Childhood. Boyhood. Youth

By Leo Tolstoy



I -- THE TUTOR, KARL IVANITCH


On the 12th of August, 18-- (just three days after my tenth birthday,

when I had been given such wonderful presents), I was awakened at seven

o'clock in the morning by Karl Ivanitch slapping the wall close to my

head with a fly-flap made of sugar paper and a stick. He did this so

roughly that he hit the image of my patron saint suspended to the oaken

back of my bed, and the dead fly fell down on my curls. I peeped out

from under the coverlet, steadied the still shaking image with my hand,

flicked the dead fly on to the floor, and gazed at Karl Ivanitch with

sleepy, wrathful eyes. He, in a parti-coloured wadded dressing-gown

fastened about the waist with a wide belt of the same material, a red

knitted cap adorned with a tassel, and soft slippers of goat skin, went

on walking round the walls and taking aim at, and slapping, flies.


"Suppose," I thought to myself, "that I am only a small boy, yet why

should he disturb me? Why does he not go killing flies around Woloda's

bed? No; Woloda is older than I, and I am the youngest of the family, so

he torments me. That is what he thinks of all day long--how to tease

me. He knows very well that he has woken me up and frightened me, but he

pretends not to notice it. Disgusting brute! And his dressing-gown and

cap and tassel too--they are all of them disgusting."


While I was thus inwardly venting my wrath upon Karl Ivanitch, he had

passed to his own bedstead, looked at his watch (which hung suspended in

a little shoe sewn with bugles), and deposited the fly-flap on a nail,

then, evidently in the most cheerful mood possible, he turned round to

us.


"Get up, children! It is quite time, and your mother is already in the

drawing-room," he exclaimed in his strong German accent. Then he crossed

over to me, sat down at my feet, and took his snuff-box out of his

pocket. I pretended to be asleep. Karl Ivanitch sneezed, wiped his

nose, flicked his fingers, and began amusing himself by teasing me and

tickling my toes as he said with a smile, "Well, well, little lazy one!"


For all my dread of being tickled, I determined not to get out of bed

or to answer him, but hid my head deeper in the pillow, kicked out with

all my strength, and strained every nerve to keep from laughing.


"How kind he is, and how fond of us!" I thought to myself. "Yet to think

that I could be hating him so just now!"


I felt angry, both with myself and with Karl Ivanitch, I wanted to laugh

and to cry at the same time, for my nerves were all on edge.


"Leave me alone, Karl!" I exclaimed at length, with tears in my eyes, as

I raised my head from beneath the bed-clothes.


Karl Ivanitch was taken aback. He left off tickling my feet, and asked

me kindly what the matter was. Had I had a disagreeable dream? His good

German face and the sympathy with which he sought to know the cause

of my tears made them flow the faster. I felt conscience-stricken, and

could not understand how, only a minute ago, I had been hating Karl,

and thinking his dressing-gown and cap and tassel disgusting. On the

contrary, they looked eminently lovable now. Even the tassel seemed

another token of his goodness. I replied that I was crying because I had

had a bad dream, and had seen Mamma dead and being buried. Of course it

was a mere invention, since I did not remember having dreamt anything

at all that night, but the truth was that Karl's sympathy as he tried to

comfort and reassure me had gradually made me believe that I HAD dreamt

such a horrible dream, and so weep the more--though from a different

cause to the one he imagined.


When Karl Ivanitch had left me, I sat up in bed and proceeded to draw

my stockings over my little feet. The tears had quite dried now, yet the

mournful thought of the invented dream was still haunting me a little.

Presently Uncle [This term is often applied by children to old servants

in Russia] Nicola came in--a neat little man who was always grave,

methodical, and respectful, as well as a great friend of Karl's. He

brought with him our clothes and boots--at least, boots for Woloda, and

for myself the old detestable, be-ribanded shoes. In his presence I

felt ashamed to cry, and, moreover, the morning sun was shining so gaily

through the window, and Woloda, standing at the washstand as he mimicked

Maria Ivanovna (my sister's governess), was laughing so loud and so

long, that even the serious Nicola--a towel over his shoulder, the soap

in one hand, and the basin in the other--could not help smiling as he

said, "Will you please let me wash you, Vladimir Petrovitch?" I had

cheered up completely.


"Are you nearly ready?" came Karl's voice from the schoolroom. The tone

of that voice sounded stern now, and had nothing in it of the kindness

which had just touched me so much. In fact, in the schoolroom Karl was

altogether a different man from what he was at other times. There he was

the tutor. I washed and dressed myself hurriedly, and, a brush still

in my hand as I smoothed my wet hair, answered to his call. Karl,

with spectacles on nose and a book in his hand, was sitting, as usual,

between the door and one of the windows. To the left of the door were

two shelves--one of them the children's (that is to say, ours), and the

other one Karl's own. Upon ours were heaped all sorts of books--lesson

books and play books--some standing up and some lying down. The only

two standing decorously against the wall were two large volumes of a

Histoire des Voyages, in red binding. On that shelf could be seen books

thick and thin and books large and small, as well as covers without

books and books without covers, since everything got crammed up together

anyhow when play time arrived and we were told to put the "library" (as

Karl called these shelves) in order. The collection of books on his own

shelf was, if not so numerous as ours, at least more varied. Three of

them in particular I remember, namely, a German pamphlet (minus a cover)

on Manuring Cabbages in Kitchen-Gardens, a History of the Seven Years'

War (bound in parchment and burnt at one corner), and a Course of

Hydrostatics. Though Karl passed so much of his time in reading that he

had injured his sight by doing so, he never read anything beyond these

books and The Northern Bee.


Another article on Karl's shelf I remember well. This was a round piece

of cardboard fastened by a screw to a wooden stand, with a sort of comic

picture of a lady and a hairdresser glued to the cardboard. Karl was

very clever at fixing pieces of cardboard together, and had devised this

contrivance for shielding his weak eyes from any very strong light.


I can see him before me now--the tall figure in its wadded dressing-gown

and red cap (a few grey hairs visible beneath the latter) sitting beside

the table; the screen with the hairdresser shading his face; one hand

holding a book, and the other one resting on the arm of the chair.

Before him lie his watch, with a huntsman painted on the dial, a

check cotton handkerchief, a round black snuff-box, and a green

spectacle-case. The neatness and orderliness of all these articles show

clearly that Karl Ivanitch has a clear conscience and a quiet mind.


Sometimes, when tired of running about the salon downstairs, I would

steal on tiptoe to the schoolroom and find Karl sitting alone in his

armchair as, with a grave and quiet expression on his face, he perused

one of his favourite books. Yet sometimes, also, there were moments when

he was not reading, and when the spectacles had slipped down his large

aquiline nose, and the blue, half-closed eyes and faintly smiling lips

seemed to be gazing before them with a curious expression. All would be

quiet in the room--not a sound being audible save his regular breathing

and the ticking of the watch with the hunter painted on the dial. He

would not see me, and I would stand at the door and think: "Poor, poor

old man! There are many of us, and we can play together and be happy,

but he sits there all alone, and has nobody to be fond of him. Surely

he speaks truth when he says that he is an orphan. And the story of his

life, too--how terrible it is! I remember him telling it to Nicola. How

dreadful to be in his position!" Then I would feel so sorry for him that

I would go to him, and take his hand, and say, "Dear Karl Ivanitch!"

and he would be visibly delighted whenever I spoke to him like this, and

would look much brighter.


On the second wall of the schoolroom hung some maps--mostly torn, but

glued together again by Karl's hand. On the third wall (in the middle of

which stood the door) hung, on one side of the door, a couple of rulers

(one of them ours--much bescratched, and the other one his--quite a new

one), with, on the further side of the door, a blackboard on which our

more serious faults were marked by circles and our lesser faults by

crosses. To the left of the blackboard was the corner in which we had to

kneel when naughty. How well I remember that corner--the shutter on the

stove, the ventilator above it, and the noise which it made when turned!

Sometimes I would be made to stay in that corner till my back and knees

were aching all over, and I would think to myself. "Has Karl Ivanitch

forgotten me? He goes on sitting quietly in his arm-chair and reading

his Hydrostatics, while I--!" Then, to remind him of my presence, I

would begin gently turning the ventilator round. Or scratching some

plaster off the wall; but if by chance an extra large piece fell upon

the floor, the fright of it was worse than any punishment. I would

glance round at Karl, but he would still be sitting there quietly, book

in hand, and pretending that he had noticed nothing.


In the middle of the room stood a table, covered with a torn black

oilcloth so much cut about with penknives that the edge of the table

showed through. Round the table stood unpainted chairs which, through

use, had attained a high degree of polish. The fourth and last wall

contained three windows, from the first of which the view was as

follows. Immediately beneath it there ran a high road on which every

irregularity, every pebble, every rut was known and dear to me. Beside

the road stretched a row of lime-trees, through which glimpses could be

caught of a wattled fence, with a meadow with farm buildings on one side

of it and a wood on the other--the whole bounded by the keeper's hut at

the further end of the meadow. The next window to the right overlooked

the part of the terrace where the "grownups" of the family used to sit

before luncheon. Sometimes, when Karl was correcting our exercises, I

would look out of that window and see Mamma's dark hair and the backs

of some persons with her, and hear the murmur of their talking and

laughter. Then I would feel vexed that I could not be there too, and

think to myself, "When am I going to be grown up, and to have no more

lessons, but sit with the people whom I love instead of with these

horrid dialogues in my hand?" Then my anger would change to sadness, and

I would fall into such a reverie that I never heard Karl when he scolded

me for my mistakes.


At last, on the morning of which I am speaking, Karl Ivanitch took

off his dressing-gown, put on his blue frockcoat with its creased and

crumpled shoulders, adjusted his tie before the looking-glass, and took

us down to greet Mamma.





II -- MAMMA


Mamma was sitting in the drawing-room and making tea. In one hand she

was holding the tea-pot, while with the other one she was drawing water

from the urn and letting it drip into the tray. Yet though she appeared

to be noticing what she doing, in reality she noted neither this fact

nor our entry.


However vivid be one's recollection of the past, any attempt to recall

the features of a beloved being shows them to one's vision as through

a mist of tears--dim and blurred. Those tears are the tears of the

imagination. When I try to recall Mamma as she was then, I see, true,

her brown eyes, expressive always of love and kindness, the small mole

on her neck below where the small hairs grow, her white embroidered

collar, and the delicate, fresh hand which so often caressed me,

and which I so often kissed; but her general appearance escapes me

altogether.


To the left of the sofa stood an English piano, at which my dark-haired

sister Lubotshka was sitting and playing with manifest effort (for

her hands were rosy from a recent washing in cold water) Clementi's

"Etudes." Then eleven years old, she was dressed in a short cotton frock

and white lace-frilled trousers, and could take her octaves only in

arpeggio. Beside her was sitting Maria Ivanovna, in a cap adorned

with pink ribbons and a blue shawl. Her face was red and cross, and it

assumed an expression even more severe when Karl Ivanitch entered the

room. Looking angrily at him without answering his bow, she went on

beating time with her foot and counting, "One, two, three--one, two,

three," more loudly and commandingly than ever.


Karl Ivanitch paid no attention to this rudeness, but went, as usual,

with German politeness to kiss Mamma's hand. She drew herself up, shook

her head as though by the movement to chase away sad thoughts from her,

and gave Karl her hand, kissing him on his wrinkled temple as he bent

his head in salutation.


"I thank you, dear Karl Ivanitch," she said in German, and then, still

using the same language asked him how we (the children) had slept.

Karl Ivanitch was deaf in one ear, and the added noise of the piano now

prevented him from hearing anything at all. He moved nearer to the sofa,

and, leaning one hand upon the table and lifting his cap above his

head, said with, a smile which in those days always seemed to me the

perfection of politeness: "You, will excuse me, will you not, Natalia

Nicolaevna?"


The reason for this was that, to avoid catching cold, Karl never took

off his red cap, but invariably asked permission, on entering the

drawing-room, to retain it on his head.


"Yes, pray replace it, Karl Ivanitch," said Mamma, bending towards him

and raising her voice, "But I asked you whether the children had slept

well?"


Still he did not hear, but, covering his bald head again with the red

cap, went on smiling more than ever.


"Stop a moment, Mimi," said Mamma (now smiling also) to Maria Ivanovna.

"It is impossible to hear anything."


How beautiful Mamma's face was when she smiled! It made her so

infinitely more charming, and everything around her seemed to grow

brighter! If in the more painful moments of my life I could have seen

that smile before my eyes, I should never have known what grief is. In

my opinion, it is in the smile of a face that the essence of what we

call beauty lies. If the smile heightens the charm of the face, then the

face is a beautiful one. If the smile does not alter the face, then the

face is an ordinary one. But if the smile spoils the face, then the face

is an ugly one indeed.


Mamma took my head between her hands, bent it gently backwards, looked

at me gravely, and said: "You have been crying this morning?"


I did not answer. She kissed my eyes, and said again in German: "Why did

you cry?"


When talking to us with particular intimacy she always used this

language, which she knew to perfection.


"I cried about a dream, Mamma" I replied, remembering the invented

vision, and trembling involuntarily at the recollection.


Karl Ivanitch confirmed my words, but said nothing as to the subject of

the dream. Then, after a little conversation on the weather, in which

Mimi also took part, Mamma laid some lumps of sugar on the tray for

one or two of the more privileged servants, and crossed over to her

embroidery frame, which stood near one of the windows.


"Go to Papa now, children," she said, "and ask him to come to me before

he goes to the home farm."


Then the music, the counting, and the wrathful looks from Mimi began

again, and we went off to see Papa. Passing through the room which had

been known ever since Grandpapa's time as "the pantry," we entered the

study.





III -- PAPA


He was standing near his writing-table, and pointing angrily to some

envelopes, papers, and little piles of coin upon it as he addressed some

observations to the bailiff, Jakoff Michaelovitch, who was standing in

his usual place (that is to say, between the door and the barometer)

and rapidly closing and unclosing the fingers of the hand which he held

behind his back. The more angry Papa grew, the more rapidly did those

fingers twirl, and when Papa ceased speaking they came to rest also.

Yet, as soon as ever Jakoff himself began to talk, they flew here,

there, and everywhere with lightning rapidity. These movements always

appeared to me an index of Jakoff's secret thoughts, though his face was

invariably placid, and expressive alike of dignity and submissiveness,

as who should say, "I am right, yet let it be as you wish." On seeing

us, Papa said, "Directly--wait a moment," and looked towards the door as

a hint for it to be shut.


"Gracious heavens! What can be the matter with you to-day, Jakoff?" he

went on with a hitch of one shoulder (a habit of his). "This envelope

here with the 800 roubles enclosed,"--Jacob took out a set of tablets,

put down "800" and remained looking at the figures while he waited

for what was to come next--"is for expenses during my absence. Do you

understand? From the mill you ought to receive 1000 roubles. Is not

that so? And from the Treasury mortgage you ought to receive some 8000

roubles. From the hay--of which, according to your calculations, we

shall be able to sell 7000 poods [The pood = 40 lbs.]at 45 copecks a

piece there should come in 3000. Consequently the sum-total that you

ought to have in hand soon is--how much?--12,000 roubles. Is that

right?"


"Precisely," answered Jakoff. Yet by the extreme rapidity with which

his fingers were twitching I could see that he had an objection to make.

Papa went on:


"Well, of this money you will send 10,000 roubles to the Petrovskoe

local council. As for the money already at the office, you will remit it

to me, and enter it as spent on this present date." Jakoff turned over

the tablet marked "12,000," and put down "21,000"--seeming, by his

action, to imply that 12,000 roubles had been turned over in the

same fashion as he had turned the tablet. "And this envelope with the

enclosed money," concluded Papa, "you will deliver for me to the person

to whom it is addressed."


I was standing close to the table, and could see the address. It was "To

Karl Ivanitch Mayer." Perhaps Papa had an idea that I had read something

which I ought not, for he touched my shoulder with his hand and made me

aware, by a slight movement, that I must withdraw from the table. Not

sure whether the movement was meant for a caress or a command, I kissed

the large, sinewy hand which rested upon my shoulder.


"Very well," said Jakoff. "And what are your orders about the accounts

for the money from Chabarovska?" (Chabarovska was Mamma's village.)


"Only that they are to remain in my office, and not to be taken thence

without my express instructions."


For a minute or two Jakoff was silent. Then his fingers began to twitch

with extraordinary rapidity, and, changing the expression of deferential

vacancy with which he had listened to his orders for one of shrewd

intelligence, he turned his tablets back and spoke.


"Will you allow me to inform you, Peter Alexandritch," he said, with

frequent pauses between his words, "that, however much you wish it, it

is out of the question to repay the local council now. You enumerated

some items, I think, as to what ought to come in from the mortgage, the

mill, and the hay (he jotted down each of these items on his tablets

again as he spoke). Yet I fear that we must have made a mistake

somewhere in the accounts." Here he paused a while, and looked gravely

at Papa.


"How so?"


"Well, will you be good enough to look for yourself? There is the

account for the mill. The miller has been to me twice to ask for time,

and I am afraid that he has no money whatever in hand. He is here now.

Would you like to speak to him?"


"No. Tell me what he says," replied Papa, showing by a movement of his

head that he had no desire to have speech with the miller.


"Well, it is easy enough to guess what he says. He declares that there

is no grinding to be got now, and that his last remaining money has gone

to pay for the dam. What good would it do for us to turn him out? As to

what you were pleased to say about the mortgage, you yourself are aware

that your money there is locked up and cannot be recovered at a moment's

notice. I was sending a load of flour to Ivan Afanovitch to-day, and

sent him a letter as well, to which he replies that he would have been

glad to oblige you, Peter Alexandritch, were it not that the matter is

out of his hands now, and that all the circumstances show that it would

take you at least two months to withdraw the money. From the hay I

understood you to estimate a return of 3000 roubles?" (Here Jakoff

jotted down "3000" on his tablets, and then looked for a moment from the

figures to Papa with a peculiar expression on his face.) "Well, surely

you see for yourself how little that is? And even then we should lose if

we were to sell the stuff now, for you must know that--"


It was clear that he would have had many other arguments to adduce had

not Papa interrupted him.


"I cannot make any change in my arrangements," said Papa. "Yet if there

should REALLY have to be any delay in the recovery of these sums, we

could borrow what we wanted from the Chabarovska funds."


"Very well, sir." The expression of Jakoff's face and the way in which

he twitched his fingers showed that this order had given him great

satisfaction. He was a serf, and a most zealous, devoted one, but,

like all good bailiffs, exacting and parsimonious to a degree in the

interests of his master. Moreover, he had some queer notions of his own.

He was forever endeavouring to increase his master's property at the

expense of his mistress's, and to prove that it would be impossible to

avoid using the rents from her estates for the benefit of Petrovskoe (my

father's village, and the place where we lived). This point he had now

gained and was delighted in consequence.


Papa then greeted ourselves, and said that if we stayed much longer in

the country we should become lazy boys; that we were growing quite big

now, and must set about doing lessons in earnest,


"I suppose you know that I am starting for Moscow to-night?" he went on,

"and that I am going to take you with me? You will live with Grandmamma,

but Mamma and the girls will remain here. You know, too, I am sure, that

Mamma's one consolation will be to hear that you are doing your lessons

well and pleasing every one around you."


The preparations which had been in progress for some days past had

made us expect some unusual event, but this news left us thunderstruck,

Woloda turned red, and, with a shaking voice, delivered Mamma's message

to Papa.


"So this was what my dream foreboded!" I thought to myself. "God send

that there come nothing worse!" I felt terribly sorry to have to leave

Mamma, but at the same rejoiced to think that I should soon be grown up,

"If we are going to-day, we shall probably have no lessons to do, and

that will be splendid. However, I am sorry for Karl Ivanitch, for he

will certainly be dismissed now. That was why that envelope had been

prepared for him. I think I would almost rather stay and do lessons here

than leave Mamma or hurt poor Karl. He is miserable enough already."


As these thoughts crossed my mind I stood looking sadly at the black

ribbons on my shoes. After a few words to Karl Ivanitch about the

depression of the barometer and an injunction to Jakoff not to feed

the hounds, since a farewell meet was to be held after luncheon, Papa

disappointed my hopes by sending us off to lessons--though he also

consoled us by promising to take us out hunting later.


On my way upstairs I made a digression to the terrace. Near the door

leading on to it Papa's favourite hound, Milka, was lying in the sun and

blinking her eyes.


"Miloshka," I cried as I caressed her and kissed her nose, "we are going

away today. Good-bye. Perhaps we shall never see each other again." I

was crying and laughing at the same time.





IV -- LESSONS


Karl Ivanitch was in a bad temper. This was clear from his contracted

brows, and from the way in which he flung his frockcoat into a drawer,

angrily donned his old dressing-gown again, and made deep dints with

his nails to mark the place in the book of dialogues to which we were

to learn by heart. Woloda began working diligently, but I was too

distracted to do anything at all. For a long while I stared vacantly

at the book; but tears at the thought of the impending separation kept

rushing to my eyes and preventing me from reading a single word. When at

length the time came to repeat the dialogues to Karl (who listened to us

with blinking eyes--a very bad sign), I had no sooner reached the place

where some one asks, "Wo kommen Sie her?" ("Where do you come from?")

and some one else answers him, "Ich komme vom Kaffeehaus" ("I come from

the coffee-house"), than I burst into tears and, for sobbing, could not

pronounce, "Haben Sie die Zeitung nicht gelesen?" ("Have you not read the

newspaper?") at all. Next, when we came to our writing lesson, the tears

kept falling from my eyes and, making a mess on the paper, as though

some one had written on blotting-paper with water, Karl was very

angry. He ordered me to go down upon my knees, declared that it was all

obstinacy and "puppet-comedy playing" (a favourite expression of his)

on my part, threatened me with the ruler, and commanded me to say that

I was sorry. Yet for sobbing and crying I could not get a word out. At

last--conscious, perhaps, that he was unjust--he departed to Nicola's

pantry, and slammed the door behind him. Nevertheless their conversation

there carried to the schoolroom.


"Have you heard that the children are going to Moscow, Nicola?" said

Karl.


"Yes. How could I help hearing it?"


At this point Nicola seemed to get up for Karl said, "Sit down, Nicola,"

and then locked the door. However, I came out of my corner and crept to

the door to listen.


"However much you may do for people, and however fond of them you may

be, never expect any gratitude, Nicola," said Karl warmly. Nicola, who

was shoe-cobbling by the window, nodded his head in assent.


"Twelve years have I lived in this house," went on Karl, lifting his

eyes and his snuff-box towards the ceiling, "and before God I can say

that I have loved them, and worked for them, even more than if they had

been my own children. You recollect, Nicola, when Woloda had the fever?

You recollect how, for nine days and nights, I never closed my eyes as

I sat beside his bed? Yes, at that time I was 'the dear, good Karl

Ivanitch'--I was wanted then; but now"--and he smiled ironically--"the

children are growing up, and must go to study in earnest. Perhaps they

never learnt anything with me, Nicola? Eh?"


"I am sure they did," replied Nicola, laying his awl down and

straightening a piece of thread with his hands.


"No, I am wanted no longer, and am to be turned out. What good are

promises and gratitude? Natalia Nicolaevna"--here he laid his hand upon

his heart--"I love and revere, but what can SHE I do here? Her will is

powerless in this house."


He flung a strip of leather on the floor with an angry gesture. "Yet I

know who has been playing tricks here, and why I am no longer wanted. It

is because I do not flatter and toady as certain people do. I am in

the habit of speaking the truth in all places and to all persons," he

continued proudly, "God be with these children, for my leaving them will

benefit them little, whereas I--well, by God's help I may be able to

earn a crust of bread somewhere. Nicola, eh?"


Nicola raised his head and looked at Karl as though to consider whether

he would indeed be able to earn a crust of bread, but he said nothing.

Karl said a great deal more of the same kind--in particular how much

better his services had been appreciated at a certain general's where

he had formerly lived (I regretted to hear that). Likewise he spoke of

Saxony, his parents, his friend the tailor, Schonheit (beauty), and so

on.


I sympathised with his distress, and felt dreadfully sorry that he and

Papa (both of whom I loved about equally) had had a difference. Then I

returned to my corner, crouched down upon my heels, and fell to thinking

how a reconciliation between them might be effected.


Returning to the study, Karl ordered me to get up and prepare to write

from dictation. When I was ready he sat down with a dignified air in

his arm-chair, and in a voice which seemed to come from a profound abyss

began to dictate: "Von al-len Lei-den-shaf-ten die grau-samste ist. Have

you written that?" He paused, took a pinch of snuff, and began again:

"Die grausamste ist die Un-dank-bar-keit [The most cruel of all passions

is ingratitude.] a capital U, mind."


The last word written, I looked at him, for him to go on.


"Punctum" (stop), he concluded, with a faintly perceptible smile, as he

signed to us to hand him our copy-books.


Several times, and in several different tones, and always with an

expression of the greatest satisfaction, did he read out that sentence,

which expressed his predominant thought at the moment. Then he set us

to learn a lesson in history, and sat down near the window. His face did

not look so depressed now, but, on the contrary, expressed eloquently

the satisfaction of a man who had avenged himself for an injury dealt

him.


By this time it was a quarter to one o'clock, but Karl Ivanitch never

thought of releasing us. He merely set us a new lesson to learn. My

fatigue and hunger were increasing in equal proportions, so that I

eagerly followed every sign of the approach of luncheon. First came the

housemaid with a cloth to wipe the plates. Next, the sound of crockery

resounded in the dining-room, as the table was moved and chairs placed

round it. After that, Mimi, Lubotshka, and Katenka. (Katenka was Mimi's

daughter, and twelve years old) came in from the garden, but Foka (the

servant who always used to come and announce luncheon) was not yet to be

seen. Only when he entered was it lawful to throw one's books aside and

run downstairs.


Hark! Steps resounded on the staircase, but they were not Foka's. Foka's

I had learnt to study, and knew the creaking of his boots well. The door

opened, and a figure unknown to me made its appearance.





V -- THE IDIOT


The man who now entered the room was about fifty years old, with a pale,

attenuated face pitted with smallpox, long grey hair, and a scanty beard

of a reddish hue. Likewise he was so tall that, on coming through the

doorway, he was forced not only to bend his head, but to incline his

whole body forward. He was dressed in a sort of smock that was much

torn, and held in his hand a stout staff. As he entered he smote this

staff upon the floor, and, contracting his brows and opening his mouth

to its fullest extent, laughed in a dreadful, unnatural way. He had lost

the sight of one eye, and its colourless pupil kept rolling about and

imparting to his hideous face an even more repellent expression than it

otherwise bore.


"Hullo, you are caught!" he exclaimed as he ran to Woloda with little

short steps and, seizing him round the head, looked at it searchingly.

Next he left him, went to the table, and, with a perfectly serious

expression on his face, began to blow under the oil-cloth, and to make

the sign of the cross over it, "O-oh, what a pity! O-oh, how it hurts!

They are angry! They fly from me!" he exclaimed in a tearful choking

voice as he glared at Woloda and wiped away the streaming tears with his

sleeve. His voice was harsh and rough, all his movements hysterical and

spasmodic, and his words devoid of sense or connection (for he used no

conjunctions). Yet the tone of that voice was so heartrending, and his

yellow, deformed face at times so sincere and pitiful in its expression,

that, as one listened to him, it was impossible to repress a mingled

sensation of pity, grief, and fear.


This was the idiot Grisha. Whence he had come, or who were his parents,

or what had induced him to choose the strange life which he led, no

one ever knew. All that I myself knew was that from his fifteenth year

upwards he had been known as an imbecile who went barefooted both in

winter and summer, visited convents, gave little images to any one who

cared to take them, and spoke meaningless words which some people took

for prophecies; that nobody remembered him as being different; that at,

rare intervals he used to call at Grandmamma's house; and that by some

people he was said to be the outcast son of rich parents and a pure,

saintly soul, while others averred that he was a mere peasant and an

idler.


At last the punctual and wished-for Foka arrived, and we went

downstairs. Grisha followed us sobbing and continuing to talk nonsense,

and knocking his staff on each step of the staircase. When we entered

the drawing-room we found Papa and Mamma walking up and down there, with

their hands clasped in each other's, and talking in low tones. Maria

Ivanovna was sitting bolt upright in an arm-chair placed at tight angles

to the sofa, and giving some sort of a lesson to the two girls sitting

beside her. When Karl Ivanitch entered the room she looked at him for a

moment, and then turned her eyes away with an expression which seemed to

say, "You are beneath my notice, Karl Ivanitch." It was easy to see from

the girls' eyes that they had important news to communicate to us as

soon as an opportunity occurred (for to leave their seats and approach

us first was contrary to Mimi's rules). It was for us to go to her

and say, "Bon jour, Mimi," and then make her a low bow; after which we

should possibly be permitted to enter into conversation with the girls.


What an intolerable creature that Mimi was! One could hardly say a word

in her presence without being found fault with. Also whenever we wanted

to speak in Russian, she would say, "Parlez, donc, francais," as though

on purpose to annoy us, while, if there was any particularly nice

dish at luncheon which we wished to enjoy in peace, she would keep on

ejaculating, "Mangez, donc, avec du pain!" or, "Comment est-ce que vous

tenez votre fourchette?" "What has SHE got to do with us?" I used to

think to myself. "Let her teach the girls. WE have our Karl Ivanitch." I

shared to the full his dislike of "certain people."


"Ask Mamma to let us go hunting too," Katenka whispered to me, as she

caught me by the sleeve just when the elders of the family were making a

move towards the dining-room.


"Very well. I will try."


Grisha likewise took a seat in the dining-room, but at a little table

apart from the rest. He never lifted his eyes from his plate, but kept

on sighing and making horrible grimaces, as he muttered to himself:

"What a pity! It has flown away! The dove is flying to heaven! The stone

lies on the tomb!" and so forth.


Ever since the morning Mamma had been absent-minded, and Grisha's

presence, words, and actions seemed to make her more so.


"By the way, there is something I forgot to ask you," she said, as she

handed Papa a plate of soup.


"What is it?"


"That you will have those dreadful dogs of yours tied up. They nearly

worried poor Grisha to death when he entered the courtyard, and I am

sure they will bite the children some day."


No sooner did Grisha hear himself mentioned that he turned towards our

table and showed us his torn clothes. Then, as he went on with his meal,

he said: "He would have let them tear me in pieces, but God would not

allow it! What a sin to let the dogs loose--a great sin! But do not beat

him, master; do not beat him! It is for God to forgive! It is past now!"


"What does he say?" said Papa, looking at him gravely and sternly. "I

cannot understand him at all."


"I think he is saying," replied Mamma, "that one of the huntsmen set

the dogs on him, but that God would not allow him to be torn in pieces.

Therefore he begs you not to punish the man."


"Oh, is that it?" said Papa, "How does he know that I intended to

punish the huntsman? You know, I am not very fond of fellows like this,"

he added in French, "and this one offends me particularly. Should it

ever happen that--"


"Oh, don't say so," interrupted Mamma, as if frightened by some thought.

"How can you know what he is?"


"I think I have plenty of opportunities for doing so, since no lack of

them come to see you--all of them the same sort, and probably all with

the same story."


I could see that Mamma's opinion differed from his, but that she did not

mean to quarrel about it.


"Please hand me the cakes," she said to him, "Are they good to-day or

not?"


"Yes, I AM angry," he went on as he took the cakes and put them where

Mamma could not reach them, "very angry at seeing supposedly reasonable

and educated people let themselves be deceived," and he struck the table

with his fork.


"I asked you to hand me the cakes," she repeated with outstretched hand.


"And it is a good thing," Papa continued as he put the hand aside, "that

the police run such vagabonds in. All they are good for is to play upon

the nerves of certain people who are already not over-strong in

that respect," and he smiled, observing that Mamma did not like the

conversation at all. However, he handed her the cakes.


"All that I have to say," she replied, "is that one can hardly believe

that a man who, though sixty years of age, goes barefooted winter and

summer, and always wears chains of two pounds' weight, and never

accepts the offers made to him to live a quiet, comfortable life--it is

difficult to believe that such a man should act thus out of laziness."

Pausing a moment, she added with a sigh: "As to predictions, je suis

payee pour y croire, I told you, I think, that Grisha prophesied the

very day and hour of poor Papa's death?"


"Oh, what HAVE you gone and done?" said Papa, laughing and putting his

hand to his cheek (whenever he did this I used to look for something

particularly comical from him). "Why did you call my attention to his

feet? I looked at them, and now can eat nothing more."


Luncheon was over now, and Lubotshka and Katenka were winking at us,

fidgeting about in their chairs, and showing great restlessness. The

winking, of course, signified, "Why don't you ask whether we too may go

to the hunt?" I nudged Woloda, and Woloda nudged me back, until at last

I took heart of grace, and began (at first shyly, but gradually with

more assurance) to ask if it would matter much if the girls too were

allowed to enjoy the sport. Thereupon a consultation was held among the

elder folks, and eventually leave was granted--Mamma, to make things

still more delightful, saying that she would come too.





VI -- PREPARATIONS FOR THE CHASE


During dessert Jakoff had been sent for, and orders given him to have

ready the carriage, the hounds, and the saddle-horses--every detail

being minutely specified, and every horse called by its own particular

name. As Woloda's usual mount was lame, Papa ordered a "hunter" to be

saddled for him; which term, "hunter" so horrified Mamma's ears, that

she imagined it to be some kind of an animal which would at once run

away and bring about Woloda's death. Consequently, in spite of all

Papa's and Woloda's assurances (the latter glibly affirming that it was

nothing, and that he liked his horse to go fast), poor Mamma continued

to exclaim that her pleasure would be quite spoilt for her.


When luncheon was over, the grown-ups had coffee in the study, while

we younger ones ran into the garden and went chattering along the

undulating paths with their carpet of yellow leaves. We talked about

Woloda's riding a hunter and said what a shame it was that Lubotshka,

could not run as fast as Katenka, and what fun it would be if we could

see Grisha's chains, and so forth; but of the impending separation

we said not a word. Our chatter was interrupted by the sound of the

carriage driving up, with a village urchin perched on each of its

springs. Behind the carriage rode the huntsmen with the hounds, and

they, again, were followed by the groom Ignat on the steed intended

for Woloda, with my old horse trotting alongside. After running to

the garden fence to get a sight of all these interesting objects, and

indulging in a chorus of whistling and hallooing, we rushed upstairs to

dress--our one aim being to make ourselves look as like the huntsmen as

possible. The obvious way to do this was to tuck one's breeches inside

one's boots. We lost no time over it all, for we were in a hurry to run

to the entrance steps again there to feast our eyes upon the horses and

hounds, and to have a chat with the huntsmen. The day was exceedingly

warm while, though clouds of fantastic shape had been gathering on the

horizon since morning and driving before a light breeze across the sun,

it was clear that, for all their menacing blackness, they did not

really intend to form a thunderstorm and spoil our last day's pleasure.

Moreover, towards afternoon some of them broke, grew pale and elongated,

and sank to the horizon again, while others of them changed to the

likeness of white transparent fish-scales. In the east, over Maslovska,

a single lurid mass was louring, but Karl Ivanitch (who always seemed to

know the ways of the heavens) said that the weather would still continue

to be fair and dry.


In spite of his advanced years, it was in quite a sprightly manner that

Foka came out to the entrance steps, to give the order "Drive up."

In fact, as he planted his legs firmly apart and took up his station

between the lowest step and the spot where the coachman was to halt,

his mien was that of a man who knew his duties and had no need to be

reminded of them by anybody. Presently the ladies, also came out, and

after a little discussions as to seats and the safety of the girls (all

of which seemed to me wholly superfluous), they settled themselves in

the vehicle, opened their parasols, and started. As the carriage was,

driving away, Mamma pointed to the hunter and asked nervously "Is that

the horse intended for Vladimir Petrovitch?" On the groom answering

in the affirmative, she raised her hands in horror and turned her head

away. As for myself, I was burning with impatience. Clambering on to

the back of my steed (I was just tall enough to see between its ears), I

proceeded to perform evolutions in the courtyard.


"Mind you don't ride over the hounds, sir," said one of the huntsmen.


"Hold your tongue. It is not the first time I have been one of the

party." I retorted with dignity.


Although Woloda had plenty of pluck, he was not altogether free from

apprehensions as he sat on the hunter. Indeed, he more than once asked

as he patted it, "Is he quiet?" He looked very well on horseback--almost

a grown-up young man, and held himself so upright in the saddle that I

envied him since my shadow seemed to show that I could not compare with

him in looks.


Presently Papa's footsteps sounded on the flagstones, the whip collected

the hounds, and the huntsmen mounted their steeds. Papa's horse came up

in charge of a groom, the hounds of his particular leash sprang up from

their picturesque attitudes to fawn upon him, and Milka, in a collar

studded with beads, came bounding joyfully from behind his heels to

greet and sport with the other dogs. Finally, as soon as Papa had

mounted we rode away.





VII -- THE HUNT


AT the head of the cavalcade rode Turka, on a hog-backed roan. On his

head he wore a shaggy cap, while, with a magnificent horn slung across

his shoulders and a knife at his belt, he looked so cruel and inexorable

that one would have thought he was going to engage in bloody strife with

his fellow men rather than to hunt a small animal. Around the hind legs

of his horse the hounds gambolled like a cluster of checkered, restless

balls. If one of them wished to stop, it was only with the greatest

difficulty that it could do so, since not only had its leash-fellow

also to be induced to halt, but at once one of the huntsmen would wheel

round, crack his whip, and shout to the delinquent,


"Back to the pack, there!"


Arrived at a gate, Papa told us and the huntsmen to continue our way

along the road, and then rode off across a cornfield. The harvest was at

its height. On the further side of a large, shining, yellow stretch of

cornland lay a high purple belt of forest which always figured in my

eyes as a distant, mysterious region behind which either the world ended

or an uninhabited waste began. This expanse of corn-land was dotted with

swathes and reapers, while along the lanes where the sickle had passed

could be seen the backs of women as they stooped among the tall, thick

grain or lifted armfuls of corn and rested them against the shocks. In

one corner a woman was bending over a cradle, and the whole stubble was

studded with sheaves and cornflowers. In another direction shirt-sleeved

men were standing on waggons, shaking the soil from the stalks of

sheaves, and stacking them for carrying. As soon as the foreman (dressed

in a blouse and high boots, and carrying a tally-stick) caught sight of

Papa, he hastened to take off his lamb's-wool cap and, wiping his red

head, told the women to get up. Papa's chestnut horse went trotting

along with a prancing gait as it tossed its head and swished its tail

to and fro to drive away the gadflies and countless other insects which

tormented its flanks, while his two greyhounds--their tails curved like

sickles--went springing gracefully over the stubble. Milka was always

first, but every now and then she would halt with a shake of her head

to await the whipper-in. The chatter of the peasants; the rumbling of

horses and waggons; the joyous cries of quails; the hum of insects as

they hung suspended in the motionless air; the smell of the soil and

grain and steam from our horses; the thousand different lights and

shadows which the burning sun cast upon the yellowish-white cornland;

the purple forest in the distance; the white gossamer threads which were

floating in the air or resting on the soil-all these things I observed

and heard and felt to the core.


Arrived at the Kalinovo wood, we found the carriage awaiting us

there, with, beside it, a one-horse waggonette driven by the butler--a

waggonette in which were a tea-urn, some apparatus for making ices, and

many other attractive boxes and bundles, all packed in straw! There was

no mistaking these signs, for they meant that we were going to have tea,

fruit, and ices in the open air. This afforded us intense delight, since

to drink tea in a wood and on the grass and where none else had ever

drunk tea before seemed to us a treat beyond expressing.


When Turka arrived at the little clearing where the carriage was

halted he took Papa's detailed instructions as to how we were to divide

ourselves and where each of us was to go (though, as a matter of fact,

he never acted according to such instructions, but always followed his

own devices). Then he unleashed the hounds, fastened the leashes to

his saddle, whistled to the pack, and disappeared among the young birch

trees the liberated hounds jumping about him in high delight, wagging

their tails, and sniffing and gambolling with one another as they

dispersed themselves in different directions.


"Has anyone a pocket-handkerchief to spare?" asked Papa. I took mine

from my pocket and offered it to him.


"Very well. Fasten it to this greyhound here."


"Gizana?" I asked, with the air of a connoisseur.


"Yes. Then run him along the road with you. When you come to a little

clearing in the wood stop and look about you, and don't come back to me

without a hare."


Accordingly I tied my handkerchief round Gizana's soft neck, and set off

running at full speed towards the appointed spot, Papa laughing as he

shouted after me, "Hurry up, hurry up or you'll be late!"


Every now and then Gizana kept stopping, pricking up his ears, and

listening to the hallooing of the beaters. Whenever he did this I was

not strong enough to move him, and could do no more than shout, "Come

on, come on!" Presently he set off so fast that I could not restrain

him, and I encountered more than one fall before we reached our

destination. Selecting there a level, shady spot near the roots of a

great oak-tree, I lay down on the turf, made Gizana crouch beside me,

and waited. As usual, my imagination far outstripped reality. I fancied

that I was pursuing at least my third hare when, as a matter of fact,

the first hound was only just giving tongue. Presently, however, Turka's

voice began to sound through the wood in louder and more excited tones,

the baying of a hound came nearer and nearer, and then another, and then

a third, and then a fourth, deep throat joined in the rising and falling

cadences of a chorus, until the whole had united their voices in one

continuous, tumultuous burst of melody. As the Russian proverb expresses

it, "The forest had found a tongue, and the hounds were burning as with

fire."


My excitement was so great that I nearly swooned where I stood. My lips

parted themselves as though smiling, the perspiration poured from me in

streams, and, in spite of the tickling sensation caused by the drops as

they trickled over my chin, I never thought of wiping them away. I felt

that a crisis was approaching. Yet the tension was too unnatural to

last. Soon the hounds came tearing along the edge of the wood, and

then--behold, they were racing away from me again, and of hares there

was not a sign to be seen! I looked in every direction and Gizana did

the same--pulling at his leash at first and whining. Then he lay down

again by my side, rested his muzzle on my knees, and resigned himself to

disappointment. Among the naked roots of the oak-tree under which I was

sitting. I could see countless ants swarming over the parched grey earth

and winding among the acorns, withered oak-leaves, dry twigs, russet

moss, and slender, scanty blades of grass. In serried files they kept

pressing forward on the level track they had made for themselves--some

carrying burdens, some not. I took a piece of twig and barred their way.

Instantly it was curious to see how they made light of the obstacle.

Some got past it by creeping underneath, and some by climbing over it. A

few, however, there were (especially those weighted with loads) who were

nonplussed what to do. They either halted and searched for a way round,

or returned whence they had come, or climbed the adjacent herbage, with

the evident intention of reaching my hand and going up the sleeve of my

jacket. From this interesting spectacle my attention was distracted by

the yellow wings of a butterfly which was fluttering alluringly before

me. Yet I had scarcely noticed it before it flew away to a little

distance and, circling over some half-faded blossoms of white clover,

settled on one of them. Whether it was the sun's warmth that delighted

it, or whether it was busy sucking nectar from the flower, at all events

it seemed thoroughly comfortable. It scarcely moved its wings at all,

and pressed itself down into the clover until I could hardly see

its body. I sat with my chin on my hands and watched it with intense

interest.


Suddenly Gizana sprang up and gave me such a violent jerk that I nearly

rolled over. I looked round. At the edge of the wood a hare had just

come into view, with one ear bent down and the other one sharply

pricked. The blood rushed to my head, and I forgot everything else as

I shouted, slipped the dog, and rushed towards the spot. Yet all was in

vain. The hare stopped, made a rush, and was lost to view.


How confused I felt when at that moment Turka stepped from the

undergrowth (he had been following the hounds as they ran along the

edges of the wood)! He had seen my mistake (which had consisted in my

not biding my time), and now threw me a contemptuous look as he said,

"Ah, master!" And you should have heard the tone in which he said it! It

would have been a relief to me if he had then and there suspended me to

his saddle instead of the hare. For a while I could only stand miserably

where I was, without attempting to recall the dog, and ejaculate as I

slapped my knees, "Good heavens! What a fool I was!" I could hear the

hounds retreating into the distance, and baying along the further side

of the wood as they pursued the hare, while Turka rallied them with

blasts on his gorgeous horn: yet I did not stir.





VIII -- WE PLAY GAMES


THE hunt was over, a cloth had been spread in the shade of some young

birch-trees, and the whole party was disposed around it. The butler,

Gabriel, had stamped down the surrounding grass, wiped the plates in

readiness, and unpacked from a basket a quantity of plums and peaches

wrapped in leaves.


Through the green branches of the young birch-trees the sun glittered

and threw little glancing balls of light upon the pattern of my napkin,

my legs, and the bald moist head of Gabriel. A soft breeze played in

the leaves of the trees above us, and, breathing softly upon my hair and

heated face, refreshed me beyond measure. When we had finished the

fruit and ices, nothing remained to be done around the empty cloth, so,

despite the oblique, scorching rays of the sun, we rose and proceeded to

play.


"Well, what shall it be?" said Lubotshka, blinking in the sunlight and

skipping about the grass, "Suppose we play Robinson?"


"No, that's a tiresome game," objected Woloda, stretching himself lazily

on the turf and gnawing some leaves, "Always Robinson! If you want to

play at something, play at building a summerhouse."


Woloda was giving himself tremendous airs. Probably he was proud of

having ridden the hunter, and so pretended to be very tired. Perhaps,

also, he had too much hard-headedness and too little imagination

fully to enjoy the game of Robinson. It was a game which consisted of

performing various scenes from The Swiss Family Robinson, a book which

we had recently been reading.


"Well, but be a good boy. Why not try and please us this time?" the

girls answered. "You may be Charles or Ernest or the father, whichever

you like best," added Katenka as she tried to raise him from the ground

by pulling at his sleeve.


"No, I'm not going to; it's a tiresome game," said Woloda again, though

smiling as if secretly pleased.


"It would be better to sit at home than not to play at ANYTHING,"

murmured Lubotshka, with tears in her eyes. She was a great weeper.


"Well, go on, then. Only, DON'T cry; I can't stand that sort of thing."


Woloda's condescension did not please us much. On the contrary, his

lazy, tired expression took away all the fun of the game. When we sat

on the ground and imagined that we were sitting in a boat and either

fishing or rowing with all our might, Woloda persisted in sitting with

folded hands or in anything but a fisherman's posture. I made a remark

about it, but he replied that, whether we moved our hands or not, we

should neither gain nor lose ground--certainly not advance at all, and I

was forced to agree with him. Again, when I pretended to go out hunting,

and, with a stick over my shoulder, set off into the wood, Woloda only

lay down on his back with his hands under his head, and said that he

supposed it was all the same whether he went or not. Such behaviour and

speeches cooled our ardour for the game and were very disagreeable--the

more so since it was impossible not to confess to oneself that Woloda

was right, I myself knew that it was not only impossible to kill birds

with a stick, but to shoot at all with such a weapon. Still, it was

the game, and if we were once to begin reasoning thus, it would become

equally impossible for us to go for drives on chairs. I think that even

Woloda himself cannot at that moment have forgotten how, in the long

winter evenings, we had been used to cover an arm-chair with a shawl

and make a carriage of it--one of us being the coachman, another one the

footman, the two girls the passengers, and three other chairs the trio

of horses abreast. With what ceremony we used to set out, and with what

adventures we used to meet on the way! How gaily and quickly those long

winter evenings used to pass! If we were always to judge from reality,

games would be nonsense; but if games were nonsense, what else would

there be left to do?





IX -- A FIRST ESSAY IN LOVE


PRETENDING to gather some "American fruit" from a tree, Lubotshka

suddenly plucked a leaf upon which was a huge caterpillar, and throwing

the insect with horror to the ground, lifted her hands and sprang away

as though afraid it would spit at her. The game stopped, and we crowded

our heads together as we stooped to look at the curiosity.


I peeped over Katenka's shoulder as she was trying to lift the

caterpillar by placing another leaf in its way. I had observed before

that the girls had a way of shrugging their shoulders whenever they were

trying to put a loose garment straight on their bare necks, as well as

that Mimi always grew angry on witnessing this manoeuvre and declared

it to be a chambermaid's trick. As Katenka bent over the caterpillar she

made that very movement, while at the same instant the breeze lifted the

fichu on her white neck. Her shoulder was close to my lips, I looked at

it and kissed it. She did not turn round, but Woloda remarked without

raising his head, "What spooniness!" I felt the tears rising to my eyes,

and could not take my gaze from Katenka. I had long been used to her

fair, fresh face, and had always been fond of her, but now I looked at

her more closely, and felt more fond of her, than I had ever done or

felt before.


When we returned to the grown-ups, Papa informed us, to our great joy,

that, at Mamma's entreaties, our departure was to be postponed until

the following morning. We rode home beside the carriage--Woloda and

I galloping near it, and vieing with one another in our exhibition of

horsemanship and daring. My shadow looked longer now than it had done

before, and from that I judged that I had grown into a fine rider. Yet

my complacency was soon marred by an unfortunate occurrence. Desiring

to outdo Woloda before the audience in the carriage, I dropped a little

behind. Then with whip and spur I urged my steed forward, and at the

same time assumed a natural, graceful attitude, with the intention of

whooting past the carriage on the side on which Katenka was seated. My

only doubt was whether to halloo or not as I did so. In the event, my

infernal horse stopped so abruptly when just level with the carriage

horses that I was pitched forward on to its neck and cut a very sorry

figure!





X -- THE SORT OF MAN MY FATHER WAS


Papa was a gentleman of the last century, with all the chivalrous

character, self-reliance, and gallantry of the youth of that time. Upon

the men of the present day he looked with a contempt arising partly from

inborn pride and partly from a secret feeling of vexation that, in this

age of ours, he could no longer enjoy the influence and success which

had been his in his youth. His two principal failings were gambling and

gallantry, and he had won or lost, in the course of his career, several

millions of roubles.


Tall and of imposing figure, he walked with a curiously quick, mincing

gait, as well as had a habit of hitching one of his shoulders. His eyes

were small and perpetually twinkling, his nose large and aquiline, his

lips irregular and rather oddly (though pleasantly) compressed, his

articulation slightly defective and lisping, and his head quite bald.

Such was my father's exterior from the days of my earliest recollection.

It was an exterior which not only brought him success and made him a

man a bonnes fortunes but one which pleased people of all ranks and

stations. Especially did it please those whom he desired to please.


At all junctures he knew how to take the lead, for, though not deriving

from the highest circles of society, he had always mixed with them, and

knew how to win their respect. He possessed in the highest degree that

measure of pride and self-confidence which, without giving offence,

maintains a man in the opinion of the world. He had much originality,

as well as the ability to use it in such a way that it benefited him as

much as actual worldly position or fortune could have done. Nothing in

the universe could surprise him, and though not of eminent attainments

in life, he seemed born to have acquired them. He understood so

perfectly how to make both himself and others forget and keep at

a distance the seamy side of life, with all its petty troubles

and vicissitudes, that it was impossible not to envy him. He was a

connoisseur in everything which could give ease and pleasure, as well

as knew how to make use of such knowledge. Likewise he prided himself on

the brilliant connections which he had formed through my mother's family

or through friends of his youth, and was secretly jealous of any one of

a higher rank than himself--any one, that is to say, of a rank higher

than a retired lieutenant of the Guards. Moreover, like all ex-officers,

he refused to dress himself in the prevailing fashion, though he attired

himself both originally and artistically--his invariable wear being

light, loose-fitting suits, very fine shirts, and large collars and

cuffs. Everything seemed to suit his upright figure and quiet, assured

air. He was sensitive to the pitch of sentimentality, and, when reading

a pathetic passage, his voice would begin to tremble and the tears to

come into his eyes, until he had to lay the book aside. Likewise he was

fond of music, and could accompany himself on the piano as he sang the

love songs of his friend A-- or gipsy songs or themes from operas;

but he had no love for serious music, and would frankly flout received

opinion by declaring that, whereas Beethoven's sonatas wearied him and

sent him to sleep, his ideal of beauty was "Do not wake me, youth"

as Semenoff sang it, or "Not one" as the gipsy Taninsha rendered that

ditty. His nature was essentially one of those which follow public

opinion concerning what is good, and consider only that good which the

public declares to be so. [It may be noted that the author has said

earlier in the chapter that his father possessed "much originality."]

God only knows whether he had any moral convictions. His life was so

full of amusement that probably he never had time to form any, and was

too successful ever to feel the lack of them.


As he grew to old age he looked at things always from a fixed point

of view, and cultivated fixed rules--but only so long as that point or

those rules coincided with expediency. The mode of life which offered

some passing degree of interest--that, in his opinion, was the right

one and the only one that men ought to affect. He had great fluency of

argument; and this, I think, increased the adaptability of his morals

and enabled him to speak of one and the same act, now as good, and now,

with abuse, as abominable.





XI -- IN THE DRAWING-ROOM AND THE STUDY


Twilight had set in when we reached home. Mamma sat down to the piano,

and we to a table, there to paint and draw in colours and pencil. Though

I had only one cake of colour, and it was blue, I determined to draw a

picture of the hunt. In exceedingly vivid fashion I painted a blue boy

on a blue horse, and--but here I stopped, for I was uncertain whether

it was possible also to paint a blue HARE. I ran to the study to consult

Papa, and as he was busy reading he never lifted his eyes from his book

when I asked, "Can there be blue hares?" but at once replied, "There

can, my boy, there can." Returning to the table I painted in my blue

hare, but subsequently thought it better to change it into a blue bush.

Yet the blue bush did not wholly please me, so I changed it into a tree,

and then into a rick, until, the whole paper having now become one blur

of blue, I tore it angrily in pieces, and went off to meditate in the

large arm-chair.


Mamma was playing Field's second concerto. Field, it may be said, had

been her master. As I dozed, the music brought up before my imagination

a kind of luminosity, with transparent dream-shapes. Next she played the

"Sonate Pathetique" of Beethoven, and I at once felt heavy, depressed,

and apprehensive. Mamma often played those two pieces, and therefore I

well recollect the feelings they awakened in me. Those feelings were a

reminiscence--of what? Somehow I seemed to remember something which had

never been.


Opposite to me lay the study door, and presently I saw Jakoff enter it,

accompanied by several long-bearded men in kaftans. Then the door shut

again.


"Now they are going to begin some business or other," I thought. I

believed the affairs transacted in that study to be the most important

ones on earth. This opinion was confirmed by the fact that people only

approached the door of that room on tiptoe and speaking in whispers.

Presently Papa's resonant voice sounded within, and I also scented

cigar smoke--always a very attractive thing to me. Next, as I dozed, I

suddenly heard a creaking of boots that I knew, and, sure enough,

saw Karl Ivanitch go on tiptoe, and with a depressed, but resolute,

expression on his face and a written document in his hand, to the study

door and knock softly. It opened, and then shut again behind him.


"I hope nothing is going to happen," I mused. "Karl Ivanitch is

offended, and might be capable of anything--" and again I dozed off.


Nevertheless something DID happen. An hour later I was disturbed by

the same creaking of boots, and saw Karl come out, and disappear up

the stairs, wiping away a few tears from his cheeks with his pocket

handkerchief as he went and muttering something between his teeth. Papa

came out behind him and turned aside into the drawing-room.


"Do you know what I have just decided to do?" he asked gaily as he laid

a hand upon Mamma's shoulder.


"What, my love?"


"To take Karl Ivanitch with the children. There will be room enough for

him in the carriage. They are used to him, and he seems greatly attached

to them. Seven hundred roubles a year cannot make much difference to us,

and the poor devil is not at all a bad sort of a fellow." I could not

understand why Papa should speak of him so disrespectfully.


"I am delighted," said Mamma, "and as much for the children's sake as

his own. He is a worthy old man."


"I wish you could have seen how moved he was when I told him that he

might look upon the 500 roubles as a present! But the most amusing thing

of all is this bill which he has just handed me. It is worth

seeing," and with a smile Papa gave Mamma a paper inscribed in Karl's

handwriting. "Is it not capital?" he concluded.


The contents of the paper were as follows: [The joke of this bill

consists chiefly in its being written in very bad Russian, with

continual mistakes as to plural and singular, prepositions and so

forth.]


"Two book for the children--70 copeck. Coloured paper, gold frames, and

a pop-guns, blockheads [This word has a double meaning in Russian.] for

cutting out several box for presents--6 roubles, 55 copecks. Several

book and a bows, presents for the childrens--8 roubles, 16 copecks. A

gold watches promised to me by Peter Alexandrovitch out of Moscow, in

the years 18-- for 140 roubles. Consequently Karl Mayer have to receive

139 rouble, 79 copecks, beside his wage."


If people were to judge only by this bill (in which Karl Ivanitch

demanded repayment of all the money he had spent on presents, as well as

the value of a present promised to himself), they would take him to have

been a callous, avaricious egotist yet they would be wrong.


It appears that he had entered the study with the paper in his hand and

a set speech in his head, for the purpose of declaiming eloquently to

Papa on the subject of the wrongs which he believed himself to have

suffered in our house, but that, as soon as ever he began to speak in

the vibratory voice and with the expressive intonations which he used in

dictating to us, his eloquence wrought upon himself more than upon Papa;

with the result that, when he came to the point where he had to say,

"however sad it will be for me to part with the children," he lost his

self-command utterly, his articulation became choked, and he was obliged

to draw his coloured pocket-handkerchief from his pocket.


"Yes, Peter Alexandrovitch," he said, weeping (this formed no part of

the prepared speech), "I am grown so used to the children that I cannot

think what I should do without them. I would rather serve you without

salary than not at all," and with one hand he wiped his eyes, while with

the other he presented the bill.


Although I am convinced that at that moment Karl Ivanitch was speaking

with absolute sincerity (for I know how good his heart was), I confess

that never to this day have I been able quite to reconcile his words

with the bill.


"Well, if the idea of leaving us grieves you, you may be sure that the

idea of dismissing you grieves me equally," said Papa, tapping him on

the shoulder. Then, after a pause, he added, "But I have changed my

mind, and you shall not leave us."


Just before supper Grisha entered the room. Ever since he had entered

the house that day he had never ceased to sigh and weep--a portent,

according to those who believed in his prophetic powers, that misfortune

was impending for the household. He had now come to take leave of us,

for to-morrow (so he said) he must be moving on. I nudged Woloda, and we

moved towards the door.


"What is the matter?" he said.


"This--that if we want to see Grisha's chains we must go upstairs at

once to the men-servants' rooms. Grisha is to sleep in the second one,

so we can sit in the store-room and see everything."


"All right. Wait here, and I'll tell the girls."


The girls came at once, and we ascended the stairs, though the question

as to which of us should first enter the store-room gave us some little

trouble. Then we cowered down and waited.





XII -- GRISHA


WE all felt a little uneasy in the thick darkness, so we pressed close

to one another and said nothing. Before long Grisha arrived with his

soft tread, carrying in one hand his staff and in the other a tallow

candle set in a brass candlestick. We scarcely ventured to breathe.


"Our Lord Jesus Christ! Holy Mother of God! Father, Son, and Holy

Ghost!" he kept repeating, with the different intonations and

abbreviations which gradually become peculiar to persons who are

accustomed to pronounce the words with great frequency.


Still praying, he placed his staff in a corner and looked at the bed;

after which he began to undress. Unfastening his old black girdle, he

slowly divested himself of his torn nankeen kaftan, and deposited

it carefully on the back of a chair. His face had now lost its usual

disquietude and idiocy. On the contrary, it had in it something restful,

thoughtful, and even grand, while all his movements were deliberate and

intelligent.


Next, he lay down quietly in his shirt on the bed, made the sign of the

cross towards every side of him, and adjusted his chains beneath his

shirt--an operation which, as we could see from his face, occasioned him

considerable pain. Then he sat up again, looked gravely at his ragged

shirt, and rising and taking the candle, lifted the latter towards the

shrine where the images of the saints stood. That done, he made the sign

of the cross again, and turned the candle upside down, when it went out

with a hissing noise.


Through the window (which overlooked the wood) the moon (nearly full)

was shining in such a way that one side of the tall white figure of the

idiot stood out in the pale, silvery moonlight, while the other side was

lost in the dark shadow which covered the floor, walls, and ceiling. In

the courtyard the watchman was tapping at intervals upon his brass alarm

plate. For a while Grisha stood silently before the images and, with

his large hands pressed to his breast and his head bent forward, gave

occasional sighs. Then with difficulty he knelt down and began to pray.


At first he repeated some well-known prayers, and only accented a word

here and there. Next, he repeated thee same prayers, but louder and

with increased accentuation. Lastly he repeated them again and with even

greater emphasis, as well as with an evident effort to pronounce them in

the old Slavonic Church dialect. Though disconnected, his prayers were

very touching. He prayed for all his benefactors (so he called every one

who had received him hospitably), with, among them, Mamma and ourselves.

Next he prayed for himself, and besought God to forgive him his sins,

at the same time repeating, "God forgive also my enemies!" Then, moaning

with the effort, he rose from his knees--only to fall to the floor again

and repeat his phrases afresh. At last he regained his feet, despite

the weight of the chains, which rattled loudly whenever they struck the

floor.


Woloda pinched me rudely in the leg, but I took no notice of that

(except that I involuntarily touched the place with my hand), as I

observed with a feeling of childish astonishment, pity, and respect

the words and gestures of Grisha. Instead of the laughter and amusement

which I had expected on entering the store-room, I felt my heart beating

and overcome.


Grisha continued for some time in this state of religious ecstasy as he

improvised prayers and repeated again and yet again, "Lord, have mercy

upon me!" Each time that he said, "Pardon me, Lord, and teach me to

do what Thou wouldst have done," he pronounced the words with added

earnestness and emphasis, as though he expected an immediate answer to

his petition, and then fell to sobbing and moaning once more. Finally,

he went down on his knees again, folded his arms upon his breast, and

remained silent. I ventured to put my head round the door (holding my

breath as I did so), but Grisha still made no movement except for the

heavy sighs which heaved his breast. In the moonlight I could see a tear

glistening on the white patch of his blind eye.


"Yes, Thy will be done!" he exclaimed suddenly, with an expression which

I cannot describe, as, prostrating himself with his forehead on the

floor, he fell to sobbing like a child.


Much sand has run out since then, many recollections of the past have

faded from my memory or become blurred in indistinct visions, and poor

Grisha himself has long since reached the end of his pilgrimage; but the

impression which he produced upon me, and the feelings which he aroused

in my breast, will never leave my mind. O truly Christian Grisha, your

faith was so strong that you could feel the actual presence of God; your

love so great that the words fell of themselves from your lips. You had

no reason to prove them, for you did so with your earnest praises of His

majesty as you fell to the ground speechless and in tears!


Nevertheless the sense of awe with which I had listened to Grisha could

not last for ever. I had now satisfied my curiosity, and, being cramped

with sitting in one position so long, desired to join in the tittering

and fun which I could hear going on in the dark store-room behind me.

Some one took my hand and whispered, "Whose hand is this?" Despite the

darkness, I knew by the touch and the low voice in my ear that it was

Katenka. I took her by the arm, but she withdrew it, and, in doing so,

pushed a cane chair which was standing near. Grisha lifted his head

looked quietly about him, and, muttering a prayer, rose and made the

sign of the cross towards each of the four corners of the room.





XIII -- NATALIA SAVISHNA


In days gone by there used to run about the seignorial courtyard of the

country-house at Chabarovska a girl called Natashka. She always wore a

cotton dress, went barefooted, and was rosy, plump, and gay. It was at

the request and entreaties of her father, the clarionet player Savi,

that my grandfather had "taken her upstairs"--that is to say, made

her one of his wife's female servants. As chamber-maid, Natashka so

distinguished herself by her zeal and amiable temper that when Mamma

arrived as a baby and required a nurse Natashka was honoured with the

charge of her. In this new office the girl earned still further praises

and rewards for her activity, trustworthiness, and devotion to her young

mistress. Soon, however, the powdered head and buckled shoes of the

young and active footman Foka (who had frequent opportunities of

courting her, since they were in the same service) captivated her

unsophisticated, but loving, heart. At last she ventured to go and ask

my grandfather if she might marry Foka, but her master took the request

in bad part, flew into a passion, and punished poor Natashka by exiling

her to a farm which he owned in a remote quarter of the Steppes. At

length, when she had been gone six months and nobody could be found to

replace her, she was recalled to her former duties. Returned, and with

her dress in rags, she fell at Grandpapa's feet, and besought him to

restore her his favour and kindness, and to forget the folly of which

she had been guilty--folly which, she assured him, should never recur

again. And she kept her word.


From that time forth she called herself, not Natashka, but Natalia

Savishna, and took to wearing a cap. All the love in her heart was now

bestowed upon her young charge. When Mamma had a governess appointed

for her education, Natalia was awarded the keys as housekeeper, and

henceforth had the linen and provisions under her care. These new duties

she fulfilled with equal fidelity and zeal. She lived only for her

master's advantage. Everything in which she could detect fraud,

extravagance, or waste she endeavoured to remedy to the best of her

power. When Mamma married and wished in some way to reward Natalia

Savishna for her twenty years of care and labour, she sent for her and,

voicing in the tenderest terms her attachment and love, presented

her with a stamped charter of her (Natalia's) freedom, [It will be

remembered that this was in the days of serfdom] telling her at the same

time that, whether she continued to serve in the household or not, she

should always receive an annual pension of 300 roubles. Natalia listened

in silence to this. Then, taking the document in her hands and regarding

it with a frown, she muttered something between her teeth, and darted

from the room, slamming the door behind her. Not understanding the

reason for such strange conduct, Mamma followed her presently to her

room, and found her sitting with streaming eyes on her trunk, crushing

her pocket-handkerchief between her fingers, and looking mournfully

at the remains of the document, which was lying torn to pieces on the

floor.


"What is the matter, dear Natalia Savishna?" said Mamma, taking her

hand.


"Nothing, ma'am," she replied; "only--only I must have displeased you

somehow, since you wish to dismiss me from the house. Well, I will go."


She withdrew her hand and, with difficulty restraining her tears, rose

to leave the room, but Mamma stopped her, and they wept a while in one

another's arms.


Ever since I can remember anything I can remember Natalia Savishna and

her love and tenderness; yet only now have I learnt to appreciate them

at their full value. In early days it never occurred to me to think what

a rare and wonderful being this old domestic was. Not only did she never

talk, but she seemed never even to think, of herself. Her whole life

was compounded of love and self-sacrifice. Yet so used was I to her

affection and singleness of heart that I could not picture things

otherwise. I never thought of thanking her, or of asking myself, "Is she

also happy? Is she also contented?" Often on some pretext or another I

would leave my lessons and run to her room, where, sitting down, I

would begin to muse aloud as though she were not there. She was forever

mending something, or tidying the shelves which lined her room,

or marking linen, so that she took no heed of the nonsense which I

talked--how that I meant to become a general, to marry a beautiful

woman, to buy a chestnut horse, to, build myself a house of glass, to

invite Karl Ivanitch's relatives to come and visit me from Saxony, and

so forth; to all of which she would only reply, "Yes, my love, yes."

Then, on my rising, and preparing to go, she would open a blue trunk

which had pasted on the inside of its lid a coloured picture of a hussar

which had once adorned a pomade bottle and a sketch made by Woloda, and

take from it a fumigation pastille, which she would light and shake for

my benefit, saying:


"These, dear, are the pastilles which your grandfather (now in Heaven)

brought back from Otchakov after fighting against the Turks." Then she

would add with a sigh: "But this is nearly the last one."


The trunks which filled her room seemed to contain almost everything in

the world. Whenever anything was wanted, people said, "Oh, go and ask

Natalia Savishna for it," and, sure enough, it was seldom that she did

not produce the object required and say, "See what comes of taking care

of everything!" Her trunks contained thousands of things which nobody in

the house but herself would have thought of preserving.


Once I lost my temper with her. This was how it happened.


One day after luncheon I poured myself out a glass of kvass, and then

dropped the decanter, and so stained the tablecloth.


"Go and call Natalia, that she may come and see what her darling has

done," said Mamma.


Natalia arrived, and shook her head at me when she saw the damage I had

done; but Mamma whispered something in her car, threw a look at myself,

and then left the room.


I was just skipping away, in the sprightliest mood possible, when

Natalia darted out upon me from behind the door with the tablecloth in

her hand, and, catching hold of me, rubbed my face hard with the stained

part of it, repeating, "Don't thou go and spoil tablecloths any more!"


I struggled hard, and roared with temper.


"What?" I said to myself as I fled to the drawing-room in a mist of

tears, "To think that Natalia Savishna-just plain Natalia-should say

'THOU' to me and rub my face with a wet tablecloth as though I were a

mere servant-boy! It is abominable!"


Seeing my fury, Natalia departed, while I continued to strut about and

plan how to punish the bold woman for her offence. Yet not more than a

few moments had passed when Natalia returned and, stealing to my side,

began to comfort me,


"Hush, then, my love. Do not cry. Forgive me my rudeness. It was wrong

of me. You WILL pardon me, my darling, will you not? There, there,

that's a dear," and she took from her handkerchief a cornet of pink

paper containing two little cakes and a grape, and offered it me with

a trembling hand. I could not look the kind old woman in the face, but,

turning aside, took the paper, while my tears flowed the faster--though

from love and shame now, not from anger.





XIV -- THE PARTING


ON the day after the events described, the carriage and the luggage-cart

drew up to the door at noon. Nicola, dressed for the journey, with his

breeches tucked into his boots and an old overcoat belted tightly about

him with a girdle, got into the cart and arranged cloaks and cushions on

the seats. When he thought that they were piled high enough he sat down

on them, but finding them still unsatisfactory, jumped up and arranged

them once more.


"Nicola Dimitvitch, would you be so good as to take master's

dressing-case with you?" said Papa's valet, suddenly standing up in the

carriage, "It won't take up much room."


"You should have told me before, Michael Ivanitch," answered Nicola

snappishly as he hurled a bundle with all his might to the floor of the

cart. "Good gracious! Why, when my head is going round like a whirlpool,

there you come along with your dressing-case!" and he lifted his cap to

wipe away the drops of perspiration from his sunburnt brow.


The courtyard was full of bareheaded peasants in kaftans or simple

shirts, women clad in the national dress and wearing striped

handkerchiefs, and barefooted little ones--the latter holding their

mothers' hands or crowding round the entrance-steps. All were chattering

among themselves as they stared at the carriage. One of the postillions,

an old man dressed in a winter cap and cloak, took hold of the pole of

the carriage and tried it carefully, while the other postillion (a

young man in a white blouse with pink gussets on the sleeves and a black

lamb's-wool cap which he kept cocking first on one side and then on the

other as he arranged his flaxen hair) laid his overcoat upon the box,

slung the reins over it, and cracked his thonged whip as he looked now

at his boots and now at the other drivers where they stood greasing the

wheels of the cart--one driver lifting up each wheel in turn and the

other driver applying the grease. Tired post-horses of various hues

stood lashing away flies with their tails near the gate--some stamping

their great hairy legs, blinking their eyes, and dozing, some leaning

wearily against their neighbours, and others cropping the leaves and

stalks of dark-green fern which grew near the entrance-steps. Some of

the dogs were lying panting in the sun, while others were slinking under

the vehicles to lick the grease from the wheels. The air was filled with

a sort of dusty mist, and the horizon was lilac-grey in colour, though

no clouds were to be seen, A strong wind from the south was raising

volumes of dust from the roads and fields, shaking the poplars and

birch-trees in the garden, and whirling their yellow leaves away. I

myself was sitting at a window and waiting impatiently for these various

preparations to come to an end.


As we sat together by the drawing-room table, to pass the last few

moments en famille, it never occurred to me that a sad moment was

impending. On the contrary, the most trivial thoughts were filling my

brain. Which driver was going to drive the carriage and which the cart?

Which of us would sit with Papa, and which with Karl Ivanitch? Why must

I be kept forever muffled up in a scarf and padded boots?


"Am I so delicate? Am I likely to be frozen?" I thought to myself.

"I wish it would all come to an end, and we could take our seats and

start."


"To whom shall I give the list of the children's linen?" asked Natalia

Savishna of Mamma as she entered the room with a paper in her hand and

her eyes red with weeping.


"Give it to Nicola, and then return to say good-bye to them," replied

Mamma. The old woman seemed about to say something more, but suddenly

stopped short, covered her face with her handkerchief, and left the

room. Something seemed to prick at my heart when I saw that gesture of

hers, but impatience to be off soon drowned all other feeling, and

I continued to listen indifferently to Papa and Mamma as they talked

together. They were discussing subjects which evidently interested

neither of them. What must be bought for the house? What would Princess

Sophia or Madame Julie say? Would the roads be good?--and so forth.


Foka entered, and in the same tone and with the same air as though he

were announcing luncheon said, "The carriages are ready." I saw Mamma

tremble and turn pale at the announcement, just as though it were

something unexpected.


Next, Foka was ordered to shut all the doors of the room. This amused

me highly. As though we needed to be concealed from some one! When

every one else was seated, Foka took the last remaining chair. Scarcely,

however, had he done so when the door creaked and every one looked that

way. Natalia Savishna entered hastily, and, without raising her eyes,

sat own on the same chair as Foka. I can see them before me now-Foka's

bald head and wrinkled, set face, and, beside him, a bent, kind figure

in a cap from beneath which a few grey hairs were straggling. The pair

settled themselves together on the chair, but neither of them looked

comfortable.


I continued preoccupied and impatient. In fact, the ten minutes during

which we sat there with closed doors seemed to me an hour. At last every

one rose, made the sign of the cross, and began to say good-bye. Papa

embraced Mamma, and kissed her again and again.


"But enough," he said presently. "We are not parting for ever."


"No, but it is-so-so sad!" replied Mamma, her voice trembling with

emotion.


When I heard that faltering voice, and saw those quivering lips and

tear-filled eyes, I forgot everything else in the world. I felt so ill

and miserable that I would gladly have run away rather than bid

her farewell. I felt, too, that when she was embracing Papa she was

embracing us all. She clasped Woloda to her several times, and made the

sign of the cross over him; after which I approached her, thinking that

it was my turn. Nevertheless she took him again and again to her heart,

and blessed him. Finally I caught hold of her, and, clinging to her,

wept--wept, thinking of nothing in the world but my grief.


As we passed out to take our seats, other servants pressed round us in

the hall to say good-bye. Yet their requests to shake hands with

us, their resounding kisses on our shoulders, [The fashion in which

inferiors salute their superiors in Russia.] and the odour of their

greasy heads only excited in me a feeling akin to impatience with these

tiresome people. The same feeling made me bestow nothing more than a

very cross kiss upon Natalia's cap when she approached to take leave of

me. It is strange that I should still retain a perfect recollection of

these servants' faces, and be able to draw them with the most minute

accuracy in my mind, while Mamma's face and attitude escape me entirely.

It may be that it is because at that moment I had not the heart to look

at her closely. I felt that if I did so our mutual grief would burst

forth too unrestrainedly.


I was the first to jump into the carriage and to take one of the hinder

seats. The high back of the carriage prevented me from actually seeing

her, yet I knew by instinct that Mamma was still there.


"Shall I look at her again or not?" I said to myself. "Well, just for

the last time," and I peeped out towards the entrance-steps. Exactly at

that moment Mamma moved by the same impulse, came to the opposite side

of the carriage, and called me by name. Hearing her voice behind me. I

turned round, but so hastily that our heads knocked together. She gave a

sad smile, and kissed me convulsively for the last time.


When we had driven away a few paces I determined to look at her once

more. The wind was lifting the blue handkerchief from her head as, bent

forward and her face buried in her hands, she moved slowly up the steps.

Foka was supporting her. Papa said nothing as he sat beside me. I felt

breathless with tears--felt a sensation in my throat as though I were

going to choke, just as we came out on to the open road I saw a white

handkerchief waving from the terrace. I waved mine in return, and the

action of so doing calmed me a little. I still went on crying, but the

thought that my tears were a proof of my affection helped to soothe and

comfort me.


After a little while I began to recover, and to look with interest at

objects which we passed and at the hind-quarters of the led horse which

was trotting on my side. I watched how it would swish its tail, how it

would lift one hoof after the other, how the driver's thong would fall

upon its back, and how all its legs would then seem to jump together and

the back-band, with the rings on it, to jump too--the whole covered with

the horse's foam. Then I would look at the rolling stretches of ripe

corn, at the dark ploughed fields where ploughs and peasants and horses

with foals were working, at their footprints, and at the box of the

carriage to see who was driving us; until, though my face was still wet

with tears, my thoughts had strayed far from her with whom I had just

parted--parted, perhaps, for ever. Yet ever and again something would

recall her to my memory. I remembered too how, the evening before, I

had found a mushroom under the birch-trees, how Lubotshka had quarrelled

with Katenka as to whose it should be, and how they had both of them

wept when taking leave of us. I felt sorry to be parted from them, and

from Natalia Savishna, and from the birch-tree avenue, and from Foka.

Yes, even the horrid Mimi I longed for. I longed for everything at home.

And poor Mamma!--The tears rushed to my eyes again. Yet even this mood

passed away before long.





XV -- CHILDHOOD


HAPPY, happy, never-returning time of childhood! How can we help loving

and dwelling upon its recollections? They cheer and elevate the soul,

and become to one a source of higher joys.


Sometimes, when dreaming of bygone days, I fancy that, tired out with

running about, I have sat down, as of old, in my high arm-chair by the

tea-table. It is late, and I have long since drunk my cup of milk. My

eyes are heavy with sleep as I sit there and listen. How could I not

listen, seeing that Mamma is speaking to somebody, and that the sound

of her voice is so melodious and kind? How much its echoes recall to

my heart! With my eyes veiled with drowsiness I gaze at her wistfully.

Suddenly she seems to grow smaller and smaller, and her face vanishes

to a point; yet I can still see it--can still see her as she looks at me

and smiles. Somehow it pleases me to see her grown so small. I blink and

blink, yet she looks no larger than a boy reflected in the pupil of an

eye. Then I rouse myself, and the picture fades. Once more I half-close

my eyes, and cast about to try and recall the dream, but it has gone.


I rise to my feet, only to fall back comfortably into the armchair.


"There! You are failing asleep again, little Nicolas," says Mamma. "You

had better go to by-by."


"No, I won't go to sleep, Mamma," I reply, though almost inaudibly, for

pleasant dreams are filling all my soul. The sound sleep of childhood is

weighing my eyelids down, and for a few moments I sink into slumber and

oblivion until awakened by some one. I feel in my sleep as though a

soft hand were caressing me. I know it by the touch, and, though still

dreaming, I seize hold of it and press it to my lips. Every one else has

gone to bed, and only one candle remains burning in the drawing-room.

Mamma has said that she herself will wake me. She sits down on the arm

of the chair in which I am asleep, with her soft hand stroking my hair,

and I hear her beloved, well-known voice say in my ear:


"Get up, my darling. It is time to go by-by."


No envious gaze sees her now. She is not afraid to shed upon me the

whole of her tenderness and love. I do not wake up, yet I kiss and kiss

her hand.


"Get up, then, my angel."


She passes her other arm round my neck, and her fingers tickle me as

they move across it. The room is quiet and in half-darkness, but the

tickling has touched my nerves and I begin to awake. Mamma is sitting

near me--that I can tell--and touching me; I can hear her voice and

feel her presence. This at last rouses me to spring up, to throw my arms

around her neck, to hide my head in her bosom, and to say with a sigh:


"Ah, dear, darling Mamma, how much I love you!"


She smiles her sad, enchanting smile, takes my head between her two

hands, kisses me on the forehead, and lifts me on to her lap.


"Do you love me so much, then?" she says. Then, after a few moments'

silence, she continues: "And you must love me always, and never forget

me. If your Mamma should no longer be here, will you promise never to

forget her--never, Nicolinka? and she kisses me more fondly than ever.


"Oh, but you must not speak so, darling Mamma, my own darling Mamma!"

I exclaim as I clasp her knees, and tears of joy and love fall from my

eyes.


How, after scenes like this, I would go upstairs, and stand before the

ikons, and say with a rapturous feeling, "God bless Papa and Mamma!" and

repeat a prayer for my beloved mother which my childish lips had learnt

to lisp-the love of God and of her blending strangely in a single

emotion!


After saying my prayers I would wrap myself up in the bedclothes. My

heart would feel light, peaceful, and happy, and one dream would follow

another. Dreams of what? They were all of them vague, but all of them

full of pure love and of a sort of expectation of happiness. I remember,

too, that I used to think about Karl Ivanitch and his sad lot. He was

the only unhappy being whom I knew, and so sorry would I feel for him,

and so much did I love him, that tears would fall from my eyes as I

thought, "May God give him happiness, and enable me to help him and to

lessen his sorrow. I could make any sacrifice for him!" Usually, also,

there would be some favourite toy--a china dog or hare--stuck into the

bed-corner behind the pillow, and it would please me to think how warm

and comfortable and well cared-for it was there. Also, I would pray God

to make every one happy, so that every one might be contented, and also

to send fine weather to-morrow for our walk. Then I would turn myself

over on to the other side, and thoughts and dreams would become jumbled

and entangled together until at last I slept soundly and peacefully,

though with a face wet with tears.


Do in after life the freshness and light-heartedness, the craving for

love and for strength of faith, ever return which we experience in our

childhood's years? What better time is there in our lives than when

the two best of virtues--innocent gaiety and a boundless yearning for

affection--are our sole objects of pursuit?


Where now are our ardent prayers? Where now are our best gifts--the pure

tears of emotion which a guardian angel dries with a smile as he sheds

upon us lovely dreams of ineffable childish joy? Can it be that life has

left such heavy traces upon one's heart that those tears and ecstasies

are for ever vanished? Can it be that there remains to us only the

recollection of them?





XVI -- VERSE-MAKING


RATHER less than a month after our arrival in Moscow I was sitting

upstairs in my Grandmamma's house and doing some writing at a large

table. Opposite to me sat the drawing master, who was giving a few

finishing touches to the head of a turbaned Turk, executed in black

pencil. Woloda, with out-stretched neck, was standing behind the drawing

master and looking over his shoulder. The head was Woloda's first

production in pencil and to-day--Grandmamma's name-day--the masterpiece

was to be presented to her.


"Aren't you going to put a little more shadow there?" said Woloda to

the master as he raised himself on tiptoe and pointed to the Turk's

neck.


"No, it is not necessary," the master replied as he put pencil and

drawing-pen into a japanned folding box. "It is just right now, and

you need not do anything more to it. As for you, Nicolinka," he added,

rising and glancing askew at the Turk, "won't you tell us your great

secret at last? What are you going to give your Grandmamma? I think

another head would be your best gift. But good-bye, gentlemen," and

taking his hat and cardboard he departed.


I too had thought that another head than the one at which I had been

working would be a better gift; so, when we were told that Grandmamma's

name-day was soon to come round and that we must each of us have a

present ready for her, I had taken it into my head to write some

verses in honour of the occasion, and had forthwith composed two rhymed

couplets, hoping that the rest would soon materialise. I really do not

know how the idea--one so peculiar for a child--came to occur to me, but

I know that I liked it vastly, and answered all questions on the subject

of my gift by declaring that I should soon have something ready for

Grandmamma, but was not going to say what it was.


Contrary to my expectation, I found that, after the first two couplets

executed in the initial heat of enthusiasm, even my most strenuous

efforts refused to produce another one. I began to read different poems

in our books, but neither Dimitrieff nor Derzhavin could help me. On

the contrary, they only confirmed my sense of incompetence. Knowing,

however, that Karl Ivanitch was fond of writing verses, I stole softly

upstairs to burrow among his papers, and found, among a number of German

verses, some in the Russian language which seemed to have come from his

own pen.


  To L


  Remember near

  Remember far,

  Remember me.

  To-day be faithful, and for ever--

  Aye, still beyond the grave--remember

  That I have well loved thee.


  "KARL MAYER."


These verses (which were written in a fine, round hand on thin

letter-paper) pleased me with the touching sentiment with which they

seemed to be inspired. I learnt them by heart, and decided to take them

as a model. The thing was much easier now. By the time the name-day had

arrived I had completed a twelve-couplet congratulatory ode, and sat

down to the table in our school-room to copy them out on vellum.


Two sheets were soon spoiled--not because I found it necessary to alter

anything (the verses seemed to me perfect), but because, after the third

line, the tail-end of each successive one would go curving upward and

making it plain to all the world that the whole thing had been written

with a want of adherence to the horizontal--a thing which I could not

bear to see.


The third sheet also came out crooked, but I determined to make it do.

In my verses I congratulated Grandmamma, wished her many happy returns,

and concluded thus:


  "Endeavouring you to please and cheer,

   We love you like our Mother dear."


This seemed to me not bad, yet it offended my ear somehow.


"Lo-ve you li-ike our Mo-ther dear," I repeated to myself. "What other

rhyme could I use instead of 'dear'? Fear? Steer? Well, it must go at

that. At least the verses are better than Karl Ivanitch's."


Accordingly I added the last verse to the rest. Then I went into

our bedroom and recited the whole poem aloud with much feeling and

gesticulation. The verses were altogether guiltless of metre, but I

did not stop to consider that. Yet the last one displeased me more than

ever. As I sat on my bed I thought:


"Why on earth did I write 'like our Mother dear'? She is not here, and

therefore she need never have been mentioned. True, I love and respect

Grandmamma, but she is not quite the same as--Why DID I write that?

What did I go and tell a lie for? They may be verses only, yet I needn't

quite have done that."


At that moment the tailor arrived with some new clothes for us.


"Well, so be it!" I said in much vexation as I crammed the verses

hastily under my pillow and ran down to adorn myself in the new Moscow

garments.


They fitted marvellously-both the brown jacket with yellow buttons (a

garment made skin-tight and not "to allow room for growth," as in

the country) and the black trousers (also close-fitting so that they

displayed the figure and lay smoothly over the boots).


"At last I have real trousers on!" I thought as I looked at my legs with

the utmost satisfaction. I concealed from every one the fact that the

new clothes were horribly tight and uncomfortable, but, on the contrary,

said that, if there were a fault, it was that they were not tight

enough. For a long while I stood before the looking-glass as I combed

my elaborately pomaded head, but, try as I would, I could not reduce the

topmost hairs on the crown to order. As soon as ever I left off combing

them, they sprang up again and radiated in different directions, thus

giving my face a ridiculous expression.


Karl Ivanitch was dressing in another room, and I heard some one

bring him his blue frockcoat and under-linen. Then at the door leading

downstairs I heard a maid-servant's voice, and went to see what she

wanted. In her hand she held a well-starched shirt which she said she

had been sitting up all night to get ready. I took it, and asked if

Grandmamma was up yet.


"Oh yes, she has had her coffee, and the priest has come. My word, but

you look a fine little fellow!" added the girl with a smile at my new

clothes.


This observation made me blush, so I whirled round on one leg, snapped

my fingers, and went skipping away, in the hope that by these manoeuvres

I should make her sensible that even yet she had not realised quite what

a fine fellow I was.


However, when I took the shirt to Karl I found that he did not need it,

having taken another one. Standing before a small looking-glass, he tied

his cravat with both hands--trying, by various motions of his head, to

see whether it fitted him comfortably or not--and then took us down to

see Grandmamma. To this day I cannot help laughing when I remember what

a smell of pomade the three of us left behind us on the staircase as we

descended.


Karl was carrying a box which he had made himself, Woloda, his drawing,

and I my verses, while each of us also had a form of words ready with

which to present his gift. Just as Karl opened the door, the priest put

on his vestment and began to say prayers.


During the ceremony Grandmamma stood leaning over the back of a chair,

with her head bent down. Near her stood Papa. He turned and smiled at us

as we hurriedly thrust our presents behind our backs and tried to remain

unobserved by the door. The whole effect of a surprise, upon which we

had been counting, was entirely lost. When at last every one had made

the sign of the cross I became intolerably oppressed with a sudden,

invincible, and deadly attack of shyness, so that the courage to, offer

my present completely failed me. I hid myself behind Karl Ivanitch, who

solemnly congratulated Grandmamma and, transferring his box from his

right hand to his left, presented it to her. Then he withdrew a few

steps to make way for Woloda. Grandmamma seemed highly pleased with

the box (which was adorned with a gold border), and smiled in the most

friendly manner in order to express her gratitude. Yet it was evident

that, she did not know where to set the box down, and this probably

accounts for the fact that she handed it to Papa, at the same time

bidding him observe how beautifully it was made.


His curiosity satisfied, Papa handed the box to the priest, who also

seemed particularly delighted with it, and looked with astonishment,

first at the article itself, and then at the artist who could make

such wonderful things. Then Woloda presented his Turk, and received a

similarly flattering ovation on all sides.


It was my turn now, and Grandmamma turned to me with her kindest smile.

Those who have experienced what embarrassment is know that it is a

feeling which grows in direct proportion to delay, while decision

decreases in similar measure. In other words the longer the condition

lasts, the more invincible does it become, and the smaller does the

power of decision come to be.


My last remnants of nerve and energy had forsaken me while Karl and

Woloda had been offering their presents, and my shyness now reached its

culminating point, I felt the blood rushing from my heart to my head,

one blush succeeding another across my face, and drops of perspiration

beginning to stand out on my brow and nose. My ears were burning, I

trembled from head to foot, and, though I kept changing from one foot to

the other, I remained rooted where I stood.


"Well, Nicolinka, tell us what you have brought?" said Papa. "Is it a

box or a drawing?"


There was nothing else to be done. With a trembling hand held out the

folded, fatal paper, but my voiced failed me completely and I stood

before Grandmamma in silence. I could not get rid of the dreadful idea

that, instead of a display of the expected drawing, some bad verses of

mine were about to be read aloud before every one, and that the words

"our Mother dear" would clearly prove that I had never loved, but had

only forgotten, her. How shall I express my sufferings when Grandmamma

began to read my poetry aloud?--when, unable to decipher it, she stopped

half-way and looked at Papa with a smile (which I took to be one of

ridicule)?--when she did not pronounce it as I had meant it to be

pronounced?--and when her weak sight not allowing her to finish it, she

handed the paper to Papa and requested him to read it all over again

from the beginning? I fancied that she must have done this last because

she did not like to read such a lot of stupid, crookedly written stuff

herself, yet wanted to point out to Papa my utter lack of feeling. I

expected him to slap me in the face with the verses and say, "You bad

boy! So you have forgotten your Mamma! Take that for it!" Yet nothing

of the sort happened. On the contrary, when the whole had been read,

Grandmamma said, "Charming!" and kissed me on the forehead. Then our

presents, together with two cambric pocket-handkerchiefs and a snuff-box

engraved with Mamma's portrait, were laid on the table attached to the

great Voltairian arm-chair in which Grandmamma always sat.


"The Princess Barbara Ilinitsha!" announced one of the two footmen who

used to stand behind Grandmamma's carriage, but Grandmamma was looking

thoughtfully at the portrait on the snuff-box, and returned no answer.


"Shall I show her in, madam?" repeated the footman.





XVII -- THE PRINCESS KORNAKOFF


"Yes, show her in," said Grandmamma, settling herself as far back in

her arm-chair as possible. The Princess was a woman of about

forty-five, small and delicate, with a shrivelled skin and disagreeable,

greyish-green eyes, the expression of which contradicted the unnaturally

suave look of the rest of her face. Underneath her velvet bonnet,

adorned with an ostrich feather, was visible some reddish hair, while

against the unhealthy colour of her skin her eyebrows and eyelashes

looked even lighter and redder that they would other wise have done.

Yet, for all that, her animated movements, small hands, and peculiarly

dry features communicated something aristocratic and energetic to her

general appearance. She talked a great deal, and, to judge from her

eloquence, belonged to that class of persons who always speak as though

some one were contradicting them, even though no one else may be saying

a word. First she would raise her voice, then lower it and then take on

a fresh access of vivacity as she looked at the persons present, but not

participating in the conversation, with an air of endeavouring to draw

them into it.


Although the Princess kissed Grandmamma's hand and repeatedly called her

"my good Aunt," I could see that Grandmamma did not care much about her,

for she kept raising her eyebrows in a peculiar way while listening

to the Princess's excuses why Prince Michael had been prevented from

calling, and congratulating Grandmamma "as he would like so-much to

have done." At length, however, she answered the Princess's French with

Russian, and with a sharp accentuation of certain words.


"I am much obliged to you for your kindness," she said. "As for Prince

Michael's absence, pray do not mention it. He has so much else to do.

Besides, what pleasure could he find in coming to see an old woman like

me?" Then, without allowing the Princess time to reply, she went on:

"How are your children my dear?"


"Well, thank God, Aunt, they grow and do their lessons and

play--particularly my eldest one, Etienne, who is so wild that it

is almost impossible to keep him in order. Still, he is a clever and

promising boy. Would you believe it, cousin," (this last to Papa, since

Grandmamma altogether uninterested in the Princess's children, had

turned to us, taken my verses out from beneath the presentation box, and

unfolded them again), "would you believe it, but one day not long ago--"

and leaning over towards Papa, the Princess related something or other

with great vivacity. Then, her tale concluded, she laughed, and, with a

questioning look at Papa, went on:


"What a boy, cousin! He ought to have been whipped, but the trick was

so spirited and amusing that I let him off." Then the Princess looked at

Grandmamma and laughed again.


"Ah! So you WHIP your children, do you" said Grandmamma, with a

significant lift of her eyebrows, and laying a peculiar stress on the

word "WHIP."


"Alas, my good Aunt," replied the Princess in a sort of tolerant tone

and with another glance at Papa, "I know your views on the subject, but

must beg to be allowed to differ with them. However much I have thought

over and read and talked about the matter, I have always been forced to

come to the conclusion that children must be ruled through FEAR. To make

something of a child, you must make it FEAR something. Is it not so,

cousin? And what, pray, do children fear so much as a rod?"


As she spoke she seemed, to look inquiringly at Woloda and myself, and I

confess that I did not feel altogether comfortable.


"Whatever you may say," she went on, "a boy of twelve, or even of

fourteen, is still a child and should be whipped as such; but with

girls, perhaps, it is another matter."


"How lucky it is that I am not her son!" I thought to myself.


"Oh, very well," said Grandmamma, folding up my verses and replacing

them beneath the box (as though, after that exposition of views, the

Princess was unworthy of the honour of listening to such a production).

"Very well, my dear," she repeated "But please tell me how, in return,

you can look for any delicate sensibility from your children?"


Evidently Grandmamma thought this argument unanswerable, for she cut the

subject short by adding:


"However, it is a point on which people must follow their own opinions."


The Princess did not choose to reply, but smiled condescendingly, and as

though out of indulgence to the strange prejudices of a person whom she

only PRETENDED to revere.


"Oh, by the way, pray introduce me to your young people," she went on

presently as she threw us another gracious smile.


Thereupon we rose and stood looking at the Princess, without in the

least knowing what we ought to do to show that we were being introduced.


"Kiss the Princess's hand," said Papa.


"Well, I hope you will love your old aunt," she said to Woloda, kissing

his hair, "even though we are not near relatives. But I value friendship

far more than I do degrees of relationship," she added to Grandmamma,

who nevertheless, remained hostile, and replied:


"Eh, my dear? Is that what they think of relationships nowadays?"


"Here is my man of the world," put in Papa, indicating Woloda; "and here

is my poet," he added as I kissed the small, dry hand of the Princess,

with a vivid picture in my mind of that same hand holding a rod and

applying it vigorously.


"WHICH one is the poet?" asked the Princess.


"This little one," replied Papa, smiling; "the one with the tuft of hair

on his top-knot."


"Why need he bother about my tuft?" I thought to myself as I retired

into a corner. "Is there nothing else for him to talk about?"


I had strange ideas on manly beauty. I considered Karl Ivanitch one of

the handsomest men in the world, and myself so ugly that I had no need

to deceive myself on that point. Therefore any remark on the subject of

my exterior offended me extremely. I well remember how, one day after

luncheon (I was then six years of age), the talk fell upon my personal

appearance, and how Mamma tried to find good features in my face, and

said that I had clever eyes and a charming smile; how, nevertheless,

when Papa had examined me, and proved the contrary, she was obliged to

confess that I was ugly; and how, when the meal was over and I went

to pay her my respects, she said as she patted my cheek; "You know,

Nicolinka, nobody will ever love you for your face alone, so you must

try all the more to be a good and clever boy."


Although these words of hers confirmed in me my conviction that I was

not handsome, they also confirmed in me an ambition to be just such

a boy as she had indicated. Yet I had my moments of despair at my

ugliness, for I thought that no human being with such a large nose, such

thick lips, and such small grey eyes as mine could ever hope to attain

happiness on this earth. I used to ask God to perform a miracle by

changing me into a beauty, and would have given all that I possessed, or

ever hoped to possess, to have a handsome face.





XVIII -- PRINCE IVAN IVANOVITCH


When the Princess had heard my verses and overwhelmed the writer of them

with praise, Grandmamma softened to her a little. She began to address

her in French and to cease calling her "my dear." Likewise she invited

her to return that evening with her children. This invitation having

been accepted, the Princess took her leave. After that, so many other

callers came to congratulate Grandmamma that the courtyard was crowded

all day long with carriages.


"Good morning, my dear cousin," was the greeting of one guest in

particular as he entered the room and kissed Grandmamma's hand. He was

a man of seventy, with a stately figure clad in a military uniform and

adorned with large epaulettes, an embroidered collar, and a white cross

round the neck. His face, with its quiet and open expression, as well

as the simplicity and ease of his manners, greatly pleased me, for, in

spite of the thin half-circle of hair which was all that was now left

to him, and the want of teeth disclosed by the set of his upper lip, his

face was a remarkably handsome one.


Thanks to his fine character, handsome exterior, remarkable valour,

influential relatives, and, above all, good fortune, Prince, Ivan

Ivanovitch had early made himself a career. As that career progressed,

his ambition had met with a success which left nothing more to be sought

for in that direction. From his earliest youth upward he had prepared

himself to fill the exalted station in the world to which fate actually

called him later; wherefore, although in his prosperous life (as in the

lives of all) there had been failures, misfortunes, and cares, he had

never lost his quietness of character, his elevated tone of thought, or

his peculiarly moral, religious bent of mind. Consequently, though he

had won the universal esteem of his fellows, he had done so less through

his important position than through his perseverance and integrity.

While not of specially distinguished intellect, the eminence of his

station (whence he could afford to look down upon all petty questions)

had caused him to adopt high points of view. Though in reality he was

kind and sympathetic, in manner he appeared cold and haughty--probably

for the reason that he had forever to be on his guard against the

endless claims and petitions of people who wished to profit through

his influence. Yet even then his coldness was mitigated by the polite

condescension of a man well accustomed to move in the highest circles

of society. Well-educated, his culture was that of a youth of the end of

the last century. He had read everything, whether philosophy or belles

lettres, which that age had produced in France, and loved to quote from

Racine, Corneille, Boileau, Moliere, Montaigne, and Fenelon. Likewise he

had gleaned much history from Segur, and much of the old classics from

French translations of them; but for mathematics, natural philosophy, or

contemporary literature he cared nothing whatever. However, he knew how

to be silent in conversation, as well as when to make general remarks

on authors whom he had never read--such as Goethe, Schiller, and Byron.

Moreover, despite his exclusively French education, he was simple in

speech and hated originality (which he called the mark of an untutored

nature). Wherever he lived, society was a necessity to him, and, both in

Moscow and the country he had his reception days, on which practically

"all the town" called upon him. An introduction from him was a passport

to every drawing-room; few young and pretty ladies in society objected

to offering him their rosy cheeks for a paternal salute; and people even

in the highest positions felt flattered by invitations to his parties.


The Prince had few friends left now like Grandmamma--that is to say, few

friends who were of the same standing as himself, who had had the same

sort of education, and who saw things from the same point of view:

wherefore he greatly valued his intimate, long-standing friendship with

her, and always showed her the highest respect.


I hardly dared to look at the Prince, since the honour paid him on all

sides, the huge epaulettes, the peculiar pleasure with which Grandmamma

received him, and the fact that he alone, seemed in no way afraid of

her, but addressed her with perfect freedom (even being so daring as to

call her "cousin"), awakened in me a feeling of reverence for his person

almost equal to that which I felt for Grandmamma herself.


On being shown my verses, he called me to his side, and said:


"Who knows, my cousin, but that he may prove to be a second Derzhavin?"

Nevertheless he pinched my cheek so hard that I was only prevented from

crying by the thought that it must be meant for a caress.


Gradually the other guests dispersed, and with them Papa and Woloda.

Thus only Grandmamma, the Prince, and myself were left in the

drawing-room.


"Why has our dear Natalia Nicolaevna not come to-day" asked the Prince

after a silence.


"Ah, my friend," replied Grandmamma, lowering her voice and laying a

hand upon the sleeve of his uniform, "she would certainly have come if

she had been at liberty to do what she likes. She wrote to me that Peter

had proposed bringing her with him to town, but that she had refused,

since their income had not been good this year, and she could see

no real reason why the whole family need come to Moscow, seeing that

Lubotshka was as yet very young and that the boys were living with me--a

fact, she said, which made her feel as safe about them as though she had

been living with them herself."


"True, it is good for the boys to be here," went on Grandmamma, yet in

a tone which showed clearly that she did not think it was so very good,

"since it was more than time that they should be sent to Moscow to

study, as well as to learn how to comport themselves in society. What

sort of an education could they have got in the country? The eldest boy

will soon be thirteen, and the second one eleven. As yet, my cousin,

they are quite untaught, and do not know even how to enter a room."


"Nevertheless" said the Prince, "I cannot understand these complaints

of ruined fortunes. He has a very handsome income, and Natalia has

Chabarovska, where we used to act plays, and which I know as well as

I do my own hand. It is a splendid property, and ought to bring in an

excellent return."


"Well," said Grandmamma with a sad expression on her face, "I do not

mind telling you, as my most intimate friend, that all this seems to me

a mere pretext on his part for living alone, for strolling about from

club to club, for attending dinner-parties, and for resorting to--well,

who knows what? She suspects nothing; you know her angelic sweetness and

her implicit trust of him in everything. He had only to tell her that

the children must go to Moscow and that she must be left behind in the

country with a stupid governess for company, for her to believe him! I

almost think that if he were to say that the children must be whipped

just as the Princess Barbara whips hers, she would believe even that!"

and Grandmamma leant back in her arm-chair with an expression of

contempt. Then, after a moment of silence, during which she took her

handkerchief out of her pocket to wipe away a few tears which had stolen

down her cheeks, she went, on:


"Yes, my friend, I often think that he cannot value and understand

her properly, and that, for all her goodness and love of him and her

endeavours to conceal her grief (which, however as I know only too well,

exists). She cannot really be happy with him. Mark my words if he does

not--" Here Grandmamma buried her face in the handkerchief.


"Ah, my dear old friend," said the Prince reproachfully. "I think you

are unreasonable. Why grieve and weep over imagined evils? That is

not right. I have known him a long time, and feel sure that he is an

attentive, kind, and excellent husband, as well as (which is the chief

thing of all) a perfectly honourable man."


At this point, having been an involuntary auditor of a conversation

not meant for my ears, I stole on tiptoe out of the room, in a state of

great distress.





XIX -- THE IWINS


"Woloda, Woloda! The Iwins are just coming." I shouted on seeing from

the window three boys in blue overcoats, and followed by a young tutor,

advancing along the pavement opposite our house.


The Iwins were related to us, and of about the same age as ourselves. We

had made their acquaintance soon after our arrival in Moscow. The second

brother, Seriosha, had dark curly hair, a turned-up, strongly pronounced

nose, very bright red lips (which, never being quite shut, showed a

row of white teeth), beautiful dark-blue eyes, and an uncommonly bold

expression of face. He never smiled but was either wholly serious or

laughing a clear, merry, agreeable laugh. His striking good looks had

captivated me from the first, and I felt an irresistible attraction

towards him. Only to see him filled me with pleasure, and at one time my

whole mental faculties used to be concentrated in the wish that I

might do so. If three or four days passed without my seeing him I felt

listless and ready to cry. Awake or asleep, I was forever dreaming of

him. On going to bed I used to see him in my dreams, and when I had

shut my eyes and called up a picture of him I hugged the vision as

my choicest delight. So much store did I set upon this feeling for my

friend that I never mentioned it to any one. Nevertheless, it must have

annoyed him to see my admiring eyes constantly fixed upon him, or else

he must have felt no reciprocal attraction, for he always preferred to

play and talk with Woloda. Still, even with that I felt satisfied, and

wished and asked for nothing better than to be ready at any time to make

any sacrifice for him. Likewise, over and above the strange fascination

which he exercised upon me, I always felt another sensation, namely,

a dread of making him angry, of offending him, of displeasing him. Was

this because his face bore such a haughty expression, or because I,

despising my own exterior, over-rated the beautiful in others, or,

lastly (and most probably), because it is a common sign of affection?

At all events, I felt as much fear, of him as I did love. The first time

that he spoke to me I was so overwhelmed with sudden happiness that I

turned pale, then red, and could not utter a word. He had an ugly habit

of blinking when considering anything seriously, as well as of twitching

his nose and eyebrows. Consequently every one thought that this habit

marred his face. Yet I thought it such a nice one that I involuntarily

adopted it for myself, until, a few days after I had made his

acquaintance, Grandmamma suddenly asked me whether my eyes were hurting

me, since I was winking like an owl! Never a word of affection passed

between us, yet he felt his power over me, and unconsciously but

tyrannically, exercised it in all our childish intercourse. I used to

long to tell him all that was in my heart, yet was too much afraid of

him to be frank in any way, and, while submitting myself to his will,

tried to appear merely careless and indifferent. Although at times his

influence seemed irksome and intolerable, to throw it off was beyond my

strength.


I often think with regret of that fresh, beautiful feeling of boundless,

disinterested love which came to an end without having ever found

self-expression or return. It is strange how, when a child, I always

longed to be like grown-up people, and yet how I have often longed,

since childhood's days, for those days to come back to me! Many times,

in my relations with Seriosha, this wish to resemble grown-up people

put a rude check upon the love that was waiting to expand, and made me

repress it. Not only was I afraid of kissing him, or of taking his hand

and saying how glad I was to see him, but I even dreaded calling him

"Seriosha" and always said "Sergius" as every one else did in our

house. Any expression of affection would have seemed like evidence of

childishness, and any one who indulged in it, a baby. Not having yet

passed through those bitter experiences which enforce upon older years

circumspection and coldness, I deprived myself of the pure delight of

a fresh, childish instinct for the absurd purpose of trying to resemble

grown-up people.


I met the Iwins in the ante-room, welcomed them, and then ran to tell

Grandmamma of their arrival with an expression as happy as though she

were certain to be equally delighted. Then, never taking my eyes off

Seriosha, I conducted the visitors to the drawing-room, and eagerly

followed every movement of my favourite. When Grandmamma spoke to

and fixed her penetrating glance upon him, I experienced that mingled

sensation of pride and solicitude which an artist might feel when

waiting for revered lips to pronounce a judgment upon his work.


With Grandmamma's permission, the Iwins' young tutor, Herr Frost,

accompanied us into the little back garden, where he seated himself

upon a bench, arranged his legs in a tasteful attitude, rested his

brass-knobbed cane between them, lighted a cigar, and assumed the air

of a man well-pleased with himself. He was a German, but of a very

different sort to our good Karl Ivanitch. In the first place, he spoke

both Russian and French correctly, though with a hard accent Indeed,

he enjoyed--especially among the ladies--the reputation of being a very

accomplished fellow. In the second place, he wore a reddish moustache,

a large gold pin set with a ruby, a black satin tie, and a very

fashionable suit. Lastly, he was young, with a handsome, self-satisfied

face and fine muscular legs. It was clear that he set the greatest store

upon the latter, and thought them beyond compare, especially as regards

the favour of the ladies. Consequently, whether sitting or standing, he

always tried to exhibit them in the most favourable light. In short,

he was a type of the young German-Russian whose main desire is to be

thought perfectly gallant and gentlemanly.


In the little garden merriment reigned. In fact, the game of "robbers"

never went better. Yet an incident occurred which came near to spoiling

it. Seriosha was the robber, and in pouncing upon some travellers he

fell down and knocked his leg so badly against a tree that I thought

the leg must be broken. Consequently, though I was the gendarme and

therefore bound to apprehend him, I only asked him anxiously, when I

reached him, if he had hurt himself very much. Nevertheless this threw

him into a passion, and made him exclaim with fists clenched and in a

voice which showed by its faltering what pain he was enduring, "Why,

whatever is the matter? Is this playing the game properly? You ought

to arrest me. Why on earth don't you do so?" This he repeated several

times, and then, seeing Woloda and the elder Iwin (who were taking the

part of the travellers) jumping and running about the path, he suddenly

threw himself upon them with a shout and loud laughter to effect

their capture. I cannot express my wonder and delight at this valiant

behaviour of my hero. In spite of the severe pain, he had not only

refrained from crying, but had repressed the least symptom of suffering

and kept his eye fixed upon the game! Shortly after this occurrence

another boy, Ilinka Grap, joined our party. We went upstairs, and

Seriosha gave me an opportunity of still further appreciating and taking

delight in his manly bravery and fortitude. This was how it was.


Ilinka was the son of a poor foreigner who had been under certain

obligations to my Grandpapa, and now thought it incumbent upon him to

send his son to us as frequently as possible. Yet if he thought that the

acquaintance would procure his son any advancement or pleasure, he was

entirely mistaken, for not only were we anything but friendly to Ilinka,

but it was seldom that we noticed him at all except to laugh at him. He

was a boy of thirteen, tall and thin, with a pale, birdlike face, and

a quiet, good-tempered expression. Though poorly dressed, he always had

his head so thickly pomaded that we used to declare that on warm days

it melted and ran down his neck. When I think of him now, it seems to

me that he was a very quiet, obliging, and good-tempered boy, but at

the time I thought him a creature so contemptible that he was not worth

either attention or pity.


Upstairs we set ourselves to astonish each other with gymnastic tours de

force. Ilinka watched us with a faint smile of admiration, but refused

an invitation to attempt a similar feat, saying that he had no strength.


Seriosha was extremely captivating. His face and eyes glowed with

laughter as he surprised us with tricks which we had never seen before.

He jumped over three chairs put together, turned somersaults right

across the room, and finally stood on his head on a pyramid of

Tatistchev's dictionaries, moving his legs about with such comical

rapidity that it was impossible not to help bursting with merriment.


After this last trick he pondered for a moment (blinking his eyes as

usual), and then went up to Ilinka with a very serious face.


"Try and do that," he said. "It is not really difficult."


Ilinka, observing that the general attention was fixed upon him,

blushed, and said in an almost inaudible voice that he could not do the

feat.


"Well, what does he mean by doing nothing at all? What a girl the fellow

is! He has just GOT to stand on his head," and Seriosha, took him by the

hand.


"Yes, on your head at once! This instant, this instant!" every one

shouted as we ran upon Ilinka and dragged him to the dictionaries,

despite his being visibly pale and frightened.


"Leave me alone! You are tearing my jacket!" cried the unhappy victim,

but his exclamations of despair only encouraged us the more. We were

dying with laughter, while the green jacket was bursting at every seam.


Woloda and the eldest Iwin took his head and placed it on the

dictionaries, while Seriosha, and I seized his poor, thin legs (his

struggles had stripped them upwards to the knees), and with boisterous,

laughter held them uptight--the youngest Iwin superintending his general

equilibrium.


Suddenly a moment of silence occurred amid our boisterous laughter--a

moment during which nothing was to be heard in the room but the panting

of the miserable Ilinka. It occurred to me at that moment that, after

all, there was nothing so very comical and pleasant in all this.


"Now, THAT'S a boy!" cried Seriosha, giving Ilinka a smack with his

hand. Ilinka said nothing, but made such desperate movements with his

legs to free himself that his foot suddenly kicked Seriosha in the

eye: with the result that, letting go of Ilinka's leg and covering the

wounded member with one hand, Seriosha hit out at him with all his might

with the other one. Of course Ilinka's legs slipped down as, sinking

exhausted to the floor and half-suffocated with tears, he stammered out:


"Why should you bully me so?"


The poor fellow's miserable figure, with its streaming tears, ruffled

hair, and crumpled trousers revealing dirty boots, touched us a little,

and we stood silent and trying to smile.


Seriosha was the first to recover himself.


"What a girl! What a gaby!" he said, giving Ilinka a slight kick. "He

can't take things in fun a bit. Well, get up, then."


"You are an utter beast! That's what YOU are!" said Ilinka, turning

miserably away and sobbing.


"Oh, oh! Would it still kick and show temper, then?" cried Seriosha,

seizing a dictionary and throwing it at the unfortunate boy's head.

Apparently it never occurred to Ilinka to take refuge from the missile;

he merely guarded his head with his hands.


"Well, that's enough now," added Seriosha, with a forced laugh. "You

DESERVE to be hurt if you can't take things in fun. Now let's go

downstairs."


I could not help looking with some compassion at the miserable creature

on the floor as, his face buried in the dictionary, he lay there sobbing

almost as though he were in a fit.


"Oh, Sergius!" I said. "Why have you done this?"


"Well, you did it too! Besides, I did not cry this afternoon when I

knocked my leg and nearly broke it."


"True enough," I thought. "Ilinka is a poor whining sort of a chap,

while Seriosha is a boy--a REAL boy."


It never occurred to my mind that possibly poor Ilinka was suffering

far less from bodily pain than from the thought that five companions

for whom he may have felt a genuine liking had, for no reason at all,

combined to hurt and humiliate him.


I cannot explain my cruelty on this occasion. Why did I not step forward

to comfort and protect him? Where was the pitifulness which often made

me burst into tears at the sight of a young bird fallen from its nest,

or of a puppy being thrown over a wall, or of a chicken being killed by

the cook for soup?


Can it be that the better instinct in me was overshadowed by my

affection for Seriosha and the desire to shine before so brave a boy? If

so, how contemptible were both the affection and the desire! They alone

form dark spots on the pages of my youthful recollections.





XX -- PREPARATIONS FOR THE PARTY


To judge from the extraordinary activity in the pantry, the shining

cleanliness which imparted such a new and festal guise to certain

articles in the salon and drawing-room which I had long known as

anything but resplendent, and the arrival of some musicians whom Prince

Ivan would certainly not have sent for nothing, no small amount of

company was to be expected that evening.


At the sound of every vehicle which chanced to pass the house I ran

to the window, leaned my head upon my arms, and peered with impatient

curiosity into the street.


At last a carriage stopped at our door, and, in the full belief that

this must be the Iwins, who had promised to come early, I at once ran

downstairs to meet them in the hall.


But, instead of the Iwins, I beheld from behind the figure of the

footman who opened the door two female figures-one tall and wrapped in a

blue cloak trimmed with marten, and the other one short and wrapped in

a green shawl from beneath which a pair of little feet, stuck into fur

boots, peeped forth.


Without paying any attention to my presence in the hall (although I

thought it my duty, on the appearance of these persons to salute them),

the shorter one moved towards the taller, and stood silently in front of

her. Thereupon the tall lady untied the shawl which enveloped the head

of the little one, and unbuttoned the cloak which hid her form; until,

by the time that the footmen had taken charge of these articles and

removed the fur boots, there stood forth from the amorphous chrysalis

a charming girl of twelve, dressed in a short muslin frock, white

pantaloons, and smart black satin shoes. Around her, white neck she wore

a narrow black velvet ribbon, while her head was covered with flaxen

curls which so perfectly suited her beautiful face in front and her bare

neck and shoulders behind that I, would have believed nobody, not even

Karl Ivanitch, if he, or she had told me that they only hung so nicely

because, ever since the morning, they had been screwed up in fragments

of a Moscow newspaper and then warmed with a hot iron. To me it seemed

as though she must have been born with those curls.


The most prominent feature in her face was a pair of unusually large

half-veiled eyes, which formed a strange, but pleasing, contrast to the

small mouth. Her lips were closed, while her eyes looked so grave that

the general expression of her face gave one the impression that a smile

was never to be looked for from her: wherefore, when a smile did come,

it was all the more pleasing.


Trying to escape notice, I slipped through the door of the salon,

and then thought it necessary to be seen pacing to and fro, seemingly

engaged in thought, as though unconscious of the arrival of guests.


BY the time, however, that the ladies had advanced to the middle of

the salon I seemed suddenly to awake from my reverie and told them that

Grandmamma was in the drawing room, Madame Valakhin, whose face pleased

me extremely (especially since it bore a great resemblance to her

daughter's), stroked my head kindly.


Grandmamma seemed delighted to see Sonetchka. She invited her to come

to her, put back a curl which had fallen over her brow, and looking

earnestly at her said, "What a charming child!"


Sonetchka blushed, smiled, and, indeed, looked so charming that I myself

blushed as I looked at her.


"I hope you are going to enjoy yourself here, my love," said

Grandmamma. "Pray be as merry and dance as much as ever you can. See, we

have two beaux for her already," she added, turning to Madame Valakhin,

and stretching out her hand to me.


This coupling of Sonetchka and myself pleased me so much that I blushed

again.


Feeling, presently, that, my embarrassment was increasing, and hearing

the sound of carriages approaching, I thought it wise to retire. In the

hall I encountered the Princess Kornakoff, her son, and an incredible

number of daughters. They had all of them the same face as their mother,

and were very ugly. None of them arrested my attention. They talked in

shrill tones as they took off their cloaks and boas, and laughed as they

bustled about--probably at the fact that there were so many of them!


Etienne was a boy of fifteen, tall and plump, with a sharp face,

deep-set bluish eyes, and very large hands and feet for his age.

Likewise he was awkward, and had a nervous, unpleasing voice.

Nevertheless he seemed very pleased with himself, and was, in my

opinion, a boy who could well bear being beaten with rods.


For a long time we confronted one another without speaking as we took

stock of each other. When the flood of dresses had swept past I made

shift to begin a conversation by asking him whether it had not been very

close in the carriage.


"I don't know," he answered indifferently. "I never ride inside it, for

it makes me feel sick directly, and Mamma knows that. Whenever we are

driving anywhere at night-time I always sit on the box. I like that, for

then one sees everything. Philip gives me the reins, and sometimes the

whip too, and then the people inside get a regular--well, you know," he

added with a significant gesture "It's splendid then."


"Master Etienne," said a footman, entering the hall, "Philip wishes me

to ask you where you put the whip."


"Where I put it? Why, I gave it back to him."


"But he says that you did not."


"Well, I laid it across the carriage-lamps!"


"No, sir, he says that you did not do that either. You had better

confess that you took it and lashed it to shreds. I suppose poor Philip

will have to make good your mischief out of his own pocket." The footman

(who looked a grave and honest man) seemed much put out by the affair,

and determined to sift it to the bottom on Philip's behalf.


Out of delicacy I pretended to notice nothing and turned aside, but the

other footmen present gathered round and looked approvingly at the old

servant.


"Hm--well, I DID tear it in pieces," at length confessed Etienne,

shrinking from further explanations. "However, I will pay for it. Did

you ever hear anything so absurd?" he added to me as he drew me towards

the drawing-room.


"But excuse me, sir; HOW are you going to pay for it? I know your ways

of paying. You have owed Maria Valericana twenty copecks these eight

months now, and you have owed me something for two years, and Peter

for--"


"Hold your tongue, will you!" shouted the young fellow, pale with rage,

"I shall report you for this."


"Oh, you may do so," said the footman. "Yet it is not fair, your

highness," he added, with a peculiar stress on the title, as he departed

with the ladies' wraps to the cloak-room. We ourselves entered the

salon.


"Quite right, footman," remarked someone approvingly from the ball

behind us.


Grandmamma had a peculiar way of employing, now the second person

singular, now the second person plural, in order to indicate her opinion

of people. When the young Prince Etienne went up to her she addressed

him as "YOU," and altogether looked at him with such an expression

of contempt that, had I been in his place, I should have been utterly

crestfallen. Etienne, however, was evidently not a boy of that sort,

for he not only took no notice of her reception of him, but none of her

person either. In fact, he bowed to the company at large in a way which,

though not graceful, was at least free from embarrassment.


Sonetchka now claimed my whole attention. I remember that, as I stood

in the salon with Etienne and Woloda, at a spot whence we could both

see and be seen by Sonetchka, I took great pleasure in talking very loud

(and all my utterances seemed to me both bold and comical) and glancing

towards the door of the drawing-room, but that, as soon as ever we

happened to move to another spot whence we could neither see nor be seen

by her, I became dumb, and thought the conversation had ceased to be

enjoyable. The rooms were now full of people--among them (as at all

children's parties) a number of elder children who wished to dance and

enjoy themselves very much, but who pretended to do everything merely in

order to give pleasure to the mistress of the house.


When the Iwins arrived I found that, instead of being as delighted as

usual to meet Seriosha, I felt a kind of vexation that he should see and

be seen by Sonetchka.





XXI -- BEFORE THE MAZURKA


"HULLO, Woloda! So we are going to dance to-night," said Seriosha,

issuing from the drawing-room and taking out of his pocket a brand new

pair of gloves. "I suppose it IS necessary to put on gloves?"


"Goodness! What shall I do? We have no gloves," I thought to myself.

"I must go upstairs and search about." Yet though I rummaged in every

drawer, I only found, in one of them, my green travelling mittens, and,

in another, a single lilac-coloured glove, a thing which could be of no

use to me, firstly, because it was very old and dirty, secondly, because

it was much too large for me, and thirdly (and principally), because the

middle finger was wanting--Karl having long ago cut it off to wear over

a sore nail.


However, I put it on--not without some diffident contemplation of the

blank left by the middle finger and of the ink-stained edges round the

vacant space.


"If only Natalia Savishna had been here," I reflected, "we should

certainly have found some gloves. I can't go downstairs in this

condition. Yet, if they ask me why I am not dancing, what am I to say?

However, I can't remain here either, or they will be sending upstairs to

fetch me. What on earth am I to do?" and I wrung my hands.


"What are you up to here?" asked Woloda as he burst into the room. "Go

and engage a partner. The dancing will be beginning directly."


"Woloda," I said despairingly, as I showed him my hand with two fingers

thrust into a single finger of the dirty glove, "Woloda, you, never

thought of this."


"Of what?" he said impatiently. "Oh, of gloves," he added with a

careless glance at my hand. "That's nothing. We can ask Grandmamma what

she thinks about it," and without further ado he departed downstairs. I

felt a trifle relieved by the coolness with which he had met a situation

which seemed to me so grave, and hastened back to the drawing-room,

completely forgetful of the unfortunate glove which still adorned my

left hand.


Cautiously approaching Grandmamma's arm-chair, I asked her in a whisper:


"Grandmamma, what are we to do? We have no gloves."


"What, my love?"


"We have no gloves," I repeated, at the same time bending over towards

her and laying both hands on the arm of her chair.


"But what is that?" she cried as she caught hold of my left hand.

"Look, my dear!" she continued, turning to Madame Valakhin. "See how

smart this young man has made himself to dance with your daughter!"


As Grandmamma persisted in retaining hold of my hand and gazing with a

mock air of gravity and interrogation at all around her, curiosity was

soon aroused, and a general roar of laughter ensued.


I should have been infuriated at the thought that Seriosha was present

to see this, as I scowled with embarrassment and struggled hard to free

my hand, had it not been that somehow Sonetchka's laughter (and she was

laughing to such a degree that the tears were standing in her eyes

and the curls dancing about her lovely face) took away my feeling

of humiliation. I felt that her laughter was not satirical, but only

natural and free; so that, as we laughed together and looked at one

another, there seemed to begin a kind of sympathy between us. Instead

of turning out badly, therefore, the episode of the glove served only

to set me at my ease among the dreaded circle of guests, and to make

me cease to feel oppressed with shyness. The sufferings of shy people

proceed only from the doubts which they feel concerning the opinions

of their fellows. No sooner are those opinions expressed (whether

flattering or the reverse) than the agony disappears.


How lovely Sonetchka looked when she was dancing a quadrille as my

vis-a-vis, with, as her partner, the loutish Prince Etienne! How

charmingly she smiled when, en chaine, she accorded me her hand! How

gracefully the curls, around her head nodded to the rhythm, and how

naively she executed the jete assemble with her little feet!


In the fifth figure, when my partner had to leave me for the other

side and I, counting the beats, was getting ready to dance my solo, she

pursed her lips gravely and looked in another direction; but her fears

for me were groundless. Boldly I performed the chasse en avant and

chasse en arriere glissade, until, when it came to my turn to move

towards her and I, with a comic gesture, showed her the poor glove with

its crumpled fingers, she laughed heartily, and seemed to move her tiny

feet more enchantingly than ever over the parquetted floor.


How well I remember how we formed the circle, and how, without

withdrawing her hand from mine, she scratched her little nose with

her glove! All this I can see before me still. Still can I hear the

quadrille from "The Maids of the Danube" to which we danced that night.


The second quadrille, I danced with Sonetchka herself; yet when we went

to sit down together during the interval, I felt overcome with shyness

and as though I had nothing to say. At last, when my silence had lasted

so long that I began to be afraid that she would think me a stupid boy,

I decided at all hazards to counteract such a notion.


"Vous etes une habitante de Moscou?" I began, and, on receiving an

affirmative answer, continued. "Et moi, je n'ai encore jamais frequente

la capitale" (with a particular emphasis on the word "frequente"). Yet I

felt that, brilliant though this introduction might be as evidence of my

profound knowledge of the French language, I could not long keep up the

conversation in that manner. Our turn for dancing had not yet arrived,

and silence again ensued between us. I kept looking anxiously at her in

the hope both of discerning what impression I had produced and of her

coming to my aid.


"Where did you get that ridiculous glove of yours?" she asked me all of

a sudden, and the question afforded me immense satisfaction and relief.

I replied that the glove belonged to Karl Ivanitch, and then went on

to speak ironically of his appearance, and to describe how comical he

looked in his red cap, and how he and his green coat had once fallen

plump off a horse into a pond.


The quadrille was soon over. Yet why had I spoken ironically of poor

Karl Ivanitch? Should I, forsooth, have sunk in Sonetchka's esteem if,

on the contrary, I had spoken of him with the love and respect which I

undoubtedly bore him?


The quadrille ended, Sonetchka said, "Thank you," with as lovely an

expression on her face as though I had really conferred, upon her a

favour. I was delighted. In fact I hardly knew myself for joy and could

not think whence I derived such case and confidence and even daring.


"Nothing in the world can abash me now," I thought as I wandered

carelessly about the salon. "I am ready for anything."


Just then Seriosha came and requested me to be his vis-a-vis.


"Very well," I said. "I have no partner as yet, but I can soon find

one."


Glancing round the salon with a confident eye, I saw that every lady was

engaged save one--a tall girl standing near the drawing-room door. Yet a

grown-up young man was approaching her-probably for the same purpose as

myself! He was but two steps from her, while I was at the further end

of the salon. Doing a glissade over the polished floor, I covered the

intervening space, and in a brave, firm voice asked the favour of her

hand in the quadrille. Smiling with a protecting air, the young lady

accorded me her hand, and the tall young man was left without a partner.

I felt so conscious of my strength that I paid no attention to his

irritation, though I learnt later that he had asked somebody who the

awkward, untidy boy was who, had taken away his lady from him.





XXII -- THE MAZURKA


AFTERWARDS the same young man formed one of the first couple in a

mazurka. He sprang to his feet, took his partner's hand, and then,

instead of executing the pas de Basques which Mimi had taught us, glided

forward till he arrived at a corner of the room, stopped, divided his

feet, turned on his heels, and, with a spring, glided back again. I, who

had found no partner for this particular dance and was sitting on the

arm of Grandmamma's chair, thought to myself:


"What on earth is he doing? That is not what Mimi taught us. And there

are the Iwins and Etienne all dancing in the same way-without the pas de

Basques! Ah! and there is Woloda too! He too is adopting the new style,

and not so badly either. And there is Sonetchka, the lovely one! Yes,

there she comes!" I felt immensely happy at that moment.


The mazurka came to an end, and already some of the guests were saying

good-bye to Grandmamma. She was evidently tired, yet she assured them

that she felt vexed at their early departure. Servants were gliding

about with plates and trays among the dancers, and the musicians were

carelessly playing the same tune for about the thirteenth time in

succession, when the young lady whom I had danced with before, and who

was just about to join in another mazurka, caught sight of me, and, with

a kindly smile, led me to Sonetchka. And one of the innumerable Kornakoff

princesses, at the same time asking me, "Rose or Hortie?"


"Ah, so it's YOU!" said Grandmamma as she turned round in her armchair.

"Go and dance, then, my boy."


Although I would fain have taken refuge behind the armchair rather than

leave its shelter, I could not refuse; so I got up, said, "Rose," and

looked at Sonetchka. Before I had time to realise it, however, a hand in

a white glove laid itself on mine, and the Kornakoff girl stepped forth

with a pleased smile and evidently no suspicion that I was ignorant of

the steps of the dance. I only knew that the pas de Basques (the only

figure of it which I had been taught) would be out of place. However,

the strains of the mazurka falling upon my ears, and imparting their

usual impulse to my acoustic nerves (which, in their turn, imparted

their usual impulse to my feet), I involuntarily, and to the amazement

of the spectators, began executing on tiptoe the sole (and fatal) pas

which I had been taught.


So long as we went straight ahead I kept fairly right, but when it came

to turning I saw that I must make preparations to arrest my course.

Accordingly, to avoid any appearance of awkwardness, I stopped short,

with the intention of imitating the "wheel about" which I had seen the

young man perform so neatly.


Unfortunately, just as I divided my feet and prepared to make a spring,

the Princess Kornakoff looked sharply round at my legs with such an

expression of stupefied amazement and curiosity that the glance undid

me. Instead of continuing to dance, I remained moving my legs up and

down on the same spot, in a sort of extraordinary fashion which bore

no relation whatever either to form or rhythm. At last I stopped

altogether. Every-one was looking at me--some with curiosity, some with

astonishment, some with disdain, and some with compassion, Grandmamma

alone seemed unmoved.


"You should not dance if you don't know the step," said Papa's angry

voice in my ear as, pushing me gently aside, he took my partner's hand,

completed the figures with her to the admiration of every one, and

finally led her back to, her place. The mazurka was at an end.


Ah me! What had I done to be punished so heavily?


*****


"Every one despises me, and will always despise me," I thought to

myself. "The way is closed for me to friendship, love, and fame! All,

all is lost!"


Why had Woloda made signs to me which every one saw, yet which could in

no way help me? Why had that disgusting princess looked at my legs? Why

had Sonetchka--she was a darling, of course!--yet why, oh why, had she

smiled at that moment?


Why had Papa turned red and taken my hand? Can it be that he was ashamed

of me?


Oh, it was dreadful! Alas, if only Mamma had been there she would never

have blushed for her Nicolinka!


How on the instant that dear image led my imagination captive! I seemed

to see once more the meadow before our house, the tall lime-trees in the

garden, the clear pond where the ducks swain, the blue sky dappled with

white clouds, the sweet-smelling ricks of hay. How those memories--aye,

and many another quiet, beloved recollection--floated through my mind at

that time!





XXIII -- AFTER THE MAZURKA


At supper the young man whom I have mentioned seated himself beside

me at the children's table, and treated me with an amount of attention

which would have flattered my self-esteem had I been able, after the

occurrence just related, to give a thought to anything beyond my failure

in the mazurka. However, the young man seemed determined to cheer me

up. He jested, called me "old boy," and finally (since none of the

elder folks were looking at us) began to help me to wine, first from one

bottle and then from another and to force me to drink it off quickly.


By the time (towards the end of supper) that a servant had poured me out

a quarter of a glass of champagne, and the young man had straightway bid

him fill it up and urged me to drink the beverage off at a draught, I

had begun to feel a grateful warmth diffusing itself through my body.

I also felt well-disposed towards my kind patron, and began to laugh

heartily at everything. Suddenly the music of the Grosvater dance struck

up, and every one rushed from the table. My friendship with the young

man had now outlived its day; so, whereas he joined a group of the older

folks, I approached Madame Valakhin to hear what she and her daughter had

to say to one another.


"Just HALF-an-hour more?" Sonetchka was imploring her.


"Impossible, my dearest."


"Yet, only to please me--just this ONCE?" Sonetchka went on

persuasively.


"Well, what if I should be ill to-morrow through all this dissipation?"

rejoined her mother, and was incautious enough to smile.


"There! You DO consent, and we CAN stay after all!" exclaimed Sonetchka,

jumping for joy.


"What is to be done with such a girl?" said Madame. "Well, run away and

dance. See," she added on perceiving myself, "here is a cavalier ready

waiting for you."


Sonetchka gave me her hand, and we darted off to the salon. The wine,

added to Sonetchka's presence and gaiety, had at once made me forget

all about the unfortunate end of the mazurka. I kept executing the most

splendid feats with my legs--now imitating a horse as he throws out his

hoofs in the trot, now stamping like a sheep infuriated at a dog, and

all the while laughing regardless of appearances.


Sonetchka also laughed unceasingly, whether we were whirling round in

a circle or whether we stood still to watch an old lady whose painful

movements with her feet showed the difficulty she had in walking.

Finally Sonetchka nearly died of merriment when I jumped half-way to the

ceiling in proof of my skill.


As I passed a mirror in Grandmamma's boudoir and glanced at myself

I could see that my face was all in a perspiration and my hair

dishevelled--the top-knot, in particular, being more erect than ever.

Yet my general appearance looked so happy, healthy, and good-tempered

that I felt wholly pleased with myself.


"If I were always as I am now," I thought, "I might yet be able to

please people with my looks." Yet as soon as I glanced at my partner's

face again, and saw there not only the expression of happiness, health,

and good temper which had just pleased me in my own, but also a fresh

and enchanting beauty besides, I felt dissatisfied with myself again.

I understood how silly of me it was to hope to attract the attention

of such a wonderful being as Sonetchka. I could not hope for

reciprocity--could not even think of it, yet my heart was overflowing

with happiness. I could not imagine that the feeling of love which was

filling my soul so pleasantly could require any happiness still greater,

or wish for more than that that happiness should never cease. I felt

perfectly contented. My heart beat like that of a dove, with the blood

constantly flowing back to it, and I almost wept for joy.


As we passed through the hall and peered into a little dark store-room

beneath the staircase I thought: "What bliss it would be if I could pass

the rest of my life with her in that dark corner, and never let anybody

know that we were there!"


"It HAS been a delightful evening, hasn't it?" I asked her in a low,

tremulous voice. Then I quickened my steps--as much out of fear of what

I had said as out of fear of what I had meant to imply.


"Yes, VERY!" she answered, and turned her face to look at me with an

expression so kind that I ceased to be afraid. I went on:


"Particularly since supper. Yet if you could only know how I regret" (I

had nearly said) "how miserable I am at your going, and to think that

we shall see each other no more!"


"But why SHOULDN'T we?" she asked, looking gravely at the corner of

her pocket-handkerchief, and gliding her fingers over a latticed screen

which we were passing. "Every Tuesday and Friday I go with Mamma to the

Iverskoi Prospect. I suppose you go for walks too sometimes?"


"Well, certainly I shall ask to go for one next Tuesday, and, if they

won't take me I shall go by myself--even without my hat, if necessary. I

know the way all right."


"Do you know what I have just thought of?" she went on. "You know, I

call some of the boys who come to see us THOU. Shall you and I call each

other THOU too? Wilt THOU?" she added, bending her head towards me and

looking me straight in the eyes.


At this moment a more lively section of the Grosvater dance began.


"Give me your hand," I said, under the impression that the music and din

would drown my exact words, but she smilingly replied, "THY hand, not

YOUR hand." Yet the dance was over before I had succeeded in saying

THOU, even though I kept conning over phrases in which the pronoun could

be employed--and employed more than once. All that I wanted was the

courage to say it.


"Wilt THOU?" and "THY hand" sounded continually in my ears, and caused

in me a kind of intoxication I could hear and see nothing but Sonetchka.

I watched her mother take her curls, lay them flat behind her ears (thus

disclosing portions of her forehead and temples which I had not yet

seen), and wrap her up so completely in the green shawl that nothing was

left visible but the tip of her nose. Indeed, I could see that, if her

little rosy fingers had not made a small, opening near her mouth, she

would have been unable to breathe. Finally I saw her leave her mother's

arm for an instant on the staircase, and turn and nod to us quickly

before she disappeared through the doorway.


Woloda, the Iwins, the young Prince Etienne, and myself were all of us

in love with Sonetchka and all of us standing on the staircase to follow

her with our eyes. To whom in particular she had nodded I do not know,

but at the moment I firmly believed it to be myself. In taking leave

of the Iwins, I spoke quite unconcernedly, and even coldly, to Seriosha

before I finally shook hands with him. Though he tried to appear

absolutely indifferent, I think that he understood that from that day

forth he had lost both my affection and his power over me, as well as

that he regretted it.





XXIV -- IN BED


"How could I have managed to be so long and so passionately devoted to

Seriosha?" I asked myself as I lay in bed that night. "He never either

understood, appreciated, or deserved my love. But Sonetchka! What a

darling SHE is! 'Wilt THOU?'--'THY hand'!"


I crept closer to the pillows, imagined to myself her lovely face,

covered my head over with the bedclothes, tucked the counterpane in on

all sides, and, thus snugly covered, lay quiet and enjoying the warmth

until I became wholly absorbed in pleasant fancies and reminiscences.


If I stared fixedly at the inside of the sheet above me I found that I

could see her as clearly as I had done an hour ago could talk to her in

my thoughts, and, though it was a conversation of irrational tenor, I

derived the greatest delight from it, seeing that "THOU" and "THINE" and

"for THEE" and "to THEE" occurred in it incessantly. These fancies were

so vivid that I could not sleep for the sweetness of my emotion, and

felt as though I must communicate my superabundant happiness to some

one.


"The darling!" I said, half-aloud, as I turned over; then, "Woloda, are

you asleep?"


"No," he replied in a sleepy voice. "What's the matter?"


"I am in love, Woloda--terribly in love with Sonetchka"


"Well? Anything else?" he replied, stretching himself.


"Oh, but you cannot imagine what I feel just now, as I lay covered over

with the counterpane, I could see her and talk to her so clearly that

it was marvellous! And, do you know, while I was lying thinking about

her--I don't know why it was, but all at once I felt so sad that I could

have cried."


Woloda made a movement of some sort.


"One thing only I wish for," I continued; "and that is that I could

always be with her and always be seeing her. Just that. You are in love

too, I believe. Confess that you are."


It was strange, but somehow I wanted every one to be in love with

Sonetchka, and every one to tell me that they were so.


"So that's how it is with you? " said Woloda, turning round to me.

"Well, I can understand it."


"I can see that you cannot sleep," I remarked, observing by his bright

eyes that he was anything but drowsy. "Well, cover yourself over SO"

(and I pulled the bedclothes over him), "and then let us talk about her.

Isn't she splendid? If she were to say to me, 'Nicolinka, jump out of

the window,' or 'jump into the fire,' I should say, 'Yes, I will do it

at once and rejoice in doing it.' Oh, how glorious she is!"


I went on picturing her again and again to my imagination, and, to enjoy

the vision the better, turned over on my side and buried my head in the

pillows, murmuring, "Oh, I want to cry, Woloda."


"What a fool you are!" he said with a slight laugh. Then, after a

moment's silence he added: "I am not like you. I think I would rather

sit and talk with her."


"Ah! Then you ARE in love with her!" I interrupted.


"And then," went on Woloda, smiling tenderly, "kiss her fingers and eyes

and lips and nose and feet--kiss all of her."


"How absurd!" I exclaimed from beneath the pillows.


"Ah, you don't understand things," said Woloda with contempt.


"I DO understand. It's you who don't understand things, and you talk

rubbish, too," I replied, half-crying.


"Well, there is nothing to cry about," he concluded. "She is only a

girl."





XXV -- THE LETTER


ON the 16th of April, nearly six months after the day just described,

Papa entered our schoolroom and told us that that night we must start

with him for our country house. I felt a pang at my heart when I heard

the news, and my thoughts at once turned to Mamma. The cause of our

unexpected departure was the following letter:


"PETROVSKOE, 12th April.


"Only this moment (i.e. at ten o'clock in the evening) have I received

your dear letter of the 3rd of April, but as usual, I answer it at once.

Fedor brought it yesterday from town, but, as it was late, he did not

give it to Mimi till this morning, and Mimi (since I was unwell) kept

it from me all day. I have been a little feverish. In fact, to tell the

truth, this is the fourth day that I have been in bed.


"Yet do not be uneasy. I feel almost myself again now, and if Ivan

Vassilitch should allow me, I think of getting up to-morrow.


"On Friday last I took the girls for a drive, and, close to the little

bridge by the turning on to the high road (the place which always makes

me nervous), the horses and carriage stuck fast in the mud. Well, the

day being fine, I thought that we would walk a little up the road until

the carriage should be extricated, but no sooner had we reached the

chapel than I felt obliged to sit down, I was so tired, and in this way

half-an-hour passed while help was being sent for to get the carriage

dug out. I felt cold, for I had only thin boots on, and they had been

wet through. After luncheon too, I had alternate cold and hot fits, yet

still continued to follow our ordinary routine.


"When tea was over I sat down to the piano to play a duct with

Lubotshka, (you would be astonished to hear what progress she has

made!), but imagine my surprise when I found that I could not count the

beats! Several times I began to do so, yet always felt confused in

my head, and kept hearing strange noises in my ears. I would begin

'One-two-three--' and then suddenly go on '-eight-fifteen,' and so on,

as though I were talking nonsense and could not help it. At last Mimi

came to my assistance and forced me to retire to bed. That was how my

illness began, and it was all through my own fault. The next day I had

a good deal of fever, and our good Ivan Vassilitch came. He has not left

us since, but promises soon to restore me to the world.


"What a wonderful old man he is! While I was feverish and delirious he

sat the whole night by my bedside without once closing his eyes; and at

this moment (since he knows I am busy writing) he is with the girls in

the divannaia, and I can hear him telling them German stories, and them

laughing as they listen to him.


"'La Belle Flamande,' as you call her, is now spending her second week

here as my guest (her mother having gone to pay a visit somewhere), and

she is most attentive and attached to me. She even tells me her secret

affairs. Under different circumstances her beautiful face, good temper,

and youth might have made a most excellent girl of her, but in the

society in which according to her own account, she moves she will be

wasted. The idea has more than once occurred to me that, had I not had

so many children of my own, it would have been a deed of mercy to have

adopted her.


"Lubotshka had meant to write to you herself, but she has torn up three

sheets of paper, saying: 'I know what a quizzer Papa always is. If he

were to find a single fault in my letter he would show it to everybody.'

Katenka is as charming as usual, and Mimi, too, is good, but tiresome.


"Now let me speak of more serious matters. You write to me that your

affairs are not going well this winter, and that you wish to break into

the revenues of Chabarovska. It seems to me strange that you should

think it necessary to ask my consent. Surely what belongs to me belongs

no less to you? You are so kind-hearted, dear, that, for fear of

worrying me, you conceal the real state of things, but I can guess that

you have lost a great deal at cards, as also that you are afraid of my

being angry at that. Yet, so long as you can tide over this crisis, I

shall not think much of it, and you need not be uneasy, I have grown

accustomed to no longer relying, so far as the children are concerned,

upon your gains at play, nor yet--excuse me for saying so--upon your

income. Therefore your losses cause me as little anxiety as your gains

give me pleasure. What I really grieve over is your unhappy passion

itself for gambling--a passion which bereaves me of part of your tender

affection and obliges me to tell you such bitter truths as (God knows

with what pain) I am now telling you. I never cease to beseech Him that

He may preserve us, not from poverty (for what is poverty?), but from

the terrible juncture which would arise should the interests of the

children, which I am called upon to protect, ever come into collision

with our own. Hitherto God has listened to my prayers. You have never

yet overstepped the limit beyond which we should be obliged either

to sacrifice property which would no longer belong to us, but to the

children, or--It is terrible to think of, but the dreadful misfortune

at which I hint is forever hanging over our heads. Yes, it is the heavy

cross which God has given us both to carry.


"Also, you write about the children, and come back to our old point

of difference by asking my consent to your placing them at a

boarding-school. You know my objection to that kind of education. I

do not know, dear, whether you will accede to my request, but I

nevertheless beseech you, by your love for me, to give me your promise

that never so long as I am alive, nor yet after my death (if God should

see fit to separate us), shall such a thing be done.


"Also you write that our affairs render it indispensable for you to

visit St. Petersburg. The Lord go with you! Go and return as, soon as

possible. Without you we shall all of us be lonely.


"Spring is coming in beautifully. We keep the door on to the terrace

always open now, while the path to the orangery is dry and the

peach-trees are in full blossom. Only here and there is there a little

snow remaining. The swallows are arriving, and to-day Lubotshka brought

me the first flowers. The doctor says that in about three days' time I

shall be well again and able to take the open air and to enjoy the April

sun. Now, au revoir, my dearest one. Do not be alarmed, I beg of you,

either on account of my illness or on account of your losses at play.

End the crisis as soon as possible, and then return here with the

children for the summer. I am making wonderful plans for our passing of

it, and I only need your presence to realise them."


The rest of the letter was written in French, as well as in a strange,

uncertain hand, on another piece of paper. I transcribe it word for

word:


"Do not believe what I have just written to you about my illness. It is

more serious than any one knows. I alone know that I shall never leave

my bed again. Do not, therefore, delay a minute in coming here with the

children. Perhaps it may yet be permitted me to embrace and bless them.

It is my last wish that it should be so. I know what a terrible blow

this will be to you, but you would have had to hear it sooner or

later--if not from me, at least from others. Let us try to, bear the

Calamity with fortitude, and place our trust in the mercy of God. Let

us submit ourselves to His will. Do not think that what I am writing is

some delusion of my sick imagination. On the contrary, I am perfectly

clear at this moment, and absolutely calm. Nor must you comfort yourself

with the false hope that these are the unreal, confused feelings of a

despondent spirit, for I feel indeed, I know, since God has deigned to

reveal it to me--that I have now but a very short time to live. Will my

love for you and the children cease with my life? I know that that can

never be. At this moment I am too full of that love to be capable of

believing that such a feeling (which constitutes a part of my very

existence) can ever, perish. My soul can never lack its love for you;

and I know that that love will exist for ever, since such a feeling

could never have been awakened if it were not to be eternal. I shall no

longer be with you, yet I firmly believe that my love will cleave to

you always, and from that thought I glean such comfort that I await the

approach of death calmly and without fear. Yes, I am calm, and God knows

that I have ever looked, and do look now, upon death as no more than the

passage to a better life. Yet why do tears blind my eyes? Why should the

children lose a mother's love? Why must you, my husband, experience such

a heavy and unlooked-for blow? Why must I die when your love was making

life so inexpressibly happy for me?


"But His holy will be done!


"The tears prevent my writing more. It may be that I shall never see you

again. I thank you, my darling beyond all price, for all the felicity

with which you have surrounded me in this life. Soon I shall appear

before God Himself to pray that He may reward you. Farewell, my dearest!

Remember that, if I am no longer here, my love will none the less NEVER

AND NOWHERE fail you. Farewell, Woloda--farewell, my pet! Farewell, my

Benjamin, my little Nicolinka! Surely they will never forget me?"


With this letter had come also a French note from Mimi, in which the

latter said:


"The sad circumstances of which she has written to you are but too

surely confirmed by the words of the doctor. Yesterday evening she

ordered the letter to be posted at once, but, thinking at she did so in

delirium, I waited until this morning, with the intention of sealing and

sending it then. Hardly had I done so when Natalia Nicolaevna asked

me what I had done with the letter and told me to burn it if not yet

despatched. She is forever speaking of it, and saying that it will kill

you. Do not delay your departure for an instant if you wish to see the

angel before she leaves us. Pray excuse this scribble, but I have not

slept now for three nights. You know how much I love her."


Later I heard from Natalia Savishna (who passed the whole of the night

of the 11th April at Mamma's bedside) that, after writing the first part

of the letter, Mamma laid it down upon the table beside her and went to

sleep for a while.


"I confess," said Natalia Savishna, "that I too fell asleep in the

arm-chair, and let my knitting slip from my hands. Suddenly, towards one

o'clock in the morning, I heard her saying something; whereupon I opened

my eyes and looked at her. My darling was sitting up in bed, with her

hands clasped together and streams of tears gushing from her eyes.


"'It is all over now,' she said, and hid her face in her hands.


"I sprang to my feet, and asked what the matter was.


"'Ah, Natalia Savishna, if you could only know what I have just

seen!' she said; yet, for all my asking, she would say no more,

beyond commanding me to hand her the letter. To that letter she added

something, and then said that it must be sent off directly. From that

moment she grew, rapidly worse."





XXVI -- WHAT AWAITED US AT THE COUNTRY-HOUSE


On the 18th of April we descended from the carriage at the front door

of the house at Petrovskoe. All the way from Moscow Papa had been

preoccupied, and when Woloda had asked him "whether Mamma was ill" he

had looked at him sadly and nodded an affirmative. Nevertheless he had

grown more composed during the journey, and it was only when we were

actually approaching the house that his face again began to grow

anxious, until, as he leaped from the carriage and asked Foka (who

had run breathlessly to meet us), "How is Natalia Nicolaevna now?" his

voice, was trembling, and his eyes had filled with tears. The good, old

Foka looked at us, and then lowered his gaze again. Finally he said as

he opened the hall-door and turned his head aside: "It is the sixth day

since she has not left her bed."


Milka (who, as we afterwards learned, had never ceased to whine from the

day when Mamma was taken ill) came leaping, joyfully to meet Papa, and

barking a welcome as she licked his hands, but Papa put her aside, and

went first to the drawing-room, and then into the divannaia, from which

a door led into the bedroom. The nearer he approached the latter, the

more, did his movements express the agitation that he felt. Entering the

divannaia he crossed it on tiptoe, seeming to hold his breath. Even then

he had to stop and make the sign of the cross before he could summon up

courage to turn the handle. At the same moment Mimi, with dishevelled

hair and eyes red with weeping came hastily out of the corridor.


"Ah, Peter Alexandritch!" she said in a whisper and with a marked

expression of despair. Then, observing that Papa was trying to open the

door, she whispered again:


"Not here. This door is locked. Go round to the door on the other side."


Oh, how terribly all this wrought upon my imagination, racked as it was

by grief and terrible forebodings!


So we went round to the other side. In the corridor we met the gardener,

Akim, who had been wont to amuse us with his grimaces, but at this

moment I could see nothing comical in him. Indeed, the sight of his

thoughtless, indifferent face struck me more painfully than anything

else. In the maidservants' hall, through which we had to pass, two maids

were sitting at their work, but rose to salute us with an expression so

mournful that I felt completely overwhelmed.


Passing also through Mimi's room, Papa opened the door of the bedroom,

and we entered. The two windows on the right were curtained over, and

close to them was seated, Natalia Savishna, spectacles on nose and

engaged in darning stockings. She did not approach us to kiss me as she

had been used to do, but just rose and looked at us, her tears beginning

to flow afresh. Somehow it frightened me to see every one, on beholding

us, begin to cry, although they had been calm enough before.


On the left stood the bed behind a screen, while in the great arm-chair

the doctor lay asleep. Beside the bed a young, fair-haired and

remarkably beautiful girl in a white morning wrapper was applying ice to

Mamma's head, but Mamma herself I could not see. This girl was "La

Belle Flamande" of whom Mamma had written, and who afterwards played so

important a part in our family life. As we entered she disengaged one

of her hands, straightened the pleats of her dress on her bosom, and

whispered, "She is insensible." Though I was in an agony of grief, I

observed at that moment every little detail.


It was almost dark in the room, and very hot, while the air was heavy

with the mingled, scent of mint, eau-de-cologne, camomile, and Hoffman's

pastilles. The latter ingredient caught my attention so strongly that

even now I can never hear of it, or even think of it, without my memory

carrying me back to that dark, close room, and all the details of that

dreadful time.


Mamma's eyes were wide open, but they could not see us. Never shall I

forget the terrible expression in them--the expression of agonies of

suffering!


Then we were taken away.


When, later, I was able to ask Natalia Savishna about Mamma's last

moments she told me the following:


"After you were taken out of the room, my beloved one struggled for a

long time, as though some one were trying to strangle her. Then at last

she laid her head back upon the pillow, and slept softly, peacefully,

like an angel from Heaven. I went away for a moment to see about her

medicine, and just as I entered the room again my darling was throwing

the bedclothes from off her and calling for your Papa. He stooped over

her, but strength failed her to say what she wanted to. All she could

do was to open her lips and gasp, 'My God, my God! The children, the

children!' I would have run to fetch you, but Ivan Vassilitch stopped

me, saying that it would only excite her--it were best not to do so.

Then suddenly she stretched her arms out and dropped them again. What

she meant by that gesture the good God alone knows, but I think that in

it she was blessing you--you the children whom she could not see. God

did not grant her to see her little ones before her death. Then she

raised herself up--did my love, my darling--yes, just so with her hands,

and exclaimed in a voice which I cannot bear to remember, 'Mother of

God, never forsake them!'"


"Then the pain mounted to her heart, and from her eyes it as, plain that

she suffered terribly, my poor one! She sank back upon the pillows, tore

the bedclothes with her teeth, and wept--wept--"


"Yes and what then?" I asked but Natalia Savishna could say no more. She

turned away and cried bitterly.


Mamma had expired in terrible agonies.





XXVII -- GRIEF


LATE the following evening I thought I would like to look at her once

more; so, conquering an involuntary sense of fear, I gently opened the

door of the salon and entered on tiptoe.


In the middle of the room, on a table, lay the coffin, with wax candles

burning all round it on tall silver candelabra. In the further corner

sat the chanter, reading the Psalms in a low, monotonous voice. I

stopped at the door and tried to look, but my eyes were so weak with

crying, and my nerves so terribly on edge, that I could distinguish

nothing. Every object seemed to mingle together in a strange blur--the

candles, the brocade, the velvet, the great candelabra, the pink satin

cushion trimmed with lace, the chaplet of flowers, the ribboned cap, and

something of a transparent, wax-like colour. I mounted a chair to see

her face, yet where it should have been I could see only that wax-like,

transparent something. I could not believe it to be her face. Yet, as

I stood grazing at it, I at last recognised the well-known, beloved

features. I shuddered with horror to realise that it WAS she. Why were

those eyes so sunken? What had laid that dreadful paleness upon her

cheeks, and stamped the black spot beneath the transparent skin on one

of them? Why was the expression of the whole face so cold and severe?

Why were the lips so white, and their outline so beautiful, so majestic,

so expressive of an unnatural calm that, as I looked at them, a chill

shudder ran through my hair and down my back?


Somehow, as I gazed, an irrepressible, incomprehensible power seemed

to compel me to keep my eyes fixed upon that lifeless face. I could not

turn away, and my imagination began to picture before me scenes of her

active life and happiness. I forgot that the corpse lying before me

now--the THING at which I was gazing unconsciously as at an object which

had nothing in common with my dreams--was SHE. I fancied I could

see her--now here, now there, alive, happy, and smiling. Then some

well-known feature in the face at which I was gazing would suddenly

arrest my attention, and in a flash I would recall the terrible reality

and shudder-though still unable to turn my eyes away.


Then again the dreams would replace reality--then again the reality put

to flight the dreams. At last the consciousness of both left me, and for

a while I became insensible.


How long I remained in that condition I do not know, nor yet how it

occurred. I only know that for a time I lost all sense of existence, and

experienced a kind of vague blissfulness which though grand and sweet,

was also sad. It may be that, as it ascended to a better world, her

beautiful soul had looked down with longing at the world in which she

had left us--that it had seen my sorrow, and, pitying me, had returned

to earth on the wings of love to console and bless me with a heavenly

smile of compassion.


The door creaked as the chanter entered who was to relieve his

predecessor. The noise awakened me, and my first thought was that,

seeing me standing on the chair in a posture which had nothing touching

in its aspect, he might take me for an unfeeling boy who had climbed

on to the chair out of mere curiosity: wherefore I hastened to make the

sign of the cross, to bend down my head, and to burst out crying. As I

recall now my impressions of that episode I find that it was only during

my moments of self-forgetfulness that my grief was wholehearted. True,

both before and after the funeral I never ceased to cry and to look

miserable, yet I feel conscience-stricken when I recall that grief

of mine, seeing that always present in it there was an element of

conceit--of a desire to show that I was more grieved than any one else,

of an interest which I took in observing the effect, produced upon

others by my tears, and of an idle curiosity leading me to remark

Mimi's bonnet and the faces of all present. The mere circumstance that

I despised myself for not feeling grief to the exclusion of everything

else, and that I endeavoured to conceal the fact, shows that my sadness

was insincere and unnatural. I took a delight in feeling that I was

unhappy, and in trying to feel more so. Consequently this egotistic

consciousness completely annulled any element of sincerity in my woe.


That night I slept calmly and soundly (as is usual after any great

emotion), and awoke with my tears dried and my nerves restored. At ten

o'clock we were summoned to attend the pre-funeral requiem.


The room was full of weeping servants and peasants who had come to bid

farewell to their late mistress. During the service I myself wept

a great deal, made frequent signs of the cross, and performed many

genuflections, but I did not pray with, my soul, and felt, if anything,

almost indifferent. My thoughts were chiefly centred upon the new coat

which I was wearing (a garment which was tight and uncomfortable) and

upon how to avoid soiling my trousers at the knees. Also I took the most

minute notice of all present.


Papa stood at the head of the coffin. He was as white as snow, and

only with difficulty restrained his tears. His tall figure in its black

frockcoat, his pale, expressive face, the graceful, assured manner in

which, as usual, he made the sign of the cross or bowed until he touched

the floor with his hand [A custom of the Greek funeral rite.] or took

the candle from the priest or went to the coffin--all were exceedingly

effective; yet for some reason or another I felt a grudge against him

for that very ability to appear effective at such a moment. Mimi stood

leaning against the wall as though scarcely able to support herself. Her

dress was all awry and covered with feathers, and her cap cocked to one

side, while her eyes were red with weeping, her legs trembling under

her, and she sobbed incessantly in a heartrending manner as ever and

again she buried her face in her handkerchief or her hands. I imagine

that she did this to check her continual sobbing without being seen by

the spectators. I remember, too, her telling Papa, the evening before,

that Mamma's death had come upon her as a blow from which she could

never hope to recover; that with Mamma she had lost everything; but that

"the angel," as she called my mother, had not forgotten her when at the

point of death, since she had declared her wish to render her (Mimi's)

and Katenka's fortunes secure for ever. Mimi had shed bitter tears

while relating this, and very likely her sorrow, if not wholly pure and

disinterested, was in the main sincere. Lubotshka, in black garments

and suffused with tears, stood with her head bowed upon her breast. She

rarely looked at the coffin, yet whenever she did so her face expressed

a sort of childish fear. Katenka stood near her mother, and, despite

her lengthened face, looked as lovely as ever. Woloda's frank nature

was frank also in grief. He stood looking grave and as though he were

staring at some object with fixed eyes. Then suddenly his lips would

begin to quiver, and he would hastily make the sign of the cross, and

bend his head again.


Such of those present as were strangers I found intolerable. In fact,

the phrases of condolence with which they addressed Papa (such, for

instance, as that "she is better off now" "she was too good for this

world," and so on) awakened in me something like fury. What right had

they to weep over or to talk about her? Some of them, in referring to

ourselves, called us "orphans"--just as though it were not a matter of

common knowledge that children who have lost their mother are known as

orphans! Probably (I thought) they liked to be the first to give us that

name, just as some people find pleasure in being the first to address a

newly-married girl as "Madame."


In a far corner of the room, and almost hidden by the open door, of the

dining-room, stood a grey old woman with bent knees. With hands clasped

together and eyes lifted to heaven, she prayed only--not wept. Her soul

was in the presence of God, and she was asking Him soon to reunite her

to her whom she had loved beyond all beings on this earth, and whom she

steadfastly believed that she would very soon meet again.


"There stands one who SINCERELY loved her," I thought to myself, and

felt ashamed.


The requiem was over. They uncovered the face of the deceased, and all

present except ourselves went to the coffin to give her the kiss of

farewell.


One of the last to take leave of her departed mistress was a peasant

woman who was holding by the hand a pretty little girl of five whom she

had brought with her, God knows for what reason. Just at a moment when

I chanced to drop my wet handkerchief and was stooping to pick it up

again, a loud, piercing scream startled me, and filled me with such

terror that, were I to live a hundred years more, I should never forget

it. Even now the recollection always sends a cold shudder through my

frame. I raised my head. Standing on the chair near the coffin was the

peasant woman, while struggling and fighting in her arms was the

little girl, and it was this same poor child who had screamed with such

dreadful, desperate frenzy as, straining her terrified face away, she

still, continued to gaze with dilated eyes at the face of the corpse.

I too screamed in a voice perhaps more dreadful still, and ran headlong

from the room.


Only now did I understand the source of the strong, oppressive smell

which, mingling with the scent of the incense, filled the chamber, while

the thought that the face which, but a few days ago, had been full of

freshness and beauty--the face which I loved more than anything else in

all the world--was now capable of inspiring horror at length revealed to

me, as though for the first time, the terrible truth, and filled my soul

with despair.





XXVIII -- SAD RECOLLECTIONS


Mamma was no longer with us, but our life went on as usual. We went

to bed and got up at the same times and in the same rooms; breakfast,

luncheon, and supper continued to be at their usual hours; everything

remained standing in its accustomed place; nothing in the house or in

our mode of life was altered: only, she was not there.


Yet it seemed to me as though such a misfortune ought to have changed

everything. Our old mode of life appeared like an insult to her memory.

It recalled too vividly her presence.


The day before the funeral I felt as though I should like to rest a

little after luncheon, and accordingly went to Natalia Savishna's room

with the intention of installing myself comfortably under the warm, soft

down of the quilt on her bed. When I entered I found Natalia herself

lying on the bed and apparently asleep, but, on hearing my footsteps,

she raised herself up, removed the handkerchief which had been

protecting her face from the flies, and, adjusting her cap, sat forward

on the edge of the bed. Since it frequently happened that I came to lie

down in her room, she guessed my errand at once, and said:


"So you have come to rest here a little, have you? Lie down, then, my

dearest."


"Oh, but what is the matter with you, Natalia Savishna?" I exclaimed

as I forced her back again. "I did not come for that. No, you are tired

yourself, so you LIE down."


"I am quite rested now, darling," she said (though I knew that it was

many a night since she had closed her eyes). "Yes, I am indeed, and have

no wish to sleep again," she added with a deep sigh.


I felt as though I wanted to speak to her of our misfortune, since I

knew her sincerity and love, and thought that it would be a consolation

to me to weep with her.


"Natalia Savishna," I said after a pause, as I seated myself upon the

bed, "who would ever have thought of this?"


The old woman looked at me with astonishment, for she did not quite

understand my question.


"Yes, who would ever have thought of it?" I repeated.


"Ah, my darling," she said with a glance of tender compassion, "it is

not only 'Who would ever have thought of it?' but 'Who, even now, would

ever believe it?' I am old, and my bones should long ago have gone to

rest rather than that I should have lived to see the old master, your

Grandpapa, of blessed memory, and Prince Nicola Michaelovitch, and his

two brothers, and your sister Amenka all buried before me, though all

younger than myself--and now my darling, to my never-ending sorrow, gone

home before me! Yet it has been God's will. He took her away because she

was worthy to be taken, and because He has need of the good ones."


This simple thought seemed to me a consolation, and I pressed closer to

Natalia. She laid her hands upon my head as she looked upward with eyes

expressive of a deep, but resigned, sorrow. In her soul was a sure and

certain hope that God would not long separate her from the one upon whom

the whole strength of her love had for many years been concentrated.


"Yes, my dear," she went on, "it is a long time now since I used to

nurse and fondle her, and she used to call me Natasha. She used to come

jumping upon me, and caressing and kissing me, and say, 'MY Nashik, MY

darling, MY ducky,' and I used to answer jokingly, 'Well, my love, I

don't believe that you DO love me. You will be a grown-up young

lady soon, and going away to be married, and will leave your Nashik

forgotten.' Then she would grow thoughtful and say, 'I think I had

better not marry if my Nashik cannot go with me, for I mean never to

leave her.' Yet, alas! She has left me now! Who was there in the world

she did not love? Yes, my dearest, it must never be POSSIBLE for you to

forget your Mamma. She was not a being of earth--she was an angel from

Heaven. When her soul has entered the heavenly kingdom she will continue

to love you and to be proud of you even there."


"But why do you say 'when her soul has entered the heavenly kingdom'?" I

asked. "I believe it is there now."


"No, my dearest," replied Natalia as she lowered her voice and pressed

herself yet closer to me, "her soul is still here," and she pointed

upwards. She spoke in a whisper, but with such an intensity of

conviction that I too involuntarily raised my eyes and looked at the

ceiling, as though expecting to see something there. "Before the souls

of the just enter Paradise they have to undergo forty trials for forty

days, and during that time they hover around their earthly home." [A

Russian popular legend.]


She went on speaking for some time in this strain--speaking with the

same simplicity and conviction as though she were relating common things

which she herself had witnessed, and to doubt which could never enter

into any one's head. I listened almost breathlessly, and though I did

not understand all she said, I never for a moment doubted her word.


"Yes, my darling, she is here now, and perhaps looking at us and

listening to what we are saying," concluded Natalia. Raising her head,

she remained silent for a while. At length she wiped away the tears

which were streaming from her eyes, looked me straight in the face, and

said in a voice trembling with emotion:


"Ah, it is through many trials that God is leading me to Him. Why,

indeed, am I still here? Whom have I to live for? Whom have I to love?"


"Do you not love US, then?" I asked sadly, and half-choking with my

tears.


"Yes, God knows that I love you, my darling; but to love any one as I

loved HER--that I cannot do."


She could say no more, but turned her head aside and wept bitterly. As

for me, I no longer thought of going to sleep, but sat silently with her

and mingled my tears with hers.


Presently Foka entered the room, but, on seeing our emotion and not

wishing to disturb us, stopped short at the door.


"Do you want anything, my good Foka?" asked Natalia as she wiped away

her tears.


"If you please, half-a-pound of currants, four pounds of sugar, and

three pounds of rice for the kutia." [Cakes partaken of by the mourners

at a Russian funeral.]


"Yes, in one moment," said Natalia as she took a pinch of snuff and

hastened to her drawers. All traces of the grief, aroused by our

conversation disappeared on, the instant that she had duties to fulfil,

for she looked upon those duties as of paramount importance.


"But why FOUR pounds?" she objected as she weighed the sugar on a

steelyard. "Three and a half would be sufficient," and she withdrew a

few lumps. "How is it, too, that, though I weighed out eight pounds of

rice yesterday, more is wanted now? No offence to you, Foka, but I am

not going to waste rice like that. I suppose Vanka is glad that there

is confusion in the house just now, for he thinks that nothing will be

looked after, but I am not going to have any careless extravagance with

my master's goods. Did one ever hear of such a thing? Eight pounds!"


"Well, I have nothing to do with it. He says it is all gone, that's

all."


"Hm, hm! Well, there it is. Let him take it."


I was struck by the sudden transition from the touching sensibility

with which she had just been speaking to me to this petty reckoning and

captiousness. Yet, thinking it over afterwards, I recognised that it was

merely because, in spite of what was lying on her heart, she retained

the habit of duty, and that it was the strength of that habit which

enabled her to pursue her functions as of old. Her grief was too strong

and too true to require any pretence of being unable to fulfil trivial

tasks, nor would she have understood that any one could so pretend.

Vanity is a sentiment so entirely at variance with genuine grief, yet

a sentiment so inherent in human nature, that even the most poignant

sorrow does not always drive it wholly forth. Vanity mingled with grief

shows itself in a desire to be recognised as unhappy or resigned;

and this ignoble desire--an aspiration which, for all that we may

not acknowledge it is rarely absent, even in cases of the utmost

affliction--takes off greatly from the force, the dignity, and the

sincerity of grief. Natalia Savishna had been so sorely smitten by her

misfortune that not a single wish of her own remained in her soul--she

went on living purely by habit.


Having handed over the provisions to Foka, and reminded him of the

refreshments which must be ready for the priests, she took up her

knitting and seated herself by my side again. The conversation reverted

to the old topic, and we once more mourned and shed tears together.

These talks with Natalia I repeated every day, for her quiet tears

and words of devotion brought me relief and comfort. Soon, however, a

parting came. Three days after the funeral we returned to Moscow, and I

never saw her again.


Grandmamma received the sad tidings only on our return to her house, and

her grief was extraordinary. At first we were not allowed to see her,

since for a whole week she was out of her mind, and the doctors were

afraid for her life. Not only did she decline all medicine whatsoever,

but she refused to speak to anybody or to take nourishment, and never

closed her eyes in sleep. Sometimes, as she sat alone in the arm-chair in

her room, she would begin laughing and crying at the same time, with a

sort of tearless grief, or else relapse into convulsions, and scream out

dreadful, incoherent words in a horrible voice. It was the first dire

sorrow which she had known in her life, and it reduced her almost

to distraction. She would begin accusing first one person, and then

another, of bringing this misfortune upon her, and rail at and blame

them with the most extraordinary virulence. Finally she would rise from

her arm-chair, pace the room for a while, and end by falling senseless

to the floor.


Once, when I went to her room, she appeared to be sitting quietly in her

chair, yet with an air which struck me as curious. Though her eyes were

wide open, their glance was vacant and meaningless, and she seemed to

gaze in my direction without seeing me. Suddenly her lips parted slowly

in a smile, and she said in a touchingly, tender voice: "Come here,

then, my dearest one; come here, my angel." Thinking that it was myself

she was addressing, I moved towards her, but it was not I whom she was

beholding at that moment. "Oh, my love," she went on, "if only you could

know how distracted I have been, and how delighted I am to see you once

more!" I understood then that she believed herself to be looking

upon Mamma, and halted where I was. "They told me you were gone," she

concluded with a frown; "but what nonsense! As if you could die before

ME!" and she laughed a terrible, hysterical laugh.


Only those who can love strongly can experience an overwhelming grief.

Yet their very need of loving sometimes serves to throw off their grief

from them and to save them. The moral nature of man is more tenacious of

life than the physical, and grief never kills.


After a time Grandmamma's power of weeping came back to her, and she

began to recover. Her first thought when her reason returned was for us

children, and her love for us was greater than ever. We never left her

arm-chair, and she would talk of Mamma, and weep softly, and caress us.


Nobody who saw her grief could say that it was consciously exaggerated,

for its expression was too strong and touching; yet for some reason or

another my sympathy went out more to Natalia Savishna, and to this day

I am convinced that nobody loved and regretted Mamma so purely and

sincerely as did that simple-hearted, affectionate being.


With Mamma's death the happy time of my childhood came to an end, and

a new epoch--the epoch of my boyhood--began; but since my memories of

Natalia Savishna (who exercised such a strong and beneficial influence

upon the bent of my mind and the development of my sensibility) belong

rather to the first period, I will add a few words about her and her

death before closing this portion of my life.


I heard later from people in the village that, after our return to

Moscow, she found time hang very heavy on her hands. Although the

drawers and shelves were still under her charge, and she never ceased

to arrange and rearrange them--to take things out and to dispose of them

afresh--she sadly missed the din and bustle of the seignorial mansion to

which she had been accustomed from her childhood up. Consequently

grief, the alteration in her mode of life, and her lack of activity soon

combined to develop in her a malady to which she had always been more or

less subject.


Scarcely more than a year after Mamma's death dropsy showed itself, and

she took to her bed. I can imagine how sad it must have been for her

to go on living--still more, to die--alone in that great empty house

at Petrovskoe, with no relations or any one near her. Every one there

esteemed and loved her, but she had formed no intimate friendships in

the place, and was rather proud of the fact. That was because, enjoying

her master's confidence as she did, and having so much property

under her care, she considered that intimacies would lead to culpable

indulgence and condescension. Consequently (and perhaps, also, because

she had nothing really in common with the other servants) she kept them

all at a distance, and used to say that she "recognised neither kinsman

nor godfather in the house, and would permit of no exceptions with

regard to her master's property."


Instead, she sought and found consolation in fervent prayers to God. Yet

sometimes, in those moments of weakness to which all of us are

subject, and when man's best solace is the tears and compassion of his

fellow-creatures, she would take her old dog Moska on to her bed, and

talk to it, and weep softly over it as it answered her caresses by

licking her hands, with its yellow eyes fixed upon her. When Moska

began to whine she would say as she quieted it: "Enough, enough! I know

without thy telling me that my time is near." A month before her death

she took out of her chest of drawers some fine white calico, white

cambric, and pink ribbon, and, with the help of the maidservants,

fashioned the garments in which she wished to be buried. Next she put

everything on her shelves in order and handed the bailiff an inventory

which she had made out with scrupulous accuracy. All that she kept

back was a couple of silk gowns, an old shawl, and Grandpapa's military

uniform--things which had been presented to her absolutely, and which,

thanks to her care and orderliness, were in an excellent state of

preservation--particularly the handsome gold embroidery on the uniform.


Just before her death, again, she expressed a wish that one of the gowns

(a pink one) should be made into a robe de chambre for Woloda; that the

other one (a many-coloured gown) should be made into a similar garment

for myself; and that the shawl should go to Lubotshka. As for the

uniform, it was to devolve either to Woloda or to myself, according as

the one or the other of us should first become an officer. All the rest

of her property (save only forty roubles, which she set aside for her

commemorative rites and to defray the costs of her burial) was to pass

to her brother, a person with whom, since he lived a dissipated life

in a distant province, she had had no intercourse during her lifetime.

When, eventually, he arrived to claim the inheritance, and found that

its sum-total only amounted to twenty-five roubles in notes, he refused

to believe it, and declared that it was impossible that his sister-a

woman who for sixty years had had sole charge in a wealthy house, as

well as all her life had been penurious and averse to giving away even

the smallest thing should have left no more: yet it was a fact.


Though Natalia's last illness lasted for two months, she bore her

sufferings with truly Christian fortitude. Never did she fret or

complain, but, as usual, appealed continually to God. An hour before

the end came she made her final confession, received the Sacrament with

quiet joy, and was accorded extreme unction. Then she begged forgiveness

of every one in the house for any wrong she might have done them, and

requested the priest to send us word of the number of times she had

blessed us for our love of her, as well as of how in her last moments

she had implored our forgiveness if, in her ignorance, she had ever at

any time given us offence. "Yet a thief have I never been. Never have I

used so much as a piece of thread that was not my own." Such was the one

quality which she valued in herself.


Dressed in the cap and gown prepared so long beforehand, and with her

head resting, upon the cushion made for the purpose, she conversed with

the priest up to the very last moment, until, suddenly, recollecting

that she had left him nothing for the poor, she took out ten roubles,

and asked him to distribute them in the parish. Lastly she made the sign

of the cross, lay down, and expired--pronouncing with a smile of joy the

name of the Almighty.


She quitted life without a pang, and, so far from fearing death,

welcomed it as a blessing. How often do we hear that said, and how

seldom is it a reality! Natalia Savishna had no reason to fear death

for the simple reason that she died in a sure and certain faith and in

strict obedience to the commands of the Gospel. Her whole life had

been one of pure, disinterested love, of utter self-negation. Had her

convictions been of a more enlightened order, her life directed to a

higher aim, would that pure soul have been the more worthy of love and

reverence? She accomplished the highest and best achievement in this

world: she died without fear and without repining.


They buried her where she had wished to lie--near the little mausoleum

which still covers Mamma's tomb. The little mound beneath which she

sleeps is overgrown with nettles and burdock, and surrounded by a black

railing, but I never forget, when leaving the mausoleum, to approach

that railing, and to salute the plot of earth within by bowing

reverently to the ground.


Sometimes, too, I stand thoughtfully between the railing and the

mausoleum, and sad memories pass through my mind. Once the idea came to

me as I stood there: "Did Providence unite me to those two beings solely

in order to make me regret them my life long?"




The Project Gutenberg EBook of Boyhood, by Leo Tolstoy


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BOYHOOD


By Leo Tolstoy



Translated by C.J. HOGARTH





I. A SLOW JOURNEY


Again two carriages stood at the front door of the house at Petrovskoe.

In one of them sat Mimi, the two girls, and their maid, with the

bailiff, Jakoff, on the box, while in the other--a britchka--sat Woloda,

myself, and our servant Vassili. Papa, who was to follow us to Moscow in

a few days, was standing bareheaded on the entrance-steps. He made the

sign of the cross at the windows of the carriages, and said:


"Christ go with you! Good-bye."


Jakoff and our coachman (for we had our own horses) lifted their caps in

answer, and also made the sign of the cross.


"Amen. God go with us!"


The carriages began to roll away, and the birch-trees of the great

avenue filed out of sight.


I was not in the least depressed on this occasion, for my mind was not

so much turned upon what I had left as upon what was awaiting me. In

proportion as the various objects connected with the sad recollections

which had recently filled my imagination receded behind me, those

recollections lost their power, and gave place to a consolatory feeling

of life, youthful vigour, freshness, and hope.


Seldom have I spent four days more--well, I will not say gaily, since

I should still have shrunk from appearing gay--but more agreeably and

pleasantly than those occupied by our journey.


No longer were my eyes confronted with the closed door of Mamma's room

(which I had never been able to pass without a pang), nor with the

covered piano (which nobody opened now, and at which I could never look

without trembling), nor with mourning dresses (we had each of us on our

ordinary travelling clothes), nor with all those other objects which

recalled to me so vividly our irreparable loss, and forced me to abstain

from any manifestation of merriment lest I should unwittingly offend

against HER memory.


On the contrary, a continual succession of new and exciting objects

and places now caught and held my attention, and the charms of spring

awakened in my soul a soothing sense of satisfaction with the present

and of blissful hope for the future.


Very early next morning the merciless Vassili (who had only just entered

our service, and was therefore, like most people in such a position,

zealous to a fault) came and stripped off my counterpane, affirming that

it was time for me to get up, since everything was in readiness for us

to continue our journey. Though I felt inclined to stretch myself and

rebel--though I would gladly have spent another quarter of an hour in

sweet enjoyment of my morning slumber--Vassili's inexorable face showed

that he would grant me no respite, but that he was ready to tear away

the counterpane twenty times more if necessary. Accordingly I submitted

myself to the inevitable and ran down into the courtyard to wash myself

at the fountain.


In the coffee-room, a tea-kettle was already surmounting the fire which

Milka the ostler, as red in the face as a crab, was blowing with a pair

of bellows. All was grey and misty in the courtyard, like steam from a

smoking dunghill, but in the eastern sky the sun was diffusing a clear,

cheerful radiance, and making the straw roofs of the sheds around the

courtyard sparkle with the night dew. Beneath them stood our horses,

tied to mangers, and I could hear the ceaseless sound of their chewing.

A curly-haired dog which had been spending the night on a dry dunghill

now rose in lazy fashion and, wagging its tail, walked slowly across the

courtyard.


The bustling landlady opened the creaking gates, turned her meditative

cows into the street (whence came the lowing and bellowing of other

cattle), and exchanged a word or two with a sleepy neighbour. Philip,

with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, was working the windlass of a

draw-well, and sending sparkling fresh water coursing into an oaken

trough, while in the pool beneath it some early-rising ducks were taking

a bath. It gave me pleasure to watch his strongly-marked, bearded face,

and the veins and muscles as they stood out upon his great powerful

hands whenever he made an extra effort. In the room behind the

partition-wall where Mimi and the girls had slept (yet so near to

ourselves that we had exchanged confidences overnight) movements now

became audible, their maid kept passing in and out with clothes, and, at

last the door opened and we were summoned to breakfast. Woloda, however,

remained in a state of bustle throughout as he ran to fetch first one

article and then another and urged the maid to hasten her preparations.


The horses were put to, and showed their impatience by tinkling their

bells. Parcels, trunks, dressing-cases, and boxes were replaced, and we

set about taking our seats. Yet, every time that we got in, the mountain

of luggage in the britchka seemed to have grown larger than before, and

we had much ado to understand how things had been arranged yesterday,

and how we should sit now. A tea-chest, in particular, greatly

inconvenienced me, but Vassili declared that "things will soon right

themselves," and I had no choice but to believe him.


The sun was just rising, covered with dense white clouds, and every

object around us was standing out in a cheerful, calm sort of radiance.

The whole was beautiful to look at, and I felt comfortable and light of

heart.


Before us the road ran like a broad, sinuous ribbon through cornfields

glittering with dew. Here and there a dark bush or young birch-tree cast

a long shadow over the ruts and scattered grass-tufts of the track. Yet

even the monotonous din of our carriage-wheels and collar-bells could

not drown the joyous song of soaring larks, nor the combined odour of

moth-eaten cloth, dust, and sourness peculiar to our britchka overpower

the fresh scents of the morning. I felt in my heart that delightful

impulse to be up and doing which is a sign of sincere enjoyment.


As I had not been able to say my prayers in the courtyard of the inn,

but had nevertheless been assured once that on the very first day when

I omitted to perform that ceremony some misfortune would overtake me,

I now hastened to rectify the omission. Taking off my cap, and stooping

down in a corner of the britchka, I duly recited my orisons, and

unobtrusively signed the sign of the cross beneath my coat. Yet all the

while a thousand different objects were distracting my attention, and

more than once I inadvertently repeated a prayer twice over.


Soon on the little footpath beside the road became visible some slowly

moving figures. They were pilgrims. On their heads they had dirty

handkerchiefs, on their backs wallets of birch-bark, and on their feet

bundles of soiled rags and heavy bast shoes. Moving their staffs in

regular rhythm, and scarcely throwing us a glance, they pressed onwards

with heavy tread and in single file.


"Where have they come from?" I wondered to myself, "and whither are they

bound? Is it a long pilgrimage they are making?" But soon the shadows

they cast on the road became indistinguishable from the shadows of the

bushes which they passed.


Next a carriage-and-four could be seen approaching us. In two seconds

the faces which looked out at us from it with smiling curiosity had

vanished. How strange it seemed that those faces should have nothing

in common with me, and that in all probability they would never meet my

eyes again!


Next came a pair of post-horses, with the traces looped up to their

collars. On one of them a young postillion-his lamb's wool cap cocked to

one side-was negligently kicking his booted legs against the flanks

of his steed as he sang a melancholy ditty. Yet his face and attitude

seemed to me to express such perfect carelessness and indolent ease that

I imagined it to be the height of happiness to be a postillion and to

sing melancholy songs.


Far off, through a cutting in the road, there soon stood out against

the light-blue sky, the green roof of a village church. Presently the

village itself became visible, together with the roof of the manor-house

and the garden attached to it. Who lived in that house? Children,

parents, teachers? Why should we not call there and make the

acquaintance of its inmates?


Next we overtook a file of loaded waggons--a procession to which our

vehicles had to yield the road.


"What have you got in there?" asked Vassili of one waggoner who was

dangling his legs lazily over the splashboard of his conveyance and

flicking his whip about as he gazed at us with a stolid, vacant look;

but he only made answer when we were too far off to catch what he said.


"And what have YOU got?" asked Vassili of a second waggoner who was

lying at full length under a new rug on the driving-seat of his vehicle.

The red poll and red face beneath it lifted themselves up for a

second from the folds of the rug, measured our britchka with a cold,

contemptuous look, and lay down again; whereupon I concluded that the

driver was wondering to himself who we were, whence we had come, and

whither we were going.


These various objects of interest had absorbed so much of my time that,

as yet, I had paid no attention to the crooked figures on the verst

posts as we passed them in rapid succession; but in time the sun began

to burn my head and back, the road to become increasingly dusty, the

impedimenta in the carriage to grow more and more uncomfortable, and

myself to feel more and more cramped. Consequently, I relapsed into

devoting my whole faculties to the distance-posts and their numerals,

and to solving difficult mathematical problems for reckoning the time

when we should arrive at the next posting-house.


"Twelve versts are a third of thirty-six, and in all there are forty-one

to Lipetz. We have done a third and how much, then?", and so forth, and

so forth.


"Vassili," was my next remark, on observing that he was beginning to nod

on the box-seat, "suppose we change seats? Will you?" Vassili agreed,

and had no sooner stretched himself out in the body of the vehicle than

he began to snore. To me on my new perch, however, a most interesting

spectacle now became visible--namely, our horses, all of which were

familiar to me down to the smallest detail.


"Why is Diashak on the right today, Philip, not on the left?" I asked

knowingly. "And Nerusinka is not doing her proper share of the pulling."


"One could not put Diashak on the left," replied Philip, altogether

ignoring my last remark. "He is not the kind of horse to put there at

all. A horse like the one on the left now is the right kind of one for

the job."


After this fragment of eloquence, Philip turned towards Diashak and

began to do his best to worry the poor animal by jogging at the reins,

in spite of the fact that Diashak was doing well and dragging the

vehicle almost unaided. This Philip continued to do until he found it

convenient to breathe and rest himself awhile and to settle his cap

askew, though it had looked well enough before.


I profited by the opportunity to ask him to let me have the reins

to hold, until, the whole six in my hand, as well as the whip, I had

attained complete happiness. Several times I asked whether I was doing

things right, but, as usual, Philip was never satisfied, and soon

destroyed my felicity.


The heat increased until a hand showed itself at the carriage window,

and waved a bottle and a parcel of eatables; whereupon Vassili leapt

briskly from the britchka, and ran forward to get us something to eat

and drink.


When we arrived at a steep descent, we all got out and ran down it to

a little bridge, while Vassili and Jakoff followed, supporting the

carriage on either side, as though to hold it up in the event of its

threatening to upset.


After that, Mimi gave permission for a change of seats, and sometimes

Woloda or myself would ride in the carriage, and Lubotshka or Katenka

in the britchka. This arrangement greatly pleased the girls, since much

more fun went on in the britchka. Just when the day was at its hottest,

we got out at a wood, and, breaking off a quantity of branches,

transformed our vehicle into a bower. This travelling arbour then

bustled on to catch the carriage up, and had the effect of exciting

Lubotshka to one of those piercing shrieks of delight which she was in

the habit of occasionally emitting.


At last we drew near the village where we were to halt and dine. Already

we could perceive the smell of the place--the smell of smoke and tar

and sheep-and distinguish the sound of voices, footsteps, and carts. The

bells on our horses began to ring less clearly than they had done in

the open country, and on both sides the road became lined with

huts--dwellings with straw roofs, carved porches, and small red or green

painted shutters to the windows, through which, here and there, was a

woman's face looking inquisitively out. Peasant children clad in smocks

only stood staring open-eyed or, stretching out their arms to us, ran

barefooted through the dust to climb on to the luggage behind, despite

Philip's menacing gestures. Likewise, red-haired waiters came darting

around the carriages to invite us, with words and signs, to select their

several hostelries as our halting-place.


Presently a gate creaked, and we entered a courtyard. Four hours of rest

and liberty now awaited us.





II. THE THUNDERSTORM


The sun was sinking towards the west, and his long, hot rays were

burning my neck and cheeks beyond endurance, while thick clouds of dust

were rising from the road and filling the whole air. Not the slightest

wind was there to carry it away. I could not think what to do. Neither

the dust-blackened face of Woloda dozing in a corner, nor the motion of

Philip's back, nor the long shadow of our britchka as it came bowling

along behind us brought me any relief. I concentrated my whole attention

upon the distance-posts ahead and the clouds which, hitherto dispersed

over the sky, were now assuming a menacing blackness, and beginning to

form themselves into a single solid mass.


From time to time distant thunder could be heard--a circumstance which

greatly increased my impatience to arrive at the inn where we were

to spend the night. A thunderstorm always communicated to me an

inexpressibly oppressive feeling of fear and gloom.


Yet we were still ten versts from the next village, and in the meanwhile

the large purple cloudbank--arisen from no one knows where--was

advancing steadily towards us. The sun, not yet obscured, was picking

out its fuscous shape with dazzling light, and marking its front with

grey stripes running right down to the horizon. At intervals, vivid

lightning could be seen in the distance, followed by low rumbles which

increased steadily in volume until they merged into a prolonged roll

which seemed to embrace the entire heavens. At length, Vassili got up

and covered over the britchka, the coachman wrapped himself up in

his cloak and lifted his cap to make the sign of the cross at each

successive thunderclap, and the horses pricked up their ears and

snorted as though to drink in the fresh air which the flying clouds were

outdistancing. The britchka began to roll more swiftly along the dusty

road, and I felt uneasy, and as though the blood were coursing more

quickly through my veins. Soon the clouds had veiled the face of

the sun, and though he threw a last gleam of light to the dark and

terrifying horizon, he had no choice but to disappear behind them.


Suddenly everything around us seemed changed, and assumed a gloomy

aspect. A wood of aspen trees which we were passing seemed to be all

in a tremble, with its leaves showing white against the dark lilac

background of the clouds, murmuring together in an agitated manner. The

tops of the larger trees began to bend to and fro, and dried leaves

and grass to whirl about in eddies over the road. Swallows and

white-breasted swifts came darting around the britchka and even passing

in front of the forelegs of the horses. While rooks, despite their

outstretched wings, were laid, as it were, on their keels by the wind.

Finally, the leather apron which covered us began to flutter about and

to beat against the sides of the conveyance.


The lightning flashed right into the britchka as, cleaving the obscurity

for a second, it lit up the grey cloth and silk galloon of the lining

and Woloda's figure pressed back into a corner.


Next came a terrible sound which, rising higher and higher, and

spreading further and further, increased until it reached its climax in

a deafening thunderclap which made us tremble and hold our breaths. "The

wrath of God"--what poetry there is in that simple popular conception!


The pace of the vehicle was continually increasing, and from Philip's

and Vassili's backs (the former was tugging furiously at the reins) I

could see that they too were alarmed.


Bowling rapidly down an incline, the britchka cannoned violently against

a wooden bridge at the bottom. I dared not stir and expected destruction

every moment.


Crack! A trace had given way, and, in spite of the ceaseless, deafening

thunderclaps, we had to pull up on the bridge.


Leaning my head despairingly against the side of the britchka, I

followed with a beating heart the movements of Philip's great black

fingers as he tied up the broken trace and, with hands and the butt-end

of the whip, pushed the harness vigorously back into its place.


My sense of terror was increasing with the violence of the thunder.

Indeed, at the moment of supreme silence which generally precedes the

greatest intensity of a storm, it mounted to such a height that I felt

as though another quarter of an hour of this emotion would kill me.


Just then there appeared from beneath the bridge a human being who, clad

in a torn, filthy smock, and supported on a pair of thin shanks bare of

muscles, thrust an idiotic face, a tremulous, bare, shaven head, and a

pair of red, shining stumps in place of hands into the britchka.


"M-my lord! A copeck for--for God's sake!" groaned a feeble voice as

at each word the wretched being made the sign of the cross and bowed

himself to the ground.


I cannot describe the chill feeling of horror which penetrated my heart

at that moment. A shudder crept through all my hair, and my eyes stared

in vacant terror at the outcast.


Vassili, who was charged with the apportioning of alms during the

journey, was busy helping Philip, and only when everything had been put

straight and Philip had resumed the reins again had he time to look for

his purse. Hardly had the britchka begun to move when a blinding flash

filled the welkin with a blaze of light which brought the horses to

their haunches. Then, the flash was followed by such an ear-splitting

roar that the very vault of heaven seemed to be descending upon our

heads. The wind blew harder than ever, and Vassili's cloak, the manes

and tails of the horses, and the carriage-apron were all slanted in one

direction as they waved furiously in the violent blast.


Presently, upon the britchka's top there fell some large drops of

rain--"one, two, three:" then suddenly, and as though a roll of drums

were being beaten over our heads, the whole countryside resounded with

the clatter of the deluge.


From Vassili's movements, I could see that he had now got his purse

open, and that the poor outcast was still bowing and making the sign of

the cross as he ran beside the wheels of the vehicle, at the imminent

risk of being run over, and reiterated from time to time his plea,

"For-for God's sake!" At last a copeck rolled upon the ground, and the

miserable creature--his mutilated arms, with their sleeves wet through

and through, held out before him--stopped perplexed in the roadway and

vanished from my sight.


The heavy rain, driven before the tempestuous wind, poured down in

pailfuls and, dripping from Vassili's thick cloak, formed a series of

pools on the apron. The dust became changed to a paste which clung to

the wheels, and the ruts became transformed into muddy rivulets.


At last, however, the lightning grew paler and more diffuse, and the

thunderclaps lost some of their terror amid the monotonous rattling

of the downpour. Then the rain also abated, and the clouds began to

disperse. In the region of the sun, a lightness appeared, and between

the white-grey clouds could be caught glimpses of an azure sky.


Finally, a dazzling ray shot across the pools on the road, shot through

the threads of rain--now falling thin and straight, as from a sieve--,

and fell upon the fresh leaves and blades of grass. The great cloud was

still louring black and threatening on the far horizon, but I no longer

felt afraid of it--I felt only an inexpressibly pleasant hopefulness in

proportion, as trust in life replaced the late burden of fear. Indeed,

my heart was smiling like that of refreshed, revivified Nature herself.


Vassili took off his cloak and wrung the water from it. Woloda flung

back the apron, and I stood up in the britchka to drink in the new,

fresh, balm-laden air. In front of us was the carriage, rolling along

and looking as wet and resplendent in the sunlight as though it had just

been polished. On one side of the road boundless oatfields, intersected

in places by small ravines which now showed bright with their moist

earth and greenery, stretched to the far horizon like a checkered

carpet, while on the other side of us an aspen wood, intermingled with

hazel bushes, and parquetted with wild thyme in joyous profusion, no

longer rustled and trembled, but slowly dropped rich, sparkling diamonds

from its newly-bathed branches on to the withered leaves of last year.


From above us, from every side, came the happy songs of little birds

calling to one another among the dripping brushwood, while clear from

the inmost depths of the wood sounded the voice of the cuckoo. So

delicious was the wondrous scent of the wood, the scent which follows

a thunderstorm in spring, the scent of birch-trees, violets, mushrooms,

and thyme, that I could no longer remain in the britchka. Jumping out,

I ran to some bushes, and, regardless of the showers of drops discharged

upon me, tore off a few sprigs of thyme, and buried my face in them to

smell their glorious scent.


Then, despite the mud which had got into my boots, as also the fact that

my stockings were soaked, I went skipping through the puddles to the

window of the carriage.


"Lubotshka! Katenka!" I shouted as I handed them some of the thyme,

"Just look how delicious this is!"


The girls smelt it and cried, "A-ah!" but Mimi shrieked to me to go

away, for fear I should be run over by the wheels.


"Oh, but smell how delicious it is!" I persisted.





III. A NEW POINT OF VIEW


Katenka was with me in the britchka; her lovely head inclined as she

gazed pensively at the roadway. I looked at her in silence and wondered

what had brought the unchildlike expression of sadness to her face which

I now observed for the first time there.


"We shall soon be in Moscow," I said at last. "How large do you suppose

it is?"


"I don't know," she replied.


"Well, but how large do you IMAGINE? As large as Serpukhov?"


"What do you say?"


"Nothing."


Yet the instinctive feeling which enables one person to guess the

thoughts of another and serves as a guiding thread in conversation

soon made Katenka feel that her indifference was disagreeable to me;

wherefore she raised her head presently, and, turning round, said:


"Did your Papa tell you that we girls too were going to live at your

Grandmamma's?"


"Yes, he said that we should ALL live there."


"ALL live there?"


"Yes, of course. We shall have one half of the upper floor, and you the

other half, and Papa the wing; but we shall all of us dine together with

Grandmamma downstairs."


"But Mamma says that your Grandmamma is so very grave and so easily made

angry?"


"No, she only SEEMS like that at first. She is grave, but not

bad-tempered. On the contrary, she is both kind and cheerful. If you

could only have seen the ball at her house!"


"All the same, I am afraid of her. Besides, who knows whether we--"


Katenka stopped short, and once again became thoughtful.


"What?" I asked with some anxiety.


"Nothing, I only said that--"


"No. You said, 'Who knows whether we--'"


"And YOU said, didn't you, that once there was ever such a ball at

Grandmamma's?"


"Yes. It is a pity you were not there. There were heaps of guests--about

a thousand people, and all of them princes or generals, and there was

music, and I danced--But, Katenka" I broke off, "you are not listening

to me?"


"Oh yes, I am listening. You said that you danced--?"


"Why are you so serious?"


"Well, one cannot ALWAYS be gay."


"But you have changed tremendously since Woloda and I first went

to Moscow. Tell me the truth, now: why are you so odd?" My tone was

resolute.


"AM I so odd?" said Katenka with an animation which showed me that my

question had interested her. "I don't see that I am so at all."


"Well, you are not the same as you were before," I continued. "Once upon

a time any one could see that you were our equal in everything, and that

you loved us like relations, just as we did you; but now you are always

serious, and keep yourself apart from us."


"Oh, not at all."


"But let me finish, please," I interrupted, already conscious of a

slight tickling in my nose--the precursor of the tears which usually

came to my eyes whenever I had to vent any long pent-up feeling. "You

avoid us, and talk to no one but Mimi, as though you had no wish for our

further acquaintance."


"But one cannot always remain the same--one must change a little

sometimes," replied Katenka, who had an inveterate habit of pleading

some such fatalistic necessity whenever she did not know what else to

say.


I recollect that once, when having a quarrel with Lubotshka, who had

called her "a stupid girl," she (Katenka) retorted that EVERYBODY

could not be wise, seeing that a certain number of stupid people was

a necessity in the world. However, on the present occasion, I was not

satisfied that any such inevitable necessity for "changing sometimes"

existed, and asked further:


"WHY is it necessary?"


"Well, you see, we MAY not always go on living together as we are doing

now," said Katenka, colouring slightly, and regarding Philip's back with

a grave expression on her face. "My Mamma was able to live with your

mother because she was her friend; but will a similar arrangement always

suit the Countess, who, they say, is so easily offended? Besides, in

any case, we shall have to separate SOME day. You are rich--you have

Petrovskoe, while we are poor--Mamma has nothing."


"You are rich," "we are poor"--both the words and the ideas which they

connoted seemed to me extremely strange. Hitherto, I had conceived that

only beggars and peasants were poor and could not reconcile in my mind

the idea of poverty and the graceful, charming Katenka. I felt that Mimi

and her daughter ought to live with us ALWAYS and to share everything

that we possessed. Things ought never to be otherwise. Yet, at this

moment, a thousand new thoughts with regard to their lonely position

came crowding into my head, and I felt so remorseful at the notion

that we were rich and they poor, that I coloured up and could not look

Katenka in the face.


"Yet what does it matter," I thought, "that we are well off and they are

not? Why should that necessitate a separation? Why should we not share

in common what we possess?" Yet, I had a feeling that I could not talk

to Katenka on the subject, since a certain practical instinct, opposed

to all logical reasoning, warned me that, right though she possibly was,

I should do wrong to tell her so.


"It is impossible that you should leave us. How could we ever live

apart?"


"Yet what else is there to be done? Certainly I do not WANT to do it;

yet, if it HAS to be done, I know what my plan in life will be."


"Yes, to become an actress! How absurd!" I exclaimed (for I knew that to

enter that profession had always been her favourite dream).


"Oh no. I only used to say that when I was a little girl."


"Well, then? What?"


"To go into a convent and live there. Then I could walk out in a black

dress and velvet cap!" cried Katenka.


Has it ever befallen you, my readers, to become suddenly aware that your

conception of things has altered--as though every object in life

had unexpectedly turned a side towards you of which you had hitherto

remained unaware? Such a species of moral change occurred, as regards

myself, during this journey, and therefore from it I date the beginning

of my boyhood. For the first time in my life, I then envisaged the idea

that we--i.e. our family--were not the only persons in the world; that

not every conceivable interest was centred in ourselves; and that there

existed numbers of people who had nothing in common with us, cared

nothing for us, and even knew nothing of our existence. No doubt I had

known all this before--only I had not known it then as I knew it now; I

had never properly felt or understood it.


Thought merges into conviction through paths of its own, as well as,

sometimes, with great suddenness and by methods wholly different from

those which have brought other intellects to the same conclusion. For me

the conversation with Katenka--striking deeply as it did, and forcing me

to reflect on her future position--constituted such a path. As I gazed

at the towns and villages through which we passed, and in each house of

which lived at least one family like our own, as well as at the women

and children who stared with curiosity at our carriages and then became

lost to sight for ever, and the peasants and workmen who did not even

look at us, much less make us any obeisance, the question arose for the

first time in my thoughts, "Whom else do they care for if not for us?"

And this question was followed by others, such as, "To what end do

they live?" "How do they educate their children?" "Do they teach their

children and let them play? What are their names?" and so forth.





IV. IN MOSCOW


From the time of our arrival in Moscow, the change in my conception of

objects, of persons, and of my connection with them became increasingly

perceptible. When at my first meeting with Grandmamma, I saw her thin,

wrinkled face and faded eyes, the mingled respect and fear with which

she had hitherto inspired me gave place to compassion, and when, laying

her cheek against Lubotshka's head, she sobbed as though she saw before

her the corpse of her beloved daughter, my compassion grew to love.


I felt deeply sorry to see her grief at our meeting, even though I knew

that in ourselves we represented nothing in her eyes, but were dear to

her only as reminders of our mother--that every kiss which she imprinted

upon my cheeks expressed the one thought, "She is no more--she is dead,

and I shall never see her again."


Papa, who took little notice of us here in Moscow, and whose face was

perpetually preoccupied on the rare occasions when he came in his black

dress-coat to take formal dinner with us, lost much in my eyes at this

period, in spite of his turned-up ruffles, robes de chambre, overseers,

bailiffs, expeditions to the estate, and hunting exploits.


Karl Ivanitch--whom Grandmamma always called "Uncle," and who (Heaven

knows why!) had taken it into his head to adorn the bald pate of my

childhood's days with a red wig parted in the middle--now looked to me

so strange and ridiculous that I wondered how I could ever have failed

to observe the fact before. Even between the girls and ourselves there

seemed to have sprung up an invisible barrier. They, too, began to have

secrets among themselves, as well as to evince a desire to show off

their ever-lengthening skirts even as we boys did our trousers and

ankle-straps. As for Mimi, she appeared at luncheon, the first Sunday,

in such a gorgeous dress and with so many ribbons in her cap that it was

clear that we were no longer en campagne, and that everything was now

going to be different.





V. MY ELDER BROTHER


I was only a year and some odd months younger than Woloda, and from the

first we had grown up and studied and played together. Hitherto, the

difference between elder and younger brother had never been felt between

us, but at the period of which I am speaking, I began to have a

notion that I was not Woloda's equal either in years, in tastes, or in

capabilities. I even began to fancy that Woloda himself was aware of

his superiority and that he was proud of it, and, though, perhaps, I

was wrong, the idea wounded my conceit--already suffering from frequent

comparison with him. He was my superior in everything--in games, in

studies, in quarrels, and in deportment. All this brought about an

estrangement between us and occasioned me moral sufferings which I had

never hitherto experienced.


When for the first time Woloda wore Dutch pleated shirts, I at once said

that I was greatly put out at not being given similar ones, and each

time that he arranged his collar, I felt that he was doing so on purpose

to offend me. But, what tormented me most of all was the idea that

Woloda could see through me, yet did not choose to show it.


Who has not known those secret, wordless communications which spring

from some barely perceptible smile or movement--from a casual glance

between two persons who live as constantly together as do brothers,

friends, man and wife, or master and servant--particularly if those

two persons do not in all things cultivate mutual frankness? How many

half-expressed wishes, thoughts, and meanings which one shrinks from

revealing are made plain by a single accidental glance which timidly and

irresolutely meets the eye!


However, in my own case I may have been deceived by my excessive

capacity for, and love of, analysis. Possibly Woloda did not feel at

all as I did. Passionate and frank, but unstable in his likings, he was

attracted by the most diverse things, and always surrendered himself

wholly to such attraction. For instance, he suddenly conceived a passion

for pictures, spent all his money on their purchase, begged Papa,

Grandmamma, and his drawing master to add to their number, and applied

himself with enthusiasm to art. Next came a sudden rage for curios, with

which he covered his table, and for which he ransacked the whole house.

Following upon that, he took to violent novel-reading--procuring such

works by stealth, and devouring them day and night. Involuntarily I was

influenced by his whims, for, though too proud to imitate him, I was

also too young and too lacking in independence to choose my own way.

Above all, I envied Woloda his happy, nobly frank character, which

showed itself most strikingly when we quarrelled. I always felt that

he was in the right, yet could not imitate him. For instance, on one

occasion when his passion for curios was at its height, I went to his

table and accidentally broke an empty many-coloured smelling-bottle.


"Who gave you leave to touch my things?" asked Woloda, chancing to enter

the room at that moment and at once perceiving the disorder which I had

occasioned in the orderly arrangement of the treasures on his table.

"And where is that smelling bottle? Perhaps you--?"


"I let it fall, and it smashed to pieces; but what does that matter?"


"Well, please do me the favour never to DARE to touch my things again,"

he said as he gathered up the broken fragments and looked at them

vexedly.


"And will YOU please do me the favour never to ORDER me to do anything

whatever," I retorted. "When a thing's broken, it's broken, and there is

no more to be said." Then I smiled, though I hardly felt like smiling.


"Oh, it may mean nothing to you, but to me it means a good deal," said

Woloda, shrugging his shoulders (a habit he had caught from Papa).

"First of all you go and break my things, and then you laugh. What a

nuisance a little boy can be!"


"LITTLE boy, indeed? Then YOU, I suppose, are a man, and ever so wise?"


"I do not intend to quarrel with you," said Woloda, giving me a slight

push. "Go away."


"Don't you push me!"


"Go away."


"I say again--don't you push me!"


Woloda took me by the hand and tried to drag me away from the table, but

I was excited to the last degree, and gave the table such a push with

my foot that I upset the whole concern, and brought china and crystal

ornaments and everything else with a crash to the floor.


"You disgusting little brute!" exclaimed Woloda, trying to save some of

his falling treasures.


"At last all is over between us," I thought to myself as I strode from

the room. "We are separated now for ever."


It was not until evening that we again exchanged a word. Yet I felt

guilty, and was afraid to look at him, and remained at a loose end all

day.


Woloda, on the contrary, did his lessons as diligently as ever, and

passed the time after luncheon in talking and laughing with the girls.

As soon, again, as afternoon lessons were over I left the room, for

it would have been terribly embarrassing for me to be alone with my

brother. When, too, the evening class in history was ended I took my

notebook and moved towards the door. Just as I passed Woloda, I pouted

and pulled an angry face, though in reality I should have liked to have

made my peace with him. At the same moment he lifted his head, and with

a barely perceptible and good-humouredly satirical smile looked me full

in the face. Our eyes met, and I saw that he understood me, while he,

for his part, saw that I knew that he understood me; yet a feeling

stronger than myself obliged me to turn away from him.


"Nicolinka," he said in a perfectly simple and anything but

mock-pathetic way, "you have been angry with me long enough. I am sorry

if I offended you," and he tendered me his hand.


It was as though something welled up from my heart and nearly choked

me. Presently it passed away, the tears rushed to my eyes, and I felt

immensely relieved.


"I too am so-rry, Wo-lo-da," I said, taking his hand. Yet he only looked

at me with an expression as though he could not understand why there

should be tears in my eyes.





VI. MASHA


None of the changes produced in my conception of things were so striking

as the one which led me to cease to see in one of our chambermaids a

mere servant of the female sex, but, on the contrary, a WOMAN upon whom

depended, to a certain extent, my peace of mind and happiness. From the

time of my earliest recollection I can remember Masha an inmate of our

house, yet never until the occurrence of which I am going to speak--an

occurrence which entirely altered my impression of her--had I bestowed

the smallest attention upon her. She was twenty-five years old, while I

was but fourteen. Also, she was very beautiful. But I hesitate to give a

further description of her lest my imagination should once more picture

the bewitching, though deceptive, conception of her which filled my mind

during the period of my passion. To be frank, I will only say that she

was extraordinarily handsome, magnificently developed, and a woman--as

also that I was but fourteen.


At one of those moments when, lesson-book in hand, I would pace the

room, and try to keep strictly to one particular crack in the floor as I

hummed a fragment of some tune or repeated some vague formula--in

short, at one of those moments when the mind leaves off thinking and the

imagination gains the upper hand and yearns for new impressions--I left

the schoolroom, and turned, with no definite purpose in view, towards

the head of the staircase.


Somebody in slippers was ascending the second flight of stairs. Of

course I felt curious to see who it was, but the footsteps ceased

abruptly, and then I heard Masha's voice say:


"Go away! What nonsense! What would Maria Ivanovna think if she were to

come now?"


"Oh, but she will not come," answered Woloda's voice in a whisper.


"Well, go away, you silly boy," and Masha came running up, and fled past

me.


I cannot describe the way in which this discovery confounded me.

Nevertheless the feeling of amazement soon gave place to a kind of

sympathy with Woloda's conduct. I found myself wondering less at the

conduct itself than at his ability to behave so agreeably. Also, I found

myself involuntarily desiring to imitate him.


Sometimes I would pace the landing for an hour at a time, with no other

thought in my head than to watch for movements from above. Yet, although

I longed beyond all things to do as Woloda had done, I could not bring

myself to the point. At other times, filled with a sense of envious

jealousy, I would conceal myself behind a door and listen to the sounds

which came from the maidservants' room, until the thought would occur to

my mind, "How if I were to go in now and, like Woloda, kiss Masha? What

should I say when she asked me--ME with the huge nose and the tuft on

the top of my head--what I wanted?" Sometimes, too, I could hear her

saying to Woloda,


"That serves you right! Go away! Nicolas Petrovitch never comes in here

with such nonsense." Alas! she did not know that Nicolas Petrovitch was

sitting on the staircase just below and feeling that he would give all

he possessed to be in "that bold fellow Woloda's" place! I was shy by

nature, and rendered worse in that respect by a consciousness of my own

ugliness. I am certain that nothing so much influences the development

of a man as his exterior--though the exterior itself less than his

belief in its plainness or beauty.


Yet I was too conceited altogether to resign myself to my fate. I tried

to comfort myself much as the fox did when he declared that the grapes

were sour. That is to say, I tried to make light of the satisfaction

to be gained from making such use of a pleasing exterior as I believed

Woloda to employ (satisfaction which I nevertheless envied him from

my heart), and endeavoured with every faculty of my intellect and

imagination to console myself with a pride in my isolation.





VII. SMALL SHOT


"Good gracious! Powder!" exclaimed Mimi in a voice trembling with alarm.

"Whatever are you doing? You will set the house on fire in a moment, and

be the death of us all!" Upon that, with an indescribable expression of

firmness, Mimi ordered every one to stand aside, and, regardless of

all possible danger from a premature explosion, strode with long and

resolute steps to where some small shot was scattered about the floor,

and began to trample upon it.


When, in her opinion, the peril was at least lessened, she called for

Michael and commanded him to throw the "powder" away into some remote

spot, or, better still, to immerse it in water; after which she adjusted

her cap and returned proudly to the drawing-room, murmuring as she went,

"At least I can say that they are well looked after."


When Papa issued from his room and took us to see Grandmamma we found

Mimi sitting by the window and glancing with a grave, mysterious,

official expression towards the door. In her hand she was holding

something carefully wrapped in paper. I guessed that that something was

the small shot, and that Grandmamma had been informed of the occurrence.

In the room also were the maidservant Gasha (who, to judge by her

angry flushed face, was in a state of great irritation) and Doctor

Blumenthal--the latter a little man pitted with smallpox, who was

endeavouring by tacit, pacificatory signs with his head and eyes to

reassure the perturbed Gasha. Grandmamma was sitting a little askew and

playing that variety of "patience" which is called "The Traveller"--two

unmistakable signs of her displeasure.


"How are you to-day, Mamma?" said Papa as he kissed her hand

respectfully. "Have you had a good night?"


"Yes, very good, my dear; you KNOW that I always enjoy sound health,"

replied Grandmamma in a tone implying that Papa's inquiries were

out of place and highly offensive. "Please give me a clean

pocket-handkerchief," she added to Gasha.


"I HAVE given you one, madam," answered Gasha, pointing to the

snow-white cambric handkerchief which she had just laid on the arm of

Grandmamma's chair.


"No, no; it's a nasty, dirty thing. Take it away and bring me a CLEAN

one, my dear."


Gasha went to a cupboard and slammed the door of it back so violently

that every window rattled. Grandmamma glared angrily at each of us, and

then turned her attention to following the movements of the servant.

After the latter had presented her with what I suspected to be the same

handkerchief as before, Grandmamma continued:


"And when do you mean to cut me some snuff, my dear?"


"When I have time."


"What do you say?"


"To-day."


"If you don't want to continue in my service you had better say so at

once. I would have sent you away long ago had I known that you wished

it."


"It wouldn't have broken my heart if you had!" muttered the woman in an

undertone.


Here the doctor winked at her again, but she returned his gaze so firmly

and wrathfully that he soon lowered it and went on playing with his

watch-key.


"You see, my dear, how people speak to me in my own house!" said

Grandmamma to Papa when Gasha had left the room grumbling.


"Well, Mamma, I will cut you some snuff myself," replied Papa, though

evidently at a loss how to proceed now that he had made this rash

promise.


"No, no, I thank you. Probably she is cross because she knows that no

one except herself can cut the snuff just as I like it. Do you know, my

dear," she went on after a pause, "that your children very nearly set

the house on fire this morning?"


Papa gazed at Grandmamma with respectful astonishment.


"Yes, they were playing with something or another. Tell him the story,"

she added to Mimi.


Papa could not help smiling as he took the shot in his hand.


"This is only small shot, Mamma," he remarked, "and could never be

dangerous."


"I thank you, my dear, for your instruction, but I am rather too old for

that sort of thing."


"Nerves, nerves!" whispered the doctor.


Papa turned to us and asked us where we had got the stuff, and how we

could dare to play with it.


"Don't ask THEM, ask that useless 'Uncle,' rather," put in Grandmamma,

laying a peculiar stress upon the word "UNCLE." "What else is he for?"


"Woloda says that Karl Ivanitch gave him the powder himself," declared

Mimi.


"Then you can see for yourself what use he is," continued Grandmamma.

"And where IS he--this precious 'Uncle'? How is one to get hold of him?

Send him here."


"He has gone an errand for me," said Papa.


"That is not at all right," rejoined Grandmamma. "He ought ALWAYS to be

here. True, the children are yours, not mine, and I have nothing to do

with them, seeing that you are so much cleverer than I am; yet all the

same I think it is time we had a regular tutor for them, and not this

'Uncle' of a German--a stupid fellow who knows only how to teach them

rude manners and Tyrolean songs! Is it necessary, I ask you, that they

should learn Tyrolean songs? However, there is no one for me to consult

about it, and you must do just as you like."


The word "NOW" meant "NOW THAT THEY HAVE NO MOTHER," and suddenly

awakened sad recollections in Grandmamma's heart. She threw a glance at

the snuff-box bearing Mamma's portrait and sighed.


"I thought of all this long ago," said Papa eagerly, "as well as taking

your advice on the subject. How would you like St. Jerome to superintend

their lessons?"


"Oh, I think he would do excellently, my friend," said Grandmamma in a

mollified tone, "He is at least a tutor comme il faut, and knows how to

instruct des enfants de bonne maison. He is not a mere 'Uncle' who is

good only for taking them out walking."


"Very well; I will talk to him to-morrow," said Papa. And, sure enough,

two days later saw Karl Ivanitch forced to retire in favour of the young

Frenchman referred to.





VIII. KARL IVANITCH'S HISTORY


THE evening before the day when Karl was to leave us for ever, he was

standing (clad, as usual, in his wadded dressing-gown and red cap)

near the bed in his room, and bending down over a trunk as he carefully

packed his belongings.


His behaviour towards us had been very cool of late, and he had seemed

to shrink from all contact with us. Consequently, when I entered his

room on the present occasion, he only glanced at me for a second and

then went on with his occupation. Even though I proceeded to jump on

to his bed (a thing hitherto always forbidden me to do), he said not

a word; and the idea that he would soon be scolding or forgiving us no

longer--no longer having anything to do with us--reminded me vividly of

the impending separation. I felt grieved to think that he had ceased to

love us and wanted to show him my grief.


"Will you let me help you?" I said, approaching him.


He looked at me for a moment and turned away again. Yet the expression

of pain in his eyes showed that his coldness was not the result of

indifference, but rather of sincere and concentrated sorrow.


"God sees and knows everything," he said at length, raising himself to

his full height and drawing a deep sigh. "Yes, Nicolinka," he went on,

observing, the expression of sincere pity on my face, "my fate has been

an unhappy one from the cradle, and will continue so to the grave. The

good that I have done to people has always been repaid with evil; yet,

though I shall receive no reward here, I shall find one THERE" (he

pointed upwards). "Ah, if only you knew my whole story, and all that I

have endured in this life!--I who have been a bootmaker, a soldier, a

deserter, a factory hand, and a teacher! Yet now--now I am nothing, and,

like the Son of Man, have nowhere to lay my head." Sitting down upon a

chair, he covered his eyes with his hand.


Seeing that he was in the introspective mood in which a man pays

no attention to his listener as he cons over his secret thoughts, I

remained silent, and, seating myself upon the bed, continued to watch

his kind face.


"You are no longer a child. You can understand things now, and I will

tell you my whole story and all that I have undergone. Some day, my

children, you may remember the old friend who loved you so much--"


He leant his elbow upon the table by his side, took a pinch of snuff,

and, in the peculiarly measured, guttural tone in which he used to

dictate us our lessons, began the story of his career.


Since he many times in later years repeated the whole to me

again--always in the same order, and with the same expressions and

the same unvarying intonation--I will try to render it literally, and

without omitting the innumerable grammatical errors into which he always

strayed when speaking in Russian. Whether it was really the history of

his life, or whether it was the mere product of his imagination--that

is to say, some narrative which he had conceived during his lonely

residence in our house, and had at last, from endless repetition, come

to believe in himself--or whether he was adorning with imaginary facts

the true record of his career, I have never quite been able to make

out. On the one hand, there was too much depth of feeling and practical

consistency in its recital for it to be wholly incredible, while, on the

other hand, the abundance of poetical beauty which it contained tended

to raise doubts in the mind of the listener.


"Me vere very unhappy from ze time of my birth," he began with a

profound sigh. "Ze noble blot of ze Countess of Zomerblat flows in my

veins. Me vere born six veek after ze vetting. Ze man of my Mutter (I

called him 'Papa') vere farmer to ze Count von Zomerblat. He coult not

forget my Mutter's shame, ant loaft me not. I had a youngster broser

Johann ant two sister, pot me vere strange petween my own family. Ven

Johann mate several silly trick Papa sayt, 'Wit sis chilt Karl I am

never to have one moment tranquil!' and zen he scoltet and ponishet me.

Ven ze sister quarrellet among zemselves Papa sayt, 'Karl vill never

be one opedient poy,' ant still scoltet ant ponishet me. My goot Mamma

alone loaft ant tenteret me. Often she sayt to me, 'Karl, come in my

room,' ant zere she kisset me secretly. 'Poorly, poorly Karl!' she sayt.

'Nopoty loaf you, pot I will not exchange you for somepoty in ze worlt,

One zing your Mutter pegs you, to rememper,' sayt she to me, 'learn

vell, ant be efer one honest man; zen Got will not forsake you.' Ant

I triet so to become. Ven my fourteen year hat expiret, ant me coult

partake of ze Holy Sopper, my Mutter sayt to my Vater, 'Karl is one

pig poy now, Kustaf. Vat shall we do wis him?' Ant Papa sayt, 'Me ton't

know.' Zen Mamma sayt, 'Let us give him to town at Mister Schultzen's,

and he may pea Schumacher,' ant my Vater sayt, 'Goot!' Six year ant

seven mons livet I in town wis ze Mister Shoemaker, ant he loaft me.

He sayt, 'Karl are one goot vorkman, ant shall soon become my Geselle.'

Pot-man makes ze proposition, ant Got ze deposition. In ze year 1796

one conscription took place, ant each which vas serviceable, from ze

eighteens to ze twenty-first year, hat to go to town.


"My Fater and my broser Johann come to town, ant ve go togezer to throw

ze lot for which shoult pe Soldat. Johann drew ze fatal nomper, and me

vas not necessary to pe Soldat. Ant Papa sayt, 'I have only vun son, ant

wis him I must now separate!'


"Den I take his hant, ant says, 'Why say you so, Papa? Come wis me,

ant I will say you somesing.' Ant Papa come, ant we seat togezer at ze

publics-house, ant me sayt, 'Vaiter, give us one Bierkrug,' ant he gives

us one. We trink altogezer, and broser Johann also trink. 'Papa,' sayt

me, 'ton't say zat you have only one son, ant wis it you must separate,

My heart was breaking ven you say sis. Broser Johann must not serve;

ME shall pe Soldat. Karl is for nopoty necessary, and Karl shall pe

Soldat.'


"'You is one honest man, Karl,' sayt Papa, ant kiss me. Ant me was

Soldat."





IX. CONTINUATION OF KARL'S NARRATIVE


"Zat was a terrible time, Nicolinka," continued Karl Ivanitch, "ze

time of Napoleon. He vanted to conquer Germany, ant we protected

our Vaterland to ze last trop of plot. Me vere at Ulm, me vere at

Austerlitz, me vere at Wagram."


"Did you really fight?" I asked with a gaze of astonishment "Did you

really kill anybody?"


Karl instantly reassured me on this point,


"Vonce one French grenadier was left behint, ant fell to ze grount.

I sprang forvarts wis my gon, ant vere about to kill him, aber der

Franzose warf sein Gewehr hin und rief, 'Pardon'--ant I let him loose.


"At Wagram, Napoleon cut us open, ant surrountet us in such a way as

zere vas no helping. Sree days hat we no provisions, ant stoot in

ze vater op to ze knees. Ze evil Napoleon neiser let us go loose nor

catchet us.


"On ze fours day zey took us prisoners--zank Got! ant sent us to one

fortress. Upon me vas one blue trousers, uniforms of very goot clos,

fifteen of Thalers, ant one silver clock which my Vater hat given me,

Ze Frans Soldaten took from me everysing. For my happiness zere vas

sree tucats on me which my Mamma hat sewn in my shirt of flannel. Nopoty

fount zem.


"I liket not long to stay in ze fortresses, ant resoluted to ron away.

Von day, von pig holitay, says I to the sergeant which hat to look after

us, 'Mister Sergeant, to-day is a pig holitay, ant me vants to celeprate

it. Pring here, if you please, two pottle Mateira, ant we shall trink

zem wis each oser.' Ant ze sergeant says, 'Goot!' Ven ze sergeant pring

ze Mateira ant we trink it out to ze last trop, I taket his hant

ant says, 'Mister Sergeant, perhaps you have still one Vater and one

Mutter?' He says, 'So I have, Mister Mayer.' 'My Vater ant Mutter not

seen me eight year,' I goes on to him, 'ant zey know not if I am yet

alive or if my bones be reposing in ze grave. Oh, Mister Sergeant, I

have two tucats which is in my shirt of flannel. Take zem, ant let me

loose! You will pe my penefactor, ant my Mutter will be praying for you

all her life to ze Almighty Got!'


"Ze sergeant emptiet his glass of Mateira, ant says, 'Mister Mayer, I

loaf and pity you very much, pot you is one prisoner, ant I one soldat.'

So I take his hant ant says, 'Mister Sergeant!'


"Ant ze sergeant says, 'You is one poor man, ant I will not take your

money, pot I will help you. Ven I go to sleep, puy one pail of pranty

for ze Soldaten, ant zey will sleep. Me will not look after you.' Sis

was one goot man. I puyet ze pail of pranty, ant ven ze Soldaten was

trunken me tresset in one olt coat, ant gang in silence out of ze doon.


"I go to ze wall, ant will leap down, pot zere is vater pelow, ant I

will not spoil my last tressing, so I go to ze gate.


"Ze sentry go up and town wis one gon, ant look at me. 'Who goes zere?'

ant I was silent. 'Who goes zere ze second time?' ant I was silent.

'Who goes zere ze third time?' ant I ron away, I sprang in ze vater,

climp op to ze oser site, ant walk on.


"Ze entire night I ron on ze vay, pot ven taylight came I was afrait

zat zey woult catch me, ant I hit myself in ze high corn. Zere I kneelet

town, zanket ze Vater in Heaven for my safety, ant fall asleep wis a

tranquil feeling.


"I wakenet op in ze evening, ant gang furser. At once one large German

carriage, wis two raven-black horse, came alongside me. In ze carriage

sit one well-tresset man, smoking pipe, ant look at me. I go slowly,

so zat ze carriage shall have time to pass me, pot I go slowly, ant ze

carriage go slowly, ant ze man look at me. I go quick, ant ze carriage

go quick, ant ze man stop its two horses, ant look at me. 'Young man,'

says he, 'where go you so late?' I says, 'I go to Frankfort.' 'Sit in ze

carriage--zere is room enough, ant I will trag you,' he says. 'Bot

why have you nosing about you? Your boots is dirty, ant your beart not

shaven.' I seated wis him, ant says, 'Ich bin one poor man, ant I would

like to pusy myself wis somesing in a manufactory. My tressing is dirty

because I fell in ze mud on ze roat.'


"'You tell me ontruse, young man,' says he. 'Ze roat is kvite dry now.'

I was silent. 'Tell me ze whole truse,' goes on ze goot man--'who you

are, ant vere you go to? I like your face, ant ven you is one honest

man, so I will help you.' Ant I tell all.


"'Goot, young man!' he says. 'Come to my manufactory of rope, ant I will

give you work ant tress ant money, ant you can live wis os.' I says,

'Goot!'


"I go to ze manufactory of rope, ant ze goot man says to his voman,

'Here is one yong man who defented his Vaterland, ant ron away from

prisons. He has not house nor tresses nor preat. He will live wis os.

Give him clean linen, ant norish him.'


"I livet one ant a half year in ze manufactory of rope, ant my lantlort

loaft me so much zat he would not let me loose. Ant I felt very goot.


"I were zen handsome man--yong, of pig stature, with blue eyes and

romische nose--ant Missis L-- (I like not to say her name--she was ze

voman of my lantlort) was yong ant handsome laty. Ant she fell in loaf

wis me."


Here Karl Ivanitch made a long pause, lowered his kindly blue eyes,

shook his head quietly, and smiled as people always do under the

influence of a pleasing recollection.


"Yes," he resumed as he leant back in his arm-chair and adjusted his

dressing-gown, "I have experiencet many sings in my life, pot zere is

my witness,"--here he pointed to an image of the Saviour, embroidered

on wool, which was hanging over his bed--"zat nopoty in ze worlt can say

zat Karl Ivanitch has been one dishonest man, I would not repay black

ingratitude for ze goot which Mister L-- dit me, ant I resoluted to ron

away. So in ze evening, ven all were asleep, I writet one letter to my

lantlort, ant laid it on ze table in his room. Zen I taket my tresses,

tree Thaler of money, ant go mysteriously into ze street. Nopoty have

seen me, ant I go on ze roat."





X. CONCLUSION OF KARL'S NARRATIVE


"I had not seen my Mamma for nine year, ant I know not whether she lived

or whether her bones had long since lain in ze dark grave. Ven I come to

my own country and go to ze town I ask, 'Where live Kustaf Mayer who was

farmer to ze Count von Zomerblat?' ant zey answer me, 'Graf Zomerblat

is deat, ant Kustaf Mayer live now in ze pig street, ant keep a

public-house.' So I tress in my new waistcoat and one noble coat which

ze manufacturist presented me, arranged my hairs nice, ant go to ze

public-house of my Papa. Sister Mariechen vas sitting on a pench, and

she ask me what I want. I says, 'Might I trink one glass of pranty?'

ant she says, 'Vater, here is a yong man who wish to trink one glass of

pranty.' Ant Papa says, 'Give him ze glass.' I set to ze table, trink my

glass of pranty, smoke my pipe, ant look at Papa, Mariechen, ant Johann

(who also come into ze shop). In ze conversation Papa says, 'You know,

perhaps, yong man, where stants our army?' and I say, 'I myself am come

from ze army, ant it stants now at Wien.' 'Our son,' says Papa, 'is a

Soldat, ant now is it nine years since he wrote never one wort, and we

know not whether he is alive or dead. My voman cry continually for him.'

I still fumigate the pipe, ant say, 'What was your son's name, and where

servet he? Perhaps I may know him.' 'His name was Karl Mayer, ant he

servet in ze Austrian Jagers.' 'He were of pig stature, ant a handsome

man like yourself,' puts in Mariechen. I say, 'I know your Karl.'

'Amalia,' exclaimet my Vater. 'Come here! Here is yong man which knows

our Karl!'--ant my dear Mutter comes out from a back door. I knew her

directly. 'You know our Karl?' says she, ant looks at me, ant, white all

over, trembles. 'Yes, I haf seen him,' I says, without ze corage to look

at her, for my heart did almost burst. 'My Karl is alive?' she cry. 'Zen

tank Got! Vere is he, my Karl? I woult die in peace if I coult see him

once more--my darling son! Bot Got will not haf it so.' Then she cried,

and I coult no longer stant it. 'Darling Mamma!' I say, 'I am your son,

I am your Karl!'--and she fell into my arms."


Karl Ivanitch covered his eyes, and his lips were quivering.


"'Mutter,' sagte ich, 'ich bin ihr Sohn, ich bin ihr Karl!'--und sie

sturtzte mir in die Arme!'" he repeated, recovering a little and wiping

the tears from his eyes.


"Bot Got did not wish me to finish my tays in my own town. I were

pursuet by fate. I livet in my own town only sree mons. One Suntay I sit

in a coffee-house, ant trinket one pint of Pier, ant fumigated my

pipe, ant speaket wis some frients of Politik, of ze Emperor Franz, of

Napoleon, of ze war--ant anypoty might say his opinion. But next to us

sits a strange chentleman in a grey Uberrock, who trink coffee, fumigate

the pipe, ant says nosing. Ven the night watchman shoutet ten o'clock I

taket my hat, paid ze money, and go home. At ze middle of ze night

some one knock at ze door. I rise ant says, 'Who is zere?' 'Open!' says

someone. I shout again, 'First say who is zere, ant I will open.' 'Open

in the name of the law!' say the someone behint the door. I now do so.

Two Soldaten wis gons stant at ze door, ant into ze room steps ze man in

ze grey Uberrock, who had sat with us in ze coffeehouse. He were Spion!

'Come wis me,' says ze Spion, 'Very goot!' say I. I dresset myself in

boots, trousers, ant coat, ant go srough ze room. Ven I come to ze wall

where my gon hangs I take it, ant says, 'You are a Spion, so defent

you!' I give one stroke left, one right, ant one on ze head. Ze Spion

lay precipitated on ze floor! Zen I taket my cloak-bag ant money, ant

jompet out of ze vintow. I vent to Ems, where I was acquainted wis one

General Sasin, who loaft me, givet me a passport from ze Embassy, ant

taket me to Russland to learn his chiltren. Ven General Sasin tiet, your

Mamma callet for me, ant says, 'Karl Ivanitch, I gif you my children.

Loaf them, ant I will never leave you, ant will take care for your olt

age.' Now is she teat, ant all is forgotten! For my twenty year full of

service I most now go into ze street ant seek for a try crust of preat

for my olt age! Got sees all sis, ant knows all sis. His holy will be

done! Only-only, I yearn for you, my children!"--and Karl drew me to

him, and kissed me on the forehead.





XI. ONE MARK ONLY


The year of mourning over, Grandmamma recovered a little from her grief,

and once more took to receiving occasional guests, especially children

of the same age as ourselves.


On the 13th of December--Lubotshka's birthday--the Princess Kornakoff

and her daughters, with Madame Valakhin, Sonetchka, Ilinka Grap, and the

two younger Iwins, arrived at our house before luncheon.


Though we could hear the sounds of talking, laughter, and movements

going on in the drawing-room, we could not join the party until our

morning lessons were finished. The table of studies in the schoolroom

said, "Lundi, de 2 a 3, maitre d'Histoire et de Geographie," and this

infernal maitre d'Histoire we must await, listen to, and see the back

of before we could gain our liberty. Already it was twenty minutes past

two, and nothing was to be heard of the tutor, nor yet anything to be

seen of him in the street, although I kept looking up and down it with

the greatest impatience and with an emphatic longing never to see the

maitre again.


"I believe he is not coming to-day," said Woloda, looking up for a

moment from his lesson-book.


"I hope he is not, please the Lord!" I answered, but in a despondent

tone. "Yet there he DOES come, I believe, all the same!"


"Not he! Why, that is a GENTLEMAN," said Woloda, likewise looking out of

the window, "Let us wait till half-past two, and then ask St. Jerome if

we may put away our books."


"Yes, and wish them au revoir," I added, stretching my arms, with the

book clasped in my hands, over my head. Having hitherto idled away my

time, I now opened the book at the place where the lesson was to begin,

and started to learn it. It was long and difficult, and, moreover, I

was in the mood when one's thoughts refuse to be arrested by anything at

all. Consequently I made no progress. After our last lesson in history

(which always seemed to me a peculiarly arduous and wearisome subject)

the history master had complained to St. Jerome of me because only two

good marks stood to my credit in the register--a very small total. St.

Jerome had then told me that if I failed to gain less than THREE marks

at the next lesson I should be severely punished. The next lesson was

now imminent, and I confess that I felt a little nervous.


So absorbed, however, did I become in my reading that the sound of

goloshes being taken off in the ante-room came upon me almost as a

shock. I had just time to look up when there appeared in the doorway the

servile and (to me) very disgusting face and form of the master, clad in

a blue frockcoat with brass buttons.


Slowly he set down his hat and books and adjusted the folds of his coat

(as though such a thing were necessary!), and seated himself in his

place.


"Well, gentlemen," he said, rubbing his hands, "let us first of all

repeat the general contents of the last lesson: after which I will

proceed to narrate the succeeding events of the middle ages."


This meant "Say over the last lesson." While Woloda was answering the

master with the entire ease and confidence which come of knowing a

subject well, I went aimlessly out on to the landing, and, since I

was not allowed to go downstairs, what more natural than that I should

involuntarily turn towards the alcove on the landing? Yet before I had

time to establish myself in my usual coign of vantage behind the door I

found myself pounced upon by Mimi--always the cause of my misfortunes!


"YOU here?" she said, looking severely, first at myself, and then at the

maidservants' door, and then at myself again.


I felt thoroughly guilty, firstly, because I was not in the schoolroom,

and secondly, because I was in a forbidden place. So I remained silent,

and, dropping my head, assumed a touching expression of contrition.


"Indeed, this is TOO bad!" Mimi went on, "What are you doing here?"


Still I said nothing.


"Well, it shall not rest where it is," she added, tapping the banister

with her yellow fingers. "I shall inform the Countess."


It was five minutes to three when I re-entered the schoolroom. The

master, as though oblivious of my presence or absence, was explaining

the new lesson to Woloda. When he had finished doing this, and had put

his books together (while Woloda went into the other room to fetch his

ticket), the comforting idea occurred to me that perhaps the whole thing

was over now, and that the master had forgotten me.


But suddenly he turned in my direction with a malicious smile, and said

as he rubbed his hands anew, "I hope you have learnt your lesson?"


"Yes," I replied.


"Would you be so kind, then, as to tell me something about St. Louis'

Crusade?" he went on, balancing himself on his chair and looking gravely

at his feet. "Firstly, tell me something about the reasons which induced

the French king to assume the cross" (here he raised his eyebrows and

pointed to the inkstand); "then explain to me the general characteristics

of the Crusade" (here he made a sweeping gesture with his hand, as though

to seize hold of something with it); "and lastly, expound to me the

influence of this Crusade upon the European states in general" (drawing

the copy books to the left side of the table) "and upon the French state

in particular" (drawing one of them to the right, and inclining his head

in the same direction).


I swallowed a few times, coughed, bent forward, and was silent. Then,

taking a pen from the table, I began to pick it to pieces, yet still

said nothing.


"Allow me the pen--I shall want it," said the master. "Well?"


"Louis the-er-Saint was-was-a very good and wise king."


"What?"


"King, He took it into his head to go to Jerusalem, and handed over the

reins of government to his mother."


"What was her name?


"B-b-b-lanka."


"What? Belanka?"


I laughed in a rather forced manner.


"Well, is that all you know?" he asked again, smiling.


I had nothing to lose now, so I began chattering the first thing that

came into my head. The master remained silent as he gathered together

the remains of the pen which I had left strewn about the table, looked

gravely past my ear at the wall, and repeated from time to time, "Very

well, very well." Though I was conscious that I knew nothing whatever

and was expressing myself all wrong, I felt much hurt at the fact that

he never either corrected or interrupted me.


"What made him think of going to Jerusalem?" he asked at last, repeating

some words of my own.


"Because--because--that is to say--"


My confusion was complete, and I relapsed into silence, I felt that,

even if this disgusting history master were to go on putting questions

to me, and gazing inquiringly into my face, for a year, I should never

be able to enunciate another syllable. After staring at me for some

three minutes, he suddenly assumed a mournful cast of countenance, and

said in an agitated voice to Woloda (who was just re-entering the room):


"Allow me the register. I will write my remarks."


He opened the book thoughtfully, and in his fine caligraphy marked FIVE

for Woloda for diligence, and the same for good behaviour. Then, resting

his pen on the line where my report was to go, he looked at me and

reflected. Suddenly his hand made a decisive movement and, behold,

against my name stood a clearly-marked ONE, with a full stop after it!

Another movement and in the behaviour column there stood another one and

another full stop! Quietly closing the book, the master then rose, and

moved towards the door as though unconscious of my look of entreaty,

despair, and reproach.


"Michael Lavionitch!" I said.


"No!" he replied, as though knowing beforehand what I was about to say.

"It is impossible for you to learn in that way. I am not going to earn

my money for nothing."


He put on his goloshes and cloak, and then slowly tied a scarf about his

neck. To think that he could care about such trifles after what had just

happened to me! To him it was all a mere stroke of the pen, but to me it

meant the direst misfortune.


"Is the lesson over?" asked St. Jerome, entering.


"Yes."


"And was the master pleased with you?"


"Yes."


"How many marks did he give you?"


"Five."


"And to Nicholas?"


I was silent.


"I think four," said Woloda. His idea was to save me for at least today.

If punishment there must be, it need not be awarded while we had guests.


"Voyons, Messieurs!" (St. Jerome was forever saying "Voyons!") "Faites

votre toilette, et descendons."





XII. THE KEY


We had hardly descended and greeted our guests when luncheon was

announced. Papa was in the highest of spirits since for some time

past he had been winning. He had presented Lubotshka with a silver tea

service, and suddenly remembered, after luncheon, that he had forgotten

a box of bonbons which she was to have too.


"Why send a servant for it? YOU had better go, Koko," he said to me

jestingly. "The keys are in the tray on the table, you know. Take them,

and with the largest one open the second drawer on the right. There you

will find the box of bonbons. Bring it here."


"Shall I get you some cigars as well?" said I, knowing that he always

smoked after luncheon.


"Yes, do; but don't touch anything else."


I found the keys, and was about to carry out my orders, when I was

seized with a desire to know what the smallest of the keys on the bunch

belonged to.


On the table I saw, among many other things, a padlocked portfolio,

and at once felt curious to see if that was what the key fitted. My

experiment was crowned with success. The portfolio opened and disclosed

a number of papers. Curiosity so strongly urged me also to ascertain

what those papers contained that the voice of conscience was stilled,

and I began to read their contents. . . .


My childish feeling of unlimited respect for my elders, especially for

Papa, was so strong within me that my intellect involuntarily refused to

draw any conclusions from what I had seen. I felt that Papa was living

in a sphere completely apart from, incomprehensible by, and unattainable

for, me, as well as one that was in every way excellent, and that any

attempt on my part to criticise the secrets of his life would constitute

something like sacrilege.


For this reason, the discovery which I made from Papa's portfolio left

no clear impression upon my mind, but only a dim consciousness that I

had done wrong. I felt ashamed and confused.


The feeling made me eager to shut the portfolio again as quickly as

possible, but it seemed as though on this unlucky day I was destined to

experience every possible kind of adversity. I put the key back into the

padlock and turned it round, but not in the right direction. Thinking

that the portfolio was now locked, I pulled at the key and, oh horror!

found my hand come away with only the top half of the key in it! In vain

did I try to put the two halves together, and to extract the portion

that was sticking in the padlock. At last I had to resign myself to the

dreadful thought that I had committed a new crime--one which would be

discovered to-day as soon as ever Papa returned to his study! First of

all, Mimi's accusation on the staircase, and then that one mark, and

then this key! Nothing worse could happen now. This very evening

I should be assailed successively by Grandmamma (because of Mimi's

denunciation), by St. Jerome (because of the solitary mark), and by Papa

(because of the matter of this key)--yes, all in one evening!


"What on earth is to become of me? What have I done?" I exclaimed as

I paced the soft carpet. "Well," I went on with sudden determination,

"what MUST come, MUST--that's all;" and, taking up the bonbons and the

cigars, I ran back to the other part of the house.


The fatalistic formula with which I had concluded (and which was one

that I often heard Nicola utter during my childhood) always produced

in me, at the more difficult crises of my life, a momentarily soothing,

beneficial effect. Consequently, when I re-entered the drawing-room,

I was in a rather excited, unnatural mood, yet one that was perfectly

cheerful.





XIII. THE TRAITRESS


After luncheon we began to play at round games, in which I took a lively

part. While indulging in "cat and mouse", I happened to cannon rather

awkwardly against the Kornakoffs' governess, who was playing with us,

and, stepping on her dress, tore a large hole in it. Seeing that the

girls--particularly Sonetchka--were anything but displeased at the

spectacle of the governess angrily departing to the maidservants' room

to have her dress mended, I resolved to procure them the satisfaction

a second time. Accordingly, in pursuance of this amiable resolution, I

waited until my victim returned, and then began to gallop madly round

her, until a favourable moment occurred for once more planting my

heel upon her dress and reopening the rent. Sonetchka and the young

princesses had much ado to restrain their laughter, which excited my

conceit the more, but St. Jerome, who had probably divined my tricks,

came up to me with the frown which I could never abide in him, and said

that, since I seemed disposed to mischief, he would have to send me away

if I did not moderate my behaviour.


However, I was in the desperate position of a person who, having staked

more than he has in his pocket, and feeling that he can never make up

his account, continues to plunge on unlucky cards--not because he hopes

to regain his losses, but because it will not do for him to stop and

consider. So, I merely laughed in an impudent fashion and flung away

from my monitor.


After "cat and mouse", another game followed in which the gentlemen sit

on one row of chairs and the ladies on another, and choose each other

for partners. The youngest princess always chose the younger Iwin,

Katenka either Woloda or Ilinka, and Sonetchka Seriosha--nor, to my

extreme astonishment, did Sonetchka seem at all embarrassed when her

cavalier went and sat down beside her. On the contrary, she only laughed

her sweet, musical laugh, and made a sign with her head that he had

chosen right. Since nobody chose me, I always had the mortification of

finding myself left over, and of hearing them say, "Who has been left

out? Oh, Nicolinka. Well, DO take him, somebody." Consequently, whenever

it came to my turn to guess who had chosen me, I had to go either to

my sister or to one of the ugly elder princesses. Sonetchka seemed so

absorbed in Seriosha that in her eyes I clearly existed no longer. I do

not quite know why I called her "the traitress" in my thoughts, since

she had never promised to choose me instead of Seriosha, but, for all

that, I felt convinced that she was treating me in a very abominable

fashion. After the game was finished, I actually saw "the traitress"

(from whom I nevertheless could not withdraw my eyes) go with Seriosha

and Katenka into a corner, and engage in secret confabulation.

Stealing softly round the piano which masked the conclave, I beheld the

following:


Katenka was holding up a pocket-handkerchief by two of its corners, so

as to form a screen for the heads of her two companions. "No, you have

lost! You must pay the forfeit!" cried Seriosha at that moment, and

Sonetchka, who was standing in front of him, blushed like a criminal

as she replied, "No, I have NOT lost! HAVE I, Mademoiselle Katherine?"

"Well, I must speak the truth," answered Katenka, "and say that you HAVE

lost, my dear." Scarcely had she spoken the words when Seriosha embraced

Sonetchka, and kissed her right on her rosy lips! And Sonetchka smiled

as though it were nothing, but merely something very pleasant!


Horrors! The artful "traitress!"





XIV. THE RETRIBUTION


Instantly, I began to feel a strong contempt for the female sex in

general and Sonetchka in particular. I began to think that there was

nothing at all amusing in these games--that they were only fit for

girls, and felt as though I should like to make a great noise, or to do

something of such extraordinary boldness that every one would be forced

to admire it. The opportunity soon arrived. St. Jerome said something to

Mimi, and then left the room, I could hear his footsteps ascending the

staircase, and then passing across the schoolroom, and the idea occurred

to me that Mimi must have told him her story about my being found on the

landing, and thereupon he had gone to look at the register. (In those

days, it must be remembered, I believed that St. Jerome's whole aim in

life was to annoy me.) Some where I have read that, not infrequently,

children of from twelve to fourteen years of age--that is to say,

children just passing from childhood to adolescence--are addicted to

incendiarism, or even to murder. As I look back upon my childhood, and

particularly upon the mood in which I was on that (for myself) most

unlucky day, I can quite understand the possibility of such terrible

crimes being committed by children without any real aim in view--without

any real wish to do wrong, but merely out of curiosity or under the

influence of an unconscious necessity for action. There are moments when

the human being sees the future in such lurid colours that he

shrinks from fixing his mental eye upon it, puts a check upon all his

intellectual activity, and tries to feel convinced that the future will

never be, and that the past has never been. At such moments--moments

when thought does not shrink from manifestations of will, and the carnal

instincts alone constitute the springs of life--I can understand that

want of experience (which is a particularly predisposing factor in

this connection) might very possibly lead a child, aye, without fear

or hesitation, but rather with a smile of curiosity on its face, to set

fire to the house in which its parents and brothers and sisters (beings

whom it tenderly loves) are lying asleep. It would be under the same

influence of momentary absence of thought--almost absence of mind--that

a peasant boy of seventeen might catch sight of the edge of a

newly-sharpened axe reposing near the bench on which his aged father was

lying asleep, face downwards, and suddenly raise the implement in order

to observe with unconscious curiosity how the blood would come spurting

out upon the floor if he made a wound in the sleeper's neck. It is under

the same influence--the same absence of thought, the same instinctive

curiosity--that a man finds delight in standing on the brink of an abyss

and thinking to himself, "How if I were to throw myself down?" or in

holding to his brow a loaded pistol and wondering, "What if I were

to pull the trigger?" or in feeling, when he catches sight of some

universally respected personage, that he would like to go up to him,

pull his nose hard, and say, "How do you do, old boy?"


Under the spell, then, of this instinctive agitation and lack of

reflection I was moved to put out my tongue, and to say that I would not

move, when St. Jerome came down and told me that I had behaved so badly

that day, as well as done my lessons so ill, that I had no right to be

where I was, and must go upstairs directly.


At first, from astonishment and anger, he could not utter a word.


"C'est bien!" he exclaimed eventually as he darted towards me. "Several

times have I promised to punish you, and you have been saved from it by

your Grandmamma, but now I see that nothing but the cane will teach you

obedience, and you shall therefore taste it."


This was said loud enough for every one to hear. The blood rushed to

my heart with such vehemence that I could feel that organ beating

violently--could feel the colour rising to my cheeks and my lips

trembling. Probably I looked horrible at that moment, for, avoiding

my eye, St. Jerome stepped forward and caught me by the hand. Hardly

feeling his touch, I pulled away my hand in blind fury, and with all my

childish might struck him.


"What are you doing?" said Woloda, who had seen my behaviour, and now

approached me in alarm and astonishment.


"Let me alone!" I exclaimed, the tears flowing fast. "Not a single one

of you loves me or understands how miserable I am! You are all of you

odious and disgusting!" I added bluntly, turning to the company at

large.


At this moment St. Jerome--his face pale, but determined--approached me

again, and, with a movement too quick to admit of any defence, seized

my hands as with a pair of tongs, and dragged me away. My head swam with

excitement, and I can only remember that, so long as I had strength to

do it, I fought with head and legs; that my nose several times collided

with a pair of knees; that my teeth tore some one's coat; that all

around me I could hear the shuffling of feet; and that I could smell

dust and the scent of violets with which St. Jerome used to perfume

himself.


Five minutes later the door of the store-room closed behind me.


"Basil," said a triumphant but detestable voice, "bring me the cane."





XV. DREAMS


Could I at that moment have supposed that I should ever live to survive

the misfortunes of that day, or that there would ever come a time when I

should be able to look back upon those misfortunes composedly?


As I sat there thinking over what I had done, I could not imagine what

the matter had been with me. I only felt with despair that I was for

ever lost.


At first the most profound stillness reigned around me--at least, so it

appeared to me as compared with the violent internal emotion which I had

been experiencing; but by and by I began to distinguish various sounds.

Basil brought something downstairs which he laid upon a chest outside.

It sounded like a broom-stick. Below me I could hear St. Jerome's

grumbling voice (probably he was speaking of me), and then children's

voices and laughter and footsteps; until in a few moments everything

seemed to have regained its normal course in the house, as though

nobody knew or cared to know that here was I sitting alone in the dark

store-room!


I did not cry, but something lay heavy, like a stone, upon my heart.

Ideas and pictures passed with extraordinary rapidity before my troubled

imagination, yet through their fantastic sequence broke continually

the remembrance of the misfortune which had befallen me as I once

again plunged into an interminable labyrinth of conjectures as to the

punishment, the fate, and the despair that were awaiting me. The

thought occurred to me that there must be some reason for the general

dislike--even contempt--which I fancied to be felt for me by others.

I was firmly convinced that every one, from Grandmamma down to the

coachman Philip, despised me, and found pleasure in my sufferings. Next

an idea struck me that perhaps I was not the son of my father and mother

at all, nor Woloda's brother, but only some unfortunate orphan who had

been adopted by them out of compassion, and this absurd notion not only

afforded me a certain melancholy consolation, but seemed to me quite

probable. I found it comforting to think that I was unhappy, not through

my own fault, but because I was fated to be so from my birth, and

conceived that my destiny was very much like poor Karl Ivanitch's.


"Why conceal the secret any longer, now that I have discovered it?" I

reflected. "To-morrow I will go to Papa and say to him, 'It is in vain

for you to try and conceal from me the mystery of my birth. I know it

already.' And he will answer me, 'What else could I do, my good fellow?

Sooner or later you would have had to know that you are not my son, but

were adopted as such. Nevertheless, so long as you remain worthy of my

love, I will never cast you out.' Then I shall say, 'Papa, though I

have no right to call you by that name, and am now doing so for the last

time, I have always loved you, and shall always retain that love. At the

same time, while I can never forget that you have been my benefactor, I

cannot remain longer in your house. Nobody here loves me, and St. Jerome

has wrought my ruin. Either he or I must go forth, since I cannot answer

for myself. I hate the man so that I could do anything--I could even

kill him.' Papa will begin to entreat me, but I shall make a gesture,

and say, 'No, no, my friend and benefactor! We cannot live together. Let

me go'--and for the last time I shall embrace him, and say in French,

'O mon pere, O mon bienfaiteur, donne moi, pour la derniere fois, ta

benediction, et que la volonte de Dieu soit faite!'"


I sobbed bitterly at these thoughts as I sat on a trunk in that dark

storeroom. Then, suddenly recollecting the shameful punishment which was

awaiting me, I would find myself back again in actuality, and the dreams

had fled. Soon, again, I began to fancy myself far away from the

house and alone in the world. I enter a hussar regiment and go to war.

Surrounded by the foe on every side, I wave my sword, and kill one of

them and wound another--then a third,--then a fourth. At last, exhausted

with loss of blood and fatigue, I fall to the ground and cry, "Victory!"

The general comes to look for me, asking, "Where is our saviour?"

whereupon I am pointed out to him. He embraces me, and, in his turn,

exclaims with tears of joy, "Victory!" I recover and, with my arm in a

black sling, go to walk on the boulevards. I am a general now. I meet

the Emperor, who asks, "Who is this young man who has been wounded?" He

is told that it is the famous hero Nicolas; whereupon he approaches me

and says, "My thanks to you! Whatsoever you may ask for, I will grant

it." To this I bow respectfully, and, leaning on my sword, reply, "I am

happy, most august Emperor, that I have been able to shed my blood

for my country. I would gladly have died for it. Yet, since you are

so generous as to grant any wish of mine, I venture to ask of you

permission to annihilate my enemy, the foreigner St. Jerome" And then I

step fiercely before St. Jerome and say, "YOU were the cause of all my

fortunes! Down now on your knees!"


Unfortunately this recalled to my mind the fact that at any moment the

REAL St. Jerome might be entering with the cane; so that once more I

saw myself, not a general and the saviour of my country, but an unhappy,

pitiful creature.


Then the idea of God occurred to me, and I asked Him boldly why He had

punished me thus, seeing that I had never forgotten to say my prayers,

either morning or evening. Indeed, I can positively declare that it was

during that hour in the store-room that I took the first step towards

the religious doubt which afterwards assailed me during my youth (not

that mere misfortune could arouse me to infidelity and murmuring, but

that, at moments of utter contrition and solitude, the idea of the

injustice of Providence took root in me as readily as bad seed takes

root in land well soaked with rain). Also, I imagined that I was

going to die there and then, and drew vivid pictures of St. Jerome's

astonishment when he entered the store-room and found a corpse there

instead of myself! Likewise, recollecting what Natalia Savishna had told

me of the forty days during which the souls of the departed must hover

around their earthly home, I imagined myself flying through the rooms

of Grandmamma's house, and seeing Lubotshka's bitter tears, and hearing

Grandmamma's lamentations, and listening to Papa and St. Jerome talking

together. "He was a fine boy," Papa would say with tears in his

eyes. "Yes," St. Jerome would reply, "but a sad scapegrace and

good-for-nothing." "But you should respect the dead," would expostulate

Papa. "YOU were the cause of his death; YOU frightened him until he

could no longer bear the thought of the humiliation which you were about

to inflict upon him. Away from me, criminal!" Upon that St. Jerome would

fall upon his knees and implore forgiveness, and when the forty

days were ended my soul would fly to Heaven, and see there something

wonderfully beautiful, white, and transparent, and know that it was

Mamma.


And that something would embrace and caress me. Yet, all at once, I

should feel troubled, and not know her. "If it be you," I should say

to her, "show yourself more distinctly, so that I may embrace you in

return." And her voice would answer me, "Do you not feel happy thus?"

and I should reply, "Yes, I do, but you cannot REALLY caress me, and I

cannot REALLY kiss your hand like this." "But it is not necessary," she

would say. "There can be happiness here without that,"--and I should

feel that it was so, and we should ascend together, ever higher and

higher, until--Suddenly I feel as though I am being thrown down again,

and find myself sitting on the trunk in the dark store-room (my cheeks

wet with tears and my thoughts in a mist), yet still repeating the

words, "Let us ascend together, higher and higher." Indeed, it was a

long, long while before I could remember where I was, for at that moment

my mind's eye saw only a dark, dreadful, illimitable void. I tried to

renew the happy, consoling dream which had been thus interrupted by the

return to reality, but, to my surprise, I found that, as soon as ever

I attempted to re-enter former dreams, their continuation became

impossible, while--which astonished me even more--they no longer gave me

pleasure.





XVI. "KEEP ON GRINDING, AND YOU'LL HAVE FLOUR"


I PASSED the night in the store-room, and nothing further happened,

except that on the following morning--a Sunday--I was removed to a small

chamber adjoining the schoolroom, and once more shut up. I began to hope

that my punishment was going to be limited to confinement, and found my

thoughts growing calmer under the influence of a sound, soft sleep, the

clear sunlight playing upon the frost crystals of the windowpanes, and

the familiar noises in the street.


Nevertheless, solitude gradually became intolerable. I wanted to move

about, and to communicate to some one all that was lying upon my

heart, but not a living creature was near me. The position was the more

unpleasant because, willy-nilly, I could hear St. Jerome walking about

in his room, and softly whistling some hackneyed tune. Somehow, I felt

convinced that he was whistling not because he wanted to, but because he

knew it annoyed me.


At two o'clock, he and Woloda departed downstairs, and Nicola brought me

up some luncheon. When I told him what I had done and what was awaiting

me he said:


"Pshaw, sir! Don't be alarmed. 'Keep on grinding, and you'll have

flour.'"


Although this expression (which also in later days has more than once

helped me to preserve my firmness of mind) brought me a little comfort,

the fact that I received, not bread and water only, but a whole

luncheon, and even dessert, gave me much to think about. If they had

sent me no dessert, it would have meant that my punishment was to be

limited to confinement; whereas it was now evident that I was looked

upon as not yet punished--that I was only being kept away from the

others, as an evil-doer, until the due time of punishment. While I was

still debating the question, the key of my prison turned, and St. Jerome

entered with a severe, official air.


"Come down and see your Grandmamma," he said without looking at me.


I should have liked first to have brushed my jacket, since it was

covered with dust, but St. Jerome said that that was quite unnecessary,

since I was in such a deplorable moral condition that my exterior

was not worth considering. As he led me through the salon, Katenka,

Lubotshka, and Woloda looked at me with much the same expression as

we were wont to look at the convicts who on certain days filed past my

grandmother's house. Likewise, when I approached Grandmamma's arm-chair

to kiss her hand, she withdrew it, and thrust it under her mantilla.


"Well, my dear," she began after a long pause, during which she regarded

me from head to foot with the kind of expression which makes one

uncertain where to look or what to do, "I must say that you seem to

value my love very highly, and afford me great consolation." Then she

went on, with an emphasis on each word, "Monsieur St. Jerome, who, at my

request, undertook your education, says that he can no longer remain

in the house. And why? Simply because of you." Another pause ensued.

Presently she continued in a tone which clearly showed that her speech

had been prepared beforehand, "I had hoped that you would be grateful

for all his care, and for all the trouble that he has taken with you,

that you would have appreciated his services; but you--you baby, you

silly boy!--you actually dare to raise your hand against him! Very

well, very good. I am beginning to think that you cannot understand kind

treatment, but require to be treated in a very different and humiliating

fashion. Go now directly and beg his pardon," she added in a stern and

peremptory tone as she pointed to St. Jerome, "Do you hear me?"


I followed the direction of her finger with my eye, but on that member

alighting upon St. Jerome's coat, I turned my head away, and once more

felt my heart beating violently as I remained where I was.


"What? Did you not hear me when I told you what to do?"


I was trembling all over, but I would not stir.


"Koko," went on my grandmother, probably divining my inward sufferings,

"Koko," she repeated in a voice tender rather than harsh, "is this you?"


"Grandmamma, I cannot beg his pardon for--" and I stopped suddenly, for

I felt the next word refuse to come for the tears that were choking me.


"But I ordered you, I begged of you, to do so. What is the matter with

you?"


"I-I-I will not--I cannot!" I gasped, and the tears, long pent up and

accumulated in my breast, burst forth like a stream which breaks its

dikes and goes flowing madly over the country.


"C'est ainsi que vous obeissez a votre seconde mere, c'est ainsi que

vous reconnaissez ses bontes!" remarked St. Jerome quietly, "A genoux!"


"Good God! If SHE had seen this!" exclaimed Grandmamma, turning from me

and wiping away her tears. "If she had seen this! It may be all for

the best, yet she could never have survived such grief--never!" and

Grandmamma wept more and more. I too wept, but it never occurred to me

to ask for pardon.


"Tranquillisez-vous au nom du ciel, Madame la Comtesse," said St.

Jerome, but Grandmamma heard him not. She covered her face with her

hands, and her sobs soon passed to hiccups and hysteria. Mimi and Gasha

came running in with frightened faces, salts and spirits were applied,

and the whole house was soon in a ferment.


"You may feel pleased at your work," said St. Jerome to me as he led me

from the room.


"Good God! What have I done?" I thought to myself. "What a terribly bad

boy I am!"


As soon as St. Jerome, bidding me go into his room, had returned to

Grandmamma, I, all unconscious of what I was doing, ran down the grand

staircase leading to the front door. Whether I intended to drown myself,

or whether merely to run away from home, I do not remember. I only know

that I went blindly on, my face covered with my hands that I might see

nothing.


"Where are you going to?" asked a well-known voice. "I want you, my

boy."


I would have passed on, but Papa caught hold of me, and said sternly:


"Come here, you impudent rascal. How could you dare to do such a thing

as to touch the portfolio in my study?" he went on as he dragged me into

his room. "Oh! you are silent, eh?" and he pulled my ear.


"Yes, I WAS naughty," I said. "I don't know myself what came over me

then."


"So you don't know what came over you--you don't know, you don't know?"

he repeated as he pulled my ear harder and harder. "Will you go and put

your nose where you ought not to again--will you, will you?"


Although my ear was in great pain, I did not cry, but, on the contrary,

felt a sort of morally pleasing sensation. No sooner did he let go of my

ear than I seized his hand and covered it with tears and kisses.


"Please whip me!" I cried, sobbing. "Please hurt me the more and more,

for I am a wretched, bad, miserable boy!"


"Why, what on earth is the matter with you?" he said, giving me a slight

push from him.


"No, I will not go away!" I continued, seizing his coat. "Every one else

hates me--I know that, but do YOU listen to me and protect me, or else

send me away altogether. I cannot live with HIM. He tries to humiliate

me--he tells me to kneel before him, and wants to strike me. I can't

stand it. I'm not a baby. I can't stand it--I shall die, I shall kill

myself. HE told Grandmamma that I was naughty, and now she is ill--she

will die through me. It is all his fault. Please let me--W-why

should-he-tor-ment me?"


The tears choked my further speech. I sat down on the sofa, and, with

my head buried on Papa's knees, sobbed until I thought I should die of

grief.


"Come, come! Why are you such a water-pump?" said Papa compassionately,

as he stooped over me.


"He is such a bully! He is murdering me! I shall die! Nobody loves me at

all!" I gasped almost inaudibly, and went into convulsions.


Papa lifted me up, and carried me to my bedroom, where I fell asleep.


When I awoke it was late. Only a solitary candle burned in the room,

while beside the bed there were seated Mimi, Lubotshka, and our doctor.

In their faces I could discern anxiety for my health, so, although

I felt so well after my twelve-hours' sleep that I could have got up

directly, I thought it best to let them continue thinking that I was

unwell.





XVII. HATRED


Yes, it was the real feeling of hatred that was mine now--not the hatred

of which one reads in novels, and in the existence of which I do

not believe--the hatred which finds satisfaction in doing harm to a

fellow-creature, but the hatred which consists of an unconquerable

aversion to a person who may be wholly deserving of your esteem, yet

whose very hair, neck, walk, voice, limbs, movements, and everything

else are disgusting to you, while all the while an incomprehensible

force attracts you towards him, and compels you to follow his slightest

acts with anxious attention.


This was the feeling which I cherished for St. Jerome, who had lived

with us now for a year and a half.


Judging coolly of the man at this time of day, I find that he was a true

Frenchman, but a Frenchman in the better acceptation of the term. He was

fairly well educated, and fulfilled his duties to us conscientiously,

but he had the peculiar features of fickle egotism, boastfulness,

impertinence, and ignorant self-assurance which are common to all his

countrymen, as well as entirely opposed to the Russian character.


All this set me against him, Grandmamma had signified to him her dislike

for corporal punishment, and therefore he dared not beat us, but he

frequently THREATENED us, particularly myself, with the cane, and would

utter the word fouetter as though it were fouatter in an expressive

and detestable way which always gave me the idea that to whip me would

afford him the greatest possible satisfaction.


I was not in the least afraid of the bodily pain, for I had never

experienced it. It was the mere idea that he could beat me that threw me

into such paroxysms of wrath and despair.


True, Karl Ivanitch sometimes (in moments of exasperation) had recourse

to a ruler or to his braces, but that I can look back upon without

anger. Even if he had struck me at the time of which I am now speaking

(namely, when I was fourteen years old), I should have submitted quietly

to the correction, for I loved him, and had known him all my life,

and looked upon him as a member of our family, but St. Jerome was a

conceited, opinionated fellow for whom I felt merely the unwilling

respect which I entertained for all persons older than myself. Karl

Ivanitch was a comical old "Uncle" whom I loved with my whole heart, but

who, according to my childish conception of social distinctions, ranked

below us, whereas St. Jerome was a well-educated, handsome young dandy

who was for showing himself the equal of any one.


Karl Ivanitch had always scolded and punished us coolly, as though he

thought it a necessary, but extremely disagreeable, duty. St. Jerome,

on the contrary, always liked to emphasise his part as JUDGE when

correcting us, and clearly did it as much for his own satisfaction

as for our good. He loved authority. Nevertheless, I always found his

grandiloquent French phrases (which he pronounced with a strong emphasis

on all the final syllables) inexpressibly disgusting, whereas Karl, when

angry, had never said anything beyond, "What a foolish puppet-comedy it

is!" or "You boys are as irritating as Spanish fly!" (which he always

called "Spaniard" fly). St. Jerome, however, had names for us like

"mauvais sujet," "villain," "garnement," and so forth--epithets which

greatly offended my self-respect. When Karl Ivanitch ordered us to

kneel in the corner with our faces to the wall, the punishment consisted

merely in the bodily discomfort of the position, whereas St. Jerome, in

such cases, always assumed a haughty air, made a grandiose gesture with

his hand, and exclaiming in a pseudo-tragic tone, "A genoux, mauvais

sujet!" ordered us to kneel with our faces towards him, and to crave his

pardon. His punishment consisted in humiliation.


However, on the present occasion the punishment never came, nor was the

matter ever referred to again. Yet, I could not forget all that I had

gone through--the shame, the fear, and the hatred of those two days.

From that time forth, St. Jerome appeared to give me up in despair, and

took no further trouble with me, yet I could not bring myself to treat

him with indifference. Every time that our eyes met I felt that my

look expressed only too plainly my dislike, and, though I tried hard

to assume a careless air, he seemed to divine my hypocrisy, until I was

forced to blush and turn away.


In short, it was a terrible trial to me to have anything to do with him.





XVIII. THE MAIDSERVANTS' ROOM


I BEGAN to feel more and more lonely, until my chief solace lay in

solitary reflection and observation. Of the favourite subject of

my reflections I shall speak in the next chapter. The scene where I

indulged in them was, for preference, the maidservants' room, where

a plot suitable for a novel was in progress--a plot which touched and

engrossed me to the highest degree. The heroine of the romance was, of

course, Masha. She was in love with Basil, who had known her before she

had become a servant in our house, and who had promised to marry her

some day. Unfortunately, fate, which had separated them five years ago,

and afterwards reunited them in Grandmamma's abode, next proceeded to

interpose an obstacle between them in the shape of Masha's uncle, our

man Nicola, who would not hear of his niece marrying that "uneducated

and unbearable fellow," as he called Basil. One effect of the obstacle

had been to make the otherwise slightly cool and indifferent Basil fall

as passionately in love with Masha as it is possible for a man to be

who is only a servant and a tailor, wears a red shirt, and has his hair

pomaded. Although his methods of expressing his affection were odd (for

instance, whenever he met Masha he always endeavoured to inflict upon

her some bodily pain, either by pinching her, giving her a slap with his

open hand, or squeezing her so hard that she could scarcely breathe),

that affection was sincere enough, and he proved it by the fact that,

from the moment when Nicola refused him his niece's hand, his grief led

him to drinking, and to frequenting taverns, until he proved so

unruly that more than once he had to be sent to undergo a humiliating

chastisement at the police-station.


Nevertheless, these faults of his and their consequences only served to

elevate him in Masha's eyes, and to increase her love for him. Whenever

he was in the hands of the police, she would sit crying the whole day,

and complain to Gasha of her hard fate (Gasha played an active part

in the affairs of these unfortunate lovers). Then, regardless of her

uncle's anger and blows, she would stealthily make her way to the

police-station, there to visit and console her swain.


Excuse me, reader, for introducing you to such company. Nevertheless, if

the cords of love and compassion have not wholly snapped in your soul,

you will find, even in that maidservants' room, something which may

cause them to vibrate again.


So, whether you please to follow me or not, I will return to the alcove

on the staircase whence I was able to observe all that passed in that

room. From my post I could see the stove-couch, with, upon it, an iron,

an old cap-stand with its peg bent crooked, a wash-tub, and a basin.

There, too, was the window, with, in fine disorder before it, a piece

of black wax, some fragments of silk, a half-eaten cucumber, a box of

sweets, and so on. There, too, was the large table at which SHE used

to sit in the pink cotton dress which I admired so much and the

blue handkerchief which always caught my attention so. She would be

sewing-though interrupting her work at intervals to scratch her head

a little, to bite the end of her thread, or to snuff the candle--and I

would think to myself: "Why was she not born a lady--she with her blue

eyes, beautiful fair hair, and magnificent bust? How splendid she would

look if she were sitting in a drawing-room and dressed in a cap with

pink ribbons and a silk gown--not one like Mimi's, but one like the gown

which I saw the other day on the Tverski Boulevard!" Yes, she would work

at the embroidery-frame, and I would sit and look at her in the mirror,

and be ready to do whatsoever she wanted--to help her on with her mantle

or to hand her food. As for Basil's drunken face and horrid figure in

the scanty coat with the red shirt showing beneath it, well, in his

every gesture, in his every movement of his back, I seemed always to see

signs of the humiliating chastisements which he had undergone.


"Ah, Basil! AGAIN?" cried Masha on one occasion as she stuck her needle

into the pincushion, but without looking up at the person who was

entering.


"What is the good of a man like HIM?" was Basil's first remark.


"Yes. If only he would say something DECISIVE! But I am powerless in the

matter--I am all at odds and ends, and through his fault, too."


"Will you have some tea?" put in Madesha (another servant).


"No, thank you.--But why does he hate me so, that old thief of an uncle

of yours? Why? Is it because of the clothes I wear, or of my height,

or of my walk, or what? Well, damn and confound him!" finished Basil,

snapping his fingers.


"We must be patient," said Masha, threading her needle.


"You are so--"


"It is my nerves that won't stand it, that's all."


At this moment the door of Grandmamma's room banged, and Gasha's angry

voice could be heard as she came up the stairs.


"There!" she muttered with a gesture of her hands. "Try to please people

when even they themselves do not know what they want, and it is a cursed

life--sheer hard labour, and nothing else! If only a certain thing would

happen!--though God forgive me for thinking it!"


"Good evening, Agatha Michaelovna," said Basil, rising to greet her.


"You here?" she answered brusquely as she stared at him, "That is not

very much to your credit. What do you come here for? Is the maids' room

a proper place for men?"


"I wanted to see how you were," said Basil soothingly.


"I shall soon be breathing my last--THAT'S how I am!" cried Gasha, still

greatly incensed.


Basil laughed.


"Oh, there's nothing to laugh at when I say that I shall soon be dead.

But that's how it will be, all the same. Just look at the drunkard!

Marry her, would he? The fool! Come, get out of here!" and, with a stamp

of her foot on the floor, Gasha retreated to her own room, and banged

the door behind her until the window rattled again. For a while she

could be heard scolding at everything, flinging dresses and other things

about, and pulling the ears of her favourite cat. Then the door opened

again, and puss, mewing pitifully, was flung forth by the tail.


"I had better come another time for tea," said Basil in a whisper--"at

some better time for our meeting."


"No, no!" put in Madesha. "I'll go and fetch the urn at once."


"I mean to put an end to things soon," went on Basil, seating himself

beside Masha as soon as ever Madesha had left the room. "I had much

better go straight to the Countess, and say 'so-and-so' or I will throw

up my situation and go off into the world. Oh dear, oh dear!"


"And am I to remain here?"


"Ah, there's the difficulty--that's what I feel so badly about, You have

been my sweetheart so long, you see. Ah, dear me!"


"Why don't you bring me your shirts to wash, Basil?" asked Masha after a

pause, during which she had been inspecting his wrist-bands.


At this moment Grandmamma's bell rang, and Gasha issued from her room

again.


"What do you want with her, you impudent fellow?" she cried as she

pushed Basil (who had risen at her entrance) before her towards the

door. "First you lead a girl on, and then you want to lead her further

still. I suppose it amuses you to see her tears. There's the door, now.

Off you go! We want your room, not your company. And what good can you

see in him?" she went on, turning to Masha. "Has not your uncle been

walking into you to-day already? No; she must stick to her promise,

forsooth! 'I will have no one but Basil,' Fool that you are!"


"Yes, I WILL have no one but him! I'll never love any one else! I could

kill myself for him!" poor Masha burst out, the tears suddenly gushing

forth.


For a while I stood watching her as she wiped away those tears. Then I

fell to contemplating Basil attentively, in the hope of finding out what

there was in him that she found so attractive; yet, though I sympathised

with her sincerely in her grief, I could not for the life of me

understand how such a charming creature as I considered her to be could

love a man like him.


"When I become a man," I thought to myself as I returned to my room,

"Petrovskoe shall be mine, and Basil and Masha my servants. Some day,

when I am sitting in my study and smoking a pipe, Masha will chance to

pass the door on her way to the kitchen with an iron, and I shall say,

'Masha, come here,' and she will enter, and there will be no one else in

the room. Then suddenly Basil too will enter, and, on seeing her, will

cry, 'My sweetheart is lost to me!' and Masha will begin to weep, Then

I shall say, 'Basil, I know that you love her, and that she loves you.

Here are a thousand roubles for you. Marry her, and may God grant you

both happiness!' Then I shall leave them together."


Among the countless thoughts and fancies which pass, without logic or

sequence, through the mind and the imagination, there are always some

which leave behind them a mark so profound that, without remembering

their exact subject, we can at least recall that something good has

passed through our brain, and try to retain and reproduce its effect.

Such was the mark left upon my consciousness by the idea of sacrificing

my feelings to Masha's happiness, seeing that she believed that she

could attain it only through a union with Basil.





XIX. BOYHOOD


PERHAPS people will scarcely believe me when I tell them what were the

dearest, most constant, objects of my reflections during my boyhood, so

little did those objects consort with my age and position. Yet, in my

opinion, contrast between a man's actual position and his moral activity

constitutes the most reliable sign of his genuineness.


During the period when I was leading a solitary and self-centred moral

life, I was much taken up with abstract thoughts on man's destiny, on

a future life, and on the immortality of the soul, and, with all the

ardour of inexperience, strove to make my youthful intellect solve those

questions--the questions which constitute the highest level of thought

to which the human intellect can tend, but a final decision of which the

human intellect can never succeed in attaining.


I believe the intellect to take the same course of development in the

individual as in the mass, as also that the thoughts which serve as

a basis for philosophical theories are an inseparable part of that

intellect, and that every man must be more or less conscious of those

thoughts before he can know anything of the existence of philosophical

theories. To my own mind those thoughts presented themselves with such

clarity and force that I tried to apply them to life, in the fond belief

that I was the first to have discovered such splendid and invaluable

truths.


Sometimes I would suppose that happiness depends, not upon external

causes themselves, but only upon our relation to them, and that,

provided a man can accustom himself to bearing suffering, he need

never be unhappy. To prove the latter hypothesis, I would (despite the

horrible pain) hold out a Tatistchev's dictionary at arm's length for

five minutes at a time, or else go into the store-room and scourge my

back with cords until the tears involuntarily came to my eyes!


Another time, suddenly bethinking me that death might find me at any

hour or any minute, I came to the conclusion that man could only be

happy by using the present to the full and taking no thought for the

future. Indeed, I wondered how people had never found that out before.

Acting under the influence of the new idea, I laid my lesson-books

aside for two or three days, and, reposing on my bed, gave myself up to

novel-reading and the eating of gingerbread-and-honey which I had bought

with my last remaining coins.


Again, standing one day before the blackboard and smearing figures on it

with honey, I was struck with the thought, "Why is symmetry so agreeable

to the eye? What is symmetry? Of course it is an innate sense," I

continued; "yet what is its basis? Perhaps everything in life is

symmetry? But no. On the contrary, this is life"--and I drew an oblong

figure on the board--"and after life the soul passes to eternity"--here

I drew a line from one end of the oblong figure to the edge of the

board. "Why should there not be a corresponding line on the other

side? If there be an eternity on one side, there must surely be a

corresponding one on the other? That means that we have existed in a

previous life, but have lost the recollection of it."


This conclusion--which seemed to me at the time both clear and novel,

but the arguments for which it would be difficult for me, at this

distance of time, to piece together--pleased me extremely, so I took a

piece of paper and tried to write it down. But at the first attempt

such a rush of other thoughts came whirling though my brain that I was

obliged to jump up and pace the room. At the window, my attention was

arrested by a driver harnessing a horse to a water-cart, and at once my

mind concentrated itself upon the decision of the question, "Into what

animal or human being will the spirit of that horse pass at death?" Just

at that moment, Woloda passed through the room, and smiled to see me

absorbed in speculative thoughts. His smile at once made me feel that

all that I had been thinking about was utter nonsense.


I have related all this as I recollect it in order to show the reader

the nature of my cogitations. No philosophical theory attracted me so

much as scepticism, which at one period brought me to a state of mind

verging upon insanity. I took the fancy into my head that no one nor

anything really existed in the world except myself--that objects were

not objects at all, but that images of them became manifest only so soon

as I turned my attention upon them, and vanished again directly that

I ceased to think about them. In short, this idea of mine (that real

objects do not exist, but only one's conception of them) brought me to

Schelling's well-known theory. There were moments when the influence

of this idea led me to such vagaries as, for instance, turning sharply

round, in the hope that by the suddenness of the movement I should come

in contact with the void which I believed to be existing where I myself

purported to be!


What a pitiful spring of moral activity is the human intellect! My

faulty reason could not define the impenetrable. Consequently it

shattered one fruitless conviction after another--convictions which,

happily for my after life, I never lacked the courage to abandon as soon

as they proved inadequate. From all this weary mental struggle I derived

only a certain pliancy of mind, a weakening of the will, a habit

of perpetual moral analysis, and a diminution both of freshness of

sentiment and of clearness of thought. Usually abstract thinking

develops man's capacity for apprehending the bent of his mind at certain

moments and laying it to heart, but my inclination for abstract thought

developed my consciousness in such a way that often when I began to

consider even the simplest matter, I would lose myself in a labyrinthine

analysis of my own thoughts concerning the matter in question. That is

to say, I no longer thought of the matter itself, but only of what I was

thinking about it. If I had then asked myself, "Of what am I thinking?"

the true answer would have been, "I am thinking of what I am thinking;"

and if I had further asked myself, "What, then, are the thoughts of

which I am thinking?" I should have had to reply, "They are attempts

to think of what I am thinking concerning my own thoughts"--and so on.

Reason, with me, had to yield to excess of reason. Every philosophical

discovery which I made so flattered my conceit that I often imagined

myself to be a great man discovering new truths for the benefit of

humanity. Consequently, I looked down with proud dignity upon my

fellow-mortals. Yet, strange to state, no sooner did I come in contact

with those fellow-mortals than I became filled with a stupid shyness of

them, and, the higher I happened to be standing in my own opinion, the

less did I feel capable of making others perceive my consciousness of

my own dignity, since I could not rid myself of a sense of diffidence

concerning even the simplest of my words and acts.





XX. WOLODA


THE further I advance in the recital of this period of my life, the more

difficult and onerous does the task become. Too rarely do I find among

the reminiscences of that time any moments full of the ardent feeling

of sincerity which so often and so cheeringly illumined my childhood.

Gladly would I pass in haste over my lonely boyhood, the sooner to

arrive at the happy time when once again a tender, sincere, and noble

friendship marked with a gleam of light at once the termination of that

period and the beginning of a phase of my youth which was full of the

charm of poetry. Therefore, I will not pursue my recollections from hour

to hour, but only throw a cursory glance at the most prominent of them,

from the time to which I have now carried my tale to the moment of

my first contact with the exceptional personality that was fated to

exercise such a decisive influence upon my character and ideas.


Woloda was about to enter the University. Tutors came to give

him lessons independently of myself, and I listened with envy and

involuntary respect as he drew boldly on the blackboard with white chalk

and talked about "functions," "sines," and so forth--all of which seemed

to me terms pertaining to unattainable wisdom. At length, one Sunday

before luncheon all the tutors--and among them two professors--assembled

in Grandmamma's room, and in the presence of Papa and some friends put

Woloda through a rehearsal of his University examination--in which,

to Grandmamma's delight, he gave evidence of no ordinary amount of

knowledge.


Questions on different subjects were also put to me, but on all of

them I showed complete ignorance, while the fact that the professors

manifestly endeavoured to conceal that ignorance from Grandmamma only

confused me the more. Yet, after all, I was only fifteen, and so had a

year before me in which to prepare for the examinations. Woloda now came

downstairs for luncheon only, and spent whole days and evenings over

his studies in his own room--to which he kept, not from necessity, but

because he preferred its seclusion. He was very ambitious, and meant to

pass the examinations, not by halves, but with flying colours.


The first day arrived. Woloda was wearing a new blue frockcoat with

brass buttons, a gold watch, and shiny boots. At the door stood Papa's

phaeton, which Nicola duly opened; and presently, when Woloda and

St. Jerome set out for the University, the girls--particularly

Katenka--could be seen gazing with beaming faces from the window at

Woloda's pleasing figure as it sat in the carriage. Papa said several

times, "God go with him!" and Grandmamma, who also had dragged herself

to the window, continued to make the sign of the cross as long as the

phaeton was visible, as well as to murmur something to herself.


When Woloda returned, every one eagerly crowded round him. "How many

marks? Were they good ones?" "Yes." But his happy face was an answer in

itself. He had received five marks-the maximum! The next day, he sped on

his way with the same good wishes and the same anxiety for his success,

and was welcomed home with the same eagerness and joy.


This lasted for nine days. On the tenth day there was to be the last and

most difficult examination of all--the one in divinity.


We all stood at the window, and watched for him with greater impatience

than ever. Two o'clock, and yet no Woloda.


"Here they come, Papa! Here they come!" suddenly screamed Lubotshka as

she peered through the window.


Sure enough the phaeton was driving up with St. Jerome and Woloda--the

latter no longer in his grey cap and blue frockcoat, but in the uniform

of a student of the University, with its embroidered blue collar,

three-cornered hat, and gilded sword.


"Ah! If only SHE had been alive now!" exclaimed Grandmamma on seeing

Woloda in this dress, and swooned away.


Woloda enters the anteroom with a beaming face, and embraces myself,

Lubotshka, Mimi, and Katenka--the latter blushing to her ears. He hardly

knows himself for joy. And how smart he looks in that uniform! How well

the blue collar suits his budding, dark moustache! What a tall, elegant

figure is his, and what a distinguished walk!


On that memorable day we all lunched together in Grandmamma's room.

Every face expressed delight, and with the dessert which followed the

meal the servants, with grave but gratified faces, brought in bottles of

champagne.


Grandmamma, for the first time since Mamma's death, drank a full glass

of the wine to Woloda's health, and wept for joy as she looked at him.


Henceforth Woloda drove his own turn-out, invited his own friends,

smoked, and went to balls. On one occasion, I even saw him sharing a

couple of bottles of champagne with some guests in his room, and the

whole company drinking a toast, with each glass, to some mysterious

being, and then quarrelling as to who should have the bottom of the

bottle!


Nevertheless he always lunched at home, and after the meal would stretch

himself on a sofa and talk confidentially to Katenka: yet from what I

overheard (while pretending, of course, to pay no attention) I gathered

that they were only talking of the heroes and heroines of novels which

they had read, or else of jealousy and love, and so on. Never could I

understand what they found so attractive in these conversations, nor why

they smiled so happily and discussed things with such animation.


Altogether I could see that, in addition to the friendship natural to

persons who had been companions from childhood, there existed between

Woloda and Katenka a relation which differentiated them from us, and

united them mysteriously to one another.





XXI. KATENKA AND LUBOTSHKA


Katenka was now sixteen years old--quite a grown-up girl; and although

at that age the angular figures, the bashfulness, and the gaucherie

peculiar to girls passing from childhood to youth usually replace the

comely freshness and graceful, half-developed bloom of childhood, she

had in no way altered. Still the blue eyes with their merry glance were

hers, the well-shaped nose with firm nostrils and almost forming a line

with the forehead, the little mouth with its charming smile, the dimples

in the rosy cheeks, and the small white hands. To her, the epithet of

"girl," pure and simple, was pre-eminently applicable, for in her the

only new features were a new and "young-lady-like" arrangement of her

thick flaxen hair and a youthful bosom--the latter an addition which at

once caused her great joy and made her very bashful.


Although Lubotshka and she had grown up together and received the same

education, they were totally unlike one another. Lubotshka was not tall,

and the rickets from which she had suffered had shaped her feet in goose

fashion and made her figure very bad. The only pretty feature in her

face was her eyes, which were indeed wonderful, being large and black,

and instinct with such an extremely pleasing expression of mingled

gravity and naivete that she was bound to attract attention. In

everything she was simple and natural, so that, whereas Katenka always

looked as though she were trying to be like some one else, Lubotshka

looked people straight in the face, and sometimes fixed them so long

with her splendid black eyes that she got blamed for doing what was

thought to be improper. Katenka, on the contrary, always cast her

eyelids down, blinked, and pretended that she was short-sighted, though

I knew very well that her sight was excellent. Lubotshka hated being

shown off before strangers, and when a visitor offered to kiss her she

invariably grew cross, and said that she hated "affection"; whereas,

when strangers were present, Katenka was always particularly endearing

to Mimi, and loved to walk about the room arm in arm with another girl.

Likewise, though Lubotshka was a terrible giggler, and sometimes ran

about the room in convulsions of gesticulating laughter, Katenka always

covered her mouth with her hands or her pocket-handkerchief when she

wanted to laugh. Lubotshka, again, loved to have grown-up men to talk

to, and said that some day she meant to marry a hussar, but Katenka

always pretended that all men were horrid, and that she never meant to

marry any one of them, while as soon as a male visitor addressed her she

changed completely, as though she were nervous of something. Likewise,

Lubotshka was continually at loggerheads with Mimi because the latter

wanted her to have her stays so tight that she could not breathe or eat

or drink in comfort, while Katenka, on the contrary, would often insert

her finger into her waistband to show how loose it was, and always ate

very little. Lubotshka liked to draw heads; Katenka only flowers and

butterflies. The former could play Field's concertos and Beethoven's

sonatas excellently, whereas the latter indulged in variations and

waltzes, retarded the time, and used the pedals continuously--not to

mention the fact that, before she began, she invariably struck three

chords in arpeggio.


Nevertheless, in those days I thought Katenka much the grander person of

the two, and liked her the best.





XXII. PAPA


Papa had been in a particularly good humour ever since Woloda had passed

into the University, and came much oftener to dine with Grandmamma.

However, I knew from Nicola that he had won a great deal lately.

Occasionally, he would come and sit with us in the evening before going

to the club. He used to sit down to the piano and bid us group ourselves

around him, after which he would beat time with his thin boots (he

detested heels, and never wore them), and make us sing gipsy songs. At

such times you should have seen the quaint enthusiasm of his beloved

Lubotshka, who adored him!


Sometimes, again, he would come to the schoolroom and listen with a

grave face as I said my lessons; yet by the few words which he would let

drop when correcting me, I could see that he knew even less about the

subject than I did. Not infrequently, too, he would wink at us and make

secret signs when Grandmamma was beginning to scold us and find fault

with us all round. "So much for us children!" he would say. On

the whole, however, the impossible pinnacle upon which my childish

imagination had placed him had undergone a certain abasement. I still

kissed his large white hand with a certain feeling of love and respect,

but I also allowed myself to think about him and to criticise his

behaviour until involuntarily thoughts occurred to me which alarmed me

by their presence. Never shall I forget one incident in particular which

awakened thoughts of this kind, and caused me intense astonishment. Late

one evening, he entered the drawing-room in his black dress-coat and

white waistcoat, to take Woloda (who was still dressing in his bedroom)

to a ball. Grandmamma was also in her bedroom, but had given orders

that, before setting out, Woloda was to come and say goodbye to her (it

was her invariable custom to inspect him before he went to a ball, and

to bless him and direct him as to his behaviour). The room where we were

was lighted by a solitary lamp. Mimi and Katenka were walking up

and down, and Lubotshka was playing Field's Second Concerto (Mamma's

favourite piece) at the piano. Never was there such a family likeness as

between Mamma and my sister--not so much in the face or the stature as

in the hands, the walk, the voice, the favourite expressions, and,

above all, the way of playing the piano and the whole demeanour at the

instrument. Lubotshka always arranged her dress when sitting down just

as Mamma had done, as well as turned the leaves like her, tapped her

fingers angrily and said "Dear me!" whenever a difficult passage did not

go smoothly, and, in particular, played with the delicacy and exquisite

purity of touch which in those days caused the execution of Field's

music to be known characteristically as "jeu perle" and to lie beyond

comparison with the humbug of our modern virtuosi.


Papa entered the room with short, soft steps, and approached Lubotshka.

On seeing him she stopped playing.


"No, go on, Luba, go on," he said as he forced her to sit down again.

She went on playing, while Papa, his head on his hand, sat near her for

a while. Then suddenly he gave his shoulders a shrug, and, rising, began

to pace the room. Every time that he approached the piano he halted

for a moment and looked fixedly at Lubotshka. By his walk and his

every movement, I could see that he was greatly agitated. Once, when he

stopped behind Lubotshka, he kissed her black hair, and then, wheeling

quickly round, resumed his pacing. The piece finished, Lubotshka went up

to him and said, "Was it well played?" whereupon, without answering, he

took her head in his two hands, and kissed her forehead and eyes with

such tenderness as I had never before seen him display.


"Why, you are crying!" cried Lubotshka suddenly as she ceased to toy

with his watch-chain and stared at him with her great black eyes.

"Pardon me, darling Papa! I had quite forgotten that it was dear Mamma's

piece which I was playing."


"No, no, my love; play it often," he said in a voice trembling with

emotion. "Ah, if you only knew how much good it does me to share your

tears!"


He kissed her again, and then, mastering his feelings and shrugging

his shoulders, went to the door leading to the corridor which ran past

Woloda's room.


"Waldemar, shall you be ready soon?" he cried, halting in the middle of

the passage. Just then Masha came along.


"Why, you look prettier every day," he said to her. She blushed and

passed on.


"Waldemar, shall you be ready soon?" he cried again, with a cough and a

shake of his shoulders, just as Masha slipped away and he first caught

sight of me.


I loved Papa, but the intellect is independent of the heart, and often

gives birth to thoughts which offend and are harsh and incomprehensible

to the feelings. And it was thoughts of this kind that, for all I strove

to put them away, arose at that moment in my mind.





XXIII. GRANDMAMMA


Grandmamma was growing weaker every day. Her bell, Gasha's grumbling

voice, and the slamming of doors in her room were sounds of constant

occurrence, and she no longer received us sitting in the Voltairian

arm-chair in her boudoir, but lying on the bed in her bedroom, supported

on lace-trimmed cushions. One day when she greeted us, I noticed a

yellowish-white swelling on her hand, and smelt the same oppressive

odour which I had smelt five years ago in Mamma's room. The doctor came

three times a day, and there had been more than one consultation. Yet

the character of her haughty, ceremonious bearing towards all who lived

with her, and particularly towards Papa, never changed in the least. She

went on emphasising certain words, raising her eyebrows, and saying "my

dear," just as she had always done.


Then for a few days we did not see her at all, and one morning St.

Jerome proposed to me that Woloda and I should take Katenka and

Lubotshka for a drive during the hours generally allotted to study.

Although I observed that the street was lined with straw under the

windows of Grandmamma's room, and that some men in blue stockings

[Undertaker's men.] were standing at our gate, the reason never dawned

upon me why we were being sent out at that unusual hour. Throughout

the drive Lubotshka and I were in that particularly merry mood when the

least trifle, the least word or movement, sets one off laughing.


A pedlar went trotting across the road with a tray, and we laughed.

Some ragged cabmen, brandishing their reins and driving at full speed,

overtook our sledge, and we laughed again. Next, Philip's whip got

caught in the side of the vehicle, and the way in which he said, "Bother

the thing!" as he drove to disentangle it almost killed us with mirth.

Mimi looked displeased, and said that only silly people laughed for

no reason at all, but Lubotshka--her face purple with suppressed

merriment--needed but to give me a sly glance, and we again burst out

into such Homeric laughter, when our eyes met, that the tears rushed

into them and we could not stop our paroxysms, although they nearly

choked us. Hardly, again, had we desisted a little when I looked at

Lubotshka once more, and gave vent to one of the slang words which we

then affected among ourselves--words which always called forth hilarity;

and in a moment we were laughing again.


Just as we reached home, I was opening my mouth to make a splendid

grimace at Lubotshka when my eye fell upon a black coffin-cover which

was leaning against the gate--and my mouth remained fixed in its gaping

position.


"Your Grandmamma is dead," said St. Jerome as he met us. His face was

very pale.


Throughout the whole time that Grandmamma's body was in the house I was

oppressed with the fear of death, for the corpse served as a forcible

and disagreeable reminder that I too must die some day--a feeling which

people often mistake for grief. I had no sincere regret for Grandmamma,

nor, I think, had any one else, since, although the house was full of

sympathising callers, nobody seemed to mourn for her from their hearts

except one mourner whose genuine grief made a great impression upon me,

seeing that the mourner in question was--Gasha! She shut herself up in

the garret, tore her hair and refused all consolation, saying that, now

that her mistress was dead, she only wished to die herself.


I again assert that, in matters of feeling, it is the unexpected effects

that constitute the most reliable signs of sincerity.


Though Grandmamma was no longer with us, reminiscences and gossip about

her long went on in the house. Such gossip referred mostly to her will,

which she had made shortly before her death, and of which, as yet, no

one knew the contents except her bosom friend, Prince Ivan Ivanovitch.

I could hear the servants talking excitedly together, and making

innumerable conjectures as to the amount left and the probable

beneficiaries: nor can I deny that the idea that we ourselves were

probably the latter greatly pleased me.


Six weeks later, Nicola--who acted as regular news-agent to the

house--informed me that Grandmamma had left the whole of her fortune to

Lubotshka, with, as her trustee until her majority, not Papa, but Prince

Ivan Ivanovitch!





XXIV. MYSELF


Only a few months remained before I was to matriculate for the

University, yet I was making such good progress that I felt no

apprehensions, and even took a pleasure in my studies. I kept in good

heart, and learnt my lessons fluently and intelligently. The faculty

I had selected was the mathematical one--probably, to tell the truth,

because the terms "tangent," "differentials," "integrals," and so forth,

pleased my fancy.


Though stout and broad-shouldered, I was shorter than Woloda, while my

ugliness of face still remained and tormented me as much as ever. By way

of compensation, I tried to appear original. Yet one thing comforted

me, namely, that Papa had said that I had "an INTELLIGENT face." I quite

believed him.


St. Jerome was not only satisfied with me, but actually had taken to

praising me. Consequently, I had now ceased to hate him. In fact, when,

one day, he said that, with my "capacities" and my "intellect," it would

be shameful for me not to accomplish this, that, or the other thing, I

believe I almost liked him.


I had long ago given up keeping observation on the maidservants' room,

for I was now ashamed to hide behind doors. Likewise, I confess that

the knowledge of Masha's love for Basil had greatly cooled my ardour

for her, and that my passion underwent a final cure by their marriage--a

consummation to which I myself contributed by, at Basil's request,

asking Papa's consent to the union.


When the newly-married couple brought trays of cakes and sweetmeats to

Papa as a thank-offering, and Masha, in a cap with blue ribbons, kissed

each of us on the shoulder in token of her gratitude, I merely noticed

the scent of the rose pomade on her hair, but felt no other sensation.


In general, I was beginning to get the better of my youthful defects,

with the exception of the principal one--the one of which I shall often

again have to speak in relating my life's history--namely, the tendency

to abstract thought.





XXV. WOLODA'S FRIENDS


Although, when in the society of Woloda's friends, I had to play a part

that hurt my pride, I liked sitting in his room when he had visitors,

and silently watching all they did. The two who came most frequently

to see him were a military adjutant called Dubkoff and a student named

Prince Nechludoff. Dubkoff was a little dark-haired, highly-strung man

who, though short of stature and no longer in his first youth, had

a pleasing and invariably cheerful air. His was one of those limited

natures which are agreeable through their very limitations; natures

which cannot regard matters from every point of view, but which are

nevertheless attracted by everything. Usually the reasoning of such

persons is false and one-sided, yet always genuine and taking; wherefore

their narrow egotism seems both amiable and excusable. There were two

other reasons why Dubkoff had charms for Woloda and myself--namely,

the fact that he was of military appearance, and, secondly (and

principally), the fact that he was of a certain age--an age with which

young people are apt to associate that quality of "gentlemanliness"

which is so highly esteemed at their time of life. However, he was in

very truth un homme comme il faut. The only thing which I did not like

about it all was that, in his presence, Woloda always seemed ashamed

of my innocent behaviour, and still more so of my youthfulness. As for

Prince Nechludoff, he was in no way handsome, since neither his small

grey eyes, his low, projecting forehead, nor his disproportionately long

hands and feet could be called good features. The only good points about

him were his unusually tall stature, his delicate colouring, and

his splendid teeth. Nevertheless, his face was of such an original,

energetic character (owing to his narrow, sparkling eyes and

ever-changing expression--now stern, now childlike, now smiling

indeterminately) that it was impossible to help noticing it. As a rule

he was very shy, and would blush to the ears at the smallest trifle, but

it was a shyness altogether different from mine, seeing that, the more

he blushed, the more determined-looking he grew, as though he were vexed

at his own weakness.


Although he was on very good terms with Woloda and Dubkoff, it was

clearly chance which had united them thus, since their tastes were

entirely dissimilar. Woloda and Dubkoff seemed to be afraid of anything

like serious consideration or emotion, whereas Nechludoff was beyond all

things an enthusiast, and would often, despite their sarcastic remarks,

plunge into dissertations on philosophical matters or matters of

feeling. Again, the two former liked talking about the fair objects of

their adoration (these were always numerous, and always shared by the

friends in common), whereas Nechludoff invariably grew annoyed when

taxed with his love for a certain red-haired lady.


Again, Woloda and Dubkoff often permitted themselves to criticise their

relatives, and to find amusement in so doing, but Nechludoff flew into

a tremendous rage when on one occasion they referred to some weak points

in the character of an aunt of his whom he adored. Finally, after supper

Woloda and Dubkoff would usually go off to some place whither Nechludoff

would not accompany them; wherefore they called him "a dainty girl."


The very first time that I ever saw Prince Nechludoff I was struck

with his exterior and conversation. Yet, though I could discern a great

similarity between his disposition and my own (or perhaps it was because

I COULD so discern it), the impression which he produced upon me at

first was anything but agreeable. I liked neither his quick glance, his

hard voice, his proud bearing, nor (least of all) the utter indifference

with which he treated me. Often, when conversing, I burned to contradict

him, to punish his pride by confuting him, to show him that I was clever

in spite of his disdainful neglect of my presence. But I was invariably

prevented from doing so by my shyness.





XXVI. DISCUSSIONS


Woloda was lying reading a French novel on the sofa when I paid my usual

visit to his room after my evening lessons. He looked up at me for a

moment from his book, and then went on reading. This perfectly simple

and natural movement, however, offended me. I conceived that the glance

implied a question why I had come and a wish to hide his thoughts from

me (I may say that at that period a tendency to attach a meaning to the

most insignificant of acts formed a prominent feature in my character).

So I went to the table and also took up a book to read. Yet, even before

I had actually begun reading, the idea struck me how ridiculous it was

that, although we had never seen one another all day, we should have not

a word to exchange.


"Are you going to stay in to-night, Woloda?"


"I don't know. Why?"


"Oh, because--" Seeing that the conversation did not promise to be

a success, I took up my book again, and began to read. Yet it was a

strange thing that, though we sometimes passed whole hours together

without speaking when we were alone, the mere presence of a

third--sometimes of a taciturn and wholly uninteresting person--sufficed

to plunge us into the most varied and engrossing of discussions. The

truth was that we knew one another too well, and to know a person either

too well or too little acts as a bar to intimacy.


"Is Woloda at home?" came in Dubkoff's voice from the ante-room.


"Yes!" shouted Woloda, springing up and throwing aside his book.


Dubkoff and Nechludoff entered.


"Are you coming to the theatre, Woloda?"


"No, I have no time," he replied with a blush.


"Oh, never mind that. Come along."


"But I haven't got a ticket."


"Tickets, as many as you like, at the entrance."


"Very well, then; I'll be back in a minute," said Woloda evasively as

he left the room. I knew very well that he wanted to go, but that he

had declined because he had no money, and had now gone to borrow five

roubles of one of the servants--to be repaid when he got his next

allowance.


"How do you do, DIPLOMAT?" said Dubkoff to me as he shook me by the

hand. Woloda's friends had called me by that nickname since the day when

Grandmamma had said at luncheon that Woloda must go into the army, but

that she would like to see me in the diplomatic service, dressed in a

black frock-coat, and with my hair arranged a la coq (the two essential

requirements, in her opinion, of a DIPLOMAT).


"Where has Woloda gone to?" asked Nechludoff.


"I don't know," I replied, blushing to think that nevertheless they had

probably guessed his errand.


"I suppose he has no money? Yes, I can see I am right, O diplomatist,"

he added, taking my smile as an answer in the affirmative. "Well, I have

none, either. Have you any, Dubkoff?"


"I'll see," replied Dubkoff, feeling for his pocket, and rummaging

gingerly about with his squat little fingers among his small change.

"Yes, here are five copecks-twenty, but that's all," he concluded with a

comic gesture of his hand.


At this point Woloda re-entered.


"Are we going?"


"No."


"What an odd fellow you are!" said Nechludoff. "Why don't you say that

you have no money? Here, take my ticket."


"But what are you going to do?"


"He can go into his cousin's box," said Dubkoff.


"No, I'm not going at all," replied Nechludoff.


"Why?"


"Because I hate sitting in a box."


"And for what reason?"


"I don't know. Somehow I feel uncomfortable there."


"Always the same! I can't understand a fellow feeling uncomfortable

when he is sitting with people who are fond of him. It is unnatural, mon

cher."


"But what else is there to be done si je suis tant timide? You never

blushed in your life, but I do at the least trifle," and he blushed at

that moment.


"Do you know what that nervousness of yours proceeds from?" said Dubkoff

in a protecting sort of tone, "D'un exces d'amour propre, mon cher."


"What do you mean by 'exces d'amour propre'?" asked Nechludoff, highly

offended. "On the contrary, I am shy just because I have TOO LITTLE

amour propre. I always feel as though I were being tiresome and

disagreeable, and therefore--"


"Well, get ready, Woloda," interrupted Dubkoff, tapping my brother on

the shoulder and handing him his cloak. "Ignaz, get your master ready."


"Therefore," continued Nechludoff, "it often happens with me that--"


But Dubkoff was not listening. "Tra-la-la-la," and he hummed a popular

air.


"Oh, but I'm not going to let you off," went on Nechludoff. "I mean to

prove to you that my shyness is not the result of conceit."


"You can prove it as we go along."


"But I have told you that I am NOT going."


"Well, then, stay here and prove it to the DIPLOMAT, and he can tell us

all about it when we return."


"Yes, that's what I WILL do," said Nechludoff with boyish obstinacy, "so

hurry up with your return."


"Well, do you think I am egotistic?" he continued, seating himself

beside me.


True, I had a definite opinion on the subject, but I felt so taken aback

by this unexpected question that at first I could make no reply.


"Yes, I DO think so," I said at length in a faltering voice, and

colouring at the thought that at last the moment had come when I could

show him that I was clever. "I think that EVERYBODY is egotistic, and

that everything we do is done out of egotism."


"But what do you call egotism?" asked Nechludoff--smiling, as I thought,

a little contemptuously.


"Egotism is a conviction that we are better and cleverer than any one

else," I replied.


"But how can we ALL be filled with this conviction?" he inquired.


"Well, I don't know if I am right or not--certainly no one but myself

seems to hold the opinion--but I believe that I am wiser than any one

else in the world, and that all of you know it."


"At least I can say for myself," observed Nechludoff, "that I have met a

FEW people whom I believe to excel me in wisdom."


"It is impossible," I replied with conviction.


"Do you really think so?" he said, looking at me gravely.


"Yes, really," I answered, and an idea crossed my mind which I proceeded

to expound further. "Let me prove it to you. Why do we love ourselves

better than any one else? Because we think ourselves BETTER than any

one else--more worthy of our own love. If we THOUGHT others better than

ourselves, we should LOVE them better than ourselves: but that is never

the case. And even if it were so, I should still be right," I added with

an involuntary smile of complacency.


For a few minutes Nechludoff was silent.


"I never thought you were so clever," he said with a smile so

goodhumoured and charming that I at once felt happy.


Praise exercises an all-potent influence, not only upon the feelings,

but also upon the intellect; so that under the influence of that

agreeable sensation I straightway felt much cleverer than before, and

thoughts began to rush with extraordinary rapidity through my head.

From egotism we passed insensibly to the theme of love, which seemed

inexhaustible. Although our reasonings might have sounded nonsensical to

a listener (so vague and one-sided were they), for ourselves they had a

profound significance. Our minds were so perfectly in harmony that not a

chord was struck in the one without awakening an echo in the other, and

in this harmonious striking of different chords we found the greatest

delight. Indeed, we felt as though time and language were insufficient

to express the thoughts which seethed within us.





XXVII. THE BEGINNING OF OUR FRIENDSHIP


From that time forth, a strange, but exceedingly pleasant, relation

subsisted between Dimitri Nechludoff and myself. Before other people he

paid me scanty attention, but as soon as ever we were alone, we would

sit down together in some comfortable corner and, forgetful both of time

and of everything around us, fall to reasoning.


We talked of a future life, of art, service, marriage, and education;

nor did the idea ever occur to us that very possibly all we said was

shocking nonsense. The reason why it never occurred to us was that the

nonsense which we talked was good, sensible nonsense, and that, so long

as one is young, one can appreciate good nonsense, and believe in it. In

youth the powers of the mind are directed wholly to the future, and

that future assumes such various, vivid, and alluring forms under the

influence of hope--hope based, not upon the experience of the past, but

upon an assumed possibility of happiness to come--that such dreams of

expected felicity constitute in themselves the true happiness of that

period of our life. How I loved those moments in our metaphysical

discussions (discussions which formed the major portion of our

intercourse) when thoughts came thronging faster and faster, and,

succeeding one another at lightning speed, and growing more and more

abstract, at length attained such a pitch of elevation that one felt

powerless to express them, and said something quite different from what

one had intended at first to say! How I liked those moments, too, when,

carried higher and higher into the realms of thought, we suddenly felt

that we could grasp its substance no longer and go no further!


At carnival time Nechludoff was so much taken up with one festivity and

another that, though he came to see us several times a day, he never

addressed a single word to me. This offended me so much that once again

I found myself thinking him a haughty, disagreeable fellow, and only

awaited an opportunity to show him that I no longer valued his company

or felt any particular affection for him. Accordingly, the first time

that he spoke to me after the carnival, I said that I had lessons to do,

and went upstairs, but a quarter of an hour later some one opened the

schoolroom door, and Nechludoff entered.


"Am I disturbing you?" he asked.


"No," I replied, although I had at first intended to say that I had a

great deal to do.


"Then why did you run away just now? It is a long while since we had a

talk together, and I have grown so accustomed to these discussions that

I feel as though something were wanting."


My anger had quite gone now, and Dimitri stood before me the same good

and lovable being as before.


"You know, perhaps, why I ran away?" I said.


"Perhaps I do," he answered, taking a seat near me. "However, though it

is possible I know why, I cannot say it straight out, whereas YOU can."


"Then I will do so. I ran away because I was angry with you--well, not

angry, but grieved. I always have an idea that you despise me for being

so young."


"Well, do you know why I always feel so attracted towards you?" he

replied, meeting my confession with a look of kind understanding, "and

why I like you better than any of my other acquaintances or than any of

the people among whom I mostly have to live? It is because I found out

at once that you have the rare and astonishing gift of sincerity."


"Yes, I always confess the things of which I am most ashamed--but only

to people in whom I trust," I said.


"Ah, but to trust a man you must be his friend completely, and we

are not friends yet, Nicolas. Remember how, when we were speaking of

friendship, we agreed that, to be real friends, we ought to trust one

another implicitly."


"I trust you in so far as that I feel convinced that you would never

repeat a word of what I might tell you," I said.


"Yet perhaps the most interesting and important thoughts of all are

just those which we never tell one another, while the mean thoughts

(the thoughts which, if we only knew that we had to confess them to

one another, would probably never have the hardihood to enter our

minds)--Well, do you know what I am thinking of, Nicolas?" he broke off,

rising and taking my hand with a smile. "I propose (and I feel sure

that it would benefit us mutually) that we should pledge our word to one

another to tell each other EVERYTHING. We should then really know each

other, and never have anything on our consciences. And, to guard against

outsiders, let us also agree never to speak of one another to a third

person. Suppose we do that?"


"I agree," I replied. And we did it. What the result was shall be told

hereafter.


Kerr has said that every attachment has two sides: one loves, and the

other allows himself to be loved; one kisses, and the other surrenders

his cheek. That is perfectly true. In the case of our own attachment it

was I who kissed, and Dimitri who surrendered his cheek--though he, in

his turn, was ready to pay me a similar salute. We loved equally because

we knew and appreciated each other thoroughly, but this did not prevent

him from exercising an influence over me, nor myself from rendering him

adoration.


It will readily be understood that Nechludoff's influence caused me

to adopt his bent of mind, the essence of which lay in an enthusiastic

reverence for ideal virtue and a firm belief in man's vocation to

perpetual perfection. To raise mankind, to abolish vice and misery,

seemed at that time a task offering no difficulties. To educate oneself

to every virtue, and so to achieve happiness, seemed a simple and easy

matter.


Only God Himself knows whether those blessed dreams of youth were

ridiculous, or whose the fault was that they never became realised.


The Project Gutenberg EBook of Youth, by Leo Tolstoy


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YOUTH

By Leo Tolstoy/Tolstoi


Translated by C. J. Hogarth



------------------------------------







I. WHAT I CONSIDER TO HAVE BEEN THE BEGINNING OF MY YOUTH


I have said that my friendship with Dimitri opened up for me a new view of my life and of its aim and relations. The essence of that view lay in the conviction that the destiny of man is to strive for moral improvement, and that such improvement is at once easy, possible, and lasting. Hitherto, however, I had found pleasure only in the new ideas which I discovered to arise from that conviction, and in the forming of brilliant plans for a moral, active future, while all the time my life had been continuing along its old petty, muddled, pleasure-seeking course, and the same virtuous thoughts which I and my adored friend Dimitri ("my own marvellous Mitia," as I used to call him to myself in a whisper) had been wont to exchange with one another still pleased my intellect, but left my sensibility untouched. Nevertheless there came a moment when those thoughts swept into my head with a sudden freshness and force of moral revelation which left me aghast at the amount of time which I had been wasting, and made me feel as though I must at once-that very second-apply those thoughts to life, with the firm intention of never again changing them.


It is from that moment that I date the beginning of my youth.


I was then nearly sixteen. Tutors still attended to give me lessons, St. Jerome still acted as general supervisor of my education, and, willy-nilly, I was being prepared for the University. In addition to my studies, my occupations included certain vague dreamings and ponderings, a number of gymnastic exercises to make myself the finest athlete in the world, a good deal of aimless, thoughtless wandering through the rooms of the house (but more especially along the maidservants' corridor), and much looking at myself in the mirror. From the latter, however, I always turned away with a vague feeling of depression, almost of repulsion. Not only did I feel sure that my exterior was ugly, but I could derive no comfort from any of the usual consolations under such circumstances. I could not say, for instance, that I had at least an expressive, clever, or refined face, for there was nothing whatever expressive about it. Its features were of the most humdrum, dull, and unbecoming type, with small grey eyes which seemed to me, whenever I regarded them in the mirror, to be stupid rather than clever. Of manly bearing I possessed even less, since, although I was not exactly small of stature, and had, moreover, plenty of strength for my years, every feature in my face was of the meek, sleepy-looking, indefinite type. Even refinement was lacking in it, since, on the contrary, it precisely resembled that of a simple-looking moujik, while I also had the same big hands and feet as he. At the time, all this seemed to me very shameful.





II. SPRINGTIME


Easter of the year when I entered the University fell late in April, so that the examinations were fixed for St. Thomas's Week, [Easter week.] and I had to spend Good Friday in fasting and finally getting myself ready for the ordeal.


Following upon wet snow (the kind of stuff which Karl Ivanitch used to describe as "a child following, its father"), the weather had for three days been bright and mild and still. Not a clot of snow was now to be seen in the streets, and the dirty slush had given place to wet, shining pavements and coursing rivulets. The last icicles on the roofs were fast melting in the sunshine, buds were swelling on the trees in the little garden, the path leading across the courtyard to the stables was soft instead of being a frozen ridge of mud, and mossy grass was showing green between the stones around the entrance-steps. It was just that particular time in spring when the season exercises the strongest influence upon the human soul-when clear sunlight illuminates everything, yet sheds no warmth, when rivulets run trickling under one's feet, when the air is charged with an odorous freshness, and when the bright blue sky is streaked with long, transparent clouds.


For some reason or another the influence of this early stage in the birth of spring always seems to me more perceptible and more impressive in a great town than in the country. One sees less, but one feels more. I was standing near the window-through the double frames of which the morning sun was throwing its mote-flecked beams upon the floor of what seemed to me my intolerably wearisome schoolroom-and working out a long algebraical equation on the blackboard. In one hand I was holding a ragged, long-suffering "Algebra" and in the other a small piece of chalk which had already besmeared my hands, my face, and the elbows of my jacket. Nicola, clad in an apron, and with his sleeves rolled up, was picking out the putty from the window-frames with a pair of nippers, and unfastening the screws. The window looked out upon the little garden. At length his occupation and the noise which he was making over it arrested my attention. At the moment I was in a very cross, dissatisfied frame of mind, for nothing seemed to be going right with me. I had made a mistake at the very beginning of my algebra, and so should have to work it out again; twice I had let the chalk drop. I was conscious that my hands and face were whitened all over; the sponge had rolled away into a corner; and the noise of Nicola's operations was fast getting on my nerves. I had a feeling as though I wanted to fly into a temper and grumble at some one, so I threw down chalk and "Algebra" alike, and began to pace the room. Then suddenly I remembered that to-day we were to go to confession, and that therefore I must refrain from doing anything wrong. Next, with equal suddenness I relapsed into an extraordinarily goodhumoured frame of mind, and walked across to Nicola.


"Let me help you, Nicola," I said, trying to speak as pleasantly as I possibly could. The idea that I was performing a meritorious action in thus suppressing my ill-temper and offering to help him increased my good-humour all the more.


By this time the putty had been chipped out, and the screws removed, yet, though Nicola pulled with might and main at the cross-piece, the window-frame refused to budge.


"If it comes out as soon as he and I begin to pull at it together," I thought, "it will be rather a shame, as then I shall have nothing more of the kind to do to-day."


Suddenly the frame yielded a little at one side, and came out.


"Where shall I put it?" I said.


"Let ME see to it, if you please," replied Nicola, evidently surprised as well as, seemingly, not over-pleased at my zeal. "We must not leave it here, but carry it away to the lumber-room, where I keep all the frames stored and numbered."


"Oh, but I can manage it," I said as I lifted it up. I verily believe that if the lumber-room had been a couple of versts away, and the frame twice as heavy as it was, I should have been the more pleased. I felt as though I wanted to tire myself out in performing this service for Nicola. When I returned to the room the bricks and screws had been replaced on the windowsill, and Nicola was sweeping the debris, as well as a few torpid flies, out of the open window. The fresh, fragrant air was rushing into and filling all the room, while with it came also the dull murmur of the city and the twittering of sparrows in the garden. Everything was in brilliant light, the room looked cheerful, and a gentle spring breeze was stirring Nicola's hair and the leaves of my "Algebra." Approaching the window, I sat down upon the sill, turned my eyes downwards towards the garden, and fell into a brown study.


Something new to me, something extraordinarily potent and unfamiliar, had suddenly invaded my soul. The wet ground on which, here and there, a few yellowish stalks and blades of bright-green grass were to be seen; the little rivulets glittering in the sunshine, and sweeping clods of earth and tiny chips of wood along with them; the reddish twigs of the lilac, with their swelling buds, which nodded just beneath the window; the fussy twitterings of birds as they fluttered in the bush below; the blackened fence shining wet from the snow which had lately melted off it; and, most of all, the raw, odorous air and radiant sunlight-all spoke to me, clearly and unmistakably, of something new and beautiful, of something which, though I cannot repeat it here as it was then expressed to me, I will try to reproduce so far as I understood it. Everything spoke to me of beauty, happiness, and virtue-as three things which were both easy and possible for me-and said that no one of them could exist without the other two, since beauty, happiness, and virtue were one. "How did I never come to understand that before?" I cried to myself. "How did I ever manage to be so wicked? Oh, but how good, how happy, I could be-nay, I WILL be-in the future! At once, at once-yes, this very minute-I will become another being, and begin to live differently!" For all that, I continued sitting on the window-sill, continued merely dreaming, and doing nothing. Have you ever, on a summer's day, gone to bed in dull, rainy weather, and, waking just at sunset, opened your eyes and seen through the square space of the window-the space where the linen blind is blowing up and down, and beating its rod upon the window-sill-the rain-soaked, shadowy, purple vista of an avenue of lime-trees, with a damp garden path lit up by the clear, slanting beams of the sun, and then suddenly heard the joyous sounds of bird life in the garden, and seen insects flying to and fro at the open window, and glittering in the sunlight, and smelt the fragrance of the rain-washed air, and thought to yourself, "Am I not ashamed to be lying in bed on such an evening as this?" and, leaping joyously to your feet, gone out into the garden and revelled in all that welter of life? If you have, then you can imagine for yourself the overpowering sensation which was then possessing me.





III. DREAMS


"To-day I will make my confession and purge myself of every sin," I thought to myself. "Nor will I ever commit another one." At this point I recalled all the peccadilloes which most troubled my conscience. "I will go to church regularly every Sunday, as well as read the Gospel at the close of every hour throughout the day. What is more, I will set aside, out of the cheque which I shall receive each month after I have gone to the University, two-and-a-half roubles" (a tenth of my monthly allowance) "for people who are poor but not exactly beggars, yet without letting any one know anything about it. Yes, I will begin to look out for people like that-orphans or old women-at once, yet never tell a soul what I am doing for them.


"Also, I will have a room here of my very own (St. Jerome's, probably), and look after it myself, and keep it perfectly clean. I will never let any one do anything for me, for every one is just a human being like myself. Likewise I will walk every day, not drive, to the University. Even if some one gives me a drozhki [Russian phaeton.] I will sell it, and devote the money to the poor. Everything I will do exactly and always" (what that "always" meant I could not possibly have said, but at least I had a vivid consciousness of its connoting some kind of prudent, moral, and irreproachable life). "I will get up all my lectures thoroughly, and go over all the subjects beforehand, so that at the end of my first course I may come out top and write a thesis. During my second course also I will get up everything beforehand, so that I may soon be transferred to the third course, and at eighteen come out top in the examinations, and receive two gold medals, and go on to be Master of Arts, and Doctor, and the first scholar in Europe. Yes, in all Europe I mean to be the first scholar.-Well, what next?" I asked myself at this point. Suddenly it struck me that dreams of this sort were a form of pride-a sin which I should have to confess to the priest that very evening, so I returned to the original thread of my meditations. "When getting up my lectures I will go to the Vorobievi Gori, [Sparrow Hills-a public park near Moscow.] and choose some spot under a tree, and read my lectures over there. Sometimes I will take with me something to eat-cheese or a pie from Pedotti's, or something of the kind. After that I will sleep a little, and then read some good book or other, or else draw pictures or play on some instrument (certainly I must learn to play the flute). Perhaps SHE too will be walking on the Vorobievi Gori, and will approach me one day and say, 'Who are you?' and I shall look at her, oh, so sadly, and say that I am the son of a priest, and that I am happy only when I am there alone, quite alone. Then she will give me her hand, and say something to me, and sit down beside me. So every day we shall go to the same spot, and be friends together, and I shall kiss her. But no! That would not be right! On the contrary, from this day forward I never mean to look at a woman again. Never, never again do I mean to walk with a girl, nor even to go near one if I can help it. Yet, of course, in three years' time, when I have come of age, I shall marry. Also, I mean to take as much exercise as ever I can, and to do gymnastics every day, so that, when I have turned twenty-five, I shall be stronger even than Rappo. On my first day's training I mean to hold out half a pood [The Pood = 40 Russian pounds.] at arm's length for five minutes, and the next day twenty-one pounds, and the third day twenty-two pounds, and so on, until at last I can hold out four poods in each hand, and be stronger even than a porter. Then, if ever any one should try to insult me or should begin to speak disrespectfully of HER, I shall take him so, by the front of his coat, and lift him up an arshin [The arshin = 2 feet 3 inches.] or two with one hand, and just hold him there, so that he may feel my strength and cease from his conduct. Yet that too would not be right. No, no, it would not matter; I should not hurt him, merely show him that I-"


Let no one blame me because the dreams of my youth were as foolish as those of my childhood and boyhood. I am sure that, even if it be my fate to live to extreme old age and to continue my story with the years, I, an old man of seventy, shall be found dreaming dreams just as impossible and childish as those I am dreaming now. I shall be dreaming of some lovely Maria who loves me, the toothless old man, as she might love a Mazeppa; of some imbecile son who, through some extraordinary chance, has suddenly become a minister of state; of my suddenly receiving a windfall of a million of roubles. I am sure that there exists no human being, no human age, to whom or to which that gracious, consolatory power of dreaming is totally a stranger. Yet, save for the one general feature of magic and impossibility, the dreams of each human being, of each age of man, have their own distinguishing characteristics. At the period upon which I look as having marked the close of my boyhood and the beginning of my youth, four leading sentiments formed the basis of my dreams. The first of those sentiments was love for HER-for an imaginary woman whom I always pictured the same in my dreams, and whom I somehow expected to meet some day and somewhere. This she of mine had a little of Sonetchka in her, a little of Masha as Masha could look when she stood washing linen over the clothes-tub, and a little of a certain woman with pearls round her fair white neck whom I had once seen long, long ago at a theatre, in a box below our own. My second sentiment was a craving for love. I wanted every one to know me and to love me. I wanted to be able to utter my name-Nicola Irtenieff-and at once to see every one thunderstruck at it, and come crowding round me and thanking me for something or another, I hardly knew what. My third sentiment was the expectation of some extraordinary, glorious happiness that was impending-some happiness so strong and assured as to verge upon ecstasy. Indeed, so firmly persuaded was I that very, very soon some unexpected chance would suddenly make me the richest and most famous man in the world that I lived in constant, tremulous expectation of this magic good fortune befalling me. I was always thinking to myself that "IT is beginning," and that I should go on thereafter to attain everything that a man could wish for. Consequently, I was for ever hurrying from place to place, in the belief that "IT" must be "beginning" just where I happened not to be. Lastly, my fourth and principal sentiment of all was abhorrence of myself, mingled with regret-yet a regret so blended with the certain expectation of happiness to which I have referred that it had in it nothing of sorrow. It seemed to me that it would be so easy and natural for me to tear myself away from my past and to remake it-to forget all that had been, and to begin my life, with all its relations, anew-that the past never troubled me, never clung to me at all. I even found a certain pleasure in detesting the past, and in seeing it in a darker light than the true one. This note of regret and of a curious longing for perfection were the chief mental impressions which I gathered from that new stage of my growth-impressions which imparted new principles to my view of myself, of men, and of God's world. O good and consoling voice, which in later days, in sorrowful days when my soul yielded silently to the sway of life's falseness and depravity, so often raised a sudden, bold protest against all iniquity, as well as mercilessly exposed the past, commanded, nay, compelled, me to love only the pure vista of the present, and promised me all that was fair and happy in the future! O good and consoling voice! Surely the day will never come when you are silent?





IV. OUR FAMILY CIRCLE


PAPA was seldom at home that spring. Yet, whenever he was so, he seemed extraordinarily cheerful as he either strummed his favourite pieces on the piano or looked roguishly at us and made jokes about us all, not excluding even Mimi. For instance, he would say that the Tsarevitch himself had seen Mimi at the rink, and fallen so much in love with her that he had presented a petition to the Synod for divorce; or else that I had been granted an appointment as secretary to the Austrian ambassador-a piece of news which he imparted to us with a perfectly grave face. Next, he would frighten Katenka with some spiders (of which she was very much afraid), engage in an animated conversation with our friends Dubkoff and Nechludoff, and tell us and our guests, over and over again, his plans for the year. Although these plans changed almost from day to day, and were for ever contradicting one another, they seemed so attractive that we were always glad to listen to them, and Lubotshka, in particular, would glue her eyes to his face, so as not to lose a single word. One day his plan would be that he should leave my brother and myself at the University, and go and live with Lubotshka in Italy for two years. Next, the plan would be that he should buy an estate on the south coast of the Crimea, and take us for an annual visit there; next, that we should migrate en masse to St. Petersburg; and so forth. Yet, in addition to this unusual cheerfulness of his, another change had come over him of late-a change which greatly surprised me. This was that he had had some fashionable clothes made-an olive-coloured frockcoat, smart trousers with straps at the sides, and a long wadded greatcoat which fitted him to perfection. Often, too, there was a delightful smell of scent about him when he came home from a party-more especially when he had been to see a lady of whom Mimi never spoke but with a sigh and a face that seemed to say: "Poor orphans! How dreadful! It is a good thing that SHE is gone now!" and so on, and so on. From Nicola (for Papa never spoke to us of his gambling) I had learnt that he (Papa) had been very fortunate in play that winter, and so had won an extraordinary amount of money, all of which he had placed in the bank after vowing that he would play no more that spring. Evidently, it was his fear of being unable to resist again doing so that was rendering him anxious to leave for the country as soon as possible. Indeed, he ended by deciding not to wait until I had entered the University, but to take the girls to Petrovskoe immediately after Easter, and to leave Woloda and myself to follow them at a later season.


All that winter, until the opening of spring, Woloda had been inseparable from Dubkoff, while at the same time the pair of them had cooled greatly towards Dimitri. Their chief amusements (so I gathered from conversations overheard) were continual drinking of champagne, sledge-driving past the windows of a lady with whom both of them appeared to be in love, and dancing with her-not at children's parties, either, but at real balls! It was this last fact which, despite our love for one another, placed a vast gulf between Woloda and myself. We felt that the distance between a boy still taking lessons under a tutor and a man who danced at real, grown-up balls was too great to allow of their exchanging mutual ideas. Katenka, too, seemed grown-up now, and read innumerable novels; so that the idea that she would some day be getting married no longer seemed to me a joke. Yet, though she and Woloda were thus grown-up, they never made friends with one another, but, on the contrary, seemed to cherish a mutual contempt. In general, when Katenka was at home alone, nothing but novels amused her, and they but slightly; but as soon as ever a visitor of the opposite sex called, she at once grew lively and amiable, and used her eyes for saying things which I could not then understand. It was only later, when she one day informed me in conversation that the only thing a girl was allowed to indulge in was coquetry-coquetry of the eyes, I mean-that I understood those strange contortions of her features which to every one else had seemed a matter for no surprise at all. Lubotshka also had begun to wear what was almost a long dress-a dress which almost concealed her goose-shaped feet; yet she still remained as ready a weeper as ever. She dreamed now of marrying, not a hussar, but a singer or an instrumentalist, and accordingly applied herself to her music with greater diligence than ever. St. Jerome, who knew that he was going to remain with us only until my examinations were over, and so had obtained for himself a new post in the family of some count or another, now looked with contempt upon the members of our household. He stayed indoors very little, took to smoking cigarettes (then all the rage), and was for ever whistling lively tunes on the edge of a card. Mimi daily grew more and more despondent, as though, now that we were beginning to grow up, she looked for nothing good from any one or anything.


When, on the day of which I am speaking, I went in to luncheon I found only Mimi, Katenka, Lubotshka, and St. Jerome in the dining-room. Papa was away, and Woloda in his own room, doing some preparation work for his examinations in company with a party of his comrades: wherefore he had requested that lunch should be sent to him there. Of late, Mimi had usually taken the head of the table, and as none of us had any respect for her, luncheon had lost most of its refinement and charm. That is to say, the meal was no longer what it had been in Mamma's or our grandmother's time, namely, a kind of rite which brought all the family together at a given hour and divided the day into two halves. We allowed ourselves to come in as late as the second course, to drink wine in tumblers (St. Jerome himself set us the example), to roll about on our chairs, to depart without saying grace, and so on. In fact, luncheon had ceased to be a family ceremony. In the old days at Petrovskoe, every one had been used to wash and dress for the meal, and then to repair to the drawing-room as the appointed hour (two o'clock) drew near, and pass the time of waiting in lively conversation. Just as the clock in the servants' hall was beginning to whirr before striking the hour, Foka would enter with noiseless footsteps, and, throwing his napkin over his arm and assuming a dignified, rather severe expression, would say in loud, measured tones: "Luncheon is ready!" Thereupon, with pleased, cheerful faces, we would form a procession-the elders going first and the juniors following, and, with much rustling of starched petticoats and subdued creaking of boots and shoes-would proceed to the dining-room, where, still talking in undertones, the company would seat themselves in their accustomed places. Or, again, at Moscow, we would all of us be standing before the table ready-laid in the hall, talking quietly among ourselves as we waited for our grandmother, whom the butler, Gabriel, had gone to acquaint with the fact that luncheon was ready. Suddenly the door would open, there would come the faint swish of a dress and the sound of footsteps, and our grandmother-dressed in a mob-cap trimmed with a quaint old lilac bow, and wearing either a smile or a severe expression on her face according as the state of her health inclined her-would issue from her room. Gabriel would hasten to precede her to her arm-chair, the other chairs would make a scraping sound, and, with a feeling as though a cold shiver (the precursor of appetite) were running down one's back, one would seize upon one's damp, starched napkin, nibble a morsel or two of bread, and, rubbing one's hands softly under the table, gaze with eager, radiant impatience at the steaming plates of soup which the butler was beginning to dispense in order of ranks and ages or according to the favour of our grandmother.


On the present occasion, however, I was conscious of neither excitement nor pleasure when I went in to luncheon. Even the mingled chatter of Mimi, the girls, and St. Jerome about the horrible boots of our Russian tutor, the pleated dresses worn by the young Princesses Kornakoff, and so forth (chatter which at any other time would have filled me with a sincerity of contempt which I should have been at no pains to conceal-at all events so far as Lubotshka and Katenka were concerned), failed to shake the benevolent frame of mind into which I had fallen. I was unusually good-humoured that day, and listened to everything with a smile and a studied air of kindness. Even when I asked for the kvas I did so politely, while I lost not a moment in agreeing with St. Jerome when he told me that it was undoubtedly more correct to say "Je peux" than "Je puis." Yet, I must confess to a certain disappointment at finding that no one paid any particular attention to my politeness and good-humour. After luncheon, Lubotshka showed me a paper on which she had written down a list of her sins: upon which I observed that, although the idea was excellent so far as it went, it would be still better for her to write down her sins on her SOUL-"a very different matter."


"Why is it 'a very different matter'?" asked Lubotshka.


"Never mind: that is all right; you do not understand me," and I went upstairs to my room, telling St. Jerome that I was going to work, but in reality purposing to occupy the hour and a half before confession time in writing down a list of my daily tasks and duties which should last me all my life, together with a statement of my life's aim, and the rules by which I meant unswervingly to be guided.





V. MY RULES


I TOOK some sheets of paper, and tried, first of all, to make a list of my tasks and duties for the coming year. The paper needed ruling, but, as I could not find the ruler, I had to use a Latin dictionary instead. The result was that, when I had drawn the pen along the edge of the dictionary and removed the latter, I found that, in place of a line, I had only made an oblong smudge on the paper, since the dictionary was not long enough to reach across it, and the pen had slipped round the soft, yielding corner of the book. Thereupon I took another piece of paper, and, by carefully manipulating the dictionary, contrived to rule what at least RESEMBLED lines. Dividing my duties into three sections-my duties to myself, my duties to my neighbour, and my duties to God-I started to indite a list of the first of those sections, but they seemed to me so numerous, and therefore requiring to be divided into so many species and subdivisions, that I thought I had better first of all write down the heading of "Rules of My Life" before proceeding to their detailed inscription. Accordingly, I proceeded to write "Rules of My Life" on the outside of the six sheets of paper which I had made into a sort of folio, but the words came out in such a crooked and uneven scrawl that for long I sat debating the question, "Shall I write them again?"-for long, sat in agonised contemplation of the ragged handwriting and disfigured title-page. Why was it that all the beauty and clarity which my soul then contained came out so misshapenly on paper (as in life itself) just when I was wishing to apply those qualities to what I was thinking at the moment?


"The priest is here, so please come downstairs and hear his directions," said Nicola as he entered.


Hurriedly concealing my folio under the table-cloth, I looked at myself in the mirror, combed my hair upwards (I imagined this to give me a pensive air), and descended to the divannaia, [Room with divans, or ante-room] where the table stood covered with a cloth and had an ikon and candles placed upon it. Papa entered just as I did, but by another door: whereupon the priest-a grey-headed old monk with a severe, elderly face-blessed him, and Papa kissed his small, squat, wizened hand. I did the same.


"Go and call Woldemar," said Papa. "Where is he? Wait a minute, though. Perhaps he is preparing for the Communion at the University?"


"No, he is with the Prince," said Katenka, and glanced at Lubotshka. Suddenly the latter blushed for some reason or another, and then frowned. Finally, pretending that she was not well, she left the room, and I followed her. In the drawing-room she halted, and began to pencil something fresh on her paper of peccadilloes.


"Well, what new sin have you gone and committed?" I asked.


"Nothing," she replied with another blush. All at once we heard Dimitri's voice raised in the hall as he took his leave of Woloda.


"It seems to me you are always experiencing some new temptation," said Katenka, who had entered the room behind us, and now stood looking at Lubotshka.


What was the matter with my sister I could not conceive, but she was now so agitated that the tears were starting from her eyes. Finally her confusion grew uncontrollable, and vented itself in rage against both herself and Katenka, who appeared to be teasing her.


"Any one can see that you are a FOREIGNER!" she cried (nothing offended Katenka so much as to be called by that term, which is why Lubotshka used it). "Just because I have the secret of which you know," she went on, with anger ringing through her tone, "you purposely go and upset me! Please do understand that it is no joking matter."


"Do you know what she has gone and written on her paper, Nicolinka?" cried Katenka, much infuriated by the term "foreigner." "She has written down that-"


"Oh, I never could have believed that you could be so cruel!" exclaimed Lubotshka, now bursting into open sobbing as she moved away from us. "You chose that moment on purpose! You spend your whole time in trying to make me sin! I'll never go to YOU again for sympathy and advice!"





VI. CONFESSION


With these and other disjointed impressions in my mind, I returned to the divannaia. As soon as every one had reassembled, the priest rose and prepared to read the prayer before confession. The instant that the silence was broken by the stern, expressive voice of the monk as he recited the prayer-and more especially when he addressed to us the words: "Reveal thou all thy sins without shame, concealment, or extenuation, and let thy soul be cleansed before God: for if thou concealest aught, then great will be thy sin"-the same sensation of reverent awe came over me as I had felt during the morning. I even took a certain pleasure in recognising this condition of mine, and strove to preserve it, not only by restraining all other thoughts from entering my brain, but also by consciously exerting myself to feel no other sensation than this same one of reverence.


Papa was the first to go to confession. He remained a long, long time in the room which had belonged to our grandmother, and during that time the rest of us kept silence in the divannaia, or only whispered to one another on the subject of who should precede whom. At length, the voice of the priest again reading the prayer sounded from the doorway, and then Papa's footsteps. The door creaked as he came out, coughing and holding one shoulder higher than the other, in his usual way, and for the moment he did not look at any of us.


"YOU go now, Luba," he said presently, as he gave her cheek a mischievous pinch. "Mind you tell him everything. You are my greatest sinner, you know."


Lubotshka went red and pale by turns, took her memorandum paper out of her apron, replaced it, and finally moved away towards the doorway with her head sunk between her shoulders as though she expected to receive a blow upon it from above. She was not long gone, and when she returned her shoulders were shaking with sobs.


At length-next after the excellent Katenka (who came out of the doorway with a smile on her face)-my turn arrived. I entered the dimly-lighted room with the same vague feeling of awe, the same conscious eagerness to arouse that feeling more and more in my soul, that had possessed me up to the present moment. The priest, standing in front of a reading-desk, slowly turned his face to me.


I was not more than five minutes in the room, but came out from it happy and (so I persuaded myself) entirely cleansed-a new, a morally reborn individual. Despite the fact that the old surroundings of my life now struck me as unfamiliar (even though the rooms, the furniture, and my own figure-would to heavens that I could have changed my outer man for the better in the same way that I believed myself to have changed my inner I-were the same as before), I remained in that comfortable attitude of mine until the very moment of bedtime.


Yet, no sooner had I begun to grow drowsy with the conning over of my sins than in a flash I recollected a particularly shameful sin which I had suppressed at confession time. Instantly the words of the prayer before confession came back to my memory and began sounding in my ears. My peace was gone for ever. "For if thou concealest aught, then great will be thy sin." Each time that the phrase recurred to me I saw myself a sinner for whom no punishment was adequate. Long did I toss from side to side as I considered my position, while expecting every moment to be visited with the divine wrath-to be struck with sudden death, perhaps!-an insupportable thought! Then suddenly the reassuring thought occurred to me: "Why should I not drive out to the monastery when the morning comes, and see the priest again, and make a second confession?" Thereafter I grew calmer.





VII. THE EXPEDITION TO THE MONASTERY


Several times that night I woke in terror at the thought that I might be oversleeping myself, and by six o'clock was out of bed, although the dawn was hardly peeping in at the window. I put on my clothes and boots (all of which were lying tumbled and unbrushed beside the bed, since Nicola, of course had not been in yet to tidy them up), and, without a prayer said or my face washed, emerged, for the first time in my life, into the street ALONE.


Over the way, behind the green roof of a large building, the dim, cold dawn was beginning to blush red. The keen frost of the spring morning which had stiffened the pools and mud and made them crackle under my feet now nipped my face and hands also. Not a cab was to be seen, though I had counted upon one to make the journey out and home the quicker. Only a file of waggons was rumbling along the Arbat Prospect, and a couple of bricklayers talking noisily together as they strode along the pavement. However, after walking a verst or so I began to meet men and women taking baskets to market or going with empty barrels to fetch the day's water supply; until at length, at the cross streets near the Arbat Gate, where a pieman had set up his stall and a baker was just opening his shop, I espied an old cabman shaking himself after indulging in a nap on the box of his be-scratched old blue-painted, hobble-de-hoy wreck of a drozhki. He seemed barely awake as he asked twenty copecks as the fare to the monastery and back, but came to himself a moment afterwards, just as I was about to get in, and, touching up his horse with the spare end of the reins, started to drive off and leave me. "My horse wants feeding," he growled, "I can't take you, barin.[Sir]"


With some difficulty and a promise of FORTY copecks I persuaded him to stop. He eyed me narrowly as he pulled up, but nevertheless said: "Very well. Get in, barin." I must confess that I had some qualms lest he should drive me to a quiet corner somewhere, and then rob me, but I caught hold of the collar of his ragged driving-coat, close to where his wrinkled neck showed sadly lean above his hunched-up back, and climbed on to the blue-painted, curved, rickety scat. As we set off along Vozdvizhenka Street, I noticed that the back of the drozhki was covered with a strip of the same greenish material as that of which his coat was made. For some reason or another this reassured me, and I no longer felt nervous of being taken to a quiet spot and robbed.


The sun had risen to a good height, and was gilding the cupolas of the churches, when we arrived at the monastery. In the shade the frost had not yet given, but in the open roadway muddy rivulets of water were coursing along, and it was through fast-thawing mire that the horse went clip-clopping his way. Alighting, and entering the monastery grounds, I inquired of the first monk whom I met where I could find the priest whom I was seeking.


"His cell is over there," replied the monk as he stopped a moment and pointed towards a little building up to which a flight of steps led.


"I respectfully thank you," I said, and then fell to wondering what all the monks (who at that moment began to come filing out of the church) must be thinking of me as they glanced in my direction. I was neither a grown-up nor a child, while my face was unwashed, my hair unbrushed, my clothes tumbled, and my boots unblacked and muddy. To what class of persons were the brethren assigning me-for they stared at me hard enough? Nevertheless I proceeded in the direction which the young priest had pointed out to me.


An old man with bushy grey eyebrows and a black cassock met me on the narrow path to the cells, and asked me what I wanted. For a brief moment I felt inclined to say "Nothing," and then run back to the drozhki and drive away home; but, for all its beetling brows, the face of the old man inspired confidence, and I merely said that I wished to see the priest (whom I named).


"Very well, young sir; I will take you to him," said the old man as he turned round. Clearly he had guessed my errand at a stroke. "The father is at matins at this moment, but he will soon be back," and, opening a door, the old man led me through a neat hall and corridor, all lined with clean matting, to a cell.


"Please to wait here," he added, and then, with a kind, reassuring glance, departed.


The little room in which I found myself was of the smallest possible dimensions, but extremely neat and clean. Its furniture only consisted of a small table (covered with a cloth, and placed between two equally small casement-windows, in which stood two pots of geraniums), a stand of ikons, with a lamp suspended in front of them, a bench, and two chairs. In one corner hung a wall clock, with little flowers painted on its dial, and brass weights to its chains, while upon two nails driven into a screen (which, fastened to the ceiling with whitewashed pegs, probably concealed the bed) hung a couple of cassocks. The windows looked out upon a whitewashed wall, about two arshins distant, and in the space between them there grew a small lilac-bush.


Not a sound penetrated from without, and in the stillness the measured, friendly stroke of the clock's pendulum seemed to beat quite loudly. The instant that I found myself alone in this calm retreat all other thoughts and recollections left my head as completely as though they had never been there, and I subsided into an inexpressibly pleasing kind of torpor. The rusty alpaca cassocks with their frayed linings, the worn black leather bindings of the books with their metal clasps, the dull-green plants with their carefully watered leaves and soil, and, above all, the abrupt, regular beat of the pendulum, all spoke to me intimately of some new life hitherto unknown to me-a life of unity and prayer, of calm, restful happiness.


"The months, the years, may pass," I thought to myself, "but he remains alone-always at peace, always knowing that his conscience is pure before God, that his prayer will be heard by Him." For fully half an hour I sat on that chair, trying not to move, not even to breathe loudly, for fear I should mar the harmony of the sounds which were telling me so much, and ever the pendulum continued to beat the same-now a little louder to the right, now a little softer to the left.





VIII. THE SECOND CONFESSION


Suddenly the sound of the priest's footsteps roused me from this reverie.


"Good morning to you," he said as he smoothed his grey hair with his hand. "What can I do for you?"


I besought him to give me his blessing, and then kissed his small, wizened hand with great fervour. After I had explained to him my errand he said nothing, but moved away towards the ikons, and began to read the exhortation: whereupon I overcame my shame, and told him all that was in my heart. Finally he laid his hands upon my head, and pronounced in his even, resonant voice the words: "My son, may the blessing of Our Heavenly Father be upon thee, and may He always preserve thee in faithfulness, loving-kindness, and meekness. Amen."


I was entirely happy. Tears of joy coursed down my face as I kissed the hem of his cassock and then raised my head again. The face of the priest expressed perfect tranquillity. So keenly did I feel the joy of reconciliation that, fearing in any way to dispel it, I took hasty leave of him, and, without looking to one side of me or the other (in order that my attention might not be distracted), left the grounds and re-entered the rickety, battered drozhki. Yet the joltings of the vehicle and the variety of objects which flitted past my eyes soon dissipated that feeling, and I became filled with nothing but the idea that the priest must have thought me the finest-spirited young man he had ever met, or ever would meet, in the whole of his life. Indeed, I reflected, there could not be many such as myself-of that I felt sure, and the conviction produced in me the kind of complacency which craves for self-communication to another. I had a great desire to unbosom myself to some one, and as there was no one else to speak to, I addressed myself to the cabman.


"Was I very long gone?" I asked him.


"No, not very long," he replied. He seemed to have grown more cheerful under the influence of the sunshine. "Yet now it is a good while past my horse's feeding-time. You see, I am a night cabman."


"Well, I only seemed to myself to be about a minute," I went on. "Do you know what I went there for?" I added, changing my seat to the well of the drozhki, so as to be nearer the driver.


"What business is it of mine? I drive a fare where he tells me to go," he replied.


"Yes, but, all the same, what do you think I went there for?" I persisted.


"I expect some one you know is going to be buried there, so you went to see about a plot for the grave."


"No, no, my friend. Still, DO you know what I went there for?"


"No, of course I cannot tell, barin," he repeated.


His voice seemed to me so kind that I decided to edify him by relating the cause of my expedition, and even telling him of the feeling which I had experienced.


"Shall I tell you?" I said. "Well, you see,"-and I told him all, as well as inflicted upon him a description of my fine sentiments. To this day I blush at the recollection.


"Well, well!" said the cabman non-committally, and for a long while afterwards he remained silent and motionless, except that at intervals he adjusted the skirt of his coat each time that it was jerked from beneath his leg by the joltings of his huge boot on the drozhki's step. I felt sure that he must be thinking of me even as the priest had done. That is to say, that he must be thinking that no such fine-spirited young man existed in the world as I. Suddenly he shot at me:


"I tell you what, barin. You ought to keep God's affairs to yourself."


"What?" I said.


"Those affairs of yours-they are God's business," he repeated, mumbling the words with his toothless lips.


"No, he has not understood me," I thought to myself, and said no more to him till we reached home.


Although it was not my original sense of reconciliation and reverence, but only a sort of complacency at having experienced such a sense, that lasted in me during the drive home (and that, too, despite the distraction of the crowds of people who now thronged the sunlit streets in every direction), I had no sooner reached home than even my spurious complacency was shattered, for I found that I had not the forty copecks wherewith to pay the cabman! To the butler, Gabriel, I already owed a small debt, and he refused to lend me any more. Seeing me twice run across the courtyard in quest of the money, the cabman must have divined the reason, for, leaping from his drozhki, he-notwithstanding that he had seemed so kind-began to bawl aloud (with an evident desire to punch my head) that people who do not pay for their cab-rides are swindlers.


None of my family were yet out of bed, so that, except for the servants, there was no one from whom to borrow the forty copecks. At length, on my most sacred, sacred word of honour to repay (a word to which, as I could see from his face, he did not altogether trust), Basil so far yielded to his fondness for me and his remembrance of the many services I had done him as to pay the cabman. Thus all my beautiful feelings ended in smoke. When I went upstairs to dress for church and go to Communion with the rest I found that my new clothes had not yet come home, and so I could not wear them. Then I sinned headlong. Donning my other suit, I went to Communion in a sad state of mental perturbation, and filled with complete distrust of all my finer impulses.





IX. HOW I PREPARED MYSELF FOR THE EXAMINATIONS


On the Thursday in Easter week Papa, my sister, Katenka, and Mimi went away into the country, and no one remained in my grandmother's great house but Woloda, St. Jerome, and myself. The frame of mind which I had experienced on the day of my confession and during my subsequent expedition to the monastery had now completely passed away, and left behind it only a dim, though pleasing, memory which daily became more and more submerged by the impressions of this emancipated existence.


The folio endorsed "Rules of My Life" lay concealed beneath a pile of school-books. Although the idea of the possibility of framing rules, for every occasion in my life and always letting myself be guided by them still pleased me (since it appeared an idea at once simple and magnificent, and I was determined to make practical application of it), I seemed somehow to have forgotten to put it into practice at once, and kept deferring doing so until such and such a moment. At the same time, I took pleasure in the thought that every idea which now entered my head could be allotted precisely to one or other of my three sections of tasks and duties-those for or to God, those for or to my neighbour, and those for or to myself. "I can always refer everything to them," I said to myself, "as well as the many, many other ideas which occur to me on one subject or another." Yet at this period I often asked myself, "Was I better and more truthful when I only believed in the power of the human intellect, or am I more so now, when I am losing the faculty of developing that power, and am in doubt both as to its potency and as to its importance?" To this I could return no positive answer.


The sense of freedom, combined with the spring-like feeling of vague expectation to which I have referred already, so unsettled me that I could not keep myself in hand-could make none but the sorriest of preparations for my University ordeal. Thus I was busy in the schoolroom one morning, and fully aware that I must work hard, seeing that to-morrow was the day of my examination in a subject of which I had the two whole questions still to read up; yet no sooner had a breath of spring come wafted through the window than I felt as though there were something quite different that I wished to recall to my memory. My hands laid down my book, my feet began to move of themselves, and to set me walking up and down the room, and my head felt as though some one had suddenly touched in it a little spring and set some machine in motion-so easily and swiftly and naturally did all sorts of pleasing fancies of which I could catch no more than the radiancy begin coursing through it. Thus one hour, two hours, elapsed unperceived. Even if I sat down determinedly to my book, and managed to concentrate my whole attention upon what I was reading, suddenly there would sound in the corridor the footsteps of a woman and the rustle of her dress. Instantly everything would escape my mind, and I would find it impossible to remain still any longer, however much I knew that the woman could only be either Gasha or my grandmother's old sewing-maid moving about in the corridor. "Yet suppose it should be SHE all at once?" I would say to myself. "Suppose IT is beginning now, and I were to lose it?" and, darting out into the corridor, I would find, each time, that it was only Gasha. Yet for long enough afterwards I could not recall my attention to my studies. A little spring had been touched in my head, and a strange mental ferment started afresh. Again, that evening I was sitting alone beside a tallow candle in my room. Suddenly I looked up for a moment-to snuff the candle, or to straighten myself in my chair-and at once became aware of nothing but the darkness in the corners and the blank of the open doorway. Then, I also became conscious how still the house was, and felt as though I could do nothing else than go on listening to that stillness, and gazing into the black square of that open doorway, and gradually sinking into a brown study as I sat there without moving. At intervals, however, I would get up, and go downstairs, and begin wandering through the empty rooms. Once I sat a long while in the small drawing-room as I listened to Gasha playing "The Nightingale" (with two fingers) on the piano in the large drawing-room, where a solitary candle burned. Later, when the moon was bright, I felt obliged to get out of bed and to lean out of the window, so that I might gaze into the garden, and at the lighted roof of the Shaposnikoff mansion, the straight tower of our parish church, and the dark shadows of the fence and the lilac-bush where they lay black upon the path. So long did I remain there that, when I at length returned to bed, it was ten o'clock in the morning before I could open my eyes again.


In short, had it not been for the tutors who came to give me lessons, as well as for St. Jerome (who at intervals, and very grudgingly, applied a spur to my self-conceit) and, most of all, for the desire to figure as "clever" in the eyes of my friend Nechludoff (who looked upon distinctions in University examinations as a matter of first-rate importance)-had it not been for all these things, I say, the spring and my new freedom would have combined to make me forget everything I had ever learnt, and so to go through the examinations to no purpose whatsoever.





X. THE EXAMINATION IN HISTORY


ON the 16th of April I entered, for the first time, and under the wing of St. Jerome, the great hall of the University. I had driven there with St. Jerome in our smart phaeton and wearing the first frockcoat of my life, while the whole of my other clothes-even down to my socks and linen-were new and of a grander sort. When a Swiss waiter relieved me of my greatcoat, and I stood before him in all the beauty of my attire, I felt almost sorry to dazzle him so. Yet I had no sooner entered the bright, carpeted, crowded hall, and caught sight of hundreds of other young men in gymnasium [The Russian gymnasium = the English grammar or secondary school.] uniforms or frockcoats (of whom but a few threw me an indifferent glance), as well as, at the far end, of some solemn-looking professors who were seated on chairs or walking carelessly about among some tables, than I at once became disabused of the notion that I should attract the general attention, while the expression of my face, which at home, and even in the vestibule of the University buildings, had denoted only a kind of vague regret that I should have to present so important and distinguished an appearance, became exchanged for an expression of the most acute nervousness and dejection. However, I soon picked up again when I perceived sitting at one of the desks a very badly, untidily dressed gentleman who, though not really old, was almost entirely grey. He was occupying a seat quite at the back of the hall and a little apart from the rest, so I hastened to sit down beside him, and then fell to looking at the candidates for examination, and to forming conclusions about them. Many different figures and faces were there to be seen there; yet, in my opinion, they all seemed to divide themselves into three classes. First of all, there were youths like myself, attending for examination in the company of their parents or tutors. Among such I could see the youngest Iwin (accompanied by Frost) and Ilinka Grap (accompanied by his old father). All youths of this class wore the early beginnings of beards, sported prominent linen, sat quietly in their places, and never opened the books and notebooks which they had brought with them, but gazed at the professors and examination tables with ill-concealed nervousness. The second class of candidates were young men in gymnasium uniforms. Several of them had attained to the dignity of shaving, and most of them knew one another. They talked loudly, called the professors by their names and surnames, occupied themselves in getting their subjects ready, exchanged notebooks, climbed over desks, fetched themselves pies and sandwiches from the vestibule, and ate them then and there merely lowering their heads to the level of a desk for propriety's sake. Lastly, the third class of candidates (which seemed a small one) consisted of oldish men-some of them in frock coats, but the majority in jackets, and with no linen to be seen. These preserved a serious demeanour, sat by themselves, and had a very dingy look. The man who had afforded me consolation by being worse dressed than myself belonged to this class. Leaning forward upon his elbows, and running his fingers through his grey, dishevelled hair as he read some book or another, he had thrown me only a momentary glance-and that not a very friendly one-from a pair of glittering eyes. Then, as I sat down, he had frowned grimly, and stuck a shiny elbow out to prevent me from coming any nearer. On the other hand, the gymnasium men were over-sociable, and I felt rather afraid of their proximity. One of them did not hesitate to thrust a book into my hands, saying, "Give that to that fellow over there, will you?" while another of them exclaimed as he pushed past me, "By your leave, young fellow!" and a third made use of my shoulder as a prop when he wanted to scramble over a desk. All this seemed to me a little rough and unpleasant, for I looked upon myself as immensely superior to such fellows, and considered that they ought not to treat me with such familiarity. At length, the names began to be called out. The gymnasium men walked out boldly, answered their questions (apparently) well, and came back looking cheerful. My own class of candidates were much more diffident, as well as appeared to answer worse. Of the oldish men, some answered well, and some very poorly. When the name "Semenoff" was called out my neighbour with the grey hair and glittering eyes jostled me roughly, stepped over my legs, and went up to one of the examiners' tables. It was plain from the aspect of the professors that he answered well and with assurance, yet, on returning to his place, he did not wait to see where he was placed on the list, but quietly collected his notebooks and departed. Several times I shuddered at the sound of the voice calling out the names, but my turn did not come in exact alphabetical order, though already names had begun to be called beginning with "I."


"Ikonin and Tenieff!" suddenly shouted some one from the professors' end of the hall.


"Go on, Ikonin! You are being called," said a tall, red-faced gymnasium student near me. "But who is this BARtenieff or MORtenieff or somebody? I don't know him."


"It must be you," whispered St. Jerome loudly in my ear.


"MY name is IRtenieff," I said to the red-faced student. "Do you think that was the name they were calling out?"


"Yes. Why on earth don't you go up?" he replied. "Lord, what a dandy!" he added under his breath, yet not so quietly but that I failed to hear the words as they came wafted to me from below the desk. In front of me walked Ikonin-a tall young man of about twenty-five, who was one of those whom I had classed as oldish men. He wore a tight brown frockcoat and a blue satin tie, and had wisps of flaxen hair carefully brushed over his collar in the peasant style. His appearance had already caught my attention when we were sitting among the desks, and had given me an impression that he was not bad-looking. Also I had noticed that he was very talkative. Yet what struck me most about his physiognomy was a tuft, of queer red hairs which he had under his chin, as well as, still more, a strange habit of continually unbuttoning his waistcoat and scratching his chest under his shirt.


Behind the table to which we were summoned sat three Professors, none of whom acknowledged our salutations. A youngish professor was shuffling a bundle of tickets like a pack of cards; another one, with a star on his frockcoat, was gazing hard at a gymnasium student, who was repeating something at great speed about Charles the Great, and adding to each of his sentences the word nakonetz [= the English colloquialism "you know."] while a third one-an old man in spectacles-proceeded to bend his head down as we approached, and, peering at us through his glasses, pointed silently to the tickets. I felt his glance go over both myself and Ikonin, and also felt sure that something about us had displeased him (perhaps it was Ikonin's red hairs), for, after taking another look at the pair of us, he motioned impatiently to us to be quick in taking our tickets. I felt vexed and offended-firstly, because none of the professors had responded to our bows, and, secondly, because they evidently coupled me with Ikonin under the one denomination of "candidates," and so were condemning me in advance on account of Ikonin's red hairs. I took my ticket boldly and made ready to answer, but the professor's eye passed over my head and alighted upon Ikonin. Accordingly, I occupied myself in reading my ticket. The questions printed on it were all familiar to me, so, as I silently awaited my turn, I gazed at what was passing near me, Ikonin seemed in no way diffident-rather the reverse, for, in reaching for his ticket, he threw his body half-way across the table. Then he gave his long hair a shake, and rapidly conned over what was written on his ticket. I think he had just opened his mouth to answer when the professor with the star dismissed the gymnasium student with a word of commendation, and then turned and looked at Ikonin. At once the latter seemed taken back, and stopped short. For about two minutes there was a dead silence.


"Well?" said the professor in the spectacles.


Once more Ikonin opened his mouth, and once more remained silent.


"Come! You are not the only one to be examined. Do you mean to answer or do you not?" said the youngish professor, but Ikonin did not even look at him. He was gazing fixedly at his ticket and uttered not a single word. The professor in the spectacles scanned him through his glasses, then over them, then without them (for, indeed, he had time to take them off, to wipe their lenses carefully, and to replace them). Still not a word from Ikonin. All at once, however, a smile spread itself over his face, and he gave his long hair another shake. Next he reached across the table, laid down his ticket, looked at each of the professors in turn and then at myself, and finally, wheeling round on his heels, made a gesture with his hand and returned to the desks. The professors stared blankly at one another.


"Bless the fellow!" said the youngish professor. "What an original!"


It was now my turn to move towards the table, but the professors went on talking in undertones among themselves, as though they were unaware of my presence. At the moment, I felt firmly persuaded that the three of them were engrossed solely with the question of whether I should merely PASS the examination or whether I should pass it WELL, and that it was only swagger which made them pretend that they did not care either way, and behave as though they had not seen me.


When at length the professor in the spectacles turned to me with an air of indifference, and invited me to answer, I felt hurt, as I looked at him, to think that he should have so undeceived me: wherefore I answered brokenly at first. In time, however, things came easier to my tongue, and, inasmuch as all the questions bore upon Russian history (which I knew thoroughly), I ended with eclat, and even went so far, in my desire to convince the professors that I was not Ikonin and that they must not in anyway confound me with him, as to offer to draw a second ticket. The professor in the spectacles, however, merely nodded his head, said "That will do," and marked something in his register. On returning to the desks, I at once learnt from the gymnasium men (who somehow seemed to know everything) that I had been placed fifth.





XI. MY EXAMINATION IN MATHEMATICS


AT the subsequent examinations, I made several new acquaintances in addition to the Graps (whom I considered unworthy of my notice) and Iwin (who for some reason or other avoided me). With some of these new friends I grew quite intimate, and even Ikonin plucked up sufficient courage to inform me, when we next met, that he would have to undergo re-examination in history-the reason for his failure this time being that the professor of that faculty had never forgiven him for last year's examination, and had, indeed, "almost killed" him for it. Semenoff (who was destined for the same faculty as myself-the faculty of mathematics) avoided every one up to the very close of the examinations. Always leaning forward upon his elbows and running his fingers through his grey hair, he sat silent and alone. Nevertheless, when called up for examination in mathematics (he had no companion to accompany him), he came out second. The first place was taken by a student from the first gymnasium-a tall, dark, lanky, pale-faced fellow who wore a black folded cravat and had his cheeks and forehead dotted all over with pimples. His hands were shapely and slender, but their nails were so bitten to the quick that the finger-ends looked as though they had been tied round with strips of thread. All this seemed to me splendid, and wholly becoming to a student of the first gymnasium. He spoke to every one, and we all made friends with him. To me in particular his walk, his every movement, his lips, his dark eyes, all seemed to have in them something extraordinary and magnetic.


On the day of the mathematical examination I arrived earlier than usual at the hall. I knew the syllabus well, yet there were two questions in the algebra which my tutor had managed to pass over, and which were therefore quite unknown to me. If I remember rightly, they were the Theory of Combinations and Newton's Binomial. I seated myself on one of the back benches and pored over the two questions, but, inasmuch as I was not accustomed to working in a noisy room, and had even less time for preparation than I had anticipated, I soon found it difficult to take in all that I was reading.


"Here he is. This way, Nechludoff," said Woloda's familiar voice behind me.


I turned and saw my brother and Dimitri-their gowns unbuttoned, and their hands waving a greeting to me-threading their way through the desks. A moment's glance would have sufficed to show any one that they were second-course students-persons to whom the University was as a second home. The mere look of their open gowns expressed at once disdain for the "mere candidate" and a knowledge that the "mere candidate's" soul was filled with envy and admiration of them. I was charmed to think that every one near me could now see that I knew two real second-course students: wherefore I hastened to meet them half-way.


Woloda, of course, could not help vaunting his superiority a little.


"Hullo, you smug!" he said. "Haven't you been examined yet?"


"No."


"Well, what are you reading? Aren't you sufficiently primed?"


"Yes, except in two questions. I don't understand them at all."


"Eh, what?"-and Woloda straightway began to expound to me Newton's Binomial, but so rapidly and unintelligibly that, suddenly reading in my eyes certain misgivings as to the soundness of his knowledge, he glanced also at Dimitri's face. Clearly, he saw the same misgivings there, for he blushed hotly, though still continuing his involved explanations.


"No; hold on, Woloda, and let me try and do it," put in Dimitri at length, with a glance at the professors' corner as he seated himself beside me.


I could see that my friend was in the best of humours. This was always the case with him when he was satisfied with himself, and was one of the things in him which I liked best. Inasmuch as he knew mathematics well and could speak clearly, he hammered the question so thoroughly into my head that I can remember it to this day. Hardly had he finished when St. Jerome said to me in a loud whisper, "A vous, Nicolas," and I followed Ikonin out from among the desks without having had an opportunity of going through the OTHER question of which I was ignorant. At the table which we now approached were seated two professors, while before the blackboard stood a gymnasium student, who was working some formula aloud, and knocking bits off the end of the chalk with his too vigorous strokes. He even continued writing after one of the Professors had said to him "Enough!" and bidden us draw our tickets. "Suppose I get the Theory of Combinations?" I thought to myself as my tremulous fingers took a ticket from among a bundle wrapped in torn paper. Ikonin, for his part, reached across the table with the same assurance, and the same sidelong movement of his whole body, as he had done at the previous examination. Taking the topmost ticket without troubling to make further selection, he just glanced at it, and then frowned angrily.


"I always draw this kind of thing," he muttered.


I looked at mine. Horrors! It was the Theory of Combinations!


"What have you got?" whispered Ikonin at this point.


I showed him.


"Oh, I know that," he said.


"Will you make an exchange, then?"


"No. Besides, it would be all the same for me if I did," he contrived to whisper just as the professor called us up to the blackboard. "I don't feel up to anything to-day."


"Then everything is lost!" I thought to myself. Instead of the brilliant result which I had anticipated I should be for ever covered with shame-more so even than Ikonin! Suddenly, under the very eyes of the professor, Ikonin turned to me, snatched my ticket out of my hands, and handed me his own. I looked at his ticket. It was Newton's Binomial!


The professor was a youngish man, with a pleasant, clever expression of face-an effect chiefly due to the prominence of the lower part of his forehead.


"What? Are you exchanging tickets, gentlemen?" he said.


"No. He only gave me his to look at, professor," answered Ikonin-and, sure enough, the word "professor" was the last word that he uttered there. Once again, he stepped backwards towards me from the table, once again he looked at each of the professors in turn and then at myself, once again he smiled faintly, and once again he shrugged his shoulders as much as to say, "It is no use, my good sirs." Then he returned to the desks. Subsequently, I learnt that this was the third year he had vainly attempted to matriculate.


I answered my question well, for I had just read it up; and the professor, kindly informing me that I had done even better than was required, placed me fifth.





XII. MY EXAMINATION IN LATIN


All went well until my examination in Latin. So far, a gymnasium student stood first on the list, Semenoff second, and myself third. On the strength of it I had begun to swagger a little, and to think that, for all my youth, I was not to be despised.


From the first day of the examinations, I had heard every one speak with awe of the Professor of Latin, who appeared to be some sort of a wild beast who battened on the financial ruin of young men (of those, that is to say, who paid their own fees) and spoke only in the Greek and Latin tongues. However, St. Jerome, who had coached me in Latin, spoke encouragingly, and I myself thought that, since I could translate Cicero and certain parts of Horace without the aid of a lexicon, I should do no worse than the rest. Yet things proved otherwise. All the morning the air had been full of rumours concerning the tribulations of candidates who had gone up before me: rumours of how one young fellow had been accorded a nought, another one a single mark only, a third one greeted with abuse and threatened with expulsion, and so forth. Only Semenoff and the first gymnasium student had, as usual, gone up quietly, and returned to their seats with five marks credited to their names. Already I felt a prescience of disaster when Ikonin and myself found ourselves summoned to the little table at which the terrible professor sat in solitary grandeur.


The terrible professor turned out to be a little thin, bilious-looking man with hair long and greasy and a face expressive of extraordinary sullenness. Handing Ikonin a copy of Cicero's Orations, he bid him translate. To my great astonishment Ikonin not only read off some of the Latin, but even managed to construe a few lines to the professor's prompting. At the same time, conscious of my superiority over such a feeble companion, I could not help smiling a little, and even looking rather contemptuous, when it came to a question of analysis, and Ikonin, as on previous occasions, plunged into a silence which promised never to end. I had hoped to please the professor by that knowing, slightly sarcastic smile of mine, but, as a matter of fact, I contrived to do quite the contrary.


"Evidently you know better than he, since you are laughing," he said to me in bad Russian. "Well, we shall see. Tell me the answer, then."


Later I learnt that the professor was Ikonin's guardian, and that Ikonin actually lived with him. I lost no time in answering the question in syntax which had been put to Ikonin, but the professor only pulled a long face and turned away from me.


"Well, your turn will come presently, and then we shall see how much you know," he remarked, without looking at me, but proceeding to explain to Ikonin the point on which he had questioned him.


"That will do," he added, and I saw him put down four marks to Ikonin in his register. "Come!" I thought to myself. "He cannot be so strict after all."


When Ikonin had taken his departure the professor spent fully five minutes-five minutes which seemed to me five hours-in setting his books and tickets in order, in blowing his nose, in adjusting and sprawling about on his chair, in gazing down the hall, and in looking here, there, and everywhere-in doing everything, in fact, except once letting his eye rest upon me. Yet even that amount of dissimulation did not seem to satisfy him, for he next opened a book, and pretended to read it, for all the world as though I were not there at all. I moved a little nearer him, and gave a cough.


"Ah, yes! You too, of course! Well, translate me something," he remarked, handing me a book of some kind. "But no; you had better take this," and, turning over the leaves of a Horace, he indicated to me a passage which I should never have imagined possible of translation.


"I have not prepared this," I said.


"Oh! Then you only wish to answer things which you have got by heart, do you? Indeed? No, no; translate me that."


I started to grope for the meaning of the passage, but each questioning look which I threw at the professor was met by a shake of the head, a profound sigh, and an exclamation of "No, no!" Finally he banged the book to with such a snap that he caught his finger between the covers. Angrily releasing it, he handed me a ticket containing questions in grammar, and, flinging himself back in his chair, maintained a menacing silence. I should have tried to answer the questions had not the expression of his face so clogged my tongue that nothing seemed to come from it right.


"No, no! That's not it at all!" he suddenly exclaimed in his horrible accent as he altered his posture to one of leaning forward upon the table and playing with the gold signet-ring which was nearly slipping from the little finger of his left hand. "That is not the way to prepare for serious study, my good sir. Fellows like yourself think that, once they have a gown and a blue collar to their backs, they have reached the summit of all things and become students. No, no, my dear sir. A subject needs to be studied FUNDAMENTALLY," and so on, and so on.


During this speech (which was uttered with a clipped sort of intonation) I went on staring dully at his lowered eyelids. Beginning with a fear lest I should lose my place as third on the list, I went on to fear lest I should pass at all. Next, these feelings became reinforced by a sense of injustice, injured self-respect, and unmerited humiliation, while the contempt which I felt for the professor as some one not quite (according to my ideas) "comme il faut"-a fact which I deduced from the shortness, strength, and roundness of his nails-flared up in me more and more and turned all my other feelings to sheer animosity. Happening, presently, to glance at me, and to note my quivering lips and tear-filled eyes, he seemed to interpret my agitation as a desire to be accorded my marks and dismissed: wherefore, with an air of relenting, he said (in the presence of another professor who had just approached):


"Very well; I will accord you a 'pass'" (which signified two marks), "although you do not deserve it. I do so simply out of consideration for your youth, and in the hope that, when you begin your University career, you will learn to be less light-minded."


The concluding phrase, uttered in the hearing of the other professor (who at once turned his eyes upon me, as though remarking, "There! You see, young man!") completed my discomfiture. For a moment, a mist swam before my eyes-a mist in which the terrible professor seemed to be far away, as he sat at his table while for an instant a wild idea danced through my brain. "What if I DID do such a thing?" I thought to myself. "What would come of it?" However, I did not do the thing in question, but, on the contrary, made a bow of peculiar reverence to each of the professors, and with a slight smile on my face-presumably the same smile as that with which I had derided Ikonin-turned away from the table.


This piece of unfairness affected me so powerfully at the time that, had I been a free agent, I should have attended for no more examinations. My ambition was gone (since now I could not possibly be third), and I therefore let the other examinations pass without any exertion, or even agitation, on my part. In the general list I still stood fourth, but that failed to interest me, since I had reasoned things out to myself, and come to the conclusion that to try for first place was stupid-even "bad form:" that, in fact, it was better to pass neither very well nor very badly, as Woloda had done. This attitude I decided to maintain throughout the whole of my University career, notwithstanding that it was the first point on which my opinion had differed from that of my friend Dimitri.


Yet, to tell the truth, my thoughts were already turning towards a uniform, a "mortar-board," and the possession of a drozhki of my own, a room of my own, and, above all, freedom of my own. And certainly the prospect had its charm.





XIII. I BECOME GROWN-UP


When, on May 8th, I returned home from the final, the divinity, examination, I found my acquaintance, the foreman from Rozonoff's, awaiting me. He had called once before to fit me for my gown, as well as for a tunic of glossy black cloth (the lapels of which were, on that occasion, only sketched in chalk), but to-day he had come to bring me the clothes in their finished state, with their gilt buttons wrapped in tissue paper.


Donning the garments, and finding them splendid (notwithstanding that St. Jerome assured me that the back of the tunic wrinkled badly), I went downstairs with a complacent smile which I was powerless to banish from my face, and sought Woloda, trying the while to affect unconsciousness of the admiring looks of the servants, who came darting out of the hall and corridor to gaze upon me with ravished eyes. Gabriel, the butler, overtook me in the salle, and, after congratulating me with much empressement, handed me, according to instructions from my father, four bank-notes, as well as informed me that Papa had also given orders that, from that day forth, the groom Kuzma, the phaeton, and the bay horse Krassavchik were to be entirely at my disposal. I was so overjoyed at this not altogether expected good-fortune that I could no longer feign indifference in Gabriel's presence, but, flustered and panting, said the first thing which came into my head ("Krassavchik is a splendid trotter," I think it was). Then, catching sight of the various heads protruding from the doors of the hall and corridor, I felt that I could bear no more, and set off running at full speed across the salle, dressed as I was in the new tunic, with its shining gilt buttons. Just as I burst into Woloda's room, I heard behind me the voices of Dubkoff and Nechludoff, who had come to congratulate me, as well as to propose a dinner somewhere and the drinking of much champagne in honour of my matriculation. Dimitri informed me that, though he did not care for champagne, he would nevertheless join us that evening and drink my health, while Dubkoff remarked that I looked almost like a colonel, and Woloda omitted to congratulate me at all, merely saying in an acid way that he supposed we should now-i.e. in two days time-be off into the country. The truth was that Woloda, though pleased at my matriculation, did not altogether like my becoming as grown-up as himself. St. Jerome, who also joined us at this moment, said in a very pompous manner that his duties were now ended, and that, although he did not know whether they had been well done or ill, at least he had done his best, and must depart to-morrow to his Count's. In replying to their various remarks I could feel, in spite of myself, a pleased, agreeable, faintly self-sufficient smile playing over my countenance, as well as could remark that that smile, communicated itself to those to whom I was speaking.


So here was I without a tutor, yet with my own private drozhki, my name printed on the list of students, a sword and belt of my own, and a chance of an occasional salute from officials! In short, I was grownup and, I suppose, happy.


Finally, we arranged to go out and dine at five o'clock, but since Woloda presently went off to Dubkoff's, and Dimitri disappeared in his usual fashion (saying that there was something he MUST do before dinner), I was left with two whole hours still at my disposal. For a time I walked through the rooms of the house, and looked at myself in all the mirrors-firstly with the tunic buttoned, then with it unbuttoned, and lastly with only the top button fastened. Each time it looked splendid. Eventually, though anxious not to show any excess of delight, I found myself unable to refrain from crossing over to the coach-house and stables to gaze at Krassovchik, Kuzma, and the drozhki. Then I returned and once more began my tour of the rooms, where I looked at myself in all the mirrors as before, and counted my money over in my pocket-my face smiling happily the while. Yet not an hour had elapsed before I began to feel slightly ennuye-to feel a shade of regret that no one was present to see me in my splendid position. I began to long for life and movement, and so sent out orders for the drozhki to be got ready, since I had made up my mind to drive to the Kuznetski Bridge and make some purchases.


In this connection I recalled how, after matriculating, Woloda had gone and bought himself a lithograph of horses by Victor Adam and some pipes and tobacco: wherefore I felt that I too must do the same. Amid glances showered upon me from every side, and with the sunlight reflected from my buttons, cap-badge, and sword, I drove to the Kuznetski Bridge, where, halting at a Picture shop, I entered it with my eyes looking to every side. It was not precisely horses by Adam which I meant to buy, since I did not wish to be accused of too closely imitating Woloda; wherefore, out of shame for causing the obsequious shopmen such agitation as I appeared to do, I made a hasty selection, and pitched upon a water-colour of a woman's head which I saw displayed in the window-price twenty roubles. Yet no sooner had I paid the twenty roubles over the counter than my heart smote me for having put two such beautifully dressed shop-assistants to so much trouble for such a trifle. Moreover, I fancied that they were regarding me with some disdain. Accordingly, in my desire to show them what manner of man I was, I turned my attention to a silver trifle which I saw displayed in a show-case, and, recognising that it was a porte-crayon (price eighteen roubles), requested that it should forthwith be wrapped in paper for me. Next, the money paid, and the information acquired that splendid pipes and tobacco were to be obtained in an adjacent emporium, I bowed to the two shopmen politely, and issued into the street with the picture under my arm. At the shop next door (which had painted on its sign-board a negro smoking a cigar) I bought (likewise out of a desire to imitate no one) some Turkish tobacco, a Stamboul hookah, and two pipes. On coming out of the shop, I had just entered the drozhki when I caught sight of Semenoff, who was walking hurriedly along the pavement with his head bent down. Vexed that he should not have recognised me, I called out to him pretty loudly, "Hold on a minute!" and, whipping up the drozhki, soon overtook him.


"How do you do?" I said.


"My respects to you," he replied, but without stopping.


"Why are you not in your University uniform?" I next inquired.


At this he stopped short with a frown, and parted his white teeth as though the sun were hurting his eyes. The next moment, however, he threw a glance of studied indifference at my drozhki and uniform, and continued on his way.


From the Kuznetski Bridge, I drove to a confectioner's in Tverskaia Street, and, much as I should have liked it to be supposed that it was the newspapers which most interested me, I had no choice but to begin falling upon tartlet after tartlet. In fact, for all my bashfulness before a gentleman who kept regarding me with some curiosity from behind a newspaper, I ate with great swiftness a tartlet of each of the eight different sorts which the confectioner kept.


On reaching home, I experienced a slight touch of stomach-ache, but paid no attention to it, and set to work to inspect my purchases. Of these, the picture so much displeased me that, instead of having it framed and hung in my room, as Woloda had done with his, I took pains to hide it behind a chest of drawers, where no one could see it. Likewise, though I also found the porte-crayon distasteful, I was able, as I laid it on my table, to comfort myself with the thought that it was at least a SILVER article-so much capital, as it were-and likely to be very useful to a student. As for the smoking things, I decided to put them into use at once, and try their capabilities.


Unsealing the four packages, and carefully filling the Stamboul pipe with some fine-cut, reddish-yellow Turkish tobacco, I applied a hot cinder to it, and, taking the mouthpiece between my first and second fingers (a position of the hand which greatly caught my fancy), started to inhale the smoke.


The smell of the tobacco seemed delightful, yet something burnt my mouth and caught me by the breath. Nevertheless, I hardened my heart, and continued to draw abundant fumes into my interior. Then I tried blowing rings and retaining the smoke. Soon the room became filled with blue vapours, while the pipe started to crackle and the tobacco to fly out in sparks. Presently, also, I began to feel a smarting in my mouth and a giddiness in my head. Accordingly, I was on the point of stopping and going to look at myself and my pipe in the mirror, when, to my surprise, I found myself staggering about. The room was whirling round and round, and as I peered into the mirror (which I reached only with some difficulty) I perceived that my face was as white as a sheet. Hardly had I thrown myself down upon a sofa when such nausea and faintness swept over me that, making up my mind that the pipe had proved my death, I expected every moment to expire. Terribly frightened, I tried to call out for some one to come and help me, and to send for the doctor.


However, this panic of mine did not last long, for I soon understood what the matter with me was, and remained lying on the sofa with a racking headache and my limbs relaxed as I stared dully at the stamp on the package of tobacco, the Pipe-tube coiled on the floor, and the odds and ends of tobacco and confectioner's tartlets which were littered about. "Truly," I thought to myself in my dejection and disillusionment, "I cannot be quite grown-up if I cannot smoke as other fellows do, and should be fated never to hold a chibouk between my first and second fingers, or to inhale and puff smoke through a flaxen moustache!"


When Dimitri called for me at five o'clock, he found me in this unpleasant predicament. After drinking a glass of water, however, I felt nearly recovered, and ready to go with him.


"So much for your trying to smoke!" said he as he gazed at the remnants of my debauch. "It is a silly thing to do, and waste of money as well. I long ago promised myself never to smoke. But come along; we have to call for Dubkoff."





XIV. HOW WOLODA AND DUBKOFF AMUSED THEMSELVES


THE moment that Dimitri entered my room I perceived from his face, manner of walking, and the signs which, in him, denoted ill-humour-a blinking of the eyes and a grim holding of his head to one side, as though to straighten his collar-that he was in the coldly-correct frame of mind which was his when he felt dissatisfied with himself. It was a frame of mind, too, which always produced a chilling effect upon my feelings towards him. Of late I had begun to observe and appraise my friend's character a little more, but our friendship had in no way suffered from that, since it was still too young and strong for me to be able to look upon Dimitri as anything but perfect, no matter in what light I regarded him. In him there were two personalities, both of which I thought beautiful. One, which I loved devotedly, was kind, mild, forgiving, gay, and conscious of being those various things. When he was in this frame of mind his whole exterior, the very tone of his voice, his every movement, appeared to say: "I am kind and good-natured, and rejoice in being so, and every one can see that I so rejoice." The other of his two personalities-one which I had only just begun to apprehend, and before the majesty of which I bowed in spirit-was that of a man who was cold, stern to himself and to others, proud, religious to the point of fanaticism, and pedantically moral. At the present moment he was, as I say, this second personality.


With that frankness which constituted a necessary condition of our relations I told him, as soon as we entered the drozhki, how much it depressed and hurt me to see him, on this my fete-day in a frame of mind so irksome and disagreeable to me.


"What has upset you so?" I asked him. "Will you not tell me?"


"My dear Nicolas," was his slow reply as he gave his head a nervous twitch to one side and blinked his eyes, "since I have given you my word never to conceal anything from you, you have no reason to suspect me of secretiveness. One cannot always be in exactly the same mood, and if I seem at all put out, that is all there is to say about it."


"What a marvellously open, honourable character his is!" I thought to myself, and dropped the subject.


We drove the rest of the way to Dubkoff's in silence. Dubkoff's flat was an unusually fine one-or, at all events, so it seemed to me. Everywhere were rugs, pictures, gardenias, striped hangings, photographs, and curved settees, while on the walls hung guns, pistols, pouches, and the mounted heads of wild beasts. It was the appearance of this apartment which made me aware whom, it was that Woloda had imitated in the scheme of his own sitting-room. We found Dubkoff and Woloda engaged in cards, while seated also at the table, and watching the game with close attention, was a gentleman whom I did not know, but who appeared to be of no great importance, judging by the modesty of his attitude. Dubkoff himself was in a silk dressing-gown and soft slippers, while Woloda-seated opposite him on a divan-was in his shirtsleeves, as well as (to judge by his flushed face and the impatient, cursory glance which he gave us for a second as he looked up from the cards) much taken up with the game. On seeing me, he reddened still more.


"Well, it is for you to deal," he remarked to Dubkoff. In an instant I divined that he did not altogether relish my becoming acquainted with the fact that he gambled. Yet his expression had nothing in it of confusion-only a look which seemed to me to say: "Yes, I play cards, and if you are surprised at that, it is only because you are so young. There is nothing wrong about it-it is a necessity at our age." Yes, I at once divined and understood that.


Instead of dealing, however, Dubkoff rose and shook hands with us; after which he bade us both be seated, and then offered us pipes, which we declined.


"Here is our DIPLOMAT, then-the hero of the day!" he said to me, "Good Lord! how you look like a colonel!"


"H-m!" I muttered in reply, though once more feeling a complacent smile overspread my countenance.


I stood in that awe of Dubkoff which a sixteen-year-old boy naturally feels for a twenty-seven-year-old man of whom his elders say that he is a very clever young man who can dance well and speak French, and who, though secretly despising one's youth, endeavours to conceal the fact. Yet, despite my respect for him, I somehow found it difficult and uncomfortable, throughout my acquaintanceship with him, to look him in the eyes, I have since remarked that there are three kinds of men whom I cannot face easily, namely those who are much better than myself, those who are much worse, and those between whom and myself there is a mutual determination not to mention some particular thing of which we are both aware. Dubkoff may have been a much better fellow than myself, or he may have been a much worse; but the point was that he lied very frequently without recognising the fact that I was aware of his doing so, yet had determined not to mention it.


"Let us play another round," said Woloda, hunching one shoulder after the manner of Papa, and reshuffling the cards.


"How persistent you are!" said Dubkoff. "We can play all we want to afterwards. Well, one more round, then."


During the play, I looked at their hands. Woloda's hands were large and red, whilst in the crook of the thumb and the way in which the other fingers curved themselves round the cards as he held them they so exactly resembled Papa's that now and then I could not help thinking that Woloda purposely held the cards thus so as to look the more like a grownup. Yet the next moment, looking at his face, I could see that he had not a thought in his mind beyond the game. Dubkoff's hands, on the contrary, were small, puffy, and inclined to clench themselves, as well as extremely neat and small-fingered. They were just the kind of hands which generally display rings, and which are most to be seen on persons who are both inclined to use them and fond of objets de vertu.


Woloda must have lost, for the gentleman who was watching the play remarked that Vladimir Petrovitch had terribly bad luck, while Dubkoff reached for a note book, wrote something in it, and then, showing Woloda what he had written, said:


"Is that right?"


"Yes." said Woloda, glancing with feigned carelessness at the note book. "Now let us go."


Woloda took Dubkoff, and I gave Dimitri a lift in my drozhki.


"What were they playing at?" I inquired of Dimitri.


"At piquet. It is a stupid game. In fact, all such games are stupid."


"And were they playing for much?"


"No, not very much, but more than they ought to."


"Do you ever play yourself?"


"No; I swore never to do so; but Dubkoff will play with any one he can get hold of."


"He ought not to do that," I remarked. "So Woloda does not play so well as he does?"


"Perhaps Dubkoff ought not to, as you say, yet there is nothing especially bad about it all. He likes playing, and plays well, but he is a good fellow all the same."


"I had no idea of this," I said.


"We must not think ill of him," concluded Dimitri, "since he is a simply splendid fellow. I like him very much, and always shall like him, in spite of his weakness."


For some reason or another the idea occurred to me that, just BECAUSE Dimitri stuck up so stoutly for Dubkoff, he neither liked nor respected him in reality, but was determined, out of stubbornness and a desire not to be accused of inconstancy, never to own to the fact. He was one of those people who love their friends their life long, not so much because those friends remain always dear to them, as because, having once-possibly mistakenly-liked a person, they look upon it as dishonourable to cease ever to do so.





XV. I AM FETED AT DINNER


Dubkoff and Woloda knew every one at the restaurant by name, and every one, from the waiters to the proprietor, paid them great respect. No time was lost in allotting us a private room, where a bottle of iced champagne-upon which I tried to look with as much indifference as I could-stood ready waiting for us, and where we were served with a most wonderful repast selected by Dubkoff from the French menu. The meal went off most gaily and agreeably, notwithstanding that Dubkoff, as usual, told us blood-curdling tales of doubtful veracity (among others, a tale of how his grandmother once shot dead three robbers who were attacking her-a recital at which I blushed, closed my eyes, and turned away from the narrator), and that Woloda reddened visibly whenever I opened my mouth to speak-which was the more uncalled for on his part, seeing that never once, so far as I can remember, did I say anything shameful. After we had been given champagne, every one congratulated me, and I drank "hands across" with Dimitri and Dubkoff, and wished them joy. Since, however, I did not know to whom the bottle of champagne belonged (it was explained to me later that it was common property), I considered that, in return, I ought to treat my friends out of the money which I had never ceased to finger in my pocket. Accordingly, I stealthily extracted a ten-rouble note, and, beckoning the waiter to my side, handed him the money, and told him in a whisper (yet not so softly but that every one could hear me, seeing that every one was staring at me in dead silence) to "bring, if you please, a half-bottle of champagne." At this Woloda reddened again, and began to fidget so violently, and to gaze upon myself and every one else with such a distracted air, that I felt sure I had somehow put my foot in it. However, the half-bottle came, and we drank it with great gusto. After that, things went on merrily. Dubkoff continued his unending fairy tales, while Woloda also told funny stories-and told them well, too-in a way I should never have credited him: so that our laughter rang long and loud. Their best efforts lay in imitation, and in variants of a certain well-known saw. "Have you ever been abroad?" one would say to the other, for instance. "No," the one interrogated would reply, "but my brother plays the fiddle." Such perfection had the pair attained in this species of comic absurdity that they could answer any question by its means, while they would also endeavour to unite two absolutely unconnected matters without a previous question having been asked at all, yet say everything with a perfectly serious face and produce a most comic effect. I too began to try to be funny, but as soon as ever I spoke they either looked at me askance or did not look at me until I had finished: so that my anecdotes fell flat. Yet, though Dubkoff always remarked, "Our DIPLOMAT is lying, brother," I felt so exhilarated with the champagne and the company of my elders that the remark scarcely touched me. Only Dimitri, though he drank level with the rest of us, continued in the same severe, serious frame of mind-a fact which put a certain check upon the general hilarity.


"Now, look here, gentlemen," said Dubkoff at last. "After dinner we ought to take the DIPLOMAT in hand. How would it be for him to go with us to see Auntie? There we could put him through his paces."


"Ah, but Nechludoff will not go there," objected Woloda.


"O unbearable, insupportable man of quiet habits that you are!" cried Dubkoff, turning to Dimitri. "Yet come with us, and you shall see what an excellent lady my dear Auntie is."


"I will neither go myself nor let him go," replied Dimitri.


"Let whom go? The DIPLOMAT? Why, you yourself saw how he brightened up at the very mention of Auntie."


"It is not so much that I WILL NOT LET HIM go," continued Dimitri, rising and beginning to pace the room without looking at me, "as that I neither wish him nor advise him to go. He is not a child now, and if he must go he can go alone-without you. Surely you are ashamed of this, Dubkoff?-ashamed of always wanting others to do all the wrong things that you yourself do?"


"But what is there so very wrong in my inviting you all to come and take a cup of tea with my Aunt?" said Dubkoff, with a wink at Woloda. "If you don't like us going, it is your affair; yet we are going all the same. Are you coming, Woloda?"


"Yes, yes," assented Woloda. "We can go there, and then return to my rooms and continue our piquet."


"Do you want to go with them or not?" said Dimitri, approaching me.


"No," I replied, at the same time making room for him to sit down beside me on the divan. "I did not wish to go in any case, and since you advise me not to, nothing on earth will make me go now. Yet," I added a moment later, "I cannot honestly say that I have NO desire to go. All I say is that I am glad I am not going."


"That is right," he said. "Live your own life, and do not dance to any one's piping. That is the better way."


This little tiff not only failed to mar our hilarity, but even increased it. Dimitri suddenly reverted to the kindly mood which I loved best-so great (as I afterwards remarked on more than one occasion) was the influence which the consciousness of having done a good deed exercised upon him. At the present moment the source of his satisfaction was the fact that he had stopped my expedition to "Auntie's." He grew extraordinarily gay, called for another bottle of champagne (which was against his rules), invited some one who was a perfect stranger into our room, plied him with wine, sang "Gaudeamus igitur," requested every one to join him in the chorus, and proposed that we should and rink at the Sokolniki. [Mews.]


"Let us enjoy ourselves to-night," he said with a laugh. "It is in honour of his matriculation that you now see me getting drunk for the first time in my life."


Yet somehow this merriment sat ill upon him. He was like some good-natured father or tutor who is pleased with his young charges, and lets himself go for their amusement, yet at the same time tries to show them that one can enjoy oneself decently and in an honourable manner. However, his unexpected gaiety had an infectious influence upon myself and my companions, and the more so because each of us had now drunk about half a bottle of champagne.


It was in this pleasing frame of mind that I went out into the main salon to smoke a cigarette which Dubkoff had given me. In rising I noticed that my head seemed to swim a little, and that my legs and arms retained their natural positions only when I bent my thoughts determinedly upon them. At other moments my legs would deviate from the straight line, and my arms describe strange gestures. I concentrated my whole attention upon the members in question, forced my hands first to raise themselves and button my tunic, and then to smooth my hair (though they ruffled my locks in doing so), and lastly commanded my legs to march me to the door-a function which they duly performed, though at one time with too much reluctance, and at another with too much ABANDON (the left leg, in particular, coming to a halt every moment on tiptoe). Some one called out to me, "Where are you going to? They will bring you a cigar-light directly," but I guessed the voice to be Woloda's, and, feeling satisfied, somehow, that I had succeeded in divining the fact, merely smiled airily in reply, and continued on my way.





XVI. THE QUARREL


In the main salon I perceived sitting at a small table a short, squat gentleman of the professional type. He had a red moustache, and was engaged in eating something or another, while by his side sat a tall, clean-shaven individual with whom he was carrying on a conversation in French. Somehow the aspect of these two persons displeased me; yet I decided, for all that, to light my cigarette at the candelabrum which was standing before them. Looking from side to side, to avoid meeting their gaze, I approached the table, and applied my cigarette to the flame. When it was fairly alight, I involuntarily threw a glance at the gentleman who was eating, and found his grey eyes fixed upon me with an expression of intense displeasure. Just as I was turning away his red moustache moved a little, and he said in French:


"I do not like people to smoke when I am dining, my good sir."


I murmured something inaudible.


"No, I do not like it at all," he went on sternly, and with a glance at his clean-shaven companion, as though inviting him to admire the way in which he was about to deal with me. "I do not like it, my good sir, nor do I like people who have the impudence to puff their smoke up one's very nose."


By this time I had gathered that it was myself he was scolding, and at first felt as though I had been altogether in the wrong.


"I did not mean to inconvenience you," I said.


"Well, if you did not suppose you were being impertinent, at least I did! You are a cad, young sir!" he shouted in reply.


"But what right have you to shout at me like that?" I exclaimed, feeling that it was now HE that was insulting ME, and growing angry accordingly.


"This much right," he replied, "that I never allow myself to be overlooked by any one, and that I always teach young fellows like yourself their manners. What is your name, young sir, and where do you live?"


At this I felt so hurt that my teeth chattered, and I felt as though I were choking. Yet all the while I was conscious of being in the wrong, and so, instead of offering any further rudeness to the offended one, humbly told him my name and address.


"And MY name, young sir," he returned, "is Kolpikoff, and I will trouble you to be more polite to me in future.-However, You will hear from me again" ("vous aurez de mes nouvelles"-the conversation had been carried on wholly in French), was his concluding remark.


To this I replied, "I shall be delighted," with an infusion of as much hauteur as I could muster into my tone. Then, turning on my heel, I returned with my cigarette-which had meanwhile gone out-to our own room.


I said nothing, either to my brother or my friends, about what had happened (and the more so because they were at that moment engaged in a dispute of their own), but sat down in a corner to think over the strange affair. The words, "You are a cad, young sir," vexed me more and more the longer that they sounded in my ears. My tipsiness was gone now, and, in considering my conduct during the dispute, the uncomfortable thought came over me that I had behaved like a coward.


"Yet what right had he to attack me?" I reflected. "Why did he not simply intimate to me that I was annoying him? After all, it may have been he that was in the wrong. Why, too, when he called me a young cad, did I not say to him, 'A cad, my good sir, is one who takes offence'? Or why did I not simply tell him to hold his tongue? That would have been the better course. Or why did I not challenge him to a duel? No, I did none of those things, but swallowed his insults like a wretched coward."


Still the words, "You are a cad, young sir," kept sounding in my ears with maddening iteration. "I cannot leave things as they are," I at length decided as I rose to my feet with the fixed intention of returning to the gentleman and saying something outrageous to him-perhaps, also, of breaking the candelabrum over his head if occasion offered. Yet, though I considered the advisability of this last measure with some pleasure, it was not without a good deal of trepidation that I re-entered the main salon. As luck would have it, M. Kolpikoff was no longer there, but only a waiter engaged in clearing the table. For a moment I felt like telling the waiter the whole story, and explaining to him my innocence in the matter, but for some reason or another I thought better of it, and once more returned, in the same hazy condition of mind, to our own room.


"What has become of our DIPLOMAT?" Dubkoff was just saying. "Upon him now hang the fortunes of Europe."


"Oh, leave me alone," I said, turning moodily away. Then, as I paced the room, something made me begin to think that Dubkoff was not altogether a good fellow. "There is nothing very much to admire in his eternal jokes and his nickname of 'DIPLOMAT,'" I reflected. "All he thinks about is to win money from Woloda and to go and see his 'Auntie.' There is nothing very nice in all that. Besides, everything he says has a touch of blackguardism in it, and he is forever trying to make people laugh. In my opinion he is simply stupid when he is not absolutely a brute." I spent about five minutes in these reflections, and felt my enmity towards Dubkoff continually increasing. For his part, he took no notice of me, and that angered me the more. I actually felt vexed with Woloda and Dimitri because they went on talking to him.


"I tell you what, gentlemen: the DIPLOMAT ought to be christened," said Dubkoff suddenly, with a glance and a smile which seemed to me derisive, and even treacherous. "Yet, O Lord, what a poor specimen he is!"


"You yourself ought to be christened, and you yourself are a sorry specimen!" I retorted with an evil smile, and actually forgetting to address him as "thou." [In Russian as in French, the second person singular is the form of speech used between intimate friends.]


This reply evidently surprised Dubkoff, but he turned away good-humouredly, and went on talking to Woloda and Dimitri. I tried to edge myself into the conversation, but, since I felt that I could not keep it up, I soon returned to my corner, and remained there until we left.


When the bill had been paid and wraps were being put on, Dubkoff turned to Dimitri and said: "Whither are Orestes and Pedalion going now? Home, I suppose, to talk about love. Well, let US go and see my dear Auntie. That will be far more entertaining than your sour company."


"How dare you speak like that, and laugh at us?" I burst out as I approached him with clenched fists. "How dare you laugh at feelings which you do not understand? I will not have you do it! Hold your tongue!" At this point I had to hold my own, for I did not know what to say next, and was, moreover, out of breath with excitement. At first Dubkoff was taken aback, but presently he tried to laugh it off, and to take it as a joke. Finally I was surprised to see him look crestfallen, and lower his eyes.


"I NEVER laugh at you or your feelings. It is merely my way of speaking," he said evasively.


"Indeed?" I cried; yet the next moment I felt ashamed of myself and sorry for him, since his flushed, downcast face had in it no other expression than one of genuine pain.


"What is the matter with you?" said Woloda and Dimitri simultaneously. "No one was trying to insult you."


"Yes, he DID try to insult me!" I replied.


"What an extraordinary fellow your brother is!" said Dubkoff to Woloda. At that moment he was passing out of the door, and could not have heard what I said. Possibly I should have flung myself after him and offered him further insult, had it not been that just at that moment the waiter who had witnessed my encounter with Kolpikoff handed me my greatcoat, and I at once quietened down-merely making such a pretence of having had a difference with Dimitri as was necessary to make my sudden appeasement appear nothing extraordinary. Next day, when I met Dubkoff at Woloda's, the quarrel was not raked up, yet he and I still addressed each other as "you," and found it harder than ever to look one another in the face.


The remembrance of my scene with Kolpikoff-who, by the way, never sent me "de ses nouvelles," either the following day or any day afterwards-remained for years a keen and unpleasant memory. Even so much as five years after it had happened I would begin fidgeting and muttering to myself whenever I remembered the unavenged insult, and was fain to comfort myself with the satisfaction of recollecting the sort of young fellow I had shown myself to be in my subsequent affair with Dubkoff. In fact, it was only later still that I began to regard the matter in another light, and both to recall with comic appreciation my passage of arms with Kolpikoff, and to regret the undeserved affront which I had offered my good friend Dubkoff.


When, at a later hour on the evening of the dinner, I told Dimitri of my affair with Kolpikoff, whose exterior I described in detail, he was astounded.


"That is the very man!" he cried. "Don't you know that this precious Kolpikoff is a known scamp and sharper, as well as, above all things, a coward, and that he was expelled from his regiment by his brother officers because, having had his face slapped, he would not fight? But how came you to let him get away?" he added, with a kindly smile and glance. "Surely he could not have said more to you than he did when he called you a cad?"


"No," I admitted with a blush.


"Well, it was not right, but there is no great harm done," said Dimitri consolingly.


Long afterwards, when thinking the matter over at leisure, I suddenly came to the conclusion that it was quite possible that Kolpikoff took the opportunity of vicariously wiping off upon me the slap in the face which he had once received, just as I myself took the opportunity of vicariously wiping off upon the innocent Dubkoff the epithet "cad" which Kolpikoff had just applied to me.





XVII. I GET READY TO PAY SOME CALLS


On awaking next morning my first thoughts were of the affair with Kolpikoff. Once again I muttered to myself and stamped about the room, but there was no help for it. To-day was the last day that I was to spend in Moscow, and it was to be spent, by Papa's orders, in my paying a round of calls which he had written out for me on a piece of paper-his first solicitude on our account being not so much for our morals or our education as for our due observance of the convenances. On the piece of paper was written in his swift, broken hand-writing: "(1) Prince Ivan Ivanovitch WITHOUT FAIL; (2) the Iwins WITHOUT FAIL; (3) Prince Michael; (4) the Princess Nechludoff and Madame Valakhina if you wish." Of course I was also to call upon my guardian, upon the rector, and upon the professors.


These last-mentioned calls, however, Dimitri advised me not to pay: saying that it was not only unnecessary to do so, but not the thing. However, there were the other visits to be got through. It was the first two on the list-those marked as to be paid "WITHOUT FAIL"-that most alarmed me. Prince Ivan Ivanovitch was a commander-in-chief, as well as old, wealthy, and a bachelor. Consequently, I foresaw that vis-a-vis conversation between him and myself-myself a sixteen-year-old student!-was not likely to be interesting. As for the Iwins, they too were rich-the father being a departmental official of high rank who had only on one occasion called at our house during my grandmother's time. Since her death, I had remarked that the younger Iwin had fought shy of us, and seemed to give himself airs. The elder of the pair, I had heard, had now finished his course in jurisprudence, and gone to hold a post in St. Petersburg, while his brother Sergius (the former object of my worship) was also in St. Petersburg, as a great fat cadet in the Corps of Pages.


When I was a young man, not only did I dislike intercourse with people who thought themselves above me, but such intercourse was, for me, an unbearable torture, owing partly to my constant dread of being snubbed, and partly to my straining every faculty of my intellect to prove to such people my independence. Yet, even if I failed to fulfil the latter part of my father's instructions, I felt that I must carry out the former. I paced my room and eyed my clothes ready disposed on chairs-the tunic, the sword, and the cap. Just as I was about to set forth, old Grap called to congratulate me, bringing with him Ilinka. Grap pere was a Russianised German and an intolerably effusive, sycophantic old man who was more often than not tipsy. As a rule, he visited us only when he wanted to ask for something, and although Papa sometimes entertained him in his study, old Grap never came to dinner with us. With his subserviency and begging propensities went such a faculty of good-humour and a power of making himself at home that every one looked upon his attachment to us as a great honour. For my part, however, I never liked him, and felt ashamed when he was speaking.


I was much put out by the arrival of these visitors, and made no effort to conceal the fact. Upon Ilinka I had been so used to look down, and he so used to recognise my right to do so, that it displeased me to think that he was now as much a matriculated student as myself. In some way he appeared to me to have made a POINT of attaining that equality. I greeted the pair coldly, and, without offering them any refreshment (since it went against the grain to do so, and I thought they could ask for anything, if they wanted it, without my first inviting them to state their requirements), gave orders for the drozhki to be got ready. Ilinka was a good-natured, extremely moral, and far from stupid young fellow; yet, for all that, what people call a person of moods. That is to say, for no apparent reason he was for ever in some PRONOUNCED frame of mind-now lachrymose, now frivolous, now touchy on the very smallest point. At the present moment he appeared to be in the last-named mood. He kept looking from his father to myself without speaking, except when directly addressed, at which times he smiled the self-deprecatory, forced smile under which he was accustomed to conceal his feelings, and more especially that feeling of shame for his father which he must have experienced in our house.


"So, Nicolas Petrovitch," the old man said to me, following me everywhere about the room as I went through the operation of dressing, while all the while his fat fingers kept turning over and over a silver snuff-box with which my grandmother had once presented me, "as soon as ever I heard from my son that you had passed your examinations so well (though of course your abilities are well-known to everyone), I at once came to congratulate you, my dear boy. Why, I have carried you on my shoulders before now, and God knows that I love you as though you were my own son. My Ilinka too has always been fond of you, and feels quite at home with you."


Meanwhile the said Ilinka remained sitting silently by the window, apparently absorbed in contemplation of my three-cornered cap, and every now and then angrily muttering something in an undertone.


"Now, I also wanted to ask you, Nicolas Petrovitch." His father went on, "whether my son did well in the examinations? He tells me that he is going to be in the same faculty as yourself, and that therefore you will be able to keep an eye on him, and advise him, and so on."


"Oh, yes, I suppose he passed well," I replied, with a glance at Ilinka, who, conscious of my gaze, reddened violently and ceased to move his lips about. "And might he spend the day with you?" was the father's next request, which he made with a deprecatory smile, as though he stood in actual awe of me, yet always keeping so close to me, wherever I moved, that the fumes of the drink and tobacco in which he had been indulging were constantly perceptible to my nostrils. I felt greatly vexed at his placing me in such a false position towards his son, as well as at his distracting my attention from what was, to me, a highly important operation-namely, the operation of dressing; while, over and above all, I was annoyed by the smell of liquor with which he followed me about. Accordingly, I said very coldly that I could not have the pleasure of Ilinka's company that day, since I should be out.


"Ah! I suppose you are going to see your sister?" put in Ilinka with a smile, but without looking at me. "Well, I too have business to attend to." At this I felt even more put out, as well as pricked with compunction; so, to soften my refusal a little, I hastened to say that the reason why I should not be at home that day was that I had to call upon the PRINCE Ivan Ivanovitch, the PRINCESS Kornakoff, and the Monsieur Iwin who held such an influential post, as well as, probably, to dine with the PRINCESS Nechludoff (for I thought that, on learning what important folk I was in the habit of mixing with, the Graps would no longer think it worth while to pretend to me). However, just as they were leaving, I invited Ilinka to come and see me another day; but he only murmured something unintelligible, and it was plain that he meant never to set foot in the house again.


When they had departed, I set off on my round of calls. Woloda, whom I had asked that morning to come with me, in order that I might not feel quite so shy as when altogether alone, had declined on the ground that for two brothers to be seen driving in one drozhki would appear so horribly "proper."





XVIII. THE VALAKHIN FAMILY


Accordingly I set off alone. My first call on the route lay at the Valakhin mansion. It was now three years since I had seen Sonetchka, and my love for her had long become a thing of the past, yet there still lingered in my heart a sort of clear, touching recollection of our bygone childish affection. At intervals, also, during those three years, I had found myself recalling her memory with such force and vividness that I had actually shed tears, and imagined myself to be in love with her again, but those occasions had not lasted more than a few minutes at a time, and had been long in recurring.


I knew that Sonetchka and her mother had been abroad-that, in fact, they had been so for the last two years. Also, I had heard that they had been in a carriage accident, and that Sonetchka's face had been so badly cut with the broken glass that her beauty was marred. As I drove to their house, I kept recalling the old Sonetchka to my mind, and wondering what she would look like when I met her. Somehow I imagined that, after her two years' sojourn abroad, she would look very tall, with a beautiful waist, and, though sedate and imposing, extremely attractive. Somehow, also, my imagination refused to picture her with her face disfigured with scars, but, on the contrary, since I had read somewhere of a lover who remained true to his adored one in spite of her disfigurement with smallpox, strove to imagine that I was in love with Sonetchka, for the purpose of priding myself on holding to my troth in spite of her scars-Yet, as a matter of fact, I was not really in love with her during that drive, but having once stirred up in myself old MEMORIES of love, felt PREPARED to fall into that condition, and the more so because, of late, my conscience had often been pricking me for having discarded so many of my old flames.


The Valakhins lived in a neat little wooden mansion approached by a courtyard. I gained admittance by ringing a bell (then a rarity in Moscow), and was received by a mincing, smartly-attired page. He either could not or made no attempt to inform me whether there was any one at home, but, leaving me alone in the dark hall, ran off down a still darker corridor. For a long time I waited in solitude in this gloomy place, out of which, in addition to the front door and the corridor, there only opened a door which at the moment was closed. Rather surprised at the dismal appearance of the house, I came to the conclusion that the reason was that its inmates were still abroad. After five minutes, however, the door leading into the salon was opened by the page boy, who then conducted me into a neat, but not richly furnished, drawing-room, where presently I was joined by Sonetchka.


She was now seventeen years old, and very small and thin, as well as of an unhealthy pallor of face. No scars at all were visible, however, and the beautiful, prominent eyes and bright, cheerful smile were the same as I had known and loved in my childhood. I had not expected her to look at all like this, and therefore could not at once lavish upon her the sentiment which I had been preparing on the way. She gave me her hand in the English fashion (which was then as much a novelty as a door-bell), and, bestowing upon mine a frank squeeze, sat down on the sofa by my side.


"Ah! how glad I am to see you, my dear Nicolas!" she said as she looked me in the face with an expression of pleasure so sincere that in the words "my dear Nicolas" I caught the purely friendly rather than the patronising note. To my surprise she seemed to me simpler, kinder, and more sisterly after her foreign tour than she had been before it. True, I could now see that she had two small scars between her nose and temples, but her wonderful eyes and smile fitted in exactly with my recollections, and shone as of old.


"But how greatly you have changed!" she went on. "You are quite grown-up now. And I-I-well, what do you think of me?"


"I should never have known you," I replied, despite the fact that at the moment I was thinking that I should have known her anywhere and always.


"Why? Am I grown so ugly?" she inquired with a movement of her head.


"Oh, no, decidedly not!" I hastened to reply. "But you have grown taller and older. As for being uglier, why, you are even-


"Yes, yes; never mind. Do you remember our dances and games, and St. Jerome, and Madame Dorat?" (As a matter of fact, I could not recollect any Madame Dorat, but saw that Sonetchka was being led away by the joy of her childish recollections, and mixing them up a little). "Ah! what a lovely time it was!" she went on-and once more there shone before me the same eyes and smile as I had always carried in my memory. While she had been speaking, I had been thinking over my position at the present moment, and had come to the conclusion that I was in love with her. The instant, however, that I arrived at that result my careless, happy mood vanished, a mist seemed to arise before me which concealed even her eyes and smile, and, blushing hotly, I became tongue-tied and ill-at-ease.


"But times are different now," she went on with a sigh and a little lifting of her eyebrows. "Everything seems worse than it used to be, and ourselves too. Is it not so, Nicolas?"


I could return her no answer, but sat silently looking at her.


"Where are those Iwins and Kornakoffs now? Do you remember them?" she continued, looking, I think, with some curiosity at my blushing, downcast countenance. "What splendid times we used to have!"


Still I could not answer her.


The next moment, I was relieved from this awkward position by the entry of old Madame Valakhin into the room. Rising, I bowed, and straightway recovered my faculty of speech. On the other hand, an extraordinary change now took place in Sonetchka. All her gaiety and bonhomie disappeared, her smile became quite a different one, and, except for the point of her shortness of stature, she became just the lady from abroad whom I had expected to find in her. Yet for this change there was no apparent reason, since her mother smiled every whit as pleasantly, and expressed in her every movement just the same benignity, as of old. Seating herself in her arm-chair, the old lady signed to me to come and sit beside her; after which she said something to her daughter in English, and Sonetchka left the room-a fact which still further helped to relieve me. Madame then inquired after my father and brother, and passed on to speak of her great bereavement-the loss of her husband. Presently, however, she seemed to become sensible of the fact that I was not helping much in the conversation, for she gave me a look as much as to say: "If, now, my dear boy, you were to get up, to take your leave, and to depart, it would be well." But a curious circumstance had overtaken me. While she had been speaking of her bereavement, I had recalled to myself, not only the fact that I was in love, but the probability that the mother knew of it: whereupon such a fit of bashfulness had come upon me that I felt powerless to put any member of my body to its legitimate use. I knew that if I were to rise and walk I should have to think where to plant each foot, what to do with my head, what with my hands, and so on. In a word, I foresaw that I should be very much as I had been on the night when I partook too freely of champagne, and therefore, since I felt uncertain of being able to manage myself if I DID rise, I ended by feeling UNABLE to rise. Meanwhile, I should say, Sonetchka had returned to the room with her work, and seated herself in a far corner-a corner whence, as I was nevertheless sensible, she could observe me. Madame must have felt some surprise as she gazed at my crimson face and noted my complete immobility, but I decided that it was better to continue sitting in that absurd position than to risk something unpleasant by getting up and walking. Thus I sat on and on, in the hope that some unforeseen chance would deliver me from my predicament. That unforeseen chance at length presented itself in the person of an unforeseen young man, who entered the room with an air of being one of the household, and bowed to me politely as he did so: whereupon Madame rose, excused herself to me for having to speak with her "homme d'affaires," and finally gave me a glance which said: "Well, if you DO mean to go on sitting there for ever, at least I can't drive you away." Accordingly, with a great effort I also rose, but, finding it impossible to do any leave-taking, moved away towards the door, followed by the pitying glances of mother and daughter. All at once I stumbled over a chair, although it was lying quite out of my route: the reason for my stumbling being that my whole attention was centred upon not tripping over the carpet. Driving through the fresh air, however-where at first I muttered and fidgeted about so much that Kuzma, my coachman, asked me what was the matter-I soon found this feeling pass away, and began to meditate quietly concerning my love for Sonetchka and her relations with her mother, which had appeared to me rather strange. When, afterwards, I told my father that mother and daughter had not seemed on the best of terms with one another, he said:


"Yes, Madame leads the poor girl an awful life with her meanness. Yet," added my father with a greater display of feeling than a man might naturally conceive for a mere relative, "she used to be such an original, dear, charming woman! I cannot think what has made her change so much. By the way, you didn't notice a secretary fellow about, did you? Fancy a Russian lady having an affaire with a secretary!"


"Yes, I saw him," I replied.


"And was he at least good-looking?"


"No, not at all."


"It is extraordinary!" concluded Papa, with a cough and an irritable hoist of his shoulder.


"Well, I am in love!" was my secret thought to myself as I drove along in my drozhki.





XIX. THE KORNAKOFFS


MY second call on the route lay at the Kornakoffs', who lived on the first floor of a large mansion facing the Arbat. The staircase of the building looked extremely neat and orderly, yet in no way luxurious-being lined only with drugget pinned down with highly-polished brass rods. Nowhere were there any flowers or mirrors to be seen. The salon, too, with its polished floor, which I traversed on my way to the drawing-room, was decorated in the same cold, severe, unostentatious style. Everything in it looked bright and solid, but not new, and pictures, flower-stands, and articles of bric-a-brac were wholly absent. In the drawing-room I found some of the young princesses seated, but seated with the sort of correct, "company" air about them which gave one the impression that they sat like that only when guests were expected.


"Mamma will be here presently," the eldest of them said to me as she seated herself by my side. For the next quarter of an hour, this young lady entertained me with such an easy flow of small-talk that the conversation never flagged a moment. Yet somehow she made so patent the fact that she was just entertaining me that I felt not altogether pleased. Amongst other things, she told me that their brother Stephen (whom they called Etienne, and who had been two years at the College of Cadets) had now received his commission. Whenever she spoke of him, and more particularly when she told me that he had flouted his mother's wishes by entering the Hussars, she assumed a nervous air, and immediately her sisters, sitting there in silence, also assumed a nervous air. When, again, she spoke of my grandmother's death, she assumed a MOURNFUL air, and immediately the others all did the same. Finally, when she recalled how I had once struck St. Jerome and been expelled from the room, she laughed and showed her bad teeth, and immediately all the other princesses laughed and showed their bad teeth too.


Next, the Princess-Mother herself entered-a little dried-up woman, with a wandering glance and a habit of always looking at somebody else when she was addressing one. Taking my hand, she raised her own to my lips for me to kiss it-which otherwise, not supposing it to be necessary, I should not have done.


"How pleased I am to see you!" she said with her usual clearness of articulation as she gazed at her daughters. "And how like your mother you look! Does he not, Lise?"


Lise assented, though I knew for a fact that I did not resemble my mother in the least.


"And what a grown-up you have become! My Etienne, you will remember, is your second cousin. No, not second cousin-what is it, Lise? My mother was Barbara Dimitrievna, daughter of Dimitri Nicolaevitch, and your grandmother was Natalia Nicolaevna."


"Then he is our THIRD cousin, Mamma," said the eldest girl.


"Oh, how you always confuse me!" was her mother's angry reply. "Not third cousin, but COUSIN GERMAN-that is your relationship to Etienne. He is an officer now. Did you know it? It is not well that he should have his own way too much. You young men need keeping in hand, or-! Well, you are not vexed because your old aunt tells you the plain truth? I always kept Etienne strictly in hand, for I found it necessary to do so."


"Yes, that is how our relationship stands," she went on. "Prince Ivan Ivanovitch is my uncle, and your late mother's uncle also. Consequently I must have been your mother's first cousin-no, second cousin. Yes, that is it. Tell me, have you been to call on Prince Ivan yet?"


I said no, but that I was just going to.


"Ah, is it possible?" she cried. "Why, you ought to have paid him the first call of all! Surely you know that he stands to you in the position of a father? He has no children of his own, and his only heirs are yourself and my children. You ought to pay him all possible deference, both because of his age, and because of his position in the world, and because of everything else. I know that you young fellows of the present day think nothing of relationships and are not fond of old men, yet do you listen to me, your old aunt, for I am fond of you, and was fond of your mother, and had a great-a very great-liking and respect for your grandmother. You must not fail to call upon him on any account."


I said that I would certainly go, and since my present call seemed to me to have lasted long enough, I rose, and was about to depart, but she restrained me.


"No, wait a minute," she cried. "Where is your father, Lise? Go and tell him to come here. He will be so glad to see you," she added, turning to me.


Two minutes later Prince Michael entered. He was a short, thick-set gentleman, very slovenly dressed and ill-shaven, yet wearing such an air of indifference that he looked almost a fool. He was not in the least glad to see me-at all events he did not intimate that he was; but the Princess (who appeared to stand in considerable awe of him) hastened to say:


"Is not Woldemar here" (she seemed to have forgotten my name) "exactly like his mother?" and she gave her husband a glance which forced him to guess what she wanted. Accordingly he approached me with his usual passionless, half-discontented expression, and held out to me an unshaven cheek to kiss.


"Why, you are not dressed yet, though you have to go out soon!" was the Princess's next remark to him in the angry tone which she habitually employed in conversation with her domestics. "It will only mean your offending some one again, and trying to set people against you."


"In a moment, in a moment, mother," said Prince Michael, and departed. I also made my bows and departed.


This was the first time I had heard of our being related to Prince Ivan Ivanovitch, and the news struck me unpleasantly.





XX. THE IWINS


As for the prospect of my call upon the Prince, it seemed even more unpleasant. However, the order of my route took me first to the Iwins, who lived in a large and splendid mansion in Tverskaia Street. It was not without some nervousness that I entered the great portico where a Swiss major-domo stood armed with his staff of office.


To my inquiry as to whether any one was at home he replied: "Whom do you wish to see, sir? The General's son is within."


"And the General himself?" I asked with forced assurance.


"I must report to him your business first. What may it be, sir?" said the major-domo as he rang a bell. Immediately the gaitered legs of a footman showed themselves on the staircase above; whereupon I was seized with such a fit of nervousness that I hastily bid the lacquey say nothing about my presence to the General, since I would first see his son. By the time I had reached the top of the long staircase, I seemed to have grown extremely small (metaphorically, I mean, not actually), and had very much the same feeling within me as had possessed my soul when my drozhki drew up to the great portico, namely, a feeling as though drozhki, horse, and coachman had all of them grown extremely small too. I found the General's son lying asleep on a sofa, with an open book before him. His tutor, Monsieur Frost, under whose care he still pursued his studies at home, had entered behind me with a sort of boyish tread, and now awoke his pupil. Iwin evinced no particular pleasure at seeing me, while I also seemed to notice that, while talking to me, he kept looking at my eyebrows. Although he was perfectly polite, I conceived that he was "entertaining" me much as the Princess Valakhin had done, and that he not only felt no particular liking for me, but even that he considered my acquaintance in no way necessary to one who possessed his own circle of friends. All this arose out of the idea that he was regarding my eyebrows. In short, his bearing towards me appeared to be (as I recognised with an awkward sensation) very much the same as my own towards Ilinka Grap. I began to feel irritated, and to interpret every fleeting glance which he cast at Monsieur Frost as a mute inquiry: "Why has this fellow come to see me?"


After some conversation he remarked that his father and mother were at home. Would I not like to visit them too?


"First I will go and dress myself," he added as he departed to another room, notwithstanding that he had seemed to be perfectly well dressed (in a new frockcoat and white waistcoat) in the present one. A few minutes later he reappeared in his University uniform, buttoned up to the chin, and we went downstairs together. The reception rooms through which we passed were lofty and of great size, and seemed to be richly furnished with marble and gilt ornaments, chintz-covered settees, and a number of mirrors. Presently Madame Iwin met us, and we went into a little room behind the drawing-room, where, welcoming me in very friendly fashion, she seated herself by my side, and began to inquire after my relations.


Closer acquaintance with Madame (whom I had seen only twice before, and that but for a moment on each occasion) impressed me favourably. She was tall, thin, and very pale, and looked as though she suffered from chronic depression and fatigue. Yet, though her smile was a sad one, it was very kind, and her large, mournful eyes, with a slight cast in their vision, added to the pathos and attractiveness of her expression. Her attitude, while not precisely that of a hunchback, made her whole form droop, while her every movement expressed languor. Likewise, though her speech was deliberate, the timbre of her voice, and the manner in which she lisped her r's and l's, were very pleasing to the ear. Finally, she did not "ENTERTAIN" me. Unfortunately, the answers which I returned to her questions concerning my relations seemed to afford her a painful interest, and to remind her of happier days: with the result that when, presently, her son left the room, she gazed at me in silence for a moment, and then burst into tears. As I sat there in mute bewilderment, I could not conceive what I had said to bring this about. At first I felt sorry for her as she sat there weeping with downcast eyes. Next I began to think to myself: "Ought I not to try and comfort her, and how ought that to be done?" Finally, I began to feel vexed with her for placing me in such an awkward position. "Surely my appearance is not so moving as all that?" I reflected. "Or is she merely acting like this to see what I shall do under the circumstances?"


"Yet it would not do for me to go," I continued to myself, "for that would look too much as though I were fleeing to escape her tears." Accordingly I began fidgeting about on my seat, in order to remind her of my presence.


"Oh, how foolish of me!" at length she said, as she gazed at me for a moment and tried to smile. "There are days when one weeps for no reason whatever." She felt about for her handkerchief, and then burst out weeping more violently than before.


"Oh dear! How silly of me to be for ever crying like this! Yet I was so fond of your mother! We were such friends! We-we-"


At this point she found her handkerchief, and, burying her face in it, went on crying. Once more I found myself in the same protracted dilemma. Though vexed, I felt sorry for her, since her tears appeared to be genuine-even though I also had an idea that it was not so much for my mother that she was weeping as for the fact that she was unhappy, and had known happier days. How it would all have ended I do not know, had not her son reappeared and said that his father desired to see her. Thereupon she rose, and was just about to leave the room, when the General himself entered. He was a small, grizzled, thick-set man, with bushy black eyebrows, a grey, close-cropped head, and a very stern, haughty expression of countenance.


I rose and bowed to him, but the General (who was wearing three stars on his green frockcoat) not only made no response to my salutation, but scarcely even looked at me; so that all at once I felt as though I were not a human being at all, but only some negligible object such as a settee or window; or, if I were a human being, as though I were quite indistinguishable from such a negligible object.


"Then you have not yet written to the Countess, my dear?" he said to his wife in French, and with an imperturbable, yet determined, expression on his countenance.


"Good-bye, Monsieur Irtenieff," Madame said to me, in her turn, as she made a proud gesture with her head and looked at my eyebrows just as her son had done. I bowed to her, and again to her husband, but my second salutation made no more impression upon him than if a window had just been opened or closed. Nevertheless the younger Iwin accompanied me to the door, and on the way told me that he was to go to St. Petersburg University, since his father had been appointed to a post in that city (and young Iwin named a very high office in the service).


"Well, his Papa may do whatsoever he likes," I muttered to myself as I climbed into the drozhki, "but at all events I will never set foot in that house again. His wife weeps and looks at me as though I were the embodiment of woe, while that old pig of a General does not even give me a bow. However, I will get even with him some day." How I meant to do that I do not know, but my words nevertheless came true.


Afterwards, I frequently found it necessary to remember the advice of my father when he said that I must cultivate the acquaintanceship of the Iwins, and not expect a man in the position of General Iwin to pay any attention to a boy like myself. But I had figured in that position long enough.





XXI. PRINCE IVAN IVANOVITCH


"Now for the last call-the visit to Nikitskaia Street," I said to Kuzma, and we started for Prince Ivan Ivanovitch's mansion.


Towards the end, a round of calls usually brings one a certain amount of self-assurance: consequently I was approaching the Prince's abode in quite a tranquil frame of mind, when suddenly I remembered the Princess Kornakoff's words that I was his heir, and at the same moment caught sight of two carriages waiting at the portico. Instantly, my former nervousness returned.


Both the old major-domo who opened the door to me, and the footman who took my coat, and the two male and three female visitors whom I found in the drawing-room, and, most of all, Prince Ivan Ivanovitch himself (whom I found clad in a "company" frockcoat and seated on a sofa) seemed to look at me as at an HEIR, and so to eye me with ill-will. Yet the Prince was very gracious and, after kissing me (that is to say, after pressing his cold, dry, flabby lips to my cheek for a second), asked me about my plans and pursuits, jested with me, inquired whether I still wrote verses of the kind which I used to indite in honour of my grandmother's birthdays, and invited me to dine with him that day. Nevertheless, in proportion as he grew the kinder, the more did I feel persuaded that his civility was only intended to conceal from me the fact that he disliked the idea of my being his heir. He had a custom (due to his false teeth, of which his mouth possessed a complete set) of raising his upper lip a little as he spoke, and producing a slight whistling sound from it; and whenever, on the present occasion, he did so it seemed to me that he was saying to himself: "A boy, a boy-I know it! And my heir, too-my heir!"


When we were children, we had been used to calling the Prince "dear Uncle;" but now, in my capacity of heir, I could not bring my tongue to the phrase, while to say "Your Highness," as did one of the other visitors, seemed derogatory to my self-esteem. Consequently, never once during that visit did I call him anything at all. The personage, however, who most disturbed me was the old Princess who shared with me the position of prospective inheritor, and who lived in the Prince's house. While seated beside her at dinner, I felt firmly persuaded that the reason why she would not speak to me was that she disliked me for being her co-heir, and that the Prince, for his part, paid no attention to our side of the table for the reason that the Princess and myself hoped to succeed him, and so were alike distasteful in his sight.


"You cannot think how I hated it all!" I said to Dimitrieff the same evening, in a desire to make a parade of disliking the notion of being an heir (somehow I thought it the thing to do). "You cannot think how I loathed the whole two hours that I spent there!-Yet he is a fine-looking old fellow, and was very kind to me," I added-wishing, among other things, to disabuse my friend of any possible idea that my loathing had arisen out of the fact that I had felt so small. "It is only the idea that people may be classing me with the Princess who lives with him, and who licks the dust off his boots. He is a wonderful old man, and good and considerate to everybody, but it is awful to see how he treats the Princess. Money is a detestable thing, and ruins all human relations.


"Do you know, I think it would be far the best thing for me to have an open explanation with the Prince," I went on; "to tell him that I respect him as a man, but think nothing of being his heir, and that I desire him to leave me nothing, since that is the only condition on which I can, in future, visit his house."


Instead of bursting out laughing when I said this, Dimitri pondered awhile in silence, and then answered:


"You are wrong. Either you ought to refrain from supposing that people may be classing you with this Princess of whom you speak, or, if you DO suppose such a thing, you ought to suppose further that people are thinking what you yourself know quite well-namely, that such thoughts are so utterly foreign to your nature that you despise them and would never make them a basis for action. Suppose, however, that people DO suppose you to suppose such a thing-Well, to sum up," he added, feeling that he was getting a little mixed in his pronouncements, "you had much better not suppose anything of the kind."


My friend was perfectly right, though it was not until long, long afterwards that experience of life taught me the evil that comes of thinking-still worse, of saying-much that seems very fine; taught me that there are certain thoughts which should always be kept to oneself, since brave words seldom go with brave deeds. I learnt then that the mere fact of giving utterance to a good intention often makes it difficult, nay, impossible, to carry that good intention into effect. Yet how is one to refrain from giving utterance to the brave, self-sufficient impulses of youth? Only long afterwards does one remember and regret them, even as one incontinently plucks a flower before its blooming, and subsequently finds it lying crushed and withered on the ground.


The very next morning I, who had just been telling my friend Dimitri that money corrupts all human relations, and had (as we have seen) squandered the whole of my cash on pictures and Turkish pipes, accepted a loan of twenty roubles which he suggested should pay for my travelling expenses into the country, and remained a long while thereafter in his debt!





XXII. INTIMATE CONVERSATION WITH MY FRIEND


THIS conversation of ours took place in a phaeton on the way to Kuntsevo. Dimitri had invited me in the morning to go with him to his mother's, and had called for me after luncheon; the idea being that I should spend the evening, and perhaps also pass the night, at the country-house where his family lived. Only when we had left the city and exchanged its grimy streets and the unbearably deafening clatter of its pavements for the open vista of fields and the subdued grinding of carriage-wheels on a dusty high road (while the sweet spring air and prospect enveloped us on every side) did I awake from the new impressions and sensations of freedom into which the past two days had plunged me. Dimitri was in his kind and sociable mood. That is to say, he was neither frowning nor blinking nervously nor straightening his neck in his collar. For my own part, I was congratulating myself on those noble sentiments which I have expressed above, in the belief that they had led him to overlook my shameful encounter with Kolpikoff, and to refrain from despising me for it. Thus we talked together on many an intimate subject which even a friend seldom mentions to a friend. He told me about his family whose acquaintance I had not yet made-about his mother, his aunt, and his sister, as also about her whom Woloda and Dubkoff believed to be his "flame," and always spoke of as "the lady with the chestnut locks." Of his mother he spoke with a certain cold and formal commendation, as though to forestall any further mention of her; his aunt he extolled enthusiastically, though with a touch of condescension in his tone; his sister he scarcely mentioned at all, as though averse to doing so in my presence; but on the subject of "the lady with the chestnut locks" (whose real name was Lubov Sergievna, and who was a grown-up young lady living on a family footing with the Nechludoffs) he discoursed with animation.


"Yes, she is a wonderful woman," he said with a conscious reddening of the face, yet looking me in the eyes with dogged temerity. "True, she is no longer young, and even rather elderly, as well as by no means good-looking; but as for loving a mere featherhead, a mere beauty-well, I never could understand that, for it is such a silly thing to do." (Dimitri said this as though he had just discovered a most novel and extraordinary truth.) "I am certain, too, that such a soul, such a heart and principles, as are hers are not to be found elsewhere in the world of the present day." (I do not know whence he had derived the habit of saying that few good things were discoverable in the world of the present day, but at all events he loved to repeat the expression, and it somehow suited him.)


"Only, I am afraid," he went on quietly, after thus annihilating all such men as were foolish enough to admire mere beauty, "I am afraid that you will not understand or realise her quickly. She is modest, even secretive, and by no means fond of exhibiting her beautiful and surprising qualities. Now, my mother-who, as you will see, is a noble, sensible woman-has known Lubov Sergievna, for many years; yet even to this day she does not properly understand her. Shall I tell you why I was out of temper last evening when you were questioning me? Well, you must know that the day before yesterday Lubov asked me to accompany her to Ivan Yakovlevitch's (you have heard of him, I suppose? the fellow who seems to be mad, but who, in reality, is a very remarkable man). Well, Lubov is extremely religious, and understands Ivan Yakovlevitch to the full. She often goes to see him, and converses with him, and gives him money for the poor-money which she has earned herself. She is a marvellous woman, as you will see. Well, I went with her to Ivan's, and felt very grateful to her for having afforded me the opportunity of exchanging a word with so remarkable a man; but my mother could not understand our action at all, and discerned in it only superstition. Consequently, last night she and I quarrelled for the first time in our lives. A very bitter one it was, too," he concluded, with a convulsive shrug of his shoulders, as though the mention of it recalled the feelings which he had then experienced.


"And what are your intentions about it all?" I inquired, to divert him from such a disagreeable recollection. "That is to say, how do you imagine it is going to turn out? Do you ever speak to her about the future, or about how your love or friendship are going to end?"


"Do you mean, do I intend to marry her eventually?" he inquired, in his turn, with a renewed blush, but turning himself round and looking me boldly in the face.


"Yes, certainly," I replied as I settled myself down. "We are both of us grown-up, as well as friends, so we may as well discuss our future life as we drive along. No one could very well overlook or overhear us now."


"Why should I NOT marry her?" he went on in response to my reassuring reply. "It is my aim-as it should be the aim of every honourable man-to be as good and as happy as possible; and with her, if she should still be willing when I have become more independent, I should be happier and better than with the greatest beauty in the world."


Absorbed in such conversation, we hardly noticed that we were approaching Kuntsevo, or that the sky was becoming overcast and beginning to threaten rain. On the right, the sun was slowly sinking behind the ancient trees of the Kuntsevo park-one half of its brilliant disc obscured with grey, subluminous cloud, and the other half sending forth spokes of flaming light which threw the old trees into striking relief as they stood there with their dense crowns of green showing against a blue patch of sky. The light and shimmer of that patch contrasted sharply with the heavy pink cloud which lay massed above a young birch-tree visible on the horizon before us, while, a little further to the right, the parti-coloured roofs of the Kuntsevo mansion could be seen projecting above a belt of trees and undergrowth-one side of them reflecting the glittering rays of the sun, and the other side harmonising with the more louring portion of the heavens. Below us, and to the left, showed the still blue of a pond where it lay surrounded with pale-green laburnums-its dull, concave-looking depths repeating the trees in more sombre shades of colour over the surface of a hillock. Beyond the water spread the black expanse of a ploughed field, with the straight line of a dark-green ridge by which it was bisected running far into the distance, and there joining the leaden, threatening horizon.


On either side of the soft road along which the phaeton was pursuing the even tenour of its way, bright-green, tangled, juicy belts of rye were sprouting here and there into stalk. Not a motion was perceptible in the air, only a sweet freshness, and everything looked extraordinarily clear and bright. Near the road I could see a little brown path winding its way among the dark-green, quarter-grown stems of rye, and somehow that path reminded me vividly of our village, and somehow (through some connection of thought) the idea of that village reminded me vividly of Sonetchka, and so of the fact that I was in love with her.


Notwithstanding my fondness for Dimitri and the pleasure which his frankness had afforded me, I now felt as though I desired to hear no more about his feelings and intentions with regard to Lubov Sergievna, but to talk unstintedly about my own love for Sonetchka, who seemed to me an object of affection of a far higher order. Yet for some reason or another I could not make up my mind to tell him straight out how splendid it would seem when I had married Sonetchka and we were living in the country-of how we should have little children who would crawl about the floor and call me Papa, and of how delighted I should be when he, Dimitri, brought his wife, Lubov Sergievna, to see us, wearing an expensive gown. Accordingly, instead of saying all that, I pointed to the setting sun, and merely remarked: "Look, Dimitri! How splendid!"


To this, however, Dimitri made no reply, since he was evidently dissatisfied at my answering his confession (which it had cost him much to make) by directing his attention to natural objects (to which he was, in general, indifferent). Upon him Nature had an effect altogether different to what she had upon myself, for she affected him rather by her industry than by her beauty-he loved her rather with his intellect than with his senses.


"I am absolutely happy," I went on, without noticing that he was altogether taken up with his own thoughts and oblivious of anything that I might be saying. "You will remember how told you about a girl with whom I used to be in love when was a little boy? Well, I saw her again only this morning, and am now infatuated with her." Then I told him-despite his continued expression of indifference-about my love, and about all my plans for my future connubial happiness. Strangely enough, no sooner had I related in detail the whole strength of my feelings than I instantly became conscious of its diminution.


The rain overtook us just as we were turning into the avenue of birch-trees which led to the house, but it did not really wet us. I only knew that it was raining by the fact that I felt a drop fall, first on my nose, and then on my hand, and heard something begin to patter upon the young, viscous leaves of the birch-trees as, drooping their curly branches overhead, they seemed to imbibe the pure, shining drops with an avidity which filled the whole avenue with scent. We descended from the carriage, so as to reach the house the quicker through the garden, but found ourselves confronted at the entrance-door by four ladies, two of whom were knitting, one reading a book, and the fourth walking to and fro with a little dog. Thereupon, Dimitri began to present me to his mother, sister, and aunt, as well as to Lubov Sergievna. For a moment they remained where they were, but almost instantly the rain became heavier.


"Let us go into the verandah; you can present him to us there," said the lady whom I took to be Dimitri's mother, and we all of us ascended the entrance-steps.





XXIII. THE NECHLUDOFFS


From the first, the member of this company who struck me the most was Lubov Sergievna, who, holding a lapdog in her arms and wearing stout laced boots, was the last of the four ladies to ascend the staircase, and twice stopped to gaze at me intently and then kiss her little dog. She was anything but good-looking, since she was red-haired, thin, short, and slightly crooked. What made her plain face all the plainer was the queer way in which her hair was parted to one side (it looked like the wigs which bald women contrive for themselves). However much I should have liked to applaud my friend, I could not find a single comely feature in her. Even her brown eyes, though expressive of good-humour, were small and dull-were, in fact, anything but pretty; while her hands (those most characteristic of features), were though neither large nor ill-shaped, coarse and red.


As soon as we reached the verandah, each of the ladies, except Dimitri's sister Varenika-who also had been regarding me attentively out of her large, dark-grey eyes-said a few words to me before resuming her occupation, while Varenika herself began to read aloud from a book which she held on her lap and steadied with her finger.


The Princess Maria Ivanovna was a tall, well-built woman of forty. To judge by the curls of half-grey hair which descended below her cap one might have taken her for more, but as soon as ever one observed the fresh, extraordinarily tender, and almost wrinkleless face, as well as, most of all, the lively, cheerful sparkle of the large eyes, one involuntarily took her for less. Her eyes were black and very frank, her lips thin and slightly severe, her nose regular and slightly inclined to the left, and her hands ringless, large, and almost like those of a man, but with finely tapering fingers. She wore a dark-blue dress fastened to the throat and sitting closely to her firm, still youthful waist-a waist which she evidently pinched. Lastly, she held herself very upright, and was knitting a garment of some kind. As soon as I stepped on to the verandah she took me by the hand, drew me to her as though wishing to scrutinise me more closely, and said, as she gazed at me with the same cold, candid glance as her son's, that she had long known me by report from Dimitri, and that therefore, in order to make my acquaintance thoroughly, she had invited me to stay these twenty-four hours in her house.


"Do just as you please here," she said, "and stand on no ceremony whatever with us, even as we shall stand on none with you. Pray walk, read, listen, or sleep as the mood may take you."


Sophia Ivanovna was an old maid and the Princess's younger sister, though she looked the elder of the two. She had that exceedingly overstuffed appearance which old maids always present who are short of stature but wear corsets. It seemed as though her healthiness had shifted upwards to the point of choking her, her short, fat hands would not meet below her projecting bust, and the line of her waist was scarcely visible at all.


Notwithstanding that the Princess Maria Ivanovna had black hair and eyes, while Sophia Ivanovna had white hair and large, vivacious, tranquilly blue eyes (a rare combination), there was a great likeness between the two sisters, for they had the same expression, nose, and lips. The only difference was that Sophia's nose and lips were a trifle coarser than Maria's, and that, when she smiled, those features inclined towards the right, whereas Maria's inclined towards the left. Sophia, to judge by her dress and coiffure, was still youthful at heart, and would never have displayed grey curls, even if she had possessed them. Yet at first her glance and bearing towards me seemed very proud, and made me nervous, whereas I at once felt at home with the Princess. Perhaps it was only Sophia's stoutness and a certain resemblance to portraits of Catherine the Great that gave her, in my eyes, a haughty aspect, but at all events I felt quite intimidated when she looked at me intently and said, "Friends of our friends are our friends also." I became reassured and changed my opinion about her only when, after saying those words, she opened her mouth and sighed deeply. It may be that she owed her habit of sighing after every few words-with a great distention of the mouth and a slight drooping of her large blue eyes-to her stoutness, yet it was none the less one which expressed so much good-humour that I at once lost all fear of her, and found her actually attractive. Her eyes were charming, her voice pleasant and musical, and even the flowing lines of her fullness seemed to my youthful vision not wholly lacking in beauty.


I had imagined that Lubov Sergievna, as my friend's friend, would at once say something friendly and familiar to me; yet, after gazing at me fixedly for a while, as though in doubt whether the remark she was about to make to me would not be too friendly, she at length asked me what faculty I was in. After that she stared at me as before, in evident hesitation as to whether or not to say something civil and familiar, until, remarking her perplexity, I besought her with a look to speak freely. Yet all she then said was, "They tell me the Universities pay very little attention to science now," and turned away to call her little dog.


All that evening she spoke only in disjointed fragments of this kind-fragments which had no connection either with the point or with one another; yet I had such faith in Dimitri, and he so often kept looking from her to me with an expression which mutely asked me, "Now, what do you think of that?" that, though I entirely failed to persuade myself that in Lubov Sergievna there was anything to speak of, I could not bear to express the thought, even to myself.


As for the last member of the family, Varenika, she was a well-developed girl of sixteen. The only good features in her were a pair of dark-grey eyes,-which, in their expression of gaiety mingled with quiet attention, greatly resembled those of her aunt-a long coil of flaxen hair, and extremely delicate, beautiful hands.


"I expect, Monsieur Nicolas, you find it wearisome to hear a story begun from the middle?" said Sophia Ivanovna with her good-natured sigh as she turned over some pieces of clothing which she was sewing. The reading aloud had ceased for the moment because Dimitri had left the room on some errand or another.


"Or perhaps you have read Rob Roy before?" she added.


At that period I thought it incumbent upon me, in virtue of my student's uniform, to reply in a very "clever and original" manner to every question put to me by people whom I did not know very well, and regarded such short, clear answers as "Yes," "No," "I like it," or "I do not care for it," as things to be ashamed of. Accordingly, looking down at my new and fashionably-cut trousers and the glittering buttons of my tunic, I replied that I had never read Rob Roy, but that it interested me greatly to hear it, since I preferred to read books from the middle rather than from the beginning.


"It is twice as interesting," I added with a self-satisfied smirk; "for then one can guess what has gone before as well as what is to come after."


The Princess smiled what I thought was a forced smile, but one which I discovered later to be her only one.


"Well, perhaps that is true," she said. "But tell me, Nicolas (you will not be offended if I drop the Monsieur)-tell me, are you going to be in town long? When do you go away?"


"I do not know quite. Perhaps to-morrow, or perhaps not for some while yet," I replied for some reason or another, though I knew perfectly well that in reality we were to go to-morrow.


"I wish you could stop longer, both for your own sake and for Dimitri's," she said in a meditative manner. "At your age friendship is a weak thing."


I felt that every one was looking at me, and waiting to see what I should say-though certainly Varenika made a pretence of looking at her aunt's work. I felt, in fact, as though I were being put through an examination, and that it behoved me to figure in it as well as possible.


"Yes, to ME Dimitri's friendship is most useful," I replied, "but to HIM mine cannot be of any use at all, since he is a thousand times better than I." (Dimitri could not hear what I said, or I should have feared his detecting the insincerity of my words.)


Again the Princess smiled her unnatural, yet characteristically natural, smile.


"Just listen to him!" she said. "But it is YOU who are the little monster of perfection."


"'Monster of perfection,'" I thought to myself. "That is splendid. I must make a note of it."


"Yet, to dismiss yourself, he has been extraordinarily clever in that quarter," she went on in a lower tone (which pleased me somehow) as she indicated Lubov Sergievna with her eyes, "since he has discovered in our poor little Auntie" (such was the pet name which they gave Lubov) "all sorts of perfections which I, who have known her and her little dog for twenty years, had never yet suspected. Varenika, go and tell them to bring me a glass of water," she added, letting her eyes wander again. Probably she had bethought her that it was too soon, or not entirely necessary, to let me into all the family secrets. "Yet no-let HIM go, for he has nothing to do, while you are reading. Pray go to the door, my friend," she said to me, "and walk about fifteen steps down the passage. Then halt and call out pretty loudly, 'Peter, bring Maria Ivanovna a glass of iced water'"-and she smiled her curious smile once more.


"I expect she wants to say something about me in my absence," I thought to myself as I left the room. "I expect she wants to remark that she can see very clearly that I am a very, very clever young man."


Hardly had I taken a dozen steps when I was overtaken by Sophia Ivanovna, who, though fat and short of breath, trod with surprising lightness and agility.


"Merci, mon cher," she said. "I will go and tell them myself."





XXIV. LOVE


SOPHIA IVANOVNA, as I afterwards came to know her, was one of those rare, young-old women who are born for family life, but to whom that happiness has been denied by fate. Consequently all that store of their love which should have been poured out upon a husband and children becomes pent up in their hearts, until they suddenly decide to let it overflow upon a few chosen individuals. Yet so inexhaustible is that store of old maids' love that, despite the number of individuals so selected, there still remains an abundant surplus of affection which they lavish upon all by whom they are surrounded-upon all, good or bad, whom they may chance to meet in their daily life.


Of love there are three kinds-love of beauty, the love which denies itself, and practical love.


Of the desire of a young man for a young woman, as well as of the reverse instance, I am not now speaking, for of such tendresses I am wary, seeing that I have been too unhappy in my life to have been able ever to see in such affection a single spark of truth, but rather a lying pretence in which sensuality, connubial relations, money, and the wish to bind hands or to unloose them have rendered feeling such a complex affair as to defy analysis. Rather am I speaking of that love for a human being which, according to the spiritual strength of its possessor, concentrates itself either upon a single individual, upon a few, or upon many-of love for a mother, a father, a brother, little children, a friend, a compatriot-of love, in short, for one's neighbour.


Love of beauty consists in a love of the sense of beauty and of its expression. People who thus love conceive the object of their affection to be desirable only in so far as it arouses in them that pleasurable sensation of which the consciousness and the expression soothes the senses. They change the object of their love frequently, since their principal aim consists in ensuring that the voluptuous feeling of their adoration shall be constantly titillated. To preserve in themselves this sensuous condition, they talk unceasingly, and in the most elegant terms, on the subject of the love which they feel, not only for its immediate object, but also for objects upon which it does not touch at all. This country of ours contains many such individuals-individuals of that well-known class who, cultivating "the beautiful," not only discourse of their cult to all and sundry, but speak of it pre-eminently in FRENCH. It may seem a strange and ridiculous thing to say, but I am convinced that among us we have had in the past, and still have, a large section of society-notably women-whose love for their friends, husbands, or children would expire to-morrow if they were debarred from dilating upon it in the tongue of France!


Love of the second kind-renunciatory love-consists in a yearning to undergo self-sacrifice for the object beloved, regardless of any consideration whether such self-sacrifice will benefit or injure the object in question. "There is no evil which I would not endure to show both the world and him or her whom I adore my devotion." There we have the formula of this kind of love. People who thus love never look for reciprocity of affection, since it is a finer thing to sacrifice yourself for one who does not comprehend you. Also, they are always painfully eager to exaggerate the merits of their sacrifice; usually constant in their love, for the reason that they would find it hard to forego the kudos of the deprivations which they endure for the object beloved; always ready to die, to prove to him or to her the entirety of their devotion; but sparing of such small daily proofs of their love as call for no special effort of self-immolation. They do not much care whether you eat well, sleep well, keep your spirits up, or enjoy good health, nor do they ever do anything to obtain for you those blessings if they have it in their power; but, should you be confronting a bullet, or have fallen into the water, or stand in danger of being burnt, or have had your heart broken in a love affair-well, for all these things they are prepared if the occasion should arise. Moreover, people addicted to love of such a self-sacrificing order are invariably proud of their love, exacting, jealous, distrustful, and-strange to tell-anxious that the object of their adoration should incur perils (so that they may save it from calamity, and console it thereafter) and even be vicious (so that they may purge it of its vice).


Suppose, now, that you are living in the country with a wife who loves you in this self-sacrificing manner. You may be healthy and contented, and have occupations which interest you, while, on the other hand, your wife may be too weak to superintend the household work (which, in consequence, will be left to the servants), or to look after the children (who, in consequence, will be left to the nurses), or to put her heart into any work whatsoever: and all because she loves nobody and nothing but yourself. She may be patently ill, yet she will say not a word to you about it, for fear of distressing you. She may be patently ennuyee, yet for your sake she will be prepared to be so for the rest of her life. She may be patently depressed because you stick so persistently to your occupations (whether sport, books, farming, state service, or anything else) and see clearly that they are doing you harm; yet, for all that, she will keep silence, and suffer it to be so. Yet, should you but fall sick-and, despite her own ailments and your prayers that she will not distress herself in vain, your loving wife will remain sitting inseparably by your bedside. Every moment you will feel her sympathetic gaze resting upon you and, as it were, saying: "There! I told you so, but it is all one to me, and I shall not leave you." In the morning you maybe a little better, and move into another room. The room, however, will be insufficiently warmed or set in order; the soup which alone you feel you could eat will not have been cooked; nor will any medicine have been sent for. Yet, though worn out with night watching, your loving wife will continue to regard you with an expression of sympathy, to walk about on tiptoe, and to whisper unaccustomed and obscure orders to the servants. You may wish to be read to-and your loving wife will tell you with a sigh that she feels sure you will be unable to hear her reading, and only grow angry at her awkwardness in doing it; wherefore you had better not be read to at all. You may wish to walk about the room-and she will tell you that it would be far better for you not to do so. You may wish to talk with some friends who have called-and she will tell you that talking is not good for you. At nightfall the fever may come upon you again, and you may wish to be left alone whereupon your loving wife, though wasted, pale, and full of yawns, will go on sitting in a chair opposite you, as dusk falls, until her very slightest movement, her very slightest sound, rouses you to feelings of anger and impatience. You may have a servant who has lived with you for twenty years, and to whom you are attached, and who would tend you well and to your satisfaction during the night, for the reason that he has been asleep all day and is, moreover, paid a salary for his services; yet your wife will not suffer him to wait upon you. No; everything she must do herself with her weak, unaccustomed fingers (of which you follow the movements with suppressed irritation as those pale members do their best to uncork a medicine bottle, to snuff a candle, to pour out physic, or to touch you in a squeamish sort of way). If you are an impatient, hasty sort of man, and beg of her to leave the room, you will hear by the vexed, distressed sounds which come from her that she is humbly sobbing and weeping behind the door, and whispering foolishness of some kind to the servant. Finally if you do not die, your loving wife-who has not slept during the whole three weeks of your illness (a fact of which she will constantly remind you)-will fall ill in her turn, waste away, suffer much, and become even more incapable of any useful pursuit than she was before; while by the time that you have regained your normal state of health she will express to you her self-sacrificing affection only by shedding around you a kind of benignant dullness which involuntarily communicates itself both to yourself and to every one else in your vicinity.


The third kind of love-practical love-consists of a yearning to satisfy every need, every desire, every caprice, nay, every vice, of the being beloved. People who love thus always love their life long, since, the more they love, the more they get to know the object beloved, and the easier they find the task of loving it-that is to say, of satisfying its desires. Their love seldom finds expression in words, but if it does so, it expresses itself neither with assurance nor beauty, but rather in a shamefaced, awkward manner, since people of this kind invariably have misgivings that they are loving unworthily. People of this kind love even the faults of their adored one, for the reason that those faults afford them the power of constantly satisfying new desires. They look for their affection to be returned, and even deceive themselves into believing that it is returned, and are happy accordingly: yet in the reverse case they will still continue to desire happiness for their beloved one, and try by every means in their power-whether moral or material, great or small-to provide it.


Such practical love it was-love for her nephew, for her niece, for her sister, for Lubov Sergievna, and even for myself, because I loved Dimitri-that shone in the eyes, as well as in the every word and movement, of Sophia Ivanovna.


Only long afterwards did I learn to value her at her true worth. Yet even now the question occurred to me: "What has made Dimitri-who throughout has tried to understand love differently to other young fellows, and has always had before his eyes the gentle, loving Sophia Ivanovna-suddenly fall so deeply in love with the incomprehensible Lubov Sergievna, and declare that in his aunt he can only find good QUALITIES? Verily it is a true saying that 'a prophet hath no honour in his own country.' One of two things: either every man has in him more of bad than of good, or every man is more receptive to bad than to good. Lubov Sergievna he has not known for long, whereas his aunt's love he has known since the day of his birth."





XXV. I BECOME BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH THE NECHLUDOFFS


WHEN I returned to the verandah, I found that they were not talking of me at all, as I had anticipated. On the contrary, Varenika had laid aside the book, and was engaged in a heated dispute with Dimitri, who, for his part, was walking up and down the verandah, and frowningly adjusting his neck in his collar as he did so. The subject of the quarrel seemed to be Ivan Yakovlevitch and superstition, but it was too animated a difference for its underlying cause not to be something which concerned the family much more nearly. Although the Princess and Lubov Sergievna were sitting by in silence, they were following every word, and evidently tempted at times to take part in the dispute; yet always, just when they were about to speak, they checked themselves, and left the field clear for the two principles, Dimitri and Varenika. On my entry, the latter glanced at me with such an indifferent air that I could see she was wholly absorbed in the quarrel and did not care whether she spoke in my presence or not. The Princess too looked the same, and was clearly on Varenika's side, while Dimitri began, if anything, to raise his voice still more when I appeared, and Lubov Sergievna, for her part, observed to no one in particular: "Old people are quite right when they say, 'Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait.'"


Nevertheless this quotation did not check the dispute, though it somehow gave me the impression that the side represented by the speaker and her friend was in the wrong. Although it was a little awkward for me to be present at a petty family difference, the fact that the true relations of the family revealed themselves during its progress, and that my presence did nothing to hinder that revelation, afforded me considerable gratification.


How often it happens that for years one sees a family cover themselves over with a conventional cloak of decorum, and preserve the real relations of its members a secret from every eye! How often, too, have I remarked that, the more impenetrable (and therefore the more decorous) is the cloak, the harsher are the relations which it conceals! Yet, once let some unexpected question-often a most trivial one (the colour of a woman's hair, a visit, a man's horses, and so forth)-arise in that family circle, and without any visible cause there will also arise an ever-growing difference, until in time the cloak of decorum becomes unequal to confining the quarrel within due bounds, and, to the dismay of the disputants and the astonishment of the auditors, the real and ill-adjusted relations of the family are laid bare, and the cloak, now useless for concealment, is bandied from hand to hand among the contending factions until it serves only to remind one of the years during which it successfully deceived one's perceptions. Sometimes to strike one's head violently against a ceiling hurts one less than just to graze some spot which has been hurt and bruised before: and in almost every family there exists some such raw and tender spot. In the Nechludoff family that spot was Dimitri's extraordinary affection for Lubov Sergievna, which aroused in the mother and sister, if not a jealous feeling, at all events a sense of hurt family pride. This was the grave significance which underlay, for all those present, the seeming dispute about Ivan Yakovlevitch and superstition.


"In anything that other people deride and despise you invariably profess to see something extraordinarily good!" Varenika was saying in her clear voice, as she articulated each syllable with careful precision.


"Indeed?" retorted Dimitri with an impatient toss of his head. "Now, in the first place, only a most unthinking person could ever speak of DESPISING such a remarkable man as Ivan Yakovlevitch, while, in the second place, it is YOU who invariably profess to see nothing good in what confronts you."


Meanwhile Sophia Ivanovna kept looking anxiously at us as she turned first to her nephew, and then to her niece, and then to myself. Twice she opened her mouth as though to say what was in her mind and drew a deep sigh.


"Varia, PLEASE go on reading," she said at length, at the same time handing her niece the book, and patting her hand kindly. "I wish to know whether he ever found HER again" (as a matter of fact, the novel in question contained not a word about any one finding any one else). "And, Mitia dear," she added to her nephew, despite the glum looks which he was throwing at her for having interrupted the logical thread of his deductions, "you had better let me poultice your cheek, or your teeth will begin to ache again."


After that the reading was resumed. Yet the quarrel had in no way dispelled the calm atmosphere of family and intellectual harmony which enveloped this circle of ladies.


Clearly deriving its inspiration and character from the Princess Maria Ivanovna, it was a circle which, for me, had a wholly novel and attractive character of logicalness mingled with simplicity and refinement. That character I could discern in the daintiness, good taste, and solidity of everything about me, whether the handbell, the binding of the book, the settee, or the table. Likewise, I divined it in the upright, well-corseted pose of the Princess, in her pendant curls of grey hair, in the manner in which she had, at our first introduction, called me plain "Nicolas" and "he," in the occupations of the ladies (the reading and the sewing of garments), and in the unusual whiteness of their hands. Those hands, en passant, showed a family feature common to all-namely, the feature that the flesh of the palm on the outer side was rosy in colour, and divided by a sharp, straight line from the pure whiteness of the upper portion of the hand. Still more was the character of this feminine circle expressed in the manner in which the three ladies spoke Russian and French-spoke them, that is to say, with perfect articulation of syllables and pedantic accuracy of substantives and prepositions. All this, and more especially the fact that the ladies treated me as simply and as seriously as a real grown-up-telling me their opinions, and listening to my own (a thing to which I was so little accustomed that, for all my glittering buttons and blue facings, I was in constant fear of being told: "Surely you do not think that we are talking SERIOUSLY to you? Go away and learn something")-all this, I say, caused me to feel an entire absence of restraint in this society. I ventured at times to rise, to move about, and to talk boldly to each of the ladies except Varenika (whom I always felt it was unbecoming, or even forbidden, for me to address unless she first spoke to me).


As I listened to her clear, pleasant voice reading aloud, I kept glancing from her to the path of the flower-garden, where the rain-spots were making small dark circles in the sand, and thence to the lime-trees, upon the leaves of which the rain was pattering down in large detached drops shed from the pale, shimmering edge of the livid blue cloud which hung suspended over us. Then I would glance at her again, and then at the last purple rays of the setting sun where they were throwing the dense clusters of old, rain-washed birches into brilliant relief. Yet again my eyes would return to Varenika, and, each time that they did so, it struck me afresh that she was not nearly so plain as at first I had thought her.


"How I wish that I wasn't in love already!" I reflected, "or that Sonetchka was Varenika! How nice it would be if suddenly I could become a member of this family, and have the three ladies for my mother, aunt, and wife respectively!" All the time that these thoughts kept passing through my head I kept attentively regarding Varenika as she read, until somehow I felt as though I were magnetising her, and that presently she must look at me. Sure enough, at length she raised her head, threw me a glance, and, meeting my eyes, turned away.


"The rain does not seem to stop," she remarked.


Suddenly a new feeling came over me. I began to feel as though everything now happening to me was a repetition of some similar occurrence before-as though on some previous occasion a shower of rain had begun to fall, and the sun had set behind birch-trees, and I had been looking at her, and she had been reading aloud, and I had magnetised her, and she had looked up at me. Yes, all this I seemed to recall as though it had happened once before.


"Surely she is not-SHE?" was my thought. "Surely IT is not beginning?" However, I soon decided that Varenika was not the "SHE" referred to, and that "it" was not "beginning." "In the first place," I said to myself, "Varenika is not at all BEAUTIFUL. She is just an ordinary girl whose acquaintance I have made in the ordinary way, whereas the she whom I shall meet somewhere and some day and in some not ordinary way will be anything but ordinary. This family pleases me so much only because hitherto I have never seen anybody. Such things will always be happening in the future, and I shall see many more such families during my life."





XXVI. I SHOW OFF


AT tea time the reading came to an end, and the ladies began to talk among themselves of persons and things unknown to me. This I conceived them to be doing on purpose to make me conscious (for all their kind demeanour) of the difference which years and position in the world had set between them and myself. In general discussions, however, in which I could take part I sought to atone for my late silence by exhibiting that extraordinary cleverness and originality to which I felt compelled by my University uniform. For instance, when the conversation turned upon country houses, I said that Prince Ivan Ivanovitch had a villa near Moscow which people came to see even from London and Paris, and that it contained balustrading which had cost 380,000 roubles. Likewise, I remarked that the Prince was a very near relation of mine, and that, when lunching with him the same day, he had invited me to go and spend the entire summer with him at that villa, but that I had declined, since I knew the villa well, and had stayed in it more than once, and that all those balustradings and bridges did not interest me, since I could not bear ornamental work, especially in the country, where I liked everything to be wholly countrified. After delivering myself of this extraordinary and complicated romance, I grew confused, and blushed so much that every one must have seen that I was lying. Both Varenika, who was handing me a cup of tea, and Sophia Ivanovna, who had been gazing at me throughout, turned their heads away, and began to talk of something else with an expression which I afterwards learnt that good-natured people assume when a very young man has told them a manifest string of lies-an expression which says, "Yes, we know he is lying, and why he is doing it, the poor young fellow!"


What I had said about Prince Ivan Ivanovitch having a country villa, I had related simply because I could find no other pretext for mentioning both my relationship to the Prince and the fact that I had been to luncheon with him that day; yet why I had said all I had about the balustrading costing 380,000 roubles, and about my having several times visited the Prince at that villa (I had never once been there-more especially since the Prince possessed no residences save in Moscow and Naples, as the Nechludoffs very well knew), I could not possibly tell you. Neither in childhood nor in adolescence nor in riper years did I ever remark in myself the vice of falsehood-on the contrary, I was, if anything, too outspoken and truthful. Yet, during this first stage of my manhood, I often found myself seized with a strange and unreasonable tendency to lie in the most desperate fashion. I say advisedly "in the most desperate fashion," for the reason that I lied in matters in which it was the easiest thing in the world to detect me. On the whole I think that a vain-glorious desire to appear different from what I was, combined with an impossible hope that the lie would never be found out, was the chief cause of this extraordinary impulse.


After tea, since the rain had stopped and the after-glow of sunset was calm and clear, the Princess proposed that we should go and stroll in the lower garden, and admire her favourite spots there. Following my rule to be always original, and conceiving that clever people like myself and the Princess must surely be above the banalities of politeness, I replied that I could not bear a walk with no object in view, and that, if I DID walk, I liked to walk alone. I had no idea that this speech was simply rude; all I thought was that, even as nothing could be more futile than empty compliments, so nothing could be more pleasing and original than a little frank brusquerie. However, though much pleased with my answer, I set out with the rest of the company.


The Princess's favourite spot of all was at the very bottom of the lower garden, where a little bridge spanned a narrow piece of swamp. The view there was very restricted, yet very intimate and pleasing. We are so accustomed to confound art with nature that, often enough, phenomena of nature which are never to be met with in pictures seem to us unreal, and give us the impression that nature is unnatural, or vice versa; whereas phenomena of nature which occur with too much frequency in pictures seem to us hackneyed, and views which are to be met with in real life, but which appear to us too penetrated with a single idea or a single sentiment, seem to us arabesques. The view from the Princess's favourite spot was as follows. On the further side of a small lake, over-grown with weeds round its edges, rose a steep ascent covered with bushes and with huge old trees of many shades of green, while, overhanging the lake at the foot of the ascent, stood an ancient birch tree which, though partly supported by stout roots implanted in the marshy bank of the lake, rested its crown upon a tall, straight poplar, and dangled its curved branches over the smooth surface of the pond-both branches and the surrounding greenery being reflected therein as in a mirror.


"How lovely!" said the Princess with a nod of her head, and addressing no one in particular.


"Yes, marvellous!" I replied in my desire to show that had an opinion of my own on every subject. "Yet somehow it all looks to me so terribly like a scheme of decoration."


The Princess went on gazing at the scene as though she had not heard me, and turning to her sister and Lubov Sergievna at intervals, in order to point out to them its details-especially a curved, pendent bough, with its reflection in the water, which particularly pleased her. Sophia Ivanovna observed to me that it was all very beautiful, and that she and her sister would sometimes spend hours together at this spot; yet it was clear that her remarks were meant merely to please the Princess. I have noticed that people who are gifted with the faculty of loving are seldom receptive to the beauties of nature. Lubov Sergievna also seemed enraptured, and asked (among other things), "How does that birch tree manage to support itself? Has it stood there long?" Yet the next moment she became absorbed in contemplation of her little dog Susetka, which, with its stumpy paws pattering to and fro upon the bridge in a mincing fashion, seemed to say by the expression of its face that this was the first time it had ever found itself out of doors. As for Dimitri, he fell to discoursing very logically to his mother on the subject of how no view can be beautiful of which the horizon is limited. Varenika alone said nothing. Glancing at her, I saw that she was leaning over the parapet of the bridge, her profile turned towards me, and gazing straight in front of her. Something seemed to be interesting her deeply, or even affecting her, since it was clear that she was oblivious to her surroundings, and thinking neither of herself nor of the fact that any one might be regarding her. In the expression of her large eyes there was nothing but wrapt attention and quiet, concentrated thought, while her whole attitude seemed so unconstrained and, for all her shortness, so dignified that once more some recollection or another touched me and once more I asked myself, "Is IT, then, beginning?" Yet again I assured myself that I was already in love with Sonetchka, and that Varenika was only an ordinary girl, the sister of my friend. Though she pleased me at that moment, I somehow felt a vague desire to show her, by word or deed, some small unfriendliness.


"I tell you what, Dimitri," I said to my friend as I moved nearer to Varenika, so that she might overhear what I was going to say, "it seems to me that, even if there had been no mosquitos here, there would have been nothing to commend this spot; whereas "-and here I slapped my cheek, and in very truth annihilated one of those insects-"it is simply awful."


"Then you do not care for nature?" said Varenika without turning her head.


"I think it a foolish, futile pursuit," I replied, well satisfied that I had said something to annoy her, as well as something original. Varenika only raised her eyebrows a little, with an expression of pity, and went on gazing in front of her as calmly as before.


I felt vexed with her. Yet, for all that, the rusty, paint-blistered parapet on which she was leaning, the way in which the dark waters of the pond reflected the drooping branch of the overhanging birch tree (it almost seemed to me as though branch and its reflection met), the rising odour of the swamp, the feeling of crushed mosquito on my cheek, and her absorbed look and statuesque pose-many times afterwards did these things recur with unexpected vividness to my recollection.





XXVII. DIMITRI


WHEN we returned to the house from our stroll, Varenika declined to sing as she usually did in the evenings, and I was conceited enough to attribute this to my doing, in the belief that its reason lay in what I had said on the bridge. The Nechludoffs never had supper, and went to bed early, while to-night, since Dimitri had the toothache (as Sophia Ivanovna had foretold), he departed with me to his room even earlier than usual. Feeling that I had done all that was required of me by my blue collar and gilt buttons, and that every one was very pleased with me, I was in a gratified, complacent mood, while Dimitri, on the other hand, was rendered by his quarrel with his sister and the toothache both taciturn and gloomy. He sat down at the table, got out a couple of notebooks-a diary and the copy-book in which it was his custom every evening to inscribe the tasks performed by or awaiting him-and, continually frowning and touching his cheek with his hand, continued writing for a while.


"Oh, DO leave me alone!" he cried to the maid whom Sophia Ivanovna sent to ask him whether his teeth were still hurting him, and whether he would not like to have a poultice made. Then, saying that my bed would soon be ready for me and that he would be back presently, he departed to Lubov Sergievna's room.


"What a pity that Varenika is not good-looking and, in general, Sonetchka!" I reflected when I found myself alone. "How nice it would be if, after I have left the University, I could go to her and offer her my hand! I would say to her, 'Princess, though no longer young, and therefore unable to love passionately, I will cherish you as a dear sister. And you,' I would continue to her mother, 'I greatly respect; and you, Sophia Ivanovna, I value highly. Therefore say to me, Varenika (since I ask you to be my wife), just the simple and direct word YES.' And she would give me her hand, and I should press it, and say, 'Mine is a love which depends not upon words, but upon deeds.' And suppose," next came into my head, "that Dimitri should suddenly fall in love with Lubotshka (as Lubotshka has already done with him), and should desire to marry her? Then either one or the other of us would have to resign all thought of marriage. Well, it would be splendid, for in that case I should act thus. As soon as I had noticed how things were, I should make no remark, but go to Dimitri and say, 'It is no use, my friend, for you and I to conceal our feelings from one another. You know that my love for your sister will terminate only with my life. Yet I know all; and though you have deprived me of all hope, and have rendered me an unhappy man, so that Nicolas Irtenieff will have to bewail his misery for the rest of his existence, yet do you take my sister,' and I should lay his hand in Lubotshka's. Then he would say to me, 'No, not for all the world!' and I should reply, 'Prince Nechludoff, it is in vain for you to attempt to outdo me in nobility. Not in the whole world does there exist a more magnanimous being than Nicolas Irtenieff.' Then I should salute him and depart. In tears Dimitri and Lubotshka would pursue me, and entreat me to accept their sacrifice, and I should consent to do so, and, perhaps, be happy ever afterwards-if only I were in love with Varenika." These fancies tickled my imagination so pleasantly that I felt as though I should like to communicate them to my friend; yet, despite our mutual vow of frankness, I also felt as though I had not the physical energy to do so.


Dimitri returned from Lubov Sergievna's room with some toothache capsules which she had given him, yet in even greater pain, and therefore in even greater depression, than before. Evidently no bedroom had yet been prepared for me, for presently the boy who acted as Dimitri's valet arrived to ask him where I was to sleep.


"Oh, go to the devil!" cried Dimitri, stamping his foot. "Vasika, Vasika, Vasika!" he went on, the instant that the boy had left the room, with a gradual raising of his voice at each repetition. "Vasika, lay me out a bed on the floor."


"No, let ME sleep on the floor," I objected.


"Well, it is all one. Lie anywhere you like," continued Dimitri in the same angry tone. "Vasika, why don't you go and do what I tell you?"


Evidently Vasika did not understand what was demanded of him, for he remained where he was.


"What is the matter with you? Go and lay the bed, Vasika, I tell you!" shouted Dimitri, suddenly bursting into a sort of frenzy; yet Vasika still did not understand, but, blushing hotly, stood motionless.


"So you are determined to drive me mad, are you?"-and leaping from his chair and rushing upon the boy, Dimitri struck him on the head with the whole weight of his fist, until the boy rushed headlong from the room. Halting in the doorway, Dimitri glanced at me, and the expression of fury and pain which had sat for a moment on his countenance suddenly gave place to such a boyish, kindly, affectionate, yet ashamed, expression that I felt sorry for him, and reconsidered my intention of leaving him to himself. He said nothing, but for a long time paced the room in silence, occasionally glancing at me with the same deprecatory expression as before. Then he took his notebook from the table, wrote something in it, took off his jacket and folded it carefully, and, stepping into the corner where the ikon hung, knelt down and began to say his prayers, with his large white hands folded upon his breast. So long did he pray that Vasika had time to bring a mattress and spread it, under my whispered directions, on the floor. Indeed, I had undressed and laid myself down upon the mattress before Dimitri had finished. As I contemplated his slightly rounded back and the soles of his feet (which somehow seemed to stick out in my direction in a sort of repentant fashion whenever he made his obeisances), I felt that I liked him more than ever, and debated within myself whether or not I should tell him all I had been fancying concerning our respective sisters. When he had finished his prayers, he lay down upon the bed near me, and, propping himself upon his elbow, looked at me in silence, with a kindly, yet abashed, expression. Evidently he found it difficult to do this, yet meant thus to punish himself. Then I smiled and returned his gaze, and he smiled back at me.


"Why do you not tell me that my conduct has been abominable?" he said. "You have been thinking so, have you not?"


"Yes," I replied; and although it was something quite different which had been in my mind, it now seemed to me that that was what I had been thinking. "Yes, it was not right of you, nor should I have expected it of you." It pleased me particularly at that moment to call him by the familiar second person singular. "But how are your teeth now?" I added.


"Oh, much better. Nicolinka, my friend," he went on, and so feelingly that it sounded as though tears were standing in his eyes, "I know and feel that I am bad, but God sees how I try to be better, and how I entreat Him to make me so. Yet what am I to do with such an unfortunate, horrible nature as mine? What am I to do with it? I try to keep myself in hand and to rule myself, but suddenly it becomes impossible for me to do so-at all events, impossible for me to do so unaided. I need the help and support of some one. Now, there is Lubov Sergievna; SHE understands me, and could help me in this, and I know by my notebook that I have greatly improved in this respect during the past year. Ah, my dear Nicolinka"-he spoke with the most unusual and unwonted tenderness, and in a tone which had grown calmer now that he had made his confession-"how much the influence of a woman like Lubov could do for me! Think how good it would be for me if I could have a friend like her to live with when I have become independent! With her I should be another man."


And upon that Dimitri began to unfold to me his plans for marriage, for a life in the country, and for continual self-discipline.


"Yes, I will live in the country," he said, "and you shall come to see me when you have married Sonetchka. Our children shall play together. All this may seem to you stupid and ridiculous, yet it may very well come to pass."


"Yes, it very well may" I replied with a smile, yet thinking how much nicer it would be if I married his sister.


"I tell you what," he went on presently; "you only imagine yourself to be in love with Sonetchka, whereas I can see that it is all rubbish, and that you do not really know what love means."


I did not protest, for, in truth, I almost agreed with him, and for a while we lay without speaking.


"Probably you have noticed that I have been in my old bad humour today, and have had a nasty quarrel with Varia?" he resumed. "I felt bad about it afterwards-more particularly since it occurred in your presence. Although she thinks wrongly on some subjects, she is a splendid girl and very good, as you will soon recognise."


His quick transition from mention of my love affairs to praise of his sister pleased me extremely, and made me blush, but I nevertheless said nothing more about his sister, and we went on talking of other things.


Thus we chattered until the cocks had crowed twice. In fact, the pale dawn was already looking in at the window when at last Dimitri lay down upon his bed and put out the candle.


"Well, now for sleep," he said.


"Yes," I replied, "but-"


"But what?"


"Now nice it is to be alive in the daylight!"


"Yes, it IS a splendid thing!" he replied in a voice which, even in the darkness, enabled me to see the expression of his cheerful, kindly eyes and boyish smile.





XXVIII. IN THE COUNTRY


Next day Woloda and myself departed in a post-chaise for the country. Turning over various Moscow recollections in my head as we drove along, I suddenly recalled Sonetchka Valakhin-though not until evening, and when we had already covered five stages of the road. "It is a strange thing," I thought, "that I should be in love, and yet have forgotten all about it. I must start and think about her," and straightway I proceeded to do so, but only in the way that one thinks when travelling-that is to say, disconnectedly, though vividly. Thus I brought myself to such a condition that, for the first two days after our arrival home, I somehow considered it incumbent upon me always to appear sad and moody in the presence of the household, and especially before Katenka, whom I looked upon as a great connoisseur in matters of this kind, and to whom I threw out a hint of the condition in which my heart was situated. Yet, for all my attempts at dissimulation and assiduous adoption of such signs of love sickness as I had occasionally observed in other people, I only succeeded for two days (and that at intervals, and mostly towards evening) in reminding myself of the fact that I was in love, and finally, when I had settled down into the new rut of country life and pursuits, I forgot about my affection for Sonetchka altogether.


We arrived at Petrovskoe in the night time, and I was then so soundly asleep that I saw nothing of the house as we approached it, nor yet of the avenue of birch trees, nor yet of the household-all of whom had long ago betaken themselves to bed and to slumber. Only old hunchbacked Foka-bare-footed, clad in some sort of a woman's wadded nightdress, and carrying a candlestick-opened the door to us. As soon as he saw who we were, he trembled all over with joy, kissed us on the shoulders, hurriedly put on his felt slippers, and started to dress himself properly. I passed in a semi-waking condition through the porch and up the steps, but in the hall the lock of the door, the bars and bolts, the crooked boards of the flooring, the chest, the ancient candelabrum (splashed all over with grease as of old), the shadows thrown by the crooked, chill, recently-lighted stump of candle, the perennially dusty, unopened window behind which I remembered sorrel to have grown-all was so familiar, so full of memories, so intimate of aspect, so, as it were, knit together by a single idea, that I suddenly became conscious of a tenderness for this quiet old house. Involuntarily I asked myself, "How have we, the house and I, managed to remain apart so long?" and, hurrying from spot to spot, ran to see if all the other rooms were still the same. Yes, everything was unchanged, except that everything had become smaller and lower, and I myself taller, heavier, and more filled out. Yet, even as I was, the old house received me back into its arms, and aroused in me with every board, every window, every step of the stairs, and every sound the shadows of forms, feelings, and events of the happy but irrevocable past. When we entered our old night nursery, all my childish fears lurked once more in the darkness of the corners and doorway. When we passed into the drawing-room, I could feel the old calm motherly love diffusing itself from every object in the apartment. In the breakfast-room, the noisy, careless merriment of childhood seemed merely to be waiting to wake to life again. In the divannaia (whither Foka first conducted us, and where he had prepared our beds) everything-mirror, screen, old wooden ikon, the lumps on the walls covered with white paper-seemed to speak of suffering and of death and of what would never come back to us again.


We got into bed, and Foka, bidding us good-night, retired.


"It was in this room that Mamma died, was it not?" said Woloda.


I made no reply, but pretended to be asleep. If I had said anything I should have burst into tears. On awaking next morning, I beheld Papa sitting on Woloda's bed in his dressing gown and slippers and smoking a cigar. Leaping up with a merry hoist of the shoulders, he came over to me, slapped me on the back with his great hand, and presented me his cheek to press my lips to.


"Well done, DIPLOMAT!" he said in his most kindly jesting tone as he looked at me with his small bright eyes. "Woloda tells me you have passed the examinations well for a youngster, and that is a splendid thing. Unless you start and play the fool, I shall have another fine little fellow in you. Thanks, my dear boy. Well, we will have a grand time of it here now, and in the winter, perhaps, we shall move to St. Petersburg. I only wish the hunting was not over yet, or I could have given you some amusement in THAT way. Can you shoot, Woldemar? However, whether there is any game or not, I will take you out some day. Next winter, if God pleases, we will move to St. Petersburg, and you shall meet people, and make friends, for you are now my two young grown-ups. I have been telling Woldemar that you are just starting on your careers, whereas my day is ended. You are old enough now to walk by yourselves, but, whenever you wish to confide in me, pray do so, for I am no longer your nurse, but your friend. At least, I will be your friend and comrade and adviser as much as I can and more than that I cannot do. How does that fall in with your philosophy, eh, Koko? Well or ill, eh?"


Of course I said that it fell in with it entirely, and, indeed, I really thought so. That morning Papa had a particularly winning, bright, and happy expression on his face, and these new relations between us, as of equals and comrades, made me love him all the more.


"Now, tell me," he went on, "did you call upon all our kinsfolk and the Iwins? Did you see the old man, and what did he say to you? And did you go to Prince Ivan's?"


We continued talking so long that, before we were fully dressed, the sun had left the window of the divannaia, and Jakoff (the same old man who of yore had twirled his fingers behind his back and always repeated his words) had entered the room and reported to Papa that the carriage was ready.


"Where are you going to?" I asked Papa.


"Oh, I had forgotten all about it!" he replied, with a cough and the usual hoisting of his shoulder. "I promised to go and call upon Epifanova to-day. You remember Epifanova-'la belle Flamande'-don't you, who used to come and see your Mamma? They are nice people." And with a self-conscious shrug of his shoulders (so it appeared to me) Papa left the room.


During our conversation, Lubotshka had more than once come to the door and asked "Can I come in?" but Papa had always shouted to her that she could not do so, since we were not dressed yet.


"What rubbish!" she replied. "Why, I have seen you in your dressing-gown."


"Never mind; you cannot see your brothers without their inexpressibles," rejoined Papa. "If they each of them just go to the door, let that be enough for you. Now go. Even for them to SPEAK to you in such a neglige costume is unbecoming."


"How unbearable you are!" was Lubotshka's parting retort. "Well, at least hurry up and come down to the drawing-room, for Mimi wants to see them."


As soon as Papa had left the room, I hastened to array myself in my student's uniform, and to repair to the drawing-room.


Woloda, on the other hand, was in no hurry, but remained sitting on his bed and talking to Jakoff about the best places to find plover and snipe. As I have said, there was nothing in the world he so much feared as to be suspected of any affection for his father, brother, and sister; so that, to escape any expression of that feeling, he often fell into the other extreme, and affected a coldness which shocked people who did not comprehend its cause. In the hall, I collided with Papa, who was hurrying towards the carriage with short, rapid steps. He had a new and fashionable Moscow greatcoat on, and smelt of scent. On seeing me, he gave a cheerful nod, as much as to say, "Do you remark my splendour?" and once again I was struck with the happy expression of face which I had noted earlier in the morning.


The drawing-room looked the same lofty, bright room as of Yore, with its brown English piano, and its large open windows looking on to the green trees and yellowish-red paths of the garden. After kissing Mimi and Lubotshka, I was approaching Katenka for the same purpose when it suddenly struck me that it might be improper for me to salute her in that fashion. Accordingly I halted, silent and blushing. Katenka, for her part, was quite at her ease as she held out a white hand to me and congratulated me on my passing into the University. The same thing took place when Woloda entered the drawing-room and met Katenka. Indeed, it was something of a problem how, after being brought up together and seeing one another daily, we ought now, after this first separation, to meet again. Katenka had grown better-looking than any of us, yet Woloda seemed not at all confused as, with a slight bow to her, he crossed over to Lubotshka, made a jesting remark to her, and then departed somewhere on some solitary expedition.





XXIX. RELATIONS BETWEEN THE GIRLS AND OURSELVES


OF the girls Woloda took the strange view that, although he wished that they should have enough to eat, should sleep well, be well dressed, and avoid making such mistakes in French as would shame him before strangers, he would never admit that they could think or feel like human beings, still less that they could converse with him sensibly about anything. Whenever they addressed to him a serious question (a thing, by the way, which he always tried to avoid), such as asking his opinion on a novel or inquiring about his doings at the University, he invariably pulled a grimace, and either turned away without speaking or answered with some nonsensical French phrase-"Comme c'est tres jolie!" or the like. Or again, feigning to look serious and stolidly wise, he would say something absolutely meaningless and bearing no relation whatever to the question asked him, or else suddenly exclaim, with a look of pretended unconsciousness, the word bulku or poyechali or kapustu, [Respectively, "roll of butter," "away," and "cabbage."] or something of the kind; and when, afterwards, I happened to repeat these words to him as having been told me by Lubotshka or Katenka, he would always remark:


"Hm! So you actually care about talking to them? I can see you are a duffer still"-and one needed to see and near him to appreciate the profound, immutable contempt which echoed in this remark. He had been grown-up now two years, and was in love with every good-looking woman that he met; yet, despite the fact that he came in daily contact with Katenka (who during those two years had been wearing long dresses, and was growing prettier every day), the possibility of his falling in love with her never seemed to enter his head. Whether this proceeded from the fact that the prosaic recollections of childhood were still too fresh in his memory, or whether from the aversion which very young people feel for everything domestic, or whether from the common human weakness which, at a first encounter with anything fair and pretty, leads a man to say to himself, "Ah! I shall meet much more of the same kind during my life," but at all events Woloda had never yet looked upon Katenka with a man's eyes.


All that summer Woloda appeared to find things very wearisome-a fact which arose out of that contempt for us all which, as I have said, he made no effort to conceal. His expression of face seemed to be constantly saying, "Phew! how it bores me to have no one to speak to!" The first thing in the morning he would go out shooting, or sit reading a book in his room, and not dress until luncheon time. Indeed, if Papa was not at home, he would take his book into that meal, and go on reading it without addressing so much as a single word to any one of us, who felt, somehow, guilty in his presence. In the evening, too, he would stretch himself on a settee in the drawing-room, and either go to sleep, propped on his elbow, or tell us farcical stories-sometimes stories so improper as to make Mimi grow angry and blush, and ourselves die with laughter. At other times he would not condescend to address a single serious word to any member of the family except Papa or (occasionally) myself. Involuntarily I offended against his view of girls, seeing that I was not so afraid of seeming affectionate as he, and, moreover, had not such a profound and confirmed contempt for young women. Yet several times that summer, when driven by lack of amusement to try and engage Lubotshka and Katenka in conversation, I always encountered in them such an absence of any capacity for logical thinking, and such an ignorance of the simplest, most ordinary matters (as, for instance, the nature of money, the subjects studied at universities, the effect of war, and so forth), as well as such indifference to my explanations of such matters, that these attempts of mine only ended in confirming my unfavourable opinion of feminine ability.


I remember one evening when Lubotshka kept repeating some unbearably tedious passage on the piano about a hundred times in succession, while Woloda, who was dozing on a settee in the drawing-room, kept addressing no one in particular as he muttered, "Lord! how she murders it! WHAT a musician! WHAT a Beethoven!" (he always pronounced the composer's name with especial irony). "Wrong again! Now-a second time! That's it!" and so on. Meanwhile Katenka and I were sitting by the tea-table, and somehow she began to talk about her favourite subject-love. I was in the right frame of mind to philosophise, and began by loftily defining love as the wish to acquire in another what one does not possess in oneself. To this Katenka retorted that, on the contrary, love is not love at all if a girl desires to marry a man for his money alone, but that, in her opinion, riches were a vain thing, and true love only the affection which can stand the test of separation (this I took to be a hint concerning her love for Dubkoff). At this point Woloda, who must have been listening all the time, raised himself on his elbow, and cried out some rubbish or another; and I felt that he was right.


Apart from the general faculties (more or less developed in different persons) of intellect, sensibility, and artistic feeling, there also exists (more or less developed in different circles of society, and especially in families) a private or individual faculty which I may call APPREHENSION. The essence of this faculty lies in sympathetic appreciation of proportion, and in identical understanding of things. Two individuals who possess this faculty and belong to the same social circle or the same family apprehend an expression of feeling precisely to the same point, namely, the point beyond which such expression becomes mere phrasing. Thus they apprehend precisely where commendation ends and irony begins, where attraction ends and pretence begins, in a manner which would be impossible for persons possessed of a different order of apprehension. Persons possessed of identical apprehension view objects in an identically ludicrous, beautiful, or repellent light; and in order to facilitate such identical apprehension between members of the same social circle or family, they usually establish a language, turns of speech, or terms to define such shades of apprehension as exist for them alone. In our particular family such apprehension was common to Papa, Woloda, and myself, and was developed to the highest pitch, Dubkoff also approximated to our coterie in apprehension, but Dimitri, though infinitely more intellectual than Dubkoff, was grosser in this respect. With no one, however, did I bring this faculty to such a point as with Woloda, who had grown up with me under identical conditions. Papa stood a long way from us, and much that was to us as clear as "two and two make four" was to him incomprehensible. For instance, I and Woloda managed to establish between ourselves the following terms, with meanings to correspond. Izium [Raisins.] meant a desire to boast of one's money; shishka [Bump or swelling.] (on pronouncing which one had to join one's fingers together, and to put a particular emphasis upon the two sh's in the word) meant anything fresh, healthy, and comely, but not elegant; a substantive used in the plural meant an undue partiality for the object which it denoted; and so forth, and so forth. At the same time, the meaning depended considerably upon the expression of the face and the context of the conversation; so that, no matter what new expression one of us might invent to define a shade of feeling the other could immediately understand it by a hint alone. The girls did not share this faculty of apprehension, and herein lay the chief cause of our moral estrangement, and of the contempt which we felt for them.


It may be that they too had their "apprehension," but it so little ran with ours that, where we already perceived the "phrasing," they still saw only the feeling-our irony was for them truth, and so on. At that time I had not yet learnt to understand that they were in no way to blame for this, and that absence of such apprehension in no way prevented them from being good and clever girls. Accordingly I looked down upon them. Moreover, having once lit upon my precious idea of "frankness," and being bent upon applying it to the full in myself, I thought the quiet, confiding nature of Lubotshka guilty of secretiveness and dissimulation simply because she saw no necessity for digging up and examining all her thoughts and instincts. For instance, the fact that she always signed the sign of the cross over Papa before going to bed, that she and Katenka invariably wept in church when attending requiem masses for Mamma, and that Katenka sighed and rolled her eyes about when playing the piano-all these things seemed to me sheer make-believe, and I asked myself: "At what period did they learn to pretend like grown-up people, and how can they bring themselves to do it?"





XXX. HOW I EMPLOYED MY TIME


Nevertheless, the fact that that summer I developed a passion for music caused me to become better friends with the ladies of our household than I had been for years. In the spring, a young fellow came to see us, armed with a letter of introduction, who, as soon as ever he entered the drawing-room, fixed his eyes upon the piano, and kept gradually edging his chair closer to it as he talked to Mimi and Katenka. After discoursing awhile of the weather and the amenities of country life, he skilfully directed the conversation to piano-tuners, music, and pianos generally, and ended by saying that he himself played-and in truth he did sit down and perform three waltzes, with Mimi, Lubotshka, and Katenka grouped about the instrument, and watching him as he did so. He never came to see us again, but his playing, and his attitude when at the piano, and the way in which he kept shaking his long hair, and, most of all, the manner in which he was able to execute octaves with his left hand as he first of all played them rapidly with his thumb and little finger, and then slowly closed those members, and then played the octaves afresh, made a great impression upon me. This graceful gesture of his, together with his easy pose and his shaking of hair and successful winning of the ladies' applause by his talent, ended by firing me to take up the piano. Convinced that I possessed both talent and a passion for music, I set myself to learn, and, in doing so, acted just as millions of the male-still more, of the female-sex have done who try to teach themselves without a skilled instructor, without any real turn for the art, or without the smallest understanding either of what the art can give or of what ought to be done to obtain that gift. For me music (or rather, piano-playing) was simply a means of winning the ladies' good graces through their sensibility. With the help of Katenka I first learnt the notes (incidentally breaking several of them with my clumsy fingers), and then-that is to say, after two months of hard work, supplemented by ceaseless twiddling of my rebellious fingers on my knees after luncheon, and on the pillow when in bed-went on to "pieces," which I played (so Katenka assured me) with "soul" ("avec ame"), but altogether regardless of time.


My range of pieces was the usual one-waltzes, galops, "romances," "arrangements," etcetera; all of them of the class of delightful compositions of which any one with a little healthy taste could point out a selection among the better class works contained in any volume of music and say, "These are what you ought NOT to play, seeing that anything worse, less tasteful, and more silly has never yet been included in any collection of music,"-but which (probably for that very reason) are to be found on the piano of every Russian lady. True, we also possessed an unfortunate volume which contained Beethoven's "Sonate Pathetique" and the C minor Sonata (a volume lamed for life by the ladies-more especially by Lubotshka, who used to discourse music from it in memory of Mamma), as well as certain other good pieces which her teacher in Moscow had given her; but among that collection there were likewise compositions of the teacher's own, in the shape of clumsy marches and galops-and these too Lubotshka used to play! Katenka and I cared nothing for serious works, but preferred, above all things, "Le Fou" and "The Nightingale"-the latter of which Katenka would play until her fingers almost became invisible, and which I too was beginning to execute with much vigour and some continuity. I had adopted the gestures of the young man of whom I have spoken, and frequently regretted that there were no strangers present to see me play. Soon, however, I began to realise that Liszt and Kalkbrenner were beyond me, and that I should never overtake Katenka. Accordingly, imagining that classical music was easier (as well as, partly, for the sake of originality), I suddenly came to the conclusion that I loved abstruse German music. I began to go into raptures whenever Lubotshka played the "Sonate Pathetique," and although (if the truth be told) that work had for years driven me to the verge of distraction, I set myself to play Beethoven, and to talk of him as "Beethoven." Yet through all this chopping and changing and pretence (as I now conceive) there may have run in me a certain vein of talent, since music sometimes affected me even to tears, and things which particularly pleased me I could strum on the piano afterwards (in a certain fashion) without the score; so that, had any one taught me at that period to look upon music as an end, a grace, in itself, and not merely as a means for pleasing womenfolk with the velocity and pseudo-sentiment of one's playing, I might possibly have become a passable musician.


The reading of French novels (of which Woloda had brought a large store with him from Moscow) was another of my amusements that summer. At that period Monte Cristo and Taine's works had just appeared, while I also revelled in stories by Sue, Dumas, and Paul de Kock. Even their most unnatural personages and events were for me as real as actuality, and not only was I incapable of suspecting an author of lying, but, in my eyes, there existed no author at all. That is to say, the various personages and events of a book paraded themselves before me on the printed page as personages and events that were alive and real; and although I had never in my life met such characters as I there read about, I never for a second doubted that I should one day do so. I discovered in myself all the passions described in every novel, as well as a likeness to all the characters-heroes and villains impartially-who figured therein, just as a suspicious man finds in himself the signs of every possible disease when reading a book on medicine. I took pleasure both in the cunning designs, the glowing sentiments, the tumultuous events, and the character-drawing of these works. A good man was of the goodness, a bad man of the badness, possible only to the imagination of early youth. Likewise I found great pleasure in the fact that it was all written in French, and that I could lay to heart the fine words which the fine heroes spoke, and recall them for use some day when engaged in some noble deed. What quantities of French phrases I culled from those books for Kolpikoff's benefit if I should ever meet him again, as well as for HERS, when at length I should find her and reveal to her my love! For them both I prepared speeches which should overcome them as soon as spoken! Upon novels, too, I founded new ideals of the moral qualities which I wished to attain. First of all, I wished to be NOBLE in all my deeds and conduct (I use the French word noble instead of the Russian word blagorodni for the reason that the former has a different meaning to the latter-as the Germans well understood when they adopted noble as nobel and differentiated it from ehrlich); next, to be strenuous; and lastly, to be what I was already inclined to be, namely, comme il faut. I even tried to approximate my appearance and bearing to that of the heroes who possessed these qualities. In particular I remember how in one of the hundred or so novels which I read that summer there was a very strenuous hero with heavy eyebrows, and that I so greatly wished to resemble him (I felt that I did so already from a moral point of view) that one day, when looking at my eyebrows in the glass, I conceived the idea of clipping them, in order to make them grow bushier. Unfortunately, after I had started to do so, I happened to clip one spot rather shorter than the rest, and so had to level down the rest to it-with the result that, to my horror, I beheld myself eyebrow-less, and anything but presentable. However, I comforted myself with the reflection that my eyebrows would soon sprout again as bushy as my hero's, and was only perplexed to think how I could explain the circumstance to the household when they next perceived my eyebrow-less condition. Accordingly I borrowed some gunpowder from Woloda, rubbed it on my temples, and set it alight. The powder did not fire properly, but I succeeded in singeing myself sufficiently to avert all suspicion of my pranks. And, indeed, afterwards, when I had forgotten all about my hero, my eyebrows grew again, and much thicker than they had been before.





XXXI. "COMME IL FAUT"


SEVERAL times in the course of this narrative I have hinted at an idea corresponding to the above French heading, and now feel it incumbent upon me to devote a whole chapter to that idea, which was one of the most ruinous, lying notions which ever became engrafted upon my life by my upbringing and social milieu.


The human race may be divided into several categories-rich and poor, good and bad, military and civilian, clever and stupid, and so forth, and so forth. Yet each man has his own favourite, fundamental system of division which he unconsciously uses to class each new person with whom he meets. At the time of which I am speaking, my own favourite, fundamental system of division in this respect was into people "comme il faut" and people "comme il ne faut pas"-the latter subdivided, again, into people merely not "comme il faut" and the lower orders. People "comme il faut" I respected, and looked upon as worthy to consort with me as my equals; the second of the above categories I pretended merely to despise, but in reality hated, and nourished towards them a kind of feeling of offended personality; while the third category had no existence at all, so far as I was concerned, since my contempt for them was too complete. This "comme il faut"-ness of mine lay, first and foremost, in proficiency in French, especially conversational French. A person who spoke that language badly at once aroused in me a feeling of dislike. "Why do you try to talk as we do when you haven't a notion how to do it?" I would seem to ask him with my most venomous and quizzing smile. The second condition of "comme il faut"-ness was long nails that were well kept and clean; the third, ability to bow, dance, and converse; the fourth-and a very important one-indifference to everything, and a constant air of refined, supercilious ennui. Moreover, there were certain general signs which, I considered, enabled me to tell, without actually speaking to a man, the class to which he belonged. Chief among these signs (the others being the fittings of his rooms, his gloves, his handwriting, his turn-out, and so forth) were his feet. The relation of boots to trousers was sufficient to determine, in my eyes, the social status of a man. Heelless boots with angular toes, wedded to narrow, unstrapped trouser-ends-these denoted the vulgarian. Boots with narrow, round toes and heels, accompanied either by tight trousers strapped under the instep and fitting close to the leg or by wide trousers similarly strapped, but projecting in a peak over the toe-these meant the man of mauvais genre; and so on, and so on.


It was a curious thing that I who lacked all ability to become "comme il faut," should have assimilated the idea so completely as I did. Possibly it was the fact that it had cost me such enormous labour to acquire that brought about its strenuous development in my mind. I hardly like to think how much of the best and most valuable time of my first sixteen years of existence I wasted upon its acquisition. Yet every one whom I imitated-Woloda, Dubkoff, and the majority of my acquaintances-seemed to acquire it easily. I watched them with envy, and silently toiled to become proficient in French, to bow gracefully and without looking at the person whom I was saluting, to gain dexterity in small-talk and dancing, to cultivate indifference and ennui, and to keep my fingernails well trimmed (though I frequently cut my finger-ends with the scissors in so doing). And all the time I felt that so much remained to be done if I was ever to attain my end! A room, a writing-table, an equipage I still found it impossible to arrange "comme il faut," however much I fought down my aversion to practical matters in my desire to become proficient. Yet everything seemed to arrange itself properly with other people, just as though things could never have been otherwise! Once I remember asking Dubkoff, after much zealous and careful labouring at my finger-nails (his own were extraordinarily good), whether his nails had always been as now, or whether he had done anything to make them so: to which he replied that never within his recollection had he done anything to them, and that he could not imagine a gentleman's nails possibly being different. This answer incensed me greatly, for I had not yet learnt that one of the chief conditions of "comme il faut"-ness was to hold one's tongue about the labour by which it had been acquired. "Comme il faut"-ness I looked upon as not only a great merit, a splendid accomplishment, an embodiment of all the perfection which must strive to attain, but as the one indispensable condition without which there could never be happiness, nor glory, nor any good whatsoever in this world. Even the greatest artist or savant or benefactor of the human race would at that time have won from me no respect if he had not also been "comme il faut." A man possessed of "comme il faut"-ness stood higher than, and beyond all possible equality with, such people, and might well leave it to them to paint pictures, to compose music, to write books, or to do good. Possibly he might commend them for so doing (since why should not merit be commended where-ever it be found?), but he could never stand ON A LEVEL with them, seeing that he was "comme il faut" and they were not-a quite final and sufficient reason. In fact, I actually believe that, had we possessed a brother or a father or a mother who had not been "comme il faut," I should have declared it to be a great misfortune for us, and announced that between myself and them there could never be anything in common. Yet neither waste of the golden hours which I consumed in constantly endeavouring to observe the many arduous, unattainable conditions of "comme il faut"-ness (to the exclusion of any more serious pursuit), nor dislike of and contempt for nine-tenths of the human race, nor disregard of all the beauty that lay outside the narrow circle of "comme il faut"-ness comprised the whole of the evil which the idea wrought in me. The chief evil of all lay in the notion acquired that a man need not strive to become a tchinovnik, [Official.] a coachbuilder, a soldier, a savant, or anything useful, so long only as he was "comme il faut "-that by attaining the latter quality he had done all that was demanded of him, and was even superior to most people.


Usually, at a given period in youth, and after many errors and excesses, every man recognises the necessity of his taking an active part in social life, and chooses some branch of labour to which to devote himself. Only with the "comme il faut" man does this rarely happen. I have known, and know, very, very many people-old, proud, self-satisfied, and opinionated-who to the question (if it should ever present itself to them in their world) "Who have you been, and what have you ever done?" would be unable to reply otherwise than by saying,


"Je fus un homme tres comme il faut,"


Such a fate was awaiting myself.





XXXII. YOUTH


Despite the confusion of ideas raging in my head, I was at least young, innocent, and free that summer-consequently almost happy.


Sometimes I would rise quite early in the morning, for I slept on the open verandah, and the bright, horizontal beams of the morning sun would wake me up. Dressing myself quickly, I would tuck a towel and a French novel under my arm, and go off to bathe in the river in the shade of a birch tree which stood half a verst from the house. Next, I would stretch myself on the grass and read-raising my eyes from time to time to look at the surface of the river where it showed blue in the shade of the trees, at the ripples caused by the first morning breeze, at the yellowing field of rye on the further bank, and at the bright-red sheen of the sunlight as it struck lower and lower down the white trunks of the birch-trees which, ranged in ranks one behind the other, gradually receded into the remote distance of the home park. At such moments I would feel joyously conscious of having within me the same young, fresh force of life as nature was everywhere exuding around me. When, however, the sky was overcast with grey clouds of morning and I felt chilly after bathing, I would often start to walk at random through the fields and woods, and joyously trail my wet boots in the fresh dew. All the while my head would be filled with vivid dreams concerning the heroes of my last-read novel, and I would keep picturing to myself some leader of an army or some statesman or marvellously strong man or devoted lover or another, and looking round me in, a nervous expectation that I should suddenly descry HER somewhere near me, in a meadow or behind a tree. Yet, whenever these rambles led me near peasants engaged at their work, all my ignoring of the existence of the "common people" did not prevent me from experiencing an involuntary, overpowering sensation of awkwardness; so that I always tried to avoid their seeing me. When the heat of the day had increased, it was not infrequently my habit-if the ladies did not come out of doors for their morning tea-to go rambling through the orchard and kitchen-garden, and to pluck ripe fruit there. Indeed, this was an occupation which furnished me with one of my greatest pleasures. Let any one go into an orchard, and dive into the midst of a tall, thick, sprouting raspberry-bed. Above will be seen the clear, glowing sky, and, all around, the pale-green, prickly stems of raspberry-trees where they grow mingled together in a tangle of profusion. At one's feet springs the dark-green nettle, with its slender crown of flowers, while the broad-leaved burdock, with its bright-pink, prickly blossoms, overtops the raspberries (and even one's head) with its luxuriant masses, until, with the nettle, it almost meets the pendent, pale-green branches of the old apple-trees where apples, round and lustrous as bone, but as yet unripe, are mellowing in the heat of the sun. Below, again, are seen young raspberry-shoots, twining themselves around the partially withered, leafless parent plant, and stretching their tendrils towards the sunlight, with green, needle-shaped blades of grass and young, dew-coated pods peering through last year's leaves, and growing juicily green in the perennial shade, as though they care nothing for the bright sunshine which is playing on the leaves of the apple-trees above them. In this density there is always moisture-always a smell of confined, perpetual shade, of cobwebs, fallen apples (turning black where they roll on the mouldy sod), raspberries, and earwigs of the kind which impel one to reach hastily for more fruit when one has inadvertently swallowed a member of that insect tribe with the last berry. At every step one's movements keep flushing the sparrows which always make their home in these depths, and one hears their fussy chirping and the beating of their tiny, fluttering wings against the stalks, and catches the low buzzing of a bumble bee somewhere, and the sound of the gardener's footsteps (it is half-daft Akim) on the path as he hums his eternal sing-song to himself. Then one mutters under one's breath, "No! Neither he nor any one else shall find me here!" yet still one goes on stripping juicy berries from their conical white pilasters, and cramming them into one's mouth. At length, one's legs soaked to the knees as one repeats, over and over again, some rubbish which keeps running in one's head, and one's hands and nether limbs (despite the protection of one's wet trousers) thoroughly stung with the nettles, one comes to the conclusion that the sun's rays are beating too straight upon one's head for eating to be any longer desirable, and, sinking down into the tangle of greenery, one remains there-looking and listening, and continuing in mechanical fashion to strip off one or two of the finer berries and swallow them.


At eleven o'clock-that is to say, when the ladies had taken their morning tea and settled down to their occupations-I would repair to the drawing-room. Near the first window, with its unbleached linen blind lowered to exclude the sunshine, but through the chink of which the sun kept throwing brilliant circles of light which hurt the eye to look at them, there would be standing a screen, with flies quietly parading the whiteness of its covering. Behind it would be seated Mimi, shaking her head in an irritable manner, and constantly shifting from spot to spot to avoid the sunshine as at intervals it darted her from somewhere and laid a streak of flame upon her hand or face. Through the other three windows the sun would be throwing three squares of light, crossed with the shadows of the window-frames, and where one of these patches marked the unstained floor of the room there would be lying, in accordance with invariable custom, Milka, with her ears pricked as she watched the flies promenading the lighted space. Seated on a settee, Katenka would be knitting or reading aloud as from time to time she gave her white sleeves (looking almost transparent in the sunshine) an impatient shake, or tossed her head with a frown to drive away some fly which had settled upon her thick auburn hair and was now buzzing in its tangles. Lubotshka would either be walking up and down the room (her hands clasped behind her) until the moment should arrive when a movement would be made towards the garden, or playing some piece of which every note had long been familiar to me. For my own part, I would sit down somewhere, and listen to the music or the reading until such time as I myself should have an opportunity of performing on the piano. After luncheon I would condescend to take the girls out riding (since to go for a mere walk at that hour seemed to me unsuitable to my years and position in the world), and these excursions of ours-in which I often took my companions through unaccustomed spots and dells-were very pleasant. Indeed, on some of these occasions I grew quite boyish, and the girls would praise my riding and daring, and pretend that I was their protector. In the evening, if we had no guests with us, tea (served in the dim verandah), would be followed by a walk round the homestead with Papa, and then I would stretch myself on my usual settee, and read and ponder as of old, as I listened to Katenka or Lubotshka playing. At other times, if I was alone in the drawing-room and Lubotshka was performing some old-time air, I would find myself laying my book down, and gazing through the open doorway on to the balcony at the pendent, sinuous branches of the tall birch-trees where they stood overshadowed by the coming night, and at the clear sky where, if one looked at it intently enough, misty, yellowish spots would appear suddenly, and then disappear again. Next, as I listened to the sounds of the music wafted from the salon, and to the creaking of gates and the voices of the peasant women when the cattle returned to the village, I would suddenly bethink me of Natalia Savishna and of Mamma and of Karl Ivanitch, and become momentarily sad. But in those days my spirit was so full of life and hope that such reminiscences only touched me in passing, and soon fled away again.


After supper and (sometimes) a night stroll with some one in the garden (for I was afraid to walk down the dark avenues by myself), I would repair to my solitary sleeping-place on the verandah-a proceeding which, despite the countless mosquitos which always devoured me, afforded me the greatest pleasure. If the moon was full, I frequently spent whole nights sitting up on my mattress, looking at the light and shade, listening to the sounds or stillness, dreaming of one matter and another (but more particularly of the poetic, voluptuous happiness which, in those days, I believed was to prove the acme of my felicity) and lamenting that until now it had only been given to me to IMAGINE things. No sooner had every one dispersed, and I had seen lights pass from the drawing-room to the upper chambers (whence female voices would presently be heard, and the noise of windows opening and shutting), than I would depart to the verandah, and walk up and down there as I listened attentively to the sounds from the slumbering mansion. To this day, whenever I feel any expectation (no matter how small and baseless) of realising a fraction of some happiness of which I may be dreaming, I somehow invariably fail to picture to myself what the imagined happiness is going to be like.


At the least sound of bare footsteps, or of a cough, or of a snore, or of the rattling of a window, or of the rustling of a dress, I would leap from my mattress, and stand furtively gazing and listening, thrown, without any visible cause, into extreme agitation. But the lights would disappear from the upper rooms, the sounds of footsteps and talking give place to snores, the watchman begin his nightly tapping with his stick, the garden grow brighter and more mysterious as the streaks of light vanished from the windows, the last candle pass from the pantry to the hall (throwing a glimmer into the dewy garden as it did so), and the stooping figure of Foka (decked in a nightcap, and carrying the candle) become visible to my eyes as he went to his bed. Often I would find a great and fearful pleasure in stealing over the grass, in the black shadow of the house, until I had reached the hall window, where I would stand listening with bated breath to the snoring of the boy, to Foka's gruntings (in the belief that no one heard him), and to the sound of his senile voice as he drawled out the evening prayers. At length even his candle would be extinguished, and the window slammed down, so that I would find myself utterly alone; whereupon, glancing nervously from side to side, lest haply I should see the white woman standing near a flower-bed or by my couch, I would run at full speed back to the verandah. Then, and only then, I would lie down with my face to the garden, and, covering myself over, so far as possible, from the mosquitos and bats, fall to gazing in front of me as I listened to the sounds of the night and dreamed of love and happiness.


At such times everything would take on for me a different meaning. The look of the old birch trees, with the one side of their curling branches showing bright against the moonlit sky, and the other darkening the bushes and carriage-drive with their black shadows; the calm, rich glitter of the pond, ever swelling like a sound; the moonlit sparkle of the dewdrops on the flowers in front of the verandah; the graceful shadows of those flowers where they lay thrown upon the grey stonework; the cry of a quail on the far side of the pond; the voice of some one walking on the high road; the quiet, scarcely audible scrunching of two old birch trees against one another; the humming of a mosquito at my car under the coverlet; the fall of an apple as it caught against a branch and rustled among the dry leaves; the leapings of frogs as they approached almost to the verandah-steps and sat with the moon shining mysteriously on their green backs-all these things took on for me a strange significance-a significance of exceeding beauty and of infinite love. Before me would rise SHE, with long black tresses and a high bust, but always mournful in her fairness, with bare hands and voluptuous arms. She loved me, and for one moment of her love I would sacrifice my whole life!-But the moon would go on rising higher and higher, and shining brighter and brighter, in the heavens; the rich sparkle of the pond would swell like a sound, and become ever more and more brilliant, while the shadows would grow blacker and blacker, and the sheen of the moon more and more transparent: until, as I looked at and listened to all this, something would say to me that SHE with the bare hands and voluptuous arms did not represent ALL happiness, that love for her did not represent ALL good; so that, the more I gazed at the full, high-riding moon, the higher would true beauty and goodness appear to me to lie, and the purer and purer they would seem-the nearer and nearer to Him who is the source of all beauty and all goodness. And tears of a sort of unsatisfied, yet tumultuous, joy would fill my eyes.


Always, too, I was alone; yet always, too, it seemed to me that, although great, mysterious Nature could draw the shining disc of the moon to herself, and somehow hold in some high, indefinite place the pale-blue sky, and be everywhere around me, and fill of herself the infinity of space, while I was but a lowly worm, already defiled with the poor, petty passions of humanity-always it seemed to me that, nevertheless, both Nature and the moon and I were one.





XXXIII. OUR NEIGHBOURS


ON the first day after our arrival, I had been greatly astonished that Papa should speak of our neighbours, the Epifanovs, as "nice people," and still more so that he should go to call upon them. The fact was that we had long been at law over some land with this family. When a child, I had more than once heard Papa raging over the litigation, abusing the Epifanovs, and warning people (so I understood him) against them. Likewise, I had heard Jakoff speak of them as "our enemies" and "black people" and could remember Mamma requesting that their names should never be mentioned in her presence, nor, indeed, in the house at all.


From these data I, as a child, had arrived at the clear and assured conviction that the Epifanovs were foemen of ours who would at any time stab or strangle both Papa and his sons if they should ever come across them, as well as that they were "black people", in the literal sense of the term. Consequently, when, in the year that Mamma died, I chanced to catch sight of Avdotia ("La Belle Flamande") on the occasion of a visit which she paid to my mother, I found it hard to believe that she did not come of a family of negroes. All the same, I had the lowest possible opinion of the family, and, for all that we saw much of them that summer, continued to be strongly prejudiced against them. As a matter of fact, their household only consisted of the mother (a widow of fifty, but a very well-preserved, cheery old woman), a beautiful daughter named Avdotia, and a son, Peter, who was a stammerer, unmarried, and of very serious disposition.


For the last twenty years before her husband's death, Madame Epifanov had lived apart from him-sometimes in St. Petersburg, where she had relatives, but more frequently at her village of Mitishtchi, which stood some three versts from ours. Yet the neighbourhood had taken to circulating such horrible tales concerning her mode of life that Messalina was, by comparison, a blameless child: which was why my mother had requested her name never to be mentioned. As a matter of fact, not one-tenth part of the most cruel of all gossip-the gossip of country-houses-is worthy of credence; and although, when I first made Madame's acquaintance, she had living with her in the house a clerk named Mitusha, who had been promoted from a serf, and who, curled, pomaded, and dressed in a frockcoat of Circassian pattern, always stood behind his mistress's chair at luncheon, while from time to time she invited her guests to admire his handsome eyes and mouth, there was nothing for gossip to take hold of. I believe, too, that since the time-ten years earlier-when she had recalled her dutiful son Peter from the service, she had wholly changed her mode of living. It seems her property had never been a large one-merely a hundred souls or so-[This refers, of course, to the days of serfdom.]and that during her previous life of gaiety she had spent a great deal. Consequently, when, some ten years ago, those portions of the property which had been mortgaged and re-mortgaged had been foreclosed upon and compulsorily sold by auction, she had come to the conclusion that all these unpleasant details of distress upon and valuation of her property had been due not so much to failure to pay the interest as to the fact that she was a woman: wherefore she had written to her son (then serving with his regiment) to come and save his mother from her embarrassments, and he, like a dutiful son-conceiving that his first duty was to comfort his mother in her old age-had straightway resigned his commission (for all that he had been doing well in his profession, and was hoping soon to become independent), and had come to join her in the country.


Despite his plain face, uncouth demeanour, and fault of stuttering, Peter was a man of unswerving principles and of the most extraordinary good sense. Somehow-by small borrowings, sundry strokes of business, petitions for grace, and promises to repay-he contrived to carry on the property, and, making himself overseer, donned his father's greatcoat (still preserved in a drawer), dispensed with horses and carriages, discouraged guests from calling at Mitishtchi, fashioned his own sleighs, increased his arable land and curtailed that of the serfs, felled his own timber, sold his produce in person, and saw to matters generally. Indeed, he swore, and kept his oath, that, until all outstanding debts were paid, he would never wear any clothes than his father's greatcoat and a corduroy jacket which he had made for himself, nor yet ride in aught but a country waggon, drawn by peasants' horses. This stoical mode of life he sought to apply also to his family, so far as the sympathetic respect which he conceived to be his mother's due would allow of; so that, although, in the drawing-room, he would show her only stuttering servility, and fulfil all her wishes, and blame any one who did not do precisely as she bid them, in his study or his office he would overhaul the cook if she had served up so much as a duck without his orders, or any one responsible for sending a serf (even though at Madame's own bidding) to inquire after a neighbour's health or for despatching the peasant girls into the wood to gather wild raspberries instead of setting them to weed the kitchen-garden.


Within four years every debt had been repaid, and Peter had gone to Moscow and returned thence in a new jacket and tarantass. [A two-wheeled carriage.] Yet, despite this flourishing position of affairs, he still preserved the stoical tendencies in which, to tell the truth, he took a certain vague pride before his family and strangers, since he would frequently say with a stutter: "Any one who REALLY wishes to see me will be glad to see me even in my dressing-gown, and to eat nothing but shtchi [Cabbage-soup.] and kasha [Buckwheat gruel.] at my table." "That is what I eat myself," he would add. In his every word and movement spoke pride based upon a consciousness of having sacrificed himself for his mother and redeemed the property, as well as contempt for any one who had not done something of the same kind.


The mother and daughter were altogether different characters from Peter, as well as altogether different from one another. The former was one of the most agreeable, uniformly good-tempered, and cheerful women whom one could possibly meet. Anything attractive and genuinely happy delighted her. Even the faculty of being pleased with the sight of young people enjoying themselves (it is only in the best-natured of elderly folk that one meets with that TRAIT) she possessed to the full. On the other hand, her daughter was of a grave turn of mind. Rather, she was of that peculiarly careless, absent-minded, gratuitously distant bearing which commonly distinguishes unmarried beauties. Whenever she tried to be gay, her gaiety somehow seemed to be unnatural to her, so that she always appeared to be laughing either at herself or at the persons to whom she was speaking or at the world in general-a thing which, possibly, she had no real intention of doing. Often I asked myself in astonishment what she could mean when she said something like, "Yes, I know how terribly good-looking I am," or, "Of course every one is in love with me," and so forth. Her mother was a person always busy, since she had a passion for housekeeping, gardening, flowers, canaries, and pretty trinkets. Her rooms and garden, it is true, were small and poorly fitted-up, yet everything in them was so neat and methodical, and bore such a general air of that gentle gaiety which one hears expressed in a waltz or polka, that the word "toy" by which guests often expressed their praise of it all exactly suited her surroundings. She herself was a "toy"-being petite, slender, fresh-coloured, small, and pretty-handed, and invariably gay and well-dressed. The only fault in her was that a slight over-prominence of the dark-blue veins on her little hands rather marred the general effect of her appearance. On the other hand, her daughter scarcely ever did anything at all. Not only had she no love for trifling with flowers and trinkets, but she neglected her personal exterior, and only troubled to dress herself well when guests happened to call. Yet, on returning to the room in society costume, she always looked extremely handsome-save for that cold, uniform expression of eyes and smile which is common to all beauties. In fact, her strictly regular, beautiful face and symmetrical figure always seemed to be saying to you, "Yes, you may look at me."


At the same time, for all the mother's liveliness of disposition and the daughter's air of indifference and abstraction, something told one that the former was incapable of feeling affection for anything that was not pretty and gay, but that Avdotia, on the contrary, was one of those natures which, once they love, are willing to sacrifice their whole life for the man they adore.





XXXIV. MY FATHER'S SECOND MARRIAGE


MY father was forty-eight when he took as his second wife Avdotia Vassilievna Epifanov.


I suspect that when, that spring, he had departed for the country with the girls, he had been in that communicatively happy, sociable mood in which gamblers usually find themselves who have retired from play after winning large stakes. He had felt that he still had a fortune left to him which, so long as he did not squander it on gaming, might be used for our advancement in life. Moreover, it was springtime, he was unexpectedly well supplied with ready money, he was alone, and he had nothing to do. As he conversed with Jakoff on various matters, and remembered both the interminable suit with the Epifanovs and Avdotia's beauty (it was a long while since he had seen her), I can imagine him saying: "How do you think we ought to act in this suit, Jakoff? My idea is simply to let the cursed land go. Eh? What do you think about it?" I can imagine, too, how, thus interrogated, Jakoff twirled his fingers behind his back in a deprecatory sort of way, and proceeded to argue that it all the same, "Peter Alexandritch, we are in the right." Nevertheless, I further conjecture, Papa ordered the dogcart to be got ready, put on his fashionable olive-coloured driving-coat, brushed up the remnants of his hair, sprinkled his clothes with scent, and, greatly pleased to think that he was acting a la seignior (as well as, even more, revelling in the prospect of soon seeing a pretty woman), drove off to visit his neighbours.


I can imagine, too, that when the flustered housemaid ran to inform Peter Vassilievitch that Monsieur Irtenieff himself had called, Peter answered angrily, "Well, what has he come for?" and, stepping softly about the house, first went into his study to put on his old soiled jacket, and then sent down word to the cook that on no account whatever-no, not even if she were ordered to do so by the mistress herself-was she to add anything to luncheon.


Since, later, I often saw Papa with Peter, I can form a very good idea of this first interview between them. I can imagine that, despite Papa's proposal to end the suit in a peaceful manner, Peter was morose and resentful at the thought of having sacrificed his career to his mother, and at Papa having done nothing of the kind-a by no means surprising circumstance, Peter probably said to himself. Next, I can see Papa taking no notice of this ill-humour, but cracking quips and jests, while Peter gradually found himself forced to treat him as a humorist with whom he felt offended one moment and inclined to be reconciled the next. Indeed, with his instinct for making fun of everything, Papa often used to address Peter as "Colonel;" and though I can remember Peter once replying, with an unusually violent stutter and his face scarlet with indignation, that he had never been a c-c-colonel, but only a l-l-lieutenant, Papa called him "Colonel" again before another five minutes were out.


Lubotshka told me that, up to the time of Woloda's and my arrival from Moscow, there had been daily meetings with the Epifanovs, and that things had been very lively, since Papa, who had a genius for arranging, everything with a touch of originality and wit, as well as in a simple and refined manner, had devised shooting and fishing parties and fireworks for the Epifanovs' benefit. All these festivities-so said Lubotshka-would have gone off splendidly but for the intolerable Peter, who had spoilt everything by his puffing and stuttering. After our coming, however, the Epifanovs only visited us twice, and we went once to their house, while after St. Peter's Day (on which, it being Papa's nameday, the Epifanovs called upon us in common with a crowd of other guests) our relations with that family came entirely to an end, and, in future, only Papa went to see them.


During the brief period when I had opportunities of seeing Papa and Dunetchka (as her mother called Avdotia) together, this is what I remarked about them. Papa remained unceasingly in the same buoyant mood as had so greatly struck me on the day after our arrival. So gay and youthful and full of life and happy did he seem that the beams of his felicity extended themselves to all around him, and involuntarily communicated to them a similar frame of mind. He never stirred from Avdotia's side so long as she was in the room, but either kept on plying her with sugary-sweet compliments which made me feel ashamed for him or, with his gaze fixed upon her with an air at once passionate and complacent, sat hitching his shoulder and coughing as from time to time he smiled and whispered something in her ear. Yet throughout he wore the same expression of raillery as was peculiar to him even in the most serious matters.


As a rule, Avdotia herself seemed to catch the infection of the happiness which sparkled at this period in Papa's large blue eyes; yet there were moments also when she would be seized with such a fit of shyness that I, who knew the feeling well, was full of sympathy and compassion as I regarded her embarrassment. At moments of this kind she seemed to be afraid of every glance and every movement-to be supposing that every one was looking at her, every one thinking of no one but her, and that unfavourably. She would glance timidly from one person to another, the colour coming and going in her cheeks, and then begin to talk loudly and defiantly, but, for the most part, nonsense; until presently, realising this, and supposing that Papa and every one else had heard her, she would blush more painfully than ever. Yet Papa never noticed her nonsense, for he was too much taken up with coughing and with gazing at her with his look of happy, triumphant devotion. I noticed, too, that, although these fits of shyness attacked Avdotia, without any visible cause, they not infrequently ensued upon Papa's mention of one or another young and beautiful woman. Frequent transitions from depression to that strange, awkward gaiety of hers to which I have referred before the repetition of favourite words and turns of speech of Papa's; the continuation of discussions with others which Papa had already begun-all these things, if my father had not been the principal actor in the matter and I had been a little older, would have explained to me the relations subsisting between him and Avdotia. At the time, however, I never surmised them-no, not even when Papa received from her brother Peter a letter which so upset him that not again until the end of August did he go to call upon the Epifanovs'. Then, however, he began his visits once more, and ended by informing us, on the day before Woloda and I were to return to Moscow, that he was about to take Avdotia Vassilievna Epifanov to be his wife.





XXXV. HOW WE RECEIVED THE NEWS


Yet, even on the eve of the official announcement, every one had learnt of the matter, and was discussing it. Mimi never left her room that day, and wept copiously. Katenka kept her company, and only came out for luncheon, with a grieved expression on her face which was manifestly borrowed from her mother. Lubotshka, on the contrary, was very cheerful, and told us after luncheon that she knew of a splendid secret which she was going to tell no one.


"There is nothing so splendid about your secret," said Woloda, who did not in the least share her satisfaction. "If you were capable of any serious thought at all, you would understand that it is a very bad lookout for us."


Lubotshka stared at him in amazement, and said no more. After the meal was over, Woloda made a feint of taking me by the arm, and then, fearing that this would seem too much like "affection," nudged me gently by the elbow, and beckoned me towards the salon.


"You know, I suppose, what the secret is of which Lubotshka was speaking?" he said when he was sure that we were alone. It was seldom that he and I spoke together in confidence: with the result that, whenever it came about, we felt a kind of awkwardness in one another's presence, and "boys began to jump about" in our eyes, as Woloda expressed it. On the present occasion, however, he answered the excitement in my eyes with a grave, fixed look which said: "You need not be surprised, for we are brothers, and we have to consider an important family matter." I understood him, and he went on:


"You know, I suppose, that Papa is going to marry Avdotia Epifanov?"


I nodded, for I had already heard so. "Well, it is not a good thing," continued Woloda.


"Why so?"


"Why?" he repeated irritably. "Because it will be so pleasant, won't it, to have this stuttering 'colonel' and all his family for relations! Certainly she seems nice enough, as yet; but who knows what she will turn out to be later? It won't matter much to you or myself, but Lubotshka will soon be making her debut, and it will hardly be nice for her to have such a 'belle mere' as this-a woman who speaks French badly, and has no manners to teach her."


Although it seemed odd to hear Woloda criticising Papa's choice so coolly, I felt that he was right.


"Why is he marrying her?" I asked.


"Oh, it is a hole-and-corner business, and God only knows why," he answered. "All I know is that her brother, Peter, tried to make conditions about the marriage, and that, although at first Papa would not hear of them, he afterwards took some fancy or knight-errantry or another into his head. But, as I say, it is a hole-and-corner business. I am only just beginning to understand my father "-the fact that Woloda called Papa "my father" instead of "Papa" somehow hurt me-"and though I can see that he is kind and clever, he is irresponsible and frivolous to a degree that-Well, the whole thing is astonishing. He cannot so much as look upon a woman calmly. You yourself know how he falls in love with every one that he meets. You know it, and so does Mimi."


"What do you mean?" I said.


"What I say. Not long ago I learnt that he used to be in love with Mimi herself when he was a young man, and that he used to send her poetry, and that there really was something between them. Mimi is heart-sore about it to this day"-and Woloda burst out laughing.


"Impossible!" I cried in astonishment.


"But the principal thing at this moment," went on Woloda, becoming serious again, and relapsing into French, "is to think how delighted all our relations will be with this marriage! Why, she will probably have children!"


Woloda's prudence and forethought struck me so forcibly that I had no answer to make. Just at this moment Lubotshka approached us.


"So you know?" she said with a joyful face.


"Yes," said Woloda. "Still, I am surprised at you, Lubotshka. You are no longer a baby in long clothes. Why should you be so pleased because Papa is going to marry a piece of trash?"


At this Lubotshka's face fell, and she became serious.


"Oh, Woloda!" she exclaimed. "Why 'a piece of trash' indeed? How can you dare to speak of Avdotia like that? If Papa is going to marry her she cannot be 'trash.'"


"No, not trash, so to speak, but-"


"No 'buts' at all!" interrupted Lubotshka, flaring up. "You have never heard me call the girl whom you are in love with 'trash!' How, then, can you speak so of Papa and a respectable woman? Although you are my elder brother, I won't allow you to speak like that! You ought not to!"


"Mayn't I even express an opinion about-"


"No, you mayn't!" repeated Lubotshka. "No one ought to criticise such a father as ours. Mimi has the right to, but not you, however much you may be the eldest brother."


"Oh you don't understand anything," said Woloda contemptuously. "Try and do so. How can it be a good thing that a 'Dunetchka' of an Epifanov should take the place of our dead Mamma?"


For a moment Lubotshka was silent. Then the tears suddenly came into her eyes.


"I knew that you were conceited, but I never thought that you could be cruel," she said, and left us.


"Pshaw!" said Woloda, pulling a serio-comic face and make-believe, stupid eyes. "That's what comes of arguing with them." Evidently he felt that he was at fault in having so far forgot himself as to descend to discuss matters at all with Lubotshka.


Next day the weather was bad, and neither Papa nor the ladies had come down to morning tea when I entered the drawing-room. There had been cold rain in the night, and remnants of the clouds from which it had descended were still scudding across the sky, with the sun's luminous disc (not yet risen to any great height) showing faintly through them. It was a windy, damp, grey morning. The door into the garden was standing open, and pools left by the night's rain were drying on the damp-blackened flags of the terrace. The open door was swinging on its iron hinges in the wind, and all the paths looked wet and muddy. The old birch trees with their naked white branches, the bushes, the turf, the nettles, the currant-trees, the elders with the pale side of their leaves turned upwards-all were dashing themselves about, and looking as though they were trying to wrench themselves free from their roots. From the avenue of lime-trees showers of round, yellow leaves were flying through the air in tossing, eddying circles, and strewing the wet road and soaked aftermath of the hayfield with a clammy carpet. At the moment, my thoughts were wholly taken up with my father's approaching marriage and with the point of view from which Woloda regarded it. The future seemed to me to bode no good for any of us. I felt distressed to think that a woman who was not only a stranger but young should be going to associate with us in so many relations of life, without having any right to do so-nay, that this young woman was going to usurp the place of our dead mother. I felt depressed, and kept thinking more and more that my father was to blame in the matter. Presently I heard his voice and Woloda's speaking together in the pantry, and, not wishing to meet Papa just then, had just left the room when I was pursued by Lubotshka, who said that Papa wanted to see me.


He was standing in the drawing-room, with his hand resting on the piano, and was gazing in my direction with an air at once grave and impatient. His face no longer wore the youthful, gay expression which had struck me for so long, but, on the contrary, looked sad. Woloda was walking about the room with a pipe in his hand. I approached my father, and bade him good morning.


"Well, my children," he said firmly, with a lift of his head and in the peculiarly hurried manner of one who wishes to announce something obviously unwelcome, but no longer admitting of reconsideration, "you know, I suppose, that I am going to marry Avdotia Epifanov." He paused a moment. "Hitherto I had had no desire for any one to succeed your mother, but"-and again he paused-"it-it is evidently my fate. Dunetchka is an excellent, kind girl, and no longer in her first youth. I hope, therefore, my children, that you will like her, and she, I know, will be sincerely fond of you, for she is a good woman. And now," he went on, addressing himself more particularly to Woloda and myself, and having the appearance of speaking hurriedly in order to prevent us from interrupting him, "it is time for you to depart, while I myself am going to stay here until the New Year, and then to follow you to Moscow with"-again he hesitated a moment-"my wife and Lubotshka." It hurt me to see my father standing as though abashed and at fault before us, so I moved a little nearer him, but Woloda only went on walking about the room with his head down, and smoking.


"So, my children, that is what your old father has planned to do," concluded Papa-reddening, coughing, and offering Woloda and myself his hands. Tears were in his eyes as he said this, and I noticed, too, that the hand which he was holding out to Woloda (who at that moment chanced to be at the other end of the room) was shaking slightly. The sight of that shaking hand gave me an unpleasant shock, for I remembered that Papa had served in 1812, and had been, as every one knew, a brave officer. Seizing the great veiny hand, I covered it with kisses, and he squeezed mine hard in return. Then, with a sob amid his tears, he suddenly threw his arms around Lubotshka's dark head, and kissed her again and again on the eyes. Woloda pretended that he had dropped his pipe, and, bending down, wiped his eyes furtively with the back of his hand. Then, endeavouring to escape notice, he left the room.





XXXVI. THE UNIVERSITY


THE wedding was to take place in two weeks' time, but, as our lectures had begun already, Woloda and myself were forced to return to Moscow at the beginning of September. The Nechludoffs had also returned from the country, and Dimitri (with whom, on parting, I had made an agreement that we should correspond frequently with the result, of course, that we had never once written to one another) came to see us immediately after our arrival, and arranged to escort me to my first lecture on the morrow.


It was a beautiful sunny day. No sooner had I entered the auditorium than I felt my personality entirely disappear amid the swarm of light-hearted youths who were seething tumultuously through every doorway and corridor under the influence of the sunlight pouring through the great windows. I found the sense of being a member of this huge community very pleasing, yet there were few among the throng whom I knew, and that only on terms of a nod and a "How do you do, Irtenieff?"


All around me men were shaking hands and chatting together-from every side came expressions of friendship, laughter, jests, and badinage. Everywhere I could feel the tie which bound this youthful society in one, and everywhere, too, I could feel that it left me out. Yet this impression lasted for a moment only, and was succeeded, together with the vexation which it had caused, by the idea that it was best that I should not belong to that society, but keep to my own circle of gentlemen; wherefore I proceeded to seat myself upon the third bench, with, as neighbours, Count B., Baron Z., the Prince R., Iwin, and some other young men of the same class with none of whom, however, was acquainted save with Iwin and Count B. Yet the look which these young gentlemen threw at me at once made me feel that I was not of their set, and I turned to observe what was going on around me. Semenoff, with grey, matted hair, white teeth, and tunic flying open, was seated a little distance off, and leaning forward on his elbows as he nibbled a pen, while the gymnasium student who had come out first in the examinations had established himself on the front bench, and, with a black stock coming half-way up his cheek, was toying with the silver watch-chain which adorned his satin waistcoat. On a bench in a raised part of the hall I could descry Ikonin (evidently he had contrived to enter the University somehow!), and hear him fussily proclaiming, in all the glory of blue piped trousers which completely hid his boots, that he was now seated on Parnassus. Ilinka-who had surprised me by giving me a bow not only cold, but supercilious, as though to remind me that here we were all equals-was just in front of me, with his legs resting in free and easy style on another bench (a hit, somehow I thought, at myself), and conversing with a student as he threw occasional glances in my direction. Iwin's set by my side were talking in French, yet every word which I overheard of their conversation seemed to me both stupid and incorrect ("Ce n'est pas francais," I thought to myself), while all the attitudes, utterances, and doings of Semenoff, Ilinka, and the rest struck me as uniformly coarse, ungentlemanly, and "comme il ne faut pas."


Thus, attached to no particular set, I felt isolated and unable to make friends, and so grew resentful. One of the students on the bench in front of me kept biting his nails, which were raw to the quick already, and this so disgusted me that I edged away from him. In short, I remember finding my first day a most depressing affair.


When the professor entered, and there was a general stir and a cessation of chatter, I remember throwing a scornful glance at him, as also that he began his discourse with a sentence which I thought devoid of meaning. I had expected the lecture to be, from first to last, so clever that not a word ought to be taken from or added to it. Disappointed in this, I at once proceeded to draw beneath the heading "First Lecture" with which I had adorned my beautifully-bound notebook no less than eighteen faces in profile, joined together in a sort of chaplet, and only occasionally moved my hand along the page in order to give the professor (who, I felt sure, must be greatly interested in me) the impression that I was writing something. In fact, at this very first lecture I came to the decision which I maintained to the end of my course, namely, that it was unnecessary, and even stupid, to take down every word said by every professor.


At subsequent lectures, however, I did not feel my isolation so strongly, since I made several acquaintances and got into the way of shaking hands and entering into conversation. Yet for some reason or another no real intimacy ever sprang up between us, and I often found myself depressed and only feigning cheerfulness. With the set which comprised Iwin and "the aristocrats," as they were generally known, I could not make any headway at all, for, as I now remember, I was always shy and churlish to them, and nodded to them only when they nodded to me; so that they had little inducement to desire my acquaintance. With most of the other students, however, this arose from quite a different cause. As soon as ever I discerned friendliness on the part of a comrade, I at once gave him to understand that I went to luncheon with Prince Ivan Ivanovitch and kept my own drozhki. All this I said merely to show myself in the most favourable light in his eyes, and to induce him to like me all the more; yet almost invariably the only result of my communicating to him the intelligence concerning the drozhki and my relationship to Prince Ivan Ivanovitch was that, to my astonishment, he at once adopted a cold and haughty bearing towards me.


Among us we had a Crown student named Operoff-a very modest, industrious, and clever young fellow, who always offered one his hand like a slab of wood (that is to say, without closing his fingers or making the slightest movement with them); with the result that his comrades often did the same to him in jest, and called it the "deal board" way of shaking hands. He and I nearly always sat next to one another, and discussed matters generally. In particular he pleased me with the freedom with which he would criticise the professors as he pointed out to me with great clearness and acumen the merits or demerits of their respective ways of teaching and made occasional fun of them. Such remarks I found exceedingly striking and diverting when uttered in his quiet, mincing voice. Nevertheless he never let a lecture pass without taking careful notes of it in his fine handwriting, and eventually we decided to join forces, and to do our preparation together. Things had progressed to the point of his always looking pleased when I took my usual seat beside him when, unfortunately, I one day found it necessary to inform him that, before her death, my mother had besought my father never to allow us to enter for a government scholarship, as well as that I myself considered Crown students, no matter how clever, to be-"well, they are not GENTLEMEN," I concluded, though beginning to flounder a little and grow red. At the moment Operoff said nothing, but at subsequent lectures he ceased to greet me or to offer me his board-like hand, and never attempted to talk to me, but, as soon as ever I sat down, he would lean his head upon his arm, and purport to be absorbed in his notebooks. I was surprised at this sudden coolness, but looked upon it as infra dig, "pour un jeune homme de bonne maison" to curry favour with a mere Crown student of an Operoff, and so left him severely alone-though I confess that his aloofness hurt my feelings. On one occasion I arrived before him, and, since the lecture was to be delivered by a popular professor whom students came to hear who did not usually attend such functions, I found almost every seat occupied. Accordingly I secured Operoff's place for myself by spreading my notebooks on the desk before it; after which I left the room again for a moment. When I returned I perceived that my paraphernalia had been relegated to the bench behind, and the place taken by Operoff himself. I remarked to him that I had already secured it by placing my notebooks there.


"I know nothing about that," he replied sharply, yet without looking up at me.


"I tell you I placed my notebooks there," I repeated, purposely trying to bluster, in the hope of intimidating him. "Every one saw me do it," I added, including the students near me in my glance. Several of them looked at me with curiosity, yet none of them spoke.


"Seats cannot be booked here," said Operoff. "Whoever first sits down in a place keeps it," and, settling himself angrily where he was, he flashed at me a glance of defiance.


"Well, that only means that you are a cad," I said.


I have an idea that he murmured something about my being "a stupid young idiot," but I decided not to hear it. What would be the use, I asked myself, of my hearing it? That we should brawl like a couple of manants over less than nothing? (I was very fond of the word manants, and often used it for meeting awkward junctures.) Perhaps I should have said something more had not, at that moment, a door slammed and the professor (dressed in a blue frockcoat, and shuffling his feet as he walked) ascended the rostrum.


Nevertheless, when the examination was about to come on, and I had need of some one's notebooks, Operoff remembered his promise to lend me his, and we did our preparation together.





XXXVII. AFFAIRS OF THE HEART


Affaires du coeur exercised me greatly that winter. In fact, I fell in love three times. The first time, I became passionately enamoured of a buxom lady whom I used to see riding at Freitag's riding-school; with the result that every day when she was taking a lesson there (that is to say, every Tuesday and Friday) I used to go to gaze at her, but always in such a state of trepidation lest I should be seen that I stood a long way off, and bolted directly I thought her likely to approach the spot where I was standing. Likewise, I used to turn round so precipitately whenever she appeared to be glancing in my direction that I never saw her face well, and to this day do not know whether she was really beautiful or not.


Dubkoff, who was acquainted with her, surprised me one day in the riding-school, where I was lurking concealed behind the lady's grooms and the fur wraps which they were holding, and, having heard from Dimitri of my infatuation, frightened me so terribly by proposing to introduce me to the Amazon that I fled incontinently from the school, and was prevented by the mere thought that possibly he had told her about me from ever entering the place again, or even from hiding behind her grooms, lest I should encounter her.


Whenever I fell in love with ladies whom I did not know, and especially married women, I experienced a shyness a thousand times greater than I had ever felt with Sonetchka. I dreaded beyond measure that my divinity should learn of my passion, or even of my existence, since I felt sure that, once she had done so, she would be so terribly offended that I should never be forgiven for my presumption. And indeed, if the Amazon referred to above had ever come to know how I used to stand behind the grooms and dream of seizing her and carrying her off to some country spot-if she had ever come to know how I should have lived with her there, and how I should have treated her, it is probable that she would have had very good cause for indignation! But I always felt that, once I got to know her, she would straightway divine these thoughts, and consider herself insulted by my acquaintance.


As my second affaire du coeur, I, (for the third time) fell in love with Sonetchka when I saw her at her sister's. My second passion for her had long since come to an end, but I became enamoured of her this third time through Lubotshka sending me a copy-book in which Sonetchka had copied some extracts from Lermontoff's The Demon, with certain of the more subtly amorous passages underlined in red ink and marked with pressed flowers. Remembering how Woloda had been wont to kiss his inamorata's purse last year, I essayed to do the same thing now; and really, when alone in my room in the evenings and engaged in dreaming as I looked at a flower or occasionally pressed it to my lips, I would feel a certain pleasantly lachrymose mood steal over me, and remain genuinely in love (or suppose myself to be so) for at least several days.


Finally, my third affaire du coeur that winter was connected with the lady with whom Woloda was in love, and who used occasionally to visit at our house. Yet, in this damsel, as I now remember, there was not a single beautiful feature to be found-or, at all events, none of those which usually pleased me. She was the daughter of a well-known Moscow lady of light and leading, and, petite and slender, wore long flaxen curls after the English fashion, and could boast of a transparent profile. Every one said that she was even cleverer and more learned than her mother, but I was never in a position to judge of that, since, overcome with craven bashfulness at the mere thought of her intellect and accomplishments, I never spoke to her alone but once, and then with unaccountable trepidation. Woloda's enthusiasm, however (for the presence of an audience never prevented him from giving vent to his rapture), communicated itself to me so strongly that I also became enamoured of the lady. Yet, conscious that he would not be pleased to know that two brothers were in love with the same girl, I never told him of my condition. On the contrary, I took special delight in the thought that our mutual love for her was so pure that, though its object was, in both cases, the same charming being, we remained friends and ready, if ever the occasion should arise, to sacrifice ourselves for one another. Yet I have an idea that, as regards self-sacrifice, he did not quite share my views, for he was so passionately in love with the lady that once he was for giving a member of the diplomatic corps, who was said to be going to marry her, a slap in the face and a challenge to a duel; but, for my part, I would gladly have sacrificed my feelings for his sake, seeing that the fact that the only remark I had ever addressed to her had been on the subject of the dignity of classical music, and that my passion, for all my efforts to keep it alive, expired the following week, would have rendered it the more easy for me to do so.





XXXVIII. THE WORLD


As regards those worldly delights to which I had intended, on entering the University, to surrender myself in imitation of my brother, I underwent a complete disillusionment that winter. Woloda danced a great deal, and Papa also went to balls with his young wife, but I appeared to be thought either too young or unfitted for such delights, and no one invited me to the houses where balls were being given. Yet, in spite of my vow of frankness with Dimitri, I never told him (nor any one else) how much I should have liked to go to those dances, and how I felt hurt at being forgotten and (apparently) taken for the philosopher that I pretended to be.


Nevertheless, a reception was to be given that winter at the Princess Kornakoff's, and to it she sent us personal invitations-to myself among the rest! Consequently, I was to attend my first ball. Before starting, Woloda came into my room to see how I was dressing myself-an act on his part which greatly surprised me and took me aback. In my opinion (it must be understood) solicitude about one's dress was a shameful thing, and should be kept under, but he seemed to think it a thing so natural and necessary that he said outright that he was afraid I should be put out of countenance on that score. Accordingly, he bid me don my patent leather boots, and was horrified to find that I wanted to put on gloves of peau de chamois. Next, he adjusted my watch-chain in a particular manner, and carried me off to a hairdresser's near the Kuznetski Bridge to have my locks coiffured. That done, he withdrew to a little distance and surveyed me.


"Yes, he looks right enough now" said he to the hairdresser. "Only-couldn't you smooth those tufts of his in front a little?" Yet, for all that Monsieur Charles treated my forelocks with one essence and another, they persisted in rising up again when ever I put on my hat. In fact, my curled and tonsured figure seemed to me to look far worse than it had done before. My only hope of salvation lay in an affectation of untidiness. Only in that guise would my exterior resemble anything at all. Woloda, apparently, was of the same opinion, for he begged me to undo the curls, and when I had done so and still looked unpresentable, he ceased to regard me at all, but throughout the drive to the Kornakoffs remained silent and depressed.


Nevertheless, I entered the Kornakoffs' mansion boldly enough, and it was only when the Princess had invited me to dance, and I, for some reason or another (though I had driven there with no other thought in my head than to dance well), had replied that I never indulged in that pastime, that I began to blush, and, left solitary among a crowd of strangers, became plunged in my usual insuperable and ever-growing shyness. In fact, I remained silent on that spot almost the whole evening!


Nevertheless, while a waltz was in progress, one of the young princesses came to me and asked me, with the sort of official kindness common to all her family, why I was not dancing. I can remember blushing hotly at the question, but at the same time feeling-for all my efforts to prevent it-a self-satisfied smile steal over my face as I began talking, in the most inflated and long-winded French, such rubbish as even now, after dozens of years, it shames me to recall. It must have been the effect of the music, which, while exciting my nervous sensibility, drowned (as I supposed) the less intelligible portion of my utterances. Anyhow, I went on speaking of the exalted company present, and of the futility of men and women, until I had got myself into such a tangle that I was forced to stop short in the middle of a word of a sentence which I found myself powerless to conclude.


Even the worldly-minded young Princess was shocked by my conduct, and gazed at me in reproach; whereat I burst out laughing. At this critical moment, Woloda, who had remarked that I was conversing with great animation, and probably was curious to know what excuses I was making for not dancing, approached us with Dubkoff. Seeing, however, my smiling face and the Princess's frightened mien, as well as overhearing the appalling rubbish with which I concluded my speech, he turned red in the face, and wheeled round again. The Princess also rose and left me. I continued to smile, but in such a state of agony from the consciousness of my stupidity that I felt ready to sink into the floor. Likewise I felt that, come what might, I must move about and say something, in order to effect a change in my position. Accordingly I approached Dubkoff, and asked him if he had danced many waltzes with her that night. This I feigned to say in a gay and jesting manner, yet in reality I was imploring help of the very Dubkoff to whom I had cried "Hold your tongue!" on the night of the matriculation dinner. By way of answer, he made as though he had not heard me, and turned away. Next, I approached Woloda, and said with an effort and in a similar tone of assumed gaiety: "Hullo, Woloda! Are you played out yet?" He merely looked at me as much as to say, "You wouldn't speak to me like that if we were alone," and left me without a word, in the evident fear that I might continue to attach myself to his person.


"My God! Even my own brother deserts me!" I thought to myself.


Yet somehow I had not the courage to depart, but remained standing where I was until the very end of the evening. At length, when every one was leaving the room and crowding into the hall, and a footman slipped my greatcoat on to my shoulders in such a way as to tilt up my cap, I gave a dreary, half-lachrymose smile, and remarked to no one in particular: "Comme c'est gracieux!"





XXXIX. THE STUDENTS' FEAST


NOTWITHSTANDING that, as yet, Dimitri's influence had kept me from indulging in those customary students' festivities known as kutezhi or "wines," that winter saw me participate in such a function, and carry away with me a not over-pleasant impression of it. This is how it came about.


At a lecture soon after the New Year, Baron Z.-a tall, light-haired young fellow of very serious demeanour and regular features-invited us all to spend a sociable evening with him. By "us all", I mean all the men more or less "comme il faut", of our course, and exclusive of Grap, Semenoff, Operoff, and commoners of that sort. Woloda smiled contemptuously when he heard that I was going to a "wine" of first course men, but I looked to derive great and unusual pleasure from this, to me, novel method of passing the time. Accordingly, punctually at the appointed hour of eight I presented myself at the Baron's.


Our host, in an open tunic and white waistcoat, received his guests in the brilliantly lighted salon and drawing-room of the small mansion where his parents lived-they having given up their reception rooms to him for the evening for purposes of this party. In the corridor could be seen the heads and skirts of inquisitive domestics, while in the dining-room I caught a glimpse of a dress which I imagined to belong to the Baroness herself. The guests numbered a score, and were all of them students except Herr Frost (in attendance upon Iwin) and a tall, red-faced gentleman who was superintending the feast and who was introduced to every one as a relative of the Baron's and a former student of the University of Dorpat. At first, the excessive brilliancy and formal appointments of the reception-rooms had such a chilling effect upon this youthful company that every one involuntarily hugged the walls, except a few bolder spirits and the ex-Dorpat student, who, with his waistcoat already unbuttoned, seemed to be in every room, and in every corner of every room, at once, and filled the whole place with his resonant, agreeable, never-ceasing tenor voice. The remainder of the guests preferred either to remain silent or to talk in discreet tones of professors, faculties, examinations, and other serious and interesting matters. Yet every one, without exception, kept watching the door of the dining-room, and, while trying to conceal the fact, wearing an expression which said: "Come! It is time to begin." I too felt that it was time to begin, and awaited the beginning with pleasurable impatience.


After footmen had handed round tea among the guests, the Dorpat student asked Frost in Russian:


"Can you make punch, Frost?"


"Oh ja!" replied Frost with a joyful flourish of his heels, and the other went on:


"Then do you set about it" (they addressed each other in the second person singular, as former comrades at Dorpat). Frost accordingly departed to the dining-room, with great strides of his bowed, muscular legs, and, after some walking backwards and forwards, deposited upon the drawing-room table a large punchbowl, accompanied by a ten-pound sugar loaf supported on three students' swords placed crosswise. Meanwhile, the Baron had been going round among his guests as they sat regarding the punch-bowl, and addressing them, with a face of immutable gravity, in the formula: "I beg of you all to drink of this loving-cup in student fashion, that there may be good-fellowship among the members of our course. Unbutton your waistcoats, or take them off altogether, as you please." Already the Dorpat student had divested himself of his tunic and rolled up his white shirt-sleeves above his elbows, and now, planting his feet firmly apart, he proceeded to set fire to the rum in the punch-bowl.


"Gentlemen, put out the candles!" he cried with a sudden shout so loud and insistent that we seemed all of us to be shouting at once. However, we still went on silently regarding the punch-bowl and the white shirt of the Dorpat student, with a feeling that a moment of great solemnity was approaching.


"Put out the lights, Frost, I tell you!" the Dorpat student shouted again. Evidently the punch was now sufficiently burnt. Accordingly every one helped to extinguish the candles, until the room was in total darkness save for a spot where the white shirts and hands of the three students supporting the sugarloaf on their crossed swords were lit up by the lurid flames from the bowl. Yet the Dorpat student's tenor voice was not the only one to be heard, for in different quarters of the room resounded chattering and laughter. Many had taken off their tunics (especially students whose garments were of fine cloth and perfectly new), and I now did the same, with a consciousness that "IT" was "beginning." There had been no great festivity as yet, but I felt assured that things would go splendidly when once we had begun drinking tumblers of the potion that was now in course of preparation.


At length, the punch was ready, and the Dorpat student, with much bespattering of the table as he did so, ladled the liquor into tumblers, and cried: "Now, gentlemen, please!" When we had each of us taken a sticky tumbler of the stuff into our hands, the Dorpat student and Frost sang a German song in which the word "Hoch!" kept occurring again and again, while we joined, in haphazard fashion, in the chorus. Next we clinked glasses together, shouted something in praise of punch, crossed hands, and took our first drink of the sweet, strong mixture. After that there was no further waiting; the "wine" was in full swing. The first glassful consumed, a second was poured out. Yet, for all that I began to feel a throbbing in my temples, and that the flames seemed to be turning purple, and that every one around me was laughing and shouting, things seemed lacking in real gaiety, and I somehow felt that, as a matter of fact, we were all of us finding the affair rather dull, and only PRETENDING to be enjoying it. The Dorpat student may have been an exception, for he continued to grow more and more red in the face and more and more ubiquitous as he filled up empty glasses and stained the table with fresh spots of the sweet, sticky stuff. The precise sequence of events I cannot remember, but I can recall feeling strongly attracted towards Frost and the Dorpat student that evening, learning their German song by heart, and kissing them each on their sticky-sweet lips; also that that same evening I conceived a violent hatred against the Dorpat student, and was for pushing him from his chair, but thought better of it; also that, besides feeling the same spirit of independence towards the rest of the company as I had felt on the night of the matriculation dinner, my head ached and swam so badly that I thought each moment would be my last; also that, for some reason or another, we all of us sat down on the floor and imitated the movements of rowers in a boat as we sang in chorus, "Down our mother stream the Volga;" also that I conceived this procedure on our part to be uncalled for; also that, as I lay prone upon the floor, I crossed my legs and began wriggling about like a tsigane; [Gipsy dancer.] also that I ricked some one's neck, and came to the conclusion that I should never have done such a thing if I had not been drunk; also that we had some supper and another kind of liquor, and that I then went to the door to get some fresh air; also that my head seemed suddenly to grow chill, and that I noticed, as I drove away, that the scat of the vehicle was so sharply aslant and slippery that for me to retain my position behind Kuzma was impossible; also that he seemed to have turned all flabby, and to be waving about like a dish clout. But what I remember best is that throughout the whole of that evening I never ceased to feel that I was acting with excessive stupidity in pretending to be enjoying myself, to like drinking a great deal, and to be in no way drunk, as well as that every one else present was acting with equal stupidity in pretending those same things. All the time I had a feeling that each one of my companions was finding the festivities as distasteful as I was myself; but, in the belief that he was the only one doing so, felt himself bound to pretend that he was very merry, in order not to mar the general hilarity. Also, strange to state, I felt that I ought to keep up this pretence for the sole reason that into a punch-bowl there had been poured three bottles of champagne at nine roubles the bottle and ten bottles of rum at four-making seventy roubles in all, exclusive of the supper. So convinced of my folly did I feel that, when, at next day's lecture, those of my comrades who had been at Baron Z.'s party seemed not only in no way ashamed to remember what they had done, but even talked about it so that other students might hear of their doings, I felt greatly astonished. They all declared that it had been a splendid "wine," that Dorpat students were just the fellows for that kind of thing, and that there had been consumed at it no less than forty bottles of rum among twenty guests, some of whom had dropped senseless under the table! That they should care to talk about such things seemed strange enough, but that they should care to lie about them seemed absolutely unintelligible.





XL. MY FRIENDSHIP WITH THE NECHLUDOFFS


That winter, too, I saw a great deal both of Dimitri who often looked us up, and of his family, with whom I was beginning to stand on intimate terms.


The Nechludoffs (that is to say, mother, aunt, and daughter) always spent their evenings at home, at which time the Princess liked young men to visit her-at all events young men of the kind whom she described as able to spend an evening without playing cards or dancing. Yet such young fellows must have been few and far between, for, although I went to the Nechludoffs almost every evening, I seldom found other guests present. Thus, I came to know the members of this family and their several dispositions well enough to be able to form clear ideas as to their mutual relations, and to be quite at home amid the rooms and furniture of their house. Indeed, so long as no other guests were present, I felt entirely at my ease. True, at first I used to feel a little uncomfortable when left alone in the room with Varenika, for I could not rid myself of the idea that, though far from pretty, she wished me to fall in love with her; but in time this nervousness of mine began to lessen, since she always looked so natural, and talked to me so exactly as though she were conversing with her brother or Lubov Sergievna, that I came to look upon her simply as a person to whom it was in no way dangerous or wrong to show that I took pleasure in her company. Throughout the whole of our acquaintance she appeared to me merely a plain, though not positively ugly, girl, concerning whom one would never ask oneself the question,


"Am I, or am I not, in love with her?" Sometimes I would talk to her direct, but more often I did so through Dimitri or Lubov Sergievna; and it was the latter method which afforded me the most pleasure. I derived considerable gratification from discoursing when she was there, from hearing her sing, and, in general, from knowing that she was in the same room as myself; but it was seldom now that any thoughts of what our future relations might ever be, or that any dreams of self-sacrifice for my friend if he should ever fall in love with my sister, came into my head. If any such ideas or fancies occurred to me, I felt satisfied with the present, and drove away all thoughts about the future.


Yet, in spite of this intimacy, I continued to look upon it as my bounden duty to keep the Nechludoffs in general, and Varenika in particular, in ignorance of my true feelings and tastes, and strove always to appear altogether another young man than what I really was-to appear, indeed, such a young man as could never possibly have existed. I affected to be "soulful" and would go off into raptures and exclamations and impassioned gestures whenever I wished it to be thought that anything pleased me, while, on the other hand, I tried always to seem indifferent towards any unusual circumstance which I myself perceived or which I had had pointed out to me. I aimed always at figuring both as a sarcastic cynic divorced from every sacred tie and as a shrewd observer, as well as at being accounted logical in all my conduct, precise and methodical in all my ways of life, and at the same time contemptuous of all materiality. I may safely say that I was far better in reality than the strange being into whom I attempted to convert myself; yet, whatever I was or was not, the Nechludoffs were unfailingly kind to me, and (happily for myself) took no notice (as it now appears) of my play-acting. Only Lubov Sergievna, who, I believe, really believed me to be a great egoist, atheist, and cynic, had no love for me, but frequently disputed what I said, flew into tempers, and left me petrified with her disjointed, irrelevant utterances. Yet Dimitri held always to the same strange, something more than friendly, relations with her, and used to say not only that she was misunderstood by every one, but that she did him a world of good. This, however, did not prevent the rest of his family from finding fault with his infatuation.


Once, when talking to me about this incomprehensible attachment, Varenika explained the matter thus: "You see, Dimitri is a selfish person. He is very proud, and, for all his intellect, very fond of praise, and of surprising people, and of always being FIRST, while little Auntie" (the general nickname for Lubov Sergievna) "is innocent enough to admire him, and at the same time devoid of the tact to conceal her admiration. Consequently she flatters his vanity-not out of pretence, but sincerely."


This dictum I laid to heart, and, when thinking it over afterwards, could not but come to the conclusion that Varenika was very sensible; wherefore I was glad to award her promotion thenceforth in my regard. Yet, though I was always glad enough to assign her any credit which might arise from my discovering in her character any signs of good sense or other moral qualities, I did so with strict moderation, and never ran to any extreme pitch of enthusiasm in the process. Thus, when Sophia Ivanovna (who was never weary of discussing her niece) related to me how, four years ago, Varenika had suddenly given away all her clothes to some peasant children without first asking permission to do so, so that the garments had subsequently to be recovered, I did not at once accept the fact as entitling Varenika to elevation in my opinion, but went on giving her good advice about the unpracticalness of such views on property.


When other guests were present at the Nechludoffs (among them, sometimes, Woloda and Dubkoff) I used to withdraw myself to a remote plane, and, with the complacency and quiet consciousness of strength of an habitue of the house, listen to what others were saying without putting in a remark myself. Yet everything that these others said seemed to me so immeasurably stupid that I used to feel inwardly amazed that such a clever, logical woman as the Princess, with her equally logical family, could listen to and answer such rubbish. Had it, however, entered into my head to compare what, others said with what I myself said when there alone, I should probably have ceased to feel surprise. Still less should I have continued to feel surprise had I not believed that the women of our own household-Avdotia, Lubotshka, and Katenka-were superior to the rest of their sex, for in that case I should have remembered the kind of things over which Avdotia and Katenka would laugh and jest with Dubkoff from one end of an evening to the other. I should have remembered that seldom did an evening pass but Dubkoff would first have, an argument about something, and then read in a sententious voice either some verses beginning "Au banquet de la vie, infortune convive" or extracts from The Demon. In short, I should have remembered what nonsense they used to chatter for hours at a time.


It need hardly be said that, when guests were present, Varenika paid less attention to me than when we were alone, as well as that I was deprived of the reading and music which I so greatly loved to hear. When talking to guests, she lost, in my eyes, her principal charm-that of quiet seriousness and simplicity. I remember how strange it used to seem to me to hear her discoursing on theatres and the weather to my brother Woloda! I knew that of all things in the world he most despised and shunned banality, and that Varenika herself used to make fun of forced conversations on the weather and similar matters. Why, then, when meeting in society, did they both of them talk such intolerable nothings, and, as it were, shame one another? After talks of this kind I used to feel silently resentful against Woloda, as well as next day to rally Varenika on her overnight guests. Yet one result of it was that I derived all the greater pleasure from being one of the Nechludoffs' family circle. Also, for some reason or another I began to prefer meeting Dimitri in his mother's drawing-room to being with him alone.





XLI. MY FRIENDSHIP WITH THE NECHLUDOFFS


At this period, indeed, my friendship with Dimitri hung by a hair. I had been criticising him too long not to have discovered faults in his character, for it is only in first youth that we love passionately and therefore love only perfect people. As soon as the mists engendered by love of this kind begin to dissolve, and to be penetrated by the clear beams of reason, we see the object of our adoration in his true shape, and with all his virtues and failings exposed. Some of those failings strike us with the exaggerated force of the unexpected, and combine with the instinct for novelty and the hope that perfection may yet be found in a fellow-man to induce us not only to feel coldness, but even aversion, towards the late object of our adoration. Consequently, desiring it no longer, we usually cast it from us, and pass onwards to seek fresh perfection. For the circumstance that that was not what occurred with respect to my own relation to Dimitri, I was indebted to his stubborn, punctilious, and more critical than impulsive attachment to myself-a tie which I felt ashamed to break. Moreover, our strange vow of frankness bound us together. We were afraid that, if we parted, we should leave in one another's power all the incriminatory moral secrets of which we had made mutual confession. At the same time, our rule of frankness had long ceased to be faithfully observed, but, on the contrary, proved a frequent cause of constraint, and brought about strange relations between us.


Almost every time that winter that I went upstairs to Dimitri's room, I used to find there a University friend of his named Bezobiedoff, with whom he appeared to be very much taken up. Bezobiedoff was a small, slight fellow, with a face pitted over with smallpox, freckled, effeminate hands, and a huge flaxen moustache much in need of the comb. He was invariably dirty, shabby, uncouth, and uninteresting. To me, Dimitri's relations with him were as unintelligible as his relations with Lubov Sergievna, and the only reason he could have had for choosing such a man for his associate was that in the whole University there was no worse-looking student than Bezobiedoff. Yet that alone would have been sufficient to make Dimitri extend him his friendship, and, as a matter of fact, in all his intercourse with this fellow he seemed to be saying proudly: "I care nothing who a man may be. In my eyes every one is equal. I like him, and therefore he is a desirable acquaintance." Nevertheless I could not imagine how he could bring himself to do it, nor how the wretched Bezobiedoff ever contrived to maintain his awkward position. To me the friendship seemed a most distasteful one.


One night, I went up to Dimitri's room to try and get him to come down for an evening's talk in his mother's drawing-room, where we could also listen to Varenika's reading and singing, but Bezobiedoff had forestalled me there, and Dimitri answered me curtly that he could not come down, since, as I could see for myself, he had a visitor with him.


"Besides," he added, "what is the fun of sitting there? We had much better stay HERE and talk."


I scarcely relished the prospect of spending a couple of hours in Bezobiedoff's company, yet could not make up my mind to go down alone; wherefore, cursing my friend's vagaries, I seated myself in a rocking-chair, and began rocking myself silently to and fro. I felt vexed with them both for depriving me of the pleasures of the drawing-room, and my only hope as I listened irritably to their conversation was that Bezobiedoff would soon take his departure. "A nice guest indeed to be sitting with!" I thought to myself when a footman brought in tea and Dimitri had five times to beg Bezobiedoff to have a cup, for the reason that the bashful guest thought it incumbent upon him always to refuse it at first and to say, "No, help yourself." I could see that Dimitri had to put some restraint upon himself as he resumed the conversation. He tried to inveigle me also into it, but I remained glum and silent.


"I do not mean to let my face give any one the suspicion that I am bored" was my mental remark to Dimitri as I sat quietly rocking myself to and fro with measured beat. Yet, as the moments passed, I found myself-not without a certain satisfaction-growing more and more inwardly hostile to my friend. "What a fool he is!" I reflected. "He might be spending the evening agreeably with his charming family, yet he goes on sitting with this brute!-will go on doing so, too, until it is too late to go down to the drawing-room!" Here I glanced at him over the back of my chair, and thought the general look of his attitude and appearance so offensive and repellant that at the moment I could gladly have offered him some insult, even a most serious one.


At last Bezobiedoff rose, but Dimitri could not easily let such a delightful friend depart, and asked him to stay the night. Fortunately, Bezobiedoff declined the invitation, and departed. Having seen him off, Dimitri returned, and, smiling a faintly complacent smile as he did so, and rubbing his hands together (in all probability partly because he had sustained his character for eccentricity, and partly because he had got rid of a bore), started to pace the room, with an occasional glance at myself. I felt more offended with him than ever. "How can he go on walking about the room and grinning like that?" was my inward reflection.


"What are you so angry about?" he asked me suddenly as he halted in front of my chair.


"I am not in the least angry," I replied (as people always do answer under such circumstances). "I am merely vexed that you should play-act to me, and to Bezobiedoff, and to yourself."


"What rubbish!" he retorted. "I never play-act to any one."


"I have in mind our rule of frankness," I replied, "when I tell you that I am certain you cannot bear this Bezobiedoff any more than I can. He is an absolute cad, yet for some inexplicable reason or another it pleases you to masquerade before him."


"Not at all! To begin with, he is a splendid fellow, and-"


"But I tell you it IS so. I also tell you that your friendship for Lubov Sergievna is founded on the same basis, namely, that she thinks you a god."


"And I tell you once more that it is not so."


"Oh, I know it for myself," I retorted with the heat of suppressed anger, and designing to disarm him with my frankness. "I have told you before, and I repeat it now, that you always seem to like people who say pleasant things to you, but that, as soon as ever I come to examine your friendship, I invariably find that there exists no real attachment between you."


"Oh, but you are wrong," said Dimitri with an angry straightening of the neck in his collar. "When I like people, neither their praise nor their blame can make any difference to my opinion of them."


"Well, dreadful though it may seem to you, I confess that I myself often used to hate my father when he abused me, and to wish that he was dead. In the same way, you-"


"Speak for yourself. I am very sorry that you could ever have been so-"


"No, no!" I cried as I leapt from my chair and faced him with the courage of exasperation. "It is for YOURSELF that you ought to feel sorry-sorry because you never told me a word about this fellow. You know that was not honourable of you. Nevertheless, I will tell YOU what I think of you," and, burning to wound him even more than he had wounded me, I set out to prove to him that he was incapable of feeling any real affection for anybody, and that I had the best of grounds (as in very truth I believed I had) for reproaching him. I took great pleasure in telling him all this, but at the same time forgot that the only conceivable purpose of my doing so-to force him to confess to the faults of which I had accused him-could not possibly be attained at the present moment, when he was in a rage. Had he, on the other hand, been in a condition to argue calmly, I should probably never have said what I did.


The dispute was verging upon an open quarrel when Dimitri suddenly became silent, and left the room. I pursued him, and continued what I was saying, but he did not answer. I knew that his failings included a hasty temper, and that he was now fighting it down; wherefore I cursed his good resolutions the more in my heart.


This, then, was what our rule of frankness had brought us to-the rule that we should "tell one another everything in our minds, and never discuss one another with a third person!" Many a time we had exaggerated frankness to the pitch of making mutual confession of the most shameless thoughts, and of shaming ourselves by voicing to one another proposals or schemes for attaining our desires; yet those confessions had not only failed to draw closer the tie which united us, but had dissipated sympathy and thrust us further apart, until now pride would not allow him to expose his feelings even in the smallest detail, and we employed in our quarrel the very weapons which we had formerly surrendered to one another-the weapons which could strike the shrewdest blows!





XLII. OUR STEPMOTHER


Notwithstanding that Papa had not meant to return to Moscow before the New Year, he arrived in October, when there was still good riding to hounds to be had in the country. He alleged as his reason for changing his mind that his suit was shortly to come on before the Senate, but Mimi averred that Avdotia had found herself so ennuyee in the country, and had so often talked about Moscow and pretended to be unwell, that Papa had decided to accede to her wishes. "You see, she never really loved him-she and her love only kept buzzing about his ears because she wanted to marry a rich man," added Mimi with a pensive sigh which said: "To think what a certain other person could have done for him if only he had valued her!"


Yet that "certain other person" was unjust to Avdotia, seeing that the latter's affection for Papa-the passionate, devoted love of self-abandonment-revealed itself in her every look and word and movement. At the same time, that love in no way hindered her, not only from being averse to parting with her adored husband, but also from desiring to visit Madame Annette's and order there a lovely cap, a hat trimmed with a magnificent blue ostrich feather, and a blue Venetian velvet bodice which was to expose to the public gaze the snowy, well shaped breast and arms which no one had yet gazed upon except her husband and maids. Of course Katenka sided with her mother and, in general, there became established between Avdotia and ourselves, from the day of her arrival, the most extraordinary and burlesque order of relations. As soon as she stepped from the carriage, Woloda assumed an air of great seriousness and ceremony, and, advancing towards her with much bowing and scraping, said in the tone of one who is presenting something for acceptance:


"I have the honour to greet the arrival of our dear Mamma, and to kiss her hand."


"Ah, my dear son!" she replied with her beautiful, unvarying smile.


"And do not forget the younger son," I said as I also approached her hand, with an involuntary imitation of Woloda's voice and expression.


Had our stepmother and ourselves been certain of any mutual affection, that expression might have signified contempt for any outward manifestation of our love. Had we been ill-disposed towards one another, it might have denoted irony, or contempt for pretence, or a desire to conceal from Papa (standing by the while) our real relations, as well as many other thoughts and sentiments. But, as a matter of fact, that expression (which well consorted with Avdotia's own spirit) simply signified nothing at all-simply concealed the absence of any definite relations between us. In later life I often had occasion to remark, in the case of other families whose members anticipated among themselves relations not altogether harmonious, the sort of provisional, burlesque relations which they formed for daily use; and it was just such relations as those which now became established between ourselves and our stepmother. We scarcely ever strayed beyond them, but were polite to her, conversed with her in French, bowed and scraped before her, and called her "chere Maman"-a term to which she always responded in a tone of similar lightness and with her beautiful, unchanging smile. Only the lachrymose Lubotshka, with her goose feet and artless prattle, really liked our stepmother, or tried, in her naive and frequently awkward way, to bring her and ourselves together: wherefore the only person in the world for whom, besides Papa, Avdotia had a spark of affection was Lubotshka. Indeed, Avdotia always treated her with a kind of grave admiration and timid deference which greatly surprised me.


From the first Avdotia was very fond of calling herself our stepmother and hinting that, since children and servants usually adopt an unjust and hostile attitude towards a woman thus situated, her own position was likely to prove a difficult one. Yet, though she foresaw all the unpleasantness of her predicament, she did nothing to escape from it by (for instance) conciliating this one, giving presents to that other one, and forbearing to grumble-the last a precaution which it would have been easy for her to take, seeing that by nature she was in no way exacting, as well as very good-tempered. Yet, not only did she do none of these things, but her expectation of difficulties led her to adopt the defensive before she had been attacked. That is to say, supposing that the entire household was designing to show her every kind of insult and annoyance, she would see plots where no plots were, and consider that her most dignified course was to suffer in silence-an attitude of passivity as regards winning AFfection which of course led to DISaffection. Moreover, she was so totally lacking in that faculty of "apprehension" to which I have already referred as being highly developed in our household, and all her customs were so utterly opposed to those which had long been rooted in our establishment, that those two facts alone were bound to go against her. From the first, her mode of life in our tidy, methodical household was that of a person only just arrived there. Sometimes she went to bed late, sometimes early; sometimes she appeared at luncheon, sometimes she did not; sometimes she took supper, sometimes she dispensed with it. When we had no guests with us she more often than not walked about the house in a semi-nude condition, and was not ashamed to appear before us-even before the servants-in a white chemise, with only a shawl thrown over her bare shoulders. At first this Bohemianism pleased me, but before very long it led to my losing the last shred of respect which I felt for her. What struck me as even more strange was the fact that, according as we had or had not guests, she was two different women. The one (the woman figuring in society) was a young and healthy, but rather cold, beauty, a person richly dressed, neither stupid nor clever, and unfailingly cheerful. The other woman (the one in evidence when no guests were present) was considerably past her first youth, languid, depressed, slovenly, and ennuyee, though affectionate. Frequently, as I looked at her when, smiling, rosy with the winter air, and happy in the consciousness of her beauty, she came in from a round of calls and, taking off her hat, went to look at herself in a mirror; or when, rustling in her rich, decollete ball dress, and at once shy and proud before the servants, she was passing to her carriage; or when, at one of our small receptions at home, she was sitting dressed in a high silken dress finished with some sort of fine lace about her soft neck, and flashing her unvarying, but lovely, smile around her-as I looked at her at such times I could not help wondering what would have been said by persons who had been ravished to behold her thus if they could have seen her as I often saw her, namely, when, waiting in the lonely midnight hours for her husband to return from his club, she would walk like a shadow from room to room, with her hair dishevelled and her form clad in a sort of dressing-jacket. Presently, she would sit down to the piano and, her brows all puckered with the effort, play over the only waltz that she knew; after which she would pick up a novel, read a few pages somewhere in the middle of it, and throw it aside. Next, repairing in person to the dining-room, so as not to disturb the servants, she would get herself a cucumber and some cold veal, and eat it standing by the window-sill-then once more resume her weary, aimless, gloomy wandering from room to room. But what, above all other things, caused estrangement between us was that lack of understanding which expressed itself chiefly in the peculiar air of indulgent attention with which she would listen when any one was speaking to her concerning matters of which she had no knowledge. It was not her fault that she acquired the unconscious habit of bending her head down and smiling slightly with her lips only when she found it necessary to converse on topics which did not interest her (which meant any topic except herself and her husband); yet that smile and that inclination of the head, when incessantly repeated, could become unbearably wearisome. Also, her peculiar gaiety-which always sounded as though she were laughing at herself, at you, and at the world in general-was gauche and anything but infectious, while her sympathy was too evidently forced. Lastly, she knew no reticence with regard to her ceaseless rapturising to all and sundry concerning her love for Papa. Although she only spoke the truth when she said that her whole life was bound up with him, and although she proved it her life long, we considered such unrestrained, continual insistence upon her affection for him bad form, and felt more ashamed for her when she was descanting thus before strangers even than we did when she was perpetrating bad blunders in French. Yet, although, as I have said, she loved her husband more than anything else in the world, and he too had a great affection for her (or at all events he had at first, and when he saw that others besides himself admired her beauty), it seemed almost as though she purposely did everything most likely to displease him-simply to prove to him the strength of her love, her readiness to sacrifice herself for his sake, and the fact that her one aim in life was to win his affection! She was fond of display, and my father too liked to see her as a beauty who excited wonder and admiration; yet she sacrificed her weakness for fine clothes to her love for him, and grew more and more accustomed to remain at home in a plain grey blouse. Again, Papa considered freedom and equality to be indispensable conditions of family life, and hoped that his favourite Lubotshka and his kind-hearted young wife would become sincere friends; yet once again Avdotia sacrificed herself by considering it incumbent upon her to pay the "real mistress of the house," as she called Lubotshka, an amount of deference which only shocked and annoyed my father. Likewise, he played cards a great deal that winter, and lost considerable sums towards the end of it, wherefore, unwilling, as usual, to let his gambling affairs intrude upon his family life, he began to preserve complete secrecy concerning his play; yet Avdotia, though often ailing, as well as, towards the end of the winter, enceinte, considered herself bound always to sit up (in a grey blouse, and with her hair dishevelled) for my father when, at, say, four or five o'clock in the morning, he returned home from the club ashamed, depleted in pocket, and weary. She would ask him absent-mindedly whether he had been fortunate in play, and listen with indulgent attention, little nods of her head, and a faint smile upon her face as he told her of his doings at the club and begged her, for about the hundredth time, never to sit up for him again. Yet, though Papa's winnings or losings (upon which his substance practically depended) in no way interested her, she was always the first to meet him when he returned home in the small hours of the morning. This she was incited to do, not only by the strength of her devotion, but by a certain secret jealousy from which she suffered. No one in the world could persuade her that it was REALLY from his club, and not from a mistress's, that Papa came home so late. She would try to read love secrets in his face, and, discerning none there, would sigh with a sort of enjoyment of her grief, and give herself up once more to the contemplation of her unhappiness.


As the result of these and many other constant sacrifices which occurred in Papa's relations with his wife during the latter months of that winter (a time when he lost much, and was therefore out of spirits), there gradually grew up between the two an intermittent feeling of tacit hostility-of restrained aversion to the object of devotion of the kind which expresses itself in an unconscious eagerness to show the object in question every possible species of petty annoyance.





XLIII. NEW COMRADES


The winter had passed imperceptibly and the thaw begun when the list of examinations was posted at the University, and I suddenly remembered that I had to return answers to questions in eighteen subjects on which I had heard lectures delivered, but with regard to some of which I had taken no notes and made no preparation whatever. It seems strange that the question "How am I going to pass?" should never have entered my head, but the truth is that all that winter I had been in such a state of haze through the delights of being both grown-up and "comme il faut" that, whenever the question of the examinations had occurred to me, I had mentally compared myself with my comrades, and thought to myself, "They are certain to pass, and as most of them are not 'comme il faut,' and I am therefore their personal superior, I too am bound to come out all right." In fact, the only reason why I attended lectures at all was that I might become an habitue of the University, and obtain Papa's leave to go in and out of the house. Moreover, I had many acquaintances now, and often enjoyed myself vastly at the University. I loved the racket, talking, and laughter in the auditorium, the opportunities for sitting on a back bench, and letting the measured voice of the professor lure one into dreams as one contemplated one's comrades, the occasional runnings across the way for a snack and a glass of vodka (sweetened by the fearful joy of knowing that one might be hauled before the professor for so doing), the stealthy closing of the door as one returned to the auditorium, and the participation in "course versus course" scuffles in the corridors. All this was very enjoyable.


By the time, however, that every one had begun to put in a better attendance at lectures, and the professor of physics had completed his course and taken his leave of us until the examinations came on, and the students were busy collecting their notebooks and arranging to do their preparation in parties, it struck me that I also had better prepare for the ordeal. Operoff, with whom I still continued on bowing, but otherwise most frigid, terms, suddenly offered not only to lend me his notebooks, but to let me do my preparation with himself and some other students. I thanked him, and accepted the invitation-hoping by that conferment of honour completely to dissipate our old misunderstanding; but at the same time I requested that the gatherings should always be held at my home, since my quarters were so splendid! To this the students replied that they meant to take turn and turn about-sometimes to meet at one fellow's place, sometimes at another's, as might be most convenient.


The first of our reunions was held at Zuchin's, who had a small partition-room in a large building on the Trubni Boulevard. The opening night I arrived late, and entered when the reading aloud had already begun. The little apartment was thick with tobacco-smoke, while on the table stood a bottle of vodka, a decanter, some bread, some salt, and a shin-bone of mutton. Without rising, Zuchin asked me to have some vodka and to doff my tunic.


"I expect you are not accustomed to such entertainment," he added.


Every one was wearing a dirty cotton shirt and a dickey. Endeavouring not to show my contempt for the company, I took off my tunic, and lay down in a sociable manner on the sofa. Zuchin went on reading aloud and correcting himself with the help of notebooks, while the others occasionally stopped him to ask a question, which he always answered with ability, correctness, and precision. I listened for a time with the rest, but, not understanding much of it, since I had not been present at what had been read before, soon interpolated a question.


"Hullo, old fellow! It will be no good for you to listen if you do not know the subject," said Zuchin. "I will lend you my notebooks, and then you can read it up by to-morrow, and I will explain it to you."


I felt rather ashamed of my ignorance. Also, I felt the truth of what he said; so I gave up listening, and amused myself by observing my new comrades. According to my classification of humanity, into persons "comme il faut" and persons not "comme il faut," they evidently belonged to the latter category, and so aroused in me not only a feeling of contempt, but also a certain sensation of personal hostility, for the reason that, though not "comme il faut," they accounted me their equal, and actually patronised me in a sort of good-humoured fashion. What in particular excited in me this feeling was their feet, their dirty nails and fingers, a particularly long talon on Operoff's obtrusive little finger, their red shirts, their dickeys, the chaff which they good-naturedly threw at one another, the dirty room, a habit which Zuchin had of continually snuffling and pressing a finger to his nose, and, above all, their manner of speaking-that is to say, their use and intonation of words. For instance, they said "flat" for fool, "just the ticket" for exactly, "grandly" for splendidly, and so on-all of which seemed to me either bookish or disagreeably vulgar. Still more was my "comme il faut" refinement disturbed by the accents which they put upon certain Russian-and, still more, upon foreign-words. Thus they said dieYATelnost for DIEyatelnost, NARochno for naROChno, v'KAMinie for v'kaMINie, SHAKespeare for ShakesPEARe, and so forth.


Yet, for all their insuperably repellent exterior, I could detect something good in these fellows, and envied them the cheerful good-fellowship which united them in one. Consequently, I began to feel attracted towards them, and made up my mind that, come what might, I would become of their number. The kind and honourable Operoff I knew already, and now the brusque, but exceptionally clever, Zuchin (who evidently took the lead in this circle) began to please me greatly. He was a dark, thick-set little fellow, with a perennially glistening, polished face, but one that was extremely lively, intellectual, and independent in its expression. That expression it derived from a low, but prominent, forehead, deep black eyes, short, bristly hair, and a thick, dark beard which looked as though it stood in constant need of trimming. Although, too, he seemed to think nothing of himself (a trail which always pleased me in people), it was clear that he never let his brain rest. He had one of those expressive faces which, a few hours after you have seen them for the first time, change suddenly and entirely to your view. Such a change took place, in my eyes, with regard to Zuchin's face towards the end of that evening. Suddenly, I seemed to see new wrinkles appear upon its surface, its eyes grow deeper, its smile become a different one, and the whole face assume such an altered aspect that I scarcely recognised it.


When the reading was ended, Zuchin, the other students, and myself manifested our desire to be "comrades all" by drinking vodka until little remained in the bottle. Thereupon Zuchin asked if any one had a quarter-rouble to spare, so that he could send the old woman who looked after him to buy some more; yet, on my offering to provide the money, he made as though he had not heard me, and turned to Operoff, who pulled out a purse sewn with bugles, and handed him the sum required.


"And mind you don't get drunk," added the giver, who himself had not partaken of the vodka.


"By heavens!" answered Zuchin as he sucked the marrow out of a mutton bone (I remember thinking that it must be because he ate marrow that he was so clever). "By heavens!" he went on with a slight smile (and his smile was of the kind that one involuntarily noticed, and somehow felt grateful for), "even if I did get drunk, there would be no great harm done. I wonder which of us two could look after himself the better-you or I? Anyway I am willing to make the experiment," and he slapped his forehead with mock boastfulness. "But what a pity it is that Semenoff has disappeared! He has gone and completely hidden himself somewhere."


Sure enough, the grey-haired Semenoff who had comforted me so much at my first examination by being worse dressed than myself, and who, after passing the second examination, had attended his lectures regularly during the first month, had disappeared thereafter from view, and never been seen at the University throughout the latter part of the course.


"Where is he?" asked some one.


"I do not know" replied Zuchin. "He has escaped my eye altogether. Yet what fun I used to have with him! What fire there was in the man! and what an intellect! I should be indeed sorry if he has come to grief-and come to grief he probably has, for he was no mere boy to take his University course in instalments."


After a little further conversation, and agreeing to meet again the next night at Zuchin's, since his abode was the most central point for us all, we began to disperse. As, one by one, we left the room, my conscience started pricking me because every one seemed to be going home on foot, whereas I had my drozhki. Accordingly, with some hesitation I offered Operoff a lift. Zuchin came to the door with us, and, after borrowing a rouble of Operoff, went off to make a night of it with some friends. As we drove along, Operoff told me a good deal about Zuchin's character and mode of life, and on reaching home it was long before I could get to sleep for thinking of the new acquaintances I had made. For many an hour, as I lay awake, I kept wavering between the respect which their knowledge, simplicity, and sense of honour, as well as the poetry of their youth and courage, excited in my regard, and the distaste which I felt for their outward man. In spite of my desire to do so, it was at that time literally impossible for me to associate with them, since our ideas were too wholly at variance. For me, life's meaning and charm contained an infinitude of shades of which they had not an inkling, and vice versa. The greatest obstacles of all, however, to our better acquaintance I felt to be the twenty roubles' worth of cloth in my tunic, my drozhki, and my white linen shirt; and they appeared to me most important obstacles, since they made me feel as though I had unwittingly insulted these comrades by displaying such tokens of my wealth. I felt guilty in their eyes, and as though, whether I accepted or rejected their acquittal and took a line of my own, I could never enter into equal and unaffected relations with them. Yet to such an extent did the stirring poetry of the courage which I could detect in Zuchin (in particular) overshadow the coarse, vicious side of his nature that the latter made no unpleasant impression upon me.


For a couple of weeks I visited Zuchin's almost every night for purposes of work. Yet I did very little there, since, as I have said, I had lost ground at the start, and, not having sufficient grit in me to catch up my companions by solitary study, was forced merely to PRETEND that I was listening to and taking in all they were reading. I have an idea, too, that they divined my pretence, since I often noticed that they passed over points which they themselves knew without first inquiring of me whether I did the same. Yet, day by day, I was coming to regard the vulgarity of this circle with more indulgence, to feel increasingly drawn towards its way of life, and to find in it much that was poetical. Only my word of honour to Dimitri that I would never indulge in dissipation with these new comrades kept me from deciding also to share their diversions.


Once, I thought I would make a display of my knowledge of literature, particularly French literature, and so led the conversation to that theme. Judge, then, of my surprise when I discovered that not only had my companions been reading the foreign passages in Russian, but that they had studied far more foreign works than I had, and knew and could appraise English, and even Spanish, writers of whom I had never so much as heard! Likewise, Pushkin and Zhukovski represented to them LITERATURE, and not, as to myself, certain books in yellow covers which I had once read and studied when a child. For Dumas and Sue they had an almost equal contempt, and, in general, were competent to form much better and clearer judgments on literary matters than I was, for all that I refused to recognise the fact. In knowledge of music, too, I could not beat them, and was astonished to find that Operoff played the violin, and another student the cello and piano, while both of them were members of the University orchestra, and possessed a wide knowledge of and appreciation of good music. In short, with the exception of the French and German languages, my companions were better posted at every point than I was, yet not the least proud of the fact. True, I might have plumed myself on my position as a man of the world, but Woloda excelled me even in that. Wherein, then, lay the height from which I presumed to look down upon these comrades? In my acquaintanceship with Prince Ivan Ivanovitch? In my ability to speak French? In my drozhki? In my linen shirt? In my finger-nails? "Surely these things are all rubbish," was the thought which would come flitting through my head under the influence of the envy which the good-fellowship and kindly, youthful gaiety displayed around me excited in my breast. Every one addressed his interlocutor in the second person singular. True, the familiarity of this address almost approximated to rudeness, yet even the boorish exterior of the speaker could not conceal a constant endeavour never to hurt another one's feelings. The terms "brute" or "swine," when used in this good-natured fashion, only convulsed me, and gave me cause for inward merriment. In no way did they offend the person addressed, or prevent the company at large from remaining on the most sincere and friendly footing. In all their intercourse these youths were delicate and forbearing in a way that only very poor and very young men can be. However much I might detect in Zuchin's character and amusements an element of coarseness and profligacy, I could also detect the fact that his drinking-bouts were of a very different order to the puerility with burnt rum and champagne in which I had participated at Baron Z.'s.





XLIV. ZUCHIN AND SEMENOFF


Although I do not know what class of society Zuchin belonged to, I know that, without the help either of means or social position, he had matriculated from the Seventh Gymnasium. At that time he was eighteen-though he looked much older-and very clever, especially in his powers of assimilation. To him it was easier to survey the whole of some complicated subject, to foresee its various parts and deductions, than to use that knowledge, when gained, for reasoning out the exact laws to which those deductions were due. He knew that he was clever, and of the fact he was proud; yet from that very pride arose the circumstance that he treated every one with unvarying simplicity and good-nature. Moreover, his experience of life must have been considerable, for already he had squandered much love, friendship, activity, and money. Though poor and moving only in the lower ranks of society, there was nothing which he had ever attempted for which he did not thenceforth feel the contempt, the indifference, or the utter disregard which were bound to result from his attaining his goal too easily. In fact, the very ardour with which he applied himself to a new pursuit seemed to be due to his contempt for what he had already attained, since his abilities always led him to success, and therefore to a certain right to despise it. With the sciences it was the same. Though little interested in them, and taking no notes, he knew mathematics thoroughly, and was uttering no vain boast when he said that he could beat the professor himself. Much of what he heard said in lectures he thought rubbish, yet with his peculiar habit of unconsciously practical roguishness he feigned to subscribe to all that the professors thought important, and every professor adored him. True, he was outspoken to the authorities, but they none the less respected him. Besides disliking and despising the sciences, he despised all who laboured to attain what he himself had mastered so easily, since the sciences, as he understood them, did not occupy one-tenth part of his powers. In fact, life, as he saw it from the student's standpoint, contained nothing to which he could devote himself wholly, and his impetuous, active nature (as he himself often said) demanded life complete: wherefore he frequented the drinking-bout in so far as he could afford it, and surrendered himself to dissipation chiefly out of a desire to get as far away from himself as possible. Consequently, just as the examinations were approaching, Operoff's prophecy to me came true, for Zuchin wasted two whole weeks in this fashion, and we had to do the latter part of our preparation at another student's. Yet at the first examination he reappeared with pale, haggard face and tremulous hands, and passed brilliantly into the second course!


The company of roisterers of which Zuchin had been the leader since its formation at the beginning of the term consisted of eight students, among whom, at first, had been numbered Ikonin and Semenoff; but the former had left under the strain of the continuous revelry in which the band had indulged in the early part of the term, and the latter seceded later for reasons which were never wholly explained. In its early days this band had been looked upon with awe by all the fellows of our course, and had had its exploits much discussed. Of these exploits the leading heroes had been Zuchin and, towards the end of the term, Semenoff, but the latter had come to be generally shunned, and to cause disturbances on the rare occasions when he attended a lecture. Just before the examinations began, he rounded off his drinking exploits in a most energetic and original fashion, as I myself had occasion to witness (through my acquaintanceship with Zuchin). This is how it was. One evening we had just assembled at Zuchin's, and Operoff, reinforcing a candlestick with a candle stuck in a bottle, had just plunged his nose into his notebooks and begun to read aloud in his thin voice from his neatly-written notes on physics, when the landlady entered the room, and informed Zuchin that some one had brought a note for him... [The remainder of this chapter is omitted in the original.]





XLV. I COME TO GRIEF


At length the first examination-on differentials and integrals-drew near, but I continued in a vague state which precluded me from forming any clear idea of what was awaiting me. Every evening, after consorting with Zuchin and the rest, the thought would occur to me that there was something in my convictions which I must change-something wrong and mistaken; yet every morning the daylight would find me again satisfied to be "comme il faut," and desirous of no change whatsoever.


Such was the frame of mind in which I attended for the first examination. I seated myself on the bench where the princes, counts, and barons always sat, and began talking to them in French, with the not unnatural result that I never gave another thought to the answers which I was shortly to return to questions in a subject of which I knew nothing. I gazed supinely at other students as they went up to be examined, and even allowed myself to chaff some of them.


"Well, Grap," I said to Ilinka (who, from our first entry into the University, had shaken off my influence, had ceased to smile when I spoke to him, and always remained ill-disposed towards me), "have you survived the ordeal?"


"Yes," retorted Ilinka. "Let us see if YOU can do so."


I smiled contemptuously at the answer, notwithstanding that the doubt which he had expressed had given me a momentary shock. Once again, however, indifference overlaid that feeling, and I remained so entirely absent-minded and supine that, the very moment after I had been examined (a mere formality for me, as it turned out) I was making a dinner appointment with Baron Z. When called out with Ikonin, I smoothed the creases in my uniform, and walked up to the examiner's table with perfect sang froid.


True, a slight shiver of apprehension ran down my back when the young professor-the same one as had examined me for my matriculation-looked me straight in the face as I reached across to the envelope containing the tickets. Ikonin, though taking a ticket with the same plunge of his whole body as he had done at the previous examinations, did at least return some sort of an answer this time, though a poor one. I, on the contrary, did just as he had done on the two previous occasions, or even worse, since I took a second ticket, yet for a second time returned no answer. The professor looked me compassionately in the face, and said in a quiet, but determined, voice:


"You will not pass into the second course, Monsieur Irtenieff. You had better not complete the examinations. The faculty must be weeded out. The same with you, Monsieur Ikonin."


Ikonin implored leave to finish the examinations, as a great favour, but the professor replied that he (Ikonin) was not likely to do in two days what he had not succeeded in doing in a year, and that he had not the smallest chance of passing. Ikonin renewed his humble, piteous appeals, but the professor was inexorable.


"You can go, gentlemen," he remarked in the same quiet, resolute voice.


I was only too glad to do so, for I felt ashamed of seeming, by my silent presence, to be joining in Ikonin's humiliating prayers for grace. I have no recollection of how I threaded my way through the students in the hall, nor of what I replied to their questions, nor of how I passed into the vestibule and departed home. I was offended, humiliated, and genuinely unhappy.


For three days I never left my room, and saw no one, but found relief in copious tears. I should have sought a pistol to shoot myself if I had had the necessary determination for the deed. I thought that Ilinka Grap would spit in my face when he next met me, and that he would have the right to do so; that Operoff would rejoice at my misfortune, and tell every one of it; that Kolpikoff had justly shamed me that night at the restaurant; that my stupid speeches to Princess Kornikoff had had their fitting result; and so on, and so on. All the moments in my life which had been for me most difficult and painful recurred to my mind. I tried to blame some one for my calamity, and thought that some one must have done it on purpose-must have conspired a whole intrigue against me. Next, I murmured against the professors, against my comrades, Woloda, Dimitri, and Papa (the last for having sent me to the University at all). Finally, I railed at Providence for ever having let me see such ignominy. Believing myself ruined for ever in the eyes of all who knew me, I besought Papa to let me go into the hussars or to the Caucasus. Naturally, Papa was anything but pleased at what had happened; yet, on seeing my passionate grief, he comforted me by saying that, though it was a bad business, it might yet be mended by my transferring to another faculty. Woloda, who also saw nothing very terrible in my misfortune, added that at least I should not be put out of countenance in a new faculty, since I should have new comrades there. As for the ladies of the household, they neither knew nor cared what either an examination or a plucking meant, and condoled with me only because they saw me in such distress. Dimitri came to see me every day, and was very kind and consolatory throughout; but for that very reason he seemed to me to have grown colder than before. It always hurt me and made me feel uncomfortable when he came up to my room and seated himself in silence beside me, much as a doctor might scat himself by the bedside of an awkward patient. Sophia Ivanovna and Varenika sent me books for which I had expressed a wish, as also an invitation to go and see them, but in that very thoughtfulness of theirs I saw only proud, humiliating condescension to one who had fallen beyond forgiveness. Although, in three days' time, I grew calmer, it was not until we departed for the country that I left the house, but spent the time in nursing my grief and wandering, fearful of all the household, through the various rooms.


One evening, as I was sitting deep in thought and listening to Avdotia playing her waltz, I suddenly leapt to my feet, ran upstairs, got out the copy-book whereon I had once inscribed "Rules of My Life," opened it, and experienced my first moment of repentance and moral resolution. True, I burst into tears once more, but they were no longer tears of despair. Pulling myself together, I set about writing out a fresh set of rules, in the assured conviction that never again would I do a wrong action, waste a single moment on frivolity, or alter the rules which I now decided to frame.


How long that moral impulse lasted, what it consisted of, and what new principles I devised for my moral growth I will relate when speaking of the ensuing and happier portion of my early manhood.


THE COSSACKS
A Tale of 1852

By

Leo Tolstoy (1863)

Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude

Chapter I
All is quiet in Moscow. The squeak of wheels is seldom heard in the snow-covered street. There are no lights left in the windows and the street lamps have been extinguished. Only the sound of bells, borne over the city from the church towers, suggests the approach of morning. The streets are deserted. At rare intervals a night-cabman's sledge kneads up the snow and sand in the street as the driver makes his way to another corner where he falls asleep while waiting for a fare. An old woman passes by on her way to church, where a few wax candles burn with a red light reflected on the gilt mountings of the icons. Workmen are already getting up after the long winter night and going to their workbut for the gentlefolk it is still evening.

From a window in Chevalier's Restaurant a lightillegal at that houris still to be seen through a chink in the shutter. At the entrance a carriage, a sledge, and a cabman's sledge, stand close together with their backs to the curbstone. A three-horse sledge from the post-station is there also. A yard-porter muffled up and pinched with cold is sheltering behind the corner of the house.

'And what's the good of all this jawing?' thinks the footman who sits in the hall weary and haggard. 'This always happens when I'm on duty.' From the adjoining room are heard the voices of three young men, sitting there at a table on which are wine and the remains of supper. One, a rather plain, thin, neat little man, sits looking with tired kindly eyes at his friend, who is about to start on a journey. Another, a tall man, lies on a sofa beside a table on which are empty bottles, and plays with his watch-key. A third, wearing a short, fur-lined coat, is pacing up and down the room stopping now and then to crack an almond between his strong, rather thick, but well-tended fingers. He keeps smiling at something and his face and eyes are all aglow. He speaks warmly and gesticulates, but evidently does not find the words he wants and those that occur to him seem to him inadequate to express what has risen to his heart.

'Now I can speak out fully,' said the traveller. 'I don't want to defend myself, but I should like you at least to understand me as I understand myself, and not look at the matter superficially. You say I have treated her badly,' he continued, addressing the man with the kindly eyes who was watching him.

'Yes, you are to blame,' said the latter, and his look seemed to express still more kindliness and weariness.

'I know why you say that,' rejoined the one who was leaving. 'To be loved is in your opinion as great a happiness as to love, and if a man obtains it, it is enough for his whole life.'

'Yes, quite enough, my dear fellow, more than enough!' confirmed the plain little man, opening and shutting his eyes.

'But why shouldn't the man love too?' said the traveller thoughtfully, looking at his friend with something like pity. 'Why shouldn't one love? Because love doesn't come  No, to be beloved is a misfortune. It is a misfortune to feel guilty because you do not give something you cannot give. O my God!' he added, with a gesture of his arm. 'If it all happened reasonably, and not all topsy-turvynot in our way but in a way of its own! Why, it's as if I had stolen that love! You think so too, don't deny it. You must think so. But will you believe it, of all the horrid and stupid things I have found time to do in my lifeand there are manythis is one I do not and cannot repent of. Neither at the beginning nor afterwards did I lie to myself or to her. It seemed to me that I had at last fallen in love, but then I saw that it was an involuntary falsehood, and that that was not the way to love, and I could not go on, but she did. Am I to blame that I couldn't? What was I to do?'

'Well, it's ended now!' said his friend, lighting a cigar to master his sleepiness. 'The fact is that you have not yet loved and do not know what love is.'

The man in the fur-lined coat was going to speak again, and put his hands to his head, but could not express what he wanted to say.

'Never loved!  Yes, quite true, I never have! But after all, I have within me a desire to love, and nothing could be stronger than that desire! But then, again, does such love exist? There always remains something incomplete. Ah well! What's the use of talking? I've made an awful mess of life! But anyhow it's all over now; you are quite right. And I feel that I am beginning a new life.'

'Which you will again make a mess of,' said the man who lay on the sofa playing with his watch-key. But the traveller did not listen to him.

'I am sad and yet glad to go,' he continued. 'Why I am sad I don't know.'

And the traveller went on talking about himself, without noticing that this did not interest the others as much as it did him. A man is never such an egotist as at moments of spiritual ecstasy. At such times it seems to him that there is nothing on earth more splendid and interesting than himself.

'Dmitri Andreich! The coachman won't wait any longer!' said a young serf, entering the room in a sheepskin coat, with a scarf tied round his head. 'The horses have been standing since twelve, and it's now four o'clock!'

Dmitri Andreich looked at his serf, Vanyusha. The scarf round Vanyusha's head, his felt boots and sleepy face, seemed to be calling his master to a new life of labour, hardship, and activity.

'True enough! Good-bye!' said he, feeling for the unfastened hook and eye on his coat.

In spite of advice to mollify the coachman by another tip, he put on his cap and stood in the middle of the room. The friends kissed once, then again, and after a pause, a third time. The man in the fur-lined coat approached the table and emptied a champagne glass, then took the plain little man's hand and blushed.

'Ah well, I will speak out all the same  I must and will be frank with you because I am fond of you  Of course you love herI always thought sodon't you?'

'Yes,' answered his friend, smiling still more gently.

'And perhaps'

'Please sir, I have orders to put out the candles,' said the sleepy attendant, who had been listening to the last part of the conversation and wondering why gentlefolk always talk about one and the same thing. 'To whom shall I make out the bill? To you, sir?' he added, knowing whom to address and turning to the tall man.

'To me,' replied the tall man. 'How much?'

'Twenty-six rubles.'

The tall man considered for a moment, but said nothing and put the bill in his pocket.

The other two continued their talk.

'Good-bye, you are a capital fellow!' said the short plain man with the mild eyes. Tears filled the eyes of both. They stepped into the porch.

'Oh, by the by,' said the traveller, turning with a blush to the tall man, 'will you settle Chevalier's bill and write and let me know?'

'All right, all right!' said the tall man, pulling on his gloves. 'How I envy you!' he added quite unexpectedly when they were out in the porch.

The traveller got into his sledge, wrapped his coat about him, and said: 'Well then, come along!' He even moved a little to make room in the sledge for the man who said he envied himhis voice trembled.

'Good-bye, Mitya! I hope that with God's help you' said the tall one. But his wish was that the other would go away quickly, and so he could not finish the sentence.

They were silent a moment. Then someone again said, 'Good-bye,' and a voice cried, 'Ready,' and the coachman touched up the horses.

'Hy, Elisar!' One of the friends called out, and the other coachman and the sledge-drivers began moving, clicking their tongues and pulling at the reins. Then the stiffened carriage-wheels rolled squeaking over the frozen snow.

'A fine fellow, that Olenin!' said one of the friends. 'But what an idea to go to the Caucasusas a cadet, too! I wouldn't do it for anything.  Are you dining at the club to-morrow?'

'Yes.'

They separated.

The traveller felt warm, his fur coat seemed too hot. He sat on the bottom of the sledge and unfastened his coat, and the three shaggy post-horses dragged themselves out of one dark street into another, past houses he had never before seen. It seemed to Olenin that only travellers starting on a long journey went through those streets. All was dark and silent and dull around him, but his soul was full of memories, love, regrets, and a pleasant tearful feeling.

Chapter II
'I'm fond of them, very fond!  First-rate fellows!  Fine!' he kept repeating, and felt ready to cry. But why he wanted to cry, who were the first-rate fellows he was so fond ofwas more than he quite knew. Now and then he looked round at some house and wondered why it was so curiously built; sometimes he began wondering why the post-boy and Vanyusha, who were so different from himself, sat so near, and together with him were being jerked about and swayed by the tugs the side-horses gave at the frozen traces, and again he repeated: 'First rate  very fond!' and once he even said: 'And how it seizes one  excellent!' and wondered what made him say it. 'Dear me, am I drunk?' he asked himself. He had had a couple of bottles of wine, but it was not the wine alone that was having this effect on Olenin. He remembered all the words of friendship heartily, bashfully, spontaneously (as he believed) addressed to him on his departure. He remembered the clasp of hands, glances, the moments of silence, and the sound of a voice saying, 'Good-bye, Mitya!' when he was already in the sledge. He remembered his own deliberate frankness. And all this had a touching significance for him. Not only friends and relatives, not only people who had been indifferent to him, but even those who did not like him, seemed to have agreed to become fonder of him, or to forgive him, before his departure, as people do before confession or death. 'Perhaps I shall not return from the Caucasus,' he thought. And he felt that he loved his friends and some one besides. He was sorry for himself. But it was not love for his friends that so stirred and uplifted his heart that he could not repress the meaningless words that seemed to rise of themselves to his lips; nor was it love for a woman (he had never yet been in love) that had brought on this mood. Love for himself, love full of hopewarm young love for all that was good in his own soul (and at that moment it seemed to him that there was nothing but good in it)compelled him to weep and to mutter incoherent words.

Olenin was a youth who had never completed his university course, never served anywhere (having only a nominal post in some government office or other), who had squandered half his fortune and had reached the age of twenty-four without having done anything or even chosen a career. He was what in Moscow society is termed un jeune homme.

At the age of eighteen he was freeas only rich young Russians in the 'forties who had lost their parents at an early age could be. Neither physical nor moral fetters of any kind existed for him; he could do as he liked, lacking nothing and bound by nothing. Neither relatives, nor fatherland, nor religion, nor wants, existed for him. He believed in nothing and admitted nothing. But although he believed in nothing he was not a morose or blase young man, nor self-opinionated, but on the contrary continually let himself be carried away. He had come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as love, yet his heart always overflowed in the presence of any young and attractive woman. He had long been aware that honours and position were nonsense, yet involuntarily he felt pleased when at a ball Prince Sergius came up and spoke to him affably. But he yielded to his impulses only in so far as they did not limit his freedom. As soon as he had yielded to any influence and became conscious of its leading on to labour and struggle, he instinctively hastened to free himself from the feeling or activity into which he was being drawn and to regain his freedom. In this way he experimented with society-life, the civil service, farming, musicto which at one time he intended to devote his lifeand even with the love of women in which he did not believe. He meditated on the use to which he should devote that power of youth which is granted to man only once in a lifetime: that force which gives a man the power of making himself, or evenas it seemed to himof making the universe, into anything he wishes: should it be to art, to science, to love of woman, or to practical activities? It is true that some people are devoid of this impulse, and on entering life at once place their necks under the first yoke that offers itself and honestly labour under it for the rest of their lives. But Olenin was too strongly conscious of the presence of that all-powerful God of Youthof that capacity to be entirely transformed into an aspiration or ideathe capacity to wish and to doto throw oneself headlong into a bottomless abyss without knowing why or wherefore. He bore this consciousness within himself, was proud of it and, without knowing it, was happy in that consciousness. Up to that time he had loved only himself, and could not help loving himself, for he expected nothing but good of himself and had not yet had time to be disillusioned. On leaving Moscow he was in that happy state of mind in which a young man, conscious of past mistakes, suddenly says to himself, 'That was not the real thing.' All that had gone before was accidental and unimportant. Till then he had not really tried to live, but now with his departure from Moscow a new life was beginninga life in which there would be no mistakes, no remorse, and certainly nothing but happiness.

It is always the case on a long journey that till the first two or three stages have been passed imagination continues to dwell on the place left behind, but with the first morning on the road it leaps to the end of the journey and there begins building castles in the air. So it happened to Olenin.

After leaving the town behind, he gazed at the snowy fields and felt glad to be alone in their midst. Wrapping himself in his fur coat, he lay at the bottom of the sledge, became tranquil, and fell into a doze. The parting with his friends had touched him deeply, and memories of that last winter spent in Moscow and images of the past, mingled with vague thoughts and regrets, rose unbidden in his imagination.

He remembered the friend who had seen him off and his relations with the girl they had talked about. The girl was rich. "How could he love her knowing that she loved me?" thought he, and evil suspicions crossed his mind. "There is much dishonesty in men when one comes to reflect." Then he was confronted by the question: "But really, how is it I have never been in love? Every one tells me that I never have. Can it be that I am a moral monstrosity?" And he began to recall all his infatuations. He recalled his entry into society, and a friend's sister with whom he spent several evenings at a table with a lamp on it which lit up her slender fingers busy with needlework, and the lower part of her pretty delicate face. He recalled their conversations that dragged on like the game in which one passes on a stick which one keeps alight as long as possible, and the general awkwardness and restraint and his continual feeling of rebellion at all that conventionality. Some voice had always whispered: "That's not it, that's not it," and so it had proved. Then he remembered a ball and the mazurka he danced with the beautiful D. "How much in love I was that night and how happy! And how hurt and vexed I was next morning when I woke and felt myself still free! Why does not love come and bind me hand and foot?" thought he. "No, there is no such thing as love! That neighbour who used to tell me, as she told Dubrovin and the Marshal, that she loved the stars, was not IT either." And now his farming and work in the country recurred to his mind, and in those recollections also there was nothing to dwell on with pleasure. "Will they talk long of my departure?" came into his head; but who "they" were he did not quite know. Next came a thought that made him wince and mutter incoherently. It was the recollection of M. Cappele the tailor, and the six hundred and seventy-eight rubles he still owed him, and he recalled the words in which he had begged him to wait another year, and the look of perplexity and resignation which had appeared on the tailor's face. 'Oh, my God, my God!' he repeated, wincing and trying to drive away the intolerable thought. 'All the same and in spite of everything she loved me,' thought he of the girl they had talked about at the farewell supper. 'Yes, had I married her I should not now be owing anything, and as it is I am in debt to Vasilyev.' Then he remembered the last night he had played with Vasilyev at the club (just after leaving her), and he recalled his humiliating requests for another game and the other's cold refusal. 'A year's economizing and they will all be paid, and the devil take them!' But despite this assurance he again began calculating his outstanding debts, their dates, and when he could hope to pay them off. 'And I owe something to Morell as well as to Chevalier,' thought he, recalling the night when he had run up so large a debt. It was at a carousel at the gipsies arranged by some fellows from Petersburg: Sashka B-, an aide-de-camp to the Tsar, Prince D-, and that pompous old. 'How is it those gentlemen are so self-satisfied?' thought he, 'and by what right do they form a clique to which they think others must be highly flattered to be admitted? Can it be because they are on the Emperor's staff? Why, it's awful what fools and scoundrels they consider other people to be! But I showed them that I at any rate, on the contrary, do not at all want their intimacy. All the same, I fancy Andrew, the steward, would be amazed to know that I am on familiar terms with a man like Sashka B-, a colonel and an aide-de-camp to the Tsar! Yes, and no one drank more than I did that evening, and I taught the gipsies a new song and everyone listened to it. Though I have done many foolish things, all the same I am a very good fellow,' thought he.

Morning found him at the third post-stage. He drank tea, and himself helped Vanyusha to move his bundles and trunks and sat down among them, sensible, erect, and precise, knowing where all his belongings were, how much money he had and where it was, where he had put his passport and the post-horse requisition and toll-gate papers, and it all seemed to him so well arranged that he grew quite cheerful and the long journey before him seemed an extended pleasure-trip.

All that morning and noon he was deep in calculations of how many versts he had travelled, how many remained to the next stage, how many to the next town, to the place where he would dine, to the place where he would drink tea, and to Stavropol, and what fraction of the whole journey was already accomplished. He also calculated how much money he had with him, how much would be left over, how much would pay off all his debts, and what proportion of his income he would spend each month. Towards evening, after tea, he calculated that to Stavropol there still remained seven-elevenths of the whole journey, that his debts would require seven months' economy and one-eighth of his whole fortune; and then, tranquillized, he wrapped himself up, lay down in the sledge, and again dozed off. His imagination was now turned to the future: to the Caucasus. All his dreams of the future were mingled with pictures of Amalat-Beks, Circassian women, mountains, precipices, terrible torrents, and perils. All these things were vague and dim, but the love of fame and the danger of death furnished the interest of that future. Now, with unprecedented courage and a strength that amazed everyone, he slew and subdued an innumerable host of hillsmen; now he was himself a hillsman and with them was maintaining their independence against the Russians. As soon as he pictured anything definite, familiar Moscow figures always appeared on the scene. Sashka B-fights with the Russians or the hillsmen against him. Even the tailor Cappele in some strange way takes part in the conqueror's triumph. Amid all this he remembered his former humiliations, weaknesses, and mistakes, and the recollection was not disagreeable. It was clear that there among the mountains, waterfalls, fair Circassians, and dangers, such mistakes could not recur. Having once made full confession to himself there was an end of it all. One other vision, the sweetest of them all, mingled with the young man's every thought of the futurethe vision of a woman.

And there, among the mountains, she appeared to his imagination as a Circassian slave, a fine figure with a long plait of hair and deep submissive eyes. He pictured a lonely hut in the mountains, and on the threshold she stands awaiting him when, tired and covered with dust, blood, and fame, he returns to her. He is conscious of her kisses, her shoulders, her sweet voice, and her submissiveness. She is enchanting, but uneducated, wild, and rough. In the long winter evenings he begins her education. She is clever and gifted and quickly acquires all the knowledge essential. Why not? She can quite easily learn foreign languages, read the French masterpieces and understand them: Notre Dame de Paris, for instance, is sure to please her. She can also speak French. In a drawing-room she can show more innate dignity than a lady of the highest society. She can sing, simply, powerfully, and passionately. 'Oh, what nonsense!' said he to himself. But here they reached a post-station and he had to change into another sledge and give some tips. But his fancy again began searching for the 'nonsense' he had relinquished, and again fair Circassians, glory, and his return to Russia with an appointment as aide-de-camp and a lovely wife rose before his imagination. 'But there's no such thing as love,' said he to himself. 'Fame is all rubbish. But the six hundred and seventy-eight rubles?  And the conquered land that will bring me more wealth than I need for a lifetime? It will not be right though to keep all that wealth for myself. I shall have to distribute it. But to whom? Well, six hundred and seventy-eight rubles to Cappele and then we'll see.'  Quite vague visions now cloud his mind, and only Vanyusha's voice and the interrupted motion of the sledge break his healthy youthful slumber. Scarcely conscious, he changes into another sledge at the next stage and continues his journey.

Next morning everything goes on just the same: the same kind of post-stations and tea-drinking, the same moving horses' cruppers, the same short talks with Vanyusha, the same vague dreams and drowsiness, and the same tired, healthy, youthful sleep at night.

Chapter III
The farther Olenin travelled from Central Russia the farther he left his memories behind, and the nearer he drew to the Caucasus the lighter his heart became. "I'll stay away for good and never return to show myself in society," was a thought that sometimes occurred to him. "These people whom I see here are NOT people. None of them know me and none of them can ever enter the Moscow society I was in or find out about my past. And no one in that society will ever know what I am doing, living among these people." And quite a new feeling of freedom from his whole past came over him among the rough beings he met on the road whom he did not consider to be PEOPLE in the sense that his Moscow acquaintances were. The rougher the people and the fewer the signs of civilization the freer he felt. Stavropol, through which he had to pass, irked him. The signboards, some of them even in French, ladies in carriages, cabs in the marketplace, and a gentleman wearing a fur cloak and tall hat who was walking along the boulevard and staring at the passersby, quite upset him. "Perhaps these people know some of my acquaintances," he thought; and the club, his tailor, cards, society  came back to his mind. But after Stavropol everything was satisfactorywild and also beautiful and warlike, and Olenin felt happier and happier. All the Cossacks, post-boys, and post-station masters seemed to him simple folk with whom he could jest and converse simply, without having to consider to what class they belonged. They all belonged to the human race which, without his thinking about it, all appeared dear to Olenin, and they all treated him in a friendly way.

Already in the province of the Don Cossacks his sledge had been exchanged for a cart, and beyond Stavropol it became so warm that Olenin travelled without wearing his fur coat. It was already springan unexpected joyous spring for Olenin. At night he was no longer allowed to leave the Cossack villages, and they said it was dangerous to travel in the evening. Vanyusha began to be uneasy, and they carried a loaded gun in the cart. Olenin became still happier. At one of the post-stations the post-master told of a terrible murder that had been committed recently on the high road. They began to meet armed men. "So this is where it begins!" thought Olenin, and kept expecting to see the snowy mountains of which mention was so often made. Once, towards evening, the Nogay driver pointed with his whip to the mountains shrouded in clouds. Olenin looked eagerly, but it was dull and the mountains were almost hidden by the clouds. Olenin made out something grey and white and fleecy, but try as he would he could find nothing beautiful in the mountains of which he had so often read and heard. The mountains and the clouds appeared to him quite alike, and he thought the special beauty of the snow peaks, of which he had so often been told, was as much an invention as Bach's music and the love of women, in which he did not believe. So he gave up looking forward to seeing the mountains. But early next morning, being awakened in his cart by the freshness of the air, he glanced carelessly to the right. The morning was perfectly clear. Suddenly he saw, about twenty paces away as it seemed to him at first glance, pure white gigantic masses with delicate contours, the distinct fantastic outlines of their summits showing sharply against the far-off sky. When he had realized the distance between himself and them and the sky and the whole immensity of the mountains, and felt the infinitude of all that beauty, he became afraid that it was but a phantasm or a dream. He gave himself a shake to rouse himself, but the mountains were still the same.

"What's that! What is it?" he said to the driver.

"Why, the mountains," answered the Nogay driver with indifference.

"And I too have been looking at them for a long while," said Vanyusha.
"Aren't they fine? They won't believe it at home."
The quick progress of the three-horsed cart along the smooth road caused the mountains to appear to be running along the horizon, while their rosy crests glittered in the light of the rising sun. At first Olenin was only astonished at the sight, then gladdened by it; but later on, gazing more and more intently at that snow-peaked chain that seemed to rise not from among other black mountains, but straight out of the plain, and to glide away into the distance, he began by slow degrees to be penetrated by their beauty and at length to FEEL the mountains. From that moment all he saw, all he thought, and all he felt, acquired for him a new character, sternly majestic like the mountains! All his Moscow reminiscences, shame, and repentance, and his trivial dreams about the Caucasus, vanished and did not return. 'Now it has begun,' a solemn voice seemed to say to him. The road and the Terek, just becoming visible in the distance, and the Cossack villages and the people, all no longer appeared to him as a joke. He looked at himself or Vanyusha, and again thought of the mountains.  Two Cossacks ride by, their guns in their cases swinging rhythmically behind their backs, the white and bay legs of their horses mingling confusedly  and the mountains! Beyond the Terek rises the smoke from a Tartar village and the mountains! The sun has risen and glitters on the Terek, now visible beyond the reeds  and the mountains! From the village comes a Tartar wagon, and women, beautiful young women, pass by and the mountains! 'Abreks canter about the plain, and here am I driving along and do not fear them! I have a gun, and strength, and youth and the mountains!'

Chapter IV
That whole part of the Terek line (about fifty miles) along which lie the villages of the Grebensk Cossacks is uniform in character both as to country and inhabitants. The Terek, which separates the Cossacks from the mountaineers, still flows turbid and rapid though already broad and smooth, always depositing greyish sand on its low reedy right bank and washing away the steep, though not high, left bank, with its roots of century-old oaks, its rotting plane trees, and young brushwood. On the right bank lie the villages of pro-Russian, though still somewhat restless, Tartars. Along the left bank, back half a mile from the river and standing five or six miles apart from one another, are Cossack villages. In olden times most of these villages were situated on the banks of the river; but the Terek, shifting northward from the mountains year by year, washed away those banks, and now there remain only the ruins of the old villages and of the gardens of pear and plum trees and poplars, all overgrown with blackberry bushes and wild vines. No one lives there now, and one only sees the tracks of the deer, the wolves, the hares, and the pheasants, who have learned to love these places. From village to village runs a road cut through the forest as a cannon-shot might fly. Along the roads are cordons of Cossacks and watch-towers with sentinels in them. Only a narrow strip about seven hundred yards wide of fertile wooded soil belongs to the Cossacks. To the north of it begin the sand-drifts of the Nogay or Mozdok steppes, which fetch far to the north and run, Heaven knows where, into the Trukhmen, Astrakhan, and Kirghiz-Kaisatsk steppes. To the south, beyond the Terek, are the Great Chechnya river, the Kochkalov range, the Black Mountains, yet another range, and at last the snowy mountains, which can just be seen but have never yet been scaled. In this fertile wooded strip, rich in vegetation, has dwelt as far back as memory runs the fine warlike and prosperous Russian tribe belonging to the sect of Old Believers, and called the Grebensk Cossacks.

Long long ago their Old Believer ancestors fled from Russia and settled beyond the Terek among the Chechens on the Greben, the first range of wooded mountains of Chechnya. Living among the Chechens the Cossacks intermarried with them and adopted the manners and customs of the hill tribes, though they still retained the Russian language in all its purity, as well as their Old Faith. A tradition, still fresh among them, declares that Tsar Ivan the Terrible came to the Terek, sent for their Elders, and gave them the land on this side of the river, exhorting them to remain friendly to Russia and promising not to enforce his rule upon them nor oblige them to change their faith. Even now the Cossack families claim relationship with the Chechens, and the love of freedom, of leisure, of plunder and of war, still form their chief characteristics. Only the harmful side of Russian influence shows itselfby interference at elections, by confiscation of church bells, and by the troops who are quartered in the country or march through it. A Cossack is inclined to hate less the dzhigit hillsman who maybe has killed his brother, than the soldier quartered on him to defend his village, but who has defiled his hut with tobacco-smoke. He respects his enemy the hillsman and despises the soldier, who is in his eyes an alien and an oppressor. In reality, from a Cossack's point of view a Russian peasant is a foreign, savage, despicable creature, of whom he sees a sample in the hawkers who come to the country and in the Ukrainian immigrants whom the Cossack contemptuously calls 'woolbeaters'. For him, to be smartly dressed means to be dressed like a Circassian. The best weapons are obtained from the hillsmen and the best horses are bought, or stolen, from them. A dashing young Cossack likes to show off his knowledge of Tartar, and when carousing talks Tartar even to his fellow Cossack. In spite of all these things this small Christian clan stranded in a tiny corner of the earth, surrounded by half-savage Mohammedan tribes and by soldiers, considers itself highly advanced, acknowledges none but Cossacks as human beings, and despises everybody else. The Cossack spends most of his time in the cordon, in action, or in hunting and fishing. He hardly ever works at home. When he stays in the village it is an exception to the general rule and then he is holiday-making. All Cossacks make their own wine, and drunkenness is not so much a general tendency as a rite, the non-fulfilment of which would be considered apostasy. The Cossack looks upon a woman as an instrument for his welfare; only the unmarried girls are allowed to amuse themselves. A married woman has to work for her husband from youth to very old age: his demands on her are the Oriental ones of submission and labour. In consequence of this outlook women are strongly developed both physically and mentally, and though they areas everywhere in the Eastnominally in subjection, they possess far greater influence and importance in family-life than Western women. Their exclusion from public life and inurement to heavy male labour give the women all the more power and importance in the household. A Cossack, who before strangers considers it improper to speak affectionately or needlessly to his wife, when alone with her is involuntarily conscious of her superiority. His house and all his property, in fact the entire homestead, has been acquired and is kept together solely by her labour and care. Though firmly convinced that labour is degrading to a Cossack and is only proper for a Nogay labourer or a woman, he is vaguely aware of the fact that all he makes use of and calls his own is the result of that toil, and that it is in the power of the woman (his mother or his wife) whom he considers his slave, to deprive him of all he possesses. Besides, the continuous performance of man's heavy work and the responsibilities entrusted to her have endowed the Grebensk women with a peculiarly independent masculine character and have remarkably developed their physical powers, common sense, resolution, and stability. The women are in most cases stronger, more intelligent, more developed, and handsomer than the men. A striking feature of a Grebensk woman's beauty is the combination of the purest Circassian type of face with the broad and powerful build of Northern women. Cossack women wear the Circassian dressa Tartar smock, beshmet, and soft slippersbut they tie their kerchiefs round their heads in the Russian fashion. Smartness, cleanliness and elegance in dress and in the arrangement of their huts, are with them a custom and a necessity. In their relations with men the women, and especially the unmarried girls, enjoy perfect freedom.

Novomlinsk village was considered the very heart of Grebensk Cossackdom. In it more than elsewhere the customs of the old Grebensk population have been preserved, and its women have from time immemorial been renowned all over the Caucasus for their beauty. A Cossack's livelihood is derived from vineyards, fruit-gardens, water melon and pumpkin plantations, from fishing, hunting, maize and millet growing, and from war plunder. Novomlinsk village lies about two and a half miles away from the Terek, from which it is separated by a dense forest. On one side of the road which runs through the village is the river; on the other, green vineyards and orchards, beyond which are seen the driftsands of the Nogay Steppe. The village is surrounded by earth-banks and prickly bramble hedges, and is entered by tall gates hung between posts and covered with little reed-thatched roofs. Beside them on a wooden gun-carriage stands an unwieldy cannon captured by the Cossacks at some time or other, and which has not been fired for a hundred years. A uniformed Cossack sentinel with dagger and gun sometimes stands, and sometimes does not stand, on guard beside the gates, and sometimes presents arms to a passing officer and sometimes does not. Below the roof of the gateway is written in black letters on a white board: 'Houses 266: male inhabitants 897: female 1012.' The Cossacks' houses are all raised on pillars two and a half feet from the ground. They are carefully thatched with reeds and have large carved gables. If not new they are at least all straight and clean, with high porches of different shapes; and they are not built close together but have ample space around them, and are all picturesquely placed along broad streets and lanes. In front of the large bright windows of many of the houses, beyond the kitchen gardens, dark green poplars and acacias with their delicate pale verdure and scented white blossoms overtop the houses, and beside them grow flaunting yellow sunflowers, creepers, and grape vines. In the broad open square are three shops where drapery, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, locust beans and gingerbreads are sold; and surrounded by a tall fence, loftier and larger than the other houses, stands the Regimental Commander's dwelling with its casement windows, behind a row of tall poplars. Few people are to be seen in the streets of the village on weekdays, especially in summer. The young men are on duty in the cordons or on military expeditions; the old ones are fishing or helping the women in the orchards and gardens. Only the very old, the sick, and the children, remain at home.

Chapter V
It was one of those wonderful evenings that occur only in the Caucasus. The sun had sunk behind the mountains but it was still light. The evening glow had spread over a third of the sky, and against its brilliancy the dull white immensity of the mountains was sharply defined. The air was rarefied, motionless, and full of sound. The shadow of the mountains reached for several miles over the steppe. The steppe, the opposite side of the river, and the roads, were all deserted. If very occasionally mounted men appeared, the Cossacks in the cordon and the Chechens in their aouls (villages) watched them with surprised curiosity and tried to guess who those questionable men could be. At nightfall people from fear of one another flock to their dwellings, and only birds and beasts fearless of man prowl in those deserted spaces. Talking merrily, the women who have been tying up the vines hurry away from the gardens before sunset. The vineyards, like all the surrounding district, are deserted, but the villages become very animated at that time of the evening. From all sides, walking, riding, or driving in their creaking carts, people move towards the village. Girls with their smocks tucked up and twigs in their hands run chatting merrily to the village gates to meet the cattle that are crowding together in a cloud of dust and mosquitoes which they bring with them from the steppe. The well-fed cows and buffaloes disperse at a run all over the streets and Cossack women in coloured beshmets go to and fro among them. You can hear their merry laughter and shrieks mingling with the lowing of the cattle. There an armed and mounted Cossack, on leave from the cordon, rides up to a hut and, leaning towards the window, knocks. In answer to the knock the handsome head of a young woman appears at the window and you can hear caressing, laughing voices. There a tattered Nogay labourer, with prominent cheekbones, brings a load of reeds from the steppes, turns his creaking cart into the Cossack captain's broad and clean courtyard, and lifts the yoke off the oxen that stand tossing their heads while he and his master shout to one another in Tartar. Past a puddle that reaches nearly across the street, a barefooted Cossack woman with a bundle of firewood on her back makes her laborious way by clinging to the fences, holding her smock high and exposing her white legs. A Cossack returning from shooting calls out in jest: 'Lift it higher, shameless thing!' and points his gun at her. The woman lets down her smock and drops the wood. An old Cossack, returning home from fishing with his trousers tucked up and his hairy grey chest uncovered, has a net across his shoulder containing silvery fish that are still struggling; and to take a short cut climbs over his neighbour's broken fence and gives a tug to his coat which has caught on the fence. There a woman is dragging a dry branch along and from round the corner comes the sound of an axe. Cossack children, spinning their tops wherever there is a smooth place in the street, are shrieking; women are climbing over fences to avoid going round. From every chimney rises the odorous kisyak smoke. From every homestead comes the sound of increased bustle, precursor to the stillness of night.

Granny Ulitka, the wife of the Cossack cornet who is also teacher in the regimental school, goes out to the gates of her yard like the other women, and waits for the cattle which her daughter Maryanka is driving along the street. Before she has had time fully to open the wattle gate in the fence, an enormous buffalo cow surrounded by mosquitoes rushes up bellowing and squeezes in. Several well-fed cows slowly follow her, their large eyes gazing with recognition at their mistress as they swish their sides with their tails. The beautiful and shapely Maryanka enters at the gate and throwing away her switch quickly slams the gate to and rushes with all the speed of her nimble feet to separate and drive the cattle into their sheds. 'Take off your slippers, you devil's wench!' shouts her mother, 'you've worn them into holes!' Maryanka is not at all offended at being called a 'devil's wench', but accepting it as a term of endearment cheerfully goes on with her task. Her face is covered with a kerchief tied round her head. She is wearing a pink smock and a green beshmet. She disappears inside the lean-to shed in the yard, following the big fat cattle; and from the shed comes her voice as she speaks gently and persuasively to the buffalo: 'Won't she stand still? What a creature! Come now, come old dear!' Soon the girl and the old woman pass from the shed to the dairy carrying two large pots of milk, the day's yield. From the dairy chimney rises a thin cloud of kisyak smoke: the milk is being used to make into clotted cream. The girl makes up the fire while her mother goes to the gate. Twilight has fallen on the village. The air is full of the smell of vegetables, cattle, and scented kisyak smoke. From the gates and along the streets Cossack women come running, carrying lighted rags. From the yards one hears the snorting and quiet chewing of the cattle eased of their milk, while in the street only the voices of women and children sound as they call to one another. It is rare on a week-day to hear the drunken voice of a man.

One of the Cossack wives, a tall, masculine old woman, approaches Granny Ulitka from the homestead opposite and asks her for a light. In her hand she holds a rag.

'Have you cleared up. Granny?'

'The girl is lighting the fire. Is it fire you want?' says Granny
Ulitka, proud of being able to oblige her neighbour.
Both women enter the hut, and coarse hands unused to dealing with small articles tremblingly lift the lid of a matchbox, which is a rarity in the Caucasus. The masculine-looking new-comer sits down on the doorstep with the evident intention of having a chat.

'And is your man at the school. Mother?' she asked.

'He's always teaching the youngsters. Mother. But he writes that he'll come home for the holidays,' said the cornet's wife.

'Yes, he's a clever man, one sees; it all comes useful.'

'Of course it does.'

'And my Lukashka is at the cordon; they won't let him come home,' said the visitor, though the cornet's wife had known all this long ago. She wanted to talk about her Lukashka whom she had lately fitted out for service in the Cossack regiment, and whom she wished to marry to the cornet's daughter, Maryanka.

'So he's at the cordon?'

'He is. Mother. He's not been home since last holidays. The other day I sent him some shirts by Fomushkin. He says he's all right, and that his superiors are satisfied. He says they are looking out for abreks again. Lukashka is quite happy, he says.'

'Ah well, thank God,' said the cornet's wife.' "Snatcher" is certainly the only word for him.' Lukashka was surnamed 'the Snatcher' because of his bravery in snatching a boy from a watery grave, and the cornet's wife alluded to this, wishing in her turn to say something agreeable to Lukashka's mother.

'I thank God, Mother, that he's a good son! He's a fine fellow, everyone praises him,' says Lukashka's mother. 'All I wish is to get him married; then I could die in peace.'

'Well, aren't there plenty of young women in the village?' answered the cornet's wife slyly as she carefully replaced the lid of the matchbox with her horny hands.

'Plenty, Mother, plenty,' remarked Lukashka's mother, shaking her head. 'There's your girl now, your Maryankathat's the sort of girl! You'd have to search through the whole place to find such another!' The cornet's wife knows what Lukashka's mother is after, but though she believes him to be a good Cossack she hangs back: first because she is a cornet's wife and rich, while Lukashka is the son of a simple Cossack and fatherless, secondly because she does not want to part with her daughter yet, but chiefly because propriety demands it.

'Well, when Maryanka grows up she'll be marriageable too,' she answers soberly and modestly.

'I'll send the matchmakers to youI'll send them! Only let me get the vineyard done and then we'll come and make our bows to you,' says Lukashka's mother. 'And we'll make our bows to Elias Vasilich too.'

'Elias, indeed!' says the cornet's wife proudly. 'It's to me you must speak! All in its own good time.'

Lukashka's mother sees by the stern face of the cornet's wife that it is not the time to say anything more just now, so she lights her rag with the match and says, rising: 'Don't refuse us, think of my words. I'll go, it is time to light the fire.'

As she crosses the road swinging the burning rag, she meets Maryanka, who bows.

'Ah, she's a regular queen, a splendid worker, that girl!' she thinks, looking at the beautiful maiden. 'What need for her to grow any more? It's time she was married and to a good home; married to Lukashka!'

But Granny Ulitka had her own cares and she remained sitting on the threshold thinking hard about something, till the girl called her.

Chapter VI
The male population of the village spend their time on military expeditions and in the cordonor 'at their posts', as the Cossacks say. Towards evening, that same Lukashka the Snatcher, about whom the old women had been talking, was standing on a watch-tower of the Nizhni-Prototsk post situated on the very banks of the Terek. Leaning on the railing of the tower and screwing up his eyes, he looked now far into the distance beyond the Terek, now down at his fellow Cossacks, and occasionally he addressed the latter. The sun was already approaching the snowy range that gleamed white above the fleecy clouds. The clouds undulating at the base of the mountains grew darker and darker. The clearness of evening was noticeable in the air. A sense of freshness came from the woods, though round the post it was still hot. The voices of the talking Cossacks vibrated more sonorously than before. The moving mass of the Terek's rapid brown waters contrasted more vividly with its motionless banks. The waters were beginning to subside and here and there the wet sands gleamed drab on the banks and in the shallows. The other side of the river, just opposite the cordon, was deserted; only an immense waste of low-growing reeds stretched far away to the very foot of the mountains. On the low bank, a little to one side, could be seen the flat-roofed clay houses and the funnel-shaped chimneys of a Chechen village. The sharp eyes of the Cossack who stood on the watch-tower followed, through the evening smoke of the pro-Russian village, the tiny moving figures of the Chechen women visible in the distance in their red and blue garments.

Although the Cossacks expected abreks to cross over and attack them from the Tartar side at any moment, especially as it was May when the woods by the Terek are so dense that it is difficult to pass through them on foot and the river is shallow enough in places for a horseman to ford it, and despite the fact that a couple of days before a Cossack had arrived with a circular from the commander of the regiment announcing that spies had reported the intention of a party of some eight men to cross the Terek, and ordering special vigilanceno special vigilance was being observed in the cordon. The Cossacks, unarmed and with their horses unsaddled just as if they were at home, spent their time some in fishing, some in drinking, and some in hunting. Only the horse of the man on duty was saddled, and with its feet hobbled was moving about by the brambles near the wood, and only the sentinel had his Circassian coat on and carried a gun and sword. The corporal, a tall thin Cossack with an exceptionally long back and small hands and feet, was sitting on the earth-bank of a hut with his beshmet unbuttoned. On his face was the lazy, bored expression of a superior, and having shut his eyes he dropped his head upon the palm first of one hand and then of the other. An elderly Cossack with a broad greyish-black beard was lying in his shirt, girdled with a black strap, close to the river and gazing lazily at the waves of the Terek as they monotonously foamed and swirled. Others, also overcome by the heat and half naked, were rinsing clothes in the Terek, plaiting a fishing line, or humming tunes as they lay on the hot sand of the river bank. One Cossack, with a thin face much burnt by the sun, lay near the hut evidently dead drunk, by a wall which though it had been in shadow some two hours previously was now exposed to the sun's fierce slanting rays.

Lukashka, who stood on the watch-tower, was a tall handsome lad about twenty years old and very like his mother. His face and whole build, in spite of the angularity of youth, indicated great strength, both physical and moral. Though he had only lately joined the Cossacks at the front, it was evident from the expression of his face and the calm assurance of his attitude that he had already acquired the somewhat proud and warlike bearing peculiar to Cossacks and to men generally who continually carry arms, and that he felt he was a Cossack and fully knew his own value. His ample Circassian coat was torn in some places, his cap was on the back of his head Chechen fashion, and his leggings had slipped below his knees. His clothing was not rich, but he wore it with that peculiar Cossack foppishness which consists in imitating the Chechen brave. Everything on a real brave is ample, ragged, and neglected, only his weapons are costly. But these ragged clothes and these weapons are belted and worn with a certain air and matched in a certain manner, neither of which can be acquired by everybody and which at once strike the eye of a Cossack or a hillsman. Lukashka had this resemblance to a brave. With his hands folded under his sword, and his eyes nearly closed, he kept looking at the distant Tartar village. Taken separately his features were not beautiful, but anyone who saw his stately carriage and his dark-browed intelligent face would involuntarily say, 'What a fine fellow!'

'Look at the women, what a lot of them are walking about in the village,' said he in a sharp voice, languidly showing his brilliant white teeth and not addressing anyone in particular.

Nazarka who was lying below immediately lifted his head and remarked:

'They must be going for water.'

'Supposing one scared them with a gun?' said Lukashka, laughing,
'Wouldn't they be frightened?'
'It wouldn't reach.'

'What! Mine would carry beyond. Just wait a bit, and when their feast comes round I'll go and visit Girey Khan and drink buza there,' said Lukashka, angrily swishing away the mosquitoes which attached themselves to him.

A rustling in the thicket drew the Cossack's attention. A pied mongrel half-setter, searching for a scent and violently wagging its scantily furred tail, came running to the cordon. Lukashka recognized the dog as one belonging to his neighbour, Uncle Eroshka, a hunter, and saw, following it through the thicket, the approaching figure of the hunter himself.

Uncle Eroshka was a gigantic Cossack with a broad, snow-white beard and such broad shoulders and chest that in the wood, where there was no one to compare him with, he did not look particularly tall, so well proportioned were his powerful limbs. He wore a tattered coat and, over the bands with which his legs were swathed, sandals made of undressed deer's hide tied on with strings; while on his head he had a rough little white cap. He carried over one shoulder a screen to hide behind when shooting pheasants, and a bag containing a hen for luring hawks, and a small falcon; over the other shoulder, attached by a strap, was a wild cat he had killed; and stuck in his belt behind were some little bags containing bullets, gunpowder, and bread, a horse's tail to swish away the mosquitoes, a large dagger in a torn scabbard smeared with old bloodstains, and two dead pheasants. Having glanced at the cordon he stopped.

'Hy, Lyam!' he called to the dog in such a ringing bass that it awoke an echo far away in the wood; and throwing over his shoulder his big gun, of the kind the Cossacks call a 'flint', he raised his cap.

'Had a good day, good people, eh?' he said, addressing the Cossacks in the same strong and cheerful voice, quite without effort, but as loudly as if he were shouting to someone on the other bank of the river.

'Yes, yes. Uncle!' answered from all sides the voices of the young
Cossacks.
'What have you seen? Tell us!' shouted Uncle Eroshka, wiping the sweat from his broad red face with the sleeve of his coat.

'Ah, there's a vulture living in the plane tree here, Uncle. As soon as night comes he begins hovering round,' said Nazarka, winking and jerking his shoulder and leg.

'Come, come!' said the old man incredulously.

'Really, Uncle! You must keep watch,' replied Nazarka with a laugh.

The other Cossacks began laughing.

The wag had not seen any vulture at all, but it had long been the custom of the young Cossacks in the cordon to tease and mislead Uncle Eroshka every time he came to them.

'Eh, you fool, always lying!' exclaimed Lukashka from the tower to
Nazarka.
Nazarka was immediately silenced.

'It must be watched. I'll watch,' answered the old man to the great delight of all the Cossacks. 'But have you seen any boars?'

'Watching for boars, are you?' said the corporal, bending forward and scratching his back with both hands, very pleased at the chance of some distraction. 'It's abreks one has to hunt here and not boars! You've not heard anything, Uncle, have you?' he added, needlessly screwing up his eyes and showing his close-set white teeth.

'Abreks,' said the old man. 'No, I haven't. I say, have you any chikhir? Let me have a drink, there's a good man. I'm really quite done up. When the time comes I'll bring you some fresh meat, I really will. Give me a drink!' he added.

'Well, and are you going to watch?' inquired the corporal, as though he had not heard what the other said.

'I did mean to watch tonight,' replied Uncle Eroshka. 'Maybe, with God's help, I shall kill something for the holiday. Then you shall have a share, you shall indeed!'

'Uncle! Hallo, Uncle!' called out Lukashka sharply from above, attracting everybody's attention. All the Cossacks looked up at him. 'Just go to the upper water-course, there's a fine herd of boars there. I'm not inventing, really! The other day one of our Cossacks shot one there. I'm telling you the truth,' added he, readjusting the musket at his back and in a tone that showed he was not joking.

'Ah! Lukashka the Snatcher is here!' said the old man, looking up.
'Where has he been shooting?'
'Haven't you seen? I suppose you're too young!' said Lukashka. 'Close by the ditch,' he went on seriously with a shake of the head. 'We were just going along the ditch when all at once we heard something crackling, but my gun was in its case. Elias fired suddenly  But I'll show you the place, it's not far. You just wait a bit. I know every one of their footpaths  Daddy Mosev,' said he, turning resolutely and almost commandingly to the corporal, 'it's time to relieve guard!' and holding aloft his gun he began to descend from the watch-tower without waiting for the order.

'Come down!' said the corporal, after Lukashka had started, and glanced round. 'Is it your turn, Gurka? Then go  True enough your Lukashka has become very skilful,' he went on, addressing the old man. 'He keeps going about just like you, he doesn't stay at home. The other day he killed a boar.'

Chapter VII
The sun had already set and the shades of night were rapidly spreading from the edge of the wood. The Cossacks finished their task round the cordon and gathered in the hut for supper. Only the old man still stayed under the plane tree watching for the vulture and pulling the string tied to the falcon's leg, but though a vulture was really perching on the plane tree it declined to swoop down on the lure. Lukashka, singing one song after another, was leisurely placing nets among the very thickest brambles to trap pheasants. In spite of his tall stature and big hands every kind of work, both rough and delicate, prospered under Lukashka's fingers.

'Hallo, Luke!' came Nazarka's shrill, sharp voice calling him from the thicket close by. 'The Cossacks have gone in to supper.'

Nazarka, with a live pheasant under his arm, forced his way through the brambles and emerged on the footpath.

'Oh!' said Lukashka, breaking off in his song, 'where did you get that cock pheasant? I suppose it was in my trap?'

Nazarka was of the same age as Lukashka and had also only been at the front since the previous spring.

He was plain, thin and puny, with a shrill voice that rang in one's ears. They were neighbours and comrades. Lukashka was sitting on the grass crosslegged like a Tartar, adjusting his nets.

'I don't know whose it wasyours, I expect.'

'Was it beyond the pit by the plane tree? Then it is mine! I set the nets last night.'

Lukashka rose and examined the captured pheasant. After stroking the dark burnished head of the bird, which rolled its eyes and stretched out its neck in terror, Lukashka took the pheasant in his hands.

'We'll have it in a pilau tonight. You go and kill and pluck it.'

'And shall we eat it ourselves or give it to the corporal?'

'He has plenty!'

'I don't like killing them,' said Nazarka.

'Give it here!'

Lukashka drew a little knife from under his dagger and gave it a swift jerk. The bird fluttered, but before it could spread its wings the bleeding head bent and quivered.

'That's how one should do it!' said Lukashka, throwing down the pheasant. 'It will make a fat pilau.'

Nazarka shuddered as he looked at the bird.

'I say, Lukashka, that fiend will be sending us to the ambush again tonight,' he said, taking up the bird. (He was alluding to the corporal.) 'He has sent Fomushkin to get wine, and it ought to be his turn. He always puts it on us.'

Lukashka went whistling along the cordon.

'Take the string with you,' he shouted.

Nazirka obeyed.

'I'll give him a bit of my mind today, I really will,' continued Nazarka. 'Let's say we won't go; we're tired out and there's an end of it! No, really, you tell him, he'll listen to you. It's too bad!'

'Get along with you! What a thing to make a fuss about!' said Lukashka, evidently thinking of something else. 'What bosh! If he made us turn out of the village at night now, that would be annoying: there one can have some fun, but here what is there? It's all one whether we're in the cordon or in ambush. What a fellow you are!'

'And are you going to the village?'

'I'll go for the holidays.'

'Gurka says your Dunayka is carrying on with Fomushkin,' said Nazarka suddenly.

'Well, let her go to the devil,' said Lukashka, showing his regular white teeth, though he did not laugh. 'As if I couldn't find another!'

'Gurka says he went to her house. Her husband was out and there was Fomushkin sitting and eating pie. Gurka stopped awhile and then went away, and passing by the window he heard her say, "He's gone, the fiend. Why don't you eat your pie, my own? You needn't go home for the night," she says. And Gurka under the window says to himself, "That's fine!"'

'You're making it up.'

'No, quite true, by Heaven!'

'Well, if she's found another let her go to the devil,' said Lukashka, after a pause. 'There's no lack of girls and I was sick of her anyway.'

'Well, see what a devil you are!' said Nazarka. 'You should make up to the cornet's girl, Maryanka. Why doesn't she walk out with any one?'

Lukashka frowned. 'What of Maryanka? They're all alike,' said he.

'Well, you just try'

'What do you think? Are girls so scarce in the village?'

And Lukashka recommenced whistling, and went along the cordon pulling leaves and branches from the bushes as he went. Suddenly, catching sight of a smooth sapling, he drew the knife from the handle of his dagger and cut it down. 'What a ramrod it will make,' he said, swinging the sapling till it whistled through the air.

The Cossacks were sitting round a low Tartar table on the earthen floor of the clay-plastered outer room of the hut, when the question of whose turn it was to lie in ambush was raised. 'Who is to go tonight?' shouted one of the Cossacks through the open door to the corporal in the next room.

'Who is to go?' the corporal shouted back. 'Uncle Burlak has been and Fomushkin too,' said he, not quite confidently. 'You two had better go, you and Nazarka,' he went on, addressing Lukashka. 'And Ergushov must go too; surely he has slept it off?'

'You don't sleep it off yourself so why should he?' said Nazarka in a subdued voice.

The Cossacks laughed.

Ergushov was the Cossack who had been lying drunk and asleep near the hut. He had only that moment staggered into the room rubbing his eyes.

Lukashka had already risen and was getting his gun ready.

'Be quick and go! Finish your supper and go!' said the corporal; and without waiting for an expression of consent he shut the door, evidently not expecting the Cossack to obey. 'Of course,' thought he, 'if I hadn't been ordered to I wouldn't send anyone, but an officer might turn up at any moment. As it is, they say eight abreks have crossed over.'

'Well, I suppose I must go,' remarked Ergushov, 'it's the regulation.
Can't be helped! The times are such. I say, we must go.'
Meanwhile Lukashka, holding a big piece of pheasant to his mouth with both hands and glancing now at Nazarka, now at Ergushov, seemed quite indifferent to what passed and only laughed at them both. Before the Cossacks were ready to go into ambush. Uncle Eroshka, who had been vainly waiting under the plane tree till night fell, entered the dark outer room.

'Well, lads,' his loud bass resounded through the low-roofed room drowning all the other voices, 'I'm going with you. You'll watch for Chechens and I for boars!'

Chapter VIII
It was quite dark when Uncle Eroshka and the three Cossacks, in their cloaks and shouldering their guns, left the cordon and went towards the place on the Terek where they were to lie in ambush. Nazarka did not want to go at all, but Lukashka shouted at him and they soon started. After they had gone a few steps in silence the Cossacks turned aside from the ditch and went along a path almost hidden by reeds till they reached the river. On its bank lay a thick black log cast up by the water. The reeds around it had been recently beaten down.

'Shall we lie here?' asked Nazarka.

'Why not?' answered Lukashka. 'Sit down here and I'll be back in a minute. I'll only show Daddy where to go.'

'This is the best place; here we can see and not be seen,' said
Ergushov, 'so it's here we'll lie. It's a first-rate place!'
Nazarka and Ergushov spread out their cloaks and settled down behind the log, while Lukashka went on with Uncle Eroshka.

'It's not far from here. Daddy,' said Lukashka, stepping softly in front of the old man; 'I'll show you where they've beenI'm the only one that knows. Daddy.'

'Show me! You're a fine fellow, a regular Snatcher!' replied the old man, also whispering.

Having gone a few steps Lukashka stopped, stooped down over a puddle, and whistled. 'That's where they come to drink, d'you see?' He spoke in a scarcely audible voice, pointing to fresh hoof-prints.

'Christ bless you,' answered the old man. 'The boar will be in the hollow beyond the ditch,' he added. Til watch, and you can go.'

Lukashka pulled his cloak up higher and walked back alone, throwing swift glances now to the left at the wall of reeds, now to the Terek rushing by below the bank. 'I daresay he's watching or creeping along somewhere,' thought he of a possible Chechen hillsman. Suddenly a loud rustling and a splash in the water made him start and seize his musket. From under the bank a boar leapt uphis dark outline showing for a moment against the glassy surface of the water and then disappearing among the reeds. Lukashka pulled out his gun and aimed, but before he could fire the boar had disappeared in the thicket. Lukashka spat with vexation and went on. On approaching the ambuscade he halted again and whistled softly. His whistle was answered and he stepped up to his comrades.

Nazarka, all curled up, was already asleep. Ergushov sat with his legs crossed and moved slightly to make room for Lukashka.

'How jolly it is to sit here! It's really a good place,' said he. 'Did you take him there?'

'Showed him where,' answered Lukashka, spreading out his cloak. 'But what a big boar I roused just now close to the water! I expect it was the very one! You must have heard the crash?'

'I did hear a beast crashing through. I knew at once it was a beast. I thought to myself: "Lukashka has roused a beast,"' Ergushov said, wrapping himself up in his cloak. 'Now I'll go to sleep,' he added. 'Wake me when the cocks crow. We must have discipline. I'll lie down and have a nap, and then you will have a nap and I'll watchthat's the way.'

'Luckily I don't want to sleep,' answered Lukashka.

The night was dark, warm, and still. Only on one side of the sky the stars were shining, the other and greater part was overcast by one huge cloud stretching from the mountaintops. The black cloud, blending in the absence of any wind with the mountains, moved slowly onwards, its curved edges sharply denned against the deep starry sky. Only in front of him could the Cossack discern the Terek and the distance beyond. Behind and on both sides he was surrounded by a wall of reeds. Occasionally the reeds would sway and rustle against one another apparently without cause. Seen from down below, against the clear part of the sky, their waving tufts looked like the feathery branches of trees. Close in front at his very feet was the bank, and at its base the rushing torrent. A little farther on was the moving mass of glassy brown water which eddied rhythmically along the bank and round the shallows. Farther still, water, banks, and cloud all merged together in impenetrable gloom. Along the surface of the water floated black shadows, in which the experienced eyes of the Cossack detected trees carried down by the current. Only very rarely sheet-lightning, mirrored in the water as in a black glass, disclosed the sloping bank opposite. The rhythmic sounds of nightthe rustling of the reeds, the snoring of the Cossacks, the hum of mosquitoes, and the rushing water, were every now and then broken by a shot fired in the distance, or by the gurgling of water when a piece of bank slipped down, the splash of a big fish, or the crashing of an animal breaking through the thick undergrowth in the wood. Once an owl flew past along the Terek, flapping one wing against the other rhythmically at every second beat. Just above the Cossack's head it turned towards the wood and then, striking its wings no longer after every other flap but at every flap, it flew to an old plane tree where it rustled about for a long time before settling down among the branches. At every one of these unexpected sounds the watching Cossack listened intently, straining his hearing, and screwing up his eyes while he deliberately felt for his musket.

The greater part of the night was past. The black cloud that had moved westward revealed the clear starry sky from under its torn edge, and the golden upturned crescent of the moon shone above the mountains with a reddish light. The cold began to be penetrating. Nazarka awoke, spoke a little, and fell asleep again. Lukashka feeling bored got up, drew the knife from his dagger-handle and began to fashion his stick into a ramrod. His head was full of the Chechens who lived over there in the mountains, and of how their brave lads came across and were not afraid of the Cossacks, and might even now be crossing the river at some other spot. He thrust himself out of his hiding-place and looked along the river but could see nothing. And as he continued looking out at intervals upon the river and at the opposite bank, now dimly distinguishable from the water in the faint moonlight, he no longer thought about the Chechens but only of when it would be time to wake his comrades, and of going home to the village. In the village he imagined Dunayka, his 'little soul', as the Cossacks call a man's mistress, and thought of her with vexation. Silvery mists, a sign of coming morning, glittered white above the water, and not far from him young eagles were whistling and flapping their wings. At last the crowing of a cock reached him from the distant village, followed by the long-sustained note of another, which was again answered by yet other voices.

'Time to wake them,' thought Lukashka, who had finished his ramrod and felt his eyes growing heavy. Turning to his comrades he managed to make out which pair of legs belonged to whom, when it suddenly seemed to him that he heard something splash on the other side of the Terek. He turned again towards the horizon beyond the hills, where day was breaking under the upturned crescent, glanced at the outline of the opposite bank, at the Terek, and at the now distinctly visible driftwood upon it. For one instant it seemed to him that he was moving and that the Terek with the drifting wood remained stationary. Again he peered out. One large black log with a branch particularly attracted his attention. The tree was floating in a strange way right down the middle of the stream, neither rocking nor whirling. It even appeared not to be floating altogether with the current, but to be crossing it in the direction of the shallows. Lukashka stretching out his neck watched it intently. The tree floated to the shallows, stopped, and shifted in a peculiar manner. Lukashka thought he saw an arm stretched out from beneath the tree. 'Supposing I killed an abrek all by myself!' he thought, and seized his gun with a swift, unhurried movement, putting up his gun-rest, placing the gun upon it, and holding it noiselessly in position. Cocking the trigger, with bated breath he took aim, still peering out intently. 'I won't wake them,' he thought. But his heart began beating so fast that he remained motionless, listening. Suddenly the trunk gave a plunge and again began to float across the stream towards our bank. 'Only not to miss ' thought he, and now by the faint light of the moon he caught a glimpse of a Tartar's head in front of the floating wood. He aimed straight at the head which appeared to be quite nearjust at the end of his rifle's barrel. He glanced cross. 'Right enough it is an abrek! he thought joyfully, and suddenly rising to his knees he again took aim. Having found the sight, barely visible at the end of the long gun, he said: 'In the name of the Father and of the Son,' in the Cossack way learnt in his childhood, and pulled the trigger. A flash of lightning lit up for an instant the reeds and the water, and the sharp, abrupt report of the shot was carried across the river, changing into a prolonged roll somewhere in the far distance. The piece of driftwood now floated not across, but with the current, rocking and whirling.

'Stop, I say!' exclaimed Ergushov, seizing his musket and raising himself behind the log near which he was lying.

'Shut up, you devil!' whispered Lukashka, grinding his teeth. 'abreks!'

'Whom have you shot?' asked Nazarka. 'Who was it, Lukashka?'

Lukashka did not answer. He was reloading his gun and watching the floating wood. A little way off it stopped on a sand-bank, and from behind it something large that rocked in the water came into view.

'What did you shoot? Why don't you speak?' insisted the Cossacks.

'Abreks, I tell you!' said Lukashka.

'Don't humbug! Did the gun go off? '

'I've killed an abrek, that's what I fired at,' muttered Lukashka in a voice choked by emotion, as he jumped to his feet. 'A man was swimming' he said, pointing to the sandbank. 'I killed him. Just look there.'

'Have done with your humbugging!' said Ergushov again, rubbing his eyes.

'Have done with what? Look there,' said Lukashka, seizing him by the shoulders and pulling him with such force that Ergushov groaned.

He looked in the direction in which Lukashka pointed, and discerning a body immediately changed his tone.

'O Lord! But I say, more will come! I tell you the truth,' said he softly, and began examining his musket. 'That was a scout swimming across: either the others are here already or are not far off on the other sideI tell you for sure!' Lukashka was unfastening his belt and taking off his Circassian coat.

'What are you up to, you idiot?' exclaimed Ergushov. 'Only show yourself and you've lost all for nothing, I tell you true! If you've killed him he won't escape. Let me have a little powder for my musket-panyou have some? Nazarka, you go back to the cordon and look alive; but don't go along the bank or you'll be killedI tell you true.'

'Catch me going alone! Go yourself!' said Nazarka angrily.

Having taken off his coat, Lukashka went down to the bank.

'Don't go in, I tell you!' said Ergushov, putting some powder on the pan. 'Look, he's not moving. I can see. It's nearly morning; wait till they come from the cordon. You go, Nazarka. You're afraid! Don't be afraid, I tell you.'

'Luke, I say, Lukashka! Tell us how you did it!' said Nazarka.

Lukashka changed his mind about going into the water just then. 'Go quick to the cordon and I will watch. Tell the Cossacks to send out the patrol. If the ABREKS are on this side they must be caught,' said he.

'That's what I say. They'll get off,' said Ergushov, rising. 'True, they must be caught!'

Ergushov and Nazarka rose and, crossing themselves, started off for the cordonnot along the riverbank but breaking their way through the brambles to reach a path in the wood.

'Now mind, Lukashkathey may cut you down here, so you'd best keep a sharp look-out, I tell you!'

'Go along; I know,' muttered Lukashka; and having examined his gun again he sat down behind the log.

He remained alone and sat gazing at the shallows and listening for the Cossacks; but it was some distance to the cordon and he was tormented by impatience. He kept thinking that the other ABREKS who were with the one he had killed would escape. He was vexed with the ABREKS who were going to escape just as he had been with the boar that had escaped the evening before. He glanced round and at the opposite bank, expecting every moment to see a man, and having arranged his gun-rest he was ready to fire. The idea that he might himself be killed never entered his head.

Chapter IX
It was growing light. The Chechen's body which was gently rocking in the shallow water was now clearly visible. Suddenly the reeds rustled not far from Luke and he heard steps and saw the feathery tops of the reeds moving. He set his gun at full cock and muttered: 'In the name of the Father and of the Son,' but when the cock clicked the sound of steps ceased.

'Hallo, Cossacks! Don't kill your Daddy!' said a deep bass voice calmly; and moving the reeds apart Daddy Eroshka came up close to Luke.

'I very nearly killed you, by God I did!' said Lukashka.

'What have you shot?' asked the old man.

His sonorous voice resounded through the wood and downward along the river, suddenly dispelling the mysterious quiet of night around the Cossack. It was as if everything had suddenly become lighter and more distinct.

'There now. Uncle, you have not seen anything, but I've killed a beast,' said Lukashka, uncocking his gun and getting up with unnatural calmness.

The old man was staring intently at the white back, now clearly visible, against which the Terek rippled.

'He was swimming with a log on his back. I spied him out!  Look there. There! He's got blue trousers, and a gun I think. Do you see?' inquired Luke.

'How can one help seeing?' said the old man angrily, and a serious and stern expression appeared on his face. 'You've killed a brave,' he said, apparently with regret.

'Well, I sat here and suddenly saw something dark on the other side. I spied him when he was still over there. It was as if a man had come there and fallen in. Strange! And a piece of driftwood, a good-sized piece, comes floating, not with the stream but across it; and what do I see but a head appearing from under it! Strange! I stretched out of the reeds but could see nothing; then I rose and he must have heard, the beast, and crept out into the shallow and looked about. "No, you don't!" I said, as soon as he landed and looked round, "you won't get away!" Oh, there was something choking me! I got my gun ready but did not stir, and looked out. He waited a little and then swam out again; and when he came into the moonlight I could see his whole back. "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost" and through the smoke I see him struggling. He moaned, or so it seemed to me. "Ah," I thought, "the Lord be thanked, I've killed him!" And when he drifted onto the sand-bank I could see him distinctly: he tried to get up but couldn't. He struggled a bit and then lay down. Everything could be seen. Look, he does not movehe must be dead! The Cossacks have gone back to the cordon in case there should be any more of them.'

'And so you got him!' said the old man. 'He is far away now, my lad!
' And again he shook his head sadly.
Just then the sound reached them of breaking bushes and the loud voices of Cossacks approaching along the bank on horseback and on foot. 'Are you bringing the skiff?' shouted Lukashka.

'You're a trump, Luke! Lug it to the bank!' shouted one of the Cossacks.

Without waiting for the skiff Lukashka began to undress, keeping an eye all the while on his prey.

'Wait a bit, Nazarka is bringing the skiff,' shouted the corporal.

'You fool! Maybe he is alive and only pretending! Take your dagger with you!' shouted another Cossack.

'Get along,' cried Luke, pulling off his trousers. He quickly undressed and, crossing himself, jumped, plunging with a splash into the river. Then with long strokes of his white arms, lifting his back high out of the water and breathing deeply, he swam across the current of the Terek towards the shallows. A crowd of Cossacks stood on the bank talking loudly. Three horsemen rode off to patrol. The skiff appeared round a bend. Lukashka stood up on the sandbank, leaned over the body, and gave it a couple of shakes.

'Quite dead!' he shouted in a shrill voice.

The Chechen had been shot in the head. He had on a pair of blue trousers, a shirt, and a Circassian coat, and a gun and dagger were tied to his back. Above all these a large branch was tied, and it was this which at first had misled Lukashka.

'What a carp you've landed!' cried one of the Cossacks who had assembled in a circle, as the body, lifted out of the skiff, was laid on the bank, pressing down the grass.

'How yellow he is!' said another.

'Where have our fellows gone to search? I expect the rest of them are on the other bank. If this one had not been a scout he would not have swum that way. Why else should he swim alone?' said a third.

'Must have been a smart one to offer himself before the others; a regular brave!' said Lukashka mockingly, shivering as he wrung out his clothes that had got wet on the bank.

'His beard is dyed and cropped.'

'And he has tied a bag with a coat in it to his back.'

'That would make it easier for him to swim,' said some one.

'I say, Lukashka,' said the corporal, who was holding the dagger and gun taken from the dead man. 'Keep the dagger for yourself and the coat too; but I'll give you three rubles for the gun. You see it has a hole in it,' said he, blowing into the muzzle. 'I want it just for a souvenir.'

Lukashka did not answer. Evidently this sort of begging vexed him but he knew it could not be avoided.

'See, what a devil!' said he, frowning and throwing down the Chechen's coat. 'If at least it were a good coat, but it's a mere rag.'

'It'll do to fetch firewood in,' said one of the Cossacks.

'Mosev, I'll go home,' said Lukashka, evidently forgetting his vexation and wishing to get some advantage out of having to give a present to his superior.

'All right, you may go!'

'Take the body beyond the cordon, lads,' said the corporal, still examining the gun, 'and put a shelter over him from the sun. Perhaps they'll send from the mountains to ransom it.'

'It isn't hot yet,' said someone.

'And supposing a jackal tears him? Would that be well?' remarked another Cossack.

'We'll set a watch; if they should come to ransom him it won't do for him to have been torn.'

'Well, Lukashka, whatever you do you must stand a pail of vodka for the lads,' said the corporal gaily.

'Of course! That's the custom,' chimed in the Cossacks. 'See what luck God has sent you! Without ever having seen anything of the kind before, you've killed a brave!'

'Buy the dagger and coat and don't be stingy, and I'll let you have the trousers too,' said Lukashka. 'They're too tight for me; he was a thin devil.'

One Cossack bought the coat for a ruble and another gave the price of two pails of vodka for the dagger.

'Drink, lads! I'll stand you a pail!' said Luke. 'I'll bring it myself from the village.'

'And cut up the trousers into kerchiefs for the girls!' said Nazarka.

The Cossacks burst out laughing.

'Have done laughing!' said the corporal. 'And take the body away. Why have you put the nasty thing by the hut?'

'What are you standing there for? Haul him along, lads!' shouted Lukashka in a commanding voice to the Cossacks, who reluctantly took hold of the body, obeying him as though he were their chief. After dragging the body along for a few steps the Cossacks let fall the legs, which dropped with a lifeless jerk, and stepping apart they then stood silent for a few moments. Nazarka came up and straightened the head, which was turned to one side so that the round wound above the temple and the whole of the dead man's face were visible. 'See what a mark he has made right in the brain,' he said. 'He won't get lost. His owners will always know him!' No one answered, and again the Angel of Silence flew over the Cossacks.

The sun had risen high and its diverging beams were lighting up the dewy grass. Near by, the Terek murmured in the awakened wood and, greeting the morning, the pheasants called to one another. The Cossacks stood still and silent around the dead man, gazing at him. The brown body, with nothing on but the wet blue trousers held by a girdle over the sunken stomach, was well shaped and handsome. The muscular arms lay stretched straight out by his sides; the blue, freshly shaven, round head with the clotted wound on one side of it was thrown back. The smooth tanned forehead contrasted sharply with the shaven part of the head. The open glassy eyes with lowered pupils stared upwards, seeming to gaze past everything. Under the red trimmed moustache the fine lips, drawn at the corners, seemed stiffened into a smile of good-natured subtle raillery. The fingers of the small hands covered with red hairs were bent inward, and the nails were dyed red.

Lukashka had not yet dressed. He was wet. His neck was redder and his eyes brighter than usual, his broad jaws twitched, and from his healthy body a hardly perceptible steam rose in the fresh morning air.

'He too was a man!' he muttered, evidently admiring the corpse.

'Yes, if you had fallen into his hands you would have had short shrift,' said one of the Cossacks.

The Angel of Silence had taken wing. The Cossacks began bustling about and talking. Two of them went to cut brushwood for a shelter, others strolled towards the cordon. Luke and Nazarka ran to get ready to go to the village.

Half an hour later they were both on their way homewards, talking incessantly and almost running through the dense woods which separated the Terek from the village.

'Mind, don't tell her I sent you, but just go and find out if her husband is at home,' Luke was saying in his shrill voice.

'And I'll go round to Yamka too,' said the devoted Nazarka. 'We'll have a spree, shall we?'

'When should we have one if not to-day?' replied Luke.

When they reached the village the two Cossacks drank, and lay down to sleep till evening.

Chapter X
On the third day after the events above described, two companies of a Caucasian infantry regiment arrived at the Cossack village of Novomlinsk. The horses had been unharnessed and the companies' wagons were standing in the square. The cooks had dug a pit, and with logs gathered from various yards (where they had not been sufficiently securely stored) were now cooking the food; the pay-sergeants were settling accounts with the soldiers. The Service Corps men were driving piles in the ground to which to tie the horses, and the quartermasters were going about the streets just as if they were at home, showing officers and men to their quarters. Here were green ammunition boxes in a line, the company's carts, horses, and cauldrons in which buckwheat porridge was being cooked. Here were the captain and the lieutenant and the sergeant-major, Onisim Mikhaylovich, and all this was in the Cossack village where it was reported that the companies were ordered to take up their quarters: therefore they were at home here. But why they were stationed there, who the Cossacks were, and whether they wanted the troops to be there, and whether they were Old Believers or notwas all quite immaterial. Having received their pay and been dismissed, tired out and covered with dust, the soldiers noisily and in disorder, like a swarm of bees about to settle, spread over the squares and streets; quite regardless of the Cossacks' ill will, chattering merrily and with their muskets clinking, by twos and threes they entered the huts and hung up their accoutrements, unpacked their bags, and bantered the women. At their favourite spot, round the porridge-cauldrons, a large group of soldiers assembled and with little pipes between their teeth they gazed, now at the smoke which rose into the hot sky, becoming visible when it thickened into white clouds as it rose, and now at the camp fires which were quivering in the pure air like molten glass, and bantered and made fun of the Cossack men and women because they do not live at all like Russians. In all the yards one could see soldiers and hear their laughter and the exasperated and shrill cries of Cossack women defending their houses and refusing to give the soldiers water or cooking utensils. Little boys and girls, clinging to their mothers and to each other, followed all the movements of the troopers (never before seen by them) with frightened curiosity, or ran after them at a respectful distance. The old Cossacks came out silently and dismally and sat on the earthen embankments of their huts, and watched the soldiers' activity with an air of leaving it all to the will of God without understanding what would come of it.

Olenin, who had joined the Caucasian Army as a cadet three months before, was quartered in one of the best houses in the village, the house of the cornet, Elias Vasilichthat is to say at Granny Ulitka's.

'Goodness knows what it will be like, Dmitri Andreich,' said the panting Vanyusha to Olenin, who, dressed in a Circassian coat and mounted on a Kabarda horse which he had bought in Groznoe, was after a five-hours' march gaily entering the yard of the quarters assigned to him.

'Why, what's the matter?' he asked, caressing his horse and looking merrily at the perspiring, dishevelled, and worried Vanyusha, who had arrived with the baggage wagons and was unpacking.

Olenin looked quite a different man. In place of his clean-shaven lips and chin he had a youthful moustache and a small beard. Instead of a sallow complexion, the result of nights turned into day, his cheeks, his forehead, and the skin behind his ears were now red with healthy sunburn. In place of a clean new black suit he wore a dirty white Circassian coat with a deeply pleated skirt, and he bore arms. Instead of a freshly starched collar, his neck was tightly clasped by the red band of his silk BESHMET. He wore Circassian dress but did not wear it well, and anyone would have known him for a Russian and not a Tartar brave. It was the thingbut not the real thing. But for all that, his whole person breathed health, joy, and satisfaction.

'Yes, it seems funny to you,' said Vanyusha, 'but just try to talk to these people yourself: they set themselves against one and there's an end of it. You can't get as much as a word out of them.' Vanyusha angrily threw down a pail on the threshold. 'Somehow they don't seem like Russians.'

'You should speak to the Chief of the Village!'

'But I don't know where he lives,' said Vanyusha in an offended tone.

'Who has upset you so?' asked Olenin, looking round.

'The devil only knows. Faugh! There is no real master here. They say he has gone to some kind of KRIGA, and the old woman is a real devil. God preserve us!' answered Vanyusha, putting his hands to his head. 'How we shall live here I don't know. They are worse than Tartars, I do declarethough they consider themselves Christians! A Tartar is bad enough, but all the same he is more noble. Gone to the KRIGA indeed! What this KRIGA they have invented is, I don't know!' concluded Vanyusha, and turned aside.

'It's not as it is in the serfs' quarters at home, eh?' chaffed Olenin without dismounting.

'Please sir, may I have your horse?' said Vanyusha, evidently perplexed by this new order of things but resigning himself to his fate.

'So a Tartar is more noble, eh, Vanyusha?' repeated Olenin, dismounting and slapping the saddle.

'Yes, you're laughing! You think it funny,' muttered Vanyusha angrily.

'Come, don't be angry, Vanyusha,' replied Olenin, still smiling. 'Wait a minute, I'll go and speak to the people of the house; you'll see I shall arrange everything. You don't know what a jolly life we shall have here. Only don't get upset.'

Vanyusha did not answer. Screwing up his eyes he looked contemptuously after his master, and shook his head. Vanyusha regarded Olenin as only his master, and Olenin regarded Vanyusha as only his servant; and they would both have been much surprised if anyone had told them that they were friends, as they really were without knowing it themselves. Vanyusha had been taken into his proprietor's house when he was only eleven and when Olenin was the same age. When Olenin was fifteen he gave Vanyusha lessons for a time and taught him to read French, of which the latter was inordinately proud; and when in specially good spirits he still let off French words, always laughing stupidly when he did so.

Olenin ran up the steps of the porch and pushed open the door of the hut. Maryanka, wearing nothing but a pink smock, as all Cossack women do in the house, jumped away from the door, frightened, and pressing herself against the wall covered the lower part of her face with the broad sleeve of her Tartar smock. Having opened the door wider, Olenin in the semi-darkness of the passage saw the whole tall, shapely figure of the young Cossack girl. With the quick and eager curiosity of youth he involuntarily noticed the firm maidenly form revealed by the fine print smock, and the beautiful black eyes fixed on him with childlike terror and wild curiosity. 'This is SHE,' thought Olenin. 'But there will be many others like her' came at once into his head, and he opened the inner door. Old Granny Ulitka, also dressed only in a smock, was stooping with her back turned to him, sweeping the floor.

'Good-day to you. Mother! I've come about my lodgings,' he began.

The Cossack woman, without unbending, turned her severe but still handsome face towards him.

'What have you come here for? Want to mock at us, eh? I'll teach you to mock; may the black plague seize you!' she shouted, looking askance from under her frowning brow at the new-comer.

Olenin had at first imagined that the way-worn, gallant Caucasian Army (of which he was a member) would be everywhere received joyfully, and especially by the Cossacks, our comrades in the war; and he therefore felt perplexed by this reception. Without losing presence of mind however he tried to explain that he meant to pay for his lodgings, but the old woman would not give him a hearing.

'What have you come for? Who wants a pest like you, with your scraped face? You just wait a bit; when the master returns he'll show you your place. I don't want your dirty money! A likely thingjust as if we had never seen any! You'll stink the house out with your beastly tobacco and want to put it right with money! Think we've never seen a pest! May you be shot in your bowels and your heart!' shrieked the old woman in a piercing voice, interrupting Olenin.

'It seems Vanyusha was right!' thought Olenin. "A Tartar would be nobler",' and followed by Granny Ulitka's abuse he went out of the hut. As he was leaving, Maryanka, still wearing only her pink smock, but with her forehead covered down to her eyes by a white kerchief, suddenly slipped out from the passage past him. Pattering rapidly down the steps with her bare feet she ran from the porch, stopped, and looking round hastily with laughing eyes at the young man, vanished round the corner of the hut.

Her firm youthful step, the untamed look of the eyes glistening from under the white kerchief, and the firm stately build of the young beauty, struck Olenin even more powerfully than before. 'Yes, it must be SHE,' he thought, and troubling his head still less about the lodgings, he kept looking round at Maryanka as he approached Vanyusha.

'There you see, the girl too is quite savage, just like a wild filly!' said Vanyusha, who though still busy with the luggage wagon had now cheered up a bit. 'LA FAME!' he added in a loud triumphant voice and burst out laughing.

Chapter XI
Towards evening the master of the house returned from his fishing, and having learnt that the cadet would pay for the lodging, pacified the old woman and satisfied Vanyusha's demands.

Everything was arranged in the new quarters. Their hosts moved into the winter hut and let their summer hut to the cadet for three rubles a month. Olenin had something to eat and went to sleep. Towards evening he woke up, washed and made himself tidy, dined, and having lit a cigarette sat down by the window that looked onto the street. It was cooler. The slanting shadow of the hut with its ornamental gables fell across the dusty road and even bent upwards at the base of the wall of the house opposite. The steep reed-thatched roof of that house shone in the rays of the setting sun. The air grew fresher. Everything was peaceful in the village. The soldiers had settled down and become quiet. The herds had not yet been driven home and the people had not returned from their work.

Olenin's lodging was situated almost at the end of the village. At rare intervals, from somewhere far beyond the Terek in those parts whence Olenin had just come (the Chechen or the Kumytsk plain), came muffled sounds of firing. Olenin was feeling very well contented after three months of bivouac life. His newly washed face was fresh and his powerful body clean (an unaccustomed sensation after the campaign) and in all his rested limbs he was conscious of a feeling of tranquillity and strength. His mind, too, felt fresh and clear. He thought of the campaign and of past dangers. He remembered that he had faced them no worse than other men, and that he was accepted as a comrade among valiant Caucasians. His Moscow recollections were left behind Heaven knows how far! The old life was wiped out and a quite new life had begun in which there were as yet no mistakes. Here as a new man among new men he could gain a new and good reputation. He was conscious of a youthful and unreasoning joy of life. Looking now out of the window at the boys spinning their tops in the shadow of the house, now round his neat new lodging, he thought how pleasantly he would settle down to this new Cossack village life. Now and then he glanced at the mountains and the blue sky, and an appreciation of the solemn grandeur of nature mingled with his reminiscences and dreams. His new life had begun, not as he imagined it would when he left Moscow, but unexpectedly well. 'The mountains, the mountains, the mountains!' they permeated all his thoughts and feelings.

'He's kissed his dog and licked the jug!  Daddy Eroshka has kissed his dog!' suddenly the little Cossacks who had been spinning their tops under the window shouted, looking towards the side street. 'He's drunk his bitch, and his dagger!' shouted the boys, crowding together and stepping backwards.

These shouts were addressed to Daddy Eroshka, who with his gun on his shoulder and some pheasants hanging at his girdle was returning from his shooting expedition.

'I have done wrong, lads, I have!' he said, vigorously swinging his arms and looking up at the windows on both sides of the street. 'I have drunk the bitch; it was wrong,' he repeated, evidently vexed but pretending not to care.

Olenin was surprised by the boys' behavior towards the old hunter, but was still more struck by the expressive, intelligent face and the powerful build of the man whom they called Daddy Eroshka.

'Here Daddy, here Cossack!' he called. 'Come here!'

The old man looked into the window and stopped.

'Good evening, good man,' he said, lifting his little cap off his cropped head.

'Good evening, good man,' replied Olenin. 'What is it the youngsters are shouting at you?'

Daddy Eroshka came up to the window. 'Why, they're teasing the old man. No matter, I like it. Let them joke about their old daddy,' he said with those firm musical intonations with which old and venerable people speak. 'Are you an army commander?' he added.

'No, I am a cadet. But where did you kill those pheasants?' asked
Olenin.
'I dispatched these three hens in the forest,' answered the old man, turning his broad back towards the window to show the hen pheasants which were hanging with their heads tucked into his belt and staining his coat with blood. 'Haven't you seen any?' he asked. 'Take a brace if you like! Here you are,' and he handed two of the pheasants in at the window. 'Are you a sportsman yourself?' he asked.

'I am. During the campaign I killed four myself.'

'Four? What a lot!' said the old man sarcastically. 'And are you a drinker? Do you drink CHIKHIR?'

'Why not? I like a drink.'

'Ah, I see you are a trump! We shall be KUNAKS, you and I,' said Daddy
Eroshka.
'Step in,' said Olenin. 'We'll have a drop of CHIKHIR.'

'I might as well,' said the old man, 'but take the pheasants.' The old man's face showed that he liked the cadet. He had seen at once that he could get free drinks from him, and that therefore it would be all right to give him a brace of pheasants.

Soon Daddy Eroshka's figure appeared in the doorway of the hut, and it was only then that Olenin became fully conscious of the enormous size and sturdy build of this man, whose red-brown face with its perfectly white broad beard was all furrowed by deep lines produced by age and toil. For an old man, the muscles of his legs, arms, and shoulders were quite exceptionally large and prominent. There were deep scars on his head under the short-cropped hair. His thick sinewy neck was covered with deep intersecting folds like a bull's. His horny hands were bruised and scratched. He stepped lightly and easily over the threshold, unslung his gun and placed it in a corner, and casting a rapid glance round the room noted the value of the goods and chattels deposited in the hut, and with out-turned toes stepped softly, in his sandals of raw hide, into the middle of the room. He brought with him a penetrating but not unpleasant smell of CHIKHIR wine, vodka, gunpowder, and congealed blood.

Daddy Eroshka bowed down before the icons, smoothed his beard, and approaching Olenin held out his thick brown hand. 'Koshkildy,' said he; That is Tartar for "Good-day""Peace be unto you," it means in their tongue.'

'Koshkildy, I know,' answered Olenin, shaking hands.

'Eh, but you don't, you won't know the right order! Fool!' said Daddy Eroshka, shaking his head reproachfully. 'If anyone says "Koshkildy" to you, you must say "Allah rasi bo sun," that is, "God save you." That's the way, my dear fellow, and not "Koshkildy." But I'll teach you all about it. We had a fellow here, Elias Mosevich, one of your Russians, he and I were kunaks. He was a trump, a drunkard, a thief, a sportsmanand what a sportsman! I taught him everything.'

'And what will you teach me?' asked Olenin, who was becoming more and more interested in the old man.

'I'll take you hunting and teach you to fish. I'll show you Chechens
and find a girl for you, if you likeeven that! That's the sort I am!
I'm a wag!'and the old man laughed. 'I'll sit down. I'm tired.
Karga?' he added inquiringly.
'And what does "Karga" mean?' asked Olenin.

'Why, that means "All right" in Georgian. But I say it just so. It is a way I have, it's my favourite word. Karga, Karga. I say it just so; in fun I mean. Well, lad, won't you order the chikhir? You've got an orderly, haven't you? Hey, Ivan!' shouted the old man. 'All your soldiers are Ivans. Is yours Ivan?'

'True enough, his name is IvanVanyusha. Here Vanyusha! Please get some chikhir from our landlady and bring it here.'

'Ivan or Vanyusha, that's all one. Why are all your soldiers Ivans? Ivan, old fellow,' said the old man, 'you tell them to give you some from the barrel they have begun. They have the best chikhir in the village. But don't give more than thirty kopeks for the quart, mind, because that witch would be only too glad. Our people are anathema people; stupid people,' Daddy Eroshka continued in a confidential tone after Vanyusha had gone out. 'They do not look upon you as on men, you are worse than a Tartar in their eyes. "Worldly Russians" they say. But as for me, though you are a soldier you are still a man, and have a soul in you. Isn't that right? Elias Mosevich was a soldier, yet what a treasure of a man he was! Isn't that so, my dear fellow? That's why our people don't like me; but I don't care! I'm a merry fellow, and I like everybody. I'm Eroshka; yes, my dear fellow.'

And the old Cossack patted the young man affectionately on the shoulder.

Chapter XII
Vanyusha, who meanwhile had finished his housekeeping arrangements and had even been shaved by the company's barber and had pulled his trousers out of his high boots as a sign that the company was stationed in comfortable quarters, was in excellent spirits. He looked attentively but not benevolently at Eroshka, as at a wild beast he had never seen before, shook his head at the floor which the old man had dirtied and, having taken two bottles from under a bench, went to the landlady.

'Good evening, kind people,' he said, having made up his mind to be very gentle. 'My master has sent me to get some chikhir. Will you draw some for me, good folk?'

The old woman gave no answer. The girl, who was arranging the kerchief on her head before a little Tartar mirror, looked round at Vanyusha in silence.

'I'll pay money for it, honoured people,' said Vanyusha, jingling the coppers in his pocket. 'Be kind to us and we, too will be kind to you,' he added.

'How much?' asked the old woman abruptly. 'A quart.'

'Go, my own, draw some for them,' said Granny Ulitka to her daughter.
'Take it from the cask that's begun, my precious.'
The girl took the keys and a decanter and went out of the hut with
Vanyusha.
'Tell me, who is that young woman?' asked Olenin, pointing to Maryanka, who was passing the window. The old man winked and nudged the young man with his elbow.

'Wait a bit,' said he and reached out of the window. 'Khm,' he coughed, and bellowed, 'Maryanka dear. Hallo, Maryanka, my girlie, won't you love me, darling? I'm a wag,' he added in a whisper to Olenin. The girl, not turning her head and swinging her arms regularly and vigorously, passed the window with the peculiarly smart and bold gait of a Cossack woman and only turned her dark shaded eyes slowly towards the old man.

'Love me and you'll be happy,' shouted Eroshka, winking, and he looked questioningly at the cadet.

'I'm a fine fellow, I'm a wag!' he added. 'She's a regular queen, that girl. Eh?'

'She is lovely,' said Olenin. 'Call her here!'

'No, no,' said the old man. 'For that one a match is being arranged with Lukashka, Luke, a fine Cossack, a brave, who killed an abrek the other day. I'll find you a better one. I'll find you one that will be all dressed up in silk and silver. Once I've said it I'll do it. I'll get you a regular beauty!'

'You, an old manand say such things,' replied Olenin. 'Why, it's a sin!'

'A sin? Where's the sin?' said the old man emphatically. 'A sin to look at a nice girl? A sin to have some fun with her? Or is it a sin to love her? Is that so in your parts?  No, my dear fellow, it's not a sin, it's salvation! God made you and God made the girl too. He made it all; so it is no sin to look at a nice girl. That's what she was made for; to be loved and to give joy. That's how I judge it, my good fellow.'

Having crossed the yard and entered a cool dark storeroom filled with barrels, Maryanka went up to one of them and repeating the usual prayer plunged a dipper into it. Vanyusha standing in the doorway smiled as he looked at her. He thought it very funny that she had only a smock on, close-fitting behind and tucked up in front, and still funnier that she wore a necklace of silver coins. He thought this quite un-Russian and that they would all laugh in the serfs' quarters at home if they saw a girl like that. 'La fille comme c'est tres bien, for a change,' he thought. 'I'll tell that to my master.'

'What are you standing in the light for, you devil!' the girl suddenly shouted. 'Why don't you pass me the decanter!'

Having filled the decanter with cool red wine, Maryanka handed it to
Vanyusha.
'Give the money to Mother,' she said, pushing away the hand in which he held the money.

Vanyusha laughed.

'Why are you so cross, little dear?' he said good-naturedly, irresolutely shuffling with his feet while the girl was covering the barrel.

She began to laugh.

'And you! Are you kind?'

'We, my master and I, are very kind,' Vanyusha answered decidedly. 'We are so kind that wherever we have stayed our hosts were always very grateful. It's because he's generous.'

The girl stood listening.

'And is your master married?' she asked.

'No. The master is young and unmarried, because noble gentlemen can never marry young,' said Vanyusha didactically.

'A likely thing! See what a fed-up buffalo he isand too young to marry! Is he the chief of you all?' she asked.

'My master is a cadet; that means he's not yet an officer, but he's more important than a generalhe's an important man! Because not only our colonel, but the Tsar himself, knows him,' proudly explained Vanyusha. 'We are not like those other beggars in the line regiment, and our papa himself was a Senator. He had more than a thousand serfs, all his own, and they send us a thousand rubles at a time. That's why everyone likes us. Another may be a captain but have no money. What's the use of that?'

'Go away. I'll lock up,' said the girl, interrupting him.

Vanyusha brought Olenin the wine and announced that 'La fille c'est tres joulie,' and, laughing stupidly, at once went out.

Chapter XIII
Meanwhile the tattoo had sounded in the village square. The people had returned from their work. The herd lowed as in clouds of golden dust it crowded at the village gate. The girls and the women hurried through the streets and yards, turning in their cattle. The sun had quite hidden itself behind the distant snowy peaks. One pale bluish shadow spread over land and sky. Above the darkened gardens stars just discernible were kindling, and the sounds were gradually hushed in the village. The cattle having been attended to and left for the night, the women came out and gathered at the corners of the streets and, cracking sunflower seeds with their teeth, settled down on the earthen embankments of the houses. Later on Maryanka, having finished milking the buffalo and the other two cows, also joined one of these groups.

The group consisted of several women and girls and one old Cossack man.

They were talking about the abrek who had been killed.

The Cossack was narrating and the women questioning him.

'I expect he'll get a handsome reward,' said one of the women.

'Of course. It's said that they'll send him a cross.'

'Mosev did try to wrong him. Took the gun away from him, but the authorities at Kizlyar heard of it.'

'A mean creature that Mosev is!'

'They say Lukashka has come home,' remarked one of the girls.

'He and Nazarka are merry-making at Yamka's.' (Yamka was an unmarried, disreputable Cossack woman who kept an illicit pot-house.) 'I heard say they had drunk half a pailful.'

'What luck that Snatcher has,' somebody remarked. 'A real snatcher. But there's no denying he's a fine lad, smart enough for anything, a right-minded lad! His father was just such another. Daddy Kiryak was: he takes after his father. When he was killed the whole village howled. Look, there they are,' added the speaker, pointing to the Cossacks who were coming down the street towards them.

'And Ergushov has managed to come along with them too! The drunkard!'

Lukashka, Nazarka, and Ergushov, having emptied half a pail of vodka, were coming towards the girls. The faces of all three, but especially that of the old Cossack, were redder than usual. Ergushov was reeling and kept laughing and nudging Nazarka in the ribs.

'Why are you not singing?' he shouted to the girls. 'Sing to our merry-making, I tell you!'

They were welcomed with the words, 'Had a good day? Had a good day?'

'Why sing? It's not a holiday,' said one of the women. 'You're tight, so you go and sing.'

Ergushov roared with laughter and nudged Nazarka. 'You'd better sing.
And I'll begin too. I'm clever, I tell you.'
'Are you asleep, fair ones?' said Nazarka. 'We've come from the cordon to drink your health. We've already drunk Lukashka's health.'

Lukashka, when he reached the group, slowly raised his cap and stopped in front of the girls. His broad cheekbones and neck were red. He stood and spoke softly and sedately, but in his tranquillity and sedateness there was more of animation and strength than in all Nazarka's loquacity and bustle. He reminded one of a playful colt that with a snort and a flourish of its tail suddenly stops short and stands as though nailed to the ground with all four feet. Lukashka stood quietly in front of the girls, his eyes laughed, and he spoke but little as he glanced now at his drunken companions and now at the girls. When Maryanka joined the group he raised his cap with a firm deliberate movement, moved out of her way and then stepped in front of her with one foot a little forward and with his thumbs in his belt, fingering his dagger. Maryanka answered his greeting with a leisurely bow of her head, settled down on the earth-bank, and took some seeds out of the bosom of her smock. Lukashka, keeping his eyes fixed on Maryanka, slowly cracked seeds and spat out the shells. All were quiet when Maryanka joined the group.

'Have you come for long?' asked a woman, breaking the silence.

'Till to-morrow morning,' quietly replied Lukashka.

'Well, God grant you get something good,' said the Cossack; 'I'm glad of it, as I've just been saying.'

'And I say so too,' put in the tipsy Ergushov, laughing. 'What a lot of visitors have come,' he added, pointing to a soldier who was passing by. 'The soldiers' vodka is goodI like it.'

'They've sent three of the devils to us,' said one of the women.
'Grandad went to the village Elders, but they say nothing can be done.'
'Ah, ha! Have you met with trouble?' said Ergushov.

'I expect they have smoked you out with their tobacco?' asked another woman. 'Smoke as much as you like in the yard, I say, but we won't allow it inside the hut. Not if the Elder himself comes, I won't allow it. Besides, they may rob you. He's not quartered any of them on himself, no fear, that devil's son of an Elder.'

'You don't like it?' Ergushov began again.

'And I've also heard say that the girls will have to make the soldiers' beds and offer them chikhir and honey,' said Nazarka, putting one foot forward and tilting his cap like Lukashka.

Ergushov burst into a roar of laughter, and seizing the girl nearest to him, he embraced her. 'I tell you true.'

'Now then, you black pitch!' squealed the girl, 'I'll tell your old woman.'

'Tell her,' shouted he. 'That's quite right what Nazarka says; a circular has been sent round. He can read, you know. Quite true!' And he began embracing the next girl.

'What are you up to, you beast?' squealed the rosy, round-faced
Ustenka, laughing and lifting her arm to hit him.
The Cossack stepped aside and nearly fell.

'There, they say girls have no strength, and you nearly killed me.'

'Get away, you black pitch, what devil has brought you from the cordon?' said Ustenka, and turning away from him she again burst out laughing. 'You were asleep and missed the abrek, didn't you? Suppose he had done for you it would have been all the better.'

'You'd have howled, I expect,' said Nazarka, laughing.

'Howled! A likely thing.'

'Just look, she doesn't care. She'd howl, Nazarka, eh? Would she?' said
Ergushov.
Lukishka all this time had stood silently looking at Maryanka. His gaze evidently confused the girl.

'Well, Maryanka! I hear they've quartered one of the chiefs on you?' he said, drawing nearer.

Maryanka, as was her wont, waited before she replied, and slowly raising her eyes looked at the Cossack. Lukashka's eyes were laughing as if something special, apart from what was said, was taking place between himself and the girl.

'Yes, it's all right for them as they have two huts,' replied an old woman on Maryanka's behalf, 'but at Fomushkin's now they also have one of the chiefs quartered on them and they say one whole corner is packed full with his things, and the family have no room left. Was such a thing ever heard of as that they should turn a whole horde loose in the village?' she said. 'And what the plague are they going to do here?'

'I've heard say they'll build a bridge across the Terek,' said one of the girls.

'And I've been told that they will dig a pit to put the girls in because they don't love the lads,' said Nazarka, approaching Ustenka; and he again made a whimsical gesture which set everybody laughing, and Ergushov, passing by Maryanka, who was next in turn, began to embrace an old woman.

'Why don't you hug Maryanka? You should do it to each in turn,' said
Nazarka.
'No, my old one is sweeter,' shouted the Cossack, kissing the struggling old woman.

'You'll throttle me,' she screamed, laughing.

The tramp of regular footsteps at the other end of the street interrupted their laughter. Three soldiers in their cloaks, with their muskets on their shoulders, were marching in step to relieve guard by the ammunition wagon.

The corporal, an old cavalry man, looked angrily at the Cossacks and led his men straight along the road where Lukashka and Nazarka were standing, so that they should have to get out of the way. Nazarka moved, but Lukashka only screwed up his eyes and turned his broad back without moving from his place.

'People are standing here, so you go round,' he muttered, half turning his head and tossing it contemptuously in the direction of the soldiers.

The soldiers passed by in silence, keeping step regularly along the dusty road.

Maryanka began laughing and all the other girls chimed in.

'What swells!' said Nazarka, 'Just like long-skirted choristers,' and he walked a few steps down the road imitating the soldiers.

Again everyone broke into peals of laughter.

Lukashka came slowly up to Maryanka.

'And where have you put up the chief?' he asked.

Maryanka thought for a moment.

'We've let him have the new hut,' she said.

'And is he old or young,' asked Lukashka, sitting down beside her.

'Do you think I've asked?' answered the girl. 'I went to get him some chikhir and saw him sitting at the window with Daddy Eroshka. Red-headed he seemed. They've brought a whole cartload of things.'

And she dropped her eyes.

'Oh, how glad I am that I got leave from the cordon!' said Lukashka, moving closer to the girl and looking straight in her eyes all the time.

'And have you come for long?' asked Maryanka, smiling slightly.

'Till the morning. Give me some sunflower seeds,' he said, holding out his hand.

Maryanka now smiled outright and unfastened the neckband of her smock.

'Don't take them all,' she said.

'Really I felt so dull all the time without you, I swear I did,' he said in a calm, restrained whisper, helping himself to some seeds out of the bosom of the girl's smock, and stooping still closer over her he continued with laughing eyes to talk to her in low tones.

'I won't come, I tell you,' Maryanka suddenly said aloud, leaning away from him.

'No really  what I wanted to say to you, ' whispered Lukashka.
'By the Heavens! Do come!'
Maryanka shook her head, but did so with a smile.

'Nursey Maryanka! Hallo Nursey! Mammy is calling! Supper time!' shouted
Maryanka's little brother, running towards the group.
'I'm coming,' replied the girl. 'Go, my dear, go aloneI'll come in a minute.'

Lukashka rose and raised his cap.

'I expect I had better go home too, that will be best,' he said, trying to appear unconcerned but hardly able to repress a smile, and he disappeared behind the corner of the house.

Meanwhile night had entirely enveloped the village. Bright stars were scattered over the dark sky. The streets became dark and empty. Nazarka remained with the women on the earth-bank and their laughter was still heard, but Lukashka, having slowly moved away from the girls, crouched down like a cat and then suddenly started running lightly, holding his dagger to steady it: not homeward, however, but towards the cornet's house. Having passed two streets he turned into a lane and lifting the skirt of his coat sat down on the ground in the shadow of a fence. 'A regular cornet's daughter!' he thought about Maryanka. 'Won't even have a larkthe devil! But just wait a bit.'

The approaching footsteps of a woman attracted his attention. He began listening, and laughed all by himself. Maryanka with bowed head, striking the pales of the fences with a switch, was walking with rapid regular strides straight towards him. Lukashka rose. Maryanka started and stopped.

'What an accursed devil! You frightened me! So you have not gone home?' she said, and laughed aloud.

Lukashka put one arm round her and with the other hand raised her face.
'What I wanted to tell you, by Heaven!' his voice trembled and broke.
'What are you talking of, at night time!' answered Maryanka. 'Mother is waiting for me, and you'd better go to your sweetheart.'

And freeing herself from his arms she ran away a few steps. When she had reached the wattle fence of her home she stopped and turned to the Cossack who was running beside her and still trying to persuade her to stay a while with him.

'Well, what do you want to say, midnight-gadabout?' and she again began laughing.

'Don't laugh at me, Maryanka! By the Heaven! Well, what if I have a sweetheart? May the devil take her! Only say the word and now I'll love youI'll do anything you wish. Here they are!' and he jingled the money in his pocket. 'Now we can live splendidly. Others have pleasures, and I? I get no pleasure from you, Maryanka dear!'

The girl did not answer. She stood before him breaking her switch into little bits with a rapid movement of her fingers.

Lukashka suddenly clenched his teeth and fists.

'And why keep waiting and waiting? Don't I love you, darling? You can do what you like with me,' said he suddenly, frowning angrily and seizing both her hands.

The calm expression of Maryanka's face and voice did not change.

'Don't bluster, Lukashka, but listen to me,' she answered, not pulling away her hands but holding the Cossack at arm's length. 'It's true I am a girl, but you listen to me! It does not depend on me, but if you love me I'll tell you this. Let go my hands, I'll tell you without.I'll marry you, but you'll never get any nonsense from me,' said Maryanka without turning her face.

'What, you'll marry me? Marriage does not depend on us. Love me yourself, Maryanka dear,' said Lukashka, from sullen and furious becoming again gentle, submissive, and tender, and smiling as he looked closely into her eyes.

Maryanka clung to him and kissed him firmly on the lips.

'Brother dear!' she whispered, pressing him convulsively to her. Then, suddenly tearing herself away, she ran into the gate of her house without looking round.

In spite of the Cossack's entreaties to wait another minute to hear what he had to say, Maryanka did not stop.

'Go,' she cried, 'you'll be seen! I do believe that devil, our lodger, is walking about the yard.'

'Cornet's daughter,' thought Lukashka. 'She will marry me. Marriage is all very well, but you just love me!'

He found Nazarka at Yamka's house, and after having a spree with him went to Dunayka's house, where, in spite of her not being faithful to him, he spent the night.

Chapter XIV
It was quite true that Olenin had been walking about the yard when Maryanka entered the gate, and had heard her say, 'That devil, our lodger, is walking about.' He had spent that evening with Daddy Eroshka in the porch of his new lodging. He had had a table, a samovar, wine, and a candle brought out, and over a cup of tea and a cigar he listened to the tales the old man told seated on the threshold at his feet. Though the air was still, the candle dripped and flickered: now lighting up the post of the porch, now the table and crockery, now the cropped white head of the old man. Moths circled round the flame and, shedding the dust of their wings, fluttered on the table and in the glasses, flew into the candle flame, and disappeared in the black space beyond. Olenin and Eroshka had emptied five bottles of chikhir. Eroshka filled the glasses every time, offering one to Olenin, drinking his health, and talking untiringly. He told of Cossack life in the old days: of his father, 'The Broad', who alone had carried on his back a boar's carcass weighing three hundredweight, and drank two pails of chikhir at one sitting. He told of his own days and his chum Girchik, with whom during the plague he used to smuggle felt cloaks across the Terek. He told how one morning he had killed two deer, and about his 'little soul' who used to run to him at the cordon at night. He told all this so eloquently and picturesquely that Olenin did not notice how time passed. 'Ah yes, my dear fellow, you did not know me in my golden days; then I'd have shown you things. Today it's "Eroshka licks the jug", but then Eroshka was famous in the whole regiment. Whose was the finest horse? Who had a Gurda sword? To whom should one go to get a drink? With whom go on the spree? Who should be sent to the mountains to kill Ahmet Khan? Why, always Eroshka! Whom did the girls love? Always Eroshka had to answer for it. Because I was a real brave: a drinker, a thief (I used to seize herds of horses in the mountains), a singer; I was a master of every art! There are no Cossacks like that nowadays. It's disgusting to look at them. When they're that high [Eroshka held his hand three feet from the ground] they put on idiotic boots and keep looking at themthat's all the pleasure they know. Or they'll drink themselves foolish, not like men but all wrong. And who was I? I was Eroshka, the thief; they knew me not only in this village but up in the mountains. Tartar princes, my kunaks, used to come to see me! I used to be everybody's kunak. If he was a Tartarwith a Tartar; an Armenianwith an Armenian; a soldierwith a soldier; an officerwith an officer! I didn't care as long as he was a drinker. He says you should cleanse yourself from intercourse with the world, not drink with soldiers, not eat with a Tartar.'

'Who says all that?' asked Olenin.

'Why, our teacher! But listen to a Mullah or a Tartar Cadi. He says, "You unbelieving Giaours, why do you eat pig?" That shows that everyone has his own law. But I think it's all one. God has made everything for the joy of man. There is no sin in any of it. Take example from an animal. It lives in the Tartar's reeds or in ours. Wherever it happens to go, there is its home! Whatever God gives it, that it eats! But our people say we have to lick red-hot plates in hell for that. And I think it's all a fraud,' he added after a pause.

'What is a fraud?' asked Olenin.

'Why, what the preachers say. We had an army captain in Chervlena who was my kunak: a fine fellow just like me. He was killed in Chechnya. Well, he used to say that the preachers invent all that out of their own heads. "When you die the grass will grow on your grave and that's all!"' The old man laughed. 'He was a desperate fellow.'

'And how old are you?' asked Olenin.

'The Lord only knows! I must be about seventy. When a Tsaritsa reigned in Russia I was no longer very small. So you can reckon it out. I must be seventy.'

'Yes you must, but you are still a fine fellow.'

'Well, thank Heaven I am healthy, quite healthy, except that a woman, a witch, has harmed me.'

'How?'

'Oh, just harmed me.'

'And so when you die the grass will grow?' repeated Olenin.

Eroshka evidently did not wish to express his thought clearly. He was silent for a while.

'And what did you think? Drink!' he shouted suddenly, smiling and handing Olenin some wine.

Chapter XV
'Well, what was I saying?' he continued, trying to remember. 'Yes, that's the sort of man I am. I am a hunter. There is no hunter to equal me in the whole army. I will find and show you any animal and any bird, and what and where. I know it all! I have dogs, and two guns, and nets, and a screen and a hawk. I have everything, thank the Lord! If you are not bragging but are a real sportsman, I'll show you everything. Do you know what a man I am? When I have found a trackI know the animal. I know where he will lie down and where he'll drink or wallow. I make myself a perch and sit there all night watching. What's the good of staying at home? One only gets into mischief, gets drunk. And here women come and chatter, and boys shout at meenough to drive one mad. It's a different matter when you go out at nightfall, choose yourself a place, press down the reeds and sit there and stay waiting, like a jolly fellow. One knows everything that goes on in the woods. One looks up at the sky: the stars move, you look at them and find out from them how the time goes. One looks roundthe wood is rustling; one goes on waiting, now there comes a cracklinga boar comes to rub himself; one listens to hear the young eaglets screech and then the cocks give voice in the village, or the geese. When you hear the geese you know it is not yet midnight. And I know all about it! Or when a gun is fired somewhere far away, thoughts come to me. One thinks, who is that firing? Is it another Cossack like myself who has been watching for some animal? And has he killed it? Or only wounded it so that now the poor thing goes through the reeds smearing them with its blood all for nothing? I don't like that! Oh, how I dislike it! Why injure a beast? You fool, you fool! Or one thinks, "Maybe an abrek has killed some silly little Cossack." All this passes through one's mind. And once as I sat watching by the river I saw a cradle floating down. It was sound except for one corner which was broken off. Thoughts did come that time! I thought some of your soldiers, the devils, must have got into a Tartar village and seized the Chechen women, and one of the devils has killed the little one: taken it by its legs, and hit its head against a wall. Don't they do such things? Ah! Men have no souls! And thoughts came to me that filled me with pity. I thought: they've thrown away the cradle and driven the wife out, and her brave has taken his gun and come across to our side to rob us. One watches and thinks. And when one hears a litter breaking through the thicket, something begins to knock inside one. Dear one, come this way! "They'll scent me," one thinks; and one sits and does not stir while one's heart goes dun! dun! dun! and simply lifts you. Once this spring a fine litter came near me, I saw something black. "In the name of the Father and of the Son," and I was just about to fire when she grunts to her pigs: "Danger, children," she says, "there's a man here," and off they all ran, breaking through the bushes. And she had been so close I could almost have bitten her.'

'How could a sow tell her brood that a man was there?' asked Olenin.

'What do you think? You think the beast's a fool? No, he is wiser than a man though you do call him a pig! He knows everything. Take this for instance. A man will pass along your track and not notice it; but a pig as soon as it gets onto your track turns and runs at once: that shows there is wisdom in him, since he scents your smell and you don't. And there is this to be said too: you wish to kill it and it wishes to go about the woods alive. You have one law and it has another. It is a pig, but it is no worse than youit too is God's creature. Ah, dear! Man is foolish, foolish, foolish!' The old man repeated this several times and then, letting his head drop, he sat thinking.

Olenin also became thoughtful, and descending from the porch with his hands behind his back began pacing up and down the yard.

Eroshka, rousing himself, raised his head and began gazing intently at the moths circling round the flickering flame of the candle and burning themselves in it.

'Fool, fool!' he said. 'Where are you flying to? Fool, fool!' He rose and with his thick fingers began to drive away the moths.

'You'll burn, little fool! Fly this way, there's plenty of room.' He spoke tenderly, trying to catch them delicately by their wings with his thick fingers and then letting them fly again. 'You are killing yourself and I am sorry for you!'

He sat a long time chattering and sipping out of the bottle. Olenin paced up and down the yard. Suddenly he was struck by the sound of whispering outside the gate. Involuntarily holding his breath, he heard a woman's laughter, a man's voice, and the sound of a kiss. Intentionally rustling the grass under his feet he crossed to the opposite side of the yard, but after a while the wattle fence creaked. A Cossack in a dark Circassian coat and a white sheepskin cap passed along the other side of the fence (it was Luke), and a tall woman with a white kerchief on her head went past Olenin. 'You and I have nothing to do with one another' was what Maryanka's firm step gave him to understand. He followed her with his eyes to the porch of the hut, and he even saw her through the window take off her kerchief and sit down. And suddenly a feeling of lonely depression and some vague longings and hopes, and envy of someone or other, overcame the young man's soul.

The last lights had been put out in the huts. The last sounds had died away in the village. The wattle fences and the cattle gleaming white in the yards, the roofs of the houses and the stately poplars, all seemed to be sleeping the labourers' healthy peaceful sleep. Only the incessant ringing voices of frogs from the damp distance reached the young man. In the east the stars were growing fewer and fewer and seemed to be melting in the increasing light, but overhead they were denser and deeper than before. The old man was dozing with his head on his hand. A cock crowed in the yard opposite, but Olenin still paced up and down thinking of something. The sound of a song sung by several voices reached him and he stepped up to the fence and listened. The voices of several young Cossacks carolled a merry song, and one voice was distinguishable among them all by its firm strength.

'Do you know who is singing there?' said the old man, rousing himself. 'It is the Brave, Lukashka. He has killed a Chechen and now he rejoices. And what is there to rejoice at?  The fool, the fool!'

'And have you ever killed people?' asked Olenin.

'You devil!' shouted the old man. 'What are you asking? One must not talk so. It is a serious thing to destroy a human being  Ah, a very serious thing! Good-bye, my dear fellow. I've eaten my fill and am drunk,' he said rising. 'Shall I come to-morrow to go shooting?'

'Yes, come!'

'Mind, get up early; if you oversleep you will be fined!'

'Never fear, I'll be up before you,' answered Olenin.

The old man left. The song ceased, but one could hear footsteps and merry talk. A little later the singing broke out again but farther away, and Eroshka's loud voice chimed in with the other. 'What people, what a life!' thought Olenin with a sigh as he returned alone to his hut.

Chapter XVI
Daddy Eroshka was a superannuated and solitary Cossack: twenty years ago his wife had gone over to the Orthodox Church and run away from him and married a Russian sergeant-major, and he had no children. He was not bragging when he spoke of himself as having been the boldest dare-devil in the village when he was young. Everybody in the regiment knew of his old-time prowess. The death of more than one Russian, as well as Chechen, lay on his conscience. He used to go plundering in the mountains, and robbed the Russians too; and he had twice been in prison. The greater part of his life was spent in the forests, hunting. There he lived for days on a crust of bread and drank nothing but water. But on the other hand, when he was in the village he made merry from morning to night. After leaving Olenin he slept for a couple of hours and awoke before it was light. He lay on his bed thinking of the man he had become acquainted with the evening before. Olenin's 'simplicity' (simplicity in the sense of not grudging him a drink) pleased him very much, and so did Olenin himself. He wondered why the Russians were all 'simple' and so rich, and why they were educated, and yet knew nothing. He pondered on these questions and also considered what he might get out of Olenin.

Daddy Eroshka's hut was of a good size and not old, but the absence of a woman was very noticeable in it. Contrary to the usual cleanliness of the Cossacks, the whole of this hut was filthy and exceedingly untidy. A blood-stained coat had been thrown on the table, half a dough-cake lay beside a plucked and mangled crow with which to feed the hawk. Sandals of raw hide, a gun, a dagger, a little bag, wet clothes, and sundry rags lay scattered on the benches. In a corner stood a tub with stinking water, in which another pair of sandals were being steeped, and near by was a gun and a hunting-screen. On the floor a net had been thrown down and several dead pheasants lay there, while a hen tied by its leg was walking about near the table pecking among the dirt. In the unheated oven stood a broken pot with some kind of milky liquid. On the top of the oven a falcon was screeching and trying to break the cord by which it was tied, and a moulting hawk sat quietly on the edge of the oven, looking askance at the hen and occasionally bowing its head to right and left. Daddy Eroshka himself, in his shirt, lay on his back on a short bed rigged up between the wall and the oven, with his strong legs raised and his feet on the oven. He was picking with his thick fingers at the scratches left on his hands by the hawk, which he was accustomed to carry without wearing gloves. The whole room, especially near the old man, was filled with that strong but not unpleasant mixture of smells that he always carried about with him.

'Uyde-ma, Daddy?' (Is Daddy in?) came through the window in a sharp voice, which he at once recognized as Lukashka's.

'Uyde, Uyde, Uyde. I am in!' shouted the old man. 'Come in, neighbour
Mark, Luke Mark. Come to see Daddy? On your way to the cordon?'
At the sound of his master's shout the hawk flapped his wings and pulled at his cord.

The old man was fond of Lukashka, who was the only man he excepted from his general contempt for the younger generation of Cossacks. Besides that, Lukashka and his mother, as near neighbours, often gave the old man wine, clotted cream, and other home produce which Eroshka did not possess. Daddy Eroshka, who all his life had allowed himself to get carried away, always explained his infatuations from a practical point of view. 'Well, why not?' he used to say to himself. 'I'll give them some fresh meat, or a bird, and they won't forget Daddy: they'll sometimes bring a cake or a piece of pie.'

'Good morning. Mark! I am glad to see you,' shouted the old man cheerfully, and quickly putting down his bare feet he jumped off his bed and walked a step or two along the creaking floor, looked down at his out-turned toes, and suddenly, amused by the appearance of his feet, smiled, stamped with his bare heel on the ground, stamped again, and then performed a funny dance-step. 'That's clever, eh?' he asked, his small eyes glistening. Lukashka smiled faintly. 'Going back to the cordon?' asked the old man.

'I have brought the chikhir I promised you when we were at the cordon.'

'May Christ save you!' said the old man, and he took up the extremely wide trousers that were lying on the floor, and his beshmet, put them on, fastened a strap round his waist, poured some water from an earthenware pot over his hands, wiped them on the old trousers, smoothed his beard with a bit of comb, and stopped in front of Lukashka. 'Ready,' he said.

Lukashka fetched a cup, wiped it and filled it with wine, and then handed it to the old man.

'Your health! To the Father and the Son!' said the old man, accepting the wine with solemnity. 'May you have what you desire, may you always be a hero, and obtain a cross.'

Lukashka also drank a little after repeating a prayer, and then put the wine on the table. The old man rose and brought out some dried fish which he laid on the threshold, where he beat it with a stick to make it tender; then, having put it with his horny hands on a blue plate (his only one), he placed it on the table.

'I have all I want. I have victuals, thank God!' he said proudly.
'Well, and what of Mosev?' he added.
Lukashka, evidently wishing to know the old man's opinion, told him how the officer had taken the gun from him.

'Never mind the gun,' said the old man. 'If you don't give the gun you will get no reward.'

'But they say. Daddy, it's little reward a fellow gets when he is not yet a mounted Cossack; and the gun is a fine one, a Crimean, worth eighty rubles.'

'Eh, let it go! I had a dispute like that with an officer, he wanted my horse. "Give it me and you'll be made a cornet," says he. I wouldn't, and I got nothing!'

'Yes, Daddy, but you see I have to buy a horse; and they say you can't get one the other side of the river under fifty rubles, and mother has not yet sold our wine.'

'Eh, we didn't bother,' said the old man; 'when Daddy Eroshka was your age he already stole herds of horses from the Nogay folk and drove them across the Terek. Sometimes we'd give a fine horse for a quart of vodka or a cloak.'

'Why so cheap?' asked Lukashka.

'You're a fool, a fool, Mark,' said the old man contemptuously. 'Why, that's what one steals for, so as not to be stingy! As for you, I suppose you haven't so much as seen how one drives off a herd of horses? Why don't you speak?'

'What's one to say. Daddy?' replied Lukashka. 'It seems we are not the same sort of men as you were.'

'You're a fool. Mark, a fool! "Not the same sort of men!"' retorted the old man, mimicking the Cossack lad. 'I was not that sort of Cossack at your age.'

'How's that?' asked Lukashka.

The old man shook his head contemptuously.

'Daddy Eroshka was simple; he did not grudge anything! That's why I was kunak with all Chechnya. A kunak would come to visit me and I'd make him drunk with vodka and make him happy and put him to sleep with me, and when I went to see him I'd take him a presenta dagger! That's the way it is done, and not as you do nowadays: the only amusement lads have now is to crack seeds and spit out the shells!' the old man finished contemptuously, imitating the present-day Cossacks cracking seeds and spitting out the shells.

'Yes, I know,' said Lukashka; 'that's so!'

'If you wish to be a fellow of the right sort, be a brave and not a peasant! Because even a peasant can buy a horsepay the money and take the horse.'

They were silent for a while.

'Well, of course it's dull both in the village and the cordon, Daddy: but there's nowhere one can go for a bit of sport. All our fellows are so timid. Take Nazarka. The other day when we went to the Tartar village, Girey Khan asked us to come to Nogay to take some horses, but no one went, and how was I to go alone?'

'And what of Daddy? Do you think I am quite dried up?  No, I'm not dried up. Let me have a horse and I'll be off to Nogay at once.'

'What's the good of talking nonsense!' said Luke. 'You'd better tell me what to do about Girey Khan. He says, "Only bring horses to the Terek, and then even if you bring a whole stud I'll find a place for them." You see he's also a shaven-headed Tartarhow's one to believe him?'

'You may trust Girey Khan, all his kin were good people. His father too was a faithful kunak. But listen to Daddy and I won't teach you wrong: make him take an oath, then it will be all right. And if you go with him, have your pistol ready all the same, especially when it comes to dividing up the horses. I was nearly killed that way once by a Chechen. I wanted ten rubles from him for a horse. Trusting is all right, but don't go to sleep without a gun.' Lukashka listened attentively to the old man.

'I say. Daddy, have you any stone-break grass?' he asked after a pause.

'No, I haven't any, but I'll teach you how to get it. You're a good lad and won't forget the old man. Shall I tell you?'

'Tell me, Daddy.'

'You know a tortoise? She's a devil, the tortoise is!'

'Of course I know!'

'Find her nest and fence it round so that she can't get in. Well, she'll come, go round it, and then will go off to find the stone-break grass and will bring some along and destroy the fence. Anyhow next morning come in good time, and where the fence is broken there you'll find the stone-break grass lying. Take it wherever you like. No lock and no bar will be able to stop you.'

'Have you tried it yourself. Daddy?'

'As for trying, I have not tried it, but I was told of it by good people. I used only one charm: that was to repeat the Pilgrim rhyme when mounting my horse; and no one ever killed me!'

'What is the Pilgrim rhyme. Daddy?'

'What, don't you know it? Oh, what people! You're right to ask Daddy.
Well, listen, and repeat after me:
'Hail! Ye, living in Sion, This is your King, Our steeds we shall sit on, Sophonius is weeping. Zacharias is speaking, Father Pilgrim, Mankind ever loving.'

'Kind ever loving,' the old man repeated. 'Do you know it now? Try it.'

Lukashka laughed.

'Come, Daddy, was it that that hindered their killing you? Maybe it just happened so!'

'You've grown too clever! You learn it all, and say it. It will do you no harm. Well, suppose you have sung "Pilgrim", it's all right,' and the old man himself began laughing. 'But just one thing, Luke, don't you go to Nogay!'

'Why?'

'Times have changed. You are not the same men. You've become rubbishy Cossacks! And see how many Russians have come down on us! You'd get to prison. Really, give it up! Just as if you could! Now Girchik and I, we used'

And the old man was about to begin one of his endless tales, but
Lukashka glanced at the window and interrupted him.
'It is quite light. Daddy. It's time to be off. Look us up some day.'

'May Christ save you! I'll go to the officer; I promised to take him out shooting. He seems a good fellow.'

Chapter XVII
From Eroshka's hut Lukashka went home. As he returned, the dewy mists were rising from the ground and enveloped the village. In various places the cattle, though out of sight, could be heard beginning to stir. The cocks called to one another with increasing frequency and insistence. The air was becoming more transparent, and the villagers were getting up. Not till he was close to it could Lukishka discern the fence of his yard, all wet with dew, the porch of the hut, and the open shed. From the misty yard he heard the sound of an axe chopping wood. Lukashka entered the hut. His mother was up, and stood at the oven throwing wood into it. His little sister was still lying in bed asleep.

'Well, Lukashka, had enough holiday-making?' asked his mother softly.
'Where did you spend the night?'
'I was in the village,' replied her son reluctantly, reaching for his musket, which he drew from its cover and examined carefully.

His mother swayed her head.

Lukashka poured a little gunpowder onto the pan, took out a little bag from which he drew some empty cartridge cases which he began filling, carefully plugging each one with a ball wrapped in a rag. Then, having tested the loaded cartridges with his teeth and examined them, he put down the bag.

'I say, Mother, I told you the bags wanted mending; have they been done?' he asked.

'Oh yes, our dumb girl was mending something last night. Why, is it time for you to be going back to the cordon? I haven't seen anything of you!'

'Yes, as soon as I have got ready I shall have to go,' answered
Lukashka, tying up the gunpowder. 'And where is our dumb one? Outside?'
'Chopping wood, I expect. She kept fretting for you. "I shall not see him at all!" she said. She puts her hand to her face like this, and clicks her tongue and presses her hands to her heart as much as to say"sorry." Shall I call her in? She understood all about the abrek.'

'Call her,' said Lukashka. 'And I had some tallow there; bring it: I must grease my sword.'

The old woman went out, and a few minutes later Lukashka's dumb sister came up the creaking steps and entered the hut. She was six years older than her brother and would have been extremely like him had it not been for the dull and coarsely changeable expression (common to all deaf and dumb people) of her face. She wore a coarse smock all patched; her feet were bare and muddy, and on her head she had an old blue kerchief. Her neck, arms, and face were sinewy like a peasant's. Her clothing and her whole appearance indicated that she always did the hard work of a man. She brought in a heap of logs which she threw down by the oven. Then she went up to her brother, and with a joyful smile which made her whole face pucker up, touched him on the shoulder and began making rapid signs to him with her hands, her face, and whole body.

'That's right, that's right, Stepka is a trump!' answered the brother, nodding. 'She's fetched everything and mended everything, she's a trump! Here, take this for it!' He brought out two pieces of gingerbread from his pocket and gave them to her.

The dumb woman's face flushed with pleasure, and she began making a weird noise for joy. Having seized the gingerbread she began to gesticulate still more rapidly, frequently pointing in one direction and passing her thick finger over her eyebrows and her face. Lukashka understood her and kept nodding, while he smiled slightly. She was telling him to give the girls dainties, and that the girls liked him, and that one girl, Maryankathe best of them allloved him. She indicated Maryanka by rapidly pointing in the direction of Maryanka's home and to her own eyebrows and face, and by smacking her lips and swaying her head. 'Loves' she expressed by pressing her hands to her breast, kissing her hand, and pretending to embrace someone. Their mother returned to the hut, and seeing what her dumb daughter was saying, smiled and shook her head. Her daughter showed her the gingerbread and again made the noise which expressed joy.

'I told Ulitka the other day that I'd send a matchmaker to them,' said the mother. 'She took my words well.'

Lukashka looked silently at his mother.

'But how about selling the wine, mother? I need a horse.'

'I'll cart it when I have time. I must get the barrels ready,' said the mother, evidently not wishing her son to meddle in domestic matters. 'When you go out you'll find a bag in the passage. I borrowed from the neighbours and got something for you to take back to the cordon; or shall I put it in your saddle-bag?'

'All right,' answered Lukashka. 'And if Girey Khan should come across the river send him to me at the cordon, for I shan't get leave again for a long time now; I have some business with him.'

He began to get ready to start.

'I will send him on,' said the old woman. 'It seems you have been spreeing at Yamka's all the time. I went out in the night to see the cattle, and I think it was your voice I heard singing songs.'

Lukashka did not reply, but went out into the passage, threw the bags over his shoulder, tucked up the skirts of his coat, took his musket, and then stopped for a moment on the threshold.

'Good-bye, mother!' he said as he closed the gate behind him. 'Send me a small barrel with Nazarka. I promised it to the lads, and he'll call for it.'

'May Christ keep you, Lukashka. God be with you! I'll send you some, some from the new barrel,' said the old woman, going to the fence: 'But listen,' she added, leaning over the fence.

The Cossack stopped.

'You've been making merry here; well, that's all right. Why should not a young man amuse himself? God has sent you luck and that's good. But now look out and mind, my son. Don't you go and get into mischief. Above all, satisfy your superiors: one has to! And I will sell the wine and find money for a horse and will arrange a match with the girl for you.'

'All right, all right!' answered her son, frowning.

His deaf sister shouted to attract his attention. She pointed to her head and the palm of her hand, to indicate the shaved head of a Chechen. Then she frowned, and pretending to aim with a gun, she shrieked and began rapidly humming and shaking her head. This meant that Lukashka should kill another Chechen.

Lukashka understood. He smiled, and shifting the gun at his back under his cloak stepped lightly and rapidly, and soon disappeared in the thick mist.

The old woman, having stood a little while at the gate, returned silently to the hut and immediately began working.

Chapter XVIII
Lukasha returned to the cordon and at the same time Daddy Eroshka whistled to his dogs and, climbing over his wattle fence, went to Olenin's lodging, passing by the back of the houses (he disliked meeting women before going out hunting or shooting). He found Olenin still asleep, and even Vanyusha, though awake, was still in bed and looking round the room considering whether it was not time to get up, when Daddy Eroshka, gun on shoulder and in full hunter's trappings, opened the door.

'A cudgel!' he shouted in his deep voice. 'An alarm! The Chechens are upon us! Ivan! get the samovar ready for your master, and get up yourselfquick,' cried the old man. 'That's our way, my good man! Why even the girls are already up! Look out of the window. See, she's going for water and you're still sleeping!'

Olenin awoke and jumped up, feeling fresh and lighthearted at the sight of the old man and at the sound of his voice.

'Quick, Vanyusha, quick!' he cried.

'Is that the way you go hunting?' said the old man. 'Others are having their breakfast and you are asleep! Lyam! Here!' he called to his dog. 'Is your gun ready?' he shouted, as loud as if a whole crowd were in the hut.

'Well, it's true I'm guilty, but it can't be helped! The powder,
Vanyusha, and the wads!' said Olenin.
'A fine!' shouted the old man.

'Du tay voulay vou?' asked Vanyusha, grinning.

'You're not one of usyour gabble is not like our speech, you devil!' the old man shouted at Vanyusha, showing the stumps of his teeth.

'A first offence must be forgiven,' said Olenin playfully, drawing on his high boots.

'The first offence shall be forgiven,' answered Eroshka, 'but if you oversleep another time you'll be fined a pail of chikhir. When it gets warmer you won't find the deer.'

'And even if we do find him he is wiser than we are,' said Olenin, repeating the words spoken by the old man the evening before, 'and you can't deceive him!'

'Yes, laugh away! You kill one first, and then you may talk. Now then, hurry up! Look, there's the master himself coming to see you,' added Eroshka, looking out of the window. 'Just see how he's got himself up. He's put on a new coat so that you should see that he's an officer. Ah, these people, these people!'

Sure enough Vanyusha came in and announced that the master of the house wished to see Olenin.

'L'arjan!' he remarked profoundly, to forewarn his master of the meaning of this visitation. Following him, the master of the house in a new Circassian coat with an officer's stripes on the shoulders and with polished boots (quite exceptional among Cossacks) entered the room, swaying from side to side, and congratulated his lodger on his safe arrival.

The cornet, Elias Vasilich, was an educated Cossack. He had been to Russia proper, was a regimental schoolteacher, and above all he was noble. He wished to appear noble, but one could not help feeling beneath his grotesque pretence of polish, his affectation, his self-confidence, and his absurd way of speaking, he was just the same as Daddy Eroshka. This could also be clearly seen by his sunburnt face and his hands and his red nose. Olenin asked him to sit down.

'Good morning. Father Elias Vasilich,' said Eroshka, rising with (or so it seemed to Olenin) an ironically low bow.

'Good morning. Daddy. So you're here already,' said the cornet, with a careless nod.

The cornet was a man of about forty, with a grey pointed beard, skinny and lean, but handsome and very fresh-looking for his age. Having come to see Olenin he was evidently afraid of being taken for an ordinary Cossack, and wanted to let Olenin feel his importance from the first.

'That's our Egyptian Nimrod,' he remarked, addressing Olenin and pointing to the old man with a self-satisfied smile. 'A mighty hunter before the Lord! He's our foremost man on every hand. You've already been pleased to get acquainted with him.'

Daddy Eroshka gazed at his feet in their shoes of wet raw hide and shook his head thoughtfully at the cornet's ability and learning, and muttered to himself: 'Gyptian Nimvrod! What things he invents!'

'Yes, you see we mean to go hunting,' answered Olenin.

'Yes, sir, exactly,' said the cornet, 'but I have a small business with you.'

'What do you want?'

'Seeing that you are a gentleman,' began the cornet, 'and as I may understand myself to be in the rank of an officer too, and therefore we may always progressively negotiate, as gentlemen do.' (He stopped and looked with a smile at Olenin and at the old man.) 'But if you have the desire with my consent, then, as my wife is a foolish woman of our class, she could not quite comprehend your words of yesterday's date. Therefore my quarters might be let for six rubles to the Regimental Adjutant, without the stables; but I can always avert that from myself free of charge. But, as you desire, therefore I, being myself of an officer's rank, can come to an agreement with you in everything personally, as an inhabitant of this district, not according to our customs, but can maintain the conditions in every way.'

'Speaks clearly!' muttered the old man.

The cornet continued in the same strain for a long time. At last, not without difficulty, Olenin gathered that the cornet wished to let his rooms to him, Olenin, for six rubles a month. The latter gladly agreed to this, and offered his visitor a glass of tea. The cornet declined it.

'According to our silly custom we consider it a sort of sin to drink out of a "worldly" tumbler,' he said. 'Though, of course, with my education I may understand, but my wife from her human weakness'

'Well then, will you have some tea?'

'If you will permit me, I will bring my own particular glass,' answered the cornet, and stepped out into the porch.

'Bring me my glass!' he cried.

In a few minutes the door opened and a young sunburnt arm in a print sleeve thrust itself in, holding a tumbler in the hand. The cornet went up, took it, and whispered something to his daughter. Olenin poured tea for the cornet into the latter's own 'particular' glass, and for Eroshka into a 'worldly' glass.

'However, I do not desire to detain you,' said the cornet, scalding his lips and emptying his tumbler. 'I too have a great liking for fishing, and I am here, so to say, only on leave of absence for recreation from my duties. I too have the desire to tempt fortune and see whether some Gifts of the Terek may not fall to my share. I hope you too will come and see us and have a drink of our wine, according to the custom of our village,' he added.

The cornet bowed, shook hands with Olenin, and went out. While Olenin was getting ready, he heard the cornet giving orders to his family in an authoritative and sensible tone, and a few minutes later he saw him pass by the window in a tattered coat with his trousers rolled up to his knees and a fishing net over his shoulder.

'A rascal!' said Daddy Eroshka, emptying his 'worldly' tumbler. 'And will you really pay him six rubles? Was such a thing ever heard of? They would let you the best hut in the village for two rubles. What a beast! Why, I'd let you have mine for three!'

'No, I'll remain here,' said Olenin.

'Six rubles!  Clearly it's a fool's money. Eh, eh, eh! answered the old man. 'Let's have some chikhir, Ivan!'

Having had a snack and a drink of vodka to prepare themselves for the road, Olenin and the old man went out together before eight o'clock.

At the gate they came up against a wagon to which a pair of oxen were harnessed. With a white kerchief tied round her head down to her eyes, a coat over her smock, and wearing high boots, Maryanka with a long switch in her hand was dragging the oxen by a cord tied to their horns.

'Mammy,' said the old man, pretending that he was going to seize her.

Maryanka flourished her switch at him and glanced merrily at them both with her beautiful eyes.

Olenin felt still more light-hearted.

'Now then, come on, come on,' he said, throwing his gun on his shoulder and conscious of the girl's eyes upon him.

'Gee up!' sounded Maryanka's voice behind them, followed by the creak of the moving wagon.

As long as their road lay through the pastures at the back of the village Eroshka went on talking. He could not forget the cornet and kept on abusing him.

'Why are you so angry with him?' asked Olenin.

'He's stingy. I don't like it,' answered the old man. 'He'll leave it all behind when he dies! Then who's he saving up for? He's built two houses, and he's got a second garden from his brother by a law-suit. And in the matter of papers what a dog he is! They come to him from other villages to fill up documents. As he writes it out, exactly so it happens. He gets it quite exact. But who is he saving for? He's only got one boy and the girl; when she's married who'll be left?'

'Well then, he's saving up for her dowry,' said Olenin.

'What dowry? The girl is sought after, she's a fine girl. But he's such a devil that he must yet marry her to a rich fellow. He wants to get a big price for her. There's Luke, a Cossack, a neighbour and a nephew of mine, a fine lad. It's he who killed the Chechenhe has been wooing her for a long time, but he hasn't let him have her. He's given one excuse, and another, and a third. "The girl's too young," he says. But I know what he is thinking. He wants to keep them bowing to him. He's been acting shamefully about that girl. Still, they will get her for Lukashka, because he is the best Cossack in the village, a brave, who has killed an abrek and will be rewarded with a cross.'

'But how about this? When I was walking up and down the yard last night, I saw my landlord's daughter and some Cossack kissing,' said Olenin.

'You're pretending!' cried the old man, stopping.

'On my word,' said Olenin.

'Women are the devil,' said Eroshka pondering. 'But what Cossack was it?'

'I couldn't see.'

'Well, what sort of a cap had he, a white one?'

'Yes.'

'And a red coat? About your height?'

'No, a bit taller.'

'It's he!' and Eroshka burst out laughing. 'It's himself, it's Mark. He is Luke, but I call him Mark for a joke. His very self! I love him. I was just such a one myself. What's the good of minding them? My sweetheart used to sleep with her mother and her sister-in-law, but I managed to get in. She used to sleep upstairs; that witch her mother was a regular demon; it's awful how she hated me. Well, I used to come with a chum, Girchik his name was. We'd come under her window and I'd climb on his shoulders, push up the window and begin groping about. She used to sleep just there on a bench. Once I woke her up and she nearly called out. She hadn't recognized me. "Who is there?" she said, and I could not answer. Her mother was even beginning to stir, but I took off my cap and shoved it over her mouth; and she at once knew it by a seam in it, and ran out to me. I used not to want anything then. She'd bring along clotted cream and grapes and everything,' added Eroshka (who always explained things practically), 'and she wasn't the only one. It was a life!'

'And what now?'

'Now we'll follow the dog, get a pheasant to settle on a tree, and then you may fire.'

'Would you have made up to Maryanka?'

'Attend to the dogs. I'll tell you tonight,' said the old man, pointing to his favourite dog, Lyam.

After a pause they continued talking, while they went about a hundred paces. Then the old man stopped again and pointed to a twig that lay across the path.

'What do you think of that?' he said. 'You think it's nothing? It's bad that this stick is lying so.'

'Why is it bad?'

He smiled.

'Ah, you don't know anything. Just listen to me. When a stick lies like that don't you step across it, but go round it or throw it off the path this way, and say "Father and Son and Holy Ghost," and then go on with God's blessing. Nothing will happen to you. That's what the old men used to teach me.'

'Come, what rubbish!' said Olenin. 'You'd better tell me more about
Maryanka. Does she carry on with Lukashka?'
'Hush  be quiet now!' the old man again interrupted in a whisper: 'just listen, we'll go round through the forest.'

And the old man, stepping quietly in his soft shoes, led the way by a narrow path leading into the dense, wild, overgrown forest. Now and again with a frown he turned to look at Olenin, who rustled and clattered with his heavy boots and, carrying his gun carelessly, several times caught the twigs of trees that grew across the path.

'Don't make a noise. Step softly, soldier!' the old man whispered angrily.

There was a feeling in the air that the sun had risen. The mist was dissolving but it still enveloped the tops of the trees. The forest looked terribly high. At every step the aspect changed: what had appeared like a tree proved to be a bush, and a reed looked like a tree.

Chapter XIX
The mist had partly lifted, showing the wet reed thatches, and was now turning into dew that moistened the road and the grass beside the fence. Smoke rose everywhere in clouds from the chimneys. The people were going out of the village, some to their work, some to the river, and some to the cordon. The hunters walked together along the damp, grass-grown path. The dogs, wagging their tails and looking at their masters, ran on both sides of them. Myriads of gnats hovered in the air and pursued the hunters, covering their backs, eyes, and hands. The air was fragrant with the grass and with the dampness of the forest. Olenin continually looked round at the ox-cart in which Maryanka sat urging on the oxen with a long switch.

It was calm. The sounds from the village, audible at first, now no longer reached the sportsmen. Only the brambles cracked as the dogs ran under them, and now and then birds called to one another. Olenin knew that danger lurked in the forest, that abreks always hid in such places. But he knew too that in the forest, for a man on foot, a gun is a great protection. Not that he was afraid, but he felt that another in his place might be; and looking into the damp misty forest and listening to the rare and faint sounds with strained attention, he changed his hold on his gun and experienced a pleasant feeling that was new to him. Daddy Eroshka went in front, stopping and carefully scanning every puddle where an animal had left a double track, and pointing it out to Olenin. He hardly spoke at all and only occasionally made remarks in a whisper. The track they were following had once been made by wagons, but the grass had long overgrown it. The elm and plane-tree forest on both sides of them was so dense and overgrown with creepers that it was impossible to see anything through it. Nearly every tree was enveloped from top to bottom with wild grape vines, and dark bramble bushes covered the ground thickly. Every little glade was overgrown with blackberry bushes and grey feathery reeds. In places, large hoof-prints and small funnel-shaped pheasant-trails led from the path into the thicket. The vigour of the growth of this forest, untrampled by cattle, struck Olenin at every turn, for he had never seen anything like it. This forest, the danger, the old man and his mysterious whispering, Maryanka with her virile upright bearing, and the mountainsall this seemed to him like a dream.

'A pheasant has settled,' whispered the old man, looking round and pulling his cap over his face'Cover your mug! A pheasant!' he waved his arm angrily at Olenin and pushed forward almost on all fours. 'He don't like a man's mug.'

Olenin was still behind him when the old man stopped and began examining a tree. A cock-pheasant on the tree clucked at the dog that was barking at it, and Olenin saw the pheasant; but at that moment a report, as of a cannon, came from Eroshka's enormous gun, the bird fluttered up and, losing some feathers, fell to the ground. Coming up to the old man Olenin disturbed another, and raising his gun he aimed and fired. The pheasant flew swiftly up and then, catching at the branches as he fell, dropped like a stone to the ground.

'Good man!' the old man (who could not hit a flying bird) shouted, laughing.

Having picked up the pheasants they went on. Olenin, excited by the exercise and the praise, kept addressing remarks to the old man.

'Stop! Come this way,' the old man interrupted. 'I noticed the track of deer here yesterday.'

After they had turned into the thicket and gone some three hundred paces they scrambled through into a glade overgrown with reeds and partly under water. Olenin failed to keep up with the old huntsman and presently Daddy Eroshka, some twenty paces in front, stooped down, nodding and beckoning with his arm. On coming up with him Olenin saw a man's footprint to which the old man was pointing.

'D'you see?'

'Yes, well?' said Olenin, trying to speak as calmly as he could. 'A man's footstep!'

Involuntarily a thought of Cooper's Pathfinder and of abreks flashed through Olenin's mind, but noticing the mysterious manner with which the old man moved on, he hesitated to question him and remained in doubt whether this mysteriousness was caused by fear of danger or by the sport.

'No, it's my own footprint,' the old man said quietly, and pointed to some grass under which the track of an animal was just perceptible.

The old man went on; and Olenin kept up with him.

Descending to lower ground some twenty paces farther on they came upon a spreading pear-tree, under which, on the black earth, lay the fresh dung of some animal.

The spot, all covered over with wild vines, was like a cosy arbour, dark and cool.

'He's been here this morning,' said the old man with a sigh; 'the lair is still damp, quite fresh.'

Suddenly they heard a terrible crash in the forest some ten paces from where they stood. They both started and seized their guns, but they could see nothing and only heard the branches breaking. The rhythmical rapid thud of galloping was heard for a moment and then changed into a hollow rumble which resounded farther and farther off, re-echoing in wider and wider circles through the forest. Olenin felt as though something had snapped in his heart. He peered carefully but vainly into the green thicket and then turned to the old man. Daddy Eroshka with his gun pressed to his breast stood motionless; his cap was thrust backwards, his eyes gleamed with an unwonted glow, and his open mouth, with its worn yellow teeth, seemed to have stiffened in that position.

'A homed stag!' he muttered, and throwing down his gun in despair he began pulling at his grey beard, 'Here it stood. We should have come round by the path. Fool! fool!' and he gave his beard an angry tug. Fool! Pig!' he repeated, pulling painfully at his own beard. Through the forest something seemed to fly away in the mist, and ever farther and farther off was heard the sound of the flight of the stag.

It was already dusk when, hungry, tired, but full of vigour, Olenin returned with the old man. Dinner was ready. He ate and drank with the old man till he felt warm and merry. Olenin then went out into the porch. Again, to the west, the mountains rose before his eyes. Again the old man told his endless stories of hunting, of abreks, of sweethearts, and of all that free and reckless life. Again the fair Maryanka went in and out and across the yard, her beautiful powerful form outlined by her smock.

Chapter XX
The next day Olenin went alone to the spot where he and the old man startled the stag. Instead of passing round through the gate he climbed over the prickly hedge, as everybody else did, and before he had had time to pull out the thorns that had caught in his coat, his dog, which had run on in front, started two pheasants. He had hardly stepped among the briers when the pheasants began to rise at every step (the old man had not shown him that place the day before as he meant to keep it for shooting from behind the screen). Olenin fired twelve times and killed five pheasants, but clambering after them through the briers he got so fatigued that he was drenched with perspiration. He called off his dog, uncocked his gun, put in a bullet above the small shot, and brushing away the mosquitoes with the wide sleeve of his Circassian coat he went slowly to the spot where they had been the day before. It was however impossible to keep back the dog, who found trails on the very path, and Olenin killed two more pheasants, so that after being detained by this it was getting towards noon before he began to find the place he was looking for.

The day was perfectly clear, calm, and hot. The morning moisture had dried up even in the forest, and myriads of mosquitoes literally covered his face, his back, and his arms. His dog had turned from black to grey, its back being covered with mosquitoes, and so had Olenin's coat through which the insects thrust their stings. Olenin was ready to run away from them and it seemed to him that it was impossible to live in this country in the summer. He was about to go home, but remembering that other people managed to endure such pain he resolved to bear it and gave himself up to be devoured. And strange to say, by noontime the feeling became actually pleasant. He even felt that without this mosquito-filled atmosphere around him, and that mosquito-paste mingled with perspiration which his hand smeared over his face, and that unceasing irritation all over his body, the forest would lose for him some of its character and charm. These myriads of insects were so well suited to that monstrously lavish wild vegetation, these multitudes of birds and beasts which filled the forest, this dark foliage, this hot scented air, these runlets filled with turbid water which everywhere soaked through from the Terek and gurgled here and there under the overhanging leaves, that the very thing which had at first seemed to him dreadful and intolerable now seemed pleasant. After going round the place where yesterday they had found the animal and not finding anything, he felt inclined to rest. The sun stood right above the forest and poured its perpendicular rays down on his back and head whenever he came out into a glade or onto the road. The seven heavy pheasants dragged painfully at his waist. Having found the traces of yesterday's stag he crept under a bush into the thicket just where the stag had lain, and lay down in its lair. He examined the dark foliage around him, the place marked by the stag's perspiration and yesterday's dung, the imprint of the stag's knees, the bit of black earth it had kicked up, and his own footprints of the day before. He felt cool and comfortable and did not think of or wish for anything. And suddenly he was overcome by such a strange feeling of causeless joy and of love for everything, that from an old habit of his childhood he began crossing himself and thanking someone. Suddenly, with extraordinary clearness, he thought: 'Here am I, Dmitri Olenin, a being quite distinct from every other being, now lying all alone Heaven only knows wherewhere a stag used to livean old stag, a beautiful stag who perhaps had never seen a man, and in a place where no human being has ever sat or thought these thoughts. Here I sit, and around me stand old and young trees, one of them festooned with wild grape vines, and pheasants are fluttering, driving one another about and perhaps scenting their murdered brothers.' He felt his pheasants, examined them, and wiped the warm blood off his hand onto his coat. 'Perhaps the jackals scent them and with dissatisfied faces go off in another direction: above me, flying in among the leaves which to them seem enormous islands, mosquitoes hang in the air and buzz: one, two, three, four, a hundred, a thousand, a million mosquitoes, and all of them buzz something or other and each one of them is separate from all else and is just such a separate Dmitri Olenin as I am myself.' He vividly imagined what the mosquitoes buzzed: 'This way, this way, lads! Here's some one we can eat!' They buzzed and stuck to him. And it was clear to him that he was not a Russian nobleman, a member of Moscow society, the friend and relation of so-and-so and so-and-so, but just such a mosquito, or pheasant, or deer, as those that were now living all around him. 'Just as they, just as Daddy Eroshka, I shall live awhile and die, and as he says truly:

"grass will grow and nothing more".

'But what though the grass does grow?' he continued thinking. 'Still I must live and be happy, because happiness is all I desire. Never mind what I aman animal like all the rest, above whom the grass will grow and nothing more; or a frame in which a bit of the one God has been set,still I must live in the very best way. How then must I live to be happy, and why was I not happy before?' And he began to recall his former life and he felt disgusted with himself. He appeared to himself to have been terribly exacting and selfish, though he now saw that all the while he really needed nothing for himself. And he looked round at the foliage with the light shining through it, at the setting sun and the clear sky, and he felt just as happy as before. 'Why am I happy, and what used I to live for?' thought he. 'How much I exacted for myself; how I schemed and did not manage to gain anything but shame and sorrow! and, there now, I require nothing to be happy;' and suddenly a new light seemed to reveal itself to him. 'Happiness is this!' he said to himself. 'Happiness lies in living for others. That is evident. The desire for happiness is innate in every man; therefore it is legitimate. When trying to satisfy it selfishlythat is, by seeking for oneself riches, fame, comforts, or loveit may happen that circumstances arise which make it impossible to satisfy these desires. It follows that it is these desires that are illegitimate, but not the need for happiness. But what desires can always be satisfied despite external circumstances? What are they? Love, self-sacrifice.' He was so glad and excited when he had discovered this, as it seemed to him, new truth, that he jumped up and began impatiently seeking some one to sacrifice himself for, to do good to and to love. 'Since one wants nothing for oneself,' he kept thinking, 'why not live for others?' He took up his gun with the intention of returning home quickly to think this out and to find an opportunity of doing good. He made his way out of the thicket. When he had come out into the glade he looked around him; the sun was no longer visible above the tree-tops. It had grown cooler and the place seemed to him quite strange and not like the country round the village. Everything seemed changedthe weather and the character of the forest; the sky was wrapped in clouds, the wind was rustling in the tree-tops, and all around nothing was visible but reeds and dying broken-down trees. He called to his dog who had run away to follow some animal, and his voice came back as in a desert. And suddenly he was seized with a terrible sense of weirdness. He grew frightened. He remembered the abreks and the murders he had been told about, and he expected every moment that an abrek would spring from behind every bush and he would have to defend his life and die, or be a coward. He thought of God and of the future life as for long he had not thought about them. And all around was that same gloomy stern wild nature. 'And is it worth while living for oneself,' thought he, 'when at any moment you may die, and die without having done any good, and so that no one will know of it?' He went in the direction where he fancied the village lay. Of his shooting he had no further thought; but he felt tired to death and peered round at every bush and tree with particular attention and almost with terror, expecting every moment to be called to account for his life. After having wandered about for a considerable time he came upon a ditch down which was flowing cold sandy water from the Terek, and, not to go astray any longer, he decided to follow it. He went on without knowing where the ditch would lead him. Suddenly the reeds behind him crackled. He shuddered and seized his gun, and then felt ashamed of himself: the over-excited dog, panting hard, had thrown itself into the cold water of the ditch and was lapping it!

He too had a drink, and then followed the dog in the direction it wished to go, thinking it would lead him to the village. But despite the dog's company everything around him seemed still more dreary. The forest grew darker and the wind grew stronger and stronger in the tops of the broken old trees. Some large birds circled screeching round their nests in those trees. The vegetation grew poorer and he came oftener and oftener upon rustling reeds and bare sandy spaces covered with animal footprints. To the howling of the wind was added another kind of cheerless monotonous roar. Altogether his spirits became gloomy. Putting his hand behind him he felt his pheasants, and found one missing. It had broken off and was lost, and only the bleeding head and beak remained sticking in his belt. He felt more frightened than he had ever done before. He began to pray to God, and feared above all that he might die without having done anything good or kind; and he so wanted to live, and to live so as to perform a feat of self-sacrifice.

Chapter XXI
Suddenly it was as though the sun had shone into his soul. He heard Russian being spoken, and also heard the rapid smooth flow of the Terek, and a few steps farther in front of him saw the brown moving surface of the river, with the dim-coloured wet sand of its banks and shallows, the distant steppe, the cordon watch-tower outlined above the water, a saddled and hobbled horse among the brambles, and then the mountains opening out before him. The red sun appeared for an instant from under a cloud and its last rays glittered brightly along the river over the reeds, on the watch-tower, and on a group of Cossacks, among whom Lukashka's vigorous figure attracted Olenin's involuntary attention.

Olenin felt that he was again, without any apparent cause, perfectly happy. He had come upon the Nizhni-Prototsk post on the Terek, opposite a pro-Russian Tartar village on the other side of the river. He accosted the Cossacks, but not finding as yet any excuse for doing anyone a kindness, he entered the hut; nor in the hut did he find any such opportunity. The Cossacks received him coldly. On entering the mud hut he lit a cigarette. The Cossacks paid little attention to him, first because he was smoking a cigarette, and secondly because they had something else to divert them that evening. Some hostile Chechens, relatives of the abrek who had been killed, had come from the hills with a scout to ransom the body; and the Cossacks were waiting for their Commanding Officer's arrival from the village. The dead man's brother, tall and well shaped with a short cropped beard which was dyed red, despite his very tattered coat and cap was calm and majestic as a king. His face was very like that of the dead abrek. He did not deign to look at anyone, and never once glanced at the dead body, but sitting on his heels in the shade he spat as he smoked his short pipe, and occasionally uttered some few guttural sounds of command, which were respectfully listened to by his companion. He was evidently a brave who had met Russians more than once before in quite other circumstances, and nothing about them could astonish or even interest him. Olenin was about to approach the dead body and had begun to look at it when the brother, looking up at him from under his brows with calm contempt, said something sharply and angrily. The scout hastened to cover the dead man's face with his coat. Olenin was struck by the dignified and stem expression of the brave's face. He began to speak to him, asking from what village he came, but the Chechen, scarcely giving him a glance, spat contemptuously and turned away. Olenin was so surprised at the Chechen not being interested in him that he could only put it down to the man's stupidity or ignorance of Russian; so he turned to the scout, who also acted as interpreter. The scout was as ragged as the other, but instead of being red-haired he was black-haired, restless, with extremely white gleaming teeth and sparkling black eyes. The scout willingly entered into conversation and asked for a cigarette.

'There were five brothers,' began the scout in his broken Russian. 'This is the third brother the Russians have killed, only two are left. He is a brave, a great brave!' he said, pointing to the Chechen. 'When they killed Ahmet Khan (the dead brave) this one was sitting on the opposite bank among the reeds. He saw it all. Saw him laid in the skiff and brought to the bank. He sat there till the night and wished to kill the old man, but the others would not let him.'

Lukashka went up to the speaker, and sat down. 'Of what village?' asked he.

'From there in the hills,' replied the scout, pointing to the misty bluish gorge beyond the Terek. 'Do you know Suuk-su? It is about eight miles beyond that.'

'Do you know Girey Khan in Suuk-su?' asked Lukashka, evidently proud of the acquaintance. 'He is my kunak.'

'He is my neighbour,' answered the scout.

'He's a trump!' and Lukashka, evidently much interested, began talking to the scout in Tartar.

Presently a Cossack captain, with the head of the village, arrived on horseback with a suite of two Cossacks. The captainone of the new type of Cossack officerswished the Cossacks 'Good health,' but no one shouted in reply, 'Hail! Good health to your honour,' as is customary in the Russian Army, and only a few replied with a bow. Some, and among them Lukashka, rose and stood erect. The corporal replied that all was well at the outposts. All this seemed ridiculous: it was as if these Cossacks were playing at being soldiers. But these formalities soon gave place to ordinary ways of behaviour, and the captain, who was a smart Cossack just like the others, began speaking fluently in Tartar to the interpreter. They filled in some document, gave it to the scout, and received from him some money. Then they approached the body.

'Which of you is Luke Gavrilov?' asked the captain.

Lukishka took off his cap and came forward.

'I have reported your exploit to the Commander. I don't know what will come of it. I have recommended you for a cross; you're too young to be made a sergeant. Can you read?'

'I can't.'

'But what a fine fellow to look at!' said the captain, again playing the commander. 'Put on your cap. Which of the Gavrilovs does he come of?  the Broad, eh?'

'His nephew,' replied the corporal.

'I know, I know. Well, lend a hand, help them,' he said, turning to the
Cossacks.
Lukashka's face shone with joy and seemed handsomer than usual. He moved away from the corporal, and having put on his cap sat down beside Olenin.

When the body had been carried to the skiff the brother Chechen descended to the bank. The Cossacks involuntarily stepped aside to let him pass. He jumped into the boat and pushed off from the bank with his powerful leg, and now, as Olenin noticed, for the first time threw a rapid glance at all the Cossacks and then abruptly asked his companion a question. The latter answered something and pointed to Lukashka. The Chechen looked at him and, turning slowly away, gazed at the opposite bank. That look expressed not hatred but cold contempt. He again made some remark.

'What is he saying?' Olenin asked of the fidgety scout.

'Yours kill ours, ours slay yours. It's always the same,' replied the scout, evidently inventing, and he smiled, showing his white teeth, as he jumped into the skiff.

The dead man's brother sat motionless, gazing at the opposite bank. He was so full of hatred and contempt that there was nothing on this side of the river that moved his curiosity. The scout, standing up at one end of the skiff and dipping his paddle now on one side now on the other, steered skilfully while talking incessantly. The skiff became smaller and smaller as it moved obliquely across the stream, the voices became scarcely audible, and at last, still within sight, they landed on the opposite bank where their horses stood waiting. There they lifted out the corpse and (though the horse shied) laid it across one of the saddles, mounted, and rode at a foot-pace along the road past a Tartar village from which a crowd came out to look at them. The Cossacks on the Russian side of the river were highly satisfied and jovial. Laughter and jokes were heard on all sides. The captain and the head of the village entered the mud hut to regale themselves. Lukashka, vainly striving to impart a sedate expression to his merry face, sat down with his elbows on his knees beside Olenin and whittled away at a stick.

'Why do you smoke?' he said with assumed curiosity. 'Is it good?'

He evidently spoke because he noticed Olenin felt ill at ease and isolated among the Cossacks.

'It's just a habit,' answered Olenin. 'Why?'

'H'm, if one of us were to smoke there would be a row! Look there now, the mountains are not far off,' continued Lukashka, 'yet you can't get there! How will you get back alone? It's getting dark. I'll take you, if you like. You ask the corporal to give me leave.'

'What a fine fellow!' thought Olenin, looking at the Cossack's bright face. He remembered Maryanka and the kiss he had heard by the gate, and he was sorry for Lukashka and his want of culture. 'What confusion it is,' he thought. 'A man kills another and is happy and satisfied with himself as if he had done something excellent. Can it be that nothing tells him that it is not a reason for any rejoicing, and that happiness lies not in killing, but in sacrificing oneself?'

'Well, you had better not meet him again now, mate!' said one of the Cossacks who had seen the skiff off, addressing Lukashka. 'Did you hear him asking about you?'

Lukashka raised his head.

'My godson?' said Lukashka, meaning by that word the dead Chechen.

'Your godson won't rise, but the red one is the godson's brother!'

'Let him thank God that he got off whole himself,' replied Lukashka.

'What are you glad about?' asked Olenin. 'Supposing your brother had been killed; would you be glad?'

The Cossack looked at Olenin with laughing eyes. He seemed to have understood all that Olenin wished to say to him, but to be above such considerations.

'Well, that happens too! Don't our fellows get killed sometimes?'

Chapter XXII
The Captain and the head of the village rode away, and Olenin, to please Lukashka as well as to avoid going back alone through the dark forest, asked the corporal to give Lukashka leave, and the corporal did so. Olenin thought that Lukashka wanted to see Maryanka and he was also glad of the companionship of such a pleasant-looking and sociable Cossack. Lukashka and Maryanka he involuntarily united in his mind, and he found pleasure in thinking about them. 'He loves Maryanka,' thought Olenin, 'and I could love her,' and a new and powerful emotion of tenderness overcame him as they walked homewards together through the dark forest. Lukashka too felt happy; something akin to love made itself felt between these two very different young men. Every time they glanced at one another they wanted to laugh.

'By which gate do you enter?' asked Olenin.

'By the middle one. But I'll see you as far as the marsh. After that you have nothing to fear.'

Olenin laughed.

'Do you think I am afraid? Go back, and thank you. I can get on alone.'

'It's all right! What have I to do? And how can you help being afraid? Even we are afraid,' said Lukashka to set Olenin's self-esteem at rest, and he laughed too.

'Then come in with me. We'll have a talk and a drink and in the morning you can go back.'

'Couldn't I find a place to spend the night?' laughed Lukashka. 'But the corporal asked me to go back.'

'I heard you singing last night, and also saw you.'

'Every one' and Luke swayed his head.

'Is it true you are getting married?' asked Olenin.

'Mother wants me to marry. But I have not got a horse yet.'

'Aren't you in the regular service?'

'Oh dear no! I've only just joined, and have not got a horse yet, and don't know how to get one. That's why the marriage does not come off.'

'And what would a horse cost?'

'We were bargaining for one beyond the river the other day and they would not take sixty rubles for it, though it is a Nogay horse.'

'Will you come and be my drabant?' (A drabant was a kind of orderly attached to an officer when campaigning.) 'I'll get it arranged and will give you a horse,' said Olenin suddenly. 'Really now, I have two and I don't want both.'

'Howdon't want it?' Lukashka said, laughing. 'Why should you make me a present? We'll get on by ourselves by God's help.'

'No, really! Or don't you want to be a drabant?' said Olenin, glad that it had entered his head to give a horse to Lukashka, though, without knowing why, he felt uncomfortable and confused and did not know what to say when he tried to speak.

Lukashka was the first to break the silence.

'Have you a house of your own in Russia?' he asked.

Olenin could not refrain from replying that he had not only one, but several houses.

'A good house? Bigger than ours?' asked Lukashka good-naturedly.

'Much bigger; ten times as big and three storeys high,' replied Olenin.

'And have you horses such as ours?'

'I have a hundred horses, worth three or four hundred rubles each, but they are not like yours. They are trotters, you know. But still, I like the horses here best.'

'Well, and did you come here of your own free will, or were you sent?' said Lukashka, laughing at him. 'Look! that's where you lost your way,' he added, 'you should have turned to the right.'

'I came by my own wish,' replied Olenin. 'I wanted to see your parts and to join some expeditions.'

'I would go on an expedition any day,' said Lukashka. 'D'you hear the jackals howling?' he added, listening.

'I say, don't you feel any horror at having killed a man?' asked Olenin.

'What's there to be frightened about? But I should like to join an expedition,' Lukashka repeated. 'How I want to! How I want to!'

'Perhaps we may be going together. Our company is going before the holidays, and your "hundred" too.'

'And what did you want to come here for? You've a house and horses and serfs. In your place I'd do nothing but make merry! And what is your rank?'

'I am a cadet, but have been recommended for a commission.'

'Well, if you're not bragging about your home, if I were you I'd never have left it! Yes, I'd never have gone away anywhere. Do you find it pleasant living among us?'

'Yes, very pleasant,' answered Olenin.

It had grown quite dark before, talking in this way, they approached the village. They were still surrounded by the deep gloom of the forest. The wind howled through the tree-tops. The jackals suddenly seemed to be crying close beside them, howling, chuckling, and sobbing; but ahead of them in the village the sounds of women's voices and the barking of dogs could already be heard; the outlines of the huts were clearly to be seen; lights gleamed and the air was filled with the peculiar smell of kisyak smoke. Olenin felt keenly, that night especially, that here in this village was his home, his family, all his happiness, and that he never had and never would live so happily anywhere as he did in this Cossack village. He was so fond of everybody and especially of Lukashka that night. On reaching home, to Lukashka's great surprise, Olenin with his own hands led out of the shed a horse he had bought in Groznoeit was not the one he usually rode but anothernot a bad horse though no longer young, and gave it to Lukashka.

'Why should you give me a present?' said Lukashka, 'I have not yet done anything for you.'

'Really it is nothing,' answered Olenin. 'Take it, and you will give me a present, and we'll go on an expedition against the enemy together.'

Lukashka became confused.

'But what d'you mean by it? As if a horse were of little value,' he said without looking at the horse.

'Take it, take it! If you don't you will offend me. Vanyusha! Take the grey horse to his house.'

Lukashka took hold of the halter.

'Well then, thank you! This is something unexpected, undreamt of.'

Olenin was as happy as a boy of twelve.

'Tie it up here. It's a good horse. I bought it in Groznoe; it gallops splendidly! Vanyusha, bring us some chikhir. Come into the hut.'

The wine was brought. Lukashka sat down and took the wine-bowl.

'God willing I'll find a way to repay you,' he said, finishing his wine. 'How are you called?'

'Dmitri Andreich.'

'Well, 'Mitry Andreich, God bless you. We will be kunaks. Now you must come to see us. Though we are not rich people still we can treat a kunak, and I will tell mother in case you need anythingclotted cream or grapesand if you come to the cordon I'm your servant to go hunting or to go across the river, anywhere you like! There now, only the other day, what a boar I killed, and I divided it among the Cossacks, but if I had only known, I'd have given it to you.' 'That's all right, thank you! But don't harness the horse, it has never been in harness.'

'Why harness the horse? And there is something else I'll tell you if you like,' said Lukashka, bending his head. 'I have a kunak, Girey Khan. He asked me to lie in ambush by the road where they come down from the mountains. Shall we go together? I'll not betray you. I'll be your murid.'

'Yes, we'll go; we'll go some day.'

Lukashka seemed quite to have quieted down and to have understood Olenin's attitude towards him. His calmness and the ease of his behaviour surprised Olenin, and he did not even quite like it. They talked long, and it was late when Lukashka, not tipsy (he never was tipsy) but having drunk a good deal, left Olenin after shaking hands.

Olenin looked out of the window to see what he would do. Lukashka went out, hanging his head. Then, having led the horse out of the gate, he suddenly shook his head, threw the reins of the halter over its head, sprang onto its back like a cat, gave a wild shout, and galloped down the street. Olenin expected that Lukishka would go to share his joy with Maryanka, but though he did not do so Olenin still felt his soul more at ease than ever before in his life. He was as delighted as a boy, and could not refrain from telling Vanyusha not only that he had given Lukashka the horse, but also why he had done it, as well as his new theory of happiness. Vanyusha did not approve of his theory, and announced that 'l'argent il n'y a pas!' and that therefore it was all nonsense.

Lukashka rode home, jumped off the horse, and handed it over to his mother, telling her to let it out with the communal Cossack herd. He himself had to return to the cordon that same night. His deaf sister undertook to take the horse, and explained by signs that when she saw the man who had given the horse, she would bow down at his feet. The old woman only shook her head at her son's story, and decided in her own mind that he had stolen it. She therefore told the deaf girl to take it to the herd before daybreak.

Lukashka went back alone to the cordon pondering over Olenin's action. Though he did not consider the horse a good one, yet it was worth at least forty rubles and Lukashka was very glad to have the present. But why it had been given him he could not at all understand, and therefore he did not experience the least feeling of gratitude. On the contrary, vague suspicions that the cadet had some evil intentions filled his mind. What those intentions were he could not decide, but neither could he admit the idea that a stranger would give him a horse worth forty rubles for nothing, just out of kindness; it seemed impossible. Had he been drunk one might understand it! He might have wished to show off. But the cadet had been sober, and therefore must have wished to bribe him to do something wrong. 'Eh, humbug!' thought Lukashka. 'Haven't I got the horse and we'll see later on. I'm not a fool myself and we shall see who'll get the better of the other,' he thought, feeling the necessity of being on his guard, and therefore arousing in himself unfriendly feelings towards Olenin. He told no one how he had got the horse. To some he said he had bought it, to others he replied evasively. However, the truth soon got about in the village, and Lukashka's mother and Maryanka, as well as Elias Vasilich and other Cossacks, when they heard of Olenin's unnecessary gift, were perplexed, and began to be on their guard against the cadet. But despite their fears his action aroused in them a great respect for his simplicity and wealth.

'Have you heard,' said one, 'that the cadet quartered on Elias Vasilich has thrown a fifty-ruble horse at Lukashka? He's rich! '

'Yes, I heard of it,' replied another profoundly, 'he must have done him some great service. We shall see what will come of this cadet. Eh! what luck that Snatcher has!'

'Those cadets are crafty, awfully crafty,' said a third. 'See if he don't go setting fire to a building, or doing something!'

Chapter XXIII
Olenin's life went on with monotonous regularity. He had little intercourse with the commanding officers or with his equals. The position of a rich cadet in the Caucasus was peculiarly advantageous in this respect. He was not sent out to work, or for training. As a reward for going on an expedition he was recommended for a commission, and meanwhile he was left in peace. The officers regarded him as an aristocrat and behaved towards him with dignity. Cardplaying and the officers' carousals accompanied by the soldier-singers, of which he had had experience when he was with the detachment, did not seem to him attractive, and he also avoided the society and life of the officers in the village. The life of officers stationed in a Cossack village has long had its own definite form. Just as every cadet or officer when in a fort regularly drinks porter, plays cards, and discusses the rewards given for taking part in the expeditions, so in the Cossack villages he regularly drinks chikhir with his hosts, treats the girls to sweet-meats and honey, dangles after the Cossack women, and falls in love, and occasionally marries there. Olenin always took his own path and had an unconscious objection to the beaten tracks. And here, too, he did not follow the ruts of a Caucasian officer's life.

It came quite naturally to him to wake up at daybreak. After drinking tea and admiring from his porch the mountains, the morning, and Maryanka, he would put on a tattered ox-hide coat, sandals of soaked raw hide, buckle on a dagger, take a gun, put cigarettes and some lunch in a little bag, call his dog, and soon after five o'clock would start for the forest beyond the village. Towards seven in the evening he would return tired and hungry with five or six pheasants hanging from his belt (sometimes with some other animal) and with his bag of food and cigarettes untouched. If the thoughts in his head had lain like the lunch and cigarettes in the bag, one might have seen that during all those fourteen hours not a single thought had moved in it. He returned morally fresh, strong, and perfectly happy, and he could not tell what he had been thinking about all the time. Were they ideas, memories, or dreams that had been flitting through his mind? They were frequently all three. He would rouse himself and ask what he had been thinking about; and would see himself as a Cossack working in a vineyard with his Cossack wife, or an abrek in the mountains, or a boar running away from himself. And all the time he kept peering and watching for a pheasant, a boar, or a deer.

In the evening Daddy Eroshka would be sure to be sitting with him. Vanyusha would bring a jug of chikhir, and they would converse quietly, drink, and separate to go quite contentedly to bed. The next day he would again go shooting, again be healthily weary, again they would sit conversing and drink their fill, and again be happy. Sometimes on a holiday or day of rest Olenin spent the whole day at home. Then his chief occupation was watching Maryanka, whose every movement, without realizing it himself, he followed greedily from his window or his porch. He regarded Maryanka and loved her (so he thought) just as he loved the beauty of the mountains and the sky, and he had no thought of entering into any relations with her. It seemed to him that between him and her such relations as there were between her and the Cossack Lukashka could not exist, and still less such as often existed between rich officers and other Cossack girls. It seemed to him that if he tried to do as his fellow officers did, he would exchange his complete enjoyment of contemplation for an abyss of suffering, disillusionment, and remorse. Besides, he had already achieved a triumph of self-sacrifice in connexion with her which had given him great pleasure, and above all he was in a way afraid of Maryanka and would not for anything have ventured to utter a word of love to her lightly.

Once during the summer, when Olenin had not gone out shooting but was sitting at home, quite unexpectedly a Moscow acquaintance, a very young man whom he had met in society, came in.

'Ah, mon cher, my dear fellow, how glad I was when I heard that you were here!' he began in his Moscow French, and he went on intermingling French words in his remarks. 'They said, "Olenin". What Olenin? and I was so pleased. Fancy fate bringing us together here! Well, and how are you? How? Why?' and Prince Beletski told his whole story: how he had temporarily entered the regiment, how the Commander-in-Chief had offered to take him as an adjutant, and how he would take up the post after this campaign although personally he felt quite indifferent about it.

'Living here in this hole one must at least make a careerget a crossor a rankbe transferred to the Guards. That is quite indispensable, not for myself but for the sake of my relations and friends. The prince received me very well; he is a very decent fellow,' said Beletski, and went on unceasingly. 'I have been recommended for the St. Anna Cross for the expedition. Now I shall stay here a bit until we start on the campaign. It's capital here. What women! Well, and how are you getting on? I was told by our captain, Startsev you know, a kind-hearted stupid creature. Well, he said you were living like an awful savage, seeing no one! I quite understand you don't want to be mixed up with the set of officers we have here. I am so glad now you and I will be able to see something of one another. I have put up at the Cossack corporal's house. There is such a girl there. Ustenka! I tell you she's just charming.'

And more and more French and Russian words came pouring forth from that world which Olenin thought he had left for ever. The general opinion about Beletski was that he was a nice, good-natured fellow. Perhaps he really was; but in spite of his pretty, good-natured face, Olenin thought him extremely unpleasant. He seemed just to exhale that filthiness which Olenin had forsworn. What vexed him most was that he could nothad not the strengthabruptly to repulse this man who came from that world: as if that old world he used to belong to had an irresistible claim on him. Olenin felt angry with Beletski and with himself, yet against his wish he introduced French phrases into his own conversation, was interested in the Commander-in-Chief and in their Moscow acquaintances, and because in this Cossack village he and Beletski both spoke French, he spoke contemptuously of their fellow officers and of the Cossacks, and was friendly with Beletski, promising to visit him and inviting him to drop in to see him. Olenin however did not himself go to see Beletski. Vanyusha for his part approved of Beletski, remarking that he was a real gentleman.

Beletski at once adopted the customary life of a rich officer in a Cossack village. Before Olenin's eyes, in one month he came to be like an old resident of the village; he made the old men drunk, arranged evening parties, and himself went to parties arranged by the girlsbragged of his conquests, and even got so far that, for some unknown reason, the women and girls began calling him grandad, and the Cossacks, to whom a man who loved wine and women was clearly understandable, got used to him and even liked him better than they did Olenin, who was a puzzle to them.

Chapter XXIV
It was five in the morning. Vanyusha was in the porch heating the samovar, and using the leg of a long boot instead of bellows. Olenin had already ridden off to bathe in the Terek. (He had recently invented a new amusement: to swim his horse in the river.) His landlady was in her outhouse, and the dense smoke of the kindling fire rose from the chimney. The girl was milking the buffalo cow in the shed. 'Can't keep quiet, the damned thing!' came her impatient voice, followed by the rhythmical sound of milking.

From the street in front of the house horses' hoofs were heard clattering briskly, and Olenin, riding bareback on a handsome dark-grey horse which was still wet and shining, rode up to the gate. Maryanka's handsome head, tied round with a red kerchief, appeared from the shed and again disappeared. Olenin was wearing a red silk shirt, a white Circassian coat girdled with a strap which carried a dagger, and a tall cap. He sat his well-fed wet horse with a slightly conscious elegance and, holding his gun at his back, stooped to open the gate.

His hair was still wet, and his face shone with youth and health. He thought himself handsome, agile, and like a brave; but he was mistaken. To any experienced Caucasian he was still only a soldier.

When he noticed that the girl had put out her head he stooped with particular smartness, threw open the gate and, tightening the reins, swished his whip and entered the yard. 'Is tea ready, Vanyusha?' he cried gaily, not looking at the door of the shed. He felt with pleasure how his fine horse, pressing down its flanks, pulling at the bridle and with every muscle quivering and with each foot ready to leap over the fence, pranced on the hard clay of the yard. <i>'C'est pret</i>,' answered Vanyusha. Olenin felt as if Maryanka's beautiful head was still looking out of the shed but he did not turn to look at her. As he jumped down from his horse he made an awkward movement and caught his gun against the porch, and turned a frightened look towards the shed, where there was no one to be seen and whence the sound of milking could still be heard.

Soon after he had entered the hut he came out again and sat down with his pipe and a book on the side of the porch which was not yet exposed to the rays of the sun. He meant not to go anywhere before dinner that day, and to write some long-postponed letters; but somehow he felt disinclined to leave his place in the porch, and he was as reluctant to go back into the hut as if it had been a prison. The housewife had heated her oven, and the girl, having driven the cattle, had come back and was collecting <i>kisyak</i> and heaping it up along the fence. Olenin went on reading, but did not understand a word of what was written in the book that lay open before him. He kept lifting his eyes from it and looking at the powerful young woman who was moving about. Whether she stepped into the moist morning shadow thrown by the house, or went out into the middle of the yard lit up by the joyous young light, so that the whole of her stately figure in its bright coloured garment gleamed in the sunshine and cast a black shadowhe always feared to lose any one of her movements. It delighted him to see how freely and gracefully her figure bent: into what folds her only garment, a pink smock, draped itself on her bosom and along her shapely legs; how she drew herself up and her tight-drawn smock showed the outline of her heaving bosom, how the soles of her narrow feet in her worn red slippers rested on the ground without altering their shape; how her strong arms with the sleeves rolled up, exerting the muscles, used the spade almost as if in anger, and how her deep dark eyes sometimes glanced at him. Though the delicate brows frowned, yet her eyes expressed pleasure and a knowledge of her own beauty.

'I say, Olenin, have you been up long?' said Beletski as he entered the yard dressed in the coat of a Caucasian officer.

'Ah, Beletski,' replied Olenin, holding out his hand. 'How is it you are out so early?'

'I had to. I was driven out; we are having a ball tonight. Maryanka, of course you'll come to Ustenka's?' he added, turning to the girl.

Olenin felt surprised that Beletski could address this woman so easily. But Maryanka, as though she had not heard him, bent her head, and throwing the spade across her shoulder went with her firm masculine tread towards the outhouse.

'She's shy, the wench is shy,' Beletski called after her. 'Shy of you,' he added as, smiling gaily, he ran up the steps of the porch.

'How is it you are having a ball and have been driven out?'

'It's at Ustenka's, at my landlady's, that the ball is, and you two are invited. A ball consists of a pie and a gathering of girls.'

'What should we do there?'

Beletski smiled knowingly and winked, jerking his head in the direction of the outhouse into which Maryanka had disappeared.

Olenin shrugged his shoulders and blushed.

'Well, really you are a strange fellow!' said he.

'Come now, don't pretend'

Olenin frowned, and Beletski noticing this smiled insinuatingly. 'Oh, come, what do you mean?' he said, 'living in the same houseand such a fine girl, a splendid girl, a perfect beauty.'

'Wonderfully beautiful! I never saw such a woman before,' replied
Olenin.
'Well then?' said Beletski, quite unable to understand the situation.

'It may be strange,' replied Olenin, 'but why should I not say what is true? Since I have lived here women don't seem to exist for me. And it is so good, really! Now what can there be in common between us and women like these? Eroshkathat's a different matter! He and I have a passion in commonsport.'

'There now! In common! And what have I in common with Amalia Ivanovna? It's the same thing! You may say they're not very cleanthat's another matter A la guerre, comme a la guerre! '

'But I have never known any Amalia Ivanovas, and have never known how to behave with women of that sort,' replied Olenin. 'One cannot respect them, but these I do respect.'

'Well go on respecting them! Who wants to prevent you?'

Olenin did not reply. He evidently wanted to complete what he had begun to say. It was very near his heart.

'I know I am an exception' He was visibly confused. 'But my life has so shaped itself that I not only see no necessity to renounce my rules, but I could not live here, let alone live as happily as I am doing, were I to live as you do. Therefore I look for something quite different from what you look for.'

Beletski raised his eyebrows incredulously. 'Anyhow, come to me this evening; Maryanka will be there and I will make you acquainted. Do come, please! If you feel dull you can go away. Will you come?'

'I would come, but to speak frankly I am afraid of being' seriously carried away.'

'Oh, oh, oh!' shouted Beletski. 'Only come, and I'll see that you aren't. Will you? On your word?'

'I would come, but really I don't understand what we shall do; what part we shall play!'

'Please, I beg of you. You will come?'

'Yes, perhaps I'll come,' said Olenin.

'Really now! Charming women such as one sees nowhere else, and to live like a monk! What an idea! Why spoil your life and not make use of what is at hand? Have you heard that our company is ordered to Vozdvizhensk?'

'Hardly. I was told the 8th Company would be sent there,' said Olenin.

'No. I have had a letter from the adjutant there. He writes that the Prince himself will take part in the campaign. I am very glad I shall see something of him. I'm beginning to get tired of this place.'

'I hear we shall start on a raid soon.'

'I have not heard of it; but I have heard that Krinovitsin has received the Order of St. Anna for a raid. He expected a lieutenancy,' said Beletski laughing. 'He was let in! He has set off for headquarters.'

It was growing dusk and Olenin began thinking about the party. The invitation he had received worried him. He felt inclined to go, but what might take place there seemed strange, absurd, and even rather alarming. He knew that neither Cossack men nor older women, nor anyone besides the girls, were to be there. What was going to happen? How was he to behave? What would they talk about? What connexion was there between him and those wild Cossack girls? Beletski had told him of such curious, cynical, and yet rigid relations. It seemed strange to think that he would be there in the same hut with Maryanka and perhaps might have to talk to her. It seemed to him impossible when he remembered her majestic bearing. But Beletski spoke of it as if it were all perfectly simple. 'Is it possible that Beletski will treat Maryanka in the same way? That is interesting,' thought he. 'No, better not go. It's all so horrid, so vulgar, and above allit leads to nothing!' But again he was worried by the question of what would take place; and besides he felt as if bound by a promise. He went out without having made up his mind one way or the other, but he walked as far as Beletski's, and went in there.

The hut in which Beletski lived was like Olenin's. It was raised nearly five feet from the ground on wooden piles, and had two rooms. In the first (which Olenin entered by the steep flight of steps) feather beds, rugs, blankets, and cushions were tastefully and handsomely arranged, Cossack fashion, along the main wall. On the side wall hung brass basins and weapons, while on the floor, under a bench, lay watermelons and pumpkins. In the second room there was a big brick oven, a table, and sectarian icons. It was here that Beletski was quartered, with his camp-bed and his pack and trunks. His weapons hung on the wall with a little rug behind them, and on the table were his toilet appliances and some portraits. A silk dressing-gown had been thrown on the bench. Beletski himself, clean and good-looking, lay on the bed in his underclothing, reading Les Trois Mousquetaires.

He jumped up.

'There, you see how I have arranged things. Fine! Well, it's good that you have come. They are working furiously. Do you know what the pie is made of? Dough with a stuffing of pork and grapes. But that's not the point. You just look at the commotion out there!'

And really, on looking out of the window they saw an unusual bustle going on in the hut. Girls ran in and out, now for one thing and now for another.

'Will it soon be ready?' cried Beletski.

'Very soon! Why? Is Grandad hungry?' and from the hut came the sound of ringing laughter.

Ustenka, plump, small, rosy, and pretty, with her sleeves turned up, ran into Beletski's hut to fetch some plates.

'Get away or I shall smash the plates!' she squeaked, escaping from
Beletski. 'You'd better come and help,' she shouted to Olenin,
laughing. 'And don't forget to get some refreshments for the girls.'
('Refreshments' meaning spicebread and sweets.)
'And has Maryanka come?'

'Of course! She brought some dough.'

'Do you know,' said Beletski, 'if one were to dress Ustenka up and clean and polish her up a bit, she'd be better than all our beauties. Have you ever seen that Cossack woman who married a colonel; she was charming! Borsheva? What dignity! Where do they get it'

'I have not seen Borsheva, but I think nothing could be better than the costume they wear here.'

'Ah, I'm first-rate at fitting into any kind of life,' said Beletski with a sigh of pleasure. 'I'll go and see what they are up to.'

He threw his dressing-gown over his shoulders and ran out, shouting,
'And you look after the "refreshments".'
Olenin sent Beletski's orderly to buy spice-bread and honey; but it suddenly seemed to him so disgusting to give money (as if he were bribing someone) that he gave no definite reply to the orderly's question: 'How much spice-bread with peppermint, and how much with honey?'

'Just as you please.'

'Shall I spend all the money,' asked the old soldier impressively. 'The peppermint is dearer. It's sixteen kopeks.'

'Yes, yes, spend it all,' answered Olenin and sat down by the window, surprised that his heart was thumping as if he were preparing himself for something serious and wicked.

He heard screaming and shrieking in the girls' hut when Beletski went there, and a few moments later saw how he jumped out and ran down the steps, accompanied by shrieks, bustle, and laughter.

'Turned out,' he said.

A little later Ustenka entered and solemnly invited her visitors to come in: announcing that all was ready.

When they came into the room they saw that everything was really ready. Ustenka was rearranging the cushions along the wall. On the table, which was covered by a disproportionately small cloth, was a decanter of chikhir and some dried fish. The room smelt of dough and grapes. Some half dozen girls in smart tunics, with their heads not covered as usual with kerchiefs, were huddled together in a corner behind the oven, whispering, giggling, and spluttering with laughter.

'I humbly beg you to do honour to my patron saint,' said Ustenka, inviting her guests to the table.

Olenin noticed Maryanka among the group of girls, who without exception were all handsome, and he felt vexed and hurt that he met her in such vulgar and awkward circumstances. He felt stupid and awkward, and made up his mind to do what Beletski did. Beletski stepped to the table somewhat solemnly yet with confidence and ease, drank a glass of wine to Ustenka's health, and invited the others to do the same. Ustenka announced that girls don't drink. 'We might with a little honey,' exclaimed a voice from among the group of girls. The orderly, who had just returned with the honey and spice-cakes, was called in. He looked askance (whether with envy or with contempt) at the gentlemen, who in his opinion were on the spree; and carefully and conscientiously handed over to them a piece of honeycomb and the cakes wrapped up in a piece of greyish paper, and began explaining circumstantially all about the price and the change, but Beletski sent him away. Having mixed honey with wine in the glasses, and having lavishly scattered the three pounds of spice-cakes on the table, Beletski dragged the girls from their corners by force, made them sit down at the table, and began distributing the cakes among them. Olenin involuntarily noticed how Maryanka's sunburnt but small hand closed on two round peppermint nuts and one brown one, and that she did not know what to do with them. The conversation was halting and constrained, in spite of Ustenka's and Beletski's free and easy manner and their wish to enliven the company. Olenin faltered, and tried to think of something to say, feeling that he was exciting curiosity and perhaps provoking ridicule and infecting the others with his shyness. He blushed, and it seemed to him that Maryanka in particular was feeling uncomfortable. 'Most likely they are expecting us to give them some money,' thought he. 'How are we to do it? And how can we manage quickest to give it and get away?'

Chapter XXV
'How is it you don't know your own lodger?' said Beletski, addressing
Maryanka.
'How is one to know him if he never comes to see us?' answered
Maryanka, with a look at Olenin.
Olenin felt frightened, he did not know of what. He flushed and, hardly knowing what he was saying, remarked: 'I'm afraid of your mother. She gave me such a scolding the first time I went in.'

Maryanka burst out laughing. 'And so you were frightened?' she said, and glanced at him and turned away.

It was the first time Olenin had seen the whole of her beautiful face. Till then he had seen her with her kerchief covering her to the eyes. It was not for nothing that she was reckoned the beauty of the village. Ustenka was a pretty girl, small, plump, rosy, with merry brown eyes, and red lips which were perpetually smiling and chattering. Maryanka on the contrary was certainly not pretty but beautiful. Her features might have been considered too masculine and almost harsh had it not been for her tall stately figure, her powerful chest and shoulders, and especially the severe yet tender expression of her long dark eyes which were darkly shadowed beneath their black brows, and for the gentle expression of her mouth and smile. She rarely smiled, but her smile was always striking. She seemed to radiate virginal strength and health. All the girls were good-looking, but they themselves and Beletski, and the orderly when he brought in the spice-cakes, all involuntarily gazed at Maryanka, and anyone addressing the girls was sure to address her. She seemed a proud and happy queen among them.

Beletski, trying to keep up the spirit of the party, chattered incessantly, made the girls hand round chikhir, fooled about with them, and kept making improper remarks in French about Maryanka's beauty to Olenin, calling her 'yours' (la votre), and advising him to behave as he did himself. Olenin felt more and more uncomfortable. He was devising an excuse to get out and run away when Beletski announced that Ustenka, whose saint's day it was, must offer chikhir to everybody with a kiss. She consented on condition that they should put money on her plate, as is the custom at weddings.

'What fiend brought me to this disgusting feast?' thought Olenin, rising to go away.

'Where are you off to?'

'I'll fetch some tobacco,' he said, meaning to escape, but Beletski seized his hand.

'I have some money,' he said to him in French.

'One can't go away, one has to pay here,' thought Olenin bitterly, vexed at his own awkwardness. 'Can't I really behave like Beletski? I ought not to have come, but once I am here I must not spoil their fun. I must drink like a Cossack,' and taking the wooden bowl (holding about eight tumblers) he almost filled it with chikhir and drank it almost all. The girls looked at him, surprised and almost frightened, as he drank. It seemed to them strange and not right. Ustenka brought them another glass each, and kissed them both. 'There girls, now we'll have some fun,' she said, clinking on the plate the four rubles the men had put there.

Olenin no longer felt awkward, but became talkative.

'Now, Maryanka, it's your turn to offer us wine and a kiss,' said
Beletski, seizing her hand.
'Yes, I'll give you such a kiss!' she said playfully, preparing to strike at him.

'One can kiss Grandad without payment,' said another girl.

'There's a sensible girl,' said Beletski, kissing the struggling girl. 'No, you must offer it,' he insisted, addressing Maryanka. 'Offer a glass to your lodger.'

And taking her by the hand he led her to the bench and sat her down beside Olenin.

'What a beauty,' he said, turning her head to see it in profile.

Maryanka did not resist but proudly smiling turned her long eyes towards Olenin.

'A beautiful girl,' repeated Beletski.

'Yes, see what a beauty I am,' Maryanka's look seemed to endorse. Without considering what he was doing Olenin embraced Maryanka and was going to kiss her, but she suddenly extricated herself, upsetting Beletski and pushing the top off the table, and sprang away towards the oven. There was much shouting and laughter. Then Beletski whispered something to the girls and suddenly they all ran out into the passage and locked the door behind them.

'Why did you kiss Beletski and won't kiss me?' asked Olenin.

'Oh, just so. I don't want to, that's all!' she answered, pouting and frowning. 'He's Grandad,' she added with a smile. She went to the door and began to bang at it. 'Why have you locked the door, you devils?'

'Well, let them be there and us here,' said Olenin, drawing closer to her.

She frowned, and sternly pushed him away with her hand. And again she appeared so majestically handsome to Olenin that he came to his senses and felt ashamed of what he was doing. He went to the door and began pulling at it himself.

'Beletski! Open the door! What a stupid joke!'

Maryanka again gave a bright happy laugh. 'Ah, you're afraid of me?' she said.

'Yes, you know you're as cross as your mother.'

'Spend more of your time with Eroshka; that will make the girls love you!' And she smiled, looking straight and close into his eyes.

He did not know what to reply. 'And if I were to come to see you' he let fall.

'That would be a different matter,' she replied, tossing her head.

At that moment Beletski pushed the door open, and Maryanka sprang away from Olenin and in doing so her thigh struck his leg.

'It's all nonsense what I have been thinking aboutlove and self-sacrifice and Lukashka. Happiness is the one thing. He who is happy is right,' flashed through Olenin's mind, and with a strength unexpected to himself he seized and kissed the beautiful Maryanka on her temple and her cheek. Maryanka was not angry, but only burst into a loud laugh and ran out to the other girls.

That was the end of the party. Ustenka's mother, returned from her work, gave all the girls a scolding, and turned them all out.

Chapter XXVI
'Yes,' thought Olenin, as he walked home. 'I need only slacken the reins a bit and I might fall desperately in love with this Cossack girl.' He went to bed with these thoughts, but expected it all to blow over and that he would continue to live as before.

But the old life did not return. His relations to Maryanka were changed. The wall that had separated them was broken down. Olenin now greeted her every time they met.

The master of the house having returned to collect the rent, on hearing of Olenin's wealth and generosity invited him to his hut. The old woman received him kindly, and from the day of the party onwards Olenin often went in of an evening and sat with them till late at night. He seemed to be living in the village just as he used to, but within him everything had changed. He spent his days in the forest, and towards eight o'clock, when it began to grow dusk, he would go to see his hosts, alone or with Daddy Eroshka. They grew so used to him that they were surprised when he stayed away. He paid well for his wine and was a quiet fellow. Vanyusha would bring him his tea and he would sit down in a corner near the oven. The old woman did not mind him but went on with her work, and over their tea or their chikhir they talked about Cossack affairs, about the neighbours, or about Russia: Olenin relating and the others inquiring. Sometimes he brought a book and read to himself. Maryanka crouched like a wild goat with her feet drawn up under her, sometimes on the top of the oven, sometimes in a dark corner. She did not take part in the conversations, but Olenin saw her eyes and face and heard her moving or cracking sunflower seeds, and he felt that she listened with her whole being when he spoke, and was aware of his presence while he silently read to himself. Sometimes he thought her eyes were fixed on him, and meeting their radiance he involuntarily became silent and gazed at her. Then she would instantly hide her face and he would pretend to be deep in conversation with the old woman, while he listened all the time to her breathing and to her every movement and waited for her to look at him again. In the presence of others she was generally bright and friendly with him, but when they were alone together she was shy and rough. Sometimes he came in before Maryanka had returned home. Suddenly he would hear her firm footsteps and catch a glimmer of her blue cotton smock at the open door. Then she would step into the middle of the hut, catch sight of him, and her eyes would give a scarcely perceptible kindly smile, and he would feel happy and frightened.

He neither sought for nor wished for anything from her, but every day her presence became more and more necessary to him.

Olenin had entered into the life of the Cossack village so fully that his past seemed quite foreign to him. As to the future, especially a future outside the world in which he was now living, it did not interest him at all. When he received letters from home, from relatives and friends, he was offended by the evident distress with which they regarded him as a lost man, while he in his village considered those as lost who did not live as he was living. He felt sure he would never repent of having broken away from his former surroundings and of having settled down in this village to such a solitary and original life. When out on expeditions, and when quartered at one of the forts, he felt happy too; but it was here, from under Daddy Eroshka's wing, from the forest and from his hut at the end of the village, and especially when he thought of Maryanka and Lukashka, that he seemed to see the falseness of his former life. That falseness used to rouse his indignation even before, but now it seemed inexpressibly vile and ridiculous. Here he felt freer and freer every day and more and more of a man. The Caucasus now appeared entirely different to what his imagination had painted it. He had found nothing at all like his dreams, nor like the descriptions of the Caucasus he had heard and read. 'There are none of all those chestnut steeds, precipices, Amalet Beks, heroes or villains,' thought he. 'The people live as nature lives: they die, are born, unite, and more are bornthey fight, eat and drink, rejoice and die, without any restrictions but those that nature imposes on sun and grass, on animal and tree. They have no other laws.' Therefore these people, compared to himself, appeared to him beautiful, strong, and free, and the sight of them made him feel ashamed and sorry for himself. Often it seriously occurred to him to throw up everything, to get registered as a Cossack, to buy a hut and cattle and marry a Cossack woman (only not Maryanka, whom he conceded to Lukashka), and to live with Daddy Eroshka and go shooting and fishing with him, and go with the Cossacks on their expeditions. 'Why ever don't I do it? What am I waiting for?' he asked himself, and he egged himself on and shamed himself. 'Am I afraid of doing what I hold to be reasonable and right? Is the wish to be a simple Cossack, to live close to nature, not to injure anyone but even to do good to others, more stupid than my former dreams, such as those of becoming a minister of state or a colonel?' but a voice seemed to say that he should wait, and not take any decision. He was held back by a dim consciousness that he could not live altogether like Eroshka and Lukashka because he had a different idea of happinesshe was held back by the thought that happiness lies in self-sacrifice. What he had done for Lukashka continued to give him joy. He kept looking for occasions to sacrifice himself for others, but did not meet with them. Sometimes he forgot this newly discovered recipe for happiness and considered himself capable of identifying his life with Daddy Eroshka's, but then he quickly bethought himself and promptly clutched at the idea of conscious self-sacrifice, and from that basis looked calmly and proudly at all men and at their happiness.

Chapter XXVII
Just before the vintage Lukashka came on horseback to see Olenin. He looked more dashing than ever. 'Well? Are you getting married?' asked Olenin, greeting him merrily.

Lukashka gave no direct reply.

'There, I've exchanged your horse across the river. This is a horse! A
Kabarda horse from the Lov stud. I know horses.'
They examined the new horse and made him caracole about the yard. The horse really was an exceptionally fine one, a broad and long gelding, with glossy coat, thick silky tail, and the soft fine mane and crest of a thoroughbred. He was so well fed that 'you might go to sleep on his back' as Lukashka expressed it. His hoofs, eyes, teeth, were exquisitely shaped and sharply outlined, as one only finds them in very pure-bred horses. Olenin could not help admiring the horse, he had not yet met with such a beauty in the Caucasus.

'And how it goes!' said Lukashka, patting its neck. 'What a step! And so cleverhe simply runs after his master.'

'Did you have to add much to make the exchange?' asked Olenin.

'I did not count it,' answered Lukashka with a smile. 'I got him from a kunak.'

'A wonderfully beautiful horse! What would you take for it?' asked
Olenin.
'I have been offered a hundred and fifty rubles for it, but I'll give it you for nothing,' said Lukashka, merrily. 'Only say the word and it's yours. I'll unsaddle it and you may take it. Only give me some sort of a horse for my duties.'

'No, on no account.'

'Well then, here is a dagger I've brought you,' said Lukashka, unfastening his girdle and taking out one of the two daggers which hung from it. 'I got it from across the river.'

'Oh, thank you!'

'And mother has promised to bring you some grapes herself.'

'That's quite unnecessary. We'll balance up some day. You see I don't offer you any money for the dagger!'

'How could you? We are kunaks. It's just the same as when Girey Khan across the river took me into his home and said,

"Choose what you like!" So I took this sword. It's our custom.'

They went into the hut and had a drink.

'Are you staying here awhile?' asked Olenin.

'No, I have come to say good-bye. They are sending me from the cordon to a company beyond the Terek. I am going to-night with my comrade Nazarka.'

'And when is the wedding to be?'

'I shall be coming back for the betrothal, and then I shall return to the company again,' Lukashka replied reluctantly.

'What, and see nothing of your betrothed?'

'Just sowhat is the good of looking at her? When you go on campaign ask in our company for Lukashka the Broad. But what a lot of boars there are in our parts! I've killed two. I'll take you.' 'Well, good-bye! Christ save you.'

Lukashka mounted his horse, and without calling on Maryanka, rode caracoling down the street, where Nazarka was already awaiting him.

'I say, shan't we call round?' asked Nazarka, winking in the direction of Yamka's house.

'That's a good one!' said Lukashka. 'Here, take my horse to her and if I don't come soon give him some hay. I shall reach the company by the morning anyway.'

'Hasn't the cadet given you anything more?'

'I am thankful to have paid him back with a daggerhe was going to ask for the horse,' said Lukashka, dismounting and handing over the horse to Nazarka.

He darted into the yard past Olenin's very window, and came up to the window of the cornet's hut. It was already quite dark. Maryanka, wearing only her smock, was combing her hair preparing for bed.

'It's I' whispered the Cossack.

Maryanka's look was severely indifferent, but her face suddenly brightened up when she heard her name. She opened the window and leant out, frightened and joyous.

'Whatwhat do you want?' she said.

'Open!' uttered Lukashka. 'Let me in for a minute. I am so sick of waiting! It's awful!'

He took hold of her head through the window and kissed her.

'Really, do open!'

'Why do you talk nonsense? I've told you I won't! Have you come for long?'

He did not answer but went on kissing her, and she did not ask again.

'There, through the window one can't even hug you properly,' said
Lukashka.
'Maryanka dear!' came the voice of her mother, 'who is that with you?'

Lukashka took off his cap, which might have been seen, and crouched down by the window.

'Go, be quick!' whispered Maryanka.

'Lukashka called round,' she answered; 'he was asking for Daddy.'

'Well then send him here!'

'He's gone; said he was in a hurry.'

In fact, Lukashka, stooping, as with big strides he passed under the windows, ran out through the yard and towards Yamka's house unseen by anyone but Olenin. After drinking two bowls of chikhir he and Nazarka rode away to the outpost. The night was warm, dark, and calm. They rode in silence, only the footfall of their horses was heard. Lukashka started a song about the Cossack, Mingal, but stopped before he had finished the first verse, and after a pause, turning to Nazarka, said:

'I say, she wouldn't let me in!'

'Oh?' rejoined Nazarka. 'I knew she wouldn't. D'you know what Yamka told me? The cadet has begun going to their house. Daddy Eroshka brags that he got a gun from the cadet for getting him Maryanka.'

'He lies, the old devil!' said Lukashka, angrily. 'She's not such a girl. If he does not look out I'll wallop that old devil's sides,' and he began his favourite song:

'From the village of Izmaylov,
  From the master's favourite garden,
  Once escaped a keen-eyed falcon.
 Soon after him a huntsman came a-riding,
  And he beckoned to the falcon that had strayed,
  But the bright-eyed bird thus answered:
 "In gold cage you could not keep me,
 On your hand you could not hold me,
  So now I fly to blue seas far away.
 There a white swan I will kill,
 Of sweet swan-flesh have my fill."'
Chapter XXVIII
The bethrothal was taking place in the cornet's hut. Lukashka had returned to the village, but had not been to see Olenin, and Olenin had not gone to the betrothal though he had been invited. He was sad as he had never been since he settled in this Cossack village. He had seen Lukashka earlier in the evening and was worried by the question why Lukashka was so cold towards him. Olenin shut himself up in his hut and began writing in his diary as follows:

'Many things have I pondered over lately and much have I changed,' wrote he, 'and I have come back to the copybook maxim: The one way to be happy is to love, to love self-denyingly, to love everybody and everything; to spread a web of love on all sides and to take all who come into it. In this way I caught Vanyusha, Daddy Eroshka, Lukashka, and Maryanka.'

As Olenin was finishing this sentence Daddy Eroshka entered the room.

Eroshka was in the happiest frame of mind. A few evenings before this, Olenin had gone to see him and had found him with a proud and happy face deftly skinning the carcass of a boar with a small knife in the yard. The dogs (Lyam his pet among them) were lying close by watching what he was doing and gently wagging their tails. The little boys were respectfully looking at him through the fence and not even teasing him as was their wont. His women neighbours, who were as a rule not too gracious towards him, greeted him and brought him, one a jug of chikhir, another some clotted cream, and a third a little flour. The next day Eroshka sat in his store-room all covered with blood, and distributed pounds of boar-flesh, taking in payment money from some and wine from others. His face clearly expressed, 'God has sent me luck. I have killed a boar, so now I am wanted.' Consequently, he naturally began to drink, and had gone on for four days never leaving the village. Besides which he had had something to drink at the betrothal.

He came to Olenin quite drunk: his face red, his beard tangled, but wearing a new beshmet trimmed with gold braid; and he brought with him a balalayka which he had obtained beyond the river. He had long promised Olenin this treat, and felt in the mood for it, so that he was sorry to find Olenin writing.

'Write on, write on, my lad,' he whispered, as if he thought that a spirit sat between him and the paper and must not be frightened away, and he softly and silently sat down on the floor. When Daddy Eroshka was drunk his favourite position was on the floor. Olenin looked round, ordered some wine to be brought, and continued to write. Eroshka found it dull to drink by himself and he wished to talk.

'I've been to the betrothal at the cornet's. But there! They're shwine!Don't want them!Have come to you.'

'And where did you get your balalayka asked Olenin, still writing.

'I've been beyond the river and got it there, brother mine,' he answered, also very quietly. 'I'm a master at it. Tartar or Cossack, squire or soldiers' songs, any kind you please.'

Olenin looked at him again, smiled, and went on writing.

That smile emboldened the old man.

'Come, leave off, my lad, leave off!' he said with sudden firmness.

'Well, perhaps I will.'

'Come, people have injured you but leave them alone, spit at them!
Come, what's the use of writing and writing, what's the good?'
And he tried to mimic Olenin by tapping the floor with his thick fingers, and then twisted his big face to express contempt.

'What's the good of writing quibbles. Better have a spree and show you're a man!'

No other conception of writing found place in his head except that of legal chicanery.

Olenin burst out laughing and so did Eroshka. Then, jumping up from the floor, the latter began to show off his skill on the balalayka and to sing Tartar songs.

'Why write, my good fellow! You'd better listen to what I'll sing to you. When you're dead you won't hear any more songs. Make merry now!'

First he sang a song of his own composing accompanied by a dance:

'Ah, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dim, Say where did they last see him? In a booth, at the fair, He was selling pins, there.'

Then he sang a song he had learnt from his former sergeant-major:

'Deep I fell in love on Monday, Tuesday nothing did but sigh, Wednesday I popped the question, Thursday waited her reply. Friday, late, it came at last, Then all hope for me was past! Saturday my life to take I determined like a man, But for my salvation's sake Sunday morning changed my plan!'

Then he sang again:

'Oh dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dim, Say where did they last see him?'

And after that, winking, twitching his shoulders, and footing it to the tune, he sang:

'I will kiss you and embrace, Ribbons red twine round you; And I'll call you little Grace. Oh, you little Grace now do Tell me, do you love me true?'

And he became so excited that with a sudden dashing movement he started dancing around the room accompanying himself the while.

Songs like 'Dee, dee, dee''gentlemen's songs'he sang for Olenin's benefit, but after drinking three more tumblers of chikhir he remembered old times and began singing real Cossack and Tartar songs. In the midst of one of his favourite songs his voice suddenly trembled and he ceased singing, and only continued strumming on the balalayka.

'Oh, my dear friend!' he said.

The peculiar sound of his voice made Olenin look round.

The old man was weeping. Tears stood in his eyes and one tear was running down his cheek.

'You are gone, my young days, and will never come back!' he said, blubbering and halting. 'Drink, why don't you drink!' he suddenly shouted with a deafening roar, without wiping away his tears.

There was one Tartar song that specially moved him. It had few words, but its charm lay in the sad refrain. 'Ay day, dalalay!' Eroshka translated the words of the song: 'A youth drove his sheep from the aoul to the mountains: the Russians came and burnt the aoul, they killed all the men and took all the women into bondage. The youth returned from the mountains. Where the aoul had stood was an empty space; his mother not there, nor his brothers, nor his house; one tree alone was left standing. The youth sat beneath the tree and wept. "Alone like thee, alone am I left,'" and Eroshka began singing: 'Ay day, dalalay!' and the old man repeated several times this wailing, heart-rending refrain.

When he had finished the refrain Eroshka suddenly seized a gun that hung on the wall, rushed hurriedly out into the yard and fired off both barrels into the air. Then again he began, more dolefully, his 'Ay day, dalalayah, ah,' and ceased.

Olenin followed him into the porch and looked up into the starry sky in the direction where the shots had flashed. In the cornet's house there were lights and the sound of voices. In the yard girls were crowding round the porch and the windows, and running backwards and forwards between the hut and the outhouse. Some Cossacks rushed out of the hut and could not refrain from shouting, re-echoing the refrain of Daddy Eroshka's song and his shots.

'Why are you not at the betrothal?' asked Olenin.

'Never mind them! Never mind them!' muttered the old man, who had evidently been offended by something there. 'Don't like them, I don't. Oh, those people! Come back into the hut! Let them make merry by themselves and we'll make merry by ourselves.'

Olenin went in.

'And Lukashka, is he happy? Won't he come to see me?' he asked.

'What, Lukashka? They've lied to him and said I am getting his girl for you,' whispered the old man. 'But what's the girl? She will be ours if we want her. Give enough moneyand she's ours. I'll fix it up for you. Really!'

'No, Daddy, money can do nothing if she does not love me. You'd better not talk like that!'

'We are not loved, you and I. We are forlorn,' said Daddy Eroshka suddenly, and again he began to cry.

Listening to the old man's talk Olenin had drunk more than usual. 'So now my Lukashka is happy,' thought he; yet he felt sad. The old man had drunk so much that evening that he fell down on the floor and Vanyusha had to call soldiers in to help, and spat as they dragged the old man out. He was so angry with the old man for his bad behaviour that he did not even say a single French word.

Chapter XXIX
It was August. For days the sky had been cloudless, the sun scorched unbearably and from early morning the warm wind raised a whirl of hot sand from the sand-drifts and from the road, and bore it in the air through the reeds, the trees, and the village. The grass and the leaves on the trees were covered with dust, the roads and dried-up salt marshes were baked so hard that they rang when trodden on. The water had long since subsided in the Terek and rapidly vanished and dried up in the ditches. The slimy banks of the pond near the village were trodden bare by the cattle and all day long you could hear the splashing of water and the shouting of girls and boys bathing. The sand-drifts and the reeds were already drying up in the steppes, and the cattle, lowing, ran into the fields in the day-time. The boars migrated into the distant reed-beds and to the hills beyond the Terek. Mosquitoes and gnats swarmed in thick clouds over the low lands and villages. The snow-peaks were hidden in grey mist. The air was rarefied and smoky. It was said that abreks had crossed the now shallow river and were prowling on this side of it. Every night the sun set in a glowing red blaze. It was the busiest time of the year. The villagers all swarmed in the melon-fields and the vineyards. The vineyards thickly overgrown with twining verdure lay in cool, deep shade. Everywhere between the broad translucent leaves, ripe, heavy, black clusters peeped out. Along the dusty road from the vineyards the creaking carts moved slowly, heaped up with black grapes. Clusters of them, crushed by the wheels, lay in the dirt. Boys and girls in smocks stained with grape-juice, with grapes in their hands and mouths, ran after their mothers. On the road you continually came across tattered labourers with baskets of grapes on their powerful shoulders; Cossack maidens, veiled with kerchiefs to their eyes, drove bullocks harnessed to carts laden high with grapes. Soldiers who happened to meet these carts asked for grapes, and the maidens, clambering up without stopping their carts, would take an armful of grapes and drop them into the skirts of the soldiers' coats. In some homesteads they had already begun pressing the grapes; and the smell of the emptied skins filled the air. One saw the blood-red troughs in the pent-houses in the yards and Nogay labourers with their trousers rolled up and their legs stained with the juice. Grunting pigs gorged themselves with the empty skins and rolled about in them. The flat roofs of the outhouses were all spread over with the dark amber clusters drying in the sun. Daws and magpies crowded round the roofs, picking the seeds and fluttering from one place to another.

The fruits of the year's labour were being merrily gathered in, and this year the fruit was unusually fine and plentiful.

In the shady green vineyards amid a sea of vines, laughter, songs, merriment, and the voices of women were to be heard on all sides, and glimpses of their bright-coloured garments could be seen.

Just at noon Maryanka was sitting in their vineyard in the shade of a peach-tree, getting out the family dinner from under an unharnessed cart. Opposite her, on a spread-out horse-cloth, sat the cornet (who had returned from the school) washing his hands by pouring water on them from a little jug. Her little brother, who had just come straight out of the pond, stood wiping his face with his wide sleeves, and gazed anxiously at his sister and his mother and breathed deeply, awaiting his dinner. The old mother, with her sleeves rolled up over her strong sunburnt arms, was arranging grapes, dried fish, and clotted cream on a little low, circular Tartar table. The cornet wiped his hands, took off his cap, crossed himself, and moved nearer to the table. The boy seized the jug and eagerly began to drink. The mother and daughter crossed their legs under them and sat down by the table. Even in the shade it was intolerably hot. The air above the vineyard smelt unpleasant: the strong warm wind passing amid the branches brought no coolness, but only monotonously bent the tops of the pear, peach, and mulberry trees with which the vineyard was sprinkled. The cornet, having crossed himself once more, took a little jug of <i>chikhir</i> that stood behind him covered with a vine-leaf, and having had a drink from the mouth of the jug passed it to the old woman. He had nothing on over his shirt, which was unfastened at the neck and showed his shaggy muscular chest. His fine-featured cunning face looked cheerful; neither in his attitude nor in his words was his usual wiliness to be seen; he was cheerful and natural.

'Shall we finish the bit beyond the shed to-night?' he asked, wiping his wet beard.

'We'll manage it,' replied his wife, 'if only the weather does not hinder us. The Demkins have not half finished yet,' she added. 'Only Ustenka is at work there, wearing herself out.'

'What can you expect of them?' said the old man proudly.

'Here, have a drink, Maryanka dear!' said the old woman, passing the jug to the girl. 'God willing we'll have enough to pay for the wedding feast,' she added.

'That's not yet awhile,' said the cornet with a slight frown.

The girl hung her head.

'Why shouldn't we mention it?' said the old woman. 'The affair is settled, and the time is drawing near too.'

'Don't make plans beforehand,' said the cornet. 'Now we have the harvest to get in.'

'Have you seen Lukashka's new horse?' asked the old woman. 'That which Dmitri Andreich Olenin gave him is gone  he's exchanged it.'

'No, I have not; but I spoke with the servant to-day,' said the cornet, 'and he said his master has again received a thousand rubles.'

'Rolling in riches, in short,' said the old woman.

The whole family felt cheerful and contented.

The work was progressing successfully. The grapes were more abundant and finer than they had expected.

After dinner Maryanka threw some grass to the oxen, folded her <i>beshmet</i> for a pillow, and lay down under the wagon on the juicy down-trodden grass. She had on only a red kerchief over her head and a faded blue print smock, yet

she felt unbearably hot. Her face was burning, and she did not know where to put her feet, her eyes were moist with sleepiness and weariness, her lips parted involuntarily, and her chest heaved heavily and deeply.

The busy time of year had begun a fortnight ago and the continuous heavy labour had filled the girl's life. At dawn she jumped up, washed her face with cold water, wrapped herself in a shawl, and ran out barefoot to see to the cattle. Then she hurriedly put on her shoes and her beshmet and, taking a small bundle of bread, she harnessed the bullocks and drove away to the vineyards for the whole day. There she cut the grapes and carried the baskets with only an hour's interval for rest, and in the evening she returned to the village, bright and not tired, dragging the bullocks by a rope or driving them with a long stick. After attending to the cattle, she took some sunflower seeds in the wide sleeve of her smock and went to the corner of the street to crack them and have some fun with the other girls. But as soon as it was dusk she returned home, and after having supper with her parents and her brother in the dark outhouse, she went into the hut, healthy and free from care, and climbed onto the oven, where half drowsing she listened to their lodger's conversation. As soon as he went away she would throw herself down on her bed and sleep soundly and quietly till morning. And so it went on day after day. She had not seen Lukashka since the day of their betrothal, but calmly awaited the wedding. She had got used to their lodger and felt his intent looks with pleasure.

Chapter XXX
Although there was no escape from the heat and the mosquitoes swarmed in the cool shadow of the wagons, and her little brother tossing about beside her kept pushing her, Maryanka having drawn her kerchief over her head was just falling asleep, when suddenly their neighbour Ustenka came running towards her and, diving under the wagon, lay down beside her.

'Sleep, girls, sleep!' said Ustenka, making herself comfortable under the wagon. 'Wait a bit,' she exclaimed, 'this won't do!'

She jumped up, plucked some green branches, and stuck them through the wheels on both sides of the wagon and hung her beshmet over them.

'Let me in,' she shouted to the little boy as she again crept under the wagon. 'Is this the place for a Cossackwith the girls? Go away!'

When alone under the wagon with her friend, Ustenka suddenly put both her arms round her, and clinging close to her began kissing her cheeks and neck.

'Darling, sweetheart,' she kept repeating, between bursts of shrill, clear laughter.

'Why, you've learnt it from Grandad,' said Maryanka, struggling. 'Stop it!'

And they both broke into such peals of laughter that Maryanka's mother shouted to them to be quiet.

'Are you jealous?' asked Ustenka in a whisper.

'What humbug! Let me sleep. What have you come for?'

But Ustenka kept on, 'I say! But I wanted to tell you such a thing.'

Maryanka raised herself on her elbow and arranged the kerchief which had slipped off.

'Well, what is it?'

'I know something about your lodger!'

'There's nothing to know,' said Maryanka.

'Oh, you rogue of a girl!' said Ustenka, nudging her with her elbow and laughing. 'Won't tell anything. Does he come to you?'

'He does. What of that?' said Maryanka with a sudden blush.

'Now I'm a simple lass. I tell everybody. Why should I pretend?' said Ustenka, and her bright rosy face suddenly became pensive. 'Whom do I hurt? I love him, that's all about it.'

'Grandad, do you mean?'

'Well, yes!'

'And the sin?'

'Ah, Maryanka! When is one to have a good time if not while one's still free? When I marry a Cossack I shall bear children and shall have cares. There now, when you get married to Lukashka not even a thought of joy will enter your head: children will come, and work!'

'Well? Some who are married live happily. It makes no difference!'
Maryanka replied quietly.
'Do tell me just this once what has passed between you and Lukishka?'

'What has passed? A match was proposed. Father put it off for a year, but now it's been settled and they'll marry us in autumn.'

'But what did he say to you?' Maryanka smiled.

'What should he say? He said he loved me. He kept asking me to come to the vineyards with him.'

'Just see what pitch! But you didn't go, did you? And what a dare-devil he has become: the first among the braves. He makes merry out there in the army too! The other day our Kirka came home; he says: "What a horse Lukashka's got in exchange!" But all the same I expect he frets after you. And what else did he say?'

'Must you know everything?' said Maryanka laughing. 'One night he came to my window tipsy, and asked me to let him in.' 'And you didn't let him?'

'Let him, indeed! Once I have said a thing I keep to it firm as a rock,' answered Maryanka seriously.

'A fine fellow! If he wanted her, no girl would refuse him.'

'Well, let him go to the others,' replied Maryanka proudly.

'You don't pity him?'

'I do pity him, but I'll have no nonsense. It is wrong.' Ustenka suddenly dropped her head on her friend's breast, seized hold of her, and shook with smothered laughter. 'You silly fool!' she exclaimed, quite out of breath. 'You don't want to be happy,' and she began tickling Maryanka. 'Oh, leave off!' said Maryanka, screaming and laughing. 'You've crushed Lazutka.'

'Hark at those young devils! Quite frisky! Not tired yet!' came the old woman's sleepy voice from the wagon.

'Don't want happiness,' repeated Ustenka in a whisper, insistently. 'But you are lucky, that you are! How they love you! You are so crusty, and yet they love you. Ah, if I were in your place I'd soon turn the lodger's head! I noticed him when you were at our house. He was ready to eat you with his eyes. What things Grandad has given me! And yours they say is the richest of the Russians. His orderly says they have serfs of their own.'

Maryanka raised herself, and after thinking a moment, smiled.

'Do you know what he once told me: the lodger I mean?' she said, biting a bit of grass. 'He said, "I'd like to be Lukashka the Cossack, or your brother Lazutka." What do you think he meant?'

'Oh, just chattering what came into his head,' answered Ustenka. 'What does mine not say! Just as if he was possessed!'

Maryanka dropped her hand on her folded beshmet, threw her arm over
Ustenka's shoulder, and shut her eyes.
'He wanted to come and work in the vineyard to-day: father invited him,' she said, and after a short silence she fell asleep.

Chapter XXXI
The sun had come out from behind the pear-tree that had shaded the wagon, and even through the branches that Ustenka had fixed up it scorched the faces of the sleeping girls. Maryanka woke up and began arranging the kerchief on her head. Looking about her, beyond the pear-tree she noticed their lodger, who with his gun on his shoulder stood talking to her father. She nudged Ustenka and smilingly pointed him out to her.

'I went yesterday and didn't find a single one,' Olenin was saying as he looked about uneasily, not seeing Maryanka through the branches.

'Ah, you should go out there in that direction, go right as by compasses, there in a disused vineyard denominated as the Waste, hares are always to be found,' said the cornet, having at once changed his manner of speech.

'A fine thing to go looking for hares in these busy times! You had better come and help us, and do some work with the girls,' the old woman said merrily. 'Now then, girls, up with you!' she cried.

Maryanka and Ustenka under the cart were whispering and could hardly restrain their laughter.

Since it had become known that Olenin had given a horse worth fifty rubles to Lukashka, his hosts had become more amiable and the cornet in particular saw with pleasure his daughter's growing intimacy with Olenin. 'But I don't know how to do the work,' replied Olenin, trying not to look through the green branches under the wagon where he had now noticed Maryanka's blue smock and red kerchief.

'Come, I'll give you some peaches,' said the old woman.

'It's only according to the ancient Cossack hospitality. It's her old woman's silliness,' said the cornet, explaining and apparently correcting his wife's words. 'In Russia, I expect, it's not so much peaches as pineapple jam and preserves you have been accustomed to eat at your pleasure.'

'So you say hares are to be found in the disused vineyard?' asked Olenin. 'I will go there,' and throwing a hasty glance through the green branches he raised his cap and disappeared between the regular rows of green vines.

The sun had already sunk behind the fence of the vineyards, and its broken rays glittered through the translucent leaves when Olenin returned to his host's vineyard. The wind was falling and a cool freshness was beginning to spread around. By some instinct Olenin recognized from afar Maryanka's blue smock among the rows of vine, and, picking grapes on his way, he approached her. His highly excited dog also now and then seized a low-hanging cluster of grapes in his slobbering mouth. Maryanka, her face flushed, her sleeves rolled up, and her kerchief down below her chin, was rapidly cutting the heavy clusters and laying them in a basket. Without letting go of the vine she had hold of, she stopped to smile pleasantly at him and resumed her work. Olenin drew near and threw his gun behind his back to have his hands free. 'Where are your people? May God aid you! Are you alone?' he meant to say but did not say, and only raised his cap in silence.

He was ill at ease alone with Maryanka, but as if purposely to torment himself he went up to her.

'You'll be shooting the women with your gun like that,' said Maryanka.

'No, I shan't shoot them.'

They were both silent.

Then after a pause she said: 'You should help me.'

He took out his knife and began silently to cut off the clusters. He reached from under the leaves low down a thick bunch weighing about three pounds, the grapes of which grew so close that they flattened each other for want of space. He showed it to Maryanka.

'Must they all be cut? Isn't this one too green?'

'Give it here.'

Their hands touched. Olenin took her hand, and she looked at him smiling.

'Are you going to be married soon?' he asked.

She did not answer, but turned away with a stern look.

'Do you love Lukashka?'

'What's that to you?'

'I envy him!'

'Very likely!' 'No really. You are so beautiful!'

And he suddenly felt terribly ashamed of having said it, so commonplace did the words seem to him. He flushed, lost control of himself, and seized both her hands.

'Whatever I am, I'm not for you. Why do you make fun of me?' replied Maryanka, but her look showed how certainly she knew he was not making fun.

'Making fun? If you only knew how I'

The words sounded still more commonplace, they accorded still less with what he felt, but yet he continued, 'I don't know what I would not do for you'

'Leave me alone, you pitch!'

But her face, her shining eyes, her swelling bosom, her shapely legs, said something quite different. It seemed to him that she understood how petty were all things he had said, but that she was superior to such considerations. It seemed to him she had long known all he wished and was not able to tell her, but wanted to hear how he would say it. 'And how can she help knowing,' he thought, 'since I only want to tell her all that she herself is? But she does not wish to under-stand, does not wish to reply.'

'Hallo!' suddenly came Ustenka's high voice from behind the vine at no great distance, followed by her shrill laugh. 'Come and help me, Dmitri Andreich. I am all alone,' she cried, thrusting her round, naive little face through the vines.

Olenin did not answer nor move from his place.

Maryanka went on cutting and continually looked up at Olenin. He was about to say something, but stopped, shrugged his shoulders and, having jerked up his gun, walked out of the vineyard with rapid strides.

Chapter XXXII
He stopped once or twice, listening to the ringing laughter of Maryanka and Ustenka who, having come together, were shouting something. Olenin spent the whole evening hunting in the forest and returned home at dusk without having killed anything. When crossing the road he noticed her open the door of the outhouse, and her blue smock showed through it. He called to Vanyusha very loud so as to let her know that he was back, and then sat down in the porch in his usual place. His hosts now returned from the vineyard; they came out of the outhouse and into their hut, but did not ask of the latch and knocked. The floor hardly creaked under the bare cautious footsteps which approached the door. The latch clicked, the door creaked, and he noticed a faint smell of marjoram and pumpkin, and Maryanka's whole figure appeared in the doorway. He saw her only for an instant in the moonlight. She slammed the door and, muttering something, ran lightly back again. Olenin began rapping softly but nothing responded. He ran to the window and listened. Suddenly he was startled by a shrill, squeaky man's voice.

'Fine!' exclaimed a rather small young Cossack in a white cap, coming across the yard close to Olenin. 'I saw  fine!'

Olenin recognized Nazarka, and was silent, not knowing what to do or say.

'Fine! I'll go and tell them at the office, and I'll tell her father!
That's a fine cornet's daughter! One's not enough for her.'
'What do you want of me, what are you after?' uttered Olenin.

'Nothing; only I'll tell them at the office.'

Nazarka spoke very loud, and evidently did so intentionally, adding:
'Just see what a clever cadet!'
Olenin trembled and grew pale.

'Come here, here!' He seized the Cossack firmly by the arm and drew him towards his hut.

'Nothing happened, she did not let me in, and I too mean no harm. She is an honest girl'

'Eh, discuss'

'Yes, but all the same I'll give you something now. Wait a bit!'

Nazarka said nothing. Olenin ran into his hut and brought out ten rubles, which he gave to the Cossack.

'Nothing happened, but still I was to blame, so I give this!Only for
God's sake don't let anyone know, for nothing happened'
'I wish you joy,' said Nazarka laughing, and went away.

Nazarka had come to the village that night at Lukashka's bidding to find a place to hide a stolen horse, and now, passing by on his way home, had heard the sound of footsteps. When he returned next morning to his company he bragged to his chum, and told him how cleverly he had got ten rubles. Next morning Olenin met his hosts and they knew nothing about the events of the night. He did not speak to Maryanka, and she only laughed a little when she looked at him. Next night he also passed without sleep, vainly wandering about the yard. The day after he purposely spent shooting, and in the evening he went to see Beletski to escape from his own thoughts. He was afraid of himself, and promised himself not to go to his hosts' hut any more.

That night he was roused by the sergeant-major. His company was ordered to start at once on a raid. Olenin was glad this had happened, and thought he would not again return to the village.

The raid lasted four days. The commander, who was a relative of Olenin's, wished to see him and offered to let him remain with the staff, but this Olenin declined. He found that he could not live away from the village, and asked to be allowed to return to it. For having taken part in the raid he received a soldier's cross, which he had formerly greatly desired. Now he was quite indifferent about it, and even more indifferent about his promotion, the order for which had still not arrived. Accompanied by Vanyusha he rode back to the cordon without any accident several hours in advance of the rest of the company. He spent the whole evening in his porch watching Maryanka, and he again walked about the yard, without aim or thought, all night.

Chapter XXXIII
It was late when he awoke the next day. His hosts were no longer in. He did not go shooting, but now took up a book, and now went out into the porch, and now again re-entered the hut and lay down on the bed. Vanyusha thought he was ill.

Towards evening Olenin got up, resolutely began writing, and wrote on till late at night. He wrote a letter, but did not post it because he felt that no one would have understood what he wanted to say, and besides it was not necessary that anyone but himself should understand it. This is what he wrote:

'I receive letters of condolence from Russia. They are afraid that I shall perish, buried in these wilds. They say about me: "He will become coarse; he will be behind the times in everything; he will take to drink, and who knows but that he may marry a Cossack girl." It was not for nothing, they say, that Ermolov declared: "Anyone serving in the Caucasus for ten years either becomes a confirmed drunkard or marries a loose woman." How terrible! Indeed it won't do for me to ruin myself when I might have the great happiness of even becoming the Countess B's husband, or a Court chamberlain, or a Marechal de noblesse of my district. Oh, how repulsive and pitiable you all seem to me! You do not know what happiness is and what life is! One must taste life once in all its natural beauty, must see and understand what I see every day before methose eternally unapproachable snowy peaks, and a majestic woman in that primitive beauty in which the first woman must have come from her creator's handsand then it becomes clear who is ruining himself and who is living truly or falselyyou or I. If you only knew how despicable and pitiable you, in your delusions, seem to me! When I picture to myselfin place of my hut, my forests, and my lovethose drawing-rooms, those women with their pomatum-greased hair eked out with false curls, those unnaturally grimacing lips, those hidden, feeble, distorted limbs, and that chatter of obligatory drawing-room conversation which has no right to the nameI feel unendurably revolted. I then see before me those obtuse faces, those rich eligible girls whose looks seem to say:

"It's all right, you may come near though I am rich and eligible"and that arranging and rearranging of seats, that shameless match-making and that eternal tittle-tattle and pretence; those ruleswith whom to shake hands, to whom only to nod, with whom to converse (and all this done deliberately with a conviction of its inevitability), that continual ennui in the blood passing on from generation to generation. Try to understand or believe just this one thing: you need only see and comprehend what truth and beauty are, and all that you now say and think and all your wishes for me and for yourselves will fly to atoms! Happiness is being with nature, seeing her, and conversing with her. "He may even (God forbid) marry a common Cossack girl, and be quite lost socially" I can imagine them saying of me with sincere pity! Yet the one thing I desire is to be quite "lost" in your sense of the word. I wish to marry a Cossack girl, and dare not because it would be a height of happiness of which I am unworthy.

'Three months have passed since I first saw the Cossack girl, Maryanka. The views and prejudices of the world I had left were still fresh in me. I did not then believe that I could love that woman. I delighted in her beauty just as I delighted in the beauty of the mountains and the sky, nor could I help delighting in her, for she is as beautiful as they. I found that the sight of her beauty had become a necessity of my life and I began asking myself whether I did not love her. But I could find nothing within myself at all like love as I had imagined it to be. Mine was not the restlessness of loneliness and desire for marriage, nor was it platonic, still less a carnal love such as I have experienced. I needed only to see her, to hear her, to know that she was nearand if I was not happy, I was at peace.

'After an evening gathering at which I met her and touched her, I felt that between that woman and myself there existed an indissoluble though unacknowledged bond against which I could not struggle, yet I did struggle. I asked myself: "Is it possible to love a woman who will never understand the profoundest interests of my life? Is it possible to love a woman simply for her beauty, to love the statue of a woman?" But I was already in love with her, though I did not yet trust to my feelings.

'After that evening when I first spoke to her our relations changed. Before that she had been to me an extraneous but majestic object of external nature: but since then she has become a human being. I began to meet her, to talk to her, and sometimes to go to work for her father and to spend whole evenings with them, and in this intimate intercourse she remained still in my eyes just as pure, inaccessible, and majestic. She always responded with equal calm, pride, and cheerful equanimity. Sometimes she was friendly, but generally her every look, every word, and every movement expressed equanimitynot contemptuous, but crushing and bewitching. Every day with a feigned smile on my lips I tried to play a part, and with torments of passion and desire in my heart I spoke banteringly to her. She saw that I was dissembling, but looked straight at me cheerfully and simply. This position became unbearable. I wished not to deceive her but to tell her all I thought and felt. I was extremely agitated. We were in the vineyard when I began to tell her of my love, in words I am now ashamed to remember. I am ashamed because I ought not to have dared to speak so to her because she stood far above such words and above the feeling they were meant to express. I said no more, but from that day my position has been intolerable. I did not wish to demean myself by continuing our former flippant relations, and at the same time I felt that I had not yet reached the level of straight and simple relations with her. I asked myself despairingly, "What am I to do?" In foolish dreams I imagined her now as my mistress and now as my wife, but rejected both ideas with disgust. To make her a wanton woman would be dreadful. It would be murder. To turn her into a fine lady, the wife of Dmitri Andreich Olenin, like a Cossack woman here who is married to one of our officers, would be still worse. Now could I turn Cossack like Lukashka, and steal horses, get drunk on chikhir, sing rollicking songs, kill people, and when drunk climb in at her window for the night without a thought of who and what I am, it would be different: then we might understand one another and I might be happy.

'I tried to throw myself into that kind of life but was still more conscious of my own weakness and artificiality. I cannot forget myself and my complex, distorted past, and my future appears to me still more hopeless. Every day I have before me the distant snowy mountains and this majestic, happy woman. But not for me is the only happiness possible in the world; I cannot have this woman! What is most terrible and yet sweetest in my condition is that I feel that I understand her but that she will never understand me; not because she is inferior: on the contrary she ought not to understand me. She is happy, she is like nature: consistent, calm, and self-contained; and I, a weak distorted being, want her to understand my deformity and my torments! I have not slept at night, but have aimlessly passed under her windows not rendering account to myself of what was happening to me. On the 18th our company started on a raid, and I spent three days away from the village. I was sad and apathetic, the usual songs, cards, drinking-bouts, and talk of rewards in the regiment, were more repulsive to me than usual. Yesterday I returned home and saw her, my hut. Daddy Eroshka, and the snowy mountains, from my porch, and was seized by such a strong, new feeling of joy that I understood it all. I love this woman; I feel real love for the first and only time in my life. I know what has befallen me. I do not fear to be degraded by this feeling, I am not ashamed of my love, I am proud of it. It is not my fault that I love. It has come about against my will. I tried to escape from my love by self-renunciation, and tried to devise a joy in the Cossack Lukashka's and Maryanka's love, but thereby only stirred up my own love and jealousy. This is not the ideal, the so-called exalted love which I have known before; not that sort of attachment in which you admire your own love and feel that the source of your emotion is within yourself and do everything yourself. I have felt that too. It is still less a desire for enjoyment: it is something different. Perhaps in her I love nature: the personification of all that is beautiful in nature; but yet I am not acting by my own will, but some elemental force loves through me; the whole of God's world, all nature, presses this love into my soul and says, "Love her." I love her not with my mind or my imagination, but with my whole being. Loving her I feel myself to be an integral part of all God's joyous world. I wrote before about the new convictions to which my solitary life had brought me, but no one knows with what labour they shaped themselves within me and with what joy I realized them and saw a new way of life opening out before me; nothing was dearer to me than those convictions Well!  love has come and neither they nor any regrets for them remain! It is even difficult for me to believe that I could prize such a one-sided, cold, and abstract state of mind. Beauty came and scattered to the winds all that laborious inward toil, and no regret remains for what has vanished! Self-renunciation is all nonsense and absurdity! That is pride, a refuge from well-merited unhappiness, and salvation from the envy of others' happiness: "Live for others, and do good!"Why? when in my soul there is only love for myself and the desire to love her and to live her life with her? Not for others, not for Lukashka, I now desire happiness. I do not now love those others. Formerly I should have told myself that this is wrong. I should have tormented myself with the questions: What will become of her, of me, and of Lukashka? Now I don't care. I do not live my own life, there is something stronger than me which directs me. I suffer; but formerly I was dead and only now do I live. Today I will go to their house and tell her everything.'

Chapter XXXIV
Late that evening, after writing this letter, Olenin went to his hosts' hut. The old woman was sitting on a bench behind the oven unwinding cocoons. Maryanka with her head uncovered sat sewing by the light of a candle. On seeing Olenin she jumped up, took her kerchief and stepped to the oven. 'Maryanka dear,' said her mother, 'won't you sit here with me a bit?' 'No, I'm bareheaded,' she replied, and sprang up on the oven. Olenin could only see a knee, and one of her shapely legs hanging down from the oven. He treated the old woman to tea. She treated her guest to clotted cream which she sent Maryanka to fetch. But having put a plateful on the table Maryanka again sprang on the oven from whence Olenin felt her eyes upon him. They talked about household matters. Granny Ulitka became animated and went into raptures of hospitality. She brought Olenin preserved grapes and a grape tart and some of her best wine, and pressed him to eat and drink with the rough yet proud hospitality of country folk, only found among those who produce their bread by the labour of their own hands. The old woman, who had at first struck Olenin so much by her rudeness, now often touched him by her simple tenderness towards her daughter.

'Yes, we need not offend the Lord by grumbling! We have enough of everything, thank God. We have pressed sufficient CHIKHIR and have preserved and shall sell three or four barrels of grapes and have enough left to drink. Don't be in a hurry to leave us. We will make merry together at the wedding.'

'And when is the wedding to be?' asked Olenin, feeling his blood suddenly rush to his face while his heart beat irregularly and painfully.

He heard a movement on the oven and the sound of seeds being cracked.

'Well, you know, it ought to be next week. We are quite ready,' replied the old woman, as simply and quietly as though Olenin did not exist. 'I have prepared and have procured everything for Maryanka. We will give her away properly. Only there's one thing not quite right. Our Lukashka has been running rather wild. He has been too much on the spree! He's up to tricks! The other day a Cossack came here from his company and said he had been to Nogay.'

'He must mind he does not get caught,' said Olenin.

'Yes, that's what I tell him. "Mind, Lukashka, don't you get into mischief. Well, of course, a young fellow naturally wants to cut a dash. But there's a time for everything. Well, you've captured or stolen something and killed an abrek! Well, you're a fine fellow! But now you should live quietly for a bit, or else there'll be trouble."'

'Yes, I saw him a time or two in the division, he was always merry-making. He has sold another horse,' said Olenin, and glanced towards the oven. A pair of large, dark, and hostile eyes glittered as they gazed severely at him.

He became ashamed of what he had said. 'What of it? He does no one any harm,' suddenly remarked Maryanka. 'He makes merry with his own money,' and lowering her legs she jumped down from the oven and went out banging the door.

Olenin followed her with his eyes as long as she was in the hut, and then looked at the door and waited, understanding nothing of what Granny Ulitka was telling him.

A few minutes later some visitors arrived: an old man, Granny Ulitka's brother, with Daddy Eroshka, and following them came Maryanka and Ustenka.

'Good evening,' squeaked Ustenka. 'Still on holiday?' she added, turning to Olenin.

'Yes, still on holiday,' he replied, and felt, he did not know why, ashamed and ill at ease.

He wished to go away but could not. It also seemed to him impossible to remain silent. The old man helped him by asking for a drink, and they had a drink. Olenin drank with Eroshka, with the other Cossack, and again with Eroshka, and the more he drank the heavier was his heart. But the two old men grew merry. The girls climbed onto the oven, where they sat whispering and looking at the men, who drank till it was late. Olenin did not talk, but drank more than the others. The Cossacks were shouting. The old woman would not let them have any more chikhir, and at last turned them out. The girls laughed at Daddy Eroshka, and it was past ten when they all went out into the porch. The old men invited themselves to finish their merry-making at Olenin's. Ustenka ran off home and Eroshka led the old Cossack to Vanyusha. The old woman went out to tidy up the shed. Maryanka remained alone in the hut. Olenin felt fresh and joyous, as if he had only just woke up. He noticed everything, and having let the old men pass ahead he turned back to the hut where Maryanka was preparing for bed. He went up to her and wished to say something, but his voice broke. She moved away from him, sat down cross-legged on her bed in the corner, and looked at him silently with wild and frightened eyes. She was evidently afraid of him. Olenin felt this. He felt sorry and ashamed of himself, and at the same time proud and pleased that he aroused even that feeling in her.

'Maryanka!' he said. 'Will you never take pity on me? I can't tell you how I love you.'

She moved still farther away.

'Just hear how the wine is speaking!  You'll get nothing from me!'

'No, it is not the wine. Don't marry Lukashka. I will marry you.'
('What am I saying,' he thought as he uttered these words. 'Shall I be
able to say the same to-morrow?' 'Yes, I shall, I am sure I shall, and
I will repeat them now,' replied an inner voice.)
'Will you marry me?'

She looked at him seriously and her fear seemed to have passed.

'Maryanka, I shall go out of my mind! I am not myself. I will do whatever you command,' and madly tender words came from his lips of their own accord.

'Now then, what are you drivelling about?' she interrupted, suddenly seizing the arm he was stretching towards her. She did not push his arm away but pressed it firmly with her strong hard fingers. 'Do gentlemen marry Cossack girls? Go away!'

'But will you? Everything'

'And what shall we do with Lukashka?' said she, laughing.

He snatched away the arm she was holding and firmly embraced her young body, but she sprang away like a fawn and ran barefoot into the porch: Olenin came to his senses and was terrified at himself. He again felt himself inexpressibly vile compared to her, yet not repenting for an instant of what he had said he went home, and without even glancing at the old men who were drinking in his room he lay down and fell asleep more soundly than he had done for a long time.

Chapter XXXV
The next day was a holiday. In the evening all the villagers, their holiday clothes shining in the sunset, were out in the street. That season more wine than usual had been produced, and the people were now free from their labours. In a month the Cossacks were to start on a campaign and in many families preparations were being made for weddings.

Most of the people were standing in the square in front of the Cossack Government Office and near the two shops, in one of which cakes and pumpkin seeds were sold, in the other kerchiefs and cotton prints. On the earth-embankment of the office-building sat or stood the old men in sober grey, or black coats without gold trimmings or any kind of ornament. They conversed among themselves quietly in measured tones, about the harvest, about the young folk, about village affairs, and about old times, looking with dignified equanimity at the younger generation. Passing by them, the women and girls stopped and bent their heads. The young Cossacks respectfully slackened their pace and raised their caps, holding them for a while over their heads. The old men then stopped speaking. Some of them watched the passers-by severely, others kindly, and in their turn slowly took off their caps and put them on again.

The Cossack girls had not yet started dancing their khorovods, but having gathered in groups, in their bright coloured beshmets with white kerchiefs on their heads pulled down to their eyes, they sat either on the ground or on the earth-banks about the huts sheltered from the oblique rays of the sun, and laughed and chattered in their ringing voices. Little boys and girls playing in the square sent their balls high up into the clear sky, and ran about squealing and shouting. The half-grown girls had started dancing their khorovods, and were timidly singing in their thin shrill voices. Clerks, lads not in the service, or home for the holiday, bright-faced and wearing smart white or new red Circassian gold-trimmed coats, went about arm in arm in twos or threes from one group of women or girls to another, and stopped to joke and chat with the Cossack girls. The Armenian shopkeeper, in a gold-trimmed coat of fine blue cloth, stood at the open door through which piles of folded bright-coloured kerchiefs were visible and, conscious of his own importance and with the pride of an Oriental tradesman, waited for customers. Two red-bearded, barefooted Chechens, who had come from beyond the Terek to see the fete, sat on their heels outside the house of a friend, negligently smoking their little pipes and occasionally spitting, watching the villagers and exchanging remarks with one another in their rapid guttural speech. Occasionally a workaday-looking soldier in an old overcoat passed across the square among the bright-clad girls. Here and there the songs of tipsy Cossacks who were merry-making could already be heard. All the huts were closed; the porches had been scrubbed clean the day before. Even the old women were out in the street, which was everywhere sprinkled with pumpkin and melon seed-shells. The air was warm and still, the sky deep and clear. Beyond the roofs the dead-white mountain range, which seemed very near, was turning rosy in the glow of the evening sun. Now and then from the other side of the river came the distant roar of a cannon, but above the village, mingling with one another, floated all sorts of merry holiday sounds.

Olenin had been pacing the yard all that morning hoping to see Maryanka. But she, having put on holiday clothes, went to Mass at the chapel and afterwards sat with the other girls on an earth-embankment cracking seeds; sometimes again, together with her companions, she ran home, and each time gave the lodger a bright and kindly look. Olenin felt afraid to address her playfully or in the presence of others. He wished to finish telling her what he had begun to say the night before, and to get her to give him a definite answer. He waited for another moment like that of yesterday evening, but the moment did not come, and he felt that he could not remain any longer in this uncertainty. She went out into the street again, and after waiting awhile he too went out and without knowing where he was going he followed her. He passed by the corner where she was sitting in her shining blue satin beshmet, and with an aching heart he heard behind him the girls laughing.

Beletski's hut looked out onto the square. As Olenin was passing it he heard Beletski's voice calling to him, 'Come in,' and in he went.

After a short talk they both sat down by the window and were soon joined by Eroshka, who entered dressed in a new beshmet and sat down on the floor beside them.

'There, that's the aristocratic party,' said Beletski, pointing with his cigarette to a brightly coloured group at the corner. 'Mine is there too. Do you see her? in red. That's a new beshmet. Why don't you start the khorovod?' he shouted, leaning out of the window. 'Wait a bit, and then when it grows dark let us go too. Then we will invite them to Ustenka's. We must arrange a ball for them!'

'And I will come to Ustenka's,' said Olenin in a decided tone. 'Will
Maryanka be there?'
'Yes, she'll be there. Do come!' said Beletski, without the least surprise. 'But isn't it a pretty picture?' he added, pointing to the motley crowds.

'Yes, very!' Olenin assented, trying to appear indifferent.

'Holidays of this kind,' he added, 'always make me wonder why all these people should suddenly be contented and jolly. To-day for instance, just because it happens to be the fifteenth of the month, everything is festive. Eyes and faces and voices and movements and garments, and the air and the sun, are all in a holiday mood. And we no longer have any holidays!'

'Yes,' said Beletski, who did not like such reflections.

'And why are you not drinking, old fellow?' he said, turning to Eroshka.

Eroshka winked at Olenin, pointing to Beletski. 'Eh, he's a proud one that kunak of yours,' he said.

Beletski raised his glass. ALLAH BIRDY' he said, emptying it. (ALLAH BIRDY, 'God has given!'the usual greeting of Caucasians when drinking together.)

'Sau bul' ('Your health'), answered Eroshka smiling, and emptied his glass.

'Speaking of holidays!' he said, turning to Olenin as he rose and looked out of the window, 'What sort of holiday is that! You should have seen them make merry in the old days! The women used to come out in their goldtrimmed sarafans. Two rows of gold coins hanging round their necks and gold-cloth diadems on their heads, and when they passed they made a noise, "flu, flu," with their dresses. Every woman looked like a princess. Sometimes they'd come out, a whole herd of them, and begin singing songs so that the air seemed to rumble, and they went on making merry all night. And the Cossacks would roll out a barrel into the yards and sit down and drink till break of day, or they would go hand-in-hand sweeping the village. Whoever they met they seized and took along with them, and went from house to house. Sometimes they used to make merry for three days on end. Father used to come homeI still remember itquite red and swollen, without a cap, having lost everything: he'd come and lie down. Mother knew what to do: she would bring him some fresh caviar and a little chikhir to sober him up, and would herself run about in the village looking for his cap. Then he'd sleep for two days! That's the sort of fellows they were then! But now what are they?'

'Well, and the girls in the sarafans, did they make merry all by themselves?' asked Beletski.

'Yes, they did! Sometimes Cossacks would come on foot or on horse and say, "Let's break up the khorovods," and they'd go, but the girls would take up cudgels. Carnival week, some young fellow would come galloping up, and they'd cudgel his horse and cudgel him too. But he'd break through, seize the one he loved, and carry her off. And his sweetheart would love him to his heart's content! Yes, the girls in those days, they were regular queens!'

Chapter XXXVI
Just then two men rode out of the side street into the square. One of them was Nazarka. The other, Lukashka, sat slightly sideways on his well-fed bay Kabarda horse which stepped lightly over the hard road jerking its beautiful head with its fine glossy mane. The well-adjusted gun in its cover, the pistol at his back, and the cloak rolled up behind his saddle showed that Lukashka had not come from a peaceful place or from one near by. The smart way in which he sat a little sideways on his horse, the careless motion with which he touched the horse under its belly with his whip, and especially his half-closed black eyes, glistening as he looked proudly around him, all expressed the conscious strength and self-confidence of youth. 'Ever seen as fine a lad?' his eyes, looking from side to side, seemed to say. The elegant horse with its silver ornaments and trappings, the weapons, and the handsome Cossack himself attracted the attention of everyone in the square. Nazarka, lean and short, was much less well dressed. As he rode past the old men, Lukashka paused and raised his curly white sheepskin cap above his closely cropped black head.

'Well, have you carried off many Nogay horses?' asked a lean old man with a frowning, lowering look.

'Have you counted them, Grandad, that you ask?' replied Lukashka, turning away.

'That's all very well, but you need not take my lad along with you,' the old man muttered with a still darker frown.

'Just see the old devil, he knows everything,' muttered Lukashka to himself, and a worried expression came over his face; but then, noticing a corner where a number of Cossack girls were standing, he turned his horse towards them.

'Good evening, girls!' he shouted in his powerful, resonant voice, suddenly checking his horse. 'You've grown old without me, you witches!' and he laughed.

'Good evening, Lukashka! Good evening, laddie!' the merry voices answered. 'Have you brought much money? Buy some sweets for the girls!  Have you come for long? True enough, it's long since we saw you.'

'Nazarka and I have just flown across to make a night of it,' replied
Lukashka, raising his whip and riding straight at the girls.
'Why, Maryanka has quite forgotten you,' said Ustenka, nudging Maryanka with her elbow and breaking into a shrill laugh.

Maryanka moved away from the horse and throwing back her head calmly looked at the Cossack with her large sparkling eyes.

'True enough, you have not been home for a long time! Why are you trampling us under your horse?' she remarked dryly, and turned away.

Lukashka had appeared particularly merry. His face shone with audacity and joy. Obviously staggered by Maryanka's cold reply he suddenly knitted his brow.

'Step up on my stirrup and I'll carry you away to the mountains.
Mammy!' he suddenly exclaimed, and as if to disperse his dark thoughts
he caracoled among the girls. Stooping down towards Maryanka, he said,
'I'll kiss, oh, how I'll kiss you! '
Maryanka's eyes met his and she suddenly blushed and stepped back.

'Oh, bother you! you'll crush my feet,' she said, and bending her head looked at her well-shaped feet in their tightly fitting light blue stockings with clocks and her new red slippers trimmed with narrow silver braid.

Lukashka turned towards Ustenka, and Maryanka sat down next to a woman with a baby in her arms. The baby stretched his plump little hands towards the girl and seized a necklace string that hung down onto her blue beshmet. Maryanka bent towards the child and glanced at Lukashka from the corner of her eyes. Lukashka just then was getting out from under his coat, from the pocket of his black beshmet, a bundle of sweetmeats and seeds.

'There, I give them to all of you,' he said, handing the bundle to
Ustenka and smiling at Maryanka.
A confused expression again appeared on the girl's face. It was as though a mist gathered over her beautiful eyes. She drew her kerchief down below her lips, and leaning her head over the fair-skinned face of the baby that still held her by her coin necklace she suddenly began to kiss it greedily. The baby pressed his little hands against the girl's high breasts, and opening his toothless mouth screamed loudly.

"You're smothering the boy!" said the little one's mother, taking him away; and she unfastened her beshmet to give him the breast. "You'd better have a chat with the young fellow."

"I'll only go and put up my horse and then Nazarka and I will come back; we'll make merry all night," said Lukashka, touching his horse with his whip and riding away from the girls.

Turning into a side street, he and Nazarka rode up to two huts that stood side by side.

"Here we are all right, old fellow! Be quick and come soon!" called Lukashka to his comrade, dismounting in front of one of the huts; then he carefully led his horse in at the gate of the wattle fence of his own home.

"How d'you do, Stepka?" he said to his dumb sister, who, smartly dressed like the others, came in from the street to take his horse; and he made signs to her to take the horse to the hay, but not to unsaddle it.

The dumb girl made her usual humming noise, smacked her lips as she pointed to the horse and kissed it on the nose, as much as to say that she loved it and that it was a fine horse.

"How d'you do. Mother? How is it that you have not gone out yet?" shouted Lukashka, holding his gun in place as he mounted the steps of the porch.

His old mother opened the door.

"Dear me! I never expected, never thought, you'd come," said the old woman. "Why, Kirka said you wouldn't be here."

"Go and bring some chikhir, Mother. Nazarka is coming here and we will celebrate the feast day."

"Directly, Lukashka, directly!" answered the old woman. "Our women are making merry. I expect our dumb one has gone too."

She took her keys and hurriedly went to the outhouse. Nazarka, after putting up his horse and taking the gun off his shoulder, returned to Lukashka's house and went in.

Chapter XXXVII
'Your health!' said Lukashka, taking from his mother's hands a cup filled to the brim with chikhir and carefully raising it to his bowed head.

'A bad business!' said Nazarka. 'You heard how Daddy Burlak said, "Have you stolen many horses?" He seems to know!'

'A regular wizard!' Lukashka replied shortly. 'But what of it!' he added, tossing his head. 'They are across the river by now. Go and find them!'

'Still it's a bad lookout.'

'What's a bad lookout? Go and take some chikhir to him to-morrow and nothing will come of it. Now let's make merry. Drink!' shouted Lukashka, just in the tone in which old Eroshka uttered the word. 'We'll go out into the street and make merry with the girls. You go and get some honey; or no, I'll send our dumb wench. We'll make merry till morning.'

Nazarka smiled.

'Are we stopping here long?' he asked.

Till we've had a bit of fun. Run and get some vodka. Here's the money.'

Nazarka ran off obediently to get the vodka from Yamka's.

Daddy Eroshka and Ergushov, like birds of prey, scenting where the merry-making was going on, tumbled into the hut one after the other, both tipsy.

'Bring us another half-pail,' shouted Lukashka to his mother, by way of reply to their greeting.

'Now then, tell us where did you steal them, you devil?' shouted
Eroshka. 'Fine fellow, I'm fond of you!'
'Fond indeed' answered Lukashka laughing, 'carrying sweets from cadets to lasses! Eh, you old'

'That's not true, not true!  Oh, Mark,' and the old man burst out laughing. 'And how that devil begged me. "Go," he said, "and arrange it." He offered me a gun! But no. I'd have managed it, but I feel for you. Now tell us where have you been?' And the old man began speaking in Tartar.

Lukashka answered him promptly.

Ergushov, who did not know much Tartar, only occasionally put in a word in Russian: 'What I say is he's driven away the horses. I know it for a fact,' he chimed in.

'Girey and I went together.' (His speaking of Girey Khan as 'Girey' was, to the Cossack mind, evidence of his boldness.) 'Just beyond the river he kept bragging that he knew the whole of the steppe and would lead the way straight, but we rode on and the night was dark, and my Girey lost his way and began wandering in a circle without getting anywhere: couldn't find the village, and there we were. We must have gone too much to the right. I believe we wandered about wellnigh till midnight. Then, thank goodness, we heard dogs howling.'

'Fools!' said Daddy Eroshka. 'There now, we too used to lose our way in the steppe. (Who the devil can follow it?) But I used to ride up a hillock and start howling like the wolves, like this!' He placed his hands before his mouth, and howled like a pack of wolves, all on one note. 'The dogs would answer at once  Well, go onso you found them?'

'We soon led them away! Nazarka was nearly caught by some Nogay women, he was!'

'Caught indeed,' Nazarka, who had just come back, said in an injured tone.

'We rode off again, and again Girey lost his way and almost landed us among the sand-drifts. We thought we were just getting to the Terek but we were riding away from it all the time!'

'You should have steered by the stars,' said Daddy Eroshka.

'That's what I say,' interjected Ergushov,

'Yes, steer when all is black; I tried and tried all about and at last I put the bridle on one of the mares and let my own horse go freethinking he'll lead us out, and what do you think! he just gave a snort or two with his nose to the ground, galloped ahead, and led us straight to our village. Thank goodness! It was getting quite light. We barely had time to hide them in the forest. Nagim came across the river and took them away.'

Ergushov shook his head. 'It's just what I said. Smart. Did you get much for them?'

'It's all here,' said Lukashka, slapping his pocket.

Just then his mother came into the room, and Lukashka did not finish what he was saying.

'Drink!' he shouted.

'We too, Girich and I, rode out late one night' began Eroshka.

'Oh bother, we'll never hear the end of you!' said Lukashka. 'I am going.' And having emptied his cup and tightened the strap of his belt he went out.

Chapter XXXVIII
It was already dark when Lukashka went out into the street. The autumn night was fresh and calm. The full golden moon floated up behind the tall dark poplars that grew on one side of the square. From the chimneys of the outhouses smoke rose and spread above the village, mingling with the mist. Here and there lights shone through the windows, and the air was laden with the smell of kisyak, grape-pulp, and mist. The sounds of voices, laughter, songs, and the cracking of seeds mingled just as they had done in the daytime, but were now more distinct. Clusters of white kerchiefs and caps gleamed through the darkness near the houses and by the fences.

In the square, before the shop door which was lit up and open, the black and white figures of Cossack men and maids showed through the darkness, and one heard from afar their loud songs and laughter and talk. The girls, hand in hand, went round and round in a circle stepping lightly in the dusty square. A skinny girl, the plainest of them all, set the tune:

   'From beyond the wood, from the forest dark,
    From the garden green and the shady park,
    There came out one day two young lads so gay.
    Young bachelors, hey! brave and smart were they!
    And they walked and walked, then stood still, each man,
    And they talked and soon to dispute began!
    Then a maid came out; as she came along,
    Said, "To one of you I shall soon belong!"
    'Twas the fair-faced lad got the maiden fair,
    Yes, the fair-faced lad with the golden hair!
    Her right hand so white in his own took he,
    And he led her round for his mates to see!
    And said, "Have you ever in all your life,
    Met a lass as fair as my sweet little wife?"'
The old women stood round listening to the songs. The little boys and girls ran about chasing one another in the dark. The men stood by, catching at the girls as the latter moved round, and sometimes breaking the ring and entering it. On the dark side of the doorway stood Beletski and Olenin, in their Circassian coats and sheepskin caps, and talked together in a style of speech unlike that of the Cossacks, in low but distinct tones, conscious that they were attracting attention. Next to one another in the khorovod circle moved plump little Ustenka in her red beshmet and the stately Maryanka in her new smock and beshmet. Olenin and Beletski were discussing how to snatch Ustenka and Maryanka out of the ring. Beletski thought that Olenin wished only to amuse himself, but Olenin was expecting his fate to be decided. He wanted at any cost to see Maryanka alone that very day and to tell her everything, and ask her whether she could and would be his wife. Although that question had long been answered in the negative in his own mind, he hoped he would be able to tell her all he felt, and that she would understand him.

'Why did you not tell me sooner?' said Beletski. 'I would have got
Ustenka to arrange it for you. You are such a queer fellow! '
'What's to be done!  Some day, very soon, I'll tell you all about it. Only now, for Heaven's sake, arrange so that she should come to Ustenka's.'

'All right, that's easily done! Well, Maryanka, will you belong to the "fair-faced lad", and not to Lukashka?' said Beletski, speaking to Maryanka first for propriety's sake, but having received no reply he went up to Ustenka and begged her to bring Maryanka home with her. He had hardly time to finish what he was saying before the leader began another song and the girls started pulling each other round in the ring by the hand.

They sang:

   "Past the garden, by the garden,
    A young man came strolling down,
    Up the street and through the town.
    And the first time as he passed
    He did wave his strong right hand.
    As the second time he passed
    Waved his hat with silken band.
    But the third time as he went
    He stood still: before her bent.
   "How is it that thou, my dear,
    My reproaches dost not fear?
    In the park don't come to walk
    That we there might have a talk?
    Come now, answer me, my dear,
    Dost thou hold me in contempt?
    Later on, thou knowest, dear,
    Thou'lt get sober and repent.
    Soon to woo thee I will come,
    And when we shall married be
    Thou wilt weep because of me!"
   "Though I knew what to reply,
    Yet I dared not him deny,
    No, I dared not him deny!
    So into the park went I,
    In the park my lad to meet,
    There my dear one I did greet."
   "Maiden dear, I bow to thee!
    Take this handkerchief from me.
    In thy white hand take it, see!
    Say I am beloved by thee.
    I don't know at all, I fear,
    What I am to give thee, dear!
    To my dear I think I will
    Of a shawl a present make
    And five kisses for it take."'
Lukashka and Nazarka broke into the ring and started walking about among the girls. Lukashka joined in the singing, taking seconds in his clear voice as he walked in the middle of the ring swinging his arms. 'Well, come in, one of you!' he said. The other girls pushed Maryanka, but she would not enter the ring. The sound of shrill laughter, slaps, kisses, and whispers mingled with the singing.

As he went past Olenin, Lukashka gave a friendly nod.

'Dmitri Andreich! Have you too come to have a look?' he said.

'Yes,' answered Olenin dryly.

Beletski stooped and whispered something into Ustenka's ear. She had not time to reply till she came round again, when she said:

'All right, we'll come.'

'And Maryanka too?'

Olenin stooped towards Maryanka. 'You'll come? Please do, if only for a minute. I must speak to you.'

'If the other girls come, I will.'

'Will you answer my question?' said he, bending towards her. 'You are in good spirits to-day.'

She had already moved past him. He went after her.

'Will you answer?'

'Answer what?'

'The question I asked you the other day,' said Olenin, stooping to her ear. 'Will you marry me?'

Maryanka thought for a moment.

'I'll tell you,' said she, 'I'll tell you to-night.'

And through the darkness her eyes gleamed brightly and kindly at the young man.

He still followed her. He enjoyed stooping closer to her. But Lukashka, without ceasing to sing, suddenly seized her firmly by the hand and pulled her from her place in the ring of girls into the middle. Olenin had only time to say, "Come to Ustenka's," and stepped back to his companion.

The song came to an end. Lukashka wiped his lips, Maryanka did the same, and they kissed. "No, no, kisses five!" said Lukashka. Chatter, laughter, and running about, succeeded to the rhythmic movements and sound. Lukashka, who seemed to have drunk a great deal, began to distribute sweetmeats to the girls.

"I offer them to everyone!" he said with proud, comically pathetic self-admiration. "But anyone who goes after soldiers goes out of the ring!" he suddenly added, with an angry glance at Olenin.

The girls grabbed his sweetmeats from him, and, laughing, struggled for them among themselves. Beletski and Olenin stepped aside.

Lukashka, as if ashamed of his generosity, took off his cap and wiping his forehead with his sleeve came up to Maryanka and Ustenka.

"Answer me, my dear, dost thou hold me in contempt?" he said in the words of the song they had just been singing, and turning to Maryanka he angrily repeated the words: "Dost thou hold me in contempt? When we shall married be thou wilt weep because of me!" he added, embracing Ustenka and Maryanka both together.

Ustenka tore herself away, and swinging her arm gave him such a blow on the back that she hurt her hand.

"Well, are you going to have another turn?" he asked.

"The other girls may if they like," answered Ustenka, "but I am going home and Maryanka was coming to our house too."

With his arm still round her, Lukashka led Maryanka away from the crowd to the darker corner of a house.

"Don't go, Maryanka," he said, "let's have some fun for the last time.
Go home and I will come to you!"
"What am I to do at home? Holidays are meant for merrymaking. I am going to Ustenka's," replied Maryanka.

'I'll marry you all the same, you know!'

'All right,' said Maryanka, 'we shall see when the time comes.'

'So you are going,' said Lukashka sternly, and, pressing her close, he kissed her on the cheek.

'There, leave off! Don't bother,' and Maryanka, wrenching herself from his arms, moved away.

'Ah my girl, it will turn out badly,' said Lukashka reproachfully and stood still, shaking his head. 'Thou wilt weep because of me' and turning away from her he shouted to the other girls:

'Now then! Play away!'

What he had said seemed to have frightened and vexed Maryanka. She stopped, 'What will turn out badly?'

'Why, that!'

'That what?'

'Why, that you keep company with a soldier-lodger and no longer care for me!'

'I'll care just as long as I choose. You're not my father, nor my mother. What do you want? I'll care for whom I like!'

'Well, all right' said Lukashka, 'but remember!' He moved towards the shop. 'Girls!' he shouted, 'why have you stopped? Go on dancing. Nazarka, fetch some more chikhir.'

'Well, will they come?' asked Olenin, addressing Beletski.

'They'll come directly,' replied Beletski. 'Come along, we must prepare the ball.'

Chapter XXXIX
It was already late in the night when Olenin came out of Beletski's hut following Maryanka and Ustenka. He saw in the dark street before him the gleam of the girl's white kerchief. The golden moon was descending towards the steppe. A silvery mist hung over the village. All was still; there were no lights anywhere and one heard only the receding footsteps of the young women. Olenin's heart beat fast. The fresh moist atmosphere cooled his burning face. He glanced at the sky and turned to look at the hut he had just come out of: the candle was already out. Then he again peered through the darkness at the girls' retreating shadows. The white kerchief disappeared in the mist. He was afraid to remain alone, he was so happy. He jumped down from the porch and ran after the girls.

'Bother you, someone may see' said Ustenka.

'Never mind!'

Olenin ran up to Maryanka and embraced her.

Maryanka did not resist.

'Haven't you kissed enough yet?' said Ustenka. 'Marry and then kiss, but now you'd better wait.'

'Good-night, Maryanka. To-morrow I will come to see your father and tell him. Don't you say anything.'

'Why should I!' answered Maryanka.

Both the girls started running. Olenin went on by himself thinking over all that had happened. He had spent the whole evening alone with her in a corner by the oven. Ustenka had not left the hut for a single moment, but had romped about with the other girls and with Beletski all the time. Olenin had talked in whispers to Maryanka.

'Will you marry me?' he had asked.

'You'd deceive me and not have me,' she replied cheerfully and calmly.

'But do you love me? Tell me for God's sake!'

'Why shouldn't I love you? You don't squint,' answered Maryanka, laughing and with her hard hands squeezing his.

'What whi-ite, whi-i-ite, soft hands you've gotso like clotted cream,' she said.

'I am in earnest. Tell me, will you marry me?'

'Why not, if father gives me to you?'

'Well then remember, I shall go mad if you deceive me. To-morrow I will tell your mother and father. I shall come and propose.'

Maryanka suddenly burst out laughing.

'What's the matter?'

'It seems so funny!'

'It's true! I will buy a vineyard and a house and will enroll myself as a Cossack.'

'Mind you don't go after other women then. I am severe about that.'

Olenin joyfully repeated all these words to himself. The memory of them now gave him pain and now such joy that it took away his breath. The pain was because she had remained as calm as usual while talking to him. She did not seem at all agitated by these new conditions. It was as if she did not trust him and did not think of the future. It seemed to him that she only loved him for the present moment, and that in her mind there was no future with him. He was happy because her words sounded to him true, and she had consented to be his. 'Yes,' thought he to himself, 'we shall only understand one another when she is quite mine. For such love there are no words. It needs lifethe whole of life. To-morrow everything will be cleared up. I cannot live like this any longer; to-morrow I will tell everything to her father, to Beletski, and to the whole village.'

Lukashka, after two sleepless nights, had drunk so much at the fete that for the first time in his life his feet would not carry him, and he slept in Yamka's house.

Chapter XL
The next day Olenin awoke earlier than usual, and immediately remembered what lay before him, and he joyfully recalled her kisses, the pressure of her hard hands, and her words, 'What white hands you have!' He jumped up and wished to go at once to his hosts' hut to ask for their consent to his marriage with Maryanka. The sun had not yet risen, but it seemed that there was an unusual bustle in the street and side-street: people were moving about on foot and on horseback, and talking. He threw on his Circassian coat and hastened out into the porch. His hosts were not yet up. Five Cossacks were riding past and talking loudly together. In front rode Lukashka on his broad-backed Kabarda horse.

The Cossacks were all speaking and shouting so that it was impossible to make out exactly what they were saying.

'Ride to the Upper Post,' shouted one.

'Saddle and catch us up, be quick,' said another.

'It's nearer through the other gate!'

'What are you talking about?' cried Lukashka. 'We must go through the middle gates, of course.'

'So we must, it's nearer that way,' said one of the Cossacks who was covered with dust and rode a perspiring horse. Lukashka's face was red and swollen after the drinking of the previous night and his cap was pushed to the back of his head. He was calling out with authority as though he were an officer.

'What is the matter? Where are you going?' asked Olenin, with difficulty attracting the Cossacks' attention.

'We are off to catch abreks. They're hiding among the sand-drifts. We are just off, but there are not enough of us yet.'

And the Cossacks continued to shout, more and more of them joining as they rode down the street. It occurred to Olenin that it would not look well for him to stay behind; besides he thought he could soon come back. He dressed, loaded his gun with bullets, jumped onto his horse which Vanyusha had saddled more or less well, and overtook the Cossacks at the village gates. The Cossacks had dismounted, and filling a wooden bowl with chikhir from a little cask which they had brought with them, they passed the bowl round to one another and drank to the success of their expedition. Among them was a smartly dressed young cornet, who happened to be in the village and who took command of the group of nine Cossacks who had joined for the expedition. All these Cossacks were privates, and although the cornet assumed the airs of a commanding officer, they only obeyed Lukashka. Of Olenin they took no notice at all, and when they had all mounted and started, and Olenin rode up to the cornet and began asking him what was taking place, the cornet, who was usually quite friendly, treated him with marked condescension. It was with great difficulty that Olenin managed to find out from him what was happening. Scouts who had been sent out to search for abreks had come upon several hillsmen some six miles from the village. These abreks had taken shelter in pits and had fired at the scouts, declaring they would not surrender. A corporal who had been scouting with two Cossacks had remained to watch the abreks, and had sent one Cossack back to get help.

The sun was just rising. Three miles beyond the village the steppe spread out and nothing was visible except the dry, monotonous, sandy, dismal plain covered with the footmarks of cattle, and here and there with tufts of withered grass, with low reeds in the flats, and rare, little-trodden footpaths, and the camps of the nomad Nogay tribe just visible far away. The absence of shade and the austere aspect of the place were striking. The sun always rises and sets red in the steppe. When it is windy whole hills of sand are carried by the wind from place to place.

When it is calm, as it was that morning, the silence, uninterrupted by any movement or sound, is peculiarly striking. That morning in the steppe it was quiet and dull, though the sun had already risen. It all seemed specially soft and desolate. The air was hushed, the footfalls and the snorting of the horses were the only sounds to be heard, and even they quickly died away.

The men rode almost silently. A Cossack always carries his weapons so that they neither jingle nor rattle. Jingling weapons are a terrible disgrace to a Cossack. Two other Cossacks from the village caught the party up and exchanged a few words. Lukashka's horse either stumbled or caught its foot in some grass, and became restivewhich is a sign of bad luck among the Cossacks, and at such a time was of special importance. The others exchanged glances and turned away, trying not to notice what had happened. Lukaskha pulled at the reins, frowned sternly, set his teeth, and flourished his whip above his head. His good Kabarda horse, prancing from one foot to another not knowing with which to start, seemed to wish to fly upwards on wings. But Lukashka hit its well-fed sides with his whip once, then again, and a third time, and the horse, showing its teeth and spreading out its tail, snorted and reared and stepped on its hind legs a few paces away from the others.

'Ah, a good steed that!' said the cornet.

That he said steed instead of HORSE indicated special praise.

'A lion of a horse,' assented one of the others, an old Cossack.

The Cossacks rode forward silently, now at a footpace, then at a trot, and these changes were the only incidents that interrupted for a moment the stillness and solemnity of their movements.

Riding through the steppe for about six miles, they passed nothing but one Nogay tent, placed on a cart and moving slowly along at a distance of about a mile from them. A Nogay family was moving from one part of the steppe to another. Afterwards they met two tattered Nogay women with high cheekbones, who with baskets on their backs were gathering dung left by the cattle that wandered over the steppe. The cornet, who did not know their language well, tried to question them, but they did not understand him and, obviously frightened, looked at one another.

Lukashka rode up to them both, stopped his horse, and promptly uttered the usual greeting. The Nogay women were evidently relieved, and began speaking to him quite freely as to a brother.

'Ayay, kop abrek!' they said plaintively, pointing in the direction in which the Cossacks were going. Olenin understood that they were saying, 'Many abreks.'

Never having seen an engagement of that kind, and having formed an idea of them only from Daddy Eroshka's tales, Olenin wished not to be left behind by the Cossacks, but wanted to see it all. He admired the Cossacks, and was on the watch, looking and listening and making his own observations. Though he had brought his sword and a loaded gun with him, when he noticed that the Cossacks avoided him he decided to take no part in the action, as in his opinion his courage had already been sufficiently proved when he was with his detachment, and also because he was very happy.

Suddenly a shot was heard in the distance.

The cornet became excited, and began giving orders to the Cossacks as to how they should divide and from which side they should approach. But the Cossacks did not appear to pay any attention to these orders, listening only to what Lukashka said and looking to him alone. Lukashka's face and figure were expressive of calm solemnity. He put his horse to a trot with which the others were unable to keep pace, and screwing up his eyes kept looking ahead.

'There's a man on horseback,' he said, reining in his horse and keeping in line with the others.

Olenin looked intently, but could not see anything. The Cossacks soon distinguished two riders and quietly rode straight towards them.

'Are those the ABREKS?' asked Olenin.

The Cossacks did not answer his question, which appeared quite meaningless to them. The ABREKS would have been fools to venture across the river on horseback.

'That's friend Rodka waving to us, I do believe,' said Lukashka, pointing to the two mounted men who were now clearly visible. 'Look, he's coming to us.'

A few minutes later it became plain that the two horsemen were the
Cossack scouts. The corporal rode up to Lukashka.
Chapter XLI
'Are they far?' was all Lukashka said.

Just then they heard a sharp shot some thirty paces off. The corporal smiled slightly.

'Our Gurka is having shots at them,' he said, nodding in the direction of the shot.

Having gone a few paces farther they saw Gurka sitting behind a sand-hillock and loading his gun. To while away the time he was exchanging shots with the ABREKS, who were behind another sand-heap. A bullet came whistling from their side.

The cornet was pale and grew confused. Lukashka dismounted from his
horse, threw the reins to one of the other Cossacks, and went up to
Gurka. Olenin also dismounted and, bending down, followed Lukashka.
They had hardly reached Gurka when two bullets whistled above them.
Lukashka looked around laughing at Olenin and stooped a little.

'Look out or they will kill you, Dmitri Andreich,' he said. 'You'd better go awayyou have no business here.' But Olenin wanted absolutely to see the ABREKS.

From behind the mound he saw caps and muskets some two hundred paces off. Suddenly a little cloud of smoke appeared from thence, and again a bullet whistled past. The ABREKS were hiding in a marsh at the foot of the hill. Olenin was much impressed by the place in which they sat. In reality it was very much like the rest of the steppe, but because the ABREKS sat there it seemed to detach itself from all the rest and to have become distinguished. Indeed it appeared to Olenin that it was the very spot for ABREKS to occupy. Lukashka went back to his horse and Olenin followed him.

'We must get a hay-cart,' said Lukashka, 'or they will be killing some of us. There behind that mound is a Nogay cart with a load of hay.'

The cornet listened to him and the corporal agreed. The cart of hay was fetched, and the Cossacks, hiding behind it, pushed it forward. Olenin rode up a hillock from whence he could see everything. The hay-cart moved on and the Cossacks crowded together behind it. The Cossacks advanced, but the Chechens, of whom there were nine, sat with their knees in a row and did not fire.

All was quiet. Suddenly from the Chechens arose the sound of a mournful song, something like Daddy Eroshka's 'Ay day, dalalay.' The Chechens knew that they could not escape, and to prevent themselves from being tempted to take to flight they had strapped themselves together, knee to knee, had got their guns ready, and were singing their death-song.

The Cossacks with their hay-cart drew closer and closer, and Olenin expected the firing to begin at any moment, but the silence was only broken by the abreks' mournful song. Suddenly the song ceased; there was a sharp report, a bullet struck the front of the cart, and Chechen curses and yells broke the silence and shot followed on shot and one bullet after another struck the cart. The Cossacks did not fire and were now only five paces distant.

Another moment passed and the Cossacks with a whoop rushed out on both sides from behind the cartLukashka in front of them. Olenin heard only a few shots, then shouting and moans. He thought he saw smoke and blood, and abandoning his horse and quite beside himself he ran towards the Cossacks. Horror seemed to blind him. He could not make out anything, but understood that all was over. Lukashka, pale as death, was holding a wounded Chechen by the arms and shouting, 'Don't kill him. I'll take him alive!' The Chechen was the red-haired man who had fetched his brother's body away after Lukashka had killed him. Lukashka was twisting his arms. Suddenly the Chechen wrenched himself free and fired his pistol. Lukashka fell, and blood began to flow from his stomach. He jumped up, but fell again, swearing in Russian and in Tartar. More and more blood appeared on his clothes and under him. Some Cossacks approached him and began loosening his girdle. One of them, Nazarka, before beginning to help, fumbled for some time, unable to put his sword in its sheath: it would not go the right way. The blade of the sword was blood-stained.

The Chechens with their red hair and clipped moustaches lay dead and hacked about. Only the one we know of, who had fired at Lukashka, though wounded in many places was still alive. Like a wounded hawk all covered with blood (blood was flowing from a wound under his right eye), pale and gloomy, he looked about him with wideopen excited eyes and clenched teeth as he crouched, dagger in hand, still prepared to defend himself. The cornet went up to him as if intending to pass by, and with a quick movement shot him in the ear. The Chechen started up, but it was too late, and he fell.

The Cossacks, quite out of breath, dragged the bodies aside and took the weapons from them. Each of the red-haired Chechens had been a man, and each one had his own individual expression. Lukashka was carried to the cart. He continued to swear in Russian and in Tartar.

'No fear, I'll strangle him with my hands. ANNA SENI!' he cried, struggling. But he soon became quiet from weakness.

Olenin rode home. In the evening he was told that Lukashka was at death's door, but that a Tartar from beyond the river had undertaken to cure him with herbs.

The bodies were brought to the village office. The women and the little boys hastened to look at them.

It was growing dark when Olenin returned, and he could not collect himself after what he had seen. But towards night memories of the evening before came rushing to his mind. He looked out of the window, Maryanka was passing to and fro from the house to the cowshed, putting things straight. Her mother had gone to the vineyard and her father to the office. Olenin could not wait till she had quite finished her work, but went out to meet her. She was in the hut standing with her back towards him. Olenin thought she felt shy.

'Maryanka,' said he, 'I say, Maryanka! May I come in?'

She suddenly turned. There was a scarcely perceptible trace of tears in her eyes and her face was beautiful in its sadness. She looked at him in silent dignity.

Olenin again said:

'Maryanka, I have come'

'Leave me alone!' she said. Her face did not change but the tears ran down her cheeks.

'What are you crying for? What is it?'

'What?' she repeated in a rough voice. 'Cossacks have been killed, that's what for.'

'Lukashka?' said Olenin.

'Go away! What do you want?'

'Maryanka!' said Olenin, approaching her.

'You will never get anything from me!'

'Maryanka, don't speak like that,' Olenin entreated.

'Get away. I'm sick of you!' shouted the girl, stamping her foot, and moved threateningly towards him. And her face expressed such abhorrence, such contempt, and such anger that Olenin suddenly understood that there was no hope for him, and that his first impression of this woman's inaccessibility had been perfectly correct.

Olenin said nothing more, but ran out of the hut.

Chapter XLII
For two hours after returning home he lay on his bed motionless. Then he went to his company commander and obtained leave to visit the staff. Without taking leave of anyone, and sending Vanyusha to settle his accounts with his landlord, he prepared to leave for the fort where his regiment was stationed. Daddy Eroshka was the only one to see him off. They had a drink, and then a second, and then yet another. Again as on the night of his departure from Moscow, a three-horsed conveyance stood waiting at the door. But Olenin did not confer with himself as he had done then, and did not say to himself that all he had thought and done here was 'not it'. He did not promise himself a new life. He loved Maryanka more than ever, and knew that he could never be loved by her.

'Well, good-bye, my lad!' said Daddy Eroshka. 'When you go on an expedition, be wise and listen to my wordsthe words of an old man. When you are out on a raid or the like (you know I'm an old wolf and have seen things), and when they begin firing, don't get into a crowd where there are many men. When you fellows get frightened you always try to get close together with a lot of others. You think it is merrier to be with others, but that's where it is worst of all! They always aim at a crowd. Now I used to keep farther away from the others and went alone, and I've never been wounded. Yet what things haven't I seen in my day?'

'But you've got a bullet in your back,' remarked Vanyusha, who was clearing up the room.

'That was the Cossacks fooling about,' answered Eroshka.

'Cossacks? How was that?' asked Olenin.

'Oh, just so. We were drinking. Vanka Sitkin, one of the Cossacks, got merry, and puff! he gave me one from his pistol just here.'

'Yes, and did it hurt?' asked Olenin. 'Vanyusha, will you soon be ready?' he added.

'Ah, where's the hurry! Let me tell you. When he banged into me, the bullet did not break the bone but remained here. And I say: "You've killed me, brother. Eh! What have you done to me? I won't let you off! You'll have to stand me a pailful!"'

'Well, but did it hurt?' Olenin asked again, scarcely listening to the tale.

'Let me finish. He stood a pailful, and we drank it, but the blood went on flowing. The whole room was drenched and covered with blood. Grandad Burlak, he says, "The lad will give up the ghost. Stand a bottle of the sweet sort, or we shall have you taken up!" They bought more drink, and boozed and boozed'

'Yes, but did it hurt you much?' Olenin asked once more.

'Hurt, indeed! Don't interrupt: I don't like it. Let me finish. We boozed and boozed till morning, and I fell asleep on the top of the oven, drunk. When I woke in the morning I could not unbend myself anyhow'

'Was it very painful?' repeated Olenin, thinking that now he would at last get an answer to his question.

'Did I tell you it was painful? I did not say it was painful, but I could not bend and could not walk.'

'And then it healed up?' said Olenin, not even laughing, so heavy was his heart.

'It healed up, but the bullet is still there. Just feel it!' And lifting his shirt he showed his powerful back, where just near the bone a bullet could be felt and rolled about.

'Feel how it rolls,' he said, evidently amusing himself with the bullet as with a toy. 'There now, it has rolled to the back.'

'And Lukashka, will he recover?' asked Olenin.

'Heaven only knows! There's no doctor. They've gone for one.'

'Where will they get one? From Groznoe?' asked Olenin. 'No, my lad. Were I the Tsar I'd have hung all your Russian doctors long ago. Cutting is all they know! There's our Cossack Baklashka, no longer a real man now that they've cut off his leg! That shows they're fools. What's Baklashka good for now? No, my lad, in the mountains there are real doctors. There was my chum, Vorchik, he was on an expedition and was wounded just here in the chest. Well, your doctors gave him up, but one of theirs came from the mountains and cured him! They understand herbs, my lad!'

'Come, stop talking rubbish,' said Olenin. 'I'd better send a doctor from head-quarters.'

'Rubbish!' the old man said mockingly. 'Fool, fool! Rubbish. You'll send a doctor!If yours cured people, Cossacks and Chechens would go to you for treatment, but as it is your officers and colonels send to the mountains for doctors. Yours are all humbugs, all humbugs.'

Olenin did not answer. He agreed only too fully that all was humbug in the world in which he had lived and to which he was now returning.

'How is Lukashka? You've been to see him?' he asked.

'He just lies as if he were dead. He does not eat nor drink. Vodka is the only thing his soul accepts. But as long as he drinks vodka it's well. I'd be sorry to lose the lad. A fine lada brave, like me. I too lay dying like that once. The old women were already wailing. My head was burning. They had already laid me out under the holy icons. So I lay there, and above me on the oven little drummers, no bigger than this, beat the tattoo. I shout at them and they drum all the harder.' (The old man laughed.) 'The women brought our church elder. They were getting ready to bury me. They said, "He defiled himself with worldly unbelievers; he made merry with women; he ruined people; he did not fast, and he played the balalayka. Confess," they said. So I began to confess. "I've sinned!" I said. Whatever the priest said, I always answered "I've sinned." He began to ask me about the balalayka. "Where is the accursed thing," he says. "Show it me and smash it." But I say, "I've not got it." I'd hidden it myself in a net in the outhouse. I knew they could not find it. So they left me. Yet after all I recovered. When I went for my BALALAYKAWhat was I saying?' he continued. 'Listen to me, and keep farther away from the other men or you'll get killed foolishly. I feel for you, truly: you are a drinkerI love you! And fellows like you like riding up the mounds. There was one who lived here who had come from Russia, he always would ride up the mounds (he called the mounds so funnily, "hillocks"). Whenever he saw a mound, off he'd gallop. Once he galloped off that way and rode to the top quite pleased, but a Chechen fired at him and killed him! Ah, how well they shoot from their gun-rests, those Chechens! Some of them shoot even better than I do. I don't like it when a fellow gets killed so foolishly! Sometimes I used to look at your soldiers and wonder at them. There's foolishness for you! They go, the poor fellows, all in a clump, and even sew red collars to their coats! How can they help being hit! One gets killed, they drag him away and another takes his place! What foolishness!' the old man repeated, shaking his head. 'Why not scatter, and go one by one? So you just go like that and they won't notice you. That's what you must do.'

'Well, thank you! Good-bye, Daddy. God willing we may meet again,' said
Olenin, getting up and moving towards the passage.
The old man, who was sitting on the floor, did not rise.

'Is that the way one says "Good-bye"? Fool, fool!' he began. 'Oh dear, what has come to people? We've kept company, kept company for well-nigh a year, and now "Good-bye!" and off he goes! Why, I love you, and how I pity you! You are so forlorn, always alone, always alone. You're somehow so unsociable. At times I can't sleep for thinking about you. I am so sorry for you. As the song has it:

"It is very hard, dear brother, In a foreign land to live."

So it is with you.'

'Well, good-bye,' said Olenin again.

The old man rose and held out his hand. Olenin pressed it and turned to go.

'Give us your mug, your mug!'

And the old man took Olenin by the head with both hands and kissed him three times with wet moustaches and lips, and began to cry.

'I love you, good-bye!'

Olenin got into the cart.

'Well, is that how you're going? You might give me something for a remembrance. Give me a gun! What do you want two for?' said the old man, sobbing quite sincerely.

Olenin got out a musket and gave it to him.

'What a lot you've given the old fellow,' murmured Vanyusha, 'he'll never have enough! A regular old beggar. They are all such irregular people,' he remarked, as he wrapped himself in his overcoat and took his seat on the box.

'Hold your tongue, swine!' exclaimed the old man, laughing. 'What a stingy fellow!'

Maryanka came out of the cowshed, glanced indifferently at the cart, bowed and went towards the hut.

'LA FILLE!' said Vanyusha, with a wink, and burst out into a silly laugh.

'Drive on!' shouted Olenin, angrily.

'Good-bye, my lad! Good-bye. I won't forget you!' shouted Eroshka.

Olenin turned round. Daddy Eroshka was talking to Maryanka, evidently about his own affairs, and neither the old man nor the girl looked at Olenin.

The End














SEVASTOPOL.




SEVASTOPOL IN DECEMBER, 1854.


The flush of morning has but just begun to tinge the sky above Sapun
Mountain; the dark blue surface of the sea has already cast aside the
shades of night and awaits the first ray to begin a play of merry
gleams; cold and mist are wafted from the bay; there is no snow--all is
black, but the morning frost pinches the face and crackles underfoot,
and the far-off, unceasing roar of the sea, broken now and then by the
thunder of the firing in Sevastopol, alone disturbs the calm of the
morning. It is dark on board the ships; it has just struck eight bells.

Toward the north the activity of the day begins gradually to replace
the nocturnal quiet; here the relief guard has passed clanking their
arms, there the doctor is already hastening to the hospital, further on
the soldier has crept out of his earth hut and is washing his sunburnt
face in ice-encrusted water, and, turning towards the crimsoning east,
crosses himself quickly as he prays to God; here a tall and heavy
camel-wagon has dragged creaking to the cemetery, to bury the bloody
dead, with whom it is laden nearly to the top. You go to the wharf--a
peculiar odor of coal, manure, dampness, and of beef strikes you;
thousands of objects of all sorts--wood, meat, gabions, flour, iron, and
so forth--lie in heaps about the wharf; soldiers of various regiments,
with knapsacks and muskets, without knapsacks and without muskets,
throng thither, smoke, quarrel, drag weights aboard the steamer which
lies smoking beside the quay; unattached two-oared boats, filled with
all sorts of people,--soldiers, sailors, merchants, women,--land at and
leave the wharf.

"To the Grafsky, Your Excellency? be so good." Two or three retired
sailors rise in their boats and offer you their services.

You select the one who is nearest to you, you step over the
half-decomposed carcass of a brown horse, which lies there in the mud
beside the boat, and reach the stern. You quit the shore. All about
you is the sea, already glittering in the morning sun, in front of you
is an aged sailor, in a camel's-hair coat, and a young, white-headed
boy, who work zealously and in silence at the oars. You gaze at the
motley vastness of the vessels, scattered far and near over the bay,
and at the small black dots of boats moving about on the shining
azure expanse, and at the bright and beautiful buildings of the city,
tinted with the rosy rays of the morning sun, which are visible in one
direction, and at the foaming white line of the quay, and the sunken
ships from which black tips of masts rise sadly here and there, and
at the distant fleet of the enemy faintly visible as they rock on the
crystal horizon of the sea, and at the streaks of foam on which leap
salt bubbles beaten up by the oars; you listen to the monotonous sound
of voices which fly to you over the water, and the grand sounds of
firing, which, as it seems to you, is increasing in Sevastopol.

It cannot be that, at the thought that you too are in Sevastopol, a
certain feeling of manliness, of pride, has not penetrated your soul,
and that the blood has not begun to flow more swiftly through your
veins.

"Your Excellency! you are steering straight into the Kistentin,"[A]
says your old sailor to you as he turns round to make sure of the
direction which you are imparting to the boat, with the rudder to the
right.

[A] The vessel Constantine.

"And all the cannon are still on it," remarks the white-headed boy,
casting a glance over the ship as we pass.

"Of course; it's new. Korniloff lived on board of it," said the old
man, also glancing at the ship.

"See where it has burst!" says the boy, after a long silence, looking
at a white cloud of spreading smoke which has suddenly appeared high
over the South Bay, accompanied by the sharp report of an exploding
bomb.

"_He_ is firing to-day with his new battery," adds the old man, calmly
spitting on his hands. "Now, give way, Mishka! we'll overtake the
barge." And your boat moves forward more swiftly over the broad swells
of the bay, and you actually do overtake the heavy barge, upon which
some bags are piled, and which is rowed by awkward soldiers, and it
touches the Grafsky wharf amid a multitude of boats of every sort which
are landing.

Throngs of gray soldiers, black sailors, and women of various colors
move noisily along the shore. The women are selling rolls, Russian
peasants with samovars are crying _hot sbiten_;[B] and here upon the
first steps are strewn rusted cannon-balls, bombs, grape-shot, and
cast-iron cannon of various calibers; a little further on is a large
square, upon which lie huge beams, gun-carriages, sleeping soldiers;
there stand horses, wagons, green guns, ammunition-chests, and stacks
of arms; soldiers, sailors, officers, women, children, and merchants
are moving about; carts are arriving with hay, bags, and casks; here
and there Cossacks make their way through, or officers on horseback,
or a general in a drosky. To the right, the street is hemmed in by a
barricade, in whose embrasures stand some small cannon, and beside
these sits a sailor smoking his pipe. On the left a handsome house
with Roman ciphers on the pediment, beneath which stand soldiers and
blood-stained litters--everywhere you behold the unpleasant signs of
a war encampment. Your first impression is inevitably of the most
disagreeable sort. The strange mixture of camp and town life, of a
beautiful city and a dirty bivouac, is not only not beautiful, but
seems repulsive disorder; it even seems to you that every one is
thoroughly frightened, and is fussing about without knowing what he
is doing. But look more closely at the faces of these people who are
moving about you, and you will gain an entirely different idea. Look at
this little soldier from the provinces, for example, who is leading a
troika of brown horses to water, and is purring something to himself so
composedly that he evidently will not go astray in this motley crowd,
which does not exist for him; but he is fulfilling his duty, whatever
that may be,--watering the horses or carrying arms,--with just as much
composure, self-confidence, and equanimity as though it were taking
place in Tula or Saransk. You will read the same expression on the face
of this officer who passes by in immaculate white gloves, and in the
face of the sailor who is smoking as he sits on the barricade, and in
the faces of the working soldiers, waiting with their litters on the
steps of the former club, and in the face of yonder girl, who, fearing
to wet her pink gown, skips across the street on the little stones.

[B] A drink made of water, molasses, laurel-leaves or salvia, which is
drunk like tea, especially by the lower classes.

Yes! disenchantment certainly awaits you, if you are entering
Sevastopol for the first time. In vain will you seek, on even a
single countenance, for traces of anxiety, discomposure, or even of
enthusiasm, readiness for death, decision,--there is nothing of the
sort. You will see the tradespeople quietly engaged in the duties
of their callings, so that, possibly, you may reproach yourself for
superfluous raptures, you may entertain some doubt as to the justice
of the ideas regarding the heroism of the defenders of Sevastopol
which you have formed from stories, descriptions, and the sights
and sounds on the northern side. But, before you doubt, go upon the
bastions, observe the defenders of Sevastopol on the very scene of
the defence, or, better still, go straight across into that house,
which was formerly the Sevastopol Assembly House, and upon whose roof
stand soldiers with litters,--there you will behold the defenders
of Sevastopol, there you will behold frightful and sad, great and
laughable, but wonderful sights, which elevate the soul.

You enter the great Hall of Assembly. You have but just opened the door
when the sight and smell of forty or fifty seriously wounded men and
of those who have undergone amputation--some in hammocks, the majority
upon the floor--suddenly strike you. Trust not to the feeling which
detains you upon the threshold of the hall; be not ashamed of having
come to _look at_ the sufferers, be not ashamed to approach and address
them: the unfortunates like to see a sympathizing human face, they like
to tell of their sufferings and to hear words of love and interest. You
walk along between the beds and seek a face less stern and suffering,
which you decide to approach, with the object of conversing.

"Where are you wounded?" you inquire, timidly and with indecision, of
an old, gaunt soldier, who, seated in his hammock, is watching you with
a good-natured glance, and seems to invite you to approach him. I say
"you ask timidly," because these sufferings inspire you, over and above
the feeling of profound sympathy, with a fear of offending and with a
lofty reverence for the man who has undergone them.

"In the leg," replies the soldier; but, at the same time, you perceive,
by the folds of the coverlet, that he has lost his leg above the knee.
"God be thanked now," he adds,--"I shall get my discharge."

"Were you wounded long ago?"

"It was six weeks ago, Your Excellency."

"Does it still pain you?"

"No, there's no pain now; only there's a sort of gnawing in my calf
when the weather is bad, but that's nothing."

"How did you come to be wounded?"

"On the fifth bastion, during the first bombardment. I had just trained
a cannon, and was on the point of going away, so, to another embrasure
when _it_ struck me in the leg, just as if I had stepped into a hole
and had no leg."

"Was it not painful at the first moment?"

"Not at all; only as though something boiling hot had struck my leg."

"Well, and then?"

"And then--nothing; only the skin began to draw as though it had been
rubbed hard. The first thing of all, Your Excellency, _is not to think
at all_. If you don't think about a thing, it amounts to nothing. Men
suffer from thinking more than from anything else."

At that moment, a woman in a gray striped dress and a black kerchief
bound about her head approaches you.

She joins in your conversation with the sailor, and begins to tell
about him, about his sufferings, his desperate condition for the space
of four weeks, and how, when he was wounded, he made the litter halt
that he might see the volley from our battery, how the grand-duke spoke
to him and gave him twenty-five rubles, and how he said to him that he
wanted to go back to the bastion to direct the younger men, even if he
could not work himself. As she says all this in a breath, the woman
glances now at you, now at the sailor, who has turned away as though
he did not hear her and plucks some lint from his pillow, and her eyes
sparkle with peculiar enthusiasm.

"This is my housewife, Your Excellency!" the sailor says to you, with
an expression which seems to say, "You must excuse her. Every one knows
it's a woman's way--she's talking nonsense."

You begin to understand the defenders of Sevastopol. For some reason,
you feel ashamed of yourself in the presence of this man. You would
like to say a very great deal to him, in order to express to him your
sympathy and admiration; but you find no words, or you are dissatisfied
with those which come into your head,--and you do reverence in silence
before this taciturn, unconscious grandeur and firmness of soul, this
modesty in the face of his own merits.

"Well, God grant you a speedy recovery," you say to him, and you halt
before another invalid, who is lying on the floor and appears to be
awaiting death in intolerable agony.

He is a blond man with pale, swollen face. He is lying on his back,
with his left arm thrown out, in a position which is expressive of
cruel suffering. His parched, open mouth with difficulty emits his
stertorous breathing; his blue, leaden eyes are rolled up, and from
beneath the wadded coverlet the remains of his right arm, enveloped
in bandages, protrude. The oppressive odor of a corpse strikes you
forcibly, and the consuming, internal fire which has penetrated every
limb of the sufferer seems to penetrate you also.

"Is he unconscious?" you inquire of the woman, who comes up to you and
gazes at you tenderly as at a relative.

"No, he can still hear, but he's very bad," she adds, in a whisper. "I
gave him some tea to-day,--what if he is a stranger, one must still have
pity!--and he hardly tasted it."

"How do you feel?" you ask him.

The wounded man turns his eyeballs at the sound of your voice, but he
neither sees nor understands you.

"There's a gnawing at my heart."

A little further on, you see an old soldier changing his linen. His
face and body are of a sort of cinnamon-brown color, and gaunt as a
skeleton. He has no arm at all; it has been cut off at the shoulder. He
is sitting with a wide-awake air, he puts himself to rights; but you
see, by his dull, corpse-like gaze, his frightful gauntness, and the
wrinkles on his face, that he is a being who has suffered for the best
part of his life.

On the other side, you behold in a cot the pale, suffering, and
delicate face of a woman, upon whose cheek plays a feverish flush.

"That's our little sailor lass who was struck in the leg by a bomb on
the 5th," your guide tells you. "She was carrying her husband's dinner
to him in the bastion."

"Has it been amputated?"

"They cut it off above the knee."

Now, if your nerves are strong, pass through the door on the left.
In yonder room they are applying bandages and performing operations.
There, you will see doctors with their arms blood-stained above the
elbow, and with pale, stern faces, busied about a cot, upon which, with
eyes widely opened, and uttering, as in delirium, incoherent, sometimes
simple and touching words, lies a wounded man under the influence of
chloroform. The doctors are busy with the repulsive but beneficent
work of amputation. You see the sharp, curved knife enter the healthy,
white body, you see the wounded man suddenly regain consciousness with
a piercing cry and curses, you see the army surgeon fling the amputated
arm into a corner, you see another wounded man, lying in a litter in
the same apartment, shrink convulsively and groan as he gazes at the
operation upon his comrade, not so much from physical pain as from the
moral torture of anticipation.--You behold the frightful, soul-stirring
scenes; you behold war, not from its conventional, beautiful, and
brilliant side, with music and drum-beat, with fluttering flags and
galloping generals, but you behold war in its real phase--in blood, in
suffering, in death.

On emerging from this house of pain, you will infallibly experience
a sensation of pleasure, you will inhale the fresh air more fully,
you will feel satisfaction in the consciousness of your health, but,
at the same time, you will draw from the sight of these sufferings a
consciousness of your nothingness, and you will go calmly and without
any indecision to the bastion.

"What do the death and sufferings of such an insignificant worm as I
signify in comparison with so many deaths and such great sufferings?"
But the sight of the clear sky, the brilliant sun, the fine city, the
open church, and the soldiers moving about in various directions soon
restores your mind to its normal condition of frivolity, petty cares,
and absorption in the present alone.

Perhaps you meet the funeral procession of some officer coming from the
church, with rose-colored coffin, and music and fluttering banners;
perhaps the sounds of firing reach your ear from the bastion, but this
does not lead you back to your former thoughts; the funeral seems to
you a very fine military spectacle, and you do not connect with this
spectacle, or with the sounds, any clear idea of suffering and death,
as you did at the point where the bandaging was going on.

Passing the barricade and the church, you come to the most lively part
of the city. On both sides hang the signs of shops and inns. Merchants,
women in bonnets and kerchiefs, dandified officers,--everything speaks
to you of the firmness of spirit, of the independence and the security
of the inhabitants.

Enter the inn on the right if you wish to hear the conversations of
sailors and officers; stories of the preceding night are sure to be in
progress there, and of Fenka, and the affair of the 24th, and of the
dearness and badness of cutlets, and of such and such a comrade who has
been killed.

"Devil take it, how bad things are with us to-day!" ejaculates the bass
voice of a beardless naval officer, with white brows and lashes, in a
green knitted sash.

"Where?" asks another.

"In the fourth bastion," replies the young officer, and you are
certain to look at the white-lashed officer with great attention, and
even with some respect, at the words, "in the fourth bastion." His
excessive ease of manner, the way he flourishes his hands, his loud
laugh, and his voice, which seems to you insolent, reveal to you that
peculiar boastful frame of mind which some very young men acquire
after danger; nevertheless, you think he is about to tell you how bad
the condition of things on the fourth bastion is because of the bombs
and balls. Nothing of the sort! things are bad because it is muddy.
"It's impossible to pass through the battery," says he, pointing at
his boots, which are covered with mud above the calf. "And my best
gun-captain was killed to-day; he was struck plump in the forehead,"
says another. "Who's that? Mitiukhin?" "No!... What now, are they going
to give me any veal? the villains!" he adds to the servant of the inn.
"Not Mitiukhin, but Abrosimoff. Such a fine young fellow!--he was in the
sixth sally."

At another corner of the table, over a dish of cutlets with peas, and
a bottle of sour Crimean wine called "Bordeaux," sit two infantry
officers; one with a red collar, who is young and has two stars on his
coat, is telling the other, with a black collar and no stars, about the
affair at Alma. The former has already drunk a good deal, and it is
evident, from the breaks in his narrative, from his undecided glance
expressive of doubt as to whether he is believed, and chiefly from
the altogether too prominent part which he has played in it all, and
from the excessive horror of it all, that he is strongly disinclined
to bear strict witness to the truth. But these tales, which you will
hear for a long time to come in every corner of Russia, are nothing
to you; you prefer to go to the bastions, especially to the fourth,
of which you have heard so many and such diverse things. When any one
says that he has been in the fourth bastion, he says it with a peculiar
air of pride and satisfaction; when any one says, "I am going to the
fourth bastion," either a little agitation or a very great indifference
is infallibly perceptible in him; when any one wants to jest about
another, he says, "You must be stationed in the fourth bastion;" when
you meet litters and inquire whence they come, the answer is generally,
"From the fourth bastion." On the whole, two totally different opinions
exist with regard to this terrible bastion; one is held by those who
have never been in it, and who are convinced that the fourth bastion is
a regular grave for every one who enters it, and the other by those
who live in it, like the white-lashed midshipman, and who, when they
mention the fourth bastion, will tell you whether it is dry or muddy
there, whether it is warm or cold in the mud hut, and so forth.

During the half-hour which you have passed in the inn, the weather has
changed; a fog which before spread over the sea has collected into
damp, heavy, gray clouds, and has veiled the sun; a kind of melancholy,
frozen mist sprinkles from above, and wets the roofs, the sidewalks,
and the soldiers' overcoats.

Passing by yet another barricade, you emerge from the door at the right
and ascend the principal street. Behind this barricade, the houses are
unoccupied on both sides of the street, there are no signs, the doors
are covered with boards, the windows are broken in; here the corners
are broken away, there the roofs are pierced. The buildings seem to
be old, to have undergone every sort of vicissitude and deprivation
characteristic of veterans, and appear to gaze proudly and somewhat
scornfully upon you. You stumble over the cannon-balls which strew
the way, and into holes filled with water, which have been excavated
in the stony ground by the bombs. In the street you meet and overtake
bodies of soldiers, sharpshooters, officers; now and then you encounter
a woman or a child, but it is no longer a woman in a bonnet, but a
sailor's daughter in an old fur cloak and soldier's boots. As you
proceed along the street, and descend a small declivity, you observe
that there are no longer any houses about you, but only some strange
heaps of ruined stones, boards, clay, and beams; ahead of you, upon a
steep hill, you perceive a black, muddy expanse, intersected by canals,
and this that is in front is the fourth bastion. Here you meet still
fewer people, no women are visible, the soldiers walk briskly, you come
across drops of blood on the road, and you will certainly encounter
there four soldiers with a stretcher and upon the stretcher a pale
yellowish face and a blood-stained overcoat. If you inquire, "Where
is he wounded?" the bearers will say angrily, without turning towards
you, "In the leg or the arm," if he is slightly wounded, or they will
preserve a gloomy silence if no head is visible on the stretcher and he
is already dead or badly hurt.

The shriek of a cannon-ball or a bomb close by surprises you
unpleasantly, as you ascend the hill. You understand all at once,
and quite differently from what you have before, the significance of
those sounds of shots which you heard in the city. A quietly cheerful
memory flashes suddenly before your fancy; your own personality begins
to occupy you more than your observations; your attention to all
that surrounds you diminishes, and a certain disagreeable feeling of
uncertainty suddenly overmasters you. In spite of this decidedly base
voice, which suddenly speaks within you, at the sight of danger, you
force it to be silent, especially when you glance at a soldier who
runs laughing past you at a trot, waving his hands, and slipping down
the hill in the mud, and you involuntarily expand your chest, throw up
your head a little higher, and climb the slippery, clayey hill. As soon
as you have reached the top, rifle-balls begin to whiz to the right
and left of you, and, possibly, you begin to reflect whether you will
not go into the trench which runs parallel with the road; but this
trench is full of such yellow, liquid, foul-smelling mud, more than
knee-deep, that you will infallibly choose the path on the hill, the
more so as you see that _every one uses the path_. After traversing a
couple of hundred paces, you emerge upon a muddy expanse, all ploughed
up, and surrounded on all sides by gabions, earthworks, platforms,
earth huts, upon which great cast-iron guns stand, and cannon-balls
lie in symmetrical heaps. All these seem to be heaped up without any
aim, connection, or order. Here in the battery sit a knot of sailors;
there in the middle of the square, half buried in mud, lies a broken
cannon; further on, a foot-soldier, with his gun, is marching through
the battery, and dragging his feet with difficulty through the sticky
soil. But everywhere, on all sides, in every spot, you see broken
dishes, unexploded bombs, cannon-balls, signs of encampment, all sunk
in the liquid, viscous mud. You seem to hear not far from you the thud
of a cannon-ball; on all sides, you seem to hear the varied sounds
of balls,--humming like bees, whistling sharply, or in a whine like a
cord--you hear the frightful roar of the fusillade, which seems to shake
you all through with some horrible fright.

"So this is it, the fourth bastion, this is it--that terrible, really
frightful place!" you think to yourself, and you experience a little
sensation of pride, and a very large sensation of suppressed terror.
But you are mistaken, this is not the fourth bastion. It is the
Yazonovsky redoubt--a place which is comparatively safe; and not at all
dreadful.

In order to reach the fourth bastion, you turn to the right, through
this narrow trench, through which the foot-soldier has gone. In this
trench you will perhaps meet stretchers again, sailors and soldiers
with shovels; you will see the superintendent of the mines, mud huts,
into which only two men can crawl by bending down, and there you will
see sharpshooters of the Black Sea battalions, who are changing their
shoes, eating, smoking their pipes, and living; and you will still see
everywhere that same stinking mud, traces of a camp, and cast-off iron
debris in every possible form. Proceeding yet three hundred paces,
you will emerge again upon a battery,--on an open space, all cut up
into holes and surrounded by gabions, covered with earth, cannon, and
earthworks. Here you will perhaps see five sailors playing cards under
the shelter of the breastworks, and a naval officer who, perceiving
that you are a new-comer, and curious, will with pleasure show his
household arrangements, and everything which may be of interest to you.

This officer rolls himself a cigarette of yellow paper, with so much
composure as he sits on a gun, walks so calmly from one embrasure
to another, converses with you so quietly, without the slightest
affectation, that, in spite of the bullets which hum above you
even more thickly than before, you become cool yourself, question
attentively, and listen to the officer's replies.

This officer will tell you, but only if you ask him, about the
bombardment on the 5th, he will tell you how only one gun in his
battery could be used, and out of all the gunners who served it only
eight remained, and how, nevertheless, on the next morning, the 6th, he
fired all the guns; he will tell you how a bomb fell upon a sailor's
earth hut on the 5th, and laid low eleven men; he will point out to
you, from the embrasures, the enemy's batteries and entrenchments,
which are not more than thirty or forty fathoms distant from this
point. I fear, however, that, under the influence of the whizzing
bullets, you may thrust yourself out of the embrasure in order to view
the enemy; you will see nothing, and, if you do see anything, you will
be very much surprised that that white stone wall, which is so near you
and from which white smoke rises in puffs,--that that white wall is the
enemy--_he_, as the soldiers and sailors say.

It is even quite possible that the naval officer will want to discharge
a shot or two in your presence, out of vanity or simply for his own
pleasure. "Send the captain and his crew to the cannon;" and fourteen
sailors step up briskly and merrily to the gun and load it--one
thrusting his pipe into his pocket, another one chewing a biscuit,
still another clattering his heels on the platform.

Observe the faces, the bearing, the movements of these men. In every
wrinkle of that sunburned face, with its high cheek-bones, in every
muscle, in the breadth of those shoulders, in the stoutness of those
legs shod in huge boots, in every calm, firm, deliberate gesture,
these chief traits which constitute the power of Russia--simplicity
and straightforwardness--are visible; but here, on every face, it
seems to you that the danger, misery, and the sufferings of war
have, in addition to these principal characteristics, left traces of
consciousness of personal worth, emotion, and exalted thought.

All at once a frightful roar, which shakes not your organs of hearing
alone but your whole being, startles you so that you tremble all over.
Then you hear the distant shriek of the shot as it pursues its course,
and the dense smoke of the powder conceals from you the platform and
the black figures of the sailors who are moving about upon it. You
hear various remarks of the sailors in reference to this shot, and you
see their animation, and an exhibition of a feeling which you had not
expected to behold perhaps--a feeling of malice, of revenge against
the enemy, which lies hidden in the soul of each man. "It struck the
embrasure itself; it seems to have killed two men--see, they've carried
them off!" you hear in joyful exclamation. "And now they are angry;
they'll fire at us directly," says some one; and, in fact, shortly
after you see a flash in front and smoke; the sentry, who is standing
on the breastwork, shouts "Can-non!" And then the ball shrieks past
you, strikes the earth, and scatters a shower of dirt and stones about
it.

This ball enrages the commander of the battery; he orders a second and
a third gun to be loaded, the enemy also begins to reply to us, and
you experience a sensation of interest, you hear and see interesting
things. Again the sentry shouts, "Can-non!" and you hear the same
report and blow, the same shower, or he shouts "Mortar!" and you hear
the monotonous, even rather pleasant whistle of the bomb, with which it
is difficult to connect the thought of horror; you hear this whistle
approaching you, and increasing in swiftness, then you see the black
sphere, the impact on the ground, the resounding explosion of the bomb
which can be felt. With the whistle and shriek, splinters fly again,
stones whiz through the air, and mud showers over you. At these sounds
you experience a strange feeling of enjoyment, and, at the same time,
of terror. At the moment when you know that the projectile is flying
towards you, it will infallibly occur to you that this shot will kill
you; but the feeling of self-love upholds you, and no one perceives
the knife which is cutting your heart. But when the shot has flown
past without touching you, you grow animated, and a certain cheerful,
inexpressibly pleasant feeling overpowers you, but only for a moment,
so that you discover a peculiar sort of charm in danger, in this game
of life and death, you want cannon-balls or bombs to strike nearer to
you.

But again the sentry has shouted in his loud, thick voice, "Mortar!"
again there is a shriek, and a bomb bursts, but with this noise comes
the groan of a man. You approach the wounded man, at the same moment
with the bearers; he has a strange, inhuman aspect, covered as he is
with blood and mud. A part of the sailor's breast has been torn away.
During the first moments, there is visible on his mud-stained face
only fear and a certain simulated, premature expression of suffering,
peculiar to men in that condition; but, at the same time, as the
stretcher is brought to him and he is laid upon it on his sound side,
you observe that this expression is replaced by an expression of a
sort of exaltation and lofty, inexpressible thought. His eyes shine
more brilliantly, his teeth are clenched, his head is held higher with
difficulty, and, as they lift him up, he stops the bearers and says
to his comrades, with difficulty and in a trembling voice: "Farewell,
brothers!" He tries to say something more, and it is plain that he
wants to say something touching, but he repeats once more: "Farewell,
brothers!"

At that moment, one of his fellow-sailors steps up to him, puts the cap
on the head which the wounded man holds towards him, and, waving his
hand indifferently, returns calmly to his gun. "That's the way with
seven or eight men every day," says the naval officer to you, in reply
to the expression of horror which has appeared upon your countenance,
as he yawns and rolls a cigarette of yellow paper.

       *       *       *       *       *

Thus you have seen the defenders of Sevastopol, on the very scene of
the defence, and you go back paying no attention, for some reason
or other, to the cannon-balls and bullets, which continue to shriek
the whole way until you reach the ruined theatre,--you proceed with
composure, and with your soul in a state of exaltation.

The principal and cheering conviction which you have brought away is
the conviction of the impossibility of the Russian people wavering
anywhere whatever--and this impossibility you have discerned not in the
multitude of traverses, breastworks, artfully interlaced trenches,
mines, and ordnance, piled one upon the other, of which you have
comprehended nothing; but you have discerned it in the eyes, the
speech, the manners, in what is called the spirit of the defenders
of Sevastopol. What they are doing they do so simply, with so little
effort and exertion, that you are convinced that they can do a hundred
times more--that they can do anything. You understand that the feeling
which makes them work is not a feeling of pettiness, ambition,
forgetfulness, which you have yourself experienced, but a different
sentiment, one more powerful, and one which has made of them men who
live with their ordinary composure under the fire of cannon, amid
hundreds of chances of death, instead of the one to which all men are
subject who live under these conditions amid incessant labor, poverty,
and dirt. Men will not accept these frightful conditions for the sake
of a cross or a title, nor because of threats; there must be another
lofty incentive as a cause, and this cause is the feeling which rarely
appears, of which a Russian is ashamed, that which lies at the bottom
of each man's soul--love for his country.

Only now have the tales of the early days of the siege of Sevastopol,
when there were no fortifications there, no army, no physical
possibility of holding it, and when at the same time there was not
the slightest doubt that it would not surrender to the enemy,--of the
days when that hero worthy of ancient Greece, Korniloff, said, as he
reviewed the army: "We will die, children, but we will not surrender
Sevastopol;" and our Russians, who are not fitted to be phrase-makers,
replied: "We will die! hurrah!"--only now have tales of that time ceased
to be for you the most beautiful historical legends, and have become
real facts and worthy of belief. You comprehend clearly, you figure
to yourself, those men whom you have just seen, as the very heroes of
those grievous times, who have not fallen, but have been raised by the
spirit, and have joyfully prepared for death, not for the sake of the
city, but of the country. This epos of Sevastopol, whose hero was the
Russian people, will leave mighty traces in Russia for a long time to
come.

Night is already falling. The sun has emerged from the gray clouds,
which cover the sky just before its setting, and has suddenly
illuminated with a crimson glow the purple vapors, the greenish sea
covered with ships and boats rocking on the regular swell, and the
white buildings of the city, and the people who are moving through its
streets. Sounds of some old waltz played by the regimental band on the
boulevard, and the sounds of firing from the bastions, which echo them
strangely, are borne across the water.




SEVASTOPOL IN MAY, 1855.


I.

Six months have already passed since the first cannon-ball whistled
from the bastions of Sevastopol, and ploughed the earth in the works
of the enemy, and since that day thousands of bombs, cannon-balls, and
rifle-balls have been flying incessantly from the bastions into the
trenches and from the trenches into the bastions, and the angel of
death has never ceased to hover over them.

Thousands of men have been disappointed in satisfying their ambition;
thousands have succeeded in satisfying theirs, in becoming swollen
with pride; thousands repose in the embrace of death. How many red
coffins and canvas canopies there have been! And still the same sounds
are echoed from the bastions, and still on clear evenings the French
peer from their camp, with involuntary tremor, at the yellow, furrowed
bastions of Sevastopol, at the black forms of our sailors moving about
upon them, and count the embrasures and the iron cannon which project
angrily from them; the under officer still gazes through his telescope,
from the heights of the telegraph station, at the dark figures of the
French at their batteries, at their tents, at the columns moving over
the green hill, and at the puffs of smoke which issue forth from the
trenches,--and a crowd of men, formed of divers races, still streams in
throngs from various quarters, with the same ardor as ever, and with
desires differing even more greatly than their races, towards this
fateful spot. And the question, unsolved by the diplomats, has still
not been solved by powder and blood.


II.

On the boulevard of the besieged city of Sevastopol, not far from the
pavilion, the regimental band was playing, and throngs of military
men and of women moved gayly through the streets. The brilliant sun
of spring had risen in the morning over the works of the English, had
passed over the bastions, then over the city, over the Nikolaevsky
barracks, and, illuminating all with equal cheer, had now sunk into
the blue and distant sea, which was lighted with a silvery gleam as it
heaved in peace.

A tall, rather bent infantry officer, who was drawing upon his hand a
glove which was presentable, if not entirely white, came out of one of
the small naval huts, built on the left side of the Morskaya[C] street,
and, staring thoughtfully at the ground, took his way up the slope to
the boulevard.

[C] Sea.

The expression of this officer's homely countenance did not indicate
any great mental capacity, but rather simplicity, judgment, honor, and
a tendency to solid worth. He was badly built, not graceful, and he
seemed to be constrained in his movements. He was dressed in a little
worn cap, a cloak of a rather peculiar shade of lilac, from beneath
whose edge the gold of a watch-chain was visible; in trousers with
straps, and brilliantly polished calfskin boots. He must have been
either a German--but his features clearly indicate his purely Russian
descent--or an adjutant, or a regimental quartermaster, only in that
case he would have had spurs, or an officer who had exchanged from the
cavalry for the period of the campaign, or possibly from the Guards. He
was, in fact, an officer who had exchanged from the cavalry, and as he
ascended the boulevard, at the present moment, he was meditating upon a
letter which he had just received from a former comrade, now a retired
land-owner in the Government of T., and his wife, pale, blue-eyed
Natasha, his great friend. He recalled one passage of the letter, in
which his comrade said:--

"When our _Invalid_[D] arrives, Pupka (this was the name by which the
retired uhlan called his wife) rushes headlong into the vestibule,
seizes the paper, and runs with it to the seat in the arbor, _in
the drawing-room_ (in which, if you remember, you and I passed such
delightful winter evenings when the regiment was stationed in our
town), and reads your heroic deeds with such ardor as it is impossible
for you to imagine. She often speaks of you. 'There is Mikhailoff,' she
says, 'he's such a _love of a man_. I am ready to kiss him when I see
him. He fights on the bastions, and he will surely receive the Cross of
St. George, and he will be talked about in the newspapers ...' and so
on, and so on ... so that I am really beginning to be jealous of you."

[D] Military Gazette.

In another place he writes: "The papers reach us frightfully late,
and, although there is plenty of news conveyed by word of mouth, not
all of it can be trusted. For instance, the _young ladies with the
music_, acquaintances of yours, were saying yesterday that Napoleon
was already captured by our Cossacks, and that he had been sent to
Petersburg; but you will comprehend how much I believe of this.
Moreover, a traveller from Petersburg told us (he has been sent on
special business by the minister, is a very agreeable person, and, now
that there is no one in town, he is more of a _resource_ to us than
you can well imagine ...) well, he declares it to be a fact that our
troops have taken Eupatoria, _so that the French have no communication
whatever with Balaklava_, and that in this engagement two hundred of
ours were killed, but that the French lost fifteen thousand. My wife
was in such raptures over this that she _caroused_ all night, and she
declares that her instinct tells her that you certainly took part in
that affair, and that you distinguished yourself."

In spite of these words, and of the expressions which I have purposely
put in italics, and the whole tone of the letter, Staff-Captain
Mikhailoff recalled, with inexpressibly sad delight, his pale friend
in the provinces, and how she had sat with him in the arbor in the
evening, and talked about sentiment, and he thought of his good
comrade, the uhlan, and of how the latter had grown angry and had lost
the game when they had played cards for kopek stakes in his study, and
how the wife had laughed at them ... he recalled the friendship of
these two people for himself (perhaps it seemed to him to lie chiefly
on the side of his pale feminine friend); all these faces with their
surroundings flitted before his mind's eye, in a wonderfully sweet,
cheerfully rosy light, and, smiling at his reminiscences, he placed his
hand on the pocket which contained the letter so dear to him.

From reminiscences Captain Mikhailoff involuntarily proceeded to dreams
and hopes. "And what will be the joy and amazement of Natasha," he
thought, as he paced along the narrow lane, "... when she suddenly
reads in the _Invalid_ a description of how I was the first to climb
upon the cannon, and that I have received the George! I shall certainly
be promoted to a full captaincy, by virtue of seniority. Then it is
quite possible that I may get the grade of major in the line, this
very year, because many of our brothers have already been killed, and
many more will be in this campaign. And after that there will be more
affairs on hand, and a regiment will be entrusted to me, since I am
an experienced man ... lieutenant-colonel ... the Order of St. Anna
on my neck ... colonel!..." and he was already a general, granting an
interview to Natasha, the widow of his comrade, who, according to his
dreams, would have died by that time, when the sounds of the music
on the boulevard penetrated more distinctly to his ears, the crowds
of people caught his eye, and he found himself on the boulevard, a
staff-captain of infantry as before.


III.

He went, first of all, to the pavilion, near which were standing the
musicians, for whom other soldiers of the same regiment were holding
the notes, in the absence of stands, and about whom a ring of cadets,
nurses, and children had formed, intent rather on seeing than on
hearing. Around the pavilion stood, sat, or walked sailors, adjutants,
and officers in white gloves. Along the grand avenue of the boulevard
paced officers of every sort, and women of every description, rarely in
bonnets, mostly with kerchiefs on their heads (some had neither bonnets
nor kerchiefs), but no one was old, and it was worthy of note that all
were gay young creatures. Beyond, in the shady and fragrant alleys of
white acacia, isolated groups walked and sat.

No one was especially delighted to encounter Captain Mikhailoff on
the boulevard, with the exception, possibly, of the captain of his
regiment, Obzhogoff, and Captain Suslikoff, who pressed his hand
warmly; but the former was dressed in camel's-hair trousers, no
gloves, a threadbare coat, and his face was very red and covered with
perspiration, and the second shouted so loudly and incoherently that it
was mortifying to walk with them, particularly in the presence of the
officers in white gloves (with one of whom, an adjutant, Staff-Captain
Mikhailoff exchanged bows; and he might have bowed to another
staff-officer, since he had met him twice at the house of a mutual
acquaintance). Besides, what pleasure was it to him to promenade with
these two gentlemen, Obzhogoff and Suslikoff, when he had met them and
shaken hands with them six times that day already? It was not for this
that he had come.

He wanted to approach the adjutant with whom he had exchanged bows, and
to enter into conversation with these officers, not for the sake of
letting Captains Obzhogoff and Suslikoff and Lieutenant Pashtetzky see
him talking with them, but simply because they were agreeable people,
and, what was more, they knew the news, and would have told it.

But why is Captain Mikhailoff afraid, and why cannot he make up his
mind to approach them? "What if they should, all at once, refuse
to recognize me," he thinks, "or, having bowed to me, what if they
continue their conversation among themselves, as though I did not
exist, or walk away from me entirely, and leave me standing there
alone among the _aristocrats_." The word aristocrats (in the sense of
a higher, select circle, in any rank of life) has acquired for some
time past with us, in Russia, a great popularity, and has penetrated
into every locality and into every class of society whither vanity has
penetrated--among merchants, among officials, writers, and officers, to
Saratoff, to Mamaduish, to Vinnitz, everywhere where men exist.

To Captain Obzhogoff, Staff-Captain Mikhailoff was an _aristocrat_. To
Staff-Captain Mikhailoff, Adjutant Kalugin was an _aristocrat_, because
he was an adjutant, and was on such a footing with the other adjutants
as to call them "thou"! To Adjutant Kalugin, Count Nordoff was an
_aristocrat_, because he was an adjutant on the Emperor's staff.

Vanity! vanity! and vanity everywhere, even on the brink of the grave,
and among men ready to die for the highest convictions. Vanity! It
must be that it is a characteristic trait, and a peculiar malady of
our century. Why was nothing ever heard among the men of former days,
of this passion, any more than of the small-pox or the cholera? Why did
Homer and Shakespeare talk of love, of glory, of suffering, while the
literature of our age is nothing but an endless narrative of snobs and
vanity?

The staff-captain walked twice in indecision past the group of _his
aristocrats_, and the third time he exerted an effort over himself
and went up to them. This group consisted of four officers: Adjutant
Kalugin, an acquaintance of Mikhailoff's, Adjutant Prince Galtsin,
who was something of an aristocrat even for Kalugin himself, Colonel
Neferdoff, one of the so-called _hundred and twenty-two_ men of the
world (who had entered the service for this campaign, from the retired
list), and Captain of Cavalry Praskukhin, also one of the hundred and
twenty-two. Luckily for Mikhailoff, Kalugin was in a very fine humor
(the general had just been talking to him in a very confidential way,
and Prince Galtsin, who had just arrived from Petersburg, was stopping
with him); he did not consider it beneath his dignity to give his
hand to Captain Mikhailoff, which Praskukhin, however, could not make
up his mind to do, though he had met Mikhailoff very frequently on the
bastion, had drunk the latter's wine and vodka, and was even indebted
to him twenty rubles and a half at preference. As he did not yet know
Prince Galtsin very well, he did not wish to convict himself, in the
latter's presence, of an acquaintance with a simple staff-captain of
infantry. He bowed slightly to the latter.

"Well, Captain," said Kalugin, "when are we to go to the bastion again?
Do you remember how we met each other on the Schvartz redoubt--it was
hot there, hey?"

"Yes, it was hot," said Mikhailoff, recalling how he had, that night,
as he was making his way along the trenches to the bastion, encountered
Kalugin, who was walking along like a hero, valiantly clanking his
sword. "I ought to have gone there to-morrow, according to present
arrangements; but we have a sick man," pursued Mikhailoff, "one
officer, as...."

He was about to relate how it was not his turn, but, as the commander
of the eighth company was ill, and the company had only a cornet
left, he had regarded it as his duty to offer himself in the place
of Lieutenant Nepshisetzky, and was, therefore, going to the bastion
to-day. But Kalugin did not hear him out.

"I have a feeling that something is going to happen within a few days,"
he said to Prince Galtsin.

"And won't there be something to-day?" asked Mikhailoff, glancing first
at Kalugin, then at Galtsin.

No one made him any reply. Prince Galtsin merely frowned a little, sent
his eyes past the other's cap, and, after maintaining silence for a
moment, said:--

"That's a magnificent girl in the red kerchief. You don't know her, do
you, captain?"

"She lives near my quarters; she is the daughter of a sailor," replied
the staff-captain.

"Come on; let's have a good look at her."

And Prince Galtsin linked one arm in that of Kalugin, the other in that
of the staff-captain, being convinced in advance that he could afford
the latter no greater gratification, which was, in fact, quite true.

The staff-captain was superstitious, and considered it a great sin
to occupy himself with women before a battle; but on this occasion he
feigned to be a vicious man, which Prince Galtsin and Kalugin evidently
did not believe, and which greatly amazed the girl in the red kerchief,
who had more than once observed how the staff-captain blushed as he
passed her little window. Praskukhin walked behind, and kept touching
Prince Galtsin with his hand, and making various remarks in the French
tongue; but as a fourth person could not walk on the small path, he
was obliged to walk alone, and it was only on the second round that he
took the arm of the brave and well known naval officer _Servyagin_,
who had stepped up and spoken to him, and who was also desirous of
joining the circle of _aristocrats_. And the gallant and famous beau
joyfully thrust his honest and muscular hand through the elbow of a
man who was known to all, and even well known to Servyagin, as not
too nice. When Praskukhin, explaining to the prince his acquaintance
with _that sailor_, whispered to him that the latter was well known
for his bravery, Prince Galtsin, having been on the fourth bastion on
the previous evening, having seen a bomb burst twenty paces from him,
considering himself no less a hero than this gentleman, and thinking
that many a reputation is acquired undeservedly, paid no particular
attention to Servyagin.

It was so agreeable to Staff-Captain Mikhailoff to walk about in this
company that he forgot the _dear_ letter from T----, and the gloomy
thoughts which had assailed him in connection with his impending
departure for the bastion. He remained with them until they began
to talk exclusively among themselves, avoiding his glances, thereby
giving him to understand that he might go, and finally deserted him
entirely. But the staff-captain was content, nevertheless, and as he
passed Yunker[E] Baron Pesth, who had been particularly haughty and
self-conceited since the preceding night, which was the first that he
had spent in the bomb-proof of the fifth bastion, and consequently
considered himself a hero, he was not in the least offended at the
presumptuous expression with which the yunker straightened himself up
and doffed his hat before him.

[E] A civilian, without military training, attached to a regiment as a
non-commissioned officer, who may eventually become a regular officer.


IV.

When later the staff-captain crossed the threshold of his quarters,
entirely different thoughts entered his mind. He looked around his
little chamber, with its uneven earth floor, and saw the windows all
awry, pasted over with paper, his old bed, with a rug nailed over
it, upon which was depicted a lady on horseback, and over which hung
two Tula pistols, the dirty couch of a cadet who lived with him, and
which was covered with a chintz coverlet; he saw his Nikita, who, with
untidy, tallowed hair, rose from the floor, scratching his head; he saw
his ancient cloak, his extra pair of boots, and a little bundle, from
which peeped a bit of cheese and the neck of a porter bottle filled
with vodka, which had been prepared for his use on the bastion, and all
at once he remembered that he was obliged to go with his company that
night to the fortifications.

"It is certainly foreordained that I am to be killed to-night," thought
the captain.... "I feel it. And the principal point is that I need not
have gone, but that I offered myself. And the man who thrusts himself
forward is always killed. And what's the matter with that accursed
Nepshisetsky? It is quite possible that he is not sick at all; and they
will kill another man for his sake, they will infallibly kill him.
However, if they don't kill me, I shall be promoted probably. I saw how
delighted the regimental commander was when I asked him to allow me to
go, if Lieutenant Nepshisetsky was ill. If I don't turn out a major,
then I shall certainly get the Vladimir cross. This is the thirteenth
time that I have been to the bastion. Ah, the thirteenth is an unlucky
number. They will surely kill me, I feel that I shall be killed; but
some one had to go, it was impossible for the lieutenant of the corps
to go. And, whatever happens, the honor of the regiment, the honor of
the army, depends on it. It was my _duty_ to go ... yes, my sacred
duty. But I have a foreboding."

The captain forgot that this was not the first time that a similar
foreboding had assailed him, in a greater or less degree, when it had
been necessary to go to the bastion, and he did not know that every
one who sets out on an affair experiences this foreboding with more or
less force. Having calmed himself with this conception of duty, which
was especially and strongly developed in the staff-captain, he seated
himself at the table, and began to write a farewell letter to his
father. Ten minutes later, having finished his letter, he rose from the
table, his eyes wet with tears, and, mentally reciting all the prayers
he knew, he set about dressing. His coarse, drunken servant indolently
handed him his new coat (the old one, which the captain generally wore
when going to the bastion, was not mended).

"Why is not my coat mended? You never do anything but sleep, you
good-for-nothing!" said Mikhailoff, angrily.

"Sleep!" grumbled Nikita. "You run like a dog all day long; perhaps you
stop--but you must not sleep, even then!"

"You are drunk again, I see."

"I didn't get drunk on your money, so you needn't scold."

"Hold your tongue, blockhead!" shouted the captain, who was ready to
strike the man. He had been absent-minded at first, but now he was, at
last, out of patience, and embittered by the rudeness of Nikita, whom
he loved, even spoiled, and who had lived with him for twelve years.

"Blockhead? Blockhead?" repeated the servant. "Why do you call me a
blockhead, sir? Is this a time for that sort of thing? It is not good
to curse."

Mikhailoff recalled whither he was on the point of going, and felt
ashamed of himself.

"You are enough to put a saint out of patience, Nikita," he said, in a
gentle voice. "Leave that letter to my father on the table, and don't
touch it," he added, turning red.

"Yes, sir," said Nikita, melting under the influence of the wine which
he had drunk, as he had said, "at his own expense," and winking his
eyes with a visible desire to weep.

But when the captain said: "Good-by, Nikita," on the porch, Nikita
suddenly broke down into repressed sobs, and ran to kiss his master's
hand.... "Farewell, master!" he exclaimed, sobbing. The old sailor's
wife, who was standing on the porch, could not, in her capacity of a
woman, refrain from joining in this touching scene, so she began to
wipe her eyes with her dirty sleeve, and to say something about even
gentlemen having their trials to bear, and that she, poor creature, had
been left a widow. And she related for the hundredth time to drunken
Nikita the story of her woes; how her husband had been killed in the
first bombardment, and how her little house had been utterly ruined
(the one in which she was now living did not belong to her), and so on.
When his master had departed, Nikita lighted his pipe, requested the
daughter of their landlord to go for some vodka, and very soon ceased
to weep, but, on the contrary, got into a quarrel with the old woman
about some small bucket, which, he declared, she had broken.

"But perhaps I shall only be wounded," meditated the captain, as he
marched through the twilight to the bastion with his company. "But
where? How? Here or here?" he thought, indicating his belly and his
breast.... "If it should be here (he thought of the upper portion of
his leg), it might run round. Well, but if it were here, and by a
splinter, that would finish me."

The captain reached the fortifications safely through the trenches,
set his men to work, with the assistance of an officer of sappers, in
the darkness, which was complete, and seated himself in a pit behind
the breastworks. There was not much firing; only once in a while
the lightning flashed from our batteries, then from _his_, and the
brilliant fuse of a bomb traced an arc of flame against the dark,
starry heavens. But all the bombs fell far in the rear and to the right
of the rifle-pits in which the captain sat. He drank his vodka, ate his
cheese, lit his cigarette, and, after saying his prayers, he tried to
get a little sleep.


V.

Prince Galtsin, Lieutenant-Colonel Neferdoff, and Praskukhin, whom no
one had invited, to whom no one spoke, but who never left them, all
went to drink tea with Adjutant Kalugin.

"Well, you did not finish telling me about Vaska Mendel," said
Kalugin, as he took off his cloak, seated himself by the window in a
soft lounging-chair, and unbuttoned the collar of his fresh, stiffly
starched cambric shirt: "How did he come to marry?"

"That's a joke, my dear fellow! There was a time, I assure you, when
nothing else was talked of in Petersburg," said Prince Galtsin, with a
laugh, as he sprang up from the piano, and seated himself on the window
beside Kalugin. "It is simply ludicrous, and I know all the details of
the affair."

And he began to relate--in a merry, and skilful manner--a love story,
which we will omit, because it possesses no interest for us. But it
is worthy of note that not only Prince Galtsin, but all the gentlemen
who had placed themselves here, one on the window-sill, another with
his legs coiled up under him, a third at the piano, seemed totally
different persons from what they were when on the boulevard; there was
nothing of that absurd arrogance and haughtiness which they and their
kind exhibit in public to the infantry officers; here they were among
their own set and natural, especially Kalugin and Prince Galtsin, and
were like very good, amiable, and merry children. The conversation
turned on their companions in the service in Petersburg, and on their
acquaintances.

"What of Maslovsky?"

"Which? the uhlan of the body-guard or of the horse-guard?"

"I know both of them. The one in the horse-guards was with me when he
was a little boy, and had only just left school. What is the elder one?
a captain of cavalry?"

"Oh, yes! long ago."

"And is he still going about with his gypsy maid?"

"No, he has deserted her ..." and so forth, and so forth, in the same
strain.

Then Prince Galtsin seated himself at the piano, and sang a gypsy song
in magnificent style. Praskukhin began to sing second, although no
one had asked him, and he did it so well that they requested him to
accompany the prince again, which he gladly consented to do.

The servant came in with the tea, cream, and cracknels on a silver
salver.

"Serve the prince," said Kalugin.

"Really, it is strange to think," said Galtsin, taking a glass, and
walking to the window, "that we are in a beleaguered city; tea with
cream, and such quarters as I should be only too happy to get in
Petersburg."

"Yes, if it were not for that," said the old lieutenant-colonel, who
was dissatisfied with everything, "this constant waiting for something
would be simply unendurable ... and to see how men are killed, killed
every day,--and there is no end to it, and under such circumstances it
would not be comfortable to live in the mud."

"And how about our infantry officers?" said Kalugin. "They live in the
bastions with the soldiers in the casemates and eat beet soup with the
soldiers--how about them?"

"How about them? They don't change their linen for ten days at a time,
and they are heroes--wonderful men."

At this moment an officer of infantry entered the room.

"I ... I was ordered ... may I present myself to the gen ... to His
Excellency from General N.?" he inquired, bowing with an air of
embarrassment.

Kalugin rose, but, without returning the officer's salute, he asked
him, with insulting courtesy and strained official smile, whether
_they_[F] would not wait awhile; and, without inviting him to be seated
or paying any further attention to him, he turned to Prince Galtsin
and began to speak to him in French, so that the unhappy officer, who
remained standing in the middle of the room, absolutely did not know
what to do with himself.

[F] A polite way of referring to the general in the plural.

"It is on very important business, sir," said the officer, after a
momentary pause.

"Ah! very well, then," said Kalugin, putting on his cloak, and
accompanying him to the door.

"_Eh bien, messieurs_, I think there will be hot work to-night," said
Kalugin in French, on his return from the general's.

"Hey? What? A sortie?" They all began to question him.

"I don't know yet--you will see for yourselves," replied Kalugin, with a
mysterious smile.

"And my commander is on the bastion--of course, I shall have to go,"
said Praskukhin, buckling on his sword.

But no one answered him: he must know for himself whether he had to go
or not.

Praskukhin and Neferdoff went off, in order to betake themselves to
their posts. "Farewell, gentlemen!" "Au revoir, gentlemen! We shall
meet again to-night!" shouted Kalugin from the window when Praskukhin
and Neferdoff trotted down the street, bending over the bows of their
Cossack saddles. The trampling of their Cossack horses soon died away
in the dusky street.

"No, tell me, is something really going to take place to-night?" said
Galtsin, in French, as he leaned with Kalugin on the window-sill, and
gazed at the bombs which were flying over the bastions.

"I can tell you, you see ... you have been on the bastions, of course?"
(Galtsin made a sign of assent, although he had been only once to the
fourth bastion.) "Well, there was a trench opposite our lunette",
and Kalugin, who was not a specialist, although he considered his
judgment on military affairs particularly accurate, began to explain
the position of our troops and of the enemy's works and the plan of the
proposed affair, mixing up the technical terms of fortifications a good
deal in the process.

"But they are beginning to hammer away at our casemates. Oho! was that
ours or _his_? there, it has burst," they said, as they leaned on the
window-sill, gazing at the fiery line of the bomb, which exploded in
the air, at the lightning of the discharges, at the dark blue sky,
momentarily illuminated, and at the white smoke of the powder, and
listened to the sounds of the firing, which grew louder and louder.

"What a charming sight? is it not?" said Kalugin, in French, directing
the attention of his guest to the really beautiful spectacle. "Do you
know, you cannot distinguish the stars from the bombs at times."

"Yes, I was just thinking that that was a star; but it darted down ...
there, it has burst now. And that big star yonder, what is it called?
It is just exactly like a bomb."

"Do you know, I have grown so used to these bombs that I am convinced
that a starlight night in Russia will always seem to me to be all
bombs; one gets so accustomed to them."

"But am not I to go on this sortie?" inquired Galtsin, after a
momentary silence.

"Enough of that, brother! Don't think of such a thing! I won't let you
go!" replied Kalugin. "Your turn will come, brother!"

"Seriously? So you think that it is not necessary to go? Hey?..."

At that moment, a frightful crash of rifles was heard in the direction
in which these gentlemen were looking, above the roar of the cannon,
and thousands of small fires, flaring up incessantly, without
intermission, flashed along the entire line.

"That's it, when the real work has begun!" said Kalugin.--"That is the
sound of the rifles, and I cannot hear it in cold blood; it takes a
sort of hold on your soul, you know. And there is the hurrah!" he
added, listening to the prolonged and distant roar of hundreds of
voices, "A-a-aa!" which reached him from the bastion.

"What is this hurrah, theirs or ours?"

"I don't know; but it has come to a hand-to-hand fight, for the firing
has ceased."

At that moment, an officer followed by his Cossack galloped up to the
porch, and slipped down from his horse.

"Where from?"

"From the bastion. The general is wanted."

"Let us go. Well, now, what is it?"

"They have attacked the lodgements ... have taken them ... the French
have brought up their heavy reserves ... they have attacked our forces
... there were only two battalions," said the panting officer, who
was the same that had come in the evening, drawing his breath with
difficulty, but stepping to the door with perfect unconcern.

"Well, have they retreated?" inquired Galtsin.

"No," answered the officer, angrily. "The battalion came up and beat
them back; but the commander of the regiment is killed, and many
officers, and I have been ordered to ask for re-enforcements...."

And with these words he and Kalugin went off to the general, whither we
will not follow them.

Five minutes later, Kalugin was mounted on the Cossack's horse (and
with that peculiar, _quasi_-Cossack seat, in which, as I have observed,
all adjutants find something especially captivating, for some reason
or other), and rode at a trot to the bastion, in order to give some
orders, and to await the news of the final result of the affair. And
Prince Galtsin, under the influence of that oppressive emotion which
the signs of a battle near at hand usually produce on a spectator who
takes no part in it, went out into the street, and began to pace up and
down there without any object.


VI.

The soldiers were bearing the wounded on stretchers, and supporting
them by their arms. It was completely dark in the streets; now and
then, a rare light flashed in the hospital or from the spot where
the officers were seated. The same thunder of cannon and exchange of
rifle-shots was borne from the bastions, and the same fires flashed
against the dark heavens. Now and then, you could hear the trampling
hoofs of an orderly's horse, the groan of a wounded man, the footsteps
and voices of the stretcher-bearers, or the conversation of some of the
frightened female inhabitants, who had come out on their porches to
view the cannonade.

Among the latter were our acquaintances Nikita, the old sailor's widow,
with whom he had already made his peace, and her ten-year-old daughter.
"Lord, Most Holy Mother of God!" whispered the old woman to herself
with a sigh, as she watched the bombs, which, like balls of fire,
sailed incessantly from one side to the other. "What a shame, what a
shame! I-i-hi-hi! It was not so in the first bombardment. See, there it
has burst, the cursed thing! right above our house in the suburbs."

"No, it is farther off, in aunt Arinka's garden, that they all fall,"
said the little girl.

"And where, where is my master now!" said Nikita, with a drawl, for he
was still rather drunk. "Oh, how I love that master of mine!--I don't
know myself!--I love him so that if, which God forbid, they should
kill him in this sinful fight, then, if you will believe it, aunty, I
don't know myself what I might do to myself in that case--by Heavens, I
don't! He is such a master that words will not do him justice! Would
I exchange him for one of those who play cards? That is simply--whew!
that's all there is to say!" concluded Nikita, pointing at the lighted
window of his master's room, in which, as the staff-captain was
absent, Yunker Zhvadchevsky had invited his friends to a carouse, on
the occasion of his receiving the cross: Sub-Lieutenant Ugrovitch and
Sub-Lieutenant Nepshisetsky, who was ill with a cold in the head.

"Those little stars! They dart through the sky like stars, like stars!"
said the little girl, breaking the silence which succeeded Nikita's
words. "There, there! another has dropped! Why do they do it, mamma?"

"They will ruin our little cabin entirely," said the old woman,
sighing, and not replying to her little daughter's question.

"And when uncle and I went there to-day, mamma," continued the little
girl, in a shrill voice, "there was such a big cannon-ball lying in the
room, near the cupboard; it had broken through the wall and into the
room ... and it is so big that you couldn't lift it."

"Those who had husbands and money have gone away," said the old woman,
"and now they have ruined my last little house. See, see how they are
firing, the wretches. Lord, Lord!"

"And as soon as we came out, a bomb flew at us, and burst and scattered
the earth about, and a piece of the shell came near striking uncle and
me."


VII.

Prince Galtsin met more and more wounded men, in stretchers and on
foot, supporting each other, and talking loudly.

"When they rushed up, brothers," said one tall soldier, who had two
guns on his shoulder, in a bass voice, "when they rushed up and
shouted, 'Allah, Allah!'[G] they pressed each other on. You kill one,
and another takes his place--you can do nothing. You never saw such
numbers as there were of them...."

[G] A The Russian soldiers, who had been fighting the Turks, were so
accustomed to this cry of the enemy that they always declared that the
French also cried "Allah."--AUTHOR'S NOTE.

But at this point in his story Galtsin interrupted him.

"You come from the bastion?"

"Just so, Your Honor!"

"Well, what has been going on there? Tell me."

"Why, what has been going on? They attacked in force, Your Honor;
they climbed over the wall, and that's the end of it. They conquered
completely, Your Honor."

"How conquered? You repulsed them, surely?"

"How could we repulse them, when he came up with his whole force? They
killed all our men, and there was no help given us."

The soldier was mistaken, for the trenches were behind our forces; but
this is a peculiar thing, which any one may observe: a soldier who has
been wounded in an engagement always thinks that the day has been lost,
and that the encounter has been a frightfully bloody one.

"Then, what did they mean by telling me that you had repulsed them?"
said Galtsin, with irritation. "Perhaps the enemy was repulsed after
you left? Is it long since you came away?"

"I have this instant come from there, Your Honor," replied the soldier.
"It is hardly possible. The trenches remained in his hands ... he won a
complete victory."

"Well, and are you not ashamed to have surrendered the trenches? This
is horrible!" said Galtsin, angered by such indifference.

"What, when he was there in force?" growled the soldier.

"And, Your Honor," said a soldier on a stretcher, who had just come up
with them, "how could we help surrendering, when nearly all of us had
been killed? If we had been in force, we would only have surrendered
with our lives. But what was there to do? I ran one man through, and
then I was struck.... O-oh! softly, brothers! steady, brothers! go more
steadily!... O-oh!" groaned the wounded man.

"There really seem to be a great many extra men coming this way," said
Galtsin, again stopping the tall soldier with the two rifles. "Why are
you walking off? Hey there, halt!"

The soldier halted, and removed his cap with his left hand.

"Where are you going, and why?" he shouted at him sternly. "He ..."

But, approaching the soldier very closely at that moment, he perceived
that the latter's right arm was bandaged, and covered with blood far
above the elbow.

"I am wounded, Your Honor!"

"Wounded? how?"

"It must have been a bullet, here!" said the soldier, pointing at his
arm, "but I cannot tell yet. My head has been broken by something,"
and, bending over, he showed the hair upon the back of it all clotted
together with blood.

"And whose gun is that second one you have?"

"A choice French one, Your Honor! I captured it. And I should not have
come away if it had not been to accompany this soldier; he might fall
down," he added, pointing at the soldier, who was walking a little in
front, leaning upon his gun, and dragging his left foot heavily after
him.

Prince Galtsin all at once became frightfully ashamed of his unjust
suspicions. He felt that he was growing crimson, and turned away,
without questioning the wounded men further, and, without looking after
them, he went to the place where the injured men were being cared for.

Having forced his way with difficulty to the porch, through the wounded
men who had come on foot, and the stretcher-bearers, who were entering
with the wounded and emerging with the dead, Galtsin entered the first
room, glanced round, and involuntarily turned back, and immediately ran
into the street. It was too terrible.


VIII.

The vast, dark, lofty hall, lighted only by the four or five candles,
which the doctors were carrying about to inspect the wounded, was
literally full. The stretcher-bearers brought in the wounded, ranged
them one beside another on the floor, which was already so crowded that
the unfortunate wretches hustled each other and sprinkled each other
with their blood, and then went forth for more. The pools of blood
which were visible on the unoccupied places, the hot breaths of several
hundred men, and the steam which rose from those who were toiling
with the stretchers produced a peculiar, thick, heavy, offensive
atmosphere, in which the candles burned dimly in the different parts
of the room. The dull murmur of diverse groans, sighs, death-rattles,
broken now and again by a shriek, was borne throughout the apartment.
Sisters of charity, with tranquil faces, and with an expression not of
empty, feminine, tearfully sickly compassion, but of active, practical
sympathy, flitted hither and thither among the blood-stained cloaks and
shirts, stepping over the wounded, with medicine, water, bandages, lint.

Doctors, with their sleeves rolled up, knelt beside the wounded, beside
whom the assistant surgeons held the candles, inspecting, feeling, and
probing the wounds, in spite of the terrible groans and entreaties of
the sufferers. One of the doctors was seated at a small table by the
door, and, at the moment when Galtsin entered the room, he was just
writing down "No. 532."

"Ivan Bogaeff, common soldier, third company of the S---- regiment,
_fractura femoris complicata_!" called another from the extremity of
the hall, as he felt of the crushed leg.... "Turn him over."

"O-oi, my fathers, good fathers!" shrieked the soldier, beseeching them
not to touch him.

"_Perforatio capitis._"

"Semyon Neferdoff, lieutenant-colonel of the N---- regiment of infantry.
Have a little patience, colonel: you can only be attended to this way;
I will let you alone," said a third, picking away at the head of the
unfortunate colonel, with some sort of a hook.

"Ai! stop! Oi! for God's sake, quick, quick, for the sake a-a-a-a!..."

"_Perforatio pectoris_ ... Sevastyan Sereda, common soldier ... of what
regiment? however, you need not write that: _moritur_. Carry him away,"
said the doctor, abandoning the soldier, who was rolling his eyes, and
already emitting the death-rattle.

Forty stretcher-bearers stood at the door, awaiting the task of
transporting to the hospital the men who had been attended to, and the
dead to the chapel, and gazed at this picture in silence, only uttering
a heavy sigh from time to time....


IX.

On his way to the bastion, Kalugin met numerous wounded men; but,
knowing from experience that such a spectacle has a bad effect on the
spirits of a man on the verge of an action, he not only did not pause
to interrogate them, but, on the contrary, he tried not to pay any heed
to them. At the foot of the hill he encountered an orderly, who was
galloping from the bastion at full speed.

"Zobkin! Zobkin! Stop a minute!"

"Well, what is it?"

"Where are you from?"

"From the lodgements."

"Well, how are things there! Hot?"

"Ah, frightfully!"

And the orderly galloped on.

In fact, although there was not much firing from the rifles, the
cannonade had begun with fresh vigor and greater heat than ever.

"Ah, that's bad!" thought Kalugin, experiencing a rather unpleasant
sensation, and there came to him also a presentiment, that is to say, a
very usual thought--the thought of death.

But Kalugin was an egotist and gifted with nerves of steel; in a word,
he was what is called brave. He did not yield to his first sensation,
and began to arouse his courage; he recalled to mind a certain adjutant
of Napoleon, who, after having given the command to advance, galloped
up to Napoleon, his head all covered with blood.

"You are wounded?" said Napoleon to him. "I beg your pardon, Sire, I am
dead,"--and the adjutant fell from his horse, and died on the spot.

This seemed very fine to him, and he fancied that he somewhat resembled
this adjutant; then he gave his horse a blow with the whip; and assumed
still more of that knowing Cossack bearing, glanced at his orderly, who
was galloping behind him, standing upright in his stirrups, and thus in
dashing style he reached the place where it was necessary to dismount.
Here he found four soldiers, who were smoking their pipes as they sat
on the stones.

"What are you doing here?" he shouted at them.

"We have been carrying a wounded man from the field, Your Honor, and
have sat down to rest," one of them replied, concealing his pipe behind
his back, and pulling off his cap.

"Resting indeed! March off to your posts!"

And, in company with them, he walked up the hill through the trenches,
encountering wounded men at every step.

On attaining the crest of the hill, he turned to the left, and, after
taking a few steps, found himself quite alone. Splinters whizzed near
him, and struck in the trenches. Another bomb rose in front of him, and
seemed to be flying straight at him. All of a sudden he felt terrified;
he ran off five paces at full speed, and lay down on the ground. But
when the bomb burst, and at a distance from him, he grew dreadfully
vexed at himself, and glanced about as he rose, to see whether any one
had perceived him fall, but there was no one about.

When fear has once made its way into the mind, it does not speedily
give way to another feeling. He, who had boasted that he would
never bend, hastened along the trench with accelerated speed, and
almost on his hands and knees. "Ah! this is very bad!" he thought,
as he stumbled. "I shall certainly be killed!" And, conscious of how
difficult it was for him to breathe, and that the perspiration was
breaking out all over his body, he was amazed at himself, but he no
longer strove to conquer his feelings.

All at once steps became audible in advance of him. He quickly
straightened himself up, raised his head, and, boldly clanking his
sword, began to proceed at a slower pace than before. He did not know
himself. When he joined the officer of sappers and the sailor who
were coming to meet him, and the former called to him, "Lie down,"
pointing to the bright speck of a bomb, which, growing ever brighter
and brighter, swifter and swifter, as it approached, crashed down
in the vicinity of the trench, he only bent his head a very little,
involuntarily, under the influence of the terrified shout, and went his
way.

"Whew! what a brave man!" ejaculated the sailor, who had calmly watched
the exploding bomb, and, with practised glance, at once calculated
that its splinters could not strike inside the trench; "he did not even
wish to lie down."

Only a few steps remained to be taken, across an open space, before
Kalugin would reach the casemate of the commander of the bastion, when
he was again attacked by dimness of vision and that stupid sensation of
fear; his heart began to beat more violently, the blood rushed to his
head, and he was obliged to exert an effort over himself in order to
reach the casemate.

"Why are you so out of breath?" inquired the general, when Kalugin had
communicated to him his orders.

"I have been walking very fast, Your Excellency!"

"Will you not take a glass of wine?"

Kalugin drank the wine, and lighted a cigarette. The engagement had
already come to an end; only the heavy cannonade continued, going on
from both sides.

In the casemate sat General N., the commander of the bastion, and six
other officers, among whom was Praskukhin, discussing various details
of the conflict. Seated in this comfortable apartment, with blue
hangings, with a sofa, a bed, a table, covered with papers, a wall
clock, and the holy pictures, before which burned a lamp, and gazing
upon these signs of habitation, and at the arshin-thick (twenty-eight
inches) beams which formed the ceiling, and listening to the shots,
which were deadened by the casemate, Kalugin positively could not
understand how he had twice permitted himself to be overcome with such
unpardonable weakness. He was angry with himself, and he longed for
danger, in order that he might subject himself to another trial.

"I am glad that you are here, captain," he said to a naval officer,
in the cloak of staff-officer, with a large moustache and the cross
of St. George, who entered the casemate at that moment, and asked the
general to give him some men, that he might repair the two embrasures
on his battery, which had been demolished. "The general ordered me to
inquire," continued Kalugin, when the commander of the battery ceased
to address the general, "whether your guns can fire grape-shot into
the trenches."

"Only one of my guns will do that," replied the captain, gruffly.

"Let us go and see, all the same."

The captain frowned, and grunted angrily:--

"I have already passed the whole night there, and I came here to try
and get a little rest," said he. "Cannot you go alone? My assistant,
Lieutenant Kartz, is there, and he will show you everything."

The captain had now been for six months in command of this, one of the
most dangerous of the batteries--and even when there were no casemates
he had lived, without relief, in the bastion and among the sailors,
from the beginning of the siege, and he bore a reputation among them
for bravery. Therefore his refusal particularly struck and amazed
Kalugin. "That's what reputation is worth!" he thought.

"Well, then, I will go alone, if you will permit it," he said, in a
somewhat bantering tone to the captain, who, however, paid not the
slightest heed to his words.

But Kalugin did not reflect that he had passed, in all, at different
times, perhaps fifty hours on the bastion, while the captain had lived
there for six months. Kalugin was actuated, moreover, by vanity, by
a desire to shine, by the hope of reward, of reputation, and by the
charm of risk; but the captain had already gone through all that: he
had been vain at first, he had displayed valor, he had risked his
life, he had hoped for fame and guerdon, and had even obtained them,
but these actuating motives had already lost their power over him, and
he regarded the matter in another light; he fulfilled his duty with
punctuality, but understanding quite well how small were the chances
for his life which were left him, after a six-months residence in the
bastion, he no longer risked these casualties, except in case of stern
necessity, so that the young lieutenant, who had entered the battery
only a week previous, and who was now showing it to Kalugin, in company
with whom he took turns in leaning out of the embrasure, or climbing
out on the ramparts, seemed ten times as brave as the captain.

After inspecting the battery, Kalugin returned to the casemate, and ran
against the general in the dark, as the latter was ascending to the
watch-tower with his staff-officers.

"Captain Praskukhin!" said the general, "please to go to the first
lodgement and say to the second battery of the M---- regiment, which is
at work there, that they are to abandon their work, to evacuate the
place without making any noise, and to join their regiment, which is
standing at the foot of the hill in reserve.... Do you understand? Lead
them to their regiment yourself."

"Yes, sir."

And Praskukhin set out for the lodgement on a run.

The firing was growing more infrequent.


X.

"Is this the second battalion of the M---- regiment?" asked Praskukhin,
hastening up to the spot, and running against the soldiers who were
carrying earth in sacks.

"Exactly so."

"Where is the commander?"

Mikhailoff, supposing that the inquiry was for the commander of the
corps, crawled out of his pit, and, taking Praskukhin for the colonel,
he stepped up to him with his hand at his visor.

"The general has given orders ... that you ... are to be so good as to
go ... as quickly as possible ... and, in particular, as quietly as
possible, to the rear ... not to the rear exactly, but to the reserve,"
said Praskukhin, glancing askance at the enemy's fires.

On recognizing Praskukhin and discovering the state of things,
Mikhailoff dropped his hand, gave his orders, and the battalion started
into motion, gathered up their guns, put on their cloaks, and set out.

No one who has not experienced it can imagine the delight which a man
feels when he takes his departure, after a three-hours bombardment,
from such a dangerous post as the lodgements. Several times in the
course of those three hours, Mikhailoff had, not without reason,
considered his _end_ as inevitable, and had grown accustomed to the
conviction that he should infallibly be killed, and that he no longer
belonged to this world. In spite of this, however, he had great
difficulty in keeping his feet from running away with him when he
issued from the lodgements at the head of his corps, in company with
Praskukhin.

"Au revoir," said the major, the commander of another battalion, who
was to remain in the lodgements, and with whom he had shared his
cheese, as they sat in the pit behind the breastworks--"a pleasant
journey to you."

"Thanks, I hope you will have good luck after we have gone. The firing
seems to be holding up."

But no sooner had he said this than the enemy, who must have observed
the movement in the lodgements, began to fire faster and faster. Our
guns began to reply to him, and again a heavy cannonade began. The
stars were gleaming high, but not brilliantly in the sky. The night was
dark--you could hardly see your hand before you; only the flashes of
the discharges and the explosions of the bombs illuminated objects for
a moment. The soldiers marched on rapidly, in silence, involuntarily
treading close on each other's heels; all that was audible through the
incessant firing was the measured sound of their footsteps on the dry
road, the noise of their bayonets as they came in contact, or the sigh
and prayer of some young soldier, "Lord, Lord! what is this!" Now and
then the groan of a wounded man arose, and the shout, "Stretcher!"
(In the company commanded by Mikhailoff, twenty-six men were killed
in one night, by the fire of the artillery alone.) The lightning
flashed against the distant horizon, the sentry in the bastion shouted,
"Can-non!" and the ball, shrieking over the heads of the corps, tore up
the earth, and sent the stones flying.

"Deuce take it! how slowly they march," thought Praskukhin, glancing
back continually, as he walked beside Mikhailoff. "Really, it will be
better for me to run on in front; I have already given the order....
But no, it might be said later on that I was a coward. What will be
will be; I will march with them."

"Now, why is he walking behind me?" thought Mikhailoff, on his side.
"So far as I have observed, he always brings ill-luck. There it comes,
flying straight for us, apparently."

After traversing several hundred paces, they encountered Kalugin, who
was going to the casemates, clanking his sword boldly as he walked, in
order to learn, by the general's command, how the work was progressing
there. But on meeting Mikhailoff, it occurred to him that, instead of
going thither, under that terrible fire, which he was not ordered to
do, he could make minute inquiries of the officer who had been there.
And, in fact, Mikhailoff furnished him with a detailed account of the
work. After walking a short distance with them, Kalugin turned into the
trench, which led to the casemate.

"Well, what news is there?" inquired the officer, who was seated alone
at the table, and eating his supper.

"Well, nothing, apparently, except that there will not be any further
conflict."

"How so? On the contrary, the general has but just gone up to the top
of the works. A regiment has already arrived. Yes, there it is ... do
you hear? The firing has begun again. Don't go. Why should you?" added
the officer, perceiving the movement made by Kalugin.

"But I must be there without fail, in the present instance," thought
Kalugin, "but I have already subjected myself to a good deal of danger
to-day; the firing is terrible."

"Well, after all, I had better wait for him here," he said.

In fact, the general returned, twenty minutes later, accompanied by the
officers, who had been with him; among their number was the yunker,
Baron Pesth, but Praskukhin was not with them. The lodgements had been
captured and occupied by our forces.

After receiving a full account of the engagement, Kalugin and Pesth
went out of the casemates.


XI.

"There is blood on your cloak; have you been having a hand-to-hand
fight?" Kalugin asked him.

"Oh, 'tis frightful! Just imagine...."

And Pesth began to relate how he had led his company, how the commander
of the company had been killed, how he had spitted a Frenchman, and
how, if it had not been for him, the battle would have been lost.

The foundations for this tale, that the company commander had been
killed, and that Pesth had killed a Frenchman, were correct; but, in
giving the details, the yunker had invented facts and bragged.

He bragged involuntarily, because, during the whole engagement, he had
been in a kind of mist, and had forgotten himself to such a degree that
everything which happened seemed to him to have happened somewhere,
sometime, and with some one, and very naturally he had endeavored
to bring out these details in a light which should be favorable to
himself. But what had happened in reality was this:--

The battalion to which the yunker had been ordered for the sortie had
stood under fire for two hours, near a wall; then the commander of
the battalion said something, the company commanders made a move, the
battalion got under way, issued forth from behind the breastworks,
marched forward a hundred paces, and came to a halt in columns. Pesth
had been ordered to take his stand on the right flank of the second
company.

The yunker stood his ground, absolutely without knowing where he was,
or why he was there, and, with restrained breath, and with a cold chill
running down his spine, he had stared stupidly straight ahead into the
dark beyond, in the expectation of something terrible. But, since there
was no firing in progress, he did not feel so much terrified as he did
queer and strange at finding himself outside the fortress, in the open
plain. Again the battalion commander ahead said something. Again the
officers had conversed in whispers, as they communicated the orders,
and the black wall of the first company suddenly disappeared. They had
been ordered to lie down. The second company lay down also, and Pesth,
in the act, pricked his hand on something sharp. The only man who did
not lie down was the commander of the second company. His short form,
with the naked sword which he was flourishing, talking incessantly the
while, moved about in front of the troop.

"Children! my lads! ... look at me! Don't fire at them, but at them
with your bayonets, the dogs! When I shout, Hurrah! follow me close ...
the chief thing is to be as close together as possible ... let us show
what we are made of! Do not let us cover ourselves with shame--shall we,
hey, my children? For our father the Tsar!"

"What is our company commander's surname?" Pesth inquired of a yunker,
who was lying beside him. "What a brave fellow he is!"

"Yes, he's always that way in a fight ..." answered the yunker. "His
name is Lisinkovsky."

At that moment, a flame flashed up in front of the company. There
was a crash, which deafened them all, stones and splinters flew high
in the air (fifty seconds, at least, later a stone fell from above
and crushed the foot of a soldier). This was a bomb from an elevated
platform, and the fact that it fell in the midst of the company proved
that the French had caught sight of the column.

"So they are sending bombs!... Just let us get at you, and you shall
feel the bayonet of a three-sided Russian, curse you!" shouted the
commander of the company, in so loud a tone that the battalion
commander was forced to order him to be quiet and not to make so much
noise.

After this the first company rose to their feet, and after it the
second. They were ordered to fix bayonets, and the battalion advanced.
Pesth was so terrified that he absolutely could not recollect whether
they advanced far, or whither, or who did what. He walked like a
drunken man. But all at once millions of fires flashed from all sides,
there was a whistling and a crashing. He shrieked and ran, because
they were all shrieking and running. Then he stumbled and fell upon
something. It was the company commander (who had been wounded at the
head of his men and who, taking the yunker for a Frenchman, seized him
by the leg). Then when he had freed his leg, and risen to his feet,
some man ran against his back in the dark and almost knocked him down
again; another man shouted, "Run him through! what are you staring at!"

Then he seized a gun, and ran the bayonet into something soft. "Ah,
Dieu!" exclaimed some one in a terribly piercing voice, and then only
did Pesth discover that he had transfixed a Frenchman. The cold sweat
started out all over his body. He shook as though in a fever, and flung
away the gun. But this lasted only a moment; it immediately occurred
to him that he was a hero. He seized the gun again, and, shouting
"Hurrah!" with the crowd, he rushed away from the dead Frenchman. After
having traversed about twenty paces, he came to the trench. There he
found our men and the company commander.

"I have run one man through!" he said to the commander.

"You're a brave fellow, Baron."


XII.

"But, do you know, Praskukhin has been killed," said Pesth,
accompanying Kalugin, on the way back.

"It cannot be!"

"But it can. I saw him myself."

"Farewell; I am in a hurry."

"I am well content," thought Kalugin, as he returned home; "I have had
luck for the first time when on duty. That was a capital engagement,
and I am alive and whole. There will be some fine presentations, and I
shall certainly get a golden sword. And I deserve it too."

After reporting to the general all that was necessary, he went to his
room, in which sat Prince Galtsin, who had returned long before, and
who was reading a book, which he had found on Kalugin's table, while
waiting for him.

It was with a wonderful sense of enjoyment that Kalugin found himself
at home again, out of all danger, and, having donned his night-shirt
and lain down on the sofa, he began to relate to Galtsin the
particulars of the affair, communicating them, naturally, from a point
of view which made it appear that he, Kalugin, was a very active and
valiant officer, to which, in my opinion, it was superfluous to refer,
seeing that every one knew it and that no one had any right to doubt
it, with the exception, perhaps, of the deceased Captain Praskukhin,
who, in spite of the fact that he had considered it a piece of
happiness to walk arm in arm with Kalugin, had told a friend, only the
evening before, in private, that Kalugin was a very fine man, but that,
between you and me, he was terribly averse to going to the bastions.

No sooner had Praskukhin, who had been walking beside Mikhailoff,
taken leave of Kalugin, and, betaking himself to a safer place, had
begun to recover his spirits somewhat, than he caught sight of a flash
of lightning behind him flaring up vividly, heard the shout of the
sentinel, "Mortar!" and the words of the soldiers who were marching
behind, "It's flying straight at the bastion!"

Mikhailoff glanced round. The brilliant point of the bomb seemed to
be suspended directly over his head in such a position that it was
absolutely impossible to determine its course. But this lasted only
for a second. The bomb came faster and faster, nearer and nearer, the
sparks of the fuse were already visible, and the fateful whistle was
audible, and it descended straight in the middle of the battalion.

"Lie down!" shouted a voice.

Mikhailoff and Praskukhin threw themselves on the ground. Praskukhin
shut his eyes, and only heard the bomb crash against the hard earth
somewhere in the vicinity. A second passed, which seemed an hour--and
the bomb had not burst. Praskukhin was alarmed; had he felt cowardly
for nothing? Perhaps the bomb had fallen at a distance, and it merely
seemed to him that the fuse was hissing near him. He opened his eyes,
and saw with satisfaction that Mikhailoff was lying motionless on the
earth, at his very feet. But then his eyes encountered for a moment the
glowing fuse of the bomb, which was twisting about at a distance of an
arshin from him.

A cold horror, which excluded every other thought and feeling, took
possession of his whole being. He covered his face with his hands.

Another second passed--a second in which a whole world of thoughts,
feelings, hopes, and memories flashed through his mind.

"Which will be killed, Mikhailoff or I? Or both together? And if it is
I, where will it strike? If in the head, then all is over with me; but
if in the leg, they will cut it off, and I shall ask them to be sure
to give me chloroform,--and I may still remain among the living. But
perhaps no one but Mikhailoff will be killed; then I will relate how
we were walking along together, and how he was killed and his blood
spurted over me. No, it is nearer to me ... it will kill me!"

Then he remembered the twenty rubles which he owed Mikhailoff, and
recalled another debt in Petersburg, which ought to have been paid long
ago; the gypsy air which he had sung the previous evening recurred
to him. The woman whom he loved appeared to his imagination in a cap
with lilac ribbons, a man who had insulted him five years before, and
whom he had not paid off for his insult, came to his mind, though
inextricably interwoven with these and with a thousand other memories
the feeling of the moment--the fear of death--never deserted him for an
instant.

"But perhaps it will not burst," he thought, and, with the decision
of despair, he tried to open his eyes. But at that instant, through
the crevice of his eyelids, his eyes were smitten with a red fire, and
something struck him in the centre of the breast, with a frightful
crash; he ran off, he knew not whither, stumbled over his sword, which
had got between his legs, and fell over on his side.

"Thank God! I am only bruised," was his first thought, and he tried
to touch his breast with his hands; but his arms seemed fettered, and
pincers were pressing his head. The soldiers flitted before his eyes,
and he unconsciously counted them: "One, two, three soldiers; and there
is an officer, wrapped up in his cloak," he thought. Then a flash
passed before his eyes, and he thought that something had been fired
off; was it the mortars, or the cannon? It must have been the cannon.
And there was still another shot; and there were more soldiers; five,
six, seven soldiers were passing by him. Then suddenly he felt afraid
that they would crush him. He wanted to shout to them that he was
bruised; but his mouth was so dry that his tongue clove to his palate
and he was tortured by a frightful thirst.

He felt that he was wet about the breast: this sensation of dampness
reminded him of water, and he even wanted to drink this, whatever it
was. "I must have brought the blood when I fell," he thought, and,
beginning to give way more and more to terror, lest the soldiers who
passed should crush him, he collected all his strength, and tried to
cry: "Take me with you!" but, instead of this, he groaned so terribly
that it frightened him to hear himself. Then more red fires flashed in
his eyes--and it seemed to him as though the soldiers were laying stones
upon him; the fires danced more and more rarely, the stones which they
piled on him oppressed him more and more.

He exerted all his strength, in order to cast off the stones; he
stretched himself out, and no longer saw or heard or thought or felt
anything. He had been killed on the spot by a splinter of shell, in the
middle of the breast.


XIII.

Mikhailoff, on catching sight of the bomb, fell to the earth, and, like
Praskukhin, he went over in thought and feeling an incredible amount in
those two seconds while the bomb lay there unexploded. He prayed to God
mentally, and kept repeating: "Thy will be done!"

"And why did I enter the military service?" he thought at the same
time; "and why, again, did I exchange into the infantry, in order to
take part in this campaign? Would it not have been better for me to
remain in the regiment of Uhlans, in the town of T., and pass the time
with my friend Natasha? And now this is what has come of it."

And he began to count, "One, two, three, four," guessing that if it
burst on the even number, he would live, but if on the uneven number,
then he should be killed. "All is over; killed," he thought, when the
bomb burst (he did not remember whether it was on the even or the
uneven number), and he felt a blow, and a sharp pain in his head.
"Lord, forgive my sins," he murmured, folding his hands, then rose, and
fell back senseless.

His first sensation, when he came to himself, was the blood which was
flowing from his nose, and a pain in his head, which had become much
less powerful. "It is my soul departing," he thought.--"What will it
be like _there_? Lord, receive my soul in peace!--But one thing is
strange," he thought,--"and that is that, though dying, I can still hear
so plainly the footsteps of the soldiers and the report of the shots."

"Send some bearers ... hey there ... the captain is killed!" shouted a
voice over his head, which he recognized as the voice of his drummer
Ignatieff.

Some one grasped him by the shoulders. He made an effort to open his
eyes, and saw overhead the dark blue heavens, the clusters of stars,
and two bombs, which were flying over him, one after the other; he saw
Ignatieff, the soldiers with the stretcher, the walls of the trench,
and all at once he became convinced that he was not yet in the other
world.

He had been slightly wounded in the head with a stone. His very first
impression was one resembling regret; he had so beautifully and so
calmly prepared himself for transit _yonder_ that a return to reality,
with its bombs, its trenches, and its blood, produced a disagreeable
effect on him; his second impression was an involuntary joy that he
was alive, and the third a desire to leave the bastion as speedily
as possible. The drummer bound up his commander's head with his
handkerchief, and, taking him under the arm, he led him to the place
where the bandaging was going on.

"But where am I going, and why?" thought the staff-captain, when
he recovered his senses a little.--"It is my duty to remain with my
men,--the more so as they will soon be out of range of the shots," some
voice whispered to him.

"Never mind, brother," he said, pulling his arm away from the obliging
drummer. "I will not go to the field-hospital; I will remain with my
men."

And he turned back.

"You had better have your wound properly attended to, Your Honor,"
said Ignatieff. "In the heat of the moment, it seems as if it were
a trifle; but it will be the worse if not attended to. There is some
inflammation rising there ... really, now, Your Honor."

Mikhailoff paused for a moment in indecision, and would have
followed Ignatieff's advice, in all probability, had he not called
to mind how many severely wounded men there must needs be at the
field-hospital. "Perhaps the doctor will smile at my scratch," thought
the staff-captain, and he returned with decision to his men, wholly
regardless of the drummer's admonitions.

"And where is Officer Praskukhin, who was walking with me?" he asked
the lieutenant, who was leading the corps when they met.

"I don't know--killed, probably," replied the lieutenant, reluctantly.

"How is it that you do not know whether he was killed or wounded? He
was walking with us. And why have you not carried him with you?"

"How could it be done, brother, when the place was so hot for us!"

"Ah, how could you do such a thing, Mikhail Ivanowitch!" said
Mikhailoff, angrily.--"How could you abandon him if he was alive; and if
he was dead, you should still have brought away his body."

"How could he be alive when, as I tell you, I went up to him and saw!"
returned the lieutenant.--"As you like, however! Only, his own men might
carry him off. Here, you dogs! the cannonade has abated," he added....

Mikhailoff sat down, and clasped his head, which the motion caused to
pain him terribly.

"Yes, I must go and get him, without fail; perhaps he is still alive,"
said Mikhailoff. "It is our duty, Mikhail Ivanowitch!"

Mikhail Ivanowitch made no reply.

"He did not take him at the time, and now the soldiers must be sent
alone--and how can they be sent? their lives may be sacrificed in vain,
under that hot fire," thought Mikhailoff.

"Children! we must go back--and get the officer who was wounded there in
the ditch," he said, in not too loud and commanding a tone, for he felt
how unpleasant it would be to the soldiers to obey his order,--and, in
fact, as he did not address any one in particular by name, no one set
out to fulfil it.

"It is quite possible that he is already dead, and it is _not worth
while_ to subject the men to unnecessary danger; I alone am to blame
for not having seen to it. I will go myself and learn whether he is
alive. It is my duty," said Mikhailoff to himself.

"Mikhail Ivanowitch! Lead the men forward, and I will overtake you,"
he said, and, pulling up his cloak with one hand, and with the other
constantly touching the image of Saint Mitrofaniy, in which he
cherished a special faith, he set off on a run along the trench.

Having convinced himself that Praskukhin was dead, he dragged himself
back, panting, and supporting with his hand the loosened bandage and
his head, which began to pain him severely. The battalion had already
reached the foot of the hill, and a place almost out of range of shots,
when Mikhailoff overtook it. I say, _almost_ out of range, because some
stray bombs struck here and there.

"At all events, I must go to the hospital to-morrow, and put down my
name," thought the staff-captain, as the medical student assisting the
doctors bound his wound.


XIV.

Hundreds of bodies, freshly smeared with blood, of men who two hours
previous had been filled with divers lofty or petty hopes and desires,
now lay, with stiffened limbs, in the dewy, flowery valley which
separated the bastion from the trench, and on the level floor of the
chapel for the dead in Sevastopol; hundreds of men crawled, twisted,
and groaned, with curses and prayers on their parched lips, some amid
the corpses in the flower-strewn vale, others on stretchers, on cots,
and on the blood-stained floor of the hospital.

And still, as on the days preceding, the dawn glowed, over Sapun
Mountain, the twinkling stars paled, the white mist spread abroad
from the dark sounding sea, the red glow illuminated the east, long
crimson cloudlets darted across the blue horizon; and still, as on days
preceding, the powerful, all-beautiful sun rose up, giving promise of
joy, love, and happiness to all who dwell in the world.


XV.

On the following day, the band of the chasseurs was playing again on
the boulevard, and again officers, cadets, soldiers, and young women
were promenading in festive guise about the pavilion and through the
low-hanging alleys of fragrant white acacias in bloom.

Kalugin, Prince Galtsin, and some colonel or other were walking
arm-in-arm near the pavilion, and discussing the engagement of the day
before. As always happens in such cases, the chief governing thread
of the conversation was not the engagement itself, but the part which
those who were narrating the story of the affair took in it.

Their faces and the sound of their voices had a serious, almost
melancholy expression, as though the loss of the preceding day had
touched and saddened them deeply; but, to tell the truth, as none of
them had lost any one very near to him, this expression of sorrow was
an official expression, which they merely felt it to be their duty to
exhibit.

On the contrary, Kalugin and the colonel were ready to see an
engagement of the same sort every day, provided that they might receive
a gold sword or the rank of major-general--notwithstanding the fact that
they were very fine fellows.

I like it when any warrior who destroys millions to gratify his
ambition is called a monster. Only question any Lieutenant Petrushkoff,
and Sub-Lieutenant Antonoff, and so on, on their word of honor, and
every one of them is a petty Napoleon, a petty monster, and ready to
bring on a battle on the instant, to murder a hundred men, merely for
the sake of receiving an extra cross or an increase of a third in his
pay.

"No, excuse me," said the colonel; "it began first on the left flank.
_I was there myself._"

"Possibly," answered Kalugin. "_I was farther on the right; I went
there twice. Once I was in search of the general, and the second time I
went merely to inspect the lodgements. It was a hot place._"

"Yes, of course, Kalugin knows," said Prince Galtsin to the colonel.
"You know that V. told me to-day that you were a brave fellow...."

"But the losses, the losses were terrible," said the colonel. "_I lost
four hundred men from my regiment. It's a wonder that I escaped from
there alive._"

At this moment, the figure of Mikhailoff, with his head bandaged,
appeared at the other extremity of the boulevard, coming to meet these
gentlemen.

"What, are you wounded, captain?" said Kalugin.

"Yes, slightly, with a stone," replied Mikhailoff.

"Has the flag been lowered yet?"[H] inquired Prince Galtsin, gazing
over the staff-captain's cap, and addressing himself to no one in
particular.

[H] This sentence is in French.

"Non, pas encore," answered Mikhailoff, who wished to show that he
understood and spoke French.

"Is the truce still in force?" said Galtsin, addressing him courteously
in Russian, and thereby intimating--so it seemed to the captain--It
must be difficult for you to speak French, so why is it not better to
talk in your own tongue simply?... And with this the adjutants left
him. The staff-captain again felt lonely, as on the preceding evening,
and, exchanging salutes with various gentlemen,--some he did not care,
and others he did not dare, to join,--he seated himself near Kazarsky's
monument, and lighted a cigarette.

Baron Pesth also had come to the boulevard. He had been telling how he
had gone over to arrange the truce, and had conversed with the French
officers, and he declared that one had said to him, "If daylight had
held off another half-hour, these ambushes would have been retaken;"
and that he had replied, "Sir, I refrain from saying no, in order not
to give you the lie," and how well he had said it, and so on.

But, in reality, although he had had a hand in the truce, he had not
dared to say anything very particular there, although he had been very
desirous of talking with the French (for it is awfully jolly to talk
with Frenchmen). Yunker Baron Pesth had marched up and down the line
for a long time, incessantly inquiring of the Frenchmen who were near
him: "To what regiment do you belong?" They answered him; and that was
the end of it.

When he walked too far along the line, the French sentry, not
suspecting that this soldier understood French, cursed him. "He
has come to spy out our works, the cursed ..." said he; and, in
consequence, Yunker Baron Pesth, taking no further interest in the
truce, went home, and thought out on the way thither those French
phrases, which he had now repeated. Captain Zoboff was also on the
boulevard, talking loudly, and Captain Obzhogoff, in a very dishevelled
condition, and an artillery captain, who courted no one, and was happy
in the love of the yunkers, and all the faces which had been there on
the day before, and all still actuated by the same motives. No one was
missing except Praskukhin, Neferdoff, and some others, whom hardly any
one remembered or thought of now, though their bodies were not yet
washed, laid out, and interred in the earth.


XVI.

White flags had been hung out from our bastion, and from the trenches
of the French, and in the blooming valley between them lay disfigured
corpses, shoeless, in garments of gray or blue, which laborers were
engaged in carrying off and heaping upon carts. The odor of the dead
bodies filled the air. Throngs of people had poured out of Sevastopol,
and from the French camp, to gaze upon this spectacle, and they pressed
one after the other with eager and benevolent curiosity.

Listen to what these people are saying.

Here, in a group of Russians and French who have come together, is a
young officer, who speaks French badly, but well enough to make himself
understood, examining a cartridge-box of the guards.

"And what is this bird here for?" says he.

"Because it is a cartridge-box belonging to a regiment of the guards,
Monsieur, and bears the Imperial eagle."

"And do you belong to the guard?"

"Pardon, Monsieur, I belong to the sixth regiment of the line."

"And this--bought where?" asks the officer, pointing to a cigar-holder
of yellow wood, in which the Frenchman was smoking his cigarette.

"At Balaklava, Monsieur. It is very plain, of palm-wood."

"Pretty!" says the officer, guided in his conversation not so much by
his own wishes as by the words which he knows.

"If you will have the kindness to keep it as a souvenir of this
meeting, you will confer an obligation on me."

And the polite Frenchman blows out the cigarette, and hands the holder
over to the officer with a little bow. The officer gives him his, and
all the members of the group, Frenchmen as well as Russians, appear
very much pleased and smile.

Then a bold infantryman, in a pink shirt, with his cloak thrown over
his shoulders, accompanied by two other soldiers, who, with their
hands behind their backs, were standing behind him, with merry, curious
countenances, stepped up to a Frenchman, and requested a light for his
pipe. The Frenchman brightened his fire, stirred up his short pipe, and
shook out a light for the Russian.

"Tobacco good!" said the soldier in the pink shirt; and the spectators
smile.

"Yes, good tobacco, Turkish tobacco," says the Frenchman. "And your
tobacco--Russian?--good?"

"Russian, good," says the soldier in the pink shirt: whereupon
those present shake with laughter. "The French not good--_bon jour,
Monsieur_," says the soldier in the pink shirt, letting fly his entire
charge of knowledge in the language at once, as he laughs and taps the
Frenchman on the stomach. The French join in the laugh.

"They are not handsome, these beasts of Russians," says a zouave, amid
the crowd of Frenchmen.

"What are they laughing about?" says another black-complexioned one,
with an Italian accent, approaching our men.

"Caftan good," says the audacious soldier, staring at the zouave's
embroidered coat-skirts, and then there is another laugh.

"Don't leave your lines; back to your places, _sacre nom_!" shouts a
French corporal, and the soldiers disperse with evident reluctance.

In the meantime, our young cavalry officer is making the tour of the
French officers. The conversation turns on some Count Sazonoff, "with
whom I was very well acquainted, Monsieur," says a French officer, with
one epaulet--"he is one of those real Russian counts, of whom we are so
fond."

"There is a Sazonoff with whom I am acquainted," said the cavalry
officer, "but he is not a count, so far as I know, at least; a little
dark-complexioned man, of about your age."

"Exactly, Monsieur, that is the man. Oh, how I should like to see that
dear count! If you see him, pray, present my compliments to him--Captain
Latour," says he, bowing.

"Isn't this a terrible business that we are conducting here? It was
hot work last night, wasn't it?" says the cavalry officer, wishing to
continue the conversation, and pointing to the dead bodies.

"Oh, frightful, Monsieur! But what brave fellows your soldiers are--what
brave fellows! It is a pleasure to fight with such valiant fellows."

"It must be admitted that your men do not hang back, either," says the
cavalry-man, with a bow, and the conviction that he is very amiable.

But enough of this.

Let us rather observe this lad of ten, clad in an ancient cap, his
father's probably, shoes worn on bare feet, and nankeen breeches, held
up by a single suspender, who had climbed over the wall at the very
beginning of the truce, and has been roaming about the ravine, staring
with dull curiosity at the French, and at the bodies which are lying
on the earth, and plucking the blue wild-flowers with which the valley
is studded. On his way home with a large bouquet, he held his nose
because of the odor which the wind wafted to him, and paused beside
a pile of corpses, which had been carried off the field, and stared
long at one terrible headless body, which chanced to be the nearest to
him. After standing there for a long while, he stepped up closer, and
touched with his foot the stiffened arm of the corpse which protruded.
The arm swayed a little. He touched it again, and with more vigor.
The arm swung back, and then fell into place again. And at once the
boy uttered a shriek, hid his face in the flowers, and ran off to the
fortifications as fast as he could go.

Yes, white flags are hung out from the bastion and the trenches, the
flowery vale is filled with dead bodies, the splendid sun sinks into
the blue sea, and the blue sea undulates and glitters in the golden
rays of the sun. Thousands of people congregate, gaze, talk, and smile
at each other. And why do not Christian people, who profess the one
great law of love and self-sacrifice, when they behold what they have
wrought, fall in repentance upon their knees before Him who, when he
gave them life, implanted in the soul of each of them, together with a
fear of death, a love of the good and the beautiful, and, with tears
of joy and happiness, embrace each other like brothers? No! But it
is a comfort to think that it was not we who began this war, that we
are only defending our own country, our father-land. The white flags
have been hauled in, and again the weapons of death and suffering are
shrieking; again innocent blood is shed, and groans and curses are
audible.

       *       *       *       *       *

I have now said all that I wish to say at this time. But a heavy
thought overmasters me. Perhaps it should not have been said;
perhaps what I have said belongs to one of those evil truths which,
unconsciously concealed in the soul of each man, should not be uttered,
lest they become pernicious, as a cask of wine should not be shaken,
lest it be thereby spoiled.

Where is the expression of evil which should be avoided? Where is the
expression of good which should be imitated in this sketch? Who is the
villain, who the hero? All are good, and all are evil.

Neither Kalugin, with his brilliant bravery--_bravoure de
gentilhomme_--and his vanity, the instigator of all his deeds; nor
Praskukhin, the empty-headed, harmless man, though he fell in battle
for the faith, the throne, and his native land; nor Mikhailoff,
with his shyness; nor Pesth, a child with no firm convictions or
principles, can be either the heroes or the villains of the tale.

The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the strength of my soul, whom
I have tried to set forth in all his beauty, and who has always been,
is, and always will be most beautiful, is--the truth.




SEVASTOPOL IN AUGUST, 1855.


I.

At the end of August, along the rocky highway to Sevastopol, between
Duvanka and Bakhtchisarai, through the thick, hot dust, at a foot-pace,
drove an officer's light cart, that peculiar _telyezhka_, not now to
be met with, which stands about half-way between a Jewish _britchka_,
a Russian travelling-carriage, and a basket-wagon. In the front of
the wagon, holding the reins, squatted the servant, clad in a nankeen
coat and an officer's cap, which had become quite limp; seated behind,
on bundles and packages covered with a military coat, was an infantry
officer, in a summer cloak.

As well as could be judged from his sitting position, the officer was
not tall in stature, but extremely thick, and that not so much from
shoulder to shoulder as from chest to back; he was broad and thick,
and his neck and the base of the head were excessively developed and
swollen. His waist, so called, a receding strip in the centre of the
body, did not exist in his case; but neither had he any belly; on
the contrary, he was rather thin than otherwise, particularly in the
face, which was overspread with an unhealthy yellowish sunburn. His
face would have been handsome had it not been for a certain bloated
appearance, and the soft, yet not elderly, heavy wrinkles that flowed
together and enlarged his features, imparting to the whole countenance
a general expression of coarseness and of lack of freshness. His eyes
were small, brown, extremely searching, even bold; his moustache was
very thick, but the ends were kept constantly short by his habit of
gnawing them; and his chin, and his cheek-bones in particular were
covered with a remarkably strong, thick, and black beard, of two days'
growth.

The officer had been wounded on the 10th of May, by a splinter, in the
head, on which he still wore a bandage, and, having now felt perfectly
well for the last week, he had come out of the Simferopol Hospital, to
rejoin his regiment, which was stationed somewhere in the direction
from which shots could be heard; but whether that was in Sevastopol
itself, on the northern defences, or at Inkermann, he had not so far
succeeded in ascertaining with much accuracy from any one.

Shots were still audible near at hand, especially at intervals, when
the hills did not interfere, or when borne on the wind with great
distinctness and frequency, and apparently near at hand. Then it seemed
as though some explosion shook the air, and caused an involuntary
shudder. Then, one after the other, followed less resounding reports in
quick succession, like a drum-beat, interrupted at times by a startling
roar. Then, everything mingled in a sort of reverberating crash,
resembling peals of thunder, when a thunder-storm is in full force, and
the rain has just begun to pour down in floods, every one said; and it
could be heard that the bombardment was progressing frightfully.

The officer kept urging on his servant, and seemed desirous of
arriving as speedily as possible. They were met by a long train of the
Russian-peasant type, which had carried provisions into Sevastopol, and
was now returning with sick and wounded soldiers in gray coats, sailors
in black paletots, volunteers in red fezes, and bearded militia-men.
The officer's light cart had to halt in the thick, immovable cloud of
dust raised by the carts, and the officer, blinking and frowning with
the dust that stuffed his eyes and ears, gazed at the faces of the sick
and wounded as they passed.

"Ah, there's a sick soldier from our company," said the servant,
turning to his master, and pointing to the wagon which was just on a
line with them, full of wounded, at the moment.

On the cart, towards the front, a bearded Russian, in a lamb's-wool
cap, was seated sidewise, and, holding the stock of his whip under
his elbow, was tying on the lash. Behind him in the cart, about five
soldiers, in different positions, were shaking about. One, though pale
and thin, with his arm in a bandage, and his cloak thrown on over his
shirt, was sitting up bravely in the middle of the cart, and tried
to touch his cap on seeing the officer, but immediately afterwards
(recollecting, probably, that he was wounded) he pretended that he only
wanted to scratch his head. Another, beside him, was lying flat on the
bottom of the wagon; all that was visible was two hands, as they clung
to the rails of the wagon, and his knees uplifted limp as mops, as they
swayed about in various directions. A third, with a swollen face and a
bandaged head, on which was placed his soldier's cap, sat on one side,
with his legs dangling over the wheel, and, with his elbows resting on
his knees, seemed immersed in thought. It was to him that the passing
officer addressed himself.

"Dolzhnikoff!" he exclaimed.

"Here," replied the soldier, opening his eyes, and pulling off his cap,
in such a thick and halting bass voice that it seemed as though twenty
soldiers had uttered an exclamation at one and the same time.

"When were you wounded, brother?"

The leaden and swimming eyes of the soldier grew animated; he evidently
recognized his officer.

"I wish Your Honor health!" he began again, in the same abrupt bass as
before.

"Where is the regiment stationed now?"

"It was stationed in Sevastopol, but they were to move on Wednesday,
Your Honor."

"Where to?"

"I don't know; it must have been to the Sivernaya, Your Honor! To-day,
Your Honor," he added, in a drawling voice, as he put on his cap,
"they have begun to fire clear across, mostly with bombs, that even go
as far as the bay; they are fighting horribly to-day, so that--"

It was impossible to hear what the soldier said further; but it was
evident, from the expression of his countenance and from his attitude,
that he was uttering discouraging remarks, with the touch of malice of
a man who is suffering.

The travelling officer, Lieutenant Kozeltzoff, was no common officer.
He was not one of those that live so and so and do thus and so because
others live and do thus; he did whatever he pleased, and others did the
same, and were convinced that it was well. He was rather richly endowed
by nature with small gifts: he sang well, played on the guitar, talked
very cleverly, and wrote very easily, particularly official documents,
in which he had practised his hand in his capacity of adjutant of the
battalion; but the most noticeable trait in his character was his
egotistical energy, which, although chiefly founded on this array of
petty talents, constituted in itself a sharp and striking trait. His
egotism was of the sort that is most frequently found developed in
masculine and especially in military circles, and which had become a
part of his life to such a degree that he understood no other choice
than to domineer or to humiliate himself; and his egotism was the
mainspring even of his private impulses; he liked to usurp the first
place over people with whom he put himself on a level.

"Well! it's absurd of me to listen to what a Moskva[I] chatters!"
muttered the lieutenant, experiencing a certain weight of apathy in
his heart, and a dimness of thought, which the sight of the transport
full of wounded and the words of the soldier, whose significance was
emphasized and confirmed by the sounds of the bombardment, had left
with him. "_That Moskva is ridiculous!_ Drive on, Nikolaeff! go ahead!
Are you asleep?" he added, rather fretfully, to the servant, as he
re-arranged the skirts of his coat.

[I] In many regiments the officers call a soldier, half in scorn, half
caressingly, _Moskva_ (Moscovite), or _prisyaga_ (an oath).

The reins were tightened, Nikolaeff clacked his lips, and the wagon
moved on at a trot.

"We will only halt a minute for food, and will proceed at once, this
very day," said the officer.


II.

As he entered the street of the ruined remains of the stone wall,
forming the Tatar houses of Duvanka, Lieutenant Kozeltzoff was stopped
by a transport of bombs and grape-shot, which were on their way to
Sevastopol, and had accumulated on the road. Two infantry soldiers
were seated in the dust, on the stones of a ruined garden-wall by the
roadside, devouring a watermelon and bread.

"Have you come far, fellow-countryman?" said one of them, as he chewed
his bread, to the soldier, with a small knapsack on his back, who had
halted near them.

"I have come from my government to join my regiment," replied the
soldier, turning his eyes away from the watermelon, and readjusting the
sack on his back. "There we were, two weeks ago, at work on the hay,
a whole troop of us; but now they have drafted all of us, and we don't
know where our regiment is at the present time. They say that our men
went on the Korabelnaya last week. Have you heard anything, gentlemen?"

"It's stationed in the town, brother," said the second, an old soldier
of the reserves, digging away with his clasp-knife at the white, unripe
melon. "We have just come from there, this afternoon. It's terrible, my
brother!"

"How so, gentlemen?"

"Don't you hear how they are firing all around to-day, so that there
is not a whole spot anywhere? It is impossible to say how many of our
brethren have been killed." And the speaker waved his hand and adjusted
his cap.

The passing soldier shook his head thoughtfully, gave a clack with his
tongue, then pulled his pipe from his boot-leg, and, without filling
it, stirred up the half-burned tobacco, lit a bit of tinder from the
soldier who was smoking, and raised his cap.

"There is no one like God, gentlemen! Good-bye," said he, and, with a
shake of the sack on his back, he went his way.

"Hey, there! you'd better wait," said the man who was digging out the
watermelon, with an air of conviction.

"It makes no difference!" muttered the traveller, threading his way
among the wheels of the assembled transports.


III.

The posting-station was full of people when Kozeltzoff drove up to it.
The first person whom he encountered, on the porch itself, was a thin
and very young man, the superintendent, who continued his altercation
with two officers, who had followed him out.

"It's not three days only, but ten that you will have to wait. Even
generals wait, my good sirs!" said the superintendent, with a desire to
administer a prick to the travellers; "and I am not going to harness up
for you."

"Then don't give anybody horses, if there are none! But why furnish
them to some lackey or other with baggage?" shouted the elder of the
two officers, with a glass of tea in his hand, and plainly avoiding the
use of pronouns,[J] but giving it to be understood that he might very
easily address the superintendent as "_thou_."

[J] This effect cannot be reproduced in English.

"Judge for yourself, now, Mr. Superintendent," said the younger
officer, with some hesitation. "We don't want to go for our own
pleasure. We must certainly be needed, since we have been called for.
And I certainly shall report to the general. But this, of course,--you
know that you are not paying proper respect to the military profession."

"You are always spoiling things," the elder man interrupted, with
vexation. "You only hinder me; you must know how to talk to them. Here,
now, he has lost his respect. Horses this very instant, I say!"

"I should be glad to give them to you, _batiushka_,[K] but where am I
to get them?"

[K] "My good sir," a familiarly respectful mode of address.

After a brief silence, the superintendent began to grow irritated, and
to talk, flourishing his hands the while.

"I understand, _batiushka_. And I know all about it myself. But what
are you going to do? Only give me"--here a ray of hope gleamed across
the faces of the officers--"only give me a chance to live until the end
of the month, and you won't see me here any longer. I'd rather go on
the Malakhoff tower, by Heavens! than stay here. Let them do what they
please about it! There's not a single sound team in the station this
day, and the horses haven't seen a wisp of hay these three days." And
the superintendent disappeared behind the gate.

Kozeltzoff entered the room in company with the officers.

"Well," said the elder officer, quite calmly, to the younger one,
although but a second before he had appeared to be greatly irritated,
"we have been travelling these three weeks, and we will wait a little
longer. There's no harm done. We shall get there at last."

The dirty, smoky apartment was so filled with officers and trunks that
it was with difficulty that Kozeltzoff found a place near the window,
where he seated himself; he began to roll himself a cigarette, as he
glanced at the faces and lent an ear to the conversations.

To the right of the door, near a crippled and greasy table, upon which
stood two samovars, whose copper had turned green in spots, here and
there, and where sugar was portioned out in various papers, sat the
principal group. A young officer, without moustache, in a new, short,
wadded summer coat, was pouring water into the teapot.

Four such young officers were there, in different corners of the room.
One of them had placed a cloak under his head, and was fast asleep on
the sofa. Another, standing by the table, was cutting up some roast
mutton for an officer without an arm, who was seated at the table.

Two officers, one in an adjutant's cloak, the other in an infantry
cloak, a thin one however, and with a satchel strapped over his
shoulder, were sitting near the oven bench, and it was evident, from
the very way in which they stared at the rest, and from the manner in
which the one with the satchel smoked his cigar, that they were not
line officers on duty at the front, and that they were delighted at it.

Not that there was any scorn apparent in their manner, but there was a
certain self-satisfied tranquillity, founded partly on money and partly
on their close intimacy with generals, a certain consciousness of
superiority which even extended to a desire to hide it.

A thick-lipped young doctor and an officer of artillery, with a German
cast of countenance, were seated almost on the feet of the young
officer who was sleeping on the sofa, and counting over their money.

There were four officers' servants, some dozing and others busy with
the trunks and packages near the door.

Among all these faces, Kozeltzoff did not find a single familiar
one; but he began to listen with curiosity to the conversation. The
young officers, who, as he decided from their looks alone, had but
just come out of the military academy, pleased him, and, what was the
principal point, they reminded him that his brother had also come from
the academy, and should have joined recently one of the batteries of
Sevastopol.

But the officer with the satchel, whose face he had seen before
somewhere, seemed bold and repulsive to him. He even left the window,
and, going to the stove-bench, seated himself on it, with the thought
that he would put the fellow down if he took it into his head to say
anything. In general, purely as a brave "line" officer, he did not like
"the staff," such as he had recognized these two officers to be at the
first glance.


IV.

"But this is dreadfully annoying," said one of the young officers, "to
be so near, and yet not be able to get there. Perhaps there will be an
action this very day, and we shall not be there."

In the sharp voice and the mottled freshness of the color that swept
across the youthful face of this officer as he spoke there was apparent
the sweet young timidity of the man who is constantly afraid lest his
every word shall not turn out exactly right.

The one-armed officer glanced at him with a smile.

"You will get there soon enough, I assure you," he said.

The young officer looked with respect at the haggard face of the
armless officer, so unexpectedly illuminated by a smile, held his peace
for a while, and busied himself once more with his tea. In fact, the
one-armed officer's face, his attitude, and, most of all, the empty
sleeve of his coat, expressed much of that tranquil indifference that
may be explained in this way--that he looked upon every conversation and
every occurrence as though saying, "That is all very fine; I know all
about that, and I can do a little of that myself, if I only choose."

"What is our decision to be?" said the young officer again to his
companion in the short coat. "Shall we pass the night here, or shall we
proceed with our own horses?"

His comrade declined to proceed.

"Just imagine, captain," said the one who was pouring the tea, turning
to the one-armed man, and picking up the knife that the latter had
dropped, "they told us that horses were frightfully dear in Sevastopol,
so we bought a horse in partnership at Simferopol."

"They made you pay pretty high for it, I fancy."

"Really, I do not know, captain; we paid ninety rubles for it and the
team. Is that very dear?" he added, turning to all the company, and to
Kozeltzoff, who was staring at him.

"It was not dear, if the horse is young," said Kozeltzoff.

"Really! but they told us that it was dear. Only, she limps a little,
but that will pass off. They told us that she was very strong."

"What academy are you from?" asked Kozeltzoff, who wished to inquire
for his brother.

"We are just from the academy of the nobility; there are six of us, and
we are on our way to Sevastopol at our own desire," said the talkative
young officer. "But we do not know where our battery is; some say that
it is in Sevastopol, others that it is at Odessa."

"Was it not possible to find out at Simferopol?" asked Kozeltzoff.

"They do not know there. Just imagine, one of our comrades went to
the headquarters there, and they were impertinent to him. You can
imagine how disagreeable that was! Would you like to have me make you
a cigarette," he said at that moment to the one-armed officer, who was
just pulling out his cigarette-machine.

He waited on the latter with a sort of servile enthusiasm.

"And are you from Sevastopol also?" he went on. "Oh, good Heavens,
how wonderful that is! How much we did think of you, and of all our
heroes, in Petersburg," he said, turning to Kozeltzoff with respect and
good-natured flattery.

"And now, perhaps, you may have to go back?" inquired the lieutenant.

"That is just what we are afraid of. You can imagine that, after having
bought the horse, and provided ourselves with all the necessaries,--a
coffee-pot with a spirit-lamp, and other indispensable trifles,--we
have no money left," he said, in a low voice, as he glanced at his
companions; "so that, if we do have to go back, we don't know what is
to be done."

"Have you received no money for travelling expenses?" inquired
Kozeltzoff.

"No," replied he, in a whisper; "they only promised to give it to us
here."

"Have you the certificate?"

"I know that--the principal thing--is the certificate; but a senator in
Moscow,--he's my uncle,--when I was at his house, said that they would
give it to us here; otherwise, he would have given me some himself. So
they will give it to us here?"

"Most certainly they will."

"I too think that they will," he said, in a tone which showed
that, after having made the same identical inquiry in thirty
posting-stations, and having everywhere received different answers, he
no longer believed any one implicitly.


V.

"Who ordered beet-soup?" called out the slatternly mistress of the
house, a fat woman of forty, as she entered the room with a bowl of
soup.

The conversation ceased at once, and all who were in the room fixed
their eyes on the woman.

"Ah, it was Kozeltzoff who ordered it," said the young officer. "He
must be waked. Get up for your dinner," he said, approaching the
sleeper on the sofa, and jogging his elbow.

A young lad of seventeen, with merry black eyes and red cheeks, sprang
energetically from the sofa, and stood in the middle of the room,
rubbing his eyes.

"Ah, excuse me, please," he said to the doctor, whom he had touched in
rising.

Lieutenant Kozeltzoff recognized his brother immediately, and stepped
up to him.

"Don't you know me?" he said with a smile.

"A-a-a-!" exclaimed the younger brother; "this is astonishing!" And he
began to kiss his brother.

They kissed twice, but stopped at the third repetition as though the
thought had occurred to both of them:--

"Why is it necessary to do it exactly three times?"

"Well, how delighted I am!" said the elder, looking at his brother.
"Let us go out on the porch; we can have a talk."

"Come, come, I don't want any soup. You eat it, Federsohn!" he said to
his comrade.

"But you wanted something to eat."

"I don't want anything."

When they emerged on the porch, the younger kept asking his brother:
"Well, how are you; tell me all about it." And still he kept on saying
how glad he was to see him, but he told nothing himself.

When five minutes had elapsed, during which time they had succeeded in
becoming somewhat silent, the elder brother inquired why the younger
had not gone into the guards, as they had all expected him to do.

He wanted to get to Sevastopol as speedily as possible, he said; for
if things turned out favorably there, he could get advancement more
rapidly there than in the guards. There it takes ten years to reach
the grade of colonel, while here Todleben had risen in two years from
lieutenant-colonel to general. Well, and if one did get killed, there
was nothing to be done.

"What a fellow you are!" said his brother, smiling.

"But the principal thing, do you know, brother," said the younger,
smiling and blushing as though he were preparing to say something
very disgraceful, "all this is nonsense, and the principal reason why
I asked it was that I was ashamed to live in Petersburg when men are
dying for their country here. Yes, and I wanted to be with you," he
added, with still greater shamefacedness.

"How absurd you are!" said the elder brother, pulling out his
cigarette-machine, and not even glancing at him. "It's a pity, though,
that we can't be together."

"Now, honestly, is it so terrible in the bastions?" inquired the
younger man, abruptly.

"It is terrible at first, but you get used to it afterwards. It's
nothing. You will see for yourself."

"And tell me still another thing. What do you think?--will Sevastopol be
taken? I think that it will not."

"God knows!"

"But one thing is annoying. Just imagine what bad luck! A whole bundle
was stolen from us on the road, and it had my shako in it, so that
now I am in a dreadful predicament; and I don't know how I am to show
myself."

The younger Kozeltzoff, Vladimir, greatly resembled his brother
Mikhail, but he resembled him as a budding rose-bush resembles one
that is out of flower. His hair was chestnut also, but it was thick
and lay in curls on his temples. On the soft white back of his neck
there was a blond lock; a sign of good luck, so the nurses say. The
full-blooded crimson of youth did not stand fixed on the soft, white
hue of his face, but flashed up and betrayed all the movements of his
mind. He had the same eyes as his brother, but they were more widely
opened, and clearer, which appeared the more peculiar because they were
veiled frequently by a slight moisture. A golden down was sprouting
on his cheeks, and over his ruddy lips, which were often folded into
a shy smile, displaying teeth of dazzling whiteness. He was a well
formed and broad-shouldered fellow, in unbuttoned coat, from beneath
which was visible a red shirt with collar turned back. As he stood
before his brother, leaning his elbows on the railing of the porch,
with cigarette in hand and innocent joy in his face and gesture, he was
so agreeable and comely a youth that any one would have gazed at him
with delight. He was extremely pleased with his brother, he looked at
him with respect and pride, fancying him his hero; but in some ways, so
far as judgments on worldly culture, ability to talk French, behavior
in the society of distinguished people, dancing, and so on, he was
somewhat ashamed of him, looked down on him, and even cherished a hope
of improving him if such a thing were possible.

All his impressions, so far, were from Petersburg, at the house of
a lady who was fond of good-looking young fellows, and who had had
him spend his holidays with her, and from Moscow, at the house of a
senator, where he had once danced at a great ball.


VI.

Having nearly talked their fill and having arrived at the feeling that
you frequently experience, that there is little in common between you,
though you love one another, the brothers were silent for a few moments.

"Pick up your things and we will set out at once," said the elder.

The younger suddenly blushed, stammered, and became confused.

"Are we to go straight to Sevastopol?" he inquired, after a momentary
pause.

"Why, yes. You can't have many things, and we can manage to carry them,
I think."

"Very good! we will start at once," said the younger, with a sigh, and
he went inside.

But he paused in the vestibule without opening the door, dropped his
head gloomily, and began to reflect.

"Straight to Sevastopol, on the instant, within range of the
bombs--frightful! It's no matter, however; it must have come sometime.
Now, at all events, with my brother--"

The fact was that it was only now, at the thought that, once seated
in the cart, he should enter Sevastopol without dismounting from it,
and that no chance occurrence could any longer detain him, that the
danger which he was seeking clearly presented itself to him, and he was
troubled at the very thought of its nearness. He managed to control
himself in some way, and entered the room; but a quarter of an hour
elapsed, and still he had not rejoined his brother, so that the latter
opened the door at last, in order to call him. The younger Kozeltzoff,
in the attitude of a naughty school-boy, was saying something to an
officer named P. When his brother opened the door, he became utterly
confused.

"Immediately. I'll come out in a minute!" he cried, waving his hand at
his brother. "Wait for me there, please."

A moment later he emerged, in fact, and approached his brother, with a
deep sigh.

"Just imagine! I cannot go with you, brother," he said.

"What? What nonsense is this?"

"I will tell you the whole truth, Misha! Not one of us has any money,
and we are all in debt to that staff-captain whom you saw there. It is
horribly mortifying!"

The elder brother frowned, and did not break the silence for a long
while.

"Do you owe much?" he asked, glancing askance at his brother.

"A great deal--no, not a great deal; but I am dreadfully ashamed of it.
He has paid for me for three stages, and all his sugar is gone, so that
I do not know--yes, and we played at preference. I am a little in his
debt there, too."

"This is bad, Volodya! Now, what would you have done if you had not met
me?" said the elder, sternly, without looking at his brother.

"Why, I was thinking, brother, that I should get that travelling-money
at Sevastopol, and that I would give him that. Surely, that can be
done; and it will be better for me to go with him to-morrow."

The elder brother pulled out his purse, and, with fingers that shook a
little, he took out two ten-ruble notes and one for three rubles.

"This is all the money I have," said he. "How much do you owe?"

Kozeltzoff did not speak the exact truth when he said that this was all
the money he had. He had, besides, four gold pieces sewn into his cuff,
in case of an emergency; but he had taken a vow not to touch them.

It appeared that Kozeltzoff, what with preference and sugar, was in
debt to the amount of eight rubles only. The elder brother gave him
this sum, merely remarking that one should not play preference when one
had no money.

"What did you play for?"

The younger brother answered not a word. His brother's question seemed
to him to cast a reflection on his honor. Vexation at himself, a shame
at his conduct, which could give rise to such a suspicion, and the
insult from his brother, of whom he was so fond, produced upon his
sensitive nature so deeply painful an impression that he made no reply.
Sensible that he was not in a condition to restrain the sobs which rose
in his throat, he took the money without glancing at it, and went back
to his comrades.


VII.

Nikolaeff, who had fortified himself at Duvanka, with two jugs of
vodka, purchased from a soldier who was peddling it on the bridge, gave
the reins a jerk, and the team jolted away over the stony road, shaded
here and there, which led along the Belbek to Sevastopol; but the
brothers, whose legs jostled each other, maintained a stubborn silence,
although they were thinking of each other every instant.

"Why did he insult me?" thought the younger. "Could he not have held
his tongue about that? It is exactly as though he thought that I was a
thief; yes, and now he is angry, apparently, so that we have quarrelled
for good. And how splendid it would have been for us to be together in
Sevastopol. Two brothers, on friendly terms, both fighting the foe!
one of them, the elder, though not very cultivated, yet a valiant
warrior, and the other younger, but a brave fellow too. In a week's
time I would have showed them that I am not such a youngster after all!
I shall cease to blush, there will be manliness in my countenance,
and, though my moustache is not very large now, it would grow to a
good size by that time;" and he felt of the down which was making its
appearance round the edges of his mouth. "Perhaps we shall arrive
to-day, and get directly into the conflict, my brother and I. He must
be obstinate and very brave, one of those who do not say much, but act
better than others. I should like to know," he continued, "whether he
is squeezing me against the side of the wagon on purpose or not. He
probably is conscious that I feel awkward, and he is pretending not
to notice me. We shall arrive to-day," he went on with his argument,
pressing close to the side of the wagon, and fearing to move lest his
brother should observe that he was uncomfortable, "and, all at once,
we shall go straight to the bastion. We shall both go together, I with
my equipments, and my brother with his company. All of a sudden, the
French throw themselves on us. I begin to fire, and fire on them. I
kill a terrible number; but they still continue to run straight at me.
Now, it is impossible to fire any longer, and there is no hope for me;
all at once my brother rushes out in front with his sword, and I grasp
my gun, and we rush on with the soldiers. The French throw themselves
on my brother. I hasten up; I kill one Frenchman, then another, and
I save my brother. I am wounded in one arm; I seize my gun with the
other, and continue my flight; but my brother is slain by my side by
the bullets. I halt for a moment, and gaze at him so sorrowfully; then
I straighten myself up and shout: 'Follow me! We will avenge him! I
loved my brother more than any one in the world,' I shall say, 'and I
have lost him. Let us avenge him! Let us annihilate the foe, or let us
all die together there!' All shout, and fling themselves after me. Then
the whole French army makes a sortie, including even Pelissier himself.
We all fight; but, at last, I am wounded a second, a third time, and I
fall, nearly dead. Then, all rush up to me. Gortchakoff comes up and
asks what I would like. I say that I want nothing--except that I may
be laid beside my brother; that I wish to die with him. They carry
me, and lay me down by the side of my brother's bloody corpse. Then I
shall raise myself, and merely say: 'Yes, you did not understand how
to value two men who really loved their father-land; now they have both
fallen,--and may God forgive you!' and I shall die.

Who knows in what measure these dreams will be realized?

"Have you ever been in a hand to hand fight?" he suddenly inquired of
his brother, quite forgetting that he had not meant to speak to him.

"No, not once," answered the elder. "Our regiment has lost two thousand
men, all on the works; and I, also, was wounded there. War is not
carried on in the least as you fancy, Volodya."

The word "Volodya" touched the younger brother. He wanted to come to an
explanation with his brother, who had not the least idea that he had
offended Volodya.

"You are not angry with me, Misha?" he said, after a momentary silence.

"What about?"

"No, because--because we had such a--nothing."

"Not in the least," replied the elder, turning to him, and slapping him
on the leg.

"Then forgive me, Misha, if I have wounded you."

And the younger brother turned aside, in order to hide the tears that
suddenly started to his eyes.


VIII.

"Is this Sevastopol already?" asked the younger brother, as they
ascended the hill.

And before them appeared the bay, with its masts of ships, its
shipping, and the sea, with the hostile fleet, in the distance; the
white batteries on the shore, the barracks, the aqueducts, the docks
and the buildings of the town, and the white and lilac clouds of smoke
rising incessantly over the yellow hills, which surrounded the town and
stood out against the blue sky, in the rosy rays of the sun, which was
reflected by the waves, and sinking towards the horizon of the shadowy
sea.

Volodya, without a shudder, gazed upon this terrible place of which
he had thought so much; on the contrary, he did so with an aesthetic
enjoyment, and a heroic sense of self-satisfaction at the idea that
here he was--he would be there in another half-hour, that he would
behold that really charmingly original spectacle--and he stared with
concentrated attention from that moment until they arrived at the north
fortification, at the baggage-train of his brother's regiment, where
they were to ascertain with certainty the situations of the regiment
and the battery.

The officer in charge of the train lived near the so-called new town
(huts built of boards by the sailors' families), in a tent, connecting
with a tolerably large shed, constructed out of green oak-boughs, that
were not yet entirely withered.

The brothers found the officer seated before a greasy table, upon which
stood a glass of cold tea, a tray with vodka, crumbs of dry sturgeon
roe, and bread, clad only in a shirt of a dirty yellow hue, and engaged
in counting a huge pile of bank-bills on a large abacus.

But before describing the personality of the officer, and his
conversation, it is indispensable that we should inspect with more
attention the interior of his shed, and become a little acquainted, at
least, with his mode of life and his occupations. The new shed, like
those built for generals and regimental commanders, was large, closely
wattled, and comfortably arranged, with little tables and benches, made
of turf. The sides and roof were hung with three rugs, to keep the
leaves from showering down, and, though extremely ugly, they were new,
and certainly costly.

Upon the iron bed, which stood beneath the principal rug, with a young
amazon depicted on it, lay a plush coverlet, of a brilliant crimson,
a torn and dirty pillow, and a raccoon cloak. On the table stood a
mirror, in a silver frame, a silver brush, frightfully dirty, a broken
horn comb, full of greasy hair, a silver candlestick, a bottle of
liqueur, with a huge gold and red label, a gold watch, with a portrait
of Peter I., two gold pens, a small box, containing pills of some sort,
a crust of bread, and some old, castaway cards, and there were bottles,
both full and empty, under the bed.

This officer had charge of the commissariat of the regiment and the
fodder of the horses. With him lived his great friend, the commissioner
who had charge of the operations.

At the moment when the brothers entered, the latter was asleep in
the booth, and the commissary officer was making up his accounts of
the government money, in anticipation of the end of the month. The
commissary officer had a very comely and warlike exterior. His stature
was tall, his moustache huge, and he possessed a respectable amount
of plumpness. The only disagreeable points about him were a certain
perspiration and puffiness of the whole face, which almost concealed
his small gray eyes (as though he was filled up with porter), and an
excessive lack of cleanliness, from his thin, greasy hair to his big,
bare feet, thrust into some sort of ermine slippers.

"Money, money!" said Kozeltzoff number one, entering the shed, and
fixing his eyes, with involuntary greed, upon the pile of bank-notes.
"You might lend me half of that, Vasily Mikhailitch!"

The commissary officer cringed at the sight of his visitors, and,
sweeping up his money, he bowed to them without rising.

"Oh, if it only belonged to me! It's government money, my dear fellow.
And who is this you have with you?" said he, thrusting the money into a
coffer which stood beside him, and staring at Volodya.

"This is my brother, who has just come from the military academy. We
have both come to learn from you where our regiment is stationed."

"Sit down, gentlemen," said the officer, rising, and going into the
shed, without paying any heed to his guests. "Won't you have something
to drink? Some porter, for instance?" said he.

"Don't put yourself out, Vasily Mikhailitch."

Volodya was impressed by the size of the commissary officer, by his
carelessness of manner, and by the respect with which his brother
addressed him.

"It must be that this is one of their very fine officers, whom every
one respects. Really, he is simple, but hospitable and brave," he
thought, seating himself in a timid and modest manner on the sofa.

"Where is our regiment stationed, then?" called out his elder brother
into the board hut.

"What?"

He repeated his query.

"Zeifer has been here to-day. He told me that they had removed to the
fifth bastion."

"Is that true?"

"If I say so, it must be true; but the deuce only knows anyway! He
would think nothing of telling a lie. Won't you have some porter?" said
the commissary officer, still from the tent.

"I will if you please," said Kozeltzoff.

"And will you have a drink, Osip Ignatievitch?" went on the voice in
the tent, apparently addressing the sleeping commissioner. "You have
slept enough; it's five o'clock."

"Why do you worry me? I am not asleep," answered a shrill, languid
little voice.

"Come, get up! we find it stupid without you."

And the commissary officer came out to his guests.

"Fetch some Simferopol porter!" he shouted.

A servant entered the booth, with a haughty expression of countenance,
as it seemed to Volodya, and, having jostled Volodya, he drew forth the
porter from beneath the bench.

The bottle of porter was soon emptied, and the conversation had
proceeded in the same style for rather a long time when the flap of
the tent flew open and out stepped a short, fresh-colored man, in a
blue dressing-gown with tassels, in a cap with a red rim and a cockade.
At the moment of his appearance, he was smoothing his small black
moustache, and, with his gaze fixed on the rugs, he replied to the
greetings of the officer with a barely perceptible movement of the
shoulders.

"I will drink a small glassful too!" said he, seating himself by the
table. "What is this, have you come from Petersburg, young man?" he
said, turning courteously to Volodya.

"Yes, sir, I am on my way to Sevastopol."

"Did you make the application yourself?"

"Yes, sir."

"What queer tastes you have, gentlemen! I do not understand it!"
continued the commissioner. "It strikes me that I should be ready just
now to travel on foot to Petersburg, if I could get away. By Heavens, I
am tired of this cursed life!"

"What is there about it that does not suit you?" said the elder
Kozeltzoff, turning to him. "You're the very last person to complain of
life here!"

The commissioner cast a look upon him, and then turned away.

"This danger, these privations, it is impossible to get anything
here," he continued, addressing Volodya. "And why you should take
such a freak, gentlemen, I really cannot understand. If there were any
advantages to be derived from it, but there is nothing of the sort. It
would be a nice thing, now, wouldn't it, if you, at your age, were to
be left a cripple for life!"

"Some need the money, and some serve for honor's sake!" said the elder
Kozeltzoff, in a tone of vexation, joining the discussion once more.

"What's the good of honor, when there's nothing to eat!" said the
commissioner with a scornful laugh, turning to the commissary, who also
laughed at this. "Give us something from 'Lucia'; we will listen," he
said, pointing to the music-box. "I love it."

"Well, is that Vasily Mikhailitch a fine man?" Volodya asked his
brother when they emerged, at dusk, from the booth, and pursued their
way to Sevastopol.

"Not at all; but such a niggard that it is a perfect terror! And I
can't bear the sight of that commissioner, and I shall give him a
thrashing one of these days."


IX.

Volodya was not precisely out of sorts when, nearly at nightfall,
they reached the great bridge over the bay, but he felt a certain
heaviness at his heart. All that he had heard and seen was so little
in consonance with the impressions which had recently passed away; the
huge, light examination hall, with its polished floor, the kind and
merry voices and laughter of his comrades, the new uniform, his beloved
tsar, whom he had been accustomed to see for the last seven years, and
who, when he took leave of them, had called them his children, with
tears in his eyes,--and everything that he had seen so little resembled
his very beautiful, rainbow-hued, magnificent dreams.

"Well, here we are at last!" said the elder brother, when they arrived
at the Mikhailovsky battery, and dismounted from their cart. "If
they let us pass the bridge, we will go directly to the Nikolaevsky
barracks. You stay there until morning, and I will go to the regiment
and find out where your battery is stationed, and to-morrow I will come
for you."

"But why? It would be better if we both went together," said Volodya;
"I will go to the bastion with you. It won't make any difference; I
shall have to get used to it. If you go, then I can too."

"Better not go."

"No, if you please; I do know, at least, that...."

"My advice is, not to go; but if you choose...."

The sky was clear and dark; the stars, and the fires of the bombs
in incessant movement and discharges, were gleaming brilliantly
through the gloom. The large white building of the battery, and the
beginning of the bridge stood out in the darkness. Literally, every
second several discharges of artillery and explosions, following each
other in quick succession or occurring simultaneously, shook the air
with increasing thunder and distinctness. Through this roar, and as
though repeating it, the melancholy dash of the waves was audible. A
faint breeze was drawing in from the sea, and the air was heavy with
moisture. The brothers stepped upon the bridge. A soldier struck his
gun awkwardly against his arm, and shouted:--

"Who goes there?"

"A soldier."

"The orders are not to let any one pass!"

"What of that! We have business! We must pass!"

"Ask the officer."

The officer, who was drowsing as he sat on an anchor, rose up and gave
the order to let them pass.

"You can go that way, but not this. Where are you driving to, all in a
heap!" he cried to the transport wagons piled high with gabions, which
had clustered about the entrance.

As they descended to the first pontoon, the brothers encountered
soldiers who were coming thence, and talking loudly.

"If he has received his ammunition money, then he has squared his
accounts in full--that's what it is!"

"Eh, brothers!" said another voice, "when you get over on the
Severnaya you will see the world, by heavens! The air is entirely
different."

"You may say more!" said the first speaker. "A cursed shell flew in
there the other day, and it tore the legs off of two sailors, so
that...."

The brothers traversed the first pontoon, while waiting for the wagon,
and halted on the second, which was already flooded with water in
parts. The breeze, which had seemed weak inland, was very powerful
here, and came in gusts; the bridge swayed to and fro, and the waves,
beating noisily against the beams, and tearing at the cables and
anchors, flooded the planks. At the right the gloomily hostile sea
roared and darkled, as it lay separated by an interminable level black
line from the starry horizon, which was light gray in its gleam; lights
flashed afar on the enemy's fleet; on the left towered the black
masts of one of our vessels, and the waves could be heard as they
beat against her hull; a steamer was visible, as it moved noisily and
swiftly from the Severnaya.

The flash of a bomb, as it burst near it, illuminated for a moment
the lofty heaps of gabions on the deck, two men who were standing
on it, and the white foam and the spurts of greenish waves, as the
steamer ploughed through them. On the edge of the bridge, with his
legs dangling in the water, sat a man in his shirt-sleeves, who
was repairing something connected with the bridge. In front, over
Sevastopol, floated the same fires, and the terrible sounds grew louder
and louder. A wave rolled in from the sea, flowed over the right side
of the bridge, and wet Volodya's feet; two soldiers passed them,
dragging their feet through the water. Something suddenly burst with a
crash and lighted up the bridge ahead of them, the wagon driving over
it, and a man on horseback. The splinters fell into the waves with a
hiss, and sent up the water in splashes.

"Ah, Mikhailo Semyonitch!" said the rider, stopping, reining in his
horse in front of the elder Kozeltzoff, "have you fully recovered
already?"

"As you see. Whither is God taking you?"

"To the Severnaya, for cartridges; I am on my way to the adjutant of
the regiment ... we expect an assault to-morrow, at any hour."

"And where is Martzoff?"

"He lost a leg yesterday; he was in the town, asleep in his room....
Perhaps you know it?"

"The regiment is in the fifth bastion, isn't it?"

"Yes; it has taken the place of the M---- regiment. Go to the
field-hospital; some of our men are there, and they will show you the
way."

"Well, and are my quarters on the Morskaya still intact?"

"Why, my good fellow, they were smashed to bits long ago by the bombs.
You will not recognize Sevastopol now; there's not a single woman there
now, nor any inns nor music; the last establishment took its departure
yesterday. It has become horribly dismal there now.... Farewell!"

And the officer rode on his way at a trot.

All at once, Volodya became terribly frightened; it seemed to him
as though a cannon-ball or a splinter of bomb would fly in their
direction, and strike him directly on the head. This damp darkness,
all these sounds, especially the angry splashing of the waves, seemed
to be saying to him that he ought not to go any farther, that nothing
good awaited him yonder, that he would never again set foot on the
ground upon this side of the bay, that he must turn about at once, and
flee somewhere or other, as far as possible from this terrible haunt
of death. "But perhaps it is too late now, everything is settled,"
thought he, trembling partly at this thought and partly because the
water had soaked through his boots and wet his feet.

Volodya heaved a deep sigh, and went a little apart from his brother.

"Lord, will they kill me--me in particular? Lord, have mercy on me!"
said he, in a whisper, and he crossed himself.

"Come, Volodya, let us go on!" said the elder brother, when their
little cart had driven upon the bridge. "Did you see that bomb?"

On the bridge, the brothers met wagons filled with the wounded, with
gabions, and one loaded with furniture, which was driven by a woman. On
the further side no one detained them.

Clinging instinctively to the walls of the Nikolaevsky battery, the
brothers listened in silence to the noise of the bombs, exploding
overhead, and to the roar of the fragments, showering down from above,
and came to that spot in the battery where the image was. There they
learned that the fifth light battery, to which Volodya had been
assigned, was stationed on the Korabelnaya, and they decided that he
should go, in spite of the danger, and pass the night with the elder
in the fifth bastion, and that he should from there join his battery
the next day. They turned into the corridor, stepping over the legs
of the sleeping soldiers, who were lying all along the walls of the
battery, and at last they arrived at the place where the wounded were
attended to.


X.

As they entered the first room, surrounded with cots on which lay the
wounded, and permeated with that frightful and disgusting hospital
odor, they met two Sisters of Mercy, who were coming to meet them.

One woman, of fifty, with black eyes, and a stern expression of
countenance, was carrying bandages and lint, and was giving strict
orders to a young fellow, an assistant surgeon, who was following her;
the other, a very pretty girl of twenty, with a pale and delicate
little fair face, gazed in an amiably helpless way from beneath her
white cap, held her hands in the pockets of her apron, as she walked
beside the elder woman, and seemed to be afraid to quit her side.

Kozeltzoff addressed to them the question whether they knew where
Martzoff was--the man whose leg had been torn off on the day before.

"He belonged to the P---- regiment, did he not?" inquired the elder. "Is
he a relative of yours?"

"No, a comrade."

"Show them the way," said she, in French, to the young sister. "Here,
this way," and she approached a wounded man, in company with the
assistant.

"Come along; what are you staring at?" said Kozeltzoff to Volodya,
who, with uplifted eyebrows and somewhat suffering expression of
countenance, could not tear himself away, but continued to stare at the
wounded. "Come, let us go."

Volodya went off with his brother, still continuing to gaze about him,
however, and repeating unconsciously:--

"Ah, my God! Ah, my God!"

"He has probably not been here long?" inquired the sister of
Kozeltzoff, pointing at Volodya, who, groaning and sighing, followed
them through the corridor.

"He has but just arrived."

The pretty little sister glanced at Volodya, and suddenly burst out
crying. "My God! my God! when will there be an end to all this?"
she said, with the accents of despair. They entered the officer's
hut. Martzoff was lying on his back, with his muscular arms, bare
to the elbow, thrown over his head, and with the expression on his
yellow face of a man who is clenching his teeth in order to keep from
shrieking with pain. His whole leg, in its stocking, was thrust outside
the coverlet, and it could be seen how he was twitching his toes
convulsively inside it.

"Well, how goes it, how do you feel?" asked the sister, raising his
bald head with her slender, delicate fingers, on one of which Volodya
noticed a gold ring, and arranging his pillow. "Here are some of your
comrades come to inquire after you."

"Badly, of course," he answered, angrily. "Let me alone! it's all
right,"--the toes in his stocking moved more rapidly than ever.
"How do you do? What is your name? Excuse me," he said, turning to
Kozeltzoff.... "Ah, yes, I beg your pardon! one forgets everything
here," he said, when the latter had mentioned his name. "You and
I lived together," he added, without the slightest expression of
pleasure, glancing interrogatively at Volodya.

"This is my brother, who has just arrived from Petersburg to-day."

"Hm! Here I have finished my service," he said, with a frown. "Ah, how
painful it is!... The best thing would be a speedy end."

He drew up his leg, and covered his face with his hands, continuing to
move his toes with redoubled swiftness.

"You must leave him," said the sister, in a whisper, while the tears
stood in her eyes; "he is in a very bad state."

The brothers had already decided on the north side to go to the fifth
bastion; but, on emerging from the Nikolaevsky battery, they seemed
to have come to a tacit understanding not to subject themselves
to unnecessary danger, and, without discussing the subject, they
determined to go their ways separately.

"Only, how are you to find your way, Volodya?" said the elder.
"However, Nikolaeff will conduct you to the Korabelnaya, and I will go
my way alone, and will be with you to-morrow."

Nothing more was said at this last leave-taking between the brothers.


XI.

The thunder of the cannon continued with the same power as before, but
Yekaterinskaya street, along which Volodya walked, followed by the
taciturn Nikolaeff, was quiet and deserted. All that he could see,
through the thick darkness, was the wide street with the white walls of
large houses, battered in many places, and the stone sidewalk beneath
his feet; now and then, he met soldiers and officers. As he passed
along the left side of the street, near the Admiralty building, he
perceived, by the light of a bright fire burning behind the wall, the
acacias planted along the sidewalk, with green guards beneath, and the
wretchedly dusty leaves of these acacias.

He could plainly hear his own steps and those of Nikolaeff, who
followed him, breathing heavily. He thought of nothing; the pretty
little Sister of Mercy, Martzoff's leg with the toes twitching in its
stocking, the bombs, the darkness, and divers pictures of death floated
hazily through his mind. All his young and sensitive soul shrank
together, and was borne down by his consciousness of loneliness, and
the indifference of every one to his fate in the midst of danger.

"They will kill me, I shall be tortured, I shall suffer, and no one
will weep." And all this, instead of the hero's life, filled with
energy and sympathy, of which he had cherished such glorious dreams.
The bombs burst and shrieked nearer and ever nearer. Nikolaeff sighed
more frequently, without breaking the silence. On crossing the bridge
leading to the Korabelnaya, he saw something fly screaming into the
bay, not far from him, which lighted up the lilac waves for an instant
with a crimson glow, then disappeared, and threw on high a cloud of
foam.

"See there, it was not put out!" said Nikolaeff, hoarsely.

"Yes," answered Volodya, involuntarily, and quite unexpectedly to
himself, in a thin, piping voice.

They encountered litters with wounded men, then more regimental
transports with gabions; they met a regiment on Korabelnaya street;
men on horseback passed them. One of them was an officer, with his
Cossack. He was riding at a trot, but, on catching sight of Volodya, he
reined in his horse near him, looked into his face, turned and rode on,
giving the horse a blow of his whip.

"Alone, alone; it is nothing to any one whether I am in existence or
not," thought the lad, and he felt seriously inclined to cry.

After ascending the hill, past a high white wall, he entered a street
of small ruined houses, incessantly illuminated by bombs. A drunken and
dishevelled woman, who was coming out of a small door in company with a
sailor, ran against him.

"If he were only a fine man," she grumbled,--"Pardon, Your Honor the
officer."

The poor boy's heart sank lower and lower, and more and more frequently
flashed the lightnings against the dark horizon, and the bombs
screamed and burst about him with ever increasing frequency. Nikolaeff
sighed, and all at once he began to speak, in what seemed to Volodya a
frightened and constrained tone.

"What haste we made to get here from home. It was nothing but
travelling. A pretty place to be in a hurry to get to!"

"What was to be done, if my brother was well again," replied Volodya,
in hope that he might banish by conversation the frightful feeling that
was taking possession of him.

"Well, what sort of health is it when he is thoroughly ill! Those who
are really well had better stay in the hospital at such a time. A
vast deal of joy there is about it, isn't there? You will have a leg
or an arm torn off, and that's all you will get! It's not far removed
from a downright sin! And here in the town it's not at all like the
bastion, and that is a perfect terror. You go and you say your prayers
the whole way. Eh, you beast, there you go whizzing past!" he added,
directing his attention to the sound of a splinter of shell whizzing
by near them. "Now, here," Nikolaeff went on, "I was ordered to show
Your Honor the way. My business, of course, is to do as I am bid; but
the cart has been abandoned to some wretch of a soldier, and the bundle
is undone.... Go on and on; but if any of the property disappears,
Nikolaeff will have to answer for it."

After proceeding a few steps further, they came out on a square.
Nikolaeff held his peace, but sighed.

"Yonder is your artillery, Your Honor!" he suddenly said. "Ask the
sentinel; he will show you."

And Volodya, after he had taken a few steps more, ceased to hear the
sound of Nikolaeff's sighs behind him.

All at once, he felt himself entirely and finally alone. This
consciousness of solitude in danger, before death, as it seemed to him,
lay upon his heart like a terribly cold and heavy stone.

He halted in the middle of the square, glanced about him, to see
whether he could catch sight of any one, grasped his head, and uttered
his thought aloud in his terror:--"Lord! Can it be that I am a coward,
a vile, disgusting, worthless coward ... can it be that I so lately
dreamed of dying with joy for my father-land, my tsar? No, I am a
wretched, an unfortunate, a wretched being!" And Volodya, with a
genuine sentiment of despair and disenchantment with himself, inquired
of the sentinel for the house of the commander of the battery, and set
out in the direction indicated.


XII.

The residence of the commander of the battery, which the sentinel had
pointed out to him, was a small, two-story house, with an entrance
on the court-yard. In one of the windows, which was pasted over with
paper, burned the feeble flame of a candle. A servant was seated on
the porch, smoking his pipe; he went in and announced Volodya to the
commander, and then led him in. In the room, between the two windows,
and beneath a shattered mirror, stood a table, heaped with official
documents, several chairs, and an iron bedstead, with a clean pallet,
and a small bed-rug by its side.

Near the door stood a handsome man, with a large moustache,--a sergeant,
in sabre and cloak, on the latter of which hung a cross and a Hungarian
medal. Back and forth in the middle of the room paced a short
staff-officer of forty, with swollen cheeks bound up, and dressed in a
thin old coat.

"I have the honor to report myself, Cornet Kozeltzoff, 2d, ordered to
the fifth light battery," said Volodya, uttering the phrase which he
had learned by heart, as he entered the room.

The commander of the battery responded dryly to his greeting, and,
without offering his hand, invited him to be seated.

Volodya dropped timidly into a chair, beside the writing-table, and
began to twist in his fingers the scissors, which his hand happened
to light upon. The commander of the battery put his hands behind his
back, and, dropping his head, pursued his walk up and down the room, in
silence, only bestowing an occasional glance at the hands which were
twirling the scissors, with the aspect of a man who is trying to recall
something.

The battery commander was a rather stout man, with a large bald spot
on the crown of his head, a thick moustache, which drooped straight
down and concealed his mouth, and pleasant brown eyes. His hands were
handsome, clean, and plump; his feet small and well turned, and they
stepped out in a confident and rather dandified manner, proving that
the commander was not a timid man.

"Yes," he said, coming to a halt in front of the sergeant; "a measure
must be added to the grain to-morrow, or our horses will be getting
thin. What do you think?"

"Of course, it is possible to do so, Your Excellency! Oats are very
cheap just now," replied the sergeant, twitching his fingers, which
he held on the seams of his trousers, but which evidently liked to
assist in the conversation. "Our forage-master, Franchuk, sent me a
note yesterday, from the transports, Your Excellency, saying that we
should certainly be obliged to purchase oats; they say they are cheap.
Therefore, what are your orders?"

"To buy, of course. He has money, surely." And the commander resumed
his tramp through the room. "And where are your things?" he suddenly
inquired of Volodya, as he paused in front of him.

Poor Volodya was so overwhelmed by the thought that he was a coward,
that he espied scorn for himself in every glance, in every word, as
though they had been addressed to a pitiable poltroon. It seemed to him
that the commander of the battery had already divined his secret, and
was making sport of him. He answered, with embarrassment, that his
effects were on the Grafskaya, and that his brother had promised to
send them to him on the morrow.

But the lieutenant-colonel was not listening to him, and, turning to
the sergeant, he inquired:--

"Where are we to put the ensign?"

"The ensign, sir?" said the sergeant, throwing Volodya into still
greater confusion by the fleeting glance which he cast upon him, and
which seemed to say, "What sort of an ensign is this?"--"He can be
quartered downstairs, with the staff-captain, Your Excellency," he
continued, after a little reflection. "The captain is at the bastion
just now, and his cot is empty."

"Will that not suit you, temporarily?" said the commander.--"I think you
must be tired, but we will lodge you better to-morrow."

Volodya rose and bowed.

"Will you not have some tea?" said the commander, when he had already
reached the door. "The samovar can be brought in."

Volodya saluted and left the room. The lieutenant-colonel's servant
conducted him downstairs, and led him into a bare, dirty chamber, in
which various sorts of rubbish were lying about, and where there was
an iron bedstead without either sheets or coverlet. A man in a red
shirt was fast asleep on the bed, covered over with a thick cloak.

Volodya took him for a soldier.

"Piotr Nikolaitch!" said the servant, touching the sleeper on the
shoulder. "The ensign is to sleep here.... This is our yunker," he
added, turning to the ensign.

"Ah, don't trouble him, please," said Volodya; but the yunker, a tall,
stout, young man, with a handsome but very stupid face, rose from the
bed, threw on his cloak, and, evidently not having had a good sleep,
left the room.

"No matter; I'll lie down in the yard," he growled out.


XIII.

Left alone with his own thoughts, Volodya's first sensation was a fear
of the incoherent, forlorn state of his own soul. He wanted to go to
sleep, and forget all his surroundings, and himself most of all. He
extinguished the candle, lay down on the bed, and, taking off his coat,
he wrapped his head up in it, in order to relieve his terror of the
darkness, with which he had been afflicted since his childhood. But all
at once the thought occurred to him that a bomb might come and crush
in the roof and kill him. He began to listen attentively; directly
overhead, he heard the footsteps of the battery commander.

"Anyway, if it does come," he thought, "it will kill any one who is
upstairs first, and then me; at all events, I shall not be the only
one."

This thought calmed him somewhat.

"Well, and what if Sevastopol should be taken unexpectedly, in the
night, and the French make their way hither? What am I to defend myself
with?"

He rose once more, and began to pace the room. His terror of the actual
danger outweighed his secret fear of the darkness. There was nothing
heavy in the room except the samovar and a saddle. "I am a scoundrel, a
coward, a miserable coward!" the thought suddenly occurred to him, and
again he experienced that oppressive sensation of scorn and disgust,
even for himself. Again he threw himself on the bed, and tried not to
think.

Then the impressions of the day involuntarily penetrated his
imagination, in consequence of the unceasing sounds, which made the
glass in the solitary window rattle, and again the thought of danger
recurred to him: now he saw visions of wounded men and blood, now
of bombs and splinters, flying into the room, then of the pretty
little Sister of Mercy, who was applying a bandage to him, a dying
man, and weeping over him, then of his mother, accompanying him to
the provincial town, and praying, amid burning tears, before the
wonder-working images, and once more sleep appeared an impossibility to
him.

But suddenly the thought of Almighty God, who can do all things, and
who hears every supplication, came clearly into his mind. He knelt
down, crossed himself, and folded his hands as he had been taught to do
in his childhood, when he prayed. This gesture, all at once, brought
back to him a consoling feeling, which he had long since forgotten.

"If I must die, if I must cease to exist, 'thy will be done, Lord,'"
he thought; "let it be quickly; but if bravery is needed, and the
firmness which I do not possess, give them to me; deliver me from shame
and disgrace, which I cannot bear, but teach me what to do in order to
fulfil thy will."

His childish, frightened, narrow soul was suddenly encouraged; it
cleared up, and caught sight of broad, brilliant, and new horizons.
During the brief period while this feeling lasted, he felt and thought
many other things, and soon fell asleep quietly and unconcernedly, to
the continuous sounds of the roar of the bombardment and the rattling
of the window-panes.

Great Lord! thou alone hast heard, and thou alone knowest those ardent,
despairing prayers of ignorance, of troubled repentance, those
petitions for the healing of the body and the enlightenment of the
mind, which have ascended to thee from that terrible precinct of death,
from the general who, a moment before, was thinking of his cross of the
George on his neck, and conscious in his terror of thy near presence,
to the simple soldier writhing on the bare earth of the Nikolaevsky
battery, and beseeching thee to bestow upon him there the reward,
unconsciously presaged, for all his sufferings.


XIV.

The elder Kozeltzoff, meeting on the street a soldier belonging to his
regiment, betook himself at once, in company with the man, to the fifth
bastion.

"Keep under the wall, Your Honor," said the soldier.

"What for?"

"It's dangerous, Your Honor; there's one passing over," said the
soldier, listening to the sound of a screaming cannon-ball, which
struck the dry road, on the other side of the street.

Kozeltzoff, paying no heed to the soldier, walked bravely along the
middle of the street.

These were the same streets, the same fires, even more frequent now,
the sounds, the groans, the encounters with the wounded, and the same
batteries, breastworks, and trenches, which had been there in the
spring, when he was last in Sevastopol; but, for some reason, all this
was now more melancholy, and, at the same time, more energetic, the
apertures in the houses were larger, there were no longer any lights in
the windows, with the exception of the Kushtchin house (the hospital),
not a woman was to be met with, the earlier tone of custom and freedom
from care no longer rested over all, but, instead, a certain impress of
heavy expectation, of weariness and earnestness.

But here is the last trench already, and here is the voice of a soldier
of the P---- regiment, who has recognized the former commander of his
company, and here stands the third battalion in the gloom, clinging
close to the wall, and lighted up now and then, for a moment, by the
discharges, and a sound of subdued conversation, and the rattling of
guns.

"Where is the commander of the regiment?" inquired Kozeltzoff.

"In the bomb-proofs with the sailors, Your Honor," replied the soldier,
ready to be of service. "I will show you the way, if you like."

From trench to trench the soldier led Kozeltzoff, to the small ditch in
the trench. In the ditch sat a sailor, smoking his pipe; behind him a
door was visible, through whose cracks shone a light.

"Can I enter?"

"I will announce you at once," and the sailor went in through the door.

Two voices became audible on the other side of the door.

"If Prussia continues to observe neutrality," said one voice, "then
Austria also...."

"What difference does Austria make," said the second, "when the Slavic
lands ... well, ask him to come in."

Kozeltzoff had never been in this casemate. He was struck by its
elegance. The floor was of polished wood, screens shielded the door.
Two bedsteads stood against the wall, in one corner stood a large
ikon of the mother of God, in a gilt frame, and before her burned a
rose-colored lamp.

On one of the beds, a naval officer, fully dressed, was sleeping. On
the other, by a table upon which stood two bottles of wine, partly
empty, sat the men who were talking--the new regimental commander and
his adjutant.

Although Kozeltzoff was far from being a coward, and was certainly
not guilty of any wrongdoing so far as his superior officers were
concerned, nor towards the regimental commander, yet he felt timid
before the colonel, who had been his comrade not long before, so
proudly did this colonel rise and listen to him.

"It is strange," thought Kozeltzoff, as he surveyed his commander, "it
is only seven weeks since he took the regiment, and how visible already
is his power as regimental commander, in everything about him--in his
dress, his bearing, his look. Is it so very long," thought he, "since
this Batrishtcheff used to carouse with us, and he wore a cheap cotton
shirt, and ate by himself, never inviting any one to his quarters, his
eternal meat-balls and curd-patties? But now! and that expression of
cold pride in his eyes, which says to you, 'Though I am your comrade,
because I am a regimental commander of the new school, yet, believe me,
I am well aware that you would give half your life merely for the sake
of being in my place!'"

"You have been a long time in recovering," said the colonel to
Kozeltzoff, coldly, with a stare.

"I was ill, colonel! The wound has not closed well even now."

"Then there was no use in your coming," said the colonel, casting
an incredulous glance at the captain's stout figure. "You are,
nevertheless, in a condition to fulfil your duty?"

"Certainly I am, sir."

"Well I'm very glad of that, sir. You will take the ninth company from
Ensign Zaitzoff--the one you had before; you will receive your orders
immediately."

"I obey, sir."

"Take care to send me the regimental adjutant when you arrive," said
the regimental commander, giving him to understand, by a slight nod,
that his audience was at an end.

On emerging from the casemate, Kozeltzoff muttered something several
times, and shrugged his shoulders, as though pained, embarrassed,
or vexed at something, and vexed, not at the regimental commander
(there was no cause for that), but at himself, and he appeared to be
dissatisfied with himself and with everything about him.


XV.

Before going to his officers, Kozeltzoff went to greet his company, and
to see where it was stationed.

The breastwork of gabions, the shapes of the trenches, the cannons
which he passed, even the fragments of shot, bombs, over which he
stumbled in his path--all this, incessantly illuminated by the light
of the firing, was well known to him, all this had engraved itself
in vivid colors on his memory, three months before, during the two
weeks which he had spent in this very bastion, without once leaving
it. Although there was much that was terrible in these reminiscences,
a certain charm of past things was mingled with it, and he recognized
the familiar places and objects with pleasure, as though the two weeks
spent there had been agreeable ones. The company was stationed along
the defensive wall toward the sixth bastion.

Kozeltzoff entered the long casemate, utterly unprotected at the
entrance side, in which they had told him that the ninth company
was stationed. There was, literally, no room to set his foot in the
casemate, so filled was it, from the very entrance, with soldiers. On
one side burned a crooked tallow candle, which a recumbent soldier
was holding to illuminate the book which another one was spelling
out slowly. Around the candle, in the reeking half-light, heads were
visible, eagerly raised in strained attention to the reader. The little
book in question was a primer. As Kozeltzoff entered the casemate, he
heard the following:

"Pray-er af-ter lear-ning. I thank Thee, Crea-tor ..."

"Snuff that candle!" said a voice. "That's a splendid book." "My ...
God ..." went on the reader.

When Kozeltzoff asked for the sergeant, the reader stopped, the
soldiers began to move about, coughed, and blew their noses, as they
always do after enforced silence. The sergeant rose near the group
about the reader, buttoning up his coat as he did so, and stepping over
and on the feet of those who had no room to withdraw them, and came
forward to his officer.

"How are you, brother? Do all these belong to our company?"

"I wish you health! Welcome on your return, Your Honor!" replied the
sergeant, with a cheerful and friendly look at Kozeltzoff. "Has Your
Honor recovered your health? Well, God be praised. It has been very
dull for us without you."

It was immediately apparent that Kozeltzoff was beloved in the company.

In the depths of the casemate, voices could be heard. Their old
commander, who had been wounded, Mikhail Semyonitch Kozeltzoff,
had arrived, and so forth; some even approached, and the drummer
congratulated him.

"How are you, Obantchuk?" said Kozeltzoff. "Are you all right?
Good-day, children!" he said, raising his voice.

"We wish you health!" sounded through the casemate.

"How are you getting on, children?"

"Badly, Your Honor. The French are getting the better of us.--Fighting
from behind the fortifications is bad work, and that's all there is
about it! and they won't come out into the open field."

"Perhaps luck is with me, and God will grant that they shall come out
into the field, children!" said Kozeltzoff. "It won't be the first time
that you and I have taken a hand together: we'll beat them again."

"We'll be glad to try it, Your Honor!" exclaimed several voices.

"And how about them--are they really bold?"

"Frightfully bold!" said the drummer, not loudly, but so that his words
were audible, turning to another soldier, as though justifying before
him the words of the commander, and persuading him that there was
nothing boastful or improbable in these words.

From the soldiers, Kozeltzoff proceeded to the defensive barracks and
his brother officers.


XVI.

In the large room of the barracks there was a great number of men;
naval, artillery, and infantry officers. Some were sleeping, others
were conversing, seated on the shot-chests and gun-carriages of the
cannons of the fortifications; others still, who formed a very numerous
and noisy group behind the arch, were seated upon two felt rugs, which
had been spread on the floor, and were drinking porter and playing
cards.

"Ah! Kozeltzoff, Kozeltzoff! Capital! it's a good thing that he has
come! He's a brave fellow!... How's your wound?" rang out from various
quarters. Here also it was evident that they loved him and were
rejoiced at his coming.

After shaking hands with his friends, Kozeltzoff joined the noisy
group of officers engaged in playing cards. There were some of his
acquaintances among them. A slender, handsome, dark-complexioned man,
with a long, sharp nose and a huge moustache, which began on his
cheeks, was dealing the cards with his thin, white, taper fingers,
on one of which there was a heavy gold seal ring. He was dealing
straight on, and carelessly, being evidently excited by something,--and
merely desirous of making a show of heedlessness. On his right, and
beside him, lay a gray-haired major, supporting himself on his elbow,
and playing for half a ruble with affected coolness, and settling up
immediately. On his left squatted an officer with a red, perspiring
face, who was laughing and jesting in a constrained way. When his
cards won, he moved one hand about incessantly in his empty trousers
pocket. He was playing high, and evidently no longer for ready money,
which displeased the handsome, dark-complexioned man. A thin and pallid
officer with a bald head, and a huge nose and mouth, was walking about
the room, holding a large package of bank-notes in his hand, staking
ready money on the bank, and winning.

Kozeltzoff took a drink of vodka, and sat down by the players.

"Take a hand, Mikhail Semyonitch!" said the dealer to him; "you have
brought lots of money, I suppose."

"Where should I get any money! On the contrary, I got rid of the last I
had in town."

"The idea! Some one certainly must have fleeced you in Simpferopol."

"I really have but very little," said Kozeltzoff, but he was evidently
desirous that they should not believe him; then he unbuttoned his coat,
and took the old cards in his hand.

"I don't care if I do try; there's no knowing what the Evil One will
do! queer things do come about at times. But I must have a drink, to
get up my courage."

And within a very short space of time he had drunk another glass of
vodka and several of porter, and had lost his last three rubles.

A hundred and fifty rubles were written down against the little,
perspiring officer.

"No, he will not bring them," said he, carelessly, drawing a fresh card.

"Try to send it," said the dealer to him, pausing a moment in his
occupation of laying out the cards, and glancing at him.

"Permit me to send it to-morrow," repeated the perspiring officer,
rising, and moving his hand about vigorously in his empty pocket.

"Hm!" growled the dealer, and, throwing the cards angrily to the right
and left, he completed the deal. "But this won't do," said he, when he
had dealt the cards. "I'm going to stop. It won't do, Zakhar Ivanitch,"
he added, "we have been playing for ready money and not on credit."

"What, do you doubt me? That's strange, truly!"

"From whom is one to get anything?" muttered the major, who had won
about eight rubles. "I have lost over twenty rubles, but when I have
won--I get nothing."

"How am I to pay," said the dealer, "when there is no money on the
table?"

"I won't listen to you!" shouted the major, jumping up, "I am playing
with you, but not with him."

All at once the perspiring officer flew into a rage.

"I tell you that I will pay to-morrow; how dare you say such
impertinent things to me?"

"I shall say what I please! This is not the way to do--that's the
truth!" shouted the major.

"That will do, Feodor Feodoritch!" all chimed in, holding back the
major.

But let us draw a veil over this scene. To-morrow, to-day, it may be,
each one of these men will go cheerfully and proudly to meet his death,
and he will die with firmness and composure; but the one consolation of
life in these conditions, which terrify even the coldest imagination in
the absence of all that is human, and the hopelessness of any escape
from them, the one consolation is forgetfulness, the annihilation
of consciousness. At the bottom of the soul of each lies that noble
spark, which makes of him a hero; but this spark wearies of burning
clearly--when the fateful moment comes it flashes up into a flame, and
illuminates great deeds.


XVII.

On the following day, the bombardment proceeded with the same vigor.
At eleven o'clock in the morning, Volodya Kozeltzoff was seated in
a circle of battery officers, and, having already succeeded to some
extent in habituating himself to them, he was surveying the new faces,
taking observations, making inquiries, and telling stories.

The discreet conversation of the artillery officers, which made some
pretensions to learning, pleased him and inspired him with respect.
Volodya's shy, innocent, and handsome appearance disposed the officers
in his favor.

The eldest officer in the battery, the captain, a short,
sandy-complexioned man, with his hair arranged in a topknot, and smooth
on the temples, educated in the old traditions of the artillery, a
squire of dames, and a would-be learned man, questioned Volodya as to
his acquirements in artillery and new inventions, jested caressingly
over his youth and his pretty little face, and treated him, in
general, as a father treats a son, which was extremely agreeable to
Volodya.

Sub-Lieutenant Dyadenko, a young officer, who talked with a Little
Russian accent, had a tattered cloak and dishevelled hair, although
he talked very loudly, and constantly seized opportunities to dispute
acrimoniously over some topic, and was very abrupt in his movements,
pleased Volodya, who, beneath this rough exterior, could not help
detecting in him a very fine and extremely good man. Dyadenko was
incessantly offering his services to Volodya, and pointing out to him
that not one of the guns in Sevastopol was properly placed, according
to rule.

Lieutenant Tchernovitzky, with his brows elevated on high, though he
was more courteous than any of the rest, and dressed in a coat that
was tolerably clean, but not new, and carefully patched, and though
he displayed a gold watch-chain on a satin waistcoat, did not please
Volodya. He kept inquiring what the Emperor and the minister of war
were doing, and related to him, with unnatural triumph, the deeds of
valor which had been performed in Sevastopol, complained of the small
number of true patriots, and displayed a great deal of learning, and
sense, and noble feeling in general; but, for some reason, all this
seemed unpleasant and unnatural to Volodya. The principal thing which
he noticed was that the other officers hardly spoke to Tchernovitzky.

Yunker Vlang, whom he had waked up on the preceding evening, was also
there. He said nothing, but, seated modestly in a corner, laughed when
anything amusing occurred, refreshed their memories when they forgot
anything, handed the vodka, and made cigarettes for all the officers.
Whether it was the modest, courteous manners of Volodya, who treated
him exactly as he did the officers, and did not torment him as though
he were a little boy, or his agreeable personal appearance which
captivated Vlang_a_, as the soldiers called him, declining his name,
for some reason or other, in the feminine gender, at all events, he
never took his big, kind eyes from the face of the new officer. He
divined and anticipated all his wishes, and remained uninterruptedly in
a sort of lover-like ecstasy, which, of course, the officers perceived,
and made fun of.

Before dinner, the staff-captain was relieved from the battery, and
joined their company. Staff-Captain Kraut was a light-complexioned,
handsome, dashing officer, with a heavy, reddish moustache, and
side-whiskers; he spoke Russian capitally, but too elegantly and
correctly for a Russian. In the service and in his life, he had been
the same as in his language; he served very well, was a capital
comrade, and the most faithful of men in money matters; but simply
as a man something was lacking in him, precisely because everything
about him was so excellent. Like all Russian-Germans, by a strange
contradiction with the ideal German, he was "praktisch" to the highest
degree.

"Here he is, our hero makes his appearance!" said the captain, as
Kraut, flourishing his arms and jingling his spurs, entered the room.
"Which will you have, Friedrich Krestyanitch, tea or vodka?"

"I have already ordered my tea to be served," he answered, "but I may
take a little drop of vodka also, for the refreshing of the soul.
Very glad to make your acquaintance; I beg that you will love us, and
lend us your favor," he said to Volodya, who rose and bowed to him.
"Staff-Captain Kraut.... The gun-sergeant on the bastion informed me
that you arrived last night."

"Much obliged for your bed; I passed the night in it."

"I hope you found it comfortable? One of the legs is broken; but no one
can stand on ceremony--in time of siege--you must prop it up."

"Well, now, did you have a fortunate time on your watch?" asked
Dyadenko.

"Yes, all right; only Skvortzoff was hit, and we mended one of the
gun-carriages last night. The cheek was smashed to atoms."

He rose from his seat, and began to walk up and down; it was plain that
he was wholly under the influence of that agreeable sensation which a
man experiences who has just escaped a danger.

"Well, Dmitri Gavrilitch," he said, tapping the captain on the knee,
"how are you getting on, my dear fellow? How about your promotion?--no
word yet?"

"Nothing yet."

"No, and there will be nothing," interpolated Dyadenko: "I proved that
to you before."

"Why won't there?"

"Because the story was not properly written down."

"Oh, you quarrelsome fellow, you quarrelsome fellow!" said Kraut,
smiling gayly; "a regular obstinate Little Russian! Now, just to
provoke you, he'll turn out your lieutenant."

"No, he won't."

"Vlang! fetch me my pipe, and fill it," said he, turning to the yunker,
who at once hastened up obligingly with the pipe.

Kraut made them all lively; he told about the bombardment, he inquired
what had been going on in his absence, and entered into conversation
with every one.


XVIII.

"Well, how are things? Have you already got settled among us?" Kraut
asked Volodya.... "Excuse me, what is your name and patronymic? that's
the custom with us in the artillery, you know. Have you got hold of a
saddle-horse?"

"No," said Volodya; "I do not know what to do. I told the captain that
I had no horse, and no money, either, until I get some for forage and
travelling expenses. I want to ask the battery commander for a horse in
the meantime, but I am afraid that he will refuse me."

"Apollon Sergieitch, do you mean?" he produced with his lips a sound
indicative of the strongest doubt, and glanced at the captain; "not
likely."

"What's that? If he does refuse, there'll be no harm done," said the
captain. "There are horses, to tell the truth, which are not needed,
but still one might try; I will inquire to-day."

"What! Don't you know him?" Dyadenko interpolated. "He might refuse
anything, but there is no reason for refusing this. Do you want to bet
on it?..."

"Well, of course, everybody knows already that you always contradict."

"I contradict because I know. He is niggardly about other things, but
he will give the horse because it is no advantage to him to refuse."

"No advantage, indeed, when it costs him eight rubles here for oats!"
said Kraut. "Is there no advantage in not keeping an extra horse?"

"Ask Skvoretz yourself, Vladimir Semyonitch!" said Vlang, returning
with Kraut's pipe. "It's a capital horse."

"The one you tumbled into the ditch with, on the festival of the forty
martyrs, in March? Hey! Vlang?" remarked the staff-captain.

"No, and why should you say that it costs eight rubles for oats,"
pursued Dyadenko, "when his own inquiries show him that it is ten and a
half; of course, he has no object in it."

"Just as though he would have nothing left! So when you get to be
battery commander, you won't let any horses go into the town?"

"When I get to be battery commander, my dear fellow, my horses will get
four measures of oats to eat, and I shall not accumulate an income,
never fear!"

"If we live, we shall see," said the staff-captain; "and you will act
just so, and so will he when he commands a battery," he added, pointing
at Volodya.

"Why do you think, Friedrich Krestyanitch, that he would turn it to his
profit?" broke in Tchernovitzky. "Perhaps he has property of his own;
then why should he turn it to profit?"

"No, sir, I ... excuse me, captain," said Volodya, reddening up to his
ears, "that strikes me as insulting."

"Oh ho, ho! What a madcap he is!" said Kraut.

"That has nothing to do with it; I only think that if the money were
not mine, I should not take it."

"Now, I'll tell you something right here, young man," began the
staff-captain in a more serious tone, "you are to understand that when
you command a battery, if you manage things well, that's sufficient;
the commander of a battery does not meddle with provisioning the
soldiers; that is the way it has been from time immemorial in the
artillery. If you are a bad manager, you will have nothing left. Now,
these are the expenditures in conformity with your position: for
shoeing your horse,--one (he closed one finger); for the apothecary,--two
(he closed another finger); for office work,--three (he shut a
third); for extra horses, which cost five hundred rubles, my dear
fellow,--that's four; you must change the soldiers' collars, you will
use a great deal of coal, you must keep open table for your officers.
If you are a battery-commander, you must live decently; you need a
carriage, and a fur coat, and this thing and that thing, and a dozen
more ... but what's the use of enumerating them all!"

"But this is the principal thing, Vladimir Semyonitch," interpolated
the captain, who had held his peace all this time; "imagine yourself to
be a man who, like myself, for instance, has served twenty years, first
for two hundred, then for three hundred rubles pay; why should he not
be given at least a bit of bread, against his old age?"

"Eh! yes, there you have it!" spoke up the staff-captain again, "don't
be in a hurry to pronounce judgment, but live on and serve your time."

Volodya was horribly ashamed and sorry for having spoken so
thoughtlessly, and he muttered something and continued to listen in
silence, when Dyadenko undertook, with the greatest zeal, to dispute it
and to prove the contrary.

The dispute was interrupted by the arrival of the colonel's servant,
who summoned them to dinner.

"Tell Apollon Sergieitch that he must give us some wine to-day," said
Tchernovitzky, to the captain, as he buttoned up his uniform.--"Why is
he so stingy with it? He will be killed, and no one will get the good
of it."

"Tell him yourself."

"Not a bit of it. You are my superior officer. Rank must be regarded in
all things."


XIX.

The table had been moved out from the wall, and spread with a soiled
table-cloth, in the same room in which Volodya had presented himself to
the colonel on the preceding evening. The battery commander now offered
him his hand, and questioned him about Petersburg and his journey.

"Well, gentlemen, I beg the favor of a glass with any of you who drink
vodka. The ensigns do not drink," he added, with a smile.

On the whole, the battery commander did not appear nearly so stern
to-day as he had on the preceding evening; on the contrary, he had the
appearance of a kindly, hospitable host, and an elder comrade among the
officers. But, in spite of this, all the officers, from the old captain
down to Ensign Dyadenko, by their very manner of speaking and looking
the commander straight in the eye, as they approached, one after the
other, to drink their vodka, exhibited great respect for him.

The dinner consisted of a large wooden bowl of cabbage-soup, in
which floated fat chunks of beef, and a huge quantity of pepper and
laurel-leaves, mustard, and Polish meat-balls in a cabbage leaf,
turnover patties of chopped meat and dough, and with butter, which
was not perfectly fresh. There were no napkins, the spoons were of
pewter and wood, there were only two glasses, and on the table stood
a decanter of water with a broken neck; but the dinner was not dull;
conversation never halted.

At first, their talk turned on the battle of Inkerman, in which the
battery had taken part, as to the causes of failure, of which each one
gave his own impressions and ideas, and held his tongue as soon as
the battery commander himself began to speak; then the conversation
naturally changed to the insufficiency of calibre of the light guns,
and upon the new lightened cannons, in which connection Volodya had an
opportunity to display his knowledge of artillery.

But their talk did not dwell upon the present terrible position of
Sevastopol, as though each of them had meditated too much on that
subject to allude to it again. In the same way, to Volodya's great
amazement and disappointment, not a word was said about the duties
of the service which he was to fulfil, just as though he had come to
Sevastopol merely for the purpose of telling about the new cannon and
dining with the commander of the battery.

While they were at dinner, a bomb fell not far from the house in which
they were seated. The walls and the floor trembled, as though in an
earthquake, and the window was obscured with the smoke of the powder.

"You did not see anything of this sort in Petersburg, I fancy; but
these surprises often take place here," said the battery commander.

"Look out, Vlang, and see where it burst."

Vlang looked, and reported that it had burst on the square, and then
there was nothing more said about the bomb.

Just before the end of the dinner, an old man, the clerk of the
battery, entered the room, with three sealed envelopes, and handed them
to the commander.

"This is very important; a messenger has this moment brought these from
the chief of the artillery."

All the officers gazed, with impatient curiosity, at the commander's
practised fingers as they broke the seal of the envelope and drew forth
the _very important_ paper. "What can it be?" each one asked himself.

It might be that they were to march out of Sevastopol for a rest, it
might be an order for the whole battery to betake themselves to the
bastions.

"Again!" said the commander, flinging the paper angrily on the table.

"What's it about, Apollon Sergieitch?" inquired the eldest officer.

"An officer and crew are required for a mortar battery over yonder,
and I have only four officers, and there is not a full gun-crew in
the line," growled the commander: "and here more are demanded of me.
But some one must go, gentlemen," he said, after a brief pause: "the
order requires him to be at the barrier at seven o'clock.... Send the
sergeant! Who is to go, gentlemen? decide," he repeated.

"Well, here's one who has never been yet," said Tchernovitzky, pointing
to Volodya. The commander of the battery made no reply.

"Yes, I should like to go," said Volodya, as he felt the cold sweat
start out on his back and neck.

"No; why should you? There's no occasion!" broke in the captain. "Of
course, no one will refuse, but neither is it proper to ask any one;
but if Apollon Sergieitch will permit us, we will draw lots, as we did
once before."

All agreed to this. Kraut cut some paper into bits, folded them up, and
dropped them into a cap. The captain jested, and even plucked up the
audacity, on this occasion, to ask the colonel for wine, to keep up
their courage, he said. Dyadenko sat in gloomy silence, Volodya smiled
at something or other, Tchernovitzky declared that it would infallibly
fall to him, Kraut was perfectly composed.

Volodya was allowed to draw first; he took one slip, which was rather
long, but it immediately occurred to him to change it; he took another,
which was smaller and thinner, unfolded it, and read on it, "I go."

"It has fallen to me," he said, with a sigh.

"Well, God be with you. You will get your baptism of fire at once,"
said the commander of the battery, gazing at the perturbed countenance
of the ensign with a kindly smile; "but you must get there as speedily
as possible. And, to make it more cheerful for you, Vlang shall go with
you as gun-sergeant."


XX.

Vlang was exceedingly well pleased with the duty assigned to him, and
ran hastily to make his preparations, and, when he was dressed, he went
to the assistance of Volodya, and tried to persuade the latter to take
his cot and fur coat with him, and some old "Annals of the Country,"
and a spirit-lamp coffee-pot, and other useless things. The captain
advised Volodya to read up his "Manual,"[L] first, about mortar-firing,
and immediately to copy the tables out of it.

[L] "Manual for Artillery Officers," by Bezak.

Volodya set about this at once, and, to his amazement and delight, he
perceived that, though he was still somewhat troubled with a sensation
of fear of danger, and still more lest he should turn out a coward, yet
it was far from being to that degree to which it had affected him on
the preceding evening. The reason for this lay partly in the daylight
and in active occupation, and partly, principally, also, in the fact
that fear and all powerful emotions cannot long continue with the same
intensity. In a word, he had already succeeded in recovering from his
terror.

At seven o'clock, just as the sun had begun to hide itself behind the
Nikolaevsky barracks, the sergeant came to him, and announced that the
men were ready and waiting for him.

"I have given the list to Vlang_a_. You will please to ask him for it,
Your Honor!" said he.

Twenty artillery-men, with side-arms, but without loading-tools, were
standing at the corner of the house. Volodya and the yunker stepped up
to them.

"Shall I make them a little speech, or shall I simply say, 'Good day,
children!' or shall I say nothing at all?" thought he. "And why should
I not say, 'Good day, children!' Why, I ought to say that much!" And he
shouted boldly, in his ringing voice:--

"Good day, children!"

The soldiers responded cheerfully. The fresh, young voice sounded
pleasant in the ears of all. Volodya marched vigorously at their head,
in front of the soldiers, and, although his heart beat as if he had run
several versts at the top of his speed, his step was light and his
countenance cheerful.

On arriving at the Malakoff mound, and climbing the slope, he
perceived that Vlang, who had not lagged a single pace behind him,
and who had appeared such a valiant fellow at home in the house, kept
constantly swerving to one side, and ducking his head, as though all
the cannon-balls and bombs, which whizzed by very frequently in that
locality, were flying straight at him. Some of the soldiers did the
same, and the faces of the majority of them betrayed, if not fear, at
least anxiety. This circumstance put the finishing touch to Volodya's
composure and encouraged him finally.

"So here I am also on the Malakoff mound, which I imagined to be a
thousand times more terrible! And I can walk along without ducking my
head before the bombs, and am far less terrified than the rest! So I
am not a coward, after all?" he thought with delight, and even with a
somewhat enthusiastic self-sufficiency.

But this feeling was soon shaken by a spectacle upon which he stumbled
in the twilight, on the Kornilovsky battery, in his search for the
commander of the bastion. Four sailors standing near the breastworks
were holding the bloody body of a man, without shoes or coat, by its
arms and legs, and staggering as they tried to fling it over the
ramparts.

(On the second day of the bombardment, it had been found impossible,
in some localities, to carry off the corpses from the bastions, and so
they were flung into the trench, in order that they might not impede
action in the batteries.)

Volodya stood petrified for a moment, as he saw the corpse waver on
the summit of the breastworks, and then roll down into the ditch;
but, luckily for him, the commander of the bastion met him there,
communicated his orders, and furnished him with a guide to the battery
and to the bomb-proofs designated for his service. We will not
enumerate the remaining dangers and disenchantments which our hero
underwent that evening: how, instead of the firing, such as he had seen
on the Volkoff field, according to the rules of accuracy and precision,
which he had expected to find here, he found two cracked mortars, one
of which had been crushed by a cannon-ball in the muzzle, while the
other stood upon the splinters of a ruined platform; how he could not
obtain any workmen until the following morning in order to repair the
platform; how not a single charge was of the weight prescribed in the
"Manual;" how two soldiers of his command were wounded, and how he was
twenty times within a hair's-breadth of death.

Fortunately, there had been assigned for his assistant a gun-captain
of gigantic size, a sailor, who had served on the mortars since the
beginning of the siege, and who convinced him of the practicability of
using them, conducted him all over the bastion, with a lantern, during
the night, exactly as though it had been his own kitchen-garden, and
who promised to put everything in proper shape on the morrow.

The bomb-proof to which his guide conducted him was excavated in the
rocky soil, and consisted of a long hole, two cubic fathoms in extent,
covered with oaken planks an arshin in thickness. Here he took up his
post, with all his soldiers. Vlang was the first, when he caught sight
of the little door, twenty-eight inches high, of the bomb-proof, to
rush headlong into it, in front of them all, and, after nearly cracking
his skull on the stone floor, he huddled down in a corner, from which
he did not again emerge.

And Volodya, when all the soldiers had placed themselves along the wall
on the floor, and some had lighted their pipes, set up his bed in one
corner, lighted a candle, and lay upon his cot, smoking a cigarette.

Shots were incessantly heard, over the bomb-proof, but they were not
very loud, with the exception of those from one cannon, which stood
close by and shook the bomb-proof with its thunder. In the bomb-proof
itself all was still; the soldiers, who were a little shy, as yet, of
the new officer, only exchanged a few words, now and then, as they
requested each other to move out of the way or to furnish a light for a
pipe. A rat scratched somewhere among the stones, or Vlang, who had not
yet recovered himself, and who still gazed wildly about him, uttered a
sudden vigorous sigh.

Volodya, as he lay on his bed, in his quiet corner, surrounded by
the men, and illuminated only by a single candle, experienced that
sensation of well-being which he had known as a child, when, in the
course of a game of hide-and-seek, he used to crawl into a cupboard or
under his mother's skirts, and listen, not daring to draw his breath,
and afraid of the dark, and yet conscious of enjoying himself. He felt
a little oppressed, but cheerful.


XXI.

After the lapse of about ten minutes, the soldiers began to change
about and to converse together. The most important personages among
them--the two gun-sergeants--placed themselves nearest the officer's
light and bed;--one was old and gray-haired, with every possible medal
and cross except the George;--the other was young, a militia-man, who
smoked cigarettes, which he was rolling. The drummer, as usual, assumed
the duty of waiting on the officer. The bombardiers and cavalrymen
sat next, and then farther away, in the shadow of the entrance,
the _underlings_ took up their post. They too began to talk among
themselves. It was caused by the hasty entrance of a man into the
casemate.

"How now, brother! couldn't you stay in the street? Didn't the girls
sing merrily?" said a voice.

"They sing such marvellous songs as were never heard in the village,"
said the man who had fled into the casemate, with a laugh.

"But Vasin does not love bombs--ah, no, he does not love them!" said one
from the aristocratic corner.

"The idea! It's quite another matter when it's necessary," drawled the
voice of Vasin, who made all the others keep silent when he spoke:
"since the 24th, the firing has been going on desperately; and what is
there wrong about it? You'll get killed for nothing, and your superiors
won't so much as say 'Thank you!' for it."

At these words of Vasin, all burst into a laugh.

"There's Melnikoff, that fellow who will sit outside the door," said
some one.

"Well, send him here, that Melnikoff," added the old gunner; "they will
kill him, for a fact, and that to no purpose."

"Who is this Melnikoff?" asked Volodya.

"Why, Your Honor, he's a stupid soldier of ours. He doesn't seem to be
afraid of anything, and now he keeps walking about outside. Please to
take a look at him; he looks like a bear."

"He knows a spell," said the slow voice of Vasin, from the corner.

Melnikoff entered the bomb-proof. He was fat (which is extremely rare
among soldiers), and a sandy-complexioned, handsome man, with a huge,
bulging forehead and prominent, light blue eyes.

"Are you afraid of the bombs?" Volodya asked him.

"What is there about the bombs to be afraid of!" replied Melnikoff,
shrugging his shoulders and scratching his head, "I know that I shall
not be killed by a bomb."

"So you would like to go on living here?"

"Why, of course, I would. It's jolly here!" he said, with a sudden
outburst of laughter.

"Oh, then you must be detailed for the sortie! I'll tell the general
so, if you like?" said Volodya, although he was not acquainted with a
single general there.

"Why shouldn't I like! I do!"

And Melnikoff disappeared behind the others.

"Let's have a game of _noski_,[M] children! Who has cards?" rang out
his brisk voice.

[M] A game in which the loser is rapped on the nose with the cards.

And, in fact, it was not long before a game was started in the back
corner, and blows on the nose, laughter, and calling of trumps were
heard.

Volodya drank some tea from the samovar, which the drummer served for
him, treated the gunners, jested, chatted with them, being desirous of
winning popularity, and felt very well content with the respect which
was shown him. The soldiers, too, perceiving that the gentleman put on
no airs, began to talk together.

One declared that the siege of Sevastopol would soon come to an end,
because a trustworthy man from the fleet had said that the emperor's
brother Constantine was coming to our relief with the 'Merican fleet,
and there would soon be an agreement that there should be no firing
for two weeks, and that a rest should be allowed, and if any one did
fire a shot, every discharge would have to be paid for at the rate of
seventy-five kopeks each.

Vasin, who, as Volodya had already noticed, was a little fellow, with
large, kindly eyes, and side-whiskers, related, amid a general silence
at first, and afterwards amid general laughter, how, when he had gone
home on leave, they had been glad at first to see him, but afterwards
his father had begun to send him off to work, and the lieutenant of
the foresters' corps sent his drozhki for his wife.

All this amused Volodya greatly. He not only did not experience the
least fear or inconvenience from the closeness and heavy air in the
bomb-proof, but he felt in a remarkably cheerful and agreeable frame of
mind.

Many of the soldiers were already snoring. Vlang had also stretched
himself out on the floor, and the old gun-sergeant, having spread out
his cloak, was crossing himself and muttering his prayers, preparatory
to sleep, when Volodya took a fancy to step out of the bomb-proof, and
see what was going on outside.

"Take your legs out of the way!" cried one soldier to another, as soon
as he rose, and the legs were pressed aside to make way for him.

Vlang, who appeared to be asleep, suddenly raised his head, and seized
Volodya by the skirt of his coat.

"Come, don't go! how can you!" he began, in a tearfully imploring
tone. "You don't know about things yet; they are firing at us out
there all the time; it is better here."

But, in spite of Vlang's entreaties, Volodya made his way out of the
bomb-proof, and seated himself on the threshold, where Melnikoff was
already sitting.

The air was pure and fresh, particularly after the bomb-proof--the night
was clear and still. Through the roar of the discharges could be heard
the sounds of cart-wheels, bringing gabions, and the voices of the men
who were at work on the magazine. Above their heads was the lofty,
starry sky, across which flashed the fiery streaks caused by the bombs;
an arshin away, on the left, a tiny opening led to another bomb-proof,
through which the feet and backs of the soldiers who lived there were
visible, and through which their voices were audible; in front, the
elevation produced by the powder-vault could be seen, and athwart it
flitted the bent figures of men, and upon it, at the very summit, amid
the bullets and the bombs which whistled past the spot incessantly,
stood a tall form in a black paletot, with his hands in his pockets,
and feet treading down the earth, which other men were fetching in
sacks. Often a bomb would fly over, and burst close to the cave. The
soldiers engaged in bringing the earth bent over and ran aside; but
the black figure never moved; went on quietly stamping down the dirt
with his feet, and remained on the spot in the same attitude as before.

"Who is that black man?" inquired Volodya of Melnikoff.

"I don't know; I will go and see."

"Don't go! it is not necessary."

But Melnikoff, without heeding him, walked up to the black figure, and
stood beside him for a tolerably long time, as calm and immovable as
the man himself.

"That is the man who has charge of the magazine, Your Honor!" he said,
on his return. "It has been pierced by a bomb, so the infantry-men are
fetching more earth."

Now and then, a bomb seemed to fly straight at the door of the
bomb-proof. On such occasions, Volodya shrank into the corner, and then
peered forth again, gazing upwards, to see whether another was not
coming from some direction. Although Vlang, from the interior of the
bomb-proof, repeatedly besought Volodya to come back, the latter sat on
the threshold for three hours, and experienced a sort of satisfaction
in thus tempting fate and in watching the flight of the bombs. Towards
the end of the evening, he had learned from what point most of the
firing proceeded, and where the shots struck.


XXII.

On the following day, the 27th, after a ten-hours sleep, Volodya, fresh
and active, stepped out on the threshold of the casement; Vlang also
started to crawl out with him, but, at the first sound of a bullet, he
flung himself backwards through the opening of the bomb-proof, bumping
his head as he did so, amid the general merriment of the soldiers,
the majority of whom had also come out into the open air. Vlang, the
old gun-sergeant, and a few others were the only ones who rarely went
out into the trenches; it was impossible to restrain the rest; they
all scattered about in the fresh morning air, escaping from the fetid
air of the bomb-proof, and, in spite of the fact that the bombardment
was as vigorous as on the preceding evening, they disposed themselves
around the door, and some even on the breastworks. Melnikoff had been
strolling about among the batteries since daybreak, and staring up with
perfect coolness.

Near the entrance sat two old soldiers and one young, curly-haired
fellow, a Jew, who had been detailed from the infantry. This soldier
picked up one of the bullets which were lying about, and, having
smoothed it against a stone with a potsherd, with his knife he carved
from it a cross, after the style of the order of St. George; the others
looked on at his work as they talked. The cross really turned out to be
quite handsome.

"Now, if we stay here much longer," said one of them, "then, when peace
is made, the time of service will be up for all of us."

"Nothing of the sort; I have at least four years service yet before my
time is up, and I have been in Sevastopol these five months."

"It is not counted towards the discharge, do you understand," said
another.

At that moment, a cannon-ball shrieked over the heads of the speakers,
and struck only an arshin away from Melnikoff, who was approaching them
from the trenches.

"That came near killing Melnikoff," said one man.

"I shall not be killed," said Melnikoff.

"Here's the cross for you, for your bravery," said the young soldier,
who had made the cross, handing it to Melnikoff.

"No, brother, a month here counts for a year, of course--that was the
order," the conversation continued.

"Think what you please, but when peace is declared, there will be an
imperial review at Orshava, and if we don't get our discharge, we shall
be allowed to go on indefinite leave."

At that moment, a shrieking little bullet flew past the speakers'
heads, and struck a stone.

"You'll get a full discharge before evening--see if you don't," said one
of the soldiers.

They all laughed.

Not only before evening, but before the expiration of two hours, two of
them received their full discharge, and five were wounded; but the rest
jested on as before.

By morning, the two mortars had actually been brought into such a
condition that it was possible to fire them. At ten o'clock, in
accordance with the orders which he had received from the commander of
the bastion, Volodya called out his command, and marched to the battery
with it.

In the men, as soon as they proceeded to action, there was not a drop
of that sentiment of fear perceptible which had been expressed on the
preceding evening. Vlang alone could not control himself; he dodged and
ducked just as before, and Vasin lost some of his composure, and fussed
and fidgeted and changed his place incessantly.

But Volodya was in an extraordinary state of enthusiasm; the thought of
danger did not even occur to him. Delight that he was fulfilling his
duty, that he was not only not a coward, but even a valiant fellow, the
feeling that he was in command, and the presence of twenty men, who,
as he was aware, were surveying him with curiosity, made a thoroughly
brave man of him. He was even vain of his valor, put on airs before
his soldiers, climbed up on the banquette, and unbuttoned his coat
expressly that he might render himself the more distinctly visible.

The commander of the bastion, who was going the rounds of his
establishment as he expressed it, at the moment, accustomed as he had
become during his eight-months experience to all sorts of bravery,
could not refrain from admiring this handsome lad, in the unbuttoned
coat, beneath which a red shirt was visible, encircling his soft white
neck, with his animated face and eyes, as he clapped his hands and
shouted: "First! Second!" and ran gayly along the ramparts, in order to
see where his bomb would fall.

At half-past eleven the firing ceased on both sides, and at precisely
twelve o'clock the storming of the Malakoff mound, of the second,
third, and fifth bastions began.


XXIII.

On this side of the bay, between Inkerman and the northern
fortifications, on the telegraph hill, about midday, stood two naval
men; one was an officer, who was engaged in observing Sevastopol
through a telescope, and the other had just arrived at the
signal-station with his orderly.

The sun stood high and brilliant above the bay, and played with the
ships which floated upon it, and with the moving sails and boats, with
a warm and cheerful glow. The light breeze hardly moved the leaves of
the dry oak-shrubs which stood about the signal-pole, puffed out the
sails of the boats, and ruffled the waves.

Sevastopol, with her unfinished church, her columns, her line of
shore, her boulevard showing green against the hill, and her elegant
library building, with her tiny azure inlets, filled with masts, with
the picturesque arches of her aqueducts, and the clouds of blue smoke,
lighted up now and then by red flashes of flame from the firing; the
same beautiful, proud, festive Sevastopol, hemmed in on one side by
yellow, smoke-crowned hills, on the other by the bright blue sea, which
glittered in the sun, was visible the same as ever, on the other side
of the bay.

Over the horizon-line of the sea, along which floated a long wreath of
black smoke from some steamer, crept long white clouds, portending a
gale. Along the entire line of the fortifications, especially over the
hills on the left, rose columns of thick, dense, white smoke; suddenly,
abruptly, and incessantly illuminated by flashes, lightnings, which
shone even amid the light of high noon, and which constantly increased
in volume, assuming divers forms, as they swept upwards, and tinged
the heavens. These puffs of smoke flashing now here, now there, took
their birth on the hills, in the batteries of the enemy, in the city,
and high against the sky. The sound of the discharges never ceased, but
shook the air with their mingled roar.

At twelve o'clock, the puffs of smoke began to occur less and less
frequently, and the atmosphere quivered less with the roar.

"But the second bastion is no longer replying at all," said the officer
of hussars, who sat there on horseback; "it is utterly destroyed!
Horrible!"

"Yes, and the Malakoff only sends one shot to their three," replied the
officer who was looking through his glass. "It enrages me to have them
silent. They are firing straight on the Kornilovsky battery, and it is
not answering at all."

"But you see that they always cease the bombardment at twelve o'clock,
just as I said. It is the same to-day. Let us go and get some breakfast
... they are already waiting for us ... there's nothing to see."

"Stop, don't interfere," said the officer with the glass, gazing at
Sevastopol with peculiar eagerness.

"What's going on there? What is it?"

"There is a movement in the trenches, and heavy columns are marching."

"Yes, that is evident," said the other. "The columns are under way. We
must give the signal."

"See, see! They have emerged from the trenches."

In truth, it was visible to the naked eye that dark masses were moving
down the hill, across the narrow valley, from the French batteries to
the bastions. In front of these specks, dark streaks were visible,
which were already close to our lines. White puffs of smoke of
discharges burst out at various points on the bastions, as though the
firing were running along the line.

The breeze bore to them the sounds of musketry-shots, exchanged
briskly, like rain upon the window-pane. The black streaks moved on,
nearer and nearer, into the very smoke. The sounds of firing grew
louder and louder, and mingled in a lengthened, resounding roar.

The smoke, rising more and more frequently, spread rapidly along the
line, flowed together in one lilac-hued cloud, which dispersed and
joined again, and through which, here and there, flitted flames and
black points--and all sounds were commingled in one reverberating crash.

"An assault," said the officer, with a pale face, as he handed the
glass to the naval officer.

Orderlies galloped along the road, officers on horseback, the
commander-in-chief in a calash, and his suite passed by. Profound
emotion and expectation were visible on all countenances.

"It cannot be that they have taken it!" said the mounted officer.

"By Heavens, there's the standard! Look, look!" said the other, sighing
and abandoning the glass. "The French standard on the Malakoff!"

"It cannot be!"


XXIV.

The elder Kozeltzoff, who had succeeded in winning back his money and
losing it all again that night, including even the gold pieces which
were sewed into his cuffs, had fallen, just before daybreak, into a
heavy, unhealthy, but profound slumber, in the fortified barracks of
the fifth battalion, when the fateful cry, repeated by various voices,
rang out:--

"The alarm!"

"Why are you sleeping, Mikhail Semyonitch! There's an assault!" a voice
shouted to him.

"That is probably some school-boy," he said, opening his eyes, but
putting no faith in it.

But all at once he caught sight of an officer running aimlessly from
one corner to the other, with such a pale face that he understood it
all. The thought that he might be taken for a coward, who did not wish
to go out to his company at a critical moment, struck him with terrible
force. He ran to his corps at the top of his speed. Firing had ceased
from the heavy guns; but the crash of musketry was at its height. The
bullets whistled, not singly like rifle-balls, but in swarms, like a
flock of birds in autumn, flying past overhead. The entire spot on
which his battalion had stood the night before was veiled in smoke, and
the shouts and cries of the enemy were audible. Soldiers, both wounded
and unwounded, met him in throngs. After running thirty paces further,
he caught sight of his company, which was hugging the wall.

"They have captured Schwartz," said a young officer. "All is lost!"

"Nonsense!" said he, angrily, grasping his blunt little iron sword, and
he began to shout:--

"Forward, children! Hurrah!"

His voice was strong and ringing; it roused even Kozeltzoff himself.
He ran forward along the traverse; fifty soldiers rushed after him,
shouting as they went. From the traverse he ran out upon an open
square. The bullets fell literally like hail. Two struck him,--but
where, and what they did, whether they bruised or wounded him, he had
not the time to decide.

In front, he could already see blue uniforms and red trousers, and
could hear shouts which were not Russian; one Frenchman was standing on
the breastworks, waving his cap, and shouting something. Kozeltzoff was
convinced that he was about to be killed; this gave him courage.

He ran on and on. Some soldiers overtook him; other soldiers appeared
at one side, also running. The blue uniforms remained at the same
distance from him, fleeing back from him to their own trenches; but
beneath his feet were the dead and wounded. When he had run to the
outermost ditch, everything became confused before Kozeltzoff's eyes,
and he was conscious of a pain in the breast.

Half an hour later, he was lying on a stretcher, near the Nikolaevsky
barracks, and knew that he was wounded, though he felt hardly any pain;
all he wanted was something cooling to drink, and to be allowed to lie
still in peace.

A plump little doctor, with black side-whiskers, approached him, and
unbuttoned his coat. Kozeltzoff stared over his chin at what the doctor
was doing to his wound, and at the doctor's face, but he felt no pain.
The doctor covered his wound with his shirt, wiped his fingers on the
skirts of his coat, and, without a word or glance at the wounded man,
went off to some one else.

Kozeltzoff's eyes mechanically took note of what was going on before
him, and, recalling the fact that he had been in the fifth bastion,
he thought, with an extraordinary feeling of self-satisfaction, that
he had fulfilled his duty well, and that, for the first time in all
his service, he had behaved as handsomely as it was possible for any
one, and had nothing with which to reproach himself. The doctor, after
bandaging the other officer's wound, pointed to Kozeltzoff, and said
something to a priest, with a huge reddish beard, and a cross, who was
standing near by.

"What! am I dying?" Kozeltzoff asked the priest, when the latter
approached him.

The priest, without making any reply, recited a prayer and handed the
cross to the wounded man.

Death had no terrors for Kozeltzoff. He grasped the cross with his weak
hands, pressed it to his lips, and burst into tears.

"Well, were the French repulsed?" he inquired of the priest, in firm
tones.

"The victory has remained with us at every point," replied the priest,
in order to comfort the wounded man, concealing from him the fact that
the French standard had already been unfurled on the Malakoff mound.

"Thank God!" said the wounded man, without feeling the tears which were
trickling down his cheeks.

The thought of his brother occurred to his mind for a single instant.
"May God grant him the same good-fortune," he said to himself.


XXV.

But the same fate did not await Volodya. He was listening to a tale
which Vasin was in the act of relating to him, when there was a
cry,--"The French are coming!" The blood fled for a moment to Volodya's
heart, and he felt his cheeks turn cold and pale. For one second he
remained motionless, but, on glancing about him, he perceived that
the soldiers were buttoning up their coats with tolerable equanimity,
and crawling out, one after the other. One even, probably Melnikoff,
remarked, in a jesting way:--

"Go out and offer them the bread and salt of hospitality, children!"

Volodya, in company with Vlang, who never separated from him by so much
as a step, crawled out of the bomb-proof, and ran to the battery.

There was no artillery firing whatever in progress on either side. It
was not so much the sight of the soldiers' composure which aroused
his courage as the pitiful and undisguised cowardice of Vlang. "Is
it possible for me to be like him?" he said to himself, and he ran
on gayly up to the breastworks, near which his mortars stood. It was
clearly apparent to him that the French were making straight for him
through an open space, and that masses of them, with their bayonets
glittering in the sun, were moving in the nearest trenches.

One, a short, broad-shouldered fellow, in zouave uniform, and armed
with a sword, ran on in front and leaped the ditch.

"Fire grape-shot!" shouted Volodya, hastening from the banquette;
but the soldiers had already made their preparations without waiting
for his orders, and the metallic sound of the grape-shot which they
discharged shrieked over his head, first from one and then from the
other mortar.

"First! second!" commanded Volodya, running from one mortar to the
other, and utterly oblivious of danger.

On one side, and near at hand, the crash of musketry from our men under
shelter, and anxious cries, were heard.

All at once a startling cry of despair, repeated by several voices, was
heard on the left: "They are surrounding us! They are surrounding us!"

Volodya looked round at this shout. Twenty Frenchmen made their
appearance in the rear. One of them, a handsome man with a black beard,
was in front of all; but, after running up to within ten paces of the
battery, he halted, and fired straight at Volodya, and then ran towards
him once more.

For a second, Volodya stood as though turned to stone, and did not
believe his eyes. When he recovered himself and glanced about him,
there were blue uniforms in front of him on the ramparts; two Frenchmen
were even spiking a cannon not ten paces distant from him.

There was no one near him, with the exception of Melnikoff, who had
been killed by a bullet beside him, and Vlang, who, with a handspike
clutched in his hand, had rushed forwards, with an expression of wrath
on his face, and with eyes lowered.

"Follow me, Vladimir Semyonitch! Follow me!" shouted the desperate
voice of Vlang, as he brandished his handspike over the French, who
were pouring in from the rear. The yunker's ferocious countenance
startled them. He struck the one who was in advance, on the head; the
others involuntarily paused, and Vlang continued to glare about him,
and to shout in despairing accents: "Follow me, Vladimir Semyonitch!
Why do you stand there? Run!" and ran towards the trenches in which lay
our infantry, firing at the French. After leaping into the trench, he
came out again to see what his adored ensign was doing. Something in a
coat was lying prostrate where Volodya had been standing, and the whole
place was filled with Frenchmen, who were firing at our men.


XXVI.

Vlang found his battery on the second line of defence. Out of the
twenty soldiers who had been in the mortar battery, only eight survived.

At nine o'clock in the evening, Vlang set out with the battery on a
steamer loaded down with soldiers, cannon, horses, and wounded men, for
Severnaya.

There was no firing anywhere. The stars shone brilliantly in the
sky, as on the preceding night; but a strong wind tossed the sea. On
the first and second bastions, lightnings flashed along the earth;
explosions rent the atmosphere, and illuminated strange black objects
in their vicinity, and the stones which flew through the air.

Something was burning near the docks, and the red glare was reflected
in the water. The bridge, covered with people, was lighted up by the
fire from the Nikolaevsky battery. A vast flame seemed to hang over the
water, from the distant promontory of the Alexandrovsky battery, and
illuminated the clouds of smoke beneath, as it rose above them; and
the same tranquil, insolent, distant lights as on the preceding evening
gleamed over the sea, from the hostile fleet.

The fresh breeze raised billows in the bay. By the red light of the
conflagrations, the masts of our sunken ships, which were settling
deeper and deeper into the water, were visible. Not a sound of
conversation was heard on deck; there was nothing but the regular swish
of the parted waves, and the steam, the neighing and pawing of the
horses, the words of command from the captain, and the groans of the
wounded. Vlang, who had had nothing to eat all day, drew a bit of bread
from his pocket, and began to chew it; but all at once he recalled
Volodya, and burst into such loud weeping that the soldiers who were
near him heard it.

"See how our Vlang_a_[N] is eating his bread and crying too," said
Vasin.

[N] The feminine form, as previously referred to.

"Wonderful!" said another.

"And see, they have fired our barracks," he continued, with a sigh.
"And how many of our brothers perished there; and the French got it for
nothing!"

"At all events, we have got out of it alive--thank God for that!" said
Vasin.

"But it's provoking, all the same!"

"What is there provoking about it? Do you suppose they are enjoying
themselves there? Not exactly! You wait, our men will take it away from
them again. And however many of our brethren perish, as God is holy, if
the emperor commands, they will win it back. Can ours leave it to them
thus? Never! There you have the bare walls; but they have destroyed all
the breastworks. Even if they have planted their standard on the hill,
they won't be able to make their way into the town."

"Just wait, we'll have a hearty reckoning with you yet, only give us
time," he concluded, addressing himself to the French.

"Of course we will!" said another, with conviction.

Along the whole line of bastions of Sevastopol, which had for so many
months seethed with remarkably vigorous life, which had for so many
months seen dying heroes relieved one after another by death, and which
had for so many months awakened the terror, the hatred, and finally
the admiration of the enemy,--on the bastions of Sevastopol, there was
no longer a single man. All was dead, wild, horrible,--but not silent.

Destruction was still in progress. On the earth, furrowed and strewn
with the recent explosions, lay bent gun-carriages, crushing down the
bodies of Russians and of the foe; heavy iron cannons silenced forever,
bombs and cannon-balls hurled with horrible force into pits, and
half-buried in the soil, then more corpses, pits, splinters of beams,
bomb-proofs, and still more silent bodies in gray and blue coats. All
these were still frequently shaken and lighted up by the crimson glow
of the explosions, which continued to shock the air.

The foe perceived that something incomprehensible was going on in that
menacing Sevastopol. Those explosions and the death-like silence on
the bastions made them shudder; but they dared not yet believe, being
still under the influence of the calm and forcible resistance of the
day, that their invincible enemy had disappeared, and they awaited
motionless and in silence the end of that gloomy night.

The army of Sevastopol, like the gloomy, surging sea, quivering
throughout its entire mass, wavering, ploughing across the bay, on
the bridge, and at the north fortifications, moved slowly through the
impenetrable darkness of the night; away from the place where it had
left so many of its brave brethren, from the place all steeped in its
blood, from the place which it had defended for eleven months against
a foe twice as powerful as itself, and which it was now ordered to
abandon without a battle.

The first impression produced on every Russian by this command was
inconceivably sad. The second feeling was a fear of pursuit. The men
felt that they were defenceless as soon as they abandoned the places on
which they were accustomed to fight, and they huddled together uneasily
in the dark, at the entrance to the bridge, which was swaying about in
the heavy breeze.

The infantry pressed forward, with a clash of bayonets, and a
thronging of regiments, equipages, and arms; cavalry officers made
their way about with orders, the inhabitants and the military servants
accompanying the baggage wept and besought to be permitted to cross,
while the artillery, in haste to get off, forced their way to the bay
with a thunder of wheels.

In spite of the diversions created by the varied and anxious demands
on their attention, the instinct of self-preservation and the desire
to escape as speedily as possible from that dread place of death were
present in every soul. This instinct existed also in a soldier mortally
wounded, who lay among the five hundred other wounded, upon the stone
pavement of the Pavlovsky quay, and prayed God to send death; and in
the militia-man, who with his last remaining strength pressed into
the compact throng, in order to make way for a general who rode by,
and in the general in charge of the transportation, who was engaged
in restraining the haste of the soldiers, and in the sailor, who had
become entangled in the moving battalion, and who, crushed by the
surging throng, had lost his breath, and in the wounded officer, who
was being borne along in a litter by four soldiers, who, stopped by the
crowd, had placed him on the ground by the Nikolaevsky battery, and in
the artillery-man, who had served his gun for sixteen years, and who,
at his superior's command, to him incomprehensible, to throw overboard
the guns, had, with the aid of his comrades, sent them over the steep
bank into the bay; and in the men of the fleet, who had just closed the
port-holes of the ships, and had rowed lustily away in their boats.
On stepping upon the further end of the bridge, nearly every soldier
pulled off his cap and crossed himself.

But behind this instinct there was another, oppressive and far deeper,
existing along with it; this was a feeling which resembled repentance,
shame, and hatred. Almost every soldier, as he gazed on abandoned
Sevastopol, from the northern shore, sighed with inexpressible
bitterness of heart, and menaced the foe.


















War and Peace

by Leo Tolstoy



CHAPTER I


"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the
Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war,
if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by
that Antichrist--I really believe he is Antichrist--I will have
nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer
my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see
I have frightened you--sit down and tell me all the news."

It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna
Pavlovna Scherer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Marya
Fedorovna. With these words she greeted Prince Vasili Kuragin, a man
of high rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her
reception. Anna Pavlovna had had a cough for some days. She was, as
she said, suffering from la grippe; grippe being then a new word in
St. Petersburg, used only by the elite.

All her invitations without exception, written in French, and
delivered by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning, ran as follows:

"If you have nothing better to do, Count [or Prince], and if the
prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too
terrible, I shall be very charmed to see you tonight between 7 and 10-
Annette Scherer."

"Heavens! what a virulent attack!" replied the prince, not in the
least disconcerted by this reception. He had just entered, wearing
an embroidered court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes, and had
stars on his breast and a serene expression on his flat face. He spoke
in that refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but
thought, and with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a
man of importance who had grown old in society and at court. He went
up to Anna Pavlovna, kissed her hand, presenting to her his bald,
scented, and shining head, and complacently seated himself on the
sofa.

"First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are. Set your friend's
mind at rest," said he without altering his tone, beneath the
politeness and affected sympathy of which indifference and even
irony could be discerned.

"Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times
like these if one has any feeling?" said Anna Pavlovna. "You are
staying the whole evening, I hope?"

"And the fete at the English ambassador's? Today is Wednesday. I
must put in an appearance there," said the prince. "My daughter is
coming for me to take me there."

"I thought today's fete had been canceled. I confess all these
festivities and fireworks are becoming wearisome."

"If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment would
have been put off," said the prince, who, like a wound-up clock, by
force of habit said things he did not even wish to be believed.

"Don't tease! Well, and what has been decided about Novosiltsev's
dispatch? You know everything."

"What can one say about it?" replied the prince in a cold,
listless tone. "What has been decided? They have decided that
Buonaparte has burnt his boats, and I believe that we are ready to
burn ours."

Prince Vasili always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a
stale part. Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the contrary, despite her forty
years, overflowed with animation and impulsiveness. To be an
enthusiast had become her social vocation and, sometimes even when she
did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to
disappoint the expectations of those who knew her. The subdued smile
which, though it did not suit her faded features, always played
round her lips expressed, as in a spoiled child, a continual
consciousness of her charming defect, which she neither wished, nor
could, nor considered it necessary, to correct.

In the midst of a conversation on political matters Anna Pavlovna
burst out:

"Oh, don't speak to me of Austria. Perhaps I don't understand
things, but Austria never has wished, and does not wish, for war.
She is betraying us! Russia alone must save Europe. Our gracious
sovereign recognizes his high vocation and will be true to it. That is
the one thing I have faith in! Our good and wonderful sovereign has to
perform the noblest role on earth, and he is so virtuous and noble
that God will not forsake him. He will fulfill his vocation and
crush the hydra of revolution, which has become more terrible than
ever in the person of this murderer and villain! We alone must
avenge the blood of the just one.... Whom, I ask you, can we rely
on?... England with her commercial spirit will not and cannot
understand the Emperor Alexander's loftiness of soul. She has
refused to evacuate Malta. She wanted to find, and still seeks, some
secret motive in our actions. What answer did Novosiltsev get? None.
The English have not understood and cannot understand the
self-abnegation of our Emperor who wants nothing for himself, but only
desires the good of mankind. And what have they promised? Nothing! And
what little they have promised they will not perform! Prussia has
always declared that Buonaparte is invincible, and that all Europe
is powerless before him.... And I don't believe a word that Hardenburg
says, or Haugwitz either. This famous Prussian neutrality is just a
trap. I have faith only in God and the lofty destiny of our adored
monarch. He will save Europe!"

She suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity.

"I think," said the prince with a smile, "that if you had been
sent instead of our dear Wintzingerode you would have captured the
King of Prussia's consent by assault. You are so eloquent. Will you
give me a cup of tea?"

"In a moment. A propos," she added, becoming calm again, "I am
expecting two very interesting men tonight, le Vicomte de Mortemart,
who is connected with the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of
the best French families. He is one of the genuine emigres, the good
ones. And also the Abbe Morio. Do you know that profound thinker? He
has been received by the Emperor. Had you heard?"

"I shall be delighted to meet them," said the prince. "But tell me,"
he added with studied carelessness as if it had only just occurred
to him, though the question he was about to ask was the chief motive
of his visit, "is it true that the Dowager Empress wants Baron Funke
to be appointed first secretary at Vienna? The baron by all accounts
is a poor creature."

Prince Vasili wished to obtain this post for his son, but others
were trying through the Dowager Empress Marya Fedorovna to secure it
for the baron.

Anna Pavlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that neither she
nor anyone else had a right to criticize what the Empress desired or
was pleased with.

"Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager Empress by her
sister," was all she said, in a dry and mournful tone.

As she named the Empress, Anna Pavlovna's face suddenly assumed an
expression of profound and sincere devotion and respect mingled with
sadness, and this occurred every time she mentioned her illustrious
patroness. She added that Her Majesty had deigned to show Baron
Funke beaucoup d'estime, and again her face clouded over with sadness.

The prince was silent and looked indifferent. But, with the
womanly and courtierlike quickness and tact habitual to her, Anna
Pavlovna wished both to rebuke him (for daring to speak he had done of
a man recommended to the Empress) and at the same time to console him,
so she said:

"Now about your family. Do you know that since your daughter came
out everyone has been enraptured by her? They say she is amazingly
beautiful."

The prince bowed to signify his respect and gratitude.

"I often think," she continued after a short pause, drawing nearer
to the prince and smiling amiably at him as if to show that
political and social topics were ended and the time had come for
intimate conversation--"I often think how unfairly sometimes the
joys of life are distributed. Why has fate given you two such splendid
children? I don't speak of Anatole, your youngest. I don't like
him," she added in a tone admitting of no rejoinder and raising her
eyebrows. "Two such charming children. And really you appreciate
them less than anyone, and so you don't deserve to have them."

And she smiled her ecstatic smile.

"I can't help it," said the prince. "Lavater would have said I
lack the bump of paternity."

"Don't joke; I mean to have a serious talk with you. Do you know I
am dissatisfied with your younger son? Between ourselves" (and her
face assumed its melancholy expression), "he was mentioned at Her
Majesty's and you were pitied...."

The prince answered nothing, but she looked at him significantly,
awaiting a reply. He frowned.

"What would you have me do?" he said at last. "You know I did all
a father could for their education, and they have both turned out
fools. Hippolyte is at least a quiet fool, but Anatole is an active
one. That is the only difference between them." He said this smiling
in a way more natural and animated than usual, so that the wrinkles
round his mouth very clearly revealed something unexpectedly coarse
and unpleasant.

"And why are children born to such men as you? If you were not a
father there would be nothing I could reproach you with," said Anna
Pavlovna, looking up pensively.

"I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess that my
children are the bane of my life. It is the cross I have to bear. That
is how I explain it to myself. It can't be helped!"

He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel fate by a
gesture. Anna Pavlovna meditated.

"Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal son Anatole?"
she asked. "They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and
though I don't feel that weakness in myself as yet, I know a little
person who is very unhappy with her father. She is a relation of
yours, Princess Mary Bolkonskaya."

Prince Vasili did not reply, though, with the quickness of memory
and perception befitting a man of the world, he indicated by a
movement of the head that he was considering this information.

"Do you know," he said at last, evidently unable to check the sad
current of his thoughts, "that Anatole is costing me forty thousand
rubles a year? And," he went on after a pause, "what will it be in
five years, if he goes on like this?" Presently he added: "That's what
we fathers have to put up with.... Is this princess of yours rich?"

"Her father is very rich and stingy. He lives in the country. He
is the well-known Prince Bolkonski who had to retire from the army
under the late Emperor, and was nicknamed 'the King of Prussia.' He is
very clever but eccentric, and a bore. The poor girl is very
unhappy. She has a brother; I think you know him, he married Lise
Meinen lately. He is an aide-de-camp of Kutuzov's and will be here
tonight."

"Listen, dear Annette," said the prince, suddenly taking Anna
Pavlovna's hand and for some reason drawing it downwards. "Arrange
that affair for me and I shall always be your most devoted slave-
slafe with an f, as a village elder of mine writes in his reports.
She is rich and of good family and that's all I want."

And with the familiarity and easy grace peculiar to him, he raised
the maid of honor's hand to his lips, kissed it, and swung it to and
fro as he lay back in his armchair, looking in another direction.

"Attendez," said Anna Pavlovna, reflecting, "I'll speak to Lise,
young Bolkonski's wife, this very evening, and perhaps the thing can
be arranged. It shall be on your family's behalf that I'll start my
apprenticeship as old maid."





CHAPTER II


Anna Pavlovna's drawing room was gradually filling. The highest
Petersburg society was assembled there: people differing widely in age
and character but alike in the social circle to which they belonged.
Prince Vasili's daughter, the beautiful Helene, came to take her
father to the ambassador's entertainment; she wore a ball dress and
her badge as maid of honor. The youthful little Princess
Bolkonskaya, known as la femme la plus seduisante de Petersbourg,* was
also there. She had been married during the previous winter, and being
pregnant did not go to any large gatherings, but only to small
receptions. Prince Vasili's son, Hippolyte, had come with Mortemart,
whom he introduced. The Abbe Morio and many others had also come.


*The most fascinating woman in Petersburg.


To each new arrival Anna Pavlovna said, "You have not yet seen my
aunt," or "You do not know my aunt?" and very gravely conducted him or
her to a little old lady, wearing large bows of ribbon in her cap, who
had come sailing in from another room as soon as the guests began to
arrive; and slowly turning her eyes from the visitor to her aunt, Anna
Pavlovna mentioned each one's name and then left them.

Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom
not one of them knew, not one of them wanted to know, and not one of
them cared about; Anna Pavlovna observed these greetings with mournful
and solemn interest and silent approval. The aunt spoke to each of
them in the same words, about their health and her own, and the health
of Her Majesty, "who, thank God, was better today." And each
visitor, though politeness prevented his showing impatience, left
the old woman with a sense of relief at having performed a vexatious
duty and did not return to her the whole evening.

The young Princess Bolkonskaya had brought some work in a
gold-embroidered velvet bag. Her pretty little upper lip, on which a
delicate dark down was just perceptible, was too short for her
teeth, but it lifted all the more sweetly, and was especially charming
when she occasionally drew it down to meet the lower lip. As is always
the case with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defect--the shortness
of her upper lip and her half-open mouth--seemed to be her own special
and peculiar form of beauty. Everyone brightened at the sight of
this pretty young woman, so soon to become a mother, so full of life
and health, and carrying her burden so lightly. Old men and dull
dispirited young ones who looked at her, after being in her company
and talking to her a little while, felt as if they too were
becoming, like her, full of life and health. All who talked to her,
and at each word saw her bright smile and the constant gleam of her
white teeth, thought that they were in a specially amiable mood that
day.

The little princess went round the table with quick, short,
swaying steps, her workbag on her arm, and gaily spreading out her
dress sat down on a sofa near the silver samovar, as if all she was
doing was a pleasure to herself and to all around her. "I have brought
my work," said she in French, displaying her bag and addressing all
present. "Mind, Annette, I hope you have not played a wicked trick
on me," she added, turning to her hostess. "You wrote that it was to
be quite a small reception, and just see how badly I am dressed."
And she spread out her arms to show her short-waisted, lace-trimmed,
dainty gray dress, girdled with a broad ribbon just below the breast.

"Soyez tranquille, Lise, you will always be prettier than anyone
else," replied Anna Pavlovna.

"You know," said the princess in the same tone of voice and still in
French, turning to a general, "my husband is deserting me? He is going
to get himself killed. Tell me what this wretched war is for?" she
added, addressing Prince Vasili, and without waiting for an answer she
turned to speak to his daughter, the beautiful Helene.

"What a delightful woman this little princess is!" said Prince
Vasili to Anna Pavlovna.

One of the next arrivals was a stout, heavily built young man with
close-cropped hair, spectacles, the light-colored breeches fashionable
at that time, a very high ruffle, and a brown dress coat. This stout
young man was an illegitimate son of Count Bezukhov, a well-known
grandee of Catherine's time who now lay dying in Moscow. The young man
had not yet entered either the military or civil service, as he had
only just returned from abroad where he had been educated, and this
was his first appearance in society. Anna Pavlovna greeted him with
the nod she accorded to the lowest hierarchy in her drawing room.
But in spite of this lowest-grade greeting, a look of anxiety and
fear, as at the sight of something too large and unsuited to the
place, came over her face when she saw Pierre enter. Though he was
certainly rather bigger than the other men in the room, her anxiety
could only have reference to the clever though shy, but observant
and natural, expression which distinguished him from everyone else
in that drawing room.

"It is very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come and visit a poor
invalid," said Anna Pavlovna, exchanging an alarmed glance with her
aunt as she conducted him to her.

Pierre murmured something unintelligible, and continued to look
round as if in search of something. On his way to the aunt he bowed to
the little princess with a pleased smile, as to an intimate
acquaintance.

Anna Pavlovna's alarm was justified, for Pierre turned away from the
aunt without waiting to hear her speech about Her Majesty's health.
Anna Pavlovna in dismay detained him with the words: "Do you know
the Abbe Morio? He is a most interesting man."

"Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and it is very
interesting but hardly feasible."

"You think so?" rejoined Anna Pavlovna in order to say something and
get away to attend to her duties as hostess. But Pierre now
committed a reverse act of impoliteness. First he had left a lady
before she had finished speaking to him, and now he continued to speak
to another who wished to get away. With his head bent, and his big
feet spread apart, he began explaining his reasons for thinking the
abbe's plan chimerical.

"We will talk of it later," said Anna Pavlovna with a smile.

And having got rid of this young man who did not know how to behave,
she resumed her duties as hostess and continued to listen and watch,
ready to help at any point where the conversation might happen to
flag. As the foreman of a spinning mill, when he has set the hands
to work, goes round and notices here a spindle that has stopped or
there one that creaks or makes more noise than it should, and
hastens to check the machine or set it in proper motion, so Anna
Pavlovna moved about her drawing room, approaching now a silent, now a
too-noisy group, and by a word or slight rearrangement kept the
conversational machine in steady, proper, and regular motion. But amid
these cares her anxiety about Pierre was evident. She kept an
anxious watch on him when he approached the group round Mortemart to
listen to what was being said there, and again when he passed to
another group whose center was the abbe.

Pierre had been educated abroad, and this reception at Anna
Pavlovna's was the first he had attended in Russia. He knew that all
the intellectual lights of Petersburg were gathered there and, like
a child in a toyshop, did not know which way to look, afraid of
missing any clever conversation that was to be heard. Seeing the
self-confident and refined expression on the faces of those present he
was always expecting to hear something very profound. At last he
came up to Morio. Here the conversation seemed interesting and he
stood waiting for an opportunity to express his own views, as young
people are fond of doing.




CHAPTER III


Anna Pavlovna's reception was in full swing. The spindles hummed
steadily and ceaselessly on all sides. With the exception of the aunt,
beside whom sat only one elderly lady, who with her thin careworn face
was rather out of place in this brilliant society, the whole company
had settled into three groups. One, chiefly masculine, had formed
round the abbe. Another, of young people, was grouped round the
beautiful Princess Helene, Prince Vasili's daughter, and the little
Princess Bolkonskaya, very pretty and rosy, though rather too plump
for her age. The third group was gathered round Mortemart and Anna
Pavlovna.

The vicomte was a nice-looking young man with soft features and
polished manners, who evidently considered himself a celebrity but out
of politeness modestly placed himself at the disposal of the circle in
which he found himself. Anna Pavlovna was obviously serving him up
as a treat to her guests. As a clever maitre d'hotel serves up as a
specially choice delicacy a piece of meat that no one who had seen
it in the kitchen would have cared to eat, so Anna Pavlovna served
up to her guests, first the vicomte and then the abbe, as peculiarly
choice morsels. The group about Mortemart immediately began discussing
the murder of the Duc d'Enghien. The vicomte said that the Duc
d'Enghien had perished by his own magnanimity, and that there were
particular reasons for Buonaparte's hatred of him.

"Ah, yes! Do tell us all about it, Vicomte," said Anna Pavlovna,
with a pleasant feeling that there was something a la Louis XV in
the sound of that sentence: "Contez nous cela, Vicomte."

The vicomte bowed and smiled courteously in token of his willingness
to comply. Anna Pavlovna arranged a group round him, inviting everyone
to listen to his tale.

"The vicomte knew the duc personally," whispered Anna Pavlovna to of
the guests. "The vicomte is a wonderful raconteur," said she to
another. "How evidently he belongs to the best society," said she to a
third; and the vicomte was served up to the company in the choicest
and most advantageous style, like a well-garnished joint of roast beef
on a hot dish.

The vicomte wished to begin his story and gave a subtle smile.

"Come over here, Helene, dear," said Anna Pavlovna to the
beautiful young princess who was sitting some way off, the center of
another group.

The princess smiled. She rose with the same unchanging smile with
which she had first entered the room--the smile of a perfectly
beautiful woman. With a slight rustle of her white dress trimmed
with moss and ivy, with a gleam of white shoulders, glossy hair, and
sparkling diamonds, she passed between the men who made way for her,
not looking at any of them but smiling on all, as if graciously
allowing each the privilege of admiring her beautiful figure and
shapely shoulders, back, and bosom--which in the fashion of those days
were very much exposed--and she seemed to bring the glamour of a
ballroom with her as she moved toward Anna Pavlovna. Helene was so
lovely that not only did she not show any trace of coquetry, but on
the contrary she even appeared shy of her unquestionable and all too
victorious beauty. She seemed to wish, but to be unable, to diminish
its effect.

"How lovely!" said everyone who saw her; and the vicomte lifted
his shoulders and dropped his eyes as if startled by something
extraordinary when she took her seat opposite and beamed upon him also
with her unchanging smile.

"Madame, I doubt my ability before such an audience," said he,
smilingly inclining his head.

The princess rested her bare round arm on a little table and
considered a reply unnecessary. She smilingly waited. All the time the
story was being told she sat upright, glancing now at her beautiful
round arm, altered in shape by its pressure on the table, now at her
still more beautiful bosom, on which she readjusted a diamond
necklace. From time to time she smoothed the folds of her dress, and
whenever the story produced an effect she glanced at Anna Pavlovna, at
once adopted just the expression she saw on the maid of honor's
face, and again relapsed into her radiant smile.

The little princess had also left the tea table and followed Helene.

"Wait a moment, I'll get my work.... Now then, what are you thinking
of?" she went on, turning to Prince Hippolyte. "Fetch me my workbag."

There was a general movement as the princess, smiling and talking
merrily to everyone at once, sat down and gaily arranged herself in
her seat.

"Now I am all right," she said, and asking the vicomte to begin, she
took up her work.

Prince Hippolyte, having brought the workbag, joined the circle
and moving a chair close to hers seated himself beside her.

Le charmant Hippolyte was surprising by his extraordinary
resemblance to his beautiful sister, but yet more by the fact that
in spite of this resemblance he was exceedingly ugly. His features
were like his sister's, but while in her case everything was lit up by
a joyous, self-satisfied, youthful, and constant smile of animation,
and by the wonderful classic beauty of her figure, his face on the
contrary was dulled by imbecility and a constant expression of
sullen self-confidence, while his body was thin and weak. His eyes,
nose, and mouth all seemed puckered into a vacant, wearied grimace,
and his arms and legs always fell into unnatural positions.

"It's not going to be a ghost story?" said he, sitting down beside
the princess and hastily adjusting his lorgnette, as if without this
instrument he could not begin to speak.

"Why no, my dear fellow," said the astonished narrator, shrugging
his shoulders.

"Because I hate ghost stories," said Prince Hippolyte in a tone
which showed that he only understood the meaning of his words after he
had uttered them.

He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be
sure whether what he said was very witty or very stupid. He was
dressed in a dark-green dress coat, knee breeches of the color of
cuisse de nymphe effrayee, as he called it, shoes, and silk stockings.

The vicomte told his tale very neatly. It was an anecdote, then
current, to the effect that the Duc d'Enghien had gone secretly to
Paris to visit Mademoiselle George; that at her house he came upon
Bonaparte, who also enjoyed the famous actress' favors, and that in
his presence Napoleon happened to fall into one of the fainting fits
to which he was subject, and was thus at the duc's mercy. The latter
spared him, and this magnanimity Bonaparte subsequently repaid by
death.

The story was very pretty and interesting, especially at the point
where the rivals suddenly recognized one another; and the ladies
looked agitated.

"Charming!" said Anna Pavlovna with an inquiring glance at the
little princess.

"Charming!" whispered the little princess, sticking the needle
into her work as if to testify that the interest and fascination of
the story prevented her from going on with it.

The vicomte appreciated this silent praise and smiling gratefully
prepared to continue, but just then Anna Pavlovna, who had kept a
watchful eye on the young man who so alarmed her, noticed that he
was talking too loudly and vehemently with the abbe, so she hurried to
the rescue. Pierre had managed to start a conversation with the abbe
about the balance of power, and the latter, evidently interested by
the young man's simple-minded eagerness, was explaining his pet
theory. Both were talking and listening too eagerly and too naturally,
which was why Anna Pavlovna disapproved.

"The means are... the balance of power in Europe and the rights of
the people," the abbe was saying. "It is only necessary for one
powerful nation like Russia--barbaric as she is said to be--to place
herself disinterestedly at the head of an alliance having for its
object the maintenance of the balance of power of Europe, and it would
save the world!"

"But how are you to get that balance?" Pierre was beginning.

At that moment Anna Pavlovna came up and, looking severely at
Pierre, asked the Italian how he stood Russian climate. The
Italian's face instantly changed and assumed an offensively
affected, sugary expression, evidently habitual to him when conversing
with women.

"I am so enchanted by the brilliancy of the wit and culture of the
society, more especially of the feminine society, in which I have
had the honor of being received, that I have not yet had time to think
of the climate," said he.

Not letting the abbe and Pierre escape, Anna Pavlovna, the more
conveniently to keep them under observation, brought them into the
larger circle.





CHAPTER IV


Just then another visitor entered the drawing room: Prince Andrew
Bolkonski, the little princess' husband. He was a very handsome
young man, of medium height, with firm, clearcut features.
Everything about him, from his weary, bored expression to his quiet,
measured step, offered a most striking contrast to his quiet, little
wife. It was evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing
room, but had found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look
at or listen to them. And among all these faces that he found so
tedious, none seemed to bore him so much as that of his pretty wife.
He turned away from her with a grimace that distorted his handsome
face, kissed Anna Pavlovna's hand, and screwing up his eyes scanned
the whole company.

"You are off to the war, Prince?" said Anna Pavlovna.

"General Kutuzov," said Bolkonski, speaking French and stressing the
last syllable of the general's name like a Frenchman, "has been
pleased to take me as an aide-de-camp...."

"And Lise, your wife?"

"She will go to the country."

"Are you not ashamed to deprive us of your charming wife?"

"Andre," said his wife, addressing her husband in the same
coquettish manner in which she spoke to other men, "the vicomte has
been telling us such a tale about Mademoiselle George and Buonaparte!"

Prince Andrew screwed up his eyes and turned away. Pierre, who
from the moment Prince Andrew entered the room had watched him with
glad, affectionate eyes, now came up and took his arm. Before he
looked round Prince Andrew frowned again, expressing his annoyance
with whoever was touching his arm, but when he saw Pierre's beaming
face he gave him an unexpectedly kind and pleasant smile.

"There now!... So you, too, are in the great world?" said he to
Pierre.

"I knew you would be here," replied Pierre. "I will come to supper
with you. May I?" he added in a low voice so as not to disturb the
vicomte who was continuing his story.

"No, impossible!" said Prince Andrew, laughing and pressing Pierre's
hand to show that there was no need to ask the question. He wished
to say something more, but at that moment Prince Vasili and his
daughter got up to go and the two young men rose to let them pass.

"You must excuse me, dear Vicomte," said Prince Vasili to the
Frenchman, holding him down by the sleeve in a friendly way to prevent
his rising. "This unfortunate fete at the ambassador's deprives me
of a pleasure, and obliges me to interrupt you. I am very sorry to
leave your enchanting party," said he, turning to Anna Pavlovna.

His daughter, Princess Helene, passed between the chairs, lightly
holding up the folds of her dress, and the smile shone still more
radiantly on her beautiful face. Pierre gazed at her with rapturous,
almost frightened, eyes as she passed him.

"Very lovely," said Prince Andrew.

"Very," said Pierre.

In passing Prince Vasili seized Pierre's hand and said to Anna
Pavlovna: "Educate this bear for me! He has been staying with me a
whole month and this is the first time I have seen him in society.
Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the society of clever
women."


Anna Pavlovna smiled and promised to take Pierre in hand. She knew
his father to be a connection of Prince Vasili's. The elderly lady who
had been sitting with the old aunt rose hurriedly and overtook
Prince Vasili in the anteroom. All the affectation of interest she had
assumed had left her kindly and tearworn face and it now expressed
only anxiety and fear.

"How about my son Boris, Prince?" said she, hurrying after him
into the anteroom. "I can't remain any longer in Petersburg. Tell me
what news I may take back to my poor boy."

Although Prince Vasili listened reluctantly and not very politely to
the elderly lady, even betraying some impatience, she gave him an
ingratiating and appealing smile, and took his hand that he might
not go away.

"What would it cost you to say a word to the Emperor, and then he
would be transferred to the Guards at once?" said she.

"Believe me, Princess, I am ready to do all I can," answered
Prince Vasili, "but it is difficult for me to ask the Emperor. I
should advise you to appeal to Rumyantsev through Prince Golitsyn.
That would be the best way."

The elderly lady was a Princess Drubetskaya, belonging to one of the
best families in Russia, but she was poor, and having long been out of
society had lost her former influential connections. She had now
come to Petersburg to procure an appointment in the Guards for her
only son. It was, in fact, solely to meet Prince Vasili that she had
obtained an invitation to Anna Pavlovna's reception and had sat
listening to the vicomte's story. Prince Vasili's words frightened
her, an embittered look clouded her once handsome face, but only for a
moment; then she smiled again and clutched Prince Vasili's arm more
tightly.

"Listen to me, Prince," said she. "I have never yet asked you for
anything and I never will again, nor have I ever reminded you of my
father's friendship for you; but now I entreat you for God's sake to
do this for my son--and I shall always regard you as a benefactor,"
she added hurriedly. "No, don't be angry, but promise! I have asked
Golitsyn and he has refused. Be the kindhearted man you always
were," she said, trying to smile though tears were in her eyes.

"Papa, we shall be late," said Princess Helene, turning her
beautiful head and looking over her classically molded shoulder as she
stood waiting by the door.

Influence in society, however, is a capital which has to be
economized if it is to last. Prince Vasili knew this, and having
once realized that if he asked on behalf of all who begged of him,
he would soon be unable to ask for himself, he became chary of using
his influence. But in Princess Drubetskaya's case he felt, after her
second appeal, something like qualms of conscience. She had reminded
him of what was quite true; he had been indebted to her father for the
first steps in his career. Moreover, he could see by her manners
that she was one of those women--mostly mothers--who, having once made
up their minds, will not rest until they have gained their end, and
are prepared if necessary to go on insisting day after day and hour
after hour, and even to make scenes. This last consideration moved
him.

"My dear Anna Mikhaylovna," said he with his usual familiarity and
weariness of tone, "it is almost impossible for me to do what you ask;
but to prove my devotion to you and how I respect your father's
memory, I will do the impossible--your son shall be transferred to the
Guards. Here is my hand on it. Are you satisfied?"

"My dear benefactor! This is what I expected from you--I knew your
kindness!" He turned to go.

"Wait--just a word! When he has been transferred to the Guards..."
she faltered. "You are on good terms with Michael Ilarionovich
Kutuzov... recommend Boris to him as adjutant! Then I shall be at
rest, and then..."

Prince Vasili smiled.

"No, I won't promise that. You don't know how Kutuzov is pestered
since his appointment as Commander in Chief. He told me himself that
all the Moscow ladies have conspired to give him all their sons as
adjutants."

"No, but do promise! I won't let you go! My dear benefactor..."

"Papa," said his beautiful daughter in the same tone as before,
"we shall be late."

"Well, au revoir! Good-by! You hear her?"

"Then tomorrow you will speak to the Emperor?"

"Certainly; but about Kutuzov, I don't promise."

"Do promise, do promise, Vasili!" cried Anna Mikhaylovna as he went,
with the smile of a coquettish girl, which at one time probably came
naturally to her, but was now very ill-suited to her careworn face.

Apparently she had forgotten her age and by force of habit
employed all the old feminine arts. But as soon as the prince had gone
her face resumed its former cold, artificial expression. She
returned to the group where the vicomte was still talking, and again
pretended to listen, while waiting till it would be time to leave. Her
task was accomplished.





CHAPTER V


"And what do you think of this latest comedy, the coronation at
Milan?" asked Anna Pavlovna, "and of the comedy of the people of Genoa
and Lucca laying their petitions before Monsieur Buonaparte, and
Monsieur Buonaparte sitting on a throne and granting the petitions
of the nations? Adorable! It is enough to make one's head whirl! It is
as if the whole world had gone crazy."

Prince Andrew looked Anna Pavlovna straight in the face with a
sarcastic smile.

"'Dieu me la donne, gare a qui la touche!'* They say he was very
fine when he said that," he remarked, repeating the words in
Italian: "'Dio mi l'ha dato. Guai a chi la tocchi!'"


*God has given it to me, let him who touches it beware!


"I hope this will prove the last drop that will make the glass run
over," Anna Pavlovna continued. "The sovereigns will not be able to
endure this man who is a menace to everything."

"The sovereigns? I do not speak of Russia," said the vicomte, polite
but hopeless: "The sovereigns, madame... What have they done for Louis
XVII, for the Queen, or for Madame Elizabeth? Nothing!" and he
became more animated. "And believe me, they are reaping the reward
of their betrayal of the Bourbon cause. The sovereigns! Why, they
are sending ambassadors to compliment the usurper."

And sighing disdainfully, he again changed his position.

Prince Hippolyte, who had been gazing at the vicomte for some time
through his lorgnette, suddenly turned completely round toward the
little princess, and having asked for a needle began tracing the Conde
coat of arms on the table. He explained this to her with as much
gravity as if she had asked him to do it.

"Baton de gueules, engrele de gueules d' azur--maison Conde," said
he.

The princess listened, smiling.

"If Buonaparte remains on the throne of France a year longer," the
vicomte continued, with the air of a man who, in a matter with which
he is better acquainted than anyone else, does not listen to others
but follows the current of his own thoughts, "things will have gone
too far. By intrigues, violence, exile, and executions, French
society--I mean good French society--will have been forever destroyed,
and then..."

He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands. Pierre wished to
make a remark, for the conversation interested him, but Anna Pavlovna,
who had him under observation, interrupted:

"The Emperor Alexander," said she, with the melancholy which
always accompanied any reference of hers to the Imperial family,
"has declared that he will leave it to the French people themselves to
choose their own form of government; and I believe that once free from
the usurper, the whole nation will certainly throw itself into the
arms of its rightful king," she concluded, trying to be amiable to the
royalist emigrant.

"That is doubtful," said Prince Andrew. "Monsieur le Vicomte quite
rightly supposes that matters have already gone too far. I think it
will be difficult to return to the old regime."

"From what I have heard," said Pierre, blushing and breaking into
the conversation, "almost all the aristocracy has already gone over to
Bonaparte's side."

"It is the Buonapartists who say that," replied the vicomte
without looking at Pierre. "At the present time it is difficult to
know the real state of French public opinion."

"Bonaparte has said so," remarked Prince Andrew with a sarcastic
smile.

It was evident that he did not like the vicomte and was aiming his
remarks at him, though without looking at him.

"'I showed them the path to glory, but they did not follow it,'"
Prince Andrew continued after a short silence, again quoting
Napoleon's words. "'I opened my antechambers and they crowded in.' I
do not know how far he was justified in saying so."

"Not in the least," replied the vicomte. "After the murder of the
duc even the most partial ceased to regard him as a hero. If to some
people," he went on, turning to Anna Pavlovna, "he ever was a hero,
after the murder of the duc there was one martyr more in heaven and
one hero less on earth."

Before Anna Pavlovna and the others had time to smile their
appreciation of the vicomte's epigram, Pierre again broke into the
conversation, and though Anna Pavlovna felt sure he would say
something inappropriate, she was unable to stop him.

"The execution of the Duc d'Enghien," declared Monsieur Pierre, "was
a political necessity, and it seems to me that Napoleon showed
greatness of soul by not fearing to take on himself the whole
responsibility of that deed."

"Dieu! Mon Dieu!" muttered Anna Pavlovna in a terrified whisper.

"What, Monsieur Pierre... Do you consider that assassination shows
greatness of soul?" said the little princess, smiling and drawing
her work nearer to her.

"Oh! Oh!" exclaimed several voices.

"Capital!" said Prince Hippolyte in English, and began slapping
his knee with the palm of his hand.

The vicomte merely shrugged his shoulders. Pierre looked solemnly at
his audience over his spectacles and continued.

"I say so," he continued desperately, "because the Bourbons fled
from the Revolution leaving the people to anarchy, and Napoleon
alone understood the Revolution and quelled it, and so for the general
good, he could not stop short for the sake of one man's life."

"Won't you come over to the other table?" suggested Anna Pavlovna.

But Pierre continued his speech without heeding her.

"No," cried he, becoming more and more eager, "Napoleon is great
because he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses,
preserved all that was good in it--equality of citizenship and freedom
of speech and of the press--and only for that reason did he obtain
power."

"Yes, if having obtained power, without availing himself of it to
commit murder he had restored it to the rightful king, I should have
called him a great man," remarked the vicomte.

"He could not do that. The people only gave him power that he
might rid them of the Bourbons and because they saw that he was a
great man. The Revolution was a grand thing!" continued Monsieur
Pierre, betraying by this desperate and provocative proposition his
extreme youth and his wish to express all that was in his mind.

"What? Revolution and regicide a grand thing?... Well, after that...
But won't you come to this other table?" repeated Anna Pavlovna.

"Rousseau's Contrat social," said the vicomte with a tolerant smile.

"I am not speaking of regicide, I am speaking about ideas."

"Yes: ideas of robbery, murder, and regicide," again interjected
an ironical voice.

"Those were extremes, no doubt, but they are not what is most
important. What is important are the rights of man, emancipation
from prejudices, and equality of citizenship, and all these ideas
Napoleon has retained in full force."

"Liberty and equality," said the vicomte contemptuously, as if at
last deciding seriously to prove to this youth how foolish his words
were, "high-sounding words which have long been discredited. Who
does not love liberty and equality? Even our Saviour preached
liberty and equality. Have people since the Revolution become happier?
On the contrary. We wanted liberty, but Buonaparte has destroyed it."

Prince Andrew kept looking with an amused smile from Pierre to the
vicomte and from the vicomte to their hostess. In the first moment
of Pierre's outburst Anna Pavlovna, despite her social experience, was
horror-struck. But when she saw that Pierre's sacrilegious words had
not exasperated the vicomte, and had convinced herself that it was
impossible to stop him, she rallied her forces and joined the
vicomte in a vigorous attack on the orator.

"But, my dear Monsieur Pierre," said she, "how do you explain the
fact of a great man executing a duc--or even an ordinary man who--is
innocent and untried?"

"I should like," said the vicomte, "to ask how monsieur explains the
18th Brumaire; was not that an imposture? It was a swindle, and not at
all like the conduct of a great man!"

"And the prisoners he killed in Africa? That was horrible!" said the
little princess, shrugging her shoulders.

"He's a low fellow, say what you will," remarked Prince Hippolyte.

Pierre, not knowing whom to answer, looked at them all and smiled.
His smile was unlike the half-smile of other people. When he smiled,
his grave, even rather gloomy, look was instantaneously replaced by
another--a childlike, kindly, even rather silly look, which seemed
to ask forgiveness.

The vicomte who was meeting him for the first time saw clearly
that this young Jacobin was not so terrible as his words suggested.
All were silent.

"How do you expect him to answer you all at once?" said Prince
Andrew. "Besides, in the actions of a statesman one has to distinguish
between his acts as a private person, as a general, and as an emperor.
So it seems to me."

"Yes, yes, of course!" Pierre chimed in, pleased at the arrival of
this reinforcement.

"One must admit," continued Prince Andrew, "that Napoleon as a man
was great on the bridge of Arcola, and in the hospital at Jaffa
where he gave his hand to the plague-stricken; but... but there are
other acts which it is difficult to justify."

Prince Andrew, who had evidently wished to tone down the awkwardness
of Pierre's remarks, rose and made a sign to his wife that it was time
to go.


Suddenly Prince Hippolyte started up making signs to everyone to
attend, and asking them all to be seated began:

"I was told a charming Moscow story today and must treat you to
it. Excuse me, Vicomte--I must tell it in Russian or the point will be
lost...." And Prince Hippolyte began to tell his story in such Russian
as a Frenchman would speak after spending about a year in Russia.
Everyone waited, so emphatically and eagerly did he demand their
attention to his story.

"There is in Moscow a lady, une dame, and she is very stingy. She
must have two footmen behind her carriage, and very big ones. That was
her taste. And she had a lady's maid, also big. She said..."

Here Prince Hippolyte paused, evidently collecting his ideas with
difficulty.

"She said... Oh yes! She said, 'Girl,' to the maid, 'put on a
livery, get up behind the carriage, and come with me while I make some
calls.'"

Here Prince Hippolyte spluttered and burst out laughing long
before his audience, which produced an effect unfavorable to the
narrator. Several persons, among them the elderly lady and Anna
Pavlovna, did however smile.

"She went. Suddenly there was a great wind. The girl lost her hat
and her long hair came down...." Here he could contain himself no
longer and went on, between gasps of laughter: "And the whole world
knew...."

And so the anecdote ended. Though it was unintelligible why he had
told it, or why it had to be told in Russian, still Anna Pavlovna
and the others appreciated Prince Hippolyte's social tact in so
agreeably ending Pierre's unpleasant and unamiable outburst. After the
anecdote the conversation broke up into insignificant small talk about
the last and next balls, about theatricals, and who would meet whom,
and when and where.





CHAPTER VI


Having thanked Anna Pavlovna for her charming soiree, the guests
began to take their leave.

Pierre was ungainly. Stout, about the average height, broad, with
huge red hands; he did not know, as the saying is, how to enter a
drawing room and still less how to leave one; that is, how to say
something particularly agreeable before going away. Besides this he
was absent-minded. When he rose to go, he took up instead of his
own, the general's three-cornered hat, and held it, pulling at the
plume, till the general asked him to restore it. All his
absent-mindedness and inability to enter a room and converse in it
was, however, redeemed by his kindly, simple, and modest expression.
Anna Pavlovna turned toward him and, with a Christian mildness that
expressed forgiveness of his indiscretion, nodded and said: "I hope to
see you again, but I also hope you will change your opinions, my
dear Monsieur Pierre."

When she said this, he did not reply and only bowed, but again
everybody saw his smile, which said nothing, unless perhaps, "Opinions
are opinions, but you see what a capital, good-natured fellow I am."
And everyone, including Anna Pavlovna, felt this.

Prince Andrew had gone out into the hall, and, turning his shoulders
to the footman who was helping him on with his cloak, listened
indifferently to his wife's chatter with Prince Hippolyte who had also
come into the hall. Prince Hippolyte stood close to the pretty,
pregnant princess, and stared fixedly at her through his eyeglass.

"Go in, Annette, or you will catch cold," said the little
princess, taking leave of Anna Pavlovna. "It is settled," she added in
a low voice.

Anna Pavlovna had already managed to speak to Lise about the match
she contemplated between Anatole and the little princess'
sister-in-law.

"I rely on you, my dear," said Anna Pavlovna, also in a low tone.
"Write to her and let me know how her father looks at the matter. Au
revoir!"--and she left the hall.

Prince Hippolyte approached the little princess and, bending his
face close to her, began to whisper something.

Two footmen, the princess' and his own, stood holding a shawl and
a cloak, waiting for the conversation to finish. They listened to
the French sentences which to them were meaningless, with an air of
understanding but not wishing to appear to do so. The princess as
usual spoke smilingly and listened with a laugh.

"I am very glad I did not go to the ambassador's," said Prince
Hippolyte "-so dull-. It has been a delightful evening, has it not?
Delightful!"

"They say the ball will be very good," replied the princess, drawing
up her downy little lip. "All the pretty women in society will be
there."

"Not all, for you will not be there; not all," said Prince Hippolyte
smiling joyfully; and snatching the shawl from the footman, whom he
even pushed aside, he began wrapping it round the princess. Either
from awkwardness or intentionally (no one could have said which) after
the shawl had been adjusted he kept his arm around her for a long
time, as though embracing her.

Still smiling, she gracefully moved away, turning and glancing at
her husband. Prince Andrew's eyes were closed, so weary and sleepy did
he seem.

"Are you ready?" he asked his wife, looking past her.

Prince Hippolyte hurriedly put on his cloak, which in the latest
fashion reached to his very heels, and, stumbling in it, ran out
into the porch following the princess, whom a footman was helping into
the carriage.

"Princesse, au revoir," cried he, stumbling with his tongue as
well as with his feet.

The princess, picking up her dress, was taking her seat in the
dark carriage, her husband was adjusting his saber; Prince
Hippolyte, under pretense of helping, was in everyone's way.

"Allow me, sir," said Prince Andrew in Russian in a cold,
disagreeable tone to Prince Hippolyte who was blocking his path.

"I am expecting you, Pierre," said the same voice, but gently and
affectionately.

The postilion started, the carriage wheels rattled. Prince Hippolyte
laughed spasmodically as he stood in the porch waiting for the vicomte
whom he had promised to take home.

"Well, mon cher," said the vicomte, having seated himself beside
Hippolyte in the carriage, "your little princess is very nice, very
nice indeed, quite French," and he kissed the tips of his fingers.
Hippolyte burst out laughing.

"Do you know, you are a terrible chap for all your innocent airs,"
continued the vicomte. "I pity the poor husband, that little officer
who gives himself the airs of a monarch."

Hippolyte spluttered again, and amid his laughter said, "And you
were saying that the Russian ladies are not equal to the French? One
has to know how to deal with them."


Pierre reaching the house first went into Prince Andrew's study like
one quite at home, and from habit immediately lay down on the sofa,
took from the shelf the first book that came to his hand (it was
Caesar's Commentaries), and resting on his elbow, began reading it
in the middle.

"What have you done to Mlle Scherer? She will be quite ill now,"
said Prince Andrew, as he entered the study, rubbing his small white
hands.

Pierre turned his whole body, making the sofa creak. He lifted his
eager face to Prince Andrew, smiled, and waved his hand.

"That abbe is very interesting but he does not see the thing in
the right light.... In my opinion perpetual peace is possible but--I
do not know how to express it... not by a balance of political
power...."

It was evident that Prince Andrew was not interested in such
abstract conversation.

"One can't everywhere say all one thinks, mon cher. Well, have you
at last decided on anything? Are you going to be a guardsman or a
diplomatist?" asked Prince Andrew after a momentary silence.

Pierre sat up on the sofa, with his legs tucked under him.

"Really, I don't yet know. I don't like either the one or the
other."

"But you must decide on something! Your father expects it."

Pierre at the age of ten had been sent abroad with an abbe as tutor,
and had remained away till he was twenty. When he returned to Moscow
his father dismissed the abbe and said to the young man, "Now go to
Petersburg, look round, and choose your profession. I will agree to
anything. Here is a letter to Prince Vasili, and here is money.
Write to me all about it, and I will help you in everything." Pierre
had already been choosing a career for three months, and had not
decided on anything. It was about this choice that Prince Andrew was
speaking. Pierre rubbed his forehead.

"But he must be a Freemason," said he, referring to the abbe whom he
had met that evening.

"That is all nonsense." Prince Andrew again interrupted him, "let us
talk business. Have you been to the Horse Guards?"

"No, I have not; but this is what I have been thinking and wanted to
tell you. There is a war now against Napoleon. If it were a war for
freedom I could understand it and should be the first to enter the
army; but to help England and Austria against the greatest man in
the world is not right."

Prince Andrew only shrugged his shoulders at Pierre's childish
words. He put on the air of one who finds it impossible to reply to
such nonsense, but it would in fact have been difficult to give any
other answer than the one Prince Andrew gave to this naive question.

"If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no
wars," he said.

"And that would be splendid," said Pierre.

Prince Andrew smiled ironically.

"Very likely it would be splendid, but it will never come about..."

"Well, why are you going to the war?" asked Pierre.

"What for? I don't know. I must. Besides that I am going..." He
paused. "I am going because the life I am leading here does not suit
me!"





CHAPTER VII


The rustle of a woman's dress was heard in the next room. Prince
Andrew shook himself as if waking up, and his face assumed the look it
had had in Anna Pavlovna's drawing room. Pierre removed his feet
from the sofa. The princess came in. She had changed her gown for a
house dress as fresh and elegant as the other. Prince Andrew rose
and politely placed a chair for her.

"How is it," she began, as usual in French, settling down briskly
and fussily in the easy chair, "how is it Annette never got married?
How stupid you men all are not to have married her! Excuse me for
saying so, but you have no sense about women. What an argumentative
fellow you are, Monsieur Pierre!"

"And I am still arguing with your husband. I can't understand why he
wants to go to the war," replied Pierre, addressing the princess
with none of the embarrassment so commonly shown by young men in their
intercourse with young women.

The princess started. Evidently Pierre's words touched her to the
quick.

"Ah, that is just what I tell him!" said she. "I don't understand
it; I don't in the least understand why men can't live without wars.
How is it that we women don't want anything of the kind, don't need
it? Now you shall judge between us. I always tell him: Here he is
Uncle's aide-de-camp, a most brilliant position. He is so well
known, so much appreciated by everyone. The other day at the
Apraksins' I heard a lady asking, 'Is that the famous Prince
Andrew?' I did indeed." She laughed. "He is so well received
everywhere. He might easily become aide-de-camp to the Emperor. You
know the Emperor spoke to him most graciously. Annette and I were
speaking of how to arrange it. What do you think?"

Pierre looked at his friend and, noticing that he did not like the
conversation, gave no reply.

"When are you starting?" he asked.

"Oh, don't speak of his going, don't! I won't hear it spoken of,"
said the princess in the same petulantly playful tone in which she had
spoken to Hippolyte in the drawing room and which was so plainly
ill-suited to the family circle of which Pierre was almost a member.
"Today when I remembered that all these delightful associations must
be broken off... and then you know, Andre..." (she looked
significantly at her husband) "I'm afraid, I'm afraid!" she whispered,
and a shudder ran down her back.

Her husband looked at her as if surprised to notice that someone
besides Pierre and himself was in the room, and addressed her in a
tone of frigid politeness.

"What is it you are afraid of, Lise? I don't understand," said he.

"There, what egotists men all are: all, all egotists! Just for a
whim of his own, goodness only knows why, he leaves me and locks me up
alone in the country."

"With my father and sister, remember," said Prince Andrew gently.

"Alone all the same, without my friends.... And he expects me not to
be afraid."

Her tone was now querulous and her lip drawn up, giving her not a
joyful, but an animal, squirrel-like expression. She paused as if
she felt it indecorous to speak of her pregnancy before Pierre, though
the gist of the matter lay in that.

"I still can't understand what you are afraid of," said Prince
Andrew slowly, not taking his eyes off his wife.

The princess blushed, and raised her arms with a gesture of despair.

"No, Andrew, I must say you have changed. Oh, how you have..."

"Your doctor tells you to go to bed earlier," said Prince Andrew.
"You had better go."

The princess said nothing, but suddenly her short downy lip
quivered. Prince Andrew rose, shrugged his shoulders, and walked about
the room.

Pierre looked over his spectacles with naive surprise, now at him
and now at her, moved as if about to rise too, but changed his mind.

"Why should I mind Monsieur Pierre being here?" exclaimed the little
princess suddenly, her pretty face all at once distorted by a
tearful grimace. "I have long wanted to ask you, Andrew, why you
have changed so to me? What have I done to you? You are going to the
war and have no pity for me. Why is it?"

"Lise!" was all Prince Andrew said. But that one word expressed an
entreaty, a threat, and above all conviction that she would herself
regret her words. But she went on hurriedly:

"You treat me like an invalid or a child. I see it all! Did you
behave like that six months ago?"

"Lise, I beg you to desist," said Prince Andrew still more
emphatically.

Pierre, who had been growing more and more agitated as he listened
to all this, rose and approached the princess. He seemed unable to
bear the sight of tears and was ready to cry himself.

"Calm yourself, Princess! It seems so to you because... I assure you
I myself have experienced... and so... because... No, excuse me! An
outsider is out of place here... No, don't distress yourself...
Good-by!"

Prince Andrew caught him by the hand.

"No, wait, Pierre! The princess is too kind to wish to deprive me of
the pleasure of spending the evening with you."

"No, he thinks only of himself," muttered the princess without
restraining her angry tears.

"Lise!" said Prince Andrew dryly, raising his voice to the pitch
which indicates that patience is exhausted.

Suddenly the angry, squirrel-like expression of the princess' pretty
face changed into a winning and piteous look of fear. Her beautiful
eyes glanced askance at her husband's face, and her own assumed the
timid, deprecating expression of a dog when it rapidly but feebly wags
its drooping tail.

"Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!" she muttered, and lifting her dress with one
hand she went up to her husband and kissed him on the forehead.

"Good night, Lise," said he, rising and courteously kissing her hand
as he would have done to a stranger.





CHAPTER VIII


The friends were silent. Neither cared to begin talking. Pierre
continually glanced at Prince Andrew; Prince Andrew rubbed his
forehead with his small hand.

"Let us go and have supper," he said with a sigh, going to the door.

They entered the elegant, newly decorated, and luxurious dining
room. Everything from the table napkins to the silver, china, and
glass bore that imprint of newness found in the households of the
newly married. Halfway through supper Prince Andrew leaned his
elbows on the table and, with a look of nervous agitation such as
Pierre had never before seen on his face, began to talk--as one who
has long had something on his mind and suddenly determines to speak
out.

"Never, never marry, my dear fellow! That's my advice: never marry
till you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable
of, and until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and
have seen her plainly as she is, or else you will make a cruel and
irrevocable mistake. Marry when you are old and good for nothing--or
all that is good and noble in you will be lost. It will all be
wasted on trifles. Yes! Yes! Yes! Don't look at me with such surprise.
If you marry expecting anything from yourself in the future, you
will feel at every step that for you all is ended, all is closed
except the drawing room, where you will be ranged side by side with
a court lackey and an idiot!... But what's the good?..." and he
waved his arm.

Pierre took off his spectacles, which made his face seem different
and the good-natured expression still more apparent, and gazed at
his friend in amazement.

"My wife," continued Prince Andrew, "is an excellent woman, one of
those rare women with whom a man's honor is safe; but, O God, what
would I not give now to be unmarried! You are the first and only one
to whom I mention this, because I like you."

As he said this Prince Andrew was less than ever like that Bolkonski
who had lolled in Anna Pavlovna's easy chairs and with half-closed
eyes had uttered French phrases between his teeth. Every muscle of his
thin face was now quivering with nervous excitement; his eyes, in
which the fire of life had seemed extinguished, now flashed with
brilliant light. It was evident that the more lifeless he seemed at
ordinary times, the more impassioned he became in these moments of
almost morbid irritation.

"You don't understand why I say this," he continued, "but it is
the whole story of life. You talk of Bonaparte and his career," said
he (though Pierre had not mentioned Bonaparte), "but Bonaparte when he
worked went step by step toward his goal. He was free, he had
nothing but his aim to consider, and he reached it. But tie yourself
up with a woman and, like a chained convict, you lose all freedom! And
all you have of hope and strength merely weighs you down and
torments you with regret. Drawing rooms, gossip, balls, vanity, and
triviality--these are the enchanted circle I cannot escape from. I
am now going to the war, the greatest war there ever was, and I know
nothing and am fit for nothing. I am very amiable and have a caustic
wit," continued Prince Andrew, "and at Anna Pavlovna's they listen
to me. And that stupid set without whom my wife cannot exist, and
those women... If you only knew what those society women are, and
women in general! My father is right. Selfish, vain, stupid, trivial
in everything--that's what women are when you see them in their true
colors! When you meet them in society it seems as if there were
something in them, but there's nothing, nothing, nothing! No, don't
marry, my dear fellow; don't marry!" concluded Prince Andrew.

"It seems funny to me," said Pierre, "that you, you should
consider yourself incapable and your life a spoiled life. You have
everything before you, everything. And you..."

He did not finish his sentence, but his tone showed how highly he
thought of his friend and how much he expected of him in the future.

"How can he talk like that?" thought Pierre. He considered his
friend a model of perfection because Prince Andrew possessed in the
highest degree just the very qualities Pierre lacked, and which
might be best described as strength of will. Pierre was always
astonished at Prince Andrew's calm manner of treating everybody, his
extraordinary memory, his extensive reading (he had read everything,
knew everything, and had an opinion about everything), but above all
at his capacity for work and study. And if Pierre was often struck
by Andrew's lack of capacity for philosophical meditation (to which he
himself was particularly addicted), he regarded even this not as a
defect but as a sign of strength.

Even in the best, most friendly and simplest relations of life,
praise and commendation are essential, just as grease is necessary
to wheels that they may run smoothly.

"My part is played out," said Prince Andrew. "What's the use of
talking about me? Let us talk about you," he added after a silence,
smiling at his reassuring thoughts.

That smile was immediately reflected on Pierre's face.

"But what is there to say about me?" said Pierre, his face
relaxing into a careless, merry smile. "What am I? An illegitimate
son!" He suddenly blushed crimson, and it was plain that he had made a
great effort to say this. "Without a name and without means... And
it really..." But he did not say what "it really" was. "For the
present I am free and am all right. Only I haven't the least idea what
I am to do; I wanted to consult you seriously."

Prince Andrew looked kindly at him, yet his glance--friendly and
affectionate as it was--expressed a sense of his own superiority.

"I am fond of you, especially as you are the one live man among
our whole set. Yes, you're all right! Choose what you will; it's all
the same. You'll be all right anywhere. But look here: give up
visiting those Kuragins and leading that sort of life. It suits you so
badly--all this debauchery, dissipation, and the rest of it!"

"What would you have, my dear fellow?" answered Pierre, shrugging
his shoulders. "Women, my dear fellow; women!"

"I don't understand it," replied Prince Andrew. "Women who are comme
il faut, that's a different matter; but the Kuragins' set of women,
'women and wine' I don't understand!"

Pierre was staying at Prince Vasili Kuragin's and sharing the
dissipated life of his son Anatole, the son whom they were planning to
reform by marrying him to Prince Andrew's sister.

"Do you know?" said Pierre, as if suddenly struck by a happy
thought, "seriously, I have long been thinking of it.... Leading
such a life I can't decide or think properly about anything. One's
head aches, and one spends all one's money. He asked me for tonight,
but I won't go."

"You give me your word of honor not to go?"

"On my honor!"





CHAPTER IX


It was past one o'clock when Pierre left his friend. It was a
cloudless, northern, summer night. Pierre took an open cab intending
to drive straight home. But the nearer he drew to the house the more
he felt the impossibility of going to sleep on such a night. It was
light enough to see a long way in the deserted street and it seemed
more like morning or evening than night. On the way Pierre
remembered that Anatole Kuragin was expecting the usual set for
cards that evening, after which there was generally a drinking bout,
finishing with visits of a kind Pierre was very fond of.

"I should like to go to Kuragin's," thought he.

But he immediately recalled his promise to Prince Andrew not to go
there. Then, as happens to people of weak character, he desired so
passionately once more to enjoy that dissipation he was so
accustomed to that he decided to go. The thought immediately
occurred to him that his promise to Prince Andrew was of no account,
because before he gave it he had already promised Prince Anatole to
come to his gathering; "besides," thought he, "all such 'words of
honor' are conventional things with no definite meaning, especially if
one considers that by tomorrow one may be dead, or something so
extraordinary may happen to one that honor and dishonor will be all
the same!" Pierre often indulged in reflections of this sort,
nullifying all his decisions and intentions. He went to Kuragin's.

Reaching the large house near the Horse Guards' barracks, in which
Anatole lived, Pierre entered the lighted porch, ascended the
stairs, and went in at the open door. There was no one in the
anteroom; empty bottles, cloaks, and overshoes were lying about; there
was a smell of alcohol, and sounds of voices and shouting in the
distance.

Cards and supper were over, but the visitors had not yet
dispersed. Pierre threw off his cloak and entered the first room, in
which were the remains of supper. A footman, thinking no one saw
him, was drinking on the sly what was left in the glasses. From the
third room came sounds of laughter, the shouting of familiar voices,
the growling of a bear, and general commotion. Some eight or nine
young men were crowding anxiously round an open window. Three others
were romping with a young bear, one pulling him by the chain and
trying to set him at the others.

"I bet a hundred on Stevens!" shouted one.

"Mind, no holding on!" cried another.

"I bet on Dolokhov!" cried a third. "Kuragin, you part our hands."

"There, leave Bruin alone; here's a bet on."

"At one draught, or he loses!" shouted a fourth.

"Jacob, bring a bottle!" shouted the host, a tall, handsome fellow
who stood in the midst of the group, without a coat, and with his fine
linen shirt unfastened in front. "Wait a bit, you fellows.... Here
is Petya! Good man!" cried he, addressing Pierre.

Another voice, from a man of medium height with clear blue eyes,
particularly striking among all these drunken voices by its sober
ring, cried from the window: "Come here; part the bets!" This was
Dolokhov, an officer of the Semenov regiment, a notorious gambler
and duelist, who was living with Anatole. Pierre smiled, looking about
him merrily.

"I don't understand. What's it all about?"

"Wait a bit, he is not drunk yet! A bottle here," said Anatole,
taking a glass from the table he went up to Pierre.

"First of all you must drink!"

Pierre drank one glass after another, looking from under his brows
at the tipsy guests who were again crowding round the window, and
listening to their chatter. Anatole kept on refilling Pierre's glass
while explaining that Dolokhov was betting with Stevens, an English
naval officer, that he would drink a bottle of rum sitting on the
outer ledge of the third floor window with his legs hanging out.

"Go on, you must drink it all," said Anatole, giving Pierre the last
glass, "or I won't let you go!"

"No, I won't," said Pierre, pushing Anatole aside, and he went up to
the window.

Dolokhov was holding the Englishman's hand and clearly and
distinctly repeating the terms of the bet, addressing himself
particularly to Anatole and Pierre.

Dolokhov was of medium height, with curly hair and light-blue
eyes. He was about twenty-five. Like all infantry officers he wore
no mustache, so that his mouth, the most striking feature of his face,
was clearly seen. The lines of that mouth were remarkably finely
curved. The middle of the upper lip formed a sharp wedge and closed
firmly on the firm lower one, and something like two distinct smiles
played continually round the two corners of the mouth; this,
together with the resolute, insolent intelligence of his eyes,
produced an effect which made it impossible not to notice his face.
Dolokhov was a man of small means and no connections. Yet, though
Anatole spent tens of thousands of rubles, Dolokhov lived with him and
had placed himself on such a footing that all who knew them, including
Anatole himself, respected him more than they did Anatole. Dolokhov
could play all games and nearly always won. However much he drank,
he never lost his clearheadedness. Both Kuragin and Dolokhov were at
that time notorious among the rakes and scapegraces of Petersburg.

The bottle of rum was brought. The window frame which prevented
anyone from sitting on the outer sill was being forced out by two
footmen, who were evidently flurried and intimidated by the directions
and shouts of the gentlemen around.

Anatole with his swaggering air strode up to the window. He wanted
to smash something. Pushing away the footmen he tugged at the frame,
but could not move it. He smashed a pane.

"You have a try, Hercules," said he, turning to Pierre.

Pierre seized the crossbeam, tugged, and wrenched the oak frame
out with a crash.

"Take it right out, or they'll think I'm holding on," said Dolokhov.

"Is the Englishman bragging?... Eh? Is it all right?" said Anatole.

"First-rate," said Pierre, looking at Dolokhov, who with a bottle of
rum in his hand was approaching the window, from which the light of
the sky, the dawn merging with the afterglow of sunset, was visible.

Dolokhov, the bottle of rum still in his hand, jumped onto the
window sill. "Listen!" cried he, standing there and addressing those
in the room. All were silent.

"I bet fifty imperials"--he spoke French that the Englishman might
understand him, but he did, not speak it very well--"I bet fifty
imperials... or do you wish to make it a hundred?" added he,
addressing the Englishman.

"No, fifty," replied the latter.

"All right. Fifty imperials... that I will drink a whole bottle of
rum without taking it from my mouth, sitting outside the window on
this spot" (he stooped and pointed to the sloping ledge outside the
window) "and without holding on to anything. Is that right?"

"Quite right," said the Englishman.

Anatole turned to the Englishman and taking him by one of the
buttons of his coat and looking down at him--the Englishman was short-
began repeating the terms of the wager to him in English.

"Wait!" cried Dolokhov, hammering with the bottle on the window sill
to attract attention. "Wait a bit, Kuragin. Listen! If anyone else
does the same, I will pay him a hundred imperials. Do you understand?"

The Englishman nodded, but gave no indication whether he intended to
accept this challenge or not. Anatole did not release him, and
though he kept nodding to show that he understood, Anatole went on
translating Dolokhov's words into English. A thin young lad, an hussar
of the Life Guards, who had been losing that evening, climbed on the
window sill, leaned over, and looked down.

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" he muttered, looking down from the window at the
stones of the pavement.

"Shut up!" cried Dolokhov, pushing him away from the window. The lad
jumped awkwardly back into the room, tripping over his spurs.

Placing the bottle on the window sill where he could reach it
easily, Dolokhov climbed carefully and slowly through the window and
lowered his legs. Pressing against both sides of the window, he
adjusted himself on his seat, lowered his hands, moved a little to the
right and then to the left, and took up the bottle. Anatole brought
two candles and placed them on the window sill, though it was
already quite light. Dolokhov's back in his white shirt, and his curly
head, were lit up from both sides. Everyone crowded to the window, the
Englishman in front. Pierre stood smiling but silent. One man, older
than the others present, suddenly pushed forward with a scared and
angry look and wanted to seize hold of Dolokhov's shirt.

"I say, this is folly! He'll be killed," said this more sensible
man.

Anatole stopped him.

"Don't touch him! You'll startle him and then he'll be killed.
Eh?... What then?... Eh?"

Dolokhov turned round and, again holding on with both hands,
arranged himself on his seat.

"If anyone comes meddling again," said he, emitting the words
separately through his thin compressed lips, "I will throw him down
there. Now then!"

Saying this he again turned round, dropped his hands, took the
bottle and lifted it to his lips, threw back his head, and raised
his free hand to balance himself. One of the footmen who had stooped
to pick up some broken glass remained in that position without
taking his eyes from the window and from Dolokhov's back. Anatole
stood erect with staring eyes. The Englishman looked on sideways,
pursing up his lips. The man who had wished to stop the affair ran
to a corner of the room and threw himself on a sofa with his face to
the wall. Pierre hid his face, from which a faint smile forgot to fade
though his features now expressed horror and fear. All were still.
Pierre took his hands from his eyes. Dolokhov still sat in the same
position, only his head was thrown further back till his curly hair
touched his shirt collar, and the hand holding the bottle was lifted
higher and higher and trembled with the effort. The bottle was
emptying perceptibly and rising still higher and his head tilting
yet further back. "Why is it so long?" thought Pierre. It seemed to
him that more than half an hour had elapsed. Suddenly Dolokhov made
a backward movement with his spine, and his arm trembled nervously;
this was sufficient to cause his whole body to slip as he sat on the
sloping ledge. As he began slipping down, his head and arm wavered
still more with the strain. One hand moved as if to clutch the
window sill, but refrained from touching it. Pierre again covered
his eyes and thought he would never never them again. Suddenly he
was aware of a stir all around. He looked up: Dolokhov was standing on
the window sill, with a pale but radiant face.

"It's empty."

He threw the bottle to the Englishman, who caught it neatly.
Dolokhov jumped down. He smelt strongly of rum.

"Well done!... Fine fellow!... There's a bet for you!... Devil
take you!" came from different sides.

The Englishman took out his purse and began counting out the
money. Dolokhov stood frowning and did not speak. Pierre jumped upon
the window sill.

"Gentlemen, who wishes to bet with me? I'll do the same thing!" he
suddenly cried. "Even without a bet, there! Tell them to bring me a
bottle. I'll do it.... Bring a bottle!"

"Let him do it, let him do it," said Dolokhov, smiling.

"What next? Have you gone mad?... No one would let you!... Why,
you go giddy even on a staircase," exclaimed several voices.

"I'll drink it! Let's have a bottle of rum!" shouted Pierre, banging
the table with a determined and drunken gesture and preparing to climb
out of the window.

They seized him by his arms; but he was so strong that everyone
who touched him was sent flying.

"No, you'll never manage him that way," said Anatole. "Wait a bit
and I'll get round him.... Listen! I'll take your bet tomorrow, but
now we are all going to ----'s."

"Come on then," cried Pierre. "Come on!... And we'll take Bruin with
us."

And he caught the bear, took it in his arms, lifted it from the
ground, and began dancing round the room with it.





CHAPTER X


Prince Vasili kept the promise he had given to Princess
Drubetskaya who had spoken to him on behalf of her only son Boris on
the evening of Anna Pavlovna's soiree. The matter was mentioned to the
Emperor, an exception made, and Boris transferred into the regiment of
Semenov Guards with the rank of cornet. He received, however, no
appointment to Kutuzov's staff despite all Anna Mikhaylovna's
endeavors and entreaties. Soon after Anna Pavlovna's reception Anna
Mikhaylovna returned to Moscow and went straight to her rich
relations, the Rostovs, with whom she stayed when in the town and
where her darling Bory, who had only just entered a regiment
of the line and was being at once transferred to the Guards as a
cornet, had been educated from childhood and lived for years at a
time. The Guards had already left Petersburg on the tenth of August,
and her son, who had remained in Moscow for his equipment, was to join
them on the march to Radzivilov.

It was St. Natalia's day and the name day of two of the Rostovs--the
mother and the youngest daughter--both named Nataly. Ever since the
morning, carriages with six horses had been coming and going
continually, bringing visitors to the Countess Rostova's big house
on the Povarskaya, so well known to all Moscow. The countess herself
and her handsome eldest daughter were in the drawing-room with the
visitors who came to congratulate, and who constantly succeeded one
another in relays.

The countess was a woman of about forty-five, with a thin Oriental
type of face, evidently worn out with childbearing--she had had
twelve. A languor of motion and speech, resulting from weakness,
gave her a distinguished air which inspired respect. Princess Anna
Mikhaylovna Drubetskaya, who as a member of the household was also
seated in the drawing room, helped to receive and entertain the
visitors. The young people were in one of the inner rooms, not
considering it necessary to take part in receiving the visitors. The
count met the guests and saw them off, inviting them all to dinner.

"I am very, very grateful to you, mon cher," or "ma chere"--he
called everyone without exception and without the slightest
variation in his tone, "my dear," whether they were above or below him
in rank--"I thank you for myself and for our two dear ones whose
name day we are keeping. But mind you come to dinner or I shall be
offended, ma chere! On behalf of the whole family I beg you to come,
mon cher!" These words he repeated to everyone without exception or
variation, and with the same expression on his full, cheerful,
clean-shaven face, the same firm pressure of the hand and the same
quick, repeated bows. As soon as he had seen a visitor off he returned
to one of those who were still in the drawing room, drew a chair
toward him or her, and jauntily spreading out his legs and putting his
hands on his knees with the air of a man who enjoys life and knows how
to live, he swayed to and fro with dignity, offered surmises about the
weather, or touched on questions of health, sometimes in Russian and
sometimes in very bad but self-confident French; then again, like a
man weary but unflinching in the fulfillment of duty, he rose to see
some visitors off and, stroking his scanty gray hairs over his bald
patch, also asked them to dinner. Sometimes on his way back from the
anteroom he would pass through the conservatory and pantry into the
large marble dining hall, where tables were being set out for eighty
people; and looking at the footmen, who were bringing in silver and
china, moving tables, and unfolding damask table linen, he would
call Dmitri Vasilevich, a man of good family and the manager of all
his affairs, and while looking with pleasure at the enormous table
would say: "Well, Dmitri, you'll see that things are all as they
should be? That's right! The great thing is the serving, that's it."
And with a complacent sigh he would return to the drawing room.

"Marya Lvovna Karagina and her daughter!" announced the countess'
gigantic footman in his bass voice, entering the drawing room. The
countess reflected a moment and took a pinch from a gold snuffbox with
her husband's portrait on it.

"I'm quite worn out by these callers. However, I'll see her and no
more. She is so affected. Ask her in," she said to the footman in a
sad voice, as if saying: "Very well, finish me off."

A tall, stout, and proud-looking woman, with a round-faced smiling
daughter, entered the drawing room, their dresses rustling.

"Dear Countess, what an age... She has been laid up, poor child...
at the Razumovski's ball... and Countess Apraksina... I was so
delighted..." came the sounds of animated feminine voices,
interrupting one another and mingling with the rustling of dresses and
the scraping of chairs. Then one of those conversations began which
last out until, at the first pause, the guests rise with a rustle of
dresses and say, "I am so delighted... Mamma's health... and
Countess Apraksina..." and then, again rustling, pass into the
anteroom, put on cloaks or mantles, and drive away. The conversation
was on the chief topic of the day: the illness of the wealthy and
celebrated beau of Catherine's day, Count Bezukhov, and about his
illegitimate son Pierre, the one who had behaved so improperly at Anna
Pavlovna's reception.

"I am so sorry for the poor count," said the visitor. "He is in such
bad health, and now this vexation about his son is enough to kill
him!"

"What is that?" asked the countess as if she did not know what the
visitor alluded to, though she had already heard about the cause of
Count Bezukhov's distress some fifteen times.

"That's what comes of a modern education," exclaimed the visitor.
"It seems that while he was abroad this young man was allowed to do as
he liked, now in Petersburg I hear he has been doing such terrible
things that he has been expelled by the police."

"You don't say so!" replied the countess.

"He chose his friends badly," interposed Anna Mikhaylovna. "Prince
Vasili's son, he, and a certain Dolokhov have, it is said, been up
to heaven only knows what! And they have had to suffer for it.
Dolokhov has been degraded to the ranks and Bezukhov's son sent back
to Moscow. Anatole Kuragin's father managed somehow to get his son's
affair hushed up, but even he was ordered out of Petersburg."

"But what have they been up to?" asked the countess.

"They are regular brigands, especially Dolokhov," replied the
visitor. "He is a son of Marya Ivanovna Dolokhova, such a worthy
woman, but there, just fancy! Those three got hold of a bear
somewhere, put it in a carriage, and set off with it to visit some
actresses! The police tried to interfere, and what did the young men
do? They tied a policeman and the bear back to back and put the bear
into the Moyka Canal. And there was the bear swimming about with the
policeman on his back!"

"What a nice figure the policeman must have cut, my dear!" shouted
the count, dying with laughter.

"Oh, how dreadful! How can you laugh at it, Count?"

Yet the ladies themselves could not help laughing.

"It was all they could do to rescue the poor man," continued the
visitor. "And to think it is Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov's son who
amuses himself in this sensible manner! And he was said to be so
well educated and clever. This is all that his foreign education has
done for him! I hope that here in Moscow no one will receive him, in
spite of his money. They wanted to introduce him to me, but I quite
declined: I have my daughters to consider."

"Why do you say this young man is so rich?" asked the countess,
turning away from the girls, who at once assumed an air of
inattention. "His children are all illegitimate. I think Pierre also
is illegitimate."

The visitor made a gesture with her hand.

"I should think he has a score of them."

Princess Anna Mikhaylovna intervened in the conversation,
evidently wishing to show her connections and knowledge of what went
on in society.

"The fact of the matter is," said she significantly, and also in a
half whisper, "everyone knows Count Cyril's reputation.... He has lost
count of his children, but this Pierre was his favorite."

"How handsome the old man still was only a year ago!" remarked the
countess. "I have never seen a handsomer man."

"He is very much altered now," said Anna Mikhaylovna. "Well, as I
was saying, Prince Vasili is the next heir through his wife, but the
count is very fond of Pierre, looked after his education, and wrote to
the Emperor about him; so that in the case of his death--and he is
so ill that he may die at any moment, and Dr. Lorrain has come from
Petersburg--no one knows who will inherit his immense fortune,
Pierre or Prince Vasili. Forty thousand serfs and millions of
rubles! I know it all very well for Prince Vasili told me himself.
Besides, Cyril Vladimirovich is my mother's second cousin. He's also
my Bory's godfather," she added, as if she attached no importance at
all to the fact.

"Prince Vasili arrived in Moscow yesterday. I hear he has come on
some inspection business," remarked the visitor.

"Yes, but between ourselves," said the princess, "that is a
pretext. The fact is he has come to see Count Cyril Vladimirovich,
hearing how ill he is."

"But do you know, my dear, that was a capital joke," said the count;
and seeing that the elder visitor was not listening, he turned to
the young ladies. "I can just imagine what a funny figure that
policeman cut!"

And as he waved his arms to impersonate the policeman, his portly
form again shook with a deep ringing laugh, the laugh of one who
always eats well and, in particular, drinks well. "So do come and dine
with us!" he said.





CHAPTER XI


Silence ensued. The countess looked at her callers, smiling affably,
but not concealing the fact that she would not be distressed if they
now rose and took their leave. The visitor's daughter was already
smoothing down her dress with an inquiring look at her mother, when
suddenly from the next room were heard the footsteps of boys and girls
running to the door and the noise of a chair falling over, and a
girl of thirteen, hiding something in the folds of her short muslin
frock, darted in and stopped short in the middle of the room. It was
evident that she had not intended her flight to bring her so far.
Behind her in the doorway appeared a student with a crimson coat
collar, an officer of the Guards, a girl of fifteen, and a plump
rosy-faced boy in a short jacket.

The count jumped up and, swaying from side to side, spread his
arms wide and threw them round the little girl who had run in.

"Ah, here she is!" he exclaimed laughing. "My pet, whose name day it
is. My dear pet!"

"Ma chere, there is a time for everything," said the countess with
feigned severity. "You spoil her, Ilya," she added, turning to her
husband.

"How do you do, my dear? I wish you many happy returns of your
name day," said the visitor. "What a charming child," she added,
addressing the mother.

This black-eyed, wide-mouthed girl, not pretty but full of life-
with childish bare shoulders which after her run heaved and shook
her bodice, with black curls tossed backward, thin bare arms, little
legs in lace-frilled drawers, and feet in low slippers--was just at
that charming age when a girl is no longer a child, though the child
is not yet a young woman. Escaping from her father she ran to hide her
flushed face in the lace of her mother's mantilla--not paying the
least attention to her severe remark--and began to laugh. She laughed,
and in fragmentary sentences tried to explain about a doll which she
produced from the folds of her frock.

"Do you see?... My doll... Mimi... You see..." was all Natasha
managed to utter (to her everything seemed funny). She leaned
against her mother and burst into such a loud, ringing fit of laughter
that even the prim visitor could not help joining in.

"Now then, go away and take your monstrosity with you," said the
mother, pushing away her daughter with pretended sternness, and
turning to the visitor she added: "She is my youngest girl."

Natasha, raising her face for a moment from her mother's mantilla,
glanced up at her through tears of laughter, and again hid her face.

The visitor, compelled to look on at this family scene, thought it
necessary to take some part in it.

"Tell me, my dear," said she to Natasha, "is Mimi a relation of
yours? A daughter, I suppose?"

Natasha did not like the visitor's tone of condescension to childish
things. She did not reply, but looked at her seriously.

Meanwhile the younger generation: Boris, the officer, Anna
Mikhaylovna's son; Nicholas, the undergraduate, the count's eldest
son; Sonya, the count's fifteen-year-old niece, and little Petya,
his youngest boy, had all settled down in the drawing room and were
obviously trying to restrain within the bounds of decorum the
excitement and mirth that shone in all their faces. Evidently in the
back rooms, from which they had dashed out so impetuously, the
conversation had been more amusing than the drawing-room talk of
society scandals, the weather, and Countess Apraksina. Now and then
they glanced at one another, hardly able to suppress their laughter.

The two young men, the student and the officer, friends from
childhood, were of the same age and both handsome fellows, though
not alike. Boris was tall and fair, and his calm and handsome face had
regular, delicate features. Nicholas was short with curly hair and
an open expression. Dark hairs were already showing on his upper
lip, and his whole face expressed impetuosity and enthusiasm. Nicholas
blushed when he entered the drawing room. He evidently tried to find
something to say, but failed. Boris on the contrary at once found
his footing, and related quietly and humorously how he had know that
doll Mimi when she was still quite a young lady, before her nose was
broken; how she had aged during the five years he had known her, and
how her head had cracked right across the skull. Having said this he
glanced at Natasha. She turned away from him and glanced at her
younger brother, who was screwing up his eyes and shaking with
suppressed laughter, and unable to control herself any longer, she
jumped up and rushed from the room as fast as her nimble little feet
would carry her. Boris did not laugh.

"You were meaning to go out, weren't you, Mamma? Do you want the
carriage?" he asked his mother with a smile.

"Yes, yes, go and tell them to get it ready," she answered,
returning his smile.

Boris quietly left the room and went in search of Natasha. The plump
boy ran after them angrily, as if vexed that their program had been
disturbed.





CHAPTER XII


The only young people remaining in the drawing room, not counting
the young lady visitor and the countess' eldest daughter (who was four
years older than her sister and behaved already like a grown-up
person), were Nicholas and Sonya, the niece. Sonya was a slender
little brunette with a tender look in her eyes which were veiled by
long lashes, thick black plaits coiling twice round her head, and a
tawny tint in her complexion and especially in the color of her
slender but graceful and muscular arms and neck. By the grace of her
movements, by the softness and flexibility of her small limbs, and
by a certain coyness and reserve of manner, she reminded one of a
pretty, half-grown kitten which promises to become a beautiful
little cat. She evidently considered it proper to show an interest
in the general conversation by smiling, but in spite of herself her
eyes under their thick long lashes watched her cousin who was going to
join the army, with such passionate girlish adoration that her smile
could not for a single instant impose upon anyone, and it was clear
that the kitten had settled down only to spring up with more energy
and again play with her cousin as soon as they too could, like Natasha
and Boris, escape from the drawing room.

"Ah yes, my dear," said the count, addressing the visitor and
pointing to Nicholas, "his friend Boris has become an officer, and
so for friendship's sake he is leaving the university and me, his
old father, and entering the military service, my dear. And there
was a place and everything waiting for him in the Archives Department!
Isn't that friendship?" remarked the count in an inquiring tone.

"But they say that war has been declared," replied the visitor.

"They've been saying so a long while," said the count, "and
they'll say so again and again, and that will be the end of it. My
dear, there's friendship for you," he repeated. "He's joining the
hussars."

The visitor, not knowing what to say, shook her head.

"It's not at all from friendship," declared Nicholas, flaring up and
turning away as if from a shameful aspersion. "It is not from
friendship at all; I simply feel that the army is my vocation."

He glanced at his cousin and the young lady visitor; and they were
both regarding him with a smile of approbation.

"Schubert, the colonel of the Pavlograd Hussars, is dining with us
today. He has been here on leave and is taking Nicholas back with him.
It can't be helped!" said the count, shrugging his shoulders and
speaking playfully of a matter that evidently distressed him.

"I have already told you, Papa," said his son, "that if you don't
wish to let me go, I'll stay. But I know I am no use anywhere except
in the army; I am not a diplomat or a government clerk.--I don't
know how to hide what I feel." As he spoke he kept glancing with the
flirtatiousness of a handsome youth at Sonya and the young lady
visitor.

The little kitten, feasting her eyes on him, seemed ready at any
moment to start her gambols again and display her kittenish nature.

"All right, all right!" said the old count. "He always flares up!
This Buonaparte has turned all their heads; they all think of how he
rose from an ensign and became Emperor. Well, well, God grant it,"
he added, not noticing his visitor's sarcastic smile.

The elders began talking about Bonaparte. Julie Karagina turned to
young Rostov.

"What a pity you weren't at the Arkharovs' on Thursday. It was so
dull without you," said she, giving him a tender smile.

The young man, flattered, sat down nearer to her with a coquettish
smile, and engaged the smiling Julie in a confidential conversation
without at all noticing that his involuntary smile had stabbed the
heart of Sonya, who blushed and smiled unnaturally. In the midst of
his talk he glanced round at her. She gave him a passionately angry
glance, and hardly able to restrain her tears and maintain the
artificial smile on her lips, she got up and left the room. All
Nicholas' animation vanished. He waited for the first pause in the
conversation, and then with a distressed face left the room to find
Sonya.

"How plainly all these young people wear their hearts on their
sleeves!" said Anna Mikhaylovna, pointing to Nicholas as he went
out. "Cousinage--dangereux voisinage;"* she added.


*Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood.


"Yes," said the countess when the brightness these young people
had brought into the room had vanished; and as if answering a question
no one had put but which was always in her mind, "and how much
suffering, how much anxiety one has had to go through that we might
rejoice in them now! And yet really the anxiety is greater now than
the joy. One is always, always anxious! Especially just at this age,
so dangerous both for girls and boys."

"It all depends on the bringing up," remarked the visitor.

"Yes, you're quite right," continued the countess. "Till now I
have always, thank God, been my children's friend and had their full
confidence," said she, repeating the mistake of so many parents who
imagine that their children have no secrets from them. "I know I shall
always be my daughters' first confidante, and that if Nicholas, with
his impulsive nature, does get into mischief (a boy can't help it), he
will all the same never be like those Petersburg young men."

"Yes, they are splendid, splendid youngsters," chimed in the
count, who always solved questions that seemed to him perplexing by
deciding that everything was splendid. "Just fancy: wants to be an
hussar. What's one to do, my dear?"

"What a charming creature your younger girl is," said the visitor;
"a little volcano!"

"Yes, a regular volcano," said the count. "Takes after me! And
what a voice she has; though she's my daughter, I tell the truth
when I say she'll be a singer, a second Salomoni! We have engaged an
Italian to give her lessons."

"Isn't she too young? I have heard that it harms the voice to
train it at that age."

"Oh no, not at all too young!" replied the count. "Why, our
mothers used to be married at twelve or thirteen."

"And she's in love with Boris already. Just fancy!" said the
countess with a gentle smile, looking at Boris' and went on, evidently
concerned with a thought that always occupied her: "Now you see if I
were to be severe with her and to forbid it... goodness knows what
they might be up to on the sly" (she meant that they would be
kissing), "but as it is, I know every word she utters. She will come
running to me of her own accord in the evening and tell me everything.
Perhaps I spoil her, but really that seems the best plan. With her
elder sister I was stricter."

"Yes, I was brought up quite differently," remarked the handsome
elder daughter, Countess Vera, with a smile.

But the smile did not enhance Vera's beauty as smiles generally
do; on the contrary it gave her an unnatural, and therefore
unpleasant, expression. Vera was good-looking, not at all stupid,
quick at learning, was well brought up, and had a pleasant voice; what
she said was true and appropriate, yet, strange to say, everyone-
the visitors and countess alike--turned to look at her as if wondering
why she had said it, and they all felt awkward.

"People are always too clever with their eldest children and try
to make something exceptional of them," said the visitor.

"What's the good of denying it, my dear? Our dear countess was too
clever with Vera," said the count. "Well, what of that? She's turned
out splendidly all the same," he added, winking at Vera.

The guests got up and took their leave, promising to return to
dinner.

"What manners! I thought they would never go," said the countess,
when she had seen her guests out.





CHAPTER XIII


When Natasha ran out of the drawing room she only went as far as the
conservatory. There she paused and stood listening to the conversation
in the drawing room, waiting for Boris to come out. She was already
growing impatient, and stamped her foot, ready to cry at his not
coming at once, when she heard the young man's discreet steps
approaching neither quickly nor slowly. At this Natasha dashed swiftly
among the flower tubs and hid there.

Boris paused in the middle of the room, looked round, brushed a
little dust from the sleeve of his uniform, and going up to a mirror
examined his handsome face. Natasha, very still, peered out from her
ambush, waiting to see what he would do. He stood a little while
before the glass, smiled, and walked toward the other door. Natasha
was about to call him but changed her mind. "Let him look for me,"
thought she. Hardly had Boris gone than Sonya, flushed, in tears,
and muttering angrily, came in at the other door. Natasha checked
her first impulse to run out to her, and remained in her hiding place,
watching--as under an invisible cap--to see what went on in the world.
She was experiencing a new and peculiar pleasure. Sonya, muttering
to herself, kept looking round toward the drawing-room door. It opened
and Nicholas came in.

"Sonya, what is the matter with you? How can you?" said he,
running up to her.

"It's nothing, nothing; leave me alone!" sobbed Sonya.

"Ah, I know what it is."

"Well, if you do, so much the better, and you can go back to her!"

"So-o-onya! Look here! How can you torture me and yourself like
that, for a mere fancy?" said Nicholas taking her hand.

Sonya did not pull it away, and left off crying. Natasha, not
stirring and scarcely breathing, watched from her ambush with
sparkling eyes. "What will happen now?" thought she.

"Sonya! What is anyone in the world to me? You alone are
everything!" said Nicholas. "And I will prove it to you."

"I don't like you to talk like that."

"Well, then, I won't; only forgive me, Sonya!" He drew her to him
and kissed her.

"Oh, how nice," thought Natasha; and when Sonya and Nicholas had
gone out of the conservatory she followed and called Boris to her.

"Boris, come here," said she with a sly and significant look. "I
have something to tell you. Here, here!" and she led him into the
conservatory to the place among the tubs where she had been hiding.

Boris followed her, smiling.

"What is the something?" asked he.

She grew confused, glanced round, and, seeing the doll she had
thrown down on one of the tubs, picked it up.

"Kiss the doll," said she.

Boris looked attentively and kindly at her eager face, but did not
reply.

"Don't you want to? Well, then, come here," said she, and went
further in among the plants and threw down the doll. "Closer, closer!"
she whispered.

She caught the young officer by his cuffs, and a look of solemnity
and fear appeared on her flushed face.

"And me? Would you like to kiss me?" she whispered almost inaudibly,
glancing up at him from under her brows, smiling, and almost crying
from excitement.

Boris blushed.

"How funny you are!" he said, bending down to her and blushing still
more, but he waited and did nothing.

Suddenly she jumped up onto a tub to be higher than he, embraced him
so that both her slender bare arms clasped him above his neck, and,
tossing back her hair, kissed him full on the lips.

Then she slipped down among the flowerpots on the other side of
the tubs and stood, hanging her head.

"Natasha," he said, "you know that I love you, but..."

"You are in love with me?" Natasha broke in.

"Yes, I am, but please don't let us do like that.... In another four
years... then I will ask for your hand."

Natasha considered.

"Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen," she counted on her slender
little fingers. "All right! Then it's settled?"

A smile of joy and satisfaction lit up her eager face.

"Settled!" replied Boris.

"Forever?" said the little girl. "Till death itself?"

She took his arm and with a happy face went with him into the
adjoining sitting room.





CHAPTER XIV


After receiving her visitors, the countess was so tired that she
gave orders to admit no more, but the porter was told to be sure to
invite to dinner all who came "to congratulate." The countess wished
to have a tete-a-tete talk with the friend of her childhood,
Princess Anna Mikhaylovna, whom she had not seen properly since she
returned from Petersburg. Anna Mikhaylovna, with her tear-worn but
pleasant face, drew her chair nearer to that of the countess.

"With you I will be quite frank," said Anna Mikhaylovna. "There
are not many left of us old friends! That's why I so value your
friendship."

Anna Mikhaylovna looked at Vera and paused. The countess pressed her
friend's hand.

"Vera," she said to her eldest daughter who was evidently not a
favorite, "how is it you have so little tact? Don't you see you are
not wanted here? Go to the other girls, or..."

The handsome Vera smiled contemptuously but did not seem at all
hurt.

"If you had told me sooner, Mamma, I would have gone," she replied
as she rose to go to her own room.

But as she passed the sitting room she noticed two couples
sitting, one pair at each window. She stopped and smiled scornfully.
Sonya was sitting close to Nicholas who was copying out some verses
for her, the first he had ever written. Boris and Natasha were at
the other window and ceased talking when Vera entered. Sonya and
Natasha looked at Vera with guilty, happy faces.

It was pleasant and touching to see these little girls in love;
but apparently the sight of them roused no pleasant feeling in Vera.

"How often have I asked you not to take my things?" she said. "You
have a room of your own," and she took the inkstand from Nicholas.

"In a minute, in a minute," he said, dipping his pen.

"You always manage to do things at the wrong time," continued
Vera. "You came rushing into the drawing room so that everyone felt
ashamed of you."

Though what she said was quite just, perhaps for that very reason no
one replied, and the four simply looked at one another. She lingered
in the room with the inkstand in her hand.

"And at your age what secrets can there be between Natasha and
Boris, or between you two? It's all nonsense!"

"Now, Vera, what does it matter to you?" said Natasha in defense,
speaking very gently.

She seemed that day to be more than ever kind and affectionate to
everyone.

"Very silly," said Vera. "I am ashamed of you. Secrets indeed!"

"All have secrets of their own," answered Natasha, getting warmer.
"We don't interfere with you and Berg."

"I should think not," said Vera, "because there can never be
anything wrong in my behavior. But I'll just tell Mamma how you are
behaving with Boris."

"Natalya Ilynichna behaves very well to me," remarked Boris. "I have
nothing to complain of."

"Don't, Boris! You are such a diplomat that it is really
tiresome," said Natasha in a mortified voice that trembled slightly.
(She used the word "diplomat," which was just then much in vogue among
the children, in the special sense they attached to it.) "Why does she
bother me?" And she added, turning to Vera, "You'll never understand
it, because you've never loved anyone. You have no heart! You are a
Madame de Genlis and nothing more" (this nickname, bestowed on Vera by
Nicholas, was considered very stinging), "and your greatest pleasure
is to be unpleasant to people! Go and flirt with Berg as much as you
please," she finished quickly.

"I shall at any rate not run after a young man before visitors..."

"Well, now you've done what you wanted," put in Nicholas--"said
unpleasant things to everyone and upset them. Let's go to the
nursery."

All four, like a flock of scared birds, got up and left the room.

"The unpleasant things were said to me," remarked Vera, "I said none
to anyone."

"Madame de Genlis! Madame de Genlis!" shouted laughing voices
through the door.

The handsome Vera, who produced such an irritating and unpleasant
effect on everyone, smiled and, evidently unmoved by what had been
said to her, went to the looking glass and arranged her hair and
scarf. Looking at her own handsome face she seemed to become still
colder and calmer.


In the drawing room the conversation was still going on.

"Ah, my dear," said the countess, "my life is not all roses
either. Don't I know that at the rate we are living our means won't
last long? It's all the Club and his easygoing nature. Even in the
country do we get any rest? Theatricals, hunting, and heaven knows
what besides! But don't let's talk about me; tell me how you managed
everything. I often wonder at you, Annette--how at your age you can
rush off alone in a carriage to Moscow, to Petersburg, to those
ministers and great people, and know how to deal with them all! It's
quite astonishing. How did you get things settled? I couldn't possibly
do it."

"Ah, my love," answered Anna Mikhaylovna, "God grant you never
know what it is to be left a widow without means and with a son you
love to distraction! One learns many things then," she added with a
certain pride. "That lawsuit taught me much. When I want to see one of
those big people I write a note: 'Princess So-and-So desires an
interview with So and-So,' and then I take a cab and go myself two,
three, or four times--till I get what I want. I don't mind what they
think of me."

"Well, and to whom did you apply about Bory?" asked the countess.
"You see yours is already an officer in the Guards, while my
Nicholas is going as a cadet. There's no one to interest himself for
him. To whom did you apply?"

"To Prince Vasili. He was so kind. He at once agreed to
everything, and put the matter before the Emperor," said Princess Anna
Mikhaylovna enthusiastically, quite forgetting all the humiliation she
had endured to gain her end.

"Has Prince Vasili aged much?" asked the countess. "I have not
seen him since we acted together at the Rumyantsovs' theatricals. I
expect he has forgotten me. He paid me attentions in those days," said
the countess, with a smile.

"He is just the same as ever," replied Anna Mikhaylovna,
"overflowing with amiability. His position has not turned his head
at all. He said to me, 'I am sorry I can do so little for you, dear
Princess. I am at your command.' Yes, he is a fine fellow and a very
kind relation. But, Nataly, you know my love for my son: I would do
anything for his happiness! And my affairs are in such a bad way
that my position is now a terrible one," continued Anna Mikhaylovna,
sadly, dropping her voice. "My wretched lawsuit takes all I have and
makes no progress. Would you believe it, I have literally not a
penny and don't know how to equip Boris." She took out her
handkerchief and began to cry. "I need five hundred rubles, and have
only one twenty-five-ruble note. I am in such a state.... My only hope
now is in Count Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov. If he will not assist
his godson--you know he is Bory's godfather--and allow him something
for his maintenance, all my trouble will have been thrown away.... I
shall not be able to equip him."

The countess' eyes filled with tears and she pondered in silence.

"I often think, though, perhaps it's a sin," said the princess,
"that here lives Count Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov so rich, all
alone... that tremendous fortune... and what is his life worth? It's a
burden to him, and Bory's life is only just beginning...."

"Surely he will leave something to Boris," said the countess.

"Heaven only knows, my dear! These rich grandees are so selfish.
Still, I will take Boris and go to see him at once, and I shall
speak to him straight out. Let people think what they will of me, it's
really all the same to me when my son's fate is at stake." The
princess rose. "It's now two o'clock and you dine at four. There
will just be time."

And like a practical Petersburg lady who knows how to make the
most of time, Anna Mikhaylovna sent someone to call her son, and
went into the anteroom with him.

"Good-by, my dear," said she to the countess who saw her to the
door, and added in a whisper so that her son should not hear, "Wish me
good luck."

"Are you going to Count Cyril Vladimirovich, my dear?" said the
count coming out from the dining hall into the anteroom, and he added:
"If he is better, ask Pierre to dine with us. He has been to the
house, you know, and danced with the children. Be sure to invite
him, my dear. We will see how Taras distinguishes himself today. He
says Count Orlov never gave such a dinner as ours will be!"





CHAPTER XV

"My dear Boris," said Princess Anna Mikhaylovna to her son as
Countess Rostova's carriage in which they were seated drove over the
straw covered street and turned into the wide courtyard of Count Cyril
Vladimirovich Bezukhov's house. "My dear Boris," said the mother,
drawing her hand from beneath her old mantle and laying it timidly and
tenderly on her son's arm, "be affectionate and attentive to him.
Count Cyril Vladimirovich is your godfather after all, your future
depends on him. Remember that, my dear, and be nice to him, as you
so well know how to be."

"If only I knew that anything besides humiliation would come of
it..." answered her son coldly. "But I have promised and will do it
for your sake."

Although the hall porter saw someone's carriage standing at the
entrance, after scrutinizing the mother and son (who without asking to
be announced had passed straight through the glass porch between the
rows of statues in niches) and looking significantly at the lady's old
cloak, he asked whether they wanted the count or the princesses,
and, hearing that they wished to see the count, said his excellency
was worse today, and that his excellency was not receiving anyone.

"We may as well go back," said the son in French.

"My dear!" exclaimed his mother imploringly, again laying her hand
on his arm as if that touch might soothe or rouse him.

Boris said no more, but looked inquiringly at his mother without
taking off his cloak.

"My friend," said Anna Mikhaylovna in gentle tones, addressing the
hall porter, "I know Count Cyril Vladimirovich is very ill... that's
why I have come... I am a relation. I shall not disturb him, my
friend... I only need see Prince Vasili Sergeevich: he is staying
here, is he not? Please announce me."

The hall porter sullenly pulled a bell that rang upstairs, and
turned away.

"Princess Drubetskaya to see Prince Vasili Sergeevich," he called to
a footman dressed in knee breeches, shoes, and a swallow-tail coat,
who ran downstairs and looked over from the halfway landing.

The mother smoothed the folds of her dyed silk dress before a
large Venetian mirror in the wall, and in her trodden-down shoes
briskly ascended the carpeted stairs.

"My dear," she said to her son, once more stimulating him by a
touch, "you promised me!"

The son, lowering his eyes, followed her quietly.

They entered the large hall, from which one of the doors led to
the apartments assigned to Prince Vasili.

Just as the mother and son, having reached the middle of the hall,
were about to ask their way of an elderly footman who had sprung up as
they entered, the bronze handle of one of the doors turned and
Prince Vasili came out--wearing a velvet coat with a single star on
his breast, as was his custom when at home--taking leave of a
good-looking, dark-haired man. This was the celebrated Petersburg
doctor, Lorrain.

"Then it is certain?" said the prince.

"Prince, humanum est errare,* but..." replied the doctor, swallowing
his r's, and pronouncing the Latin words with a French accent.


*To err is human.


"Very well, very well..."

Seeing Anna Mikhaylovna and her son, Prince Vasili dismissed the
doctor with a bow and approached them silently and with a look of
inquiry. The son noticed that an expression of profound sorrow
suddenly clouded his mother's face, and he smiled slightly.

"Ah, Prince! In what sad circumstances we meet again! And how is our
dear invalid?" said she, as though unaware of the cold offensive
look fixed on her.

Prince Vasili stared at her and at Boris questioningly and
perplexed. Boris bowed politely. Prince Vasili without acknowledging
the bow turned to Anna Mikhaylovna, answering her query by a
movement of the head and lips indicating very little hope for the
patient.

"Is it possible?" exclaimed Anna Mikhaylovna. "Oh, how awful! It
is terrible to think.... This is my son," she added, indicating Boris.
"He wanted to thank you himself."

Boris bowed again politely.

"Believe me, Prince, a mother's heart will never forget what you
have done for us."

"I am glad I was able to do you a service, my dear Anna
Mikhaylovna," said Prince Vasili, arranging his lace frill, and in
tone and manner, here in Moscow to Anna Mikhaylovna whom he had placed
under an obligation, assuming an air of much greater importance than
he had done in Petersburg at Anna Scherer's reception.

"Try to serve well and show yourself worthy," added he, addressing
Boris with severity. "I am glad.... Are you here on leave?" he went on
in his usual tone of indifference.

"I am awaiting orders to join my new regiment, your excellency,"
replied Boris, betraying neither annoyance at the prince's brusque
manner nor a desire to enter into conversation, but speaking so
quietly and respectfully that the prince gave him a searching glance.

"Are you living with your mother?"

"I am living at Countess Rostova's," replied Boris, again adding,
"your excellency."

"That is, with Ilya Rostov who married Nataly Shinshina," said
Anna Mikhaylovna.

"I know, I know," answered Prince Vasili in his monotonous voice. "I
never could understand how Nataly made up her mind to marry that
unlicked bear! A perfectly absurd and stupid fellow, and a gambler
too, I am told."

"But a very kind man, Prince," said Anna Mikhaylovna with a pathetic
smile, as though she too knew that Count Rostov deserved this censure,
but asked him not to be too hard on the poor old man. "What do the
doctors say?" asked the princess after a pause, her worn face again
expressing deep sorrow.

"They give little hope," replied the prince.

"And I should so like to thank Uncle once for all his kindness to me
and Boris. He is his godson," she added, her tone suggesting that this
fact ought to give Prince Vasili much satisfaction.

Prince Vasili became thoughtful and frowned. Anna Mikhaylovna saw
that he was afraid of finding in her a rival for Count Bezukhov's
fortune, and hastened to reassure him.

"If it were not for my sincere affection and devotion to Uncle,"
said she, uttering the word with peculiar assurance and unconcern,
"I know his character: noble, upright... but you see he has no one
with him except the young princesses.... They are still young...." She
bent her head and continued in a whisper: "Has he performed his
final duty, Prince? How priceless are those last moments! It can
make things no worse, and it is absolutely necessary to prepare him if
he is so ill. We women, Prince," and she smiled tenderly, "always know
how to say these things. I absolutely must see him, however painful it
may be for me. I am used to suffering."

Evidently the prince understood her, and also understood, as he
had done at Anna Pavlovna's, that it would be difficult to get rid
of Anna Mikhaylovna.

"Would not such a meeting be too trying for him, dear Anna
Mikhaylovna?" said he. "Let us wait until evening. The doctors are
expecting a crisis."

"But one cannot delay, Prince, at such a moment! Consider that the
welfare of his soul is at stake. Ah, it is awful: the duties of a
Christian..."

A door of one of the inner rooms opened and one of the princesses,
the count's niece, entered with a cold, stern face. The length of
her body was strikingly out of proportion to her short legs. Prince
Vasili turned to her.

"Well, how is he?"

"Still the same; but what can you expect, this noise..." said the
princess, looking at Anna Mikhaylovna as at a stranger.

"Ah, my dear, I hardly knew you," said Anna Mikhaylovna with a happy
smile, ambling lightly up to the count's niece. "I have come, and am
at your service to help you nurse my uncle. I imagine what you have
gone through," and she sympathetically turned up her eyes.

The princess gave no reply and did not even smile, but left the room
as Anna Mikhaylovna took off her gloves and, occupying the position
she had conquered, settled down in an armchair, inviting Prince Vasili
to take a seat beside her.

"Boris," she said to her son with a smile, "I shall go in to see the
count, my uncle; but you, my dear, had better go to Pierre meanwhile
and don't forget to give him the Rostovs' invitation. They ask him
to dinner. I suppose he won't go?" she continued, turning to the
prince.

"On the contrary," replied the prince, who had plainly become
depressed, "I shall be only too glad if you relieve me of that young
man.... Here he is, and the count has not once asked for him."

He shrugged his shoulders. A footman conducted Boris down one flight
of stairs and up another, to Pierre's rooms.





CHAPTER XVI


Pierre, after all, had not managed to choose a career for himself in
Petersburg, and had been expelled from there for riotous conduct and
sent to Moscow. The story told about him at Count Rostov's was true.
Pierre had taken part in tying a policeman to a bear. He had now
been for some days in Moscow and was staying as usual at his
father's house. Though he expected that the story of his escapade
would be already known in Moscow and that the ladies about his father-
who were never favorably disposed toward him--would have used it to
turn the count against him, he nevertheless on the day of his
arrival went to his father's part of the house. Entering the drawing
room, where the princesses spent most of their time, he greeted the
ladies, two of whom were sitting at embroidery frames while a third
read aloud. It was the eldest who was reading--the one who had met
Anna Mikhaylovna. The two younger ones were embroidering: both were
rosy and pretty and they differed only in that one had a little mole
on her lip which made her much prettier. Pierre was received as if
he were a corpse or a leper. The eldest princess paused in her reading
and silently stared at him with frightened eyes; the second assumed
precisely the same expression; while the youngest, the one with the
mole, who was of a cheerful and lively disposition, bent over her
frame to hide a smile probably evoked by the amusing scene she
foresaw. She drew her wool down through the canvas and, scarcely
able to refrain from laughing, stooped as if trying to make out the
pattern.

"How do you do, cousin?" said Pierre. "You don't recognize me?"

"I recognize you only too well, too well."

"How is the count? Can I see him?" asked Pierre, awkwardly as usual,
but unabashed.

"The count is suffering physically and mentally, and apparently
you have done your best to increase his mental sufferings."

"Can I see the count?" Pierre again asked.

"Hm.... If you wish to kill him, to kill him outright, you can see
him... Olga, go and see whether Uncle's beef tea is ready--it is
almost time," she added, giving Pierre to understand that they were
busy, and busy making his father comfortable, while evidently he,
Pierre, was only busy causing him annoyance.

Olga went out. Pierre stood looking at the sisters; then he bowed
and said: "Then I will go to my rooms. You will let me know when I can
see him."

And he left the room, followed by the low but ringing laughter of
the sister with the mole.

Next day Prince Vasili had arrived and settled in the count's house.
He sent for Pierre and said to him: "My dear fellow, if you are
going to behave here as you did in Petersburg, you will end very
badly; that is all I have to say to you. The count is very, very
ill, and you must not see him at all."

Since then Pierre had not been disturbed and had spent the whole
time in his rooms upstairs.

When Boris appeared at his door Pierre was pacing up and down his
room, stopping occasionally at a corner to make menacing gestures at
the wall, as if running a sword through an invisible foe, and
glaring savagely over his spectacles, and then again resuming his
walk, muttering indistinct words, shrugging his shoulders and
gesticulating.

"England is done for," said he, scowling and pointing his finger
at someone unseen. "Mr. Pitt, as a traitor to the nation and to the
rights of man, is sentenced to..." But before Pierre--who at that
moment imagined himself to be Napoleon in person and to have just
effected the dangerous crossing of the Straits of Dover and captured
London--could pronounce Pitt's sentence, he saw a well-built and
handsome young officer entering his room. Pierre paused. He had left
Moscow when Boris was a boy of fourteen, and had quite forgotten
him, but in his usual impulsive and hearty way he took Boris by the
hand with a friendly smile.

"Do you remember me?" asked Boris quietly with a pleasant smile.
"I have come with my mother to see the count, but it seems he is not
well."

"Yes, it seems he is ill. People are always disturbing him,"
answered Pierre, trying to remember who this young man was.

Boris felt that Pierre did not recognize him but did not consider it
necessary to introduce himself, and without experiencing the least
embarrassment looked Pierre straight in the face.

"Count Rostov asks you to come to dinner today," said he, after a
considerable pause which made Pierre feel uncomfortable.

"Ah, Count Rostov!" exclaimed Pierre joyfully. "Then you are his
son, Ilya? Only fancy, I didn't know you at first. Do you remember how
we went to the Sparrow Hills with Madame Jacquot?... It's such an
age..."

"You are mistaken," said Boris deliberately, with a bold and
slightly sarcastic smile. "I am Boris, son of Princess Anna
Mikhaylovna Drubetskaya. Rostov, the father, is Ilya, and his son is
Nicholas. I never knew any Madame Jacquot."

Pierre shook his head and arms as if attacked by mosquitoes or bees.

"Oh dear, what am I thinking about? I've mixed everything up. One
has so many relatives in Moscow! So you are Boris? Of course. Well,
now we know where we are. And what do you think of the Boulogne
expedition? The English will come off badly, you know, if Napoleon
gets across the Channel. I think the expedition is quite feasible.
If only Villeneuve doesn't make a mess of things!"

Boris knew nothing about the Boulogne expedition; he did not read
the papers and it was the first time he had heard Villeneuve's name.

"We here in Moscow are more occupied with dinner parties and scandal
than with politics," said he in his quiet ironical tone. "I know
nothing about it and have not thought about it. Moscow is chiefly busy
with gossip," he continued. "Just now they are talking about you and
your father."

Pierre smiled in his good-natured way as if afraid for his
companion's sake that the latter might say something he would
afterwards regret. But Boris spoke distinctly, clearly, and dryly,
looking straight into Pierre's eyes.

"Moscow has nothing else to do but gossip," Boris went on.
"Everybody is wondering to whom the count will leave his fortune,
though he may perhaps outlive us all, as I sincerely hope he will..."

"Yes, it is all very horrid," interrupted Pierre, "very horrid."

Pierre was still afraid that this officer might inadvertently say
something disconcerting to himself.

"And it must seem to you," said Boris flushing slightly, but not
changing his tone or attitude, "it must seem to you that everyone is
trying to get something out of the rich man?"

"So it does," thought Pierre.

"But I just wish to say, to avoid misunderstandings, that you are
quite mistaken if you reckon me or my mother among such people. We are
very poor, but for my own part at any rate, for the very reason that
your father is rich, I don't regard myself as a relation of his, and
neither I nor my mother would ever ask or take anything from him."

For a long time Pierre could not understand, but when he did, he
jumped up from the sofa, seized Boris under the elbow in his quick,
clumsy way, and, blushing far more than Boris, began to speak with a
feeling of mingled shame and vexation.

"Well, this is strange! Do you suppose I... who could think?... I
know very well..."

But Boris again interrupted him.

"I am glad I have spoken out fully. Perhaps you did not like it? You
must excuse me," said he, putting Pierre at ease instead of being
put at ease by him, "but I hope I have not offended you. I always make
it a rule to speak out... Well, what answer am I to take? Will you
come to dinner at the Rostovs'?"

And Boris, having apparently relieved himself of an onerous duty and
extricated himself from an awkward situation and placed another in it,
became quite pleasant again.

"No, but I say," said Pierre, calming down, "you are a wonderful
fellow! What you have just said is good, very good. Of course you
don't know me. We have not met for such a long time... not since we
were children. You might think that I... I understand, quite
understand. I could not have done it myself, I should not have had the
courage, but it's splendid. I am very glad to have made your
acquaintance. It's queer," he added after a pause, "that you should
have suspected me!" He began to laugh. "Well, what of it! I hope we'll
get better acquainted," and he pressed Boris' hand. "Do you know, I
have not once been in to see the count. He has not sent for me.... I
am sorry for him as a man, but what can one do?"

"And so you think Napoleon will manage to get an army across?" asked
Boris with a smile.

Pierre saw that Boris wished to change the subject, and being of the
same mind he began explaining the advantages and disadvantages of
the Boulogne expedition.

A footman came in to summon Boris--the princess was going. Pierre,
in order to make Boris' better acquaintance, promised to come to
dinner, and warmly pressing his hand looked affectionately over his
spectacles into Boris' eyes. After he had gone Pierre continued pacing
up and down the room for a long time, no longer piercing an
imaginary foe with his imaginary sword, but smiling at the remembrance
of that pleasant, intelligent, and resolute young man.

As often happens in early youth, especially to one who leads a
lonely life, he felt an unaccountable tenderness for this young man
and made up his mind that they would be friends.

Prince Vasili saw the princess off. She held a handkerchief to her
eyes and her face was tearful.

"It is dreadful, dreadful!" she was saying, "but cost me what it may
I shall do my duty. I will come and spend the night. He must not be
left like this. Every moment is precious. I can't think why his nieces
put it off. Perhaps God will help me to find a way to prepare
him!... Adieu, Prince! May God support you..."

"Adieu, ma bonne," answered Prince Vasili turning away from her.

"Oh, he is in a dreadful state," said the mother to her son when
they were in the carriage. "He hardly recognizes anybody."

"I don't understand, Mamma--what is his attitude to Pierre?" asked
the son.

"The will will show that, my dear; our fate also depends on it."

"But why do you expect that he will leave us anything?"

"Ah, my dear! He is so rich, and we are so poor!"

"Well, that is hardly a sufficient reason, Mamma..."

"Oh, Heaven! How ill he is!" exclaimed the mother.





CHAPTER XVII

After Anna Mikhaylovna had driven off with her son to visit Count
Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov, Countess Rostova sat for a long time all
alone applying her handkerchief to her eyes. At last she rang.

"What is the matter with you, my dear?" she said crossly to the maid
who kept her waiting some minutes. "Don't you wish to serve me? Then
I'll find you another place."

The countess was upset by her friend's sorrow and humiliating
poverty, and was therefore out of sorts, a state of mind which with
her always found expression in calling her maid "my dear" and speaking
to her with exaggerated politeness.

"I am very sorry, ma'am," answered the maid.

"Ask the count to come to me."

The count came waddling in to see his wife with a rather guilty look
as usual.

"Well, little countess? What a saute of game au madere we are to
have, my dear! I tasted it. The thousand rubles I paid for Taras
were not ill-spent. He is worth it!"

He sat down by his wife, his elbows on his knees and his hands
ruffling his gray hair.

"What are your commands, little countess?"

"You see, my dear... What's that mess?" she said, pointing to his
waistcoat. "It's the saute, most likely," she added with a smile.
"Well, you see, Count, I want some money."

Her face became sad.

"Oh, little countess!"... and the count began bustling to get out
his pocketbook.

"I want a great deal, Count! I want five hundred rubles," and taking
out her cambric handkerchief she began wiping her husband's waistcoat.

"Yes, immediately, immediately! Hey, who's there?" he called out
in a tone only used by persons who are certain that those they call
will rush to obey the summons. "Send Dmitri to me!"

Dmitri, a man of good family who had been brought up in the
count's house and now managed all his affairs, stepped softly into the
room.

"This is what I want, my dear fellow," said the count to the
deferential young man who had entered. "Bring me..." he reflected a
moment, "yes, bring me seven hundred rubles, yes! But mind, don't
bring me such tattered and dirty notes as last time, but nice clean
ones for the countess."

"Yes, Dmitri, clean ones, please," said the countess, sighing
deeply.

"When would you like them, your excellency?" asked Dmitri. "Allow me
to inform you... But, don't be uneasy," he added, noticing that the
count was beginning to breathe heavily and quickly which was always
a sign of approaching anger. "I was forgetting... Do you wish it
brought at once?"

"Yes, yes; just so! Bring it. Give it to the countess."

"What a treasure that Dmitri is," added the count with a smile
when the young man had departed. "There is never any 'impossible'
with him. That's a thing I hate! Everything is possible."

"Ah, money, Count, money! How much sorrow it causes in the world,"
said the countess. "But I am in great need of this sum."

"You, my little countess, are a notorious spendthrift," said the
count, and having kissed his wife's hand he went back to his study.

When Anna Mikhaylovna returned from Count Bezukhov's the money,
all in clean notes, was lying ready under a handkerchief on the
countess' little table, and Anna Mikhaylovna noticed that something
was agitating her.

"Well, my dear?" asked the countess.

"Oh, what a terrible state he is in! One would not know him, he is
so ill! I was only there a few moments and hardly said a word..."

"Annette, for heaven's sake don't refuse me," the countess began,
with a blush that looked very strange on her thin, dignified,
elderly face, and she took the money from under the handkerchief.

Anna Mikhaylovna instantly guessed her intention and stooped to be
ready to embrace the countess at the appropriate moment.

"This is for Boris from me, for his outfit."

Anna Mikhaylovna was already embracing her and weeping. The countess
wept too. They wept because they were friends, and because they were
kindhearted, and because they--friends from childhood--had to think
about such a base thing as money, and because their youth was over....
But those tears were pleasant to them both.





CHAPTER XVIII


Countess Rostova, with her daughters and a large number of guests,
was already seated in the drawing room. The count took the gentlemen
into his study and showed them his choice collection of Turkish pipes.
From time to time he went out to ask: "Hasn't she come yet?" They were
expecting Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, known in society as le
terrible dragon, a lady distinguished not for wealth or rank, but
for common sense and frank plainness of speech. Marya Dmitrievna was
known to the Imperial family as well as to all Moscow and
Petersburg, and both cities wondered at her, laughed privately at
her rudenesses, and told good stories about her, while none the less
all without exception respected and feared her.

In the count's room, which was full of tobacco smoke, they talked of
war that had been announced in a manifesto, and about the
recruiting. None of them had yet seen the manifesto, but they all knew
it had appeared. The count sat on the sofa between two guests who were
smoking and talking. He neither smoked nor talked, but bending his
head first to one side and then to the other watched the smokers
with evident pleasure and listened to the conversation of his two
neighbors, whom he egged on against each other.

One of them was a sallow, clean-shaven civilian with a thin and
wrinkled face, already growing old, though he was dressed like a
most fashionable young man. He sat with his legs up on the sofa as
if quite at home and, having stuck an amber mouthpiece far into his
mouth, was inhaling the smoke spasmodically and screwing up his
eyes. This was an old bachelor, Shinshin, a cousin of the countess', a
man with "a sharp tongue" as they said in Moscow society. He seemed to
be condescending to his companion. The latter, a fresh, rosy officer
of the Guards, irreproachably washed, brushed, and buttoned, held
his pipe in the middle of his mouth and with red lips gently inhaled
the smoke, letting it escape from his handsome mouth in rings. This
was Lieutenant Berg, an officer in the Semenov regiment with whom
Boris was to travel to join the army, and about whom Natasha had,
teased her elder sister Vera, speaking of Berg as her "intended."
The count sat between them and listened attentively. His favorite
occupation when not playing boston, a card game he was very fond of,
was that of listener, especially when he succeeded in setting two
loquacious talkers at one another.

"Well, then, old chap, mon tres honorable Alphonse Karlovich,"
said Shinshin, laughing ironically and mixing the most ordinary
Russian expressions with the choicest French phrases--which was a
peculiarity of his speech. "Vous comptez vous faire des rentes sur
l'etat;* you want to make something out of your company?"


*You expect to make an income out of the government.


"No, Peter Nikolaevich; I only want to show that in the cavalry
the advantages are far less than in the infantry. Just consider my own
position now, Peter Nikolaevich..."

Berg always spoke quietly, politely, and with great precision. His
conversation always related entirely to himself; he would remain
calm and silent when the talk related to any topic that had no
direct bearing on himself. He could remain silent for hours without
being at all put out of countenance himself or making others
uncomfortable, but as soon as the conversation concerned himself he
would begin to talk circumstantially and with evident satisfaction.

"Consider my position, Peter Nikolaevich. Were I in the cavalry I
should get not more than two hundred rubles every four months, even
with the rank of lieutenant; but as it is I receive two hundred and
thirty," said he, looking at Shinshin and the count with a joyful,
pleasant smile, as if it were obvious to him that his success must
always be the chief desire of everyone else.

"Besides that, Peter Nikolaevich, by exchanging into the Guards I
shall be in a more prominent position," continued Berg, "and vacancies
occur much more frequently in the Foot Guards. Then just think what
can be done with two hundred and thirty rubles! I even manage to put a
little aside and to send something to my father," he went on, emitting
a smoke ring.

"La balance y est...* A German knows how to skin a flint, as the
proverb says," remarked Shinshin, moving his pipe to the other side of
his mouth and winking at the count.


*So that squares matters.


The count burst out laughing. The other guests seeing that
Shinshin was talking came up to listen. Berg, oblivious of irony or
indifference, continued to explain how by exchanging into the Guards
he had already gained a step on his old comrades of the Cadet Corps;
how in wartime the company commander might get killed and he, as
senior in the company, might easily succeed to the post; how popular
he was with everyone in the regiment, and how satisfied his father was
with him. Berg evidently enjoyed narrating all this, and did not
seem to suspect that others, too, might have their own interests.
But all he said was so prettily sedate, and the naivete of his
youthful egotism was so obvious, that he disarmed his hearers.

"Well, my boy, you'll get along wherever you go--foot or horse--that
I'll warrant," said Shinshin, patting him on the shoulder and taking
his feet off the sofa.

Berg smiled joyously. The count, by his guests, went into the
drawing room.

It was just the moment before a big dinner when the assembled
guests, expecting the summons to zakuska,* avoid engaging in any
long conversation but think it necessary to move about and talk, in
order to show that they are not at all impatient for their food. The
host and hostess look toward the door, and now and then glance at
one another, and the visitors try to guess from these glances who,
or what, they are waiting for--some important relation who has not yet
arrived, or a dish that is not yet ready.


*Hors d'oeuvres.


Pierre had come just at dinnertime and was sitting awkwardly in
the middle of the drawing room on the first chair he had come
across, blocking the way for everyone. The countess tried to make
him talk, but he went on naively looking around through his spectacles
as if in search of somebody and answered all her questions in
monosyllables. He was in the way and was the only one who did not
notice the fact. Most of the guests, knowing of the affair with the
bear, looked with curiosity at this big, stout, quiet man, wondering
how such a clumsy, modest fellow could have played such a prank on a
policeman.

"You have only lately arrived?" the countess asked him.

"Oui, madame," replied he, looking around him.

"You have not yet seen my husband?"

"Non, madame." He smiled quite inappropriately.

"You have been in Paris recently, I believe? I suppose it's very
interesting."

"Very interesting."

The countess exchanged glances with Anna Mikhaylovna. The latter
understood that she was being asked to entertain this young man, and
sitting down beside him she began to speak about his father; but he
answered her, as he had the countess, only in monosyllables. The other
guests were all conversing with one another. "The Razumovskis... It
was charming... You are very kind... Countess Apraksina..." was
heard on all sides. The countess rose and went into the ballroom.

"Marya Dmitrievna?" came her voice from there.

"Herself," came the answer in a rough voice, and Marya Dmitrievna
entered the room.

All the unmarried ladies and even the married ones except the very
oldest rose. Marya Dmitrievna paused at the door. Tall and stout,
holding high her fifty-year-old head with its gray curls, she stood
surveying the guests, and leisurely arranged her wide sleeves as if
rolling them up. Marya Dmitrievna always spoke in Russian.

"Health and happiness to her whose name day we are keeping and to
her children," she said, in her loud, full-toned voice which drowned
all others. "Well, you old sinner," she went on, turning to the
count who was kissing her hand, "you're feeling dull in Moscow, I
daresay? Nowhere to hunt with your dogs? But what is to be done, old
man? Just see how these nestlings are growing up," and she pointed
to the girls. "You must look for husbands for them whether you like it
or not...."

"Well," said she, "how's my Cossack?" (Marya Dmitrievna always called
Natasha a Cossack) and she stroked the child's arm as she came up
fearless and gay to kiss her hand. "I know she's a scamp of a girl,
but I like her."

She took a pair of pear-shaped ruby earrings from her huge
reticule and, having given them to the rosy Natasha, who beamed with
the pleasure of her saint's-day fete, turned away at once and
addressed herself to Pierre.

"Eh, eh, friend! Come here a bit," said she, assuming a soft high
tone of voice. "Come here, my friend..." and she ominously tucked up
her sleeves still higher. Pierre approached, looking at her in a
childlike way through his spectacles.

"Come nearer, come nearer, friend! I used to be the only one to tell
your father the truth when he was in favor, and in your case it's my
evident duty." She paused. All were silent, expectant of what was to
follow, for this was dearly only a prelude.

"A fine lad! My word! A fine lad!... His father lies on his deathbed
and he amuses himself setting a policeman astride a bear! For shame,
sir, for shame! It would be better if you went to the war."

She turned away and gave her hand to the count, who could hardly
keep from laughing.

"Well, I suppose it is time we were at table?" said Marya
Dmitrievna.

The count went in first with Marya Dmitrievna, the countess followed
on the arm of a colonel of hussars, a man of importance to them
because Nicholas was to go with him to the regiment; then came Anna
Mikhaylovna with Shinshin. Berg gave his arm to Vera. The smiling
Julie Karagina went in with Nicholas. After them other couples
followed, filling the whole dining hall, and last of all the children,
tutors, and governesses followed singly. The footmen began moving
about, chairs scraped, the band struck up in the gallery, and the
guests settled down in their places. Then the strains of the count's
household band were replaced by the clatter of knives and forks, the
voices of visitors, and the soft steps of the footmen. At one end of
the table sat the countess with Marya Dmitrievna on her right and Anna
Mikhaylovna on her left, the other lady visitors were farther down. At
the other end sat the count, with the hussar colonel on his left and
Shinshin and the other male visitors on his right. Midway down the
long table on one side sat the grownup young people: Vera beside Berg,
and Pierre beside Boris; and on the other side, the children,
tutors, and governesses. From behind the crystal decanters and fruit
vases the count kept glancing at his wife and her tall cap with its
light-blue ribbons, and busily filled his neighbors' glasses, not
neglecting his own. The countess in turn, without omitting her
duties as hostess, threw significant glances from behind the
pineapples at her husband whose face and bald head seemed by their
redness to contrast more than usual with his gray hair. At the ladies'
end an even chatter of voices was heard all the time, at the men's end
the voices sounded louder and louder, especially that of the colonel
of hussars who, growing more and more flushed, ate and drank so much
that the count held him up as a pattern to the other guests. Berg with
tender smiles was saying to Vera that love is not an earthly but a
heavenly feeling. Boris was telling his new friend Pierre who the
guests were and exchanging glances with Natasha, who was sitting
opposite. Pierre spoke little but examined the new faces, and ate a
great deal. Of the two soups he chose turtle with savory patties and
went on to the game without omitting a single dish or one of the
wines. These latter the butler thrust mysteriously forward, wrapped in
a napkin, from behind the next man's shoulders and whispered: "Dry
Madeira"... "Hungarian"... or "Rhine wine" as the case might be. Of
the four crystal glasses engraved with the count's monogram that stood
before his plate, Pierre held out one at random and drank with
enjoyment, gazing with ever-increasing amiability at the other guests.
Natasha, who sat opposite, was looking at Boris as girls of thirteen
look at the boy they are in love with and have just kissed for the
first time. Sometimes that same look fell on Pierre, and that funny
lively little girl's look made him inclined to laugh without knowing
why.

Nicholas sat at some distance from Sonya, beside Julie Karagina,
to whom he was again talking with the same involuntary smile. Sonya
wore a company smile but was evidently tormented by jealousy; now
she turned pale, now blushed and strained every nerve to overhear what
Nicholas and Julie were saying to one another. The governess kept
looking round uneasily as if preparing to resent any slight that might
be put upon the children. The German tutor was trying to remember
all the dishes, wines, and kinds of dessert, in order to send a full
description of the dinner to his people in Germany; and he felt
greatly offended when the butler with a bottle wrapped in a napkin
passed him by. He frowned, trying to appear as if he did not want
any of that wine, but was mortified because no one would understand
that it was not to quench his thirst or from greediness that he wanted
it, but simply from a conscientious desire for knowledge.





CHAPTER XIX


At the men's end of the table the talk grew more and more
animated. The colonel told them that the declaration of war had
already appeared in Petersburg and that a copy, which he had himself
seen, had that day been forwarded by courier to the commander in
chief.

"And why the deuce are we going to fight Bonaparte?" remarked
Shinshin. "He has stopped Austria's cackle and I fear it will be our
turn next."

The colonel was a stout, tall, plethoric German, evidently devoted
to the service and patriotically Russian. He resented Shinshin's
remark.

"It is for the reasson, my goot sir," said he, speaking with a
German accent, "for the reasson zat ze Emperor knows zat. He
declares in ze manifessto zat he cannot fiew wiz indifference ze
danger vreatening Russia and zat ze safety and dignity of ze Empire as
vell as ze sanctity of its alliances..." he spoke this last word
with particular emphasis as if in it lay the gist of the matter.

Then with the unerring official memory that characterized him he
repeated from the opening words of the manifesto:

... and the wish, which constitutes the Emperor's sole and
absolute aim--to establish peace in Europe on firm foundations--has
now decided him to despatch part of the army abroad and to create a
new condition for the attainment of that purpose.

"Zat, my dear sir, is vy..." he concluded, drinking a tumbler of
wine with dignity and looking to the count for approval.

"Connaissez-vous le Proverbe:* 'Jerome, Jerome, do not roam, but
turn spindles at home!'?" said Shinshin, puckering his brows and
smiling. "Cela nous convient a merveille.*[2] Suvorov now--he knew
what he was about; yet they beat him a plate couture,*[3] and where
are we to find Suvorovs now? Je vous demande un peu,"*[4] said he,
continually changing from French to Russian.


*Do you know the proverb?

*[2] That suits us down to the ground.

*[3] Hollow.

*[4] I just ask you that.


"Ve must vight to the last tr-r-op of our plood!" said the
colonel, thumping the table; "and ve must tie for our Emperor, and zen
all vill pe vell. And ve must discuss it as little as po-o-ossible"...
he dwelt particularly on the word possible... "as po-o-ossible," he
ended, again turning to the count. "Zat is how ve old hussars look
at it, and zere's an end of it! And how do you, a young man and a
young hussar, how do you judge of it?" he added, addressing
Nicholas, who when he heard that the war was being discussed had
turned from his partner with eyes and ears intent on the colonel.

"I am quite of your opinion," replied Nicholas, flaming up,
turning his plate round and moving his wineglasses about with as
much decision and desperation as though he were at that moment
facing some great danger. "I am convinced that we Russians must die or
conquer," he concluded, conscious--as were others--after the words
were uttered that his remarks were too enthusiastic and emphatic for
the occasion and were therefore awkward.

"What you said just now was splendid!" said his partner Julie.

Sonya trembled all over and blushed to her ears and behind them
and down to her neck and shoulders while Nicholas was speaking.

Pierre listened to the colonel's speech and nodded approvingly.

"That's fine," said he.

"The young man's a real hussar!" shouted the colonel, again thumping
the table.

"What are you making such a noise about over there?" Marya
Dmitrievna's deep voice suddenly inquired from the other end of the
table. "What are you thumping the table for?" she demanded of the
hussar, "and why are you exciting yourself? Do you think the French
are here?"

"I am speaking ze truce," replied the hussar with a smile.

"It's all about the war," the count shouted down the table. "You
know my son's going, Marya Dmitrievna? My son is going."

"I have four sons in the army but still I don't fret. It is all in
God's hands. You may die in your bed or God may spare you in a
battle," replied Marya Dmitrievna's deep voice, which easily carried
the whole length of the table.

"That's true!"

Once more the conversations concentrated, the ladies' at the one end
and the men's at the other.

"You won't ask," Natasha's little brother was saying; "I know you
won't ask!"

"I will," replied Natasha.

Her face suddenly flushed with reckless and joyous resolution. She
half rose, by a glance inviting Pierre, who sat opposite, to listen to
what was coming, and turning to her mother:

"Mamma!" rang out the clear contralto notes of her childish voice,
audible the whole length of the table.

"What is it?" asked the countess, startled; but seeing by her
daughter's face that it was only mischief, she shook a finger at her
sternly with a threatening and forbidding movement of her head.

The conversation was hushed.

"Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?" and Natasha's voice
sounded still more firm and resolute.

The countess tried to frown, but could not. Marya Dmitrievna shook
her fat finger.

"Cossack!" she said threateningly.

Most of the guests, uncertain how to regard this sally, looked at
the elders.

"You had better take care!" said the countess.

"Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?" Natasha again cried
boldly, with saucy gaiety, confident that her prank would be taken
in good part.

Sonya and fat little Petya doubled up with laughter.

"You see! I have asked," whispered Natasha to her little brother and
to Pierre, glancing at him again.

"Ice pudding, but you won't get any," said Marya Dmitrievna.

Natasha saw there was nothing to be afraid of and so she braved even
Marya Dmitrievna.

"Marya Dmitrievna! What kind of ice pudding? I don't like ice
cream."

"Carrot ices."

"No! What kind, Marya Dmitrievna? What kind?" she almost screamed;
"I want to know!"

Marya Dmitrievna and the countess burst out laughing, and all the
guests joined in. Everyone laughed, not at Marya Dmitrievna's answer
but at the incredible boldness and smartness of this little girl who
had dared to treat Marya Dmitrievna in this fashion.

Natasha only desisted when she had been told that there would be
pineapple ice. Before the ices, champagne was served round. The band
again struck up, the count and countess kissed, and the guests,
leaving their seats, went up to "congratulate" the countess, and
reached across the table to clink glasses with the count, with the
children, and with one another. Again the footmen rushed about, chairs
scraped, and in the same order in which they had entered but with
redder faces, the guests returned to the drawing room and to the
count's study.





CHAPTER XX


The card tables were drawn out, sets made up for boston, and the
count's visitors settled themselves, some in the two drawing rooms,
some in the sitting room, some in the library.

The count, holding his cards fanwise, kept himself with difficulty
from dropping into his usual after-dinner nap, and laughed at
everything. The young people, at the countess' instigation, gathered
round the clavichord and harp. Julie by general request played
first. After she had played a little air with variations on the
harp, she joined the other young ladies in begging Natasha and
Nicholas, who were noted for their musical talent, to sing
something. Natasha, who was treated as though she were grown up, was
evidently very proud of this but at the same time felt shy.

"What shall we sing?" she said.

"'The Brook,'" suggested Nicholas.

"Well, then, let's be quick. Boris, come here," said Natasha. "But
where is Sonya?"

She looked round and seeing that her friend was not in the room
ran to look for her.

Running into Sonya's room and not finding her there, Natasha ran
to the nursery, but Sonya was not there either. Natasha concluded that
she must be on the chest in the passage. The chest in the passage
was the place of mourning for the younger female generation in the
Rostov household. And there in fact was Sonya lying face downward on
Nurse's dirty feather bed on the top of the chest, crumpling her gauzy
pink dress under her, hiding her face with her slender fingers, and
sobbing so convulsively that her bare little shoulders shook.
Natasha's face, which had been so radiantly happy all that saint's
day, suddenly changed: her eyes became fixed, and then a shiver passed
down her broad neck and the corners of her mouth drooped.

"Sonya! What is it? What is the matter?... Oo... Oo... Oo...!" And
Natasha's large mouth widened, making her look quite ugly, and she
began to wail like a baby without knowing why, except that Sonya was
crying. Sonya tried to lift her head to answer but could not, and
hid her face still deeper in the bed. Natasha wept, sitting on the
blue-striped feather bed and hugging her friend. With an effort
Sonya sat up and began wiping her eyes and explaining.

"Nicholas is going away in a week's time, his... papers... have
come... he told me himself... but still I should not cry," and she
showed a paper she held in her hand--with the verses Nicholas had
written, "still, I should not cry, but you can't... no one can
understand... what a soul he has!"

And she began to cry again because he had such a noble soul.

"It's all very well for you... I am not envious... I love you and
Boris also," she went on, gaining a little strength; "he is nice...
there are no difficulties in your way.... But Nicholas is my cousin...
one would have to... the Metropolitan himself... and even then it
can't be done. And besides, if she tells Mamma" (Sonya looked upon the
countess as her mother and called her so) "that I am spoiling
Nicholas' career and am heartless and ungrateful, while truly... God
is my witness," and she made the sign of the cross, "I love her so
much, and all of you, only Vera... And what for? What have I done to
her? I am so grateful to you that I would willingly sacrifice
everything, only I have nothing...."

Sonya could not continue, and again hid her face in her hands and in
the feather bed. Natasha began consoling her, but her face showed that
she understood all the gravity of her friend's trouble.

"Sonya," she suddenly exclaimed, as if she had guessed the true
reason of her friend's sorrow, "I'm sure Vera has said something to
you since dinner? Hasn't she?"

"Yes, these verses Nicholas wrote himself and I copied some
others, and she found them on my table and said she'd show them to
Mamma, and that I was ungrateful, and that Mamma would never allow him
to marry me, but that he'll marry Julie. You see how he's been with
her all day... Natasha, what have I done to deserve it?..."

And again she began to sob, more bitterly than before. Natasha
lifted her up, hugged her, and, smiling through her tears, began
comforting her.

"Sonya, don't believe her, darling! Don't believe her! Do you
remember how we and Nicholas, all three of us, talked in the sitting
room after supper? Why, we settled how everything was to be. I don't
quite remember how, but don't you remember that it could all be
arranged and how nice it all was? There's Uncle Shinshin's brother has
married his first cousin. And we are only second cousins, you know.
And Boris says it is quite possible. You know I have told him all
about it. And he is so clever and so good!" said Natasha. "Don't you
cry, Sonya, dear love, darling Sonya!" and she kissed her and laughed.
"Vera's spiteful; never mind her! And all will come right and she
won't say anything to Mamma. Nicholas will tell her himself, and he
doesn't care at all for Julie."

Natasha kissed her on the hair.

Sonya sat up. The little kitten brightened, its eyes shone, and it
seemed ready to lift its tail, jump down on its soft paws, and begin
playing with the ball of worsted as a kitten should.

"Do you think so?... Really? Truly?" she said, quickly smoothing her
frock and hair.

"Really, truly!" answered Natasha, pushing in a crisp lock that
had strayed from under her friend's plaits.

Both laughed.

"Well, let's go and sing 'The Brook.'"

"Come along!"

"Do you know, that fat Pierre who sat opposite me is so funny!" said
Natasha, stopping suddenly. "I feel so happy!"

And she set off at a run along the passage.

Sonya, shaking off some down which clung to her and tucking away the
verses in the bosom of her dress close to her bony little chest, ran
after Natasha down the passage into the sitting room with flushed face
and light, joyous steps. At the visitors' request the young people
sang the quartette, "The Brook," with which everyone was delighted.
Then Nicholas sang a song he had just learned:


   At nighttime in the moon's fair glow
     How sweet, as fancies wander free,
   To feel that in this world there's one
     Who still is thinking but of thee!

   That while her fingers touch the harp
     Wafting sweet music music the lea,
   It is for thee thus swells her heart,
     Sighing its message out to thee...

   A day or two, then bliss unspoilt,
     But oh! till then I cannot live!...


He had not finished the last verse before the young people began
to get ready to dance in the large hall, and the sound of the feet and
the coughing of the musicians were heard from the gallery.


Pierre was sitting in the drawing-room where Shinshin had engaged
him, as a man recently returned from abroad, in a political
conversation in which several others joined but which bored Pierre.
When the music began Natasha came in and walking straight up to Pierre
said, laughing and blushing:

"Mamma told me to ask you to join the dancers."

"I am afraid of mixing the figures," Pierre replied; "but if you
will be my teacher..." And lowering his big arm he offered it to the
slender little girl.

While the couples were arranging themselves and the musicians tuning
up, Pierre sat down with his little partner. Natasha was perfectly
happy; she was dancing with a grown-up man, who had been abroad. She
was sitting in a conspicuous place and talking to him like a
grown-up lady. She had a fan in her hand that one of the ladies had
given her to hold. Assuming quite the pose of a society woman
(heaven knows when and where she had learned it) she talked with her
partner, fanning herself and smiling over the fan.

"Dear, dear! Just look at her!" exclaimed the countess as she
crossed the ballroom, pointing to Natasha.

Natasha blushed and laughed.

"Well, really, Mamma! Why should you? What is there to be
surprised at?"


In the midst of the third ecossaise there was a clatter of chairs
being pushed back in the sitting room where the count and Marya
Dmitrievna had been playing cards with the majority of the more
distinguished and older visitors. They now, stretching themselves
after sitting so long, and replacing their purses and pocketbooks,
entered the ballroom. First came Marya Dmitrievna and the count,
both with merry countenances. The count, with playful ceremony
somewhat in ballet style, offered his bent arm to Marya Dmitrievna. He
drew himself up, a smile of debonair gallantry lit up his face and
as soon as the last figure of the ecossaise was ended, he clapped
his hands to the musicians and shouted up to their gallery, addressing
the first violin:

"Semen! Do you know the Daniel Cooper?"

This was the count's favorite dance, which he had danced in his
youth. (Strictly speaking, Daniel Cooper was one figure of the
anglaise.)

"Look at Papa!" shouted Natasha to the whole company, and quite
forgetting that she was dancing with a grown-up partner she bent her
curly head to her knees and made the whole room ring with her
laughter.

And indeed everybody in the room looked with a smile of pleasure
at the jovial old gentleman, who standing beside his tall and stout
partner, Marya Dmitrievna, curved his arms, beat time, straightened
his shoulders, turned out his toes, tapped gently with his foot,
and, by a smile that broadened his round face more and more,
prepared the onlookers for what was to follow. As soon as the
provocatively gay strains of Daniel Cooper (somewhat resembling
those of a merry peasant dance) began to sound, all the doorways of
the ballroom were suddenly filled by the domestic serfs--the men on
one side and the women on the other--who with beaming faces had come
to see their master making merry.

"Just look at the master! A regular eagle he is!" loudly remarked
the nurse, as she stood in one of the doorways.

The count danced well and knew it. But his partner could not and did
not want to dance well. Her enormous figure stood erect, her
powerful arms hanging down (she had handed her reticule to the
countess), and only her stern but handsome face really joined in the
dance. What was expressed by the whole of the count's plump figure, in
Marya Dmitrievna found expression only in her more and more beaming
face and quivering nose. But if the count, getting more and more
into the swing of it, charmed the spectators by the unexpectedness
of his adroit maneuvers and the agility with which he capered about on
his light feet, Marya Dmitrievna produced no less impression by slight
exertions--the least effort to move her shoulders or bend her arms
when turning, or stamp her foot--which everyone appreciated in view of
her size and habitual severity. The dance grew livelier and
livelier. The other couples could not attract a moment's attention
to their own evolutions and did not even try to do so. All were
watching the count and Marya Dmitrievna. Natasha kept pulling everyone
by sleeve or dress, urging them to "look at Papa!" though as it was
they never took their eyes off the couple. In the intervals of the
dance the count, breathing deeply, waved and shouted to the
musicians to play faster. Faster, faster, and faster; lightly, more
lightly, and yet more lightly whirled the count, flying round Marya
Dmitrievna, now on his toes, now on his heels; until, turning his
partner round to her seat, he executed the final pas, raising his soft
foot backwards, bowing his perspiring head, smiling and making a
wide sweep with his arm, amid a thunder of applause and laughter led
by Natasha. Both partners stood still, breathing heavily and wiping
their faces with their cambric handkerchiefs.

"That's how we used to dance in our time, ma chere," said the count.

"That was a Daniel Cooper!" exclaimed Marya Dmitrievna, tucking up
her sleeves and puffing heavily.





CHAPTER XXI


While in the Rostovs' ballroom the sixth anglaise was being
danced, to a tune in which the weary musicians blundered, and while
tired footmen and cooks were getting the supper, Count Bezukhov had
a sixth stroke. The doctors pronounced recovery impossible. After a
mute confession, communion was administered to the dying man,
preparations made for the sacrament of unction, and in his house there
was the bustle and thrill of suspense usual at such moments. Outside
the house, beyond the gates, a group of undertakers, who hid
whenever a carriage drove up, waited in expectation of an important
order for an expensive funeral. The Military Governor of Moscow, who
had been assiduous in sending aides-de-camp to inquire after the
count's health, came himself that evening to bid a last farewell to
the celebrated grandee of Catherine's court, Count Bezukhov.

The magnificent reception room was crowded. Everyone stood up
respectfully when the Military Governor, having stayed about half an
hour alone with the dying man, passed out, slightly acknowledging
their bows and trying to escape as quickly as from the glances fixed
on him by the doctors, clergy, and relatives of the family. Prince
Vasili, who had grown thinner and paler during the last few days,
escorted him to the door, repeating something to him several times
in low tones.

When the Military Governor had gone, Prince Vasili sat down all
alone on a chair in the ballroom, crossing one leg high over the
other, leaning his elbow on his knee and covering his face with his
hand. After sitting so for a while he rose, and, looking about him
with frightened eyes, went with unusually hurried steps down the
long corridor leading to the back of the house, to the room of the
eldest princess.

Those who were in the dimly lit reception room spoke in nervous
whispers, and, whenever anyone went into or came from the dying
man's room, grew silent and gazed with eyes full of curiosity or
expectancy at his door, which creaked slightly when opened.

"The limits of human life... are fixed and may not be o'erpassed,"
said an old priest to a lady who had taken a seat beside him and was
listening naively to his words.

"I wonder, is it not too late to administer unction?" asked the
lady, adding the priest's clerical title, as if she had no opinion
of her own on the subject.

"Ah, madam, it is a great sacrament," replied the priest, passing
his hand over the thin grizzled strands of hair combed back across his
bald head.

"Who was that? The Military Governor himself?" was being asked at
the other side of the room. "How young-looking he is!"

"Yes, and he is over sixty. I hear the count no longer recognizes
anyone. They wished to administer the sacrament of unction."

"I knew someone who received that sacrament seven times."

The second princess had just come from the sickroom with her eyes
red from weeping and sat down beside Dr. Lorrain, who was sitting in a
graceful pose under a portrait of Catherine, leaning his elbow on a
table.

"Beautiful," said the doctor in answer to a remark about the
weather. "The weather is beautiful, Princess; and besides, in Moscow
one feels as if one were in the country."

"Yes, indeed," replied the princess with a sigh. "So he may have
something to drink?"

Lorrain considered.

"Has he taken his medicine?"

"Yes."

The doctor glanced at his watch.

"Take a glass of boiled water and put a pinch of cream of tartar,"
and he indicated with his delicate fingers what he meant by a pinch.

"Dere has neffer been a gase," a German doctor was saying to an
aide-de-camp, "dat one liffs after de sird stroke."

"And what a well-preserved man he was!" remarked the aide-de-camp.
"And who will inherit his wealth?" he added in a whisper.

"It von't go begging," replied the German with a smile.

Everyone again looked toward the door, which creaked as the second
princess went in with the drink she had prepared according to
Lorrain's instructions. The German doctor went up to Lorrain.

"Do you think he can last till morning?" asked the German,
addressing Lorrain in French which he pronounced badly.

Lorrain, pursing up his lips, waved a severely negative finger
before his nose.

"Tonight, not later," said he in a low voice, and he moved away with
a decorous smile of self-satisfaction at being able clearly to
understand and state the patient's condition.


Meanwhile Prince Vasili had opened the door into the princess' room.

In this room it was almost dark; only two tiny lamps were burning
before the icons and there was a pleasant scent of flowers and burnt
pastilles. The room was crowded with small pieces of furniture,
whatnots, cupboards, and little tables. The quilt of a high, white
feather bed was just visible behind a screen. A small dog began to
bark.

"Ah, is it you, cousin?"

She rose and smoothed her hair, which was as usual so extremely
smooth that it seemed to be made of one piece with her head and
covered with varnish.

"Has anything happened?" she asked. "I am so terrified."

"No, there is no change. I only came to have a talk about
business, Catiche,"* muttered the prince, seating himself wearily on
the chair she had just vacated. "You have made the place warm, I
must say," he remarked. "Well, sit down: let's have a talk."


*Catherine.


"I thought perhaps something had happened," she said with her
unchanging stonily severe expression; and, sitting down opposite the
prince, she prepared to listen.

"I wished to get a nap, mon cousin, but I can't."

"Well, my dear?" said Prince Vasili, taking her hand and bending
it downwards as was his habit.

It was plain that this "well?" referred to much that they both
understood without naming.

The princess, who had a straight, rigid body, abnormally long for
her legs, looked directly at Prince Vasili with no sign of emotion
in her prominent gray eyes. Then she shook her head and glanced up
at the icons with a sigh. This might have been taken as an
expression of sorrow and devotion, or of weariness and hope of resting
before long. Prince Vasili understood it as an expression of
weariness.

"And I?" he said; "do you think it is easier for me? I am as worn
out as a post horse, but still I must have a talk with you, Catiche, a
very serious talk."

Prince Vasili said no more and his cheeks began to twitch nervously,
now on one side, now on the other, giving his face an unpleasant
expression which was never to be seen on it in a drawing room. His
eyes too seemed strange; at one moment they looked impudently sly
and at the next glanced round in alarm.

The princess, holding her little dog on her lap with her thin bony
hands, looked attentively into Prince Vasili's eyes evidently resolved
not to be the first to break silence, if she had to wait till morning.

"Well, you see, my dear princess and cousin, Catherine Semenovna,"
continued Prince Vasili, returning to his theme, apparently not
without an inner struggle; "at such a moment as this one must think of
everything. One must think of the future, of all of you... I love
you all, like children of my own, as you know."

The princess continued to look at him without moving, and with the
same dull expression.

"And then of course my family has also to be considered," Prince
Vasili went on, testily pushing away a little table without looking at
her. "You know, Catiche, that we--you three sisters, Mamontov, and
my wife--are the count's only direct heirs. I know, I know how hard it
is for you to talk or think of such matters. It is no easier for me;
but, my dear, I am getting on for sixty and must be prepared for
anything. Do you know I have sent for Pierre? The count," pointing
to his portrait, "definitely demanded that he should be called."

Prince Vasili looked questioningly at the princess, but could not
make out whether she was considering what he had just said or
whether she was simply looking at him.

"There is one thing I constantly pray God to grant, mon cousin," she
replied, "and it is that He would be merciful to him and would allow
his noble soul peacefully to leave this..."

"Yes, yes, of course," interrupted Prince Vasili impatiently,
rubbing his bald head and angrily pulling back toward him the little
table that he had pushed away. "But... in short, the fact is... you
know yourself that last winter the count made a will by which he
left all his property, not to us his direct heirs, but to Pierre."

"He has made wills enough!" quietly remarked the princess. "But he
cannot leave the estate to Pierre. Pierre is illegitimate."

"But, my dear," said Prince Vasili suddenly, clutching the little
table and becoming more animated and talking more rapidly: "what if
a letter has been written to the Emperor in which the count asks for
Pierre's legitimation? Do you understand that in consideration of
the count's services, his request would be granted?..."

The princess smiled as people do who think they know more about
the subject under discussion than those they are talking with.

"I can tell you more," continued Prince Vasili, seizing her hand,
"that letter was written, though it was not sent, and the Emperor knew
of it. The only question is, has it been destroyed or not? If not,
then as soon as all is over," and Prince Vasili sighed to intimate
what he meant by the words all is over, "and the count's papers are
opened, the will and letter will be delivered to the Emperor, and
the petition will certainly be granted. Pierre will get everything
as the legitimate son."

"And our share?" asked the princess smiling ironically, as if
anything might happen, only not that.

"But, my poor Catiche, it is as clear as daylight! He will then be
the legal heir to everything and you won't get anything. You must
know, my dear, whether the will and letter were written, and whether
they have been destroyed or not. And if they have somehow been
overlooked, you ought to know where they are, and must find them,
because..."

"What next?" the princess interrupted, smiling sardonically and
not changing the expression of her eyes. "I am a woman, and you
think we are all stupid; but I know this: an illegitimate son cannot
inherit... un batard!"* she added, as if supposing that this
translation of the word would effectively prove to Prince Vasili the
invalidity of his contention.


*A bastard.


"Well, really, Catiche! Can't you understand! You are so
intelligent, how is it you don't see that if the count has written a
letter to the Emperor begging him to recognize Pierre as legitimate,
it follows that Pierre will not be Pierre but will become Count
Bezukhov, and will then inherit everything under the will? And if
the will and letter are not destroyed, then you will have nothing
but the consolation of having been dutiful et tout ce qui s'ensuit!*
That's certain."


*And all that follows therefrom.


"I know the will was made, but I also know that it is invalid; and
you, mon cousin, seem to consider me a perfect fool," said the
princess with the expression women assume when they suppose they are
saying something witty and stinging.

"My dear Princess Catherine Semenovna," began Prince Vasili
impatiently, "I came here not to wrangle with you, but to talk about
your interests as with a kinswoman, a good, kind, true relation. And I
tell you for the tenth time that if the letter to the Emperor and
the will in Pierre's favor are among the count's papers, then, my dear
girl, you and your sisters are not heiresses! If you don't believe me,
then believe an expert. I have just been talking to Dmitri Onufrich"
(the family solicitor) "and he says the same."

At this a sudden change evidently took place in the princess' ideas;
her thin lips grew white, though her eyes did not change, and her
voice when she began to speak passed through such transitions as she
herself evidently did not expect.

"That would be a fine thing!" said she. "I never wanted anything and
I don't now."

She pushed the little dog off her lap and smoothed her dress.

"And this is gratitude--this is recognition for those who have
sacrificed everything for his sake!" she cried. "It's splendid!
Fine! I don't want anything, Prince."

"Yes, but you are not the only one. There are your sisters..."
replied Prince Vasili.

But the princess did not listen to him.

"Yes, I knew it long ago but had forgotten. I knew that I could
expect nothing but meanness, deceit, envy, intrigue, and
ingratitude--the blackest ingratitude--in this house..."

"Do you or do you not know where that will is?" insisted Prince
Vasili, his cheeks twitching more than ever.

"Yes, I was a fool! I still believed in people, loved them, and
sacrificed myself. But only the base, the vile succeed! I know who has
been intriguing!"

The princess wished to rise, but the prince held her by the hand.
She had the air of one who has suddenly lost faith in the whole
human race. She gave her companion an angry glance.

"There is still time, my dear. You must remember, Catiche, that it
was all done casually in a moment of anger, of illness, and was
afterwards forgotten. Our duty, my dear, is to rectify his mistake, to
ease his last moments by not letting him commit this injustice, and
not to let him die feeling that he is rendering unhappy those who..."

"Who sacrificed everything for him," chimed in the princess, who
would again have risen had not the prince still held her fast, "though
he never could appreciate it. No, mon cousin," she added with a
sigh, "I shall always remember that in this world one must expect no
reward, that in this world there is neither honor nor justice. In this
world one has to be cunning and cruel."

"Now come, come! Be reasonable. I know your excellent heart."

"No, I have a wicked heart."

"I know your heart," repeated the prince. "I value your friendship
and wish you to have as good an opinion of me. Don't upset yourself,
and let us talk sensibly while there is still time, be it a day or
be it but an hour.... Tell me all you know about the will, and above
all where it is. You must know. We will take it at once and show it to
the count. He has, no doubt, forgotten it and will wish to destroy it.
You understand that my sole desire is conscientiously to carry out his
wishes; that is my only reason for being here. I came simply to help
him and you."

"Now I see it all! I know who has been intriguing--I know!" cried
the princess.

"That's not the point, my dear."

"It's that protege of yours, that sweet Princess Drubetskaya, that
Anna Mikhaylovna whom I would not take for a housemaid... the
infamous, vile woman!"

"Do not let us lose any time..."

"Ah, don't talk to me! Last winter she wheedled herself in here
and told the count such vile, disgraceful things about us,
especially about Sophie--I can't repeat them--that it made the count
quite ill and he would not see us for a whole fortnight. I know it was
then he wrote this vile, infamous paper, but I thought the thing was
invalid."

"We've got to it at last--why did you not tell me about it sooner?"

"It's in the inlaid portfolio that he keeps under his pillow,"
said the princess, ignoring his question. "Now I know! Yes; if I
have a sin, a great sin, it is hatred of that vile woman!" almost
shrieked the princess, now quite changed. "And what does she come
worming herself in here for? But I will give her a piece of my mind.
The time will come!"





CHAPTER XXII


While these conversations were going on in the reception room and
the princess' room, a carriage containing Pierre (who had been sent
for) and Anna Mikhaylovna (who found it necessary to accompany him)
was driving into the court of Count Bezukhov's house. As the wheels
rolled softly over the straw beneath the windows, Anna Mikhaylovna,
having turned with words of comfort to her companion, realized that he
was asleep in his corner and woke him up. Rousing himself, Pierre
followed Anna Mikhaylovna out of the carriage, and only then began
to think of the interview with his dying father which awaited him.
He noticed that they had not come to the front entrance but to the
back door. While he was getting down from the carriage steps two
men, who looked like tradespeople, ran hurriedly from the entrance and
hid in the shadow of the wall. Pausing for a moment, Pierre noticed
several other men of the same kind hiding in the shadow of the house
on both sides. But neither Anna Mikhaylovna nor the footman nor the
coachman, who could not help seeing these people, took any notice of
them. "It seems to be all right," Pierre concluded, and followed
Anna Mikhaylovna. She hurriedly ascended the narrow dimly lit stone
staircase, calling to Pierre, who was lagging behind, to follow.
Though he did not see why it was necessary for him to go to the
count at all, still less why he had to go by the back stairs, yet
judging by Anna Mikhaylovna's air of assurance and haste, Pierre
concluded that it was all absolutely necessary. Halfway up the
stairs they were almost knocked over by some men who, carrying
pails, came running downstairs, their boots clattering. These men
pressed close to the wall to let Pierre and Anna Mikhaylovna pass
and did not evince the least surprise at seeing them there.

"Is this the way to the princesses' apartments?" asked Anna
Mikhaylovna of one of them.

"Yes," replied a footman in a bold loud voice, as if anything were
now permissible; "the door to the left, ma'am."

"Perhaps the count did not ask for me," said Pierre when he
reached the landing. "I'd better go to my own room."

Anna Mikhaylovna paused and waited for him to come up.

"Ah, my friend!" she said, touching his arm as she had done her
son's when speaking to him that afternoon, "believe me I suffer no
less than you do, but be a man!"

"But really, hadn't I better go away?" he asked, looking kindly at
her over his spectacles.

"Ah, my dear friend! Forget the wrongs that may have been done
you. Think that he is your father... perhaps in the agony of death."
She sighed. "I have loved you like a son from the first. Trust
yourself to me, Pierre. I shall not forget your interests."

Pierre did not understand a word, but the conviction that all this
had to be grew stronger, and he meekly followed Anna Mikhaylovna who
was already opening a door.

This door led into a back anteroom. An old man, a servant of the
princesses, sat in a corner knitting a stocking. Pierre had never been
in this part of the house and did not even know of the existence of
these rooms. Anna Mikhaylovna, addressing a maid who was hurrying past
with a decanter on a tray as "my dear" and "my sweet," asked about the
princess' health and then led Pierre along a stone passage. The
first door on the left led into the princesses' apartments. The maid
with the decanter in her haste had not closed the door (everything
in the house was done in haste at that time), and Pierre and Anna
Mikhaylovna in passing instinctively glanced into the room, where
Prince Vasili and the eldest princess were sitting close together
talking. Seeing them pass, Prince Vasili drew back with obvious
impatience, while the princess jumped up and with a gesture of
desperation slammed the door with all her might.

This action was so unlike her usual composure and the fear
depicted on Prince Vasili's face so out of keeping with his dignity
that Pierre stopped and glanced inquiringly over his spectacles at his
guide. Anna Mikhaylovna evinced no surprise, she only smiled faintly
and sighed, as if to say that this was no more than she had expected.

"Be a man, my friend. I will look after your interests," said she in
reply to his look, and went still faster along the passage.

Pierre could not make out what it was all about, and still less what
"watching over his interests" meant, but he decided that all these
things had to be. From the passage they went into a large, dimly lit
room adjoining the count's reception room. It was one of those
sumptuous but cold apartments known to Pierre only from the front
approach, but even in this room there now stood an empty bath, and
water had been spilled on the carpet. They were met by a deacon with a
censer and by a servant who passed out on tiptoe without heeding them.
They went into the reception room familiar to Pierre, with two Italian
windows opening into the conservatory, with its large bust and full
length portrait of Catherine the Great. The same people were still
sitting here in almost the same positions as before, whispering to one
another. All became silent and turned to look at the pale tear-worn
Anna Mikhaylovna as she entered, and at the big stout figure of Pierre
who, hanging his head, meekly followed her.

Anna Mikhaylovna's face expressed a consciousness that the
decisive moment had arrived. With the air of a practical Petersburg
lady she now, keeping Pierre close beside her, entered the room even
more boldly than that afternoon. She felt that as she brought with her
the person the dying man wished to see, her own admission was assured.
Casting a rapid glance at all those in the room and noticing the
count's confessor there, she glided up to him with a sort of amble,
not exactly bowing yet seeming to grow suddenly smaller, and
respectfully received the blessing first of one and then of another
priest.

"God be thanked that you are in time," said she to one of the
priests; "all we relatives have been in such anxiety. This young man
is the count's son," she added more softly. "What a terrible moment!"

Having said this she went up to the doctor.

"Dear doctor," said she, "this young man is the count's son. Is
there any hope?"

The doctor cast a rapid glance upwards and silently shrugged his
shoulders. Anna Mikhaylovna with just the same movement raised her
shoulders and eyes, almost closing the latter, sighed, and moved
away from the doctor to Pierre. To him, in a particularly respectful
and tenderly sad voice, she said:

"Trust in His mercy!" and pointing out a small sofa for him to sit
and wait for her, she went silently toward the door that everyone
was watching and it creaked very slightly as she disappeared behind
it.

Pierre, having made up his mind to obey his monitress implicitly,
moved toward the sofa she had indicated. As soon as Anna Mikhaylovna
had disappeared he noticed that the eyes of all in the room turned
to him with something more than curiosity and sympathy. He noticed
that they whispered to one another, casting significant looks at him
with a kind of awe and even servility. A deference such as he had
never before received was shown him. A strange lady, the one who had
been talking to the priests, rose and offered him her seat; an
aide-de-camp picked up and returned a glove Pierre had dropped; the
doctors became respectfully silent as he passed by, and moved to
make way for him. At first Pierre wished to take another seat so as
not to trouble the lady, and also to pick up the glove himself and
to pass round the doctors who were not even in his way; but all at
once he felt that this would not do, and that tonight he was a
person obliged to perform some sort of awful rite which everyone
expected of him, and that he was therefore bound to accept their
services. He took the glove in silence from the aide-de-camp, and
sat down in the lady's chair, placing his huge hands symmetrically
on his knees in the naive attitude of an Egyptian statue, and
decided in his own mind that all was as it should be, and that in
order not to lose his head and do foolish things he must not act on
his own ideas tonight, but must yield himself up entirely to the
will of those who were guiding him.

Not two minutes had passed before Prince Vasili with head erect
majestically entered the room. He was wearing his long coat with three
stars on his breast. He seemed to have grown thinner since the
morning; his eyes seemed larger than usual when he glanced round and
noticed Pierre. He went up to him, took his hand (a thing he never
used to do), and drew it downwards as if wishing to ascertain
whether it was firmly fixed on.

"Courage, courage, my friend! He has asked to see you. That is
well!" and he turned to go.

But Pierre thought it necessary to ask: "How is..." and hesitated,
not knowing whether it would be proper to call the dying man "the
count," yet ashamed to call him "father."

"He had another stroke about half an hour ago. Courage, my
friend..."

Pierre's mind was in such a confused state that the word "stroke"
suggested to him a blow from something. He looked at Prince Vasili
in perplexity, and only later grasped that a stroke was an attack of
illness. Prince Vasili said something to Lorrain in passing and went
through the door on tiptoe. He could not walk well on tiptoe and his
whole body jerked at each step. The eldest princess followed him,
and the priests and deacons and some servants also went in at the
door. Through that door was heard a noise of things being moved about,
and at last Anna Mikhaylovna, still with the same expression, pale but
resolute in the discharge of duty, ran out and touching Pierre lightly
on the arm said:

"The divine mercy is inexhaustible! Unction is about to be
administered. Come."

Pierre went in at the door, stepping on the soft carpet, and noticed
that the strange lady, the aide-de-camp, and some of the servants, all
followed him in, as if there were now no further need for permission
to enter that room.





CHAPTER XXIII


Pierre well knew this large room divided by columns and an arch, its
walls hung round with Persian carpets. The part of the room behind the
columns, with a high silk-curtained mahogany bedstead on one side
and on the other an immense case containing icons, was brightly
illuminated with red light like a Russian church during evening
service. Under the gleaming icons stood a long invalid chair, and in
that chair on snowy-white smooth pillows, evidently freshly changed,
Pierre saw--covered to the waist by a bright green quilt--the
familiar, majestic figure of his father, Count Bezukhov, with that
gray mane of hair above his broad forehead which reminded one of a
lion, and the deep characteristically noble wrinkles of his
handsome, ruddy face. He lay just under the icons; his large thick
hands outside the quilt. Into the right hand, which was lying palm
downwards, a wax taper had been thrust between forefinger and thumb,
and an old servant, bending over from behind the chair, held it in
position. By the chair stood the priests, their long hair falling over
their magnificent glittering vestments, with lighted tapers in their
hands, slowly and solemnly conducting the service. A little behind
them stood the two younger princesses holding handkerchiefs to their
eyes, and just in front of them their eldest sister, Catiche, with a
vicious and determined look steadily fixed on the icons, as though
declaring to all that she could not answer for herself should she
glance round. Anna Mikhaylovna, with a meek, sorrowful, and
all-forgiving expression on her face, stood by the door near the
strange lady. Prince Vasili in front of the door, near the invalid
chair, a wax taper in his left hand, was leaning his left arm on the
carved back of a velvet chair he had turned round for the purpose, and
was crossing himself with his right hand, turning his eyes upward each
time he touched his forehead. His face wore a calm look of piety and
resignation to the will of God. "If you do not understand these
sentiments," he seemed to be saying, "so much the worse for you!"

Behind him stood the aide-de-camp, the doctors, and the menservants;
the men and women had separated as in church. All were silently
crossing themselves, and the reading of the church service, the
subdued chanting of deep bass voices, and in the intervals sighs and
the shuffling of feet were the only sounds that could be heard. Anna
Mikhaylovna, with an air of importance that showed that she felt she
quite knew what she was about, went across the room to where Pierre
was standing and gave him a taper. He lit it and, distracted by
observing those around him, began crossing himself with the hand
that held the taper.

Sophie, the rosy, laughter-loving, youngest princess with the
mole, watched him. She smiled, hid her face in her handkerchief, and
remained with it hidden for awhile; then looking up and seeing
Pierre she again began to laugh. She evidently felt unable to look
at him without laughing, but could not resist looking at him: so to be
out of temptation she slipped quietly behind one of the columns. In
the midst of the service the voices of the priests suddenly ceased,
they whispered to one another, and the old servant who was holding the
count's hand got up and said something to the ladies. Anna Mikhaylovna
stepped forward and, stooping over the dying man, beckoned to
Lorrain from behind her back. The French doctor held no taper; he
was leaning against one of the columns in a respectful attitude
implying that he, a foreigner, in spite of all differences of faith,
understood the full importance of the rite now being performed and
even approved of it. He now approached the sick man with the noiseless
step of one in full vigor of life, with his delicate white fingers
raised from the green quilt the hand that was free, and turning
sideways felt the pulse and reflected a moment. The sick man was given
something to drink, there was a stir around him, then the people
resumed their places and the service continued. During this interval
Pierre noticed that Prince Vasili left the chair on which he had
been leaning, and--with air which intimated that he knew what he was
about and if others did not understand him it was so much the worse
for them--did not go up to the dying man, but passed by him, joined
the eldest princess, and moved with her to the side of the room
where stood the high bedstead with its silken hangings. On leaving the
bed both Prince Vasili and the princess passed out by a back door, but
returned to their places one after the other before the service was
concluded. Pierre paid no more attention to this occurrence than to
the rest of what went on, having made up his mind once for all that
what he saw happening around him that evening was in some way
essential.

The chanting of the service ceased, and the voice of the priest
was heard respectfully congratulating the dying man on having received
the sacrament. The dying man lay as lifeless and immovable as
before. Around him everyone began to stir: steps were audible and
whispers, among which Anna Mikhaylovna's was the most distinct.

Pierre heard her say:

"Certainly he must be moved onto the bed; here it will be
impossible..."

The sick man was so surrounded by doctors, princesses, and
servants that Pierre could no longer see the reddish-yellow face
with its gray mane--which, though he saw other faces as well, he had
not lost sight of for a single moment during the whole service. He
judged by the cautious movements of those who crowded round the
invalid chair that they had lifted the dying man and were moving him.

"Catch hold of my arm or you'll drop him!" he heard one of the
servants say in a frightened whisper. "Catch hold from underneath.
Here!" exclaimed different voices; and the heavy breathing of the
bearers and the shuffling of their feet grew more hurried, as if the
weight they were carrying were too much for them.

As the bearers, among whom was Anna Mikhaylovna, passed the young
man he caught a momentary glimpse between their heads and backs of the
dying man's high, stout, uncovered chest and powerful shoulders,
raised by those who were holding him under the armpits, and of his
gray, curly, leonine head. This head, with its remarkably broad brow
and cheekbones, its handsome, sensual mouth, and its cold, majestic
expression, was not disfigured by the approach of death. It was the
same as Pierre remembered it three months before, when the count had
sent him to Petersburg. But now this head was swaying helplessly
with the uneven movements of the bearers, and the cold listless gaze
fixed itself upon nothing.

After a few minutes' bustle beside the high bedstead, those who
had carried the sick man dispersed. Anna Mikhaylovna touched
Pierre's hand and said, "Come." Pierre went with her to the bed on
which the sick man had been laid in a stately pose in keeping with the
ceremony just completed. He lay with his head propped high on the
pillows. His hands were symmetrically placed on the green silk
quilt, the palms downward. When Pierre came up the count was gazing
straight at him, but with a look the significance of which could not
be understood by mortal man. Either this look meant nothing but that
as long as one has eyes they must look somewhere, or it meant too
much. Pierre hesitated, not knowing what to do, and glanced
inquiringly at his guide. Anna Mikhaylovna made a hurried sign with
her eyes, glancing at the sick man's hand and moving her lips as if to
send it a kiss. Pierre, carefully stretching his neck so as not to
touch the quilt, followed her suggestion and pressed his lips to the
large boned, fleshy hand. Neither the hand nor a single muscle of
the count's face stirred. Once more Pierre looked questioningly at
Anna Mikhaylovna to see what he was to do next. Anna Mikhaylovna
with her eyes indicated a chair that stood beside the bed. Pierre
obediently sat down, his eyes asking if he were doing right. Anna
Mikhaylovna nodded approvingly. Again Pierre fell into the naively
symmetrical pose of an Egyptian statue, evidently distressed that
his stout and clumsy body took up so much room and doing his utmost to
look as small as possible. He looked at the count, who still gazed
at the spot where Pierre's face had been before he sat down. Anna
Mikhaylovna indicated by her attitude her consciousness of the
pathetic importance of these last moments of meeting between the
father and son. This lasted about two minutes, which to Pierre
seemed an hour. Suddenly the broad muscles and lines of the count's
face began to twitch. The twitching increased, the handsome mouth
was drawn to one side (only now did Pierre realize how near death
his father was), and from that distorted mouth issued an indistinct,
hoarse sound. Anna Mikhaylovna looked attentively at the sick man's
eyes, trying to guess what he wanted; she pointed first to Pierre,
then to some drink, then named Prince Vasili in an inquiring
whisper, then pointed to the quilt. The eyes and face of the sick
man showed impatience. He made an effort to look at the servant who
stood constantly at the head of the bed.

"Wants to turn on the other side," whispered the servant, and got up
to turn the count's heavy body toward the wall.

Pierre rose to help him.

While the count was being turned over, one of his arms fell back
helplessly and he made a fruitless effort to pull it forward.
Whether he noticed the look of terror with which Pierre regarded
that lifeless arm, or whether some other thought flitted across his
dying brain, at any rate he glanced at the refractory arm, at Pierre's
terror-stricken face, and again at the arm, and on his face a
feeble, piteous smile appeared, quite out of keeping with his
features, that seemed to deride his own helplessness. At sight of this
smile Pierre felt an unexpected quivering in his breast and a tickling
in his nose, and tears dimmed his eyes. The sick man was turned on
to his side with his face to the wall. He sighed.

"He is dozing," said Anna Mikhaylovna, observing that one of the
princesses was coming to take her turn at watching. "Let us go."

Pierre went out.





CHAPTER XXIV


There was now no one in the reception room except Prince Vasili
and the eldest princess, who were sitting under the portrait of
Catherine the Great and talking eagerly. As soon as they saw Pierre
and his companion they became silent, and Pierre thought he saw the
princess hide something as she whispered:

"I can't bear the sight of that woman."

"Catiche has had tea served in the small drawing room," said
Prince Vasili to Anna Mikhaylovna. "Go and take something, my poor
Anna Mikhaylovna, or you will not hold out."

To Pierre he said nothing, merely giving his arm a sympathetic
squeeze below the shoulder. Pierre went with Anna Mikhaylovna into the
small drawing room.

"There is nothing so refreshing after a sleepless night as a cup
of this delicious Russian tea," Lorrain was saying with an air of
restrained animation as he stood sipping tea from a delicate Chinese
handleless cup before a table on which tea and a cold supper were laid
in the small circular room. Around the table all who were at Count
Bezukhov's house that night had gathered to fortify themselves. Pierre
well remembered this small circular drawing room with its mirrors
and little tables. During balls given at the house Pierre, who did not
know how to dance, had liked sitting in this room to watch the
ladies who, as they passed through in their ball dresses with diamonds
and pearls on their bare shoulders, looked at themselves in the
brilliantly lighted mirrors which repeated their reflections several
times. Now this same room was dimly lighted by two candles. On one
small table tea things and supper dishes stood in disorder, and in the
middle of the night a motley throng of people sat there, not
merrymaking, but somberly whispering, and betraying by every word
and movement that they none of them forgot what was happening and what
was about to happen in the bedroom. Pierre did not eat anything though
he would very much have liked to. He looked inquiringly at his
monitress and saw that she was again going on tiptoe to the
reception room where they had left Prince Vasili and the eldest
princess. Pierre concluded that this also was essential, and after a
short interval followed her. Anna Mikhaylovna was standing beside
the princess, and they were both speaking in excited whispers.

"Permit me, Princess, to know what is necessary and what is not
necessary," said the younger of the two speakers, evidently in the
same state of excitement as when she had slammed the door of her room.

"But, my dear princess," answered Anna Mikhaylovna blandly but
impressively, blocking the way to the bedroom and preventing the other
from passing, "won't this be too much for poor Uncle at a moment
when he needs repose? Worldly conversation at a moment when his soul
is already prepared..."

Prince Vasili was seated in an easy chair in his familiar
attitude, with one leg crossed high above the other. His cheeks, which
were so flabby that they looked heavier below, were twitching
violently; but he wore the air of a man little concerned in what the
two ladies were saying.

"Come, my dear Anna Mikhaylovna, let Catiche do as she pleases.
You know how fond the count is of her."

"I don't even know what is in this paper," said the younger of the
two ladies, addressing Prince Vasili and pointing to an inlaid
portfolio she held in her hand. "All I know is that his real will is
in his writing table, and this is a paper he has forgotten...."

She tried to pass Anna Mikhaylovna, but the latter sprang so as to
bar her path.

"I know, my dear, kind princess," said Anna Mikhaylovna, seizing the
portfolio so firmly that it was plain she would not let go easily.
"Dear princess, I beg and implore you, have some pity on him! Je
vous en conjure..."

The princess did not reply. Their efforts in the struggle for the
portfolio were the only sounds audible, but it was evident that if the
princess did speak, her words would not be flattering to Anna
Mikhaylovna. Though the latter held on tenaciously, her voice lost
none of its honeyed firmness and softness.

"Pierre, my dear, come here. I think he will not be out of place
in a family consultation; is it not so, Prince?"

"Why don't you speak, cousin?" suddenly shrieked the princess so
loud that those in the drawing room heard her and were startled.
"Why do you remain silent when heaven knows who permits herself to
interfere, making a scene on the very threshold of a dying man's room?
Intriguer!" she hissed viciously, and tugged with all her might at the
portfolio.

But Anna Mikhaylovna went forward a step or two to keep her hold
on the portfolio, and changed her grip.

Prince Vasili rose. "Oh!" said he with reproach and surprise,
"this is absurd! Come, let go I tell you."

The princess let go.

"And you too!"

But Anna Mikhaylovna did not obey him.

"Let go, I tell you! I will take the responsibility. I myself will
go and ask him, I!... does that satisfy you?"

"But, Prince," said Anna Mikhaylovna, "after such a solemn
sacrament, allow him a moment's peace! Here, Pierre, tell them your
opinion," said she, turning to the young man who, having come quite
close, was gazing with astonishment at the angry face of the
princess which had lost all dignity, and at the twitching cheeks of
Prince Vasili.

"Remember that you will answer for the consequences," said Prince
Vasili severely. "You don't know what you are doing."

"Vile woman!" shouted the princess, darting unexpectedly at Anna
Mikhaylovna and snatching the portfolio from her.

Prince Vasili bent his head and spread out his hands.

At this moment that terrible door, which Pierre had watched so
long and which had always opened so quietly, burst noisily open and
banged against the wall, and the second of the three sisters rushed
out wringing her hands.

"What are you doing!" she cried vehemently. "He is dying and you
leave me alone with him!"

Her sister dropped the portfolio. Anna Mikhaylovna, stooping,
quickly caught up the object of contention and ran into the bedroom.
The eldest princess and Prince Vasili, recovering themselves, followed
her. A few minutes later the eldest sister came out with a pale hard
face, again biting her underlip. At sight of Pierre her expression
showed an irrepressible hatred.

"Yes, now you may be glad!" said she; "this is what you have been
waiting for." And bursting into tears she hid her face in her
handkerchief and rushed from the room.

Prince Vasili came next. He staggered to the sofa on which Pierre
was sitting and dropped onto it, covering his face with his hand.
Pierre noticed that he was pale and that his jaw quivered and shook as
if in an ague.

"Ah, my friend!" said he, taking Pierre by the elbow; and there
was in his voice a sincerity and weakness Pierre had never observed in
it before. "How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what? I
am near sixty, dear friend... I too... All will end in death, all!
Death is awful..." and he burst into tears.

Anna Mikhaylovna came out last. She approached Pierre with slow,
quiet steps.

"Pierre!" she said.

Pierre gave her an inquiring look. She kissed the young man on his
forehead, wetting him with her tears. Then after a pause she said:

"He is no more...."

Pierre looked at her over his spectacles.

"Come, I will go with you. Try to weep, nothing gives such relief as
tears."

She led him into the dark drawing room and Pierre was glad no one
could see his face. Anna Mikhaylovna left him, and when she returned
he was fast asleep with his head on his arm.

In the morning Anna Mikhaylovna said to Pierre:

"Yes, my dear, this is a great loss for us all, not to speak of you.
But God will support you: you are young, and are now, I hope, in
command of an immense fortune. The will has not yet been opened. I
know you well enough to be sure that this will not turn your head, but
it imposes duties on you, and you must be a man."

Pierre was silent.

"Perhaps later on I may tell you, my dear boy, that if I had not
been there, God only knows what would have happened! You know, Uncle
promised me only the day before yesterday not to forget Boris. But
he had no time. I hope, my dear friend, you will carry out your
father's wish?"

Pierre understood nothing of all this and coloring shyly looked in
silence at Princess Anna Mikhaylovna. After her talk with Pierre, Anna
Mikhaylovna returned to the Rostovs' and went to bed. On waking in the
morning she told the Rostovs and all her acquaintances the details
of Count Bezukhov's death. She said the count had died as she would
herself wish to die, that his end was not only touching but
edifying. As to the last meeting between father and son, it was so
touching that she could not think of it without tears, and did not
know which had behaved better during those awful moments--the father
who so remembered everything and everybody at last and had
spoken such pathetic words to the son, or Pierre, whom it had been
pitiful to see, so stricken was he with grief, though he tried hard to
hide it in order not to sadden his dying father. "It is painful, but
it does one good. It uplifts the soul to see such men as the old count
and his worthy son," said she. Of the behavior of the eldest
princess and Prince Vasili she spoke disapprovingly, but in whispers
and as a great secret.





CHAPTER XXV


At Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Andreevich Bolkonski's estate, the
arrival of young Prince Andrew and his wife was daily expected, but
this expectation did not upset the regular routine of life in the
old prince's household. General in Chief Prince Nicholas Andreevich
(nicknamed in society, "the King of Prussia") ever since the Emperor
Paul had exiled him to his country estate had lived there continuously
with his daughter, Princess Mary, and her companion, Mademoiselle
Bourienne. Though in the new reign he was free to return to the
capitals, he still continued to live in the country, remarking that
anyone who wanted to see him could come the hundred miles from
Moscow to Bald Hills, while he himself needed no one and nothing. He
used to say that there are only two sources of human vice--idleness
and superstition, and only two virtues--activity and intelligence.
He himself undertook his daughter's education, and to develop these
two cardinal virtues in her gave her lessons in algebra and geometry
till she was twenty, and arranged her life so that her whole time
was occupied. He was himself always occupied: writing his memoirs,
solving problems in higher mathematics, turning snuffboxes on a lathe,
working in the garden, or superintending the building that was
always going on at his estate. As regularity is a prime condition
facilitating activity, regularity in his household was carried to
the highest point of exactitude. He always came to table under
precisely the same conditions, and not only at the same hour but at
the same minute. With those about him, from his daughter to his serfs,
the prince was sharp and invariably exacting, so that without being
a hardhearted man he inspired such fear and respect as few hardhearted
men would have aroused. Although he was in retirement and had now no
influence in political affairs, every high official appointed to the
province in which the prince's estate lay considered it his duty to
visit him and waited in the lofty antechamber ante chamber just as the
architect, gardener, or Princess Mary did, till the prince appeared
punctually to the appointed hour. Everyone sitting in this antechamber
experienced the same feeling of respect and even fear when the
enormously high study door opened and showed the figure of a rather
small old man, with powdered wig, small withered hands, and bushy gray
eyebrows which, when he frowned, sometimes hid the gleam of his
shrewd, youthfully glittering eyes.

On the morning of the day that the young couple were to arrive,
Princess Mary entered the antechamber as usual at the time appointed
for the morning greeting, crossing herself with trepidation and
repeating a silent prayer. Every morning she came in like that, and
every morning prayed that the daily interview might pass off well.

An old powdered manservant who was sitting in the antechamber rose
quietly and said in a whisper: "Please walk in."

Through the door came the regular hum of a lathe. The princess
timidly opened the door which moved noiselessly and easily. She paused
at the entrance. The prince was working at the lathe and after
glancing round continued his work.

The enormous study was full of things evidently in constant use. The
large table covered with books and plans, the tall glass-fronted
bookcases with keys in the locks, the high desk for writing while
standing up, on which lay an open exercise book, and the lathe with
tools laid ready to hand and shavings scattered around--all
indicated continuous, varied, and orderly activity. The motion of
the small foot shod in a Tartar boot embroidered with silver, and
the firm pressure of the lean sinewy hand, showed that the prince
still possessed the tenacious endurance and vigor of hardy old age.
After a few more turns of the lathe he removed his foot from the
pedal, wiped his chisel, dropped it into a leather pouch attached to
the lathe, and, approaching the table, summoned his daughter. He never
gave his children a blessing, so he simply held out his bristly
cheek (as yet unshaven) and, regarding her tenderly and attentively,
said severely:

"Quite well? All right then, sit down." He took the exercise book
containing lessons in geometry written by himself and drew up a
chair with his foot.

"For tomorrow!" said he, quickly finding the page and making a
scratch from one paragraph to another with his hard nail.

The princess bent over the exercise book on the table.

"Wait a bit, here's a letter for you," said the old man suddenly,
taking a letter addressed in a woman's hand from a bag hanging above
the table, onto which he threw it.

At the sight of the letter red patches showed themselves on the
princess' face. She took it quickly and bent her head over it.

"From Heloise?" asked the prince with a cold smile that showed his
still sound, yellowish teeth.

"Yes, it's from Julie," replied the princess with a timid glance and
a timid smile.

"I'll let two more letters pass, but the third I'll read," said
the prince sternly; "I'm afraid you write much nonsense. I'll read the
third!"

"Read this if you like, Father," said the princess, blushing still
more and holding out the letter.

"The third, I said the third!" cried the prince abruptly, pushing
the letter away, and leaning his elbows on the table he drew toward
him the exercise book containing geometrical figures.

"Well, madam," he began, stooping over the book close to his
daughter and placing an arm on the back of the chair on which she sat,
so that she felt herself surrounded on all sides by the acrid scent of
old age and tobacco, which she had known so long. "Now, madam, these
triangles are equal; please note that the angle ABC..."

The princess looked in a scared way at her father's eyes
glittering close to her; the red patches on her face came and went,
and it was plain that she understood nothing and was so frightened
that her fear would prevent her understanding any of her father's
further explanations, however clear they might be. Whether it was
the teacher's fault or the pupil's, this same thing happened every
day: the princess' eyes grew dim, she could not see and could not hear
anything, but was only conscious of her stern father's withered face
close to her, of his breath and the smell of him, and could think only
of how to get away quickly to her own room to make out the problem
in peace. The old man was beside himself: moved the chair on which
he was sitting noisily backward and forward, made efforts to control
himself and not become vehement, but almost always did become
vehement, scolded, and sometimes flung the exercise book away.

The princess gave a wrong answer.

"Well now, isn't she a fool!" shouted the prince, pushing the book
aside and turning sharply away; but rising immediately, he paced up
and down, lightly touched his daughter's hair and sat down again.

He drew up his chair, and continued to explain.

"This won't do, Princess; it won't do," said he, when Princess Mary,
having taken and closed the exercise book with the next day's
lesson, was about to leave: "Mathematics are most important, madam!
I don't want to have you like our silly ladies. Get used to it and
you'll like it," and he patted her cheek. "It will drive all the
nonsense out of your head."

She turned to go, but he stopped her with a gesture and took an
uncut book from the high desk.

"Here is some sort of Key to the Mysteries that your Heloise has
sent you. Religious! I don't interfere with anyone's belief... I
have looked at it. Take it. Well, now go. Go."

He patted her on the shoulder and himself closed the door after her.

Princess Mary went back to her room with the sad, scared
expression that rarely left her and which made her plain, sickly
face yet plainer. She sat down at her writing table, on which stood
miniature portraits and which was littered with books and papers.
The princess was as untidy as her father was tidy. She put down the
geometry book and eagerly broke the seal of her letter. It was from
her most intimate friend from childhood; that same Julie Karagina
who had been at the Rostovs' name-day party.

Julie wrote in French:


Dear and precious Friend, How terrible and frightful a thing is
separation! Though I tell myself that half my life and half my
happiness are wrapped up in you, and that in spite of the distance
separating us our hearts are united by indissoluble bonds, my heart
rebels against fate and in spite of the pleasures and distractions
around me I cannot overcome a certain secret sorrow that has been in
my heart ever since we parted. Why are we not together as we were last
summer, in your big study, on the blue sofa, the confidential sofa?
Why cannot I now, as three months ago, draw fresh moral strength
from your look, so gentle, calm, and penetrating, a look I loved so
well and seem to see before me as I write?


Having read thus far, Princess Mary sighed and glanced into the
mirror which stood on her right. It reflected a weak, ungraceful
figure and thin face. Her eyes, always sad, now looked with particular
hopelessness at her reflection in the glass. "She flatters me,"
thought the princess, turning away and continuing to read. But Julie
did not flatter her friend, the princess' eyes--large, deep and
luminous (it seemed as if at times there radiated from them shafts
of warm light)--were so beautiful that very often in spite of the
plainness of her face they gave her an attraction more powerful than
that of beauty. But the princess never saw the beautiful expression of
her own eyes--the look they had when she was not thinking of
herself. As with everyone, her face assumed a forced unnatural
expression as soon as she looked in a glass. She went on reading:


All Moscow talks of nothing but war. One of my two brothers is
already abroad, the other is with the Guards, who are starting on
their march to the frontier. Our dear Emperor has left Petersburg
and it is thought intends to expose his precious person to the chances
of war. God grant that the Corsican monster who is destroying the
peace of Europe may be overthrown by the angel whom it has pleased the
Almighty, in His goodness, to give us as sovereign! To say nothing
of my brothers, this war has deprived me of one of the associations
nearest my heart. I mean young Nicholas Rostov, who with his
enthusiasm could not bear to remain inactive and has left the
university to join the army. I will confess to you, dear Mary, that in
spite of his extreme youth his departure for the army was a great
grief to me. This young man, of whom I spoke to you last summer, is so
noble-minded and full of that real youthfulness which one seldom finds
nowadays among our old men of twenty and, particularly, he is so frank
and has so much heart. He is so pure and poetic that my relations with
him, transient as they were, have been one of the sweetest comforts to
my poor heart, which has already suffered so much. Someday I will tell
you about our parting and all that was said then. That is still too
fresh. Ah, dear friend, you are happy not to know these poignant
joys and sorrows. You are fortunate, for the latter are generally
the stronger! I know very well that Count Nicholas is too young ever
to be more to me than a friend, but this sweet friendship, this poetic
and pure intimacy, were what my heart needed. But enough of this!
The chief news, about which all Moscow gossips, is the death of old
Count Bezukhov, and his inheritance. Fancy! The three princesses
have received very little, Prince Vasili nothing, and it is Monsieur
Pierre who has inherited all the property and has besides been
recognized as legitimate; so that he is now Count Bezukhov and
possessor of the finest fortune in Russia. It is rumored that Prince
Vasili played a very despicable part in this affair and that he
returned to Petersburg quite crestfallen.

I confess I understand very little about all these matters of
wills and inheritance; but I do know that since this young man, whom
we all used to know as plain Monsieur Pierre, has become Count
Bezukhov and the owner of one of the largest fortunes in Russia, I
am much amused to watch the change in the tone and manners of the
mammas burdened by marriageable daughters, and of the young ladies
themselves, toward him, though, between you and me, he always seemed
to me a poor sort of fellow. As for the past two years people have
amused themselves by finding husbands for me (most of whom I don't
even know), the matchmaking chronicles of Moscow now speak of me as
the future Countess Bezukhova. But you will understand that I have
no desire for the post. A propos of marriages: do you know that a
while ago that universal auntie Anna Mikhaylovna told me, under the
seal of strict secrecy, of a plan of marriage for you. It is neither
more nor less than with Prince Vasili's son Anatole, whom they wish to
reform by marrying him to someone rich and distinguee, and it is on
you that his relations' choice has fallen. I don't know what you
will think of it, but I consider it my duty to let you know of it.
He is said to be very handsome and a terrible scapegrace. That is
all I have been able to find out about him.

But enough of gossip. I am at the end of my second sheet of paper,
and Mamma has sent for me to go and dine at the Apraksins'. Read the
mystical book I am sending you; it has an enormous success here.
Though there are things in it difficult for the feeble human mind to
grasp, it is an admirable book which calms and elevates the soul.
Adieu! Give my respects to monsieur your father and my compliments
to Mademoiselle Bourienne. I embrace you as I love you.

JULIE

P.S. Let me have news of your brother and his charming little wife.


The princess pondered awhile with a thoughtful smile and her
luminous eyes lit up so that her face was entirely transformed. Then
she suddenly rose and with her heavy tread went up to the table. She
took a sheet of paper and her hand moved rapidly over it. This is
the reply she wrote, also in French:


Dear and precious Friend, Your letter of the 13th has given me great
delight. So you still love me, my romantic Julie? Separation, of which
you say so much that is bad, does not seem to have had its usual
effect on you. You complain of our separation. What then should I say,
if I dared complain, I who am deprived of all who are dear to me?
Ah, if we had not religion to console us life would be very sad. Why
do you suppose that I should look severely on your affection for
that young man? On such matters I am only severe with myself. I
understand such feelings in others, and if never having felt them I
cannot approve of them, neither do I condemn them. Only it seems to me
that Christian love, love of one's neighbor, love of one's enemy, is
worthier, sweeter, and better than the feelings which the beautiful
eyes of a young man can inspire in a romantic and loving young girl
like yourself.

The news of Count Bezukhov's death reached us before your letter and
my father was much affected by it. He says the count was the last
representative but one of the great century, and that it is his own
turn now, but that he will do all he can to let his turn come as
late as possible. God preserve us from that terrible misfortune!

I cannot agree with you about Pierre, whom I knew as a child. He
always seemed to me to have an excellent heart, and that is the
quality I value most in people. As to his inheritance and the part
played by Prince Vasili, it is very sad for both. Ah, my dear
friend, our divine Saviour's words, that it is easier for a camel to
go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the
Kingdom of God, are terribly true. I pity Prince Vasili but am still
more sorry for Pierre. So young, and burdened with such riches--to
what temptations he will be exposed! If I were asked what I desire
most on earth, it would be to be poorer than the poorest beggar. A
thousand thanks, dear friend, for the volume you have sent me and
which has such success in Moscow. Yet since you tell me that among
some good things it contains others which our weak human understanding
cannot grasp, it seems to me rather useless to spend time in reading
what is unintelligible and can therefore bear no fruit. I never
could understand the fondness some people have for confusing their
minds by dwelling on mystical books that merely awaken their doubts
and excite their imagination, giving them a bent for exaggeration
quite contrary to Christian simplicity. Let us rather read the
Epistles and Gospels. Let us not seek to penetrate what mysteries they
contain; for how can we, miserable sinners that we are, know the
terrible and holy secrets of Providence while we remain in this
flesh which forms an impenetrable veil between us and the Eternal? Let
us rather confine ourselves to studying those sublime rules which
our divine Saviour has left for our guidance here below. Let us try to
conform to them and follow them, and let us be persuaded that the less
we let our feeble human minds roam, the better we shall please God,
who rejects all knowledge that does not come from Him; and the less we
seek to fathom what He has been pleased to conceal from us, the sooner
will He vouchsafe its revelation to us through His divine Spirit.

My father has not spoken to me of a suitor, but has only told me
that he has received a letter and is expecting a visit from Prince
Vasili. In regard to this project of marriage for me, I will tell you,
dear sweet friend, that I look on marriage as a divine institution
to which we must conform. However painful it may be to me, should
the Almighty lay the duties of wife and mother upon me I
shall try to perform them as faithfully as I can, without
disquieting myself by examining my feelings toward him whom He may
give me for husband.

I have had a letter from my brother, who announces his speedy
arrival at Bald Hills with his wife. This pleasure will be but a brief
one, however, for he will leave, us again to take part in this unhappy
war into which we have been drawn, God knows how or why. Not only
where you are--at the heart of affairs and of the world--is the talk
all of war, even here amid fieldwork and the calm of nature--which
townsfolk consider characteristic of the country--rumors of war are
heard and painfully felt. My father talks of nothing but marches and
countermarches, things of which I understand nothing; and the day
before yesterday during my daily walk through the village I
witnessed a heartrending scene.... It was a convoy of conscripts
enrolled from our people and starting to join the army. You should
have seen the state of the mothers, wives, and children of the men who
were going and should have heard the sobs. It seems as though
mankind has forgotten the laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached
love and forgiveness of injuries--and that men attribute the
greatest merit to skill in killing one another.

Adieu, dear and kind friend; may our divine Saviour and His most
Holy Mother keep you in their holy and all-powerful care!

MARY


"Ah, you are sending off a letter, Princess? I have already
dispatched mine. I have written to my poor mother," said the smiling
Mademoiselle Bourienne rapidly, in her pleasant mellow tones and
with guttural r's. She brought into Princess Mary's strenuous,
mournful, and gloomy world a quite different atmosphere, careless,
lighthearted, and self-satisfied.

"Princess, I must warn you," she added, lowering her voice and
evidently listening to herself with pleasure, and speaking with
exaggerated grasseyement, "the prince has been scolding Michael
Ivanovich. He is in a very bad humor, very morose. Be prepared."

"Ah, dear friend," replied Princess Mary, "I have asked you never to
warn me of the humor my father is in. I do not allow myself to judge
him and would not have others do so."

The princess glanced at her watch and, seeing that she was five
minutes late in starting her practice on the clavichord, went into the
sitting room with a look of alarm. Between twelve and two o'clock,
as the day was mapped out, the prince rested and the princess played
the clavichord.





CHAPTER XXVI


The gray-haired valet was sitting drowsily listening to the
snoring of the prince, who was in his large study. From the far side
of the house through the closed doors came the sound of difficult
passages--twenty times repeated--of a sonata by Dussek.

Just then a closed carriage and another with a hood drove up to
the porch. Prince Andrew got out of the carriage, helped his little
wife to alight, and let her pass into the house before him. Old
Tikhon, wearing a wig, put his head out of the door of the
antechamber, reported in a whisper that the prince was sleeping, and
hastily closed the door. Tikhon knew that neither the son's arrival
nor any other unusual event must be allowed to disturb the appointed
order of the day. Prince Andrew apparently knew this as well as
Tikhon; he looked at his watch as if to ascertain whether his father's
habits had changed since he was at home last, and, having assured
himself that they had not, he turned to his wife.

"He will get up in twenty minutes. Let us go across to Mary's room,"
he said.

The little princess had grown stouter during this time, but her eyes
and her short, downy, smiling lip lifted when she began to speak
just as merrily and prettily as ever.

"Why, this is a palace!" she said to her husband, looking around
with the expression with which people compliment their host at a ball.
"Let's come, quick, quick!" And with a glance round, she smiled at
Tikhon, at her husband, and at the footman who accompanied them.

"Is that Mary practicing? Let's go quietly and take her by
surprise."

Prince Andrew followed her with a courteous but sad expression.

"You've grown older, Tikhon," he said in passing to the old man, who
kissed his hand.

Before they reached the room from which the sounds of the clavichord
came, the pretty, fair haired Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle Bourienne,
rushed out apparently beside herself with delight.

"Ah! what joy for the princess!" exclaimed she: "At last! I must let
her know."

"No, no, please not... You are Mademoiselle Bourienne," said the
little princess, kissing her. "I know you already through my
sister-in-law's friendship for you. She was not expecting us?"

They went up to the door of the sitting room from which came the
sound of the oft-repeated passage of the sonata. Prince Andrew stopped
and made a grimace, as if expecting something unpleasant.

The little princess entered the room. The passage broke off in the
middle, a cry was heard, then Princess Mary's heavy tread and the
sound of kissing. When Prince Andrew went in the two princesses, who
had only met once before for a short time at his wedding, were in each
other's arms warmly pressing their lips to whatever place they
happened to touch. Mademoiselle Bourienne stood near them pressing her
hand to her heart, with a beatific smile and obviously equally ready
to cry or to laugh. Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders and
frowned, as lovers of music do when they hear a false note. The two
women let go of one another, and then, as if afraid of being too late,
seized each other's hands, kissing them and pulling them away, and
again began kissing each other on the face, and then to Prince
Andrew's surprise both began to cry and kissed again. Mademoiselle
Bourienne also began to cry. Prince Andrew evidently felt ill at ease,
but to the two women it seemed quite natural that they should cry, and
apparently it never entered their heads that it could have been
otherwise at this meeting.

"Ah! my dear!... Ah! Mary!" they suddenly exclaimed, and then
laughed. "I dreamed last night..."--"You were not expecting us?..."-
"Ah! Mary, you have got thinner?..." "And you have grown stouter!..."

"I knew the princess at once," put in Mademoiselle Bourienne.

"And I had no idea!..." exclaimed Princess Mary. "Ah, Andrew, I
did not see you."

Prince Andrew and his sister, hand in hand, kissed one another,
and he told her she was still the same crybaby as ever. Princess
Mary had turned toward her brother, and through her tears the
loving, warm, gentle look of her large luminous eyes, very beautiful
at that moment, rested on Prince Andrew's face.

The little princess talked incessantly, her short, downy upper lip
continually and rapidly touching her rosy nether lip when necessary
and drawing up again next moment when her face broke into a smile of
glittering teeth and sparkling eyes. She told of an accident they
had had on the Spasski Hill which might have been serious for her in
her condition, and immediately after that informed them that she had
left all her clothes in Petersburg and that heaven knew what she would
have to dress in here; and that Andrew had quite changed, and that
Kitty Odyntsova had married an old man, and that there was a suitor
for Mary, a real one, but that they would talk of that later. Princess
Mary was still looking silently at her brother and her beautiful
eyes were full of love and sadness. It was plain that she was
following a train of thought independent of her sister-in-law's words.
In the midst of a description of the last Petersburg fete she
addressed her brother:

"So you are really going to the war, Andrew?" she said sighing.

Lise sighed too.

"Yes, and even tomorrow," replied her brother.

"He is leaving me here, God knows why, when he might have had
promotion..."

Princess Mary did not listen to the end, but continuing her train of
thought turned to her sister-in-law with a tender glance at her
figure.

"Is it certain?" she said.

The face of the little princess changed. She sighed and said:
"Yes, quite certain. Ah! it is very dreadful..."

Her lip descended. She brought her face close to her sister-in-law's
and unexpectedly again began to cry.

"She needs rest," said Prince Andrew with a frown. "Don't you, Lise?
Take her to your room and I'll go to Father. How is he? Just the
same?"

"Yes, just the same. Though I don't know what your opinion will be,"
answered the princess joyfully.

"And are the hours the same? And the walks in the avenues? And the
lathe?" asked Prince Andrew with a scarcely perceptible smile which
showed that, in spite of all his love and respect for his father, he
was aware of his weaknesses.

"The hours are the same, and the lathe, and also the mathematics and
my geometry lessons," said Princess Mary gleefully, as if her
lessons in geometry were among the greatest delights of her life.

When the twenty minutes had elapsed and the time had come for the
old prince to get up, Tikhon came to call the young prince to his
father. The old man made a departure from his usual routine in honor
of his son's arrival: he gave orders to admit him to his apartments
while he dressed for dinner. The old prince always dressed in
old-fashioned style, wearing an antique coat and powdered hair; and
when Prince Andrew entered his father's dressing room (not with the
contemptuous look and manner he wore in drawing rooms, but with the
animated face with which he talked to Pierre), the old man was sitting
on a large leather-covered chair, wrapped in a powdering mantle,
entrusting his head to Tikhon.

"Ah! here's the warrior! Wants to vanquish Buonaparte?" said the old
man, shaking his powdered head as much as the tail, which Tikhon was
holding fast to plait, would allow.

"You at least must tackle him properly, or else if he goes on like
this he'll soon have us, too, for his subjects! How are you?" And he
held out his cheek.

The old man was in a good temper after his nap before dinner. (He
used to say that a nap "after dinner was silver--before dinner,
golden.") He cast happy, sidelong glances at his son from under his
thick, bushy eyebrows. Prince Andrew went up and kissed his father
on the spot indicated to him. He made no reply on his father's
favorite topic--making fun of the military men of the day, and more
particularly of Bonaparte.

"Yes, Father, I have come come to you and brought my wife who is
pregnant," said Prince Andrew, following every movement of his
father's face with an eager and respectful look. "How is your health?"

"Only fools and rakes fall ill, my boy. You know me: I am busy
from morning till night and abstemious, so of course I am well."

"Thank God," said his son smiling.

"God has nothing to do with it! Well, go on," he continued,
returning to his hobby; "tell me how the Germans have taught you to
fight Bonaparte by this new science you call 'strategy.'"

Prince Andrew smiled.

"Give me time to collect my wits, Father," said he, with a smile
that showed that his father's foibles did not prevent his son from
loving and honoring him. "Why, I have not yet had time to settle
down!"

"Nonsense, nonsense!" cried the old man, shaking his pigtail to
see whether it was firmly plaited, and grasping his by the hand.
"The house for your wife is ready. Princess Mary will take her there
and show her over, and they'll talk nineteen to the dozen. That's
their woman's way! I am glad to have her. Sit down and talk. About
Mikhelson's army I understand--Tolstoy's too... a simultaneous
expedition.... But what's the southern army to do? Prussia is
neutral... I know that. What about Austria?" said he, rising from
his chair and pacing up and down the room followed by Tikhon, who
ran after him, handing him different articles of clothing. "What of
Sweden? How will they cross Pomerania?"

Prince Andrew, seeing that his father insisted, began--at first
reluctantly, but gradually with more and more animation, and from
habit changing unconsciously from Russian to French as he went on-
to explain the plan of operation for the coming campaign. He explained
how an army, ninety thousand strong, was to threaten Prussia so as
to bring her out of her neutrality and draw her into the war; how part
of that army was to join some Swedish forces at Stralsund; how two
hundred and twenty thousand Austrians, with a hundred thousand
Russians, were to operate in Italy and on the Rhine; how fifty
thousand Russians and as many English were to land at Naples, and
how a total force of five hundred thousand men was to attack the
French from different sides. The old prince did not evince the least
interest during this explanation, but as if he were not listening to
it continued to dress while walking about, and three times
unexpectedly interrupted. Once he stopped it by shouting: "The white
one, the white one!"

This meant that Tikhon was not handing him the waistcoat he
wanted. Another time he interrupted, saying:

"And will she soon be confined?" and shaking his head
reproachfully said: "That's bad! Go on, go on."

The third interruption came when Prince Andrew was finishing his
description. The old man began to sing, in the cracked voice of old
age: "Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre. Dieu sait quand reviendra."*


*"Marlborough is going to the wars; God knows when he'll return."


His son only smiled.

"I don't say it's a plan I approve of," said the son; "I am only
telling you what it is. Napoleon has also formed his plan by now,
not worse than this one."

"Well, you've told me nothing new," and the old man repeated,
meditatively and rapidly:

"Dieu sait quand reviendra. Go to the dining room."





CHAPTER XXVII


At the appointed hour the prince, powdered and shaven, entered the
dining room where his daughter-in-law, Princess Mary, and Mademoiselle
Bourienne were already awaiting him together with his architect, who
by a strange caprice of his employer's was admitted to table though
the position of that insignificant individual was such as could
certainly not have caused him to expect that honor. The prince, who
generally kept very strictly to social distinctions and rarely
admitted even important government officials to his table, had
unexpectedly selected Michael Ivanovich (who always went into a corner
to blow his nose on his checked handkerchief) to illustrate the theory
that all men are equals, and had more than once impressed on his
daughter that Michael Ivanovich was "not a whit worse than you or
I." At dinner the prince usually spoke to the taciturn Michael
Ivanovich more often than to anyone else.

In the dining room, which like all the rooms in the house was
exceedingly lofty, the members of the household and the footmen--one
behind each chair--stood waiting for the prince to enter. The head
butler, napkin on arm, was scanning the setting of the table, making
signs to the footmen, and anxiously glancing from the clock to the
door by which the prince was to enter. Prince Andrew was looking at
a large gilt frame, new to him, containing the genealogical tree of
the Princes Bolkonski, opposite which hung another such frame with a
badly painted portrait (evidently by the hand of the artist
belonging to the estate) of a ruling prince, in a crown--an alleged
descendant of Rurik and ancestor of the Bolkonskis. Prince Andrew,
looking again at that genealogical tree, shook his head, laughing as a
man laughs who looks at a portrait so characteristic of the original
as to be amusing.

"How thoroughly like him that is!" he said to Princess Mary, who had
come up to him.

Princess Mary looked at her brother in surprise. She did not
understand what he was laughing at. Everything her father did inspired
her with reverence and was beyond question.

"Everyone has his Achilles' heel," continued Prince Andrew.
"Fancy, with his powerful mind, indulging in such nonsense!"

Princess Mary could not understand the boldness of her brother's
criticism and was about to reply, when the expected footsteps were
heard coming from the study. The prince walked in quickly and jauntily
as was his wont, as if intentionally contrasting the briskness of
his manners with the strict formality of his house. At that moment the
great clock struck two and another with a shrill tone joined in from
the drawing room. The prince stood still; his lively glittering eyes
from under their thick, bushy eyebrows sternly scanned all present and
rested on the little princess. She felt, as courtiers do when the Tsar
enters, the sensation of fear and respect which the old man inspired
in all around him. He stroked her hair and then patted her awkwardly
on the back of her neck.

"I'm glad, glad, to see you," he said, looking attentively into
her eyes, and then quickly went to his place and sat down. "Sit
down, sit down! Sit down, Michael Ianovich!"

He indicated a place beside him to his daughter-in-law. A footman
moved the chair for her.

"Ho, ho!" said the old man, casting his eyes on her rounded
figure. "You've been in a hurry. That's bad!"

He laughed in his usual dry, cold, unpleasant way, with his lips
only and not with his eyes.

"You must walk, walk as much as possible, as much as possible," he
said.

The little princess did not, or did not wish to, hear his words. She
was silent and seemed confused. The prince asked her about her father,
and she began to smile and talk. He asked about mutual
acquaintances, and she became still more animated and chattered away
giving him greetings from various people and retailing the town
gossip.

"Countess Apraksina, poor thing, has lost her husband and she has
cried her eyes out," she said, growing more and more lively.

As she became animated the prince looked at her more and more
sternly, and suddenly, as if he had studied her sufficiently and had
formed a definite idea of her, he turned away and addressed Michael
Ivanovich.

"Well, Michael Ivanovich, our Bonaparte will be having a bad time of
it. Prince Andrew" (he always spoke thus of his son) "has been telling
me what forces are being collected against him! While you and I
never thought much of him."

Michael Ivanovich did not at all know when "you and I" had said such
things about Bonaparte, but understanding that he was wanted as a
peg on which to hang the prince's favorite topic, he looked
inquiringly at the young prince, wondering what would follow.

"He is a great tactician!" said the prince to his son, pointing to
the architect.

And the conversation again turned on the war, on Bonaparte, and
the generals and statesmen of the day. The old prince seemed convinced
not only that all the men of the day were mere babies who did not know
the A B C of war or of politics, and that Bonaparte was an
insignificant little Frenchy, successful only because there were no
longer any Potemkins or Suvorovs left to oppose him; but he was also
convinced that there were no political difficulties in Europe and no
real war, but only a sort of puppet show at which the men of the day
were playing, pretending to do something real. Prince Andrew gaily
bore with his father's ridicule of the new men, and drew him on and
listened to him with evident pleasure.

"The past always seems good," said he, "but did not Suvorov
himself fall into a trap Moreau set him, and from which he did not
know how to escape?"

"Who told you that? Who?" cried the prince. "Suvorov!" And he jerked
away his plate, which Tikhon briskly caught. "Suvorov!... Consider,
Prince Andrew. Two... Frederick and Suvorov; Moreau!... Moreau would
have been a prisoner if Suvorov had had a free hand; but he had the
Hofs-kriegs-wurst-schnapps-Rath on his hands. It would have puzzled
the devil himself! When you get there you'll find out what those
Hofs-kriegs-wurst-Raths are! Suvorov couldn't manage them so what
chance has Michael Kutuzov? No, my dear boy," he continued, "you and
your generals won't get on against Buonaparte; you'll have to call
in the French, so that birds of a feather may fight together. The
German, Pahlen, has been sent to New York in America, to fetch the
Frenchman, Moreau," he said, alluding to the invitation made that year
to Moreau to enter the Russian service.... "Wonderful!... Were the
Potemkins, Suvorovs, and Orlovs Germans? No, lad, either you fellows
have all lost your wits, or I have outlived mine. May God help you,
but we'll see what will happen. Buonaparte has become a great
commander among them! Hm!..."

"I don't at all say that all the plans are good," said Prince
Andrew, "I am only surprised at your opinion of Bonaparte. You may
laugh as much as you like, but all the same Bonaparte is a great
general!"

"Michael Ivanovich!" cried the old prince to the architect who, busy
with his roast meat, hoped he had been forgotten: "Didn't I tell you
Buonaparte was a great tactician? Here, he says the same thing."

"To be sure, your excellency." replied the architect.

The prince again laughed his frigid laugh.

"Buonaparte was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He has got
splendid soldiers. Besides he began by attacking Germans. And only
idlers have failed to beat the Germans. Since the world began
everybody has beaten the Germans. They beat no one--except one
another. He made his reputation fighting them."

And the prince began explaining all the blunders which, according to
him, Bonaparte had made in his campaigns and even in politics. His son
made no rejoinder, but it was evident that whatever arguments were
presented he was as little able as his father to change his opinion.
He listened, refraining from a reply, and involuntarily wondered how
this old man, living alone in the country for so many years, could
know and discuss so minutely and acutely all the recent European
military and political events.

"You think I'm an old man and don't understand the present state
of affairs?" concluded his father. "But it troubles me. I don't
sleep at night. Come now, where has this great commander of yours
shown his skill?" he concluded.

"That would take too long to tell," answered the son.

"Well, then go to your Buonaparte! Mademoiselle Bourienne, here's
another admirer of that powder-monkey emperor of yours," he
exclaimed in excellent French.

"You know, Prince, I am not a Bonapartist!"

"Dieu sait quand reviendra..." hummed the prince out of tune and,
with a laugh still more so, he quitted the table.

The little princess during the whole discussion and the rest of
the dinner sat silent, glancing with a frightened look now at her
father-in-law and now at Princess Mary. When they left the table she
took her sister-in-law's arm and drew her into another room.

"What a clever man your father is," said she; "perhaps that is why I
am afraid of him."

"Oh, he is so kind!" answered Princess Mary.





CHAPTER XXVIII


Prince Andrew was to leave next evening. The old prince, not
altering his routine, retired as usual after dinner. The little
princess was in her sister-in-law's room. Prince Andrew in a traveling
coat without epaulettes had been packing with his valet in the rooms
assigned to him. After inspecting the carriage himself and seeing
the trunks put in, he ordered the horses to be harnessed. Only those
things he always kept with him remained in his room; a small box, a
large canteen fitted with silver plate, two Turkish pistols and a
saber--a present from his father who had brought it from the siege
of Ochakov. All these traveling effects of Prince Andrew's were in
very good order: new, clean, and in cloth covers carefully tied with
tapes.

When starting on a journey or changing their mode of life, men
capable of reflection are generally in a serious frame of mind. At
such moments one reviews the past and plans for the future. Prince
Andrew's face looked very thoughtful and tender. With his hands behind
him he paced briskly from corner to corner of the room, looking
straight before him and thoughtfully shaking his head. Did he fear
going to the war, or was he sad at leaving his wife?--perhaps both,
but evidently he did not wish to be seen in that mood, for hearing
footsteps in the passage he hurriedly unclasped his hands, stopped
at a table as if tying the cover of the small box, and assumed his
usual tranquil and impenetrable expression. It was the heavy tread
of Princess Mary that he heard.

"I hear you have given orders to harness," she cried, panting (she
had apparently been running), "and I did so wish to have another
talk with you alone! God knows how long we may again be parted. You
are not angry with me for coming? You have changed so, Andrusha,"
she added, as if to explain such a question.

She smiled as she uttered his pet name, "Andrusha." It was obviously
strange to her to think that this stern handsome man should be
Andrusha--the slender mischievous boy who had been her playfellow in
childhood.

"And where is Lise?" he asked, answering her question only by a
smile.

"She was so tired that she has fallen asleep on the sofa in my room.
Oh, Andrew! What a treasure of a wife you have," said she, sitting
down on the sofa, facing her brother. "She is quite a child: such a
dear, merry child. I have grown so fond of her."

Prince Andrew was silent, but the princess noticed the ironical
and contemptuous look that showed itself on his face.

"One must be indulgent to little weaknesses; who is free from
them, Andrew? Don't forget that she has grown up and been educated
in society, and so her position now is not a rosy one. We should enter
into everyone's situation. Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner.*
Think it must be for her, poor thing, after what she has been used to,
to be parted from her husband and be left alone in the country, in her
condition! It's very hard."


*To understand all is to forgive all.


Prince Andrew smiled as he looked at his sister, as we smile at
those we think we thoroughly understand.

"You live in the country and don't think the life terrible," he
replied.

"I... that's different. Why speak of me? I don't want any other
life, and can't, for I know no other. But think, Andrew: for a young
society woman to be buried in the country during the best years of her
life, all alone--for Papa is always busy, and I... well, you know what
poor resources I have for entertaining a woman used to the best
society. There is only Mademoiselle Bourienne...."

"I don't like your Mademoiselle Bourienne at all," said Prince
Andrew.

"No? She is very nice and kind and, above all, she's much to be
pitied. She has no one, no one. To tell the truth, I don't need her,
and she's even in my way. You know I always was a savage, and now am
even more so. I like being alone.... Father likes her very much. She
and Michael Ivanovich are the two people to whom he is always gentle
and kind, because he has been a benefactor to them both. As Sterne
says: 'We don't love people so much for the good they have done us, as
for the good we have done them.' Father took her when she was homeless
after losing her own father. She is very good-natured, and my father
likes her way of reading. She reads to him in the evenings and reads
splendidly."

"To be quite frank, Mary, I expect Father's character sometimes
makes things trying for you, doesn't it?" Prince Andrew asked
suddenly.

Princess Mary was first surprised and then aghast at this question.

"For me? For me?... Trying for me!..." said she.

"He always was rather harsh; and now I should think he's getting
very trying," said Prince Andrew, apparently speaking lightly of their
father in order to puzzle or test his sister.

"You are good in every way, Andrew, but you have a kind of
intellectual pride," said the princess, following the train of her own
thoughts rather than the trend of the conversation--"and that's a
great sin. How can one judge Father? But even if one might, what
feeling except veneration could such a man as my father evoke? And I
am so contented and happy with him. I only wish you were all as
happy as I am."

Her brother shook his head incredulously.

"The only thing that is hard for me... I will tell you the truth,
Andrew... is Father's way of treating religious subjects. I don't
understand how a man of his immense intellect can fail to see what
is as clear as day, and can go so far astray. That is the only thing
that makes me unhappy. But even in this I can see lately a shade of
improvement. His satire has been less bitter of late, and there was
a monk he received and had a long talk with."

"Ah! my dear, I am afraid you and your monk are wasting your
powder," said Prince Andrew banteringly yet tenderly.

"Ah! mon ami, I only pray, and hope that God will hear me.
Andrew..." she said timidly after a moment's silence, "I have a
great favor to ask of you."

"What is it, dear?"

"No--promise that you will not refuse! It will give you no trouble
and is nothing unworthy of you, but it will comfort me. Promise,
Andrusha!..." said she, putting her hand in her reticule but not yet
taking out what she was holding inside it, as if what she held were
the subject of her request and must not be shown before the request
was granted.

She looked timidly at her brother.

"Even if it were a great deal of trouble..." answered Prince Andrew,
as if guessing what it was about.

"Think what you please! I know you are just like Father. Think as
you please, but do this for my sake! Please do! Father's father, our
grandfather, wore it in all his wars." (She still did not take out
what she was holding in her reticule.) "So you promise?"

"Of course. What is it?"

"Andrew, I bless you with this icon and you must promise me you will
never take it off. Do you promise?"

"If it does not weigh a hundredweight and won't break my neck...
To please you..." said Prince Andrew. But immediately, noticing the
pained expression his joke had brought to his sister's face, he
repented and added: "I am glad; really, dear, I am very glad."

"Against your will He will save and have mercy on you and bring
you to Himself, for in Him alone is truth and peace," said she in a
voice trembling with emotion, solemnly holding up in both hands before
her brother a small, oval, antique, dark-faced icon of the Saviour
in a gold setting, on a finely wrought silver chain.

She crossed herself, kissed the icon, and handed it to Andrew.

"Please, Andrew, for my sake!..."

Rays of gentle light shone from her large, timid eyes. Those eyes
lit up the whole of her thin, sickly face and made it beautiful. Her
brother would have taken the icon, but she stopped him. Andrew
understood, crossed himself and kissed the icon. There was a look of
tenderness, for he was touched, but also a gleam of irony on his face.

"Thank you, my dear." She kissed him on the forehead and sat down
again on the sofa. They were silent for a while.

"As I was saying to you, Andrew, be kind and generous as you
always used to be. Don't judge Lise harshly," she began. "She is so
sweet, so good-natured, and her position now is a very hard one."

"I do not think I have complained of my wife to you, Masha, or
blamed her. Why do you say all this to me?"

Red patches appeared on Princess Mary's face and she was silent as
if she felt guilty.

"I have said nothing to you, but you have already been talked to.
And I am sorry for that," he went on.

The patches grew deeper on her forehead, neck, and cheeks. She tried
to say something but could not. Her brother had guessed right: the
little princess had been crying after dinner and had spoken of her
forebodings about her confinement, and how she dreaded it, and had
complained of her fate, her father-in-law, and her husband. After
crying she had fallen asleep. Prince Andrew felt sorry for his sister.

"Know this, Masha: I can't reproach, have not reproached, and
never shall reproach my wife with anything, and I cannot reproach
myself with anything in regard to her; and that always will be so in
whatever circumstances I may be placed. But if you want to know the
truth... if you want to know whether I am happy? No! Is she happy? No!
But why this is so I don't know..."

As he said this he rose, went to his sister, and, stooping, kissed
her forehead. His fine eyes lit up with a thoughtful, kindly, and
unaccustomed brightness, but he was looking not at his sister but over
her head toward the darkness of the open doorway.

"Let us go to her, I must say good-by. Or--go and wake and I'll come
in a moment. Petrushka!" he called to his valet: "Come here, take
these away. Put this on the seat and this to the right."

Princess Mary rose and moved to the door, then stopped and said:
"Andrew, if you had faith you would have turned to God and asked Him
to give you the love you do not feel, and your prayer would have
been answered."

"Well, may be!" said Prince Andrew. "Go, Masha; I'll come
immediately."

On the way to his sister's room, in the passage which connected
one wing with the other, Prince Andrew met Mademoiselle Bourienne
smiling sweetly. It was the third time that day that, with an ecstatic
and artless smile, she had met him in secluded passages.

"Oh! I thought you were in your room," she said, for some reason
blushing and dropping her eyes.

Prince Andrew looked sternly at her and an expression of anger
suddenly came over his face. He said nothing to her but looked at
her forehead and hair, without looking at her eyes, with such contempt
that the Frenchwoman blushed and went away without a word. When he
reached his sister's room his wife was already awake and her merry
voice, hurrying one word after another, came through the open door.
She was speaking as usual in French, and as if after long
self-restraint she wished to make up for lost time.

"No, but imagine the old Countess Zubova, with false curls and her
mouth full of false teeth, as if she were trying to cheat old
age.... Ha, ha, ha! Mary!"

This very sentence about Countess Zubova and this same laugh
Prince Andrew had already heard from his wife in the presence of
others some five times. He entered the room softly. The little
princess, plump and rosy, was sitting in an easy chair with her work
in her hands, talking incessantly, repeating Petersburg
reminiscences and even phrases. Prince Andrew came up, stroked her
hair, and asked if she felt rested after their journey. She answered
him and continued her chatter.

The coach with six horses was waiting at the porch. It was an autumn
night, so dark that the coachman could not see the carriage pole.
Servants with lanterns were bustling about in the porch. The immense
house was brilliant with lights shining through its lofty windows. The
domestic serfs were crowding in the hall, waiting to bid good-by to
the young prince. The members of the household were all gathered in
the reception hall: Michael Ivanovich, Mademoiselle Bourienne,
Princess Mary, and the little princess. Prince Andrew had been
called to his father's study as the latter wished to say good-by to
him alone. All were waiting for them to come out.

When Prince Andrew entered the study the old man in his old-age
spectacles and white dressing gown, in which he received no one but
his son, sat at the table writing. He glanced round.

"Going?" And he went on writing.

"I've come to say good-by."

"Kiss me here," and he touched his cheek: "Thanks, thanks!"

"What do you thank me for?"

"For not dilly-dallying and not hanging to a woman's apron
strings. The Service before everything. Thanks, thanks!" And he went
on writing, so that his quill spluttered and squeaked. "If you have
anything to say, say it. These two things can be done together," he
added.

"About my wife... I am ashamed as it is to leave her on your
hands..."

"Why talk nonsense? Say what you want."

"When her confinement is due, send to Moscow for an accoucheur....
Let him be here...."

The old prince stopped writing and, as if not understanding, fixed
his stern eyes on his son.

"I know that no one can help if nature does not do her work," said
Prince Andrew, evidently confused. "I know that out of a million cases
only one goes wrong, but it is her fancy and mine. They have been
telling her things. She has had a dream and is frightened."

"Hm... Hm..." muttered the old prince to himself, finishing what
he was writing. "I'll do it."

He signed with a flourish and suddenly turning to his son began to
laugh.

"It's a bad business, eh?"

"What is bad, Father?"

"The wife!" said the old prince, briefly and significantly.

"I don't understand!" said Prince Andrew.

"No, it can't be helped, lad," said the prince. "They're all like
that; one can't unmarry. Don't be afraid; I won't tell anyone, but you
know it yourself."

He seized his son by the hand with small bony fingers, shook it,
looked straight into his son's face with keen eyes which seemed to see
through him, and again laughed his frigid laugh.

The son sighed, thus admitting that his father had understood him.
The old man continued to fold and seal his letter, snatching up and
throwing down the wax, the seal, and the paper, with his accustomed
rapidity.

"What's to be done? She's pretty! I will do everything. Make your
mind easy," said he in abrupt sentences while sealing his letter.

Andrew did not speak; he was both pleased and displeased that his
father understood him. The old man got up and gave the letter to his
son.

"Listen!" said he; "don't worry about your wife: what can be done
shall be. Now listen! Give this letter to Michael Ilarionovich.* I
have written that he should make use of you in proper places and not
keep you long as an adjutant: a bad position! Tell him I remember
and like him. Write and tell me how he receives you. If he is all
right--serve him. Nicholas Bolkonski's son need not serve under anyone
if he is in disfavor. Now come here."


*Kutuzov.


He spoke so rapidly that he did not finish half his words, but his
son was accustomed to understand him. He led him to the desk, raised
the lid, drew out a drawer, and took out an exercise book filled
with his bold, tall, close handwriting.

"I shall probably die before you. So remember, these are my memoirs;
hand them to the Emperor after my death. Now here is a Lombard bond
and a letter; it is a premium for the man who writes a history of
Suvorov's wars. Send it to the Academy. Here are some jottings for you
to read when I am gone. You will find them useful."

Andrew did not tell his father that he would no doubt live a long
time yet. He felt that he must not say it.

"I will do it all, Father," he said.

"Well, now, good-by!" He gave his son his hand to kiss, and embraced
him. "Remember this, Prince Andrew, if they kill you it will hurt
me, your old father..." he paused unexpectedly, and then in a
querulous voice suddenly shrieked: "but if I hear that you have not
behaved like a son of Nicholas Bolkonski, I shall be ashamed!"

"You need not have said that to me, Father," said the son with a
smile.

The old man was silent.

"I also wanted to ask you," continued Prince Andrew, "if I'm
killed and if I have a son, do not let him be taken away from you-
as I said yesterday... let him grow up with you.... Please."

"Not let the wife have him?" said the old man, and laughed.

They stood silent, facing one another. The old man's sharp eyes were
fixed straight on his son's. Something twitched in the lower part of
the old prince's face.

"We've said good-by. Go!" he suddenly shouted in a loud, angry
voice, opening his door.

"What is it? What?" asked both princesses when they saw for a moment
at the door Prince Andrew and the figure of the old man in a white
dressing gown, spectacled and wigless, shouting in an angry voice.

Prince Andrew sighed and made no reply.

"Well!" he said, turning to his wife.

And this "Well!" sounded coldly ironic, as if he were saying,:
"Now go through your performance."

"Andrew, already!" said the little princess, turning pale and
looking with dismay at her husband.

He embraced her. She screamed and fell unconscious on his shoulder.

He cautiously released the shoulder she leaned on, looked into her
face, and carefully placed her in an easy chair.

"Adieu, Mary," said he gently to his sister, taking her by the
hand and kissing her, and then he left the room with rapid steps.

The little princess lay in the armchair, Mademoiselle Bourienne
chafing her temples. Princess Mary, supporting her sister-in-law,
still looked with her beautiful eyes full of tears at the door through
which Prince Andrew had gone and made the sign of the cross in his
direction. From the study, like pistol shots, came the frequent
sound of the old man angrily blowing his nose. Hardly had Prince
Andrew gone when the study door opened quickly and the stern figure of
the old man in the white dressing gown looked out.

"Gone? That's all right!" said he; and looking angrily at the
unconscious little princess, he shook his head reprovingly and slammed
the door.





BOOK TWO: 1805





CHAPTER I


In October, 1805, a Russian army was occupying the villages and
towns of the Archduchy of Austria, and yet other regiments freshly
arriving from Russia were settling near the fortress of Braunau and
burdening the inhabitants on whom they were quartered. Braunau was the
headquarters of the commander-in-chief, Kutuzov.

On October 11, 1805, one of the infantry regiments that had just
reached Braunau had halted half a mile from the town, waiting to be
inspected by the commander in chief. Despite the un-Russian appearance
of the locality and surroundings--fruit gardens, stone fences, tiled
roofs, and hills in the distance--and despite the fact that the
inhabitants (who gazed with curiosity at the soldiers) were not
Russians, the regiment had just the appearance of any Russian regiment
preparing for an inspection anywhere in the heart of Russia.

On the evening of the last day's march an order had been received
that the commander in chief would inspect the regiment on the march.
Though the words of the order were not clear to the regimental
commander, and the question arose whether the troops were to be in
marching order or not, it was decided at a consultation between the
battalion commanders to present the regiment in parade order, on the
principle that it is always better to "bow too low than not bow low
enough." So the soldiers, after a twenty-mile march, were kept mending
and cleaning all night long without closing their eyes, while the
adjutants and company commanders calculated and reckoned, and by
morning the regiment--instead of the straggling, disorderly crowd it
had been on its last march the day before--presented a well-ordered
array of two thousand men each of whom knew his place and his duty,
had every button and every strap in place, and shone with cleanliness.
And not only externally was all in order, but had it pleased the
commander in chief to look under the uniforms he would have found on
every man a clean shirt, and in every knapsack the appointed number of
articles, "awl, soap, and all," as the soldiers say. There was only
one circumstance concerning which no one could be at ease. It was
the state of the soldiers' boots. More than half the men's boots
were in holes. But this defect was not due to any fault of the
regimental commander, for in spite of repeated demands boots had not
been issued by the Austrian commissariat, and the regiment had marched
some seven hundred miles.

The commander of the regiment was an elderly, choleric, stout, and
thick-set general with grizzled eyebrows and whiskers, and wider
from chest to back than across the shoulders. He had on a brand-new
uniform showing the creases where it had been folded and thick gold
epaulettes which seemed to stand rather than lie down on his massive
shoulders. He had the air of a man happily performing one of the
most solemn duties of his life. He walked about in front of the line
and at every step pulled himself up, slightly arching his back. It was
plain that the commander admired his regiment, rejoiced in it, and
that his whole mind was engrossed by it, yet his strut seemed to
indicate that, besides military matters, social interests and the fair
sex occupied no small part of his thoughts.

"Well, Michael Mitrich, sir?" he said, addressing one of the
battalion commanders who smilingly pressed forward (it was plain
that they both felt happy). "We had our hands full last night.
However, I think the regiment is not a bad one, eh?"

The battalion commander perceived the jovial irony and laughed.

"It would not be turned off the field even on the Tsaritsin Meadow."

"What?" asked the commander.

At that moment, on the road from the town on which signalers had
been posted, two men appeared on horse back. They were an
aide-de-camp followed by a Cossack.

The aide-de-camp was sent to confirm the order which had not been
clearly worded the day before, namely, that the commander in chief
wished to see the regiment just in the state in which it had been on
the march: in their greatcoats, and packs, and without any preparation
whatever.

A member of the Hofkriegsrath from Vienna had come to Kutuzov the
day before with proposals and demands for him to join up with the army
of the Archduke Ferdinand and Mack, and Kutuzov, not considering
this junction advisable, meant, among other arguments in support of
his view, to show the Austrian general the wretched state in which the
troops arrived from Russia. With this object he intended to meet the
regiment; so the worse the condition it was in, the better pleased the
commander in chief would be. Though the aide-de-camp did not know
these circumstances, he nevertheless delivered the definite order that
the men should be in their greatcoats and in marching order, and
that the commander in chief would otherwise be dissatisfied. On
hearing this the regimental commander hung his head, silently shrugged
his shoulders, and spread out his arms with a choleric gesture.

"A fine mess we've made of it!" he remarked.

"There now! Didn't I tell you, Michael Mitrich, that if it was
said 'on the march' it meant in greatcoats?" said he reproachfully
to the battalion commander. "Oh, my God!" he added, stepping
resolutely forward. "Company commanders!" he shouted in a voice
accustomed to command. "Sergeants major!... How soon will he be here?"
he asked the aide-de-camp with a respectful politeness evidently
relating to the personage he was referring to.

"In an hour's time, I should say."

"Shall we have time to change clothes?"

"I don't know, General...."

The regimental commander, going up to the line himself, ordered
the soldiers to change into their greatcoats. The company commanders
ran off to their companies, the sergeants major began bustling (the
greatcoats were not in very good condition), and instantly the squares
that had up to then been in regular order and silent began to sway and
stretch and hum with voices. On all sides soldiers were running to and
fro, throwing up their knapsacks with a jerk of their shoulders and
pulling the straps over their heads, unstrapping their overcoats and
drawing the sleeves on with upraised arms.

In half an hour all was again in order, only the squares had
become gray instead of black. The regimental commander walked with his
jerky steps to the front of the regiment and examined it from a
distance.

"Whatever is this? This!" he shouted and stood still. "Commander
of the third company!"

"Commander of the third company wanted by the general!...
commander to the general... third company to the commander." The words
passed along the lines and an adjutant ran to look for the missing
officer.

When the eager but misrepeated words had reached their destination
in a cry of: "The general to the third company," the missing officer
appeared from behind his company and, though he was a middle-aged
man and not in the habit of running, trotted awkwardly stumbling on
his toes toward the general. The captain's face showed the
uneasiness of a schoolboy who is told to repeat a lesson he has not
learned. Spots appeared on his nose, the redness of which was
evidently due to intemperance, and his mouth twitched nervously. The
general looked the captain up and down as he came up panting,
slackening his pace as he approached.

"You will soon be dressing your men in petticoats! What is this?"
shouted the regimental commander, thrusting forward his jaw and
pointing at a soldier in the ranks of the third company in a greatcoat
of bluish cloth, which contrasted with the others. "What have you been
after? The commander in chief is expected and you leave your place?
Eh? I'll teach you to dress the men in fancy coats for a parade....
Eh...?"

The commander of the company, with his eyes fixed on his superior,
pressed two fingers more and more rigidly to his cap, as if in this
pressure lay his only hope of salvation.

"Well, why don't you speak? Whom have you got there dressed up as
a Hungarian?" said the commander with an austere gibe.

"Your excellency..."

"Well, your excellency, what? Your excellency! But what about your
excellency?... nobody knows."

"Your excellency, it's the officer Dolokhov, who has been reduced to
the ranks," said the captain softly.

"Well? Has he been degraded into a field marshal, or into a soldier?
If a soldier, he should be dressed in regulation uniform like the
others."

"Your excellency, you gave him leave yourself, on the march."

"Gave him leave? Leave? That's just like you young men," said the
regimental commander cooling down a little. "Leave indeed.... One says
a word to you and you... What?" he added with renewed irritation, "I
beg you to dress your men decently."

And the commander, turning to look at the adjutant, directed his
jerky steps down the line. He was evidently pleased at his own display
of anger and walking up to the regiment wished to find a further
excuse for wrath. Having snapped at an officer for an unpolished
badge, at another because his line was not straight, he reached the
third company.

"H-o-o-w are you standing? Where's your leg? Your leg?" shouted
the commander with a tone of suffering in his voice, while there
were still five men between him and Dolokhov with his bluish-gray
uniform.

Dolokhov slowly straightened his bent knee, looking straight with
his clear, insolent eyes in the general's face.

"Why a blue coat? Off with it... Sergeant major! Change his
coat... the ras..." he did not finish.

"General, I must obey orders, but I am not bound to endure..."
Dolokhov hurriedly interrupted.

"No talking in the ranks!... No talking, no talking!"

"Not bound to endure insults," Dolokhov concluded in loud, ringing
tones.

The eyes of the general and the soldier met. The general became
silent, angrily pulling down his tight scarf.

"I request you to have the goodness to change your coat," he said as
he turned away.





CHAPTER II


"He's coming!" shouted the signaler at that moment.

The regimental commander, flushing, ran to his horse, seized the
stirrup with trembling hands, threw his body across the saddle,
righted himself, drew his saber, and with a happy and resolute
countenance, opening his mouth awry, prepared to shout. The regiment
fluttered like a bird preening its plumage and became motionless.

"Att-ention!" shouted the regimental commander in a soul-shaking
voice which expressed joy for himself, severity for the regiment,
and welcome for the approaching chief.

Along the broad country road, edged on both sides by trees, came a
high, light blue Viennese caleche, slightly creaking on its springs
and drawn by six horses at a smart trot. Behind the caleche galloped
the suite and a convoy of Croats. Beside Kutuzov sat an Austrian
general, in a white uniform that looked strange among the Russian
black ones. The caleche stopped in front of the regiment. Kutuzov
and the Austrian general were talking in low voices and Kutuzov smiled
slightly as treading heavily he stepped down from the carriage just as
if those two thousand men breathlessly gazing at him and the
regimental commander did not exist.

The word of command rang out, and again the regiment quivered, as
with a jingling sound it presented arms. Then amidst a dead silence
the feeble voice of the commander in chief was heard. The regiment
roared, "Health to your ex... len... len... lency!" and again all
became silent. At first Kutuzov stood still while the regiment
moved; then he and the general in white, accompanied by the suite,
walked between the ranks.

From the way the regimental commander saluted the commander in chief
and devoured him with his eyes, drawing himself up obsequiously, and
from the way he walked through the ranks behind the generals,
bending forward and hardly able to restrain his jerky movements, and
from the way he darted forward at every word or gesture of the
commander in chief, it was evident that he performed his duty as a
subordinate with even greater zeal than his duty as a commander.
Thanks to the strictness and assiduity of its commander the
regiment, in comparison with others that had reached Braunau at the
same time, was in splendid condition. There were only 217 sick and
stragglers. Everything was in good order except the boots.

Kutuzov walked through the ranks, sometimes stopping to say a few
friendly words to officers he had known in the Turkish war,
sometimes also to the soldiers. Looking at their boots he several
times shook his head sadly, pointing them out to the Austrian
general with an expression which seemed to say that he was not blaming
anyone, but could not help noticing what a bad state of things it was.
The regimental commander ran forward on each such occasion, fearing to
miss a single word of the commander in chief's regarding the regiment.
Behind Kutuzov, at a distance that allowed every softly spoken word to
be heard, followed some twenty men of his suite. These gentlemen
talked among themselves and sometimes laughed. Nearest of all to the
commander in chief walked a handsome adjutant. This was Prince
Bolkonski. Beside him was his comrade Nesvitski, a tall staff officer,
extremely stout, with a kindly, smiling, handsome face and moist eyes.
Nesvitski could hardly keep from laughter provoked by a swarthy hussar
officer who walked beside him. This hussar, with a grave face and
without a smile or a change in the expression of his fixed eyes,
watched the regimental commander's back and mimicked his every
movement. Each time the commander started and bent forward, the hussar
started and bent forward in exactly the same manner. Nesvitski laughed
and nudged the others to make them look at the wag.

Kutuzov walked slowly and languidly past thousands of eyes which
were starting from their sockets to watch their chief. On reaching the
third company he suddenly stopped. His suite, not having expected
this, involuntarily came closer to him.

"Ah, Timokhin!" said he, recognizing the red-nosed captain who had
been reprimanded on account of the blue greatcoat.

One would have thought it impossible for a man to stretch himself
more than Timokhin had done when he was reprimanded by the
regimental commander, but now that the commander in chief addressed
him he drew himself up to such an extent that it seemed he could not
have sustained it had the commander in chief continued to look at him,
and so Kutuzov, who evidently understood his case and wished him
nothing but good, quickly turned away, a scarcely perceptible smile
flitting over his scarred and puffy face.

"Another Ismail comrade," said he. "A brave officer! Are you
satisfied with him?" he asked the regimental commander.

And the latter--unconscious that he was being reflected in the
hussar officer as in a looking glass--started, moved forward, and
answered: "Highly satisfied, your excellency!"

"We all have our weaknesses," said Kutuzov smiling and walking
away from him. "He used to have a predilection for Bacchus."

The regimental commander was afraid he might be blamed for this
and did not answer. The hussar at that moment noticed the face of
the red-nosed captain and his drawn-in stomach, and mimicked his
expression and pose with such exactitude that Nesvitski could not help
laughing. Kutuzov turned round. The officer evidently had complete
control of his face, and while Kutuzov was turning managed to make a
grimace and then assume a most serious, deferential, and innocent
expression.

The third company was the last, and Kutuzov pondered, apparently
trying to recollect something. Prince Andrew stepped forward from
among the suite and said in French:

"You told me to remind you of the officer Dolokhov, reduced to the
ranks in this regiment."

"Where is Dolokhov?" asked Kutuzov.

Dolokhov, who had already changed into a soldier's gray greatcoat,
did not wait to be called. The shapely figure of the fair-haired
soldier, with his clear blue eyes, stepped forward from the ranks,
went up to the commander in chief, and presented arms.

"Have you a complaint to make?" Kutuzov asked with a slight frown.

"This is Dolokhov," said Prince Andrew.

"Ah!" said Kutuzov. "I hope this will be a lesson to you. Do your
duty. The Emperor is gracious, and I shan't forget you if you
deserve well."

The clear blue eyes looked at the commander in chief just as
boldly as they had looked at the regimental commander, seeming by
their expression to tear open the veil of convention that separates
a commander in chief so widely from a private.

"One thing I ask of your excellency," Dolokhov said in his firm,
ringing, deliberate voice. "I ask an opportunity to atone for my fault
and prove my devotion to His Majesty the Emperor and to Russia!"

Kutuzov turned away. The same smile of the eyes with which he had
turned from Captain Timokhin again flitted over his face. He turned
away with a grimace as if to say that everything Dolokhov had said
to him and everything he could say had long been known to him, that he
was weary of it and it was not at all what he wanted. He turned away
and went to the carriage.

The regiment broke up into companies, which went to their
appointed quarters near Braunau, where they hoped to receive boots and
clothes and to rest after their hard marches.

"You won't bear me a grudge, Prokhor Ignatych?" said the
regimental commander, overtaking the third company on its way to its
quarters and riding up to Captain Timokhin who was walking in front.
(The regimental commander's face now that the inspection was happily
over beamed with irrepressible delight.) "It's in the Emperor's
service... it can't be helped... one is sometimes a bit hasty on
parade... I am the first to apologize, you know me!... He was very
pleased!" And he held out his hand to the captain.

"Don't mention it, General, as if I'd be so bold!" replied the
captain, his nose growing redder as he gave a smile which showed where
two front teeth were missing that had been knocked out by the butt end
of a gun at Ismail.

"And tell Mr. Dolokhov that I won't forget him--he may be quite
easy. And tell me, please--I've been meaning to ask--how is to ask-
how is he behaving himself, and in general..."

"As far as the service goes he is quite punctilious, your
excellency; but his character..." said Timokhin.

"And what about his character?" asked the regimental commander.

"It's different on different days," answered the captain. "One day
he is sensible, well educated, and good-natured, and the next he's a
wild beast.... In Poland, if you please, he nearly killed a Jew."

"Oh, well, well!" remarked the regimental commander. "Still, one
must have pity on a young man in misfortune. You know he has important
connections... Well, then, you just..."

"I will, your excellency," said Timokhin, showing by his smile
that he understood his commander's wish.

"Well, of course, of course!"

The regimental commander sought out Dolokhov in the ranks and,
reining in his horse, said to him:

"After the next affair... epaulettes."

Dolokhov looked round but did not say anything, nor did the
mocking smile on his lips change.

"Well, that's all right," continued the regimental commander. "A cup
of vodka for the men from me," he added so that the soldiers could
hear. "I thank you all! God be praised!" and he rode past that company
and overtook the next one.

"Well, he's really a good fellow, one can serve under him," said
Timokhin to the subaltern beside him.

"In a word, a hearty one..." said the subaltern, laughing (the
regimental commander was nicknamed King of Hearts).

The cheerful mood of their officers after the inspection infected
the soldiers. The company marched on gaily. The soldiers' voices could
be heard on every side.

"And they said Kutuzov was blind of one eye?"

"And so he is! Quite blind!"

"No, friend, he is sharper-eyed than you are. Boots and leg bands...
he noticed everything..."

"When he looked at my feet, friend... well, thinks I..."

"And that other one with him, the Austrian, looked as if he were
smeared with chalk--as white as flour! I suppose they polish him up as
they do the guns."

"I say, Fedeshon!... Did he say when the battles are to begin? You
were near him. Everybody said that Buonaparte himself was at Braunau."

"Buonaparte himself!... Just listen to the fool, what he doesn't
know! The Prussians are up in arms now. The Austrians, you see, are
putting them down. When they've been put down, the war with Buonaparte
will begin. And he says Buonaparte is in Braunau! Shows you're a fool.
You'd better listen more carefully!"

"What devils these quartermasters are! See, the fifth company is
turning into the village already... they will have their buckwheat
cooked before we reach our quarters."

"Give me a biscuit, you devil!"

"And did you give me tobacco yesterday? That's just it, friend!
Ah, well, never mind, here you are."

"They might call a halt here or we'll have to do another four
miles without eating."

"Wasn't it fine when those Germans gave us lifts! You just sit still
and are drawn along."

"And here, friend, the people are quite beggarly. There they all
seemed to be Poles--all under the Russian crown--but here they're
all regular Germans."

"Singers to the front " came the captain's order.

And from the different ranks some twenty men ran to the front. A
drummer, their leader, turned round facing the singers, and
flourishing his arm, began a long-drawn-out soldiers' song, commencing
with the words: "Morning dawned, the sun was rising," and
concluding: "On then, brothers, on to glory, led by Father
Kamenski." This song had been composed in the Turkish campaign and now
being sung in Austria, the only change being that the words "Father
Kamenski" were replaced by "Father Kutuzov."

Having jerked out these last words as soldiers do and waved his arms
as if flinging something to the ground, the drummer--a lean,
handsome soldier of forty--looked sternly at the singers and screwed
up his eyes. Then having satisfied himself that all eyes were fixed on
him, he raised both arms as if carefully lifting some invisible but
precious object above his head and, holding it there for some seconds,
suddenly flung it down and began:

"Oh, my bower, oh, my bower...!"

"Oh, my bower new...!" chimed in twenty voices, and the castanet
player, in spite of the burden of his equipment, rushed out to the
front and, walking backwards before the company, jerked his
shoulders and flourished his castanets as if threatening someone.
The soldiers, swinging their arms and keeping time spontaneously,
marched with long steps. Behind the company the sound of wheels, the
creaking of springs, and the tramp of horses' hoofs were heard.
Kutuzov and his suite were returning to the town. The commander in
chief made a sign that the men should continue to march at ease, and
he and all his suite showed pleasure at the sound of the singing and
the sight of the dancing soldier and the gay and smartly marching men.
In the second file from the right flank, beside which the carriage
passed the company, a blue-eyed soldier involuntarily attracted
notice. It was Dolokhov marching with particular grace and boldness in
time to the song and looking at those driving past as if he pitied all
who were not at that moment marching with the company. The hussar
cornet of Kutuzov's suite who had mimicked the regimental commander,
fell back from the carriage and rode up to Dolokhov.

Hussar cornet Zherkov had at one time, in Petersburg, belonged to
the wild set led by Dolokhov. Zherkov had met Dolokhov abroad as a
private and had not seen fit to recognize him. But now that Kutuzov
had spoken to the gentleman ranker, he addressed him with the
cordiality of an old friend.

"My dear fellow, how are you?" said he through the singing, making
his horse keep pace with the company.

"How am I?" Dolokhov answered coldly. "I am as you see."

The lively song gave a special flavor to the tone of free and easy
gaiety with which Zherkov spoke, and to the intentional coldness of
Dolokhov's reply.

"And how do you get on with the officers?" inquired Zherkov.

"All right. They are good fellows. And how have you wriggled onto
the staff?"

"I was attached; I'm on duty."

Both were silent.

"She let the hawk fly upward from her wide right sleeve," went the
song, arousing an involuntary sensation of courage and cheerfulness.
Their conversation would probably have been different but for the
effect of that song.

"Is it true that Austrians have been beaten?" asked Dolokhov.

"The devil only knows! They say so."

"I'm glad," answered Dolokhov briefly and clearly, as the song
demanded.

"I say, come round some evening and we'll have a game of faro!" said
Zherkov.

"Why, have you too much money?"

"Do come."

"I can't. I've sworn not to. I won't drink and won't play till I get
reinstated."

"Well, that's only till the first engagement."

"We shall see."

They were again silent.

"Come if you need anything. One can at least be of use on the
staff..."

Dolokhov smiled. "Don't trouble. If I want anything, I won't beg-
I'll take it!"

"Well, never mind; I only..."

"And I only..."

"Good-by."

"Good health..."

        "It's a long, long way.
        To my native land..."


Zherkov touched his horse with the spurs; it pranced excitedly
from foot to foot uncertain with which to start, then settled down,
galloped past the company, and overtook the carriage, still keeping
time to the song.





CHAPTER III


On returning from the review, Kutuzov took the Austrian general into
his private room and, calling his adjutant, asked for some papers
relating to the condition of the troops on their arrival, and the
letters that had come from the Archduke Ferdinand, who was in
command of the advanced army. Prince Andrew Bolkonski came into the
room with the required papers. Kutuzov and the Austrian member of
the Hofkriegsrath were sitting at the table on which a plan was spread
out.

"Ah!..." said Kutuzov glancing at Bolkonski as if by this
exclamation he was asking the adjutant to wait, and he went on with
the conversation in French.

"All I can say, General," said he with a pleasant elegance of
expression and intonation that obliged one to listen to each
deliberately spoken word. It was evident that Kutuzov himself listened
with pleasure to his own voice. "All I can say, General, is that if
the matter depended on my personal wishes, the will of His Majesty the
Emperor Francis would have been fulfilled long ago. I should long
ago have joined the archduke. And believe me on my honour that to me
personally it would be a pleasure to hand over the supreme command
of the army into the hands of a better informed and more skillful
general--of whom Austria has so many--and to lay down all this heavy
responsibility. But circumstances are sometimes too strong for us,
General."

And Kutuzov smiled in a way that seemed to say, "You are quite at
liberty not to believe me and I don't even care whether you do or not,
but you have no grounds for telling me so. And that is the whole
point."

The Austrian general looked dissatisfied, but had no option but to
reply in the same tone.

"On the contrary," he said, in a querulous and angry tone that
contrasted with his flattering words, "on the contrary, your
excellency's participation in the common action is highly valued by
His Majesty; but we think the present delay is depriving the
splendid Russian troops and their commander of the laurels they have
been accustomed to win in their battles," he concluded his evidently
prearranged sentence.

Kutuzov bowed with the same smile.

"But that is my conviction, and judging by the last letter with
which His Highness the Archduke Ferdinand has honored me, I imagine
that the Austrian troops, under the direction of so skillful a
leader as General Mack, have by now already gained a decisive
victory and no longer need our aid," said Kutuzov.

The general frowned. Though there was no definite news of an
Austrian defeat, there were many circumstances confirming the
unfavorable rumors that were afloat, and so Kutuzov's suggestion of an
Austrian victory sounded much like irony. But Kutuzov went on
blandly smiling with the same expression, which seemed to say that
he had a right to suppose so. And, in fact, the last letter he had
received from Mack's army informed him of a victory and stated
strategically the position of the army was very favorable.

"Give me that letter," said Kutuzov turning to Prince Andrew.
"Please have a look at it"--and Kutuzov with an ironical smile about
the corners of his mouth read to the Austrian general the following
passage, in German, from the Archduke Ferdinand's letter:


We have fully concentrated forces of nearly seventy thousand men
with which to attack and defeat the enemy should he cross the Lech.
Also, as we are masters of Ulm, we cannot be deprived of the advantage
of commanding both sides of the Danube, so that should the enemy not
cross the Lech, we can cross the Danube, throw ourselves on his line
of communications, recross the river lower down, and frustrate his
intention should he try to direct his whole force against our faithful
ally. We shall therefore confidently await the moment when the
Imperial Russian army will be fully equipped, and shall then, in
conjunction with it, easily find a way to prepare for the enemy the
fate he deserves.


Kutuzov sighed deeply on finishing this paragraph and looked at
the member of the Hofkriegsrath mildly and attentively.

"But you know the wise maxim your excellency, advising one to expect
the worst," said the Austrian general, evidently wishing to have
done with jests and to come to business. He involuntarily looked round
at the aide-de-camp.

"Excuse me, General," interrupted Kutuzov, also turning to Prince
Andrew. "Look here, my dear fellow, get from Kozlovski all the reports
from our scouts. Here are two letters from Count Nostitz and here is
one from His Highness the Archduke Ferdinand and here are these," he
said, handing him several papers, "make a neat memorandum in French
out of all this, showing all the news we have had of the movements
of the Austrian army, and then give it to his excellency."

Prince Andrew bowed his head in token of having understood from
the first not only what had been said but also what Kutuzov would have
liked to tell him. He gathered up the papers and with a bow to both,
stepped softly over the carpet and went out into the waiting room.

Though not much time had passed since Prince Andrew had left Russia,
he had changed greatly during that period. In the expression of his
face, in his movements, in his walk, scarcely a trace was left of
his former affected languor and indolence. He now looked like a man
who has time to think of the impression he makes on others, but is
occupied with agreeable and interesting work. His face expressed
more satisfaction with himself and those around him, his smile and
glance were brighter and more attractive.

Kutuzov, whom he had overtaken in Poland, had received him very
kindly, promised not to forget him, distinguished him above the
other adjutants, and had taken him to Vienna and given him the more
serious commissions. From Vienna Kutuzov wrote to his old comrade,
Prince Andrew's father.


Your son bids fair to become an officer distinguished by his
industry, firmness, and expedition. I consider myself fortunate to
have such a subordinate by me.


On Kutuzov's staff, among his fellow officers and in the army
generally, Prince Andrew had, as he had had in Petersburg society, two
quite opposite reputations. Some, a minority, acknowledged him to be
different from themselves and from everyone else, expected great
things of him, listened to him, admired, and imitated him, and with
them Prince Andrew was natural and pleasant. Others, the majority,
disliked him and considered him conceited, cold, and disagreeable. But
among these people Prince Andrew knew how to take his stand so that
they respected and even feared him.

Coming out of Kutuzov's room into the waiting room with the papers
in his hand Prince Andrew came up to his comrade, the aide-de-camp
on duty, Kozlovski, who was sitting at the window with a book.

"Well, Prince?" asked Kozlovski.

"I am ordered to write a memorandum explaining why we are not
advancing."

"And why is it?"

Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders.

"Any news from Mack?"

"No."

"If it were true that he has been beaten, news would have come."

"Probably," said Prince Andrew moving toward the outer door.

But at that instant a tall Austrian general in a greatcoat, with the
order of Maria Theresa on his neck and a black bandage round his head,
who had evidently just arrived, entered quickly, slamming the door.
Prince Andrew stopped short.

"Commander in Chief Kutuzov?" said the newly arrived general
speaking quickly with a harsh German accent, looking to both sides and
advancing straight toward the inner door.

"The commander in chief is engaged," said Kozlovski, going hurriedly
up to the unknown general and blocking his way to the door. "Whom
shall I announce?"

The unknown general looked disdainfully down at Kozlovski, who was
rather short, as if surprised that anyone should not know him.

"The commander in chief is engaged," repeated Kozlovski calmly.

The general's face clouded, his lips quivered and trembled. He
took out a notebook, hurriedly scribbled something in pencil, tore out
the leaf, gave it to Kozlovski, stepped quickly to the window, and
threw himself into a chair, gazing at those in the room as if
asking, "Why do they look at me?" Then he lifted his head, stretched
his neck as if he intended to say something, but immediately, with
affected indifference, began to hum to himself, producing a queer
sound which immediately broke off. The door of the private room opened
and Kutuzov appeared in the doorway. The general with the bandaged
head bent forward as though running away from some danger, and, making
long, quick strides with his thin legs, went up to Kutuzov.

"Vous voyez le malheureux Mack," he uttered in a broken voice.

Kutuzov's face as he stood in the open doorway remained perfectly
immobile for a few moments. Then wrinkles ran over his face like a
wave and his forehead became smooth again, he bowed his head
respectfully, closed his eyes, silently let Mack enter his room before
him, and closed the door himself behind him.

The report which had been circulated that the Austrians had been
beaten and that the whole army had surrendered at Ulm proved to be
correct. Within half an hour adjutants had been sent in various
directions with orders which showed that the Russian troops, who had
hitherto been inactive, would also soon have to meet the enemy.

Prince Andrew was one of those rare staff officers whose chief
interest lay in the general progress of the war. When he saw Mack
and heard the details of his disaster he understood that half the
campaign was lost, understood all the difficulties of the Russian
army's position, and vividly imagined what awaited it and the part
he would have to play. Involuntarily he felt a joyful agitation at the
thought of the humiliation of arrogant Austria and that in a week's
time he might, perhaps, see and take part in the first Russian
encounter with the French since Suvorov met them. He feared that
Bonaparte's genius might outweigh all the courage of the Russian
troops, and at the same time could not admit the idea of his hero
being disgraced.

Excited and irritated by these thoughts Prince Andrew went toward
his room to write to his father, to whom he wrote every day. In the
corridor he met Nesvitski, with whom he shared a room, and the wag
Zherkov; they were as usual laughing.

"Why are you so glum?" asked Nesvitski noticing Prince Andrew's pale
face and glittering eyes.

"There's nothing to be gay about," answered Bolkonski.

Just as Prince Andrew met Nesvitski and Zherkov, there came toward
them from the other end of the corridor, Strauch, an Austrian
general who on Kutuzov's staff in charge of the provisioning of the
Russian army, and the member of the Hofkriegsrath who had arrived
the previous evening. There was room enough in the wide corridor for
the generals to pass the three officers quite easily, but Zherkov,
pushing Nesvitski aside with his arm, said in a breathless voice,

"They're coming!... they're coming!... Stand aside, make way, please
make way!"

The generals were passing by, looking as if they wished to avoid
embarrassing attentions. On the face of the wag Zherkov there suddenly
appeared a stupid smile of glee which he seemed unable to suppress.

"Your excellency," said he in German, stepping forward and
addressing the Austrian general, "I have the honor to congratulate
you."

He bowed his head and scraped first with one foot and then with
the other, awkwardly, like a child at a dancing lesson.

The member of the Hofkriegsrath looked at him severely but, seeing
the seriousness of his stupid smile, could not but give him a moment's
attention. He screwed up his eyes showing that he was listening.

"I have the honor to congratulate you. General Mack has arrived,
quite well, only a little bruised just here," he added, pointing
with a beaming smile to his head.

The general frowned, turned away, and went on.

"Gott, wie naiv!"* said he angrily, after he had gone a few steps.

*"Good God, what simplicity!"


Nesvitski with a laugh threw his arms round Prince Andrew, but
Bolkonski, turning still paler, pushed him away with an angry look and
turned to Zherkov. The nervous irritation aroused by the appearance of
Mack, the news of his defeat, and the thought of what lay before the
Russian army found vent in anger at Zherkov's untimely jest.

"If you, sir, choose to make a buffoon of yourself," he said
sharply, with a slight trembling of the lower jaw, "I can't prevent
your doing so; but I warn you that if you dare to play the fool in
my presence, I will teach you to behave yourself."

Nesvitski and Zherkov were so surprised by this outburst that they
gazed at Bolkonski silently with wide-open eyes.

"What's the matter? I only congratulated them," said Zherkov.

"I am not jesting with you; please be silent!" cried Bolkonski,
and taking Nesvitski's arm he left Zherkov, who did not know what to
say.

"Come, what's the matter, old fellow?" said Nesvitski trying to
soothe him.

"What's the matter?" exclaimed Prince Andrew standing still in his
excitement. "Don't you understand that either we are officers
serving our Tsar and our country, rejoicing in the successes and
grieving at the misfortunes of our common cause, or we are merely
lackeys who care nothing for their master's business. Quarante mille
hommes massacres et l'armee de nos allies detruite, et vous trouvez la
le mot pour rire,"* he said, as if strengthening his views by this
French sentence. "C'est bien pour un garcon de rein comme cet
individu dont vous avez fait un ami, mais pas pour vous, pas pour
vous.*[2] Only a hobbledehoy could amuse himself in this way," he
added in Russian--but pronouncing the word with a French accent-
having noticed that Zherkov could still hear him.


*"Forty thousand men massacred and the army of our allies destroyed,
and you find that a cause for jesting!"

*[2] "It is all very well for that good-for-nothing fellow of whom
you have made a friend, but not for you, not for you."


He waited a moment to see whether the cornet would answer, but he
turned and went out of the corridor.





CHAPTER IV


The Pavlograd Hussars were stationed two miles from Braunau. The
squadron in which Nicholas Rostov served as a cadet was quartered in
the German village of Salzeneck. The best quarters in the village were
assigned to cavalry-captain Denisov, the squadron commander, known
throughout the whole cavalry division as Vaska Denisov. Cadet
Rostov, ever since he had overtaken the regiment in Poland, had
lived with the squadron commander.

On October 11, the day when all was astir at headquarters over the
news of Mack's defeat, the camp life of the officers of this
squadron was proceeding as usual. Denisov, who had been losing at
cards all night, had not yet come home when Rostov rode back early
in the morning from a foraging expedition. Rostov in his cadet
uniform, with a jerk to his horse, rode up to the porch, swung his leg
over the saddle with a supple youthful movement, stood for a moment in
the stirrup as if loathe to part from his horse, and at last sprang
down and called to his orderly.

"Ah, Bondarenko, dear friend!" said he to the hussar who rushed up
headlong to the horse. "Walk him up and down, my dear fellow," he
continued, with that gay brotherly cordiality which goodhearted
young people show to everyone when they are happy.

"Yes, your excellency," answered the Ukrainian gaily, tossing his
head.

"Mind, walk him up and down well!"

Another hussar also rushed toward the horse, but Bondarenko had
already thrown the reins of the snaffle bridle over the horse's
head. It was evident that the cadet was liberal with his tips and that
it paid to serve him. Rostov patted the horse's neck and then his
flank, and lingered for a moment.

"Splendid! What a horse he will be!" he thought with a smile, and
holding up his saber, his spurs jingling, he ran up the steps of the
porch. His landlord, who in a waistcoat and a pointed cap, pitchfork
in hand, was clearing manure from the cowhouse, looked out, and his
face immediately brightened on seeing Rostov. "Schon gut Morgen! Schon
gut Morgen!"* he said winking with a merry smile, evidently pleased to
greet the young man.


*"A very good morning! A very good morning!"


"Schon fleissig?"* said Rostov with the same gay brotherly smile
which did not leave his eager face. "Hoch Oestreicher! Hoch Russen!
Kaiser Alexander hoch!"*[2] said he, quoting words often repeated by
the German landlord.


*"Busy already?"

*[2] "Hurrah for the Austrians! Hurrah for the Russians! Hurrah
for Emperor Alexander!"


The German laughed, came out of the cowshed, pulled off his cap, and
waving it above his head cried:

"Und die ganze Welt hoch!"*


*"And hurrah for the whole world!"


Rostov waved his cap above his head like the German and cried
laughing, "Und vivat die ganze Welt!" Though neither the German
cleaning his cowshed nor Rostov back with his platoon from foraging
for hay had any reason for rejoicing, they looked at each other with
joyful delight and brotherly love, wagged their heads in token of
their mutual affection, and parted smiling, the German returning to
his cowshed and Rostov going to the cottage he occupied with Denisov.

"What about your master?" he asked Lavrushka, Denisov's orderly,
whom all the regiment knew for a rogue.

"Hasn't been in since the evening. Must have been losing,"
answered Lavrushka. "I know by now, if he wins he comes back early
to brag about it, but if he stays out till morning it means he's
lost and will come back in a rage. Will you have coffee?"

"Yes, bring some."

Ten minutes later Lavrushka brought the coffee. "He's coming!"
said he. "Now for trouble!" Rostov looked out of the window and saw
Denisov coming home. Denisov was a small man with a red face,
sparkling black eyes, and black tousled mustache and hair. He wore
an unfastened cloak, wide breeches hanging down in creases, and a
crumpled shako on the back of his head. He came up to the porch
gloomily, hanging his head.

"Lavwuska!" he shouted loudly and angrily, "take it off, blockhead!"

"Well, I am taking it off," replied Lavrushka's voice.

"Ah, you're up already," said Denisov, entering the room.

"Long ago," answered Rostov, "I have already been for the hay, and
have seen Fraulein Mathilde."

"Weally! And I've been losing, bwother. I lost yesterday like a
damned fool!" cried Denisov, not pronouncing his r's. "Such ill
luck! Such ill luck. As soon as you left, it began and went on.
Hullo there! Tea!"

Puckering up his face though smiling, and showing his short strong
teeth, he began with stubby fingers of both hands to ruffle up his
thick tangled black hair.

"And what devil made me go to that wat?" (an officer nicknamed
"the rat") he said, rubbing his forehead and whole face with both
hands. "Just fancy, he didn't let me win a single cahd, not one cahd."

He took the lighted pipe that was offered to him, gripped it in
his fist, and tapped it on the floor, making the sparks fly, while
he continued to shout.

"He lets one win the singles and collahs it as soon as one doubles
it; gives the singles and snatches the doubles!"

He scattered the burning tobacco, smashed the pipe, and threw it
away. Then he remained silent for a while, and all at once looked
cheerfully with his glittering, black eyes at Rostov.

"If at least we had some women here; but there's nothing foh one
to do but dwink. If we could only get to fighting soon. Hullo, who's
there?" he said, turning to the door as he heard a tread of heavy
boots and the clinking of spurs that came to a stop, and a
respectful cough.

"The squadron quartermaster!" said Lavrushka.

Denisov's face puckered still more.

"Wetched!" he muttered, throwing down a purse with some gold in
it. "Wostov, deah fellow, just see how much there is left and shove
the purse undah the pillow," he said, and went out to the
quartermaster.

Rostov took the money and, mechanically arranging the old and new
coins in separate piles, began counting them.

"Ah! Telyanin! How d'ye do? They plucked me last night," came
Denisov's voice from the next room.

"Where? At Bykov's, at the rat's... I knew it," replied a piping
voice, and Lieutenant Telyanin, a small officer of the same
squadron, entered the room.

Rostov thrust the purse under the pillow and shook the damp little
hand which was offered him. Telyanin for some reason had been
transferred from the Guards just before this campaign. He behaved very
well in the regiment but was not liked; Rostov especially detested him
and was unable to overcome or conceal his groundless antipathy to
the man.

"Well, young cavalryman, how is my Rook behaving?" he asked. (Rook
was a young horse Telyanin had sold to Rostov.)

The lieutenant never looked the man he was speaking to straight in
the face; his eyes continually wandered from one object to another.

"I saw you riding this morning..." he added.

"Oh, he's all right, a good horse," answered Rostov, though the
horse for which he had paid seven hundred rubbles was not worth half
that sum. "He's begun to go a little lame on the left foreleg," he
added.

"The hoof's cracked! That's nothing. I'll teach you what to do and
show you what kind of rivet to use."

"Yes, please do," said Rostov.

"I'll show you, I'll show you! It's not a secret. And it's a horse
you'll thank me for."

"Then I'll have it brought round," said Rostov wishing to avoid
Telyanin, and he went out to give the order.

In the passage Denisov, with a pipe, was squatting on the
threshold facing the quartermaster who was reporting to him. On seeing
Rostov, Denisov screwed up his face and pointing over his shoulder
with his thumb to the room where Telyanin was sitting, he frowned
and gave a shudder of disgust.

"Ugh! I don't like that fellow," he said, regardless of the
quartermaster's presence.

Rostov shrugged his shoulders as much as to say: "Nor do I, but
what's one to do?" and, having given his order, he returned to
Telyanin.

Telyanin was sitting in the same indolent pose in which Rostov had
left him, rubbing his small white hands.

"Well there certainly are disgusting people," thought Rostov as he
entered.

"Have you told them to bring the horse?" asked Telyanin, getting
up and looking carelessly about him.

"I have."

"Let us go ourselves. I only came round to ask Denisov about
yesterday's order. Have you got it, Denisov?"

"Not yet. But where are you off to?"

"I want to teach this young man how to shoe a horse," said Telyanin.

They went through the porch and into the stable. The lieutenant
explained how to rivet the hoof and went away to his own quarters.

When Rostov went back there was a bottle of vodka and a sausage on
the table. Denisov was sitting there scratching with his pen on a
sheet of paper. He looked gloomily in Rostov's face and said: "I am
witing to her."

He leaned his elbows on the table with his pen in his hand and,
evidently glad of a chance to say quicker in words what he wanted to
write, told Rostov the contents of his letter.

"You see, my fwiend," he said, "we sleep when we don't love. We
are childwen of the dust... but one falls in love and one is a God,
one is pua' as on the first day of cweation... Who's that now? Send
him to the devil, I'm busy!" he shouted to Lavrushka, who went up to
him not in the least abashed.

"Who should it be? You yourself told him to come. It's the
quartermaster for the money."

Denisov frowned and was about to shout some reply but stopped.

"Wetched business," he muttered to himself. "How much is left in the
puhse?" he asked, turning to Rostov.

"Seven new and three old imperials."

"Oh, it's wetched! Well, what are you standing there for, you
sca'cwow? Call the quahtehmasteh," he shouted to Lavrushka.

"Please, Denisov, let me lend you some: I have some, you know," said
Rostov, blushing.

"Don't like bowwowing from my own fellows, I don't," growled
Denisov.

"But if you won't accept money from me like a comrade, you will
offend me. Really I have some," Rostov repeated.

"No, I tell you."

And Denisov went to the bed to get the purse from under the pillow.

"Where have you put it, Wostov?"

"Under the lower pillow."

"It's not there."

Denisov threw both pillows on the floor. The purse was not there.

"That's a miwacle."

"Wait, haven't you dropped it?" said Rostov, picking up the
pillows one at a time and shaking them.

He pulled off the quilt and shook it. The purse was not there.

"Dear me, can I have forgotten? No, I remember thinking that you
kept it under your head like a treasure," said Rostov. "I put it
just here. Where is it?" he asked, turning to Lavrushka.

"I haven't been in the room. It must be where you put it."

"But it isn't?..."

"You're always like that; you thwow a thing down anywhere and forget
it. Feel in your pockets."

"No, if I hadn't thought of it being a treasure," said Rostov,
"but I remember putting it there."

Lavrushka turned all the bedding over, looked under the bed and
under the table, searched everywhere, and stood still in the middle of
the room. Denisov silently watched Lavrushka's movements, and when the
latter threw up his arms in surprise saying it was nowhere to be found
Denisov glanced at Rostov.

"Wostov, you've not been playing schoolboy twicks..."

Rostov felt Denisov's gaze fixed on him, raised his eyes, and
instantly dropped them again. All the blood which had seemed congested
somewhere below his throat rushed to his face and eyes. He could not
draw breath.

"And there hasn't been anyone in the room except the lieutenant
and yourselves. It must be here somewhere," said Lavrushka.

"Now then, you devil's puppet, look alive and hunt for it!"
shouted Denisov, suddenly, turning purple and rushing at the man
with a threatening gesture. "If the purse isn't found I'll flog you,
I'll flog you all."

Rostov, his eyes avoiding Denisov, began buttoning his coat, buckled
on his saber, and put on his cap.

"I must have that purse, I tell you," shouted Denisov, shaking his
orderly by the shoulders and knocking him against the wall.

"Denisov, let him alone, I know who has taken it," said Rostov,
going toward the door without raising his eyes. Denisov paused,
thought a moment, and, evidently understanding what Rostov hinted
at, seized his arm.

"Nonsense!" he cried, and the veins on his forehead and neck stood
out like cords. "You are mad, I tell you. I won't allow it. The
purse is here! I'll flay this scoundwel alive, and it will be found."

"I know who has taken it," repeated Rostov in an unsteady voice, and
went to the door.

"And I tell you, don't you dahe to do it!" shouted Denisov,
rushing at the cadet to restrain him.

But Rostov pulled away his arm and, with as much anger as though
Denisov were his worst enemy, firmly fixed his eyes directly on his
face.

"Do you understand what you're saying?" he said in a trembling
voice. "There was no one else in the room except myself. So that if it
is not so, then..."

He could not finish, and ran out of the room.

"Ah, may the devil take you and evewybody," were the last words
Rostov heard.

Rostov went to Telyanin's quarters.

"The master is not in, he's gone to headquarters," said Telyanin's
orderly. "Has something happened?" he added, surprised at the
cadet's troubled face.

"No, nothing."

"You've only just missed him," said the orderly.

The headquarters were situated two miles away from Salzeneck, and
Rostov, without returning home, took a horse and rode there. There was
an inn in the village which the officers frequented. Rostov rode up to
it and saw Telyanin's horse at the porch.

In the second room of the inn the lieutenant was sitting over a dish
of sausages and a bottle of wine.

"Ah, you've come here too, young man!" he said, smiling and
raising his eyebrows.

"Yes," said Rostov as if it cost him a great deal to utter the word;
and he sat down at the nearest table.

Both were silent. There were two Germans and a Russian officer in
the room. No one spoke and the only sounds heard were the clatter of
knives and the munching of the lieutenant.

When Telyanin had finished his lunch he took out of his pocket a
double purse and, drawing its rings aside with his small, white,
turned-up fingers, drew out a gold imperial, and lifting his
eyebrows gave it to the waiter.

"Please be quick," he said.

The coin was a new one. Rostov rose and went up to Telyanin.

"Allow me to look at your purse," he said in a low, almost
inaudible, voice.

With shifting eyes but eyebrows still raised, Telyanin handed him
the purse.

"Yes, it's a nice purse. Yes, yes," he said, growing suddenly
pale, and added, "Look at it, young man."

Rostov took the purse in his hand, examined it and the money in
it, and looked at Telyanin. The lieutenant was looking about in his
usual way and suddenly seemed to grow very merry.

"If we get to Vienna I'll get rid of it there but in these
wretched little towns there's nowhere to spend it," said he. "Well,
let me have it, young man, I'm going."

Rostov did not speak.

"And you? Are you going to have lunch too? They feed you quite
decently here," continued Telyanin. "Now then, let me have it."

He stretched out his hand to take hold of the purse. Rostov let go
of it. Telyanin took the purse and began carelessly slipping it into
the pocket of his riding breeches, with his eyebrows lifted and his
mouth slightly open, as if to say, "Yes, yes, I am putting my purse in
my pocket and that's quite simple and is no else's business."

"Well, young man?" he said with a sigh, and from under his lifted
brows he glanced into Rostov's eyes.

Some flash as of an electric spark shot from Telyanin's eyes to
Rostov's and back, and back again and again in an instant.

"Come here," said Rostov, catching hold of Telyanin's arm and almost
dragging him to the window. "That money is Denisov's; you took
it..." he whispered just above Telyanin's ear.

"What? What? How dare you? What?" said Telyanin.

But these words came like a piteous, despairing cry and an
entreaty for pardon. As soon as Rostov heard them, an enormous load of
doubt fell from him. He was glad, and at the same instant began to
pity the miserable man who stood before him, but the task he had begun
had to be completed.

"Heaven only knows what the people here may imagine," muttered
Telyanin, taking up his cap and moving toward a small empty room.
"We must have an explanation..."

"I know it and shall prove it," said Rostov.

"I..."

Every muscle of Telyanin's pale, terrified face began to quiver, his
eyes still shifted from side to side but with a downward look not
rising to Rostov's face, and his sobs were audible.

"Count!... Don't ruin a young fellow... here is this wretched money,
take it..." He threw it on the table. "I have an old father and
mother!..."

Rostov took the money, avoiding Telyanin's eyes, and went out of the
room without a word. But at the door he stopped and then retraced
his steps. "O God," he said with tears in his eyes, "how could you
do it?"

"Count..." said Telyanin drawing nearer to him.

"Don't touch me," said Rostov, drawing back. "If you need it, take
the money," and he threw the purse to him and ran out of the inn.





CHAPTER V


That same evening there was an animated discussion among the
squadron's officers in Denisov's quarters.

"And I tell you, Rostov, that you must apologize to the colonel!"
said a tall, grizzly-haired staff captain, with enormous mustaches and
many wrinkles on his large features, to Rostov who was crimson with
excitement.

The staff captain, Kirsten, had twice been reduced to the ranks
for affairs of honor and had twice regained his commission.

"I will allow no one to call me a liar!" cried Rostov. "He told me I
lied, and I told him he lied. And there it rests. He may keep me on
duty every day, or may place me under arrest, but no one can make me
apologize, because if he, as commander of this regiment, thinks it
beneath his dignity to give me satisfaction, then..."

"You just wait a moment, my dear fellow, and listen," interrupted
the staff captain in his deep bass, calmly stroking his long mustache.
"You tell the colonel in the presence of other officers that an
officer has stolen..."

"I'm not to blame that the conversation began in the presence of
other officers. Perhaps I ought not to have spoken before them, but
I am not a diplomatist. That's why I joined the hussars, thinking that
here one would not need finesse; and he tells me that I am lying--so
let him give me satisfaction..."

"That's all right. No one thinks you a coward, but that's not the
point. Ask Denisov whether it is not out of the question for a cadet
to demand satisfaction of his regimental commander?"

Denisov sat gloomily biting his mustache and listening to the
conversation, evidently with no wish to take part in it. He answered
the staff captain's question by a disapproving shake of his head.

"You speak to the colonel about this nasty business before other
officers," continued the staff captain, "and Bogdanich" (the colonel
was called Bogdanich) "shuts you up."

"He did not shut me up, he said I was telling an untruth."

"Well, have it so, and you talked a lot of nonsense to him and
must apologize."

"Not on any account!" exclaimed Rostov.

"I did not expect this of you," said the staff captain seriously and
severely. "You don't wish to apologize, but, man, it's not only to him
but to the whole regiment--all of us--you're to blame all round. The
case is this: you ought to have thought the matter over and taken
advice; but no, you go and blurt it all straight out before the
officers. Now what was the colonel to do? Have the officer tried and
disgrace the whole regiment? Disgrace the whole regiment because of
one scoundrel? Is that how you look at it? We don't see it like
that. And Bogdanich was a brick: he told you you were saying what
was not true. It's not pleasant, but what's to be done, my dear
fellow? You landed yourself in it. And now, when one wants to smooth
the thing over, some conceit prevents your apologizing, and you wish
to make the whole affair public. You are offended at being put on duty
a bit, but why not apologize to an old and honorable officer? Whatever
Bogdanich may be, anyway he is an honorable and brave old colonel!
You're quick at taking offense, but you don't mind disgracing the
whole regiment!" The staff captain's voice began to tremble. "You have
been in the regiment next to no time, my lad, you're here today and
tomorrow you'll be appointed adjutant somewhere and can snap your
fingers when it is said 'There are thieves among the Pavlograd
officers!' But it's not all the same to us! Am I not right, Denisov?
It's not the same!"

Denisov remained silent and did not move, but occasionally looked
with his glittering black eyes at Rostov.

"You value your own pride and don't wish to apologize," continued
the staff captain, "but we old fellows, who have grown up in and,
God willing, are going to die in the regiment, we prize the honor of
the regiment, and Bogdanich knows it. Oh, we do prize it, old
fellow! And all this is not right, it's not right! You may take
offense or not but I always stick to mother truth. It's not right!"

And the staff captain rose and turned away from Rostov.

"That's twue, devil take it!" shouted Denisov, jumping up. "Now then,
Wostov, now then!"

 Rostov, growing red and pale alternately, looked first at one
officer and then at the other.

"No, gentlemen, no... you mustn't think... I quite understand.
You're wrong to think that of me... I... for me... for the honor of
the regiment I'd... Ah well, I'll show that in action, and for me
the honor of the flag... Well, never mind, it's true I'm to blame,
to blame all round. Well, what else do you want?..."

"Come, that's right, Count!" cried the staff captain, turning
round and clapping Rostov on the shoulder with his big hand.

"I tell you," shouted Denisov, "he's a fine fellow."

"That's better, Count," said the staff captain, beginning to address
Rostov by his title, as if in recognition of his confession. "Go and
apologize, your excellency. Yes, go!"

"Gentlemen, I'll do anything. No one shall hear a word from me,"
said Rostov in an imploring voice, "but I can't apologize, by God I
can't, do what you will! How can I go and apologize like a little
boy asking forgiveness?"

Denisov began to laugh.

"It'll be worse for you. Bogdanich is vindictive and you'll pay
for your obstinacy," said Kirsten.

"No, on my word it's not obstinacy! I can't describe the feeling.
I can't..."

"Well, it's as you like," said the staff captain. "And what has
become of that scoundrel?" he asked Denisov.

"He has weported himself sick, he's to be stwuck off the list
tomowwow," muttered Denisov.

"It is an illness, there's no other way of explaining it," said
the staff captain.

"Illness or not, he'd better not cwoss my path. I'd kill him!"
shouted Denisov in a bloodthirsty tone.

Just then Zherkov entered the room.

"What brings you here?" cried the officers turning to the newcomer.

"We're to go into action, gentlemen! Mack has surrendered with his
whole army."

"It's not true!"

"I've seen him myself!"

"What? Saw the real Mack? With hands and feet?"

"Into action! Into action! Bring him a bottle for such news! But how
did you come here?"

"I've been sent back to the regiment all on account of that devil,
Mack. An Austrian general complained of me. I congratulated him on
Mack's arrival... What's the matter, Rostov? You look as if you'd just
come out of a hot bath."

"Oh, my dear fellow, we're in such a stew here these last two days."

The regimental adjutant came in and confirmed the news brought by
Zherkov. They were under orders to advance next day.

"We're going into action, gentlemen!"

"Well, thank God! We've been sitting here too long!"





CHAPTER VI


Kutuzov fell back toward Vienna, destroying behind him the bridges
over the rivers Inn (at Braunau) and Traun (near Linz). On October
23 the Russian troops were crossing the river Enns. At midday the
Russian baggage train, the artillery, and columns of troops were
defiling through the town of Enns on both sides of the bridge.

It was a warm, rainy, autumnal day. The wide expanse that opened out
before the heights on which the Russian batteries stood guarding the
bridge was at times veiled by a diaphanous curtain of slanting rain,
and then, suddenly spread out in the sunlight, far-distant objects
could be clearly seen glittering as though freshly varnished. Down
below, the little town could be seen with its white, red-roofed
houses, its cathedral, and its bridge, on both sides of which streamed
jostling masses of Russian troops. At the bend of the Danube, vessels,
an island, and a castle with a park surrounded by the waters of the
confluence of the Enns and the Danube became visible, and the rocky
left bank of the Danube covered with pine forests, with a mystic
background of green treetops and bluish gorges. The turrets of a
convent stood out beyond a wild virgin pine forest, and far away on
the other side of the Enns the enemy's horse patrols could be
discerned.

Among the field guns on the brow of the hill the general in
command of the rearguard stood with a staff officer, scanning the
country through his fieldglass. A little behind them Nesvitski, who
had been sent to the rearguard by the commander in chief, was
sitting on the trail of a gun carriage. A Cossack who accompanied
him had handed him a knapsack and a flask, and Nesvitski was
treating some officers to pies and real doppelkummel. The officers
gladly gathered round him, some on their knees, some squatting Turkish
fashion on the wet grass.

"Yes, the Austrian prince who built that castle was no fool. It's
a fine place! Why are you not eating anything, gentlemen?" Nesvitski
was saying.

"Thank you very much, Prince," answered one of the officers, pleased
to be talking to a staff officer of such importance. "It's a lovely
place! We passed close to the park and saw two deer... and what a
splendid house!"

"Look, Prince," said another, who would have dearly liked to take
another pie but felt shy, and therefore pretended to be examining
the countryside--"See, our infantrymen have already got there. Look
there in the meadow behind the village, three of them are dragging
something. They'll ransack that castle," he remarked with evident
approval.

"So they will," said Nesvitski. "No, but what I should like,"
added he, munching a pie in his moist-lipped handsome mouth, "would be
to slip in over there."

He pointed with a smile to a turreted nunnery, and his eyes narrowed
and gleamed.

"That would be fine, gentlemen!"

The officers laughed.

"Just to flutter the nuns a bit. They say there are Italian girls
among them. On my word I'd give five years of my life for it!"

"They must be feeling dull, too," said one of the bolder officers,
laughing.

Meanwhile the staff officer standing in front pointed out
something to the general, who looked through his field glass.

"Yes, so it is, so it is," said the general angrily, lowering the
field glass and shrugging his shoulders, "so it is! They'll be fired
on at the crossing. And why are they dawdling there?"

On the opposite side the enemy could be seen by the naked eye, and
from their battery a milk-white cloud arose. Then came the distant
report of a shot, and our troops could be seen hurrying to the
crossing.

Nesvitski rose, puffing, and went up to the general, smiling.

"Would not your excellency like a little refreshment?" he said.

"It's a bad business," said the general without answering him,
"our men have been wasting time."

"Hadn't I better ride over, your excellency?" asked Nesvitski.

"Yes, please do," answered the general, and he repeated the order
that had already once been given in detail: "and tell the hussars that
they are to cross last and to fire the bridge as I ordered; and the
inflammable material on the bridge must be reinspected."

"Very good," answered Nesvitski.

He called the Cossack with his horse, told him to put away the
knapsack and flask, and swung his heavy person easily into the saddle.

"I'll really call in on the nuns," he said to the officers who
watched him smilingly, and he rode off by the winding path down the
hill.

"Now then, let's see how far it will carry, Captain. Just try!" said
the general, turning to an artillery officer. "Have a little fun to
pass the time."

"Crew, to your guns!" commanded the officer.

In a moment the men came running gaily from their campfires and
began loading.

"One!" came the command.

Number one jumped briskly aside. The gun rang out with a deafening
metallic roar, and a whistling grenade flew above the heads of our
troops below the hill and fell far short of the enemy, a little
smoke showing the spot where it burst.

The faces of officers and men brightened up at the sound. Everyone
got up and began watching the movements of our troops below, as
plainly visible as if but a stone's throw away, and the movements of
the approaching enemy farther off. At the same instant the sun came
fully out from behind the clouds, and the clear sound of the
solitary shot and the brilliance of the bright sunshine merged in a
single joyous and spirited impression.





CHAPTER VII


Two of the enemy's shots had already flown across the bridge,
where there was a crush. Halfway across stood Prince Nesvitski, who
had alighted from his horse and whose big body was jammed
against the railings. He looked back laughing to the Cossack who stood
a few steps behind him holding two horses by their bridles. Each
time Prince Nesvitski tried to move on, soldiers and carts pushed
him back again and pressed him against the railings, and all he
could do was to smile.

"What a fine fellow you are, friend!" said the Cossack to a convoy
soldier with a wagon, who was pressing onto the infantrymen who were
crowded together close to his wheels and his horses. "What a fellow!
You can't wait a moment! Don't you see the general wants to pass?"

But the convoyman took no notice of the word "general" and shouted
at the soldiers who were blocking his way. "Hi there, boys! Keep to
the left! Wait a bit." But the soldiers, crowded together shoulder
to shoulder, their bayonets interlocking, moved over the bridge in a
dense mass. Looking down over the rails Prince Nesvitski saw the
rapid, noisy little waves of the Enns, which rippling and eddying
round the piles of the bridge chased each other along. Looking on
the bridge he saw equally uniform living waves of soldiers, shoulder
straps, covered shakos, knapsacks, bayonets, long muskets, and,
under the shakos, faces with broad cheekbones, sunken cheeks, and
listless tired expressions, and feet that moved through the sticky mud
that covered the planks of the bridge. Sometimes through the
monotonous waves of men, like a fleck of white foam on the waves of
the Enns, an officer, in a cloak and with a type of face different
from that of the men, squeezed his way along; sometimes like a chip of
wood whirling in the river, an hussar on foot, an orderly, or a
townsman was carried through the waves of infantry; and sometimes like
a log floating down the river, an officers' or company's baggage
wagon, piled high, leather covered, and hemmed in on all sides,
moved across the bridge.

"It's as if a dam had burst," said the Cossack hopelessly. "Are
there many more of you to come?"

"A million all but one!" replied a waggish soldier in a torn coat,
with a wink, and passed on followed by another, an old man.

"If he" (he meant the enemy) "begins popping at the bridge now,"
said the old soldier dismally to a comrade, "you'll forget to
scratch yourself."

That soldier passed on, and after him came another sitting on a
cart.

"Where the devil have the leg bands been shoved to?" said an
orderly, running behind the cart and fumbling in the back of it.

And he also passed on with the wagon. Then came some merry
soldiers who had evidently been drinking.

"And then, old fellow, he gives him one in the teeth with the butt
end of his gun..." a soldier whose greatcoat was well tucked up said
gaily, with a wide swing of his arm.

"Yes, the ham was just delicious..." answered another with a loud
laugh. And they, too, passed on, so that Nesvitski did not learn who
had been struck on the teeth, or what the ham had to do with it.

"Bah! How they scurry. He just sends a ball and they think they'll
all be killed," a sergeant was saying angrily and reproachfully.

"As it flies past me, Daddy, the ball I mean," said a young
soldier with an enormous mouth, hardly refraining from laughing, "I
felt like dying of fright. I did, 'pon my word, I got that
frightened!" said he, as if bragging of having been frightened.

That one also passed. Then followed a cart unlike any that had
gone before. It was a German cart with a pair of horses led by a
German, and seemed loaded with a whole houseful of effects. A fine
brindled cow with a large udder was attached to the cart behind. A
woman with an unweaned baby, an old woman, and a healthy German girl
with bright red cheeks were sitting on some feather beds. Evidently
these fugitives were allowed to pass by special permission. The eyes
of all the soldiers turned toward the women, and while the vehicle was
passing at foot pace all the soldiers' remarks related to the two
young ones. Every face bore almost the same smile, expressing unseemly
thoughts about the women.

"Just see, the German sausage is making tracks, too!"

"Sell me the missis," said another soldier, addressing the German,
who, angry and frightened, strode energetically along with downcast
eyes.

"See how smart she's made herself! Oh, the devils!"

"There, Fedotov, you should be quartered on them!"

"I have seen as much before now, mate!"

"Where are you going?" asked an infantry officer who was eating an
apple, also half smiling as he looked at the handsome girl.

The German closed his eyes, signifying that he did not understand.

"Take it if you like," said the officer, giving the girl an apple.

The girl smiled and took it. Nesvitski like the rest of the men on
the bridge did not take his eyes off the women till they had passed.
When they had gone by, the same stream of soldiers followed, with
the same kind of talk, and at last all stopped. As often happens,
the horses of a convoy wagon became restive at the end of the
bridge, and the whole crowd had to wait.

"And why are they stopping? There's no proper order!" said the
soldiers. "Where are you shoving to? Devil take you! Can't you wait?
It'll be worse if he fires the bridge. See, here's an officer jammed
in too"--different voices were saying in the crowd, as the men
looked at one another, and all pressed toward the exit from the
bridge.

Looking down at the waters of the Enns under the bridge, Nesvitski
suddenly heard a sound new to him, of something swiftly approaching...
something big, that splashed into the water.

"Just see where it carries to!" a soldier near by said sternly,
looking round at the sound.

"Encouraging us to get along quicker," said another uneasily.

The crowd moved on again. Nesvitski realized that it was a cannon
ball.

"Hey, Cossack, my horse!" he said. "Now, then, you there! get out of
the way! Make way!"

With great difficulty he managed to get to his horse, and shouting
continually he moved on. The soldiers squeezed themselves to make
way for him, but again pressed on him so that they jammed his leg, and
those nearest him were not to blame for they were themselves pressed
still harder from behind.

"Nesvitski, Nesvitski! you numskull!" came a hoarse voice from
behind him.

Nesvitski looked round and saw, some fifteen paces away but
separated by the living mass of moving infantry, Vaska Denisov, red
and shaggy, with his cap on the back of his black head and a cloak
hanging jauntily over his shoulder.

"Tell these devils, these fiends, to let me pass!" shouted Denisov
evidently in a fit of rage, his coal-black eyes with their bloodshot
whites glittering and rolling as he waved his sheathed saber in a
small bare hand as red as his face.

"Ah, Vaska!" joyfully replied Nesvitski. "What's up with you?"

"The squadwon can't pass," shouted Vaska Denisov, showing his
white teeth fiercely and spurring his black thoroughbred Arab, which
twitched its ears as the bayonets touched it, and snorted, spurting
white foam from his bit, tramping the planks of the bridge with his
hoofs, and apparently ready to jump over the railings had his rider
let him. "What is this? They're like sheep! Just like sheep! Out of
the way!... Let us pass!... Stop there, you devil with the cart!
I'll hack you with my saber!" he shouted, actually drawing his saber
from its scabbard and flourishing it.

The soldiers crowded against one another with terrified faces, and
Denisov joined Nesvitski.

"How's it you're not drunk today?" said Nesvitski when the other had
ridden up to him.

"They don't even give one time to dwink!" answered Vaska Denisov.
"They keep dwagging the wegiment to and fwo all day. If they mean to
fight, let's fight. But the devil knows what this is."

"What a dandy you are today!" said Nesvitski, looking at Denisov's
new cloak and saddlecloth.

Denisov smiled, took out of his sabretache a handkerchief that
diffused a smell of perfume, and put it to Nesvitski's nose.

"Of course. I'm going into action! I've shaved, bwushed my teeth,
and scented myself."

The imposing figure of Nesvitski followed by his Cossack, and the
determination of Denisov who flourished his sword and shouted
frantically, had such an effect that they managed to squeeze through
to the farther side of the bridge and stopped the infantry. Beside the
bridge Nesvitski found the colonel to whom he had to deliver the
order, and having done this he rode back.

Having cleared the way Denisov stopped at the end of the bridge.
Carelessly holding in his stallion that was neighing and pawing the
ground, eager to rejoin its fellows, he watched his squadron draw
nearer. Then the clang of hoofs, as of several horses galloping,
resounded on the planks of the bridge, and the squadron, officers in
front and men four abreast, spread across the bridge and began to
emerge on his side of it.

The infantry who had been stopped crowded near the bridge in the
trampled mud and gazed with that particular feeling of ill-will,
estrangement, and ridicule with which troops of different arms usually
encounter one another at the clean, smart hussars who moved past
them in regular order.

"Smart lads! Only fit for a fair!" said one.

"What good are they? They're led about just for show!" remarked
another.

"Don't kick up the dust, you infantry!" jested an hussar whose
prancing horse had splashed mud over some foot soldiers.

"I'd like to put you on a two days' march with a knapsack! Your fine
cords would soon get a bit rubbed," said an infantryman, wiping the
mud off his face with his sleeve. "Perched up there, you're more
like a bird than a man."

"There now, Zikin, they ought to put you on a horse. You'd look
fine," said a corporal, chaffing a thin little soldier who bent
under the weight of his knapsack.

"Take a stick between your legs, that'll suit you for a horse!"
the hussar shouted back.





CHAPTER VIII


The last of the infantry hurriedly crossed the bridge, squeezing
together as they approached it as if passing through a funnel. At last
the baggage wagons had all crossed, the crush was less, and the last
battalion came onto the bridge. Only Denisov's squadron of hussars
remained on the farther side of the bridge facing the enemy, who could
be seen from the hill on the opposite bank but was not yet visible
from the bridge, for the horizon as seen from the valley through which
the river flowed was formed by the rising ground only half a mile
away. At the foot of the hill lay wasteland over which a few groups of
our Cossack scouts were moving. Suddenly on the road at the top of the
high ground, artillery and troops in blue uniform were seen. These
were the French. A group of Cossack scouts retired down the hill at
a trot. All the officers and men of Denisov's squadron, though they
tried to talk of other things and to look in other directions, thought
only of what was there on the hilltop, and kept constantly looking
at the patches appearing on the skyline, which they knew to be the
enemy's troops. The weather had cleared again since noon and the sun
was descending brightly upon the Danube and the dark hills around
it. It was calm, and at intervals the bugle calls and the shouts of
the enemy could be heard from the hill. There was no one now between
the squadron and the enemy except a few scattered skirmishers. An
empty space of some seven hundred yards was all that separated them.
The enemy ceased firing, and that stern, threatening, inaccessible,
and intangible line which separates two hostile armies was all the
more clearly felt.

"One step beyond that boundary line which resembles the line
dividing the living from the dead lies uncertainty, suffering, and
death. And what is there? Who is there?--there beyond that field, that
tree, that roof lit up by the sun? No one knows, but one wants to
know. You fear and yet long to cross that line, and know that sooner
or later it must be crossed and you will have to find out what is
there, just as you will inevitably have to learn what lies the other
side of death. But you are strong, healthy, cheerful, and excited, and
are surrounded by other such excitedly animated and healthy men." So
thinks, or at any rate feels, anyone who comes in sight of the
enemy, and that feeling gives a particular glamour and glad keenness
of impression to everything that takes place at such moments.

On the high ground where the enemy was, the smoke of a cannon
rose, and a ball flew whistling over the heads of the hussar squadron.
The officers who had been standing together rode off to their
places. The hussars began carefully aligning their horses. Silence
fell on the whole squadron. All were looking at the enemy in front and
at the squadron commander, awaiting the word of command. A second
and a third cannon ball flew past. Evidently they were firing at the
hussars, but the balls with rapid rhythmic whistle flew over the heads
of the horsemen and fell somewhere beyond them. The hussars did not
look round, but at the sound of each shot, as at the word of
command, the whole squadron with its rows of faces so alike yet so
different, holding its breath while the ball flew past, rose in the
stirrups and sank back again. The soldiers without turning their heads
glanced at one another, curious to see their comrades' impression.
Every face, from Denisov's to that of the bugler, showed one common
expression of conflict, irritation, and excitement, around chin and
mouth. The quartermaster frowned, looking at the soldiers as if
threatening to punish them. Cadet Mironov ducked every time a ball
flew past. Rostov on the left flank, mounted on his Rook--a handsome
horse despite its game leg--had the happy air of a schoolboy called up
before a large audience for an examination in which he feels sure he
will distinguish himself. He was glancing at everyone with a clear,
bright expression, as if asking them to notice how calmly he sat under
fire. But despite himself, on his face too that same indication of
something new and stern showed round the mouth.

"Who's that curtseying there? Cadet Miwonov! That's not wight!
Look at me," cried Denisov who, unable to keep still on one spot, kept
turning his horse in front of the squadron.

The black, hairy, snub-nosed face of Vaska Denisov, and his whole
short sturdy figure with the sinewy hairy hand and stumpy fingers in
which he held the hilt of his naked saber, looked just as it usually
did, especially toward evening when he had emptied his second
bottle; he was only redder than usual. With his shaggy head thrown
back like birds when they drink, pressing his spurs mercilessly into
the sides of his good horse, Bedouin, and sitting as though falling
backwards in the saddle, he galloped to the other flank of the
squadron and shouted in a hoarse voice to the men to look to their
pistols. He rode up to Kirsten. The staff captain on his broad-backed,
steady mare came at a walk to meet him. His face with its long
mustache was serious as always, only his eyes were brighter than
usual.

"Well, what about it?" said he to Denisov. "It won't come to a
fight. You'll see--we shall retire."

"The devil only knows what they're about!" muttered Denisov. "Ah,
Wostov," he cried noticing the cadet's bright face, "you've got it
at last."

And he smiled approvingly, evidently pleased with the cadet.
Rostov felt perfectly happy. Just then the commander appeared on the
bridge. Denisov galloped up to him.

"Your excellency! Let us attack them! I'll dwive them off."

"Attack indeed!" said the colonel in a bored voice, puckering up his
face as if driving off a troublesome fly. "And why are you stopping
here? Don't you see the skirmishers are retreating? Lead the
squadron back."

The squadron crossed the bridge and drew out of range of fire
without having lost a single man. The second squadron that had been in
the front line followed them across and the last Cossacks quitted
the farther side of the river.

The two Pavlograd squadrons, having crossed the bridge, retired up
the hill one after the other. Their colonel, Karl Bogdanich
Schubert, came up to Denisov's squadron and rode at a footpace not far
from Rostov, without taking any notice of him although they were now
meeting for the first time since their encounter concerning
Telyanin. Rostov, feeling that he was at the front and in the power of
a man toward whom he now admitted that he had been to blame, did not
lift his eyes from the colonel's athletic back, his nape covered
with light hair, and his red neck. It seemed to Rostov that
Bogdanich was only pretending not to notice him, and that his whole
aim now was to test the cadet's courage, so he drew himself up and
looked around him merrily; then it seemed to him that Bogdanich rode
so near in order to show him his courage. Next he thought that his
enemy would send the squadron on a desperate attack just to punish
him--Rostov. Then he imagined how, after the attack, Bogdanich would
come up to him as he lay wounded and would magnanimously extend the
hand of reconciliation.

The high-shouldered figure of Zherkov, familiar to the Pavlograds as
he had but recently left their regiment, rode up to the colonel. After
his dismissal from headquarters Zherkov had not remained in the
regiment, saying he was not such a fool as to slave at the front
when he could get more rewards by doing nothing on the staff, and
had succeeded in attaching himself as an orderly officer to Prince
Bagration. He now came to his former chief with an order from the
commander of the rear guard.

"Colonel," he said, addressing Rostov's enemy with an air of
gloomy gravity and glancing round at his comrades, "there is an
order to stop and fire the bridge."

"An order to who?" asked the colonel morosely.

"I don't myself know 'to who,'" replied the cornet in a serious
tone, "but the prince told me to 'go and tell the colonel that the
hussars must return quickly and fire the bridge.'"

Zherkov was followed by an officer of the suite who rode up to the
colonel of hussars with the same order. After him the stout
Nesvitski came galloping up on a Cossack horse that could scarcely
carry his weight.

"How's this, Colonel?" he shouted as he approached. "I told you to
fire the bridge, and now someone has gone and blundered; they are
all beside themselves over there and one can't make anything out."

The colonel deliberately stopped the regiment and turned to
Nesvitski.

"You spoke to me of inflammable material," said he, "but you said
nothing about firing it."

"But, my dear sir," said Nesvitski as he drew up, taking off his cap
and smoothing his hair wet with perspiration with his plump hand,
"wasn't I telling you to fire the bridge, when inflammable material
had been put in position?"

"I am not your 'dear sir,' Mr. Staff Officer, and you did not tell
me to burn the bridge! I know the service, and it is my habit orders
strictly to obey. You said the bridge would be burned, but who would
it burn, I could not know by the holy spirit!"

"Ah, that's always the way!" said Nesvitski with a wave of the hand.
"How did you get here?" said he, turning to Zherkov.

"On the same business. But you are damp! Let me wring you out!"

"You were saying, Mr. Staff Officer..." continued the colonel in
an offended tone.

"Colonel," interrupted the officer of the suite, "You must be
quick or the enemy will bring up his guns to use grapeshot."

The colonel looked silently at the officer of the suite, at the
stout staff officer, and at Zherkov, and he frowned.

"I will the bridge fire," he said in a solemn tone as if to announce
that in spite of all the unpleasantness he had to endure he would
still do the right thing.

Striking his horse with his long muscular legs as if it were to
blame for everything, the colonel moved forward and ordered the second
squadron, that in which Rostov was serving under Denisov, to return to
the bridge.

"There, it's just as I thought," said Rostov to himself. "He
wishes to test me!" His heart contracted and the blood rushed to his
face. "Let him see whether I am a coward!" he thought.

Again on all the bright faces of the squadron the serious expression
appeared that they had worn when under fire. Rostov watched his enemy,
the colonel, closely--to find in his face confirmation of his own
conjecture, but the colonel did not once glance at Rostov, and
looked as he always did when at the front, solemn and stern. Then came
the word of command.

"Look sharp! Look sharp!" several voices repeated around him.

Their sabers catching in the bridles and their spurs jingling, the
hussars hastily dismounted, not knowing what they were to do. The
men were crossing themselves. Rostov no longer looked at the
colonel, he had no time. He was afraid of falling behind the
hussars, so much afraid that his heart stood still. His hand
trembled as he gave his horse into an orderly's charge, and he felt
the blood rush to his heart with a thud. Denisov rode past him,
leaning back and shouting something. Rostov saw nothing but the
hussars running all around him, their spurs catching and their
sabers clattering.

"Stretchers!" shouted someone behind him.

Rostov did not think what this call for stretchers meant; he ran on,
trying only to be ahead of the others; but just at the bridge, not
looking at the ground, he came on some sticky, trodden mud,
stumbled, and fell on his hands. The others outstripped him.

"At boss zides, Captain," he heard the voice of the colonel, who,
having ridden ahead, had pulled up his horse near the bridge, with a
triumphant, cheerful face.

Rostov wiping his muddy hands on his breeches looked at his enemy
and was about to run on, thinking that the farther he went to the
front the better. But Bogdanich, without looking at or recognizing
Rostov, shouted to him:

"Who's that running on the middle of the bridge? To the right!
Come back, Cadet!" he cried angrily; and turning to Denisov, who,
showing off his courage, had ridden on to the planks of the bridge:

"Why run risks, Captain? You should dismount," he said.

"Oh, every bullet has its billet," answered Vaska Denisov, turning
in his saddle.


Meanwhile Nesvitski, Zherkov, and the officer of the suite were
standing together out of range of the shots, watching, now the small
group of men with yellow shakos, dark-green jackets braided with cord,
and blue riding breeches, who were swarming near the bridge, and
then at what was approaching in the distance from the opposite side-
the blue uniforms and groups with horses, easily recognizable as
artillery.

"Will they burn the bridge or not? Who'll get there first? Will they
get there and fire the bridge or will the French get within
grapeshot range and wipe them out?" These were the questions each
man of the troops on the high ground above the bridge involuntarily
asked himself with a sinking heart--watching the bridge and the
hussars in the bright evening light and the blue tunics advancing from
the other side with their bayonets and guns.

"Ugh. The hussars will get it hot!" said Nesvitski; "they are within
grapeshot range now."

"He shouldn't have taken so many men," said the officer of the
suite.

"True enough," answered Nesvitski; "two smart fellows could have
done the job just as well."

"Ah, your excellency," put in Zherkov, his eyes fixed on the
hussars, but still with that naive air that made it impossible to know
whether he was speaking in jest or in earnest. "Ah, your excellency!
How you look at things! Send two men? And who then would give us the
Vladimir medal and ribbon? But now, even if they do get peppered,
the squadron may be recommended for honors and he may get a ribbon.
Our Bogdanich knows how things are done."

"There now!" said the officer of the suite, "that's grapeshot."

He pointed to the French guns, the limbers of which were being
detached and hurriedly removed.

On the French side, amid the groups with cannon, a cloud of smoke
appeared, then a second and a third almost simultaneously, and at
the moment when the first report was heard a fourth was seen. Then two
reports one after another, and a third.

"Oh! Oh!" groaned Nesvitski as if in fierce pain, seizing the
officer of the suite by the arm. "Look! A man has fallen! Fallen,
fallen!"

"Two, I think."

"If I were Tsar I would never go to war," said Nesvitski, turning
away.

The French guns were hastily reloaded. The infantry in their blue
uniforms advanced toward the bridge at a run. Smoke appeared again but
at irregular intervals, and grapeshot cracked and rattled onto the
bridge. But this time Nesvitski could not see what was happening
there, as a dense cloud of smoke arose from it. The hussars had
succeeded in setting it on fire and the French batteries were now
firing at them, no longer to hinder them but because the guns were
trained and there was someone to fire at.

The French had time to fire three rounds of grapeshot before the
hussars got back to their horses. Two were misdirected and the shot
went too high, but the last round fell in the midst of a group of
hussars and knocked three of them over.

Rostov, absorbed by his relations with Bogdanich, had paused on
the bridge not knowing what to do. There was no one to hew down (as he
had always imagined battles to himself), nor could he help to fire the
bridge because he had not brought any burning straw with him like
the other soldiers. He stood looking about him, when suddenly he heard
a rattle on the bridge as if nuts were being spilt, and the hussar
nearest to him fell against the rails with a groan. Rostov ran up to
him with the others. Again someone shouted, "Stretchers!" Four men
seized the hussar and began lifting him.

"Oooh! For Christ's sake let me alone!" cried the wounded man, but
still he was lifted and laid on the stretcher.

Nicholas Rostov turned away and, as if searching for something,
gazed into the distance, at the waters of the Danube, at the sky,
and at the sun. How beautiful the sky looked; how blue, how calm,
and how deep! How bright and glorious was the setting sun! With what
soft glitter the waters of the distant Danube shone. And fairer
still were the faraway blue mountains beyond the river, the nunnery,
the mysterious gorges, and the pine forests veiled in the mist of
their summits... There was peace and happiness... "I should wishing
for nothing else, nothing, if only I were there," thought Rostov.
"In myself alone and in that sunshine there is so much happiness;
but here... groans, suffering, fear, and this uncertainty and hurry...
There--they are shouting again, and again are all running back
somewhere, and I shall run with them, and it, death, is here above
me and around... Another instant and I shall never again see the
sun, this water, that gorge!..."

At that instant the sun began to hide behind the clouds, and other
stretchers came into view before Rostov. And the fear of death and
of the stretchers, and love of the sun and of life, all merged into
one feeling of sickening agitation.

"O Lord God! Thou who art in that heaven, save, forgive, and protect
me!" Rostov whispered.

The hussars ran back to the men who held their horses; their
voices sounded louder and calmer, the stretchers disappeared from
sight.

"Well, fwiend? So you've smelt powdah!" shouted Vaska Denisov just
above his ear.

"It's all over; but I am a coward--yes, a coward!" thought Rostov,
and sighing deeply he took Rook, his horse, which stood resting one
foot, from the orderly and began to mount.

"Was that grapeshot?" he asked Denisov.

"Yes and no mistake!" cried Denisov. "You worked like wegular bwicks
and it's nasty work! An attack's pleasant work! Hacking away at the
dogs! But this sort of thing is the very devil, with them shooting
at you like a target."

And Denisov rode up to a group that had stopped near Rostov,
composed of the colonel, Nesvitski, Zherkov, and the officer from
the suite.

"Well, it seems that no one has noticed," thought Rostov. And this
was true. No one had taken any notice, for everyone knew the sensation
which the cadet under fire for the first time had experienced.

"Here's something for you to report," said Zherkov. "See if I
don't get promoted to a sublieutenancy."

"Inform the prince that I the bridge fired!" said the colonel
triumphantly and gaily.

"And if he asks about the losses?"

"A trifle," said the colonel in his bass voice: "two hussars
wounded, and one knocked out," he added, unable to restrain a happy
smile, and pronouncing the phrase "knocked out" with ringing
distinctness.





CHAPTER IX


Pursued by the French army of a hundred thousand men under the
command of Bonaparte, encountering a population that was unfriendly to
it, losing confidence in its allies, suffering from shortness of
supplies, and compelled to act under conditions of war unlike anything
that had been foreseen, the Russian army of thirty-five thousand men
commanded by Kutuzov was hurriedly retreating along the Danube,
stopping where overtaken by the enemy and fighting rearguard actions
only as far as necessary to enable it to retreat without losing its
heavy equipment. There had been actions at Lambach, Amstetten, and
Melk; but despite the courage and endurance--acknowledged even by
the enemy--with which the Russians fought, the only consequence of
these actions was a yet more rapid retreat. Austrian troops that had
escaped capture at Ulm and had joined Kutuzov at Braunau now separated
from the Russian army, and Kutuzov was left with only his own weak and
exhausted forces. The defense of Vienna was no longer to be thought
of. Instead of an offensive, the plan of which, carefully prepared
in accord with the modern science of strategics, had been handed to
Kutuzov when he was in Vienna by the Austrian Hofkriegsrath, the
sole and almost unattainable aim remaining for him was to effect a
junction with the forces that were advancing from Russia, without
losing his army as Mack had done at Ulm.

On the twenty-eighth of October Kutuzov with his army crossed to the
left bank of the Danube and took up a position for the first time with
the river between himself and the main body of the French. On the
thirtieth he attacked Mortier's division, which was on the left
bank, and broke it up. In this action for the first time trophies were
taken: banners, cannon, and two enemy generals. For the first time,
after a fortnight's retreat, the Russian troops had halted and after a
fight had not only held the field but had repulsed the French.
Though the troops were ill-clad, exhausted, and had lost a third of
their number in killed, wounded, sick, and stragglers; though a number
of sick and wounded had been abandoned on the other side of the Danube
with a letter in which Kutuzov entrusted them to the humanity of the
enemy; and though the big hospitals and the houses in Krems
converted into military hospitals could no longer accommodate all
the sick and wounded, yet the stand made at Krems and the victory over
Mortier raised the spirits of the army considerably. Throughout the
whole army and at headquarters most joyful though erroneous rumors
were rife of the imaginary approach of columns from Russia, of some
victory gained by the Austrians, and of the retreat of the
frightened Bonaparte.

Prince Andrew during the battle had been in attendance on the
Austrian General Schmidt, who was killed in the action. His horse
had been wounded under him and his own arm slightly grazed by a
bullet. As a mark of the commander in chief's special favor he was
sent with the news of this victory to the Austrian court, now no
longer at Vienna (which was threatened by the French) but at Brunn.
Despite his apparently delicate build Prince Andrew could endure
physical fatigue far better than many very muscular men, and on the
night of the battle, having arrived at Krems excited but not weary,
with dispatches from Dokhturov to Kutuzov, he was sent immediately
with a special dispatch to Brunn. To be so sent meant not only a
reward but an important step toward promotion.

The night was dark but starry, the road showed black in the snow
that had fallen the previous day--the day of the battle. Reviewing his
impressions of the recent battle, picturing pleasantly to himself
the impression his news of a victory would create, or recalling the
send-off given him by the commander in chief and his fellow
officers, Prince Andrew was galloping along in a post chaise
enjoying the feelings of a man who has at length begun to attain a
long-desired happiness. As soon as he closed his eyes his ears
seemed filled with the rattle of the wheels and the sensation of
victory. Then he began to imagine that the Russians were running
away and that he himself was killed, but he quickly roused himself
with a feeling of joy, as if learning afresh that this was not so
but that on the contrary the French had run away. He again recalled
all the details of the victory and his own calm courage during the
battle, and feeling reassured he dozed off.... The dark starry night
was followed by a bright cheerful morning. The snow was thawing in the
sunshine, the horses galloped quickly, and on both sides of the road
were forests of different kinds, fields, and villages.

At one of the post stations he overtook a convoy of Russian wounded.
The Russian officer in charge of the transport lolled back in the
front cart, shouting and scolding a soldier with coarse abuse. In each
of the long German carts six or more pale, dirty, bandaged men were
being jolted over the stony road. Some of them were talking (he
heard Russian words), others were eating bread; the more severely
wounded looked silently, with the languid interest of sick children,
at the envoy hurrying past them.

Prince Andrew told his driver to stop, and asked a soldier in what
action they had been wounded. "Day before yesterday, on the Danube,"
answered the soldier. Prince Andrew took out his purse and gave the
soldier three gold pieces.

"That's for them all," he said to the officer who came up.

"Get well soon, lads!" he continued, turning to the soldiers.
"There's plenty to do still."

"What news, sir?" asked the officer, evidently anxious to start a
conversation.

"Good news!... Go on!" he shouted to the driver, and they galloped
on.

It was already quite dark when Prince Andrew rattled over the
paved streets of Brunn and found himself surrounded by high buildings,
the lights of shops, houses, and street lamps, fine carriages, and all
that atmosphere of a large and active town which is always so
attractive to a soldier after camp life. Despite his rapid journey and
sleepless night, Prince Andrew when he drove up to the palace felt
even more vigorous and alert than he had done the day before. Only his
eyes gleamed feverishly and his thoughts followed one another with
extraordinary clearness and rapidity. He again vividly recalled the
details of the battle, no longer dim, but definite and in the
concise form in which he imagined himself stating them to
the Emperor Francis. He vividly imagined the casual questions that
might be put to him and the answers he would give. He expected to be
at once presented to the Emperor. At the chief entrance to the palace,
however, an official came running out to meet him, and learning that
he was a special messenger led him to another entrance.

"To the right from the corridor, Euer Hochgeboren! There you will
find the adjutant on duty," said the official. "He will conduct you to
the Minister of War."

The adjutant on duty, meeting Prince Andrew, asked him to wait,
and went in to the Minister of War. Five minutes later he returned and
bowing with particular courtesy ushered Prince Andrew before him along
a corridor to the cabinet where the Minister of War was at work. The
adjutant by his elaborate courtesy appeared to wish to ward off any
attempt at familiarity on the part of the Russian messenger.

Prince Andrew's joyous feeling was considerably weakened as he
approached the door of the minister's room. He felt offended, and
without his noticing it the feeling of offense immediately turned into
one of disdain which was quite uncalled for. His fertile mind
instantly suggested to him a point of view which gave him a right to
despise the adjutant and the minister. "Away from the smell of powder,
they probably think it easy to gain victories!" he thought. His eyes
narrowed disdainfully, he entered the room of the Minister of War with
peculiarly deliberate steps. This feeling of disdain was heightened
when he saw the minister seated at a large table reading some papers
and making pencil notes on them, and for the first two or three
minutes taking no notice of his arrival. A wax candle stood at each
side of the minister's bent bald head with its gray temples. He went
on reading to the end, without raising his eyes at the opening of
the door and the sound of footsteps.

"Take this and deliver it," said he to his adjutant, handing him the
papers and still taking no notice of the special messenger.

Prince Andrew felt that either the actions of Kutuzov's army
interested the Minister of War less than any of the other matters he
was concerned with, or he wanted to give the Russian special messenger
that impression. "But that is a matter of perfect indifference to me,"
he thought. The minister drew the remaining papers together,
arranged them evenly, and then raised his head. He had an intellectual
and distinctive head, but the instant he turned to Prince Andrew the
firm, intelligent expression on his face changed in a way evidently
deliberate and habitual to him. His face took on the stupid artificial
smile (which does not even attempt to hide its artificiality) of a man
who is continually receiving many petitioners one after another.

"From General Field Marshal Kutuzov?" he asked. "I hope it is good
news? There has been an encounter with Mortier? A victory? It was high
time!"

He took the dispatch which was addressed to him and began to read it
with a mournful expression.

"Oh, my God! My God! Schmidt!" he exclaimed in German. "What a
calamity! What a calamity!"

Having glanced through the dispatch he laid it on the table and
looked at Prince Andrew, evidently considering something.

"Ah what a calamity! You say the affair was decisive? But Mortier is
not captured." Again he pondered. "I am very glad you have brought
good news, though Schmidt's death is a heavy price to pay for the
victory. His Majesty will no doubt wish to see you, but not today. I
thank you! You must have a rest. Be at the levee tomorrow after the
parade. However, I will let you know."

The stupid smile, which had left his face while he was speaking,
reappeared.

"Au revoir! Thank you very much. His Majesty will probably desire to
see you," he added, bowing his head.

When Prince Andrew left the palace he felt that all the interest and
happiness the victory had afforded him had been now left in the
indifferent hands of the Minister of War and the polite adjutant.
The whole tenor of his thoughts instantaneously changed; the battle
seemed the memory of a remote event long past.





CHAPTER X


Prince Andrew stayed at Brunn with Bilibin, a Russian acquaintance
of his in the diplomatic service.

"Ah, my dear prince! I could not have a more welcome visitor,"
said Bilibin as he came out to meet Prince Andrew. "Franz, put the
prince's things in my bedroom," said he to the servant who was
ushering Bolkonski in. "So you're a messenger of victory, eh?
Splendid! And I am sitting here ill, as you see."

After washing and dressing, Prince Andrew came into the diplomat's
luxurious study and sat down to the dinner prepared for him. Bilibin
settled down comfortably beside the fire.

After his journey and the campaign during which he had been deprived
of all the comforts of cleanliness and all the refinements of life,
Prince Andrew felt a pleasant sense of repose among luxurious
surroundings such as he had been accustomed to from childhood. Besides
it was pleasant, after his reception by the Austrians, to speak if not
in Russian (for they were speaking French) at least with a Russian who
would, he supposed, share the general Russian antipathy to the
Austrians which was then particularly strong.

Bilibin was a man of thirty-five, a bachelor, and of the same circle
as Prince Andrew. They had known each other previously in
Petersburg, but had become more intimate when Prince Andrew was in
Vienna with Kutuzov. Just as Prince Andrew was a young man who gave
promise of rising high in the military profession, so to an even
greater extent Bilibin gave promise of rising in his diplomatic
career. He still a young man but no longer a young diplomat, as he had
entered the service at the age of sixteen, had been in Paris and
Copenhagen, and now held a rather important post in Vienna. Both the
foreign minister and our ambassador in Vienna knew him and valued him.
He was not one of those many diplomats who are esteemed because they
have certain negative qualities, avoid doing certain things, and speak
French. He was one of those, who, liking work, knew how to do it,
and despite his indolence would sometimes spend a whole night at his
writing table. He worked well whatever the import of his work. It
was not the question "What for?" but the question "How?" that
interested him. What the diplomatic matter might be he did not care,
but it gave him great pleasure to prepare a circular, memorandum, or
report, skillfully, pointedly, and elegantly. Bilibin's services
were valued not only for what he wrote, but also for his skill in
dealing and conversing with those in the highest spheres.

Bilibin liked conversation as he liked work, only when it could be
made elegantly witty. In society he always awaited an opportunity to
say something striking and took part in a conversation only when
that was possible. His conversation was always sprinkled with
wittily original, finished phrases of general interest. These
sayings were prepared in the inner laboratory of his mind in a
portable form as if intentionally, so that insignificant society
people might carry them from drawing room to drawing room. And, in
fact, Bilibin's witticisms were hawked about in the Viennese drawing
rooms and often had an influence on matters considered important.

His thin, worn, sallow face was covered with deep wrinkles, which
always looked as clean and well washed as the tips of one's fingers
after a Russian bath. The movement of these wrinkles formed the
principal play of expression on his face. Now his forehead would
pucker into deep folds and his eyebrows were lifted, then his eyebrows
would descend and deep wrinkles would crease his cheeks. His small,
deep-set eyes always twinkled and looked out straight.

"Well, now tell me about your exploits," said he.

Bolkonski, very modestly without once mentioning himself,
described the engagement and his reception by the Minister of War.

"They received me and my news as one receives a dog in a game of
skittles," said he in conclusion.

Bilibin smiled and the wrinkles on his face disappeared.

"Cependant, mon cher," he remarked, examining his nails from a
distance and puckering the skin above his left eye, "malgre la haute
estime que je professe pour the Orthodox Russian army, j'avoue que
votre victoire n'est pas des plus victorieuses."*


*"But my dear fellow, with all my respect for the Orthodox Russian
army, I must say that your victory was not particularly victorious."


He went on talking in this way in French, uttering only those
words in Russian on which he wished to put a contemptuous emphasis.

"Come now! You with all your forces fall on the unfortunate
Mortier and his one division, and even then Mortier slips through your
fingers! Where's the victory?"

"But seriously," said Prince Andrew, "we can at any rate say without
boasting that it was a little better than at Ulm..."

"Why didn't you capture one, just one, marshal for us?"

"Because not everything happens as one expects or with the
smoothness of a parade. We had expected, as I told you, to get at
their rear by seven in the morning but had not reached it by five in
the afternoon."

"And why didn't you do it at seven in the morning? You ought to have
been there at seven in the morning," returned Bilibin with a smile.
"You ought to have been there at seven in the morning."

"Why did you not succeed in impressing on Bonaparte by diplomatic
methods that he had better leave Genoa alone?" retorted Prince
Andrew in the same tone.

"I know," interrupted Bilibin, "you're thinking it's very easy to
take marshals, sitting on a sofa by the fire! That is true, but
still why didn't you capture him? So don't be surprised if not only
the Minister of War but also his Most August Majesty the Emperor and
King Francis is not much delighted by your victory. Even I, a poor
secretary of the Russian Embassy, do not feel any need in token of
my joy to give my Franz a thaler, or let him go with his Liebchen to
the Prater... True, we have no Prater here..."

He looked straight at Prince Andrew and suddenly unwrinkled his
forehead.

"It is now my turn to ask you 'why?' mon cher," said Bolkonski. "I
confess I do not understand: perhaps there are diplomatic subtleties
here beyond my feeble intelligence, but I can't make it out. Mack
loses a whole army, the Archduke Ferdinand and the Archduke Karl
give no signs of life and make blunder after blunder. Kutuzov alone at
last gains a real victory, destroying the spell of the invincibility
of the French, and the Minister of War does not even care to hear
the details."

"That's just it, my dear fellow. You see it's hurrah for the Tsar,
for Russia, for the Orthodox Greek faith! All that is beautiful, but
what do we, I mean the Austrian court, care for your victories?
Bring us nice news of a victory by the Archduke Karl or Ferdinand (one
archduke's as good as another, as you know) and even if it is only
over a fire brigade of Bonaparte's, that will be another story and
we'll fire off some cannon! But this sort of thing seems done on
purpose to vex us. The Archduke Karl does nothing, the Archduke
Ferdinand disgraces himself. You abandon Vienna, give up its
defense--as much as to say: 'Heaven is with us, but heaven help you
and your capital!' The one general whom we all loved, Schmidt, you
expose to a bullet, and then you congratulate us on the victory! Admit
that more irritating news than yours could not have been conceived.
It's as if it had been done on purpose, on purpose. Besides, suppose
you did gain a brilliant victory, if even the Archduke Karl gained a
victory, what effect would that have on the general course of
events? It's too late now when Vienna is occupied by the French army!"

"What? Occupied? Vienna occupied?"

"Not only occupied, but Bonaparte is at Schonbrunn, and the count,
our dear Count Vrbna, goes to him for orders."

After the fatigues and impressions of the journey, his reception,
and especially after having dined, Bolkonski felt that he could not
take in the full significance of the words he heard.

"Count Lichtenfels was here this morning," Bilibin continued, "and
showed me a letter in which the parade of the French in Vienna was
fully described: Prince Murat et tout le tremblement... You see that
your victory is not a matter for great rejoicing and that you can't be
received as a savior."

"Really I don't care about that, I don't care at all," said Prince
Andrew, beginning to understand that his news of the battle before
Krems was really of small importance in view of such events as the
fall of Austria's capital. "How is it Vienna was taken? What of the
bridge and its celebrated bridgehead and Prince Auersperg? We heard
reports that Prince Auersperg was defending Vienna?" he said.

"Prince Auersperg is on this, on our side of the river, and is
defending us--doing it very badly, I think, but still he is
defending us. But Vienna is on the other side. No, the bridge has
not yet been taken and I hope it will not be, for it is mined and
orders have been given to blow it up. Otherwise we should long ago
have been in the mountains of Bohemia, and you and your army would
have spent a bad quarter of an hour between two fires."

"But still this does not mean that the campaign is over," said
Prince Andrew.

"Well, I think it is. The bigwigs here think so too, but they
daren't say so. It will be as I said at the beginning of the campaign,
it won't be your skirmishing at Durrenstein, or gunpowder at all, that
will decide the matter, but those who devised it," said Bilibin
quoting one of his own mots, releasing the wrinkles on his forehead,
and pausing. "The only question is what will come of the meeting
between the Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia in Berlin? If
Prussia joins the Allies, Austria's hand will be forced and there will
be war. If not it is merely a question of settling where the
preliminaries of the new Campo Formio are to be drawn up."

"What an extraordinary genius!" Prince Andrew suddenly exclaimed,
clenching his small hand and striking the table with it, "and what
luck the man has!"

"Buonaparte?" said Bilibin inquiringly, puckering up his forehead to
indicate that he was about to say something witty. "Buonaparte?" he
repeated, accentuating the u: "I think, however, now that he lays down
laws for Austria at Schonbrunn, il faut lui faire grace de l'u!* I
shall certainly adopt an innovation and call him simply Bonaparte!"


*"We must let him off the u!"


"But joking apart," said Prince Andrew, "do you really think the
campaign is over?"

"This is what I think. Austria has been made a fool of, and she is
not used to it. She will retaliate. And she has been fooled in the
first place because her provinces have been pillaged--they say the
Holy Russian army loots terribly--her army is destroyed, her capital
taken, and all this for the beaux yeux* of His Sardinian Majesty.
And therefore--this is between ourselves--I instinctively feel that we
are being deceived, my instinct tells me of negotiations with France
and projects for peace, a secret peace concluded separately."


*Fine eyes.


"Impossible!" cried Prince Andrew. "That would be too base."

"If we live we shall see," replied Bilibin, his face again
becoming smooth as a sign that the conversation was at an end.

When Prince Andrew reached the room prepared for him and lay down in
a clean shirt on the feather bed with its warmed and fragrant pillows,
he felt that the battle of which he had brought tidings was far, far
away from him. The alliance with Prussia, Austria's treachery,
Bonaparte's new triumph, tomorrow's levee and parade, and the audience
with the Emperor Francis occupied his thoughts.

He closed his eyes, and immediately a sound of cannonading, of
musketry and the rattling of carriage wheels seemed to fill his
ears, and now again drawn out in a thin line the musketeers were
descending the hill, the French were firing, and he felt his heart
palpitating as he rode forward beside Schmidt with the bullets merrily
whistling all around, and he experienced tenfold the joy of living, as
he had not done since childhood.

He woke up...

"Yes, that all happened!" he said, and, smiling happily to himself
like a child, he fell into a deep, youthful slumber.





CHAPTER XI


Next day he woke late. Recalling his recent impressions, the first
thought that came into his mind was that today he had to be
presented to the Emperor Francis; he remembered the Minister of War,
the polite Austrian adjutant, Bilibin, and last night's
conversation. Having dressed for his attendance at court in full
parade uniform, which he had not worn for a long time, he went into
Bilibin's study fresh, animated, and handsome, with his hand bandaged.
In the study were four gentlemen of the diplomatic corps. With
Prince Hippolyte Kuragin, who was a secretary to the embassy,
Bolkonski was already acquainted. Bilibin introduced him to the
others.

The gentlemen assembled at Bilibin's were young, wealthy, gay
society men, who here, as in Vienna, formed a special set which
Bilibin, their leader, called les notres.* This set, consisting almost
exclusively of diplomats, evidently had its own interests which had
nothing to do with war or politics but related to high society, to
certain women, and to the official side of the service. These
gentlemen received Prince Andrew as one of themselves, an honor they
did not extend to many. From politeness and to start conversation,
they asked him a few questions about the army and the battle, and then
the talk went off into merry jests and gossip.


*Ours.


"But the best of it was," said one, telling of the misfortune of a
fellow diplomat, "that the Chancellor told him flatly that his
appointment to London was a promotion and that he was so to regard it.
Can you fancy the figure he cut?..."

"But the worst of it, gentlemen--I am giving Kuragin away to you--is
that that man suffers, and this Don Juan, wicked fellow, is taking
advantage of it!"

Prince Hippolyte was lolling in a lounge chair with his legs over
its arm. He began to laugh.

"Tell me about that!" he said.

"Oh, you Don Juan! You serpent!" cried several voices.

"You, Bolkonski, don't know," said Bilibin turning to Prince Andrew,
"that all the atrocities of the French army (I nearly said of the
Russian army) are nothing compared to what this man has been doing
among the women!"

"La femme est la compagne de l'homme,"* announced Prince
Hippolyte, and began looking through a lorgnette at his elevated legs.


*"Woman is man's companion."


Bilibin and the rest of "ours" burst out laughing in Hippolyte's
face, and Prince Andrew saw that Hippolyte, of whom--he had to
admit--he had almost been jealous on his wife's account, was the
butt of this set.

"Oh, I must give you a treat," Bilibin whispered to Bolkonski.
"Kuragin is exquisite when he discusses politics--you should see his
gravity!"

He sat down beside Hippolyte and wrinkling his forehead began
talking to him about politics. Prince Andrew and the others gathered
round these two.

"The Berlin cabinet cannot express a feeling of alliance," began
Hippolyte gazing round with importance at the others, "without
expressing... as in its last note... you understand... Besides, unless
His Majesty the Emperor derogates from the principle of our
alliance...

"Wait, I have not finished..." he said to Prince Andrew, seizing him
by the arm, "I believe that intervention will be stronger than
nonintervention. And..." he paused. "Finally one cannot impute the
nonreceipt of our dispatch of November 18. That is how it will end."
And he released Bolkonski's arm to indicate that he had now quite
finished.

"Demosthenes, I know thee by the pebble thou secretest in thy golden
mouth!" said Bilibin, and the mop of hair on his head moved with
satisfaction.

Everybody laughed, and Hippolyte louder than anyone. He was
evidently distressed, and breathed painfully, but could not restrain
the wild laughter that convulsed his usually impassive features.

"Well now, gentlemen," said Bilibin, "Bolkonski is my guest in
this house and in Brunn itself. I want to entertain him as far as I
can, with all the pleasures of life here. If we were in Vienna it
would be easy, but here, in this wretched Moravian hole, it is more
difficult, and I beg you all to help me. Brunn's attractions must be
shown him. You can undertake the theater, I society, and you,
Hippolyte, of course the women."

"We must let him see Amelie, she's exquisite!" said one of "ours,"
kissing his finger tips.

"In general we must turn this bloodthirsty soldier to more humane
interests," said Bilibin.

"I shall scarcely be able to avail myself of your hospitality,
gentlemen, it is already time for me to go," replied Prince Andrew
looking at his watch.

"Where to?"

"To the Emperor."

"Oh! Oh! Oh! Well, au revoir, Bolkonski! Au revoir, Prince! Come
back early to dinner," cried several voices. "We'll take you in hand."

"When speaking to the Emperor, try as far as you can to praise the
way that provisions are supplied and the routes indicated," said
Bilibin, accompanying him to the hall.

"I should like to speak well of them, but as far as I the facts, I
can't," replied Bolkonski, smiling.

"Well, talk as much as you can, anyway. He has a passion for
giving audiences, but he does not like talking himself and can't do
it, as you will see."





CHAPTER XII


At the levee Prince Andrew stood among the Austrian officers as he
had been told to, and the Emperor Francis merely looked fixedly into
his face and just nodded to him with to him with his long head. But
after it was over, the adjutant he had seen the previous day
ceremoniously informed Bolkonski that the Emperor desired to give
him an audience. The Emperor Francis received him standing in the
middle of the room. Before the conversation began Prince Andrew was
struck by the fact that the Emperor seemed confused and blushed as
if not knowing what to say.

"Tell me, when did the battle begin?" he asked hurriedly.

Prince Andrew replied. Then followed other questions just as simple:
"Was Kutuzov well? When had he left Krems?" and so on. The Emperor
spoke as if his sole aim were to put a given number of questions-
the answers to these questions, as was only too evident, did not
interest him.

"At what o'clock did the battle begin?" asked the Emperor.

"I cannot inform Your Majesty at what o'clock the battle began at
the front, but at Durrenstein, where I was, our attack began after
five in the afternoon," replied Bolkonski growing more animated and
expecting that he would have a chance to give a reliable account,
which he had ready in his mind, of all he knew and had seen. But the
Emperor smiled and interrupted him.

"How many miles?"

"From where to where, Your Majesty?"

"From Durrenstein to Krems."

"Three and a half miles, Your Majesty."

"The French have abandoned the left bank?"

"According to the scouts the last of them crossed on rafts during
the night."

"Is there sufficient forage in Krems?"

"Forage has not been supplied to the extent..."

The Emperor interrupted him.

"At what o'clock was General Schmidt killed?"

"At seven o'clock, I believe."

"At seven o'clock? It's very sad, very sad!"

The Emperor thanked Prince Andrew and bowed. Prince Andrew
withdrew and was immediately surrounded by courtiers on all sides.
Everywhere he saw friendly looks and heard friendly words. Yesterday's
adjutant reproached him for not having stayed at the palace, and
offered him his own house. The Minister of War came up and
congratulated him on the Maria Theresa Order of the third grade, which
the Emperor was conferring on him. The Empress' chamberlain invited
him to see Her Majesty. The archduchess also wished to see him. He did
not know whom to answer, and for a few seconds collected his thoughts.
Then the Russian ambassador took him by the shoulder, led him to the
window, and began to talk to him.

Contrary to Bilibin's forecast the news he had brought was
joyfully received. A thanksgiving service was arranged, Kutuzov was
awarded the Grand Cross of Maria Theresa, and the whole army
received rewards. Bolkonski was invited everywhere, and had to spend
the whole morning calling on the principal Austrian dignitaries.
Between four and five in the afternoon, having made all his calls,
he was returning to Bilibin's house thinking out a letter to his
father about the battle and his visit to Brunn. At the door he found a
vehicle half full of luggage. Franz, Bilibin's man, was dragging a
portmanteau with some difficulty out of the front door.

Before returning to Bilibin's Prince Andrew had gone to bookshop
to provide himself with some books for the campaign, and had spent
some time in the shop.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Oh, your excellency!" said Franz, with difficulty rolling the
portmanteau into the vehicle, "we are to move on still farther. The
scoundrel is again at our heels!"

"Eh? What?" asked Prince Andrew.

Bilibin came out to meet him. His usually calm face showed
excitement.

"There now! Confess that this is delightful," said he. "This
affair of the Thabor Bridge, at Vienna.... They have crossed without
striking a blow!"

Prince Andrew could not understand.

"But where do you come from not to know what every coachman in the
town knows?"

"I come from the archduchess'. I heard nothing there."

"And you didn't see that everybody is packing up?"

"I did not... What is it all about?" inquired Prince Andrew
impatiently.

"What's it all about? Why, the French have crossed the bridge that
Auersperg was defending, and the bridge was not blown up: so Murat
is now rushing along the road to Brunn and will be here in a day or
two."

"What? Here? But why did they not blow up the bridge, if it was
mined?"

"That is what I ask you. No one, not even Bonaparte, knows why."

Bolkonski shrugged his shoulders.

"But if the bridge is crossed it means that the army too is lost? It
will be cut off," said he.

"That's just it," answered Bilibin. "Listen! The French entered
Vienna as I told you. Very well. Next day, which was yesterday,
those gentlemen, messieurs les marechaux,* Murat, Lannes,and Belliard,
mount and ride to bridge. (Observe that all three are Gascons.)
'Gentlemen,' says one of them, 'you know the Thabor Bridge is mined
and doubly mined and that there are menacing fortifications at its
head and an army of fifteen thousand men has been ordered to blow up
the bridge and not let us cross? But it will please our sovereign
the Emperor Napoleon if we take this bridge, so let us three go and
take it!' 'Yes, let's!' say the others. And off they go and take the
bridge, cross it, and now with their whole army are on this side of
the Danube, marching on us, you, and your lines of communication."


*The marshalls.


"Stop jesting," said Prince Andrew sadly and seriously. This news
grieved him and yet he was pleased.

As soon as he learned that the Russian army was in such a hopeless
situation it occurred to him that it was he who was destined to lead
it out of this position; that here was the Toulon that would lift
him from the ranks of obscure officers and offer him the first step to
fame! Listening to Bilibin he was already imagining how on reaching
the army he would give an opinion at the war council which would be
the only one that could save the army, and how he alone would be
entrusted with the executing of the plan.

"Stop this jesting," he said

"I am not jesting," Bilibin went on. "Nothing is truer or sadder.
These gentlemen ride onto the bridge alone and wave white
handkerchiefs; they assure the officer on duty that they, the
marshals, are on their way to negotiate with Prince Auersperg. He lets
them enter the tete-de-pont.* They spin him a thousand gasconades,
saying that the war is over, that the Emperor Francis is arranging a
meeting with Bonaparte, that they desire to see Prince Auersperg,
and so on. The officer sends for Auersperg; these gentlemen embrace
the officers, crack jokes, sit on the cannon, and meanwhile a French
battalion gets to the bridge unobserved, flings the bags of incendiary
material into the water, and approaches the tete-de-pont. At length
appears the lieutenant general, our dear Prince Auersperg von
Mautern himself. 'Dearest foe! Flower of the Austrian army, hero of
the Turkish wars Hostilities are ended, we can shake one another's
hand.... The Emperor Napoleon burns with impatience to make Prince
Auersperg's acquaintance.' In a word, those gentlemen, Gascons indeed,
so bewildered him with fine words, and he is so flattered by his
rapidly established intimacy with the French marshals, and so
dazzled by the sight of Murat's mantle and ostrich plumes, qu'il n'y
voit que du feu, et oublie celui qu'il devait faire faire sur
l'ennemi!"*[2] In spite of the animation of his speech, Bilibin did
not forget to pause after this mot to give time for its due
appreciation. "The French battalion rushes to the bridgehead, spikes
the guns, and the bridge is taken! But what is best of all," he went
on, his excitement subsiding under the delightful interest of his
own story, "is that the sergeant in charge of the cannon which was
to give the signal to fire the mines and blow up the bridge, this
sergeant, seeing that the French troops were running onto the
bridge, was about to fire, but Lannes stayed his hand. The sergeant,
who was evidently wiser than his general, goes up to Auersperg and
says: 'Prince, you are being deceived, here are the French!' Murat,
seeing that all is lost if the sergeant is allowed to speak, turns
to Auersperg with feigned astonishment (he is a true Gascon) and says:
'I don't recognize the world-famous Austrian discipline, if you
allow a subordinate to address you like that!' It was a stroke of
genius. Prince Auersperg feels his dignity at stake and orders the
sergeant to be arrested. Come, you must own that this affair of the
Thabor Bridge is delightful! It is not exactly stupidity, nor
rascality...."


*Bridgehead.

*[2] That their fire gets into his eyes and he forgets that he ought
to be firing at the enemy.


"It may be treachery," said Prince Andrew, vividly imagining the
gray overcoats, wounds, the smoke of gunpowder, the sounds of
firing, and the glory that awaited him.

"Not that either. That puts the court in too bad a light," replied
Bilibin. "It's not treachery nor rascality nor stupidity: it is just as
at Ulm... it is..."--he seemed to be trying to find the right
expression. "C'est... c'est du Mack. Nous sommes mackes [It is... it
is a bit of Mack. We are Macked]," he concluded, feeling that he had
produced a good epigram, a fresh one that would be repeated. His
hitherto puckered brow became smooth as a sign of pleasure, and with a
slight smile he began to examine his nails.

"Where are you off to?" he said suddenly to Prince Andrew who had
risen and was going toward his room.

"I am going away."

"Where to?"

"To the army."

"But you meant to stay another two days?"

"But now I am off at once."

And Prince Andrew after giving directions about his departure went
to his room.

"Do you know, mon cher," said Bilibin following him, "I have been
thinking about you. Why are you going?"

And in proof of the conclusiveness of his opinion all the wrinkles
vanished from his face.

Prince Andrew looked inquiringly at him and gave no reply.

"Why are you going? I know you think it your duty to gallop back
to the army now that it is in danger. I understand that. Mon cher,
it is heroism!"

"Not at all," said Prince Andrew.

"But as you are a philosopher, be a consistent one, look at the
other side of the question and you will see that your duty, on the
contrary, is to take care of yourself. Leave it to those who are no
longer fit for anything else.... You have not been ordered to return
and have not been dismissed from here; therefore, you can stay and
go with us wherever our ill luck takes us. They say we are going to
Olmutz, and Olmutz is a very decent town. You and I will travel
comfortably in my caleche."

"Do stop joking, Bilibin," cried Bolkonski.

"I am speaking sincerely as a friend! Consider! Where and why are
you going, when you might remain here? You are faced by one of two
things," and the skin over his left temple puckered, "either you
will not reach your regiment before peace is concluded, or you will
share defeat and disgrace with Kutuzov's whole army."

And Bilibin unwrinkled his temple, feeling that the dilemma was
insoluble.

"I cannot argue about it," replied Prince Andrew coldly, but he
thought: "I am going to save the army."

"My dear fellow, you are a hero!" said Bilibin.





CHAPTER XIII


That same night, having taken leave of the Minister of War,
Bolkonski set off to rejoin the army, not knowing where he would
find it and fearing to be captured by the French on the way to Krems.

In Brunn everybody attached to the court was packing up, and the
heavy baggage was already being dispatched to Olmutz. Near Hetzelsdorf
Prince Andrew struck the high road along which the Russian army was
moving with great haste and in the greatest disorder. The road was
so obstructed with carts that it was impossible to get by in a
carriage. Prince Andrew took a horse and a Cossack from a Cossack
commander, and hungry and weary, making his way past the baggage
wagons, rode in search of the commander in chief and of his own
luggage. Very sinister reports of the position of the army reached him
as he went along, and the appearance of the troops in their disorderly
flight confirmed these rumors.

"Cette armee russe que l'or de l'Angleterre a transportee des
extremites de l'univers, nous allons lui faire eprouver le meme
sort--(le sort de l'armee d'Ulm)."* He remembered these words in
Bonaparte's address to his army at the beginning of the campaign,
and they awoke in him astonishment at the genius of his hero, a
feeling of wounded pride, and a hope of glory. "And should there be
nothing left but to die?" he thought. "Well, if need be, I shall do it
no worse than others."


*"That Russian army which has been brought from the ends of the
earth by English gold, we shall cause to share the same fate--(the
fate of the army at Ulm)."


He looked with disdain at the endless confused mass of
detachments, carts, guns, artillery, and again baggage wagons and
vehicles of all kinds overtaking one another and blocking the muddy
road, three and sometimes four abreast. From all sides, behind and
before, as far as ear could reach, there were the rattle of wheels,
the creaking of carts and gun carriages, the tramp of horses, the
crack of whips, shouts, the urging of horses, and the swearing of
soldiers, orderlies, and officers. All along the sides of the road
fallen horses were to be seen, some flayed, some not, and
broken-down carts beside which solitary soldiers sat waiting for
something, and again soldiers straggling from their companies,
crowds of whom set off to the neighboring villages, or returned from
them dragging sheep, fowls, hay, and bulging sacks. At each ascent
or descent of the road the crowds were yet denser and the din of
shouting more incessant. Soldiers floundering knee-deep in mud
pushed the guns and wagons themselves. Whips cracked, hoofs slipped,
traces broke, and lungs were strained with shouting. The officers
directing the march rode backward and forward between the carts. Their
voices were but feebly heard amid the uproar and one saw by their
faces that they despaired of the possibility of checking this
disorder.

"Here is our dear Orthodox Russian army," thought Bolkonski,
recalling Bilibin's words.

Wishing to find out where the commander in chief was, he rode up
to a convoy. Directly opposite to him came a strange one-horse
vehicle, evidently rigged up by soldiers out of any available
materials and looking like something between a cart, a cabriolet,
and a caleche. A soldier was driving, and a woman enveloped in
shawls sat behind the apron under the leather hood of the vehicle.
Prince Andrew rode up and was just putting his question to a soldier
when his attention was diverted by the desperate shrieks of the
woman in the vehicle. An officer in charge of transport was beating
the soldier who was driving the woman's vehicle for trying to get
ahead of others, and the strokes of his whip fell on the apron of
the equipage. The woman screamed piercingly. Seeing Prince Andrew
she leaned out from behind the apron and, waving her thin arms from
under the woolen shawl, cried:

"Mr. Aide-de-camp! Mr. Aide-de-camp!... For heaven's sake... Protect
me! What will become of us? I am the wife of the doctor of the Seventh
Chasseurs.... They won't let us pass, we are left behind and have lost
our people..."

"I'll flatten you into a pancake!" shouted the angry officer to
the soldier. "Turn back with your slut!"

"Mr. Aide-de-camp! Help me!... What does it all mean?" screamed
the doctor's wife.

"Kindly let this cart pass. Don't you see it's a woman?" said Prince
Andrew riding up to the officer.

The officer glanced at him, and without replying turned again to the
soldier. "I'll teach you to push on!... Back!"

"Let them pass, I tell you!" repeated Prince Andrew, compressing his
lips.

"And who are you?" cried the officer, turning on him with tipsy
rage, "who are you? Are you in command here? Eh? I am commander
here, not you! Go back or I'll flatten you into a pancake," repeated
he. This expression evidently pleased him.

"That was a nice snub for the little aide-de-camp," came a voice
from behind.

Prince Andrew saw that the officer was in that state of senseless,
tipsy rage when a man does not know what he is saying. He saw that his
championship of the doctor's wife in her queer trap might expose him
to what he dreaded more than anything in the world--to ridicule; but
his instinct urged him on. Before the officer finished his sentence
Prince Andrew, his face distorted with fury, rode up to him and raised
his riding whip.

"Kind...ly let--them--pass!"

The officer flourished his arm and hastily rode away.

"It's all the fault of these fellows on the staff that there's
this disorder," he muttered. "Do as you like."

Prince Andrew without lifting his eyes rode hastily away from the
doctor's wife, who was calling him her deliverer, and recalling with a
sense of disgust the minutest details of this humiliating scene he
galloped on to the village where he was told that the commander in
chief was.

On reaching the village he dismounted and went to the nearest house,
intending to rest if but for a moment, eat something, and try to
sort out the stinging and tormenting thoughts that confused his
mind. "This is a mob of scoundrels and not an army," he was thinking
as he went up to the window of the first house, when a familiar
voice called him by name.

He turned round. Nesvitski's handsome face looked out of the
little window. Nesvitski, moving his moist lips as he chewed
something, and flourishing his arm, called him to enter.

"Bolkonski! Bolkonski!... Don't you hear? Eh? Come quick..." he
shouted.

Entering the house, Prince Andrew saw Nesvitski and another adjutant
having something to eat. They hastily turned round to him asking if he
had any news. On their familiar faces he read agitation and alarm.
This was particularly noticeable on Nesvitski's usually laughing
countenance.

"Where is the commander in chief?" asked Bolkonski.

"Here, in that house," answered the adjutant.

"Well, is it true that it's peace and capitulation?" asked
Nesvitski.

"I was going to ask you. I know nothing except that it was all I
could do to get here."

"And we, my dear boy! It's terrible! I was wrong to laugh at Mack,
we're getting it still worse," said Nesvitski. "But sit down and
have something to eat."

"You won't be able to find either your baggage or anything else now,
Prince. And God only knows where your man Peter is," said the other
adjutant.

"Where are headquarters?"

"We are to spend the night in Znaim."

"Well, I have got all I need into packs for two horses," said
Nesvitski. "They've made up splendid packs for me--fit to cross the
Bohemian mountains with. It's a bad lookout, old fellow! But what's
the matter with you? You must be ill to shiver like that," he added,
noticing that Prince Andrew winced as at an electric shock.

"It's nothing," replied Prince Andrew.

He had just remembered his recent encounter with the doctor's wife
and the convoy officer.

"What is the commander in chief doing here?" he asked.

"I can't make out at all," said Nesvitski.

"Well, all I can make out is that everything is abominable,
abominable, quite abominable!" said Prince Andrew, and he went off
to the house where the commander in chief was.

Passing by Kutuzov's carriage and the exhausted saddle horses of his
suite, with their Cossacks who were talking loudly together, Prince
Andrew entered the passage. Kutuzov himself, he was told, was in the
house with Prince Bagration and Weyrother. Weyrother was the
Austrian general who had succeeded Schmidt. In the passage little
Kozlovski was squatting on his heels in front of a clerk. The clerk,
with cuffs turned up, was hastily writing at a tub turned bottom
upwards. Kozlovski's face looked worn--he too had evidently not
slept all night. He glanced at Prince Andrew and did not even nod to
him.

"Second line... have you written it?" he continued dictating to
the clerk. "The Kiev Grenadiers, Podolian..."

"One can't write so fast, your honor," said the clerk, glancing
angrily and disrespectfully at Kozlovski.

Through the door came the sounds of Kutuzov's voice, excited and
dissatisfied, interrupted by another, an unfamiliar voice. From the
sound of these voices, the inattentive way Kozlovski looked at him,
the disrespectful manner of the exhausted clerk, the fact that the
clerk and Kozlovski were squatting on the floor by a tub so near to
the commander in chief, and from the noisy laughter of the Cossacks
holding the horses near the window, Prince Andrew felt that
something important and disastrous was about to happen.

He turned to Kozlovski with urgent questions.

"Immediately, Prince," said Kozlovski. "Dispositions for Bagration."

"What about capitulation?"

"Nothing of the sort. Orders are issued for a battle."

Prince Andrew moved toward the door from whence voices were heard.
Just as he was going to open it the sounds ceased, the door opened,
and Kutuzov with his eagle nose and puffy face appeared in the
doorway. Prince Andrew stood right in front of Kutuzov but the
expression of the commander in chief's one sound eye showed him to
be so preoccupied with thoughts and anxieties as to be oblivious of
his presence. He looked straight at his adjutant's face without
recognizing him.

"Well, have you finished?" said he to Kozlovski.

"One moment, your excellency."

Bagration, a gaunt middle-aged man of medium height with a firm,
impassive face of Oriental type, came out after the commander in
chief.

"I have the honor to present myself," repeated Prince Andrew
rather loudly, handing Kutuzov an envelope.

"Ah, from Vienna? Very good. Later, later!"

Kutuzov went out into the porch with Bagration.

"Well, good-by, Prince," said he to Bagration. "My blessing, and may
Christ be with you in your great endeavor!"

His face suddenly softened and tears came into his eyes. With his
left hand he drew Bagration toward him, and with his right, on which
he wore a ring, he made the sign of the cross over him with a
gesture evidently habitual, offering his puffy cheek, but Bagration
kissed him on the neck instead.

"Christ be with you!" Kutuzov repeated and went toward his carriage.
"Get in with me," said he to Bolkonski.

"Your excellency, I should like to be of use here. Allow me to
remain with Prince Bagration's detachment."

"Get in," said Kutuzov, and noticing that Bolkonski still delayed,
he added: "I need good officers myself, need them myself!"

They got into the carriage and drove for a few minutes in silence.

"There is still much, much before us," he said, as if with an old
man's penetration he understood all that was passing in Bolkonski's
mind. "If a tenth part of his detachment returns I shall thank God,"
he added as if speaking to himself.

Prince Andrew glanced at Kutuzov's face only a foot distant from him
and involuntarily noticed the carefully washed seams of the scar
near his temple, where an Ismail bullet had pierced his skull, and the
empty eye socket. "Yes, he has a right to speak so calmly of those
men's death," thought Bolkonski.

"That is why I beg to be sent to that detachment," he said.

Kutuzov did not reply. He seemed to have forgotten what he had
been saying, and sat plunged in thought. Five minutes later, gently
swaying on the soft springs of the carriage, he turned to Prince
Andrew. There was not a trace of agitation on his face. With
delicate irony he questioned Prince Andrew about the details of his
interview with the Emperor, about the remarks he had heard at court
concerning the Krems affair, and about some ladies they both knew.





CHAPTER XIV


On November 1 Kutuzov had received, through a spy, news that the
army he commanded was in an almost hopeless position. The spy reported
that the French, after crossing the bridge at Vienna, were advancing
in immense force upon Kutuzov's line of communication with the
troops that were arriving from Russia. If Kutuzov decided to remain at
Krems, Napoleon's army of one hundred and fifty thousand men would cut
him off completely and surround his exhausted army of forty
thousand, and he would find himself in the position of Mack at Ulm. If
Kutuzov decided to abandon the road connecting him with the troops
arriving from Russia, he would have to march with no road into unknown
parts of the Bohemian mountains, defending himself against superior
forces of the enemy and abandoning all hope of a junction with
Buxhowden. If Kutuzov decided to retreat along the road from Krems
to Olmutz, to unite with the troops arriving from Russia, he risked
being forestalled on that road by the French who had crossed the
Vienna bridge, and encumbered by his baggage and transport, having
to accept battle on the march against an enemy three times as
strong, who would hem him in from two sides.

Kutuzov chose this latter course.

The French, the spy reported, having crossed the Vienna bridge, were
advancing by forced marches toward Znaim, which lay sixty-six miles
off on the line of Kutuzov's retreat. If he reached Znaim before the
French, there would be great hope of saving the army; to let the
French forestall him at Znaim meant the exposure of his whole army
to a disgrace such as that of Ulm, or to utter destruction. But to
forestall the French with his whole army was impossible. The road
for the French from Vienna to Znaim was shorter and better than the
road for the Russians from Krems to Znaim.

The night he received the news, Kutuzov sent Bagration's vanguard,
four thousand strong, to the right across the hills from the
Krems-Znaim to the Vienna-Znaim road. Bagration was to make this march
without resting, and to halt facing Vienna with Znaim to his rear, and
if he succeeded in forestalling the French he was to delay them as
long as possible. Kutuzov himself with all his transport took the road
to Znaim.

Marching thirty miles that stormy night across roadless hills,
with his hungry, ill-shod soldiers, and losing a third of his men as
stragglers by the way, Bagration came out on the Vienna-Znaim road
at Hollabrunn a few hours ahead of the French who were approaching
Hollabrunn from Vienna. Kutuzov with his transport had still to
march for some days before he could reach Znaim. Hence Bagration
with his four thousand hungry, exhausted men would have to detain
for days the whole enemy army that came upon him at Hollabrunn,
which was clearly impossible. But a freak of fate made the
impossible possible. The success of the trick that had placed the
Vienna bridge in the hands of the French without a fight led Murat
to try to deceive Kutuzov in a similar way. Meeting Bagration's weak
detachment on the Znaim road he supposed it to be Kutuzov's whole
army. To be able to crush it absolutely he awaited the arrival of
the rest of the troops who were on their way from Vienna, and with
this object offered a three days' truce on condition that both
armies should remain in position without moving. Murat declared that
negotiations for peace were already proceeding, and that he
therefore offered this truce to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. Count
Nostitz, the Austrian general occupying the advanced posts, believed
Murat's emissary and retired, leaving Bagration's division exposed.
Another emissary rode to the Russian line to announce the peace
negotiations and to offer the Russian army the three days' truce.
Bagration replied that he was not authorized either to accept or
refuse a truce and sent his adjutant to Kutuzov to report the offer he
had received.

A truce was Kutuzov's sole chance of gaining time, giving
Bagration's exhausted troops some rest, and letting the transport
and heavy convoys (whose movements were concealed from the French)
advance if but one stage nearer Znaim. The offer of a truce gave the
only, and a quite unexpected, chance of saving the army. On
receiving the news he immediately dispatched Adjutant General
Wintzingerode, who was in attendance on him, to the enemy camp.
Wintzingerode was not merely to agree to the truce but also to offer
terms of capitulation, and meanwhile Kutuzov sent his adjutants back
to hasten to the utmost the movements of the baggage trains of the
entire army along the Krems-Znaim road. Bagration's exhausted and
hungry detachment, which alone covered this movement of the
transport and of the whole army, had to remain stationary in face of
an enemy eight times as strong as itself.

Kutuzov's expectations that the proposals of capitulation (which
were in no way binding) might give time for part of the transport to
pass, and also that Murat's mistake would very soon be discovered,
proved correct. As soon as Bonaparte (who was at Schonbrunn, sixteen
miles from Hollabrunn) received Murat's dispatch with the proposal
of a truce and a capitulation, he detected a ruse and wrote the
following letter to Murat:


Schonbrunn, 25th Brumaire, 1805,

at eight o'clock in the morning

To PRINCE MURAT,

I cannot find words to express to you my displeasure. You command
only my advance guard, and have no right to arrange an armistice
without my order. You are causing me to lose the fruits of a campaign.
Break the armistice immediately and march on the enemy. Inform him
that the general who signed that capitulation had no right to do so,
and that no one but the Emperor of Russia has that right.

If, however, the Emperor of Russia ratifies that convention, I
will ratify it; but it is only a trick. March on, destroy the
Russian army.... You are in a position to seize its baggage and
artillery.

The Russian Emperor's aide-de-camp is an impostor. Officers are
nothing when they have no powers; this one had none.... The
Austrians let themselves be tricked at the crossing of the Vienna
bridge, you are letting yourself be tricked by an aide-de-camp of
the Emperor.

NAPOLEON


Bonaparte's adjutant rode full gallop with this menacing letter to
Murat. Bonaparte himself, not trusting to his generals, moved with all
the Guards to the field of battle, afraid of letting a ready victim
escape, and Bagration's four thousand men merrily lighted campfires,
dried and warmed themselves, cooked their porridge for the first
time for three days, and not one of them knew or imagined what was
in store for him.





CHAPTER XV


Between three and four o'clock in the afternoon Prince Andrew, who
had persisted in his request to Kutuzov, arrived at Grunth and
reported himself to Bagration. Bonaparte's adjutant had not yet
reached Murat's detachment and the battle had not yet begun. In
Bagration's detachment no one knew anything of the general position of
affairs. They talked of peace but did not believe in its
possibility; others talked of a battle but also disbelieved in the
nearness of an engagement. Bagration, knowing Bolkonski to be a
favorite and trusted adjutant, received him with distinction and
special marks of favor, explaining to him that there would probably be
an engagement that day or the next, and giving him full liberty to
remain with him during the battle or to join the rearguard and have an
eye on the order of retreat, "which is also very important."

"However, there will hardly be an engagement today," said
Bagration as if to reassure Prince Andrew.

"If he is one of the ordinary little staff dandies sent to earn a
medal he can get his reward just as well in the rearguard, but if he
wishes to stay with me, let him... he'll be of use here if he's a
brave officer," thought Bagration. Prince Andrew, without replying,
asked the prince's permission to ride round the position to see the
disposition of the forces, so as to know his bearings should he be
sent to execute an order. The officer on duty, a handsome, elegantly
dressed man with a diamond ring on his forefinger, who was fond of
speaking French though he spoke it badly, offered to conduct Prince
Andrew.

On all sides they saw rain-soaked officers with dejected faces who
seemed to be seeking something, and soldiers dragging doors,
benches, and fencing from the village.

"There now, Prince! We can't stop those fellows," said the staff
officer pointing to the soldiers. "The officers don't keep them in
hand. And there," he pointed to a sutler's tent, "they crowd in and
sit. This morning I turned them all out and now look, it's full again.
I must go there, Prince, and scare them a bit. It won't take a
moment."

"Yes, let's go in and I will get myself a roll and some cheese,"
said Prince Andrew who had not yet had time to eat anything.

"Why didn't you mention it, Prince? I would have offered you
something."

They dismounted and entered the tent. Several officers, with flushed
and weary faces, were sitting at the table eating and drinking.

"Now what does this mean, gentlemen?" said the staff officer, in the
reproachful tone of a man who has repeated the same thing more than
once. "You know it won't do to leave your posts like this. The
prince gave orders that no one should leave his post. Now you,
Captain," and he turned to a thin, dirty little artillery officer
who without his boots (he had given them to the canteen keeper to
dry), in only his stockings, rose when they entered, smiling not
altogether comfortably.

"Well, aren't you ashamed of yourself, Captain Tushin?" he
continued. "One would think that as an artillery officer you would set
a good example, yet here you are without your boots! The alarm will be
sounded and you'll be in a pretty position without your boots!" (The
staff officer smiled.) "Kindly return to your posts, gentlemen, all of
you, all!" he added in a tone of command.

Prince Andrew smiled involuntarily as he looked at the artillery
officer Tushin, who silent and smiling, shifting from one stockinged
foot to the other, glanced inquiringly with his large, intelligent,
kindly eyes from Prince Andrew to the staff officer.

"The soldiers say it feels easier without boots," said Captain
Tushin smiling shyly in his uncomfortable position, evidently
wishing to adopt a jocular tone. But before he had finished he felt
that his jest was unacceptable and had not come off. He grew confused.

"Kindly return to your posts," said the staff officer trying to
preserve his gravity.

Prince Andrew glanced again at the artillery officer's small figure.
There was something peculiar about it, quite unsoldierly, rather
comic, but extremely attractive.

The staff officer and Prince Andrew mounted their horses and rode
on.

Having ridden beyond the village, continually meeting and overtaking
soldiers and officers of various regiments, they saw on their left
some entrenchments being thrown up, the freshly dug clay of which
showed up red. Several battalions of soldiers, in their shirt
sleeves despite the cold wind, swarmed in these earthworks like a host
of white ants; spadefuls of red clay were continually being thrown
up from behind the bank by unseen hands. Prince Andrew and the officer
rode up, looked at the entrenchment, and went on again. Just behind it
they came upon some dozens of soldiers, continually replaced by
others, who ran from the entrenchment. They had to hold their noses
and put their horses to a trot to escape from the poisoned
atmosphere of these latrines.

"Voila l'agrement des camps, monsieur le Prince,"* said the staff
officer.


*"This is a pleasure one gets in camp, Prince."


They rode up the opposite hill. From there the French could
already be seen. Prince Andrew stopped and began examining the
position.

"That's our battery," said the staff officer indicating the
highest point. "It's in charge of the queer fellow we saw without
his boots. You can see everything from there; let's go there, Prince."

"Thank you very much, I will go on alone," said Prince Andrew,
wishing to rid himself of this staff officer's company, "please
don't trouble yourself further."

The staff officer remained behind and Prince Andrew rode on alone.

The farther forward and nearer the enemy he went, the more orderly
and cheerful were the troops. The greatest disorder and depression had
been in the baggage train he had passed that morning on the Znaim road
seven miles away from the French. At Grunth also some apprehension and
alarm could be felt, but the nearer Prince Andrew came to the French
lines the more confident was the appearance of our troops. The
soldiers in their greatcoats were ranged in lines, the sergeants major
and company officers were counting the men, poking the last man in
each section in the ribs and telling him to hold his hand up. Soldiers
scattered over the whole place were dragging logs and brushwood and
were building shelters with merry chatter and laughter; around the
fires sat others, dressed and undressed, drying their shirts and leg
bands or mending boots or overcoats and crowding round the boilers and
porridge cookers. In one company dinner was ready, and the soldiers
were gazing eagerly at the steaming boiler, waiting till the sample,
which a quartermaster sergeant was carrying in a wooden bowl to an
officer who sat on a log before his shelter, had been tasted.

Another company, a lucky one for not all the companies had vodka,
crowded round a pock-marked, broad-shouldered sergeant major who,
tilting a keg, filled one after another the canteen lids held out to
him. The soldiers lifted the canteen lids to their lips with
reverential faces, emptied them, rolling the vodka in their mouths,
and walked away from the sergeant major with brightened expressions,
licking their lips and wiping them on the sleeves of their greatcoats.
All their faces were as serene as if all this were happening at home
awaiting peaceful encampment, and not within sight of the enemy before
an action in which at least half of them would be left on the field.
After passing a chasseur regiment and in the lines of the Kiev
grenadiers--fine fellows busy with similar peaceful affairs--near
the shelter of the regimental commander, higher than and different
from the others, Prince Andrew came out in front of a platoon of
grenadiers before whom lay a naked man. Two soldiers held him while
two others were flourishing their switches and striking him
regularly on his bare back. The man shrieked unnaturally. A stout
major was pacing up and down the line, and regardless of the screams
kept repeating:

"It's a shame for a soldier to steal; a soldier must be honest,
honorable, and brave, but if he robs his fellows there is no honor
in him, he's a scoundrel. Go on! Go on!"

So the swishing sound of the strokes, and the desperate but
unnatural screams, continued.

"Go on, go on!" said the major.

A young officer with a bewildered and pained expression on his
face stepped away from the man and looked round inquiringly at the
adjutant as he rode by.

Prince Andrew, having reached the front line, rode along it. Our
front line and that of the enemy were far apart on the right and
left flanks, but in the center where the men with a flag of truce
had passed that morning, the lines were so near together that the
men could see one another's faces and speak to one another. Besides
the soldiers who formed the picket line on either side, there were
many curious onlookers who, jesting and laughing, stared at their
strange foreign enemies.

Since early morning--despite an injunction not to approach the
picket line--the officers had been unable to keep sight-seers away.
The soldiers forming the picket line, like showmen exhibiting a
curiosity, no longer looked at the French but paid attention to the
sight-seers and grew weary waiting to be relieved. Prince Andrew
halted to have a look at the French.

"Look! Look there!" one soldier was saying to another, pointing to a
Russian musketeer who had gone up to the picket line with an officer
and was rapidly and excitedly talking to a French grenadier. "Hark
to him jabbering! Fine, isn't it? It's all the Frenchy can do to
keep up with him. There now, Sidorov!"

"Wait a bit and listen. It's fine!" answered Sidorov, who was
considered an adept at French.

The soldier to whom the laughers referred was Dolokhov. Prince
Andrew recognized him and stopped to listen to what he was saying.
Dolokhov had come from the left flank where their regiment was
stationed, with his captain.

"Now then, go on, go on!" incited the officer, bending forward and
trying not to lose a word of the speech which was incomprehensible
to him. "More, please: more! What's he saying?"

Dolokhov did not answer the captain; he had been drawn into a hot
dispute with the French grenadier. They were naturally talking about
the campaign. The Frenchman, confusing the Austrians with the
Russians, was trying to prove that the Russians had surrendered and
had fled all the way from Ulm, while Dolokhov maintained that the
Russians had not surrendered but had beaten the French.

"We have orders to drive you off here, and we shall drive you
off," said Dolokhov.

"Only take care you and your Cossacks are not all captured!" said
the French grenadier.

The French onlookers and listeners laughed.

"We'll make you dance as we did under Suvorov...,"* said Dolokhov.


*"On vous fera danser."


"Qu' est-ce qu'il chante?"* asked a Frenchman.


*"What's he singing about?"


"It's ancient history," said another, guessing that it referred to a
former war. "The Emperor will teach your Suvara as he has taught the
others..."

"Bonaparte..." began Dolokhov, but the Frenchman interrupted him.

"Not Bonaparte. He is the Emperor! Sacre nom...!" cried he angrily.

"The devil skin your Emperor."

And Dolokhov swore at him in coarse soldier's Russian and
shouldering his musket walked away.

"Let us go, Ivan Lukich," he said to the captain.

"Ah, that's the way to talk French," said the picket soldiers. "Now,
Sidorov, you have a try!"

Sidorov, turning to the French, winked, and began to jabber
meaningless sounds very fast: "Kari, mala, tafa, safi, muter,
Kaska," he said, trying to give an expressive intonation to his voice.

"Ho! ho! ho! Ha! ha! ha! ha! Ouh! ouh!" came peals of such healthy
and good-humored laughter from the soldiers that it infected the
French involuntarily, so much so that the only thing left to do seemed
to be to unload the muskets, muskets, explode the ammunition, and
all return home as quickly as possible.

But the guns remained loaded, the loopholes in blockhouses and
entrenchments looked out just as menacingly, and the unlimbered cannon
confronted one another as before.





CHAPTER XVI


Having ridden round the whole line from right flank to left,
Prince Andrew made his way up to the battery from which the staff
officer had told him the whole field could be seen. Here he
dismounted, and stopped beside the farthest of the four unlimbered
cannon. Before the guns an artillery sentry was pacing up and down; he
stood at attention when the officer arrived, but at a sign resumed his
measured, monotonous pacing. Behind the guns were their limbers and
still farther back picket ropes and artillerymen's bonfires. To the
left, not far from the farthest cannon, was a small, newly constructed
wattle shed from which came the sound of officers' voices in eager
conversation.

It was true that a view over nearly the whole Russian position and
the greater part of the enemy's opened out from this battery. Just
facing it, on the crest of the opposite hill, the village of Schon
Grabern could be seen, and in three places to left and right the
French troops amid the smoke of their campfires, the greater part of
whom were evidently in the village itself and behind the hill. To
the left from that village, amid the smoke, was something resembling a
battery, but it was impossible to see it clearly with the naked eye.
Our right flank was posted on a rather steep incline which dominated
the French position. Our infantry were stationed there, and at the
farthest point the dragoons. In the center, where Tushin's battery
stood and from which Prince Andrew was surveying the position, was the
easiest and most direct descent and ascent to the brook separating
us from Schon Grabern. On the left our troops were close to a copse,
in which smoked the bonfires of our infantry who were felling wood.
The French line was wider than ours, and it was plain that they
could easily outflank us on both sides. Behind our position was a
steep and deep dip, making it difficult for artillery and cavalry to
retire. Prince Andrew took out his notebook and, leaning on the
cannon, sketched a plan of the position. He made some notes on two
points, intending to mention them to Bagration. His idea was, first,
to concentrate all the artillery in the center, and secondly, to
withdraw the cavalry to the other side of the dip. Prince Andrew,
being always near the commander in chief, closely following the mass
movements and general orders, and constantly studying historical
accounts of battles, involuntarily pictured to himself the course of
events in the forthcoming action in broad outline. He imagined only
important possibilities: "If the enemy attacks the right flank," he
said to himself, "the Kiev grenadiers and the Podolsk chasseurs must
hold their position till reserves from the center come up. In that
case the dragoons could successfully make a flank counterattack. If
they attack our center we, having the center battery on this high
ground, shall withdraw the left flank under its cover, and retreat
to the dip by echelons." So he reasoned.... All the time he had been
beside the gun, he had heard the voices of the officers distinctly,
but as often happens had not understood a word of what they were
saying. Suddenly, however, he was struck by a voice coming from the
shed, and its tone was so sincere that he could not but listen.

"No, friend," said a pleasant and, as it seemed to Prince Andrew,
a familiar voice, "what I say is that if it were possible to know what
is beyond death, none of us would be afraid of it. That's so, friend."

Another, a younger voice, interrupted him: "Afraid or not, you can't
escape it anyhow."

"All the same, one is afraid! Oh, you clever people," said a third
manly voice interrupting them both. "Of course you artillery men are
very wise, because you can take everything along with you--vodka and
snacks."

And the owner of the manly voice, evidently an infantry officer,
laughed.

"Yes, one is afraid," continued the first speaker, he of the
familiar voice. "One is afraid of the unknown, that's what it is.
Whatever we may say about the soul going to the sky... we know there
is no sky but only an atmosphere."

The manly voice again interrupted the artillery officer.

"Well, stand us some of your herb vodka, Tushin," it said.

"Why," thought Prince Andrew, "that's the captain who stood up in
the sutler's hut without his boots." He recognized the agreeable,
philosophizing voice with pleasure.

"Some herb vodka? Certainly!" said Tushin. "But still, to conceive a
future life..."

He did not finish. Just then there was a whistle in the air;
nearer and nearer, faster and louder, louder and faster, a cannon
ball, as if it had not finished saying what was necessary, thudded
into the ground near the shed with super human force, throwing up a
mass of earth. The ground seemed to groan at the terrible impact.

And immediately Tushin, with a short pipe in the corner of his mouth
and his kind, intelligent face rather pale, rushed out of the shed
followed by the owner of the manly voice, a dashing infantry officer
who hurried off to his company, buttoning up his coat as he ran.





CHAPTER XVII


Mounting his horse again Prince Andrew lingered with the battery,
looking at the puff from the gun that had sent the ball. His eyes
ran rapidly over the wide space, but he only saw that the hitherto
motionless masses of the French now swayed and that there really was a
battery to their left. The smoke above it had not yet dispersed. Two
mounted Frenchmen, probably adjutants, were galloping up the hill. A
small but distinctly visible enemy column was moving down the hill,
probably to strengthen the front line. The smoke of the first shot had
not yet dispersed before another puff appeared, followed by a
report. The battle had begun! Prince Andrew turned his horse and
galloped back to Grunth to find Prince Bagration. He heard the
cannonade behind him growing louder and more frequent. Evidently our
guns had begun to reply. From the bottom of the slope, where the
parleys had taken place, came the report of musketry.

Lemarrois had just arrived at a gallop with Bonaparte's stern
letter, and Murat, humiliated and anxious to expiate his fault, had at
once moved his forces to attack the center and outflank both the
Russian wings, hoping before evening and before the arrival of the
Emperor to crush the contemptible detachment that stood before him.

"It has begun. Here it is!" thought Prince Andrew, feeling the blood
rush to his heart. "But where and how will my Toulon present itself?"

Passing between the companies that had been eating porridge and
drinking vodka a quarter of an hour before, he saw everywhere the same
rapid movement of soldiers forming ranks and getting their muskets
ready, and on all their faces he recognized the same eagerness that
filled his heart. "It has begun! Here it is, dreadful but
enjoyable!" was what the face of each soldier and each officer
seemed to say.

Before he had reached the embankments that were being thrown up,
he saw, in the light of the dull autumn evening, mounted men coming
toward him. The foremost, wearing a Cossack cloak and lambskin cap and
riding a white horse, was Prince Bagration. Prince Andrew stopped,
waiting for him to come up; Prince Bagration reined in his horse and
recognizing Prince Andrew nodded to him. He still looked ahead while
Prince Andrew told him what he had seen.

The feeling, "It has begun! Here it is!" was seen even on Prince
Bagration's hard brown face with its half-closed, dull, sleepy eyes.
Prince Andrew gazed with anxious curiosity at that impassive face
and wished he could tell what, if anything, this man was thinking
and feeling at that moment. "Is there anything at all behind that
impassive face?" Prince Andrew asked himself as he looked. Prince
Bagration bent his head in sign of agreement with what Prince Andrew
told him, and said, "Very good!" in a tone that seemed to imply that
everything that took place and was reported to him was exactly what he
had foreseen. Prince Andrew, out of breath with his rapid ride,
spoke quickly. Prince Bagration, uttering his words with an Oriental
accent, spoke particularly slowly, as if to impress the fact that
there was no need to hurry. However, he put his horse to a trot in the
direction of Tushin's battery. Prince Andrew followed with the
suite. Behind Prince Bagration rode an officer of the suite, the
prince's personal adjutant, Zherkov, an orderly officer, the staff
officer on duty, riding a fine bobtailed horse, and a civilian--an
accountant who had asked permission to be present at the battle out of
curiosity. The accountant, a stout, full-faced man, looked around
him with a naive smile of satisfaction and presented a strange
appearance among the hussars, Cossacks, and adjutants, in his camlet
coat, as he jolted on his horse with a convoy officer's saddle.

"He wants to see a battle," said Zherkov to Bolkonski, pointing to
the accountant, "but he feels a pain in the pit of his stomach
already."

"Oh, leave off!" said the accountant with a beaming but rather
cunning smile, as if flattered at being made the subject of
Zherkov's joke, and purposely trying to appear stupider than he really
was.

"It is very strange, mon Monsieur Prince," said the staff officer.
(He remembered that in French there is some peculiar way of addressing
a prince, but could not get it quite right.)

By this time they were all approaching Tushin's battery, and a
ball struck the ground in front of them.

"What's that that has fallen?" asked the accountant with a naive
smile.

"A French pancake," answered Zherkov.

"So that's what they hit with?" asked the accountant. "How awful!"

He seemed to swell with satisfaction. He had hardly finished
speaking when they again heard an unexpectedly violent whistling which
suddenly ended with a thud into something soft... f-f-flop! and a
Cossack, riding a little to their right and behind the accountant,
crashed to earth with his horse. Zherkov and the staff officer bent
over their saddles and turned their horses away. The accountant
stopped, facing the Cossack, and examined him with attentive
curiosity. The Cossack was dead, but the horse still struggled.

Prince Bagration screwed up his eyes, looked round, and, seeing
the cause of the confusion, turned away with indifference, as if to
say, "Is it worth while noticing trifles?" He reined in his horse with
the case of a skillful rider and, slightly bending over, disengaged
his saber which had caught in his cloak. It was an old-fashioned saber
of a kind no longer in general use. Prince Andrew remembered the story
of Suvorov giving his saber to Bagration in Italy, and the
recollection was particularly pleasant at that moment. They had
reached the battery at which Prince Andrew had been when he examined
the battlefield.

"Whose company?" asked Prince Bagration of an artilleryman
standing by the ammunition wagon.

He asked, "Whose company?" but he really meant, "Are you
frightened here?" and the artilleryman understood him.

"Captain Tushin's, your excellency!" shouted the red-haired,
freckled gunner in a merry voice, standing to attention.

"Yes, yes," muttered Bagration as if considering something, and he
rode past the limbers to the farthest cannon.

As he approached, a ringing shot issued from it deafening him and
his suite, and in the smoke that suddenly surrounded the gun they
could see the gunners who had seized it straining to roll it quickly
back to its former position. A huge, broad-shouldered gunner, Number
One, holding a mop, his legs far apart, sprang to the wheel; while
Number Two with a trembling hand placed a charge in the cannon's
mouth. The short, round-shouldered Captain Tushin, stumbling over
the tail of the gun carriage, moved forward and, not noticing the
general, looked out shading his eyes with his small hand.

"Lift it two lines more and it will be just right," cried he in a
feeble voice to which he tried to impart a dashing note, ill suited to
his weak figure. "Number Two!" he squeaked. "Fire, Medvedev!"

Bagration called to him, and Tushin, raising three fingers to his
cap with a bashful and awkward gesture not at all like a military
salute but like a priest's benediction, approached the general. Though
Tushin's guns had been intended to cannonade the valley, he was firing
incendiary balls at the village of Schon Grabern visible just
opposite, in front of which large masses of French were advancing.

No one had given Tushin orders where and at what to fire, but
after consulting his sergeant major, Zakharchenko, for whom he had
great respect, he had decided that it would be a good thing to set
fire to the village. "Very good!" said Bagration in reply to the
officer's report, and began deliberately to examine the whole
battlefield extended before him. The French had advanced nearest on
our right. Below the height on which the Kiev regiment was
stationed, in the hollow where the rivulet flowed, the soul-stirring
rolling and crackling of musketry was heard, and much farther to the
right beyond the dragoons, the officer of the suite pointed out to
Bagration a French column that was outflanking us. To the left the
horizon bounded by the adjacent wood. Prince Bagration ordered two
battalions from the center to be sent to reinforce the right flank.
The officer of the suite ventured to remark to the prince that if
these battalions went away, the guns would remain without support.
Prince Bagration turned to the officer and with his dull eyes looked
at him in silence. It seemed to Prince Andrew that the officer's
remark was just and that really no answer could be made to it. But
at that moment an adjutant galloped up with a message from the
commander of the regiment in the hollow and news that immense masses
of the French were coming down upon them and that his regiment was
in disorder and was retreating upon the Kiev grenadiers. Prince
Bagration bowed his head in sign of assent and approval. He rode off
at a walk to the right and sent an adjutant to the dragoons with
orders to attack the French. But this adjutant returned half an hour
later with the news that the commander of the dragoons had already
retreated beyond the dip in the ground, as a heavy fire had been
opened on him and he was losing men uselessly, and so had hastened
to throw some sharpshooters into the wood.

"Very good!" said Bagration.

As he was leaving the battery, firing was heard on the left also,
and as it was too far to the left flank for him to have time to go
there himself, Prince Bagration sent Zherkov to tell the general in
command (the one who had paraded his regiment before Kutuzov at
Braunau) that he must retreat as quickly as possible behind the hollow
in the rear, as the right flank would probably not be able to
withstand the enemy's attack very long. About Tushin and the battalion
that had been in support of his battery all was forgotten. Prince
Andrew listened attentively to Bagration's colloquies with the
commanding officers and the orders he gave them and, to his
surprise, found that no orders were really given, but that Prince
Bagration tried to make it appear that everything done by necessity,
by accident, or by the will of subordinate commanders was done, if not
by his direct command, at least in accord with his intentions.
Prince Andrew noticed, however, that though what happened was due to
chance and was independent of the commander's will, owing to the
tact Bagration showed, his presence was very valuable. Officers who
approached him with disturbed countenances became calm; soldiers and
officers greeted him gaily, grew more cheerful in his presence, and
were evidently anxious to display their courage before him.





CHAPTER XVIII


Prince Bagration, having reached the highest point of our right
flank, began riding downhill to where the roll of musketry was heard
but where on account of the smoke nothing could be seen. The nearer
they got to the hollow the less they could see but the more they
felt the nearness of the actual battlefield. They began to meet
wounded men. One with a bleeding head and no cap was being dragged
along by two soldiers who supported him under the arms. There was a
gurgle in his throat and he was spitting blood. A bullet had evidently
hit him in the throat or mouth. Another was walking sturdily by
himself but without his musket, groaning aloud and swinging his arm
which had just been hurt, while blood from it was streaming over his
greatcoat as from a bottle. He had that moment been wounded and his
face showed fear rather than suffering. Crossing a road they descended
a steep incline and saw several men lying on the ground; they also met
a crowd of soldiers some of whom were unwounded. The soldiers were
ascending the hill breathing heavily, and despite the general's
presence were talking loudly and gesticulating. In front of them
rows of gray cloaks were already visible through the smoke, and an
officer catching sight of Bagration rushed shouting after the crowd of
retreating soldiers, ordering them back. Bagration rode up to the
ranks along which shots crackled now here and now there, drowning
the sound of voices and the shouts of command. The whole air reeked
with smoke. The excited faces of the soldiers were blackened with
it. Some were using their ramrods, others putting powder on the
touchpans or taking charges from their pouches, while others were
firing, though who they were firing at could not be seen for the smoke
which there was no wind to carry away. A pleasant humming and
whistling of bullets were often heard. "What is this?" thought
Prince Andrew approaching the crowd of soldiers. "It can't be an
attack, for they are not moving; it can't be a square--for they are
not drawn up for that."

The commander of the regiment, a thin, feeble-looking old man with a
pleasant smile--his eyelids drooping more than half over his old eyes,
giving him a mild expression, rode up to Bagration and welcomed him as
a host welcomes an honored guest. He reported that his regiment had
been attacked by French cavalry and that, though the attack had been
repulsed, he had lost more than half his men. He said the attack had
been repulsed, employing this military term to describe what had
occurred to his regiment, but in reality he did not himself know
what had happened during that half-hour to the troops entrusted to
him, and could not say with certainty whether the attack had been
repulsed or his regiment had been broken up. All he knew was that at
the commencement of the action balls and shells began flying all
over his regiment and hitting men and that afterwards someone had
shouted "Cavalry!" and our men had begun firing. They were still
firing, not at the cavalry which had disappeared, but at French
infantry who had come into the hollow and were firing at our men.
Prince Bagration bowed his head as a sign that this was exactly what
he had desired and expected. Turning to his adjutant he ordered him to
bring down the two battalions of the Sixth Chasseurs whom they had
just passed. Prince Andrew was struck by the changed expression on
Prince Bagration's face at this moment. It expressed the
concentrated and happy resolution you see on the face of a man who
on a hot day takes a final run before plunging into the water. The
dull, sleepy expression was no longer there, nor the affectation of
profound thought. The round, steady, hawk's eyes looked before him
eagerly and rather disdainfully, not resting on anything although
his movements were still slow and measured.

The commander of the regiment turned to Prince Bagration, entreating
him to go back as it was too dangerous to remain where they were.
"Please, your excellency, for God's sake!" he kept saying, glancing
for support at an officer of the suite who turned away from him.
"There, you see!" and he drew attention to the bullets whistling,
singing, and hissing continually around them. He spoke in the tone
of entreaty and reproach that a carpenter uses to a gentleman who
has picked up an ax: "We are used to it, but you, sir, will blister
your hands." He spoke as if those bullets could not kill him, and
his half-closed eyes gave still more persuasiveness to his words.
The staff officer joined in the colonel's appeals, but Bagration did
not reply; he only gave an order to cease firing and re-form, so as to
give room for the two approaching battalions. While he was speaking,
the curtain of smoke that had concealed the hollow, driven by a rising
wind, began to move from right to left as if drawn by an invisible
hand, and the hill opposite, with the French moving about on it,
opened out before them. All eyes fastened involuntarily on this French
column advancing against them and winding down over the uneven ground.
One could already see the soldiers' shaggy caps, distinguish the
officers from the men, and see the standard flapping against its
staff.

"They march splendidly," remarked someone in Bagration's suite.

The head of the column had already descended into the hollow. The
clash would take place on this side of it...

The remains of our regiment which had been in action rapidly
formed up and moved to the right; from behind it, dispersing the
laggards, came two battalions of the Sixth Chasseurs in fine order.
Before they had reached Bagration, the weighty tread of the mass of
men marching in step could be heard. On their left flank, nearest to
Bagration, marched a company commander, a fine round-faced man, with a
stupid and happy expression--the same man who had rushed out of the
wattle shed. At that moment he was clearly thinking of nothing but how
dashing a fellow he would appear as he passed the commander.

With the self-satisfaction of a man on parade, he stepped lightly
with his muscular legs as if sailing along, stretching himself to
his full height without the smallest effort, his ease contrasting with
the heavy tread of the soldiers who were keeping step with him. He
carried close to his leg a narrow unsheathed sword (small, curved, and
not like a real weapon) and looked now at the superior officers and
now back at the men without losing step, his whole powerful body
turning flexibly. It was as if all the powers of his soul were
concentrated on passing the commander in the best possible manner, and
feeling that he was doing it well he was happy. "Left... left...
left..." he seemed to repeat to himself at each alternate step; and in
time to this, with stern but varied faces, the wall of soldiers
burdened with knapsacks and muskets marched in step, and each one of
these hundreds of soldiers seemed to be repeating to himself at each
alternate step, "Left... left... left..." A fat major skirted a
bush, puffing and falling out of step; a soldier who had fallen
behind, his face showing alarm at his defection, ran at a trot,
panting to catch up with his company. A cannon ball, cleaving the air,
flew over the heads of Bagration and his suite, and fell into the
column to the measure of "Left... left!" "Close up!" came the
company commander's voice in jaunty tones. The soldiers passed in a
semicircle round something where the ball had fallen, and an old
trooper on the flank, a noncommissioned officer who had stopped beside
the dead men, ran to catch up his line and, falling into step with a
hop, looked back angrily, and through the ominous silence and the
regular tramp of feet beating the ground in unison, one seemed to hear
left... left... left.

"Well done, lads!" said Prince Bagration.

"Glad to do our best, your ex'len-lency!" came a confused shout from
the ranks. A morose soldier marching on the left turned his eyes on
Bagration as he shouted, with an expression that seemed to say: "We
know that ourselves!" Another, without looking round, as though
fearing to relax, shouted with his mouth wide open and passed on.

The order was given to halt and down knapsacks.

Bagration rode round the ranks that had marched past him and
dismounted. He gave the reins to a Cossack, took off and handed over
his felt coat, stretched his legs, and set his cap straight. The
head of the French column, with its officers leading, appeared from
below the hill.

"Forward, with God!" said Bagration, in a resolute, sonorous
voice, turning for a moment to the front line, and slightly swinging
his arms, he went forward uneasily over the rough field with the
awkward gait of a cavalryman. Prince Andrew felt that an invisible
power was leading him forward, and experienced great happiness.

The French were already near. Prince Andrew, walking beside
Bagration, could clearly distinguish their bandoliers, red epaulets,
and even their faces. (He distinctly saw an old French officer who,
with gaitered legs and turned-out toes, climbed the hill with
difficulty.) Prince Bagration gave no further orders and silently
continued to walk on in front of the ranks. Suddenly one shot after
another rang out from the French, smoke appeared all along their
uneven ranks, and musket shots sounded. Several of our men fell, among
them the round-faced officer who had marched so gaily and
complacently. But at the moment the first report was heard,
Bagration looked round and shouted, "Hurrah!"

"Hurrah--ah!--ah!" rang a long-drawn shout from our ranks, and
passing Bagration and racing one another they rushed in an irregular
but joyous and eager crowd down the hill at their disordered foe.





CHAPTER XIX


The attack of the Sixth Chasseurs secured the retreat of our right
flank. In the center Tushin's forgotten battery, which had managed
to set fire to the Schon Grabern village, delayed the French
advance. The French were putting out the fire which the wind was
spreading, and thus gave us time to retreat. The retirement of the
center to the other side of the dip in the ground at the rear was
hurried and noisy, but the different companies did not get mixed.
But our left--which consisted of the Azov and Podolsk infantry and the
Pavlograd hussars--was simultaneously attacked and outflanked by
superior French forces under Lannes and was thrown into confusion.
Bagration had sent Zherkov to the general commanding that left flank
with orders to retreat immediately.

Zherkov, not removing his hand from his cap, turned his horse
about and galloped off. But no sooner had he left Bagration than his
courage failed him. He was seized by panic and could not go where it
was dangerous.

Having reached the left flank, instead of going to the front where
the firing was, he began to look for the general and his staff where
they could not possibly be, and so did not deliver the order.

The command of the left flank belonged by seniority to the commander
of the regiment Kutuzov had reviewed at Braunau and in which
Dolokhov was serving as a private. But the command of the extreme left
flank had been assigned to the commander of the Pavlograd regiment
in which Rostov was serving, and a misunderstanding arose. The two
commanders were much exasperated with one another and, long after
the action had begun on the right flank and the French were already
advancing, were engaged in discussion with the sole object of
offending one another. But the regiments, both cavalry and infantry,
were by no means ready for the impending action. From privates to
general they were not expecting a battle and were engaged in
peaceful occupations, the cavalry feeding the horses and the
infantry collecting wood.

"He higher iss dan I in rank," said the German colonel of the
hussars, flushing and addressing an adjutant who had ridden up, "so
let him do what he vill, but I cannot sacrifice my hussars...
Bugler, sount ze retreat!"

But haste was becoming imperative. Cannon and musketry, mingling
together, thundered on the right and in the center, while the
capotes of Lannes' sharpshooters were already seen crossing the
milldam and forming up within twice the range of a musket shot. The
general in command of the infantry went toward his horse with jerky
steps, and having mounted drew himself up very straight and tall and
rode to the Pavlograd commander. The commanders met with polite bows
but with secret malevolence in their hearts.

"Once again, Colonel," said the general, "I can't leave half my
men in the wood. I beg of you, I beg of you," he repeated, "to
occupy the position and prepare for an attack."

"I peg of you yourself not to mix in vot is not your business!"
suddenly replied the irate colonel. "If you vere in the cavalry..."

"I am not in the cavalry, Colonel, but I am a Russian general and if
you are not aware of the fact..."

"Quite avare, your excellency," suddenly shouted the colonel,
touching his horse and turning purple in the face. "Vill you be so
goot to come to ze front and see dat zis position iss no goot? I don't
vish to destroy my men for your pleasure!"

"You forget yourself, Colonel. I am not considering my own
pleasure and I won't allow it to be said!"

Taking the colonel's outburst as a challenge to his courage, the
general expanded his chest and rode, frowning, beside him to the front
line, as if their differences would be settled there amongst the
bullets. They reached the front, several bullets sped over them, and
they halted in silence. There was nothing fresh to be seen from the
line, for from where they had been before it had been evident that
it was impossible for cavalry to act among the bushes and broken
ground, as well as that the French were outflanking our left. The
general and colonel looked sternly and significantly at one another
like two fighting cocks preparing for battle, each vainly trying to
detect signs of cowardice in the other. Both passed the examination
successfully. As there was nothing to said, and neither wished to give
occasion for it to be alleged that he had been the first to leave
the range of fire, they would have remained there for a long time
testing each other's courage had it not been that just then they heard
the rattle of musketry and a muffled shout almost behind them in the
wood. The French had attacked the men collecting wood in the copse. It
was no longer possible for the hussars to retreat with the infantry.
They were cut off from the line of retreat on the left by the
French. However inconvenient the position, it was now necessary to
attack in order to cut away through for themselves.

The squadron in which Rostov was serving had scarcely time to
mount before it was halted facing the enemy. Again, as at the Enns
bridge, there was nothing between the squadron and the enemy, and
again that terrible dividing line of uncertainty and fear-
resembling the line separating the living from the dead--lay between
them. All were conscious of this unseen line, and the question whether
they would cross it or not, and how they would cross it,
agitated them all.

The colonel rode to the front, angrily gave some reply to
questions put to him by the officers, and, like a man desperately
insisting on having his own way, gave an order. No one said anything
definite, but the rumor of an attack spread through the squadron.
The command to form up rang out and the sabers whizzed as they were
drawn from their scabbards. Still no one moved. The troops of the left
flank, infantry and hussars alike, felt that the commander did not
himself know what to do, and this irresolution communicated itself
to the men.

"If only they would be quick!" thought Rostov, feeling that at
last the time had come to experience the joy of an attack of which
he had so often heard from his fellow hussars.

"Fo'ward, with God, lads!" rang out Denisov's voice. "At a twot
fo'ward!"

The horses' croups began to sway in the front line. Rook pulled at
the reins and started of his own accord.

Before him, on the right, Rostov saw the front lines of his
hussars and still farther ahead a dark line which he could not see
distinctly but took to be the enemy. Shots could be heard, but some
way off.

"Faster!" came the word of command, and Rostov felt Rook's flanks
drooping as he broke into a gallop.

Rostov anticipated his horse's movements and became more and more
elated. He had noticed a solitary tree ahead of him. This tree had
been in the middle of the line that had seemed so terrible--and now he
had crossed that line and not only was there nothing terrible, but
everything was becoming more and more happy and animated. "Oh, how I
will slash at him!" thought Rostov, gripping the hilt of his saber.

"Hur-a-a-a-ah!" came a roar of voices. "Let anyone come my way now,"
thought Rostov driving his spurs into Rook and letting him go at a
full gallop so that he outstripped the others. Ahead, the enemy was
already visible. Suddenly something like a birch broom seemed to sweep
over the squadron. Rostov raised his saber, ready to strike, but at
that instant the trooper Nikitenko, who was galloping ahead, shot away
from him, and Rostov felt as in a dream that he continued to be
carried forward with unnatural speed but yet stayed on the same
spot. From behind him Bondarchuk, an hussar he knew, jolted against
him and looked angrily at him. Bondarchuk's horse swerved and galloped
past.

"How is it I am not moving? I have fallen, I am killed!" Rostov
asked and answered at the same instant. He was alone in the middle
of a field. Instead of the moving horses and hussars' backs, he saw
nothing before him but the motionless earth and the stubble around
him. There was warm blood under his arm. "No, I am wounded and the
horse is killed." Rook tried to rise on his forelegs but fell back,
pinning his rider's leg. Blood was flowing from his head; he struggled
but could not rise. Rostov also tried to rise but fell back, his
sabretache having become entangled in the saddle. Where our men
were, and where the French, he did not know. There was no one near.

Having disentangled his leg, he rose. "Where, on which side, was now
the line that had so sharply divided the two armies?" he asked himself
and could not answer. "Can something bad have happened to me?" he
wondered as he got up: and at that moment he felt that something
superfluous was hanging on his benumbed left arm. The wrist felt as if
it were not his. He examined his hand carefully, vainly trying to find
blood on it. "Ah, here are people coming," he thought joyfully, seeing
some men running toward him. "They will help me!" In front came a
man wearing a strange shako and a blue cloak, swarthy, sunburned,
and with a hooked nose. Then came two more, and many more running
behind. One of them said something strange, not in Russian. In among
the hindmost of these men wearing similar shakos was a Russian hussar.
He was being held by the arms and his horse was being led behind him.

"It must be one of ours, a prisoner. Yes. Can it be that they will
take me too? Who are these men?" thought Rostov, scarcely believing
his eyes. "Can they be French?" He looked at the approaching
Frenchmen, and though but a moment before he had been galloping to get
at them and hack them to pieces, their proximity now seemed so awful
that he could not believe his eyes. "Who are they? Why are they
running? Can they be coming at me? And why? To kill me? Me whom
everyone is so fond of?" He remembered his mother's love for him,
and his family's, and his friends', and the enemy's intention to
kill him seemed impossible. "But perhaps they may do it!" For more
than ten seconds he stood not moving from the spot or realizing the
situation. The foremost Frenchman, the one with the hooked nose, was
already so close that the expression of his face could be seen. And
the excited, alien face of that man, his bayonet hanging down, holding
his breath, and running so lightly, frightened Rostov. He seized his
pistol and, instead of firing it, flung it at the Frenchman and ran
with all his might toward the bushes. He did not now run with the
feeling of doubt and conflict with which he had trodden the Enns
bridge, but with the feeling of a hare fleeing from the hounds. One
single sentiment, that of fear for his young and happy life, possessed
his whole being. Rapidly leaping the furrows, he fled across the field
with the impetuosity he used to show at catchplay, now and then
turning his good-natured, pale, young face to look back. A shudder
of terror went through him: "No, better not look," he thought, but
having reached the bushes he glanced round once more. The French had
fallen behind, and just as he looked round the first man changed his
run to a walk and, turning, shouted something loudly to a comrade
farther back. Rostov paused. "No, there's some mistake," thought he.
"They can't have wanted to kill me." But at the same time, his left
arm felt as heavy as if a seventy-pound weight were tied to it. He
could run no more. The Frenchman also stopped and took aim. Rostov
closed his eyes and stooped down. One bullet and then another whistled
past him. He mustered his last remaining strength, took hold of his
left hand with his right, and reached the bushes. Behind these were
some Russian sharpshooters.





CHAPTER XX


The infantry regiments that had been caught unawares in the
outskirts of the wood ran out of it, the different companies getting
mixed, and retreated as a disorderly crowd. One soldier, in his
fear, uttered the senseless cry, "Cut off!" that is so terrible in
battle, and that word infected the whole crowd with a feeling of
panic.

"Surrounded! Cut off? We're lost!" shouted the fugitives.

The moment he heard the firing and the cry from behind, the
general realized that something dreadful had happened to his regiment,
and the thought that he, an exemplary officer of many years' service
who had never been to blame, might be held responsible at headquarters
for negligence or inefficiency so staggered him that, forgetting the
recalcitrant cavalry colonel, his own dignity as a general, and
above all quite forgetting the danger and all regard for
self-preservation, he clutched the crupper of his saddle and, spurring
his horse, galloped to the regiment under a hail of bullets which fell
around, but fortunately missed him. His one desire was to know what
was happening and at any cost correct, or remedy, the mistake if he
had made one, so that he, an exemplary officer of twenty-two years'
service, who had never been censured, should not be held to blame.

Having galloped safely through the French, he reached a field behind
the copse across which our men, regardless of orders, were running and
descending the valley. That moment of moral hesitation which decides
the fate of battles had arrived. Would this disorderly crowd of
soldiers attend to the voice of their commander, or would they,
disregarding him, continue their flight? Despite his desperate
shouts that used to seem so terrible to the soldiers, despite his
furious purple countenance distorted out of all likeness to his former
self, and the flourishing of his saber, the soldiers all continued
to run, talking, firing into the air, and disobeying orders. The moral
hesitation which decided the fate of battles was evidently culminating
in a panic.

The general had a fit of coughing as a result of shouting and of the
powder smoke and stopped in despair. Everything seemed lost. But at
that moment the French who were attacking, suddenly and without any
apparent reason, ran back and disappeared from the outskirts, and
Russian sharpshooters showed themselves in the copse. It was
Timokhin's company, which alone had maintained its order in the wood
and, having lain in ambush in a ditch, now attacked the French
unexpectedly. Timokhin, armed only with a sword, had rushed at the
enemy with such a desperate cry and such mad, drunken determination
that, taken by surprise, the French had thrown down their muskets
and run. Dolokhov, running beside Timokhin, killed a Frenchman at
close quarters and was the first to seize the surrendering French
officer by his collar. Our fugitives returned, the battalions
re-formed, and the French who had nearly cut our left flank in half
were for the moment repulsed. Our reserve units were able to join
up, and the fight was at an end. The regimental commander and Major
Ekonomov had stopped beside a bridge, letting the retreating companies
pass by them, when a soldier came up and took hold of the
commander's stirrup, almost leaning against him. The man was wearing a
bluish coat of broadcloth, he had no knapsack or cap, his head was
bandaged, and over his shoulder a French munition pouch was slung.
He had an officer's sword in his hand. The soldier was pale, his
blue eyes looked impudently into the commander's face, and his lips
were smiling. Though the commander was occupied in giving instructions
to Major Ekonomov, he could not help taking notice of the soldier.

"Your excellency, here are two trophies," said Dolokhov, pointing to
the French sword and pouch. "I have taken an officer prisoner. I
stopped the company." Dolokhov breathed heavily from weariness and
spoke in abrupt sentences. "The whole company can bear witness. I
beg you will remember this, your excellency!"

"All right, all right," replied the commander, and turned to Major
Ekonomov.

But Dolokhov did not go away; he untied the handkerchief around
his head, pulled it off, and showed the blood congealed on his hair.

"A bayonet wound. I remained at the front. Remember, your
excellency!"


Tushin's battery had been forgotten and only at the very end of
the action did Prince Bagration, still hearing the cannonade in the
center, send his orderly staff officer, and later Prince Andrew
also, to order the battery to retire as quickly as possible. When
the supports attached to Tushin's battery had been moved away in the
middle of the action by someone's order, the battery had continued
firing and was only not captured by the French because the enemy could
not surmise that anyone could have the effrontery to continue firing
from four quite undefended guns. On the contrary, the energetic action
of that battery led the French to suppose that here--in the center-
the main Russian forces were concentrated. Twice they had attempted to
attack this point, but on each occasion had been driven back by
grapeshot from the four isolated guns on the hillock.

Soon after Prince Bagration had left him, Tushin had succeeded in
setting fire to Schon Grabern.

"Look at them scurrying! It's burning! Just see the smoke! Fine!
Grand! Look at the smoke, the smoke!" exclaimed the artillerymen,
brightening up.

All the guns, without waiting for orders, were being fired in the
direction of the conflagration. As if urging each other on, the
soldiers cried at each shot: "Fine! That's good! Look at it... Grand!"
The fire, fanned by the breeze, was rapidly spreading. The French
columns that had advanced beyond the village went back; but as
though in revenge for this failure, the enemy placed ten guns to the
right of the village and began firing them at Tushin's battery.

In their childlike glee, aroused by the fire and their luck in
successfully cannonading the French, our artillerymen only noticed
this battery when two balls, and then four more, fell among our
guns, one knocking over two horses and another tearing off a
munition-wagon driver's leg. Their spirits once roused were,
however, not diminished, but only changed character. The horses were
replaced by others from a reserve gun carriage, the wounded were
carried away, and the four guns were turned against the ten-gun
battery. Tushin's companion officer had been killed at the beginning
of the engagement and within an hour seventeen of the forty men of the
guns' crews had been disabled, but the artillerymen were still as
merry and lively as ever. Twice they noticed the French appearing
below them, and then they fired grapeshot at them.

Little Tushin, moving feebly and awkwardly, kept telling his orderly
to "refill my pipe for that one!" and then, scattering sparks from it,
ran forward shading his eyes with his small hand to look at the
French.

"Smack at 'em, lads!" he kept saying, seizing the guns by the wheels
and working the screws himself.

Amid the smoke, deafened by the incessant reports which always
made him jump, Tushin not taking his pipe from his mouth ran from
gun to gun, now aiming, now counting the charges, now giving orders
about replacing dead or wounded horses and harnessing fresh ones,
and shouting in his feeble voice, so high pitched and irresolute.
His face grew more and more animated. Only when a man was killed or
wounded did he frown and turn away from the sight, shouting angrily at
the men who, as is always the case, hesitated about lifting the
injured or dead. The soldiers, for the most part handsome fellows and,
as is always the case in an artillery company, a head and shoulders
taller and twice as broad as their officer--all looked at their
commander like children in an embarrassing situation, and the
expression on his face was invariably reflected on theirs.

Owing to the terrible uproar and the necessity for concentration and
activity, Tushin did not experience the slightest unpleasant sense
of fear, and the thought that he might be killed or badly wounded
never occurred to him. On the contrary, he became more and more
elated. It seemed to him that it was a very long time ago, almost a
day, since he had first seen the enemy and fired the first shot, and
that the corner of the field he stood on was well-known and familiar
ground. Though he thought of everything, considered everything, and
did everything the best of officers could do in his position, he was
in a state akin to feverish delirium or drunkenness.

From the deafening sounds of his own guns around him, the whistle
and thud of the enemy's cannon balls, from the flushed and
perspiring faces of the crew bustling round the guns, from the sight
of the blood of men and horses, from the little puffs of smoke on
the enemy's side (always followed by a ball flying past and striking
the earth, a man, a gun, a horse), from the sight of all these
things a fantastic world of his own had taken possession of his
brain and at that moment afforded him pleasure. The enemy's guns
were in his fancy not guns but pipes from which occasional puffs
were blown by an invisible smoker.

"There... he's puffing again," muttered Tushin to himself, as a
small cloud rose from the hill and was borne in a streak to the left
by the wind.

"Now look out for the ball... we'll throw it back."

"What do you want, your honor?" asked an artilleryman, standing
close by, who heard him muttering.

"Nothing... only a shell..." he answered.

"Come along, our Matvevna!" he said to himself. "Matvevna"* was
the name his fancy gave to the farthest gun of the battery, which
was large and of an old pattern. The French swarming round their
guns seemed to him like ants. In that world, the handsome drunkard
Number One of the second gun's crew was "uncle"; Tushin looked at
him more often than at anyone else and took delight in his every
movement. The sound of musketry at the foot of the hill, now
diminishing, now increasing, seemed like someone's breathing. He
listened intently to the ebb and flow of these sounds.


*Daughter of Matthew.


"Ah! Breathing again, breathing!" he muttered to himself.

He imagined himself as an enormously tall, powerful man who was
throwing cannon balls at the French with both hands.

"Now then, Matvevna, dear old lady, don't let me down!" he was
saying as he moved from the gun, when a strange, unfamiliar voice
called above his head: "Captain Tushin! Captain!"

Tushin turned round in dismay. It was the staff officer who had
turned him out of the booth at Grunth. He was shouting in a gasping
voice:

"Are you mad? You have twice been ordered to retreat, and you..."

"Why are they down on me?" thought Tushin, looking in alarm at his
superior.

"I... don't..." he muttered, holding up two fingers to his cap.
"I..."

But the staff officer did not finish what he wanted to say. A cannon
ball, flying close to him, caused him to duck and bend over his horse.
He paused, and just as he was about to say something more, another
ball stopped him. He turned his horse and galloped off.

"Retire! All to retire!" he shouted from a distance.

The soldiers laughed. A moment later, an adjutant arrived with the
same order.

It was Prince Andrew. The first thing he saw on riding up to the
space where Tushin's guns were stationed was an unharnessed horse with
a broken leg, that lay screaming piteously beside the harnessed
horses. Blood was gushing from its leg as from a spring. Among the
limbers lay several dead men. One ball after another passed over as he
approached and he felt a nervous shudder run down his spine. But the
mere thought of being afraid roused him again. "I cannot be afraid,"
thought he, and dismounted slowly among the guns. He delivered the
order and did not leave the battery. He decided to have the guns
removed from their positions and withdrawn in his presence. Together
with Tushin, stepping across the bodies and under a terrible fire from
the French, he attended to the removal of the guns.

"A staff officer was here a minute ago, but skipped off," said an
artilleryman to Prince Andrew. "Not like your honor!"

Prince Andrew said nothing to Tushin. They were both so busy as to
seem not to notice one another. When having limbered up the only two
cannon that remained uninjured out of the four, they began moving down
the hill (one shattered gun and one unicorn were left behind),
Prince Andrew rode up to Tushin.

"Well, till we meet again..." he said, holding out his hand to
Tushin.

"Good-by, my dear fellow," said Tushin. "Dear soul! Good-by, my dear
fellow!" and for some unknown reason tears suddenly filled his eyes.





CHAPTER XXI


The wind had fallen and black clouds, merging with the powder smoke,
hung low over the field of battle on the horizon. It was growing
dark and the glow of two conflagrations was the more conspicuous.
The cannonade was dying down, but the rattle of musketry behind and on
the right sounded oftener and nearer. As soon as Tushin with his guns,
continually driving round or coming upon wounded men, was out of range
of fire and had descended into the dip, he was met by some of the
staff, among them the staff officer and Zherkov, who had been twice
sent to Tushin's battery but had never reached it. Interrupting one
another, they all gave, and transmitted, orders as to how to
proceed, reprimanding and reproaching him. Tushin gave no orders, and,
silently--fearing to speak because at every word he felt ready to weep
without knowing why--rode behind on his artillery nag. Though the
orders were to abandon the wounded, many of them dragged themselves
after troops and begged for seats on the gun carriages. The jaunty
infantry officer who just before the battle had rushed out of Tushin's
wattle shed was laid, with a bullet in his stomach, on "Matvevna's"
carriage. At the foot of the hill, a pale hussar cadet, supporting one
hand with the other, came up to Tushin and asked for a seat.

"Captain, for God's sake! I've hurt my arm," he said timidly. "For
God's sake... I can't walk. For God's sake!"

It was plain that this cadet had already repeatedly asked for a lift
and been refused. He asked in a hesitating, piteous voice.

"Tell them to give me a seat, for God's sake!"

"Give him a seat," said Tushin. "Lay a cloak for him to sit on,
lad," he said, addressing his favorite soldier. "And where is the
wounded officer?"

"He has been set down. He died," replied someone.

"Help him up. Sit down, dear fellow, sit down! Spread out the cloak,
Antonov."

The cadet was Rostov. With one hand he supported the other; he was
pale and his jaw trembled, shivering feverishly. He was placed on
"Matvevna," the gun from which they had removed the dead officer.
The cloak they spread under him was wet with blood which stained his
breeches and arm.

"What, are you wounded, my lad?" said Tushin, approaching the gun on
which Rostov sat.

"No, it's a sprain."

"Then what is this blood on the gun carriage?" inquired Tushin.

"It was the officer, your honor, stained it," answered the
artilleryman, wiping away the blood with his coat sleeve, as if
apologizing for the state of his gun.

It was all that they could do to get the guns up the rise aided by
the infantry, and having reached the village of Gruntersdorf they
halted. It had grown so dark that one could not distinguish the
uniforms ten paces off, and the firing had begun to subside. Suddenly,
near by on the right, shouting and firing were again heard. Flashes of
shot gleamed in the darkness. This was the last French attack and
was met by soldiers who had sheltered in the village houses. They
all rushed out of the village again, but Tushin's guns could not move,
and the artillerymen, Tushin, and the cadet exchanged silent glances
as they awaited their fate. The firing died down and soldiers, talking
eagerly, streamed out of a side street.

"Not hurt, Petrov?" asked one.

"We've given it 'em hot, mate! They won't make another push now,"
said another.

"You couldn't see a thing. How they shot at their own fellows!
Nothing could be seen. Pitch-dark, brother! Isn't there something to
drink?"

The French had been repulsed for the last time. And again and
again in the complete darkness Tushin's guns moved forward, surrounded
by the humming infantry as by a frame.

In the darkness, it seemed as though a gloomy unseen river was
flowing always in one direction, humming with whispers and talk and
the sound of hoofs and wheels. Amid the general rumble, the groans and
voices of the wounded were more distinctly heard than any other
sound in the darkness of the night. The gloom that enveloped the
army was filled with their groans, which seemed to melt into one
with the darkness of the night. After a while the moving mass became
agitated, someone rode past on a white horse followed by his suite,
and said something in passing: "What did he say? Where to, now?
Halt, is it? Did he thank us?" came eager questions from all sides.
The whole moving mass began pressing closer together and a report
spread that they were ordered to halt: evidently those in front had
halted. All remained where they were in the middle of the muddy road.

Fires were lighted and the talk became more audible. Captain Tushin,
having given orders to his company, sent a soldier to find a
dressing station or a doctor for the cadet, and sat down by a
bonfire the soldiers had kindled on the road. Rostov, too, dragged
himself to the fire. From pain, cold, and damp, a feverish shivering
shook his whole body. Drowsiness was irresistibly mastering him, but
he kept awake by an excruciating pain in his arm, for which
he could find no satisfactory position. He kept closing his eyes and
then again looking at the fire, which seemed to him dazzlingly red,
and at the feeble, round-shouldered figure of Tushin who was sitting
cross-legged like a Turk beside him. Tushin's large, kind, intelligent
eyes were fixed with sympathy and commiseration on Rostov, who saw
that Tushin with his whole heart wished to help him but could not.

From all sides were heard the footsteps and talk of the infantry,
who were walking, driving past, and settling down all around. The
sound of voices, the tramping feet, the horses' hoofs moving in mud,
the crackling of wood fires near and afar, merged into one tremulous
rumble.

It was no longer, as before, a dark, unseen river flowing through
the gloom, but a dark sea swelling and gradually subsiding after a
storm. Rostov looked at and listened listlessly to what passed
before and around him. An infantryman came to the fire, squatted on
his heels, held his hands to the blaze, and turned away his face.

"You don't mind your honor?" he asked Tushin. "I've lost my company,
your honor. I don't know where... such bad luck!"

With the soldier, an infantry officer with a bandaged cheek came
up to the bonfire, and addressing Tushin asked him to have the guns
moved a trifle to let a wagon go past. After he had gone, two soldiers
rushed to the campfire. They were quarreling and fighting desperately,
each trying to snatch from the other a boot they were both holding
on to.

"You picked it up?... I dare say! You're very smart!" one of them
shouted hoarsely.

Then a thin, pale soldier, his neck bandaged with a bloodstained leg
band, came up and in angry tones asked the artillerymen for water.

"Must one die like a dog?" said he.

Tushin told them to give the man some water. Then a cheerful soldier
ran up, begging a little fire for the infantry.

"A nice little hot torch for the infantry! Good luck to you,
fellow countrymen. Thanks for the fire--we'll return it with
interest," said he, carrying away into the darkness a glowing stick.

Next came four soldiers, carrying something heavy on a cloak, and
passed by the fire. One of them stumbled.

"Who the devil has put the logs on the road?" snarled he.

"He's dead--why carry him?" said another.

"Shut up!"

And they disappeared into the darkness with with their load.

"Still aching?" Tushin asked Rostov in a whisper.

"Yes."

"Your honor, you're wanted by the general. He is in the hut here,"
said a gunner, coming up to Tushin.

"Coming, friend."

Tushin rose and, buttoning his greatcoat and pulling it straight,
walked away from the fire.

Not far from the artillery campfire, in a hut that had been prepared
for him, Prince Bagration sat at dinner, talking with some
commanding officers who had gathered at his quarters. The little old
man with the half-closed eyes was there greedily gnawing a mutton
bone, and the general who had served blamelessly for twenty-two years,
flushed by a glass of vodka and the dinner; and the staff officer with
the signet ring, and Zherkov, uneasily glancing at them all, and
Prince Andrew, pale, with compressed lips and feverishly glittering
eyes.

In a corner of the hut stood a standard captured from the French,
and the accountant with the naive face was feeling its texture,
shaking his head in perplexity--perhaps because the banner really
interested him, perhaps because it was hard for him, hungry as he was,
to look on at a dinner where there was no place for him. In the next
hut there was a French colonel who had been taken prisoner by our
dragoons. Our officers were flocking in to look at him. Prince
Bagration was thanking the individual commanders and inquiring into
details of the action and our losses. The general whose regiment had
been inspected at Braunau was informing the prince that as soon as the
action began he had withdrawn from the wood, mustered the men who were
woodcutting, and, allowing the French to pass him, had made a
bayonet charge with two battalions and had broken up the French
troops.

"When I saw, your excellency, that their first battalion was
disorganized, I stopped in the road and thought: 'I'll let them come
on and will meet them with the fire of the whole battalion'--and
that's what I did."

The general had so wished to do this and was so sorry he had not
managed to do it that it seemed to him as if it had really happened.
Perhaps it might really have been so? Could one possibly make out amid
all that confusion what did or did not happen?

"By the way, your excellency, I should inform you," he continued-
remembering Dolokhov's conversation with Kutuzov and his last
interview with the gentleman-ranker--"that Private Dolokhov, who was
reduced to the ranks, took a French officer prisoner in my presence
and particularly distinguished himself."

"I saw the Pavlograd hussars attack there, your excellency,"
chimed in Zherkov, looking uneasily around. He had not seen the
hussars all that day, but had heard about them from an infantry
officer. "They broke up two squares, your excellency."

Several of those present smiled at Zherkov's words, expecting one of
his usual jokes, but noticing that what he was saying redounded to the
glory of our arms and of the day's work, they assumed a serious
expression, though many of them knew that what he was saying was a lie
devoid of any foundation. Prince Bagration turned to the old colonel:

"Gentlemen, I thank you all; all arms have behaved heroically:
infantry, cavalry, and artillery. How was it that two guns were
abandoned in the center?" he inquired, searching with his eyes for
someone. (Prince Bagration did not ask about the guns on the left
flank; he knew that all the guns there had been abandoned at the
very beginning of the action.) "I think I sent you?" he added, turning
to the staff officer on duty.

"One was damaged," answered the staff officer, "and the other I
can't understand. I was there all the time giving orders and had
only just left.... It is true that it was hot there," he added,
modestly.

Someone mentioned that Captain Tushin was bivouacking close to the
village and had already been sent for.

"Oh, but you were there?" said Prince Bagration, addressing Prince
Andrew.

"Of course, we only just missed one another," said the staff
officer, with a smile to Bolkonski.

"I had not the pleasure of seeing you," said Prince Andrew, coldly
and abruptly.

All were silent. Tushin appeared at the threshold and made his way
timidly from behind the backs of the generals. As he stepped past
the generals in the crowded hut, feeling embarrassed as he always
was by the sight of his superiors, he did not notice the staff of
the banner and stumbled over it. Several of those present laughed.

"How was it a gun was abandoned?" asked Bagration, frowning, not
so much at the captain as at those who were laughing, among whom
Zherkov laughed loudest.

Only now, when he was confronted by the stern authorities, did his
guilt and the disgrace of having lost two guns and yet remaining alive
present themselves to Tushin in all their horror. He had been so
excited that he had not thought about it until that moment. The
officers' laughter confused him still more. He stood before
Bagration with his lower jaw trembling and was hardly able to
mutter: "I don't know... your excellency... I had no men... your
excellency."

"You might have taken some from the covering troops."

Tushin did not say that there were no covering troops, though that
was perfectly true. He was afraid of getting some other officer into
trouble, and silently fixed his eyes on Bagration as a schoolboy who
has blundered looks at an examiner.

The silence lasted some time. Prince Bagration, apparently not
wishing to be severe, found nothing to say; the others did not venture
to intervene. Prince Andrew looked at Tushin from under his brows
and his fingers twitched nervously.

"Your excellency!" Prince Andrew broke the silence with his abrupt
voice," you were pleased to send me to Captain Tushin's battery. I
went there and found two thirds of the men and horses knocked out, two
guns smashed, and no supports at all."

Prince Bagration and Tushin looked with equal intentness at
Bolkonski, who spoke with suppressed agitation.

"And, if your excellency will allow me to express my opinion," he
continued, "we owe today's success chiefly to the action of that
battery and the heroic endurance of Captain Tushin and his company,"
and without awaiting a reply, Prince Andrew rose and left the table.

Prince Bagration looked at Tushin, evidently reluctant to show
distrust in Bolkonski's emphatic opinion yet not feeling able fully to
credit it, bent his head, and told Tushin that he could go. Prince
Andrew went out with him.

"Thank you; you saved me, my dear fellow!" said Tushin.

Prince Andrew gave him a look, but said nothing and went away. He
felt sad and depressed. It was all so strange, so unlike what he had
hoped.


"Who are they? Why are they here? What do they want? And when will
all this end?" thought Rostov, looking at the changing shadows
before him. The pain in his arm became more and more intense.
Irresistible drowsiness overpowered him, red rings danced before his
eyes, and the impression of those voices and faces and a sense of
loneliness merged with the physical pain. It was they, these soldiers-
wounded and unwounded--it was they who were crushing, weighing down,
and twisting the sinews and scorching the flesh of his sprained arm
and shoulder. To rid himself of them he closed his eyes.

For a moment he dozed, but in that short interval innumerable things
appeared to him in a dream: his mother and her large white hand,
Sonya's thin little shoulders, Natasha's eyes and laughter, Denisov
with his voice and mustache, and Telyanin and all that affair with
Telyanin and Bogdanich. That affair was the same thing as this soldier
with the harsh voice, and it was that affair and this soldier that
were so agonizingly, incessantly pulling and pressing his arm and
always dragging it in one direction. He tried to get away from them,
but they would not for an instant let his shoulder move a hair's
breadth. It would not ache--it would be well--if only they did not
pull it, but it was impossible to get rid of them.

He opened his eyes and looked up. The black canopy of night hung
less than a yard above the glow of the charcoal. Flakes of falling
snow were fluttering in that light. Tushin had not returned, the
doctor had not come. He was alone now, except for a soldier who was
sitting naked at the other side of the fire, warming his thin yellow
body.

"Nobody wants me!" thought Rostov. "There is no one to help me or
pity me. Yet I was once at home, strong, happy, and loved." He
sighed and, doing so, groaned involuntarily.

"Eh, is anything hurting you?" asked the soldier, shaking his
shirt out over the fire, and not waiting for an answer he gave a grunt
and added: "What a lot of men have been crippled today--frightful!"

Rostov did not listen to the soldier. He looked at the snowflakes
fluttering above the fire and remembered a Russian winter at his warm,
bright home, his fluffy fur coat, his quickly gliding sleigh, his
healthy body, and all the affection and care of his family. "And why
did I come here?" he wondered.

Next day the French army did not renew their attack, and the remnant
of Bagration's detachment was reunited to Kutuzov's army.




BOOK THREE: 1805





CHAPTER I


Prince Vasili was not a man who deliberately thought out his
plans. Still less did he think of injuring anyone for his own
advantage. He was merely a man of the world who had got on and to whom
getting on had become a habit. Schemes and devices for which he
never rightly accounted to himself, but which formed the whole
interest of his life, were constantly shaping themselves in his
mind, arising from the circumstances and persons he met. Of these
plans he had not merely one or two in his head but dozens, some only
beginning to form themselves, some approaching achievement, and some
in course of disintegration. He did not, for instance, say to himself:
"This man now has influence, I must gain his confidence and friendship
and through him obtain a special grant." Nor did he say to himself:
"Pierre is a rich man, I must entice him to marry my daughter and lend
me the forty thousand rubles I need." But when he came across
a man of position his instinct immediately told him that this
man could be useful, and without any premeditation Prince Vasili
took the first opportunity to gain his confidence, flatter him, become
intimate with him, and finally make his request.

He had Pierre at hand in Moscow and procured for him an
appointment as Gentleman of the Bedchamber, which at that time
conferred the status of Councilor of State, and insisted on the
young man accompanying him to Petersburg and staying at his house.
With apparent absent-mindedness, yet with unhesitating assurance
that he was doing the right thing, Prince Vasili did everything to get
Pierre to marry his daughter. Had he thought out his plans
beforehand he could not have been so natural and shown such unaffected
familiarity in intercourse with everybody both above and below him
in social standing. Something always drew him toward those richer
and more powerful than himself and he had rare skill in seizing the
most opportune moment for making use of people.

Pierre, on unexpectedly becoming Count Bezukhov and a rich man, felt
himself after his recent loneliness and freedom from cares so beset
and preoccupied that only in bed was he able to be by himself. He
had to sign papers, to present himself at government offices, the
purpose of which was not clear to him, to question his chief
steward, to visit his estate near Moscow, and to receive many people
who formerly did not even wish to know of his existence but would
now have been offended and grieved had he chosen not to see them.
These different people--businessmen, relations, and acquaintances
alike--were all disposed to treat the young heir in the most
friendly and flattering manner: they were all evidently firmly
convinced of Pierre's noble qualities. He was always hearing such
words as: "With your remarkable kindness," or, "With your excellent
heart," "You are yourself so honorable Count," or, "Were he as
clever as you," and so on, till he began sincerely to believe in his
own exceptional kindness and extraordinary intelligence, the more so
as in the depth of his heart it had always seemed to him that he
really was very kind and intelligent. Even people who had formerly
been spiteful toward him and evidently unfriendly now became gentle
and affectionate. The angry eldest princess, with the long waist and
hair plastered down like a doll's, had come into Pierre's room after
the funeral. With drooping eyes and frequent blushes she told him
she was very sorry about their past misunderstandings and did not
now feel she had a right to ask him for anything, except only for
permission, after the blow she had received, to remain for a few weeks
longer in the house she so loved and where she had sacrificed so much.
She could not refrain from weeping at these words. Touched that this
statuesque princess could so change, Pierre took her hand and begged
her forgiveness, without knowing what for. From that day the eldest
princess quite changed toward Pierre and began knitting a striped
scarf for him.

"Do this for my sake, mon cher; after all, she had to put up with
a great deal from the deceased," said Prince Vasili to him, handing
him a deed to sign for the princess' benefit.

Prince Vasili had come to the conclusion that it was necessary to
throw this bone--a bill for thirty thousand rubles--to the poor
princess that it might not occur to her to speak of his share in the
affair of the inlaid portfolio. Pierre signed the deed and after
that the princess grew still kinder. The younger sisters also became
affectionate to him, especially the youngest, the pretty one with
the mole, who often made him feel confused by her smiles and her own
confusion when meeting him.

It seemed so natural to Pierre that everyone should like him, and it
would have seemed so unnatural had anyone disliked him, that he
could not but believe in the sincerity of those around him. Besides,
he had no time to ask himself whether these people were sincere or
not. He was always busy and always felt in a state of mild and
cheerful intoxication. He felt as though he were the center of some
important and general movement; that something was constantly expected
of him, that if he did not do it he would grieve and disappoint many
people, but if he did this and that, all would be well; and he did
what was demanded of him, but still that happy result always
remained in the future.

More than anyone else, Prince Vasili took possession of Pierre's
affairs and of Pierre himself in those early days. From the death of
Count Bezukhov he did not let go his hold of the lad. He had the air
of a man oppressed by business, weary and suffering, who yet would
not, for pity's sake, leave this helpless youth who, after all, was
the son of his old friend and the possessor of such enormous wealth,
to the caprice of fate and the designs of rogues. During the few
days he spent in Moscow after the death of Count Bezukhov, he would
call Pierre, or go to him himself, and tell him what ought to be
done in a tone of weariness and assurance, as if he were adding
every time: "You know I am overwhelmed with business and it is
purely out of charity that I trouble myself about you, and you also
know quite well that what I propose is the only thing possible."

"Well, my dear fellow, tomorrow we are off at last," said Prince
Vasili one day, closing his eyes and fingering Pierre's elbow,
speaking as if he were saying something which had long since been
agreed upon and could not now be altered. "We start tomorrow and I'm
giving you a place in my carriage. I am very glad. All our important
business here is now settled, and I ought to have been off long ago.
Here is something I have received from the chancellor. I asked him for
you, and you have been entered in the diplomatic corps and made a
Gentleman of the Bedchamber. The diplomatic career now lies open
before you."

Notwithstanding the tone of wearied assurance with which these words
were pronounced, Pierre, who had so long been considering his
career, wished to make some suggestion. But Prince Vasili
interrupted him in the special deep cooing tone, precluding the
possibility of interrupting his speech, which he used in extreme cases
when special persuasion was needed.

"Mais, mon cher, I did this for my own sake, to satisfy my
conscience, and there is nothing to thank me for. No one has ever
complained yet of being too much loved; and besides, you are free, you
could throw it up tomorrow. But you will see everything for yourself
when you get to Petersburg. It is high time for you to get away from
these terrible recollections." Prince Vasili sighed. "Yes, yes, my
boy. And my valet can go in your carriage. Ah! I was nearly
forgetting," he added. "You know, mon cher, your father and I had some
accounts to settle, so I have received what was due from the Ryazan
estate and will keep it; you won't require it. We'll go into the
accounts later."

By "what was due from the Ryazan estate" Prince Vasili meant several
thousand rubles quitrent received from Pierre's peasants, which the
prince had retained for himself.

In Petersburg, as in Moscow, Pierre found the same atmosphere of
gentleness and affection. He could not refuse the post, or rather
the rank (for he did nothing), that Prince Vasili had procured for
him, and acquaintances, invitations, and social occupations were so
numerous that, even more than in Moscow, he felt a sense of
bewilderment, bustle, and continual expectation of some good, always
in front of him but never attained.

Of his former bachelor acquaintances many were no longer in
Petersburg. The Guards had gone to the front; Dolokhov had been
reduced to the ranks; Anatole was in the army somewhere in the
provinces; Prince Andrew was abroad; so Pierre had not the opportunity
to spend his nights as he used to like to spend them, or to open his
mind by intimate talks with a friend older than himself and whom he
respected. His whole time was taken up with dinners and balls and
was spent chiefly at Prince Vasili's house in the company of the stout
princess, his wife, and his beautiful daughter Helene.

Like the others, Anna Pavlovna Scherer showed Pierre the change of
attitude toward him that had taken place in society.

Formerly in Anna Pavlovna's presence, Pierre had always felt that
what he was saying was out of place, tactless and unsuitable, that
remarks which seemed to him clever while they formed in his mind
became foolish as soon as he uttered them, while on the contrary
Hippolyte's stupidest remarks came out clever and apt. Now
everything Pierre said was charmant. Even if Anna Pavlovna did not say
so, he could see that she wished to and only refrained out of regard
for his modesty.

In the beginning of the winter of 1805-6 Pierre received one of Anna
Pavlovna's usual pink notes with an invitation to which was added:
"You will find the beautiful Helene here, whom it is always delightful
to see."

When he read that sentence, Pierre felt for the first time that some
link which other people recognized had grown up between himself and
Helene, and that thought both alarmed him, as if some obligation
were being imposed on him which he could not fulfill, and pleased
him as an entertaining supposition.

Anna Pavlovna's "At Home" was like the former one, only the
novelty she offered her guests this time was not Mortemart, but a
diplomatist fresh from Berlin with the very latest details of the
Emperor Alexander's visit to Potsdam, and of how the two august
friends had pledged themselves in an indissoluble alliance to uphold
the cause of justice against the enemy of the human race. Anna
Pavlovna received Pierre with a shade of melancholy, evidently
relating to the young man's recent loss by the death of Count Bezukhov
(everyone constantly considered it a duty to assure Pierre that he was
greatly afflicted by the death of the father he had hardly known), and
her melancholy was just like the august melancholy she showed at the
mention of her most august Majesty the Empress Marya Fedorovna. Pierre
felt flattered by this. Anna Pavlovna arranged the different groups in
her drawing room with her habitual skill. The large group, in which
were Prince Vasili and the generals, had the benefit of the
diplomat. Another group was at the tea table. Pierre wished to join
the former, but Anna Pavlovna--who was in the excited condition of a
commander on a battlefield to whom thousands of new and brilliant
ideas occur which there is hardly time to put in action--seeing
Pierre, touched his sleeve with her finger, saying:

"Wait a bit, I have something in view for you this evening." (She
glanced at Helene and smiled at her.) "My dear Helene, be charitable
to my poor aunt who adores you. Go and keep her company for ten
minutes. And that it will not be too dull, here is the dear count
who will not refuse to accompany you."

The beauty went to the aunt, but Anna Pavlovna detained Pierre,
looking as if she had to give some final necessary instructions.

"Isn't she exquisite?" she said to Pierre, pointing to the stately
beauty as she glided away. "And how she carries herself! For so
young a girl, such tact, such masterly perfection of manner! It
comes from her heart. Happy the man who wins her! With her the least
worldly of men would occupy a most brilliant position in society.
Don't you think so? I only wanted to know your opinion," and Anna
Pavlovna let Pierre go.

Pierre, in reply, sincerely agreed with her as to Helene's
perfection of manner. If he ever thought of Helene, it was just of her
beauty and her remarkable skill in appearing silently dignified in
society.

The old aunt received the two young people in her corner, but seemed
desirous of hiding her adoration for Helene and inclined rather to
show her fear of Anna Pavlovna. She looked at her niece, as if
inquiring what she was to do with these people. On leaving them,
Anna Pavlovna again touched Pierre's sleeve, saying: "I hope you won't
say that it is dull in my house again," and she glanced at Helene.

Helene smiled, with a look implying that she did not admit the
possibility of anyone seeing her without being enchanted. The aunt
coughed, swallowed, and said in French that she was very pleased to
see Helene, then she turned to Pierre with the same words of welcome
and the same look. In the middle of a dull and halting conversation,
Helene turned to Pierre with the beautiful bright smile that she
gave to everyone. Pierre was so used to that smile, and it had so
little meaning for him, that he paid no attention to it. The aunt
was just speaking of a collection of snuffboxes that had belonged to
Pierre's father, Count Bezukhov, and showed them her own box. Princess
Helene asked to see the portrait of the aunt's husband on the box lid.

"That is probably the work of Vinesse," said Pierre, mentioning a
celebrated miniaturist, and he leaned over the table to take the
snuffbox while trying to hear what was being said at the other table.

He half rose, meaning to go round, but the aunt handed him the
snuffbox, passing it across Helene's back. Helene stooped forward to
make room, and looked round with a smile. She was, as always at
evening parties, wearing a dress such as was then fashionable, cut
very low at front and back. Her bust, which had always seemed like
marble to Pierre, was so close to him that his shortsighted eyes could
not but perceive the living charm of her neck and shoulders, so near
to his lips that he need only have bent his head a little to have
touched them. He was conscious of the warmth of her body, the scent of
perfume, and the creaking of her corset as she moved. He did not see
her marble beauty forming a complete whole with her dress, but all the
charm of her body only covered by her garments. And having once seen
this he could not help being aware it, just as we cannot renew an
illusion we have once seen through.

"So you have never noticed before how beautiful I am?" Helene seemed
to say. "You had not noticed that I am a woman? Yes, I am a woman
who may belong to anyone--to you too," said her glance. And at that
moment Pierre felt that Helene not only could, but must, be his
wife, and that it could not be otherwise.

He knew this at that moment as surely as if he had been standing
at the altar with her. How and when this would be he did not know,
he did not even know if it would be a good thing (he even felt, he
knew not why, that it would be a bad thing), but he knew it would
happen.

Pierre dropped his eyes, lifted them again, and wished once more
to see her as a distant beauty far removed from him, as he had seen
her every day until then, but he could no longer do it. He could
not, any more than a man who has been looking at a tuft of steppe
grass through the mist and taking it for a tree can again take it
for a tree after he has once recognized it to be a tuft of grass.
She was terribly close to him. She already had power over him, and
between them there was no longer any barrier except the barrier of his
own will.

"Well, I will leave you in your little corner," came Anna Pavlovna's
voice, "I see you are all right there."

And Pierre, anxiously trying to remember whether he had done
anything reprehensible, looked round with a blush. It seemed to him
that everyone knew what had happened to him as he knew it himself.

A little later when he went up to the large circle, Anna Pavlovna
said to him: "I hear you are refitting your Petersburg house?"

This was true. The architect had told him that it was necessary, and
Pierre, without knowing why, was having his enormous Petersburg
house done up.

"That's a good thing, but don't move from Prince Vasili's. It is
good to have a friend like the prince," she said, smiling at Prince
Vasili. "I know something about that. Don't I? And you are still so
young. You need advice. Don't be angry with me for exercising an old
woman's privilege."

She paused, as women always do, expecting something after they
have mentioned their age. "If you marry it will be a different thing,"
she continued, uniting them both in one glance. Pierre did not look at
Helene nor she at him. But she was just as terribly close to him. He
muttered something and colored.

When he got home he could not sleep for a long time for thinking
of what had happened. What had happened? Nothing. He had merely
understood that the woman he had known as a child, of whom when her
beauty was mentioned he had said absent-mindedly: "Yes, she's good
looking," he had understood that this woman might belong to him.

"But she's stupid. I have myself said she is stupid," he thought.
"There is something nasty, something wrong, in the feeling she excites
in me. I have been told that her brother Anatole was in love with
her and she with him, that there was quite a scandal and that that's
why he was sent away. Hippolyte is her brother... Prince Vasili is her
father... It's bad...." he reflected, but while he was thinking this
(the reflection was still incomplete), he caught himself smiling and
was conscious that another line of thought had sprung up, and while
thinking of her worthlessness he was also dreaming of how she would be
his wife, how she would love him become quite different, and how all
he had thought and heard of her might be false. And he again saw her
not as the daughter of Prince Vasili, but visualized her whole body
only veiled by its gray dress. "But no! Why did this thought never
occur to me before?" and again he told himself that it was impossible,
that there would be something unnatural, and as it seemed to him
dishonorable, in this marriage. He recalled her former words and looks
and the words and looks of those who had seen them together. He
recalled Anna Pavlovna's words and looks when she spoke to him about
his house, recalled thousands of such hints from Prince Vasili and
others, and was seized by terror lest he had already, in some way,
bound himself to do something that was evidently wrong and that he
ought not to do. But at the very time he was expressing this
conviction to himself, in another part of his mind her image rose in
all its womanly beauty.





CHAPTER II

In November, 1805, Prince Vasili had to go on a tour of inspection
in four different provinces. He had arranged this for himself so as to
visit his neglected estates at the same time and pick up his son
Anatole where his regiment was stationed, and take him to visit Prince
Nicholas Bolkonski in order to arrange a match for him with the
daughter of that rich old man. But before leaving home and undertaking
these new affairs, Prince Vasili had to settle matters with Pierre,
who, it is true, had latterly spent whole days at home, that is, in
Prince Vasili's house where he was staying, and had been absurd,
excited, and foolish in Helene's presence (as a lover should be),
but had not yet proposed to her.

"This is all very fine, but things must be settled," said Prince
Vasili to himself, with a sorrowful sigh, one morning, feeling that
Pierre who was under such obligations to him ("But never mind that")
was not behaving very well in this matter. "Youth, frivolity...
well, God be with him," thought he, relishing his own goodness of
heart, "but it must be brought to a head. The day after tomorrow
will be Lelya's name day. I will invite two or three people, and if he
does not understand what he ought to do then it will be my affair-
yes, my affair. I am her father."

Six weeks after Anna Pavlovna's "At Home" and after the sleepless
night when he had decided that to marry Helene would be a calamity and
that he ought to avoid her and go away, Pierre, despite that decision,
had not left Prince Vasili's and felt with terror that in people's
eyes he was every day more and more connected with her, that it was
impossible for him to return to his former conception of her, that
he could not break away from her, and that though it would be a
terrible thing he would have to unite his fate with hers. He might
perhaps have been able to free himself but that Prince Vasili (who had
rarely before given receptions) now hardly let a day go by without
having an evening party at which Pierre had to be present unless he
wished to spoil the general pleasure and disappoint everyone's
expectation. Prince Vasili, in the rare moments when he was at home,
would take Pierre's hand in passing and draw it downwards, or
absent-mindedly hold out his wrinkled, clean-shaven cheek for Pierre
to kiss and would say: "Till tomorrow," or, "Be in to dinner or I
shall not see you," or, "I am staying in for your sake," and so on.
And though Prince Vasili, when he stayed in (as he said) for
Pierre's sake, hardly exchanged a couple of words with him, Pierre
felt unable to disappoint him. Every day he said to himself one and
the same thing: "It is time I understood her and made up my mind
what she really is. Was I mistaken before, or am I mistaken now? No,
she is not stupid, she is an excellent girl," he sometimes said to
himself "she never makes a mistake, never says anything stupid. She
says little, but what she does say is always clear and simple, so
she is not stupid. She never was abashed and is not abashed now, so
she cannot be a bad woman!" He had often begun to make reflections
or think aloud in her company, and she had always answered him
either by a brief but appropriate remark--showing that it did not
interest her--or by a silent look and smile which more palpably than
anything else showed Pierre her superiority. She was right in
regarding all arguments as nonsense in comparison with that smile.

She always addressed him with a radiantly confiding smile meant
for him alone, in which there was something more significant than in
the general smile that usually brightened her face. Pierre knew that
everyone was waiting for him to say a word and cross a certain line,
and he knew that sooner or later he would step across it, but an
incomprehensible terror seized him at the thought of that dreadful
step. A thousand times during that month and a half while he felt
himself drawn nearer and nearer to that dreadful abyss, Pierre said to
himself: "What am I doing? I need resolution. Can it be that I have
none?"

He wished to take a decision, but felt with dismay that in this
matter he lacked that strength of will which he had known in himself
and really possessed. Pierre was one of those who are only strong when
they feel themselves quite innocent, and since that day when he was
overpowered by a feeling of desire while stooping over the snuffbox at
Anna Pavlovna's, an unacknowledged sense of the guilt of that desire
paralyzed his will.

On Helene's name day, a small party of just their own people--as his
wife said--met for supper at Prince Vasili's. All these friends and
relations had been given to understand that the fate of the young girl
would be decided that evening. The visitors were seated at supper.
Princess Kuragina, a portly imposing woman who had once been handsome,
was sitting at the head of the table. On either side of her sat the
more important guests--an old general and his wife, and Anna
Pavlovna Scherer. At the other end sat the younger and less
important guests, and there too sat the members of the family, and
Pierre and Helene, side by side. Prince Vasili was not having any
supper: he went round the table in a merry mood, sitting down now by
one, now by another, of the guests. To each of them he made some
careless and agreeable remark except to Pierre and Helene, whose
presence he seemed not to notice. He enlivened the whole party. The
wax candles burned brightly, the silver and crystal gleamed, so did
the ladies' toilets and the gold and silver of the men's epaulets;
servants in scarlet liveries moved round the table, the clatter of
plates, knives, and glasses mingled with the animated hum of several
conversations. At one end of the table, the old chamberlain was
heard assuring an old baroness that he loved her passionately, at
which she laughed; at the other could be heard the story of the
misfortunes of some Mary Viktorovna or other. At the center of the
table, Prince Vasili attracted everybody's attention. With a facetious
smile on his face, he was telling the ladies about last Wednesday's
meeting of the Imperial Council, at which Sergey Kuzmich
Vyazmitinov, the new military governor general of Petersburg, had
received and read the then famous rescript of the Emperor Alexander
from the army to Sergey Kuzmich, in which the Emperor said that he was
receiving from all sides declarations of the people's loyalty, that
the declaration from Petersburg gave him particular pleasure, and that
he was proud to be at the head of such a nation and would endeavor
to be worthy of it. This rescript began with the words: "Sergey
Kuzmich, From all sides reports reach me," etc.

"Well, and so he never got farther than: 'Sergey Kuzmich'?" asked
one of the ladies.

"Exactly, not a hair's breadth farther," answered Prince Vasili,
laughing, "'Sergey Kuzmich... From all sides... From all sides...
Sergey Kuzmich...' Poor Vyazmitinov could not get any farther! He
began the rescript again and again, but as soon as he uttered 'Sergey'
he sobbed, 'Kuz-mi-ch,' tears, and 'From all sides' was smothered in
sobs and he could get no farther. And again his handkerchief, and
again: 'Sergey Kuzmich, From all sides,'... and tears, till at last
somebody else was asked to read it."

"Kuzmich... From all sides... and then tears," someone repeated
laughing.

"Don't be unkind," cried Anna Pavlovna from her end of the table
holding up a threatening finger. "He is such a worthy and excellent
man, our dear Vyazmitinov...."

Everybody laughed a great deal. At the head of the table, where
the honored guests sat, everyone seemed to be in high spirits and
under the influence of a variety of exciting sensations. Only Pierre
and Helene sat silently side by side almost at the bottom of the
table, a suppressed smile brightening both their faces, a smile that
had nothing to do with Sergey Kuzmich--a smile of bashfulness at their
own feelings. But much as all the rest laughed, talked, and joked,
much as they enjoyed their Rhine wine, saute, and ices, and however
they avoided looking at the young couple, and heedless and unobservant
as they seemed of them, one could feel by the occasional glances
they gave that the story about Sergey Kuzmich, the laughter, and the
food were all a pretense, and that the whole attention of that company
was directed to--Pierre and Helene. Prince Vasili mimicked the sobbing
of Sergey Kuzmich and at the same time his eyes glanced toward his
daughter, and while he laughed the expression on his face clearly
said: "Yes... it's getting on, it will all be settled today." Anna
Pavlovna threatened him on behalf of "our dear Vyazmitinov," and in
her eyes, which, for an instant, glanced at Pierre, Prince Vasili read
a congratulation on his future son-in-law and on his daughter's
happiness. The old princess sighed sadly as she offered some wine to
the old lady next to her and glanced angrily at her daughter, and
her sigh seemed to say: "Yes, there's nothing left for you and me
but to sip sweet wine, my dear, now that the time has come for these
young ones to be thus boldly, provocatively happy." "And what nonsense
all this is that I am saying!" thought a diplomatist, glancing at
the happy faces of the lovers. "That's happiness!"

Into the insignificant, trifling, and artificial interests uniting
that society had entered the simple feeling of the attraction of a
healthy and handsome young man and woman for one another. And this
human feeling dominated everything else and soared above all their
affected chatter. Jests fell flat, news was not interesting, and the
animation was evidently forced. Not only the guests but even the
footmen waiting at table seemed to feel this, and they forgot their
duties as they looked at the beautiful Helene with her radiant face
and at the red, broad, and happy though uneasy face of Pierre. It
seemed as if the very light of the candles was focused on those two
happy faces alone.

Pierre felt that he was the center of it all, and this both pleased
and embarrassed him. He was like a man entirely absorbed in some
occupation. He did not see, hear, or understand anything clearly. Only
now and then detached ideas and impressions from the world of
reality shot unexpectedly through his mind.

"So it is all finished!" he thought. "And how has it all happened?
How quickly! Now I know that not because of her alone, nor of myself
alone, but because of everyone, it must inevitably come about. They
are all expecting it, they are so sure that it will happen that I
cannot, I cannot, disappoint them. But how will it be? I do not
know, but it will certainly happen!" thought Pierre, glancing at those
dazzling shoulders close to his eyes.

Or he would suddenly feel ashamed of he knew not what. He felt it
awkward to attract everyone's attention and to be considered a lucky
man and, with his plain face, to be looked on as a sort of Paris
possessed of a Helen. "But no doubt it always is and must be so!" he
consoled himself. "And besides, what have I done to bring it about?
How did it begin? I traveled from Moscow with Prince Vasili. Then
there was nothing. So why should I not stay at his house? Then I
played cards with her and picked up her reticule and drove out with
her. How did it begin, when did it all come about?" And here he was
sitting by her side as her betrothed, seeing, hearing, feeling her
nearness, her breathing, her movements, her beauty. Then it would
suddenly seem to him that it was not she but he was so unusually
beautiful, and that that was why they all looked so at him, and
flattered by this general admiration he would expand his chest,
raise his head, and rejoice at his good fortune. Suddenly he heard a
familiar voice repeating something to him a second time. But Pierre
was so absorbed that he did not understand what was said.

"I am asking you when you last heard from Bolkonski," repeated
Prince Vasili a third time. "How absent-minded you are, my dear
fellow."

Prince Vasili smiled, and Pierre noticed that everyone was smiling
at him and Helene. "Well, what of it, if you all know it?" thought
Pierre. "What of it? It's the truth!" and he himself smiled his gentle
childlike smile, and Helene smiled too.

"When did you get the letter? Was it from Olmutz?" repeated Prince
Vasili, who pretended to want to know this in order to settle a
dispute.

"How can one talk or think of such trifles?" thought Pierre.

"Yes, from Olmutz," he answered, with a sigh.

After supper Pierre with his partner followed the others into the
drawing room. The guests began to disperse, some without taking
leave of Helene. Some, as if unwilling to distract her from an
important occupation, came up to her for a moment and made haste to go
away, refusing to let her see them off. The diplomatist preserved a
mournful silence as he left the drawing room. He pictured the vanity
of his diplomatic career in comparison with Pierre's happiness. The
old general grumbled at his wife when she asked how his leg was.
"Oh, the old fool," he thought. "That Princess Helene will be
beautiful still when she's fifty."

"I think I may congratulate you," whispered Anna Pavlovna to the old
princess, kissing her soundly. "If I hadn't this headache I'd have
stayed longer."

The old princess did not reply, she was tormented by jealousy of her
daughter's happiness.

While the guests were taking their leave Pierre remained for a
long time alone with Helene in the little drawing room where they were
sitting. He had often before, during the last six weeks, remained
alone with her, but had never spoken to her of love. Now he felt
that it was inevitable, but he could not make up his mind to take
the final step. He felt ashamed; he felt that he was occupying someone
else's place here beside Helene. "This happiness is not for you," some
inner voice whispered to him. "This happiness is for those who have
not in them what there is in you."

But, as he had to say something, he began by asking her whether
she was satisfied with the party. She replied in her usual simple
manner that this name day of hers had been one of the pleasantest
she had ever had.

Some of the nearest relatives had not yet left. They were sitting in
the large drawing room. Prince Vasili came up to Pierre with languid
footsteps. Pierre rose and said it was getting late. Prince Vasili
gave him a look of stern inquiry, as though what Pierre had just
said was so strange that one could not take it in. But then the
expression of severity changed, and he drew Pierre's hand downwards,
made him sit down, and smiled affectionately.

"Well, Lelya?" he asked, turning instantly to his daughter and
addressing her with the careless tone of habitual tenderness natural
to parents who have petted their children from babyhood, but which
Prince Vasili had only acquired by imitating other parents.

And he again turned to Pierre.

"Sergey Kuzmich--From all sides-" he said, unbuttoning the top
button of his waistcoat.

Pierre smiled, but his smile showed that he knew it was not the
story about Sergey Kuzmich that interested Prince Vasili just then,
and Prince Vasili saw that Pierre knew this. He suddenly muttered
something and went away. It seemed to Pierre that even the prince
was disconcerted. The sight of the discomposure of that old man of the
world touched Pierre: he looked at Helene and she too seemed
disconcerted, and her look seemed to say: "Well, it is your own
fault."

"The step must be taken but I cannot, I cannot!" thought Pierre, and
he again began speaking about indifferent matters, about Sergey
Kuzmich, asking what the point of the story was as he had not heard it
properly. Helene answered with a smile that she too had missed it.

When Prince Vasili returned to the drawing room, the princess, his
wife, was talking in low tones to the elderly lady about Pierre.

"Of course, it is a very brilliant match, but happiness, my dear..."

"Marriages are made in heaven," replied the elderly lady.

Prince Vasili passed by, seeming not to hear the ladies, and sat
down on a sofa in a far corner of the room. He closed his eyes and
seemed to be dozing. His head sank forward and then he roused himself.

"Aline," he said to his wife, "go and see what they are about."

The princess went up to the door, passed by it with a dignified
and indifferent air, and glanced into the little drawing room.
Pierre and Helene still sat talking just as before.

"Still the same," she said to her husband.

Prince Vasili frowned, twisting his mouth, his cheeks quivered and
his face assumed the coarse, unpleasant expression peculiar to him.
Shaking himself, he rose, threw back his head, and with resolute steps
went past the ladies into the little drawing room. With quick steps he
went joyfully up to Pierre. His face was so unusually triumphant
that Pierre rose in alarm on seeing it.

"Thank God!" said Prince Vasili. "My wife has told me everything!"
(He put one arm around Pierre and the other around his daughter.)--"My
dear boy... Lelya... I am very pleased." (His voice trembled.) "I
loved your father... and she will make you a good wife... God bless
you!..."

He embraced his daughter, and then again Pierre, and kissed him with
his malodorous mouth. Tears actually moistened his cheeks.

"Princess, come here!" he shouted.

The old princess came in and also wept. The elderly lady was using
her handkerchief too. Pierre was kissed, and he kissed the beautiful
Helene's hand several times. After a while they were left alone again.

"All this had to be and could not be otherwise," thought Pierre, "so
it is useless to ask whether it is good or bad. It is good because
it's definite and one is rid of the old tormenting doubt." Pierre held
the hand of his betrothed in silence, looking at her beautiful bosom
as it rose and fell.

"Helene!" he said aloud and paused.

"Something special is always said in such cases," he thought, but
could not remember what it was that people say. He looked at her face.
She drew nearer to him. Her face flushed.

"Oh, take those off... those..." she said, pointing to his
spectacles.

Pierre took them off, and his eyes, besides the strange look eyes
have from which spectacles have just been removed, had also a
frightened and inquiring look. He was about to stoop over her hand and
kiss it, but with a rapid, almost brutal movement of her head, she
intercepted his lips and met them with her own. Her face struck
Pierre, by its altered, unpleasantly excited expression.

"It is too late now, it's done; besides I love her," thought Pierre.

"Je vous aime!"* he said, remembering what has to be said at such
moments: but his words sounded so weak that he felt ashamed of
himself.


*"I love you."


Six weeks later he was married, and settled in Count Bezukhov's
large, newly furnished Petersburg house, the happy possessor, as
people said, of a wife who was a celebrated beauty and of millions
of money.





CHAPTER III


Old Prince Nicholas Bolkonski received a letter from Prince Vasili
in November, 1805, announcing that he and his son would be paying
him a visit. "I am starting on a journey of inspection, and of
course I shall think nothing of an extra seventy miles to come and see
you at the same time, my honored benefactor," wrote Prince Vasili. "My
son Anatole is accompanying me on his way to the army, so I hope you
will allow him personally to express the deep respect that,
emulating his father, he feels for you."

"It seems that there will be no need to bring Mary out, suitors
are coming to us of their own accord," incautiously remarked the
little princess on hearing the news.

Prince Nicholas frowned, but said nothing.

A fortnight after the letter Prince Vasili's servants came one
evening in advance of him, and he and his son arrived next day.

Old Bolkonski had always had a poor opinion of Prince Vasili's
character, but more so recently, since in the new reigns of Paul and
Alexander Prince Vasili had risen to high position and honors. And
now, from the hints contained in his letter and given by the little
princess, he saw which way the wind was blowing, and his low opinion
changed into a feeling of contemptuous ill will. He snorted whenever
he mentioned him. On the day of Prince Vasili's arrival, Prince
Bolkonski was particularly discontented and out of temper. Whether
he was in a bad temper because Prince Vasili was coming, or whether
his being in a bad temper made him specially annoyed at Prince
Vasili's visit, he was in a bad temper, and in the morning Tikhon
had already advised the architect not to go to the prince with his
report.

"Do you hear how he's walking?" said Tikhon, drawing the architect's
attention to the sound of the prince's footsteps. "Stepping flat on
his heels--we know what that means...."

However, at nine o'clock the prince, in his velvet coat with a sable
collar and cap, went out for his usual walk. It had snowed the day
before and the path to the hothouse, along which the prince was in the
habit of walking, had been swept: the marks of the broom were still
visible in the snow and a shovel had been left sticking in one of
the soft snowbanks that bordered both sides of the path. The prince
went through the conservatories, the serfs' quarters, and the
outbuildings, frowning and silent.

"Can a sleigh pass?" he asked his overseer, a venerable man,
resembling his master in manners and looks, who was accompanying him
back to the house.

"The snow is deep. I am having the avenue swept, your honor."

The prince bowed his head and went up to the porch. "God be
thanked," thought the overseer, "the storm has blown over!"

"It would have been hard to drive up, your honor," he added. "I
heard, your honor, that a minister is coming to visit your honor."

The prince turned round to the overseer and fixed his eyes on him,
frowning.

"What? A minister? What minister? Who gave orders?" he said in his
shrill, harsh voice. "The road is not swept for the princess my
daughter, but for a minister! For me, there are no ministers!"

"Your honor, I thought..."

"You thought!" shouted the prince, his words coming more and more
rapidly and indistinctly. "You thought!... Rascals! Blackgaurds!...
I'll teach you to think!" and lifting his stick he swung it and
would have hit Alpatych, the overseer, had not the latter
instinctively avoided the blow. "Thought... Blackguards..." shouted
the prince rapidly.

But although Alpatych, frightened at his own temerity in avoiding
the stroke, came up to the prince, bowing his bald head resignedly
before him, or perhaps for that very reason, the prince, though he
continued to shout: "Blackgaurds!... Throw the snow back on the road!"
did not lift his stick again but hurried into the house.

Before dinner, Princess Mary and Mademoiselle Bourienne, who knew
that the prince was in a bad humor, stood awaiting him; Mademoiselle
Bourienne with a radiant face that said: "I know nothing, I am the
same as usual," and Princess Mary pale, frightened, and with
downcast eyes. What she found hardest to bear was to know that on such
occasions she ought to behave like Mademoiselle Bourienne, but could
not. She thought: "If I seem not to notice he will think that I do not
sympathize with him; if I seem sad and out of spirits myself, he
will say (as he has done before) that I'm in the dumps."

The prince looked at his daughter's frightened face and snorted.

"Fool... or dummy!" he muttered.

"And the other one is not here. They've been telling tales," he
thought--referring to the little princess who was not in the dining
room.

"Where is the princess?" he asked. "Hiding?"

"She is not very well," answered Mademoiselle Bourienne with a
bright smile, "so she won't come down. It is natural in her state."

"Hm! Hm!" muttered the prince, sitting down.

His plate seemed to him not quite clean, and pointing to a spot he
flung it away. Tikhon caught it and handed it to a footman. The little
princess was not unwell, but had such an overpowering fear of the
prince that, hearing he was in a bad humor, she had decided not to
appear.

"I am afraid for the baby," she said to Mademoiselle Bourienne:
"Heaven knows what a fright might do."

In general at Bald Hills the little princess lived in constant fear,
and with a sense of antipathy to the old prince which she did not
realize because the fear was so much the stronger feeling. The
prince reciprocated this antipathy, but it was overpowered by his
contempt for her. When the little princess had grown accustomed to
life at Bald Hills, she took a special fancy to Mademoiselle
Bourienne, spent whole days with her, asked her to sleep in her
room, and often talked with her about the old prince and criticized
him.

"So we are to have visitors, mon prince?" remarked Mademoiselle
Bourienne, unfolding her white napkin with her rosy fingers. "His
Excellency Prince Vasili Kuragin and his son, I understand?" she
said inquiringly.

"Hm!--his excellency is a puppy.... I got him his appointment in the
service," said the prince disdainfully. "Why his son is coming I don't
understand. Perhaps Princess Elizabeth and Princess Mary know. I don't
want him." (He looked at his blushing daughter.) "Are you unwell
today? Eh? Afraid of the 'minister' as that idiot Alpatych called
him this morning?"

"No, mon pere."

Though Mademoiselle Bourienne had been so unsuccessful in her choice
of a subject, she did not stop talking, but chattered about the
conservatories and the beauty of a flower that had just opened, and
after the soup the prince became more genial.

After dinner, he went to see his daughter-in-law. The little
princess was sitting at a small table, chattering with Masha, her
maid. She grew pale on seeing her father-in-law.

She was much altered. She was now plain rather than pretty. Her
cheeks had sunk, her lip was drawn up, and her eyes drawn down.

"Yes, I feel a kind of oppression," she said in reply to the
prince's question as to how she felt.

"Do you want anything?"

"No, merci, mon pere."

"Well, all right, all right."

He left the room and went to the waiting room where Alpatych stood
with bowed head.

"Has the snow been shoveled back?"

"Yes, your excellency. Forgive me for heaven's sake... It was only
my stupidity."

"All right, all right," interrupted the prince, and laughing his
unnatural way, he stretched out his hand for Alpatych to kiss, and
then proceeded to his study.

Prince Vasili arrived that evening. He was met in the avenue by
coachmen and footmen, who, with loud shouts, dragged his sleighs up to
one of the lodges over the road purposely laden with snow.

Prince Vasili and Anatole had separate rooms assigned to them.

Anatole, having taken off his overcoat, sat with arms akimbo
before a table on a corner of which he smilingly and absent-mindedly
fixed his large and handsome eyes. He regarded his whole life as a
continual round of amusement which someone for some reason had to
provide for him. And he looked on this visit to a churlish old man and
a rich and ugly heiress in the same way. All this might, he thought,
turn out very well and amusingly. "And why not marry her if she really
has so much money? That never does any harm," thought Anatole.

He shaved and scented himself with the care and elegance which had
become habitual to him and, his handsome head held high, entered his
father's room with the good-humored and victorious air natural to him.
Prince Vasili's two valets were busy dressing him, and he looked round
with much animation and cheerfully nodded to his son as the latter
entered, as if to say: "Yes, that's how I want you to look."

"I say, Father, joking apart, is she very hideous?" Anatole asked,
as if continuing a conversation the subject of which had often been
mentioned during the journey.

"Enough! What nonsense! Above all, try to be respectful and cautious
with the old prince."

"If he starts a row I'll go away," said Prince Anatole. "I can't
bear those old men! Eh?"

"Remember, for you everything depends on this."

In the meantime, not only was it known in the maidservants' rooms
that the minister and his son had arrived, but the appearance of
both had been minutely described. Princess Mary was sitting alone in
her room, vainly trying to master her agitation.

"Why did they write, why did Lise tell me about it? It can never
happen!" she said, looking at herself in the glass. "How shall I enter
the drawing room? Even if I like him I can't now be myself with
him." The mere thought of her father's look filled her with terror.
The little princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne had already received
from Masha, the lady's maid, the necessary report of how handsome
the minister's son was, with his rosy cheeks and dark eyebrows, and
with what difficulty the father had dragged his legs upstairs while
the son had followed him like an eagle, three steps at a time.
Having received this information, the little princess and Mademoiselle
Bourienne, whose chattering voices had reached her from the
corridor, went into Princess Mary's room.

"You know they've come, Marie?" said the little princess, waddling
in, and sinking heavily into an armchair.

She was no longer in the loose gown she generally wore in the
morning, but had on one of her best dresses. Her hair was carefully
done and her face was animated, which, however, did not conceal its
sunken and faded outlines. Dressed as she used to be in Petersburg
society, it was still more noticeable how much plainer she had become.
Some unobtrusive touch had been added to Mademoiselle Bourienne's
toilet which rendered her fresh and pretty face yet more attractive.

"What! Are you going to remain as you are, dear princess?" she
began. "They'll be announcing that the gentlemen are in the drawing
room and we shall have to go down, and you have not smartened yourself
up at all!"

The little princess got up, rang for the maid, and hurriedly and
merrily began to devise and carry out a plan of how Princess Mary
should be dressed. Princess Mary's self-esteem was wounded by the fact
that the arrival of a suitor agitated her, and still more so by both
her companions' not having the least conception that it could be
otherwise. To tell them that she felt ashamed for herself and for them
would be to betray her agitation, while to decline their offers to
dress her would prolong their banter and insistence. She flushed,
her beautiful eyes grew dim, red blotches came on her face, and it
took on the unattractive martyrlike expression it so often wore, as
she submitted herself to Mademoiselle Bourienne and Lise. Both these
women quite sincerely tried to make her look pretty. She was so
plain that neither of them could think of her as a rival, so they
began dressing her with perfect sincerity, and with the naive and firm
conviction women have that dress can make a face pretty.

"No really, my dear, this dress is not pretty," said Lise, looking
sideways at Princess Mary from a little distance. "You have a maroon
dress, have it fetched. Really! You know the fate of your whole life
may be at stake. But this one is too light, it's not becoming!"

It was not the dress, but the face and whole figure of Princess Mary
that was not pretty, but neither Mademoiselle Bourienne nor the little
princess felt this; they still thought that if a blue ribbon were
placed in the hair, the hair combed up, and the blue scarf arranged
lower on the best maroon dress, and so on, all would be well. They
forgot that the frightened face and the figure could not be altered,
and that however they might change the setting and adornment of that
face, it would still remain piteous and plain. After two or three
changes to which Princess Mary meekly submitted, just as her hair
had been arranged on the top of her head (a style that quite altered
and spoiled her looks) and she had put on a maroon dress with a
pale-blue scarf, the little princess walked twice round her, now
adjusting a fold of the dress with her little hand, now arranging
the scarf and looking at her with her head bent first on one side
and then on the other.

"No, it will not do," she said decidedly, clasping her hands. "No,
Mary, really this dress does not suit you. I prefer you in your little
gray everyday dress. Now please, do it for my sake. Katie," she said
to the maid, "bring the princess her gray dress, and you'll see,
Mademoiselle Bourienne, how I shall arrange it," she added, smiling
with a foretaste of artistic pleasure.

But when Katie brought the required dress, Princess Mary remained
sitting motionless before the glass, looking at her face, and saw in
the mirror her eyes full of tears and her mouth quivering, ready to
burst into sobs.

"Come, dear princess," said Mademoiselle Bourienne, "just one more
little effort."

The little princess, taking the dress from the maid, came up to
Princess Mary.

"Well, now we'll arrange something quite simple and becoming," she
said.

The three voices, hers, Mademoiselle Bourienne's, and Katie's, who
was laughing at something, mingled in a merry sound, like the chirping
of birds.

"No, leave me alone," said Princess Mary.

Her voice sounded so serious and so sad that the chirping of the
birds was silenced at once. They looked at the beautiful, large,
thoughtful eyes full of tears and of thoughts, gazing shiningly and
imploringly at them, and understood that it was useless and even cruel
to insist.

"At least, change your coiffure," said the little princess.
"Didn't I tell you," she went on, turning reproachfully to
Mademoiselle Bourienne, "Mary's is a face which such a coiffure does
not suit in the least. Not in the least! Please change it."

"Leave me alone, please leave me alone! It is all quite the same
to me," answered a voice struggling with tears.

Mademoiselle Bourienne and the little princess had to own to
themselves that Princess Mary in this guise looked very plain, worse
than usual, but it was too late. She was looking at them with an
expression they both knew, an expression thoughtful and sad. This
expression in Princess Mary did not frighten them (she never
inspired fear in anyone), but they knew that when it appeared on her
face, she became mute and was not to be shaken in her determination.

"You will change it, won't you?" said Lise. And as Princess Mary
gave no answer, she left the room.

Princess Mary was left alone. She did not comply with Lise's
request, she not only left her hair as it was, but did not even look
in her glass. Letting her arms fall helplessly, she sat with
downcast eyes and pondered. A husband, a man, a strong dominant and
strangely attractive being rose in her imagination, and carried her
into a totally different happy world of his own. She fancied a
child, her own--such as she had seen the day before in the arms of her
nurse's daughter--at her own breast, the husband standing by and
gazing tenderly at her and the child. "But no, it is impossible, I
am too ugly," she thought.

"Please come to tea. The prince will be out in a moment," came the
maid's voice at the door.

She roused herself, and felt appalled at what she had been thinking,
and before going down she went into the room where the icons hung and,
her eyes fixed on the dark face of a large icon of the Saviour lit
by a lamp, she stood before it with folded hands for a few moments.
A painful doubt filled her soul. Could the joy of love, of earthly
love for a man, be for her? In her thoughts of marriage Princess
Mary dreamed of happiness and of children, but her strongest, most
deeply hidden longing was for earthly love. The more she tried to hide
this feeling from others and even from herself, the stronger it
grew. "O God," she said, "how am I to stifle in my heart these
temptations of the devil? How am I to renounce forever these vile
fancies, so as peacefully to fulfill Thy will?" And scarcely had she
put that question than God gave her the answer in her own heart.
"Desire nothing for thyself, seek nothing, be not anxious or
envious. Man's future and thy own fate must remain hidden from thee,
but live so that thou mayest be ready for anything. If it be God's
will to prove thee in the duties of marriage, be ready to fulfill
His will." With this consoling thought (but yet with a hope for the
fulfillment of her forbidden earthly longing) Princess Mary sighed,
and having crossed herself went down, thinking neither of her gown and
coiffure nor of how she would go in nor of what she would say. What
could all that matter in comparison with the will of God, without
Whose care not a hair of man's head can fall?





CHAPTER IV


When Princess Mary came down, Prince Vasili and his son were already
in the drawing room, talking to the little princess and Mademoiselle
Bourienne. When she entered with her heavy step, treading on her
heels, the gentlemen and Mademoiselle Bourienne rose and the little
princess, indicating her to the gentlemen, said: "Voila Marie!"
Princess Mary saw them all and saw them in detail. She saw Prince
Vasili's face, serious for an instant at the sight of her, but
immediately smiling again, and the little princess curiously noting
the impression "Marie" produced on the visitors. And she saw
Mademoiselle Bourienne, with her ribbon and pretty face, and her
unusually animated look which was fixed on him, but him she could
not see, she only saw something large, brilliant, and handsome
moving toward her as she entered the room. Prince Vasili approached
first, and she kissed the bold forehead that bent over her hand and
answered his question by saying that, on the contrary, she
remembered him quite well. Then Anatole came up to her. She still
could not see him. She only felt a soft hand taking hers firmly, and
she touched with her lips a white forehead, over which was beautiful
light-brown hair smelling of pomade. When she looked up at him she was
struck by his beauty. Anatole stood with his right thumb under a
button of his uniform, his chest expanded and his back drawn in,
slightly swinging one foot, and, with his head a little bent, looked
with beaming face at the princess without speaking and evidently not
thinking about her at all. Anatole was not quick-witted, nor ready
or eloquent in conversation, but he had the faculty, so invaluable
in society, of composure and imperturbable self-possession. If a man
lacking in self-confidence remains dumb on a first introduction and
betrays a consciousness of the impropriety of such silence and an
anxiety to find something to say, the effect is bad. But Anatole was
dumb, swung his foot, and smilingly examined the princess' hair. It
was evident that he could be silent in this way for a very long
time. "If anyone finds this silence inconvenient, let him talk, but
I don't want to," he seemed to say. Besides this, in his behavior to
women Anatole had a manner which particularly inspires in them
curiosity, awe, and even love--a supercilious consciousness of his own
superiority. It was was as if he said to them: "I know you, I know
you, but why should I bother about you? You'd be only too glad, of
course." Perhaps he did not really think this when he met women-
even probably he did not, for in general he thought very little--but
his looks and manner gave that impression. The princess felt this, and
as if wishing to show him that she did not even dare expect to
interest him, she turned to his father. The conversation was general
and animated, thanks to Princess Lise's voice and little downy lip
that lifted over her white teeth. She met Prince Vasili with that
playful manner often employed by lively chatty people, and
consisting in the assumption that between the person they so address
and themselves there are some semi-private, long-established jokes and
amusing reminiscences, though no such reminiscences really exist--just
as none existed in this case. Prince Vasili readily adopted her tone
and the little princess also drew Anatole, whom she hardly knew,
into these amusing recollections of things that had never occurred.
Mademoiselle Bourienne also shared them and even Princess Mary felt
herself pleasantly made to share in these merry reminiscences.

"Here at least we shall have the benefit of your company all to
ourselves, dear prince," said the little princess (of course, in
French) to Prince Vasili. "It's not as at Annette's* receptions
where you always ran away; you remember cette chere Annette!"


*Anna Pavlovna.

"Ah, but you won't talk politics to me like Annette!"

"And our little tea table?"

"Oh, yes!"

"Why is it you were never at Annette's?" the little princess asked
Anatole. "Ah, I know, I know," she said with a sly glance, "your
brother Hippolyte told me about your goings on. Oh!" and she shook her
finger at him, "I have even heard of your doings in Paris!"

"And didn't Hippolyte tell you?" asked Prince Vasili, turning to his
son and seizing the little princess' arm as if she would have run away
and he had just managed to catch her, "didn't he tell you how he
himself was pining for the dear princess, and how she showed him the
door? Oh, she is a pearl among women, Princess," he added, turning
to Princess Mary.

When Paris was mentioned, Mademoiselle Bourienne for her part seized
the opportunity of joining in the general current of recollections.

She took the liberty of inquiring whether it was long since
Anatole had left Paris and how he had liked that city. Anatole
answered the Frenchwoman very readily and, looking at her with a
smile, talked to her about her native land. When he saw the pretty
little Bourienne, Anatole came to the conclusion that he would not
find Bald Hills dull either. "Not at all bad!" he thought, examining
her, "not at all bad, that little companion! I hope she will bring her
along with her when we're married, la petite est gentille."*


*The little one is charming.


The old prince dressed leisurely in his study, frowning and
considering what he was to do. The coming of these visitors annoyed
him. "What are Prince Vasili and that son of his to me? Prince
Vasili is a shallow braggart and his son, no doubt, is a fine
specimen," he grumbled to himself. What angered him was that the
coming of these visitors revived in his mind an unsettled question
he always tried to stifle, one about which he always deceived himself.
The question was whether he could ever bring himself to part from
his daughter and give her to a husband. The prince never directly
asked himself that question, knowing beforehand that he would have
to answer it justly, and justice clashed not only with his feelings
but with the very possibility of life. Life without Princess Mary,
little as he seemed to value her, was unthinkable to him. "And why
should she marry?" he thought. "To be unhappy for certain. There's
Lise, married to Andrew--a better husband one would think could hardly
be found nowadays--but is she contented with her lot? And who would
marry Marie for love? Plain and awkward! They'll take her for her
connections and wealth. Are there no women living unmarried, and
even the happier for it?" So thought Prince Bolkonski while
dressing, and yet the question he was always putting off demanded an
immediate answer. Prince Vasili had brought his son with the evident
intention of proposing, and today or tomorrow he would probably ask
for an answer. His birth and position in society were not bad.
"Well, I've nothing against it," the prince said to himself, "but he
must be worthy of her. And that is what we shall see."

"That is what we shall see! That is what we shall see!" he added
aloud.

He entered the drawing room with his usual alert step, glancing
rapidly round the company. He noticed the change in the little
princess' dress, Mademoiselle Bourienne's ribbon, Princess Mary's
unbecoming coiffure, Mademoiselle Bourienne's and Anatole's smiles,
and the loneliness of his daughter amid the general conversation. "Got
herself up like a fool!" he thought, looking irritably at her. "She is
shameless, and he ignores her!"

He went straight up to Prince Vasili.

"Well! How d'ye do? How d'ye do? Glad to see you!"

"Friendship laughs at distance," began Prince Vasili in his usual
rapid, self-confident, familiar tone. "Here is my second son; please
love and befriend him."

Prince Bolkonski surveyed Anatole.

"Fine young fellow! Fine young fellow!" he said. "Well, come and
kiss me," and he offered his cheek.

Anatole kissed the old man, and looked at him with curiosity and
perfect composure, waiting for a display of the eccentricities his
father had told him to expect.

Prince Bolkonski sat down in his usual place in the corner of the
sofa and, drawing up an armchair for Prince Vasili, pointed to it
and began questioning him about political affairs and news. He
seemed to listen attentively to what Prince Vasili said, but kept
glancing at Princess Mary.

"And so they are writing from Potsdam already?" he said, repeating
Prince Vasili's last words. Then rising, he suddenly went up to his
daughter.

"Is it for visitors you've got yourself up like that, eh?" said
he. "Fine, very fine! You have done up your hair in this new way for
the visitors, and before the visitors I tell you that in future you
are never to dare to change your way of dress without my consent."

"It was my fault, mon pere," interceded the little princess, with
a blush.

"You must do as you please," said Prince Bolkonski, bowing to his
daughter-in-law, "but she need not make a fool of herself, she's plain
enough as it is."

And he sat down again, paying no more attention to his daughter, who
was reduced to tears.

"On the contrary, that coiffure suits the princess very well,"
said Prince Vasili.

"Now you, young prince, what's your name?" said Prince Bolkonski,
turning to Anatole, "come here, let us talk and get acquainted."

"Now the fun begins," thought Anatole, sitting down with a smile
beside the old prince.

"Well, my dear boy, I hear you've been educated abroad, not taught
to read and write by the deacon, like your father and me. Now tell me,
my dear boy, are you serving in the Horse Guards?" asked the old
man, scrutinizing Anatole closely and intently.

"No, I have been transferred to the line," said Anatole, hardly able
to restrain his laughter.

"Ah! That's a good thing. So, my dear boy, you wish to serve the
Tsar and the country? It is wartime. Such a fine fellow must serve.
Well, are you off to the front?"

"No, Prince, our regiment has gone to the front, but I am
attached... what is it I am attached to, Papa?" said Anatole,
turning to his father with a laugh.

"A splendid soldier, splendid! 'What am I attached to!' Ha, ha, ha!"
laughed Prince Bolkonski, and Anatole laughed still louder. Suddenly
Prince Bolkonski frowned.

"You may go," he said to Anatole.

Anatole returned smiling to the ladies.

"And so you've had him educated abroad, Prince Vasili, haven't you?"
said the old prince to Prince Vasili.

"I have done my best for him, and I can assure you the education
there is much better than ours."

"Yes, everything is different nowadays, everything is changed. The
lad's a fine fellow, a fine fellow! Well, come with me now." He took
Prince Vasili's arm and led him to his study. As soon as they were
alone together, Prince Vasili announced his hopes and wishes to the
old prince.

"Well, do you think I shall prevent her, that I can't part from
her?" said the old prince angrily. "What an idea! I'm ready for it
tomorrow! Only let me tell you, I want to know my son-in-law better.
You know my principles--everything aboveboard? I will ask her tomorrow
in your presence; if she is willing, then he can stay on. He can
stay and I'll see." The old prince snorted. "Let her marry, it's all
the same to me!" he screamed in the same piercing tone as when parting
from his son.

"I will tell you frankly," said Prince Vasili in the tone of a
crafty man convinced of the futility of being cunning with so
keen-sighted companion. "You know, you see right through people.
Anatole is no genius, but he is an honest, goodhearted lad; an
excellent son or kinsman."

"All right, all right, we'll see!"

As always happens when women lead lonely lives for any length of
time without male society, on Anatole's appearance all the three women
of Prince Bolkonski's household felt that their life had not been real
till then. Their powers of reasoning, feeling, and observing
immediately increased tenfold, and their life, which seemed to have
been passed in darkness, was suddenly lit up by a new brightness, full
of significance.

Princess Mary grew quite unconscious of her face and coiffure. The
handsome open face of the man who might perhaps be her husband
absorbed all her attention. He seemed to her kind, brave,
determined, manly, and magnanimous. She felt convinced of that.
Thousands of dreams of a future family life continually rose in her
imagination. She drove them away and tried to conceal them.

"But am I not too cold with him?" thought the princess. "I try to be
reserved because in the depth of my soul I feel too near to him
already, but then he cannot know what I think of him and may imagine
that I do not like him."

And Princess Mary tried, but could not manage, to be cordial to
her new guest. "Poor girl, she's devilish ugly!" thought Anatole.

Mademoiselle Bourienne, also roused to great excitement by Anatole's
arrival, thought in another way. Of course, she, a handsome young
woman without any definite position, without relations or even a
country, did not intend to devote her life to serving Prince
Bolkonski, to reading aloud to him and being friends with Princess
Mary. Mademoiselle Bourienne had long been waiting for a Russian
prince who, able to appreciate at a glance her superiority to the
plain, badly dressed, ungainly Russian princesses, would fall in
love with her and carry her off; and here at last was a Russian
prince. Mademoiselle Bourienne knew a story, heard from her aunt but
finished in her own way, which she liked to repeat to herself. It
was the story of a girl who had been seduced, and to whom her poor
mother (sa pauvre mere) appeared, and reproached her for yielding to a
man without being married. Mademoiselle Bourienne was often touched to
tears as in imagination she told this story to him, her seducer. And
now he, a real Russian prince, had appeared. He would carry her away
and then sa pauvre mere would appear and he would marry her. So her
future shaped itself in Mademoiselle Bourienne's head at the very time
she was talking to Anatole about Paris. It was not calculation that
guided her (she did not even for a moment consider what she should
do), but all this had long been familiar to her, and now that
Anatole had appeared it just grouped itself around him and she
wished and tried to please him as much as possible.

The little princess, like an old war horse that hears the trumpet,
unconsciously and quite forgetting her condition, prepared for the
familiar gallop of coquetry, without any ulterior motive or any
struggle, but with naive and lighthearted gaiety.

Although in female society Anatole usually assumed the role of a man
tired of being run after by women, his vanity was flattered by the
spectacle of his power over these three women. Besides that, he was
beginning to feel for the pretty and provocative Mademoiselle
Bourienne that passionate animal feeling which was apt to master him
with great suddenness and prompt him to the coarsest and most reckless
actions.

After tea, the company went into the sitting room and Princess
Mary was asked to play on the clavichord. Anatole, laughing and in
high spirits, came and leaned on his elbows, facing her and beside
Mademoiselle Bourienne. Princess Mary felt his look with a painfully
joyous emotion. Her favorite sonata bore her into a most intimately
poetic world and the look she felt upon her made that world still more
poetic. But Anatole's expression, though his eyes were fixed on her,
referred not to her but to the movements of Mademoiselle Bourienne's
little foot, which he was then touching with his own under the
clavichord. Mademoiselle Bourienne was also looking at Princess
Mary, and in her lovely eyes there was a look of fearful joy and
hope that was also new to the princess.

"How she loves me!" thought Princess Mary. "How happy I am now,
and how happy I may be with such a friend and such a husband! Husband?
Can it be possible?" she thought, not daring to look at his face,
but still feeling his eyes gazing at her.

In the evening, after supper, when all were about to retire, Anatole
kissed Princess Mary's hand. She did not know how she found the
courage, but she looked straight into his handsome face as it came
near to her shortsighted eyes. Turning from Princess Mary he went up
and kissed Mademoiselle Bourienne's hand. (This was not etiquette, but
then he did everything so simply and with such assurance!)
Mademoiselle Bourienne flushed, and gave the princess a frightened
look.

"What delicacy!" thought the princess. "Is it possible that Amelie"
(Mademoiselle Bourienne) "thinks I could be jealous of her, and not
value her pure affection and devotion to me?" She went up to her and
kissed her warmly. Anatole went up to kiss the little princess' hand.

"No! No! No! When your father writes to tell me that you are
behaving well I will give you my hand to kiss. Not till then!" she
said. And smilingly raising a finger at him, she left the room.




CHAPTER V


They all separated, but, except Anatole who fell asleep as soon as
he got into bed, all kept awake a long time that night.

"Is he really to be my husband, this stranger who is so kind--yes,
kind, that is the chief thing," thought Princess Mary; and fear, which
she had seldom experienced, came upon her. She feared to look round,
it seemed to her that someone was there standing behind the screen
in the dark corner. And this someone was he--the devil--and he was
also this man with the white forehead, black eyebrows, and red lips.

She rang for her maid and asked her to sleep in her room.

Mademoiselle Bourienne walked up and down the conservatory for a
long time that evening, vainly expecting someone, now smiling at
someone, now working herself up to tears with the imaginary words of
her pauvre mere rebuking her for her fall.

The little princess grumbled to her maid that her bed was badly
made. She could not lie either on her face or on her side. Every
position was awkward and uncomfortable, and her burden oppressed her
now more than ever because Anatole's presence had vividly recalled
to her the time when she was not like that and when everything was
light and gay. She sat in an armchair in her dressing jacket and
nightcap and Katie, sleepy and disheveled, beat and turned the heavy
feather bed for the third time, muttering to herself.

"I told you it was all lumps and holes!" the little princess
repeated. "I should be glad enough to fall asleep, so it's not my
fault!" and her voice quivered like that of a child about to cry.

The old prince did not sleep either. Tikhon, half asleep, heard
him pacing angrily about and snorting. The old prince felt as though
he had been insulted through his daughter. The insult was the more
pointed because it concerned not himself but another, his daughter,
whom he loved more than himself. He kept telling himself that he would
consider the whole matter and decide what was right and how he
should act, but instead of that he only excited himself more and more.

"The first man that turns up--she forgets her father and
everything else, runs upstairs and does up her hair and wags her
tail and is unlike herself! Glad to throw her father over! And she
knew I should notice it. Fr... fr... fr! And don't I see that that
idiot had eyes only for Bourienne--I shall have to get rid of her. And
how is it she has not pride enough to see it? If she has no pride
for herself she might at least have some for my sake! She must be
shown that the blockhead thinks nothing of her and looks only at
Bourienne. No, she has no pride... but I'll let her see...."

The old prince knew that if he told his daughter she was making a
mistake and that Anatole meant to flirt with Mademoiselle Bourienne,
Princess Mary's self-esteem would be wounded and his point (not to
be parted from her) would be gained, so pacifying himself with this
thought, he called Tikhon and began to undress.

"What devil brought them here?" thought he, while Tikhon was putting
the nightshirt over his dried-up old body and gray-haired chest. "I
never invited them. They came to disturb my life--and there is not
much of it left."

"Devil take 'em!" he muttered, while his head was still covered by
the shirt.

Tikhon knew his master's habit of sometimes thinking aloud, and
therefore met with unaltered looks the angrily inquisitive
expression of the face that emerged from the shirt.

"Gone to bed?" asked the prince.

Tikhon, like all good valets, instinctively knew the direction of
his master's thoughts. He guessed that the question referred to Prince
Vasili and his son.

"They have gone to bed and put out their lights, your excellency."

"No good... no good..." said the prince rapidly, and thrusting his
feet into his slippers and his arms into the sleeves of his dressing
gown, he went to the couch on which he slept.

Though no words had passed between Anatole and Mademoiselle
Bourienne, they quite understood one another as to the first part of
their romance, up to the appearance of the pauvre mere; they
understood that they had much to say to one another in private and
so they had been seeking an opportunity since morning to meet one
another alone. When Princess Mary went to her father's room at the
usual hour, Mademoiselle Bourienne and Anatole met in the
conservatory.

Princess Mary went to the door of the study with special
trepidation. It seemed to her that not only did everybody know that
her fate would be decided that day, but that they also knew what she
thought about it. She read this in Tikhon's face and in that of Prince
Vasili's valet, who made her a low bow when she met him in the
corridor carrying hot water.

The old prince was very affectionate and careful in his treatment of
his daughter that morning. Princess Mary well knew this painstaking
expression of her father's. His face wore that expression when his dry
hands clenched with vexation at her not understanding a sum in
arithmetic, when rising from his chair he would walk away from her,
repeating in a low voice the same words several times over.

He came to the point at once, treating her ceremoniously.

"I have had a proposition made me concerning you," he said with an
unnatural smile. "I expect you have guessed that Prince Vasili has not
come and brought his pupil with him" (for some reason Prince Bolkonski
referred to Anatole as a "pupil") "for the sake of my beautiful
eyes. Last night a proposition was made me on your account and, as you
know my principles, I refer it to you."

"How am I to understand you, mon pere?" said the princess, growing
pale and then blushing.

"How understand me!" cried her father angrily. "Prince Vasili
finds you to his taste as a daughter-in-law and makes a proposal to
you on his pupil's behalf. That's how it's to be understood! 'How
understand it'!... And I ask you!"

"I do not know what you think, Father," whispered the princess.

"I? I? What of me? Leave me out of the question. I'm not going to
get married. What about you? That's what I want to know."

The princess saw that her father regarded the matter with
disapproval, but at that moment the thought occurred to her that her
fate would be decided now or never. She lowered her eyes so as not
to see the gaze under which she felt that she could not think, but
would only be able to submit from habit, and she said: "I wish only to
do your will, but if I had to express my own desire..." She had no
time to finish. The old prince interrupted her.

"That's admirable!" he shouted. "He will take you with your dowry
and take Mademoiselle Bourienne into the bargain. She'll be the
wife, while you..."

The prince stopped. He saw the effect these words had produced on
his daughter. She lowered her head and was ready to burst into tears.

"Now then, now then, I'm only joking!" he said. "Remember this,
Princess, I hold to the principle that a maiden has a full right to
choose. I give you freedom. Only remember that your life's happiness
depends on your decision. Never mind me!"

"But I do not know, Father!"

"There's no need to talk! He receives his orders and will marry
you or anybody; but you are free to choose.... Go to your room,
think it over, and come back in an hour and tell me in his presence:
yes or no. I know you will pray over it. Well, pray if you like, but
you had better think it over. Go! Yes or no, yes or no, yes or no!" he
still shouted when the princess, as if lost in a fog, had already
staggered out of the study.

Her fate was decided and happily decided. But what her father had
said about Mademoiselle Bourienne was dreadful. It was untrue to be
sure, but still it was terrible, and she could not help thinking of
it. She was going straight on through the conservatory, neither seeing
nor hearing anything, when suddenly the well-known whispering of
Mademoiselle Bourienne aroused her. She raised her eyes, and two steps
away saw Anatole embracing the Frenchwoman and whispering something to
her. With a horrified expression on his handsome face, Anatole
looked at Princess Mary, but did not at once take his arm from the
waist of Mademoiselle Bourienne who had not yet seen her.

"Who's that? Why? Wait a moment!" Anatole's face seemed to say.
Princess Mary looked at them in silence. She could not understand
it. At last Mademoiselle Bourienne gave a scream and ran away. Anatole
bowed to Princess Mary with a gay smile, as if inviting her to join in
a laugh at this strange incident, and then shrugging his shoulders
went to the door that led to his own apartments.

An hour later, Tikhon came to call Princess Mary to the old
prince; he added that Prince Vasili was also there. When Tikhon came
to her Princess Mary was sitting on the sofa in her room, holding
the weeping Mademoiselle Bourienne in her arms and gently stroking her
hair. The princess' beautiful eyes with all their former calm radiance
were looking with tender affection and pity at Mademoiselle
Bourienne's pretty face.

"No, Princess, I have lost your affection forever!" said
Mademoiselle Bourienne.

"Why? I love you more than ever," said Princess Mary, "and I will
try to do all I can for your happiness."

"But you despise me. You who are so pure can never understand
being so carried away by passion. Oh, only my poor mother..."

"I quite understand," answered Princess Mary, with a sad smile.
"Calm yourself, my dear. I will go to my father," she said, and went
out.

Prince Vasili, with one leg thrown high over the other and a
snuffbox in his hand, was sitting there with a smile of deep emotion
on his face, as if stirred to his heart's core and himself
regretting and laughing at his own sensibility, when Princess Mary
entered. He hurriedly took a pinch of snuff.

"Ah, my dear, my dear!" he began, rising and taking her by both
hands. Then, sighing, he added: "My son's fate is in your hands.
Decide, my dear, good, gentle Marie, whom I have always loved as a
daughter!"

He drew back and a real tear appeared in his eye.

"Fr... fr..." snorted Prince Bolkonski. "The prince is making a
proposition to you in his pupil's--I mean, his son's--name. Do you
wish or not to be Prince Anatole Kuragin's wife? Reply: yes or no," he
shouted, "and then I shall reserve the right to state my opinion also.
Yes, my opinion, and only my opinion," added Prince Bolkonski, turning
to Prince Vasili and answering his imploring look. "Yes, or no?"

"My desire is never to leave you, Father, never to separate my
life from yours. I don't wish to marry," she answered positively,
glancing at Prince Vasili and at her father with her beautiful eyes.

"Humbug! Nonsense! Humbug, humbug, humbug!" cried Prince
Bolkonski, frowning and taking his daughter's hand; he did not kiss
her, but only bending his forehead to hers just touched it, and
pressed her hand so that she winced and uttered a cry.

Prince Vasili rose.

"My dear, I must tell you that this is a moment I shall never, never
forget. But, my dear, will you not give us a little hope of touching
this heart, so kind and generous? Say 'perhaps'... The future is so
long. Say 'perhaps.'"

"Prince, what I have said is all there is in my heart. I thank you
for the honor, but I shall never be your son's wife."

"Well, so that's finished, my dear fellow! I am very glad to have
seen you. Very glad! Go back to your rooms, Princess. Go!" said the
old prince. "Very, very glad to have seen you," repeated he,
embracing Prince Vasili.

"My vocation is a different one," thought Princess Mary. "My
vocation is to be happy with another kind of happiness, the
happiness of love and self-sacrifice. And cost what it may, I will
arrange poor Amelie's happiness, she loves him so passionately, and so
passionately repents. I will do all I can to arrange the match between
them. If he is not rich I will give her the means; I will ask my
father and Andrew. I shall be so happy when she is his wife. She is so
unfortunate, a stranger, alone, helpless! And, oh God, how
passionately she must love him if she could so far forget herself!
Perhaps I might have done the same!..." thought Princess Mary.





CHAPTER VI


It was long since the Rostovs had news of Nicholas. Not till
midwinter was the count at last handed a letter addressed in his son's
handwriting. On receiving it, he ran on tiptoe to his study in alarm
and haste, trying to escape notice, closed the door, and began to read
the letter.

Anna Mikhaylovna, who always knew everything that passed in the
house, on hearing of the arrival of the letter went softly into the
room and found the count with it in his hand, sobbing and laughing
at the same time.

Anna Mikhaylovna, though her circumstances had improved, was still
living with the Rostovs.

"My dear friend?" said she, in a tone of pathetic inquiry,
prepared to sympathize in any way.

The count sobbed yet more.

"Nikolenka... a letter... wa... a... s... wounded... my darling
boy... the countess... promoted to be an officer... thank God... How
tell the little countess!"

Anna Mikhaylovna sat down beside him, with her own handkerchief
wiped the tears from his eyes and from the letter, then having dried
her own eyes she comforted the count, and decided that at dinner and
till teatime she would prepare the countess, and after tea, with God's
help, would inform her.

At dinner Anna Mikhaylovna talked the whole time about the war
news and about Nikolenka, twice asked when the last letter had been
received from him, though she knew that already, and remarked that
they might very likely be getting a letter from him that day. Each
time that these hints began to make the countess anxious and she
glanced uneasily at the count and at Anna Mikhaylovna, the latter very
adroitly turned the conversation to insignificant matters. Natasha,
who, of the whole family, was the most gifted with a capacity to
feel any shades of intonation, look, and expression, pricked up her
ears from the beginning of the meal and was certain that there was
some secret between her father and Anna Mikhaylovna, that it had
something to do with her brother, and that Anna Mikhaylovna was
preparing them for it. Bold as she was, Natasha, who knew how
sensitive her mother was to anything relating to Nikolenka, did not
venture to ask any questions at dinner, but she was too excited to eat
anything and kept wriggling about on her chair regardless of her
governess' remarks. After dinner, she rushed head long after Anna
Mikhaylovna and, dashing at her, flung herself on her neck as soon
as she overtook her in the sitting room.

"Auntie, darling, do tell me what it is!"

"Nothing, my dear."

"No, dearest, sweet one, honey, I won't give up--I know you know
something."

Anna Mikhaylovna shook her head.

"You are a little slyboots," she said.

"A letter from Nikolenka! I'm sure of it!" exclaimed Natasha,
reading confirmation in Anna Mikhaylovna's face.

"But for God's sake, be careful, you know how it may affect your
mamma."

"I will, I will, only tell me! You won't? Then I will go and tell at
once."

Anna Mikhaylovna, in a few words, told her the contents of the
letter, on condition that she should tell no one.

"No, on my true word of honor," said Natasha, crossing herself,
"I won't tell anyone!" and she ran off at once to Sonya.

"Nikolenka... wounded... a letter," she announced in gleeful
triumph.

"Nicholas!" was all Sonya said, instantly turning white.

Natasha, seeing the impression the of her brother's wound produced
on Sonya, felt for the first time the sorrowful side of the news.

She rushed to Sonya, hugged her, and began to cry.

"A little wound, but he has been made an officer; he is well now, he
wrote himself," said she through her tears.

"There now! It's true that all you women are crybabies," remarked
Petya, pacing the room with large, resolute strides. "Now I'm very
glad, very glad indeed, that my brother has distinguished himself
so. You are all blubberers and understand nothing."

Natasha smiled through her tears.

"You haven't read the letter?" asked Sonya.

"No, but she said that it was all over and that he's now an
officer."

"Thank God!" said Sonya, crossing herself. "But perhaps she deceived
you. Let us go to Mamma."

Petya paced the room in silence for a time.

"If I'd been in Nikolenka's place I would have killed even more of
those Frenchmen," he said. "What nasty brutes they are! I'd have
killed so many that there'd have been a heap of them."

"Hold your tongue, Petya, what a goose you are!"

"I'm not a goose, but they are who cry about trifles," said Petya.

"Do you remember him?" Natasha suddenly asked, after a moment's
silence.

Sonya smiled.

"Do I remember Nicholas?"

"No, Sonya, but do you remember so that you remember him
perfectly, remember everything?" said Natasha, with an expressive
gesture, evidently wishing to give her words a very definite
meaning. "I remember Nikolenka too, I remember him well," she said.
"But I don't remember Boris. I don't remember him a bit."

"What! You don't remember Boris?" asked Sonya in surprise.

"It's not that I don't remember--I know what he is like, but not
as I remember Nikolenka. Him--I just shut my eyes and remember, but
Boris... No!" (She shut her eyes.)"No! there's nothing at all."

"Oh, Natasha!" said Sonya, looking ecstatically and earnestly at her
friend as if she did not consider her worthy to hear what she meant to
say and as if she were saying it to someone else, with whom joking was
out of the question, "I am in love with your brother once for all and,
whatever may happen to him or to me, shall never cease to love him
as long as I live."

Natasha looked at Sonya with wondering and inquisitive eyes, and
said nothing. She felt that Sonya was speaking the truth, that there
was such love as Sonya was speaking of. But Natasha had not yet felt
anything like it. She believed it could be, but did not understand it.

"Shall you write to him?" she asked.

Sonya became thoughtful. The question of how to write to Nicholas,
and whether she ought to write, tormented her. Now that he was already
an officer and a wounded hero, would it be right to remind him of
herself and, as it might seem, of the obligations to her he had
taken on himself?

"I don't know. I think if he writes, I will write too," she said,
blushing.

"And you won't feel ashamed to write to him?"

Sonya smiled.

"No."

"And I should be ashamed to write to Boris. I'm not going to."

"Why should you be ashamed?"

"Well, I don't know. It's awkward and would make me ashamed."

"And I know why she'd be ashamed," said Petya, offended by Natasha's
previous remark. "It's because she was in love with that fat one in
spectacles" (that was how Petya described his namesake, the new
Count Bezukhov) "and now she's in love with that singer" (he meant
Natasha's Italian singing master), "that's why she's ashamed!"

"Petya, you're a stupid!" said Natasha.

"Not more stupid than you, madam," said the nine-year-old Petya,
with the air of an old brigadier.

The countess had been prepared by Anna Mikhaylovna's hints at
dinner. On retiring to her own room, she sat in an armchair, her
eyes fixed on a miniature portrait of her son on the lid of a
snuffbox, while the tears kept coming into her eyes. Anna Mikhaylovna,
with the letter, came on tiptoe to the countess' door and paused.

"Don't come in," she said to the old count who was following her.
"Come later." And she went in, closing the door behind her.

The count put his ear to the keyhole and listened.

At first he heard the sound of indifferent voices, then Anna
Mikhaylovna's voice alone in a long speech, then a cry, then
silence, then both voices together with glad intonations, and then
footsteps. Anna Mikhaylovna opened the door. Her face wore the proud
expression of a surgeon who has just performed a difficult operation
and admits the public to appreciate his skill.

"It is done!" she said to the count, pointing triumphantly to the
countess, who sat holding in one hand the snuffbox with its portrait
and in the other the letter, and pressing them alternately to her
lips.

When she saw the count, she stretched out her arms to him,
embraced his bald head, over which she again looked at the letter
and the portrait, and in order to press them again to her lips, she
slightly pushed away the bald head. Vera, Natasha, Sonya, and Petya
now entered the room, and the reading of the letter began. After a
brief description of the campaign and the two battles in which he
had taken part, and his promotion, Nicholas said that he kissed his
father's and mother's hands asking for their blessing, and that he
kissed Vera, Natasha, and Petya. Besides that, he sent greetings to
Monsieur Schelling, Madame Schoss, and his old nurse, and asked them
to kiss for him "dear Sonya, whom he loved and thought of just the
same as ever." When she heard this Sonya blushed so that tears came
into her eyes and, unable to bear the looks turned upon her, ran
away into the dancing hall, whirled round it at full speed with her
dress puffed out like a balloon, and, flushed and smiling, plumped
down on the floor. The countess was crying.

"Why are you crying, Mamma?" asked Vera. "From all he says one
should be glad and not cry."

This was quite true, but the count, the countess, and Natasha looked
at her reproachfully. "And who is it she takes after?" thought the
countess.

Nicholas' letter was read over hundreds of times, and those who were
considered worthy to hear it had to come to the countess, for she
did not let it out of her hands. The tutors came, and the nurses,
and Dmitri, and several acquaintances, and the countess reread the
letter each time with fresh pleasure and each time discovered in it
fresh proofs of Nikolenka's virtues. How strange, how extraordinary,
how joyful it seemed, that her son, the scarcely perceptible motion of
whose tiny limbs she had felt twenty years ago within her, that son
about whom she used to have quarrels with the too indulgent count,
that son who had first learned to say "pear" and then "granny," that
this son should now be away in a foreign land amid strange
surroundings, a manly warrior doing some kind of man's work of his
own, without help or guidance. The universal experience of ages,
showing that children do grow imperceptibly from the cradle to
manhood, did not exist for the countess. Her son's growth toward
manhood, at each of its stages, had seemed as extraordinary to her
as if there had never existed the millions of human beings who grew up
in the same way. As twenty years before, it seemed impossible that the
little creature who lived somewhere under her heart would ever cry,
suck her breast, and begin to speak, so now she could not believe that
that little creature could be this strong, brave man, this model son
and officer that, judging by this letter, he now was.

"What a style! How charmingly he describes!" said she, reading the
descriptive part of the letter. "And what a soul! Not a word about
himself.... Not a word! About some Denisov or other, though he
himself, I dare say, is braver than any of them. He says nothing about
his sufferings. What a heart! How like him it is! And how he has
remembered everybody! Not forgetting anyone. I always said when he was
only so high--I always said...."

For more than a week preparations were being made, rough drafts of
letters to Nicholas from all the household were written and copied
out, while under the supervision of the countess and the solicitude of
the count, money and all things necessary for the uniform and
equipment of the newly commissioned officer were collected. Anna
Mikhaylovna, practical woman that she was, had even managed by favor
with army authorities to secure advantageous means of communication
for herself and her son. She had opportunities of sending her
letters to the Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich, who commanded the
Guards. The Rostovs supposed that The Russian Guards, Abroad, was
quite a definite address, and that if a letter reached the Grand
Duke in command of the Guards there was no reason why it should not
reach the Pavlograd regiment, which was presumably somewhere in the
same neighborhood. And so it was decided to send the letters and money
by the Grand Duke's courier to Boris and Boris was to forward them
to Nicholas. The letters were from the old count, the countess, Petya,
Vera, Natasha, and Sonya, and finally there were six thousand rubles
for his outfit and various other things the old count sent to his son.





CHAPTER VII


On the twelfth of November, Kutuzov's active army, in camp before
Olmutz, was preparing to be reviewed next day by the two Emperors--the
Russian and the Austrian. The Guards, just arrived from Russia,
spent the night ten miles from Olmutz and next morning were to come
straight to the review, reaching the field at Olmutz by ten o'clock.

That day Nicholas Rostov received a letter from Boris, telling him
that the Ismaylov regiment was quartered for the night ten miles
from Olmutz and that he wanted to see him as he had a letter and money
for him. Rostov was particularly in need of money now that the troops,
after their active service, were stationed near Olmutz and the camp
swarmed with well-provisioned sutlers and Austrian Jews offering all
sorts of tempting wares. The Pavlograds held feast after feast,
celebrating awards they had received for the campaign, and made
expeditions to Olmutz to visit a certain Caroline the Hungarian, who
had recently opened a restaurant there with girls as waitresses.
Rostov, who had just celebrated his promotion to a cornetcy and bought
Denisov's horse, Bedouin, was in debt all round, to his comrades and
the sutlers. On receiving Boris' letter he rode with a fellow
officer to Olmutz, dined there, drank a bottle of wine, and then set
off alone to the Guards' camp to find his old playmate. Rostov had not
yet had time to get his uniform. He had on a shabby cadet jacket,
decorated with a soldier's cross, equally shabby cadet's riding
breeches lined with worn leather, and an officer's saber with a
sword knot. The Don horse he was riding was one he had bought from a
Cossack during the campaign, and he wore a crumpled hussar cap stuck
jauntily back on one side of his head. As he rode up to the camp he
thought how he would impress Boris and all his comrades of the
Guards by his appearance--that of a fighting hussar who had been under
fire.

The Guards had made their whole march as if on a pleasure trip,
parading their cleanliness and discipline. They had come by easy
stages, their knapsacks conveyed on carts, and the Austrian
authorities had provided excellent dinners for the officers at every
halting place. The regiments had entered and left the town with
their bands playing, and by the Grand Duke's orders the men had
marched all the way in step (a practice on which the Guards prided
themselves), the officers on foot and at their proper posts. Boris had
been quartered, and had marched all the way, with Berg who was already
in command of a company. Berg, who had obtained his captaincy during
the campaign, had gained the confidence of his superiors by his
promptitude and accuracy and had arranged his money matters very
satisfactorily. Boris, during the campaign, had made the
acquaintance of many persons who might prove useful to him, and by a
letter of recommendation he had brought from Pierre had become
acquainted with Prince Andrew Bolkonski, through whom he hoped to
obtain a post on the commander in chief's staff. Berg and Boris,
having rested after yesterday's march, were sitting, clean and
neatly dressed, at a round table in the clean quarters allotted to
them, playing chess. Berg held a smoking pipe between his knees.
Boris, in the accurate way characteristic of him, was building a
little pyramid of chessmen with his delicate white fingers while
awaiting Berg's move, and watched his opponent's face, evidently
thinking about the game as he always thought only of whatever he was
engaged on.

"Well, how are you going to get out of that?" he remarked.

"We'll try to," replied Berg, touching a pawn and then removing
his hand.

At that moment the door opened.

"Here he is at last!" shouted Rostov. "And Berg too! Oh, you
petisenfans, allay cushay dormir!" he exclaimed, imitating his Russian
nurse's French, at which he and Boris used to laugh long ago.

"Dear me, how you have changed!"

Boris rose to meet Rostov, but in doing so did not omit to steady
and replace some chessmen that were falling. He was about to embrace
his friend, but Nicholas avoided him. With that peculiar feeling of
youth, that dread of beaten tracks, and wish to express itself in a
manner different from that of its elders which is often insincere,
Nicholas wished to do something special on meeting his friend. He
wanted to pinch him, push him, do anything but kiss him--a thing
everybody did. But notwithstanding this, Boris embraced him in a
quiet, friendly way and kissed him three times.

They had not met for nearly half a year and, being at the age when
young men take their first steps on life's road, each saw immense
changes in the other, quite a new reflection of the society in which
they had taken those first steps. Both had changed greatly since
they last met and both were in a hurry to show the changes that had
taken place in them.

"Oh, you damned dandies! Clean and fresh as if you'd been to a fete,
not like us sinners of the line," cried Rostov, with martial swagger
and with baritone notes in his voice, new to Boris, pointing to his
own mud-bespattered breeches. The German landlady, hearing Rostov's
loud voice, popped her head in at the door.

"Eh, is she pretty?" he asked with a wink.

"Why do you shout so? You'll frighten them!" said Boris. "I did
not expect you today," he added. "I only sent you the note yesterday
by Bolkonski--an adjutant of Kutuzov's, who's a friend of mine. I
did not think he would get it to you so quickly.... Well, how are you?
Been under fire already?" asked Boris.

Without answering, Rostov shook the soldier's Cross of St. George
fastened to the cording of his uniform and, indicating a bandaged arm,
glanced at Berg with a smile.

"As you see," he said.

"Indeed? Yes, yes!" said Boris, with a smile. "And we too have had a
splendid march. You know, of course, that His Imperial Highness rode
with our regiment all the time, so that we had every comfort and every
advantage. What receptions we had in Poland! What dinners and balls! I
can't tell you. And the Tsarevich was very gracious to all our
officers."

And the two friends told each other of their doings, the one of
his hussar revels and life in the fighting line, the other of the
pleasures and advantages of service under members of the Imperial
family.

"Oh, you Guards!" said Rostov. "I say, send for some wine."

Boris made a grimace.

"If you really want it," said he.

He went to his bed, drew a purse from under the clean pillow, and
sent for wine.

"Yes, and I have some money and a letter to give you," he added.

Rostov took the letter and, throwing the money on the sofa, put both
arms on the table and began to read. After reading a few lines, he
glanced angrily at Berg, then, meeting his eyes, hid his face behind
the letter.

"Well, they've sent you a tidy sum," said Berg, eying the heavy
purse that sank into the sofa. "As for us, Count, we get along on
our pay. I can tell you for myself..."

"I say, Berg, my dear fellow," said Rostov, "when you get a letter
from home and meet one of your own people whom you want to talk
everything over with, and I happen to be there, I'll go at once, to be
out of your way! Do go somewhere, anywhere... to the devil!" he
exclaimed, and immediately seizing him by the shoulder and looking
amiably into his face, evidently wishing to soften the rudeness of his
words, he added, "Don't be hurt, my dear fellow; you know I speak from
my heart as to an old acquaintance."

"Oh, don't mention it, Count! I quite understand," said Berg,
getting up and speaking in a muffled and guttural voice.

"Go across to our hosts: they invited you," added Boris.

Berg put on the cleanest of coats, without a spot or speck of
dust, stood before a looking glass and brushed the hair on his temples
upwards, in the way affected by the Emperor Alexander, and, having
assured himself from the way Rostov looked at it that his coat had
been noticed, left the room with a pleasant smile.

"Oh dear, what a beast I am!" muttered Rostov, as he read the
letter.

"Why?"

"Oh, what a pig I am, not to have written and to have given them
such a fright! Oh, what a pig I am!" he repeated, flushing suddenly.
"Well, have you sent Gabriel for some wine? All right let's have
some!"

In the letter from his parents was enclosed a letter of
recommendation to Bagration which the old countess at Anna
Mikhaylovna's advice had obtained through an acquaintance and sent
to her son, asking him to take it to its destination and make use of
it.

"What nonsense! Much I need it!" said Rostov, throwing the letter
under the table.

"Why have you thrown that away?" asked Boris.

"It is some letter of recommendation... what the devil do I want
it for!"

"Why 'What the devil'?" said Boris, picking it up and reading the
address. "This letter would be of great use to you."

"I want nothing, and I won't be anyone's adjutant."

"Why not?" inquired Boris.

"It's a lackey's job!"

"You are still the same dreamer, I see," remarked Boris, shaking his
head.

"And you're still the same diplomatist! But that's not the
point... Come, how are you?" asked Rostov.

"Well, as you see. So far everything's all right, but I confess I
should much like to be an adjutant and not remain at the front."

"Why?"

"Because when once a man starts on military service, he should try
to make as successful a career of it as possible."

"Oh, that's it!" said Rostov, evidently thinking of something else.

He looked intently and inquiringly into his friend's eyes, evidently
trying in vain to find the answer to some question.

Old Gabriel brought in the wine.

"Shouldn't we now send for Berg?" asked Boris. "He would drink
with you. I can't."

"Well, send for him... and how do you get on with that German?"
asked Rostov, with a contemptuous smile.

"He is a very, very nice, honest, and pleasant fellow," answered
Boris.

Again Rostov looked intently into Boris' eyes and sighed. Berg
returned, and over the bottle of wine conversation between the three
officers became animated. The Guardsmen told Rostov of their march and
how they had been made much of in Russia, Poland, and abroad. They
spoke of the sayings and doings of their commander, the Grand Duke,
and told stories of his kindness and irascibility. Berg, as usual,
kept silent when the subject did not relate to himself, but in
connection with the stories of the Grand Duke's quick temper he
related with gusto how in Galicia he had managed to deal with the
Grand Duke when the latter made a tour of the regiments and was
annoyed at the irregularity of a movement. With a pleasant smile
Berg related how the Grand Duke had ridden up to him in a violent
passion, shouting: "Arnauts!" ("Arnauts" was the Tsarevich's
favorite expression when he was in a rage) and called for the
company commander.

"Would you believe it, Count, I was not at all alarmed, because I
knew I was right. Without boasting, you know, I may say that I know
the Army Orders by heart and know the Regulations as well as I do
the Lord's Prayer. So, Count, there never is any negligence in my
company, and so my conscience was at ease. I came forward...." (Berg
stood up and showed how he presented himself, with his hand to his
cap, and really it would have been difficult for a face to express
greater respect and self-complacency than his did.) "Well, he
stormed at me, as the saying is, stormed and stormed and stormed! It
was not a matter of life but rather of death, as the saying is.
'Albanians!' and 'devils!' and 'To Siberia!'" said Berg with a
sagacious smile. "I knew I was in the right so I kept silent; was
not that best, Count?... 'Hey, are you dumb?' he shouted. Still I
remained silent. And what do you think, Count? The next day it was not
even mentioned in the Orders of the Day. That's what keeping one's
head means. That's the way, Count," said Berg, lighting his pipe and
emitting rings of smoke.

"Yes, that was fine," said Rostov, smiling.

But Boris noticed that he was preparing to make fun of Berg, and
skillfully changed the subject. He asked him to tell them how and
where he got his wound. This pleased Rostov and he began talking about
it, and as he went on became more and more animated. He told them of
his Schon Grabern affair, just as those who have taken part in a
battle generally do describe it, that is, as they would like it to
have been, as they have heard it described by others, and as sounds
well, but not at all as it really was. Rostov was a truthful young man
and would on no account have told a deliberate lie. He began his story
meaning to tell everything just as it happened, but imperceptibly,
involuntarily, and inevitably he lapsed into falsehood. If he had told
the truth to his hearers--who like himself had often heard stories
of attacks and had formed a definite idea of what an attack was and
were expecting to hear just such a story--they would either not have
believed him or, still worse, would have thought that Rostov was
himself to blame since what generally happens to the narrators of
cavalry attacks had not happened to him. He could not tell them simply
that everyone went at a trot and that he fell off his horse and
sprained his arm and then ran as hard as he could from a Frenchman
into the wood. Besides, to tell everything as it really happened, it
would have been necessary to make an effort of will to tell only
what happened. It is very difficult to tell the truth, and young
people are rarely capable of it. His hearers expected a story of how
beside himself and all aflame with excitement, he had flown like a
storm at the square, cut his way in, slashed right and left, how his
saber had tasted flesh and he had fallen exhausted, and so on. And
so he told them all that.

In the middle of his story, just as he was saying: "You cannot
imagine what a strange frenzy one experiences during an attack,"
Prince Andrew, whom Boris was expecting, entered the room. Prince
Andrew, who liked to help young men, was flattered by being asked
for his assistance and being well disposed toward Boris, who had
managed to please him the day before, he wished to do what the young
man wanted. Having been sent with papers from Kutuzov to the
Tsarevich, he looked in on Boris, hoping to find him alone. When he
came in and saw an hussar of the line recounting his military exploits
(Prince Andrew could not endure that sort of man), he gave Boris a
pleasant smile, frowned as with half-closed eyes he looked at
Rostov, bowed slightly and wearily, and sat down languidly on the
sofa: he felt it unpleasant to have dropped in on bad company.
Rostov flushed up on noticing this, but he did not care, this was a
mere stranger. Glancing, however, at Boris, he saw that he too
seemed ashamed of the hussar of the line.

In spite of Prince Andrew's disagreeable, ironical tone, in spite of
the contempt with which Rostov, from his fighting army point of
view, regarded all these little adjutants on the staff of whom the
newcomer was evidently one, Rostov felt confused, blushed, and
became silent. Boris inquired what news there might be on the staff,
and what, without indiscretion, one might ask about our plans.

"We shall probably advance," replied Bolkonski, evidently
reluctant to say more in the presence of a stranger.

Berg took the opportunity to ask, with great politeness, whether, as
was rumored, the allowance of forage money to captains of companies
would be doubled. To this Prince Andrew answered with a smile that
he could give no opinion on such an important government order, and
Berg laughed gaily.

"As to your business," Prince Andrew continued, addressing Boris,
"we will talk of it later" (and he looked round at Rostov). "Come to
me after the review and we will do what is possible."

And, having glanced round the room, Prince Andrew turned to
Rostov, whose state of unconquerable childish embarrassment now
changing to anger he did not condescend to notice, and said: "I
think you were talking of the Schon Grabern affair? Were you there?"

"I was there," said Rostov angrily, as if intending to insult the
aide-de-camp.

Bolkonski noticed the hussar's state of mind, and it amused him.
With a slightly contemptuous smile, he said: "Yes, there are many
stories now told about that affair!"

"Yes, stories!" repeated Rostov loudly, looking with eyes suddenly
grown furious, now at Boris, now at Bolkonski. "Yes, many stories! But
our stories are the stories of men who have been under the enemy's
fire! Our stories have some weight, not like the stories of those
fellows on the staff who get rewards without doing anything!"

"Of whom you imagine me to be one?" said Prince Andrew, with a quiet
and particularly amiable smile.

A strange feeling of exasperation and yet of respect for this
man's self-possession mingled at that moment in Rostov's soul.

"I am not talking about you," he said, "I don't know you and,
frankly, I don't want to. I am speaking of the staff in general."

"And I will tell you this," Prince Andrew interrupted in a tone of
quiet authority, "you wish to insult me, and I am ready to agree
with you that it would be very easy to do so if you haven't sufficient
self-respect, but admit that the time and place are very badly chosen.
In a day or two we shall all have to take part in a greater and more
serious duel, and besides, Drubetskoy, who says he is an old friend of
yours, is not at all to blame that my face has the misfortune to
displease you. However," he added rising, "you know my name and
where to find me, but don't forget that I do not regard either
myself or you as having been at all insulted, and as a man older
than you, my advice is to let the matter drop. Well then, on Friday
after the review I shall expect you, Drubetskoy. Au revoir!" exclaimed
Prince Andrew, and with a bow to them both he went out.

Only when Prince Andrew was gone did Rostov think of what he ought
to have said. And he was still more angry at having omitted to say it.
He ordered his horse at once and, coldly taking leave of Boris, rode
home. Should he go to headquarters next day and challenge that
affected adjutant, or really let the matter drop, was the question
that worried him all the way. He thought angrily of the pleasure he
would have at seeing the fright of that small and frail but proud
man when covered by his pistol, and then he felt with surprise that of
all the men he knew there was none he would so much like to have for a
friend as that very adjutant whom he so hated.





CHAPTER VIII


The day after Rostov had been to see Boris, a review was held of the
Austrian and Russian troops, both those freshly arrived from Russia
and those who had been campaigning under Kutuzov. The two Emperors,
the Russian with his heir the Tsarevich, and the Austrian with the
Archduke, inspected the allied army of eighty thousand men.

From early morning the smart clean troops were on the move,
forming up on the field before the fortress. Now thousands of feet and
bayonets moved and halted at the officers' command, turned with
banners flying, formed up at intervals, and wheeled round other
similar masses of infantry in different uniforms; now was heard the
rhythmic beat of hoofs and the jingling of showy cavalry in blue, red,
and green braided uniforms, with smartly dressed bandsmen in front
mounted on black, roan, or gray horses; then again, spreading out with
the brazen clatter of the polished shining cannon that quivered on the
gun carriages and with the smell of linstocks, came the artillery
which crawled between the infantry and cavalry and took up its
appointed position. Not only the generals in full parade uniforms,
with their thin or thick waists drawn in to the utmost, their red
necks squeezed into their stiff collars, and wearing scarves and all
their decorations, not only the elegant, pomaded officers, but every
soldier with his freshly washed and shaven face and his weapons
clean and polished to the utmost, and every horse groomed till its
coat shone like satin and every hair of its wetted mane lay smooth-
felt that no small matter was happening, but an important and solemn
affair. Every general and every soldier was conscious of his own
insignificance, aware of being but a drop in that ocean of men, and
yet at the same time was conscious of his strength as a part of that
enormous whole.

From early morning strenuous activities and efforts had begun and by
ten o'clock all had been brought into due order. The ranks were
drown up on the vast field. The whole army was extended in three
lines: the cavalry in front, behind it the artillery, and behind
that again the infantry.

A space like a street was left between each two lines of troops. The
three parts of that army were sharply distinguished: Kutuzov's
fighting army (with the Pavlograds on the right flank of the front);
those recently arrived from Russia, both Guards and regiments of the
line; and the Austrian troops. But they all stood in the same lines,
under one command, and in a like order.

Like wind over leaves ran an excited whisper: "They're coming!
They're coming!" Alarmed voices were heard, and a stir of final
preparation swept over all the troops.

From the direction of Olmutz in front of them, a group was seen
approaching. And at that moment, though the day was still, a light
gust of wind blowing over the army slightly stirred the streamers on
the lances and the unfolded standards fluttered against their
staffs. It looked as if by that slight motion the army itself was
expressing its joy at the approach of the Emperors. One voice was
heard shouting: "Eyes front!" Then, like the crowing of cocks at
sunrise, this was repeated by others from various sides and all became
silent.

In the deathlike stillness only the tramp of horses was heard.
This was the Emperors' suites. The Emperors rode up to the flank,
and the trumpets of the first cavalry regiment played the general
march. It seemed as though not the trumpeters were playing, but as
if the army itself, rejoicing at the Emperors' approach, had naturally
burst into music. Amid these sounds, only the youthful kindly voice of
the Emperor Alexander was clearly heard. He gave the words of
greeting, and the first regiment roared "Hurrah!" so deafeningly,
continuously, and joyfully that the men themselves were awed by
their multitude and the immensity of the power they constituted.

Rostov, standing in the front lines of Kutuzov's army which the Tsar
approached first, experienced the same feeling as every other man in
that army: a feeling of self-forgetfulness, a proud consciousness of
might, and a passionate attraction to him who was the cause of this
triumph.

He felt that at a single word from that man all this vast mass
(and he himself an insignificant atom in it) would go through fire and
water, commit crime, die, or perform deeds of highest heroism, and
so he could not but tremble and his heart stand still at the imminence
of that word.

"Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!" thundered from all sides, one regiment
after another greeting the Tsar with the strains of the march, and
then "Hurrah!"... Then the general march, and again "Hurrah!
Hurrah!" growing ever stronger and fuller and merging into a deafening
roar.

Till the Tsar reached it, each regiment in its silence and
immobility seemed like a lifeless body, but as soon as he came up it
became alive, its thunder joining the roar of the whole line along
which he had already passed. Through the terrible and deafening roar
of those voices, amid the square masses of troops standing
motionless as if turned to stone, hundreds of riders composing the
suites moved carelessly but symmetrically and above all freely, and in
front of them two men--the Emperors. Upon them the undivided,
tensely passionate attention of that whole mass of men was
concentrated.

The handsome young Emperor Alexander, in the uniform of the Horse
Guards, wearing a cocked hat with its peaks front and back, with his
pleasant face and resonant though not loud voice, attracted everyone's
attention.

Rostov was not far from the trumpeters, and with his keen sight
had recognized the Tsar and watched his approach. When he was within
twenty paces, and Nicholas could clearly distinguish every detail of
his handsome, happy young face, he experienced a feeling tenderness
and ecstasy such as he had never before known. Every trait and every
movement of the Tsar's seemed to him enchanting.

Stopping in front of the Pavlograds, the Tsar said something in
French to the Austrian Emperor and smiled.

Seeing that smile, Rostov involuntarily smiled himself and felt a
still stronger flow of love for his sovereign. He longed to show
that love in some way and knowing that this was impossible was ready
to cry. The Tsar called the colonel of the regiment and said a few
words to him.

"Oh God, what would happen to me if the Emperor spoke to me?"
thought Rostov. "I should die of happiness!"

The Tsar addressed the officers also: "I thank you all, gentlemen, I
thank you with my whole heart." To Rostov every word sounded like a
voice from heaven. How gladly would he have died at once for his Tsar!

"You have earned the St. George's standards and will be worthy of
them."

"Oh, to die, to die for him," thought Rostov.

The Tsar said something more which Rostov did not hear, and the
soldiers, straining their lungs, shouted "Hurrah!"

Rostov too, bending over his saddle, shouted "Hurrah!" with all
his might, feeling that he would like to injure himself by that shout,
if only to express his rapture fully.

The Tsar stopped a few minutes in front of the hussars as if
undecided.

"How can the Emperor be undecided?" thought Rostov, but then even
this indecision appeared to him majestic and enchanting, like
everything else the Tsar did.

That hesitation lasted only an instant. The Tsar's foot, in the
narrow pointed boot then fashionable, touched the groin of the
bobtailed bay mare he rode, his hand in a white glove gathered up
the reins, and he moved off accompanied by an irregularly swaying
sea of aides-de-camp. Farther and farther he rode away, stopping at
other regiments, till at last only his white plumes were visible to
Rostov from amid the suites that surrounded the Emperors.

Among the gentlemen of the suite, Rostov noticed Bolkonski,
sitting his horse indolently and carelessly. Rostov recalled their
quarrel of yesterday and the question presented itself whether he
ought or ought not to challenge Bolkonski. "Of course not!" he now
thought. "Is it worth thinking or speaking of it at such a moment?
At a time of such love, such rapture, and such self-sacrifice, what do
any of our quarrels and affronts matter? I love and forgive
everybody now."

When the Emperor had passed nearly all the regiments, the troops
began a ceremonial march past him, and Rostov on Bedouin, recently
purchased from Denisov, rode past too, at the rear of his squadron-
that is, alone and in full view of the Emperor.

Before he reached him, Rostov, who was a splendid horseman,
spurred Bedouin twice and successfully put him to the showy trot in
which the animal went when excited. Bending his foaming muzzle to
his chest, his tail extended, Bedouin, as if also conscious of the
Emperor's eye upon him, passed splendidly, lifting his feet with a
high and graceful action, as if flying through the air without
touching the ground.

Rostov himself, his legs well back and his stomach drawn in and
feeling himself one with his horse, rode past the Emperor with a
frowning but blissful face "like a vewy devil," as Denisov expressed
it.

"Fine fellows, the Pavlograds!" remarked the Emperor.

"My God, how happy I should be if he ordered me to leap into the
fire this instant!" thought Rostov.

When the review was over, the newly arrived officers, and also
Kutuzov's, collected in groups and began to talk about the awards,
about the Austrians and their uniforms, about their lines, about
Bonaparte, and how badly the latter would fare now, especially if
the Essen corps arrived and Prussia took our side.

But the talk in every group was chiefly about the Emperor Alexander.
His every word and movement was described with ecstasy.

They all had but one wish: to advance as soon as possible against
the enemy under the Emperor's command. Commanded by the Emperor
himself they could not fail to vanquish anyone, be it whom it might:
so thought Rostov and most of the officers after the review.

All were then more confident of victory than the winning of two
battles would have made them.





CHAPTER IX


The day after the review, Boris, in his best uniform and with his
comrade Berg's best wishes for success, rode to Olmutz to see
Bolkonski, wishing to profit by his friendliness and obtain for
himself the best post he could--preferably that of adjutant to some
important personage, a position in the army which seemed to him most
attractive. "It is all very well for Rostov, whose father sends him
ten thousand rubles at a time, to talk about not wishing to cringe
to anybody and not be anyone's lackey, but I who have nothing but my
brains have to make a career and must not miss opportunities, but must
avail myself of them!" he reflected.

He did not find Prince Andrew in Olmutz that day, but the appearance
of the town where the headquarters and the diplomatic corps were
stationed and the two Emperors were living with their suites,
households, and courts only strengthened his desire to belong to
that higher world.

He knew no one, and despite his smart Guardsman's uniform, all these
exalted personages passing in the streets in their elegant carriages
with their plumes, ribbons, and medals, both courtiers and military
men, seemed so immeasurably above him, an insignificant officer of the
Guards, that they not only did not wish to, but simply could not, be
aware of his existence. At the quarters of the commander in chief,
Kutuzov, where he inquired for Bolkonski, all the adjutants and even
the orderlies looked at him as if they wished to impress on him that a
great many officers like him were always coming there and that
everybody was heartily sick of them. In spite of this, or rather
because of it, next day, November 15, after dinner he again went to
Olmutz and, entering the house occupied by Kutuzov, asked for
Bolkonski. Prince Andrew was in and Boris was shown into a large
hall probably formerly used for dancing, but in which five beds now
stood, and furniture of various kinds: a table, chairs, and a
clavichord. One adjutant, nearest the door, was sitting at the table
in a Persian dressing gown, writing. Another, the red, stout
Nesvitski, lay on a bed with his arms under his head, laughing with an
officer who had sat down beside him. A third was playing a Viennese
waltz on the clavichord, while a fourth, lying on the clavichord, sang
the tune. Bolkonski was not there. None of these gentlemen changed his
position on seeing Boris. The one who was writing and whom Boris
addressed turned round crossly and told him Bolkonski was on duty
and that he should go through the door on the left into the
reception room if he wished to see him. Boris thanked him and went
to the reception room, where he found some ten officers and generals.

When he entered, Prince Andrew, his eyes drooping contemptuously
(with that peculiar expression of polite weariness which plainly says,
"If it were not my duty I would not talk to you for a moment"), was
listening to an old Russian general with decorations, who stood very
erect, almost on tiptoe, with a soldier's obsequious expression on his
purple face, reporting something.

"Very well, then, be so good as to wait," said Prince Andrew to
the general, in Russian, speaking with the French intonation he
affected when he wished to speak contemptuously, and noticing Boris,
Prince Andrew, paying no more heed to the general who ran after him
imploring him to hear something more, nodded and turned to him with
a cheerful smile.

At that moment Boris clearly realized what he had before surmised,
that in the army, besides the subordination and discipline
prescribed in the military code, which he and the others knew in the
regiment, there was another, more important, subordination, which made
this tight-laced, purple-faced general wait respectfully while Captain
Prince Andrew, for his own pleasure, chose to chat with Lieutenant
Drubetskoy. More than ever was Boris resolved to serve in future not
according to the written code, but under this unwritten law. He felt
now that merely by having been recommended to Prince Andrew he had
already risen above the general who at the front had the power to
annihilate him, a lieutenant of the Guards. Prince Andrew came up to
him and took his hand.

"I am very sorry you did not find me in yesterday. I was fussing
about with Germans all day. We went with Weyrother to survey the
dispositions. When Germans start being accurate, there's no end to
it!"

Boris smiled, as if he understood what Prince Andrew was alluding to
as something generally known. But it the first time he had heard
Weyrother's name, or even the term "dispositions."

"Well, my dear fellow, so you still want to be an adjutant? I have
been thinking about you."

"Yes, I was thinking"--for some reason Boris could not help
blushing--"of asking the commander in chief. He has had a letter
from Prince Kuragin about me. I only wanted to ask because I fear
the Guards won't be in action," he added as if in apology.

"All right, all right. We'll talk it over," replied Prince Andrew.
"Only let me report this gentleman's business, and I shall be at
your disposal."

While Prince Andrew went to report about the purple-faced general,
that gentleman--evidently not sharing Boris' conception of the
advantages of the unwritten code of subordination--looked so fixedly
at the presumptuous lieutenant who had prevented his finishing what he
had to say to the adjutant that Boris felt uncomfortable. He turned
away and waited impatiently for Prince Andrew's return from the
commander in chief's room.

"You see, my dear fellow, I have been thinking about you," said
Prince Andrew when they had gone into the large room where the
clavichord was. "It's no use your going to the commander in chief.
He would say a lot of pleasant things, ask you to dinner" ("That would
not be bad as regards the unwritten code," thought Boris), "but
nothing more would come of it. There will soon be a battalion of us
aides-de-camp and adjutants! But this is what we'll do: I have a
good friend, an adjutant general and an excellent fellow, Prince
Dolgorukov; and though you may not know it, the fact is that now
Kutuzov with his staff and all of us count for nothing. Everything
is now centered round the Emperor. So we will go to Dolgorukov; I have
to go there anyhow and I have already spoken to him about you. We
shall see whether he cannot attach you to himself or find a place
for you somewhere nearer the sun."

Prince Andrew always became specially keen when he had to guide a
young man and help him to worldly success. Under cover of obtaining
help of this kind for another, which from pride he would never
accept for himself, he kept in touch with the circle which confers
success and which attracted him. He very readily took up Boris'
cause and went with him to Dolgorukov.

It was late in the evening when they entered the palace at Olmutz
occupied by the Emperors and their retinues.

That same day a council of war had been held in which all the
members of the Hofkriegsrath and both Emperors took part. At that
council, contrary to the views of the old generals Kutuzov and
Prince Schwartzenberg, it had been decided to advance immediately
and give battle to Bonaparte. The council of war was just over when
Prince Andrew accompanied by Boris arrived at the palace to find
Dolgorukov. Everyone at headquarters was still under the spell of
the day's council, at which the party of the young had triumphed.
The voices of those who counseled delay and advised waiting for
something else before advancing had been so completely silenced and
their arguments confuted by such conclusive evidence of the advantages
of attacking that what had been discussed at the council--the coming
battle and the victory that would certainly result from it--no
longer seemed to be in the future but in the past. All the
advantages were on our side. Our enormous forces, undoubtedly superior
to Napoleon's, were concentrated in one place, the troops inspired
by the Emperors' presence were eager for action. The strategic
position where the operations would take place was familiar in all its
details to the Austrian General Weyrother: a lucky accident had
ordained that the Austrian army should maneuver the previous year on
the very fields where the French had now to be fought; the adjacent
locality was known and shown in every detail on the maps, and
Bonaparte, evidently weakened, was undertaking nothing.

Dolgorukov, one of the warmest advocates of an attack, had just
returned from the council, tired and exhausted but eager and proud
of the victory that had been gained. Prince Andrew introduced his
protege, but Prince Dolgorukov politely and firmly pressing his hand
said nothing to Boris and, evidently unable to suppress the thoughts
which were uppermost in his mind at that moment, addressed Prince
Andrew in French.

"Ah, my dear fellow, what a battle we have gained! God grant that
the one that will result from it will be as victorious! However,
dear fellow," he said abruptly and eagerly, "I must confess to
having been unjust to the Austrians and especially to Weyrother.
What exactitude, what minuteness, what knowledge of the locality, what
foresight for every eventuality, every possibility even to the
smallest detail! No, my dear fellow, no conditions better than our
present ones could have been devised. This combination of Austrian
precision with Russian valor--what more could be wished for?"

"So the attack is definitely resolved on?" asked Bolkonski.

"And do you know, my dear fellow, it seems to me that Bonaparte
has decidedly lost bearings, you know that a letter was received
from him today for the Emperor." Dolgorukov smiled significantly.

"Is that so? And what did he say?" inquired Bolkonski.

"What can he say? Tra-di-ri-di-ra and so on... merely to gain
time. I tell you he is in our hands, that's certain! But what was most
amusing," he continued, with a sudden, good-natured laugh, "was that
we could not think how to address the reply! If not as 'Consul' and of
course not as 'Emperor,' it seemed to me it should be to 'General
Bonaparte.'"

"But between not recognizing him as Emperor and calling him
General Bonaparte, there is a difference," remarked Bolkonski.

"That's just it," interrupted Dolgorukov quickly, laughing. "You
know Bilibin--he's a very clever fellow. He suggested addressing him
as 'Usurper and Enemy of Mankind.'"

Dolgorukov laughed merrily.

"Only that?" said Bolkonski.

"All the same, it was Bilibin who found a suitable form for the
address. He is a wise and clever fellow."

"What was it?"

"To the Head of the French Government... Au chef du gouvernement
francais," said Dolgorukov, with grave satisfaction. "Good, wasn't
it?"

"Yes, but he will dislike it extremely," said Bolkonski.

"Oh yes, very much! My brother knows him, he's dined with him--the
present Emperor--more than once in Paris, and tells me he never met
a more cunning or subtle diplomatist--you know, a combination of
French adroitness and Italian play-acting! Do you know the tale
about him and Count Markov? Count Markov was the only man who knew how
to handle him. You know the story of the handkerchief? It is
delightful!"

And the talkative Dolgorukov, turning now to Boris, now to Prince
Andrew, told how Bonaparte wishing to test Markov, our ambassador,
purposely dropped a handkerchief in front of him and stood looking
at Markov, probably expecting Markov to pick it up for him, and how
Markov immediately dropped his own beside it and picked it up
without touching Bonaparte's.

"Delightful!" said Bolkonski. "But I have come to you, Prince, as
a petitioner on behalf of this young man. You see..." but before
Prince Andrew could finish, an aide-de-camp came in to summon
Dolgorukov to the Emperor.

"Oh, what a nuisance," said Dolgorukov, getting up hurriedly and
pressing the hands of Prince Andrew and Boris. "You know I should be
very glad to do all in my power both for you and for this dear young
man." Again he pressed the hand of the latter with an expression of
good-natured, sincere, and animated levity. "But you see... another
time!"

Boris was excited by the thought of being so close to the higher
powers as he felt himself to be at that moment. He was conscious
that here he was in contact with the springs that set in motion the
enormous movements of the mass of which in his regiment he felt
himself a tiny, obedient, and insignificant atom. They followed Prince
Dolgorukov out into the corridor and met--coming out of the door of
the Emperor's room by which Dolgorukov had entered--a short man in
civilian clothes with a clever face and sharply projecting jaw
which, without spoiling his face, gave him a peculiar vivacity and
shiftiness of expression. This short man nodded to Dolgorukov as to an
intimate friend and stared at Prince Andrew with cool intensity,
walking straight toward him and evidently expecting him to bow or to
step out of his way. Prince Andrew did neither: a look of animosity
appeared on his face and the other turned away and went down the
side of the corridor.

"Who was that?" asked Boris.

"He is one of the most remarkable, but to me most unpleasant of men-
the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prince Adam Czartoryski.... It is
such men as he who decide the fate of nations," added Bolkonski with a
sigh he could not suppress, as they passed out of the palace.

Next day, the army began its campaign, and up to the very battle
of Austerlitz, Boris was unable to see either Prince Andrew or
Dolgorukov again and remained for a while with the Ismaylov regiment.





CHAPTER X


At dawn on the sixteenth of November, Denisov's squadron, in which
Nicholas Rostov served and which was in Prince Bagration's detachment,
moved from the place where it had spent the night, advancing into
action as arranged, and after going behind other columns for about two
thirds of a mile was stopped on the highroad. Rostov saw the
Cossacks and then the first and second squadrons of hussars and
infantry battalions and artillery pass by and go forward and then
Generals Bagration and Dolgorukov ride past with their adjutants.
All the fear before action which he had experienced as previously, all
the inner struggle to conquer that fear, all his dreams of
distinguishing himself as a true hussar in this battle, had been
wasted. Their squadron remained in reserve and Nicholas Rostov spent
that day in a dull and wretched mood. At nine in the morning, he heard
firing in front and shouts of hurrah, and saw wounded being brought
back (there were not many of them), and at last he saw how a whole
detachment of French cavalry was brought in, convoyed by a sontnya
of Cossacks. Evidently the affair was over and, though not big, had
been a successful engagement. The men and officers returning spoke
of a brilliant victory, of the occupation of the town of Wischau and
the capture of a whole French squadron. The day was bright and sunny
after a sharp night frost, and the cheerful glitter of that autumn day
was in keeping with the news of victory which was conveyed, not only
by the tales of those who had taken part in it, but also by the joyful
expression on the faces of soldiers, officers, generals, and
adjutants, as they passed Rostov going or coming. And Nicholas, who
had vainly suffered all the dread that precedes a battle and had spent
that happy day in inactivity, was all the more depressed.

"Come here, Wostov. Let's dwink to dwown our gwief!" shouted
Denisov, who had settled down by the roadside with a flask and some
food.

The officers gathered round Denisov's canteen, eating and talking.

"There! They are bringing another!" cried one of the officers,
indicating a captive French dragoon who was being brought in on foot
by two Cossacks.

One of them was leading by the bridle a fine large French horse he
had taken from the prisoner.

"Sell us that horse!" Denisov called out to the Cossacks.

"If you like, your honor!"

The officers got up and stood round the Cossacks and their prisoner.
The French dragoon was a young Alsatian who spoke French with a German
accent. He was breathless with agitation, his face was red, and when
he heard some French spoken he at once began speaking to the officers,
addressing first one, then another. He said he would not have been
taken, it was not his fault but the corporal's who had sent him to
seize some horsecloths, though he had told him the Russians were
there. And at every word he added: "But don't hurt my little horse!"
and stroked the animal. It was plain that he did not quite grasp where
he was. Now he excused himself for having been taken prisoner and now,
imagining himself before his own officers, insisted on his soldierly
discipline and zeal in the service. He brought with him into our
rearguard all the freshness of atmosphere of the French army, which
was so alien to us.

The Cossacks sold the horse for two gold pieces, and Rostov, being
the richest of the officers now that he had received his money, bought
it.

"But don't hurt my little horse!" said the Alsatian good-naturedly
to Rostov when the animal was handed over to the hussar.

Rostov smilingly reassured the dragoon and gave him money.

"Alley! Alley!" said the Cossack, touching the prisoner's arm to
make him go on.

"The Emperor! The Emperor!" was suddenly heard among the hussars.

All began to run and bustle, and Rostov saw coming up the road
behind him several riders with white plumes in their hats. In a moment
everyone was in his place, waiting.

Rostov did not know or remember how he ran to his place and mounted.
Instantly his regret at not having been in action and his dejected
mood amid people of whom he was weary had gone, instantly every
thought of himself had vanished. He was filled with happiness at his
nearness to the Emperor. He felt that this nearness by itself made
up to him for the day he had lost. He was happy as a lover when the
longed-for moment of meeting arrives. Not daring to look round and
without looking round, he was ecstatically conscious of his
approach. He felt it not only from the sound of the hoofs of the
approaching cavalcade, but because as he drew near everything grew
brighter, more joyful, more significant, and more festive around
him. Nearer and nearer to Rostov came that sun shedding beams of
mild and majestic light around, and already he felt himself
enveloped in those beams, he heard his voice, that kindly, calm, and
majestic voice that was yet so simple! And as if in accord with
Rostov's feeling, there was a deathly stillness amid which was heard
the Emperor's voice.

"The Pavlograd hussars?" he inquired.

"The reserves, sire!" replied a voice, a very human one compared
to that which had said: "The Pavlograd hussars?"

The Emperor drew level with Rostov and halted. Alexander's face
was even more beautiful than it had been three days before at the
review. It shone with such gaiety and youth, such innocent youth, that
it suggested the liveliness of a fourteen-year-old boy, and yet it was
the face of the majestic Emperor. Casually, while surveying the
squadron, the Emperor's eyes met Rostov's and rested on them for not
more than two seconds. Whether or no the Emperor understood what was
going on in Rostov's soul (it seemed to Rostov that he understood
everything), at any rate his light-blue eyes gazed for about two
seconds into Rostov's face. A gentle, mild light poured from them.
Then all at once he raised his eyebrows, abruptly touched his horse
with his left foot, and galloped on.

The younger Emperor could not restrain his wish to be present at the
battle and, in spite of the remonstrances of his courtiers, at
twelve o'clock left the third column with which he had been and
galloped toward the vanguard. Before he came up with the hussars,
several adjutants met him with news of the successful result of the
action.

This battle, which consisted in the capture of a French squadron,
was represented as a brilliant victory over the French, and so the
Emperor and the whole army, especially while the smoke hung over the
battlefield, believed that the French had been defeated and were
retreating against their will. A few minutes after the Emperor had
passed, the Pavlograd division was ordered to advance. In Wischau
itself, a petty German town, Rostov saw the Emperor again. In the
market place, where there had been some rather heavy firing before the
Emperor's arrival, lay several killed and wounded soldiers whom
there had not been time to move. The Emperor, surrounded by his
suite of officers and courtiers, was riding a bobtailed chestnut mare,
a different one from that which he had ridden at the review, and
bending to one side he gracefully held a gold lorgnette to his eyes
and looked at a soldier who lay prone, with blood on his uncovered
head. The wounded soldier was so dirty, coarse, and revolting that his
proximity to the Emperor shocked Rostov. Rostov saw how the
Emperor's rather round shoulders shuddered as if a cold shiver had run
down them, how his left foot began convulsively tapping the horse's
side with the spur, and how the well-trained horse looked round
unconcerned and did not stir. An adjutant, dismounting, lifted the
soldier under the arms to place him on a stretcher that had been
brought. The soldier groaned.

"Gently, gently! Can't you do it more gently?" said the Emperor
apparently suffering more than the dying soldier, and he rode away.

Rostov saw tears filling the Emperor's eyes and heard him, as he was
riding away, say to Czartoryski: "What a terrible thing war is: what a
terrible thing! Quelle terrible chose que la guerre!"

The troops of the vanguard were stationed before Wischau, within
sight of the enemy's lines, which all day long had yielded ground to
us at the least firing. The Emperor's gratitude was announced to the
vanguard, rewards were promised, and the men received a double
ration of vodka. The campfires crackled and the soldiers' songs
resounded even more merrily than on the previous night. Denisov
celebrated his promotion to the rank of major, and Rostov, who had
already drunk enough, at the end of the feast proposed the Emperor's
health. "Not 'our Sovereign, the Emperor,' as they say at official
dinners," said he, "but the health of our Sovereign, that good,
enchanting, and great man! Let us drink to his health and to the
certain defeat of the French!"

"If we fought before," he said, "not letting the French pass, as
at Schon Grabern, what shall we not do now when he is at the front? We
will all die for him gladly! Is it not so, gentlemen? Perhaps I am not
saying it right, I have drunk a good deal--but that is how I feel, and
so do you too! To the health of Alexander the First! Hurrah!"

"Hurrah!" rang the enthusiastic voices of the officers.

And the old cavalry captain, Kirsten, shouted enthusiastically and
no less sincerely than the twenty-year-old Rostov.

When the officers had emptied and smashed their glasses, Kirsten
filled others and, in shirt sleeves and breeches, went glass in hand
to the soldiers' bonfires and with his long gray mustache, his white
chest showing under his open shirt, he stood in a majestic pose in the
light of the campfire, waving his uplifted arm.

"Lads! here's to our Sovereign, the Emperor, and victory over our
enemies! Hurrah!" he exclaimed in his dashing, old, hussar's baritone.

The hussars crowded round and responded heartily with loud shouts.

Late that night, when all had separated, Denisov with his short hand
patted his favorite, Rostov, on the shoulder.

"As there's no one to fall in love with on campaign, he's fallen
in love with the Tsar," he said.

"Denisov, don't make fun of it!" cried Rostov. "It is such a
lofty, beautiful feeling, such a..."

"I believe it, I believe it, fwiend, and I share and appwove..."

"No, you don't understand!"

And Rostov got up and went wandering among the campfires, dreaming
of what happiness it would be to die--not in saving the Emperor's life
(he did not even dare to dream of that), but simply to die before
his eyes. He really was in love with the Tsar and the glory of the
Russian arms and the hope of future triumph. And he was not the only
man to experience that feeling during those memorable days preceding
the battle of Austerlitz: nine tenths of the men in the Russian army
were then in love, though less ecstatically, with their Tsar and the
glory of the Russian arms.





CHAPTER XI


The next day the Emperor stopped at Wischau, and Villier, his
physician, was repeatedly summoned to see him. At headquarters and
among the troops near by the news spread that the Emperor was
unwell. He ate nothing and had slept badly that night, those around
him reported. The cause of this indisposition was the strong
impression made on his sensitive mind by the sight of the killed and
wounded.

At daybreak on the seventeenth, a French officer who had come with a
flag of truce, demanding an audience with the Russian Emperor, was
brought into Wischau from our outposts. This officer was Savary. The
Emperor had only just fallen asleep and so Savary had to wait. At
midday he was admitted to the Emperor, and an hour later he rode off
with Prince Dolgorukov to the advanced post of the French army.

It was rumored that Savary had been sent to propose to Alexander a
meeting with Napoleon. To the joy and pride of the whole army, a
personal interview was refused, and instead of the Sovereign, Prince
Dolgorukov, the victor at Wischau, was sent with Savary to negotiate
with Napoleon if, contrary to expectations, these negotiations were
actuated by a real desire for peace.

Toward evening Dolgorukov came back, went straight to the Tsar,
and remained alone with him for a long time.

On the eighteenth and nineteenth of November, the army advanced
two days' march and the enemy's outposts after a brief interchange
of shots retreated. In the highest army circles from midday on the
nineteenth, a great, excitedly bustling activity began which lasted
till the morning of the twentieth, when the memorable battle of
Austerlitz was fought.

Till midday on the nineteenth, the activity--the eager talk, running
to and fro, and dispatching of adjutants--was confined to the
Emperor's headquarters. But on the afternoon of that day, this
activity reached Kutuzov's headquarters and the staffs of the
commanders of columns. By evening, the adjutants had spread it to
all ends and parts of the army, and in the night from the nineteenth
to the twentieth, the whole eighty thousand allied troops rose from
their bivouacs to the hum of voices, and the army swayed and started
in one enormous mass six miles long.

The concentrated activity which had begun at the Emperor's
headquarters in the morning and had started the whole movement that
followed was like the first movement of the main wheel of a large
tower clock. One wheel slowly moved, another was set in motion, and
a third, and wheels began to revolve faster and faster, levers and
cogwheels to work, chimes to play, figures to pop out, and the hands
to advance with regular motion as a result of all that activity.

Just as in the mechanism of a clock, so in the mechanism of the
military machine, an impulse once given leads to the final result; and
just as indifferently quiescent till the moment when motion is
transmitted to them are the parts of the mechanism which the impulse
has not yet reached. Wheels creak on their axles as the cogs engage
one another and the revolving pulleys whirr with the rapidity of their
movement, but a neighboring wheel is as quiet and motionless as though
it were prepared to remain so for a hundred years; but the moment
comes when the lever catches it and obeying the impulse that wheel
begins to creak and joins in the common motion the result and aim of
which are beyond its ken.

Just as in a clock, the result of the complicated motion of
innumerable wheels and pulleys is merely a slow and regular movement
of the hands which show the time, so the result of all the complicated
human activities of 160,000 Russians and French--all their passions,
desires, remorse, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride,
fear, and enthusiasm--was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz,
the so-called battle of the three Emperors--that is to say, a slow
movement of the hand on the dial of human history.

Prince Andrew was on duty that day and in constant attendance on the
commander in chief.

At six in the evening, Kutuzov went to the Emperor's headquarters
and after staying but a short time with the Tsar went to see the grand
marshal of the court, Count Tolstoy.

Bolkonski took the opportunity to go in to get some details of the
coming action from Dolgorukov. He felt that Kutuzov was upset and
dissatisfied about something and that at headquarters they were
dissatisfied with him, and also that at the Emperor's headquarters
everyone adopted toward him the tone of men who know something
others do not know: he therefore wished to speak to Dolgorukov.

"Well, how d'you do, my dear fellow?" said Dolgorukov, who was
sitting at tea with Bilibin. "The fete is for tomorrow. How is your
old fellow? Out of sorts?"

"I won't say he is out of sorts, but I fancy he would like to be
heard."

"But they heard him at the council of war and will hear him when
he talks sense, but to temporize and wait for something now when
Bonaparte fears nothing so much as a general battle is impossible."

"Yes, you have seen him?" said Prince Andrew. "Well, what is
Bonaparte like? How did he impress you?"

"Yes, I saw him, and am convinced that he fears nothing so much as a
general engagement," repeated Dolgorukov, evidently prizing this
general conclusion which he had arrived at from his interview with
Napoleon. "If he weren't afraid of a battle why did he ask for that
interview? Why negotiate, and above all why retreat, when to retreat
is so contrary to his method of conducting war? Believe me, he is
afraid, afraid of a general battle. His hour has come! Mark my words!"

"But tell me, what is he like, eh?" said Prince Andrew again.

"He is a man in a gray overcoat, very anxious that I should call him
'Your Majesty,' but who, to his chagrin, got no title from me!
That's the sort of man he is, and nothing more," replied Dolgorukov,
looking round at Bilibin with a smile.

"Despite my great respect for old Kutuzov," he continued, "we should
be a nice set of fellows if we were to wait about and so give him a
chance to escape, or to trick us, now that we certainly have him in
our hands! No, we mustn't forget Suvorov and his rule--not to put
yourself in a position to be attacked, but yourself to attack. Believe
me in war the energy of young men often shows the way better than
all the experience of old Cunctators."

"But in what position are we going to attack him? I have been at the
outposts today and it is impossible to say where his chief forces
are situated," said Prince Andrew.

He wished to explain to Dolgorukov a plan of attack he had himself
formed.

"Oh, that is all the same," Dolgorukov said quickly, and getting
up he spread a map on the table. "All eventualities have been
foreseen. If he is standing before Brunn..."

And Prince Dolgorukov rapidly but indistinctly explained Weyrother's
plan of a flanking movement.

Prince Andrew began to reply and to state his own plan, which
might have been as good as Weyrother's, but for the disadvantage
that Weyrother's had already been approved. As soon as Prince Andrew
began to demonstrate the defects of the latter and the merits of his
own plan, Prince Dolgorukov ceased to listen to him and gazed
absent-mindedly not at the map, but at Prince Andrew's face.

"There will be a council of war at Kutuzov's tonight, though; you
can say all this there," remarked Dolgorukov.

"I will do so," said Prince Andrew, moving away from the map.

"Whatever are you bothering about, gentlemen?" said Bilibin, who,
till then, had listened with an amused smile to their conversation and
now was evidently ready with a joke. "Whether tomorrow brings
victory or defeat, the glory of our Russian arms is secure. Except
your Kutuzov, there is not a single Russian in command of a column!
The commanders are: Herr General Wimpfen, le Comte de Langeron, le
Prince de Lichtenstein, le Prince, de Hohenlohe, and finally
Prishprish, and so on like all those Polish names."

"Be quiet, backbiter!" said Dolgorukov. "It is not true; there are
now two Russians, Miloradovich, and Dokhturov, and there would be a
third, Count Arakcheev, if his nerves were not too weak."

"However, I think General Kutuzov has come out," said Prince Andrew.
"I wish you good luck and success, gentlemen!" he added and went out
after shaking hands with Dolgorukov and Bilibin.

On the way home, Prince Andrew could not refrain from asking
Kutuzov, who was sitting silently beside him, what he thought of
tomorrow's battle.

Kutuzov looked sternly at his adjutant and, after a pause,
replied: "I think the battle will be lost, and so I told Count Tolstoy
and asked him to tell the Emperor. What do you think he replied? 'But,
my dear general, I am engaged with rice and cutlets, look after
military matters yourself!' Yes... That was the answer I got!"





CHAPTER XII


Shortly after nine o'clock that evening, Weyrother drove with his
plans to Kutuzov's quarters where the council of war was to be held.
All the commanders of columns were summoned to the commander in
chief's and with the exception of Prince Bagration, who declined to
come, were all there at the appointed time.

Weyrother, who was in full control of the proposed battle, by his
eagerness and briskness presented a marked contrast to the
dissatisfied and drowsy Kutuzov, who reluctantly played the part of
chairman and president of the council of war. Weyrother evidently felt
himself to be at the head of a movement that had already become
unrestrainable. He was like a horse running downhill harnessed to a
heavy cart. Whether he was pulling it or being pushed by it he did not
know, but rushed along at headlong speed with no time to consider what
this movement might lead to. Weyrother had been twice that evening
to the enemy's picket line to reconnoiter personally, and twice to the
Emperors, Russian and Austrian, to report and explain, and to his
headquarters where he had dictated the dispositions in German, and
now, much exhausted, he arrived at Kutuzov's.

He was evidently so busy that he even forgot to be polite to the
commander in chief. He interrupted him, talked rapidly and
indistinctly, without looking at the man he was addressing, and did
not reply to questions put to him. He was bespattered with mud and had
a pitiful, weary, and distracted air, though at the same time he was
haughty and self-confident.

Kutuzov was occupying a nobleman's castle of modest dimensions
near Ostralitz. In the large drawing room which had become the
commander in chief's office were gathered Kutuzov himself,
Weyrother, and the members of the council of war. They were drinking
tea, and only awaited Prince Bagration to begin the council. At last
Bagration's orderly came with the news that the prince could not
attend. Prince Andrew came in to inform the commander in chief of this
and, availing himself of permission previously given him by Kutuzov to
be present at the council, he remained in the room.

"Since Prince Bagration is not coming, we may begin," said
Weyrother, hurriedly rising from his seat and going up to the table on
which an enormous map of the environs of Brunn was spread out.

Kutuzov, with his uniform unbuttoned so that his fat neck bulged
over his collar as if escaping, was sitting almost asleep in a low
chair, with his podgy old hands resting symmetrically on its arms.
At the sound of Weyrother's voice, he opened his one eye with an
effort.

"Yes, yes, if you please! It is already late," said he, and
nodding his head he let it droop and again closed his eye.

If at first the members of the council thought that Kutuzov was
pretending to sleep, the sounds his nose emitted during the reading
that followed proved that the commander in chief at that moment was
absorbed by a far more serious matter than a desire to show his
contempt for the dispositions or anything else--he was engaged in
satisfying the irresistible human need for sleep. He really was
asleep. Weyrother, with the gesture of a man too busy to lose a
moment, glanced at Kutuzov and, having convinced himself that he was
asleep, took up a paper and in a loud, monotonous voice began to
read out the dispositions for the impending battle, under a heading
which he also read out:

"Dispositions for an attack on the enemy position behind Kobelnitz
and Sokolnitz, November 30, 1805."

The dispositions were very complicated and difficult. They began
as follows:

"As the enemy's left wing rests on wooded hills and his right
extends along Kobelnitz and Sokolnitz behind the ponds that are there,
while we, on the other hand, with our left wing by far outflank his
right, it is advantageous to attack the enemy's latter wing especially
if we occupy the villages of Sokolnitz and Kobelnitz, whereby we can
both fall on his flank and pursue him over the plain between
Schlappanitz and the Thuerassa forest, avoiding the defiles of
Schlappanitz and Bellowitz which cover the enemy's front. For this
object it is necessary that... The first column marches... The
second column marches... The third column marches..." and so on,
read Weyrother.

The generals seemed to listen reluctantly to the difficult
dispositions. The tall, fair-haired General Buxhowden stood, leaning
his back against the wall, his eyes fixed on a burning candle, and
seemed not to listen or even to wish to be thought to listen.
Exactly opposite Weyrother, with his glistening wide-open eyes fixed
upon him and his mustache twisted upwards, sat the ruddy
Miloradovich in a military pose, his elbows turned outwards, his hands
on his knees, and his shoulders raised. He remained stubbornly silent,
gazing at Weyrother's face, and only turned away his eyes when the
Austrian chief of staff finished reading. Then Miloradovich looked
round significantly at the other generals. But one could not tell from
that significant look whether he agreed or disagreed and was satisfied
or not with the arrangements. Next to Weyrother sat Count Langeron
who, with a subtle smile that never left his typically southern French
face during the whole time of the reading, gazed at his delicate
fingers which rapidly twirled by its corners a gold snuffbox on
which was a portrait. In the middle of one of the longest sentences,
he stopped the rotary motion of the snuffbox, raised his head, and
with inimical politeness lurking in the corners of his thin lips
interrupted Weyrother, wishing to say something. But the Austrian
general, continuing to read, frowned angrily and jerked his elbows, as
if to say: "You can tell me your views later, but now be so good as to
look at the map and listen." Langeron lifted his eyes with an
expression of perplexity, turned round to Miloradovich as if seeking
an explanation, but meeting the latter's impressive but meaningless
gaze drooped his eyes sadly and again took to twirling his snuffbox.

"A geography lesson!" he muttered as if to himself, but loud
enough to be heard.

Przebyszewski, with respectful but dignified politeness, held his
hand to his ear toward Weyrother, with the air of a man absorbed in
attention. Dohkturov, a little man, sat opposite Weyrother, with an
assiduous and modest mien, and stooping over the outspread map
conscientiously studied the dispositions and the unfamiliar
locality. He asked Weyrother several times to repeat words he had
not clearly heard and the difficult names of villages. Weyrother
complied and Dohkturov noted them down.

When the reading which lasted more than an hour was over, Langeron
again brought his snuffbox to rest and, without looking at Weyrother
or at anyone in particular, began to say how difficult it was to carry
out such a plan in which the enemy's position was assumed to be known,
whereas it was perhaps not known, since the enemy was in movement.
Langeron's objections were valid but it was obvious that their chief
aim was to show General Weyrother--who had read his dispositions
with as much self-confidence as if he were addressing school children-
that he had to do, not with fools, but with men who could teach him
something in military matters.

When the monotonous sound of Weyrother's voice ceased, Kutuzov
opened his eye as a miller wakes up when the soporific drone of the
mill wheel is interrupted. He listened to what Langeron said, as if
remarking, "So you are still at that silly business!" quickly closed
his eye again, and let his head sink still lower.

Langeron, trying as virulently as possible to sting Weyrother's
vanity as author of the military plan, argued that Bonaparte might
easily attack instead of being attacked, and so render the whole of
this plan perfectly worthless. Weyrother met all objections with a
firm and contemptuous smile, evidently prepared beforehand to meet all
objections be they what they might.

"If he could attack us, he would have done so today," said he.

"So you think he is powerless?" said Langeron.

"He has forty thousand men at most," replied Weyrother, with the
smile of a doctor to whom an old wife wishes to explain the
treatment of a case.

"In that case he is inviting his doom by awaiting our attack,"
said Langeron, with a subtly ironical smile, again glancing round
for support to Miloradovich who was near him.

But Miloradovich was at that moment evidently thinking of anything
rather than of what the generals were disputing about.

"Ma foi!" said he, "tomorrow we shall see all that on the
battlefield."

Weyrother again gave that smile which seemed to say that to him it
was strange and ridiculous to meet objections from Russian generals
and to have to prove to them what he had not merely convinced
himself of, but had also convinced the sovereign Emperors of.

"The enemy has quenched his fires and a continual noise is heard
from his camp," said he. "What does that mean? Either he is
retreating, which is the only thing we need fear, or he is changing
his position." (He smiled ironically.) "But even if he also took up
a position in the Thuerassa, he merely saves us a great deal of
trouble and all our arrangements to the minutest detail remain the
same."

"How is that?..." began Prince Andrew, who had for long been waiting
an opportunity to express his doubts.

Kutuzov here woke up, coughed heavily, and looked round at the
generals.

"Gentlemen, the dispositions for tomorrow--or rather for today,
for it is past midnight--cannot now be altered," said he. "You have
heard them, and we shall all do our duty. But before a battle, there
is nothing more important..." he paused, "than to have a good sleep."

He moved as if to rise. The generals bowed and retired. It was
past midnight. Prince Andrew went out.


The council of war, at which Prince Andrew had not been able to
express his opinion as he had hoped to, left on him a vague and uneasy
impression. Whether Dolgorukov and Weyrother, or Kutuzov, Langeron,
and the others who did not approve of the plan of attack, were
right--he did not know. "But was it really not possible for Kutuzov to
state his views plainly to the Emperor? Is it possible that on account
of court and personal considerations tens of thousands of lives, and
my life, my life," he thought, "must be risked?"

"Yes, it is very likely that I shall be killed tomorrow," he
thought. And suddenly, at this thought of death, a whole series of
most distant, most intimate, memories rose in his imagination: he
remembered his last parting from his father and his wife; he
remembered the days when he first loved her. He thought of her
pregnancy and felt sorry for her and for himself, and in a nervously
emotional and softened mood he went out of the hut in which he was
billeted with Nesvitski and began to walk up and down before it.

The night was foggy and through the fog the moonlight gleamed
mysteriously. "Yes, tomorrow, tomorrow!" he thought. "Tomorrow
everything may be over for me! All these memories will be no more,
none of them will have any meaning for me. Tomorrow perhaps, even
certainly, I have a presentiment that for the first time I shall
have to show all I can do." And his fancy pictured the battle, its
loss, the concentration of fighting at one point, and the hesitation
of all the commanders. And then that happy moment, that Toulon for
which he had so long waited, presents itself to him at last. He firmly
and clearly expresses his opinion to Kutuzov, to Weyrother, and to the
Emperors. All are struck by the justness of his views, but no one
undertakes to carry them out, so he takes a regiment, a division-
stipulates that no one is to interfere with his arrangements--leads
his division to the decisive point, and gains the victory alone.
"But death and suffering?" suggested another voice. Prince Andrew,
however, did not answer that voice and went on dreaming of his
triumphs. The dispositions for the next battle are planned by him
alone. Nominally he is only an adjutant on Kutuzov's staff, but he
does everything alone. The next battle is won by him alone. Kutuzov is
removed and he is appointed... "Well and then?" asked the other voice.
"If before that you are not ten times wounded, killed, or betrayed,
well... what then?..." "Well then," Prince Andrew answered himself, "I
don't know what will happen and don't want to know, and can't, but
if I want this--want glory, want to be known to men, want to be
loved by them, it is not my fault that I want it and want nothing
but that and live only for that. Yes, for that alone! I shall never
tell anyone, but, oh God! what am I to do if I love nothing but fame
and men's esteem? Death, wounds, the loss of family--I fear nothing.
And precious and dear as many persons are to me--father, sister, wife-
those dearest to me--yet dreadful and unnatural as it seems, I would
give them all at once for a moment of glory, of triumph over men, of
love from men I don't know and never shall know, for the love of these
men here," he thought, as he listened to voices in Kutuzov's
courtyard. The voices were those of the orderlies who were packing up;
one voice, probably a coachman's, was teasing Kutuzov's old cook
whom Prince Andrew knew, and who was called Tit. He was saying,
"Tit, I say, Tit!"

"Well?" returned the old man.

"Go, Tit, thresh a bit!" said the wag.

"Oh, go to the devil!" called out a voice, drowned by the laughter
of the orderlies and servants.

"All the same, I love and value nothing but triumph over them all, I
value this mystic power and glory that is floating here above me in
this mist!"





CHAPTER XIII


That same night, Rostov was with a platoon on skirmishing duty in
front of Bagration's detachment. His hussars were placed along the
line in couples and he himself rode along the line trying to master
the sleepiness that kept coming over him. An enormous space, with
our army's campfires dimly glowing in the fog, could be seen behind
him; in front of him was misty darkness. Rostov could see nothing,
peer as he would into that foggy distance: now something gleamed gray,
now there was something black, now little lights seemed to glimmer
where the enemy ought to be, now he fancied it was only something in
his own eyes. His eyes kept closing, and in his fancy appeared--now
the Emperor, now Denisov, and now Moscow memories--and he again
hurriedly opened his eyes and saw close before him the head and ears
of the horse he was riding, and sometimes, when he came within six
paces of them, the black figures of hussars, but in the distance was
still the same misty darkness. "Why not?... It might easily happen,"
thought Rostov, "that the Emperor will meet me and give me an order as
he would to any other officer; he'll say: 'Go and find out what's
there.' There are many stories of his getting to know an officer in
just such a chance way and attaching him to himself! What if he gave
me a place near him? Oh, how I would guard him, how I would tell him
the truth, how I would unmask his deceivers!" And in order to
realize vividly his love devotion to the sovereign, Rostov pictured to
himself an enemy or a deceitful German, whom he would not only kill
with pleasure but whom he would slap in the face before the Emperor.
Suddenly a distant shout aroused him. He started and opened his eyes.

"Where am I? Oh yes, in the skirmishing line... pass and
watchword--shaft, Olmutz. What a nuisance that our squadron will be in
reserve tomorrow," he thought. "I'll ask leave to go to the front,
this may be my only chance of seeing the Emperor. It won't be long now
before I am off duty. I'll take another turn and when I get back
I'll go to the general and ask him." He readjusted himself in the
saddle and touched up his horse to ride once more round his hussars.
It seemed to him that it was getting lighter. To the left he saw a
sloping descent lit up, and facing it a black knoll that seemed as
steep as a wall. On this knoll there was a white patch that Rostov
could not at all make out: was it a glade in the wood lit up by the
moon, or some unmelted snow, or some white houses? He even thought
something moved on that white spot. "I expect it's snow... that
spot... a spot--une tache," he thought. "There now... it's not a
tache... Natasha... sister, black eyes... Na... tasha... (Won't she be
surprised when I tell her how I've seen the Emperor?) Natasha...
take my sabretache..."--"Keep to the right, your honor, there are
bushes here," came the voice of an hussar, past whom Rostov was riding
in the act of falling asleep. Rostov lifted his head that had sunk
almost to his horse's mane and pulled up beside the hussar. He was
succumbing to irresistible, youthful, childish drowsiness. "But what
was I thinking? I mustn't forget. How shall I speak to the Emperor?
No, that's not it--that's tomorrow. Oh yes! Natasha... sabretache...
saber them...Whom? The hussars... Ah, the hussars with mustaches.
Along the Tverskaya Street rode the hussar with mustaches... I thought
about him too, just opposite Guryev's house... Old Guryev.... Oh,
but Denisov's a fine fellow. But that's all nonsense. The chief
thing is that the Emperor is here. How he looked at me and wished to
say something, but dared not.... No, it was I who dared not. But
that's nonsense, the chief thing is not to forget the important
thing I was thinking of. Yes, Na-tasha, sabretache, oh, yes, yes!
That's right!" And his head once more sank to his horse's neck. All at
once it seemed to him that he was being fired at. "What? What?
What?... Cut them down! What?..." said Rostov, waking up. At the
moment he opened his eyes he heard in front of him, where the
enemy was, the long-drawn shouts of thousands of voices. His horse and
the horse of the hussar near him pricked their ears at these shouts.
Over there, where the shouting came from, a fire flared up and went
out again, then another, and all along the French line on the hill
fires flared up and the shouting grew louder and louder. Rostov
could hear the sound of French words but could not distinguish them.
The din of many voices was too great; all he could hear was: "ahahah!"
and "rrrr!"

"What's that? What do you make of it?" said Rostov to the hussar
beside him. "That must be the enemy's camp!"

The hussar did not reply.

"Why, don't you hear it?" Rostov asked again, after waiting for a
reply.

"Who can tell, your honor?" replied the hussar reluctantly.

"From the direction, it must be the enemy," repeated Rostov.

"It may be he or it may be nothing," muttered the hussar. "It's
dark... Steady!" he cried to his fidgeting horse.

Rostov's horse was also getting restive: it pawed the frozen ground,
pricking its ears at the noise and looking at the lights. The shouting
grew still louder and merged into a general roar that only an army
of several thousand men could produce. The lights spread farther and
farther, probably along the line of the French camp. Rostov no
longer wanted to sleep. The gay triumphant shouting of the enemy
army had a stimulating effect on him. "Vive l'Empereur! L'Empereur!"
he now heard distinctly.

"They can't be far off, probably just beyond the stream," he said to
the hussar beside him.

The hussar only sighed without replying and coughed angrily. The
sound of horse's hoofs approaching at a trot along the line of hussars
was heard, and out of the foggy darkness the figure of a sergeant of
hussars suddenly appeared, looming huge as an elephant.

"Your honor, the generals!" said the sergeant, riding up to Rostov.

Rostov, still looking round toward the fires and the shouts, rode
with the sergeant to meet some mounted men who were riding along the
line. One was on a white horse. Prince Bagration and Prince Dolgorukov
with their adjutants had come to witness the curious phenomenon of the
lights and shouts in the enemy's camp. Rostov rode up to Bagration,
reported to him, and then joined the adjutants listening to what the
generals were saying.

"Believe me," said Prince Dolgorukov, addressing Bagration, "it is
nothing but a trick! He has retreated and ordered the rearguard to
kindle fires and make a noise to deceive us."

"Hardly," said Bagration. "I saw them this evening on that knoll; if
they had retreated they would have withdrawn from that too....
Officer!" said Bagration to Rostov, "are the enemy's skirmishers still
there?"

"They were there this evening, but now I don't know, your
excellency. Shall I go with some of my hussars to see?" replied
Rostov.

Bagration stopped and, before replying, tried to see Rostov's face
in the mist.

"Well, go and see," he said, after a pause.

"Yes, sir."

Rostov spurred his horse, called to Sergeant Fedchenko and two other
hussars, told them to follow him, and trotted downhill in the
direction from which the shouting came. He felt both frightened and
pleased to be riding alone with three hussars into that mysterious and
dangerous misty distance where no one had been before him. Bagration
called to him from the hill not to go beyond the stream, but Rostov
pretended not to hear him and did not stop but rode on and on,
continually mistaking bushes for trees and gullies for men and
continually discovering his mistakes. Having descended the hill at a
trot, he no longer saw either our own or the enemy's fires, but
heard the shouting of the French more loudly and distinctly. In the
valley he saw before him something like a river, but when he reached
it he found it was a road. Having come out onto the road he reined
in his horse, hesitating whether to ride along it or cross it and ride
over the black field up the hillside. To keep to the road which
gleamed white in the mist would have been safer because it would be
easier to see people coming along it. "Follow me!" said he, crossed
the road, and began riding up the hill at a gallop toward the point
where the French pickets had been standing that evening.

"Your honor, there he is!" cried one of the hussars behind him.
And before Rostov had time to make out what the black thing was that
had suddenly appeared in the fog, there was a flash, followed by a
report, and a bullet whizzing high up in the mist with a plaintive
sound passed out of hearing. Another musket missed fire but flashed in
the pan. Rostov turned his horse and galloped back. Four more
reports followed at intervals, and the bullets passed somewhere in the
fog singing in different tones. Rostov reined in his horse, whose
spirits had risen, like his own, at the firing, and went back at a
footpace. "Well, some more! Some more!" a merry voice was saying in
his soul. But no more shots came.

Only when approaching Bagration did Rostov let his horse gallop
again, and with his hand at the salute rode up to the general.

Dolgorukov was still insisting that the French had retreated and had
only lit fires to deceive us.

"What does that prove?" he was saying as Rostov rode up. "They might
retreat and leave the pickets."

"It's plain that they have not all gone yet, Prince," said
Bagration. "Wait till tomorrow morning, we'll find out everything
tomorrow."

"The picket is still on the hill, your excellency, just where it was
in the evening," reported Rostov, stooping forward with his hand at
the salute and unable to repress the smile of delight induced by his
ride and especially by the sound of the bullets.

"Very good, very good," said Bagration. "Thank you, officer."

"Your excellency," said Rostov, "may I ask a favor?"

"What is it?"

"Tomorrow our squadron is to be in reserve. May I ask to be attached
to the first squadron?"

"What's your name?"

"Count Rostov."

"Oh, very well, you may stay in attendance on me."

"Count Ilya Rostov's son?" asked Dolgorukov.

But Rostov did not reply.

"Then I may reckon on it, your excellency?"

"I will give the order."

"Tomorrow very likely I may be sent with some message to the
Emperor," thought Rostov.

"Thank God!"


The fires and shouting in the enemy's army were occasioned by the
fact that while Napoleon's proclamation was being read to the troops
the Emperor himself rode round his bivouacs. The soldiers, on seeing
him, lit wisps of straw and ran after him, shouting, "Vive
l'Empereur!" Napoleon's proclamation was as follows:


Soldiers! The Russian army is advancing against you to avenge the
Austrian army of Ulm. They are the same battalions you broke at
Hollabrunn and have pursued ever since to this place. The position
we occupy is a strong one, and while they are marching to go round
me on the right they will expose a flank to me. Soldiers! I will
myself direct your battalions. I will keep out of fire if you with
your habitual valor carry disorder and confusion into the enemy's
ranks, but should victory be in doubt, even for a moment, you will see
your Emperor exposing himself to the first blows of the enemy, for
there must be no doubt of victory, especially on this day when what is
at stake is the honor of the French infantry, so necessary to the
honor of our nation.

Do not break your ranks on the plea of removing the wounded! Let
every man be fully imbued with the thought that we must defeat these
hirelings of England, inspired by such hatred of our nation! This
victory will conclude our campaign and we can return to winter
quarters, where fresh French troops who are being raised in France
will join us, and the peace I shall conclude will be worthy of my
people, of you, and of myself.

NAPOLEON





CHAPTER XIV


At five in the morning it was still quite dark. The troops of the
center, the reserves, and Bagration's right flank had not yet moved,
but on the left flank the columns of infantry, cavalry, and artillery,
which were to be the first to descend the heights to attack the French
right flank and drive it into the Bohemian mountains according to
plan, were already up and astir. The smoke of the campfires, into
which they were throwing everything superfluous, made the eyes
smart. It was cold and dark. The officers were hurriedly drinking
tea and breakfasting, the soldiers, munching biscuit and beating a
tattoo with their feet to warm themselves, gathering round the fires
throwing into the flames the remains of sheds, chairs, tables, wheels,
tubs, and everything that they did not want or could not carry away
with them. Austrian column guides were moving in and out among the
Russian troops and served as heralds of the advance. As soon as an
Austrian officer showed himself near a commanding officer's
quarters, the regiment began to move: the soldiers ran from the fires,
thrust their pipes into their boots, their bags into the carts, got
their muskets ready, and formed rank. The officers buttoned up their
coats, buckled on their swords and pouches, and moved along the
ranks shouting. The train drivers and orderlies harnessed and packed
the wagons and tied on the loads. The adjutants and battalion and
regimental commanders mounted, crossed themselves, gave final
instructions, orders, and commissions to the baggage men who
remained behind, and the monotonous tramp of thousands of feet
resounded. The column moved forward without knowing where and
unable, from the masses around them, the smoke and the increasing fog,
to see either the place they were leaving or that to which they were
going.

A soldier on the march is hemmed in and borne along by his
regiment as much as a sailor is by his ship. However far he has
walked, whatever strange, unknown, and dangerous places he reaches,
just as a sailor is always surrounded by the same decks, masts, and
rigging of his ship, so the soldier always has around him the same
comrades, the same ranks, the same sergeant major Ivan Mitrich, the
same company dog Jack, and the same commanders. The sailor rarely
cares to know the latitude in which his ship is sailing, but on the
day of battle--heaven knows how and whence--a stern note of which
all are conscious sounds in the moral atmosphere of an army,
announcing the approach of something decisive and solemn, and
awakening in the men an unusual curiosity. On the day of battle the
soldiers excitedly try to get beyond the interests of their
regiment, they listen intently, look about, and eagerly ask concerning
what is going on around them.

The fog had grown so dense that though it was growing light they
could not see ten paces ahead. Bushes looked like gigantic trees and
level ground like cliffs and slopes. Anywhere, on any side, one
might encounter an enemy invisible ten paces off. But the columns
advanced for a long time, always in the same fog, descending and
ascending hills, avoiding gardens and enclosures, going over new and
unknown ground, and nowhere encountering the enemy. On the contrary,
the soldiers became aware that in front, behind, and on all sides,
other Russian columns were moving in the same direction. Every soldier
felt glad to know that to the unknown place where he was going, many
more of our men were going too.

"There now, the Kurskies have also gone past," was being said in the
ranks.

"It's wonderful what a lot of our troops have gathered, lads! Last
night I looked at the campfires and there was no end of them. A
regular Moscow!"

Though none of the column commanders rode up to the ranks or
talked to the men (the commanders, as we saw at the council of war,
were out of humor and dissatisfied with the affair, and so did not
exert themselves to cheer the men but merely carried out the
orders), yet the troops marched gaily, as they always do when going
into action, especially to an attack. But when they had marched for
about an hour in the dense fog, the greater part of the men had to
halt and an unpleasant consciousness of some dislocation and blunder
spread through the ranks. How such a consciousness is communicated
is very difficult to define, but it certainly is communicated very
surely, and flows rapidly, imperceptibly, and irrepressibly, as
water does in a creek. Had the Russian army been alone without any
allies, it might perhaps have been a long time before this
consciousness of mismanagement became a general conviction, but as
it was, the disorder was readily and naturally attributed to the
stupid Germans, and everyone was convinced that a dangerous muddle had
been occasioned by the sausage eaters.

"Why have we stopped? Is the way blocked? Or have we already come up
against the French?"

"No, one can't hear them. They'd be firing if we had."

"They were in a hurry enough to start us, and now here we stand in
the middle of a field without rhyme or reason. It's all those damned
Germans' muddling! What stupid devils!"

"Yes, I'd send them on in front, but no fear, they're crowding up
behind. And now here we stand hungry."

"I say, shall we soon be clear? They say the cavalry are blocking
the way," said an officer.

"Ah, those damned Germans! They don't know their own country!"
said another.

"What division are you?" shouted an adjutant, riding up.

"The Eighteenth."

"Then why are you here? You should have gone on long ago, now you
won't get there till evening."

"What stupid orders! They don't themselves know what they are
doing!" said the officer and rode off.

Then a general rode past shouting something angrily, not in Russian.

"Tafa-lafa! But what he's jabbering no one can make out," said a
soldier, mimicking the general who had ridden away. "I'd shoot them,
the scoundrels!"

"We were ordered to be at the place before nine, but we haven't
got halfway. Fine orders!" was being repeated on different sides.

And the feeling of energy with which the troops had started began to
turn into vexation and anger at the stupid arrangements and at the
Germans.

The cause of the confusion was that while the Austrian cavalry was
moving toward our left flank, the higher command found that our center
was too far separated from our right flank and the cavalry were all
ordered to turn back to the right. Several thousand cavalry crossed in
front of the infantry, who had to wait.

At the front an altercation occurred between an Austrian guide and a
Russian general. The general shouted a demand that the cavalry
should be halted, the Austrian argued that not he, but the higher
command, was to blame. The troops meanwhile stood growing listless and
dispirited. After an hour's delay they at last moved on, descending
the hill. The fog that was dispersing on the hill lay still more
densely below, where they were descending. In front in the fog a
shot was heard and then another, at first irregularly at varying
intervals--trata... tat--and then more and more regularly and rapidly,
and the action at the Goldbach Stream began.

Not expecting to come on the enemy down by the stream, and having
stumbled on him in the fog, hearing no encouraging word from their
commanders, and with a consciousness of being too late spreading
through the ranks, and above all being unable to see anything in front
or around them in the thick fog, the Russians exchanged shots with the
enemy lazily and advanced and again halted, receiving no timely orders
from the officers or adjutants who wandered about in the fog in
those unknown surroundings unable to find their own regiments. In this
way the action began for the first, second, and third columns, which
had gone down into the valley. The fourth column, with which Kutuzov
was, stood on the Pratzen Heights.

Below, where the fight was beginning, there was still thick fog;
on the higher ground it was clearing, but nothing could be seen of
what was going on in front. Whether all the enemy forces were, as we
supposed, six miles away, or whether they were near by in that sea
of mist, no one knew till after eight o'clock.

It was nine o'clock in the morning. The fog lay unbroken like a
sea down below, but higher up at the village of Schlappanitz where
Napoleon stood with his marshals around him, it was quite light. Above
him was a clear blue sky, and the sun's vast orb quivered like a
huge hollow, crimson float on the surface of that milky sea of mist.
The whole French army, and even Napoleon himself with his staff,
were not on the far side of the streams and hollows of Sokolnitz and
Schlappanitz beyond which we intended to take up our position and
begin the action, but were on this side, so close to our own forces
that Napoleon with the naked eye could distinguish a mounted man
from one on foot. Napoleon, in the blue cloak which he had worn on his
Italian campaign, sat on his small gray Arab horse a little in front
of his marshals. He gazed silently at the hills which seemed to rise
out of the sea of mist and on which the Russian troops were moving
in the distance, and he listened to the sounds of firing in the
valley. Not a single muscle of his face--which in those days was still
thin--moved. His gleaming eyes were fixed intently on one spot. His
predictions were being justified. Part of the Russian force had
already descended into the valley toward the ponds and lakes and
part were leaving these Pratzen Heights which he intended to attack
and regarded as the key to the position. He saw over the mist that
in a hollow between two hills near the village of Pratzen, the Russian
columns, their bayonets glittering, were moving continuously in one
direction toward the valley and disappearing one after another into
the mist. From information he had received the evening before, from
the sound of wheels and footsteps heard by the outposts during the
night, by the disorderly movement of the Russian columns, and from all
indications, he saw clearly that the allies believed him to be far
away in front of them, and that the columns moving near Pratzen
constituted the center of the Russian army, and that that center was
already sufficiently weakened to be successfully attacked. But still
he did not begin the engagement.

Today was a great day for him--the anniversary of his coronation.
Before dawn he had slept for a few hours, and refreshed, vigorous, and
in good spirits, he mounted his horse and rode out into the field in
that happy mood in which everything seems possible and everything
succeeds. He sat motionless, looking at the heights visible above
the mist, and his cold face wore that special look of confident,
self-complacent happiness that one sees on the face of a boy happily
in love. The marshals stood behind him not venturing to distract his
attention. He looked now at the Pratzen Heights, now at the sun
floating up out of the mist.

When the sun had entirely emerged from the fog, and fields and
mist were aglow with dazzling light--as if he had only awaited this to
begin the action--he drew the glove from his shapely white hand,
made a sign with it to the marshals, and ordered the action to
begin. The marshals, accompanied by adjutants, galloped off in
different directions, and a few minutes later the chief forces of
the French army moved rapidly toward those Pratzen Heights which
were being more and more denuded by Russian troops moving down the
valley to their left.





CHAPTER XV


At eight o'clock Kutuzov rode to Pratzen at the head of the fourth
column, Miloradovich's, the one that was to take the place of
Przebyszewski's and Langeron's columns which had already gone down
into the valley. He greeted the men of the foremost regiment and
gave them the order to march, thereby indicating that he intended to
lead that column himself. When he had reached the village of Pratzen
he halted. Prince Andrew was behind, among the immense number
forming the commander in chief's suite. He was in a state of
suppressed excitement and irritation, though controlledly calm as a
man is at the approach of a long-awaited moment. He was firmly
convinced that this was the day of his Toulon, or his bridge of
Arcola. How it would come about he did not know, but he felt sure it
would do so. The locality and the position of our troops were known to
him as far as they could be known to anyone in our army. His own
strategic plan, which obviously could not now be carried out, was
forgotten. Now, entering into Weyrother's plan, Prince Andrew
considered possible contingencies and formed new projects such as
might call for his rapidity of perception and decision.

To the left down below in the mist, the musketry fire of unseen
forces could be heard. It was there Prince Andrew thought the fight
would concentrate. "There we shall encounter difficulties, and there,"
thought he, "I shall be sent with a brigade or division, and there,
standard in hand, I shall go forward and break whatever is in front of
me."

He could not look calmly at the standards of the passing battalions.
Seeing them he kept thinking, "That may be the very standard with
which I shall lead the army."

In the morning all that was left of the night mist on the heights
was a hoar frost now turning to dew, but in the valleys it still lay
like a milk-white sea. Nothing was visible in the valley to the left
into which our troops had descended and from whence came the sounds of
firing. Above the heights was the dark clear sky, and to the right the
vast orb of the sun. In front, far off on the farther shore of that
sea of mist, some wooded hills were discernible, and it was there
the enemy probably was, for something could be descried. On the
right the Guards were entering the misty region with a sound of
hoofs and wheels and now and then a gleam of bayonets; to the left
beyond the village similar masses of cavalry came up and disappeared
in the sea of mist. In front and behind moved infantry. The
commander in chief was standing at the end of the village letting
the troops pass by him. That morning Kutuzov seemed worn and
irritable. The infantry passing before him came to a halt without
any command being given, apparently obstructed by something in front.

"Do order them to form into battalion columns and go round the
village!" he said angrily to a general who had ridden up. "Don't you
understand, your excellency, my dear sir, that you must not defile
through narrow village streets when we are marching against the
enemy?"

"I intended to re-form them beyond the village, your excellency,"
answered the general.

Kutuzov laughed bitterly.

"You'll make a fine thing of it, deploying in sight of the enemy!
Very fine!"

"The enemy is still far away, your excellency. According to the
dispositions..."

"The dispositions!" exclaimed Kutuzov bitterly. "Who told you
that?... Kindly do as you are ordered."

"Yes, sir."

"My dear fellow," Nesvitski whispered to Prince Andrew, "the old man
is as surly as a dog."

An Austrian officer in a white uniform with green plumes in his
hat galloped up to Kutuzov and asked in the Emperor's name had the
fourth column advanced into action.

Kutuzov turned round without answering and his eye happened to
fall upon Prince Andrew, who was beside him. Seeing him, Kutuzov's
malevolent and caustic expression softened, as if admitting that
what was being done was not his adjutant's fault, and still not
answering the Austrian adjutant, he addressed Bolkonski.

"Go, my dear fellow, and see whether the third division has passed
the village. Tell it to stop and await my orders."

Hardly had Prince Andrew started than he stopped him.

"And ask whether sharpshooters have been posted," he added. "What
are they doing? What are they doing?" he murmured to himself, still
not replying to the Austrian.

Prince Andrew galloped off to execute the order.

Overtaking the battalions that continued to advance, he stopped
the third division and convinced himself that there really were no
sharpshooters in front of our columns. The colonel at the head of
the regiment was much surprised at the commander in chief's order to
throw out skirmishers. He had felt perfectly sure that there were
other troops in front of him and that the enemy must be at least six
miles away. There was really nothing to be seen in front except a
barren descent hidden by dense mist. Having given orders in the
commander in chief's name to rectify this omission, Prince Andrew
galloped back. Kutuzov still in the same place, his stout body resting
heavily in the saddle with the lassitude of age, sat yawning wearily
with closed eyes. The troops were no longer moving, but stood with the
butts of their muskets on the ground.

"All right, all right!" he said to Prince Andrew, and turned to a
general who, watch in hand, was saying it was time they started as all
the left-flank columns had already descended.

"Plenty of time, your excellency," muttered Kutuzov in the midst
of a yawn. "Plenty of time," he repeated.

Just then at a distance behind Kutuzov was heard the sound of
regiments saluting, and this sound rapidly came nearer along the whole
extended line of the advancing Russian columns. Evidently the person
they were greeting was riding quickly. When the soldiers of the
regiment in front of which Kutuzov was standing began to shout, he
rode a little to one side and looked round with a frown. Along the
road from Pratzen galloped what looked like a squadron of horsemen
in various uniforms. Two of them rode side by side in front, at full
gallop. One in a black uniform with white plumes in his hat rode a
bobtailed chestnut horse, the other who was in a white uniform rode
a black one. These were the two Emperors followed by their suites.
Kutuzov, affecting the manners of an old soldier at the front, gave
the command "Attention!" and rode up to the Emperors with a salute.
His whole appearance and manner were suddenly transformed. He put on
the air of a subordinate who obeys without reasoning. With an
affectation of respect which evidently struck Alexander
unpleasantly, he rode up and saluted.

This unpleasant impression merely flitted over the young and happy
face of the Emperor like a cloud of haze across a clear sky and
vanished. After his illness he looked rather thinner that day than
on the field of Olmutz where Bolkonski had seen him for the first time
abroad, but there was still the same bewitching combination of majesty
and mildness in his fine gray eyes, and on his delicate lips the
same capacity for varying expression and the same prevalent appearance
of goodhearted innocent youth.

At the Olmutz review he had seemed more majestic; here he seemed
brighter and more energetic. He was slightly flushed after galloping
two miles, and reining in his horse he sighed restfully and looked
round at the faces of his suite, young and animated as his own.
Czartoryski, Novosiltsev, Prince Volkonsky, Strogonov, and the others,
all richly dressed gay young men on splendid, well-groomed, fresh,
only slightly heated horses, exchanging remarks and smiling, had
stopped behind the Emperor. The Emperor Francis, a rosy, long faced
young man, sat very erect on his handsome black horse, looking about
him in a leisurely and preoccupied manner. He beckoned to one of his
white adjutants and asked some question--"Most likely he is asking
at what o'clock they started," thought Prince Andrew, watching his old
acquaintance with a smile he could not repress as he recalled his
reception at Brunn. In the Emperors' suite were the picked young
orderly officers of the Guard and line regiments, Russian and
Austrian. Among them were grooms leading the Tsar's beautiful relay
horses covered with embroidered cloths.

As when a window is opened a whiff of fresh air from the fields
enters a stuffy room, so a whiff of youthfulness, energy, and
confidence of success reached Kutuzov's cheerless staff with the
galloping advent of all these brilliant young men.

"Why aren't you beginning, Michael Ilarionovich?" said the Emperor
Alexander hurriedly to Kutuzov, glancing courteously at the same
time at the Emperor Francis.

"I am waiting, Your Majesty," answered Kutuzov, bending forward
respectfully.

The Emperor, frowning slightly, bent his ear forward as if he had
not quite heard.

"Waiting, Your Majesty," repeated Kutuzov. (Prince Andrew noted that
Kutuzov's upper lip twitched unnaturally as he said the word
"waiting.") "Not all the columns have formed up yet, Your Majesty."

The Tsar heard but obviously did not like the reply; he shrugged his
rather round shoulders and glanced at Novosiltsev who was near him, as
if complaining of Kutuzov.

"You know, Michael Ilarionovich, we are not on the
Empress' Field where a parade does not begin till all the troops are
assembled," said the Tsar with another glance at the Emperor
Francis, as if inviting him if not to join in at least to listen to
what he was saying. But the Emperor Francis continued to look about
him and did not listen.

"That is just why I do not begin, sire," said Kutuzov in a
resounding voice, apparently to preclude the possibility of not
being heard, and again something in his face twitched--"That is just
why I do not begin, sire, because we are not on parade and not on
the Empress' Field." said clearly and distinctly.

In the Emperor's suite all exchanged rapid looks that expressed
dissatisfaction and reproach. "Old though he may be, he should not, he
certainly should not, speak like that," their glances seemed to say.

The Tsar looked intently and observantly into Kutuzov's eye
waiting to hear whether he would say anything more. But Kutuzov,
with respectfully bowed head, seemed also to be waiting. The silence
lasted for about a minute.

"However, if you command it, Your Majesty," said Kutuzov, lifting
his head and again assuming his former tone of a dull, unreasoning,
but submissive general.

He touched his horse and having called Miloradovich, the commander
of the column, gave him the order to advance.

The troops again began to move, and two battalions of the Novgorod
and one of the Apsheron regiment went forward past the Emperor.

As this Apsheron battalion marched by, the red-faced Miloradovich,
without his greatcoat, with his Orders on his breast and an enormous
tuft of plumes in his cocked hat worn on one side with its corners
front and back, galloped strenuously forward, and with a dashing
salute reined in his horse before the Emperor.

"God be with you, general!" said the Emperor.

"Ma foi, sire, nous ferons ce qui sera dans notre possibilite,
sire,"* he answered gaily, raising nevertheless ironic smiles among
the gentlemen of the Tsar's suite by his poor French.


*"Indeed, Sire, we shall do everything it is possible to do, Sire."


Miloradovich wheeled his horse sharply and stationed himself a
little behind the Emperor. The Apsheron men, excited by the Tsar's
presence, passed in step before the Emperors and their suites at a
bold, brisk pace.

"Lads!" shouted Miloradovich in a loud, self-confident, and cheery
voice, obviously so elated by the sound of firing, by the prospect
of battle, and by the sight of the gallant Apsherons, his comrades
in Suvorov's time, now passing so gallantly before the Emperors,
that he forgot the sovereigns' presence. "Lads, it's not the first
village you've had to take," cried he.

"Glad to do our best!" shouted the soldiers.

The Emperor's horse started at the sudden cry. This horse that had
carried the sovereign at reviews in Russia bore him also here on the
field of Austerlitz, enduring the heedless blows of his left foot
and pricking its ears at the sound of shots just as it had done on the
Empress' Field, not understanding the significance of the firing,
nor of the nearness of the Emperor Francis' black cob, nor of all that
was being said, thought, and felt that day by its rider.

The Emperor turned with a smile to one of his followers and made a
remark to him, pointing to the gallant Apsherons.





CHAPTER XVI


Kutuzov accompanied by his adjutants rode at a walking pace behind
the carabineers.

When he had gone less than half a mile in the rear of the column
he stopped at a solitary, deserted house that had probably once been
an inn, where two roads parted. Both of them led downhill and troops
were marching along both.

The fog had begun to clear and enemy troops were already dimly
visible about a mile and a half off on the opposite heights. Down
below, on the left, the firing became more distinct. Kutuzov had
stopped and was speaking to an Austrian general. Prince Andrew, who
was a little behind looking at them, turned to an adjutant to ask
him for a field glass.

"Look, look!" said this adjutant, looking not at the troops in the
distance, but down the hill before him. "It's the French!"

The two generals and the adjutant took hold of the field glass,
trying to snatch it from one another. The expression on all their
faces suddenly changed to one of horror. The French were supposed to
be a mile and a half away, but had suddenly and unexpectedly
appeared just in front of us.

"It's the enemy?... No!... Yes, see it is!... for certain.... But
how is that?" said different voices.

With the naked eye Prince Andrew saw below them to the right, not
more than five hundred paces from where Kutuzov was standing, a
dense French column coming up to meet the Apsherons.

"Here it is! The decisive moment has arrived. My turn has come,"
thought Prince Andrew, and striking his horse he rode up to Kutuzov.

"The Apsherons must be stopped, your excellency," cried he. But at
that very instant a cloud of smoke spread all round, firing was
heard quite close at hand, and a voice of naive terror barely two
steps from Prince Andrew shouted, "Brothers! All's lost!" And at
this as if at a command, everyone began to run.

Confused and ever-increasing crowds were running back to where
five minutes before the troops had passed the Emperors. Not only would
it have been difficult to stop that crowd, it was even impossible
not to be carried back with it oneself. Bolkonski only tried not to
lose touch with it, and looked around bewildered and unable to grasp
what was happening in front of him. Nesvitski with an angry face,
red and unlike himself, was shouting to Kutuzov that if he did not
ride away at once he would certainly be taken prisoner. Kutuzov
remained in the same place and without answering drew out a
handkerchief. Blood was flowing from his cheek. Prince Andrew forced
his way to him.

"You are wounded?" he asked, hardly able to master the trembling
of his lower jaw.

"The wound is not here, it is there!" said Kutuzov, pressing the
handkerchief to his wounded cheek and pointing to the fleeing
soldiers. "Stop them!" he shouted, and at the same moment, probably
realizing that it was impossible to stop them, spurred his horse and
rode to the right.

A fresh wave of the flying mob caught him and bore him back with it.

The troops were running in such a dense mass that once surrounded by
them it was difficult to get out again. One was shouting, "Get on! Why
are you hindering us?" Another in the same place turned round and
fired in the air; a third was striking the horse Kutuzov himself rode.
Having by a great effort got away to the left from that flood of
men, Kutuzov, with his suite diminished by more than half, rode toward
a sound of artillery fire near by. Having forced his way out of the
crowd of fugitives, Prince Andrew, trying to keep near Kutuzov, saw on
the slope of the hill amid the smoke a Russian battery that was
still firing and Frenchmen running toward it. Higher up stood some
Russian infantry, neither moving forward to protect the battery nor
backward with the fleeing crowd. A mounted general separated himself
from the infantry and approached Kutuzov. Of Kutuzov's suite only four
remained. They were all pale and exchanged looks in silence.

"Stop those wretches!" gasped Kutuzov to the regimental commander,
pointing to the flying soldiers; but at that instant, as if to
punish him for those words, bullets flew hissing across the regiment
and across Kutuzov's suite like a flock of little birds.

The French had attacked the battery and, seeing Kutuzov, were firing
at him. After this volley the regimental commander clutched at his
leg; several soldiers fell, and a second lieutenant who was holding
the flag let it fall from his hands. It swayed and fell, but caught on
the muskets of the nearest soldiers. The soldiers started firing
without orders.

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" groaned Kutuzov despairingly and looked around....
"Bolkonski!" he whispered, his voice trembling from a consciousness of
the feebleness of age, "Bolkonski!" he whispered, pointing to the
disordered battalion and at the enemy, "what's that?"

But before he had finished speaking, Prince Andrew, feeling tears of
shame and anger choking him, had already leapt from his horse and
run to the standard.

"Forward, lads!" he shouted in a voice piercing as a child's.

"Here it is!" thought he, seizing the staff of the standard and
hearing with pleasure the whistle of bullets evidently aimed at him.
Several soldiers fell.

"Hurrah!" shouted Prince Andrew, and, scarcely able to hold up the
heavy standard, he ran forward with full confidence that the whole
battalion would follow him.

And really he only ran a few steps alone. One soldier moved and then
another and soon the whole battalion ran forward shouting "Hurrah!"
and overtook him. A sergeant of the battalion ran up and took the flag
that was swaying from its weight in Prince Andrew's hands, but he
was immediately killed. Prince Andrew again seized the standard and,
dragging it by the staff, ran on with the battalion. In front he saw
our artillerymen, some of whom were fighting, while others, having
abandoned their guns, were running toward him. He also saw French
infantry soldiers who were seizing the artillery horses and turning
the guns round. Prince Andrew and the battalion were already within
twenty paces of the cannon. He heard the whistle of bullets above
him unceasingly and to right and left of him soldiers continually
groaned and dropped. But he did not look at them: he looked only at
what was going on in front of him--at the battery. He now saw
clearly the figure of a red-haired gunner with his shako knocked awry,
pulling one end of a mop while a French soldier tugged at the other.
He could distinctly see the distraught yet angry expression on the
faces of these two men, who evidently did not realize what they were
doing.

"What are they about?" thought Prince Andrew as he gazed at them.
"Why doesn't the red-haired gunner run away as he is unarmed? Why
doesn't the Frenchman stab him? He will not get away before the
Frenchman remembers his bayonet and stabs him...."

And really another French soldier, trailing his musket, ran up to
the struggling men, and the fate of the red-haired gunner, who had
triumphantly secured the mop and still did not realize what awaited
him, was about to be decided. But Prince Andrew did not see how it
ended. It seemed to him as though one of the soldiers near him hit him
on the head with the full swing of a bludgeon. It hurt a little, but
the worst of it was that the pain distracted him and prevented his
seeing what he had been looking at.

"What's this? Am I falling? My legs are giving way," thought he, and
fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle
of the Frenchmen with the gunners ended, whether the red-haired gunner
had been killed or not and whether the cannon had been captured or
saved. But he saw nothing. Above him there was now nothing but the
sky--the lofty sky, not clear yet still immeasurably lofty, with
gray clouds gliding slowly across it. "How quiet, peaceful, and
solemn; not at all as I ran," thought Prince Andrew--"not as we ran,
shouting and fighting, not at all as the gunner and the Frenchman with
frightened and angry faces struggled for the mop: how differently do
those clouds glide across that lofty infinite sky! How was it I did
not see that lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it
at last! Yes! All is vanity, all falsehood, except that infinite
sky. There is nothing, nothing, but that. But even it does not
exist, there is nothing but quiet and peace. Thank God!..."





CHAPTER XVII


On our right flank commanded by Bagration, at nine o'clock the
battle had not yet begun. Not wishing to agree to Dolgorukov's
demand to commence the action, and wishing to avert responsibility
from himself, Prince Bagration proposed to Dolgorukov to send to
inquire of the commander in chief. Bagration knew that as the distance
between the two flanks was more than six miles, even if the
messenger were not killed (which he very likely would be), and found
the commander in chief (which would be very difficult), he would not
be able to get back before evening.

Bagration cast his large, expressionless, sleepy eyes round his
suite, and the boyish face Rostov, breathless with excitement and
hope, was the first to catch his eye. He sent him.

"And if I should meet His Majesty before I meet the commander in
chief, your excellency?" said Rostov, with his hand to his cap.

"You can give the message to His Majesty," said Dolgorukov,
hurriedly interrupting Bagration.

On being relieved from picket duty Rostov had managed to get a few
hours' sleep before morning and felt cheerful, bold, and resolute,
with elasticity of movement, faith in his good fortune, and
generally in that state of mind which makes everything seem
possible, pleasant, and easy.

All his wishes were being fulfilled that morning: there was to be
a general engagement in which he was taking part, more than that, he
was orderly to the bravest general, and still more, he was going
with a message to Kutuzov, perhaps even to the sovereign himself.
The morning was bright, he had a good horse under him, and his heart
was full of joy and happiness. On receiving the order he gave his
horse the rein and galloped along the line. At first he rode along the
line of Bagration's troops, which had not yet advanced into action but
were standing motionless; then he came to the region occupied by
Uvarov's cavalry and here he noticed a stir and signs of preparation
for battle; having passed Uvarov's cavalry he clearly heard the
sound of cannon and musketry ahead of him. The firing grew louder
and louder.

In the fresh morning air were now heard, not two or three musket
shots at irregular intervals as before, followed by one or two
cannon shots, but a roll of volleys of musketry from the slopes of the
hill before Pratzen, interrupted by such frequent reports of cannon
that sometimes several of them were not separated from one another but
merged into a general roar.

He could see puffs of musketry smoke that seemed to chase one
another down the hillsides, and clouds of cannon smoke rolling,
spreading, and mingling with one another. He could also, by the
gleam of bayonets visible through the smoke, make out moving masses of
infantry and narrow lines of artillery with green caissons.

Rostov stopped his horse for a moment on a hillock to see what was
going on, but strain his attention as he would he could not understand
or make out anything of what was happening: there in the smoke men
of some sort were moving about, in front and behind moved lines of
troops; but why, whither, and who they were, it was impossible to make
out. These sights and sounds had no depressing or intimidating
effect on him; on the contrary, they stimulated his energy and
determination.

"Go on! Go on! Give it them!" he mentally exclaimed at these sounds,
and again proceeded to gallop along the line, penetrating farther
and farther into the region where the army was already in action.

"How it will be there I don't know, but all will be well!" thought
Rostov.

After passing some Austrian troops he noticed that the next part
of the line (the Guards) was already in action.

"So much the better! I shall see it close," he thought.

He was riding almost along the front line. A handful of men came
galloping toward him. They were our Uhlans who with disordered ranks
were returning from the attack. Rostov got out of their way,
involuntarily noticed that one of them was bleeding, and galloped on.

"That is no business of mine," he thought. He had not ridden many
hundred yards after that before he saw to his left, across the whole
width of the field, an enormous mass of cavalry in brilliant white
uniforms, mounted on black horses, trotting straight toward him and
across his path. Rostov put his horse to full gallop to get out of the
way of these men, and he would have got clear had they continued at
the same speed, but they kept increasing their pace, so that some of
the horses were already galloping. Rostov heard the thud of their
hoofs and the jingle of their weapons and saw their horses, their
figures, and even their faces, more and more distinctly. They were our
Horse Guards, advancing to attack the French cavalry that was coming
to meet them.

The Horse Guards were galloping, but still holding in their
horses. Rostov could already see their faces and heard the command:
"Charge!" shouted by an officer who was urging his thoroughbred to
full speed. Rostov, fearing to be crushed or swept into the attack
on the French, galloped along the front as hard as his horse could go,
but still was not in time to avoid them.

The last of the Horse Guards, a huge pockmarked fellow, frowned
angrily on seeing Rostov before him, with whom he would inevitably
collide. This Guardsman would certainly have bowled Rostov and his
Bedouin over (Rostov felt himself quite tiny and weak compared to
these gigantic men and horses) had it not occurred to Rostov to
flourish his whip before the eyes of the Guardsman's horse. The
heavy black horse, sixteen hands high, shied, throwing back its
ears; but the pockmarked Guardsman drove his huge spurs in
violently, and the horse, flourishing its tail and extending its neck,
galloped on yet faster. Hardly had the Horse Guards passed Rostov
before he heard them shout, "Hurrah!" and looking back saw that
their foremost ranks were mixed up with some foreign cavalry with
red epaulets, probably French. He could see nothing more, for
immediately afterwards cannon began firing from somewhere and smoke
enveloped everything.

At that moment, as the Horse Guards, having passed him,
disappeared in the smoke, Rostov hesitated whether to gallop after
them or to go where he was sent. This was the brilliant charge of
the Horse Guards that amazed the French themselves. Rostov was
horrified to hear later that of all that mass of huge and handsome
men, of all those brilliant, rich youths, officers and cadets, who had
galloped past him on their thousand-ruble horses, only eighteen were
left after the charge.

"Why should I envy them? My chance is not lost, and maybe I shall
see the Emperor immediately!" thought Rostov and galloped on.

When he came level with the Foot Guards he noticed that about them
and around them cannon balls were flying, of which he was aware not so
much because he heard their sound as because he saw uneasiness on
the soldiers' faces and unnatural warlike solemnity on those of the
officers.

Passing behind one of the lines of a regiment of Foot Guards he
heard a voice calling him by name.

"Rostov!"

"What?" he answered, not recognizing Boris.

"I say, we've been in the front line! Our regiment attacked!" said
Boris with the happy smile seen on the faces of young men who have
been under fire for the first time.

Rostov stopped.

"Have you?" he said. "Well, how did it go?"

"We drove them back!" said Boris with animation, growing
talkative. "Can you imagine it?" and he began describing how the
Guards, having taken up their position and seeing troops before
them, thought they were Austrians, and all at once discovered from the
cannon balls discharged by those troops that they were themselves in
the front line and had unexpectedly to go into action. Rostov
without hearing Boris to the end spurred his horse.

"Where are you off to?" asked Boris.

"With a message to His Majesty."

"There he is!" said Boris, thinking Rostov had said "His
Highness," and pointing to the Grand Duke who with his high
shoulders and frowning brows stood a hundred paces away from them in
his helmet and Horse Guards' jacket, shouting something to a pale,
white uniformed Austrian officer.

"But that's the Grand Duke, and I want the commander in chief or the
Emperor," said Rostov, and was about to spur his horse.

"Count! Count!" shouted Berg who ran up from the other side as eager
as Boris. "Count! I am wounded in my right hand" (and he showed his
bleeding hand with a handkerchief tied round it) "and I remained at
the front. I held my sword in my left hand, Count. All our family--the
von Bergs--have been knights!"

He said something more, but Rostov did not wait to hear it and
rode away.

Having passed the Guards and traversed an empty space, Rostov, to
avoid again getting in front of the first line as he had done when the
Horse Guards charged, followed the line of reserves, going far round
the place where the hottest musket fire and cannonade were heard.
Suddenly he heard musket fire quite close in front of him and behind
our troops, where he could never have expected the enemy to be.

"What can it be?" he thought. "The enemy in the rear of our army?
Impossible!" And suddenly he was seized by a panic of fear for himself
and for the issue of the whole battle. "But be that what it may," he
reflected, "there is no riding round it now. I must look for the
commander in chief here, and if all is lost it is for me to perish
with the rest."

The foreboding of evil that had suddenly come over Rostov was more
and more confirmed the farther he rode into the region behind the
village of Pratzen, which was full of troops of all kinds.

"What does it mean? What is it? Whom are they firing at? Who is
firing?" Rostov kept asking as he came up to Russian and Austrian
soldiers running in confused crowds across his path.

"The devil knows! They've killed everybody! It's all up now!" he was
told in Russian, German, and Czech by the crowd of fugitives who
understood what was happening as little as he did.

"Kill the Germans!" shouted one.

"May the devil take them--the traitors!"

"Zum Henker diese Russen!"* muttered a German.


*"Hang these Russians!"


Several wounded men passed along the road, and words of abuse,
screams, and groans mingled in a general hubbub, then the firing
died down. Rostov learned later that Russian and Austrian soldiers had
been firing at one another.

"My God! What does it all mean?" thought he. "And here, where at any
moment the Emperor may see them.... But no, these must be only a
handful of scoundrels. It will soon be over, it can't be that, it
can't be! Only to get past them quicker, quicker!"

The idea of defeat and flight could not enter Rostov's head.
Though he saw French cannon and French troops on the Pratzen Heights
just where he had been ordered to look for the commander in chief,
he could not, did not wish to, believe that.





CHAPTER XVIII


Rostov had been ordered to look for Kutuzov and the Emperor near the
village of Pratzen. But neither they nor a single commanding officer
were there, only disorganized crowds of troops of various kinds. He
urged on his already weary horse to get quickly past these crowds, but
the farther he went the more disorganized they were. The highroad on
which he had come out was thronged with caleches, carriages of all
sorts, and Russian and Austrian soldiers of all arms, some wounded and
some not. This whole mass droned and jostled in confusion under the
dismal influence of cannon balls flying from the French batteries
stationed on the Pratzen Heights.

"Where is the Emperor? Where is Kutuzov?" Rostov kept asking
everyone he could stop, but got no answer from anyone.

At last seizing a soldier by his collar he forced him to answer.

"Eh, brother! They've all bolted long ago!" said the soldier,
laughing for some reason and shaking himself free.

Having left that soldier who was evidently drunk, Rostov stopped the
horse of a batman or groom of some important personage and began to
question him. The man announced that the Tsar had been driven in a
carriage at full speed about an hour before along that very road and
that he was dangerously wounded.

"It can't be!" said Rostov. "It must have been someone else."

"I saw him myself." replied the man with a self-confident smile of
derision. "I ought to know the Emperor by now, after the times I've
seen him in Petersburg. I saw him just as I see you.... There he sat
in the carriage as pale as anything. How they made the four black
horses fly! Gracious me, they did rattle past! It's time I knew the
Imperial horses and Ilya Ivanych. I don't think Ilya drives anyone
except the Tsar!"

Rostov let go of the horse and was about to ride on, when a
wounded officer passing by addressed him:

"Who is it you want?" he asked. "The commander in chief? He was
killed by a cannon ball--struck in the breast before our regiment."

"Not killed--wounded!" another officer corrected him.

"Who? Kutuzov?" asked Rostov.

"Not Kutuzov, but what's his name--well, never mind... there are not
many left alive. Go that way, to that village, all the commanders
are there," said the officer, pointing to the village of Hosjeradek,
and he walked on.

Rostov rode on at a footpace not knowing why or to whom he was now
going. The Emperor was wounded, the battle lost. It was impossible
to doubt it now. Rostov rode in the direction pointed out to him, in
which he saw turrets and a church. What need to hurry? What was he now
to say to the Tsar or to Kutuzov, even if they were alive and
unwounded?

"Take this road, your honor, that way you will be killed at once!" a
soldier shouted to him. "They'd kill you there!"

"Oh, what are you talking about?" said another. "Where is he to
go? That way is nearer."

Rostov considered, and then went in the direction where they said he
would be killed.

"It's all the same now. If the Emperor is wounded, am I to try to
save myself?" he thought. He rode on to the region where the
greatest number of men had perished in fleeing from Pratzen. The
French had not yet occupied that region, and the Russians--the
uninjured and slightly wounded--had left it long ago. All about the
field, like heaps of manure on well-kept plowland, lay from ten to
fifteen dead and wounded to each couple of acres. The wounded crept
together in twos and threes and one could hear their distressing
screams and groans, sometimes feigned--or so it seemed to Rostov. He
put his horse to a trot to avoid seeing all these suffering men, and
he felt afraid--afraid not for his life, but for the courage he needed
and which he knew would not stand the sight of these unfortunates.

The French, who had ceased firing at this field strewn with dead and
wounded where there was no one left to fire at, on seeing an
adjutant riding over it trained a gun on him and fired several
shots. The sensation of those terrible whistling sounds and of the
corpses around him merged in Rostov's mind into a single feeling of
terror and pity for himself. He remembered his mother's last letter.
"What would she feel," thought he, "if she saw me here now on this
field with the cannon aimed at me?"

In the village of Hosjeradek there were Russian troops retiring from
the field of battle, who though still in some confusion were less
disordered. The French cannon did not reach there and the musketry
fire sounded far away. Here everyone clearly saw and said that the
battle was lost. No one whom Rostov asked could tell him where the
Emperor or Kutuzov was. Some said the report that the Emperor was
wounded was correct, others that it was not, and explained the false
rumor that had spread by the fact that the Emperor's carriage had
really galloped from the field of battle with the pale and terrified
Ober-Hofmarschal Count Tolstoy, who had ridden out to the
battlefield with others in the Emperor's suite. One officer told
Rostov that he had seen someone from headquarters behind the village
to the left, and thither Rostov rode, not hoping to find anyone but
merely to ease his conscience. When he had ridden about two miles
and had passed the last of the Russian troops, he saw, near a
kitchen garden with a ditch round it, two men on horseback facing
the ditch. One with a white plume in his hat seemed familiar to
Rostov; the other on a beautiful chestnut horse (which Rostov
fancied he had seen before) rode up to the ditch, struck his horse
with his spurs, and giving it the rein leaped lightly over. Only a
little earth crumbled from the bank under the horse's hind hoofs.
Turning the horse sharply, he again jumped the ditch, and
deferentially addressed the horseman with the white plumes,
evidently suggesting that he should do the same. The rider, whose
figure seemed familiar to Rostov and involuntarily riveted his
attention, made a gesture of refusal with his head and hand and by
that gesture Rostov instantly recognized his lamented and adored
monarch.

"But it can't be he, alone in the midst of this empty field!"
thought Rostov. At that moment Alexander turned his head and Rostov
saw the beloved features that were so deeply engraved on his memory.
The Emperor was pale, his cheeks sunken and his eyes hollow, but the
charm, the mildness of his features, was all the greater. Rostov was
happy in the assurance that the rumors about the Emperor being wounded
were false. He was happy to be seeing him. He knew that he might and
even ought to go straight to him and give the message Dolgorukov had
ordered him to deliver.

But as a youth in love trembles, is unnerved, and dares not utter
the thoughts he has dreamed of for nights, but looks around for help
or a chance of delay and flight when the longed-for moment comes and
he is alone with her, so Rostov, now that he had attained what he
had longed for more than anything else in the world, did not know
how to approach the Emperor, and a thousand reasons occurred to him
why it would be inconvenient, unseemly, and impossible to do so.

"What! It is as if I were glad of a chance to take advantage of
his being alone and despondent! A strange face may seem unpleasant
or painful to him at this moment of sorrow; besides, what can I say to
him now, when my heart fails me and my mouth feels dry at the mere
sight of him?" Not one of the innumerable speeches addressed to the
Emperor that he had composed in his imagination could he now recall.
Those speeches were intended for quite other conditions, they were for
the most part to be spoken at a moment of victory and triumph,
generally when he was dying of wounds and the sovereign had thanked
him for heroic deeds, and while dying he expressed the love his
actions had proved.

"Besides how can I ask the Emperor for his instructions for the
right flank now that it is nearly four o'clock and the battle is lost?
No, certainly I must not approach him, I must not intrude on his
reflections. Better die a thousand times than risk receiving an unkind
look or bad opinion from him," Rostov decided; and sorrowfully and
with a heart full despair he rode away, continually looking back at
the Tsar, who still remained in the same attitude of indecision.

While Rostov was thus arguing with himself and riding sadly away,
Captain von Toll chanced to ride to the same spot, and seeing the
Emperor at once rode up to him, offered his services, and assisted him
to cross the ditch on foot. The Emperor, wishing to rest and feeling
unwell, sat down under an apple tree and von Toll remained beside him.
Rostov from a distance saw with envy and remorse how von Toll spoke
long and warmly to the Emperor and how the Emperor, evidently weeping,
covered his eyes with his hand and pressed von Toll's hand.

"And I might have been in his place!" thought Rostov, and hardly
restraining his tears of pity for the Emperor, he rode on in utter
despair, not knowing where to or why he was now riding.

His despair was all the greater from feeling that his own weakness
was the cause his grief.

He might... not only might but should, have gone up to the
sovereign. It was a unique chance to show his devotion to the
Emperor and he had not made use of it.... "What have I done?"
thought he. And he turned round and galloped back to the place where
he had seen the Emperor, but there was no one beyond the ditch now.
Only some carts and carriages were passing by. From one of the drivers
he learned that Kutuzov's staff were not far off, in the village the
vehicles were going to. Rostov followed them. In front of him walked
Kutuzov's groom leading horses in horsecloths. Then came a cart, and
behind that walked an old, bandy-legged domestic serf in a peaked
cap and sheepskin coat.

"Tit! I say, Tit!" said the groom.

"What?" answered the old man absent-mindedly.

"Go, Tit! Thresh a bit!"

"Oh, you fool!" said the old man, spitting angrily. Some time passed
in silence, and then the same joke was repeated.


Before five in the evening the battle had been lost at all points.
More than a hundred cannon were already in the hands of the French.

Przebyszewski and his corps had laid down their arms. Other
columns after losing half their men were retreating in disorderly
confused masses.

The remains of Langeron's and Dokhturov's mingled forces were
crowding around the dams and banks of the ponds near the village of
Augesd.

After five o'clock it was only at the Augesd Dam that a hot
cannonade (delivered by the French alone) was still to be heard from
numerous batteries ranged on the slopes of the Pratzen Heights,
directed at our retreating forces.

In the rearguard, Dokhturov and others rallying some battalions kept
up a musketry fire at the French cavalry that was pursuing our troops.
It was growing dusk. On the narrow Augesd Dam where for so many
years the old miller had been accustomed to sit in his tasseled cap
peacefully angling, while his grandson, with shirt sleeves rolled
up, handled the floundering silvery fish in the watering can, on
that dam over which for so many years Moravians in shaggy caps and
blue jackets had peacefully driven their two-horse carts loaded with
wheat and had returned dusty with flour whitening their carts--on that
narrow dam amid the wagons and the cannon, under the horses' hoofs and
between the wagon wheels, men disfigured by fear of death now
crowded together, crushing one another, dying, stepping over the dying
and killing one another, only to move on a few steps and be killed
themselves in the same way.

Every ten seconds a cannon ball flew compressing the air around,
or a shell burst in the midst of that dense throng, killing some and
splashing with blood those near them.

Dolokhov--now an officer--wounded in the arm, and on foot, with
the regimental commander on horseback and some ten men of his company,
represented all that was left of that whole regiment. Impelled by
the crowd, they had got wedged in at the approach to the dam and,
jammed in on all sides, had stopped because a horse in front had
fallen under a cannon and the crowd were dragging it out. A cannon
ball killed someone behind them, another fell in front and splashed
Dolokhov with blood. The crowd, pushing forward desperately,
squeezed together, moved a few steps, and again stopped.

"Move on a hundred yards and we are certainly saved, remain here
another two minutes and it is certain death," thought each one.

Dolokhov who was in the midst of the crowd forced his way to the
edge of the dam, throwing two soldiers off their feet, and ran onto
the slippery ice that covered the millpool.

"Turn this way!" he shouted, jumping over the ice which creaked
under him; "turn this way!" he shouted to those with the gun. "It
bears!..."

The ice bore him but it swayed and creaked, and it was plain that it
would give way not only under a cannon or a crowd, but very soon
even under his weight alone. The men looked at him and pressed to
the bank, hesitating to step onto the ice. The general on horseback at
the entrance to the dam raised his hand and opened his mouth to
address Dolokhov. Suddenly a cannon ball hissed so low above the crowd
that everyone ducked. It flopped into something moist, and the general
fell from his horse in a pool of blood. Nobody gave him a look or
thought of raising him.

"Get onto the ice, over the ice! Go on! Turn! Don't you hear? Go
on!" innumerable voices suddenly shouted after the ball had struck the
general, the men themselves not knowing what, or why, they were
shouting.

One of the hindmost guns that was going onto the dam turned off onto
the ice. Crowds of soldiers from the dam began running onto the frozen
pond. The ice gave way under one of the foremost soldiers, and one leg
slipped into the water. He tried to right himself but fell in up to
his waist. The nearest soldiers shrank back, the gun driver stopped
his horse, but from behind still came the shouts: "Onto the ice, why
do you stop? Go on! Go on!" And cries of horror were heard in the
crowd. The soldiers near the gun waved their arms and beat the
horses to make them turn and move on. The horses moved off the bank.
The ice, that had held under those on foot, collapsed in a great mass,
and some forty men who were on it dashed, some forward and some
back, drowning one another.

Still the cannon balls continued regularly to whistle and flop
onto the ice and into the water and oftenest of all among the crowd
that covered the dam, the pond, and the bank.





CHAPTER XIX


On the Pratzen Heights, where he had fallen with the flagstaff in
his hand, lay Prince Andrew Bolkonski bleeding profusely and
unconsciously uttering a gentle, piteous, and childlike moan.

Toward evening he ceased moaning and became quite still. He did
not know how long his unconsciousness lasted. Suddenly he again felt
that he was alive and suffering from a burning, lacerating pain in his
head.

"Where is it, that lofty sky that I did not know till now, but saw
today?" was his first thought. "And I did not know this suffering
either," he thought. "Yes, I did not know anything, anything at all
till now. But where am I?"

He listened and heard the sound of approaching horses, and voices
speaking French. He opened his eyes. Above him again was the same
lofty sky with clouds that had risen and were floating still higher,
and between them gleamed blue infinity. He did not turn his head and
did not see those who, judging by the sound of hoofs and voices, had
ridden up and stopped near him.

It was Napoleon accompanied by two aides-de-camp. Bonaparte riding
over the battlefield had given final orders to strengthen the
batteries firing at the Augesd Dam and was looking at the killed and
wounded left on the field.

"Fine men!" remarked Napoleon, looking at a dead Russian
grenadier, who, with his face buried in the ground and a blackened
nape, lay on his stomach with an already stiffened arm flung wide.

"The ammunition for the guns in position is exhausted, Your
Majesty," said an adjutant who had come from the batteries that were
firing at Augesd.

"Have some brought from the reserve," said Napoleon, and having gone
on a few steps he stopped before Prince Andrew, who lay on his back
with the flagstaff that had been dropped beside him. (The flag had
already been taken by the French as a trophy.)

"That's a fine death!" said Napoleon as he gazed at Bolkonski.

Prince Andrew understood that this was said of him and that it was
Napoleon who said it. He heard the speaker addressed as Sire. But he
heard the words as he might have heard the buzzing of a fly. Not
only did they not interest him, but he took no notice of them and at
once forgot them. His head was burning, he felt himself bleeding to
death, and he saw above him the remote, lofty, and everlasting sky. He
knew it was Napoleon--his hero--but at that moment Napoleon seemed
to him such a small, insignificant creature compared with what was
passing now between himself and that lofty infinite sky with the
clouds flying over it. At that moment it meant nothing to him who
might be standing over him, or what was said of him; he was only
glad that people were standing near him and only wished that they
would help him and bring him back to life, which seemed to him so
beautiful now that he had today learned to understand it so
differently. He collected all his strength, to stir and utter a sound.
He feebly moved his leg and uttered a weak, sickly groan which aroused
his own pity.

"Ah! He is alive," said Napoleon. "Lift this young man up and
carry him to the dressing station."

Having said this, Napoleon rode on to meet Marshal Lannes, who,
hat in hand, rode up smiling to the Emperor to congratulate him on the
victory.

Prince Andrew remembered nothing more: he lost consciousness from
the terrible pain of being lifted onto the stretcher, the jolting
while being moved, and the probing of his wound at the dressing
station. He did not regain consciousness till late in the day, when
with other wounded and captured Russian officers he was carried to the
hospital. During this transfer he felt a little stronger and was
able to look about him and even speak.

The first words he heard on coming to his senses were those of a
French convoy officer, who said rapidly: "We must halt here: the
Emperor will pass here immediately; it will please him to see these
gentlemen prisoners."

"There are so many prisoners today, nearly the whole Russian army,
that he is probably tired of them," said another officer.

"All the same! They say this one is the commander of all the Emperor
Alexander's Guards," said the first one, indicating a Russian
officer in the white uniform of the Horse Guards.

Bolkonski recognized Prince Repnin whom he had met in Petersburg
society. Beside him stood a lad of nineteen, also a wounded officer of
the Horse Guards.

Bonaparte, having come up at a gallop, stopped his horse.

"Which is the senior?" he asked, on seeing the prisoners.

They named the colonel, Prince Repnin.

"You are the commander of the Emperor Alexander's regiment of
Horse Guards?" asked Napoleon.

"I commanded a squadron," replied Repnin.

"Your regiment fulfilled its duty honorably," said Napoleon.

"The praise of a great commander is a soldier's highest reward,"
said Repnin.

"I bestow it with pleasure," said Napoleon. "And who is that young
man beside you?"

Prince Repnin named Lieutenant Sukhtelen.

After looking at him Napoleon smiled.

"He's very young to come to meddle with us."

"Youth is no hindrance to courage," muttered Sukhtelen in a
failing voice.

"A splendid reply!" said Napoleon. "Young man, you will go far!"

Prince Andrew, who had also been brought forward before the
Emperor's eyes to complete the show of prisoners, could not fail to
attract his attention. Napoleon apparently remembered seeing him on
the battlefield and, addressing him, again used the epithet "young
man" that was connected in his memory with Prince Andrew.

"Well, and you, young man," said he. "How do you feel, mon brave?"

Though five minutes before, Prince Andrew had been able to say a few
words to the soldiers who were carrying him, now with his eyes fixed
straight on Napoleon, he was silent.... So insignificant at that
moment seemed to him all the interests that engrossed Napoleon, so
mean did his hero himself with his paltry vanity and joy in victory
appear, compared to the lofty, equitable, and kindly sky which he
had seen and understood, that he could not answer him.

Everything seemed so futile and insignificant in comparison with the
stern and solemn train of thought that weakness from loss of blood,
suffering, and the nearness of death aroused in him. Looking into
Napoleon's eyes Prince Andrew thought of the insignificance of
greatness, the unimportance of life which no one could understand, and
the still greater unimportance of death, the meaning of which no one
alive could understand or explain.

The Emperor without waiting for an answer turned away and said to
one of the officers as he went: "Have these gentlemen attended to
and taken to my bivouac; let my doctor, Larrey, examine their
wounds. Au revoir, Prince Repnin!" and he spurred his horse and
galloped away.

His face shone with self-satisfaction and pleasure.

The soldiers who had carried Prince Andrew had noticed and taken the
little gold icon Princess Mary had hung round her brother's neck,
but seeing the favor the Emperor showed the prisoners, they now
hastened to return the holy image.

Prince Andrew did not see how and by whom it was replaced, but the
little icon with its thin gold chain suddenly appeared upon his
chest outside his uniform.

"It would be good," thought Prince Andrew, glancing at the icon
his sister had hung round his neck with such emotion and reverence,
"it would be good if everything were as clear and simple as it seems
to Mary. How good it would be to know where to seek for help in this
life, and what to expect after it beyond the grave! How happy and calm
I should be if I could now say: 'Lord, have mercy on me!'... But to
whom should I say that? Either to a Power indefinable,
incomprehensible, which I not only cannot address but which I cannot
even express in words--the Great All or Nothing-" said he to
himself, "or to that God who has been sewn into this amulet by Mary!
There is nothing certain, nothing at all except the unimportance of
everything I understand, and the greatness of something
incomprehensible but all-important."

The stretchers moved on. At every jolt he again felt unendurable
pain; his feverishness increased and he grew delirious. Visions of his
father, wife, sister, and future son, and the tenderness he had felt
the night before the battle, the figure of the insignificant little
Napoleon, and above all this the lofty sky, formed the chief
subjects of his delirious fancies.

The quiet home life and peaceful happiness of Bald Hills presented
itself to him. He was already enjoying that happiness when that little
Napoleon had suddenly appeared with his unsympathizing look of
shortsighted delight at the misery of others, and doubts and
torments had followed, and only the heavens promised peace. Toward
morning all these dreams melted and merged into the chaos and darkness
of unconciousness and oblivion which in the opinion of Napoleon's
doctor, Larrey, was much more likely to end in death than in
convalescence.

"He is a nervous, bilious subject," said Larrey, "and will not
recover."

And Prince Andrew, with others fatally wounded, was left to the care
of the inhabitants of the district.





BOOK FOUR: 1806



CHAPTER I


Early in the year 1806 Nicholas Rostov returned home on leave.
Denisov was going home to Voronezh and Rostov persuaded him to
travel with him as far as Moscow and to stay with him there. Meeting a
comrade at the last post station but one before Moscow, Denisov had
drunk three bottles of wine with him and, despite the jolting ruts
across the snow-covered road, did not once wake up on the way to
Moscow, but lay at the bottom of the sleigh beside Rostov, who grew
more and more impatient the nearer they got to Moscow.

"How much longer? How much longer? Oh, these insufferable streets,
shops, bakers' signboards, street lamps, and sleighs!" thought Rostov,
when their leave permits had been passed at the town gate and they had
entered Moscow.

"Denisov! We're here! He's asleep," he added, leaning forward with
his whole body as if in that position he hoped to hasten the speed
of the sleigh.

Denisov gave no answer.

"There's the corner at the crossroads, where the cabman, Zakhar, has
his stand, and there's Zakhar himself and still the same horse! And
here's the little shop where we used to buy gingerbread! Can't you
hurry up? Now then!"

"Which house is it?" asked the driver.

"Why, that one, right at the end, the big one. Don't you see? That's
our house," said Rostov. "Of course, it's our house! Denisov, Denisov!
We're almost there!"

Denisov raised his head, coughed, and made no answer.

"Dmitri," said Rostov to his valet on the box, "those lights are
in our house, aren't they?"

"Yes, sir, and there's a light in your father's study."

"Then they've not gone to bed yet? What do you think? Mind now,
don't forget to put out my new coat," added Rostov, fingering his
new mustache. "Now then, get on," he shouted to the driver. "Do wake
up, Vaska!" he went on, turning to Denisov, whose head was again
nodding. "Come, get on! You shall have three rubles for vodka--get
on!" Rostov shouted, when the sleigh was only three houses from his
door. It seemed to him the horses were not moving at all. At last
the sleigh bore to the right, drew up at an entrance, and Rostov saw
overhead the old familiar cornice with a bit of plaster broken off,
the porch, and the post by the side of the pavement. He sprang out
before the sleigh stopped, and ran into the hall. The house stood cold
and silent, as if quite regardless of who had come to it. There was no
one in the hall. "Oh God! Is everyone all right?" he thought, stopping
for a moment with a sinking heart, and then immediately starting to
run along the hall and up the warped steps of the familiar
staircase. The well-known old door handle, which always angered the
countess when it was not properly cleaned, turned as loosely as
ever. A solitary tallow candle burned in the anteroom.

Old Michael was asleep on the chest. Prokofy, the footman, who was
so strong that he could lift the back of the carriage from behind, sat
plaiting slippers out of cloth selvedges. He looked up at the
opening door and his expression of sleepy indifference suddenly
changed to one of delighted amazement.

"Gracious heavens! The young count!" he cried, recognizing his young
master. "Can it be? My treasure!" and Prokofy, trembling with
excitement, rushed toward the drawing-room door, probably in order
to announce him, but, changing his mind, came back and stooped to kiss
the young man's shoulder.

"All well?" asked Rostov, drawing away his arm.

"Yes, God be thanked! Yes! They've just finished supper. Let me have
a look at you, your excellency."

"Is everything quite all right?"

"The Lord be thanked, yes!"

Rostov, who had completely forgotten Denisov, not wishing anyone
to forestall him, threw off his fur coat and ran on tiptoe through the
large dark ballroom. All was the same: there were the same old card
tables and the same chandelier with a cover over it; but someone had
already seen the young master, and, before he had reached the
drawing room, something flew out from a side door like a tornado and
began hugging and kissing him. Another and yet another creature of the
same kind sprang from a second door and a third; more hugging, more
kissing, more outcries, and tears of joy. He could not distinguish
which was Papa, which Natasha, and which Petya. Everyone shouted,
talked, and kissed him at the same time. Only his mother was not
there, he noticed that.

"And I did not know... Nicholas... My darling!..."

"Here he is... our own... Kolya,* dear fellow... How he has
changed!... Where are the candles?... Tea!..."


*Nicholas.


"And me, kiss me!"

"Dearest... and me!"

Sonya, Natasha, Petya, Anna Mikhaylovna, Vera, and the old count
were all hugging him, and the serfs, men and maids, flocked into the
room, exclaiming and oh-ing and ah-ing.

Petya, clinging to his legs, kept shouting, "And me too!"

Natasha, after she had pulled him down toward her and covered his
face with kisses, holding him tight by the skirt of his coat, sprang
away and pranced up and down in one place like a goat and shrieked
piercingly.

All around were loving eyes glistening with tears of joy, and all
around were lips seeking a kiss.

Sonya too, all rosy red, clung to his arm and, radiant with bliss,
looked eagerly toward his eyes, waiting for the look for which she
longed. Sonya now was sixteen and she was very pretty, especially at
this moment of happy, rapturous excitement. She gazed at him, not
taking her eyes off him, and smiling and holding her breath. He gave
her a grateful look, but was still expectant and looking for
someone. The old countess had not yet come. But now steps were heard
at the door, steps so rapid that they could hardly be his mother's.

Yet it was she, dressed in a new gown which he did not know, made
since he had left. All the others let him go, and he ran to her.
When they met, she fell on his breast, sobbing. She could not lift her
face, but only pressed it to the cold braiding of his hussar's jacket.
Denisov, who had come into the room unnoticed by anyone, stood there
and wiped his eyes at the sight.

"Vasili Denisov, your son's friend," he said, introducing himself to
the count, who was looking inquiringly at him.

"You are most welcome! I know, I know," said the count, kissing
and embracing Denisov. "Nicholas wrote us... Natasha, Vera, look! Here
is Denisov!"

The same happy, rapturous faces turned to the shaggy figure of
Denisov.

"Darling Denisov!" screamed Natasha, beside herself with rapture,
springing to him, putting her arms round him, and kissing him. This
escapade made everybody feel confused. Denisov blushed too, but smiled
and, taking Natasha's hand, kissed it.

Denisov was shown to the room prepared for him, and the Rostovs
all gathered round Nicholas in the sitting room.

The old countess, not letting go of his hand and kissing it every
moment, sat beside him: the rest, crowding round him, watched every
movement, word, or look of his, never taking their blissfully
adoring eyes off him. His brother and sisters struggled for the places
nearest to him and disputed with one another who should bring him
his tea, handkerchief, and pipe.

Rostov was very happy in the love they showed him; but the first
moment of meeting had been so beatific that his present joy seemed
insufficient, and he kept expecting something more, more and yet more.

Next morning, after the fatigues of their journey, the travelers
slept till ten o'clock.

In the room next their bedroom there was a confusion of sabers,
satchels, sabretaches, open portmanteaus, and dirty boots. Two freshly
cleaned pairs with spurs had just been placed by the wall. The
servants were bringing in jugs and basins, hot water for shaving,
and their well-brushed clothes. There was a masculine odor and a smell
of tobacco.

"Hallo, Gwiska--my pipe!" came Vasili Denisov's husky voice.
"Wostov, get up!"

Rostov, rubbing his eyes that seemed glued together, raised his
disheveled head from the hot pillow.

"Why, is it late?"

"Late! It's nearly ten o'clock," answered Natasha's voice. A
rustle of starched petticoats and the whispering and laughter of
girls' voices came from the adjoining room. The door was opened a
crack and there was a glimpse of something blue, of ribbons, black
hair, and merry faces. It was Natasha, Sonya, and Petya, who had
come to see whether they were getting up.

"Nicholas! Get up!" Natasha's voice was again heard at the door.

"Directly!"

Meanwhile, Petya, having found and seized the sabers in the outer
room, with the delight boys feel at the sight of a military elder
brother, and forgetting that it was unbecoming for the girls to see
men undressed, opened the bedroom door.

"Is this your saber?" he shouted.

The girls sprang aside. Denisov hid his hairy legs under the
blanket, looking with a scared face at his comrade for help. The door,
having let Petya in, closed again. A sound of laughter came from
behind it.

"Nicholas! Come out in your dressing gown!" said Natasha's voice.

"Is this your saber?" asked Petya. "Or is it yours?" he said,
addressing the black-mustached Denisov with servile deference.

Rostov hurriedly put something on his feet, drew on his dressing
gown, and went out. Natasha had put on one spurred boot and was just
getting her foot into the other. Sonya, when he came in, was
twirling round and was about to expand her dresses into a balloon
and sit down. They were dressed alike, in new pale-blue frocks, and
were both fresh, rosy, and bright. Sonya ran away, but Natasha, taking
her brother's arm, led him into the sitting room, where they began
talking. They hardly gave one another time to ask questions and give
replies concerning a thousand little matters which could not
interest anyone but themselves. Natasha laughed at every word he
said or that she said herself, not because what they were saying was
amusing, but because she felt happy and was unable to control her
joy which expressed itself by laughter.

"Oh, how nice, how splendid!" she said to everything.

Rostov felt that, under the influence of the warm rays of love, that
childlike smile which had not once appeared on his face since he
left home now for the first time after eighteen months again
brightened his soul and his face.

"No, but listen," she said, "now you are quite a man, aren't you?
I'm awfully glad you're my brother." She touched his mustache. "I want
to know what you men are like. Are you the same as we? No?"

"Why did Sonya run away?" asked Rostov.

"Ah, yes! That's a whole long story! How are you going to speak to
her--thou or you?"

"As may happen," said Rostov.

"No, call her you, please! I'll tell you all about it some other
time. No, I'll tell you now. You know Sonya's my dearest friend.
Such a friend that I burned my arm for her sake. Look here!"

She pulled up her muslin sleeve and showed him a red scar on her
long, slender, delicate arm, high above the elbow on that part that is
covered even by a ball dress.

"I burned this to prove my love for her. I just heated a ruler in
the fire and pressed it there!"

Sitting on the sofa with the little cushions on its arms, in what
used to be his old schoolroom, and looking into Natasha's wildly
bright eyes, Rostov re-entered that world of home and childhood
which had no meaning for anyone else, but gave him some of the best
joys of his life; and the burning of an arm with a ruler as a proof of
love did not seem to him senseless, he understood and was not
surprised at it.

"Well, and is that all?" he asked.

"We are such friends, such friends! All that ruler business was just
nonsense, but we are friends forever. She, if she loves anyone, does
it for life, but I don't understand that, I forget quickly."

"Well, what then?"

"Well, she loves me and you like that."

Natasha suddenly flushed.

"Why, you remember before you went away?... Well, she says you are
to forget all that.... She says: 'I shall love him always, but let him
be free.' Isn't that lovely and noble! Yes, very noble? Isn't it?"
asked Natasha, so seriously and excitedly that it was evident that
what she was now saying she had talked of before, with tears.

Rostov became thoughtful.

"I never go back on my word," he said. "Besides, Sonya is so
charming that only a fool would renounce such happiness."

"No, no!" cried Natasha, "she and I have already talked it over.
We knew you'd say so. But it won't do, because you see, if you say
that--if you consider yourself bound by your promise--it will seem
as if she had not meant it seriously. It makes it as if you were
marrying her because you must, and that wouldn't do at all."

Rostov saw that it had been well considered by them. Sonya had
already struck him by her beauty on the preceding day. Today, when
he had caught a glimpse of her, she seemed still more lovely. She
was a charming girl of sixteen, evidently passionately in love with
him (he did not doubt that for an instant). Why should he not love her
now, and even marry her, Rostov thought, but just now there were so
many other pleasures and interests before him! "Yes, they have taken a
wise decision," he thought, "I must remain free."

"Well then, that's excellent," said he. "We'll talk it over later
on. Oh, how glad I am to have you!"

"Well, and are you still true to Boris?" he continued.

"Oh, what nonsense!" cried Natasha, laughing. "I don't think about
him or anyone else, and I don't want anything of the kind."

"Dear me! Then what are you up now?"

"Now?" repeated Natasha, and a happy smile lit up her face. "Have
you seen Duport?"

"No."

"Not seen Duport--the famous dancer? Well then, you won't
understand. That's what I'm up to."

Curving her arms, Natasha held out her skirts as dancers do, ran
back a few steps, turned, cut a caper, brought her little feet sharply
together, and made some steps on the very tips of her toes.

"See, I'm standing! See!" she said, but could not maintain herself
on her toes any longer. "So that's what I'm up to! I'll never marry
anyone, but will be a dancer. Only don't tell anyone."

Rostov laughed so loud and merrily that Denisov, in his bedroom,
felt envious and Natasha could not help joining in.

"No, but don't you think it's nice?" she kept repeating.

"Nice! And so you no longer wish to marry Boris?"

Natasha flared up. "I don't want to marry anyone. And I'll tell
him so when I see him!"

"Dear me!" said Rostov.

"But that's all rubbish," Natasha chattered on. "And is Denisov
nice?" she asked.

"Yes, indeed!"

"Oh, well then, good-by: go and dress. Is he very terrible,
Denisov?"

"Why terrible?" asked Nicholas. "No, Vaska is a splendid fellow."

"You call him Vaska? That's funny! And is he very nice?"

"Very."

"Well then, be quick. We'll all have breakfast together."

And Natasha rose and went out of the room on tiptoe, like a ballet
dancer, but smiling as only happy girls of fifteen can smile. When
Rostov met Sonya in the drawing room, he reddened. He did not know how
to behave with her. The evening before, in the first happy moment of
meeting, they had kissed each other, but today they felt it could
not be done; he felt that everybody, including his mother and sisters,
was looking inquiringly at him and watching to see how he would behave
with her. He kissed her hand and addressed her not as thou but as you-
Sonya. But their eyes met and said thou, and exchanged tender
kisses. Her looks asked him to forgive her for having dared, by
Natasha's intermediacy, to remind him of his promise, and then thanked
him for his love. His looks thanked her for offering him his freedom
and told her that one way or another he would never cease to love her,
for that would be impossible.

"How strange it is," said Vera, selecting a moment when all were
silent, "that Sonya and Nicholas now say you to one another and meet
like strangers."

Vera's remark was correct, as her remarks always were, but, like
most of her observations, it made everyone feel uncomfortable, not
only Sonya, Nicholas, and Natasha, but even the old countess, who-
dreading this love affair which might hinder Nicholas from making a
brilliant match--blushed like a girl.

Denisov, to Rostov's surprise, appeared in the drawing room with
pomaded hair, perfumed, and in a new uniform, looking just as smart as
he made himself when going into battle, and he was more amiable to the
ladies and gentlemen than Rostov had ever expected to see him.





CHAPTER II


On his return to Moscow from the army, Nicholas Rostov was
welcomed by his home circle as the best of sons, a hero, and their
darling Nikolenka; by his relations as a charming, attractive, and
polite young man; by his acquaintances as a handsome lieutenant of
hussars, a good dancer, and one of the best matches in the city.

The Rostovs knew everybody in Moscow. The old count had money enough
that year, as all his estates had been remortgaged, and so Nicholas,
acquiring a trotter of his own, very stylish riding breeches of the
latest cut, such as no one else yet had in Moscow, and boots of the
latest fashion, with extremely pointed toes and small silver spurs,
passed his time very gaily. After a short period of adapting himself
to the old conditions of life, Nicholas found it very pleasant to be
at home again. He felt that he had grown up and matured very much. His
despair at failing in a Scripture examination, his borrowing money
from Gavril to pay a sleigh driver, his kissing Sonya on the sly--he
now recalled all this as childishness he had left immeasurably behind.
Now he was a lieutenant of hussars, in a jacket laced with silver, and
wearing the Cross of St. George, awarded to soldiers for bravery in
action, and in the company of well-known, elderly, and respected
racing men was training a trotter of his own for a race. He knew a
lady on one of the boulevards whom he visited of an evening. He led
the mazurka at the Arkharovs' ball, talked about the war with Field
Marshal Kamenski, visited the English Club, and was on intimate
terms with a colonel of forty to whom Denisov had introduced him.

His passion for the Emperor had cooled somewhat in Moscow. But
still, as he did not see him and had no opportunity of seeing him,
he often spoke about him and about his love for him, letting it be
understood that he had not told all and that there was something in
his feelings for the Emperor not everyone could understand, and with
his whole soul he shared the adoration then common in Moscow for the
Emperor, who was spoken of as the "angel incarnate."

During Rostov's short stay in Moscow, before rejoining the army,
he did not draw closer to Sonya, but rather drifted away from her. She
was very pretty and sweet, and evidently deeply in love with him,
but he was at the period of youth when there seems so much to do
that there is no time for that sort of thing and a young man fears
to bind himself and prizes his freedom which he needs for so many
other things. When he thought of Sonya, during this stay in Moscow, he
said to himself, "Ah, there will be, and there are, many more such
girls somewhere whom I do not yet know. There will be time enough to
think about love when I want to, but now I have no time." Besides,
it seemed to him that the society of women was rather derogatory to
his manhood. He went to balls and into ladies' society with an
affectation of doing so against his will. The races, the English Club,
sprees with Denisov, and visits to a certain house--that was another
matter and quite the thing for a dashing young hussar!

At the beginning of March, old Count Ilya Rostov was very busy
arranging a dinner in honor of Prince Bagration at the English Club.

The count walked up and down the hall in his dressing gown, giving
orders to the club steward and to the famous Feoktist, the Club's head
cook, about asparagus, fresh cucumbers, strawberries, veal, and fish
for this dinner. The count had been a member and on the committee of
the Club from the day it was founded. To him the Club entrusted the
arrangement of the festival in honor of Bagration, for few men knew so
well how to arrange a feast on an open-handed, hospitable scale, and
still fewer men would be so well able and willing to make up out of
their own resources what might be needed for the success of the
fete. The club cook and the steward listened to the count's orders
with pleased faces, for they knew that under no other management could
they so easily extract a good profit for themselves from a dinner
costing several thousand rubles.

"Well then, mind and have cocks' comb in the turtle soup, you know!"

"Shall we have three cold dishes then?" asked the cook.

The count considered.

"We can't have less--yes, three... the mayonnaise, that's one," said
he, bending down a finger.

"Then am I to order those large sterlets?" asked the steward.

"Yes, it can't be helped if they won't take less. Ah, dear me! I was
forgetting. We must have another entree. Ah, goodness gracious!" he
clutched at his head. "Who is going to get me the flowers? Dmitri! Eh,
Dmitri! Gallop off to our Moscow estate," he said to the factotum
who appeared at his call. "Hurry off and tell Maksim, the gardener, to
set the serfs to work. Say that everything out of the hothouses must
be brought here well wrapped up in felt. I must have two hundred
pots here on Friday."

Having given several more orders, he was about to go to his
"little countess" to have a rest, but remembering something else of
importance, he returned again, called back the cook and the club
steward, and again began giving orders. A light footstep and the
clinking of spurs were heard at the door, and the young count,
handsome, rosy, with a dark little mustache, evidently rested and made
sleeker by his easy life in Moscow, entered the room.

"Ah, my boy, my head's in a whirl!" said the old man with a smile,
as if he felt a little confused before his son. "Now, if you would
only help a bit! I must have singers too. I shall have my own
orchestra, but shouldn't we get the gypsy singers as well? You
military men like that sort of thing."

"Really, Papa, I believe Prince Bagration worried himself less
before the battle of Schon Grabern than you do now," said his son with
a smile.

The old count pretended to be angry.

"Yes, you talk, but try it yourself!"

And the count turned to the cook, who, with a shrewd and
respectful expression, looked observantly and sympathetically at the
father and son.

"What have the young people come to nowadays, eh, Feoktist?" said
he. "Laughing at us old fellows!"

"That's so, your excellency, all they have to do is to eat a good
dinner, but providing it and serving it all up, that's not their
business!"

"That's it, that's it!" exclaimed the count, and gaily seizing his
son by both hands, he cried, "Now I've got you, so take the sleigh and
pair at once, and go to Bezukhob's, and tell him 'Count Ilya has
sent you to ask for strawberries and fresh pineapples.' We can't get
them from anyone else. He's not there himself, so you'll have to go in
and ask the princesses; and from there go on to the Rasgulyay--the
coachman Ipatka knows--and look up the gypsy Ilyushka, the one who
danced at Count Orlov's, you remember, in a white Cossack coat, and
bring him along to me."

"And am I to bring the gypsy girls along with him?" asked
Nicholas, laughing. "Dear, dear!..."

At that moment, with noiseless footsteps and with the
businesslike, preoccupied, yet meekly Christian look which never
left her face, Anna Mikhaylovna entered the hall. Though she came upon
the count in his dressing gown every day, he invariably became
confused and begged her to excuse his costume.

"No matter at all, my dear count," she said, meekly closing her
eyes. "But I'll go to Bezukhov's myself. Pierre has arrived, and now
we shall get anything we want from his hothouses. I have to see him in
any case. He has forwarded me a letter from Boris. Thank God, Boris is
now on the staff."

The count was delighted at Anna Mikhaylovna's taking upon herself
one of his commissions and ordered the small closed carriage for her.

"Tell Bezukhov to come. I'll put his name down. Is his wife with
him?" he asked.

Anna Mikhaylovna turned up her eyes, and profound sadness was
depicted on her face.

"Ah, my dear friend, he is very unfortunate," she said. "If what
we hear is true, it is dreadful. How little we dreamed of such a thing
when we were rejoicing at his happiness! And such a lofty angelic soul
as young Bezukhov! Yes, I pity him from my heart, and shall try to
give him what consolation I can."

"Wh-what is the matter?" asked both the young and old Rostov.

Anna Mikhaylovna sighed deeply.

"Dolokhov, Mary Ivanovna's son," she said in a mysterious whisper,
"has compromised her completely, they say. Pierre took him up, invited
him to his house in Petersburg, and now... she has come here and
that daredevil after her!" said Anna Mikhaylovna, wishing to show
her sympathy for Pierre, but by involuntary intonations and a half
smile betraying her sympathy for the "daredevil," as she called
Dolokhov. "They say Pierre is quite broken by his misfortune."

"Dear, dear! But still tell him to come to the Club--it will all
blow over. It will be a tremendous banquet."

Next day, the third of March, soon after one o'clock, two hundred
and fifty members of the English Club and fifty guests were awaiting
the guest of honor and hero of the Austrian campaign, Prince
Bagration, to dinner.

On the first arrival of the news of the battle of Austerlitz, Moscow
had been bewildered. At that time, the Russians were so used to
victories that on receiving news of the defeat some would simply not
believe it, while others sought some extraordinary explanation of so
strange an event. In the English Club, where all who were
distinguished, important, and well informed forgathered when the
news began to arrive in December, nothing was said about the war and
the last battle, as though all were in a conspiracy of silence. The
men who set the tone in conversation--Count Rostopchin, Prince Yuri
Dolgorukov, Valuev, Count Markov, and Prince Vyazemski--did not show
themselves at the Club, but met in private houses in intimate circles,
and the Moscovites who took their opinions from others--Ilya Rostov
among them--remained for a while without any definite opinion on the
subject of the war and without leaders. The Moscovites felt that
something was wrong and that to discuss the bad news was difficult,
and so it was best to be silent. But after a while, just as a jury
comes out of its room, the bigwigs who guided the Club's opinion
reappeared, and everybody began speaking clearly and definitely.
Reasons were found for the incredible, unheard-of, and impossible
event of a Russian defeat, everything became clear, and in all corners
of Moscow the same things began to be said. These reasons were the
treachery of the Austrians, a defective commissariat, the treachery of
the Pole Przebyszewski and of the Frenchman Langeron, Kutuzov's
incapacity, and (it was whispered) the youth and inexperience of the
sovereign, who had trusted worthless and insignificant people. But the
army, the Russian army, everyone declared, was extraordinary and had
achieved miracles of valor. The soldiers, officers, and generals were
heroes. But the hero of heroes was Prince Bagration, distinguished
by his Schon Grabern affair and by the retreat from Austerlitz,
where he alone had withdrawn his column unbroken and had all day
beaten back an enemy force twice as numerous as his own. What also
conduced to Bagration's being selected as Moscow's hero was the fact
that he had no connections in the city and was a stranger there. In
his person, honor was shown to a simple fighting Russian soldier
without connections and intrigues, and to one who was associated by
memories of the Italian campaign with the name of Suvorov. Moreover,
paying such honor to Bagration was the best way of expressing
disapproval and dislike of Kutuzov.

"Had there been no Bagration, it would have been necessary to invent
him," said the wit Shinshin, parodying the words of Voltaire.
Kutuzov no one spoke of, except some who abused him in whispers,
calling him a court weathercock and an old satyr.

All Moscow repeated Prince Dolgorukov's saying: "If you go on
modeling and modeling you must get smeared with clay," suggesting
consolation for our defeat by the memory of former victories; and
the words of Rostopchin, that French soldiers have to be incited to
battle by highfalutin words, and Germans by logical arguments to
show them that it is more dangerous to run away than to advance, but
that Russian soldiers only need to be restrained and held back! On all
sides, new and fresh anecdotes were heard of individual examples of
heroism shown by our officers and men at Austerlitz. One had saved a
standard, another had killed five Frenchmen, a third had loaded five
cannon singlehanded. Berg was mentioned, by those who did not know
him, as having, when wounded in the right hand, taken his sword in the
left, and gone forward. Of Bolkonski, nothing was said, and only those
who knew him intimately regretted that he had died so young, leaving a
pregnant wife with his eccentric father.





CHAPTER III


On that third of March, all the rooms in the English Club were
filled with a hum of conversation, like the hum of bees swarming in
springtime. The members and guests of the Club wandered hither and
thither, sat, stood, met, and separated, some in uniform and some in
evening dress, and a few here and there with powdered hair and in
Russian kaftans. Powdered footmen, in livery with buckled shoes and
smart stockings, stood at every door anxiously noting visitors'
every movement in order to offer their services. Most of those present
were elderly, respected men with broad, self-confident faces, fat
fingers, and resolute gestures and voices. This class of guests and
members sat in certain habitual places and met in certain habitual
groups. A minority of those present were casual guests--chiefly
young men, among whom were Denisov, Rostov, and Dolokhov--who was
now again an officer in the Semenov regiment. The faces of these young
people, especially those who were militarymen, bore that expression of
condescending respect for their elders which seems to say to the older
generation, "We are prepared to respect and honor you, but all the
same remember that the future belongs to us."

Nesvitski was there as an old member of the Club. Pierre, who at his
wife's command had let his hair grow and abandoned his spectacles,
went about the rooms fashionably dressed but looking sad and dull.
Here, as elsewhere, he was surrounded by an atmosphere of subservience
to his wealth, and being in the habit of lording it over these people,
he treated them with absent-minded contempt.

By his age he should have belonged to the younger men, but by his
wealth and connections he belonged to the groups old and honored
guests, and so he went from one group to another. Some of the most
important old men were the center of groups which even strangers
approached respectfully to hear the voices of well-known men. The
largest circles formed round Count Rostopchin, Valuev, and
Naryshkin. Rostopchin was describing how the Russians had been
overwhelmed by flying Austrians and had had to force their way through
them with bayonets.

Valuev was confidentially telling that Uvarov had been sent from
Petersburg to ascertain what Moscow was thinking about Austerlitz.

In the third circle, Naryshkin was speaking of the meeting of the
Austrian Council of War at which Suvorov crowed like a cock in reply
to the nonsense talked by the Austrian generals. Shinshin, standing
close by, tried to make a joke, saying that Kutuzov had evidently
failed to learn from Suvorov even so simple a thing as the art of
crowing like a cock, but the elder members glanced severely at the
wit, making him feel that in that place and on that day, it was
improper to speak so of Kutuzov.

Count Ilya Rostov, hurried and preoccupied, went about in his soft
boots between the dining and drawing rooms, hastily greeting the
important and unimportant, all of whom he knew, as if they were all
equals, while his eyes occasionally sought out his fine well-set-up
young son, resting on him and winking joyfully at him. Young Rostov
stood at a window with Dolokhov, whose acquaintance he had lately made
and highly valued. The old count came up to them and pressed
Dolokhov's hand.

"Please come and visit us... you know my brave boy... been
together out there... both playing the hero... Ah, Vasili
Ignatovich... How d'ye do, old fellow?" he said, turning to an old man
who was passing, but before he had finished his greeting there was a
general stir, and a footman who had run in announced, with a
frightened face: "He's arrived!"

Bells rang, the stewards rushed forward, and--like rye shaken
together in a shovel--the guests who had been scattered about in
different rooms came together and crowded in the large drawing room by
the door of the ballroom.

Bagration appeared in the doorway of the anteroom without hat or
sword, which, in accord with the Club custom, he had given up to the
hall porter. He had no lambskin cap on his head, nor had he a loaded
whip over his shoulder, as when Rostov had seen him on the eve of
the battle of Austerlitz, but wore a tight new uniform with Russian
and foreign Orders, and the Star of St. George on his left breast.
Evidently just before coming to the dinner he had had his hair and
whiskers trimmed, which changed his appearance for the worse. There
was something naively festive in his air, which, in conjunction with
his firm and virile features, gave him a rather comical expression.
Bekleshev and Theodore Uvarov, who had arrived with him, paused at the
doorway to allow him, as the guest of honor, to enter first. Bagration
was embarrassed, not wishing to avail himself of their courtesy, and
this caused some delay at the doors, but after all he did at last
enter first. He walked shyly and awkwardly over the parquet floor of
the reception room, not knowing what to do with his hands; he was more
accustomed to walk over a plowed field under fire, as he had done at
the head of the Kursk regiment at Schon Grabern--and he would have
found that easier. The committeemen met him at the first door and,
expressing their delight at seeing such a highly honored guest, took
possession of him as it were, without waiting for his reply,
surrounded him, and led him to the drawing room. It was at first
impossible to enter the drawing-room door for the crowd of members and
guests jostling one another and trying to get a good look at Bagration
over each other's shoulders, as if he were some rare animal. Count
Ilya Rostov, laughing and repeating the words, "Make way, dear boy!
Make way, make way!" pushed through the crowd more energetically
than anyone, led the guests into the drawing room, and seated them
on the center sofa. The bigwigs, the most respected members of the
Club, beset the new arrivals. Count Ilya, again thrusting his way
through the crowd, went out of the drawing room and reappeared a
minute later with another committeeman, carrying a large silver salver
which he presented to Prince Bagration. On the salver lay some
verses composed and printed in the hero's honor. Bagration, on
seeing the salver, glanced around in dismay, as though seeking help.
But all eyes demanded that he should submit. Feeling himself in
their power, he resolutely took the salver with both hands and
looked sternly and reproachfully at the count who had presented it
to him. Someone obligingly took the dish from Bagration (or he
would, it seemed, have held it till evening and have gone in to dinner
with it) and drew his attention to the verses.

"Well, I will read them, then!" Bagration seemed to say, and, fixing
his weary eyes on the paper, began to read them with a fixed and
serious expression. But the author himself took the verses and began
reading them aloud. Bagration bowed his bead and listened:

   Bring glory then to Alexander's reign
   And on the throne our Titus shield.
   A dreaded foe be thou, kindhearted as a man,
   A Rhipheus at home, a Caesar in the field!
   E'en fortunate Napoleon
   Knows by experience, now, Bagration,
   And dare not Herculean Russians trouble...

But before he had finished reading, a stentorian major-domo
announced that dinner was ready! The door opened, and from the
dining room came the resounding strains of the polonaise:

   Conquest's joyful thunder waken,
   Triumph, valiant Russians, now!...

and Count Rostov, glancing angrily at the author who went on reading
his verses, bowed to Bagration. Everyone rose, feeling that dinner was
more important than verses, and Bagration, again preceding all the
rest, went in to dinner. He was seated in the place of honor between
two Alexanders--Bekleshev and Naryshkin--which was a significant
allusion to the name of the sovereign. Three hundred persons took
their seats in the dining room, according to their rank and
importance: the more important nearer to the honored guest, as
naturally as water flows deepest where the land lies lowest.

Just before dinner, Count Ilya Rostov presented his son to
Bagration, who recognized him and said a few words to him,
disjointed and awkward, as were all the words he spoke that day, and
Count Ilya looked joyfully and proudly around while Bagration spoke to
his son.

Nicholas Rostov, with Denisov and his new acquaintance, Dolokhov,
sat almost at the middle of the table. Facing them sat Pierre,
beside Prince Nesvitski. Count Ilya Rostov with the other members of
the committee sat facing Bagration and, as the very personification of
Moscow hospitality, did the honors to the prince.

His efforts had not been in vain. The dinner, both the Lenten and
the other fare, was splendid, yet he could not feel quite at ease till
the end of the meal. He winked at the butler, whispered directions
to the footmen, and awaited each expected dish with some anxiety.
Everything was excellent. With the second course, a gigantic sterlet
(at sight of which Ilya Rostov blushed with self-conscious
pleasure), the footmen began popping corks and filling the champagne
glasses. After the fish, which made a certain sensation, the count
exchanged glances with the other committeemen. "There will be many
toasts, it's time to begin," he whispered, and taking up his glass, he
rose. All were silent, waiting for what he would say.

"To the health of our Sovereign, the Emperor!" he cried, and at
the same moment his kindly eyes grew moist with tears of joy and
enthusiasm. The band immediately struck up "Conquest's joyful
thunder waken..." All rose and cried "Hurrah!" Bagration also rose and
shouted "Hurrah!" in exactly the same voice in which he had shouted it
on the field at Schon Grabern. Young Rostov's ecstatic voice could
be heard above the three hundred others. He nearly wept. "To the
health of our Sovereign, the Emperor!" he roared, "Hurrah!" and
emptying his glass at one gulp he dashed it to the floor. Many
followed his example, and the loud shouting continued for a long time.
When the voices subsided, the footmen cleared away the broken glass
and everybody sat down again, smiling at the noise they had made and
exchanging remarks. The old count rose once more, glanced at a note
lying beside his plate, and proposed a toast, "To the health of the
hero of our last campaign, Prince Peter Ivanovich Bagration!" and
again his blue eyes grew moist. "Hurrah!" cried the three hundred
voices again, but instead of the band a choir began singing a
cantata composed by Paul Ivanovich Kutuzov:

   Russians! O'er all barriers on!
   Courage conquest guarantees;
   Have we not Bagration?
   He brings foe men to their knees,... etc.


As soon as the singing was over, another and another toast was
proposed and Count Ilya Rostov became more and more moved, more
glass was smashed, and the shouting grew louder. They drank to
Bekleshev, Naryshkin, Uvarov, Dolgorukov, Apraksin, Valuev, to the
committee, to all the Club members and to all the Club guests, and
finally to Count Ilya Rostov separately, as the organizer of the
banquet. At that toast, the count took out his handkerchief and,
covering his face, wept outright.





CHAPTER IV


Pierre sat opposite Dolokhov and Nicholas Rostov. As usual, he ate
and drank much, and eagerly. But those who knew him intimately noticed
that some great change had come over him that day. He was silent all
through dinner and looked about, blinking and scowling, or, with fixed
eyes and a look of complete absent-mindedness, kept rubbing the bridge
of his nose. His face was depressed and gloomy. He seemed to see and
hear nothing of what was going on around him and to be absorbed by
some depressing and unsolved problem.

The unsolved problem that tormented him was caused by hints given by
the princess, his cousin, at Moscow, concerning Dolokhov's intimacy
with his wife, and by an anonymous letter he had received that
morning, which in the mean jocular way common to anonymous letters
said that he saw badly through his spectacles, but that his wife's
connection with Dolokhov was a secret to no one but himself. Pierre
absolutely disbelieved both the princess' hints and the letter, but he
feared now to look at Dolokhov, who was sitting opposite him. Every
time he chanced to meet Dolokhov's handsome insolent eyes, Pierre felt
something terrible and monstrous rising in his soul and turned quickly
away. Involuntarily recalling his wife's past and her relations with
Dolokhov, Pierre saw clearly that what was said in the letter might be
true, or might at least seem to be true had it not referred to his
wife. He involuntarily remembered how Dolokhov, who had fully
recovered his former position after the campaign, had returned to
Petersburg and come to him. Availing himself of his friendly relations
with Pierre as a boon companion, Dolokhov had come straight to his
house, and Pierre had put him up and lent him money. Pierre recalled
how Helene had smilingly expressed disapproval of Dolokhov's living at
their house, and how cynically Dolokhov had praised his wife's
beauty to him and from that time till they came to Moscow had not left
them for a day.

"Yes, he is very handsome," thought Pierre, "and I know him. It
would be particularly pleasant to him to dishonor my name and ridicule
me, just because I have exerted myself on his behalf, befriended
him, and helped him. I know and understand what a spice that would add
to the pleasure of deceiving me, if it really were true. Yes, if it
were true, but I do not believe it. I have no right to, and can't,
believe it." He remembered the expression Dolokhov's face assumed in
his moments of cruelty, as when tying the policeman to the bear and
dropping them into the water, or when he challenged a man to a duel
without any reason, or shot a post-boy's horse with a pistol. That
expression was often on Dolokhov's face when looking at him. "Yes,
he is a bully," thought Pierre, "to kill a man means nothing to him.
It must seem to him that everyone is afraid of him, and that must
please him. He must think that I, too, am afraid of him--and in fact I
am afraid of him," he thought, and again he felt something terrible
and monstrous rising in his soul. Dolokhov, Denisov, and Rostov were
now sitting opposite Pierre and seemed very gay. Rostov was talking
merrily to his two friends, one of whom was a dashing hussar and the
other a notorious duelist and rake, and every now and then he
glanced ironically at Pierre, whose preoccupied, absent-minded, and
massive figure was a very noticeable one at the dinner. Rostov
looked inimically at Pierre, first because Pierre appeared to his
hussar eyes as a rich civilian, the husband of a beauty, and in a
word--an old woman; and secondly because Pierre in his preoccupation
and absent-mindedness had not recognized Rostov and had not
responded to his greeting. When the Emperor's health was drunk,
Pierre, lost in thought, did not rise or lift his glass.

"What are you about?" shouted Rostov, looking at him in an ecstasy
of exasperation. "Don't you hear it's His Majesty the Emperor's
health?"

Pierre sighed, rose submissively, emptied his glass, and, waiting
till all were seated again, turned with his kindly smile to Rostov.

"Why, I didn't recognize you!" he said. But Rostov was otherwise
engaged; he was shouting "Hurrah!"

"Why don't you renew the acquaintance?" said Dolokhov to Rostov.

"Confound him, he's a fool!" said Rostov.

"One should make up to the husbands of pretty women," said Denisov.

Pierre did not catch what they were saying, but knew they were
talking about him. He reddened and turned away.

"Well, now to the health of handsome women!" said Dolokhov, and with
a serious expression, but with a smile lurking at the corners of his
mouth, he turned with his glass to Pierre.

"Here's to the health of lovely women, Peterkin--and their
lovers!" he added.

Pierre, with downcast eyes, drank out of his glass without looking
at Dolokhov or answering him. The footman, who was distributing
leaflets with Kutuzov's cantata, laid one before Pierre as one of
the principal guests. He was just going to take it when Dolokhov,
leaning across, snatched it from his hand and began reading it. Pierre
looked at Dolokhov and his eyes dropped, the something terrible and
monstrous that had tormented him all dinnertime rose and took
possession of him. He leaned his whole massive body across the table.

"How dare you take it?" he shouted.

Hearing that cry and seeing to whom it was addressed, Nesvitski
and the neighbor on his right quickly turned in alarm to Bezukhov.

"Don't! Don't! What are you about?" whispered their frightened
voices.

Dolokhov looked at Pierre with clear, mirthful, cruel eyes, and that
smile of his which seemed to say, "Ah! This is what I like!"

"You shan't have it!" he said distinctly.

Pale, with quivering lips, Pierre snatched the copy.

"You...! you... scoundrel! I challenge you!" he ejaculated, and,
pushing back his chair, he rose from the table.

At the very instant he did this and uttered those words, Pierre felt
that the question of his wife's guilt which had been tormenting him
the whole day was finally and indubitably answered in the affirmative.
He hated her and was forever sundered from her. Despite Denisov's
request that he would take no part in the matter, Rostov agreed to
be Dolokhov's second, and after dinner he discussed the arrangements
for the duel with Nesvitski, Bezukhov's second. Pierre went home,
but Rostov with Dolokhov and Denisov stayed on at the Club till
late, listening to the gypsies and other singers.

"Well then, till tomorrow at Sokolniki," said Dolokhov, as he took
leave of Rostov in the Club porch.

"And do you feel quite calm?" Rostov asked.

Dolokhov paused.

"Well, you see, I'll tell you the whole secret of dueling in two
words. If you are going to fight a duel, and you make a will and write
affectionate letters to your parents, and if you think you may be
killed, you are a fool and are lost for certain. But go with the
firm intention of killing your man as quickly and surely as
possible, and then all will be right, as our bear huntsman at Kostroma
used to tell me. 'Everyone fears a bear,' he says, 'but when you see
one your fear's all gone, and your only thought is not to let him
get away!' And that's how it is with me. A demain, mon cher."*


*Till tomorrow, my dear fellow.


Next day, at eight in the morning, Pierre and Nesvitski drove to the
Sokolniki forest and found Dolokhov, Denisov, and Rostov already
there. Pierre had the air of a man preoccupied with considerations
which had no connection with the matter in hand. His haggard face
was yellow. He had evidently not slept that night. He looked about
distractedly and screwed up his eyes as if dazzled by the sun. He
was entirely absorbed by two considerations: his wife's guilt, of
which after his sleepless night he had not the slightest doubt, and
the guiltlessness of Dolokhov, who had no reason to preserve the honor
of a man who was nothing to him.... "I should perhaps have done the
same thing in his place," thought Pierre. "It's even certain that I
should have done the same, then why this duel, this murder? Either I
shall kill him, or he will hit me in the head, or elbow, or knee.
Can't I go away from here, run away, bury myself somewhere?" passed
through his mind. But just at moments when such thoughts occurred to
him, he would ask in a particularly calm and absent-minded way,
which inspired the respect of the onlookers, "Will it be long? Are
things ready?"

When all was ready, the sabers stuck in the snow to mark the
barriers, and the pistols loaded, Nesvitski went up to Pierre.

"I should not be doing my duty, Count," he said in timid tones, "and
should not justify your confidence and the honor you have done me in
choosing me for your second, if at this grave, this very grave, moment
I did not tell you the whole truth. I think there is no sufficient
ground for this affair, or for blood to be shed over it.... You were
not right, not quite in the right, you were impetuous..."

"Oh yes, it is horribly stupid," said Pierre.

"Then allow me to express your regrets, and I am sure your
opponent will accept them," said Nesvitski (who like the others
concerned in the affair, and like everyone in similar cases, did not
yet believe that the affair had come to an actual duel). "You know,
Count, it is much more honorable to admit one's mistake than to let
matters become irreparable. There was no insult on either side.
Allow me to convey...."

"No! What is there to talk about?" said Pierre. "It's all the
same.... Is everything ready?" he added. "Only tell me where to go and
where to shoot," he said with an unnaturally gentle smile.

He took the pistol in his hand and began asking about the working of
the trigger, as he had not before held a pistol in his hand--a fact
that he did not to confess.

"Oh yes, like that, I know, I only forgot," said he.

"No apologies, none whatever," said Dolokhov to Denisov (who on
his side had been attempting a reconciliation), and he also went up to
the appointed place.

The spot chosen for the duel was some eighty paces from the road,
where the sleighs had been left, in a small clearing in the pine
forest covered with melting snow, the frost having begun to break up
during the last few days. The antagonists stood forty paces apart at
the farther edge of the clearing. The seconds, measuring the paces,
left tracks in the deep wet snow between the place where they had been
standing and Nesvitski's and Dolokhov's sabers, which were stuck
intothe ground ten paces apart to mark the barrier. It was thawing and
misty; at forty paces' distance nothing could be seen. For three
minutes all had been ready, but they still delayed and all were
silent.





CHAPTER V


"Well begin!" said Dolokhov.

"All right," said Pierre, still smiling in the same way. A feeling
of dread was in the air. It was evident that the affair so lightly
begun could no longer be averted but was taking its course
independently of men's will.

Denisov first went to the barrier and announced: "As the adve'sawies
have wefused a weconciliation, please pwoceed. Take your pistols,
and at the word thwee begin to advance.

"O-ne! T-wo! Thwee!" he shouted angrily and stepped aside.

The combatants advanced along the trodden tracks, nearer and
nearer to one another, beginning to see one another through the
mist. They had the right to fire when they liked as they approached
the barrier. Dolokhov walked slowly without raising his pistol,
looking intently with his bright, sparkling blue eyes into his
antagonist's face. His mouth wore its usual semblance of a smile.

"So I can fire when I like!" said Pierre, and at the word "three,"
he went quickly forward, missing the trodden path and stepping into
the deep snow. He held the pistol in his right hand at arm's length,
apparently afraid of shooting himself with it. His left hand he held
carefully back, because he wished to support his right hand with it
and knew he must not do so. Having advanced six paces and strayed
off the track into the snow, Pierre looked down at his feet, then
quickly glanced at Dolokhov and, bending his finger as he had been
shown, fired. Not at all expecting so loud a report, Pierre
shuddered at the sound and then, smiling at his own sensations,
stood still. The smoke, rendered denser by the mist, prevented him
from seeing anything for an instant, but there was no second report as
he had expected. He only heard Dolokhov's hurried steps, and his
figure came in view through the smoke. He was pressing one hand to his
left side, while the other clutched his drooping pistol. His face
was pale. Rostov ran toward him and said something.

"No-o-o!" muttered Dolokhov through his teeth, "no, it's not
over." And after stumbling a few staggering steps right up to the
saber, he sank on the snow beside it. His left hand was bloody; he
wiped it on his coat and supported himself with it. His frowning
face was pallid and quivered.

"Plea..." began Dolokhov, but could not at first pronounce the word.

"Please," he uttered with an effort.

Pierre, hardly restraining his sobs, began running toward Dolokhov
and was about to cross the space between the barriers, when Dolokhov
cried:

"To your barrier!" and Pierre, grasping what was meant, stopped by
his saber. Only ten paces divided them. Dolokhov lowered his head to
the snow, greedily bit at it, again raised his head, adjusted himself,
drew in his legs and sat up, seeking a firm center of gravity. He
sucked and swallowed the cold snow, his lips quivered but
his eyes, still smiling, glittered with effort and exasperation as
he mustered his remaining strength. He raised his pistol and aimed.

"Sideways! Cover yourself with your pistol!" ejaculated Nesvitski.

"Cover yourself!" even Denisov cried to his adversary.

Pierre, with a gentle smile of pity and remorse, his arms and legs
helplessly spread out, stood with his broad chest directly facing
Dolokhov looked sorrowfully at him. Denisov, Rostov, and Nesvitski
closed their eyes. At the same instant they heard a report and
Dolokhov's angry cry.

"Missed!" shouted Dolokhov, and he lay helplessly, face downwards on
the snow.

Pierre clutched his temples, and turning round went into the forest,
trampling through the deep snow, and muttering incoherent words:

"Folly... folly! Death... lies..." he repeated, puckering his face.

Nesvitski stopped him and took him home.

Rostov and Denisov drove away with the wounded Dolokhov.

The latter lay silent in the sleigh with closed eyes and did not
answer a word to the questions addressed to him. But on entering
Moscow he suddenly came to and, lifting his head with an effort,
took Rostov, who was sitting beside him, by the hand. Rostov was
struck by the totally altered and unexpectedly rapturous and tender
expression on Dolokhov's face.

"Well? How do you feel?" he asked.

"Bad! But it's not that, my friend-" said Dolokhov with a gasping
voice. "Where are we? In Moscow, I know. I don't matter, but I have
killed her, killed... She won't get over it! She won't survive...."

"Who?" asked Rostov.

"My mother! My mother, my angel, my adored angel mother," and
Dolokhov pressed Rostov's hand and burst into tears.

When he had become a little quieter, he explained to Rostov that
he was living with his mother, who, if she saw him dying, would not
survive it. He implored Rostov to go on and prepare her.

Rostov went on ahead to do what was asked, and to his great surprise
learned that Dolokhov the brawler, Dolokhov the bully, lived in Moscow
with an old mother and a hunchback sister, and was the most
affectionate of sons and brothers.





CHAPTER VI


Pierre had of late rarely seen his wife alone. Both in Petersburg
and in Moscow their house was always full of visitors. The night after
the duel he did not go to his bedroom but, as he often did, remained
in his father's room, that huge room in which Count Bezukhov had died.

He lay down on the sofa meaning to fall asleep and forget all that
had happened to him, but could not do so. Such a storm of feelings,
thoughts, and memories suddenly arose within him that he could not
fall asleep, nor even remain in one place, but had to jump up and pace
the room with rapid steps. Now he seemed to see her in the early
days of their marriage, with bare shoulders and a languid,
passionate look on her face, and then immediately he saw beside her
Dolokhov's handsome, insolent, hard, and mocking face as he had seen
it at the banquet, and then that same face pale, quivering, and
suffering, as it had been when he reeled and sank on the snow.

"What has happened?" he asked himself. "I have killed her lover,
yes, killed my wife's lover. Yes, that was it! And why? How did I come
to do it?"--"Because you married her," answered an inner voice.

"But in what was I to blame?" he asked. "In marrying her without
loving her; in deceiving yourself and her." And he vividly recalled
that moment after supper at Prince Vasili's, when he spoke those words
he had found so difficult to utter: "I love you." "It all comes from
that! Even then I felt it," he thought. "I felt then that it was not
so, that I had no right to do it. And so it turns out."

He remembered his honeymoon and blushed at the recollection.
Particularly vivid, humiliating, and shameful was the recollection
of how one day soon after his marriage he came out of the bedroom into
his study a little before noon in his silk dressing gown and found his
head steward there, who, bowing respectfully, looked into his face and
at his dressing gown and smiled slightly, as if expressing
respectful understanding of his employer's happiness.

"But how often I have felt proud of her, proud of her majestic
beauty and social tact," thought he; "been proud of my house, in
which she received all Petersburg, proud of her unapproachability and
beauty. So this is what I was proud of! I then thought that I did
not understand her. How often when considering her character I have
told myself that I was to blame for not understanding her, for not
understanding that constant composure and complacency and lack of
all interests or desires, and the whole secret lies in the terrible
truth that she is a depraved woman. Now I have spoken that terrible
word to myself all has become clear.

"Anatole used to come to borrow money from her and used to kiss
her naked shoulders. She did not give him the money, but let herself
be kissed. Her father in jest tried to rouse her jealousy, and she
replied with a calm smile that she was not so stupid as to be jealous:
'Let him do what he pleases,' she used to say of me. One day I asked
her if she felt any symptoms of pregnancy. She laughed
contemptuously and said she was not a fool to want to have children,
and that she was not going to have any children by me."

Then he recalled the coarseness and bluntness of her thoughts and
the vulgarity of the expressions that were natural to her, though
she had been brought up in the most aristocratic circles.

"I'm not such a fool.... Just you try it on.... Allez-vous
promener,"* she used to say. Often seeing the success she had with
young and old men and women Pierre could not understand why he did not
love her.


*"You clear out of this."


"Yes, I never loved her," said he to himself; "I knew she was a
depraved woman," he repeated, "but dared not admit it to myself. And
now there's Dolokhov sitting in the snow with a forced smile and
perhaps dying, while meeting my remorse with some forced bravado!"

Pierre was one of those people who, in spite of an appearance of
what is called weak character, do not seek a confidant in their
troubles. He digested his sufferings alone.

"It is all, all her fault," he said to himself; "but what of that?
Why did I bind myself to her? Why did I say 'Je vous aime'* to her,
which was a lie, and worse than a lie? I am guilty and must
endure... what? A slur on my name? A misfortune for life? Oh, that's
nonsense," he thought. "The slur on my name and honor--that's all
apart from myself.


*I love you.


"Louis XVI was executed because they said he was dishonorable and
a criminal," came into Pierre's head, "and from their point of view
they were right, as were those too who canonized him and died a
martyr's death for his sake. Then Robespierre was beheaded for being a
despot. Who is right and who is wrong? No one! But if you are alive-
live: tomorrow you'll die as I might have died an hour ago. And is
it worth tormenting oneself, when one has only a moment of life in
comparison with eternity?"

But at the moment when he imagined himself calmed by such
reflections, she suddenly came into his mind as she was at the moments
when he had most strongly expressed his insincere love for her, and he
felt the blood rush to his heart and had again to get up and move
about and break and tear whatever came to his hand. "Why did I tell
her that 'Je vous aime'?" he kept repeating to himself. And when he
had said it for the tenth time, Molibre's words: "Mais que diable
alloit-il faire dans cette galere?" occurred to him, and he began to
laugh at himself.

In the night he called his valet and told him to pack up to go to
Petersburg. He could not imagine how he could speak to her now. He
resolved to go away next day and leave a letter informing her of his
intention to part from her forever.

Next morning when the valet came into the room with his coffee,
Pierre was lying asleep on the ottoman with an open book in his hand.

He woke up and looked round for a while with a startled
expression, unable to realize where he was.

"The countess told me to inquire whether your excellency was at
home," said the valet.

But before Pierre could decide what answer he would send, the
countess herself in a white satin dressing gown embroidered with
silver and with simply dressed hair (two immense plaits twice round
her lovely head like a coronet) entered the room, calm and majestic,
except that there was a wrathful wrinkle on her rather prominent
marble brow. With her imperturbable calm she did not begin to speak in
front of the valet. She knew of the duel and had come to speak about
it. She waited till the valet had set down the coffee things and
left the room. Pierre looked at her timidly over his spectacles, and
like a hare surrounded by hounds who lays back her ears and
continues to crouch motionless before her enemies, he tried to
continue reading. But feeling this to be senseless and impossible,
he again glanced timidly at her. She did not sit down but looked at
him with a contemptuous smile, waiting for the valet to go.

"Well, what's this now? What have you been up to now, I should
like to know?" she asked sternly.

"I? What have I...?" stammered Pierre.

"So it seems you're a hero, eh? Come now, what was this duel
about? What is it meant to prove? What? I ask you."

Pierre turned over heavily on the ottoman and opened his mouth,
but could not reply.

"If you won't answer, I'll tell you..." Helene went on. "You believe
everything you're told. You were told..." Helene laughed, "that
Dolokhov was my lover," she said in French with her coarse plainness
of speech, uttering the word amant as casually as any other word, "and
you believed it! Well, what have you proved? What does this duel
prove? That you're a fool, que vous etes un sot, but everybody knew
that. What will be the result? That I shall be the laughingstock of
all Moscow, that everyone will say that you, drunk and not knowing
what you were about, challenged a man you are jealous of without
cause." Helene raised her voice and became more and more excited, "A
man who's a better man than you in every way..."

"Hm... Hm...!" growled Pierre, frowning without looking at her,
and not moving a muscle.

"And how could you believe he was my lover? Why? Because I like
his company? If you were cleverer and more agreeable, I should
prefer yours."

"Don't speak to me... I beg you," muttered Pierre hoarsely.

"Why shouldn't I speak? I can speak as I like, and I tell you
plainly that there are not many wives with husbands such as you who
would not have taken lovers (des amants), but I have not done so,"
said she.

Pierre wished to say something, looked at her with eyes whose
strange expression she did not understand, and lay down again. He
was suffering physically at that moment, there was a weight on his
chest and he could not breathe. He knew that he must do something to
put an end to this suffering, but what he wanted to do was too
terrible.

"We had better separate," he muttered in a broken voice.

"Separate? Very well, but only if you give me a fortune," said
Helene. "Separate! That's a thing to frighten me with!"

Pierre leaped up from the sofa and rushed staggering toward her.

"I'll kill you!" he shouted, and seizing the marble top of a table
with a strength he had never before felt, he made a step toward her
brandishing the slab.

Helene's face became terrible, she shrieked and sprang aside. His
father's nature showed itself in Pierre. He felt the fascination and
delight of frenzy. He flung down the slab, broke it, and swooping down
on her with outstretched hands shouted, "Get out!" in such a
terrible voice that the whole house heard it with horror. God knows
what he would have done at that moment had Helene not fled from the
room.


A week later Pierre gave his wife full power to control all his
estates in Great Russia, which formed the larger part of his property,
and left for Petersburg alone.





CHAPTER VII


Two months had elapsed since the news of the battle of Austerlitz
and the loss of Prince Andrew had reached Bald Hills, and in spite
of the letters sent through the embassy and all the searches made, his
body had not been found nor was he on the list of prisoners. What
was worst of all for his relations was the fact that there was still a
possibility of his having been picked up on the battlefield by the
people of the place and that he might now be lying, recovering or
dying, alone among strangers and unable to send news of himself. The
gazettes from which the old prince first heard of the defeat at
Austerlitz stated, as usual very briefly and vaguely, that after
brilliant engagements the Russians had had to retreat and had made
their withdrawal in perfect order. The old prince understood from this
official report that our army had been defeated. A week after the
gazette report of the battle of Austerlitz came a letter from
Kutuzov informing the prince of the fate that had befallen his son.

"Your son," wrote Kutuzov, "fell before my eyes, a standard in his
hand and at the head of a regiment--he fell as a hero, worthy of his
father and his fatherland. To the great regret of myself and of the
whole army it is still uncertain whether he is alive or not. I comfort
myself and you with the hope that your son is alive, for otherwise
he would have been mentioned among the officers found on the field
of battle, a list of whom has been sent me under flag of truce."

After receiving this news late in the evening, when he was alone
in his study, the old prince went for his walk as usual next
morning, but he was silent with his steward, the gardener, and the
architect, and though he looked very grim he said nothing to anyone.

When Princess Mary went to him at the usual hour he was working at
his lathe and, as usual, did not look round at her.

"Ah, Princess Mary!" he said suddenly in an unnatural voice,
throwing down his chisel. (The wheel continued to revolve by its own
impetus, and Princess Mary long remembered the dying creak of that
wheel, which merged in her memory with what followed.)

She approached him, saw his face, and something gave way within her.
Her eyes grew dim. By the expression of her father's face, not sad,
not crushed, but angry and working unnaturally, she saw that hanging
over her and about to crush her was some terrible misfortune, the
worst in life, one she had not yet experienced, irreparable and
incomprehensible--the death of one she loved.

"Father! Andrew!"--said the ungraceful, awkward princess with such
an indescribable charm of sorrow and self-forgetfulness that her
father could not bear her look but turned away with a sob.

"Bad news! He's not among the prisoners nor among the killed!
Kutuzov writes..." and he screamed as piercingly as if he wished to
drive the princess away by that scream... "Killed!"

The princess did not fall down or faint. She was already pale, but
on hearing these words her face changed and something brightened in
her beautiful, radiant eyes. It was as if joy--a supreme joy apart
from the joys and sorrows of this world--overflowed the great grief
within her. She forgot all fear of her father, went up to him, took
his hand, and drawing him down put her arm round his thin, scraggy
neck.

"Father," she said, "do not turn away from me, let us weep together."

"Scoundrels! Blackguards!" shrieked the old man, turning his face
away from her. "Destroying the army, destroying the men! And why?
Go, go and tell Lise."

The princess sank helplessly into an armchair beside her father
and wept. She saw her brother now as he had been at the moment when he
took leave of her and of Lise, his look tender yet proud. She saw
him tender and amused as he was when he put on the little icon. "Did
he believe? Had he repented of his unbelief? Was he now there? There
in the realms of eternal peace and blessedness?" she thought.

"Father, tell me how it happened," she asked through her tears.

"Go! Go! Killed in battle, where the best of Russian men and
Russia's glory were led to destruction. Go, Princess Mary. Go and tell
Lise. I will follow."

When Princess Mary returned from her father, the little princess sat
working and looked up with that curious expression of inner, happy
calm peculiar to pregnant women. It was evident that her eyes did
not see Princess Mary but were looking within... into herself... at
something joyful and mysterious taking place within her.

"Mary," she said, moving away from the embroidery frame and lying
back, "give me your hand." She took her sister-in-law's hand and
held it below her waist.

Her eyes were smiling expectantly, her downy lip rose and remained
lifted in childlike happiness.

Princess Mary knelt down before her and hid her face in the folds of
her sister-in-law's dress.

"There, there! Do you feel it? I feel so strange. And do you know,
Mary, I am going to love him very much," said Lise, looking with
bright and happy eyes at her sister-in-law.

Princess Mary could not lift her head, she was weeping.

"What is the matter, Mary?"

"Nothing... only I feel sad... sad about Andrew," she said, wiping
away her tears on her sister-in-law's knee.

Several times in the course of the morning Princess Mary began
trying to prepare her sister-in-law, and every time began to cry.
Unobservant as was the little princess, these tears, the cause of
which she did not understand, agitated her. She said nothing but
looked about uneasily as if in search of something. Before dinner
the old prince, of whom she was always afraid, came into her room with
a peculiarly restless and malign expression and went out again without
saying a word. She looked at Princess Mary, then sat thinking for a
while with that expression of attention to something within her that
is only seen in pregnant women, and suddenly began to cry.

"Has anything come from Andrew?" she asked.

"No, you know it's too soon for news. But my father is anxious and I
feel afraid."

"So there's nothing?"

"Nothing," answered Princess Mary, looking firmly with her radiant
eyes at her sister-in-law.

She had determined not to tell her and persuaded her father to
hide the terrible news from her till after her confinement, which
was expected within a few days. Princess Mary and the old prince
each bore and hid their grief in their own way. The old prince would
not cherish any hope: he made up his mind that Prince Andrew had
been killed, and though he sent an official to Austria to seek for
traces of his son, he ordered a monument from Moscow which he intended
to erect in his own garden to his memory, and he told everybody that
his son had been killed. He tried not to change his former way of
life, but his strength failed him. He walked less, ate less, slept
less, and became weaker every day. Princess Mary hoped. She prayed for
her brother as living and was always awaiting news of his return.





CHAPTER VIII


"Dearest," said the little princess after breakfast on the morning
of the nineteenth March, and her downy little lip rose from old habit,
but as sorrow was manifest in every smile, the sound of every word,
and even every footstep in that house since the terrible news had
come, so now the smile of the little princess--influenced by the
general mood though without knowing its cause--was such as to remind
one still more of the general sorrow.

"Dearest, I'm afraid this morning's fruschtique*--as Foka the cook
calls it--has disagreed with me."


*Fruhstuck: breakfast.


"What is the matter with you, my darling? You look pale. Oh, you are
very pale!" said Princess Mary in alarm, running with her soft,
ponderous steps up to her sister-in-law.

"Your excellency, should not Mary Bogdanovna be sent for?" said
one of the maids who was present. (Mary Bogdanovna was a midwife
from the neighboring town, who had been at Bald Hills for the last
fortnight.)

"Oh yes," assented Princess Mary, "perhaps that's it. I'll go.
Courage, my angel." She kissed Lise and was about to leave the room.

"Oh, no, no!" And besides the pallor and the physical suffering on
the little princess' face, an expression of childish fear of
inevitable pain showed itself.

"No, it's only indigestion?... Say it's only indigestion, say so,
Mary! Say..." And the little princess began to cry capriciously like a
suffering child and to wring her little hands even with some
affectation. Princess Mary ran out of the room to fetch Mary
Bogdanovna.

"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Oh!" she heard as she left the room.

The midwife was already on her way to meet her, rubbing her small,
plump white hands with an air of calm importance.

"Mary Bogdanovna, I think it's beginning!" said Princess Mary
looking at the midwife with wide-open eyes of alarm.

"Well, the Lord be thanked, Princess," said Mary Bogdanovna, not
hastening her steps. "You young ladies should not know anything
about it."

"But how is it the doctor from Moscow is not here yet?" said the
princess. (In accordance with Lise's and Prince Andrew's wishes they
had sent in good time to Moscow for a doctor and were expecting him at
any moment.)

"No matter, Princess, don't be alarmed," said Mary Bogdanovna.
"We'll manage very well without a doctor."

Five minutes later Princess Mary from her room heard something heavy
being carried by. She looked out. The men servants were carrying the
large leather sofa from Prince Andrew's study into the bedroom. On
their faces was a quiet and solemn look.

Princess Mary sat alone in her room listening to the sounds in the
house, now and then opening her door when someone passed and
watching what was going on in the passage. Some women passing with
quiet steps in and out of the bedroom glanced at the princess and
turned away. She did not venture to ask any questions, and shut the
door again, now sitting down in her easy chair, now taking her
prayer book, now kneeling before the icon stand. To her surprise and
distress she found that her prayers did not calm her excitement.
Suddenly her door opened softly and her old nurse, Praskovya Savishna,
who hardly ever came to that room as the old prince had forbidden
it, appeared on the threshold with a shawl round her head.

"I've come to sit with you a bit, Masha," said the nurse, "and
here I've brought the prince's wedding candles to light before his
saint, my angel," she said with a sigh.

"Oh, nurse, I'm so glad!"

"God is merciful, birdie."

The nurse lit the gilt candles before the icons and sat down by
the door with her knitting. Princess Mary took a book and began
reading. Only when footsteps or voices were heard did they look at one
another, the princess anxious and inquiring, the nurse encouraging.
Everyone in the house was dominated by the same feeling that
Princess Mary experienced as she sat in her room. But owing to the
superstition that the fewer the people who know of it the less a woman
in travail suffers, everyone tried to pretend not to know; no one
spoke of it, but apart from the ordinary staid and respectful good
manners habitual in the prince's household, a common anxiety, a
softening of the heart, and a consciousness that something great and
mysterious was being accomplished at that moment made itself felt.

There was no laughter in the maids' large hall. In the men servants'
hall all sat waiting, silently and alert. In the outlying serfs'
quarters torches and candles were burning and no one slept. The old
prince, stepping on his heels, paced up and down his study and sent
Tikhon to ask Mary Bogdanovna what news.--"Say only that 'the prince
told me to ask,' and come and tell me her answer."

"Inform the prince that labor has begun," said Mary Bogdanovna,
giving the messenger a significant look.

Tikhon went and told the prince.

"Very good!" said the prince closing the door behind him, and Tikhon
did not hear the slightest sound from the study after that.

After a while he re-entered it as if to snuff the candles, and,
seeing the prince was lying on the sofa, looked at him, noticed his
perturbed face, shook his head, and going up to him silently kissed
him on the shoulder and left the room without snuffing the candles
or saying why he had entered. The most solemn mystery in the world
continued its course. Evening passed, night came, and the feeling of
suspense and softening of heart in the presence of the unfathomable
did not lessen but increased. No one slept.

It was one of those March nights when winter seems to wish to resume
its sway and scatters its last snows and storms with desperate fury. A
relay of horses had been sent up the highroad to meet the German
doctor from Moscow who was expected every moment, and men on horseback
with lanterns were sent to the crossroads to guide him over the
country road with its hollows and snow-covered pools of water.

Princess Mary had long since put aside her book: she sat silent, her
luminous eyes fixed on her nurse's wrinkled face (every line of
which she knew so well), on the lock of gray hair that escaped from
under the kerchief, and the loose skin that hung under her chin.

Nurse Savishna, knitting in hand, was telling in low tones, scarcely
hearing or understanding her own words, what she had told hundreds
of times before: how the late princess had given birth to Princess
Mary in Kishenev with only a Moldavian peasant woman to help instead
of a midwife.

"God is merciful, doctors are never needed," she said.

Suddenly a gust of wind beat violently against the casement of the
window, from which the double frame had been removed (by order of
the prince, one window frame was removed in each room as soon as the
larks returned), and, forcing open a loosely closed latch, set the
damask curtain flapping and blew out the candle with its chill,
snowy draft. Princess Mary shuddered; her nurse, putting down the
stocking she was knitting, went to the window and leaning out tried to
catch the open casement. The cold wind flapped the ends of her
kerchief and her loose locks of gray hair.

"Princess, my dear, there's someone driving up the avenue!" she
said, holding the casement and not closing it. "With lanterns. Most
likely the doctor."

"Oh, my God! thank God!" said Princess Mary. "I must go and meet
him, he does not know Russian."

Princess Mary threw a shawl over her head and ran to meet the
newcomer. As she was crossing the anteroom she saw through the
window a carriage with lanterns, standing at the entrance. She went
out on the stairs. On a banister post stood a tallow candle which
guttered in the draft. On the landing below, Philip, the footman,
stood looking scared and holding another candle. Still lower, beyond
the turn of the staircase, one could hear the footstep of someone in
thick felt boots, and a voice that seemed familiar to Princess Mary
was saying something.

"Thank God!" said the voice. "And Father?"

"Gone to bed," replied the voice of Demyan the house steward, who
was downstairs.

Then the voice said something more, Demyan replied, and the steps in
the felt boots approached the unseen bend of the staircase more
rapidly.

"It's Andrew!" thought Princess Mary. "No it can't be, that would be
too extraordinary," and at the very moment she thought this, the
face and figure of Prince Andrew, in a fur cloak the deep collar of
which covered with snow, appeared on the landing where the footman
stood with the candle. Yes, it was he, pale, thin, with a changed
and strangely softened but agitated expression on his face. He came up
the stairs and embraced his sister.

"You did not get my letter?" he asked, and not waiting for a
reply--which he would not have received, for the princess was unable
to speak--he turned back, rapidly mounted the stairs again with the
doctor who had entered the hall after him (they had met at the last
post station), and again embraced his sister.

"What a strange fate, Masha darling!" And having taken off his cloak
and felt boots, he went to the little princess' apartment.





CHAPTER IX


The little princess lay supported by pillows, with a white cap on
her head (the pains had just left her). Strands of her black hair
lay round her inflamed and perspiring cheeks, her charming rosy
mouth with its downy lip was open and she was smiling joyfully. Prince
Andrew entered and paused facing her at the foot of the sofa on
which she was lying. Her glittering eyes, filled with childlike fear
and excitement, rested on him without changing their expression. "I
love you all and have done no harm to anyone; why must I suffer so?
Help me!" her look seemed to say. She saw her husband, but did not
realize the significance of his appearance before her now. Prince
Andrew went round the sofa and kissed her forehead.

"My darling!" he said--a word he had never used to her before.
"God is merciful...."

She looked at him inquiringly and with childlike reproach.

"I expected help from you and I get none, none from you either!"
said her eyes. She was not surprised at his having come; she did not
realize that he had come. His coming had nothing to do with her
sufferings or with their relief. The pangs began again and Mary
Bogdanovna advised Prince Andrew to leave the room.

The doctor entered. Prince Andrew went out and, meeting Princess
Mary, again joined her. They began talking in whispers, but their talk
broke off at every moment. They waited and listened.

"Go, dear," said Princess Mary.

Prince Andrew went again to his wife and sat waiting in the room
next to hers. A woman came from the bedroom with a frightened face and
became confused when she saw Prince Andrew. He covered his face with
his hands and remained so for some minutes. Piteous, helpless,
animal moans came through the door. Prince Andrew got up, went to
the door, and tried to open it. Someone was holding it shut.

"You can't come in! You can't!" said a terrified voice from within.

He began pacing the room. The screaming ceased, and a few more
seconds went by. Then suddenly a terrible shriek--it could not be
hers, she could not scream like that--came from the bedroom. Prince
Andrew ran to the door; the scream ceased and he heard the wail of
an infant.

"What have they taken a baby in there for?" thought Prince Andrew in
the first second. "A baby? What baby...? Why is there a baby there? Or
is the baby born?"

Then suddenly he realized the joyful significance of that wail;
tears choked him, and leaning his elbows on the window sill be began
to cry, sobbing like a child. The door opened. The doctor with his
shirt sleeves tucked up, without a coat, pale and with a trembling
jaw, came out of the room. Prince Andrew turned to him, but the doctor
gave him a bewildered look and passed by without a word. A woman
rushed out and seeing Prince Andrew stopped, hesitating on the
threshold. He went into his wife's room. She was lying dead, in the
same position he had seen her in five minutes before and, despite
the fixed eyes and the pallor of the cheeks, the same expression was
on her charming childlike face with its upper lip covered with tiny
black hair.

"I love you all, and have done no harm to anyone; and what have
you done to me?"--said her charming, pathetic, dead face.

In a corner of the room something red and tiny gave a grunt and
squealed in Mary Bogdanovna's trembling white hands.


Two hours later Prince Andrew, stepping softly, went into his
father's room. The old man already knew everything. He was standing
close to the door and as soon as it opened his rough old arms closed
like a vise round his son's neck, and without a word he began to sob
like a child.


Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrew
went up the steps to where the coffin stood, to give her the
farewell kiss. And there in the coffin was the same face, though
with closed eyes. "Ah, what have you done to me?" it still seemed to
say, and Prince Andrew felt that something gave way in his soul and
that he was guilty of a sin he could neither remedy nor forget. He
could not weep. The old man too came up and kissed the waxen little
hands that lay quietly crossed one on the other on her breast, and
to him, too, her face seemed to say: "Ah, what have you done to me,
and why?" And at the sight the old man turned angrily away.


Another five days passed, and then the young Prince Nicholas
Andreevich was baptized. The wet nurse supported the coverlet with her
while the priest with a goose feather anointed the boy's little red
and wrinkled soles and palms.

His grandfather, who was his godfather, trembling and afraid of
dropping him, carried the infant round the battered tin font and
handed him over to the godmother, Princess Mary. Prince Andrew sat
in another room, faint with fear lest the baby should be drowned in
the font, and awaited the termination of the ceremony. He looked up
joyfully at the baby when the nurse brought it to him and nodded
approval when she told him that the wax with the baby's hair had not
sunk in the font but had floated.





CHAPTER X


Rostov's share in Dolokhov's duel with Bezukhov was hushed up by the
efforts of the old count, and instead of being degraded to the ranks
as he expected he was appointed an adjutant to the governor general of
Moscow. As a result he could not go to the country with the rest of
the family, but was kept all summer in Moscow by his new duties.
Dolokhov recovered, and Rostov became very friendly with him during
his convalescence. Dolokhov lay ill at his mother's who loved him
passionately and tenderly, and old Mary Ivanovna, who had grown fond
of Rostov for his friendship to her Fedya, often talked to him about
her son.

"Yes, Count," she would say, "he is too noble and pure-souled for
our present, depraved world. No one now loves virtue; it seems like
a reproach to everyone. Now tell me, Count, was it right, was it
honorable, of Bezukhov? And Fedya, with his noble spirit, loved him
and even now never says a word against him. Those pranks in Petersburg
when they played some tricks on a policeman, didn't they do it
together? And there! Bezukhov got off scotfree, while Fedya had to
bear the whole burden on his shoulders. Fancy what he had to go
through! It's true he has been reinstated, but how could they fail
to do that? I think there were not many such gallant sons of the
fatherland out there as he. And now--this duel! Have these people no
feeling, or honor? Knowing him to be an only son, to challenge him and
shoot so straight! It's well God had mercy on us. And what was it for?
Who doesn't have intrigues nowadays? Why, if he was so jealous, as I
see things he should have shown it sooner, but he lets it go on for
months. And then to call him out, reckoning on Fedya not fighting
because he owed him money! What baseness! What meanness! I know you
understand Fedya, my dear count; that, believe me, is why I am so fond
of you. Few people do understand him. He is such a lofty, heavenly
soul!"

Dolokhov himself during his convalescence spoke to Rostov in a way
no one would have expected of him.

"I know people consider me a bad man!" he said. "Let them! I don't
care a straw about anyone but those I love; but those I love, I love
so that I would give my life for them, and the others I'd throttle
if they stood in my way. I have an adored, a priceless mother, and two
or three friends--you among them--and as for the rest I only care
about them in so far as they are harmful or useful. And most of them
are harmful, especially the women. Yes, dear boy," he continued, "I
have met loving, noble, high-minded men, but I have not yet met any
women--countesses or cooks--who were not venal. I have not yet met
that divine purity and devotion I look for in women. If I found such a
one I'd give my life for her! But those!..." and he made a gesture of
contempt. "And believe me, if I still value my life it is only because
I still hope to meet such a divine creature, who will regenerate,
purify, and elevate me. But you don't understand it."

"Oh, yes, I quite understand," answered Rostov, who was under his
new friend's influence.

In the autumn the Rostovs returned to Moscow. Early in the winter
Denisov also came back and stayed with them. The first half of the
winter of 1806, which Nicholas Rostov spent in Moscow, was one of
the happiest, merriest times for him and the whole family. Nicholas
brought many young men to his parents' house. Vera was a handsome girl
of twenty; Sonya a girl of sixteen with all the charm of an opening
flower; Natasha, half grown up and half child, was now childishly
amusing, now girlishly enchanting.

At that time in the Rostovs' house there prevailed an amorous
atmosphere characteristic of homes where there are very young and very
charming girls. Every young man who came to the house--seeing those
impressionable, smiling young faces (smiling probably at their own
happiness), feeling the eager bustle around him, and hearing the
fitful bursts of song and music and the inconsequent but friendly
prattle of young girls ready for anything and full of hope-
experienced the same feeling; sharing with the young folk of the
Rostovs' household a readiness to fall in love and an expectation of
happiness.

Among the young men introduced by Rostov one of the first was
Dolokhov, whom everyone in the house liked except Natasha. She
almost quarreled with her brother about him. She insisted that he
was a bad man, and that in the duel with Bezukhov, Pierre was right
and Dolokhov wrong, and further that he was disagreeable and
unnatural.

"There's nothing for me to understand," cried out with resolute
self-will, "he is wicked and heartless. There now, I like your Denisov
though he is a rake and all that, still I like him; so you see I do
understand. I don't know how to put it... with this one everything
is calculated, and I don't like that. But Denisov..."

"Oh, Denisov is quite different," replied Nicholas, implying that
even Denisov was nothing compared to Dolokhov--"you must understand
what a soul there is in Dolokhov, you should see him with his
mother. What a heart!"

"Well, I don't know about that, but I am uncomfortable with him. And
do you know he has fallen in love with Sonya?"

"What nonsense..."

"I'm certain of it; you'll see."

Natasha's prediction proved true. Dolokhov, who did not usually care
for the society of ladies, began to come often to the house, and the
question for whose sake he came (though no one spoke of it) was soon
settled. He came because of Sonya. And Sonya, though she would never
have dared to say so, knew it and blushed scarlet every time
Dolokhov appeared.

Dolokhov often dined at the Rostovs', never missed a performance
at which they were present, and went to Iogel's balls for young people
which the Rostovs always attended. He was pointedly attentive to Sonya
and looked at her in such a way that not only could she not bear his
glances without coloring, but even the old countess and Natasha
blushed when they saw his looks.

It was evident that this strange, strong man was under the
irresistible influence of the dark, graceful girl who loved another.

Rostov noticed something new in Dolokhov's relations with Sonya, but
he did not explain to himself what these new relations were.
"They're always in love with someone," he thought of Sonya and
Natasha. But he was not as much at ease with Sonya and Dolokhov as
before and was less frequently at home.

In the autumn of 1806 everybody had again begun talking of the war
with Napoleon with even greater warmth than the year before. Orders
were given to raise recruits, ten men in every thousand for the
regular army, and besides this, nine men in every thousand for the
militia. Everywhere Bonaparte was anathematized and in Moscow
nothing but the coming war was talked of. For the Rostov family the
whole interest of these preparations for war lay in the fact that
Nicholas would not hear of remaining in Moscow, and only awaited the
termination of Denisov's furlough after Christmas to return with him
to their regiment. His approaching departure did not prevent his
amusing himself, but rather gave zest to his pleasures. He spent the
greater part of his time away from home, at dinners, parties, and
balls.





CHAPTER XI


On the third day after Christmas Nicholas dined at home, a thing
he had rarely done of late. It was a grand farewell dinner, as he
and Denisov were leaving to join their regiment after Epiphany.
About twenty people were present, including Dolokhov and Denisov.

Never had love been so much in the air, and never had the amorous
atmosphere made itself so strongly felt in the Rostovs' house as at
this holiday time. "Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved!
That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the
one thing we are interested in here," said the spirit of the place.

Nicholas, having as usual exhausted two pairs of horses, without
visiting all the places he meant to go to and where he had been
invited, returned home just before dinner. As soon as he entered he
noticed and felt the tension of the amorous air in the house, and also
noticed a curious embarrassment among some of those present. Sonya,
Dolokhov, and the old countess were especially disturbed, and to a
lesser degree Natasha. Nicholas understood that something must have
happened between Sonya and Dolokhov before dinner, and with the kindly
sensitiveness natural to him was very gentle and wary with them both
at dinner. On that same evening there was to be one of the balls
that Iogel (the dancing master) gave for his pupils durings the
holidays.

"Nicholas, will you come to Iogel's? Please do!" said Natasha. "He
asked you, and Vasili Dmitrich* is also going."


*Denisov.


"Where would I not go at the countess' command!" said Denisov, who
at the Rostovs' had jocularly assumed the role of Natasha's knight.
"I'm even weady to dance the pas de chale."

"If I have time," answered Nicholas. "But I promised the
Arkharovs; they have a party."

"And you?" he asked Dolokhov, but as soon as he had asked the
question he noticed that it should not have been put.

"Perhaps," coldly and angrily replied Dolokhov, glancing at Sonya,
and, scowling, he gave Nicholas just such a look as he had given
Pierre at the Club dinner.

"There is something up," thought Nicholas, and he was further
confirmed in this conclusion by the fact that Dolokhov left
immediately after dinner. He called Natasha and asked her what was the
matter.

"And I was looking for you," said Natasha running out to him. "I
told you, but you would not believe it," she said triumphantly. "He
has proposed to Sonya!"

Little as Nicholas had occupied himself with Sonya of late,
something seemed to give way within him at this news. Dolokhov was a
suitable and in some respects a brilliant match for the dowerless,
orphan girl. From the point of view of the old countess and of society
it was out of the question for her to refuse him. And therefore
Nicholas' first feeling on hearing the news was one of anger with
Sonya.... He tried to say, "That's capital; of course she'll forget
her childish promises and accept the offer," but before he had time to
say it Natasha began again.

"And fancy! she refused him quite definitely!" adding, after a
pause, "she told him she loved another."

"Yes, my Sonya could not have done otherwise!" thought Nicholas.

"Much as Mamma pressed her, she refused, and I know she won't change
once she has said..."

"And Mamma pressed her!" said Nicholas reproachfully.

"Yes," said Natasha. "Do you know, Nicholas--don't be angry--but I
know you will not marry her. I know, heaven knows how, but I know
for certain that you won't marry her."

"Now don't know that at all!" said Nicholas. "But I must talk to
her. What a darling Sonya is!" he added with a smile.

"Ah, she is indeed a darling! I'll send her to you."

And Natasha kissed her brother and ran away.

A minute later Sonya came in with a frightened, guilty, and scared
look. Nicholas went up to her and kissed her hand. This was the
first time since his return that they had talked alone and about their
love.

"Sophie," he began, timidly at first and then more and more
boldly, "if you wish to refuse one who is not only a brilliant and
advantageous match but a splendid, noble fellow... he is my friend..."

Sonya interrupted him.

"I have already refused," she said hurriedly.

"If you are refusing for my sake, I am afraid that I..."

Sonya again interrupted. She gave him an imploring, frightened look.

"Nicholas, don't tell me that!" she said.

"No, but I must. It may be arrogant of me, but still it is best to
say it. If you refuse him on my account, I must tell you the whole
truth. I love you, and I think I love you more than anyone else...."

"That is enough for me," said Sonya, blushing.

"No, but I have been in love a thousand times and shall fall in love
again, though for no one have I such a feeling of friendship,
confidence, and love as I have for you. Then I am young. Mamma does
not wish it. In a word, I make no promise. And I beg you to consider
Dolokhov's offer," he said, articulating his friend's name with
difficulty.

"Don't say that to me! I want nothing. I love you as a brother and
always shall, and I want nothing more."

"You are an angel: I am not worthy of you, but I am afraid of
misleading you."

And Nicholas again kissed her hand.





CHAPTER XII


Iogel's were the most enjoyable balls in Moscow. So said the mothers
as they watched their young people executing their newly learned
steps, and so said the youths and maidens themselves as they danced
till they were ready to drop, and so said the grown-up young men and
women who came to these balls with an air of condescension and found
them most enjoyable. That year two marriages had come of these
balls. The two pretty young Princesses Gorchakov met suitors there and
were married and so further increased the fame of these dances. What
distinguished them from others was the absence of host or hostess
and the presence of the good-natured Iogel, flying about like a
feather and bowing according to the rules of his art, as he
collected the tickets from all his visitors. There was the fact that
only those came who wished to dance and amuse themselves as girls of
thirteen and fourteen do who are wearing long dresses for the first
time. With scarcely any exceptions they all were, or seemed to be,
pretty--so rapturous were their smiles and so sparkling their eyes.
Sometimes the best of the pupils, of whom Natasha, who was
exceptionally graceful, was first, even danced the pas de chale, but
at this last ball only the ecossaise, the anglaise, and the mazurka,
which was just coming into fashion, were danced. Iogel had taken a
ballroom in Bezukhov's house, and the ball, as everyone said, was a
great success. There were many pretty girls and the Rostov girls
were among the prettiest. They were both particularly happy and gay.
That evening, proud of Dolokhov's proposal, her refusal, and her
explanation with Nicholas, Sonya twirled about before she left home so
that the maid could hardly get her hair plaited, and she was
transparently radiant with impulsive joy.

Natasha no less proud of her first long dress and of being at a real
ball was even happier. They were both dressed in white muslin with
pink ribbons.

Natasha fell in love the very moment she entered the ballroom. She
was not in love with anyone in particular, but with everyone. Whatever
person she happened to look at she was in love with for that moment.

"Oh, how delightful it is!" she kept saying, running up to Sonya.

Nicholas and Denisov were walking up and down, looking with kindly
patronage at the dancers.

"How sweet she is--she will be a weal beauty!" said Denisov.

"Who?"

"Countess Natasha," answered Denisov.

"And how she dances! What gwace!" he said again after a pause.

"Who are you talking about?"

"About your sister," ejaculated Denisov testily.

Rostov smiled.

"My dear count, you were one of my best pupils--you must dance,"
said little Iogel coming up to Nicholas. "Look how many charming young
ladies-" He turned with the same request to Denisov who was also a
former pupil of his.

"No, my dear fellow, I'll be a wallflower," said Denisov. "Don't you
wecollect what bad use I made of your lessons?"

"Oh no!" said Iogel, hastening to reassure him. "You were only
inattentive, but you had talent--oh yes, you had talent!"

 The band struck up the newly introduced mazurka. Nicholas could not
refuse Iogel and asked Sonya to dance. Denisov sat down by the old
ladies and, leaning on his saber and beating time with his foot,
told them something funny and kept them amused, while he watched the
young people dancing, Iogel with Natasha, his pride and his best
pupil, were the first couple. Noiselessly, skillfully stepping with
his little feet in low shoes, Iogel flew first across the hall with
Natasha, who, though shy, went on carefully executing her steps.
Denisov did not take his eyes off her and beat time with his saber
in a way that clearly indicated that if he was not dancing it was
because he would not and not because he could not. In the middle of
a figure he beckoned to Rostov who was passing:

"This is not at all the thing," he said. "What sort of Polish
mazuwka is this? But she does dance splendidly."

Knowing that Denisov had a reputation even in Poland for the
masterly way in which he danced the mazurka, Nicholas ran up to
Natasha:

"Go and choose Denisov. He is a real dancer, a wonder!" he said.

When it came to Natasha's turn to choose a partner, she rose and,
tripping rapidly across in her little shoes trimmed with bows, ran
timidly to the corner where Denisov sat. She saw that everybody was
looking at her and waiting. Nicholas saw that Denisov was refusing
though he smiled delightedly. He ran up to them.

"Please, Vasili Dmitrich," Natasha was saying, "do come!"

"Oh no, let me off, Countess," Denisov replied.

"Now then, Vaska," said Nicholas.

"They coax me as if I were Vaska the cat!" said Denisov jokingly.

"I'll sing for you a whole evening," said Natasha.

"Oh, the faiwy! She can do anything with me!" said Denisov, and he
unhooked his saber. He came out from behind the chairs, clasped his
partner's hand firmly, threw back his head, and advanced his foot,
waiting for the beat. Only on horse back and in the mazurka was
Denisov's short stature not noticeable and he looked the fine fellow
he felt himself to be. At the right beat of the music he looked
sideways at his partner with a merry and triumphant air, suddenly
stamped with one foot, bounded from the floor like a ball, and flew
round the room taking his partner with him. He glided silently on
one foot half across the room, and seeming not to notice the chairs
was dashing straight at them, when suddenly, clinking his spurs and
spreading out his legs, he stopped short on his heels, stood so a
second, stamped on the spot clanking his spurs, whirled rapidly round,
and, striking his left heel against his right, flew round again in a
circle. Natasha guessed what he meant to do, and abandoning herself to
him followed his lead hardly knowing how. First he spun her round,
holding her now with his left, now with his right hand, then falling
on one knee he twirled her round him, and again jumping up, dashed
so impetuously forward that it seemed as if he would rush through
the whole suite of rooms without drawing breath, and then he
suddenly stopped and performed some new and unexpected steps. When
at last, smartly whirling his partner round in front of her chair,
he drew up with a click of his spurs and bowed to her, Natasha did not
even make him a curtsy. She fixed her eyes on him in amazement,
smiling as if she did not recognize him.

"What does this mean?" she brought out.

Although Iogel did not acknowledge this to be the real mazurka,
everyone was delighted with Denisov's skill, he was asked again and
again as a partner, and the old men began smilingly to talk about
Poland and the good old days. Denisov, flushed after the mazurka and
mopping himself with his handkerchief, sat down by Natasha and did not
leave her for the rest of the evening.





CHAPTER XIII


For two days after that Rostov did not see Dolokhov at his own or at
Dolokhov's home: on the third day he received a note from him:


As I do not intend to be at your house again for reasons you know
of, and am going to rejoin my regiment, I am giving a farewell
supper tonight to my friends--come to the English Hotel.


About ten o'clock Rostov went to the English Hotel straight from the
theater, where he had been with his family and Denisov. He was at once
shown to the best room, which Dolokhov had taken for that evening.
Some twenty men were gathered round a table at which Dolokhov sat
between two candles. On the table was a pile of gold and paper
money, and he was keeping the bank. Rostov had not seen him since
his proposal and Sonya's refusal and felt uncomfortable at the thought
of how they would meet.

Dolokhov's clear, cold glance met Rostov as soon as he entered the
door, as though he had long expected him.

"It's a long time since we met," he said. "Thanks for coming. I'll
just finish dealing, and then Ilyushka will come with his chorus."

"I called once or twice at your house," said Rostov, reddening.

Dolokhov made no reply.

"You may punt," he said.

Rostov recalled at that moment a strange conversation he had once
had with Dolokhov. "None but fools trust to luck in play," Dolokhov
had then said.

"Or are you afraid to play with me?" Dolokhov now asked as if
guessing Rostov's thought.

Beneath his smile Rostov saw in him the mood he had shown at the
Club dinner and at other times, when as if tired of everyday life he
had felt a need to escape from it by some strange, and usually
cruel, action.

Rostov felt ill at ease. He tried, but failed, to find some joke
with which to reply to Dolokhov's words. But before he had thought
of anything, Dolokhov, looking straight in his face, said slowly and
deliberately so that everyone could hear:

"Do you remember we had a talk about cards... 'He's a fool who
trusts to luck, one should make certain,' and I want to try."

"To try his luck or the certainty?" Rostov asked himself.

"Well, you'd better not play," Dolokhov added, and springing a new
pack of cards said: "Bank, gentlemen!"

Moving the money forward he prepared to deal. Rostov sat down by his
side and at first did not play. Dolokhov kept glancing at him.

"Why don't you play?" he asked.

And strange to say Nicholas felt that he could not help taking up
a card, putting a small stake on it, and beginning to play.

"I have no money with me," he said.

"I'll trust you."

Rostov staked five rubles on a card and lost, staked again, and
again lost. Dolokhov "killed," that is, beat, ten cards of Rostov's
running.

"Gentlemen," said Dolokhov after he had dealt for some time. "Please
place your money on the cards or I may get muddled in the reckoning."

One of the players said he hoped he might be trusted.

"Yes, you might, but I am afraid of getting the accounts mixed. So I
ask you to put the money on your cards," replied Dolokhov. "Don't
stint yourself, we'll settle afterwards," he added, turning to Rostov.

The game continued; a waiter kept handing round champagne.

All Rostov's cards were beaten and he had eight hundred rubles
scored up against him. He wrote "800 rubles" on a card, but while
the waiter filled his glass he changed his mind and altered it to
his usual stake of twenty rubles.

"Leave it," said Dolokhov, though he did not seem to be even looking
at Rostov, "you'll win it back all the sooner. I lose to the others
but win from you. Or are you afraid of me?" he asked again.

Rostov submitted. He let the eight hundred remain and laid down a
seven of hearts with a torn corner, which he had picked up from the
floor. He well remembered that seven afterwards. He laid down the
seven of hearts, on which with a broken bit of chalk he had written
"800 rubles" in clear upright figures; he emptied the glass of warm
champagne that was handed him, smiled at Dolokhov's words, and with
a sinking heart, waiting for a seven to turn up, gazed at Dolokhov's
hands which held the pack. Much depended on Rostov's winning or losing
on that seven of hearts. On the previous Sunday the old count had
given his son two thousand rubles, and though he always disliked
speaking of money difficulties had told Nicholas that this was all
he could let him have till May, and asked him to be more economical
this time. Nicholas had replied that it would be more than enough
for him and that he gave his word of honor not to take anything more
till the spring. Now only twelve hundred rubles was left of that
money, so that this seven of hearts meant for him not only the loss of
sixteen hundred rubles, but the necessity of going back on his word.
With a sinking heart he watched Dolokhov's hands and thought, "Now
then, make haste and let me have this card and I'll take my cap and
drive home to supper with Denisov, Natasha, and Sonya, and will
certainly never touch a card again." At that moment his home life,
jokes with Petya, talks with Sonya, duets with Natasha, piquet with
his father, and even his comfortable bed in the house on the
Povarskaya rose before him with such vividness, clearness, and charm
that it seemed as if it were all a lost and unappreciated bliss,
long past. He could not conceive that a stupid chance, letting the
seven be dealt to the right rather than to the left, might deprive him
of all this happiness, newly appreciated and newly illumined, and
plunge him into the depths of unknown and undefined misery. That could
not be, yet he awaited with a sinking heart the movement of Dolokhov's
hands. Those broad, reddish hands, with hairy wrists visible from
under the shirt cuffs, laid down the pack and took up a glass and a
pipe that were handed him.

"So you are not afraid to play with me?" repeated Dolokhov, and as
if about to tell a good story he put down the cards, leaned back in
his chair, and began deliberately with a smile:

"Yes, gentlemen, I've been told there's a rumor going about Moscow
that I'm a sharper, so I advise you to be careful."

"Come now, deal!" exclaimed Rostov.

"Oh, those Moscow gossips!" said Dolokhov, and he took up the
cards with a smile.

"Aah!" Rostov almost screamed lifting both hands to his head. The
seven he needed was lying uppermost, the first card in the pack. He
had lost more than he could pay.

"Still, don't ruin yourself!" said Dolokhov with a side glance at
Rostov as he continued to deal.





CHAPTER XIV


An hour and a half later most of the players were but little
interested in their own play.

The whole interest was concentrated on Rostov. Instead of sixteen
hundred rubles he had a long column of figures scored against him,
which he had reckoned up to ten thousand, but that now, as he
vaguely supposed, must have risen to fifteen thousand. In reality it
already exceeded twenty thousand rubles. Dolokhov was no longer
listening to stories or telling them, but followed every movement of
Rostov's hands and occasionally ran his eyes over the score against
him. He had decided to play until that score reached forty-three
thousand. He had fixed on that number because forty-three was the
sum of his and Sonya's joint ages. Rostov, leaning his head on both
hands, sat at the table which was scrawled over with figures, wet with
spilled wine, and littered with cards. One tormenting impression did
not leave him: that those broad-boned reddish hands with hairy
wrists visible from under the shirt sleeves, those hands which he
loved and hated, held him in their power.

"Six hundred rubles, ace, a corner, a nine... winning it back's
impossible... Oh, how pleasant it was at home!... The knave, double or
quits... it can't be!... And why is he doing this to me?" Rostov
pondered. Sometimes he staked a large sum, but Dolokhov refused to
accept it and fixed the stake himself. Nicholas submitted to him,
and at one moment prayed to God as he had done on the battlefield at
the bridge over the Enns, and then guessed that the card that came
first to hand from the crumpled heap under the table would save him,
now counted the cords on his coat and took a card with that number and
tried staking the total of his losses on it, then he looked round
for aid from the other players, or peered at the now cold face of
Dolokhov and tried to read what was passing in his mind.

"He knows of course what this loss means to me. He can't want my
ruin. Wasn't he my friend? Wasn't I fond of him? But it's not his
fault. What's he to do if he has such luck?... And it's not my fault
either," he thought to himself, "I have done nothing wrong. Have I
killed anyone, or insulted or wished harm to anyone? Why such a
terrible misfortune? And when did it begin? Such a little while ago
I came to this table with the thought of winning a hundred rubles to
buy that casket for Mamma's name day and then going home. I was so
happy, so free, so lighthearted! And I did not realize how happy I
was! When did that end and when did this new, terrible state of things
begin? What marked the change? I sat all the time in this same place
at this table, chose and placed cards, and watched those broad-boned
agile hands in the same way. When did it happen and what has happened?
I am well and strong and still the same and in the same place. No,
it can't be! Surely it will all end in nothing!"

He was flushed and bathed in perspiration, though the room was not
hot. His face was terrible and piteous to see, especially from its
helpless efforts to seem calm.

The score against him reached the fateful sum of forty-three
thousand. Rostov had just prepared a card, by bending the corner of
which he meant to double the three thousand just put down to his
score, when Dolokhov, slamming down the pack of cards, put it aside
and began rapidly adding up the total of Rostov's debt, breaking the
chalk as he marked the figures in his clear, bold hand.

"Supper, it's time for supper! And here are the gypsies!"

Some swarthy men and women were really entering from the cold
outside and saying something in their gypsy accents. Nicholas
understood that it was all over; but he said in an indifferent tone:

"Well, won't you go on? I had a splendid card all ready," as if it
were the fun of the game which interested him most.

"It's all up! I'm lost!" thought he. "Now a bullet through my brain-
that's all that's left me!" And at the same time he said in a
cheerful voice:

"Come now, just this one more little card!"

"All right!" said Dolokhov, having finished the addition. "All
right! Twenty-one rubles," he said, pointing to the figure
twenty-one by which the total exceeded the round sum of forty-three
thousand; and taking up a pack he prepared to deal. Rostov
submissively unbent the corner of his card and, instead of the six
thousand he had intended, carefully wrote twenty-one.

"It's all the same to me," he said. "I only want to see whether
you will let me win this ten, or beat it."

Dolokhov began to deal seriously. Oh, how Rostov detested at that
moment those hands with their short reddish fingers and hairy
wrists, which held him in their power.... The ten fell to him.

"You owe forty-three thousand, Count," said Dolokhov, and stretching
himself he rose from the table. "One does get tired sitting so
long," he added.

"Yes, I'm tired too," said Rostov.

Dolokhov cut him short, as if to remind him that it was not for
him to jest.

"When am I to receive the money, Count?"

Rostov, flushing, drew Dolokhov into the next room.

"I cannot pay it all immediately. Will you take an I.O.U.?" he said.

"I say, Rostov," said Dolokhov clearly, smiling and looking Nicholas
straight in the eyes, "you know the saying, 'Lucky in love, unlucky at
cards.' Your cousin is in love with you, I know."

"Oh, it's terrible to feel oneself so in this man's power,"
thought Rostov. He knew what a shock he would inflict on his father
and mother by the news of this loss, he knew what a relief it would be
to escape it all, and felt that Dolokhov knew that he could save him
from all this shame and sorrow, but wanted now to play with him as a
cat does with a mouse.

"Your cousin..." Dolokhov started to say, but Nicholas interrupted
him.

"My cousin has nothing to do with this and it's not necessary to
mention her!" he exclaimed fiercely.

"Then when am I to have it?"

"Tomorrow," replied Rostov and left the room.





CHAPTER XV


To say "tomorrow" and keep up a dignified tone was not difficult,
but to go home alone, see his sisters, brother, mother, and father,
confess and ask for money he had no right to after giving his word
of honor, was terrible.

At home, they had not yet gone to bed. The young people, after
returning from the theater, had had supper and were grouped round
the clavichord. As soon as Nicholas entered, he was enfolded in that
poetic atmosphere of love which pervaded the Rostov household that
winter and, now after Dolokhov's proposal and Iogel's ball, seemed
to have grown thicker round Sonya and Natasha as the air does before a
thunderstorm. Sonya and Natasha, in the light-blue dresses they had
worn at the theater, looking pretty and conscious of it, were standing
by the clavichord, happy and smiling. Vera was playing chess with
Shinshin in the drawing room. The old countess, waiting for the return
of her husband and son, sat playing patience with the old
gentlewoman who lived in their house. Denisov, with sparkling eyes and
ruffled hair, sat at the clavichord striking chords with his short
fingers, his legs thrown back and his eyes rolling as he sang, with
his small, husky, but true voice, some verses called "Enchantress,"
which he had composed, and to which he was trying to fit music:

   Enchantress, say, to my forsaken lyre
   What magic power is this recalls me still?
   What spark has set my inmost soul on fire,
   What is this bliss that makes my fingers thrill?

He was singing in passionate tones, gazing with his
sparkling black-agate eyes at the frightened and happy Natasha.

"Splendid! Excellent!" exclaimed Natasha. "Another verse," she
said, without noticing Nicholas.

"Everything's still the same with them," thought Nicholas,
glancing into the drawing room, where he saw Vera and his mother
with the old lady.

"Ah, and here's Nicholas!" cried Natasha, running up to him.

"Is Papa at home?" he asked.

"I am so glad you've come!" said Natasha, without answering him. "We
are enjoying ourselves! Vasili Dmitrich is staying a day longer for my
sake! Did you know?"

"No, Papa is not back yet," said Sonya.

"Nicholas, have you come? Come here, dear!" called the old
countess from the drawing room.

Nicholas went to her, kissed her hand, and sitting down silently
at her table began to watch her hands arranging the cards. From the
dancing room, they still heard the laughter and merry voices trying to
persuade Natasha to sing.

"All wight! All wight!" shouted Denisov. "It's no good making
excuses now! It's your turn to sing the ba'cawolla--I entweat you!"

The countess glanced at her silent son.

"What is the matter?" she asked.

"Oh, nothing," said he, as if weary of being continually asked the
same question. "Will Papa be back soon?"

"I expect so."

"Everything's the same with them. They know nothing about it!
Where am I to go?" thought Nicholas, and went again into the dancing
room where the clavichord stood.

Sonya was sitting at the clavichord, playing the prelude to
Denisov's favorite barcarolle. Natasha was preparing to sing.
Denisov was looking at her with enraptured eyes.

Nicholas began pacing up and down the room.

"Why do they want to make her sing? How can she sing? There's
nothing to be happy about!" thought he.

Sonya struck the first chord of the prelude.

"My God, I'm a ruined and dishonored man! A bullet through my
brain is the only thing left me--not singing!" his thoughts ran on.
"Go away? But where to? It's one--let them sing!"

He continued to pace the room, looking gloomily at Denisov and the
girls and avoiding their eyes.

"Nikolenka, what is the matter?" Sonya's eyes fixed on him seemed to
ask. She noticed at once that something had happened to him.

Nicholas turned away from her. Natasha too, with her quick instinct,
had instantly noticed her brother's condition. But, though she noticed
it, she was herself in such high spirits at that moment, so far from
sorrow, sadness, or self-reproach, that she purposely deceived herself
as young people often do. "No, I am too happy now to spoil my
enjoyment by sympathy with anyone's sorrow," she felt, and she said to
herself: "No, I must be mistaken, he must be feeling happy, just as
I am."

"Now, Sonya!" she said, going to the very middle of the room,
where she considered the resonance was best.

Having lifted her head and let her arms droop lifelessly, as
ballet dancers do, Natasha, rising energetically from her heels to her
toes, stepped to the middle of the room and stood still.

"Yes, that's me!" she seemed to say, answering the rapt gaze with
which Denisov followed her.

"And what is she so pleased about?" thought Nicholas, looking at his
sister. "Why isn't she dull and ashamed?"

Natasha took the first note, her throat swelled, her chest rose, her
eyes became serious. At that moment she was oblivious of her
surroundings, and from her smiling lips flowed sounds which anyone may
produce at the same intervals hold for the same time, but which
leave you cold a thousand times and the thousand and first time thrill
you and make you weep.

Natasha, that winter, had for the first time begun to sing
seriously, mainly because Denisov so delighted in her singing. She
no longer sang as a child, there was no longer in her singing that
comical, childish, painstaking effect that had been in it before;
but she did not yet sing well, as all the connoisseurs who heard her
said: "It is not trained, but it is a beautiful voice that must be
trained." Only they generally said this some time after she had
finished singing. While that untrained voice, with its incorrect
breathing and labored transitions, was sounding, even the connoisseurs
said nothing, but only delighted in it and wished to hear it again. In
her voice there was a virginal freshness, an unconsciousness of her
own powers, and an as yet untrained velvety softness, which so mingled
with her lack of art in singing that it seemed as if nothing in that
voice could be altered without spoiling it.

"What is this?" thought Nicholas, listening to her with widely
opened eyes. "What has happened to her? How she is singing today!" And
suddenly the whole world centered for him on anticipation of the
next note, the next phrase, and everything in the world was divided
into three beats: "Oh mio crudele affetto."... One, two, three... one,
two, three... One... "Oh mio crudele affetto."... One, two, three...
One. "Oh, this senseless life of ours!" thought Nicholas. "All this
misery, and money, and Dolokhov, and anger, and honor--it's all
nonsense... but this is real.... Now then, Natasha, now then, dearest!
Now then, darling! How will she take that si? She's taken it! Thank
God!" And without noticing that he was singing, to strengthen the si
he sung a second, a third below the high note. "Ah, God! How fine! Did
I really take it? How fortunate!" he thought.

Oh, how that chord vibrated, and how moved was something that was
finest in Rostov's soul! And this something was apart from
everything else in the world and above everything in the world.
"What were losses, and Dolokhov, and words of honor?... All
nonsense! One might kill and rob and yet be happy..."





CHAPTER XVI


It was long since Rostov had felt such enjoyment from music as he
did that day. But no sooner had Natasha finished her barcarolle than
reality again presented itself. He got up without saying a word and
went downstairs to his own room. A quarter of an hour later the old
count came in from his Club, cheerful and contented. Nicholas, hearing
him drive up, went to meet him.

"Well--had a good time?" said the old count, smiling gaily and
proudly at his son.

Nicholas tried to say "Yes," but could not: and he nearly burst into
sobs. The count was lighting his pipe and did not notice his son's
condition.

"Ah, it can't be avoided!" thought Nicholas, for the first and
last time. And suddenly, in the most casual tone, which made him
feel ashamed of himself, he said, as if merely asking his
father to let him have the carriage to drive to town:

"Papa, I have come on a matter of business. I was nearly forgetting.
I need some money."

"Dear me!" said his father, who was in a specially good humor. "I
told you it would not be enough. How much?"

"Very much," said Nicholas flushing, and with a stupid careless
smile, for which he was long unable to forgive himself, "I have lost a
little, I mean a good deal, a great deal--forty three thousand."

"What! To whom?... Nonsense!" cried the count, suddenly reddening
with an apoplectic flush over neck and nape as old people do.

"I promised to pay tomorrow," said Nicholas.

"Well!..." said the old count, spreading out his arms and sinking
helplessly on the sofa.

"It can't be helped It happens to everyone!" said the son, with a
bold, free, and easy tone, while in his soul he regarded himself as
a worthless scoundrel whose whole life could not atone for his
crime. He longed to kiss his father's hands and kneel to beg his
forgiveness, but said, in a careless and even rude voice, that it
happens to everyone!

The old count cast down his eyes on hearing his son's words and
began bustlingly searching for something.

"Yes, yes," he muttered, "it will be difficult, I fear, difficult to
raise... happens to everybody! Yes, who has not done it?"

And with a furtive glance at his son's face, the count went out of
the room.... Nicholas had been prepared for resistance, but had not at
all expected this.

"Papa! Pa-pa!" he called after him, sobbing, "forgive me!" And
seizing his father's hand, he pressed it to his lips and burst into
tears.

While father and son were having their explanation, the mother and
daughter were having one not less important. Natasha came running to
her mother, quite excited.

"Mamma!... Mamma!... He has made me..."

"Made what?"

"Made, made me an offer, Mamma! Mamma!" she exclaimed.

The countess did not believe her ears. Denisov had proposed. To
whom? To this chit of a girl, Natasha, who not so long ago was playing
with dolls and who was still having lessons.

"Don't, Natasha! What nonsense!" she said, hoping it was a joke.

"Nonsense, indeed! I am telling you the fact," said Natasha
indignantly. "I come to ask you what to do, and you call it
'nonsense!'"

The countess shrugged her shoulders.

"If it true that Monsieur Denisov has made you a proposal, tell
him he is a fool, that's all!"

"No, he's not a fool!" replied Natasha indignantly and seriously.

"Well then, what do you want? You're all in love nowadays. Well,
if you are in love, marry him!" said the countess, with a laugh of
annoyance. "Good luck to you!"

"No, Mamma, I'm not in love with him, I suppose I'm not in love with
him."

"Well then, tell him so."

"Mamma, are you cross? Don't be cross, dear! Is it my fault?"

"No, but what is it, my dear? Do you want me to go and tell him?"
said the countess smiling.

"No, I will do it myself, only tell me what to say. It's all very
well for you," said Natasha, with a responsive smile. "You should have
seen how he said it! I know he did not mean to say it, but it came out
accidently."

"Well, all the same, you must refuse him."

"No, I mustn't. I am so sorry for him! He's so nice."

"Well then, accept his offer. It's high time for you to be married,"
answered the countess sharply and sarcastically.

"No, Mamma, but I'm so sorry for him. I don't know how I'm to say
it."

"And there's nothing for you to say. I shall speak to him myself,"
said the countess, indignant that they should have dared to treat this
little Natasha as grown up.

"No, not on any account! I will tell him myself, and you'll listen
at the door," and Natasha ran across the drawing room to the dancing
hall, where Denisov was sitting on the same chair by the clavichord
with his face in his hands.

He jumped up at the sound of her light step.

"Nataly," he said, moving with rapid steps toward her, "decide my
fate. It is in your hands."

"Vasili Dmitrich, I'm so sorry for you!... No, but you are so
nice... but it won't do...not that... but as a friend, I shall
always love you."

Denisov bent over her hand and she heard strange sounds she did
not understand. She kissed his rough curly black head. At this
instant, they heard the quick rustle of the countess' dress. She
came up to them.

"Vasili Dmitrich, I thank you for the honor," she said, with an
embarrassed voice, though it sounded severe to Denisov--"but my
daughter is so young, and I thought that, as my son's friend, you
would have addressed yourself first to me. In that case you would
not have obliged me to give this refusal."

"Countess..." said Denisov, with downcast eyes and a guilty face. He
tried to say more, but faltered.

Natasha could not remain calm, seeing him in such a plight. She
began to sob aloud.

"Countess, I have done w'ong," Denisov went on in an unsteady voice,
"but believe me, I so adore your daughter and all your family that I
would give my life twice over..." He looked at the countess, and
seeing her severe face said: "Well, good-by, Countess," and kissing
her hand, he left the room with quick resolute strides, without
looking at Natasha.


Next day Rostov saw Denisov off. He not wish to stay another day
in Moscow. All Denisov's Moscow friends gave him a farewell
entertainment at the gypsies', with the result that he had no
recollection of how he was put in the sleigh or of the first three
stages of his journey.

After Denisov's departure, Rostov spent another fortnight in Moscow,
without going out of the house, waiting for the money his father could
not at once raise, and he spent most of his time in the girls' room.

Sonya was more tender and devoted to him than ever. It was as if she
wanted to show him that his losses were an achievement that made her
love him all the more, but Nicholas now considered himself unworthy of
her.

He filled the girls' albums with verses and music, and having at
last sent Dolokhov the whole forty-three thousand rubles and
received his receipt, he left at the end of November, without taking
leave of any of his acquaintances, to overtake his regiment which
was already in Poland.





BOOK FIVE: 1806 --07





CHAPTER I


After his interview with his wife Pierre left for Petersburg. At the
Torzhok post station, either there were no horses or the postmaster
would not supply them. Pierre was obliged to wait. Without undressing,
he lay down on the leather sofa in front of a round table, put his big
feet in their overboots on the table, and began to reflect.

"Will you have the portmanteaus brought in? And a bed got ready, and
tea?" asked his valet.

Pierre gave no answer, for he neither heard nor saw anything. He had
begun to think of the last station and was still pondering on the same
question--one so important that he took no notice of what went on
around him. Not only was he indifferent as to whether he got to
Petersburg earlier or later, or whether he secured accommodation at
this station, but compared to the thoughts that now occupied him it
was a matter of indifference whether he remained there for a few hours
or for the rest of his life.

The postmaster, his wife, the valet, and a peasant woman selling
Torzhok embroidery came into the room offering their services. Without
changing his careless attitude, Pierre looked at them over his
spectacles unable to understand what they wanted or how they could
go on living without having solved the problems that so absorbed
him. He had been engrossed by the same thoughts ever since the day
he returned from Sokolniki after the duel and had spent that first
agonizing, sleepless night. But now, in the solitude of the journey,
they seized him with special force. No matter what he thought about,
he always returned to these same questions which he could not solve
and yet could not cease to ask himself. It was as if the thread of the
chief screw which held his life together were stripped, so that the
screw could not get in or out, but went on turning uselessly in the
same place.

The postmaster came in and began obsequiously to beg his
excellency to wait only two hours, when, come what might, he would let
his excellency have the courier horses. It was plain that he was lying
and only wanted to get more money from the traveler.

"Is this good or bad?" Pierre asked himself. "It is good for me, bad
for another traveler, and for himself it's unavoidable, because he
needs money for food; the man said an officer had once given him a
thrashing for letting a private traveler have the courier horses.
But the officer thrashed him because he had to get on as quickly as
possible. And I," continued Pierre, "shot Dolokhov because I
considered myself injured, and Louis XVI was executed because they
considered him a criminal, and a year later they executed those who
executed him--also for some reason. What is bad? What is good? What
should one love and what hate? What does one live for? And what am
I? What is life, and what is death? What power governs all?"

There was no answer to any of these questions, except one, and
that not a logical answer and not at all a reply to them. The answer
was: "You'll die and all will end. You'll die and know all, or cease
asking." But dying was also dreadful.

The Torzhok peddler woman, in a whining voice, went on offering
her wares, especially a pair of goatskin slippers. "I have hundreds of
rubles I don't know what to do with, and she stands in her tattered
cloak looking timidly at me," he thought. "And what does she want
the money for? As if that money could add a hair's breadth to
happiness or peace of mind. Can anything in the world make her or me
less a prey to evil and death?--death which ends all and must come
today or tomorrow--at any rate, in an instant as compared with
eternity." And again he twisted the screw with the stripped thread,
and again it turned uselessly in the same place.

His servant handed him a half-cut novel, in the form of letters,
by Madame de Souza. He began reading about the sufferings and virtuous
struggles of a certain Emilie de Mansfeld. "And why did she resist her
seducer when she loved him?" he thought. "God could not have put
into her heart an impulse that was against His will. My wife--as she
once was--did not struggle, and perhaps she was right. Nothing has
been found out, nothing discovered," Pierre again said to himself.
"All we can know is that we know nothing. And that's the height of
human wisdom."

Everything within and around him seemed confused, senseless, and
repellent. Yet in this very repugnance to all his circumstances Pierre
found a kind of tantalizing satisfaction.

"I make bold to ask your excellency to move a little for this
gentleman," said the postmaster, entering the room followed by another
traveler, also detained for lack of horses.

The newcomer was a short, large-boned, yellow-faced, wrinkled old
man, with gray bushy eyebrows overhanging bright eyes of an indefinite
grayish color.

Pierre took his feet off the table, stood up, and lay down on a
bed that had been got ready for him, glancing now and then at the
newcomer, who, with a gloomy and tired face, was wearily taking off
his wraps with the aid of his servant, and not looking at Pierre. With
a pair of felt boots on his thin bony legs, and keeping on a worn,
nankeen-covered, sheepskin coat, the traveler sat down on the sofa,
leaned back his big head with its broad temples and close-cropped
hair, and looked at Bezukhov. The stern, shrewd, and penetrating
expression of that look struck Pierre. He felt a wish to speak to
the stranger, but by the time he had made up his mind to ask him a
question about the roads, the traveler had closed his eyes. His
shriveled old hands were folded and on the finger of one of them
Pierre noticed a large cast iron ring with a seal representing a
death's head. The stranger sat without stirring, either resting or, as
it seemed to Pierre, sunk in profound and calm meditation. His servant
was also a yellow, wrinkled old man, without beard or mustache,
evidently not because he was shaven but because they had never
grown. This active old servant was unpacking the traveler's canteen
and preparing tea. He brought in a boiling samovar. When everything
was ready, the stranger opened his eyes, moved to the table, filled
a tumbler with tea for himself and one for the beardless old man to
whom he passed it. Pierre began to feel a sense of uneasiness, and the
need, even the inevitability, of entering into conversation with
this stranger.

The servant brought back his tumbler turned upside down,* with an
unfinished bit of nibbled sugar, and asked if anything more would be
wanted.


*To indicate he did not want more tea.


"No. Give me the book," said the stranger.

The servant handed him a book which Pierre took to be a devotional
work, and the traveler became absorbed in it. Pierre looked at him.
All at once the stranger closed the book, putting in a marker, and
again, leaning with his arms on the back of the sofa, sat in his
former position with his eyes shut. Pierre looked at him and had not
time to turn away when the old man, opening his eyes, fixed his steady
and severe gaze straight on Pierre's face.

Pierre felt confused and wished to avoid that look, but the bright
old eyes attracted him irresistibly.





CHAPTER II


"I have the pleasure of addressing Count Bezukhov, if I am not
mistaken," said the stranger in a deliberate and loud voice.

Pierre looked silently and inquiringly at him over his spectacles.

"I have heard of you, my dear sir," continued the stranger, "and
of your misfortune." He seemed to emphasize the last word, as if to
say--"Yes, misfortune! Call it what you please, I know that what
happened to you in Moscow was a misfortune."--"I regret it very
much, my dear sir."

Pierre flushed and, hurriedly putting his legs down from the bed,
bent forward toward the old man with a forced and timid smile.

"I have not referred to this out of curiosity, my dear sir, but
for greater reasons."

He paused, his gaze still on Pierre, and moved aside on the sofa
by way of inviting the other to take a seat beside him. Pierre felt
reluctant to enter into conversation with this old man, but,
submitting to him involuntarily, came up and sat down beside him.

"You are unhappy, my dear sir," the stranger continued. "You are
young and I am old. I should like to help you as far as lies in my
power."

"Oh, yes!" said Pierre, with a forced smile. "I am very grateful
to you. Where are you traveling from?"

The stranger's face was not genial, it was even cold and severe, but
in spite of this, both the face and words of his new acquaintance were
irresistibly attractive to Pierre.

"But if for reason you don't feel inclined to talk to me," said
the old man, "say so, my dear sir." And he suddenly smiled, in an
unexpected and tenderly paternal way.

"Oh no, not at all! On the contrary, I am very glad to make your
acquaintance," said Pierre. And again, glancing at the stranger's
hands, he looked more closely at the ring, with its skull--a Masonic
sign.

"Allow me to ask," he said, "are you a Mason?"

"Yes, I belong to the Brotherhood of the Freemasons," said the
stranger, looking deeper and deeper into Pierre's eyes. "And in
their name and my own I hold out a brotherly hand to you."

"I am afraid," said Pierre, smiling, and wavering between the
confidence the personality of the Freemason inspired in him and his
own habit of ridiculing the Masonic beliefs--"I am afraid I am very
far from understanding--how am I to put it?--I am afraid my way of
looking at the world is so opposed to yours that we shall not
understand one another."

"I know your outlook," said the Mason, "and the view of life you
mention, and which you think is the result of your own mental efforts,
is the one held by the majority of people, and is the invariable fruit
of pride, indolence, and ignorance. Forgive me, my dear sir, but if
I had not known it I should not have addressed you. Your view of
life is a regrettable delusion."

"Just as I may suppose you to be deluded," said Pierre, with a faint
smile.

"I should never dare to say that I know the truth," said the
Mason, whose words struck Pierre more and more by their precision
and firmness. "No one can attain to truth by himself. Only by laying
stone on stone with the cooperation of all, by the millions of
generations from our forefather Adam to our own times, is that
temple reared which is to be a worthy dwelling place of the Great
God," he added, and closed his eyes.

"I ought to tell you that I do not believe... do not believe in God,"
said Pierre, regretfully and with an effort, feeling it essential to
speak the whole truth.

The Mason looked intently at Pierre and smiled as a rich man with
millions in hand might smile at a poor fellow who told him that he,
poor man, had not the five rubles that would make him happy.

"Yes, you do not know Him, my dear sir," said the Mason. "You cannot
know Him. You do not know Him and that is why you are unhappy."

"Yes, yes, I am unhappy," assented Pierre. "But what am I to do?"

"You know Him not, my dear sir, and so you are very unhappy. You
do not know Him, but He is here, He is in me, He is in my words, He
is in thee, and even in those blasphemous words thou hast just
uttered!" pronounced the Mason in a stern and tremulous voice.

He paused and sighed, evidently trying to calm himself.

"If He were not," he said quietly, "you and I would not be
speaking of Him, my dear sir. Of what, of whom, are we speaking?
Whom hast thou denied?" he suddenly asked with exulting austerity
and authority in his voice. "Who invented Him, if He did not exist?
Whence came thy conception of the existence of such an
incomprehensible Being? didst thou, and why did the whole world,
conceive the idea of the existence of such an incomprehensible
Being, a Being all-powerful, eternal, and infinite in all His
attributes?..."

He stopped and remained silent for a long time.

Pierre could not and did not wish to break this silence.

"He exists, but to understand Him is hard," the Mason began again,
looking not at Pierre but straight before him, and turning the
leaves of his book with his old hands which from excitement he could
not keep still. "If it were a man whose existence thou didst doubt I
could bring him to thee, could take him by the hand and show him to
thee. But how can I, an insignificant mortal, show His omnipotence,
His infinity, and all His mercy to one who is blind, or who shuts
his eyes that he may not see or understand Him and may not see or
understand his own vileness and sinfulness?" He paused again. "Who art
thou? Thou dreamest that thou art wise because thou couldst utter
those blasphemous words," he went on, with a somber and scornful
smile. "And thou art more foolish and unreasonable than a little
child, who, playing with the parts of a skillfully made watch, dares
to say that, as he does not understand its use, he does not believe in
the master who made it. To know Him is hard.... For ages, from our
forefather Adam to our own day, we labor to attain that knowledge
and are still infinitely far from our aim; but in our lack of
understanding we see only our weakness and His greatness...."

Pierre listened with swelling heart, gazing into the Mason's face
with shining eyes, not interrupting or questioning him, but
believing with his whole soul what the stranger said. Whether he
accepted the wise reasoning contained in the Mason's words, or
believed as a child believes, in the speaker's tone of conviction
and earnestness, or the tremor of the speaker's voice--which sometimes
almost broke--or those brilliant aged eyes grown old in this
conviction, or the calm firmness and certainty of his vocation,
which radiated from his whole being (and which struck Pierre
especially by contrast with his own dejection and hopelessness)--at
any rate, Pierre longed with his whole soul to believe and he did
believe, and felt a joyful sense of comfort, regeneration, and
return to life.

"He is not to be apprehended by reason, but by life," said the
Mason.

"I do not understand," said Pierre, feeling with dismay doubts
reawakening. He was afraid of any want of clearness, any weakness,
in the Mason's arguments; he dreaded not to be able to believe in him.
"I don't understand," he said, "how it is that the mind of man
cannot attain the knowledge of which you speak."

The Mason smiled with his gentle fatherly smile.

"The highest wisdom and truth are like the purest liquid we may wish
to imbibe," he said. "Can I receive that pure liquid into an impure
vessel and judge of its purity? Only by the inner purification of
myself can I retain in some degree of purity the liquid I receive."

"Yes, yes, that is so," said Pierre joyfully.

"The highest wisdom is not founded on reason alone, not on those
worldly sciences of physics, history, chemistry, and the like, into
which intellectual knowledge is divided. The highest wisdom is one.
The highest wisdom has but one science--the science of the whole-
the science explaining the whole creation and man's place in it. To
receive that science it is necessary to purify and renew one's inner
self, and so before one can know, it is necessary to believe and to
perfect one's self. And to attain this end, we have the light called
conscience that God has implanted in our souls."

"Yes, yes," assented Pierre.

"Look then at thy inner self with the eyes of the spirit, and ask
thyself whether thou art content with thyself. What hast thou attained
relying on reason only? What art thou? You are young, you are rich,
you are clever, you are well educated. And what have you done with all
these good gifts? Are you content with yourself and with your life?"

"No, I hate my life," Pierre muttered, wincing.

"Thou hatest it. Then change it, purify thyself; and as thou art
purified, thou wilt gain wisdom. Look at your life, my dear sir. How
have you spent it? In riotous orgies and debauchery, receiving
everything from society and giving nothing in return. You have
become the possessor of wealth. How have you used it? What have you
done for your neighbor? Have you ever thought of your tens of
thousands of slaves? Have you helped them physically and morally?
No! You have profited by their toil to lead a profligate life. That is
what you have done. Have you chosen a post in which you might be of
service to your neighbor? No! You have spent your life in idleness.
Then you married, my dear sir--took on yourself responsibility for the
guidance of a young woman; and what have you done? You have not helped
her to find the way of truth, my dear sir, but have thrust her into an
abyss of deceit and misery. A man offended you and you shot him, and
you say you do not know God and hate your life. There is nothing
strange in that, my dear sir!"

After these words, the Mason, as if tired by his long discourse,
again leaned his arms on the back of the sofa and closed his eyes.
Pierre looked at that aged, stern, motionless, almost lifeless face
and moved his lips without uttering a sound. He wished to say, "Yes, a
vile, idle, vicious life!" but dared not break the silence.

The Mason cleared his throat huskily, as old men do, and called
his servant.

"How about the horses?" he asked, without looking at Pierre.

"The exchange horses have just come," answered the servant. "Will
you not rest here?"

"No, tell them to harness."

"Can he really be going away leaving me alone without having told me
all, and without promising to help me?" thought Pierre, rising with
downcast head; and he began to pace the room, glancing occasionally at
the Mason. "Yes, I never thought of it, but I have led a
contemptible and profligate life, though I did not like it and did not
want to," thought Pierre. "But this man knows the truth and, if he
wished to, could disclose it to me."

Pierre wished to say this to the Mason, but did not dare to. The
traveler, having packed his things with his practiced hands, began
fastening his coat. When he had finished, he turned to Bezukhov, and
said in a tone of indifferent politeness:

"Where are you going to now, my dear sir?"

"I?... I'm going to Petersburg," answered Pierre, in a childlike,
hesitating voice. "I thank you. I agree with all you have said. But do
not suppose me to be so bad. With my whole soul I wish to be what
you would have me be, but I have never had help from anyone.... But it
is I, above all, who am to blame for everything. Help me, teach me,
and perhaps I may..."

Pierre could not go on. He gulped and turned away.

The Mason remained silent for a long time, evidently considering.

"Help comes from God alone," he said, "but such measure of help as
our Order can bestow it will render you, my dear sir. You are going to
Petersburg. Hand this to Count Willarski" (he took out his notebook
and wrote a few words on a large sheet of paper folded in four).
"Allow me to give you a piece of advice. When you reach the capital,
first of all devote some time to solitude and self-examination and
do not resume your former way of life. And now I wish you a good
journey, my dear sir," he added, seeing that his servant had
entered... "and success."

The traveler was Joseph Alexeevich Bazdeev, as Pierre saw from the
postmaster's book. Bazdeev had been one of the best-known Freemasons
and Martinists, even in Novikov's time. For a long while after he
had gone, Pierre did not go to bed or order horses but paced up and
down the room, pondering over his vicious past, and with a rapturous
sense of beginning anew pictured to himself the blissful,
irreproachable, virtuous future that seemed to him so easy. It
seemed to him that he had been vicious only because he had somehow
forgotten how good it is to be virtuous. Not a trace of his former
doubts remained in his soul. He firmly believed in the possibility
of the brotherhood of men united in the aim of supporting one
another in the path of virtue, and that is how Freemasonry presented
itself to him.





CHAPTER III


On reaching Petersburg Pierre did not let anyone know of his
arrival, he went nowhere and spent whole days in reading Thomas a
Kempis, whose book had been sent him by someone unknown. One thing
he continually realized as he read that book: the joy, hitherto
unknown to him, of believing in the possibility of attaining
perfection, and in the possibility of active brotherly love among men,
which Joseph Alexeevich had revealed to him. A week after his arrival,
the young Polish count, Willarski, whom Pierre had known slightly in
Petersburg society, came into his room one evening in the official and
ceremonious manner in which Dolokhov's second had called on him,
and, having closed the door behind him and satisfied himself that
there was nobody else in the room, addressed Pierre.

"I have come to you with a message and an offer, Count," he said
without sitting down. "A person of very high standing in our
Brotherhood has made application for you to be received into our Order
before the usual term and has proposed to me to be your sponsor. I
consider it a sacred duty to fulfill that person's wishes. Do you wish
to enter the Brotherhood of Freemasons under my sponsorship?"

 The cold, austere tone of this man, whom he had almost always
before met at balls, amiably smiling in the society of the most
brilliant women, surprised Pierre.

"Yes, I do wish it," said he.

Willarski bowed his head.

"One more question, Count," he said, "which beg you to answer in all
sincerity--not as a future Mason but as an honest man: have you
renounced your former convictions--do you believe in God?"

Pierre considered.

"Yes... yes, I believe in God," he said.

"In that case..." began Willarski, but Pierre interrupted him.

"Yes, I do believe in God," he repeated.

"In that case we can go," said Willarski. "My carriage is at your
service."

Willarski was silent throughout the drive. To Pierre's inquiries
as to what he must do and how he should answer, Willarski only replied
that brothers more worthy than he would test him and that Pierre had
only to tell the truth.

Having entered the courtyard of a large house where the Lodge had
its headquarters, and having ascended a dark staircase, they entered a
small well-lit anteroom where they took off their cloaks without the
aid of a servant. From there they passed into another room. A man in
strange attire appeared at the door. Willarski, stepping toward him,
said something to him in French in an undertone and then went up to
a small wardrobe in which Pierre noticed garments such as he had never
seen before. Having taken a kerchief from the cupboard, Willarski
bound Pierre's eyes with it and tied it in a knot behind, catching
some hairs painfully in the knot. Then he drew his face down, kissed
him, and taking him by the hand led him forward. The hairs tied in the
knot hurt Pierre and there were lines of pain on his face and a
shamefaced smile. His huge figure, with arms hanging down and with a
puckered, though smiling face, moved after Willarski with uncertain,
timid steps.

Having led him about ten paces, Willarski stopped.

"Whatever happens to you," he said, "you must bear it all manfully
if you have firmly resolved to join our Brotherhood." (Pierre nodded
affirmatively.) "When you hear a knock at the door, you will uncover
your eyes," added Willarski. "I wish you courage and success," and,
pressing Pierre's hand, he went out.

Left alone, Pierre went on smiling in the same way. Once or twice he
shrugged his and raised his hand to the kerchief, as if wishing to
take it off, but let it drop again. The five minutes spent with his
eyes bandaged seemed to him an hour. His arms felt numb, his legs
almost gave way, it seemed to him that he was tired out. He
experienced a variety of most complex sensations. He felt afraid of
what would happen to him and still more afraid of showing his fear. He
felt curious to know what was going to happen and what would be
revealed to him; but most of all, he felt joyful that the moment had
come when he would at last start on that path of regeneration and on
the actively virtuous life of which he had been dreaming since he
met Joseph Alexeevich. Loud knocks were heard at the door. Pierre took
the bandage off his eyes and glanced around him. The room was in black
darkness, only a small lamp was burning inside something white. Pierre
went nearer and saw that the lamp stood on a black table on which
lay an open book. The book was the Gospel, and the white thing with
the lamp inside was a human skull with its cavities and teeth. After
reading the first words of the Gospel: "In the beginning was the
Word and the Word was with God," Pierre went round the table and saw a
large open box filled with something. It was a coffin with bones
inside. He was not at all surprised by what he saw. Hoping to enter on
an entirely new life quite unlike the old one, he expected
everything to be unusual, even more unusual than what he was seeing. A
skull, a coffin, the Gospel--it seemed to him that he had expected all
this and even more. Trying to stimulate his emotions he looked around.
"God, death, love, the brotherhood of man," he kept saying to himself,
associating these words with vague yet joyful ideas. The door opened
and someone came in.

By the dim light, to which Pierre had already become accustomed,
he saw rather short man. Having evidently come from the light into the
darkness, the man paused, then moved with cautious steps toward the
table and placed on it his small leather-gloved hands.

This short man had on a white leather apron which covered his
chest and part of his legs; he had on a kind of necklace above which
rose a high white ruffle, outlining his rather long face which was lit
up from below.

"For what have you come hither?" asked the newcomer, turning in
Pierre's direction at a slight rustle made by the latter. "Why have
you, who do not believe in the truth of the light and who have not
seen the light, come here? What do you seek from us? Wisdom, virtue,
enlightenment?"

At the moment the door opened and the stranger came in, Pierre
felt a sense of awe and veneration such as he had experienced in his
boyhood at confession; he felt himself in the presence of one socially
a complete stranger, yet nearer to him through the brotherhood of man.
With bated breath and beating heart he moved toward the Rhetor (by
which name the brother who prepared a seeker for entrance into the
Brotherhood was known). Drawing nearer, he recognized in the Rhetor
a man he knew, Smolyaninov, and it mortified him to think that the
newcomer was an acquaintance--he wished him simply a brother and a
virtuous instructor. For a long time he could not utter a word, so
that the Rhetor had to repeat his question.

"Yes... I... I... desire regeneration," Pierre uttered with
difficulty.

"Very well," said Smolyaninov, and went on at once: "Have you any
idea of the means by which our holy Order will help you to reach
your aim?" said he quietly and quickly.

"I... hope... for guidance... help... in regeneration," said Pierre,
with a trembling voice and some difficulty in utterance due to his
excitement and to being unaccustomed to speak of abstract matters in
Russian.

"What is your conception of Freemasonry?"

"I imagine that Freemasonry is the fraternity and equality of men
who have virtuous aims," said Pierre, feeling ashamed of the
inadequacy of his words for the solemnity of the moment, as he
spoke. "I imagine..."

"Good!" said the Rhetor quickly, apparently satisfied with this
answer. "Have you sought for means of attaining your aim in religion?"

"No, I considered it erroneous and did not follow it," said
Pierre, so softly that the Rhetor did not hear him and asked him
what he was saying. "I have been an atheist," answered Pierre.

"You are seeking for truth in order to follow its laws in your life,
therefore you seek wisdom and virtue. Is that not so?" said the
Rhetor, after a moment's pause.

"Yes, yes," assented Pierre.

The Rhetor cleared his throat, crossed his gloved hands on his
breast, and began to speak.

"Now I must disclose to you the chief aim of our Order," he said,
"and if this aim coincides with yours, you may enter our Brotherhood
with profit. The first and chief object of our Order, the foundation
on which it rests and which no human power can destroy, is the
preservation and handing on to posterity of a certain important
mystery... which has come down to us from the remotest ages, even from
the first man--a mystery on which perhaps the fate of mankind depends.
But since this mystery is of such a nature that nobody can know or use
it unless he be prepared by long and diligent self-purification, not
everyone can hope to attain it quickly. Hence we have a secondary aim,
that of preparing our members as much as possible to reform their
hearts, to purify and enlighten their minds, by means handed on to
us by tradition from those who have striven to attain this mystery,
and thereby to render them capable of receiving it.

"By purifying and regenerating our members we try, thirdly, to
improve the whole human race, offering it in our members an example of
piety and virtue, and thereby try with all our might to combat the
evil which sways the world. Think this over and I will come to you
again."

"To combat the evil which sways the world..." Pierre repeated, and a
mental image of his future activity in this direction rose in his
mind. He imagined men such as he had himself been a fortnight ago, and
he addressed an edifying exhortation to them. He imagined to himself
vicious and unfortunate people whom he would assist by word and
deed, imagined oppressors whose victims he would rescue. Of the
three objects mentioned by the Rhetor, this last, that of improving
mankind, especially appealed to Pierre. The important mystery
mentioned by the Rhetor, though it aroused his curiosity, did not seem
to him essential, and the second aim, that of purifying and
regenerating himself, did not much interest him because at that moment
he felt with delight that he was already perfectly cured of his former
faults and was ready for all that was good.

Half an hour later, the Rhetor returned to inform the seeker of
the seven virtues, corresponding to the seven steps of Solomon's
temple, which every Freemason should cultivate in himself. These
virtues were:  1. Discretion, the keeping of the secrets of the Order.
 2. Obedience to those of higher ranks in the Order.  3. Morality.  4.
Love of mankind.  5. Courage.  6. Generosity.  7. The love of death.

"In the seventh place, try, by the frequent thought of death," the
Rhetor said, "to bring yourself to regard it not as a dreaded foe, but
as a friend that frees the soul grown weary in the labors of virtue
from this distressful life, and leads it to its place of recompense
and peace."

"Yes, that must be so," thought Pierre, when after these words the
Rhetor went away, leaving him to solitary meditation. "It must be
so, but I am still so weak that I love my life, the meaning of which
is only now gradually opening before me." But five of the other
virtues which Pierre recalled, counting them on his fingers, he felt
already in his soul: courage, generosity, morality, love of mankind,
and especially obedience--which did not even seem to him a virtue, but
a joy. (He now felt so glad to be free from his own lawlessness and to
submit his will to those who knew the indubitable truth.) He forgot
what the seventh virtue was and could not recall it.

The third time the Rhetor came back more quickly and asked Pierre
whether he was still firm in his intention and determined to submit to
all that would be required of him.

"I am ready for everything," said Pierre.

"I must also inform you," said the Rhetor, "that our Order
delivers its teaching not in words only but also by other means, which
may perhaps have a stronger effect on the sincere seeker after
wisdom and virtue than mere words. This chamber with what you see
therein should already have suggested to your heart, if it is sincere,
more than words could do. You will perhaps also see in your further
initiation a like method of enlightenment. Our Order imitates the
ancient societies that explained their teaching by hieroglyphics. A
hieroglyph," said the Rhetor, "is an emblem of something not
cognizable by the senses but which possesses qualities resembling
those of the symbol."

Pierre knew very well what a hieroglyph was, but dared not speak. He
listened to the Rhetor in silence, feeling from all he said that his
ordeal was about to begin.

"If you are resolved, I must begin your initiation," said the Rhetor
coming closer to Pierre. "In token of generosity I ask you to give
me all your valuables."

"But I have nothing here," replied Pierre, supposing that he was
asked to give up all he possessed.

"What you have with you: watch, money, rings...."

Pierre quickly took out his purse and watch, but could not manage
for some time to get the wedding ring off his fat finger. When that
had been done, the Rhetor said:

"In token of obedience, I ask you to undress."

Pierre took off his coat, waistcoat, and left boot according to
the Rhetor's instructions. The Mason drew the shirt back from Pierre's
left breast, and stooping down pulled up the left leg of his
trousers to above the knee. Pierre hurriedly began taking off his
right boot also and was going to tuck up the other trouser leg to save
this stranger the trouble, but the Mason told him that was not
necessary and gave him a slipper for his left foot. With a childlike
smile of embarrassment, doubt, and self-derision, which appeared on
his face against his will, Pierre stood with his arms hanging down and
legs apart, before his brother Rhetor, and awaited his further
commands.

"And now, in token of candor, I ask you to reveal to me your chief
passion," said the latter.

"My passion! I have had so many," replied Pierre.

"That passion which more than all others caused you to waver on
the path of virtue," said the Mason.

Pierre paused, seeking a reply.

"Wine? Gluttony? Idleness? Laziness? Irritability? Anger? Women?" He
went over his vices in his mind, not knowing to which of them to
give the pre-eminence.

"Women," he said in a low, scarcely audible voice.

The Mason did not move and for a long time said nothing after this
answer. At last he moved up to Pierre and, taking the kerchief that
lay on the table, again bound his eyes.

"For the last time I say to you--turn all your attention upon
yourself, put a bridle on your senses, and seek blessedness, not in
passion but in your own heart. The source of blessedness is not
without us but within...."

Pierre had already long been feeling in himself that refreshing
source of blessedness which now flooded his heart with glad emotion.





CHAPTER IV


Soon after this there came into the dark chamber to fetch Pierre,
not the Rhetor but Pierre's sponsor, Willarski, whom he recognized
by his voice. To fresh questions as to the firmness of his
resolution Pierre replied: "Yes, yes, I agree," and with a beaming,
childlike smile, his fat chest uncovered, stepping unevenly and
timidly in one slippered and one booted foot, he advanced, while
Willarski held a sword to his bare chest. He was conducted from that
room along passages that turned backwards and forwards and was at last
brought to the doors of the Lodge. Willarski coughed, he was
answered by the Masonic knock with mallets, the doors opened before
them. A bass voice (Pierre was still blindfold) questioned him as to
who he was, when and where he was born, and so on. Then he was again
led somewhere still blindfold, and as they went along he was told
allegories of the toils of his pilgrimage, of holy friendship, of
the Eternal Architect of the universe, and of the courage with which
he should endure toils and dangers. During these wanderings, Pierre
noticed that he was spoken of now as the "Seeker," now as the
"Sufferer," and now as the "Postulant," to the accompaniment of
various knockings with mallets and swords. As he was being led up to
some object he noticed a hesitation and uncertainty among his
conductors. He heard those around him disputing in whispers and one of
them insisting that he should be led along a certain carpet. After
that they took his right hand, placed it on something, and told him to
hold a pair of compasses to his left breast with the other hand and to
repeat after someone who read aloud an oath of fidelity to the laws of
the Order. The candles were then extinguished and some spirit lighted,
as Pierre knew by the smell, and he was told that he would now see the
lesser light. The bandage was taken off his eyes and, by the faint
light of the burning spirit, Pierre, as in a dream, saw several men
standing before him, wearing aprons like the Rhetor's and holding
swords in their hands pointed at his breast. Among them stood a man
whose white shirt was stained with blood. On seeing this, Pierre moved
forward with his breast toward the swords, meaning them to pierce
it. But the swords were drawn back from him and he was at once
blindfolded again.

"Now thou hast seen the lesser light," uttered a voice. Then the
candles were relit and he was told that he would see the full light;
the bandage was again removed and more than ten voices said
together: "Sic transit gloria mundi."

Pierre gradually began to recover himself and looked about at the
room and at the people in it. Round a long table covered with black
sat some twelve men in garments like those he had already seen. Some
of them Pierre had met in Petersburg society. In the President's chair
sat a young man he did not know, with a peculiar cross hanging from
his neck. On his right sat the Italian abbe whom Pierre had met at
Anna Pavlovna's two years before. There were also present a very
distinguished dignitary and a Swiss who had formerly been tutor at the
Kuragins'. All maintained a solemn silence, listening to the words
of the President, who held a mallet in his hand. Let into the wall was
a star-shaped light. At one side of the table was a small carpet
with various figures worked upon it, at the other was something
resembling an altar on which lay a Testament and a skull. Round it
stood seven large candlesticks like those used in churches. Two of the
brothers led Pierre up to the altar, placed his feet at right
angles, and bade him lie down, saying that he must prostrate himself
at the Gates of the Temple.

"He must first receive the trowel," whispered one of the brothers.

"Oh, hush, please!" said another.

Pierre, perplexed, looked round with his shortsighted eyes without
obeying, and suddenly doubts arose in his mind. "Where am I? What am I
doing? Aren't they laughing at me? Shan't I be ashamed to remember
this?" But these doubts only lasted a moment. Pierre glanced at the
serious faces of those around, remembered all he had already gone
through, and realized that he could not stop halfway. He was aghast at
his hesitation and, trying to arouse his former devotional feeling,
prostrated himself before the Gates of the Temple. And really, the
feeling of devotion returned to him even more strongly than before.
When he had lain there some time, he was told to get up, and a white
leather apron, such as the others wore, was put on him: he was given a
trowel and three pairs of gloves, and then the Grand Master
addressed him. He told him that he should try to do nothing to stain
the whiteness of that apron, which symbolized strength and purity;
then of the unexplained trowel, he told him to toil with it to cleanse
his own heart from vice, and indulgently to smooth with it the heart
of his neighbor. As to the first pair of gloves, a man's, he said that
Pierre could not know their meaning but must keep them. The second
pair of man's gloves he was to wear at the meetings, and finally of
the third, a pair of women's gloves, he said: "Dear brother, these
woman's gloves are intended for you too. Give them to the woman whom
you shall honor most of all. This gift will be a pledge of your purity
of heart to her whom you select to be your worthy helpmeet in
Masonry." And after a pause, he added: "But beware, dear brother, that
these gloves do not deck hands that are unclean." While the Grand
Master said these last words it seemed to Pierre that he grew
embarrassed. Pierre himself grew still more confused, blushed like a
child till tears came to his eyes, began looking about him uneasily,
and an awkward pause followed.

This silence was broken by one of the brethren, who led Pierre up to
the rug and began reading to him from a manuscript book an explanation
of all the figures on it: the sun, the moon, a hammer, a plumb line, a
trowel, a rough stone and a squared stone, a pillar, three windows,
and so on. Then a place was assigned to Pierre, he was shown the signs
of the Lodge, told the password, and at last was permitted to sit
down. The Grand Master began reading the statutes. They were very
long, and Pierre, from joy, agitation, and embarrassment, was not in a
state to understand what was being read. He managed to follow only the
last words of the statutes and these remained in his mind.

"In our temples we recognize no other distinctions," read the
Grand Master, "but those between virtue and vice. Beware of making any
distinctions which may infringe equality. Fly to a brother's aid
whoever he may be, exhort him who goeth astray, raise him that
falleth, never bear malice or enmity toward thy brother. Be kindly and
courteous. Kindle in all hearts the flame of virtue. Share thy
happiness with thy neighbor, and may envy never dim the purity of that
bliss. Forgive thy enemy, do not avenge thyself except by doing him
good. Thus fulfilling the highest law thou shalt regain traces of
the ancient dignity which thou hast lost."

He finished and, getting up, embraced and kissed Pierre, who, with
tears of joy in his eyes, looked round him, not knowing how to
answer the congratulations and greetings from acquaintances that met
him on all sides. He acknowledged no acquaintances but saw in all
these men only brothers, and burned with impatience to set to work
with them.

The Grand Master rapped with his mallet. All the Masons sat down
in their places, and one of them read an exhortation on the
necessity of humility.

The Grand Master proposed that the last duty should be performed,
and the distinguished dignitary who bore the title of "Collector of
Alms" went round to all the brothers. Pierre would have liked to
subscribe all he had, but fearing that it might look like pride
subscribed the same amount as the others.

The meeting was at an end, and on reaching home Pierre felt as if he
had returned from a long journey on which he had spent dozens of
years, had become completely changed, and had quite left behind his
former habits and way of life.





CHAPTER V


The day after he had been received into the Lodge, Pierre was
sitting at home reading a book and trying to fathom the significance
of the Square, one side of which symbolized God, another moral things,
a third physical things, and the fourth a combination of these. Now
and then his attention wandered from the book and the Square and he
formed in imagination a new plan of life. On the previous evening at
the Lodge, he had heard that a rumor of his duel had reached the
Emperor and that it would be wiser for him to leave Petersburg. Pierre
proposed going to his estates in the south and there attending to
the welfare of his serfs. He was joyfully planning this new life, when
Prince Vasili suddenly entered the room.

"My dear fellow, what have you been up to in Moscow? Why have you
quarreled with Helene, mon cher? You are under a delusion," said
Prince Vasili, as he entered. "I know all about it, and I can tell you
positively that Helene is as innocent before you as Christ was
before the Jews."

Pierre was about to reply, but Prince Vasili interrupted him.

"And why didn't you simply come straight to me as to a friend? I
know all about it and understand it all," he said. "You behaved as
becomes a man values his honor, perhaps too hastily, but we won't go
into that. But consider the position in which you are placing her
and me in the eyes of society, and even of the court," he added,
lowering his voice. "She is living in Moscow and you are here.
Remember, dear boy," and he drew Pierre's arm downwards, "it is simply
a misunderstanding. I expect you feel it so yourself. Let us write her
a letter at once, and she'll come here and all will be explained, or
else, my dear boy, let me tell you it's quite likely you'll have to
suffer for it."

Prince Vasili gave Pierre a significant look.

"I know from reliable sources that the Dowager Empress is taking a
keen interest in the whole affair. You know she is very gracious to
Helene."

Pierre tried several times to speak, but, on one hand, Prince Vasili
did not let him and, on the other, Pierre himself feared to begin to
speak in the tone of decided refusal and disagreement in which he
had firmly resolved to answer his father-in-law. Moreover, the words
of the Masonic statutes, "be kindly and courteous," recurred to him.
He blinked, went red, got up and sat down again, struggling with
himself to do what was for him the most difficult thing in life--to
say an unpleasant thing to a man's face, to say what the other,
whoever he might be, did not expect. He was so used to submitting to
Prince Vasili's tone of careless self-assurance that he felt he
would be unable to withstand it now, but he also felt that on what
he said now his future depended--whether he would follow the same
old road, or that new path so attractively shown him by the Masons, on
which he firmly believed he would be reborn to a new life.

"Now, dear boy," said Prince Vasili playfully, "say 'yes,' and
I'll write to her myself, and we will kill the fatted calf."

But before Prince Vasili had finished his playful speech, Pierre,
without looking at him, and with a kind of fury that made him like his
father, muttered in a whisper:

"Prince, I did not ask you here. Go, please go!" And he jumped up
and opened the door for him.

"Go!" he repeated, amazed at himself and glad to see the look of
confusion and fear that showed itself on Prince Vasili's face.

"What's the matter with you? Are you ill?"

"Go!" the quivering voice repeated. And Prince Vasili had to go
without receiving any explanation.

A week later, Pierre, having taken leave of his new friends, the
Masons, and leaving large sums of money with them for alms, went
away to his estates. His new brethren gave him letters to the Kiev and
Odessa Masons and promised to write to him and guide him in his new
activity.





CHAPTER VI


The duel between Pierre and Dolokhov was hushed up and, in spite
of the Emperor's severity regarding duels at that time, neither the
principals nor their seconds suffered for it. But the story of the
duel, confirmed by Pierre's rupture with his wife, was the talk of
society. Pierre who had been regarded with patronizing condescension
when he was an illegitimate son, and petted and extolled when he was
the best match in Russia, had sunk greatly in the esteem of society
after his marriage--when the marriageable daughters and their
mothers had nothing to hope from him--especially as he did not know
how, and did not wish, to court society's favor. Now he alone was
blamed for what had happened, he was said to be insanely jealous and
subject like his father to fits of bloodthirsty rage. And when after
Pierre's departure Helene returned to Petersburg, she was received
by all her acquaintances not only cordially, but even with a shade
of deference due to her misfortune. When conversation turned on her
husband Helene assumed a dignified expression, which with
characteristic tact she had acquired though she did not understand its
significance. This expression suggested that she had resolved to
endure her troubles uncomplainingly and that her husband was a cross
laid upon her by God. Prince Vasili expressed his opinion more openly.
He shrugged his shoulders when Pierre was mentioned and, pointing to
his forehead, remarked:

"A bit touched--I always said so."

"I said from the first," declared Anna Pavlovna referring to Pierre,
"I said at the time and before anyone else" (she insisted on her
priority) "that that senseless young man was spoiled by the depraved
ideas of these days. I said so even at the time when everybody was
in raptures about him, when he had just returned from abroad, and
when, if you remember, he posed as a sort of Marat at one of my
soirees. And how has it ended? I was against this marriage even then
and foretold all that has happened."

Anna Pavlovna continued to give on free evenings the same kind of
soirees as before--such as she alone had the gift of arranging--at
which was to be found "the cream of really good society, the bloom
of the intellectual essence of Petersburg," as she herself put it.
Besides this refined selection of society Anna Pavlovna's receptions
were also distinguished by the fact that she always presented some new
and interesting person to the visitors and that nowhere else was the
state of the political thermometer of legitimate Petersburg court
society so dearly and distinctly indicated.

Toward the end of 1806, when all the sad details of Napoleon's
destruction of the Prussian army at Jena and Auerstadt and the
surrender of most of the Prussian fortresses had been received, when
our troops had already entered Prussia and our second war with
Napoleon was beginning, Anna Pavlovna gave one of her soirees. The
"cream of really good society" consisted of the fascinating Helene,
forsaken by her husband, Mortemart, the delightful Prince Hippolyte
who had just returned from Vienna, two diplomatists, the old aunt, a
young man referred to in that drawing room as "a man of great merit"
(un homme de beaucoup de merite), a newly appointed maid of honor
and her mother, and several other less noteworthy persons.

The novelty Anna Pavlovna was setting before her guests that evening
was Boris Drubetskoy, who had just arrived as a special messenger from
the Prussian army and was aide-de-camp to a very important personage.

The temperature shown by the political thermometer to the company
that evening was this:

"Whatever the European sovereigns and commanders may do to
countenance Bonaparte, and to cause me, and us in general, annoyance
and mortification, our opinion of Bonaparte cannot alter. We shall not
cease to express our sincere views on that subject, and can only say
to the King Prussia and others: 'So much the worse for you. Tu l'as
voulu, George Dandin,' that's all we have to say about it!"

When Boris, who was to be served up to the guests, entered the
drawing room, almost all the company had assembled, and the
conversation, guided by Anna Pavlovna, was about our diplomatic
relations with Austria and the hope of an alliance with her.

Boris, grown more manly and looking fresh, rosy and
self-possessed, entered the drawing room elegantly dressed in the
uniform of an aide-de-camp and was duly conducted to pay his
respects to the aunt and then brought back to the general circle.

Anna Pavlovna gave him her shriveled hand to kiss and introduced him
to several persons whom he did not know, giving him a whispered
description of each.

"Prince Hippolyte Kuragin, M. Krug, the charge d'affaires from 
Copenhagen--a profound intellect," and simply, "Mr. Shitov--a 
man of great merit"--this of the man usually so described.

Thanks to Anna Mikhaylovna's efforts, his own tastes, and the
peculiarities of his reserved nature, Boris had managed during his
service to place himself very advantageously. He was aide-de-camp to a
very important personage, had been sent on a very important mission to
Prussia, and had just returned from there as a special messenger. He
had become thoroughly conversant with that unwritten code with which
he had been so pleased at Olmutz and according to which an ensign
might rank incomparably higher than a general, and according to
which what was needed for success in the service was not effort or
work, or courage, or perseverance, but only the knowledge of how to
get on with those who can grant rewards, and he was himself often
surprised at the rapidity of his success and at the inability of
others to understand these things. In consequence of this discovery
his whole manner of life, all his relations with old friends, all
his plans for his future, were completely altered. He was not rich,
but would spend his last groat to be better dressed than others, and
would rather deprive himself of many pleasures than allow himself to
be seen in a shabby equipage or appear in the streets of Petersburg in
an old uniform. He made friends with and sought the acquaintance of
only those above him in position and who could therefore be of use
to him. He liked Petersburg and despised Moscow. The remembrance of
the Rostovs' house and of his childish love for Natasha was unpleasant
to him and he had not once been to see the Rostovs since the day of
his departure for the army. To be in Anna Pavlovna's drawing room he
considered an important step up in the service, and he at once
understood his role, letting his hostess make use of whatever interest
he had to offer. He himself carefully scanned each face, appraising
the possibilities of establishing intimacy with each of those present,
and the advantages that might accrue. He took the seat indicated to
him beside the fair Helene and listened to the general conversation.

"Vienna considers the bases of the proposed treaty so unattainable
that not even a continuity of most brilliant successes would secure
them, and she doubts the means we have of gaining them. That is the
actual phrase used by the Vienna cabinet," said the Danish charge
d'affaires.

"The doubt is flattering," said "the man of profound intellect,"
with a subtle smile.

"We must distinguish between the Vienna cabinet and the Emperor of
Austria," said Mortemart. "The Emperor of Austria can never have
thought of such a thing, it is only the cabinet that says it."

"Ah, my dear vicomte," put in Anna Pavlovna, "L'Urope" (for some
reason she called it Urope as if that were a specially refined
French pronunciation which she could allow herself when conversing
with a Frenchman), "L'Urope ne sera jamais notre alliee sincere."*


*"Europe will never be our sincere ally."


After that Anna Pavlovna led up to the courage and firmness of the
King of Prussia, in order to draw Boris into the conversation.

Boris listened attentively to each of the speakers, awaiting his
turn, but managed meanwhile to look round repeatedly at his
neighbor, the beautiful Helene, whose eyes several times met those
of the handsome young aide-de-camp with a smile.

Speaking of the position of Prussia, Anna Pavlovna very naturally
asked Boris to tell them about his journey to Glogau and in what state
he found the Prussian army. Boris, speaking with deliberation, told
them in pure, correct French many interesting details about the armies
and the court, carefully abstaining from expressing an opinion of
his own about the facts he was recounting. For some time he
engrossed the general attention, and Anna Pavlovna felt that the
novelty she had served up was received with pleasure by all her
visitors. The greatest attention of all to Boris' narrative was
shown by Helene. She asked him several questions about his journey and
seemed greatly interested in the state of the Prussian army. As soon
as he had finished she turned to him with her usual smile.

"You absolutely must come and see me," she said in a tone that
implied that, for certain considerations he could not know of, this
was absolutely necessary.

"On Tuesday between eight and nine. It will give me great pleasure."

Boris promised to fulfill her wish and was about to begin a
conversation with her, when Anna Pavlovna called him away on the
pretext that her aunt wished to hear him.

"You know her husband, of course?" said Anna Pavlovna, closing her
eyes and indicating Helene with a sorrowful gesture. "Ah, she is
such an unfortunate and charming woman! Don't mention him before
her--please don't! It is too painful for her!"





CHAPTER VII


When Boris and Anna Pavlovna returned to the others Prince Hippolyte
had the ear of the company.

Bending forward in his armchair he said: "Le Roi de Prusse!" and
having said this laughed. Everyone turned toward him.

"Le Roi de Prusse?" Hippolyte said interrogatively, again
laughing, and then calmly and seriously sat back in his chair. Anna
Pavlovna waited for him to go on, but as he seemed quite decided to
say no more she began to tell of how at Potsdam the impious
Bonaparte had stolen the sword of Frederick the Great.

"It is the sword of Frederick the Great which I..." she began, but
Hippolyte interrupted her with the words: "Le Roi de Prusse..." and
again, as soon as all turned toward him, excused himself and
said no more.

Anna Pavlovna frowned. Mortemart, Hippolyte's friend, addressed
him firmly.

"Come now, what about your Roi de Prusse?"

Hippolyte laughed as if ashamed of laughing.

"Oh, it's nothing. I only wished to say..." (he wanted to repeat a
joke he had heard in Vienna and which he had been trying all that
evening to get in) "I only wished to say that we are wrong to fight
pour le Roi de Prusse!"

Boris smiled circumspectly, so that it might be taken as ironical or
appreciative according to the way the joke was received. Everybody
laughed.

"Your joke is too bad, it's witty but unjust," said Anna Pavlovna,
shaking her little shriveled finger at him.

"We are not fighting pour le Roi de Prusse, but for right
principles. Oh, that wicked Prince Hippolyte!" she said.

The conversation did not flag all evening and turned chiefly on
the political news. It became particularly animated toward the end
of the evening when the rewards bestowed by the Emperor were
mentioned.

"You know N--N--received a snuffbox with the portrait last year?"
said "the man of profound intellect." "Why shouldn't S--S--get the
same distinction?"

"Pardon me! A snuffbox with the Emperor's portrait is a reward but
not a distinction," said the diplomatist--"a gift, rather."

"There are precedents, I may mention Schwarzenberg."

"It's impossible," replied another.

"Will you bet? The ribbon of the order is a different matter...."

When everybody rose to go, Helene who had spoken very little all the
evening again turned to Boris, asking him in a tone of caressing
significant command to come to her on Tuesday.

"It is of great importance to me," she said, turning with a smile
toward Anna Pavlovna, and Anna Pavlovna, with the same sad smile
with which she spoke of her exalted patroness, supported Helene's
wish.

It seemed as if from some words Boris had spoken that evening
about the Prussian army, Helene had suddenly found it necessary to see
him. She seemed to promise to explain that necessity to him when he
came on Tuesday.

But on Tuesday evening, having come to Helene's splendid salon,
Boris received no clear explanation of why it had been necessary for
him to come. There were other guests and the countess talked little to
him, and only as he kissed her hand on taking leave said
unexpectedly and in a whisper, with a strangely unsmiling face:
"Come to dinner tomorrow... in the evening. You must come.... Come!"

During that stay in Petersburg, Boris became an intimate in the
countess' house.





CHAPTER VIII


The war was flaming up and nearing the Russian frontier.
Everywhere one heard curses on Bonaparte, "the enemy of mankind."
Militiamen and recruits were being enrolled in the villages, and
from the seat of war came contradictory news, false as usual and
therefore variously interpreted. The life of old Prince Bolkonski,
Prince Andrew, and Princess Mary had greatly changed since 1805.

In 1806 the old prince was made one of the eight commanders in chief
then appointed to supervise the enrollment decreed throughout
Russia. Despite the weakness of age, which had become particularly
noticeable since the time when he thought his son had been killed,
he did not think it right to refuse a duty to which he had been
appointed by the Emperor himself, and this fresh opportunity for
action gave him new energy and strength. He was continually
traveling through the three provinces entrusted to him, was pedantic
in the fulfillment of his duties, severe to cruelty with his
subordinates, and went into everything down to the minutest details
himself. Princess Mary had ceased taking lessons in mathematics from
her father, and when the old prince was at home went to his study with
the wet nurse and little Prince Nicholas (as his grandfather called
him). The baby Prince Nicholas lived with his wet nurse and nurse
Savishna in the late princess' rooms and Princess Mary spent most of
the day in the nursery, taking a mother's place to her little nephew
as best she could. Mademoiselle Bourienne, too, seemed passionately
fond of the boy, and Princess Mary often deprived herself to give
her friend the pleasure of dandling the little angel--as she called
her nephew--and playing with him.

Near the altar of the church at Bald Hills there was a chapel over
the tomb of the little princess, and in this chapel was a marble
monument brought from Italy, representing an angel with outspread
wings ready to fly upwards. The angel's upper lip was slightly
raised as though about to smile, and once on coming out of the
chapel Prince Andrew and Princess Mary admitted to one another that
the angel's face reminded them strangely of the little princess. But
what was still stranger, though of this Prince Andrew said nothing
to his sister, was that in the expression the sculptor had happened to
give the angel's face, Prince Andrew read the same mild reproach he
had read on the face of his dead wife: "Ah, why have you done this
to me?"

Soon after Prince Andrew's return the old prince made over to him
a large estate, Bogucharovo, about twenty-five miles from Bald
Hills. Partly because of the depressing memories associated with
Bald Hills, partly because Prince Andrew did not always feel equal
to bearing with his father's peculiarities, and partly because he
needed solitude, Prince Andrew made use of Bogucharovo, began building
and spent most of his time there.

After the Austerlitz campaign Prince Andrew had firmly resolved
not to continue his military service, and when the war recommenced and
everybody had to serve, he took a post under his father in the
recruitment so as to avoid active service. The old prince and his
son seemed to have changed roles since the campaign of 1805. The old
man, roused by activity, expected the best results from the new
campaign, while Prince Andrew on the contrary, taking no part in the
war and secretly regretting this, saw only the dark side.

On February 26, 1807, the old prince set off on one of his circuits.
Prince Andrew remained at Bald Hills as usual during his father's
absence. Little Nicholas had been unwell for four days. The coachman
who had driven the old prince to town returned bringing papers and
letters for Prince Andrew.

Not finding the young prince in his study the valet went with the
letters to Princess Mary's apartments, but did not find him there.
He was told that the prince had gone to the nursery.

"If you please, your excellency, Petrusha has brought some
papers," said one of the nursemaids to Prince Andrew who was sitting
on a child's little chair while, frowning and with trembling hands, he
poured drops from a medicine bottle into a wineglass half full of
water.

"What is it?" he said crossly, and, his hand shaking
unintentionally, he poured too many drops into the glass. He threw the
mixture onto the floor and asked for some more water. The maid brought
it.

There were in the room a child's cot, two boxes, two armchairs, a
table, a child's table, and the little chair on which Prince Andrew
was sitting. The curtains were drawn, and a single candle was
burning on the table, screened by a bound music book so that the light
did not fall on the cot.

"My dear," said Princess Mary, addressing her brother from beside
the cot where she was standing, "better wait a bit... later..."

"Oh, leave off, you always talk nonsense and keep putting things
off--and this is what comes of it!" said Prince Andrew in an
exasperated whisper, evidently meaning to wound his sister.

"My dear, really... it's better not to wake him... he's asleep,"
said the princess in a tone of entreaty.

Prince Andrew got up and went on tiptoe up to the little bed,
wineglass in hand.

"Perhaps we'd really better not wake him," he said hesitating.

"As you please... really... I think so... but as you please," said
Princess Mary, evidently intimidated and confused that her opinion had
prevailed. She drew her brother's attention to the maid who was
calling him in a whisper.

It was the second night that neither of them had slept, watching the
boy who was in a high fever. These last days, mistrusting their
household doctor and expecting another for whom they had sent to town,
they had been trying first one remedy and then another. Worn out by
sleeplessness and anxiety they threw their burden of sorrow on one
another and reproached and disputed with each other.

"Petrusha has come with papers from your father," whispered the
maid.

Prince Andrew went out.

"Devil take them!" he muttered, and after listening to the verbal
instructions his father had sent and taking the correspondence and his
father's letter, he returned to the nursery.

"Well?" he asked.

"Still the same. Wait, for heaven's sake. Karl Ivanich always says
that sleep is more important than anything," whispered Princess Mary
with a sigh.

Prince Andrew went up to the child and felt him. He was burning hot.

"Confound you and your Karl Ivanich!" He took the glass with the
drops and again went up to the cot.

"Andrew, don't!" said Princess Mary.

But he scowled at her angrily though also with suffering in his
eyes, and stooped glass in hand over the infant.

"But I wish it," he said. "I beg you--give it him!"

Princess Mary shrugged her shoulders but took the glass submissively
and calling the nurse began giving the medicine. The child screamed
hoarsely. Prince Andrew winced and, clutching his head, went out and
sat down on a sofa in the next room.

He still had all the letters in his hand. Opening them
mechanically he began reading. The old prince, now and then using
abbreviations, wrote in his large elongated hand on blue paper as
follows:


Have just this moment received by special messenger very joyful
news--if it's not false. Bennigsen seems to have obtained a complete
victory over Buonaparte at Eylau. In Petersburg everyone is rejoicing,
and the rewards sent to the army are innumerable. Though he is a
German--I congratulate him! I can't make out what the commander at
Korchevo--a certain Khandrikov--is up to; till now the additional
men and provisions have not arrived. Gallop off to him at once and say
I'll have his head off if everything is not here in a week. Have
received another letter about the Preussisch-Eylau battle from
Petenka--he took part in it--and it's all true. When mischief-makers
don't meddle even a German beats Buonaparte. He is said to be
fleeing in great disorder. Mind you gallop off to Korchevo without
delay and carry out instructions!


Prince Andrew sighed and broke the seal of another envelope. It
was a closely written letter of two sheets from Bilibin. He folded
it up without reading it and reread his father's letter, ending with
the words: "Gallop off to Korchevo and carry out instructions!"

"No, pardon me, I won't go now till the child is better," thought
he, going to the door and looking into the nursery.

Princess Mary was still standing by the cot, gently rocking the
baby.

"Ah yes, and what else did he say that's unpleasant?" thought Prince
Andrew, recalling his father's letter. "Yes, we have gained a
victory over Bonaparte, just when I'm not serving. Yes, yes, he's
always poking fun at me.... Ah, well! Let him!" And he began reading
Bilibin's letter which was written in French. He read without
understanding half of it, read only to forget, if but for a moment,
what he had too long been thinking of so painfully to the exclusion of
all else.





CHAPTER IX


Bilibin was now at army headquarters in a diplomatic capacity, and
though he wrote in French and used French jests and French idioms,
he described the whole campaign with a fearless self-censure and
self-derision genuinely Russian. Bilibin wrote that the obligation
of diplomatic discretion tormented him, and he was happy to have in
Prince Andrew a reliable correspondent to whom he could pour out the
bile he had accumulated at the sight of all that was being done in the
army. The letter was old, having been written before the battle at
Preussisch-Eylau.

"Since the day of our brilliant success at Austerlitz," wrote
Bilibin, "as you know, my dear prince, I never leave headquarters. I
have certainly acquired a taste for war, and it is just as well for
me; what I have seen during these last three months is incredible.

"I begin ab ovo. 'The enemy of the human race,' as you know, attacks
the Prussians. The Prussians are our faithful allies who have only
betrayed us three times in three years. We take up their cause, but it
turns out that 'the enemy of the human race' pays no heed to our
fine speeches and in his rude and savage way throws himself on the
Prussians without giving them time to finish the parade they had
begun, and in two twists of the hand he breaks them to smithereens and
installs himself in the palace at Potsdam.

"'I most ardently desire,' writes the King of Prussia to
Bonaparte, 'that Your Majesty should be received and treated in my
palace in a manner agreeable to yourself, and in so far as
circumstances allowed, I have hastened to take all steps to that
end. May I have succeeded!' The Prussian generals pride themselves
on being polite to the French and lay down their arms at the first
demand.

"The head of the garrison at Glogau, with ten thousand men, asks the
King of Prussia what he is to do if he is summoned to surrender....
All this is absolutely true.

"In short, hoping to settle matters by taking up a warlike attitude,
it turns out that we have landed ourselves in war, and what is more,
in war on our own frontiers, with and for the King of Prussia. We have
everything in perfect order, only one little thing is lacking, namely,
a commander in chief. As it was considered that the Austerlitz success
might have been more decisive had the commander in chief not been so
young, all our octogenarians were reviewed, and of Prozorovski and
Kamenski the latter was preferred. The general comes to us,
Suvorov-like, in a kibitka, and is received with acclamations of joy
and triumph.

"On the 4th, the first courier arrives from Petersburg. The mails
are taken to the field marshal's room, for he likes to do everything
himself. I am called in to help sort the letters and take those
meant for us. The field marshal looks on and waits for letters
addressed to him. We search, but none are to be found. The field
marshal grows impatient and sets to work himself and finds letters
from the Emperor to Count T., Prince V., and others. Then he bursts
into one of his wild furies and rages at everyone and everything,
seizes the letters, opens them, and reads those from the Emperor
addressed to others. 'Ah! So that's the way they treat me! No
confidence in me! Ah, ordered to keep an eye on me! Very well then!
Get along with you!' So he writes the famous order of the day to
General Bennigsen:

'I am wounded and cannot ride and consequently cannot command the
army. You have brought your army corps to Pultusk, routed: here it
is exposed, and without fuel or forage, so something must be done,
and, as you yourself reported to Count Buxhowden yesterday, you must
think of retreating to our frontier--which do today.'

"'From all my riding,' he writes to the Emperor, 'I have got a
saddle sore which, coming after all my previous journeys, quite
prevents my riding and commanding so vast an army, so I have passed on
the command to the general next in seniority, Count Buxhowden,
having sent him my whole staff and all that belongs to it, advising
him if there is a lack of bread, to move farther into the interior
of Prussia, for only one day's ration of bread remains, and in some
regiments none at all, as reported by the division commanders,
Ostermann and Sedmoretzki, and all that the peasants had has been
eaten up. I myself will remain in hospital at Ostrolenka till I
recover. In regard to which I humbly submit my report, with the
information that if the army remains in its present bivouac another
fortnight there will not be a healthy man left in it by spring.

"'Grant leave to retire to his country seat to an old man who is
already in any case dishonored by being unable to fulfill the great
and glorious task for which he was chosen. I shall await your most
gracious permission here in hospital, that I may not have to play
the part of a secretary rather than commander in the army. My
removal from the army does not produce the slightest stir--a blind man
has left it. There are thousands such as I in Russia.'

"The field marshal is angry with the Emperor and he punishes us all,
isn't it logical?

"This is the first act. Those that follow are naturally increasingly
interesting and entertaining. After the field marshal's departure it
appears that we are within sight of the enemy and must give battle.
Buxhowden is commander in chief by seniority, but General Bennigsen
does not quite see it; more particularly as it is he and his corps who
are within sight of the enemy and he wishes to profit by the
opportunity to fight a battle 'on his own hand' as the Germans say. He
does so. This is the battle of Pultusk, which is considered a great
victory but in my opinion was nothing of the kind. We civilians, as
you know, have a very bad way of deciding whether a battle was won
or lost. Those who retreat after a battle have lost it is what we say;
and according to that it is we who lost the battle of Pultusk. In
short, we retreat after the battle but send a courier to Petersburg
with news of a victory, and General Bennigsen, hoping to receive
from Petersburg the post of commander in chief as a reward for his
victory, does not give up the command of the army to General
Buxhowden. During this interregnum we begin a very original and
interesting series of maneuvers. Our aim is no longer, as it should
be, to avoid or attack the enemy, but solely to avoid General
Buxhowden who by right of seniority should be our chief. So
energetically do we pursue this aim that after crossing an
unfordable river we burn the bridges to separate ourselves from our
enemy, who at the moment is not Bonaparte but Buxhowden. General
Buxhowden was all but attacked and captured by a superior enemy
force as a result of one of these maneuvers that enabled us to
escape him. Buxhowden pursues us--we scuttle. He hardly crosses the
river to our side before we recross to the other. At last our enemy.
Buxhowden, catches us and attacks. Both generals are angry, and the
result is a challenge on Buxhowden's part and an epileptic fit on
Bennigsen's. But at the critical moment the courier who carried the
news of our victory at Pultusk to Petersburg returns bringing our
appointment as commander in chief, and our first foe, Buxhowden, is
vanquished; we can now turn our thoughts to the second, Bonaparte. But
as it turns out, just at that moment a third enemy rises before us-
namely the Orthodox Russian soldiers, loudly demanding bread, meat,
biscuits, fodder, and whatnot! The stores are empty, the roads
impassable. The Orthodox begin looting, and in a way of which our last
campaign can give you no idea. Half the regiments form bands and scour
the countryside and put everything to fire and sword. The
inhabitants are totally ruined, the hospitals overflow with sick,
and famine is everywhere. Twice the marauders even attack our
headquarters, and the commander in chief has to ask for a battalion to
disperse them. During one of these attacks they carried off my empty
portmanteau and my dressing gown. The Emperor proposes to give all
commanders of divisions the right to shoot marauders, but I much
fear this will oblige one half the army to shoot the other."

At first Prince Andrew read with his eyes only, but after a while,
in spite of himself (although he knew how far it was safe to trust
Bilibin), what he had read began to interest him more and more. When
he had read thus far, he crumpled the letter up and threw it away.
It was not what he had read that vexed him, but the fact that the life
out there in which he had now no part could perturb him. He shut his
eyes, rubbed his forehead as if to rid himself of all interest in what
he had read, and listened to what was passing in the nursery. Suddenly
he thought he heard a strange noise through the door. He was seized
with alarm lest something should have happened to the child while he
was reading the letter. He went on tiptoe to the nursery door and
opened it.

Just as he went in he saw that the nurse was hiding something from
him with a scared look and that Princess Mary was no longer by the
cot.

"My dear," he heard what seemed to him her despairing whisper behind
him.

As often happens after long sleeplessness and long anxiety, he was
seized by an unreasoning panic--it occurred to him that the child
was dead. All that he saw and heard seemed to confirm this terror.

"All is over," he thought, and a cold sweat broke out on his
forehead. He went to the cot in confusion, sure that he would find
it empty and that the nurse had been hiding the dead baby. He drew the
curtain aside and for some time his frightened, restless eyes could
not find the baby. At last he saw him: the rosy boy had tossed about
till he lay across the bed with his head lower than the pillow, and
was smacking his lips in his sleep and breathing evenly.

Prince Andrew was as glad to find the boy like that, as if he had
already lost him. He bent over him and, as his sister had taught
him, tried with his lips whether the child was still feverish. The
soft forehead was moist. Prince Andrew touched the head with his hand;
even the hair was wet, so profusely had the child perspired. He was
not dead, but evidently the crisis was over and he was convalescent.
Prince Andrew longed to snatch up, to squeeze, to hold to his heart,
this helpless little creature, but dared not do so. He stood over him,
gazing at his head and at the little arms and legs which showed
under the blanket. He heard a rustle behind him and a shadow
appeared under the curtain of the cot. He did not look round, but
still gazing at the infant's face listened to his regular breathing.
The dark shadow was Princess Mary, who had come up to the cot with
noiseless steps, lifted the curtain, and dropped it again behind
her. Prince Andrew recognized her without looking and held out his
hand to her. She pressed it.

"He has perspired," said Prince Andrew.

"I was coming to tell you so."

The child moved slightly in his sleep, smiled, and rubbed his
forehead against the pillow.

Prince Andrew looked at his sister. In the dim shadow of the curtain
her luminous eyes shone more brightly than usual from the tears of joy
that were in them. She leaned over to her brother and kissed him,
slightly catching the curtain of the cot. Each made the other a
warning gesture and stood still in the dim light beneath the curtain
as if not wishing to leave that seclusion where they three were shut
off from all the world. Prince Andrew was the first to move away,
ruffling his hair against the muslin of the curtain.

"Yes, this is the one thing left me now," he said with a sigh.




CHAPTER X


Soon after his admission to the Masonic Brotherhood, Pierre went
to the Kiev province, where he had the greatest number of serfs,
taking with him full directions which he had written down for his
own guidance as to what he should do on his estates.

When he reached Kiev he sent for all his stewards to the head office
and explained to them his intentions and wishes. He told them that
steps would be taken immediately to free his serfs--and that till then
they were not to be overburdened with labor, women while nursing their
babies were not to be sent to work, assistance was to be given to
the serfs, punishments were to be admonitory and not corporal, and
hospitals, asylums, and schools were to be established on all the
estates. Some of the stewards (there were semiliterate foremen among
them) listened with alarm, supposing these words to mean that the
young count was displeased with their management and embezzlement of
money, some after their first fright were amused by Pierre's lisp
and the new words they had not heard before, others simply enjoyed
hearing how the master talked, while the cleverest among them,
including the chief steward, understood from this speech how they
could best handle the master for their own ends.

The chief steward expressed great sympathy with Pierre's intentions,
but remarked that besides these changes it would be necessary to go
into the general state of affairs which was far from satisfactory.

Despite Count Bezukhov's enormous wealth, since he had come into
an income which was said to amount to five hundred thousand rubles a
year, Pierre felt himself far poorer than when his father had made him
an allowance of ten thousand rubles. He had a dim perception of the
following budget:

About 80,000 went in payments on all the estates to the Land Bank,
about 30,000 went for the upkeep of the estate near Moscow, the town
house, and the allowance to the three princesses; about 15,000 was
given in pensions and the same amount for asylums; 150,000 alimony was
sent to the countess; about 70,00 went for interest on debts. The
building of a new church, previously begun, had cost about 10,000 in
each of the last two years, and he did not know how the rest, about
100,000 rubles, was spent, and almost every year he was obliged to
borrow. Besides this the chief steward wrote every year telling him of
fires and bad harvests, or of the necessity of rebuilding factories
and workshops. So the first task Pierre had to face was one for
which he had very little aptitude or inclination--practical business.

He discussed estate affairs every day with his chief steward. But he
felt that this did not forward matters at all. He felt that these
consultations were detached from real affairs and did not link up with
them or make them move. On the one hand, the chief steward put the
state of things to him in the very worst light, pointing out the
necessity of paying off the debts and undertaking new activities
with serf labor, to which Pierre did not agree. On the other hand,
Pierre demanded that steps should be taken to liberate the serfs,
which the steward met by showing the necessity of first paying off the
loans from the Land Bank, and the consequent impossibility of a speedy
emancipation.

The steward did not say it was quite impossible, but suggested
selling the forests in the province of Kostroma, the land lower down
the river, and the Crimean estate, in order to make it possible: all
of which operations according to him were connected with such
complicated measures--the removal of injunctions, petitions,
permits, and so on--that Pierre became quite bewildered and only
replied:

"Yes, yes, do so."

Pierre had none of the practical persistence that would have enabled
him to attend to the business himself and so he disliked it and only
tried to pretend to the steward that he was attending to it. The
steward for his part tried to pretend to the count that he
considered these consultations very valuable for the proprietor and
troublesome to himself.

In Kiev Pierre found some people he knew, and strangers hastened
to make his acquaintance and joyfully welcomed the rich newcomer,
the largest landowner of the province. Temptations to Pierre's
greatest weakness--the one to which he had confessed when admitted
to the Lodge--were so strong that he could not resist them. Again
whole days, weeks, and months of his life passed in as great a rush
and were as much occupied with evening parties, dinners, lunches,
and balls, giving him no time for reflection, as in Petersburg.
Instead of the new life he had hoped to lead he still lived the old
life, only in new surroundings.

Of the three precepts of Freemasonry Pierre realized that he did not
fulfill the one which enjoined every Mason to set an example of
moral life, and that of the seven virtues he lacked two--morality
and the love of death. He consoled himself with the thought that he
fulfilled another of the precepts--that of reforming the human race-
and had other virtues--love of his neighbor, and especially
generosity.

In the spring of 1807 he decided to return to Petersburg. On the way
he intended to visit all his estates and see for himself how far his
orders had been carried out and in what state were the serfs whom
God had entrusted to his care and whom he intended to benefit.

The chief steward, who considered the young count's attempts
almost insane--unprofitable to himself, to the count, and to the
serfs--made some concessions. Continuing to represent the liberation
of the serfs as impracticable, he arranged for the erection of large
buildings--schools, hospitals, and asylums--on all the estates
before the master arrived. Everywhere preparations were made not for
ceremonious welcomes (which he knew Pierre would not like), but for
just such gratefully religious ones, with offerings of icons and the
bread and salt of hospitality, as, according to his understanding of
his master, would touch and delude him.

The southern spring, the comfortable rapid traveling in a Vienna
carriage, and the solitude of the road, all had a gladdening effect on
Pierre. The estates he had not before visited were each more
picturesque than the other; the serfs everywhere seemed thriving and
touchingly grateful for the benefits conferred on them. Everywhere
were receptions, which though they embarrassed Pierre awakened a
joyful feeling in the depth of his heart. In one place the peasants
presented him with bread and salt and an icon of Saint Peter and Saint
Paul, asking permission, as a mark of their gratitude for the benefits
he had conferred on them, to build a new chantry to the church at
their own expense in honor of Peter and Paul, his patron saints. In
another place the women with infants in arms met him to thank him
for releasing them from hard work. On a third estate the priest,
bearing a cross, came to meet him surrounded by children whom, by
the count's generosity, he was instructing in reading, writing, and
religion. On all his estates Pierre saw with his own eyes brick
buildings erected or in course of erection, all on one plan, for
hospitals, schools, and almshouses, which were soon to be opened.
Everywhere he saw the stewards' accounts, according to which the
serfs' manorial labor had been diminished, and heard the touching
thanks of deputations of serfs in their full-skirted blue coats.

What Pierre did not know was that the place where they presented him
with bread and salt and wished to build a chantry in honor of Peter
and Paul was a market village where a fair was held on St. Peter's
day, and that the richest peasants (who formed the deputation) had
begun the chantry long before, but that nine tenths of the peasants in
that villages were in a state of the greatest poverty. He did not know
that since the nursing mothers were no longer sent to work on his
land, they did still harder work on their own land. He did not know
that the priest who met him with the cross oppressed the peasants by
his exactions, and that the pupils' parents wept at having to let
him take their children and secured their release by heavy payments.
He did not know that the brick buildings, built to plan, were being
built by serfs whose manorial labor was thus increased, though
lessened on paper. He did not know that where the steward had shown
him in the accounts that the serfs' payments had been diminished by
a third, their obligatory manorial work had been increased by a
half. And so Pierre was delighted with his visit to his estates and
quite recovered the philanthropic mood in which he had left
Petersburg, and wrote enthusiastic letters to his "brother-instructor"
as he called the Grand Master.

"How easy it is, how little effort it needs, to do so much good,"
thought Pierre, "and how little attention we pay to it!"

He was pleased at the gratitude he received, but felt abashed at
receiving it. This gratitude reminded him of how much more he might do
for these simple, kindly people.

The chief steward, a very stupid but cunning man who saw perfectly
through the naive and intelligent count and played with him as with
a toy, seeing the effect these prearranged receptions had on Pierre,
pressed him still harder with proofs of the impossibility and above
all the uselessness of freeing the serfs, who were quite happy as it
was.

Pierre in his secret soul agreed with the steward that it would be
difficult to imagine happier people, and that God only knew what would
happen to them when they were free, but he insisted, though
reluctantly, on what he thought right. The steward promised to do
all in his power to carry out the count's wishes, seeing clearly
that not only would the count never be able to find out whether all
measures had been taken for the sale of the land and forests and to
release them from the Land Bank, but would probably never even inquire
and would never know that the newly erected buildings were standing
empty and that the serfs continued to give in money and work all
that other people's serfs gave--that is to say, all that could be
got out of them.





CHAPTER XI


Returning from his journey through South Russia in the happiest
state of mind, Pierre carried out an intention he had long had of
visiting his friend Bolkonski, whom he had not seen for two years.

Bogucharovo lay in a flat uninteresting part of the country among
fields and forests of fir and birch, which were partly cut down. The
house lay behind a newly dug pond filled with water to the brink and
with banks still bare of grass. It was at the end of a village that
stretched along the highroad in the midst of a young copse in which
were a few fir trees.

The homestead consisted of a threshing floor, outhouses, stables,
a bathhouse, a lodge, and a large brick house with semicircular facade
still in course of construction. Round the house was a garden newly
laid out. The fences and gates were new and solid; two fire pumps
and a water cart, painted green, stood in a shed; the paths were
straight, the bridges were strong and had handrails. Everything bore
an impress of tidiness and good management. Some domestic serfs Pierre
met, in reply to inquiries as to where the prince lived, pointed out a
small newly built lodge close to the pond. Anton, a man who had looked
after Prince Andrew in his boyhood, helped Pierre out of his carriage,
said that the prince was at home, and showed him into a clean little
anteroom.

Pierre was struck by the modesty of the small though clean house
after the brilliant surroundings in which he had last met his friend
in Petersburg.

He quickly entered the small reception room with its
still-unplastered wooden walls redolent of pine, and would have gone
farther, but Anton ran ahead on tiptoe and knocked at a door.

"Well, what is it?" came a sharp, unpleasant voice.

"A visitor," answered Anton.

"Ask him to wait," and the sound was heard of a chair being pushed
back.

Pierre went with rapid steps to the door and suddenly came face to
face with Prince Andrew, who came out frowning and looking old. Pierre
embraced him and lifting his spectacles kissed his friend on the cheek
and looked at him closely.

"Well, I did not expect you, I am very glad," said Prince Andrew.

Pierre said nothing; he looked fixedly at his friend with
surprise. He was struck by the change in him. His words were kindly
and there was a smile on his lips and face, but his eyes were dull and
lifeless and in spite of his evident wish to do so he could not give
them a joyous and glad sparkle. Prince Andrew had grown thinner,
paler, and more manly-looking, but what amazed and estranged Pierre
till he got used to it were his inertia and a wrinkle on his brow
indicating prolonged concentration on some one thought.

As is usually the case with people meeting after a prolonged
separation, it was long before their conversation could settle on
anything. They put questions and gave brief replies about things
they knew ought to be talked over at length. At last the
conversation gradually settled on some of the topics at first
lightly touched on: their past life, plans for the future, Pierre's
journeys and occupations, the war, and so on. The preoccupation and
despondency which Pierre had noticed in his friend's look was now
still more clearly expressed in the smile with which he listened to
Pierre, especially when he spoke with joyful animation of the past
or the future. It was as if Prince Andrew would have liked to
sympathize with what Pierre was saying, but could not. The latter
began to feel that it was in bad taste to speak of his enthusiasms,
dreams, and hopes of happiness or goodness, in Prince Andrew's
presence. He was ashamed to express his new Masonic views, which had
been particularly revived and strengthened by his late tour. He
checked himself, fearing to seem naive, yet he felt an irresistible
desire to show his friend as soon as possible that he was now a
quite different, and better, Pierre than he had been in Petersburg.

"I can't tell you how much I have lived through since then. I hardly
know myself again."

"Yes, we have altered much, very much, since then," said Prince
Andrew.

"Well, and you? What are your plans?"

"Plans!" repeated Prince Andrew ironically. "My plans?" he said,
as if astonished at the word. "Well, you see, I'm building. I mean
to settle here altogether next year...."

Pierre looked silently and searchingly into Prince Andrew's face,
which had grown much older.

"No, I meant to ask..." Pierre began, but Prince Andrew
interrupted him.

"But why talk of me?... Talk to me, yes, tell me about your
travels and all you have been doing on your estates."

Pierre began describing what he had done on his estates, trying as
far as possible to conceal his own part in the improvements that had
been made. Prince Andrew several times prompted Pierre's story of what
he had been doing, as though it were all an old-time story, and he
listened not only without interest but even as if ashamed of what
Pierre was telling him.

Pierre felt uncomfortable and even depressed in his friend's company
and at last became silent.

"I'll tell you what, my dear fellow," said Prince Andrew, who
evidently also felt depressed and constrained with his visitor, "I
am only bivouacking here and have just come to look round. I am
going back to my sister today. I will introduce you to her. But of
course you know her already," he said, evidently trying to entertain a
visitor with whom he now found nothing in common. "We will go after
dinner. And would you now like to look round my place?"

They went out and walked about till dinnertime, talking of the
political news and common acquaintances like people who do not know
each other intimately. Prince Andrew spoke with some animation and
interest only of the new homestead he was constructing and its
buildings, but even here, while on the scaffolding, in the midst of
a talk explaining the future arrangements of the house, he interrupted
himself:

"However, this is not at all interesting. Let us have dinner, and
then we'll set off."

At dinner, conversation turned on Pierre's marriage.

"I was very much surprised when I heard of it," said Prince Andrew.

Pierre blushed, as he always did when it was mentioned, and said
hurriedly: "I will tell you some time how it all happened. But you
know it is all over, and forever."

"Forever?" said Prince Andrew. "Nothing's forever."

"But you know how it all ended, don't you? You heard of the duel?"

"And so you had to go through that too!"

"One thing I thank God for is that I did not kill that man," said
Pierre.

"Why so?" asked Prince Andrew. "To kill a vicious dog is a very good
thing really."

"No, to kill a man is bad--wrong."

"Why is it wrong?" urged Prince Andrew. "It is not given to man to
know what is right and what is wrong. Men always did and always will
err, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong."

"What does harm to another is wrong," said Pierre, feeling with
pleasure that for the first time since his arrival Prince Andrew was
roused, had begun to talk, and wanted to express what had brought
him to his present state.

"And who has told you what is bad for another man?" he asked.

"Bad! Bad!" exclaimed Pierre. "We all know what is bad for
ourselves."

"Yes, we know that, but the harm I am conscious of in myself is
something I cannot inflict on others," said Prince Andrew, growing
more and more animated and evidently wishing to express his new
outlook to Pierre. He spoke in French. "I only know two very real
evils in life: remorse and illness. The only good is the absence of
those evils. To live for myself avoiding those two evils is my whole
philosophy now."

"And love of one's neighbor, and self-sacrifice?" began Pierre. "No,
I can't agree with you! To live only so as not to do evil and not to
have to repent is not enough. I lived like that, I lived for myself
and ruined my life. And only now when I am living, or at least trying"
(Pierre's modesty made him correct himself) "to live for others,
only now have I understood all the happiness of life. No, I shall
not agree with you, and you do not really believe what you are
saying." Prince Andrew looked silently at Pierre with an ironic smile.

"When you see my sister, Princess Mary, you'll get on with her,"
he said. "Perhaps you are right for yourself," he added after a
short pause, "but everyone lives in his own way. You lived for
yourself and say you nearly ruined your life and only found
happiness when you began living for others. I experienced just the
reverse. I lived for glory.--And after all what is glory? The same
love of others, a desire to do something for them, a desire for
their approval.--So I lived for others, and not almost, but quite,
ruined my life. And I have become calmer since I began to live only
for myself."

"But what do you mean by living only for yourself?" asked Pierre,
growing excited. "What about your son, your sister, and your father?"

"But that's just the same as myself--they are not others," explained
Prince Andrew. "The others, one's neighbors, le prochain, as you and
Princess Mary call it, are the chief source of all error and evil.
Le prochain--your Kiev peasants to whom you want to do good."

And he looked at Pierre with a mocking, challenging expression. He
evidently wished to draw him on.

"You are joking," replied Pierre, growing more and more excited.
"What error or evil can there be in my wishing to do good, and even
doing a little--though I did very little and did it very badly? What
evil can there be in it if unfortunate people, our serfs, people
like ourselves, were growing up and dying with no idea of God and
truth beyond ceremonies and meaningless prayers and are now instructed
in a comforting belief in future life, retribution, recompense, and
consolation? What evil and error are there in it, if people were dying
of disease without help while material assistance could so easily be
rendered, and I supplied them with a doctor, a hospital, and an asylum
for the aged? And is it not a palpable, unquestionable good if a
peasant, or a woman with a baby, has no rest day or night and I give
them rest and leisure?" said Pierre, hurrying and lisping. "And I have
done that though badly and to a small extent; but I have done
something toward it and you cannot persuade me that it was not a
good action, and more than that, you can't make me believe that you do
not think so yourself. And the main thing is," he continued, "that I
know, and know for certain, that the enjoyment of doing this good is
the only sure happiness in life."

"Yes, if you put it like that it's quite a different matter," said
Prince Andrew. "I build a house and lay out a garden, and you build
hospitals. The one and the other may serve as a pastime. But what's
right and what's good must be judged by one who knows all, but not
by us. Well, you want an argument," he added, "come on then."

They rose from the table and sat down in the entrance porch which
served as a veranda.

"Come, let's argue then," said Prince Andrew, "You talk of schools,"
he went on, crooking a finger, "education and so forth; that is, you
want to raise him" (pointing to a peasant who passed by them taking
off his cap) "from his animal condition and awaken in him spiritual
needs, while it seems to me that animal happiness is the only
happiness possible, and that is just what you want to deprive him
of. I envy him, but you want to make him what I am, without giving him
my means. Then you say, 'lighten his toil.' But as I see it,
physical labor is as essential to him, as much a condition of his
existence, as mental activity is to you or me. You can't help
thinking. I go to bed after two in the morning, thoughts come and I
can't sleep but toss about till dawn, because I think and can't help
thinking, just as he can't help plowing and mowing; if he didn't, he
would go to the drink shop or fall ill. Just as I could not stand
his terrible physical labor but should die of it in a week, so he
could not stand my physical idleness, but would grow fat and die.
The third thing--what else was it you talked about?" and Prince Andrew
crooked a third finger. "Ah, yes, hospitals, medicine. He has a fit,
he is dying, and you come and bleed him and patch him up. He will drag
about as a cripple, a burden to everybody, for another ten years. It
would be far easier and simpler for him to die. Others are being
born and there are plenty of them as it is. It would be different if
you grudged losing a laborer--that's how I regard him--but you want to
cure him from love of him. And he does not want that. And besides,
what a notion that medicine ever cured anyone! Killed them, yes!" said
he, frowning angrily and turning away from Pierre.

Prince Andrew expressed his ideas so clearly and distinctly that
it was evident he had reflected on this subject more than once, and he
spoke readily and rapidly like a man who has not talked for a long
time. His glance became more animated as his conclusions became more
hopeless.

"Oh, that is dreadful, dreadful!" said Pierre. "I don't understand
how one can live with such ideas. I had such moments myself not long
ago, in Moscow and when traveling, but at such times I collapsed so
that I don't live at all--everything seems hateful to me... myself
most of all. Then I don't eat, don't wash... and how is it with
you?..."

"Why not wash? That is not cleanly," said Prince Andrew; "on the
contrary one must try to make one's life as pleasant as possible.
I'm alive, that is not my fault, so I must live out my life as best
I can without hurting others."

"But with such ideas what motive have you for living? One would
sit without moving, undertaking nothing...."

"Life as it is leaves one no peace. I should be thankful to do
nothing, but here on the one hand the local nobility have done me
the honor to choose me to be their marshal; it was all I could do to
get out of it. They could not understand that I have not the necessary
qualifications for it--the kind of good-natured, fussy shallowness
necessary for the position. Then there's this house, which must be
built in order to have a nook of one's own in which to be quiet. And
now there's this recruiting."

"Why aren't you serving in the army?"

"After Austerlitz!" said Prince Andrew gloomily. "No, thank you very
much! I have promised myself not to serve again in the active
Russian army. And I won't--not even if Bonaparte were here at Smolensk
threatening Bald Hills--even then I wouldn't serve in the Russian
army! Well, as I was saying," he continued, recovering his
composure, "now there's this recruiting. My father is chief in command
of the Third District, and my only way of avoiding active service is
to serve under him."

"Then you are serving?"

"I am."

He paused a little while.

"And why do you serve?"

"Why, for this reason! My father is one of the most remarkable men
of his time. But he is growing old, and though not exactly cruel he
has too energetic a character. He is so accustomed to unlimited
power that he is terrible, and now he has this authority of a
commander in chief of the recruiting, granted by the Emperor. If I had
been two hours late a fortnight ago he would have had a paymaster's
clerk at Yukhnovna hanged," said Prince Andrew with a smile. "So I
am serving because I alone have any influence with my father, and
now and then can save him from actions which would torment him
afterwards."

"Well, there you see!"

"Yes, but it is not as you imagine," Prince Andrew continued. "I did
not, and do not, in the least care about that scoundrel of a clerk who
had stolen some boots from the recruits; I should even have been
very glad to see him hanged, but I was sorry for my father--that again
is for myself."

Prince Andrew grew more and more animated. His eyes glittered
feverishly while he tried to prove to Pierre that in his actions there
was no desire to do good to his neighbor.

"There now, you wish to liberate your serfs," he continued; "that is
a very good thing, but not for you--I don't suppose you ever had
anyone flogged or sent to Siberia--and still less for your serfs. If
they are beaten, flogged, or sent to Siberia, I don't suppose they are
any the worse off. In Siberia they lead the same animal life, and
the stripes on their bodies heal, and they are happy as before. But it
is a good thing for proprietors who perish morally, bring remorse upon
themselves, stifle this remorse and grow callous, as a result of being
able to inflict punishments justly and unjustly. It is those people
I pity, and for their sake I should like to liberate the serfs. You
may not have seen, but I have seen, how good men brought up in those
traditions of unlimited power, in time when they grow more
irritable, become cruel and harsh, are conscious of it, but cannot
restrain themselves and grow more and more miserable."

Prince Andrew spoke so earnestly that Pierre could not help thinking
that these thoughts had been suggested to Prince Andrew by his
father's case.

He did not reply.

"So that's what I'm sorry for--human dignity, peace of mind, purity,
and not the serfs' backs and foreheads, which, beat and shave as you
may, always remain the same backs and foreheads."

"No, no! A thousand times no! I shall never agree with you," said
Pierre.





CHAPTER XII


In the evening Andrew and Pierre got into the open carriage and
drove to Bald Hills. Prince Andrew, glancing at Pierre, broke the
silence now and then with remarks which showed that he was in a good
temper.

Pointing to the fields, he spoke of the improvements he was making
in his husbandry.

Pierre remained gloomily silent, answering in monosyllables and
apparently immersed in his own thoughts.

He was thinking that Prince Andrew was unhappy, had gone astray, did
not see the true light, and that he, Pierre, ought to aid,
enlighten, and raise him. But as soon as he thought of what he
should say, he felt that Prince Andrew with one word, one argument,
would upset all his teaching, and he shrank from beginning, afraid
of exposing to possible ridicule what to him was precious and sacred.

"No, but why do you think so?" Pierre suddenly began, lowering his
head and looking like a bull about to charge, "why do you think so?
You should not think so."

"Think? What about?" asked Prince Andrew with surprise.

"About life, about man's destiny. It can't be so. I myself thought
like that, and do you know what saved me? Freemasonry! No, don't
smile. Freemasonry is not a religious ceremonial sect, as I thought it
was: Freemasonry is the best expression of the best, the eternal,
aspects of humanity."

And he began to explain Freemasonry as he understood it to Prince
Andrew. He said that Freemasonry is the teaching of Christianity freed
from the bonds of State and Church, a teaching of equality,
brotherhood, and love.

"Only our holy brotherhood has the real meaning of life, all the
rest is a dream," said Pierre. "Understand, my dear fellow, that
outside this union all is filled with deceit and falsehood and I agree
with you that nothing is left for an intelligent and good man but to
live out his life, like you, merely trying not to harm others. But
make our fundamental convictions your own, join our brotherhood,
give yourself up to us, let yourself be guided, and you will at once
feel yourself, as I have felt myself, a part of that vast invisible
chain the beginning of which is hidden in heaven," said Pierre.

Prince Andrew, looking straight in front of him, listened in silence
to Pierre's words. More than once, when the noise of the wheels
prevented his catching what Pierre said, he asked him to repeat it,
and by the peculiar glow that came into Prince Andrew's eyes and by
his silence, Pierre saw that his words were not in vain and that
Prince Andrew would not interrupt him or laugh at what he said.

They reached a river that had overflowed its banks and which they
had to cross by ferry. While the carriage and horses were being placed
on it, they also stepped on the raft.

Prince Andrew, leaning his arms on the raft railing, gazed
silently at the flooding waters glittering in the setting sun.

"Well, what do you think about it?" Pierre asked. "Why are you
silent?"

"What do I think about it? I am listening to you. It's all very
well.... You say: join our brotherhood and we will show you the aim of
life, the destiny of man, and the laws which govern the world. But who
are we? Men. How is it you know everything? Why do I alone not see
what you see? You see a reign of goodness and truth on earth, but I
don't see it."

Pierre interrupted him.

"Do you believe in a future life?" he asked.

"A future life?" Prince Andrew repeated, but Pierre, giving him no
time to reply, took the repetition for a denial, the more readily as
he knew Prince Andrew's former atheistic convictions.

"You say you can't see a reign of goodness and truth on earth. Nor
could I, and it cannot be seen if one looks on our life here as the
end of everything. On earth, here on this earth" (Pierre pointed to
the fields), "there is no truth, all is false and evil; but in the
universe, in the whole universe there is a kingdom of truth, and we
who are now the children of earth are--eternally--children of the
whole universe. Don't I feel in my soul that I am part of this vast
harmonious whole? Don't I feel that I form one link, one step, between
the lower and higher beings, in this vast harmonious multitude of
beings in whom the Deity--the Supreme Power if you prefer the term--is
manifest? If I see, clearly see, that ladder leading from plant to
man, why should I suppose it breaks off at me and does not go
farther and farther? I feel that I cannot vanish, since nothing
vanishes in this world, but that I shall always exist and always
have existed. I feel that beyond me and above me there are spirits,
and that in this world there is truth."

"Yes, that is Herder's theory," said Prince Andrew, "but it is not
that which can convince me, dear friend--life and death are what
convince. What convinces is when one sees a being dear to one, bound
up with one's own life, before whom one was to blame and had hoped
to make it right" (Prince Andrew's voice trembled and he turned away),
"and suddenly that being is seized with pain, suffers, and ceases to
exist.... Why? It cannot be that there is no answer. And I believe
there is.... That's what convinces, that is what has convinced me,"
said Prince Andrew.

"Yes, yes, of course," said Pierre, "isn't that what I'm saying?"

"No. All I say is that it is not argument that convinces me of the
necessity of a future life, but this: when you go hand in hand with
someone and all at once that person vanishes there, into nowhere,
and you yourself are left facing that abyss, and look in. And I have
looked in...."

"Well, that's it then! You know that there is a there and there is a
Someone? There is the future life. The Someone is--God."

Prince Andrew did not reply. The carriage and horses had long
since been taken off, onto the farther bank, and reharnessed. The
sun had sunk half below the horizon and an evening frost was
starring the puddles near the ferry, but Pierre and Andrew, to the
astonishment of the footmen, coachmen, and ferrymen, still stood on
the raft and talked.

"If there is a God and future life, there is truth and good, and
man's highest happiness consists in striving to attain them. We must
live, we must love, and we must believe that we live not only today on
this scrap of earth, but have lived and shall live forever, there,
in the Whole," said Pierre, and he pointed to the sky.

Prince Andrew stood leaning on the railing of the raft listening
to Pierre, and he gazed with his eyes fixed on the red reflection of
the sun gleaming on the blue waters. There was perfect stillness.
Pierre became silent. The raft had long since stopped and only the
waves of the current beat softly against it below. Prince Andrew
felt as if the sound of the waves kept up a refrain to Pierre's words,
whispering:

"It is true, believe it."

He sighed, and glanced with a radiant, childlike, tender look at
Pierre's face, flushed and rapturous, but yet shy before his
superior friend.

"Yes, if it only were so!" said Prince Andrew. "However, it is
time to get on," he added, and, stepping off the raft, he looked up at
the sky to which Pierre had pointed, and for the first time since
Austerlitz saw that high, everlasting sky he had seen while lying on
that battlefield; and something that had long been slumbering,
something that was best within him, suddenly awoke, joyful and
youthful, in his soul. It vanished as soon as he returned to the
customary conditions of his life, but he knew that this feeling
which he did not know how to develop existed within him. His meeting
with Pierre formed an epoch in Prince Andrew's life. Though
outwardly he continued to live in the same old way, inwardly he
began a new life.





CHAPTER XIII


It was getting dusk when Prince Andrew and Pierre drove up to the
front entrance of the house at Bald Hills. As they approached the
house, Prince Andrew with a smile drew Pierre's attention to a
commotion going on at the back porch. A woman, bent with age, with a
wallet on her back, and a short, long-haired, young man in a black
garment had rushed back to the gate on seeing the carriage driving up.
Two women ran out after them, and all four, looking round at the
carriage, ran in dismay up the steps of the back porch.

"Those are Mary's 'God's folk,'" said Prince Andrew. "They have
mistaken us for my father. This is the one matter in which she
disobeys him. He orders these pilgrims to be driven away, but she
receives them."

"But what are 'God's folk'?" asked Pierre.

Prince Andrew had no time to answer. The servants came out to meet
them, and he asked where the old prince was and whether he was
expected back soon.

The old prince had gone to the town and was expected back any
minute.

Prince Andrew led Pierre to his own apartments, which were always
kept in perfect order and readiness for him in his father's house;
he himself went to the nursery.

"Let us go and see my sister," he said to Pierre when he returned.
"I have not found her yet, she is hiding now, sitting with her
'God's folk.' It will serve her right, she will be confused, but you
will see her 'God's folk.' It's really very curious."

"What are 'God's folk'?" asked Pierre.

"Come, and you'll see for yourself."

Princess Mary really was disconcerted and red patches came on her
face when they went in. In her snug room, with lamps burning before
the icon stand, a young lad with a long nose and long hair, wearing
a monk's cassock, sat on the sofa beside her, behind a samovar. Near
them, in an armchair, sat a thin, shriveled, old woman, with a meek
expression on her childlike face.

"Andrew, why didn't you warn me?" said the princess, with mild
reproach, as she stood before her pilgrims like a hen before her
chickens.

"Charmee de vous voir. Je suis tres contente de vous voir,"* she
said to Pierre as he kissed her hand. She had known him as a child,
and now his friendship with Andrew, his misfortune with his wife,
and above all his kindly, simple face disposed her favorably toward
him. She looked at him with her beautiful radiant eyes and seemed to
say, "I like you very much, but please don't laugh at my people."
After exchanging the first greetings, they sat down.


*"Delighted to see you. I am very glad to see you."


"Ah, and Ivanushka is here too!" said Prince Andrew, glancing with a
smile at the young pilgrim.

"Andrew!" said Princess Mary, imploringly. "Il faut que vous sachiez
que c'est une femme,"* said Prince Andrew to Pierre.

"Andrew, au nom de Dieu!"*[2] Princess Mary repeated.


*"You must know that this is a woman."

*[2] "For heaven's sake."


It was evident that Prince Andrew's ironical tone toward the
pilgrims and Princess Mary's helpless attempts to protect them were
their customary long-established relations on the matter.

"Mais, ma bonne amie," said Prince Andrew, "vous devriez au
contraire m'etre reconnaissante de ce que j'explique a Pierre votre
intimite avec ce jeune homme."*


*"But, my dear, you ought on the contrary to be grateful to me for
explaining to Pierre your intimacy with this young man."


"Really?" said Pierre, gazing over his spectacles with curiosity and
seriousness (for which Princess Mary was specially grateful to him)
into Ivanushka's face, who, seeing that she was being spoken about,
looked round at them all with crafty eyes.

Princess Mary's embarrassment on her people's account was quite
unnecessary. They were not in the least abashed. The old woman,
lowering her eyes but casting side glances at the newcomers, had
turned her cup upside down and placed a nibbled bit of sugar beside
it, and sat quietly in her armchair, though hoping to be offered
another cup of tea. Ivanushka, sipping out of her saucer, looked
with sly womanish eyes from under her brows at the young men.

"Where have you been? To Kiev?" Prince Andrew asked the old woman.

"I have, good sir," she answered garrulously. "Just at Christmastime
I was deemed worthy to partake of the holy and heavenly sacrament at
the shrine of the saint. And now I'm from Kolyazin, master, where a
great and wonderful blessing has been revealed."

"And was Ivanushka with you?"

"I go by myself, benefactor," said Ivanushka, trying to speak in a
bass voice. "I only came across Pelageya in Yukhnovo..."

Pelageya interrupted her companion; she evidently wished to tell
what she had seen.

"In Kolyazin, master, a wonderful blessing has been revealed."

"What is it? Some new relics?" asked Prince Andrew.

"Andrew, do leave off," said Princess Mary. "Don't tell him,
Pelageya."

"No... why not, my dear, why shouldn't I? I like him. He is kind, he
is one of God's chosen, he's a benefactor, he once gave me ten rubles,
I remember. When I was in Kiev, Crazy Cyril says to me (he's one of
God's own and goes barefoot summer and winter), he says, 'Why are
you not going to the right place? Go to Kolyazin where a
wonder-working icon of the Holy Mother of God has been revealed.' On
hearing those words I said good-by to the holy folk and went."

All were silent, only the pilgrim woman went on in measured tones,
drawing in her breath.

"So I come, master, and the people say to me: 'A great blessing
has been revealed, holy oil trickles from the cheeks of our blessed
Mother, the Holy Virgin Mother of God'...."

"All right, all right, you can tell us afterwards," said Princess
Mary, flushing.

"Let me ask her," said Pierre. "Did you see it yourselves?" he
inquired.

"Oh, yes, master, I was found worthy. Such a brightness on the
face like the light of heaven, and from the blessed Mother's cheek
it drops and drops...."

"But, dear me, that must be a fraud!" said Pierre, naively, who
had listened attentively to the pilgrim.

"Oh, master, what are you saying?" exclaimed the horrified Pelageya,
turning to Princess Mary for support.

"They impose on the people," he repeated.

"Lord Jesus Christ!" exclaimed the pilgrim woman, crossing
herself. "Oh, don't speak so, master! There was a general who did
not believe, and said, 'The monks cheat,' and as soon as he'd said
it he went blind. And he dreamed that the Holy Virgin Mother of the
Kiev catacombs came to him and said, 'Believe in me and I will make
you whole.' So he begged: 'Take me to her, take me to her.' It's the
real truth I'm telling you, I saw it myself. So he was brought,
quite blind, straight to her, and he goes up to her and falls down and
says, 'Make me whole,' says he, 'and I'll give thee what the Tsar
bestowed on me.' I saw it myself, master, the star is fixed into the
icon. Well, and what do you think? He received his sight! It's a sin
to speak so. God will punish you," she said admonishingly, turning
to Pierre.

"How did the star get into the icon?" Pierre asked.

"And was the Holy Mother promoted to the rank of general?" said
Prince Andrew, with a smile.

Pelageya suddenly grew quite pale and clasped her hands.

"Oh, master, master, what a sin! And you who have a son!" she began,
her pallor suddenly turning to a vivid red. "Master, what have you
said? God forgive you!" And she crossed herself. "Lord forgive him! My
dear, what does it mean?..." she asked, turning to Princess Mary.
She got up and, almost crying, began to arrange her wallet. She
evidently felt frightened and ashamed to have accepted charity in a
house where such things could be said, and was at the same time
sorry to have now to forgo the charity of this house.

"Now, why need you do it?" said Princess Mary. "Why did you come
to me?..."

"Come, Pelageya, I was joking," said Pierre. "Princesse, ma
parole, je n'ai pas voulu l'offenser.* I did not mean anything, I
was only joking," he said, smiling shyly and trying to efface his
offense. "It was all my fault, and Andrew was only joking."


*"Princess, on my word, I did not wish to offend her."


Pelageya stopped doubtfully, but in Pierre's face there was such a
look of sincere penitence, and Prince Andrew glanced so meekly now
at her and now at Pierre, that she was gradually reassured.





CHAPTER XIV


The pilgrim woman was appeased and, being encouraged to talk, gave a
long account of Father Amphilochus, who led so holy a life that his
hands smelled of incense, and how on her last visit to Kiev some monks
she knew let her have the keys of the catacombs, and how she, taking
some dried bread with her, had spent two days in the catacombs with
the saints. "I'd pray awhile to one, ponder awhile, then go on to
another. I'd sleep a bit and then again go and kiss the relics, and
there was such peace all around, such blessedness, that one don't want
to come out, even into the light of heaven again."

Pierre listened to her attentively and seriously. Prince Andrew went
out of the room, and then, leaving "God's folk" to finish their tea,
Princess Mary took Pierre into the drawing room.

"You are very kind," she said to him.

"Oh, I really did not mean to hurt her feelings. I understand them
so well and have the greatest respect for them."

Princess Mary looked at him silently and smiled affectionately.

"I have known you a long time, you see, and am as fond of you as
of a brother," she said. "How do you find Andrew?" she added
hurriedly, not giving him time to reply to her affectionate words.
"I am very anxious about him. His health was better in the winter, but
last spring his wound reopened and the doctor said he ought to go away
for a cure. And I am also very much afraid for him spiritually. He has
not a character like us women who, when we suffer, can weep away our
sorrows. He keeps it all within him. Today he is cheerful and in
good spirits, but that is the effect of your visit--he is not often
like that. If you could persuade him to go abroad. He needs
activity, and this quiet regular life is very bad for him. Others
don't notice it, but I see it."

Toward ten o'clock the men servants rushed to the front door,
hearing the bells of the old prince's carriage approaching. Prince
Andrew and Pierre also went out into the porch.

"Who's that?" asked the old prince, noticing Pierre as he got out
of, the carriage.

"Ah! Very glad! Kiss me," he said, having learned who the young
stranger was.

The old prince was in a good temper and very gracious to Pierre.

Before supper, Prince Andrew, coming back to his father's study,
found him disputing hotly with his visitor. Pierre was maintaining
that a time would come when there would be no more wars. The old
prince disputed it chaffingly, but without getting angry.

"Drain the blood from men's veins and put in water instead, then
there will be no more war! Old women's nonsense--old women's
nonsense!" he repeated, but still he patted Pierre affectionately on
the shoulder, and then went up to the table where Prince Andrew,
evidently not wishing to join in the conversation, was looking over
the papers his father had brought from town. The old prince went up to
him and began to talk business.

"The marshal, a Count Rostov, hasn't sent half his contingent. He
came to town and wanted to invite me to dinner--I gave him a pretty
dinner!... And there, look at this.... Well, my boy," the old prince
went on, addressing his son and patting Pierre on the shoulder. "A
fine fellow--your friend--I like him! He stirs me up. Another says
clever things and one doesn't care to listen, but this one talks
rubbish yet stirs an old fellow up. Well, go! Get along! Perhaps
I'll come and sit with you at supper. We'll have another dispute. Make
friends with my little fool, Princess Mary," he shouted after
Pierre, through the door.

Only now, on his visit to Bald Hills, did Pierre fully realize the
strength and charm of his friendship with Prince Andrew. That charm
was not expressed so much in his relations with him as with all his
family and with the household. With the stern old prince and the
gentle, timid Princess Mary, though he had scarcely known them, Pierre
at once felt like an old friend. They were all fond of him already.
Not only Princess Mary, who had been won by his gentleness with the
pilgrims, gave him her most radiant looks, but even the one-year-old
"Prince Nicholas" (as his grandfather called him) smiled at Pierre and
let himself be taken in his arms, and Michael Ivanovich and
Mademoiselle Bourienne looked at him with pleasant smiles when he
talked to the old prince.

The old prince came in to supper; this was evidently on Pierre's
account. And during the two days of the young man's visit he was
extremely kind to him and told him to visit them again.

When Pierre had gone and the members of the household met
together, they began to express their opinions of him as people always
do after a new acquaintance has left, but as seldom happens, no one
said anything but what was good of him.





CHAPTER XV


When returning from his leave, Rostov felt, for the first time,
how close was the bond that united him to Denisov and and the whole
regiment.

On approaching it, Rostov felt as he had done when approaching his
home in Moscow. When he saw the first hussar with the unbuttoned
uniform of his regiment, when he recognized red-haired Dementyev and
saw the picket ropes of the roan horses, when Lavrushka gleefully
shouted to his master, "The count has come!" and Denisov, who had been
asleep on his bed, ran all disheveled out of the mud hut to embrace
him, and the officers collected round to greet the new arrival, Rostov
experienced the same feeling his mother, his father, and his sister
had embraced him, and tears of joy choked him so that he could not
speak. The regiment was also a home, and as unalterably dear and
precious as his parents' house.

When he had reported himself to the commander of the regiment and
had been reassigned to his former squadron, had been on duty and had
gone out foraging, when he had again entered into all the little
interests of the regiment and felt himself deprived of liberty and
bound in one narrow, unchanging frame, he experienced the same sense
of peace, of moral support, and the same sense being at home here in
his own place, as he had felt under the parental roof. But here was
none of all that turmoil of the world at large, where he did not
know his right place and took mistaken decisions; here was no Sonya
with whom he ought, or ought not, to have an explanation; here was
no possibility of going there or not going there; here there were
not twenty-four hours in the day which could be spent in such a
variety of ways; there was not that innumerable crowd of people of
whom not one was nearer to him or farther from him than another; there
were none of those uncertain and undefined money relations with his
father, and nothing to recall that terrible loss to Dolokhov. Here, in
the regiment, all was clear and simple. The whole world was divided
into two unequal parts: one, our Pavlograd regiment; the other, all
the rest. And the rest was no concern of his. In the regiment,
everything was definite: who was lieutenant, who captain, who was a
good fellow, who a bad one, and most of all, who was a comrade. The
canteenkeeper gave one credit, one's pay came every four months, there
was nothing to think out or decide, you had only to do nothing that
was considered bad in the Pavlograd regiment and, when given an order,
to do what was clearly, distinctly, and definitely ordered--and all
would be well.

Having once more entered into the definite conditions of this
regimental life, Rostov felt the joy and relief a tired man feels on
lying down to rest. Life in the regiment, during this campaign, was
all the pleasanter for him, because, after his loss to Dolokhov (for
which, in spite of all his family's efforts to console him, he could
not forgive himself), he had made up his mind to atone for his fault
by serving, not as he had done before, but really well, and by being a
perfectly first-rate comrade and officer--in a word, a splendid man
altogether, a thing which seemed so difficult out in the world, but so
possible in the regiment.

After his losses, he had determined to pay back his debt to his
parents in five years. He received ten thousand rubles a year, but now
resolved to take only two thousand and leave the rest to repay the
debt to his parents.

Our army, after repeated retreats and advances and battles at
Pultusk and Preussisch-Eylau, was concentrated near Bartenstein. It
was awaiting the Emperor's arrival and the beginning of a new
campaign.

The Pavlograd regiment, belonging to that part of the army which had
served in the 1805 campaign, had been recruiting up to strength in
Russia, and arrived too late to take part in the first actions of
the campaign. It had been neither at Pultusk nor at Preussisch-Eylau
and, when it joined the army in the field in the second half of the
campaign, was attached to Platov's division.

Platov's division was acting independently of the main army. Several
times parts of the Pavlograd regiment had exchanged shots with the
enemy, had taken prisoners, and once had even captured Marshal
Oudinot's carriages. In April the Pavlograds were stationed
immovably for some weeks near a totally ruined and deserted German
village.

A thaw had set in, it was muddy and cold, the ice on the river
broke, and the roads became impassable. For days neither provisions
for the men nor fodder for the horses had been issued. As no
transports could arrive, the men dispersed about the abandoned and
deserted villages, searching for potatoes, but found few even of
these.

Everything had been eaten up and the inhabitants had all fled--if
any remained, they were worse than beggars and nothing more could be
taken from them; even the soldiers, usually pitiless enough, instead
of taking anything from them, often gave them the last of their
rations.

The Pavlograd regiment had had only two men wounded in action, but
had lost nearly half its men from hunger and sickness. In the
hospitals, death was so certain that soldiers suffering from fever, or
the swelling that came from bad food, preferred to remain on duty, and
hardly able to drag their legs went to the front rather than to the
hospitals. When spring came on, the soldiers found a plant just
showing out of the ground that looked like asparagus, which, for
some reason, they called "Mashka's sweet root." It was very bitter,
but they wandered about the fields seeking it and dug it out with
their sabers and ate it, though they were ordered not to do so, as
it was a noxious plant. That spring a new disease broke
out among the soldiers, a swelling of the arms, legs, and face,
which the doctors attributed to eating this root. But in spite of
all this, the soldiers of Denisov's squadron fed chiefly on
"Mashka's sweet root," because it was the second week that the last of
the biscuits were being doled out at the rate of half a pound a man
and the last potatoes received had sprouted and frozen.

The horses also had been fed for a fortnight on straw from the
thatched roofs and had become terribly thin, though still covered with
tufts of felty winter hair.

Despite this destitution, the soldiers and officers went on living
just as usual. Despite their pale swollen faces and tattered uniforms,
the hussars formed line for roll call, kept things in order, groomed
their horses, polished their arms, brought in straw from the
thatched roofs in place of fodder, and sat down to dine round the
caldrons from which they rose up hungry, joking about their nasty food
and their hunger. As usual, in their spare time, they lit bonfires,
steamed themselves before them naked; smoked, picked out and baked
sprouting rotten potatoes, told and listened to stories of
Potemkin's and Suvorov's campaigns, or to legends of Alesha the Sly,
or the priest's laborer Mikolka.

The officers, as usual, lived in twos and threes in the roofless,
half-ruined houses. The seniors tried to collect straw and potatoes
and, in general, food for the men. The younger ones occupied
themselves as before, some playing cards (there was plenty of money,
though there was no food), some with more innocent games, such as
quoits and skittles. The general trend of the campaign was rarely
spoken of, partly because nothing certain was known about it, partly
because there was a vague feeling that in the main it was going badly.

Rostov lived, as before, with Denisov, and since their furlough they
had become more friendly than ever. Denisov never spoke of Rostov's
family, but by the tender friendship his commander showed him,
Rostov felt that the elder hussar's luckless love for Natasha played a
part in strengthening their friendship. Denisov evidently tried to
expose Rostov to danger as seldom as possible, and after an action
greeted his safe return with evident joy. On one of his foraging
expeditions, in a deserted and ruined village to which he had come
in search of provisions, Rostov found a family consisting of an old
Pole and his daughter with an infant in arms. They were half clad,
hungry, too weak to get away on foot and had no means of obtaining a
conveyance. Rostov brought them to his quarters, placed them in his
own lodging, and kept them for some weeks while the old man was
recovering. One of his comrades, talking of women, began chaffing
Rostov, saying that he was more wily than any of them and that it
would not be a bad thing if he introduced to them the pretty Polish
girl he had saved. Rostov took the joke as an insult, flared up, and
said such unpleasant things to the officer that it was all Denisov
could do to prevent a duel. When the officer had gone away, Denisov,
who did not himself know what Rostov's relations with the Polish
girl might be, began to upbraid him for his quickness of temper, and
Rostov replied:

"Say what you like.... She is like a sister to me, and I can't
tell you how it offended me... because... well, for that reason...."

Denisov patted him on the shoulder and began rapidly pacing the room
without looking at Rostov, as was his way at moments of deep feeling.

"Ah, what a mad bweed you Wostovs are!" he muttered, and Rostov
noticed tears in his eyes.





CHAPTER XVI


In April the troops were enlivened by news of the Emperor's arrival,
but Rostov had no chance of being present at the review he held at
Bartenstein, as the Pavlograds were at the outposts far beyond that
place.

They were bivouacking. Denisov and Rostov were living in an earth
hut, dug out for them by the soldiers and roofed with branches and
turf. The hut was made in the following manner, which had then come
into vogue. A trench was dug three and a half feet wide, four feet
eight inches deep, and eight feet long. At one end of the trench,
steps were cut out and these formed the entrance and vestibule. The
trench itself was the room, in which the lucky ones, such as the
squadron commander, had a board, lying on piles at the end opposite
the entrance, to serve as a table. On each side of the trench, the
earth was cut out to a breadth of about two and a half feet, and
this did duty for bedsteads and couches. The roof was so constructed
that one could stand up in the middle of the trench and could even sit
up on the beds if one drew close to the table. Denisov, who was living
luxuriously because the soldiers of his squadron liked him, had also a
board in the roof at the farther end, with a piece of (broken but
mended) glass in it for a window. When it was very cold, embers from
the soldiers' campfire were placed on a bent sheet of iron on the
steps in the "reception room"--as Denisov called that part of the hut-
and it was then so warm that the officers, of whom there were always
some with Denisov and Rostov, sat in their shirt sleeves.

In April, Rostov was on orderly duty. One morning, between seven and
eight, returning after a sleepless night, he sent for embers,
changed his rain-soaked underclothes, said his prayers, drank tea, got
warm, then tidied up the things on the table and in his own corner,
and, his face glowing from exposure to the wind and with nothing on
but his shirt, lay down on his back, putting his arms under his
head. He was pleasantly considering the probability of being
promoted in a few days for his last reconnoitering expedition, and
was awaiting Denisov, who had gone out somewhere and with whom he
wanted a talk.

Suddenly he heard Denisov shouting in a vibrating voice behind the
hut, evidently much excited. Rostov moved to the window to see whom he
was speaking to, and saw the quartermaster, Topcheenko.

"I ordered you not to let them eat that Mashka woot stuff!" Denisov
was shouting. "And I saw with my own eyes how Lazarchuk bwought some
fwom the fields."

"I have given the order again and again, your honor, but they
don't obey," answered the quartermaster.

Rostov lay down again on his bed and thought complacently: "Let
him fuss and bustle now, my job's done and I'm lying down--capitally!"
He could hear that Lavrushka--that sly, bold orderly of Denisov's--was
talking, as well as the quartermaster. Lavrushka was saying
something about loaded wagons, biscuits, and oxen he had seen when
he had gone out for provisions.

Then Denisov's voice was heard shouting farther and farther away.
"Saddle! Second platoon!"

"Where are they off to now?" thought Rostov.

Five minutes later, Denisov came into the hut, climbed with muddy
boots on the bed, lit his pipe, furiously scattered his things
about, took his leaded whip, buckled on his saber, and went out again.
In answer to Rostov's inquiry where he was going, he answered
vaguely and crossly that he had some business.

"Let God and our gweat monarch judge me afterwards!" said Denisov
going out, and Rostov heard the hoofs of several horses splashing
through the mud. He did not even trouble to find out where Denisov had
gone. Having got warm in his corner, he fell asleep and did not
leave the hut till toward evening. Denisov had not yet returned. The
weather had cleared up, and near the next hut two officers and a cadet
were playing svayka, laughing as they threw their missiles which
buried themselves in the soft mud. Rostov joined them. In the middle
of the game, the officers saw some wagons approaching with fifteen
hussars on their skinny horses behind them. The wagons escorted by the
hussars drew up to the picket ropes and a crowd of hussars
surrounded them.

"There now, Denisov has been worrying," said Rostov, "and here are
the provisions."

"So they are!" said the officers. "Won't the soldiers be glad!"

A little behind the hussars came Denisov, accompanied by two
infantry officers with whom he was talking.

Rostov went to meet them.

"I warn you, Captain," one of the officers, a short thin man,
evidently very angry, was saying.

"Haven't I told you I won't give them up?" replied Denisov.

"You will answer for it, Captain. It is mutiny--seizing the
transport of one's own army. Our men have had nothing to eat for two
days."

"And mine have had nothing for two weeks," said Denisov.

"It is robbery! You'll answer for it, sir!" said the infantry
officer, raising his voice.

"Now, what are you pestewing me for?" cried Denisov, suddenly losing
his temper. "I shall answer for it and not you, and you'd better not
buzz about here till you get hurt. Be off! Go!" he shouted at the
officers.

"Very well, then!" shouted the little officer, undaunted and not
riding away. "If you are determined to rob, I'll..."

"Go to the devil! quick ma'ch, while you're safe and sound!" and
Denisov turned his horse on the officer.

"Very well, very well!" muttered the officer, threateningly, and
turning his horse he trotted away, jolting in his saddle.

"A dog astwide a fence! A weal dog astwide a fence!" shouted Denisov
after him (the most insulting expression a cavalryman can address to a
mounted infantryman) and riding up to Rostov, he burst out laughing.

"I've taken twansports from the infantwy by force!" he said.
"After all, can't let our men starve."

The wagons that had reached the hussars had been consigned to an
infantry regiment, but learning from Lavrushka that the transport
was unescorted, Denisov with his hussars had seized it by force. The
soldiers had biscuits dealt out to them freely, and they even shared
them with the other squadrons.

The next day the regimental commander sent for Denisov, and
holding his fingers spread out before his eyes said:

"This is how I look at this affair: I know nothing about it and
won't begin proceedings, but I advise you to ride over to the staff
and settle the business there in the commissariat department and if
possible sign a receipt for such and such stores received. If not,
as the demand was booked against an infantry regiment, there will be a
row and the affair may end badly."

From the regimental commander's, Denisov rode straight to the
staff with a sincere desire to act on this advice. In the evening he
came back to his dugout in a state such as Rostov had never yet seen
him in. Denisov could not speak and gasped for breath. When Rostov
asked what was the matter, he only uttered some incoherent oaths and
threats in a hoarse, feeble voice.

Alarmed at Denisov's condition, Rostov suggested that he should
undress, drink some water, and send for the doctor.

"Twy me for wobbewy... oh! Some more water... Let them twy me, but
I'll always thwash scoundwels... and I'll tell the Empewo'...
Ice..." he muttered.

The regimental doctor, when he came, said it was absolutely
necessary to bleed Denisov. A deep saucer of black blood was taken
from his hairy arm and only then was he able to relate what had
happened to him.

"I get there," began Denisov. "'Now then, where's your chief's
quarters?' They were pointed out. 'Please to wait.' 'I've widden
twenty miles and have duties to attend to and no time to wait.
Announce me.' Vewy well, so out comes their head chief--also took it
into his head to lecture me: 'It's wobbewy!'--'Wobbewy,' I say, 'is
not done by man who seizes pwovisions to feed his soldiers, but by him
who takes them to fill his own pockets!' 'Will you please be
silent?' 'Vewy good!' Then he says: 'Go and give a weceipt to the
commissioner, but your affair will be passed on to headquarters.' I go
to the commissioner. I enter, and at the table... who do you think?
No, but wait a bit!... Who is it that's starving us?" shouted Denisov,
hitting the table with the fist of his newly bled arm so violently
that the table nearly broke down and the tumblers on it jumped
about. "Telyanin! 'What? So it's you who's starving us to death! Is
it? Take this and this!' and I hit him so pat, stwaight on his
snout... 'Ah, what a... what...!' and I sta'ted fwashing him...
Well, I've had a bit of fun I can tell you!" cried Denisov, gleeful
and yet angry, his showing under his black mustache. "I'd have
killed him if they hadn't taken him away!"

"But what are you shouting for? Calm yourself," said Rostov. "You've
set your arm bleeding afresh. Wait, we must tie it up again."

Denisov was bandaged up again and put to bed. Next day he woke
calm and cheerful.

But at noon the adjutant of the regiment came into Rostov's and
Denisov's dugout with a grave and serious face and regretfully
showed them a paper addressed to Major Denisov from the regimental
commander in which inquiries were made about yesterday's occurrence.
The adjutant told them that the affair was likely to take a very bad
turn: that a court-martial had been appointed, and that in view of the
severity with which marauding and insubordination were now regarded,
degradation to the ranks would be the best that could be hoped for.

The case, as represented by the offended parties, was that, after
seizing the transports, Major Denisov, being drunk, went to the
chief quartermaster and without any provocation called him a thief,
threatened to strike him, and on being led out had rushed into the
office and given two officials a thrashing, and dislocated the arm
of one of them.

In answer to Rostov's renewed questions, Denisov said, laughing,
that he thought he remembered that some other fellow had got mixed
up in it, but that it was all nonsense and rubbish, and he did not
in the least fear any kind of trial, and that if those scoundrels
dared attack him he would give them an answer that they would not
easily forget.

Denisov spoke contemptuously of the whole matter, but Rostov knew
him too well not to detect that (while hiding it from others) at heart
he feared a court-martial and was worried over the affair, which was
evidently taking a bad turn. Every day, letters of inquiry and notices
from the court arrived, and on the first of May, Denisov was ordered
to hand the squadron over to the next in seniority and appear before
the staff of his division to explain his violence at the
commissariat office. On the previous day Platov reconnoitered with two
Cossack regiments and two squadrons of hussars. Denisov, as was his
wont, rode out in front of the outposts, parading his courage. A
bullet fired by a French sharpshooter hit him in the fleshy part of
his leg. Perhaps at another time Denisov would not have left the
regiment for so slight a wound, but now he took advantage of it to
excuse himself from appearing at the staff and went into hospital.





CHAPTER XVII


In June the battle of Friedland was fought, in which the
Pavlograds did not take part, and after that an armistice was
proclaimed. Rostov, who felt his friend's absence very much, having no
news of him since he left and feeling very anxious about his wound and
the progress of his affairs, took advantage of the armistice to get
leave to visit Denisov in hospital.

The hospital was in a small Prussian town that had been twice
devastated by Russian and French troops. Because it was summer, when
it is so beautiful out in the fields, the little town presented a
particularly dismal appearance with its broken roofs and fences, its
foul streets, tattered inhabitants, and the sick and drunken
soldiers wandering about.

The hospital was in a brick building with some of the window
frames and panes broken and a courtyard surrounded by the remains of a
wooden fence that had been pulled to pieces. Several bandaged
soldiers, with pale swollen faces, were sitting or walking about in
the sunshine in the yard.

Directly Rostov entered the door he was enveloped by a smell of
putrefaction and hospital air. On the stairs he met a Russian army
doctor smoking a cigar. The doctor was followed by a Russian
assistant.

"I can't tear myself to pieces," the doctor was saying. "Come to
Makar Alexeevich in the evening. I shall be there."

The assistant asked some further questions.

"Oh, do the best you can! Isn't it all the same?" The doctor noticed
Rostov coming upstairs.

"What do you want, sir?" said the doctor. "What do you want? The
bullets having spared you, do you want to try typhus? This is a
pesthouse, sir."

"How so?" asked Rostov.

"Typhus, sir. It's death to go in. Only we two, Makeev and I" (he
pointed to the assistant), "keep on here. Some five of us doctors have
died in this place.... When a new one comes he is done for in a week,"
said the doctor with evident satisfaction. "Prussian doctors have been
invited here, but our allies don't like it at all."

Rostov explained that he wanted to see Major Denisov of the hussars,
who was wounded.

"I don't know. I can't tell you, sir. Only think! I am alone in
charge of three hospitals with more than four hundred patients! It's
well that the charitable Prussian ladies send us two pounds of
coffee and some lint each month or we should be lost!" he laughed.
"Four hundred, sir, and they're always sending me fresh ones. There
are four hundred? Eh?" he asked, turning to the assistant.

The assistant looked fagged out. He was evidently vexed and
impatient for the talkative doctor to go.

"Major Denisov," Rostov said again. "He was wounded at Molliten."

"Dead, I fancy. Eh, Makeev?" queried the doctor, in a tone of
indifference.

The assistant, however, did not confirm the doctor's words.

"Is he tall and with reddish hair?" asked the doctor.

Rostov described Denisov's appearance.

"There was one like that," said the doctor, as if pleased. "That one
is dead, I fancy. However, I'll look up our list. We had a list.
Have you got it, Makeev?"

"Makar Alexeevich has the list," answered the assistant. "But if
you'll step into the officers' wards you'll see for yourself," he
added, turning to Rostov.

"Ah, you'd better not go, sir," said the doctor, "or you may have to
stay here yourself."

But Rostov bowed himself away from the doctor and asked the
assistant to show him the way.

"Only don't blame me!" the doctor shouted up after him.

Rostov and the assistant went into the dark corridor. The smell
was so strong there that Rostov held his nose and had to pause and
collect his strength before he could go on. A door opened to the
right, and an emaciated sallow man on crutches, barefoot and in
underclothing, limped out and, leaning against the doorpost, looked
with glittering envious eyes at those who were passing. Glancing in at
the door, Rostov saw that the sick and wounded were lying on the floor
on straw and overcoats.

"May I go in and look?"

"What is there to see?" said the assistant.

But, just because the assistant evidently did not want him to go in,
Rostov entered the soldiers' ward. The foul air, to which he had
already begun to get used in the corridor, was still stronger here. It
was a little different, more pungent, and one felt that this was where
it originated.

In the long room, brightly lit up by the sun through the large
windows, the sick and wounded lay in two rows with their heads to
the walls, and leaving a passage in the middle. Most of them were
unconscious and paid no attention to the newcomers. Those who were
conscious raised themselves or lifted their thin yellow faces, and all
looked intently at Rostov with the same expression of hope, of relief,
reproach, and envy of another's health. Rostov went to the middle of
the room and looking through the open doors into the two adjoining
rooms saw the same thing there. He stood still, looking silently
around. He had not at all expected such a sight. Just before him,
almost across the middle of the passage on the bare floor, lay a
sick man, probably a Cossack to judge by the cut of his hair. The
man lay on his back, his huge arms and legs outstretched. His face was
purple, his eyes were rolled back so that only the whites were seen,
and on his bare legs and arms which were still red, the veins stood
out like cords. He was knocking the back of his head against the
floor, hoarsely uttering some word which he kept repeating. Rostov
listened and made out the word. It was "drink, drink, a drink!" Rostov
glanced round, looking for someone who would put this man back in
his place and bring him water.

"Who looks after the sick here?" he asked the assistant.

Just then a commissariat soldier, a hospital orderly, came in from
the next room, marching stiffly, and drew up in front of Rostov.

"Good day, your honor!" he shouted, rolling his eyes at Rostov and
evidently mistaking him for one of the hospital authorities.

"Get him to his place and give him some water," said Rostov,
pointing to the Cossack.

"Yes, your honor," the soldier replied complacently, and rolling his
eyes more than ever he drew himself up still straighter, but did not
move.

"No, it's impossible to do anything here," thought Rostov,
lowering his eyes, and he was going out, but became aware of an
intense look fixed on him on his right, and he turned. Close to the
corner, on an overcoat, sat an old, unshaven, gray-bearded soldier
as thin as a skeleton, with a stern sallow face and eyes intently
fixed on Rostov. The man's neighbor on one side whispered something to
him, pointing at Rostov, who noticed that the old man wanted to
speak to him. He drew nearer and saw that the old man had only one leg
bent under him, the other had been amputated above the knee. His
neighbor on the other side, who lay motionless some distance from
him with his head thrown back, was a young soldier with a snub nose.
His pale waxen face was still freckled and his eyes were rolled
back. Rostov looked at the young soldier and a cold chill ran down his
back.

"Why, this one seems..." he began, turning to the assistant.

"And how we've been begging, your honor," said the old soldier,
his jaw quivering. "He's been dead since morning. After all we're men,
not dogs."

"I'll send someone at once. He shall be taken away--taken away at
once," said the assistant hurriedly. "Let us go, your honor."

"Yes, yes, let us go," said Rostov hastily, and lowering his eyes
and shrinking, he tried to pass unnoticed between the rows of
reproachful envious eyes that were fixed upon him, and went out of the
room.





CHAPTER XVIII


Going along the corridor, the assistant led Rostov to the
officers' wards, consisting of three rooms, the doors of which stood
open. There were beds in these rooms and the sick and wounded officers
were lying or sitting on them. Some were walking about the rooms in
hospital dressing gowns. The first person Rostov met in the
officers' ward was a thin little man with one arm, who was walking
about the first room in a nightcap and hospital dressing gown, with
a pipe between his teeth. Rostov looked at him, trying to remember
where he had seen him before.

"See where we've met again!" said the little man. "Tushin, Tushin,
don't you remember, who gave you a lift at Schon Grabern? And I've had
a bit cut off, you see..." he went on with a smile, pointing to the
empty sleeve of his dressing gown. "Looking for Vasili Dmitrich
Denisov? My neighbor," he added, when he heard who Rostov wanted.
"Here, here," and Tushin led him into the next room, from whence
came sounds of several laughing voices.

"How can they laugh, or even live at all here?" thought Rostov,
still aware of that smell of decomposing flesh that had been so strong
in the soldiers' ward, and still seeming to see fixed on him those
envious looks which had followed him out from both sides, and the face
of that young soldier with eyes rolled back.

Denisov lay asleep on his bed with his head under the blanket,
though it was nearly noon.

"Ah, Wostov? How are you, how are you?" he called out, still in
the same voice as in the regiment, but Rostov noticed sadly that under
this habitual ease and animation some new, sinister, hidden feeling
showed itself in the expression of Denisov's face and the
intonations of his voice.

His wound, though a slight one, had not yet healed even now, six
weeks after he had been hit. His face had the same swollen pallor as
the faces of the other hospital patients, but it was not this that
struck Rostov. What struck him was that Denisov did not seem glad to
see him, and smiled at him unnaturally. He did not ask about the
regiment, nor about the general state of affairs, and when Rostov
spoke of these matters did not listen.

Rostov even noticed that Denisov did not like to be reminded of
the regiment, or in general of that other free life which was going on
outside the hospital. He seemed to try to forget that old life and was
only interested in the affair with the commissariat officers. On
Rostov's inquiry as to how the matter stood, he at once produced
from under his pillow a paper he had received from the commission
and the rough draft of his answer to it. He became animated when he
began reading his paper and specially drew Rostov's attention to the
stinging rejoinders he made to his enemies. His hospital companions,
who had gathered round Rostov--a fresh arrival from the world outside-
gradually began to disperse as soon as Denisov began reading his
answer. Rostov noticed by their faces that all those gentlemen had
already heard that story more than once and were tired of it. Only the
man who had the next bed, a stout Uhlan, continued to sit on his
bed, gloomily frowning and smoking a pipe, and little one-armed Tushin
still listened, shaking his head disapprovingly. In the middle of
the reading, the Uhlan interrupted Denisov.

"But what I say is," he said, turning to Rostov, "it would be best
simply to petition the Emperor for pardon. They say great rewards will
now be distributed, and surely a pardon would be granted...."

"Me petition the Empewo'!" exclaimed Denisov, in a voice to which he
tried hard to give the old energy and fire, but which sounded like
an expression of irritable impotence. "What for? If I were a wobber
I would ask mercy, but I'm being court-martialed for bwinging
wobbers to book. Let them twy me, I'm not afwaid of anyone. I've
served the Tsar and my countwy honowably and have not stolen! And am I
to be degwaded?... Listen, I'm w'iting to them stwaight. This is
what I say: 'If I had wobbed the Tweasuwy...'"

"It's certainly well written," said Tushin, "but that's not the
point, Vasili Dmitrich," and he also turned to Rostov. "One has to
submit, and Vasili Dmitrich doesn't want to. You know the auditor told
you it was a bad business."

"Well, let it be bad," said Denisov.

"The auditor wrote out a petition for you," continued Tushin, "and
you ought to sign it and ask this gentleman to take it. No doubt he"
(indicating Rostov) "has connections on the staff. You won't find a
better opportunity."

"Haven't I said I'm not going to gwovel?" Denisov interrupted him,
went on reading his paper.

Rostov had not the courage to persuade Denisov, though he
instinctively felt that the way advised by Tushin and the other
officers was the safest, and though he would have been glad to be of
service to Denisov. He knew his stubborn will and straightforward
hasty temper.

When the reading of Denisov's virulent reply, which took more than
an hour, was over, Rostov said nothing, and he spent the rest of the
day in a most dejected state of mind amid Denisov's hospital comrades,
who had round him, telling them what he knew and listening to their
stories. Denisov was moodily silent all the evening.

Late in the evening, when Rostov was about to leave, he asked
Denisov whether he had no commission for him.

"Yes, wait a bit," said Denisov, glancing round at the officers, and
taking his papers from under his pillow he went to the window, where
he had an inkpot, and sat down to write.

"It seems it's no use knocking one's head against a wall!" he
said, coming from the window and giving Rostov a large envelope. In it
was the petition to the Emperor drawn up by the auditor, in which
Denisov, without alluding to the offenses of the commissariat
officials, simply asked for pardon.

"Hand it in. It seems..."

He did not finish, but gave a painfully unnatural smile.





CHAPTER XIX


Having returned to the regiment and told the commander the state
of Denisov's affairs, Rostov rode to Tilsit with the letter to the
Emperor.

On the thirteenth of June the French and Russian Emperors arrived in
Tilsit. Boris Drubetskoy had asked the important personage on whom
he was in attendance, to include him in the suite appointed for the
stay at Tilsit.

"I should like to see the great man," he said, alluding to Napoleon,
whom hitherto he, like everyone else, had always called Buonaparte.

"You are speaking of Buonaparte?" asked the general, smiling.

Boris looked at his general inquiringly and immediately saw that
he was being tested.

"I am speaking, Prince, of the Emperor Napoleon," he replied. The
general patted him on the shoulder, with a smile.

"You will go far," he said, and took him to Tilsit with him.

Boris was among the few present at the Niemen on the day the two
Emperors met. He saw the raft, decorated with monograms, saw
Napoleon pass before the French Guards on the farther bank of the
river, saw the pensive face of the Emperor Alexander as he sat in
silence in a tavern on the bank of the Niemen awaiting Napoleon's
arrival, saw both Emperors get into boats, and saw how Napoleon-
reaching the raft first--stepped quickly forward to meet Alexander and
held out his hand to him, and how they both retired into the pavilion.
Since he had begun to move in the highest circles Boris had made it
his habit to watch attentively all that went on around him and to note
it down. At the time of the meeting at Tilsit he asked the names of
those who had come with Napoleon and about the uniforms they wore, and
listened attentively to words spoken by important personages. At the
moment the Emperors went into the pavilion he looked at his watch, and
did not forget to look at it again when Alexander came out. The
interview had lasted an hour and fifty-three minutes. He noted this
down that same evening, among other facts he felt to be of historic
importance. As the Emperor's suite was a very small one, it was a
matter of great importance, for a man who valued his success in the
service, to be at Tilsit on the occasion of this interview between the
two Emperors, and having succeeded in this, Boris felt that henceforth
his position was fully assured. He had not only become known, but
people had grown accustomed to him and accepted him. Twice he had
executed commissions to the Emperor himself, so that the latter knew
his face, and all those at court, far from cold-shouldering him as
at first when they considered him a newcomer, would now have been
surprised had he been absent.

Boris lodged with another adjutant, the Polish Count Zhilinski.
Zhilinski, a Pole brought up in Paris, was rich, and passionately fond
of the French, and almost every day of the stay at Tilsit, French
officers of the Guard and from French headquarters were dining and
lunching with him and Boris.

On the evening of the twenty-fourth of June, Count Zhilinski
arranged a supper for his French friends. The guest of honor was an
aide-de-camp of Napoleon's, there were also several French officers of
the Guard, and a page of Napoleon's, a young lad of an old
aristocratic French family. That same day, Rostov, profiting by the
darkness to avoid being recognized in civilian dress, came to Tilsit
and went to the lodging occupied by Boris and Zhilinski.

Rostov, in common with the whole army from which he came, was far
from having experienced the change of feeling toward Napoleon and
the French--who from being foes had suddenly become friends--that
had taken place at headquarters and in Boris. In the army, Bonaparte
and the French were still regarded with mingled feelings of anger,
contempt, and fear. Only recently, talking with one of Platov's
Cossack officers, Rostov had argued that if Napoleon were taken
prisoner he would be treated not as a sovereign, but as a criminal.
Quite lately, happening to meet a wounded French colonel on the
road, Rostov had maintained with heat that peace was impossible
between a legitimate sovereign and the criminal Bonaparte. Rostov
was therefore unpleasantly struck by the presence of French officers
in Boris' lodging, dressed in uniforms he had been accustomed to see
from quite a different point of view from the outposts of the flank.
As soon as he noticed a French officer, who thrust his head out of the
door, that warlike feeling of hostility which he always experienced at
the sight of the enemy suddenly seized him. He stopped at the
threshold and asked in Russian whether Drubetskoy lived there.
Boris, hearing a strange voice in the anteroom, came out to meet
him. An expression of annoyance showed itself for a moment on his face
on first recognizing Rostov.

"Ah, it's you? Very glad, very glad to see you," he said, however,
coming toward him with a smile. But Rostov had noticed his first
impulse.

"I've come at a bad time I think. I should not have come, but I have
business," he said coldly.

"No, I only wonder how you managed to get away from your regiment.
Dans un moment je suis a vous,"* he said, answering someone who called
him.


*"In a minute I shall be at your disposal."


"I see I'm intruding," Rostov repeated.

The look of annoyance had already disappeared from Boris' face:
having evidently reflected and decided how to act, he very quietly
took both Rostov's hands and led him into the next room. His eyes,
looking serenely and steadily at Rostov, seemed to be veiled by
something, as if screened by blue spectacles of conventionality. So it
seemed to Rostov.

"Oh, come now! As if you could come at a wrong time!" said Boris,
and he led him into the room where the supper table was laid and
introduced him to his guests, explaining that he was not a civilian,
but an hussar officer, and an old friend of his.

"Count Zhilinski--le Comte N. N.--le Capitaine S. S.," said he,
naming his guests. Rostov looked frowningly at the Frenchmen, bowed
reluctantly, and remained silent.

Zhilinski evidently did not receive this new Russian person very
willingly into his circle and did not speak to Rostov. Boris did not
appear to notice the constraint the newcomer produced and, with the
same pleasant composure and the same veiled look in his eyes with
which he had met Rostov, tried to enliven the conversation. One of the
Frenchmen, with the politeness characteristic of his countrymen,
addressed the obstinately taciturn Rostov, saying that the latter
had probably come to Tilsit to see the Emperor.

"No, I came on business," replied Rostov, briefly.

Rostov had been out of humor from the moment he noticed the look
of dissatisfaction on Boris' face, and as always happens to those in a
bad humor, it seemed to him that everyone regarded him with aversion
and that he was in everybody's way. He really was in their way, for he
alone took no part in the conversation which again became general. The
looks the visitors cast on him seemed to say: "And what is he
sitting here for?" He rose and went up to Boris.

"Anyhow, I'm in your way," he said in a low tone. "Come and talk
over my business and I'll go away."

"Oh, no, not at all," said Boris. "But if you are tired, come and
lie down in my room and have a rest."

"Yes, really..."

They went into the little room where Boris slept. Rostov, without
sitting down, began at once, irritably (as if Boris were to blame in
some way) telling him about Denisov's affair, asking him whether,
through his general, he could and would intercede with the Emperor
on Denisov's behalf and get Denisov's petition handed in. When he
and Boris were alone, Rostov felt for the first time that he could not
look Boris in the face without a sense of awkwardness. Boris, with one
leg crossed over the other and stroking his left hand with the slender
fingers of his right, listened to Rostov as a general listens to the
report of a subordinate, now looking aside and now gazing straight
into Rostov's eyes with the same veiled look. Each time this
happened Rostov felt uncomfortable and cast down his eyes.

"I have heard of such cases and know that His Majesty is very severe
in such affairs. I think it would be best not to bring it before the
Emperor, but to apply to the commander of the corps.... But in
general, I think..."

"So you don't want to do anything? Well then, say so!" Rostov almost
shouted, not looking Boris in the face.

Boris smiled.

"On the contrary, I will do what I can. Only I thought..."

At that moment Zhilinski's voice was heard calling Boris.

"Well then, go, go, go..." said Rostov, and refusing supper and
remaining alone in the little room, he walked up and down for a long
time, hearing the lighthearted French conversation from the next room.





CHAPTER XX


Rostov had come to Tilsit the day least suitable for a petition on
Denisov's behalf. He could not himself go to the general in attendance
as he was in mufti and had come to Tilsit without permission to do so,
and Boris, even had he wished to, could not have done so on the
following day. On that day, June 27, the preliminaries of peace were
signed. The Emperors exchanged decorations: Alexander received the
Cross of the Legion of Honor and Napoleon the Order of St. Andrew of
the First Degree, and a dinner had been arranged for the evening,
given by a battalion of the French Guards to the Preobrazhensk
battalion. The Emperors were to be present at that banquet.

Rostov felt so ill at ease and uncomfortable with Boris that, when
the latter looked in after supper, he pretended to be asleep, and
early next morning went away, avoiding Boris. In his civilian
clothes and a round hat, he wandered about the town, staring at the
French and their uniforms and at the streets and houses where the
Russian and French Emperors were staying. In a square he saw tables
being set up and preparations made for the dinner; he saw the
Russian and French colors draped from side to side of the streets,
with hugh monograms A and N. In the windows of the houses also flags
and bunting were displayed.

"Boris doesn't want to help me and I don't want to ask him. That's
settled," thought Nicholas. "All is over between us, but I won't leave
here without having done all I can for Denisov and certainly not
without getting his letter to the Emperor. The Emperor!... He is
here!" thought Rostov, who had unconsciously returned to the house
where Alexander lodged.

Saddled horses were standing before the house and the suite were
assembling, evidently preparing for the Emperor to come out.

"I may see him at any moment," thought Rostov. "If only I were to
hand the letter direct to him and tell him all... could they really
arrest me for my civilian clothes? Surely not! He would understand
on whose side justice lies. He understands everything, knows
everything. Who can be more just, more magnanimous than he? And even
if they did arrest me for being here, what would it matter?" thought
he, looking at an officer who was entering the house the Emperor
occupied. "After all, people do go in.... It's all nonsense! I'll go
in and hand the letter to the Emperor myself so much the worse for
Drubetskoy who drives me to it!" And suddenly with a determination
he himself did not expect, Rostov felt for the letter in his pocket
and went straight to the house.

"No, I won't miss my opportunity now, as I did after Austerlitz," he
thought, expecting every moment to meet the monarch, and conscious
of the blood that rushed to his heart at the thought. "I will fall
at his feet and beseech him. He will lift me up, will listen, and will
even thank me. 'I am happy when I can do good, but to remedy injustice
is the greatest happiness,'" Rostov fancied the sovereign saying.
And passing people who looked after him with curiosity, he entered the
porch of the Emperor's house.

A broad staircase led straight up from the entry, and to the right
he saw a closed door. Below, under the staircase, was a door leading
to the lower floor.

"Whom do you want?" someone inquired.

"To hand in a letter, a petition, to His Majesty," said Nicholas,
with a tremor in his voice.

"A petition? This way, to the officer on duty" (he was
shown the door leading downstairs), "only it won't be accepted."

On hearing this indifferent voice, Rostov grew frightened at what he
was doing; the thought of meeting the Emperor at any moment was so
fascinating and consequently so alarming that he was ready to run
away, but the official who had questioned him opened the door, and
Rostov entered.

A short stout man of about thirty, in white breeches and high
boots and a batiste shirt that he had evidently only just put on,
standing in that room, and his valet was buttoning on to the back of
his breeches a new pair of handsome silk-embroidered braces that,
for some reason, attracted Rostov's attention. This man was was
speaking to someone in the adjoining room.

"A good figure and in her first bloom," he was saying, but on seeing
Rostov, he stopped short and frowned.

"What is it? A petition?"

"What is it?" asked the person in the other room.

"Another petitioner," answered the man with the braces.

"Tell him to come later. He'll be coming out directly, we must go."

"Later... later! Tomorrow. It's too late..."

Rostov turned and was about to go, but the man in the braces stopped
him.

"Whom have you come from? Who are you?"

"I come from Major Denisov," answered Rostov.

"Are you an officer?"

"Lieutenant Count Rostov."

"What audacity! Hand it in through your commander. And go along with
you... go," and he continued to put on the uniform the valet handed
him.

Rostov went back into the hall and noticed that in the porch there
were many officers and generals in full parade uniform, whom he had to
pass.

Cursing his temerity, his heart sinking at the thought of finding
himself at any moment face to face with the Emperor and being put to
shame and arrested in his presence, fully alive now to the impropriety
of his conduct and repenting of it, Rostov, with downcast eyes, was
making his way out of the house through the brilliant suite when a
familiar voice called him and a hand detained him.

"What are you doing here, sir, in civilian dress?" asked a deep
voice.

It was a cavalry general who had obtained the Emperor's special
favor during this campaign, and who had formerly commanded the
division in which Rostov was serving.

Rostov, in dismay, began justifying himself, but seeing the
kindly, jocular face of the general, he took him aside and in an
excited voice told him the whole affair, asking him to intercede for
Denisov, whom the general knew. Having heard Rostov to the end, the
general shook his head gravely.

"I'm sorry, sorry for that fine fellow. Give me the letter."

Hardly had Rostov handed him the letter and finished explaining
Denisov's case, when hasty steps and the jingling of spurs were
heard on the stairs, and the general, leaving him, went to the
porch. The gentlemen of the Emperor's suite ran down the stairs and
went to their horses. Hayne, the same groom who had been at
Austerlitz, led up the Emperor's horse, and the faint creak of a
footstep Rostov knew at once was heard on the stairs. Forgetting the
danger of being recognized, Rostov went close to the porch, together
with some inquisitive civilians, and again, after two years, saw those
features he adored: that same face and same look and step, and the
same union of majesty and mildness.... And the feeling of enthusiasm
and love for his sovereign rose again in Rostov's soul in all its
old force. In the uniform of the Preobrazhensk regiment--white
chamois-leather breeches and high boots--and wearing a star Rostov did
not know (it was that of the Legion d'honneur), the monarch came out
into the porch, putting on his gloves and carrying his hat under his
arm. He stopped and looked about him, brightening everything around by
his glance. He spoke a few words to some of the generals, and,
recognizing the former commander of Rostov's division, smiled and
beckoned to him.

All the suite drew back and Rostov saw the general talking for
some time to the Emperor.

The Emperor said a few words to him and took a step toward his
horse. Again the crowd of members of the suite and street gazers
(among whom was Rostov) moved nearer to the Emperor. Stopping beside
his horse, with his hand on the saddle, the Emperor turned to the
cavalry general and said in a loud voice, evidently wishing to be
heard by all:

"I cannot do it, General. I cannot, because the law is stronger than
I," and he raised his foot to the stirrup.

The general bowed his head respectfully, and the monarch mounted and
rode down the street at a gallop. Beside himself with enthusiasm,
Rostov ran after him with the crowd.





CHAPTER XXI


The Emperor rode to the square where, facing one another, a
battalion of the Preobrazhensk regiment stood on the right and a
battalion of the French Guards in their bearskin caps on the left.

As the Tsar rode up to one flank of the battalions, which
presented arms, another group of horsemen galloped up to the
opposite flank, and at the head of them Rostov recognized Napoleon. It
could be no one else. He came at a gallop, wearing a small hat, a blue
uniform open over a white vest, and the St. Andrew ribbon over his
shoulder. He was riding a very fine thoroughbred gray Arab horse
with a crimson gold-embroidered saddlecloth. On approaching
Alexander he raised his hat, and as he did so, Rostov, with his
cavalryman's eye, could not help noticing that Napoleon did not sit
well or firmly in the saddle. The battalions shouted "Hurrah!" and
"Vive l'Empereur!" Napoleon said something to Alexander, and both
Emperors dismounted and took each other's hands. Napoleon's face
wore an unpleasant and artificial smile. Alexander was saying
something affable to him.

In spite of the trampling of the French gendarmes' horses, which
were pushing back the crowd, Rostov kept his eyes on every movement of
Alexander and Bonaparte. It struck him as a surprise that Alexander
treated Bonaparte as an equal and that the latter was quite at ease
with the Tsar, as if such relations with an Emperor were an everyday
matter to him.

Alexander and Napoleon, with the long train of their suites,
approached the right flank of the Preobrazhensk battalion and came
straight up to the crowd standing there. The crowd unexpectedly
found itself so close to the Emperors that Rostov, standing in the
front row, was afraid he might be recognized.

"Sire, I ask your permission to present the Legion of Honor to the
bravest of your soldiers," said a sharp, precise voice, articulating
every letter.

This was said by the undersized Napoleon, looking up straight into
Alexander's eyes. Alexander listened attentively to what was said to
him and, bending his head, smiled pleasantly.

"To him who has borne himself most bravely in this last war,"
added Napoleon, accentuating each syllable, as with a composure and
assurance exasperating to Rostov, he ran his eyes over the Russian
ranks drawn up before him, who all presented arms with their eyes
fixed on their Emperor.

"Will Your Majesty allow me to consult the colonel?" said
Alexander and took a few hasty steps toward Prince Kozlovski, the
commander of the battalion.

Bonaparte meanwhile began taking the glove off his small white hand,
tore it in doing so, and threw it away. An aide-de-camp behind him
rushed forward and picked it up.

"To whom shall it be given?" the Emperor Alexander asked
Koslovski, in Russian in a low voice.

"To whomever Your Majesty commands."

The Emperor knit his brows with dissatisfaction and, glancing
back, remarked:

"But we must give him an answer."

Kozlovski scanned the ranks resolutely and included Rostov in his
scrutiny.

"Can it be me?" thought Rostov.

"Lazarev!" the colonel called, with a frown, and Lazarev, the
first soldier in the rank, stepped briskly forward.

"Where are you off to? Stop here!" voices whispered to Lazarev who
did not know where to go. Lazarev stopped, casting a sidelong look
at his colonel in alarm. His face twitched, as often happens to
soldiers called before the ranks.

Napoleon slightly turned his head, and put his plump little hand out
behind him as if to take something. The members of his suite, guessing
at once what he wanted, moved about and whispered as they passed
something from one to another, and a page--the same one Rostov had
seen the previous evening at Boris'--ran forward and, bowing
respectfully over the outstretched hand and not keeping it waiting a
moment, laid in it an Order on a red ribbon. Napoleon, without
looking, pressed two fingers together and the badge was between
them. Then he approached Lazarev (who rolled his eyes and persistently
gazed at his own monarch), looked round at the Emperor Alexander to
imply that what he was now doing was done for the sake of his ally,
and the small white hand holding the Order touched one of Lazarev's
buttons. It was as if Napoleon knew that it was only necessary for his
hand to deign to touch that soldier's breast for the soldier to be
forever happy, rewarded, and distinguished from everyone else in the
world. Napoleon merely laid the cross on Lazarev's breast and,
dropping his hand, turned toward Alexander as though sure that the
cross would adhere there. And it really did.

Officious hands, Russian and French, immediately seized the cross
and fastened it to the uniform. Lazarev glanced morosely at the little
man with white hands who was doing something to him and, still
standing motionless presenting arms, looked again straight into
Alexander's eyes, as if asking whether he should stand there, or go
away, or do something else. But receiving no orders, he remained for
some time in that rigid position.

The Emperors remounted and rode away. The Preobrazhensk battalion,
breaking rank, mingled with the French Guards and sat down at the
tables prepared for them.

Lazarev sat in the place of honor. Russian and French officers
embraced him, congratulated him, and pressed his hands. Crowds of
officers and civilians drew near merely to see him. A rumble of
Russian and French voices and laughter filled the air round the tables
in the square. Two officers with flushed faces, looking cheerful and
happy, passed by Rostov.

"What d'you think of the treat? All on silver plate," one of them
was saying. "Have you seen Lazarev?"

"I have."

"Tomorrow, I hear, the Preobrazhenskis will give them a dinner."

"Yes, but what luck for Lazarev! Twelve hundred francs' pension
for life."

"Here's a cap, lads!" shouted a Preobrazhensk soldier, donning a
shaggy French cap.

"It's a fine thing! First-rate!"

"Have you heard the password?" asked one Guards' officer of another.
"The day before yesterday it was 'Napoleon, France, bravoure';
yesterday, 'Alexandre, Russie, grandeur.' One day our Emperor gives it
and next day Napoleon. Tomorrow our Emperor will send a St. George's
Cross to the bravest of the French Guards. It has to be done. He
must respond in kind."

Boris, too, with his friend Zhilinski, came to see the Preobrazhensk
banquet. On his way back, he noticed Rostov standing by the corner
of a house.

"Rostov! How d'you do? We missed one another," he said, and could
not refrain from asking what was the matter, so strangely dismal and
troubled was Rostov's face.

"Nothing, nothing," replied Rostov.

"You'll call round?"

"Yes, I will."

Rostov stood at that corner for a long time, watching the feast from
a distance. In his mind, a painful process was going on
which he could not bring to a conclusion. Terrible doubts rose in
his soul. Now he remembered Denisov with his changed expression, his
submission, and the whole hospital, with arms and legs torn off and
its dirt and disease. So vividly did he recall that hospital stench of
dead flesh that he looked round to see where the smell came from. Next
he thought of that self-satisfied Bonaparte, with his small white
hand, who was now an Emperor, liked and respected by Alexander. Then
why those severed arms and legs and those dead men?... Then again he
thought of Lazarev rewarded and Denisov punished and unpardoned. He
caught himself harboring such strange thoughts that he was frightened.

The smell of the food the Preobrazhenskis were eating and a sense of
hunger recalled him from these reflections; he had to get something to
eat before going away. He went to a hotel he had noticed that morning.
There he found so many people, among them officers who, like
himself, had come in civilian clothes, that he had difficulty in
getting a dinner. Two officers of his own division joined him. The
conversation naturally turned on the peace. The officers, his
comrades, like most of the army, were dissatisfied with the peace
concluded after the battle of Friedland. They said that had we held
out a little longer Napoleon would have been done for, as his troops
had neither provisions nor ammunition. Nicholas ate and drank (chiefly
the latter) in silence. He finished a couple of bottles of wine by
himself. The process in his mind went on tormenting him without
reaching a conclusion. He feared to give way to his thoughts, yet
could not get rid of them. Suddenly, on one of the officers' saying
that it was humiliating to look at the French, Rostov began shouting
with uncalled-for wrath, and therefore much to the surprise of the
officers:

"How can you judge what's best?" he cried, the blood suddenly
rushing to his face. "How can you judge the Emperor's actions? What
right have we to argue? We cannot comprehend either the Emperor's or
his actions!"

"But I never said a word about the Emperor!" said the officer,
justifying himself, and unable to understand Rostov's outburst, except
on the supposition that he was drunk.

But Rostov did not listen to him.

"We are not diplomatic officials, we are soldiers and nothing more,"
he went on. "If we are ordered to die, we must die. If we're punished,
it means that we have deserved it, it's not for us to judge. If the
Emperor pleases to recognize Bonaparte as Emperor and to conclude an
alliance with him, it means that that is the right thing to do. If
once we begin judging and arguing about everything, nothing sacred
will be left! That way we shall be saying there is no God--nothing!"
shouted Nicholas, banging the table--very little to the point as it
seemed to his listeners, but quite relevantly to the course of his own
thoughts.

"Our business is to do our duty, to fight and not to think! That's
all...." said he.

"And to drink," said one of the officers, not wishing to quarrel.

"Yes, and to drink," assented Nicholas. "Hullo there! Another
bottle!" he shouted.

In 1808 the Emperor Alexander went to Erfurt for a fresh interview
with the Emperor Napoleon, and in the upper circles of Petersburg
there was much talk of the grandeur of this important meeting.





CHAPTER XXII


In 1809 the intimacy between "the world's two arbiters," as Napoleon
and Alexander were called, was such that when Napoleon declared war on
Austria a Russian corps crossed the frontier to co-operate with our
old enemy Bonaparte against our old ally the Emperor of Austria, and
in court circles the possibility of marriage between Napoleon and
one of Alexander's sisters was spoken of. But besides considerations
of foreign policy, the attention of Russian society was at that time
keenly directed on the internal changes that were being undertaken
in all the departments of government.

Life meanwhile--real life, with its essential interests of health
and sickness, toil and rest, and its intellectual interests in
thought, science, poetry, music, love, friendship, hatred, and
passions--went on as usual, independently of and apart from
political friendship or enmity with Napoleon Bonaparte and from all
the schemes of reconstruction.




BOOK SIX: 1808 --10





CHAPTER I


Prince Andrew had spent two years continuously in the country.

All the plans Pierre had attempted on his estates--and constantly
changing from one thing to another had never accomplished--were
carried out by Prince Andrew without display and without perceptible
difficulty.

He had in the highest degree a practical tenacity which Pierre
lacked, and without fuss or strain on his part this set things going.

On one of his estates the three hundred serfs were liberated and
became free agricultural laborers--this being one of the first
examples of the kind in Russia. On other estates the serfs' compulsory
labor was commuted for a quitrent. A trained midwife was engaged for
Bogucharovo at his expense, and a priest was paid to teach reading and
writing to the children of the peasants and household serfs.

Prince Andrew spent half his time at Bald Hills with his father
and his son, who was still in the care of nurses. The other half he
spent in "Bogucharovo Cloister," as his father called Prince
Andrew's estate. Despite the indifference to the affairs of the
world he had expressed to Pierre, he diligently followed all that went
on, received many books, and to his surprise noticed that when he or
his father had visitors from Petersburg, the very vortex of life,
these people lagged behind himself--who never left the country--in
knowledge of what was happening in home and foreign affairs.

Besides being occupied with his estates and reading a great
variety of books, Prince Andrew was at this time busy with a
critical of survey our last two unfortunate campaigns, and with
drawing up a proposal for a reform of the army rules and regulations.

In the spring of 1809 he went to visit the Ryazan estates which
had been inherited by his son, whose guardian he was.

Warmed by the spring sunshine he sat in the caleche looking at the
new grass, the first leaves on the birches, and the first puffs of
white spring clouds floating across the clear blue sky. He was not
thinking of anything, but looked absent-mindedly and cheerfully from
side to side.

They crossed the ferry where he had talked with Pierre the year
before. They went through the muddy village, past threshing floors and
green fields of winter rye, downhill where snow still lodged near
the bridge, uphill where the clay had been liquefied by the rain, past
strips of stubble land and bushes touched with green here and there,
and into a birch forest growing on both sides of the road. In the
forest it was almost hot, no wind could be felt. The birches with
their sticky green leaves were motionless, and lilac-colored flowers
and the first blades of green grass were pushing up and lifting last
year's leaves. The coarse evergreen color of the small fir trees
scattered here and there among the birches was an unpleasant
reminder of winter. On entering the forest the horses began to snort
and sweated visibly.

Peter the footman made some remark to the coachman; the latter
assented. But apparently the coachman's sympathy was not enough for
Peter, and he turned on the box toward his master.

"How pleasant it is, your excellency!" he said with a respectful
smile.

"What?"

"It's pleasant, your excellency!"

"What is he talking about?" thought Prince Andrew. "Oh, the
spring, I suppose," he thought as he turned round. "Yes, really
everything is green already.... How early! The birches and cherry
and alders too are coming out.... But the oaks show no sign yet. Ah,
here is one oak!"

 At the edge of the road stood an oak. Probably ten times the age of
the birches that formed the forest, it was ten times as thick and
twice as tall as they. It was an enormous tree, its girth twice as
great as a man could embrace, and evidently long ago some of its
branches had been broken off and its bark scarred. With its huge
ungainly limbs sprawling unsymmetrically, and its gnarled hands and
fingers, it stood an aged, stern, and scornful monster among the
smiling birch trees. Only the dead-looking evergreen firs dotted about
in the forest, and this oak, refused to yield to the charm of spring
or notice either the spring or the sunshine.

"Spring, love, happiness!" this oak seemed to say. "Are you not
weary of that stupid, meaningless, constantly repeated fraud? Always
the same and always a fraud? There is no spring, no sun, no happiness!
Look at those cramped dead firs, ever the same, and at me too,
sticking out my broken and barked fingers just where they have
grown, whether from my back or my sides: as they have grown so I
stand, and I do not believe in your hopes and your lies."

As he passed through the forest Prince Andrew turned several times
to look at that oak, as if expecting something from it. Under the oak,
too, were flowers and grass, but it stood among them scowling,
rigid, misshapen, and grim as ever.

"Yes, the oak is right, a thousand times right," thought Prince
Andrew. "Let others--the young--yield afresh to that fraud, but we
know life, our life is finished!"

A whole sequence of new thoughts, hopeless but mournfully
pleasant, rose in his soul in connection with that tree. During this
journey he, as it were, considered his life afresh and arrived at
his old conclusion, restful in its hopelessness: that it was not for
him to begin anything anew--but that he must live out his life,
content to do no harm, and not disturbing himself or desiring
anything.





CHAPTER II


Prince Andrew had to see the Marshal of the Nobility for the
district in connection with the affairs of the Ryazan estate of
which he was trustee. This Marshal was Count Ilya Rostov, and in the
middle of May Prince Andrew went to visit him.

It was now hot spring weather. The whole forest was already
clothed in green. It was dusty and so hot that on passing near water
one longed to bathe.

Prince Andrew, depressed and preoccupied with the business about
which he had to speak to the Marshal, was driving up the avenue in the
grounds of the Rostovs' house at Otradnoe. He heard merry girlish
cries behind some trees on the right and saw a group of girls running to
cross the path of his caleche. Ahead of the rest and nearer to him ran
a dark-haired, remarkably slim, pretty girl in a yellow chintz
dress, with a white handkerchief on her head from under which loose
locks of hair escaped. The girl was shouting something but, seeing
that he was a stranger, ran back laughing without looking at him.

Suddenly, he did not know why, he felt a pang. The day was so
beautiful, the sun so bright, everything around so gay, but that
slim pretty girl did not know, or wish to know, of his existence and
was contented and cheerful in her own separate--probably foolish-
but bright and happy life. "What is she so glad about? What is she
thinking of? Not of the military regulations or of the arrangement
of the Ryazan serfs' quitrents. Of what is she thinking? Why is she so
happy?" Prince Andrew asked himself with instinctive curiosity.

In 1809 Count Ilya Rostov was living at Otradnoe just as he had done
in former years, that is, entertaining almost the whole province
with hunts, theatricals, dinners, and music. He was glad to see Prince
Andrew, as he was to see any new visitor, and insisted on his
staying the night.

During the dull day, in the course of which he was entertained by
his elderly hosts and by the more important of the visitors (the old
count's house was crowded on account of an approaching name day),
Prince Andrew repeatedly glanced at Natasha, gay and laughing among
the younger members of the company, and asked himself each time, "What
is she thinking about? Why is she so glad?"

That night, alone in new surroundings, he was long unable to
sleep. He read awhile and then put out his candle, but relit it. It
was hot in the room, the inside shutters of which were closed. He
was cross with the stupid old man (as he called Rostov), who had
made him stay by assuring him that some necessary documents had not
yet arrived from town, and he was vexed with himself for having
stayed.

He got up and went to the window to open it. As soon as he opened
the shutters the moonlight, as if it had long been watching for
this, burst into the room. He opened the casement. The night was
fresh, bright, and very still. Just before the window was a row of
pollard trees, looking black on one side and with a silvery light on
the other. Beneath the trees grewsome kind of lush, wet, bushy
vegetation with silver-lit leaves and stems here and there. Farther
back beyond the dark trees a roof glittered with dew, to the right was
a leafy tree with brilliantly white trunk and branches, and above it
shone the moon, nearly at its full, in a pale, almost starless, spring
sky. Prince Andrew leaned his elbows on the window ledge and his
eyes rested on that sky.

His room was on the first floor. Those in the rooms above were
also awake. He heard female voices overhead.

"Just once more," said a girlish voice above him which Prince Andrew
recognized at once.

"But when are you coming to bed?" replied another voice.

"I won't, I can't sleep, what's the use? Come now for the last
time."

 Two girlish voices sang a musical passage--the end of some song.

"Oh, how lovely! Now go to sleep, and there's an end of it."

"You go to sleep, but I can't," said the first voice, coming
nearer to the window. She was evidently leaning right out, for the
rustle of her dress and even her breathing could be heard.
Everything was stone-still, like the moon and its light and the
shadows. Prince Andrew, too, dared not stir, for fear of betraying his
unintentional presence.

"Sonya! Sonya!" he again heard the first speaker. "Oh, how can you
sleep? Only look how glorious it is! Ah, how glorious! Do wake up,
Sonya!" she said almost with tears in her voice. "There never, never
was such a lovely night before!"

Sonya made some reluctant reply.

"Do just come and see what a moon!... Oh, how lovely! Come
here.... Darling, sweetheart, come here! There, you see? I feel like
sitting down on my heels, putting my arms round my knees like this,
straining tight, as tight as possible, and flying away! Like this...."

"Take care, you'll fall out."

He heard the sound of a scuffle and Sonya's disapproving voice:
"It's past one o'clock."

"Oh, you only spoil things for me. All right, go, go!"

Again all was silent, but Prince Andrew knew she was still sitting
there. From time to time he heard a soft rustle and at times a sigh.

"O God, O God! What does it mean?" she suddenly exclaimed. "To bed
then, if it must be!" and she slammed the casement.

"For her I might as well not exist!" thought Prince Andrew while
he listened to her voice, for some reason expecting yet fearing that
she might say something about him. "There she is again! As if it
were on purpose," thought he.

In his soul there suddenly arose such an unexpected turmoil of
youthful thoughts and hopes, contrary to the whole tenor of his
life, that unable to explain his condition to himself he lay down
and fell asleep at once.





CHAPTER III


Next morning, having taken leave of no one but the count, and not
waiting for the ladies to appear, Prince Andrew set off for home.

It was already the beginning of June when on his return journey he
drove into the birch forest where the gnarled old oak had made so
strange and memorable an impression on him. In the forest the
harness bells sounded yet more muffled than they had done six weeks
before, for now all was thick, shady, and dense, and the young firs
dotted about in the forest did not jar on the general beauty but,
lending themselves to the mood around, were delicately green with
fluffy young shoots.

The whole day had been hot. Somewhere a storm was gathering, but
only a small cloud had scattered some raindrops lightly, sprinkling
the road and the sappy leaves. The left side of the forest was dark in
the shade, the right side glittered in the sunlight, wet and shiny and
scarcely swayed by the breeze. Everything was in blossom, the
nightingales trilled, and their voices reverberated now near, now
far away.

"Yes, here in this forest was that oak with which I agreed," thought
Prince Andrew. "But where is it?" he again wondered, gazing at the
left side of the road, and without recognizing it he looked with
admiration at the very oak he sought. The old oak, quite transfigured,
spreading out a canopy of sappy dark-green foliage, stood rapt and
slightly trembling in the rays of the evening sun. Neither gnarled
fingers nor old scars nor old doubts and sorrows were any of them in
evidence now. Through the hard century-old bark, even where there were
no twigs, leaves had sprouted such as one could hardly believe the old
veteran could have produced.

"Yes, it is the same oak," thought Prince Andrew, and all at once he
was seized by an unreasoning springtime feeling of joy and renewal.
All the best moments of his life suddenly rose to his memory.
Austerlitz with the lofty heavens, his wife's dead reproachful face,
Pierre at the ferry, that girl thrilled by the beauty of the night,
and that night itself and the moon, and.... all this rushed suddenly
to his mind.

"No, life is not over at thirty-one!" Prince Andrew suddenly decided
finally and decisively. "It is not enough for me to know what I have
in me--everyone must know it: Pierre, and that young girl who wanted
to fly away into the sky, everyone must know me, so that my life may
not be lived for myself alone while others live so apart from it,
but so that it may be reflected in them all, and they and I may live
in harmony!"


On reaching home Prince Andrew decided to go to Petersburg that
autumn and found all sorts of reasons for this decision. A whole
serics of sensible and logical considerations showing it to be
essential for him to go to Petersburg, and even to re-enter the
service, kept springing up in his mind. He could not now understand
how he could ever even have doubted the necessity of taking an
active share in life, just as a month before he had not understood how
the idea of leaving the quiet country could ever enter his head. It
now seemed clear to him that all his experience of life must be
senselessly wasted unless he applied it to some kind of work and again
played an active part in life. He did not even remember how
formerly, on the strength of similar wretched logical arguments, it
had seemed obvious that he would be degrading himself if he now, after
the lessons he had had in life, allowed himself to believe in the
possibility of being useful and in the possibility of happiness or
love. Now reason suggested quite the opposite. After that journey to
Ryazan he found the country dull; his former pursuits no longer
interested him, and often when sitting alone in his study he got up,
went to the mirror, and gazed a long time at his own face. Then he
would turn away to the portrait of his dead Lise, who with hair curled
a la grecque looked tenderly and gaily at him out of the gilt frame.
She did not now say those former terrible words to him, but looked
simply, merrily, and inquisitively at him. And Prince Andrew, crossing
his arms behind him, long paced the room, now frowning, now smiling,
as he reflected on those irrational, inexpressible thoughts, secret as
a crime, which altered his whole life and were connected with
Pierre, with fame, with the girl at the window, the oak, and woman's
beauty and love. And if anyone came into his room at such moments he
was particularly cold, stern, and above all unpleasantly logical.

"My dear," Princess Mary entering at such a moment would say,
"little Nicholas can't go out today, it's very cold."

"If it were hot," Prince Andrew would reply at such times very dryly
to his sister, "he could go out in his smock, but as it is cold he
must wear warm clothes, which were designed for that purpose. That
is what follows from the fact that it is cold; and not that a child
who needs fresh air should remain at home," he would add with
extreme logic, as if punishing someone for those secret illogical
emotions that stirred within him.

At such moments Princess Mary would think how intellectual work
dries men up.





CHAPTER IV


Prince Andrew arrived in Petersburg in August, 1809. It was the time
when the youthful Speranski was at the zenith of his fame and his
reforms were being pushed forward with the greatest energy. That
same August the Emperor was thrown from his caleche, injured his
leg, and remained three weeks at Peterhof, receiving Speranski every
day and no one else. At that time the two famous decrees were being
prepared that so agitated society--abolishing court ranks and
introducing examinations to qualify for the grades of Collegiate
Assessor and State Councilor--and not merely these but a whole state
constitution, intended to change the existing order of government in
Russia: legal, administrative, and financial, from the Council of
State down to the district tribunals. Now those vague liberal dreams
with which the Emperor Alexander had ascended the throne, and which he
had tried to put into effect with the aid of his associates,
Czartoryski, Novosiltsev, Kochubey, and Strogonov--whom he himself
in jest had called his Comite de salut public--were taking shape and
being realized.

Now all these men were replaced by Speranski on the civil side,
and Arakcheev on the military. Soon after his arrival Prince Andrew,
as a gentleman of the chamber, presented himself at court and at a
levee. The Emperor, though he met him twice, did not favor him with
a single word. It had always seemed to Prince Andrew before that he
was antipathetic to the Emperor and that the latter disliked his
face and personality generally, and in the cold, repellent glance
the Emperor gave him, he now found further confirmation of this
surmise. The courtiers explained the Emperor's neglect of him by His
Majesty's displeasure at Bolkonski's not having served since 1805.

"I know myself that one cannot help one's sympathies and
antipathies," thought Prince Andrew, "so it will not do to present
my proposal for the reform of the army regulations to the Emperor
personally, but the project will speak for itself."

He mentioned what he had written to an old field marshal, a friend
of his father's. The field marshal made an appointment to see him,
received him graciously, and promised to inform the Emperor. A few
days later Prince Andrew received notice that he was to go to see
the Minister of War, Count Arakcheev.


On the appointed day Prince Andrew entered Count Arakcheev's waiting
room at nine in the morning.

He did not know Arakcheev personally, had never seen him, and all he
had heard of him inspired him with but little respect for the man.

"He is Minister of War, a man trusted by the Emperor, and I need not
concern myself about his personal qualities: he has been
commissioned to consider my project, so he alone can get it
adopted," thought Prince Andrew as he waited among a number of
important and unimportant people in Count Arakcheev's waiting room.

During his service, chiefly as an adjutant, Prince Andrew had seen
the anterooms of many important men, and the different types of such
rooms were well known to him. Count Arakcheev's anteroom had quite a
special character. The faces of the unimportant people awaiting
their turn for an audience showed embarrassment and servility; the
faces of those of higher rank expressed a common feeling of
awkwardness, covered by a mask of unconcern and ridicule of
themselves, their situation, and the person for whom they were
waiting. Some walked thoughtfully up and down, others whispered and
laughed. Prince Andrew heard the nickname "Sila Andreevich" and the
words, "Uncle will give it to us hot," in reference to Count
Arakcheev. One general (an important personage), evidently feeling
offended at having to wait so long, sat crossing and uncrossing his
legs and smiling contemptuously to himself.

But the moment the door opened one feeling alone appeared on all
faces--that of fear. Prince Andrew for the second time asked the
adjutant on duty to take in his name, but received an ironical look
and was told that his turn would come in due course. After some others
had been shown in and out of the minister's room by the adjutant on
duty, an officer who struck Prince Andrew by his humiliated and
frightened air was admitted at that terrible door. This officer's
audience lasted a long time. Then suddenly the grating sound of a
harsh voice was heard from the other side of the door, and the
officer--with pale face and trembling lips--came out and passed
through the waiting room, clutching his head.

After this Prince Andrew was conducted to the door and the officer
on duty said in a whisper, "To the right, at the window."

Prince Andrew entered a plain tidy room and saw at the table a man
of forty with a long waist, a long closely cropped head, deep
wrinkles, scowling brows above dull greenish-hazel eyes and an
overhanging red nose. Arakcheev turned his head toward him without
looking at him.

"What is your petition?" asked Arakcheev.

"I am not petitioning, your excellency," returned Prince Andrew
quietly.

Arakcheev's eyes turned toward him.

"Sit down," said he. "Prince Bolkonski?"

"I am not petitioning about anything. His Majesty the Emperor has
deigned to send your excellency a project submitted by me..."

"You see, my dear sir, I have read your project," interrupted
Arakcheev, uttering only the first words amiably and then--again
without looking at Prince Andrew--relapsing gradually into a tone of
grumbling contempt. "You are proposing new military laws? There are
many laws but no one to carry out the old ones. Nowadays everybody
designs laws, it is easier writing than doing."

"I came at His Majesty the Emperor's wish to learn from your
excellency how you propose to deal with the memorandum I have
presented," said Prince Andrew politely.

"I have endorsed a resolution on your memorandum and sent it to
the committee. I do not approve of it," said Arakcheev, rising and
taking a paper from his writing table. "Here!" and he handed it to
Prince Andrew.

Across the paper was scrawled in pencil, without capital letters,
misspelled, and without punctuation: "Unsoundly constructed because
resembles an imitation of the French military code and from the
Articles of War needlessly deviating."

"To what committee has the memorandum been referred?" inquired
Prince Andrew.

"To the Committee on Army Regulations, and I have recommended that
your honor should be appointed a member, but without a salary."

Prince Andrew smiled.

"I don't want one."

"A member without salary," repeated Arakcheev. "I have the
honor... Eh! Call the next one! Who else is there?" he shouted, bowing
to Prince Andrew.





CHAPTER V


While waiting for the announcement of his appointment to the
committee Prince Andrew looked up his former acquaintances,
particularly those he knew to be in power and whose aid he might need.
In Petersburg he now experienced the same feeling he had had on the
eve of a battle, when troubled by anxious curiosity and irresistibly
attracted to the ruling circles where the future, on which the fate of
millions depended, was being shaped. From the irritation of the
older men, the curiosity of the uninitiated, the reserve of the
initiated, the hurry and preoccupation of everyone, and the
innumerable committees and commissions of whose existence he learned
every day, he felt that now, in 1809, here in Petersburg a vast
civil conflict was in preparation, the commander in chief of which was
a mysterious person he did not know, but who was supposed to be a
man of genius--Speranski. And this movement of reconstruction of which
Prince Andrew had a vague idea, and Speranski its chief promoter,
began to interest him so keenly that the question of the army
regulations quickly receded to a secondary place in his consciousness.

Prince Andrew was most favorably placed to secure good reception
in the highest and most diverse Petersburg circles of the day. The
reforming party cordially welcomed and courted him, the first place
because he was reputed to be clever and very well read, and secondly
because by liberating his serfs he had obtained the reputation of
being a liberal. The party of the old and dissatisfied, who censured
the innovations, turned to him expecting his sympathy in their
disapproval of the reforms, simply because he was the son of his
father. The feminine society world welcomed him gladly, because he was
rich, distinguished, a good match, and almost a newcomer, with a
halo of romance on account of his supposed death and the tragic loss
of his wife. Besides this the general opinion of all who had known him
previously was that he had greatly improved during these last five
years, having softened and grown more manly, lost his former
affectation, pride, and contemptuous irony, and acquired the
serenity that comes with years. People talked about him, were
interested in him, and wanted to meet him.

The day after his interview with Count Arakcheev, Prince Andrew
spent the evening at Count Kochubey's. He told the count of his
interview with Sila Andreevich (Kochubey spoke of Arakcheev by that
nickname with the same vague irony Prince Andrew had noticed in the
Minister of War's anteroom).

"Mon cher, even in this case you can't do without Michael
Mikhaylovich Speranski. He manages everything. I'll speak to him. He
has promised to come this evening."

"What has Speranski to do with the army regulations?" asked Prince
Andrew.

Kochubey shook his head smilingly, as if surprised at Bolkonski's
simplicity.

"We were talking to him about you a few days ago," Kochubey
continued, "and about your freed plowmen."

"Oh, is it you, Prince, who have freed your serfs?" said an old
man of Catherine's day, turning contemptuously toward Bolkonski.

"It was a small estate that brought in no profit," replied Prince
Andrew, trying to extenuate his action so as not to irritate the old
man uselessly.

"Afraid of being late..." said the old man, looking at Kochubey.

"There's one thing I don't understand," he continued. "Who will plow
the land if they are set free? It is easy to write laws, but difficult
to rule.... Just the same as now--I ask you, Count--who will be
heads of the departments when everybody has to pass examinations?"

"Those who pass the examinations, I suppose," replied Kochubey,
crossing his legs and glancing round.

"Well, I have Pryanichnikov serving under me, a splendid man, a
priceless man, but he's sixty. Is he to go up for examination?"

"Yes, that's a difficulty, as education is not at all general,
but..."

Count Kochubey did not finish. He rose, took Prince Andrew by the
arm, and went to meet a tall, bald, fair man of about forty with a
large open forehead and a long face of unusual and peculiar whiteness,
who was just entering. The newcomer wore a blue swallow-tail coat with
a cross suspended from his neck and a star on his left breast. It
was Speranski. Prince Andrew recognized him at once, and felt a
throb within him, as happens at critical moments of life. Whether it
was from respect, envy, or anticipation, he did not know.
Speranski's whole figure was of a peculiar type that made him easily
recognizable. In the society in which Prince Andrew lived he had never
seen anyone who together with awkward and clumsy gestures possessed
such calmness and self-assurance; he had never seen so resolute yet
gentle an expression as that in those half-closed, rather humid
eyes, or so firm a smile that expressed nothing; nor had he heard such
a refined, smooth, soft voice; above all he had never seen such
delicate whiteness of face or hands--hands which were broad, but
very plump, soft, and white. Such whiteness and softness Prince Andrew
had only seen on the faces of soldiers who had been long in
hospital. This was Speranski, Secretary of State, reporter to the
Emperor and his companion at Erfurt, where he had more than once met
and talked with Napoleon.

Speranski did not shift his eyes from one face to another as
people involuntarily do on entering a large company and was in no
hurry to speak. He spoke slowly, with assurance that he would be
listened to, and he looked only at the person with whom he was
conversing.

Prince Andrew followed Speranski's every word and movement with
particular attention. As happens to some people, especially to men who
judge those near to them severely, he always on meeting anyone new-
especially anyone whom, like Speranski, he knew by reputation-
expected to discover in him the perfection of human qualities.

Speranski told Kochubey he was sorry he had been unable to come
sooner as he had been detained at the palace. He did not say that
the Emperor had kept him, and Prince Andrew noticed this affectation
of modesty. When Kochubey introduced Prince Andrew, Speranski slowly
turned his eyes to Bolkonski with his customary smile and looked at
him in silence.

"I am very glad to make your acquaintance. I had heard of you, as
everyone has," he said after a pause.

Kochubey said a few words about the reception Arakcheev had given
Bolkonski. Speranski smiled more markedly.

"The chairman of the Committee on Army Regulations is my good friend
Monsieur Magnitski," he said, fully articulating every word and
syllable, "and if you like I can put you in touch with him." He paused
at the full stop. "I hope you will find him sympathetic and ready to
co-operate in promoting all that is reasonable."

A circle soon formed round Speranski, and the old man who had talked
about his subordinate Pryanichnikov addressed a question to him.

Prince Andrew without joining in the conversation watched every
movement of Speranski's: this man, not long since an insignificant
divinity student, who now, Bolkonski thought, held in his hands--those
plump white hands--the fate of Russia. Prince Andrew was struck by the
extraordinarily disdainful composure with which Speranski answered the
old man. He appeared to address condescending words to him from an
immeasurable height. When the old man began to speak too loud,
Speranski smiled and said he could not judge of the advantage or
disadvantage of what pleased the sovereign.

Having talked for a little while in the general circle, Speranski
rose and coming up to Prince Andrew took him along to the other end of
the room. It was clear that he thought it necessary to interest
himself in Bolkonski.

"I had no chance to talk with you, Prince, during the animated
conversation in which that venerable gentleman involved me," he said
with a mildly contemptuous smile, as if intimating by that smile
that he and Prince Andrew understood the insignificance of the
people with whom he had just been talking. This flattered Prince
Andrew. "I have known of you for a long time: first from your action
with regard to your serfs, a first example, of which it is very
desirable that there should be more imitators; and secondly because
you are one of those gentlemen of the chamber who have not
considered themselves offended by the new decree concerning the
ranks allotted to courtiers, which is causing so much gossip and
tittle-tattle."

"No," said Prince Andrew, "my father did not wish me to take
advantage of the privilege. I began the service from the lower grade."

"Your father, a man of the last century, evidently stands above
our contemporaries who so condemn this measure which merely
reestablishes natural justice."

"I think, however, that these condemnations have some ground,"
returned Prince Andrew, trying to resist Speranski's influence, of
which he began to be conscious. He did not like to agree with him in
everything and felt a wish to contradict. Though he usually spoke
easily and well, he felt a difficulty in expressing himself now
while talking with Speranski. He was too much absorbed in observing
the famous man's personality.

"Grounds of personal ambition maybe," Speranski put in quietly.

"And of state interest to some extent," said Prince Andrew.

"What do you mean?" asked Speranski quietly, lowering his eyes.

"I am an admirer of Montesquieu," replied Prince Andrew, "and his
idea that le principe des monarchies est l'honneur me parait
incontestable. Certains droits et privileges de la noblesse me
paraissent etre des moyens de soutenir ce sentiment."*


*"The principle of monarchies is honor seems to me incontestable.
Certain rights and privileges for the aristocracy appear to me a means
of maintaining that sentiment."


The smile vanished from Speranski's white face, which was much
improved by the change. Probably Prince Andrew's thought interested
him.

"Si vous envisagez la question sous ce point de vue,"* he began,
pronouncing French with evident difficulty, and speaking even slower
than in Russian but quite calmly.


*"If you regard the question from that point of view."


Speranski went on to say that honor, l'honeur, cannot be upheld by
privileges harmful to the service; that honor, l'honneur, is either
a negative concept of not doing what is blameworthy or it is a
source of emulation in pursuit of commendation and rewards, which
recognize it. His arguments were concise, simple, and clear.

"An institution upholding honor, the source of emulation, is one
similar to the Legion d'honneur of the great Emperor Napoleon, not
harmful but helpful to the success of the service, but not a class
or court privilege."

"I do not dispute that, but it cannot be denied that court
privileges have attained the same end," returned Prince Andrew. "Every
courtier considers himself bound to maintain his position worthily."

"Yet you do not care to avail yourself of the privilege, Prince,"
said Speranski, indicating by a smile that he wished to finish amiably
an argument which was embarrassing for his companion. "If you will
do me the honor of calling on me on Wednesday," he added, "I will,
after talking with Magnitski, let you know what may interest you,
and shall also have the pleasure of a more detailed chat with you."

Closing his eyes, he bowed a la francaise, without taking leave, and
trying to attract as little attention as possible, he left the room.





CHAPTER VI


During the first weeks of his stay in Petersburg Prince Andrew
felt the whole trend of thought he had formed during his life of
seclusion quite overshadowed by the trifling cares that engrossed
him in that city.

On returning home in the evening he would jot down in his notebook
four or five necessary calls or appointments for certain hours. The
mechanism of life, the arrangement of the day so as to be in time
everywhere, absorbed the greater part of his vital energy. He did
nothing, did not even think or find time to think, but only talked,
and talked successfully, of what he had thought while in the country.

He sometimes noticed with dissatisfaction that he repeated the
same remark on the same day in different circles. But he was so busy
for whole days together that he had no time to notice that he was
thinking of nothing.

As he had done on their first meeting at Kochubey's, Speranski
produced a strong impression on Prince Andrew on the Wednesday, when
he received him tete-a-tate at his own house and talked to him long
and confidentially.

To Bolkonski so many people appeared contemptible and
insignificant creatures, and he so longed to find in someone the
living ideal of that perfection toward which he strove, that he
readily believed that in Speranski he had found this ideal of a
perfectly rational and virtuous man. Had Speranski sprung from the
same class as himself and possessed the same breeding and
traditions, Bolkonski would soon have discovered his weak, human,
unheroic sides; but as it was, Speranski's strange and logical turn of
mind inspired him with respect all the more because he did not quite
understand him. Moreover, Speranski, either because he appreciated the
other's capacity or because he considered it necessary to win him to
his side, showed off his dispassionate calm reasonableness before
Prince Andrew and flattered him with that subtle flattery which goes
hand in hand with self-assurance and consists in a tacit assumption
that one's companion is the only man besides oneself capable of
understanding the folly of the rest of mankind and the
reasonableness and profundity of one's own ideas.

During their long conversation on Wednesday evening, Speranski
more than once remarked: "We regard everything that is above the
common level of rooted custom..." or, with a smile: "But we want the
wolves to be fed and the sheep to be safe..." or: "They cannot
understand this..." and all in a way that seemed to say: "We, you
and I, understand what they are and who we are."

This first long conversation with Speranski only strengthened in
Prince Andrew the feeling he had experienced toward him at their first
meeting. He saw in him a remarkable, clear-thinking man of vast
intellect who by his energy and persistence had attained power,
which he was using solely for the welfare of Russia. In Prince
Andrew's eyes Speranski was the man he would himself have wished to
be--one who explained all the facts of life reasonably, considered
important only what was rational, and was capable of applying the
standard of reason to everything. Everything seemed so simple and
clear in Speranski's exposition that Prince Andrew involuntarily
agreed with him about everything. If he replied and argued, it was
only because he wished to maintain his independence and not submit
to Speranski's opinions entirely. Everything was right and
everything was as it should be: only one thing disconcerted Prince
Andrew. This was Speranski's cold, mirrorlike look, which did not
allow one to penetrate to his soul, and his delicate white hands,
which Prince Andrew involuntarily watched as one does watch the
hands of those who possess power. This mirrorlike gaze and those
delicate hands irritated Prince Andrew, he knew not why. He was
unpleasantly struck, too, by the excessive contempt for others that he
observed in Speranski, and by the diversity of lines of argument he
used to support his opinions. He made use of every kind of mental
device, except analogy, and passed too boldly, it seemed to Prince
Andrew, from one to another. Now he would take up the position of a
practical man and condemn dreamers; now that of a satirist, and
laugh ironically at his opponents; now grow severely logical, or
suddenly rise to the realm of metaphysics. (This last resource was one
he very frequently employed.) He would transfer a question to
metaphysical heights, pass on to definitions of space, time, and
thought, and, having deduced the refutation he needed, would again
descend to the level of the original discussion.

In general the trait of Speranski's mentality which struck Prince
Andrew most was his absolute and unshakable belief in the power and
authority of reason. It was evident that the thought could never occur
to him which to Prince Andrew seemed so natural, namely, that it is
after all impossible to express all one thinks; and that he had
never felt the doubt, "Is not all I think and believe nonsense?" And
it was just this peculiarity of Speranski's mind that particularly
attracted Prince Andrew.

During the first period of their acquaintance Bolkonski felt a
passionate admiration for him similar to that which he had once felt
for Bonaparte. The fact that Speranski was the son of a village
priest, and that stupid people might meanly despise him on account
of his humble origin (as in fact many did), caused Prince Andrew to
cherish his sentiment for him the more, and unconsciously to
strengthen it.

On that first evening Bolkonski spent with him, having mentioned the
Commission for the Revision of the Code of Laws, Speranski told him
sarcastically that the Commission had existed for a hundred and
fifty years, had cost millions, and had done nothing except that
Rosenkampf had stuck labels on the corresponding paragraphs of the
different codes.

"And that is all the state has for the millions it has spent,"
said he. "We want to give the Senate new juridical powers, but we have
no laws. That is why it is a sin for men like you, Prince, not to
serve in these times!"

Prince Andrew said that for that work an education in
jurisprudence was needed which he did not possess.

"But nobody possesses it, so what would you have? It is a vicious
circle from which we must break a way out."

A week later Prince Andrew was a member of the Committee on Army
Regulations and--what he had not at all expected--was chairman of a
section of the committee for the revision of the laws. At
Speranski's request he took the first part of the Civil Code that
was being drawn up and, with the aid of the Code Napoleon and the
Institutes of Justinian, he worked at formulating the section on
Personal Rights.





CHAPTER VII


Nearly two years before this, in 1808, Pierre on returning to
Petersburg after visiting his estates had involuntarily found
himself in a leading position among the Petersburg Freemasons. He
arranged dining and funeral lodge meetings, enrolled new members,
and busied himself uniting various lodges and acquiring authentic
charters. He gave money for the erection of temples and supplemented
as far as he could the collection of alms, in regard to which the
majority of members were stingy and irregular. He supported almost
singlehanded a poorhouse the order had founded in Petersburg.

His life meanwhile continued as before, with the same infatuations
and dissipations. He liked to dine and drink well, and though he
considered it immoral and humiliating could not resist the temptations
of the bachelor circles in which he moved.

Amid the turmoil of his activities and distractions, however, Pierre
at the end of a year began to feel that the more firmly he tried to
rest upon it, the more Masonic ground on which he stood gave way under
him. At the same time he felt that the deeper the ground sank under
him the closer bound he involuntarily became to the order. When he had
joined the Freemasons he had experienced the feeling of one who
confidently steps onto the smooth surface of a bog. When he put his
foot down it sank in. To make quite sure of the firmness the ground,
he put his other foot down and sank deeper still, became stuck in
it, and involuntarily waded knee-deep in the bog.

Joseph Alexeevich was not in Petersburg--he had of late stood
aside from the affairs of the Petersburg lodges, and lived almost
entirely in Moscow. All the members of the lodges were men Pierre knew
in ordinary life, and it was difficult for him to regard them merely
as Brothers in Freemasonry and not as Prince B. or Ivan Vasilevich D.,
whom he knew in society mostly as weak and insignificant men. Under
the Masonic aprons and insignia he saw the uniforms and decorations at
which they aimed in ordinary life. Often after collecting alms, and
reckoning up twenty to thirty rubles received for the most part in
promises from a dozen members, of whom half were as well able to pay
as himself, Pierre remembered the Masonic vow in which each Brother
promised to devote all his belongings to his neighbor, and doubts on
which he tried not to dwell arose in his soul.

He divided the Brothers he knew into four categories. In the first
he put those who did not take an active part in the affairs of the
lodges or in human affairs, but were exclusively occupied with the
mystical science of the order: with questions of the threefold
designation of God, the three primordial elements--sulphur, mercury,
and salt--or the meaning of the square and all the various figures
of the temple of Solomon. Pierre respected this class of Brothers to
which the elder ones chiefly belonged, including, Pierre thought,
Joseph Alexeevich himself, but he did not share their interests. His
heart was not in the mystical aspect of Freemasonry.

In the second category Pierre reckoned himself and others like
him, seeking and vacillating, who had not yet found in Freemasonry a
straight and comprehensible path, but hoped to do so.

In the third category he included those Brothers (the majority)
who saw nothing in Freemasonry but the external forms and
ceremonies, and prized the strict performance of these forms without
troubling about their purport or significance. Such were Willarski and
even the Grand Master of the principal lodge.

Finally, to the fourth category also a great many Brothers belonged,
particularly those who had lately joined. These according to
Pierre's observations were men who had no belief in anything, nor
desire for anything, but joined the Freemasons merely to associate
with the wealthy young Brothers who were influential through their
connections or rank, and of whom there were very many in the lodge.

Pierre began to feel dissatisfied with what he was doing.
Freemasonry, at any rate as he saw it here, sometimes seemed to him
based merely on externals. He did not think of doubting Freemasonry
itself, but suspected that Russian Masonry had taken a wrong path
and deviated from its original principles. And so toward the end of
the year he went abroad to be initiated into the higher secrets of the
order.

In the summer of 1809 Pierre returned to Petersburg. Our
Freemasons knew from correspondence with those abroad that Bezukhov
had obtained the confidence of many highly placed persons, had been
initiated into many mysteries, had been raised to a higher grade,
and was bringing back with him much that might conduce to the
advantage of the Masonic cause in Russia. The Petersburg Freemasons
all came to see him, tried to ingratiate themselves with him, and it
seemed to them all that he was preparing something for them and
concealing it.

A solemn meeting of the lodge of the second degree was convened,
at which Pierre promised to communicate to the Petersburg Brothers
what he had to deliver to them from the highest leaders of their
order. The meeting was a full one. After the usual ceremonies Pierre
rose and began his address.

"Dear Brothers," he began, blushing and stammering, with a written
speech in his hand, "it is not sufficient to observe our mysteries
in the seclusion of our lodge--we must act--act! We are drowsing,
but we must act." Pierre raised his notebook and began to read.

"For the dissemination of pure truth and to secure the triumph of
virtue," he read, "we must cleanse men from prejudice, diffuse
principles in harmony with the spirit of the times, undertake the
education of the young, unite ourselves in indissoluble bonds with the
wisest men, boldly yet prudently overcome superstitions, infidelity,
and folly, and form of those devoted to us a body linked together by
unity of purpose and possessed of authority and power.

"To attain this end we must secure a preponderance of virtue over
vice and must endeavor to secure that the honest man may, even in this
world, receive a lasting reward for his virtue. But in these great
endeavors we are gravely hampered by the political institutions of
today. What is to be done in these circumstances? To favor
revolutions, overthrow everything, repel force by force?... No! We are
very far from that. Every violent reform deserves censure, for it
quite fails to remedy evil while men remain what they are, and also
because wisdom needs no violence.

"The whole plan of our order should be based on the idea of
preparing men of firmness and virtue bound together by unity of
conviction--aiming at the punishment of vice and folly, and
patronizing talent and virtue: raising worthy men from the dust and
attaching them to our Brotherhood. Only then will our order have the
power unobtrusively to bind the hands of the protectors of disorder
and to control them without their being aware of it. In a word, we
must found a form of government holding universal sway, which should
be diffused over the whole world without destroying the bonds of
citizenship, and beside which all other governments can continue in
their customary course and do everything except what impedes the great
aim of our order, which is to obtain for virtue the victory over vice.
This aim was that of Christianity itself. It taught men to be wise and
good and for their own benefit to follow the example and instruction
of the best and wisest men.

"At that time, when everything was plunged in darkness, preaching
alone was of course sufficient. The novelty of Truth endowed her
with special strength, but now we need much more powerful methods.
It is now necessary that man, governed by his senses, should find in
virtue a charm palpable to those senses. It is impossible to eradicate
the passions; but we must strive to direct them to a noble aim, and it
is therefore necessary that everyone should be able to satisfy his
passions within the limits of virtue. Our order should provide means
to that end.

"As soon as we have a certain number of worthy men in every state,
each of them again training two others and all being closely united,
everything will be possible for our order, which has already in secret
accomplished much for the welfare of mankind."

This speech not only made a strong impression, but created
excitement in the lodge. The majority of the Brothers, seeing in it
dangerous designs of Illuminism,* met it with a coldness that
surprised Pierre. The Grand Master began answering him, and Pierre
began developing his views with more and more warmth. It was long
since there had been so stormy a meeting. Parties were formed, some
accusing Pierre of Illuminism, others supporting him. At that
meeting he was struck for the first time by the endless variety of
men's minds, which prevents a truth from ever presenting itself
identically to two persons. Even those members who seemed to be on his
side understood him in their own way with limitations and
alterations he could not agree to, as what he always wanted most was
to convey his thought to others just as he himself understood it.


*The Illuminati sought to substitute republican for monarchical
institutions.


At the end of the meeting the Grand Master with irony and ill-will
reproved Bezukhov for his vehemence and said it was not love of virtue
alone, but also a love of strife that had moved him in the dispute.
Pierre did not answer him and asked briefly whether his proposal would
be accepted. He was told that it would not, and without waiting for
the usual formalities he left the lodge and went home.





CHAPTER VIII


Again Pierre was overtaken by the depression he so dreaded. For
three days after the delivery of his speech at the lodge he lay on a
sofa at home receiving no one and going nowhere.

It was just then that he received a letter from his wife, who
implored him to see her, telling him how grieved she was about him and
how she wished to devote her whole life to him.

At the end of the letter she informed him that in a few days she
would return to Petersburg from abroad.

Following this letter one of the Masonic Brothers whom Pierre
respected less than the others forced his way in to see him and,
turning the conversation upon Pierre's matrimonial affairs, by way
of fraternal advice expressed the opinion that his severity to his
wife was wrong and that he was neglecting one of the first rules of
Freemasonry by not forgiving the penitent.

At the same time his mother-in-law, Prince Vasili's wife, sent to
him imploring him to come if only for a few minutes to discuss a
most important matter. Pierre saw that there was a conspiracy
against him and that they wanted to reunite him with his wife, and
in the mood he then was, this was not even unpleasant to him.
Nothing mattered to him. Nothing in life seemed to him of much
importance, and under the influence of the depression that possessed
him he valued neither his liberty nor his resolution to punish his
wife.

"No one is right and no one is to blame; so she too is not to
blame," he thought.

If he did not at once give his consent to a reunion with his wife,
it was only because in his state of depression he did not feel able to
take any step. Had his wife come to him, he would not have turned
her away. Compared to what preoccupied him, was it not a matter of
indifference whether he lived with his wife or not?

Without replying either to his wife or his mother-in-law, Pierre
late one night prepared for a journey and started for Moscow to see
Joseph Alexeevich. This is what he noted in his diary:


Moscow, 17th November

I have just returned from my benefactor, and hasten to write down
what I have experienced. Joseph Alexeevich is living poorly and has
for three years been suffering from a painful disease of the
bladder. No one has ever heard him utter a groan or a word of
complaint. From morning till late at night, except when he eats his
very plain food, he is working at science. He received me graciously
and made me sit down on the bed on which he lay. I made the sign of
the Knights of the East and of Jerusalem, and he responded in the same
manner, asking me with a mild smile what I had learned and gained in
the Prussian and Scottish lodges. I told him everything as best I
could, and told him what I had proposed to our Petersburg lodge, of
the bad reception I had encountered, and of my rupture with the
Brothers. Joseph Alexeevich, having remained silent and thoughtful for
a good while, told me his view of the matter, which at once lit up for
me my whole past and the future path I should follow. He surprised
me by asking whether I remembered the threefold aim of the order:
(1) The preservation and study of the mystery. (2) The purification
and reformation of oneself for its reception, and (3) The
improvement of the human race by striving for such purification. Which
is the principal aim of these three? Certainly self-reformation and
self-purification. Only to this aim can we always strive independently
of circumstances. But at the same time just this aim demands the
greatest efforts of us; and so, led astray by pride, losing sight of
this aim, we occupy ourselves either with the mystery which in our
impurity we are unworthy to receive, or seek the reformation of the
human race while ourselves setting an example of baseness and
profligacy. Illuminism is not a pure doctrine, just because it is
attracted by social activity and puffed up by pride. On this ground
Joseph Alexeevich condemned my speech and my whole activity, and in
the depth of my soul I agreed with him. Talking of my family affairs
he said to me, "the chief duty of a true Mason, as I have told you,
lies in perfecting himself. We often think that by removing all the
difficulties of our life we shall more quickly reach our aim, but on
the contrary, my dear sir, it is only in the midst of worldly cares
that we can attain our three chief aims: (1) Self-knowledge--for man
can only know himself by comparison, (2) Self-perfecting, which can
only be attained by conflict, and (3) The attainment of the chief
virtue--love of death. Only the vicissitudes of life can show us its
vanity and develop our innate love of death or of rebirth to a new
life." These words are all the more remarkable because, in spite of
his great physical sufferings, Joseph Alexeevich is never weary of
life though he loves death, for which--in spite of the purity and
loftiness of his inner man--he does not yet feel himself
sufficiently prepared. My benefactor then explained to me fully the
meaning of the Great Square of creation and pointed out to me that the
numbers three and seven are the basis of everything. He advised me not
to avoid intercourse with the Petersburg Brothers, but to take up only
second-grade posts in the lodge, to try, while diverting the
Brothers from pride, to turn them toward the true path
self-knowledge and self-perfecting. Besides this he advised me for
myself personally above all to keep a watch over myself, and to that
end he gave me a notebook, the one I am now writing in and in which
I will in future note down all my actions.


Petersburg, 23rd November

I am again living with my wife. My mother-in-law came to me in tears
and said that Helene was here and that she implored me to hear her;
that she was innocent and unhappy at my desertion, and much more. I
knew that if I once let myself see her I should not have strength to
go on refusing what she wanted. In my perplexity I did not know
whose aid and advice to seek. Had my benefactor been here he would
have told me what to do. I went to my room and reread Joseph
Alexeevich's letters and recalled my conversations with him, and
deduced from it all that I ought not to refuse a suppliant, and
ought to reach a helping hand to everyone--especially to one so
closely bound to me--and that I must bear my cross. But if I forgive
her for the sake of doing right, then let union with her have only a
spiritual aim. That is what I decided, and what I wrote to Joseph
Alexeevich. I told my wife that I begged her to forget the past, to
forgive me whatever wrong I may have done her, and that I had
nothing to forgive. It gave me joy to tell her this. She need not know
how hard it was for me to see her again. I have settled on the upper
floor of this big house and am experiencing a happy feeling of
regeneration.





CHAPTER IX


At that time, as always happens, the highest society that met at
court and at the grand balls was divided into several circles, each
with its own particular tone. The largest of these was the French
circle of the Napoleonic alliance, the circle of Count Rumyantsev
and Caulaincourt. In this group Helene, as soon as she had settled
in Petersburg with her husband, took a very prominent place. She was
visited by the members of the French embassy and by many belonging
to that circle and noted for their intellect and polished manners.

Helene had been at Erfurt during the famous meeting of the
Emperors and had brought from there these connections with the
Napoleonic notabilities. At Erfurt her success had been brilliant.
Napoleon himself had noticed her in the theater and said of her:
"C'est un superbe animal."* Her success as a beautiful and elegant
woman did not surprise Pierre, for she had become even handsomer
than before. What did surprise him was that during these last two
years his wife had succeeded in gaining the reputation "d' une femme
charmante, aussi spirituelle que belle."*[2] The distinguished
Prince de Ligne wrote her eight-page letters. Bilibin saved up his
epigrams to produce them in Countess Bezukhova's presence. To be
received in the Countess Bezukhova's salon was regarded as a diploma
of intellect. Young men read books before attending Helene's evenings,
to have something to say in her salon, and secretaries of the embassy,
and even ambassadors, confided diplomatic secrets to her, so that in a
way Helene was a power. Pierre, who knew she was very stupid,
sometimes attended, with a strange feeling of perplexity and fear, her
evenings and dinner parties, where politics, poetry, and philosophy
were discussed. At these parties his feelings were like those of a
conjuror who always expects his trick to be found out at any moment.
But whether because stupidity was just what was needed to run such a
salon, or because those who were deceived found pleasure in the
deception, at any rate it remained unexposed and Helene Bezukhova's
reputation as a lovely and clever woman became so firmly established
that she could say the emptiest and stupidest things and everybody
would go into raptures over every word of hers and look for a profound
meaning in it of which she herself had no conception.


*"That's a superb animal."

*[2] "Of a charming woman, as witty as she is lovely."


Pierre was just the husband needed for a brilliant society woman. He
was that absent-minded crank, a grand seigneur husband who was in no
one's way, and far from spoiling the high tone and general
impression of the drawing room, he served, by the contrast he
presented to her, as an advantageous background to his elegant and
tactful wife. Pierre during the last two years, as a result of his
continual absorption in abstract interests and his sincere contempt
for all else, had acquired in his wife's circle, which did not
interest him, that air of unconcern, indifference, and benevolence
toward all, which cannot be acquired artificially and therefore
inspires involuntary respect. He entered his wife's drawing room as
one enters a theater, was acquainted with everybody, equally pleased
to see everyone, and equally indifferent to them all. Sometimes he
joined in a conversation which interested him and, regardless of
whether any "gentlemen of the embassy" were present or not,
lispingly expressed his views, which were sometimes not at all in
accord with the accepted tone of the moment. But the general opinion
concerning the queer husband of "the most distinguished woman in
Petersburg" was so well established that no one took his freaks
seriously.

Among the many young men who frequented her house every day, Boris
Drubetskoy, who had already achieved great success in the service, was
the most intimate friend of the Bezukhov household since Helene's
return from Erfurt. Helene spoke of him as "mon page" and treated
him like a child. Her smile for him was the same as for everybody, but
sometimes that smile made Pierre uncomfortable. Toward him Boris
behaved with a particularly dignified and sad deference. This shade of
deference also disturbed Pierre. He had suffered so painfully three
years before from the mortification to which his wife had subjected
him that he now protected himself from the danger of its repetition,
first by not being a husband to his wife, and secondly by not allowing
himself to suspect.

"No, now that she has become a bluestocking she has finally
renounced her former infatuations," he told himself. "There has
never been an instance of a bluestocking being carried away by affairs
of the heart"--a statement which, though gathered from an unknown
source, he believed implicitly. Yet strange to say Boris' presence
in his wife's drawing room (and he was almost always there) had a
physical effect upon Pierre; it constricted his limbs and destroyed
the unconsciousness and freedom of his movements.

"What a strange antipathy," thought Pierre, "yet I used to like
him very much."

In the eyes of the world Pierre was a great gentleman, the rather
blind and absurd husband of a distinguished wife, a clever crank who
did nothing but harmed nobody and was a first-rate, good-natured
fellow. But a complex and difficult process of internal development
was taking place all this time in Pierre's soul, revealing much to him
and causing him many spiritual doubts and joys.





CHAPTER X


Pierre went on with his diary, and this is what he wrote in it
during that time:


24th November

Got up at eight, read the Scriptures, then went to my duties. [By
Joseph Alexeevich's advice Pierre had entered the service of the state
and served on one of the committees.] Returned home for dinner and
dined alone--the countess had many visitors I do not like. I ate and
drank moderately and after dinner copied out some passages for the
Brothers. In the evening I went down to the countess and told a
funny story about B., and only remembered that I ought not to have
done so when everybody laughed loudly at it.

I am going to bed with a happy and tranquil mind. Great God, help me
to walk in Thy paths, (1) to conquer anger by calmness and
deliberation, (2) to vanquish lust by self-restraint and repulsion,
(3) to withdraw from worldliness, but not avoid (a) the service of the
state, (b) family duties, (c) relations with my friends, and the
management of my affairs.


27th November

I got up late. On waking I lay long in bed yielding to sloth. O God,
help and strengthen me that I may walk in Thy ways! Read the
Scriptures, but without proper feeling. Brother Urusov came and we
talked about worldly vanities. He told me of the Emperor's new
projects. I began to criticize them, but remembered my rules and my
benefactor's words--that a true Freemason should be a zealous worker
for the state when his aid is required and a quiet onlooker when not
called on to assist. My tongue is my enemy. Brothers G. V. and O.
visited me and we had a preliminary talk about the reception of a
new Brother. They laid on me the duty of Rhetor. I feel myself weak
and unworthy. Then our talk turned to the interpretation of the
seven pillars and steps of the Temple, the seven sciences, the seven
virtues, the seven vices, and the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Brother O. was very eloquent. In the evening the admission took place.
The new decoration of the Premises contributed much to the
magnificence of the spectacle. It was Boris Drubetskoy who was
admitted. I nominated him and was the Rhetor. A strange feeling
agitated me all the time I was alone with him in the dark chamber. I
caught myself harboring a feeling of hatred toward him which I
vainly tried to overcome. That is why I should really like to save him
from evil and lead him into the path of truth, but evil thoughts of
him did not leave me. It seemed to me that his object in entering
the Brotherhood was merely to be intimate and in favor with members of
our lodge. Apart from the fact that he had asked me several times
whether N. and S. were members of our lodge (a question to which I
could not reply) and that according to my observation he is
incapable of feeling respect for our holy order and is too preoccupied
and satisfied with the outer man to desire spiritual improvement, I
had no cause to doubt him, but he seemed to me insincere, and all
the time I stood alone with him in the dark temple it seemed to me
that he was smiling contemptuously at my words, and I wished really to
stab his bare breast with the sword I held to it. I could not be
eloquent, nor could I frankly mention my doubts to the Brothers and to
the Grand Master. Great Architect of Nature, help me to find the
true path out of the labyrinth of lies!


 After this, three pages were left blank in the diary, and then
the following was written:


I have had a long and instructive talk alone with Brother V., who
advised me to hold fast by brother A. Though I am unworthy, much was
revealed to me. Adonai is the name of the creator of the world. Elohim
is the name of the ruler of all. The third name is the name
unutterable which means the All. Talks with Brother V. strengthen,
refresh, and support me in the path of virtue. In his presence doubt
has no place. The distinction between the poor teachings of mundane
science and our sacred all-embracing teaching is clear to me. Human
sciences dissect everything to comprehend it, and kill everything to
examine it. In the holy science of our order all is one, all is
known in its entirety and life. The Trinity--the three elements of
matter--are sulphur, mercury, and salt. Sulphur is of an oily and
fiery nature; in combination with salt by its fiery nature it
arouses a desire in the latter by means of which it attracts
mercury, seizes it, holds it, and in combination produces other
bodies. Mercury is a fluid, volatile, spiritual essence. Christ, the
Holy Spirit, Him!...


3rd December

Awoke late, read the Scriptures but was apathetic. Afterwards went
and paced up and down the large hall. I wished to meditate, but
instead my imagination pictured an occurrence of four years ago,
when Dolokhov, meeting me in Moscow after our duel, said he hoped I
was enjoying perfect peace of mind in spite of my wife's absence. At
the time I gave him no answer. Now I recalled every detail of that
meeting and in my mind gave him the most malevolent and bitter
replies. I recollected myself and drove away that thought only when
I found myself glowing with anger, but I did not sufficiently
repent. Afterwards Boris Drubetskoy came and began relating various
adventures. His coming vexed me from the first, and I said something
disagreeable to him. He replied. I flared up and said much that was
unpleasant and even rude to him. He became silent, and I recollected
myself only when it was too late. My God, I cannot get on with him
at all. The cause of this is my egotism. I set myself above him and so
become much worse than he, for he is lenient to my rudeness while I on
the contrary nourish contempt for him. O God, grant that in his
presence I may rather see my own vileness, and behave so that he too
may benefit. After dinner I fell asleep and as I was drowsing off I
clearly heard a voice saying in my left ear, "Thy day!"

I dreamed that I was walking in the dark and was suddenly surrounded
by dogs, but I went on undismayed. Suddenly a smallish dog seized my
left thigh with its teeth and would not let go. I began to throttle it
with my hands. Scarcely had I torn it off before another, a bigger
one, began biting me. I lifted it up, but the higher I lifted it the
bigger and heavier it grew. And suddenly Brother A. came and, taking
my arm, led me to a building to enter which we had to pass along a
narrow plank. I stepped on it, but it bent and gave way and I began to
clamber up a fence which I could scarcely reach with my hands. After
much effort I dragged myself up, so that my leg hung down on one
side and my body on the other. I looked round and saw Brother A.
standing on the fence and pointing me to a broad avenue and garden,
and in the garden was a large and beautiful building. I woke up. O
Lord, great Architect of Nature, help me to tear from myself these
dogs--my passions especially the last, which unites in itself the
strength of all the former ones, and aid me to enter that temple of
virtue to a vision of which I attained in my dream.


7th December

I dreamed that Joseph Alexeevich was sitting in my house, and that I
was very glad and wished to entertain him. It seemed as if I chattered
incessantly with other people and suddenly remembered that this
could not please him, and I wished to come close to him and embrace
him. But as soon as I drew near I saw that his face had changed and
grown young, and he was quietly telling me something about the
teaching of our order, but so softly that I could not hear it. Then it
seemed that we all left the room and something strange happened. We
were sitting or lying on the floor. He was telling me something, and I
wished to show him my sensibility, and not listening to what he was
saying I began picturing to myself the condition of my inner man and
the grace of God sanctifying me. And tears came into my eyes, and I
was glad he noticed this. But he looked at me with vexation and jumped
up, breaking off his remarks. I felt abashed and asked whether what he
had been saying did not concern me; but he did not reply, gave me a
kind look, and then we suddenly found ourselves in my bedroom where
there is a double bed. He lay down on the edge of it and I burned with
longing to caress him and lie down too. And he said, "Tell me
frankly what is your chief temptation? Do you know it? I think you
know it already." Abashed by this question, I replied that sloth was
my chief temptation. He shook his head incredulously; and even more
abashed, I said that though I was living with my wife as he advised, I
was not living with her as her husband. To this he replied that one
should not deprive a wife of one's embraces and gave me to
understand that that was my duty. But I replied that I should be
ashamed to do it, and suddenly everything vanished. And I awoke and
found in my mind the text from the Gospel: "The life was the light
of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness
comprehended it not." Joseph Alexeevich's face had looked young and
bright. That day I received a letter from my benefactor in which he
wrote about "conjugal duties."


9th December

I had a dream from which I awoke with a throbbing heart. I saw
that I was in Moscow in my house, in the big sitting room, and
Joseph Alexeevich came in from the drawing room. I seemed to know at
once that the process of regeneration had already taken place in
him, and I rushed to meet him. I embraced him and kissed his hands,
and he said, "Hast thou noticed that my face is different?" I looked
at him, still holding him in my arms, and saw that his face was young,
but that he had no hair on his head and his features were quite
changed. And I said, "I should have known you had I met you by
chance," and I thought to myself, "Am I telling the truth?" And
suddenly I saw him lying like a dead body; then he gradually recovered
and went with me into my study carrying a large book of sheets of
drawing paper; I said, "I drew that," and he answered by bowing his
head. I opened the book, and on all the pages there were excellent
drawings. And in my dream I knew that these drawings represented the
love adventures of the soul with its beloved. And on its pages I saw a
beautiful representation of a maiden in transparent garments and
with a transparent body, flying up to the clouds. And I seemed to know
that this maiden was nothing else than a representation of the Song of
Songs. And looking at those drawings I dreamed I felt that I was doing
wrong, but could not tear myself away from them. Lord, help me! My
God, if Thy forsaking me is Thy doing, Thy will be done; but if I am
myself the cause, teach me what I should do! I shall perish of my
debauchery if Thou utterly desertest me!





CHAPTER XI


The Rostovs' monetary affairs had not improved during the two
years they had spent in the country.

Though Nicholas Rostov had kept firmly to his resolution and was
still serving modestly in an obscure regiment, spending
comparatively little, the way of life at Otradnoe--Mitenka's
management of affairs, in particular--was such that the debts
inevitably increased every year. The only resource obviously
presenting itself to the old count was to apply for an official
post, so he had come to Petersburg to look for one and also, as he
said, to let the lassies enjoy themselves for the last time.

Soon after their arrival in Petersburg Berg proposed to Vera and was
accepted.

Though in Moscow the Rostovs belonged to the best society without
themselves giving it a thought, yet in Petersburg their circle of
acquaintances was a mixed and indefinite one. In Petersburg they
were provincials, and the very people they had entertained in Moscow
without inquiring to what set they belonged, here looked down on them.

The Rostovs lived in the same hospitable way in Petersburg as in
Moscow, and the most diverse people met at their suppers. Country
neighbors from Otradnoe, impoverished old squires and their daughters,
Peronskaya a maid of honor, Pierre Bezukhov, and the son of their
district postmaster who had obtained a post in Petersburg. Among the
men who very soon became frequent visitors at the Rostovs' house in
Petersburg were Boris, Pierre whom the count had met in the street and
dragged home with him, and Berg who spent whole days at the Rostovs'
and paid the eldest daughter, Countess Vera, the attentions a young
man pays when he intends to propose.

Not in vain had Berg shown everybody his right hand wounded at
Austerlitz and held a perfectly unnecessary sword in his left. He
narrated that episode so persistently and with so important an air
that everyone believed in the merit and usefulness of his deed, and he
had obtained two decorations for Austerlitz.

In the Finnish war he also managed to distinguish himself. He had
picked up the scrap of a grenade that had killed an aide-de-camp
standing near the commander in chief and had taken it to his
commander. Just as he had done after Austerlitz, he related this
occurrence at such length and so insistently that everyone again
believed it had been necessary to do this, and he received two
decorations for the Finnish war also. In 1809 he was a captain in
the Guards, wore medals, and held some special lucrative posts in
Petersburg.

Though some skeptics smiled when told of Berg's merits, it could not
be denied that he was a painstaking and brave officer, on excellent
terms with his superiors, and a moral young man with a brilliant
career before him and an assured position in society.

Four years before, meeting a German comrade in the stalls of a
Moscow theater, Berg had pointed out Vera Rostova to him and had
said in German, "das soll mein Weib werden,"* and from that moment had
made up his mind to marry her. Now in Petersburg, having considered
the Rostovs' position and his own, he decided that the time had come
to propose.


*"That girl shall be my wife."


Berg's proposal was at first received with a perplexity that was not
flattering to him. At first it seemed strange that the son of an
obscure Livonian gentleman should propose marriage to a Countess
Rostova; but Berg's chief characteristic was such a naive and good
natured egotism that the Rostovs involuntarily came to think it
would be a good thing, since he himself was so firmly convinced that
it was good, indeed excellent. Moreover, the Rostovs' affairs were
seriously embarrassed, as the suitor could not but know; and above
all, Vera was twenty-four, had been taken out everywhere, and though
she was certainly good-looking and sensible, no one up to now had
proposed to her. So they gave their consent.

"You see," said Berg to his comrade, whom he called "friend" only
because he knew that everyone has friends, "you see, I have considered
it all, and should not marry if I had not thought it all out or if
it were in any way unsuitable. But on the contrary, my papa and
mamma are now provided for--I have arranged that rent for them in
the Baltic Provinces--and I can live in Petersburg on my pay, and with
her fortune and my good management we can get along nicely. I am not
marrying for money--I consider that dishonorable--but a wife should
bring her share and a husband his. I have my position in the
service, she has connections and some means. In our times that is
worth something, isn't it? But above all, she is a handsome, estimable
girl, and she loves me..."

Berg blushed and smiled.

"And I love her, because her character is sensible and very good.
Now the other sister, though they are the same family, is quite
different--an unpleasant character and has not the same
intelligence. She is so... you know?... Unpleasant... But my
fiancee!... Well, you will be coming," he was going to say, "to dine,"
but changed his mind and said "to take tea with us," and quickly
doubling up his tongue he blew a small round ring of tobacco smoke,
perfectly embodying his dream of happiness.

After the first feeling of perplexity aroused in the parents by
Berg's proposal, the holiday tone of joyousness usual at such times
took possession of the family, but the rejoicing was external and
insincere. In the family's feeling toward this wedding a certain
awkwardness and constraint was evident, as if they were ashamed of not
having loved Vera sufficiently and of being so ready to get her off
their hands. The old count felt this most. He would probably have been
unable to state the cause of his embarrassment, but it resulted from
the state of his affairs. He did not know at all how much he had, what
his debts amounted to, or what dowry he could give Vera. When his
daughters were born he had assigned to each of them, for her dowry, an
estate with three hundred serfs; but one of these estates had
already been sold, and the other was mortgaged and the interest so
much in arrears that it would have to be sold, so that it was
impossible to give it to Vera. Nor had he any money.

Berg had already been engaged a month, and only a week remained
before the wedding, but the count had not yet decided in his own
mind the question of the dowry, nor spoken to his wife about it. At
one time the count thought of giving her the Ryazan estate or of
selling a forest, at another time of borrowing money on a note of
hand. A few days before the wedding Berg entered the count's study
early one morning and, with a pleasant smile, respectfully asked his
future father-in-law to let him know what Vera's dowry would be. The
count was so disconcerted by this long-foreseen inquiry that without
consideration he gave the first reply that came into his head. "I like
your being businesslike about it.... I like it. You shall be
satisfied...."

And patting Berg on the shoulder he got up, wishing to end the
conversation. But Berg, smiling pleasantly, explained that if he did
not know for certain how much Vera would have and did not receive at
least part of the dowry in advance, he would have to break matters
off.

"Because, consider, Count--if I allowed myself to marry now
without having definite means to maintain my wife, I should be
acting badly...."

The conversation ended by the count, who wished to be generous and
to avoid further importunity, saying that he would give a note of hand
for eighty thousand rubles. Berg smiled meekly, kissed the count on
the shoulder, and said that he was very grateful, but that it was
impossible for him to arrange his new life without receiving thirty
thousand in ready money. "Or at least twenty thousand, Count," he
added, "and then a note of hand for only sixty thousand."

"Yes, yes, all right!" said the count hurriedly. "Only excuse me, my
dear fellow, I'll give you twenty thousand and a note of hand for
eighty thousand as well. Yes, yes! Kiss me."





CHAPTER XII


Natasha was sixteen and it was the year 1809, the very year to which
she had counted on her fingers with Boris after they had kissed four
years ago. Since then she had not seen him. Before Sonya and her
mother, if Boris happened to be mentioned, she spoke quite freely of
that episode as of some childish, long-forgotten matter that was not
worth mentioning. But in the secret depths of her soul the question
whether her engagement to Boris was a jest or an important, binding
promise tormented her.

Since Boris left Moscow in 1805 to join the army he had had not seen
the Rostovs. He had been in Moscow several times, and had passed
near Otradnoe, but had never been to see them.

Sometimes it occurred to Natasha that he not wish to see her, and
this conjecture was confirmed by the sad tone in which her elders
spoke of him.

"Nowadays old friends are not remembered," the countess would say
when Boris was mentioned.

Anna Mikhaylovna also had of late visited them less frequently,
seemed to hold herself with particular dignity, and always spoke
rapturously and gratefully of the merits of her son and the
brilliant career on which he had entered. When the Rostovs came to
Petersburg Boris called on them.

He drove to their house in some agitation. The memory of Natasha was
his most poetic recollection. But he went with the firm intention of
letting her and her parents feel that the childish relations between
himself and Natasha could not be binding either on her or on him. He
had a brilliant position in society thanks to his intimacy with
Countess Bezukhova, a brilliant position in the service thanks to
the patronage of an important personage whose complete confidence he
enjoyed, and he was beginning to make plans for marrying one of the
richest heiresses in Petersburg, plans which might very easily be
realized. When he entered the Rostovs' drawing room Natasha was in her
own room. When she heard of his arrival she almost ran into the
drawing room, flushed and beaming with a more than cordial smile.

Boris remembered Natasha in a short dress, with dark eyes shining
from under her curls and boisterous, childish laughter, as he had
known her four years before; and so he was taken aback when quite a
different Natasha entered, and his face expressed rapturous
astonishment. This expression on his face pleased Natasha.

"Well, do you recognize your little madcap playmate?" asked the
countess.

Boris kissed Natasha's hand and said that he was astonished at the
change in her.

"How handsome you have grown!"

"I should think so!" replied Natasha's laughing eyes.

"And is Papa older?" she asked.

Natasha sat down and, without joining in Boris' conversation with
the countess, silently and minutely studied her childhood's suitor. He
felt the weight of that resolute and affectionate scrutiny and glanced
at her occasionally.

Boris' uniform, spurs, tie, and the way his hair was brushed were
all comme il faut and in the latest fashion. This Natasha noticed at
once. He sat rather sideways in the armchair next to the countess,
arranging with his right hand the cleanest of gloves that fitted his
left hand like a skin, and he spoke with a particularly refined
compression of his lips about the amusements of the highest Petersburg
society, recalling with mild irony old times in Moscow and Moscow
acquaintances. It was not accidentally, Natasha felt, that he alluded,
when speaking of the highest aristocracy, to an ambassador's ball he
had attended, and to invitations he had received from N.N. and S.S.

All this time Natasha sat silent, glancing up at him from under
her brows. This gaze disturbed and confused Boris more and more. He
looked round more frequently toward her, and broke off in what he
was saying. He did not stay more than ten minutes, then rose and
took his leave. The same inquisitive, challenging, and rather
mocking eyes still looked at him. After his first visit Boris said
to himself that Natasha attracted him just as much as ever, but that
he must not yield to that feeling, because to marry her, a girl almost
without fortune, would mean ruin to his career, while to renew their
former relations without intending to marry her would be dishonorable.
Boris made up his mind to avoid meeting Natasha, but despite that
resolution he called again a few days later and began calling often
and spending whole days at the Rostovs'. It seemed to him that he
ought to have an explanation with Natasha and tell her that the old
times must be forgotten, that in spite of everything... she could
not be his wife, that he had no means, and they would never let her
marry him. But he failed to do so and felt awkward about entering on
such an explanation. From day to day he became more and more
entangled. It seemed to her mother and Sonya that Natasha was in
love with Boris as of old. She sang him his favorite songs, showed him
her album, making him write in it, did not allow him to allude to
the past, letting it be understood how was the present; and every
day he went away in a fog, without having said what he meant to, and
not knowing what he was doing or why he came, or how it would all end.
He left off visiting Helene and received reproachful notes from her
every day, and yet he continued to spend whole days with the Rostovs.





CHAPTER XIII


One night when the old countess, in nightcap and dressing jacket,
without her false curls, and with her poor little knob of hair showing
under her white cotton cap, knelt sighing and groaning on a rug and
bowing to the ground in prayer, her door creaked and Natasha, also
in a dressing jacket with slippers on her bare feet and her hair in
curlpapers, ran in. The countess--her prayerful mood dispelled--looked
round and frowned. She was finishing her last prayer: "Can it be
that this couch will be my grave?" Natasha, flushed and eager,
seeing her mother in prayer, suddenly checked her rush, half sat down,
and unconsciously put out her tongue as if chiding herself. Seeing
that her mother was still praying she ran on tiptoe to the bed and,
rapidly slipping one little foot against the other, pushed off her
slippers and jumped onto the bed the countess had feared might
become her grave. This couch was high, with a feather bed and five
pillows each smaller than the one below. Natasha jumped on it, sank
into the feather bed, rolled over to the wall, and began snuggling
up the bedclothes as she settled down, raising her knees to her
chin, kicking out and laughing almost inaudibly, now covering
herself up head and all, and now peeping at her mother. The countess
finished her prayers and came to the bed with a stern face, but
seeing, that Natasha's head was covered, she smiled in her kind,
weak way.

"Now then, now then!" said she.

"Mamma, can we have a talk? Yes?" said Natasha. "Now, just one on
your throat and another... that'll do!" And seizing her mother round
the neck, she kissed her on the throat. In her behavior to her
mother Natasha seemed rough, but she was so sensitive and tactful that
however she clasped her mother she always managed to do it without
hurting her or making her feel uncomfortable or displeased.

"Well, what is it tonight?" said the mother, having arranged her
pillows and waited until Natasha, after turning over a couple of
times, had settled down beside her under the quilt, spread out her
arms, and assumed a serious expression.

These visits of Natasha's at night before the count returned from
his club were one of the greatest pleasures of both mother, and
daughter.

"What is it tonight?--But I have to tell you..."

Natasha put her hand on her mother's mouth.

"About Boris... I know," she said seriously; "that's what I have
come about. Don't say it--I know. No, do tell me!" and she removed her
hand. "Tell me, Mamma! He's nice?"

"Natasha, you are sixteen. At your age I was married. You say
Boris is nice. He is very nice, and I love him like a son. But what
then?... What are you thinking about? You have quite turned his
head, I can see that...."

As she said this the countess looked round at her daughter.
Natasha was lying looking steadily straight before her at one of the
mahogany sphinxes carved on the corners of the bedstead, so that the
countess only saw her daughter's face in profile. That face struck her
by its peculiarly serious and concentrated expression.

Natasha was listening and considering.

"Well, what then?" said she.

"You have quite turned his head, and why? What do you want of him?
You know you can't marry him."

"Why not?" said Natasha, without changing her position.

"Because he is young, because he is poor, because he is a
relation... and because you yourself don't love him."

"How do you know?"

"I know. It is not right, darling!"

 "But if I want to..." said Natasha.

"Leave off talking nonsense," said the countess.

"But if I want to..."

"Natasha, I am in earnest..."

Natasha did not let her finish. She drew the countess' large hand to
her, kissed it on the back and then on the palm, then again turned
it over and began kissing first one knuckle, then the space between
the knuckles, then the next knuckle, whispering, "January, February,
March, April, May. Speak, Mamma, why don't you say anything? Speak!"
said she, turning to her mother, who was tenderly gazing at her
daughter and in that contemplation seemed to have forgotten all she
had wished to say.

"It won't do, my love! Not everyone will understand this
friendship dating from your childish days, and to see him so
intimate with you may injure you in the eyes of other young men who
visit us, and above all it torments him for nothing. He may already
have found a suitable and wealthy match, and now he's half crazy."

"Crazy?" repeated Natasha.

"I'll tell you some things about myself. I had a cousin..."

"I know! Cyril Matveich... but he is old."

"He was not always old. But this is what I'll do, Natasha, I'll have
a talk with Boris. He need not come so often...."

"Why not, if he likes to?"

"Because I know it will end in nothing...."

"How can you know? No, Mamma, don't speak to him! What nonsense!"
said Natasha in the tone of one being deprived of her property. "Well,
I won't marry, but let him come if he enjoys it and I enjoy it."
Natasha smiled and looked at her mother. "Not to marry, but just
so," she added.

"How so, my pet?"

"Just so. There's no need for me to marry him. But... just so."

"Just so, just so," repeated the countess, and shaking all over, she
went off into a good humored, unexpected, elderly laugh.

"Don't laugh, stop!" cried Natasha. "You're shaking the whole bed!
You're awfully like me, just such another giggler.... Wait..." and she
seized the countess' hands and kissed a knuckle of the little
finger, saying, "June," and continued, kissing, "July, August," on the
other hand. "But, Mamma, is he very much in love? What do you think?
Was anybody ever so much in love with you? And he's very nice, very,
very nice. Only not quite my taste--he is so narrow, like the
dining-room clock.... Don't you understand? Narrow, you know--gray,
light gray..."

"What rubbish you're talking!" said the countess.

Natasha continued: "Don't you really understand? Nicholas would
understand.... Bezukhov, now, is blue, dark-blue and red, and he is
square."

"You flirt with him too," said the countess, laughing.

"No, he is a Freemason, I have found out. He is fine, dark-blue
and red.... How can I explain it to you?"

"Little countess!" the count's voice called from behind the door.
"You're not asleep?" Natasha jumped up, snatched up her slippers,
and ran barefoot to her own room.

It was a long time before she could sleep. She kept thinking that no
one could understand all that she understood and all there was in her.

"Sonya?" she thought, glancing at that curled-up, sleeping little
kitten with her enormous plait of hair. "No, how could she? She's
virtuous. She fell in love with Nicholas and does not wish to know
anything more. Even Mamma does not understand. It is wonderful how
clever I am and how... charming she is," she went on, speaking of
herself in the third person, and imagining it was some very wise
man--the wisest and best of men--who was saying it of her. "There is
everything, everything in her," continued this man. "She is
unusually intelligent, charming... and then she is pretty,
uncommonly pretty, and agile--she swims and rides splendidly... and
her voice! One can really say it's a wonderful voice!"

She hummed a scrap from her favorite opera by Cherubini, threw
herself on her bed, laughed at the pleasant thought that she would
immediately fall asleep, called Dunyasha the maid to put out the
candle, and before Dunyasha had left the room had already passed
into yet another happier world of dreams, where everything was as
light and beautiful as in reality, and even more so because it was
different.


Next day the countess called Boris aside and had a talk with him,
after which he ceased coming to the Rostovs'.





CHAPTER XIV


On the thirty-first of December, New Year's Eve, 1809 --10 an old
grandee of Catherine's day was giving a ball and midnight supper.
The diplomatic corps and the Emperor himself were to be present.

The grandee's well-known mansion on the English Quay glittered
with innumerable lights. Police were stationed at the brightly lit
entrance which was carpeted with red baize, and not only gendarmes but
dozens of police officers and even the police master himself stood
at the porch. Carriages kept driving away and fresh ones arriving,
with red-liveried footmen and footmen in plumed hats. From the
carriages emerged men wearing uniforms, stars, and ribbons, while
ladies in satin and ermine cautiously descended the carriage steps
which were let down for them with a clatter, and then walked hurriedly
and noiselessly over the baize at the entrance.

Almost every time a new carriage drove up a whisper ran through
the crowd and caps were doffed.

"The Emperor?... No, a minister.... prince... ambassador. Don't
you see the plumes?..." was whispered among the crowd.

One person, better dressed than the rest, seemed to know everyone
and mentioned by name the greatest dignitaries of the day.

A third of the visitors had already arrived, but the Rostovs, who
were to be present, were still hurrying to get dressed.

There had been many discussions and preparations for this ball in
the Rostov family, many fears that the invitation would not arrive,
that the dresses would not be ready, or that something would not be
arranged as it should be.

Marya Ignatevna Peronskaya, a thin and shallow maid of honor at
the court of the Dowager Empress, who was a friend and relation of the
countess and piloted the provincial Rostovs in Petersburg high
society, was to accompany them to the ball.

They were to call for her at her house in the Taurida Gardens at ten
o'clock, but it was already five minutes to ten, and the girls were
not yet dressed.

Natasha was going to her first grand ball. She had got up at eight
that morning and had been in a fever of excitement and activity all
day. All her powers since morning had been concentrated on ensuring
that they all--she herself, Mamma, and Sonya--should be as well
dressed as possible. Sonya and her mother put themselves entirely in
her hands. The countess was to wear a claret-colored velvet dress, and
the two girls white gauze over pink silk slips, with roses on their
bodices and their hair dressed a la grecque.

Everything essential had already been done; feet, hands, necks,
and ears washed, perfumed, and powdered, as befits a ball; the
openwork silk stockings and white satin shoes with ribbons were
already on; the hairdressing was almost done. Sonya was finishing
dressing and so was the countess, but Natasha, who had bustled about
helping them all, was behindhand. She was still sitting before a
looking-glass with a dressing jacket thrown over her slender
shoulders. Sonya stood ready dressed in the middle of the room and,
pressing the head of a pin till it hurt her dainty finger, was
fixing on a last ribbon that squeaked as the pin went through it.

"That's not the way, that's not the way, Sonya!" cried Natasha
turning her head and clutching with both hands at her hair which the
maid who was dressing it had not time to release. "That bow is not
right. Come here!"

Sonya sat down and Natasha pinned the ribbon on differently.

"Allow me, Miss! I can't do it like that," said the maid who was
holding Natasha's hair.

"Oh, dear! Well then, wait. That's right, Sonya."

"Aren't you ready? It is nearly ten," came the countess' voice.

"Directly! Directly! And you, Mamma?"

"I have only my cap to pin on."

"Don't do it without me!" called Natasha. "You won't do it right."

"But it's already ten."

They had decided to be at the ball by half past ten, and Natasha had
still to get dressed and they had to call at the Taurida Gardens.

When her hair was done, Natasha, in her short petticoat from under
which her dancing shoes showed, and in her mother's dressing jacket,
ran up to Sonya, scrutinized her, and then ran to her mother.
Turning her mother's head this way and that, she fastened on the cap
and, hurriedly kissing her gray hair, ran back to the maids who were
turning up the hem of her skirt.

The cause of the delay was Natasha's skirt, which was too long.
Two maids were turning up the hem and hurriedly biting off the ends of
thread. A third with pins in her mouth was running about between the
countess and Sonya, and a fourth held the whole of the gossamer
garment up high on one uplifted hand.

"Mavra, quicker, darling!"

"Give me my thimble, Miss, from there..."

"Whenever will you be ready?" asked the count coming to the door.
"Here is here is some scent. Peronskaya must be tired of waiting."

"It's ready, Miss," said the maid, holding up the shortened gauze
dress with two fingers, and blowing and shaking something off it, as
if by this to express a consciousness of the airiness and purity of
what she held.

Natasha began putting on the dress.

"In a minute! In a minute! Don't come in, Papa!" she cried to her
father as he opened the door--speaking from under the filmy skirt
which still covered her whole face.

Sonya slammed the door to. A minute later they let the count in.
He was wearing a blue swallow-tail coat, shoes and stockings, and
was perfumed and his hair pomaded.

"Oh, Papa! how nice you look! Charming!" cried Natasha, as she stood
in the middle of the room smoothing out the folds of the gauze.

"If you please, Miss! allow me," said the maid, who on her knees was
pulling the skirt straight and shifting the pins from one side of
her mouth to the other with her tongue.

"Say what you like," exclaimed Sonya, in a despairing voice as she
looked at Natasha, "say what you like, it's still too long."

Natasha stepped back to look at herself in the pier glass. The dress
was too long.

"Really, madam, it is not at all too long," said Mavra, crawling
on her knees after her young lady.

"Well, if it's too long we'll take it up... we'll tack it up in
one minute," said the resolute Dunyasha taking a needle that was stuck
on the front of her little shawl and, still kneeling on the floor, set
to work once more.

At that moment, with soft steps, the countess came in shyly, in
her cap and velvet gown.

"Oo-oo, my beauty!" exclaimed the count, "she looks better than
any of you!"

He would have embraced her but, blushing, she stepped aside
fearing to be rumpled.

"Mamma, your cap, more to this side," said Natasha. "I'll arrange
it," and she rushed forward so that the maids who were tacking up
her skirt could not move fast enough and a piece of gauze was torn
off.

"Oh goodness! What has happened? Really it was not my fault!"

"Never mind, I'll run it up, it won't show," said Dunyasha.

"What a beauty--a very queen!" said the nurse as she came to the
door. "And Sonya! They are lovely!"

At a quarter past ten they at last got into their carriages and
started. But they had still to call at the Taurida Gardens.

Peronskaya was quite ready. In spite of her age and plainness she
had gone through the same process as the Rostovs, but with less
flurry--for to her it was a matter of routine. Her ugly old body was
washed, perfumed, and powdered in just the same way. She had washed
behind her ears just as carefully, and when she entered her drawing
room in her yellow dress, wearing her badge as maid of honor, her
old lady's maid was as full of rapturous admiration as the Rostovs'
servants had been.

She praised the Rostovs' toilets. They praised her taste and toilet,
and at eleven o'clock, careful of their coiffures and dresses, they
settled themselves in their carriages and drove off.





CHAPTER XV


Natasha had not had a moment free since early morning and had not
once had time to think of what lay before her.

In the damp chill air and crowded closeness of the swaying carriage,
she for the first time vividly imagined what was in store for her
there at the ball, in those brightly lighted rooms--with music,
flowers, dances, the Emperor, and all the brilliant young people of
Petersburg. The prospect was so splendid that she hardly believed it
would come true, so out of keeping was it with the chill darkness
and closeness of the carriage. She understood all that awaited her
only when, after stepping over the red baize at the entrance, she
entered the hall, took off her fur cloak, and, beside Sonya and in
front of her mother, mounted the brightly illuminated stairs between
the flowers. Only then did she remember how she must behave at a ball,
and tried to assume the majestic air she considered indispensable
for a girl on such an occasion. But, fortunately for her, she felt her
eyes growing misty, she saw nothing clearly, her pulse beat a
hundred to the minute, and the blood throbbed at her heart. She
could not assume that pose, which would have made her ridiculous,
and she moved on almost fainting from excitement and trying with all
her might to conceal it. And this was the very attitude that became
her best. Before and behind them other visitors were entering, also
talking in low tones and wearing ball dresses. The mirrors on the
landing reflected ladies in white, pale-blue, and pink dresses, with
diamonds and pearls on their bare necks and arms.

Natasha looked in the mirrors and could not distinguish her
reflection from the others. All was blended into one brilliant
procession. On entering the ballroom the regular hum of voices,
footsteps, and greetings deafened Natasha, and the light and glitter
dazzled her still more. The host and hostess, who had already been
standing at the door for half an hour repeating the same words to
the various arrivals, "Charme de vous voir,"* greeted the Rostovs
and Peronskaya in the same manner.


*"Delighted to see you."


The two girls in their white dresses, each with a rose in her
black hair, both curtsied in the same way, but the hostess' eye
involuntarily rested longer on the slim Natasha. She looked at her and
gave her alone a special smile in addition to her usual smile as
hostess. Looking at her she may have recalled the golden,
irrecoverable days of her own girlhood and her own first ball. The
host also followed Natasha with his eyes and asked the count which was
his daughter.

"Charming!" said he, kissing the tips of his fingers.

In the ballroom guests stood crowding at the entrance doors awaiting
the Emperor. The countess took up a position in one of the front
rows of that crowd. Natasha heard and felt that several people were
asking about her and looking at her. She realized that those
noticing her liked her, and this observation helped to calm her.

"There are some like ourselves and some worse," she thought.

Peronskaya was pointing out to the countess the most important
people at the ball.

"That is the Dutch ambassador, do you see? That gray-haired man,"
she said, indicating an old man with a profusion of silver-gray
curly hair, who was surrounded by ladies laughing at something he
said.

"Ah, here she is, the Queen of Petersburg, Countess Bezukhova," said
Peronskaya, indicating Helene who had just entered. "How lovely! She
is quite equal to Marya Antonovna. See how the men, young and old, pay
court to her. Beautiful and clever... they say Prince--is quite mad
about her. But see, those two, though not good-looking, are even
more run after."

She pointed to a lady who was crossing the room followed by a very
plain daughter.

"She is a splendid match, a millionairess," said Peronskaya. "And
look, here come her suitors."

"That is Bezukhova's brother, Anatole Kuragin," she said, indicating
a handsome officer of the Horse Guards who passed by them with head
erect, looking at something over the heads of the ladies. "He's
handsome, isn't he? I hear they will marry him to that rich girl.
But your cousin, Drubetskoy, is also very attentive to her. They say
she has millions. Oh yes, that's the French ambassador himself!" she
replied to the countess' inquiry about Caulaincourt. "Looks as if he
were a king! All the same, the French are charming, very charming.
No one more charming in society. Ah, here she is! Yes, she is still
the most beautiful of them all, our Marya Antonovna! And how simply
she is dressed! Lovely! And that stout one in spectacles is the
universal Freemason," she went on, indicating Pierre. "Put him
beside his wife and he looks a regular buffoon!"

Pierre, swaying his stout body, advanced, making way through the
crowd and nodding to right and left as casually and good-naturedly
as if he were passing through a crowd at a fair. He pushed through,
evidently looking for someone.

Natasha looked joyfully at the familiar face of Pierre, "the
buffoon," as Peronskaya had called him, and knew he was looking for
them, and for her in particular. He had promised to be at the ball and
introduce partners to her.

But before he reached them Pierre stopped beside a very handsome,
dark man of middle height, and in a white uniform, who stood by a
window talking to a tall man wearing stars and a ribbon. Natasha at
once recognized the shorter and younger man in the white uniform: it
was Bolkonski, who seemed to her to have grown much younger,
happier, and better-looking.

"There's someone else we know--Bolkonski, do you see, Mamma?" said
Natasha, pointing out Prince Andrew. "You remember, he stayed a
night with us at Otradnoe."

"Oh, you know him?" said Peronskaya. "I can't bear him. Il fait a
present la pluie et le beau temps.* He's too proud for anything.
Takes after his father. And he's hand in glove with Speranski, writing
some project or other. Just look how he treats the ladies! There's one
talking to him and he has turned away," she said, pointing at him.
"I'd give it to him if he treated me as he does those ladies."


*"He is all the rage just now.





CHAPTER XVI


Suddenly everybody stirred, began talking, and pressed forward and
then back, and between the two rows, which separated, the Emperor
entered to the sounds of music that had immediately struck up.
Behind him walked his host and hostess. He walked in rapidly, bowing
to right and left as if anxious to get the first moments of the
reception over. The band played the polonaise in vogue at that time on
account of the words that had been set to it, beginning: "Alexander,
Elisaveta, all our hearts you ravish quite..." The Emperor passed on
to the drawing room, the crowd made a rush for the doors, and
several persons with excited faces hurried there and back again.
Then the crowd hastily retired from the drawing-room door, at which
the Emperor reappeared talking to the hostess. A young man, looking
distraught, pounced down on the ladies, asking them to move aside.
Some ladies, with faces betraying complete forgetfulness of all the
rules of decorum, pushed forward to the detriment of their toilets.
The men began to choose partners and take their places for the
polonaise.

Everyone moved back, and the Emperor came smiling out of the drawing
room leading his hostess by the hand but not keeping time to the
music. The host followed with Marya Antonovna Naryshkina; then came
ambassadors, ministers, and various generals, whom Peronskaya
diligently named. More than half the ladies already had partners and
were taking up, or preparing to take up, their positions for the
polonaise. Natasha felt that she would be left with her mother and
Sonya among a minority of women who crowded near the wall, not
having been invited to dance. She stood with her slender arms
hanging down, her scarcely defined bosom rising and falling regularly,
and with bated breath and glittering, frightened eyes gazed straight
before her, evidently prepared for the height of joy or misery. She
was not concerned about the Emperor or any of those great people
whom Peronskaya was pointing out--she had but one thought: "Is it
possible no one will ask me, that I shall not be among the first to
dance? Is it possible that not one of all these men will notice me?
They do not even seem to see me, or if they do they look as if they
were saying, 'Ah, she's not the one I'm after, so it's not worth
looking at her!' No, it's impossible," she thought. "They must know
how I long to dance, how splendidly I dance, and how they would
enjoy dancing with me."

The strains of the polonaise, which had continued for a considerable
time, had begun to sound like a sad reminiscence to Natasha's ears.
She wanted to cry. Peronskaya had left them. The count was at the
other end of the room. She and the countess and Sonya were standing by
themselves as in the depths of a forest amid that crowd of
strangers, with no one interested in them and not wanted by anyone.
Prince Andrew with a lady passed by, evidently not recognizing them.
The handsome Anatole was smilingly talking to a partner on his arm and
looked at Natasha as one looks at a wall. Boris passed them twice
and each time turned away. Berg and his wife, who were not dancing,
came up to them.

This family gathering seemed humiliating to Natasha--as if there
were nowhere else for the family to talk but here at the ball. She did
not listen to or look at Vera, who was telling her something about her
own green dress.

At last the Emperor stopped beside his last partner (he had danced
with three) and the music ceased. A worried aide-de-camp ran up to the
Rostovs requesting them to stand farther back, though as it was they
were already close to the wall, and from the gallery resounded the
distinct, precise, enticingly rhythmical strains of a waltz. The
Emperor looked smilingly down the room. A minute passed but no one had
yet begun dancing. An aide-de-camp, the Master of Ceremonies, went
up to Countess Bezukhova and asked her to dance. She smilingly
raised her hand and laid it on his shoulder without looking at him.
The aide-de-camp, an adept in his art, grasping his partner firmly
round her waist, with confident deliberation started smoothly, gliding
first round the edge of the circle, then at the corner of the room
he caught Helene's left hand and turned her, the only sound audible,
apart from the ever-quickening music, being the rhythmic click of
the spurs on his rapid, agile feet, while at every third beat his
partner's velvet dress spread out and seemed to flash as she whirled
round. Natasha gazed at them and was ready to cry because it was not
she who was dancing that first turn of the waltz.

Prince Andrew, in the white uniform of a cavalry colonel, wearing
stockings and dancing shoes, stood looking animated and bright in
the front row of the circle not far from the Rostovs. Baron Firhoff
was talking to him about the first sitting of the Council of State
to be held next day. Prince Andrew, as one closely connected with
Speranski and participating in the work of the legislative commission,
could give reliable information about that sitting, concerning which
various rumors were current. But not listening to what Firhoff was
saying, he was gazing now at the sovereign and now at the men
intending to dance who had not yet gathered courage to enter the
circle.

Prince Andrew was watching these men abashed by the Emperor's
presence, and the women who were breathlessly longing to be asked to
dance.

Pierre came up to him and caught him by the arm.

"You always dance. I have a protegee, the young Rostova, here. Ask
her," he said.

"Where is she?" asked Bolkonski. "Excuse me!" he added, turning to
the baron, "we will finish this conversation elsewhere--at a ball
one must dance." He stepped forward in the direction Pierre indicated.
The despairing, dejected expression of Natasha's face caught his
eye. He recognized her, guessed her feelings, saw that it was her
debut, remembered her conversation at the window, and with an
expression of pleasure on his face approached Countess Rostova.

"Allow me to introduce you to my daughter," said the countess,
with heightened color.

"I have the pleasure of being already acquainted, if the countess
remembers me," said Prince Andrew with a low and courteous bow quite
belying Peronskaya's remarks about his rudeness, and approaching
Natasha he held out his arm to grasp her waist before he had completed
his invitation. He asked her to waltz. That tremulous expression on
Natasha's face, prepared either for despair or rapture, suddenly
brightened into a happy, grateful, childlike smile.

"I have long been waiting for you," that frightened happy little
girl seemed to say by the smile that replaced the threatened tears, as
she raised her hand to Prince Andrew's shoulder. They were the
second couple to enter the circle. Prince Andrew was one of the best
dancers of his day and Natasha danced exquisitely. Her little feet
in their white satin dancing shoes did their work swiftly, lightly,
and independently of herself, while her face beamed with ecstatic
happiness. Her slender bare arms and neck were not beautiful--compared
to Helene's her shoulders looked thin and her bosom undeveloped. But
Helene seemed, as it were, hardened by a varnish left by the thousands
of looks that had scanned her person, while Natasha was like a girl
exposed for the first time, who would have felt very much ashamed
had she not been assured that this was absolutely necessary.

Prince Andrew liked dancing, and wishing to escape as quickly as
possible from the political and clever talk which everyone addressed
to him, wishing also to break up the circle of restraint he
disliked, caused by the Emperor's presence, he danced, and had
chosen Natasha because Pierre pointed her out to him and because she
was the first pretty girl who caught his eye; but scarcely had he
embraced that slender supple figure and felt her stirring so close
to him and smiling so near him than the wine of her charm rose to
his head, and he felt himself revived and rejuvenated when after
leaving her he stood breathing deeply and watching the other dancers.





CHAPTER XVII


After Prince Andrew, Boris came up to ask Natasha for dance, and
then the aide-de-camp who had opened the ball, and several other young
men, so that, flushed and happy, and passing on her superfluous
partners to Sonya, she did not cease dancing all the evening. She
noticed and saw nothing of what occupied everyone else. Not only did
she fail to notice that the Emperor talked a long time with the French
ambassador, and how particularly gracious he was to a certain lady, or
that Prince So-and-so and So-and-so did and said this and that, and
that Helene had great success and was honored was by the special
attention of So-and-so, but she did not even see the Emperor, and only
noticed that he had gone because the ball became livelier after his
departure. For one of the merry cotillions before supper Prince Andrew
was again her partner. He reminded her of their first encounter in the
Otradnoe avenue, and how she had been unable to sleep that moonlight
night, and told her how he had involuntarily overheard her. Natasha
blushed at that recollection and tried to excuse herself, as if
there had been something to be ashamed of in what Prince Andrew had
overheard.

Like all men who have grown up in society, Prince Andrew liked
meeting someone there not of the conventional society stamp. And
such was Natasha, with her surprise, her delight, her shyness, and
even her mistakes in speaking French. With her he behaved with special
care and tenderness, sitting beside her and talking of the simplest
and most unimportant matters; he admired her shy grace. In the
middle of the cotillion, having completed one of the figures, Natasha,
still out of breath, was returning to her seat when another dancer
chose her. She was tired and panting and evidently thought of
declining, but immediately put her hand gaily on the man's shoulder,
smiling at Prince Andrew.

"I'd be glad to sit beside you and rest: I'm tired; but you see
how they keep asking me, and I'm glad of it, I'm happy and I love
everybody, and you and I understand it all," and much, much more was
said in her smile. When her partner left her Natasha ran across the
room to choose two ladies for the figure.

"If she goes to her cousin first and then to another lady, she
will be my wife," said Prince Andrew to himself quite to his own
surprise, as he watched her. She did go first to her cousin.

"What rubbish sometimes enters one's head!" thought Prince Andrew,
"but what is certain is that that girl is so charming, so original,
that she won't be dancing here a month before she will be
married.... Such as she are rare here," he thought, as Natasha,
readjusting a rose that was slipping on her bodice, settled herself
beside him.

When the cotillion was over the old count in his blue coat came up
to the dancers. He invited Prince Andrew to come and see them, and
asked his daughter whether she was enjoying herself. Natasha did not
answer at once but only looked up with a smile that said
reproachfully: "How can you ask such a question?"

"I have never enjoyed myself so much before!" she said, and Prince
Andrew noticed how her thin arms rose quickly as if to embrace her
father and instantly dropped again. Natasha was happier than she had
ever been in her life. She was at that height of bliss when one
becomes completely kind and good and does not believe in the
possibility of evil, unhappiness, or sorrow.

At that ball Pierre for the first time felt humiliated by the
position his wife occupied in court circles. He was gloomy and
absent-minded. A deep furrow ran across his forehead, and standing
by a window he stared over his spectacles seeing no one.

On her way to supper Natasha passed him.

Pierre's gloomy, unhappy look struck her. She stopped in front of
him. She wished to help him, to bestow on him the superabundance of
her own happiness.

"How delightful it is, Count!" said she. "Isn't it?"

Pierre smiled absent-mindedly, evidently not grasping what she said.

"Yes, I am very glad," he said.

"How can people be dissatisfied with anything?" thought Natasha.
"Especially such a capital fellow as Bezukhov!" In Natasha's eyes
all the people at the ball alike were good, kind, and splendid people,
loving one another; none of them capable of injuring another--and so
they ought all to be happy.





CHAPTER XVIII


Next day Prince Andrew thought of the ball, but his mind did not
dwell on it long. "Yes, it was a very brilliant ball," and then...
"Yes, that little Rostova is very charming. There's something fresh,
original, un-Petersburg-like about her that distinguishes her." That
was all he thought about yesterday's ball, and after his morning tea
he set to work.

But either from fatigue or want of sleep he was ill-disposed for
work and could get nothing done. He kept criticizing his own work,
as he often did, and was glad when he heard someone coming.

The visitor was Bitski, who served on various committees, frequented
all the societies in Petersburg, and a passionate devotee of the new
ideas and of Speranski, and a diligent Petersburg newsmonger--one of
those men who choose their opinions like their clothes according to
the fashion, but who for that very reason appear to be the warmest
partisans. Hardly had he got rid of his hat before he ran into
Prince Andrew's room with a preoccupied air and at once began talking.
He had just heard particulars of that morning's sitting of the Council
of State opened by the Emperor, and he spoke of it enthusiastically.
The Emperor's speech had been extraordinary. It had been a speech such
as only constitutional monarchs deliver. "The Sovereign plainly said
that the Council and Senate are estates of the realm, he said that the
government must rest not on authority but on secure bases. The Emperor
said that the fiscal system must be reorganized and the accounts
published," recounted Bitski, emphasizing certain words and opening
his eyes significantly.

"Ah, yes! Today's events mark an epoch, the greatest epoch in our
history," he concluded.

Prince Andrew listened to the account of the opening of the
Council of State, which he had so impatiently awaited and to which
he had attached such importance, and was surprised that this event,
now that it had taken place, did not affect him, and even seemed quite
insignificant. He listened with quiet irony to Bitski's enthusiastic
account of it. A very simple thought occurred to him: "What does it
matter to me or to Bitski what the Emperor was pleased to say at the
Council? Can all that make me any happier or better?"

And this simple reflection suddenly destroyed all the interest
Prince Andrew had felt in the impending reforms. He was going to
dine that evening at Speranski's, "with only a few friends," as the
host had said when inviting him. The prospect of that dinner in the
intimate home circle of the man he so admired had greatly interested
Prince Andrew, especially as he had not yet seen Speranski in his
domestic surroundings, but now he felt disinclined to go to it.

At the appointed hour, however, he entered the modest house
Speranski owned in the Taurida Gardens. In the parqueted dining room
this small house, remarkable for its extreme cleanliness (suggesting
that of a monastery), Prince Andrew, who was rather late, found the
friendly gathering of Speranski's intimate acquaintances already
assembled at five o'clock. There were no ladies present except
Speranski's little daughter (long-faced like her father) and her
governess. The other guests were Gervais, Magnitski, and Stolypin.
While still in the anteroom Prince Andrew heard loud voices and a
ringing staccato laugh--a laugh such as one hears on the stage.
Someone--it sounded like Speranski--was distinctly ejaculating
ha-ha-ha. Prince Andrew had never before heard Speranski's famous
laugh, and this ringing, high pitched laughter from a statesman made a
strange impression on him.

He entered the dining room. The whole company were standing
between two windows at a small table laid with hors-d'oeuvres.
Speranski, wearing a gray swallow-tail coat with a star on the breast,
and evidently still the same waistcoat and high white stock he had
worn at the meeting of the Council of State, stood at the table with a
beaming countenance. His guests surrounded him. Magnitski,
addressing himself to Speranski, was relating an anecdote, and
Speranski was laughing in advance at what Magnitski was going to
say. When Prince Andrew entered the room Magnitski's words were
again crowned by laughter. Stolypin gave a deep bass guffaw as he
munched a piece of bread and cheese. Gervais laughed softly with a
hissing chuckle, and Speranski in a high-pitched staccato manner.

Still laughing, Speranski held out his soft white hand to Prince
Andrew.

"Very pleased to see you, Prince," he said. "One moment..." he
went on, turning to Magnitski and interrupting his story. "We have
agreed that this is a dinner for recreation, with not a word about
business!" and turning again to the narrator he began to laugh afresh.

Prince Andrew looked at the laughing Speranski with astonishment,
regret, and disillusionment. It seemed to him that this was not
Speranski but someone else. Everything that had formerly appeared
mysterious and fascinating in Speranski suddenly became plain and
unattractive.

At dinner the conversation did not cease for a moment and seemed
to consist of the contents of a book of funny anecdotes. Before
Magnitski had finished his story someone else was anxious to relate
something still funnier. Most of the anecdotes, if not relating to the
state service, related to people in the service. It seemed that in
this company the insignificance of those people was so definitely
accepted that the only possible attitude toward them was one of good
humored ridicule. Speranski related how at the Council that morning
a deaf dignitary, when asked his opinion, replied that he thought so
too. Gervais gave a long account of an official revision, remarkable
for the stupidity of everybody concerned. Stolypin, stuttering,
broke into the conversation and began excitedly talking of the
abuses that existed under the former order of things--threatening to
give a serious turn to the conversation. Magnitski starting quizzing
Stolypin about his vehemence. Gervais intervened with a joke, and
the talk reverted to its former lively tone.

Evidently Speranski liked to rest after his labors and find
amusement in a circle of friends, and his guests, understanding his
wish, tried to enliven him and amuse themselves. But their gaiety
seemed to Prince Andrew mirthless and tiresome. Speranski's
high-pitched voice struck him unpleasantly, and the incessant laughter
grated on him like a false note. Prince Andrew did not laugh and
feared that he would be a damper on the spirits of the company, but no
one took any notice of his being out of harmony with the general mood.
They all seemed very gay.

He tried several times to join in the conversation, but his
remarks were tossed aside each time like a cork thrown out of the
water, and he could not jest with them.

There was nothing wrong or unseemly in what they said, it was
witty and might have been funny, but it lacked just that something
which is the salt of mirth, and they were not even aware that such a
thing existed.

After dinner Speranski's daughter and her governess rose. He
patted the little girl with his white hand and kissed her. And that
gesture, too, seemed unnatural to Prince Andrew.

The men remained at table over their port--English fashion. In the
midst of a conversation that was started about Napoleon's Spanish
affairs, which they all agreed in approving, Prince Andrew began to
express a contrary opinion. Speranski smiled and, with an evident wish
to prevent the conversation from taking an unpleasant course, told a
story that had no connection with the previous conversation. For a few
moments all were silent.

Having sat some time at table, Speranski corked a bottle of wine
and, remarking, "Nowadays good wine rides in a carriage and pair,"
passed it to the servant and got up. All rose and continuing to talk
loudly went into the drawing room. Two letters brought by a courier
were handed to Speranski and he took them to his study. As soon as
he had left the room the general merriment stopped and the guests
began to converse sensibly and quietly with one another.

"Now for the recitation!" said Speranski on returning from his
study. "A wonderful talent!" he said to Prince Andrew, and Magnitski
immediately assumed a pose and began reciting some humorous verses
in French which he had composed about various well-known Petersburg
people. He was interrupted several times by applause. When the
verses were finished Prince Andrew went up to Speranski and took his
leave.

"Where are you off to so early?" asked Speranski.

"I promised to go to a reception."

They said no more. Prince Andrew looked closely into those
mirrorlike, impenetrable eyes, and felt that it had been ridiculous of
him to have expected anything from Speranski and from any of his own
activities connected with him, or ever to have attributed importance
to what Speranski was doing. That precise, mirthless laughter rang
in Prince Andrew's ears long after he had left the house.

When he reached home Prince Andrew began thinking of his life in
Petersburg during those last four months as if it were something
new. He recalled his exertions and solicitations, and the history of
his project of army reform, which had been accepted for
consideration and which they were trying to pass over in silence
simply because another, a very poor one, had already been prepared and
submitted to the Emperor. He thought of the meetings of a committee of
which Berg was a member. He remembered how carefully and at what
length everything relating to form and procedure was discussed at
those meetings, and how sedulously and promptly all that related to
the gist of the business was evaded. He recalled his labors on the
Legal Code, and how painstakingly he had translated the articles of
the Roman and French codes into Russian, and he felt ashamed of
himself. Then he vividly pictured to himself Bogucharovo, his
occupations in the country, his journey to Ryazan; he remembered the
peasants and Dron the village elder, and mentally applying to them the
Personal Rights he had divided into paragraphs, he felt astonished
that he could have spent so much time on such useless work.





CHAPTER XIX


Next day Prince Andrew called at a few houses he had not visited
before, and among them at the Rostovs' with whom he had renewed
acquaintance at the ball. Apart from considerations of politeness
which demanded the call, he wanted to see that original, eager girl
who had left such a pleasant impression on his mind, in her own home.

Natasha was one of the first to meet him. She was wearing a
dark-blue house dress in which Prince Andrew thought her even prettier
than in her ball dress. She and all the Rostov family welcomed him
as an old friend, simply and cordially. The whole family, whom he
had formerly judged severely, now seemed to him to consist of
excellent, simple, and kindly people. The old count's hospitality
and good nature, which struck one especially in Petersburg as a
pleasant surprise, were such that Prince Andrew could not refuse to
stay to dinner. "Yes," he thought, "they are capital people, who of
course have not the slightest idea what a treasure they possess in
Natasha; but they are kindly folk and form the best possible setting
for this strikingly poetic, charming girl, overflowing with life!"

In Natasha Prince Andrew was conscious of a strange world completely
alien to him and brimful of joys unknown to him, a different world,
that in the Otradnoe avenue and at the window that moonlight night had
already begun to disconcert him. Now this world disconcerted him no
longer and was no longer alien to him, but he himself having entered
it found in it a new enjoyment.

After dinner Natasha, at Prince Andrew's request, went to the
clavichord and began singing. Prince Andrew stood by a window
talking to the ladies and listened to her. In the midst of a phrase he
ceased speaking and suddenly felt tears choking him, a thing he had
thought impossible for him. He looked at Natasha as she sang, and
something new and joyful stirred in his soul. He felt happy and at the
same time sad. He had absolutely nothing to weep about yet he was
ready to weep. What about? His former love? The little princess? His
disillusionments?... His hopes for the future?... Yes and no. The
chief reason was a sudden, vivid sense of the terrible contrast
between something infinitely great and illimitable within him and that
limited and material something that he, and even she, was. This
contrast weighed on and yet cheered him while she sang.

As soon as Natasha had finished she went up to him and asked how
he liked her voice. She asked this and then became confused, feeling
that she ought not to have asked it. He smiled, looking at her, and
said he liked her singing as he liked everything she did.

Prince Andrew left the Rostovs' late in the evening. He went to
bed from habit, but soon realized that he could not sleep. Having
lit his candle he sat up in bed, then got up, then lay down again
not at all troubled by his sleeplessness: his soul was as fresh and
joyful as if he had stepped out of a stuffy room into God's own
fresh air. It did not enter his head that he was in love with Natasha;
he was not thinking about her, but only picturing her to himself,
and in consequence all life appeared in a new light. "Why do I strive,
why do I toil in this narrow, confined frame, when life, all life with
all its joys, is open to me?" said he to himself. And for the first
time for a very long while he began making happy plans for the future.
He decided that he must attend to his son's education by finding a
tutor and putting the boy in his charge, then he ought to retire
from the service and go abroad, and see England, Switzerland and
Italy. "I must use my freedom while I feel so much strength and
youth in me," he said to himself. "Pierre was right when he said one
must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and
now I do believe in it. Let the dead bury their dead, but while one
has life one must live and be happy!" thought he.





CHAPTER XX


One morning Colonel Berg, whom Pierre knew as he knew everybody in
Moscow and Petersburg, came to see him. Berg arrived in an
immaculate brand-new uniform, with his hair pomaded and brushed
forward over his temples as the Emperor Alexander wore his hair.

"I have just been to see the countess, your wife. Unfortunately
she could not grant my request, but I hope, Count, I shall be more
fortunate with you," he said with a smile.

"What is it you wish, Colonel? I am at your service."

"I have now quite settled in my new rooms, Count" (Berg said this
with perfect conviction that this information could not but be
agreeable), "and so I wish to arrange just a small party for my own
and my wife's friends." (He smiled still more pleasantly.) "I wished
to ask the countess and you to do me the honor of coming to tea and to
supper."

Only Countess Helene, considering the society of such people as
the Bergs beneath her, could be cruel enough to refuse such an
invitation. Berg explained so clearly why he wanted to collect at
his house a small but select company, and why this would give him
pleasure, and why though he grudged spending money on cards or
anything harmful, he was prepared to run into some expense for the
sake of good society--that Pierre could not refuse, and promised to
come.

"But don't be late, Count, if I may venture to ask; about ten
minutes to eight, please. We shall make up a rubber. Our general is
coming. He is very good to me. We shall have supper, Count. So you
will do me the favor."

Contrary to his habit of being late, Pierre on that day arrived at
the Bergs' house, not at ten but at fifteen minutes to eight.

Having prepared everything necessary for the party, the Bergs were
ready for their guests' arrival.

In their new, clean, and light study with its small busts and
pictures and new furniture sat Berg and his wife. Berg, closely
buttoned up in his new uniform, sat beside his wife explaining to
her that one always could and should be acquainted with people above
one, because only then does one get satisfaction from acquaintances.

"You can get to know something, you can ask for something. See how I
managed from my first promotion." (Berg measured his life not by years
but by promotions.) "My comrades are still nobodies, while I am only
waiting for a vacancy to command a regiment, and have the happiness to
be your husband." (He rose and kissed Vera's hand, and on the way to
her straightened out a turned-up corner of the carpet.) "And how
have I obtained all this? Chiefly by knowing how to choose my
aquaintances. It goes without saying that one must be conscientious
and methodical."

Berg smiled with a sense of his superiority over a weak woman, and
paused, reflecting that this dear wife of his was after all but a weak
woman who could not understand all that constitutes a man's dignity,
what it was ein Mann zu sein.* Vera at the same time smiling with a
sense of superiority over her good, conscientious husband, who all the
same understood life wrongly, as according to Vera all men did.
Berg, judging by his wife, thought all women weak and foolish. Vera,
judging only by her husband and generalizing from that observation,
supposed that all men, though they understand nothing and are
conceited and selfish, ascribe common sense to themselves alone.


*To be a man.


Berg rose and embraced his wife carefully, so as not to crush her
lace fichu for which he had paid a good price, kissing her straight on
the lips.

"The only thing is, we mustn't have children too soon," he
continued, following an unconscious sequence of ideas.

"Yes," answered Vera, "I don't at all want that. We must live for
society."

"Princess Yusupova wore one exactly like this," said Berg,
pointing to the fichu with a happy and kindly smile.

Just then Count Bezukhov was announced. Husband and wife glanced
at one another, both smiling with self-satisfaction, and each mentally
claiming the honor of this visit.

"This is what what comes of knowing how to make acquaintances,"
thought Berg. "This is what comes of knowing how to conduct oneself."

"But please don't interrupt me when I am entertaining the guests,"
said Vera, "because I know what interests each of them and what to say
to different people."

Berg smiled again.

"It can't be helped: men must sometimes have masculine
conversation," said he.

They received Pierre in their small, new drawing-room, where it
was impossible to sit down anywhere without disturbing its symmetry,
neatness, and order; so it was quite comprehensible and not strange
that Berg, having generously offered to disturb the symmetry of an
armchair or of the sofa for his dear guest, but being apparently
painfully undecided on the matter himself, eventually left the visitor
to settle the question of selection. Pierre disturbed the symmetry
by moving a chair for himself, and Berg and Vera immediately began
their evening party, interrupting each other in their efforts to
entertain their guest.

Vera, having decided in her own mind that Pierre ought to be
entertained with conversation about the French embassy, at once
began accordingly. Berg, having decided that masculine conversation
was required, interrupted his wife's remarks and touched on the
question of the war with Austria, and unconsciously jumped from the
general subject to personal considerations as to the proposals made
him to take part in the Austrian campaign and the reasons why he had
declined them. Though the conversation was very incoherent and Vera
was angry at the intrusion of the masculine element, both husband
and wife felt with satisfaction that, even if only one guest was
present, their evening had begun very well and was as like as two peas
to every other evening party with its talk, tea, and lighted candles.

Before long Boris, Berg's old comrade, arrived. There was a shade of
condescension and patronage in his treatment of Berg and Vera. After
Boris came a lady with the colonel, then the general himself, then the
Rostovs, and the party became unquestionably exactly like all other
evening parties. Berg and Vera could not repress their smiles of
satisfaction at the sight of all this movement in their drawing
room, at the sound of the disconnected talk, the rustling of
dresses, and the bowing and scraping. Everything was just as everybody
always has it, especially so the general, who admired the apartment,
patted Berg on the shoulder, and with parental authority superintended
the setting out of the table for boston. The general sat down by Count
Ilya Rostov, who was next to himself the most important guest. The old
people sat with the old, the young with the young, and the hostess
at the tea table, on which stood exactly the same kind of cakes in a
silver cake basket as the Panins had at their party. Everything was
just as it was everywhere else.





CHAPTER XXI


Pierre, as one of the principal guests, had to sit down to boston
with Count Rostov, the general, and the colonel. At the card table
he happened to be directly facing Natasha, and was struck by a curious
change that had come over her since the ball. She was silent, and
not only less pretty than at the ball, but only redeemed from
plainness by her look of gentle indifference to everything around.

"What's the matter with her?" thought Pierre, glancing at her. She
was sitting by her sister at the tea table, and reluctantly, without
looking at him, made some reply to Boris who sat down beside her.
After playing out a whole suit and to his partner's delight taking
five tricks, Pierre, hearing greetings and the steps of someone who
had entered the room while he was picking up his tricks, glanced again
at Natasha.

"What has happened to her?" he asked himself with still greater
surprise.

Prince Andrew was standing before her, saying something to her
with a look of tender solicitude. She, having raised her head, was
looking up at him, flushed and evidently trying to master her rapid
breathing. And the bright glow of some inner fire that had been
suppressed was again alight in her. She was completely transformed and
from a plain girl had again become what she had been at the ball.

Prince Andrew went up to Pierre, and the latter noticed a new and
youthful expression in his friend's face.

Pierre changed places several times during the game, sitting now
with his back to Natasha and now facing her, but during the whole of
the six rubbers he watched her and his friend.

"Something very important is happening between them," thought
Pierre, and a feeling that was both joyful and painful agitated him
and made him neglect the game.

After six rubbers the general got up, saying that it was no use
playing like that, and Pierre was released. Natasha on one side was
talking with Sonya and Boris, and Vera with a subtle smile was
saying something to Prince Andrew. Pierre went up to his friend and,
asking whether they were talking secrets, sat down beside them.
Vera, having noticed Prince Andrew's attentions to Natasha, decided
that at a party, a real evening party, subtle allusions to the
tender passion were absolutely necessary and, seizing a moment when
Prince Andrew was alone, began a conversation with him about
feelings in general and about her sister. With so intellectual a guest
as she considered Prince Andrew to be, she felt that she had to employ
her diplomatic tact.

When Pierre went up to them he noticed that Vera was being carried
away by her self-satisfied talk, but that Prince Andrew seemed
embarrassed, a thing that rarely happened with him.

"What do you think?" Vera was saying with an arch smile. "You are so
discerning, Prince, and understand people's characters so well at a
glance. What do you think of Natalie? Could she be constant in her
attachments? Could she, like other women" (Vera meant herself),
"love a man once for all and remain true to him forever? That is
what I consider true love. What do you think, Prince?"

"I know your sister too little," replied Prince Andrew, with a
sarcastic smile under which he wished to hide his embarrassment, "to
be able to solve so delicate a question, and then I have noticed
that the less attractive a woman is the more constant she is likely to
be," he added, and looked up Pierre who was just approaching them.

"Yes, that is true, Prince. In our days," continued Vera--mentioning
"our days" as people of limited intelligence are fond of doing,
imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of
"our days" and that human characteristics change with the times--"in
our days a girl has so much freedom that the pleasure of being courted
often stifles real feeling in her. And it must be confessed that
Natalie is very susceptible." This return to the subject of Natalie
caused Prince Andrew to knit his brows with discomfort: he was about
to rise, but Vera continued with a still more subtle smile:

"I think no one has been more courted than she," she went on, "but
till quite lately she never cared seriously for anyone. Now you
know, Count," she said to Pierre, "even our dear cousin Boris, who,
between ourselves, was very far gone in the land of tenderness..."
(alluding to a map of love much in vogue at that time).

Prince Andrew frowned and remained silent.

"You are friendly with Boris, aren't you?" asked Vera.

"Yes, I know him..."

"I expect he has told you of his childish love for Natasha?"

"Oh, there was childish love?" suddenly asked Prince Andrew,
blushing unexpectedly.

"Yes, you know between cousins intimacy often leads to love. Le
cousinage est un dangereux voisinage.* Don't you think so?"


*"Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood."


"Oh, undoubtedly!" said Prince Andrew, and with sudden and unnatural
liveliness he began chaffing Pierre about the need to be very
careful with his fifty-year-old Moscow cousins, and in the midst of
these jesting remarks he rose, taking Pierre by the arm, and drew
him aside.

"Well?" asked Pierre, seeing his friend's strange animation with
surprise, and noticing the glance he turned on Natasha as he rose.

"I must... I must have a talk with you," said Prince Andrew. "You
know that pair of women's gloves?" (He referred to the Masonic
gloves given to a newly initiated Brother to present to the woman he
loved.) "I... but no, I will talk to you later on," and with a strange
light in his eyes and restlessness in his movements, Prince Andrew
approached Natasha and sat down beside her. Pierre saw how Prince
Andrew asked her something and how she flushed as she replied.

But at that moment Berg came to Pierre and began insisting that he
should take part in an argument between the general and the colonel on
the affairs in Spain.

Berg was satisfied and happy. The smile of pleasure never left his
face. The party was very successful and quite like other parties he
had seen. Everything was similar: the ladies' subtle talk, the
cards, the general raising his voice at the card table, and the
samovar and the tea cakes; only one thing was lacking that he had
always seen at the evening parties he wished to imitate. They had
not yet had a loud conversation among the men and a dispute about
something important and clever. Now the general had begun such a
discussion and so Berg drew Pierre to it.





CHAPTER XXII


Next day, having been invited by the count, Prince Andrew dined with
the Rostovs and spent the rest of the day there.

Everyone in the house realized for whose sake Prince Andrew came,
and without concealing it he tried to be with Natasha all day. Not
only in the soul of the frightened yet happy and enraptured Natasha,
but in the whole house, there was a feeling of awe at something
important that was bound to happen. The countess looked with sad and
sternly serious eyes at Prince Andrew when he talked to Natasha and
timidly started some artificial conversation about trifles as soon
as he looked her way. Sonya was afraid to leave Natasha and afraid
of being in the way when she was with them. Natasha grew pale, in a
panic of expectation, when she remained alone with him for a moment.
Prince Andrew surprised her by his timidity. She felt that he wanted
to say something to her but could not bring himself to do so.

In the evening, when Prince Andrew had left, the countess went up to
Natasha and whispered: "Well, what?"

"Mamma! For heaven's sake don't ask me anything now! One can't
talk about that," said Natasha.

But all the same that night Natasha, now agitated and now
frightened, lay a long time in her mother's bed gazing straight
before her. She told her how he had complimented her, how he told
her he was going abroad, asked her where they were going to spend
the summer, and then how he had asked her about Boris.

"But such a... such a... never happened to me before!" she said.
"Only I feel afraid in his presence. I am always afraid when I'm
with him. What does that mean? Does it mean that it's the real
thing? Yes? Mamma, are you asleep?"

"No, my love; I am frightened myself," answered her mother. "Now
go!"

"All the same I shan't sleep. What silliness, to sleep! Mummy!
Mummy! such a thing never happened to me before," she said,
surprised and alarmed at the feeling she was aware of in herself. "And
could we ever have thought!..."

It seemed to Natasha that even at the time she first saw Prince
Andrew at Otradnoe she had fallen in love with him. It was as if she
feared this strange, unexpected happiness of meeting again the very
man she had then chosen (she was firmly convinced she had done so) and
of finding him, as it seemed, not indifferent to her.

"And it had to happen that he should come specially to Petersburg
while we are here. And it had to happen that we should meet at that
ball. It is fate. Clearly it is fate that everything led up to this!
Already then, directly I saw him I felt something peculiar."

"What else did he say to you? What are those verses? Read them..."
said her mother, thoughtfully, referring to some verses Prince
Andrew had written in Natasha's album.

"Mamma, one need not be ashamed of his being a widower?"

"Don't, Natasha! Pray to God. 'Marriages are made in heaven,'"
said her mother.

"Darling Mummy, how I love you! How happy I am!" cried Natasha,
shedding tears of joy and excitement and embracing her mother.

At that very time Prince Andrew was sitting with Pierre and
telling him of his love for Natasha and his firm resolve to make her
his wife.

That day Countess Helene had a reception at her house. The French
ambassador was there, and a foreign prince of the blood who had of
late become a frequent visitor of hers, and many brilliant ladies
and gentlemen. Pierre, who had come downstairs, walked through the
rooms and struck everyone by his preoccupied, absent-minded, and
morose air.

Since the ball he had felt the approach of a fit of nervous
depression and had made desperate efforts to combat it. Since the
intimacy of his wife with the royal prince, Pierre had unexpectedly
been made a gentleman of the bedchamber, and from that time he had
begun to feel oppressed and ashamed in court society, and dark
thoughts of the vanity of all things human came to him oftener than
before. At the same time the feeling he had noticed between his
protegee Natasha and Prince Andrew accentuated his gloom by the
contrast between his own position and his friend's. He tried equally
to avoid thinking about his wife, and about Natasha and Prince Andrew;
and again everything seemed to him insignificant in comparison with
eternity; again the question: for what? presented itself; and he
forced himself to work day and night at Masonic labors, hoping to
drive away the evil spirit that threatened him. Toward midnight, after
he had left the countess' apartments, he was sitting upstairs in a
shabby dressing gown, copying out the original transaction of the
Scottish lodge of Freemasons at a table in his low room cloudy with
tobacco smoke, when someone came in. It was Prince Andrew.

"Ah, it's you!" said Pierre with a preoccupied, dissatisfied air.
"And I, you see, am hard at it." He pointed to his manuscript book
with that air of escaping from the ills of life with which unhappy
people look at their work.

Prince Andrew, with a beaming, ecstatic expression of renewed life
on his face, paused in front of Pierre and, not noticing his sad look,
smiled at him with the egotism of joy.

"Well, dear heart," said he, "I wanted to tell you about it
yesterday and I have come to do so today. I never experienced anything
like it before. I am in love, my friend!"

Suddenly Pierre heaved a deep sigh and dumped his heavy person
down on the sofa beside Prince Andrew.

"With Natasha Rostova, yes?" said he.

"Yes, yes! Who else should it be? I should never have believed it,
but the feeling is stronger than I. Yesterday I tormented myself and
suffered, but I would not exchange even that torment for anything in
the world, I have not lived till now. At last I live, but I can't live
without her! But can she love me?... I am too old for her.... Why
don't you speak?"

"I? I? What did I tell you?" said Pierre suddenly, rising and
beginning to pace up and down the room. "I always thought it....
That girl is such a treasure... she is a rare girl.... My dear friend,
I entreat you, don't philosophize, don't doubt, marry, marry,
marry.... And I am sure there will not be a happier man than you."

"But what of her?"

"She loves you."

"Don't talk rubbish..." said Prince Andrew, smiling and looking into
Pierre's eyes.

"She does, I know," Pierre cried fiercely.

"But do listen," returned Prince Andrew, holding him by the arm. "Do
you know the condition I am in? I must talk about it to someone."

"Well, go on, go on. I am very glad," said Pierre, and his face
really changed, his brow became smooth, and he listened gladly to
Prince Andrew. Prince Andrew seemed, and really was, quite a
different, quite a new man. Where was his spleen, his contempt for
life, his disillusionment? Pierre was the only person to whom he
made up his mind to speak openly; and to him he told all that was in
his soul. Now he boldly and lightly made plans for an extended future,
said he could not sacrifice his own happiness to his father's caprice,
and spoke of how he would either make his father consent to this
marriage and love her, or would do without his consent; then he
marveled at the feeling that had mastered him as at something strange,
apart from and independent of himself.

"I should not have believed anyone who told me that I was capable of
such love," said Prince Andrew. "It is not at all the same feeling
that I knew in the past. The whole world is now for me divided into
two halves: one half is she, and there all is joy, hope, light: the
other half is everything where she is not, and there is all gloom
and darkness...."

"Darkness and gloom," reiterated Pierre: "yes, yes, I understand
that."

"I cannot help loving the light, it is not my fault. And I am very
happy! You understand me? I know you are glad for my sake."

"Yes, yes," Pierre assented, looking at his friend with a touched
and sad expression in his eyes. The brighter Prince Andrew's lot
appeared to him, the gloomier seemed his own.





CHAPTER XXIII


Prince Andrew needed his father's consent to his marriage, and to
obtain this he started for the country next day.

His father received his son's communication with external composure,
but inward wrath. He could not comprehend how anyone could wish to
alter his life or introduce anything new into it, when his own life
was already ending. "If only they would let me end my days as I want
to," thought the old man, "then they might do as they please." With
his son, however, he employed the diplomacy he reserved for
important occasions and, adopting a quiet tone, discussed the whole
matter.

In the first place the marriage was not a brilliant one as regards
birth, wealth, or rank. Secondly, Prince Andrew was no longer as young
as he had been and his health was poor (the old man laid special
stress on this), while she was very young. Thirdly, he had a son
whom it would be a pity to entrust to a chit of a girl. "Fourthly
and finally," the father said, looking ironically at his son, "I beg
you to put it off for a year: go abroad, take a cure, look out as
you wanted to for a German tutor for Prince Nicholas. Then if your
love or passion or obstinacy--as you please--is still as great, marry!
And that's my last word on it. Mind, the last..." concluded the
prince, in a tone which showed that nothing would make him alter his
decision.

Prince Andrew saw clearly that the old man hoped that his
feelings, or his fiancee's, would not stand a year's test, or that
he (the old prince himself) would die before then, and he decided to
conform to his father's wish--to propose, and postpone the wedding for
a year.

Three weeks after the last evening he had spent with the Rostovs,
Prince Andrew returned to Petersburg.


Next day after her talk with her mother Natasha expected Bolkonski
all day, but he did not come. On the second and third day it was the
same. Pierre did not come either and Natasha, not knowing that
Prince Andrew had gone to see his father, could not explain his
absence to herself.

Three weeks passed in this way. Natasha had no desire to go out
anywhere and wandered from room to room like a shadow, idle and
listless; she wept secretly at night and did not go to her mother in
the evenings. She blushed continually and was irritable. It seemed
to her that everybody knew about her disappointment and was laughing
at her and pitying her. Strong as was her inward grief, this wound
to her vanity intensified her misery.

Once she came to her mother, tried to say something, and suddenly
began to cry. Her tears were those of an offended child who does not
know why it is being punished.

The countess began to soothe Natasha, who after first listening to
her mother's words, suddenly interrupted her:

"Leave off, Mamma! I don't think, and don't want to think about
it! He just came and then left off, left off..."

Her voice trembled, and she again nearly cried, but recovered and
went on quietly:

"And I don't at all want to get married. And I am afraid of him; I
have now become quite calm, quite calm."

The day after this conversation Natasha put on the old dress which
she knew had the peculiar property of conducing to cheerfulness in the
mornings, and that day she returned to the old way of life which she
had abandoned since the ball. Having finished her morning tea she went
to the ballroom, which she particularly liked for its loud
resonance, and began singing her solfeggio. When she had finished
her first exercise she stood still in the middle of the room and
sang a musical phrase that particularly pleased her. She listened
joyfully (as though she had not expected it) to the charm of the notes
reverberating, filling the whole empty ballroom, and slowly dying
away; and all at once she felt cheerful. "What's the good of making so
much of it? Things are nice as it is," she said to herself, and she
began walking up and down the room, not stepping simply on the
resounding parquet but treading with each step from the heel to the
toe (she had on a new and favorite pair of shoes) and listening to the
regular tap of the heel and creak of the toe as gladly as she had to
the sounds of her own voice. Passing a mirror she glanced into it.
"There, that's me!" the expression of her face seemed to say as she
caught sight of herself. "Well, and very nice too! I need nobody."

A footman wanted to come in to clear away something in the room
but she would not let him, and having closed the door behind him
continued her walk. That morning she had returned to her favorite
mood--love of, and delight in, herself. "How charming that Natasha
is!" she said again, speaking as some third, collective, male
person. "Pretty, a good voice, young, and in nobody's way if only they
leave her in peace." But however much they left her in peace she could
not now be at peace, and immediately felt this.

In the hall the porch door opened, and someone asked, "At home?" and
then footsteps were heard. Natasha was looking at the mirror, but
did not see herself. She listened to the sounds in the hall. When
she saw herself, her face was pale. It was he. She knew this for
certain, though she hardly heard his voice through the closed doors.

Pale and agitated, Natasha ran into the drawing room.

"Mamma! Bolkonski has come!" she said. "Mamma, it is awful, it is
unbearable! I don't want... to be tormented? What am I to do?..."

Before the countess could answer, Prince Andrew entered the room
with an agitated and serious face. As soon as he saw Natasha his
face brightened. He kissed the countess' hand and Natasha's, and sat
down beside the sofa.

"It is long since we had the pleasure..." began the countess, but
Prince Andrew interrupted her by answering her intended question,
obviously in haste to say what he had to.

"I have not been to see all this time because I have been at my
father's. I had to talk over a very important matter with him. I
only got back last night," he said glancing at Natasha; "I want to
have a talk with you, Countess," he added after a moment's pause.

The countess lowered her eyes, sighing deeply.

"I am at your disposal," she murmured.

Natasha knew that she ought to go away, but was unable to do so:
something gripped her throat, and regardless of manners she stared
straight at Prince Andrew with wide-open eyes.

"At once? This instant!... No, it can't be!" she thought.

Again he glanced at her, and that glance convinced her that she
was not mistaken. Yes, at once, that very instant, her fate would be
decided.

"Go, Natasha! I will call you," said the countess in a whisper.

Natasha glanced with frightened imploring eyes at Prince Andrew
and at her mother and went out.

"I have come, Countess, to ask for your daughter's hand," said
Prince Andrew.

The countess' face flushed hotly, but she said nothing.

"Your offer..." she began at last sedately. He remained silent,
looking into her eyes. "Your offer..." (she grew confused) "is
agreeable to us, and I accept your offer. I am glad. And my husband...
I hope... but it will depend on her...."

"I will speak to her when I have your consent.... Do you give it
to me?" said Prince Andrew.

"Yes," replied the countess. She held out her hand to him, and
with a mixed feeling of estrangement and tenderness pressed her lips
to his forehead as he stooped to kiss her hand. She wished to love him
as a son, but felt that to her he was a stranger and a terrifying man.
"I am sure my husband will consent," said the countess, "but your
father..."

"My father, to whom I have told my plans, has made it an express
condition of his consent that the wedding is not to take place for a
year. And I wished to tell you of that," said Prince Andrew.

"It is true that Natasha is still young, but--so long as that?..."

"It is unavoidable," said Prince Andrew with a sigh.

"I will send her to you," said the countess, and left the room.

"Lord have mercy upon us!" she repeated while seeking her daughter.

Sonya said that Natasha was in her bedroom. Natasha was sitting on
the bed, pale and dry eyed, and was gazing at the icons and whispering
something as she rapidly crossed herself. Seeing her mother she jumped
up and flew to her.

"Well, Mamma?... Well?..."

"Go, go to him. He is asking for your hand," said the countess,
coldly it seemed to Natasha. "Go... go," said the mother, sadly and
reproachfully, with a deep sigh, as her daughter ran away.

Natasha never remembered how she entered the drawing room. When
she came in and saw him she paused. "Is it possible that this stranger
has now become everything to me?" she asked herself, and immediately
answered, "Yes, everything! He alone is now dearer to me than
everything in the world." Prince Andrew came up to her with downcast
eyes.

"I have loved you from the very first moment I saw you. May I hope?"

He looked at her and was struck by the serious impassioned
expression of her face. Her face said: "Why ask? Why doubt what you
cannot but know? Why speak, when words cannot express what one feels?"

She drew near to him and stopped. He took her hand and kissed it.

"Do you love me?"

"Yes, yes!" Natasha murmured as if in vexation. Then she sighed
loudly and, catching her breath more and more quickly, began to sob.

"What is it? What's the matter?"

"Oh, I am so happy!" she replied, smiled through her tears, bent
over closer to him, paused for an instant as if asking herself whether
she might, and then kissed him.

Prince Andrew held her hands, looked into her eyes, and did not find
in his heart his former love for her. Something in him had suddenly
changed; there was no longer the former poetic and mystic charm of
desire, but there was pity for her feminine and childish weakness,
fear at her devotion and trustfulness, and an oppressive yet joyful
sense of the duty that now bound him to her forever. The present
feeling, though not so bright and poetic as the former, was stronger
and more serious.

"Did your mother tell you that it cannot be for a year?" asked
Prince Andrew, still looking into her eyes.

"Is it possible that I--the 'chit of a girl,' as everybody called
me," thought Natasha--"is it possible that I am now to be the wife and
the equal of this strange, dear, clever man whom even my father
looks up to? Can it be true? Can it be true that there can be no
more playing with life, that now I am grown up, that on me now lies
a responsibility for my every word and deed? Yes, but what did he
ask me?"

"No," she replied, but she had not understood his question.

"Forgive me!" he said. "But you are so young, and I have already
been through so much in life. I am afraid for you, you do not yet know
yourself."

Natasha listened with concentrated attention, trying but failing
to take in the meaning of his words.

"Hard as this year which delays my happiness will be," continued
Prince Andrew, "it will give you time to be sure of yourself. I ask
you to make me happy in a year, but you are free: our engagement shall
remain a secret, and should you find that you do not love me, or
should you come to love..." said Prince Andrew with an unnatural
smile.

"Why do you say that?" Natasha interrupted him. "You know that
from the very day you first came to Otradnoe I have loved you," she
cried, quite convinced that she spoke the truth.

"In a year you will learn to know yourself...."

"A whole year!" Natasha repeated suddenly, only now realizing that
the marriage was to be postponed for a year. "But why a year? Why a
year?..."

Prince Andrew began to explain to her the reasons for this delay.
Natasha did not hear him.

"And can't it be helped?" she asked. Prince Andrew did not reply,
but his face expressed the impossibility of altering that decision.

"It's awful! Oh, it's awful! awful!" Natasha suddenly cried, and
again burst into sobs. "I shall die, waiting a year: it's
impossible, it's awful!" She looked into her lover's face and saw in
it a look of commiseration and perplexity.

"No, no! I'll do anything!" she said, suddenly checking her tears.
"I am so happy."

The father and mother came into the room and gave the betrothed
couple their blessing.

From that day Prince Andrew began to frequent the Rostovs' as
Natasha's affianced lover.





CHAPTER XXIV

No betrothal ceremony took place and Natasha's engagement to
Bolkonski was not announced; Prince Andrew insisted on that. He said
that as he was responsible for the delay he ought to bear the whole
burden of it; that he had given his word and bound himself forever,
but that he did not wish to bind Natasha and gave her perfect freedom.
If after six months she felt that she did not love him she would
have full right to reject him. Naturally neither Natasha nor her
parents wished to hear of this, but Prince Andrew was firm. He came
every day to the Rostovs', but did not behave to Natasha as an
affianced lover: he did not use the familiar thou, but said you to
her, and kissed only her hand. After their engagement, quite
different, intimate, and natural relations sprang up between them.
It was as if they had not known each other till now. Both liked to
recall how they had regarded each other when as yet they were
nothing to one another; they felt themselves now quite different
beings: then they were artificial, now natural and sincere. At first
the family felt some constraint in intercourse with Prince Andrew;
he seemed a man from another world, and for a long time Natasha
trained the family to get used to him, proudly assuring them all
that he only appeared to be different, but was really just like all of
them, and that she was not afraid of him and no one else ought to
be. After a few days they grew accustomed to him, and without
restraint in his presence pursued their usual way of life, in which he
took his part. He could talk about rural economy with the count,
fashions with the countess and Natasha, and about albums and fancywork
with Sonya. Sometimes the household both among themselves and in his
presence expressed their wonder at how it had all happened, and at the
evident omens there had been of it: Prince Andrew's coming to Otradnoe
and their coming to Petersburg, and the likeness between Natasha and
Prince Andrew which her nurse had noticed on his first visit, and
Andrew's encounter with Nicholas in 1805, and many other incidents
betokening that it had to be.

In the house that poetic dullness and quiet reigned which always
accompanies the presence of a betrothed couple. Often when all sitting
together everyone kept silent. Sometimes the others would get up and
go away and the couple, left alone, still remained silent. They rarely
spoke of their future life. Prince Andrew was afraid and ashamed to
speak of it. Natasha shared this as she did all his feelings, which
she constantly divined. Once she began questioning him about his
son. Prince Andrew blushed, as he often did now--Natasha
particularly liked it in him--and said that his son would not live
with them.

"Why not?" asked Natasha in a frightened tone.

"I cannot take him away from his grandfather, and besides..."

"How I should have loved him!" said Natasha, immediately guessing
his thought; "but I know you wish to avoid any pretext for finding
fault with us."

Sometimes the old count would come up, kiss Prince Andrew, and ask
his advice about Petya's education or Nicholas' service. The old
countess sighed as she looked at them; Sonya was always getting
frightened lest she should be in the way and tried to find excuses for
leaving them alone, even when they did not wish it. When Prince Andrew
spoke (he could tell a story very well), Natasha listened to him
with pride; when she spoke she noticed with fear and joy that he gazed
attentively and scrutinizingly at her. She asked herself in
perplexity: "What does he look for in me? He is trying to discover
something by looking at me! What if what he seeks in me is not there?"
Sometimes she fell into one of the mad, merry moods characteristic
of her, and then she particularly loved to hear and see how Prince
Andrew laughed. He seldom laughed, but when he did he abandoned
himself entirely to his laughter, and after such a laugh she always
felt nearer to him. Natasha would have been completely happy if the
thought of the separation awaiting her and drawing near had not
terrified her, just as the mere thought of it made him turn pale and
cold.

On the eve of his departure from Petersburg Prince Andrew brought
with him Pierre, who had not been to the Rostovs' once since the ball.
Pierre seemed disconcerted and embarrassed. He was talking to the
countess, and Natasha sat down beside a little chess table with Sonya,
thereby inviting Prince Andrew to come too. He did so.

"You have known Bezukhov a long time?" he asked. "Do you like him?"

"Yes, he's a dear, but very absurd."

And as usual when speaking of Pierre, she began to tell anecdotes of
his absent-mindedness, some of which had even been invented about him.

"Do you know I have entrusted him with our secret? I have known
him from childhood. He has a heart of gold. I beg you, Natalie,"
Prince Andrew said with sudden seriousness--"I am going away and
heaven knows what may happen. You may cease to... all right, I know
I am not to say that. Only this, then: whatever may happen to you when
I am not here..."

"What can happen?"

"Whatever trouble may come," Prince Andrew continued, "I beg you,
Mademoiselle Sophie, whatever may happen, to turn to him alone for
advice and help! He is a most absent-minded and absurd fellow, but
he has a heart of gold."

Neither her father, nor her mother, nor Sonya, nor Prince Andrew
himself could have foreseen how the separation from her lover would
act on Natasha. Flushed and agitated she went about the house all that
day, dry-eyed, occupied with most trivial matters as if not
understanding what awaited her. She did not even cry when, on taking
leave, he kissed her hand for the last time. "Don't go!" she said in a
tone that made him wonder whether he really ought not to stay and
which he remembered long afterwards. Nor did she cry when he was gone;
but for several days she sat in her room dry-eyed, taking no
interest in anything and only saying now and then, "Oh, why did he
go away?"

But a fortnight after his departure, to the surprise of those around
her, she recovered from her mental sickness just as suddenly and
became her old self again, but with a change in her moral physiognomy,
as a child gets up after a long illness with a changed expression of
face.





CHAPTER XXV


During that year after his son's departure, Prince Nicholas
Bolkonski's health and temper became much worse. He grew still more
irritable, and it was Princess Mary who generally bore the brunt of
his frequent fits of unprovoked anger. He seemed carefully to seek out
her tender spots so as to torture her mentally as harshly as possible.
Princess Mary had two passions and consequently two joys--her
nephew, little Nicholas, and religion--and these were the favorite
subjects of the prince's attacks and ridicule. Whatever was spoken
of he would bring round to the superstitiousness of old maids, or
the petting and spoiling of children. "You want to make him"--little
Nicholas--"into an old maid like yourself! A pity! Prince Andrew wants
a son and not an old maid," he would say. Or, turning to
Mademoiselle Bourienne, he would ask her in Princess Mary's presence
how she liked our village priests and icons and would joke about them.

He continually hurt Princess Mary's feelings and tormented her,
but it cost her no effort to forgive him. Could he be to blame
toward her, or could her father, whom she knew loved her in spite of
it all, be unjust? And what is justice? The princess never thought
of that proud word "justice." All the complex laws of man centered for
her in one clear and simple law--the law of love and self-sacrifice
taught us by Him who lovingly suffered for mankind though He Himself
was God. What had she to do with the justice or injustice of other
people? She had to endure and love, and that she did.

During the winter Prince Andrew had come to Bald Hills and had
been gay, gentle, and more affectionate than Princess Mary had known
him for a long time past. She felt that something had happened to him,
but he said nothing to her about his love. Before he left he had a
long talk with his father about something, and Princess Mary noticed
that before his departure they were dissatisfied with one another.

Soon after Prince Andrew had gone, Princess Mary wrote to her friend
Julie Karagina in Petersburg, whom she had dreamed (as all girls
dream) of marrying to her brother, and who was at that time in
mourning for her own brother, killed in Turkey.


Sorrow, it seems, is our common lot, my dear, tender friend Julie.

Your loss is so terrible that I can only explain it to myself as a
special providence of God who, loving you, wishes to try you and
your excellent mother. Oh, my friend! Religion, and religion alone,
can--I will not say comfort us--but save us from despair. Religion
alone can explain to us what without its help man cannot comprehend:
why, for what cause, kind and noble beings able to find happiness in
life--not merely harming no one but necessary to the happiness of
others--are called away to God, while cruel, useless, harmful persons,
or such as are a burden to themselves and to others, are left
living. The first death I saw, and one I shall never forget--that of
my dear sister-in-law--left that impression on me. Just as you ask
destiny why your splendid brother had to die, so I asked why that
angel Lise, who not only never wronged anyone, but in whose soul there
were never any unkind thoughts, had to die. And what do you think,
dear friend? Five years have passed since then, and already I, with my
petty understanding, begin to see clearly why she had to die, and in
what way that death was but an expression of the infinite goodness
of the Creator, whose every action, though generally
incomprehensible to us, is but a manifestation of His infinite love
for His creatures. Perhaps, I often think, she was too angelically
innocent to have the strength to perform all a mother's duties. As a
young wife she was irreproachable; perhaps she could not have been
so as a mother. As it is, not only has she left us, and particularly
Prince Andrew, with the purest regrets and memories, but probably
she will there receive a place I dare not hope for myself. But not
to speak of her alone, that early and terrible death has had the
most beneficent influence on me and on my brother in spite of all
our grief. Then, at the moment of our loss, these thoughts could not
occur to me; I should then have dismissed them with horror, but now
they are very clear and certain. I write all this to you, dear friend,
only to convince you of the Gospel truth which has become for me a
principle of life: not a single hair of our heads will fall without
His will. And His will is governed only by infinite love for us, and
so whatever befalls us is for our good.

You ask whether we shall spend next winter in Moscow. In spite of my
wish to see you, I do not think so and do not want to do so. You
will be surprised to hear that the reason for this is Buonaparte!
The case is this: my father's health is growing noticeably worse, he
cannot stand any contradiction and is becoming irritable. This
irritability is, as you know, chiefly directed to political questions.
He cannot endure the notion that Buonaparte is negotiating on equal
terms with all the sovereigns of Europe and particularly with our own,
the grandson of the Great Catherine! As you know, I am quite
indifferent to politics, but from my father's remarks and his talks
with Michael Ivanovich I know all that goes on in the world and
especially about the honors conferred on Buonaparte, who only at
Bald Hills in the whole world, it seems, is not accepted as a great
man, still less as Emperor of France. And my father cannot stand this.
It seems to me that it is chiefly because of his political views
that my father is reluctant to speak of going to Moscow; for he
foresees the encounters that would result from his way of expressing
his views regardless of anybody. All the benefit he might derive
from a course of treatment he would lose as a result of the disputes
about Buonaparte which would be inevitable. In any case it will be
decided very shortly.

Our family life goes on in the old way except for my brother
Andrew's absence. He, as I wrote you before, has changed very much
of late. After his sorrow he only this year quite recovered his
spirits. He has again become as I used to know him when a child: kind,
affectionate, with that heart of gold to which I know no equal. He has
realized, it seems to me, that life is not over for him. But
together with this mental change he has grown physically much
weaker. He has become thinner and more nervous. I am anxious about him
and glad he is taking this trip abroad which the doctors recommended
long ago. I hope it will cure him. You write that in Petersburg he
is spoken of as one of the most active, cultivated, and capable of the
young men. Forgive my vanity as a relation, but I never doubted it.
The good he has done to everybody here, from his peasants up to the
gentry, is incalculable. On his arrival in Petersburg he received only
his due. I always wonder at the way rumors fly from Petersburg to
Moscow, especially such false ones as that you write about--I mean the
report of my brother's betrothal to the little Rostova. I do not think
my brother will ever marry again, and certainly not her; and this is
why: first, I know that though he rarely speaks about the wife he
has lost, the grief of that loss has gone too deep in his heart for
him ever to decide to give her a successor and our little angel a
stepmother. Secondly because, as far as I know, that girl is not the
kind of girl who could please Prince Andrew. I do not think he would
choose her for a wife, and frankly I do not wish it. But I am
running on too long and am at the end of my second sheet. Good-by,
my dear friend. May God keep you in His holy and mighty care. My
dear friend, Mademoiselle Bourienne, sends you kisses.

MARY





CHAPTER XXVI


In the middle of the summer Princess Mary received an unexpected
letter from Prince Andrew in Switzerland in which he gave her
strange and surprising news. He informed her of his engagement to
Natasha Rostova. The whole letter breathed loving rapture for his
betrothed and tender and confiding affection for his sister. He
wrote that he had never loved as he did now and that only now did he
understand and know what life was. He asked his sister to forgive
him for not having told her of his resolve when he had last visited
Bald Hills, though he had spoken of it to his father. He had not
done so for fear Princess Mary should ask her father to give his
consent, irritating him and having to bear the brunt of his
displeasure without attaining her object. "Besides," he wrote, "the
matter was not then so definitely settled as it is now. My father then
insisted on a delay of a year and now already six months, half of that
period, have passed, and my resolution is firmer than ever. If the
doctors did not keep me here at the spas I should be back in Russia,
but as it is I have to postpone my return for three months. You know
me and my relations with Father. I want nothing from him. I have
been and always shall be independent; but to go against his will and
arouse his anger, now that he may perhaps remain with us such a
short time, would destroy half my happiness. I am now writing to him
about the same question, and beg you to choose a good moment to hand
him the letter and to let me know how he looks at the whole matter and
whether there is hope that he may consent to reduce the term by four
months."

After long hesitations, doubts, and prayers, Princess Mary gave
the letter to her father. The next day the old prince said to her
quietly:

"Write and tell your brother to wait till I am dead.... It won't
be long--I shall soon set him free."

The princess was about to reply, but her father would not let her
speak and, raising his voice more and more, cried:

"Marry, marry, my boy!... A good family!... Clever people, eh? Rich,
eh? Yes, a nice stepmother little Nicholas will have! Write and tell
him that he may marry tomorrow if he likes. She will be little
Nicholas' stepmother and I'll marry Bourienne!... Ha, ha, ha! He
mustn't be without a stepmother either! Only one thing, no more
women are wanted in my house--let him marry and live by himself.
Perhaps you will go and live with him too?" he added, turning to
Princess Mary. "Go in heavens name! Go out into the frost... the
frost... the frost!

After this outburst the prince did not speak any more about the
matter. But repressed vexation at his son's poor-spirited behavior
found expression in his treatment of his daughter. To his former
pretexts for irony a fresh one was now added--allusions to stepmothers
and amiabilities to Mademoiselle Bourienne.

"Why shouldn't I marry her?" he asked his daughter. "She'll make a
splendid princess!"

And latterly, to her surprise and bewilderment, Princess Mary
noticed that her father was really associating more and more with
the Frenchwoman. She wrote to Prince Andrew about the reception of his
letter, but comforted him with hopes of reconciling their father to
the idea.

Little Nicholas and his education, her brother Andrew, and
religion were Princess Mary's joys and consolations; but besides that,
since everyone must have personal hopes, Princess Mary in the
profoundest depths of her heart had a hidden dream and hope that
supplied the chief consolation of her life. This comforting dream
and hope were given her by God's folk--the half-witted and other
pilgrims who visited her without the prince's knowledge. The longer
she lived, the more experience and observation she had of life, the
greater was her wonder at the short-sightedness of men who seek
enjoyment and happiness here on earth: toiling, suffering, struggling,
and harming one another, to obtain that impossible, visionary,
sinful happiness. Prince Andrew had loved his wife, she died, but that
was not enough: he wanted to bind his happiness to another woman.
Her father objected to this because he wanted a more distinguished and
wealthier match for Andrew. And they all struggled and suffered and
tormented one another and injured their souls, their eternal souls,
for the attainment of benefits which endure but for an instant. Not
only do we know this ourselves, but Christ, the Son of God, came
down to earth and told us that this life is but for a moment and is
a probation; yet we cling to it and think to find happiness in it.
"How is it that no one realizes this?" thought Princess Mary. "No
one except these despised God's folk who, wallet on back, come to me
by the back door, afraid of being seen by the prince, not for fear
of ill-usage by him but for fear of causing him to sin. To leave
family, home, and all the cares of worldly welfare, in order without
clinging to anything to wander in hempen rags from place to place
under an assumed name, doing no one any harm but praying for all-
for those who drive one away as well as for those who protect one:
higher than that life and truth there is no life or truth!"

There was one pilgrim, a quiet pockmarked little woman of fifty
called Theodosia, who for over thirty years had gone about barefoot
and worn heavy chains. Princess Mary was particularly fond of her.
Once, when in a room with a lamp dimly lit before the icon Theodosia
was talking of her life, the thought that Theodosia alone had found
the true path of life suddenly came to Princess Mary with such force
that she resolved to become a pilgrim herself. When Theodosia had gone
to sleep Princess Mary thought about this for a long time, and at last
made up her mind that, strange as it might seem, she must go on a
pilgrimage. She disclosed this thought to no one but to her confessor,
Father Akinfi, the monk, and he approved of her intention. Under guise
of a present for the pilgrims, Princess Mary prepared a pilgrim's
complete costume for herself: a coarse smock, bast shoes, a rough
coat, and a black kerchief. Often, approaching the chest of drawers
containing this secret treasure, Princess Mary paused, uncertain
whether the time had not already come to put her project into
execution.

Often, listening to the pilgrims' tales, she was so stimulated by
their simple speech, mechanical to them but to her so full of deep
meaning, that several times she was on the point of abandoning
everything and running away from home. In imagination she already
pictured herself by Theodosia's side, dressed in coarse rags,
walking with a staff, a wallet on her back, along the dusty road,
directing her wanderings from one saint's shrine to another, free from
envy, earthly love, or desire, and reaching at last the place where
there is no more sorrow or sighing, but eternal joy and bliss.

"I shall come to a place and pray there, and before having time to
get used to it or getting to love it, I shall go farther. I will go on
till my legs fail, and I'll lie down and die somewhere, and shall at
last reach that eternal, quiet haven, where there is neither sorrow
nor sighing..." thought Princess Mary.

But afterwards, when she saw her father and especially little Koko
(Nicholas), her resolve weakened. She wept quietly, and felt that
she was a sinner who loved her father and little nephew more than God.





BOOK SEVEN: 1810 --11





CHAPTER I


The Bible legend tells us that the absence of labor--idleness--was a
condition of the first man's blessedness before the Fall. Fallen man
has retained a love of idleness, but the curse weighs on the race
not only because we have to seek our bread in the sweat of our
brows, but because our moral nature is such that we cannot be both
idle and at ease. An inner voice tells us we are in the wrong if we
are idle. If man could find a state in which he felt that though
idle he was fulfilling his duty, he would have found one of the
conditions of man's primitive blessedness. And such a state of
obligatory and irreproachable idleness is the lot of a whole class-
the military. The chief attraction of military service has consisted
and will consist in this compulsory and irreproachable idleness.

Nicholas Rostov experienced this blissful condition to the full
when, after 1807, he continued to serve in the Pavlograd regiment,
in which he already commanded the squadron he had taken over from
Denisov.

Rostov had become a bluff, good-natured fellow, whom his Moscow
acquaintances would have considered rather bad form, but who was liked
and respected by his comrades, subordinates, and superiors, and was
well contented with his life. Of late, in 1809, he found in letters
from home more frequent complaints from his mother that their
affairs were falling into greater and greater disorder, and that it
was time for him to come back to gladden and comfort his old parents.

Reading these letters, Nicholas felt a dread of their wanting to
take him away from surroundings in which, protected from all the
entanglements of life, he was living so calmly and quietly. He felt
that sooner or later he would have to re-enter that whirlpool of life,
with its embarrassments and affairs to be straightened out, its
accounts with stewards, quarrels, and intrigues, its ties, society,
and with Sonya's love and his promise to her. It was all dreadfully
difficult and complicated; and he replied to his mother in cold,
formal letters in French, beginning: "My dear Mamma," and ending:
"Your obedient son," which said nothing of when he would return. In
1810 he received letters from his parents, in which they told him of
Natasha's engagement to Bolkonski, and that the wedding would be in
a year's time because the old prince made difficulties. This letter
grieved and mortified Nicholas. In the first place he was sorry that
Natasha, for whom he cared more than for anyone else in the family,
should be lost to the home; and secondly, from his hussar point of
view, he regretted not to have been there to show that fellow
Bolkonski that connection with him was no such great honor after
all, and that if he loved Natasha he might dispense with permission
from his dotard father. For a moment he hesitated whether he should
not apply for leave in order to see Natasha before she was married,
but then came the maneuvers, and considerations about Sonya and
about the confusion of their affairs, and Nicholas again put it off.
But in the spring of that year, he received a letter from his
mother, written without his father's knowledge, and that letter
persuaded him to return. She wrote that if he did not come and take
matters in hand, their whole property would be sold by auction and
they would all have to go begging. The count was so weak, and
trusted Mitenka so much, and was so good-natured, that everybody
took advantage of him and things were going from bad to worse. "For
God's sake, I implore you, come at once if you do not wish to make
me and the whole family wretched," wrote the countess.

This letter touched Nicholas. He had that common sense of a
matter-of-fact man which showed him what he ought to do.

The right thing now was, if not to retire from the service, at any
rate to go home on leave. Why he had to go he did not know; but
after his after-dinner nap he gave orders to saddle Mars, an extremely
vicious gray stallion that had not been ridden for a long time, and
when he returned with the horse all in a lather, he informed Lavrushka
(Denisov's servant who had remained with him) and his comrades who
turned up in the evening that he was applying for leave and was
going home. Difficult and strange as it was for him to reflect that he
would go away without having heard from the staff--and this interested
him extremely--whether he was promoted to a captaincy or would receive
the Order of St. Anne for the last maneuvers; strange as it was to
think that he would go away without having sold his three roans to the
Polish Count Golukhovski, who was bargaining for the horses Rostov had
betted he would sell for two thousand rubles; incomprehensible as it
seemed that the ball the hussars were giving in honor of the Polish
Mademoiselle Przazdziecka (out of rivalry to the Uhlans who had
given one in honor of their Polish Mademoiselle Borzozowska) would
take place without him--he knew he must go away from this good, bright
world to somewhere where everything was stupid and confused. A week
later he obtained his leave. His hussar comrades--not only those of
his own regiment, but the whole brigade--gave Rostov a dinner to which
the subscription was fifteen rubles a head, and at which there were
two bands and two choirs of singers. Rostov danced the Trepak with
Major Basov; the tipsy officers tossed, embraced, and dropped
Rostov; the soldiers of the third squadron tossed him too, and shouted
"hurrah!" and then they put him in his sleigh and escorted him as
far as the first post station.

During the first half of the journey--from Kremenchug to Kiev--all
Rostov's thoughts, as is usual in such cases, were behind him, with
the squadron; but when he had gone more than halfway he began to
forget his three roans and Dozhoyveyko, his quartermaster, and to
wonder anxiously how things would be at Otradnoe and what he would
find there. Thoughts of home grew stronger the nearer he approached
it--far stronger, as though this feeling of his was subject to the law
by which the force of attraction is in inverse proportion to the
square of the distance. At the last post station before Otradnoe he
gave the driver a three-ruble tip, and on arriving he ran
breathlessly, like a boy, up the steps of his home.

After the rapture of meeting, and after that odd feeling of
unsatisfied expectation--the feeling that "everything is just the
same, so why did I hurry?"--Nicholas began to settle down in his old
home world. His father and mother were much the same, only a little
older. What was new in them was a certain uneasiness and occasional
discord, which there used not to be, and which, as Nicholas soon found
out, was due to the bad state of their affairs. Sonya was nearly
twenty; she had stopped growing prettier and promised nothing more
than she was already, but that was enough. She exhaled happiness and
love from the time Nicholas returned, and the faithful, unalterable
love of this girl had a gladdening effect on him. Petya and Natasha
surprised Nicholas most. Petya was a big handsome boy of thirteen,
merry, witty, and mischievous, with a voice that was already breaking.
As for Natasha, for a long while Nicholas wondered and laughed
whenever he looked at her.

"You're not the same at all," he said.

"How? Am I uglier?"

"On the contrary, but what dignity? A princess!" he whispered to
her.

"Yes, yes, yes!" cried Natasha, joyfully.

She told him about her romance with Prince Andrew and of his visit
to Otradnoe and showed him his last letter.

"Well, are you glad?" Natasha asked. "I am so tranquil and happy
now."

"Very glad," answered Nicholas. "He is an excellent fellow.... And
are you very much in love?"

"How shall I put it?" replied Natasha. "I was in love with Boris,
with my teacher, and with Denisov, but this is quite different. I feel
at peace and settled. I know that no better man than he exists, and
I am calm and contented now. Not at all as before."

Nicholas expressed his disapproval of the postponement of the
marriage for a year; but Natasha attacked her brother with
exasperation, proving to him that it could not be otherwise, and
that it would be a bad thing to enter a family against the father's
will, and that she herself wished it so.

"You don't at all understand," she said.

Nicholas was silent and agreed with her.

Her brother often wondered as he looked at her. She did not seem
at all like a girl in love and parted from her affianced husband.
She was even-tempered and calm and quite as cheerful as of old. This
amazed Nicholas and even made him regard Bolkonski's courtship
skeptically. He could not believe that her fate was sealed, especially
as he had not seen her with Prince Andrew. It always seemed to him
that there was something not quite right about this intended marriage.

"Why this delay? Why no betrothal?" he thought. Once, when he had
touched on this topic with his mother, he discovered, to his
surprise and somewhat to his satisfaction, that in the depth of her
soul she too had doubts about this marriage.

"You see he writes," said she, showing her son a letter of Prince
Andrew's, with that latent grudge a mother always has in regard to a
daughter's future married happiness, "he writes that he won't come
before December. What can be keeping him? Illness, probably! His
health is very delicate. Don't tell Natasha. And don't attach
importance to her being so bright: that's because she's living through
the last days of her girlhood, but I know what she is like every
time we receive a letter from him! However, God grant that
everything turns out well!" (She always ended with these words.) "He
is an excellent man!"





CHAPTER II


After reaching home Nicholas was at first serious and even dull.
He was worried by the impending necessity of interfering in the stupid
business matters for which his mother had called him home. To throw
off this burden as quickly as possible, on the third day after his
arrival he went, angry and scowling and without answering questions as
to where he was going, to Mitenka's lodge and demanded an account of
everything. But what an account of everything might be Nicholas knew
even less than the frightened and bewildered Mitenka. The conversation
and the examination of the accounts with Mitenka did not last long.
The village elder, a peasant delegate, and the village clerk, who were
waiting in the passage, heard with fear and delight first the young
count's voice roaring and snapping and rising louder and louder, and
then words of abuse, dreadful words, ejaculated one after the other.

"Robber!... Ungrateful wretch!... I'll hack the dog to pieces! I'm
not my father!... Robbing us!..." and so on.

Then with no less fear and delight they saw how the young count, red
in the face and with bloodshot eyes, dragged Mitenka out by the scruff
of the neck and applied his foot and knee to his behind with great
agility at convenient moments between the words, shouting, "Be off!
Never let me see your face here again, you villain!"

Mitenka flew headlong down the six steps and ran away into the
shrubbery. (This shrubbery was a well-known haven of refuge for
culprits at Otradnoe. Mitenka himself, returning tipsy from the
town, used to hide there, and many of the residents at Otradnoe,
hiding from Mitenka, knew of its protective qualities.)

Mitenka's wife and sisters-in-law thrust their heads and
frightened faces out of the door of a room where a bright samovar
was boiling and where the steward's high bedstead stood with its
patchwork quilt.

The young count paid no heed to them, but, breathing hard, passed by
with resolute strides and went into the house.

The countess, who heard at once from the maids what had happened
at the lodge, was calmed by the thought that now their affairs would
certainly improve, but on the other hand felt anxious as to the effect
this excitement might have on her son. She went several times to his
door on tiptoe and listened, as he lighted one pipe after another.

Next day the old count called his son aside and, with an embarrassed
smile, said to him:

"But you know, my dear boy, it's a pity you got excited! Mitenka has
told me all about it."

"I knew," thought Nicholas, "that I should never understand anything
in this crazy world."

"You were angry that he had not entered those 700 rubles. But they
were carried forward--and you did not look at the other page."

"Papa, he is a blackguard and a thief! I know he is! And what I have
done, I have done; but, if you like, I won't speak to him again."

"No, my dear boy" (the count, too, felt embarrassed. He knew he
had mismanaged his wife's property and was to blame toward his
children, but he did not know how to remedy it). "No, I beg you to
attend to the business. I am old. I..."

"No, Papa. Forgive me if I have caused you unpleasantness. I
understand it all less than you do."

"Devil take all these peasants, and money matters, and carryings
forward from page to page," he thought. "I used to understand what a
'corner' and the stakes at cards meant, but carrying forward to
another page I don't understand at all," said he to himself, and after
that he did not meddle in business affairs. But once the countess
called her son and informed him that she had a promissory note from
Anna Mikhaylovna for two thousand rubles, and asked him what he
thought of doing with it.

"This," answered Nicholas. "You say it rests with me. Well, I
don't like Anna Mikhaylovna and I don't like Boris, but they were
our friends and poor. Well then, this!" and he tore up the note, and
by so doing caused the old countess to weep tears of joy. After
that, young Rostov took no further part in any business affairs, but
devoted himself with passionate enthusiasm to what was to him a new
pursuit--the chase--for which his father kept a large establishment.





CHAPTER III


The weather was already growing wintry and morning frosts
congealed an earth saturated by autumn rains. The verdure had
thickened and its bright green stood out sharply against the
brownish strips of winter rye trodden down by the cattle, and
against the pale-yellow stubble of the spring buckwheat. The wooded
ravines and the copses, which at the end of August had still been
green islands amid black fields and stubble, had become golden and
bright-red islands amid the green winter rye. The hares had already
half changed their summer coats, the fox cubs were beginning to
scatter, and the young wolves were bigger than dogs. It was the best
time of the year for the chase. The hounds of that ardent young
sportsman Rostov had not merely reached hard winter condition, but
were so jaded that at a meeting of the huntsmen it was decided to give
them a three days' rest and then, on the sixteenth of September, to go
on a distant expedition, starting from the oak grove where there was
an undisturbed litter of wolf cubs.

All that day the hounds remained at home. It was frosty and the
air was sharp, but toward evening the sky became overcast and it began
to thaw. On the fifteenth, when young Rostov, in his dressing gown,
looked out of the window, he saw it was an unsurpassable morning for
hunting: it was as if the sky were melting and sinking to the earth
without any wind. The only motion in the air was that of the dripping,
microscopic particles of drizzling mist. The bare twigs in the
garden were hung with transparent drops which fell on the freshly
fallen leaves. The earth in the kitchen garden looked wet and black
and glistened like poppy seed and at a short distance merged into
the dull, moist veil of mist. Nicholas went out into the wet and muddy
porch. There was a smell of decaying leaves and of dog. Milka, a
black-spotted, broad-haunched bitch with prominent black eyes, got
up on seeing her master, stretched her hind legs, lay down like a
hare, and then suddenly jumped up and licked him right on his nose and
mustache. Another borzoi, a dog, catching sight of his master from the
garden path, arched his back and, rushing headlong toward the porch
with lifted tail, began rubbing himself against his legs.

"O-hoy!" came at that moment, that inimitable huntsman's call
which unites the deepest bass with the shrillest tenor, and round
the corner came Daniel the head huntsman and head kennelman, a gray,
wrinkled old man with hair cut straight over his forehead, Ukrainian
fashion, a long bent whip in his hand, and that look of independence
and scorn of everything that is only seen in huntsmen. He doffed his
Circassian cap to his master and looked at him scornfully. This
scorn was not offensive to his master. Nicholas knew that this Daniel,
disdainful of everybody and who considered himself above them, was all
the same his serf and huntsman.

"Daniel!" Nicholas said timidly, conscious at the sight of the
weather, the hounds, and the huntsman that he was being carried away
by that irresistible passion for sport which makes a man forget all
his previous resolutions, as a lover forgets in the presence of his
mistress.

"What orders, your excellency?" said the huntsman in his deep
bass, deep as a proto-deacon's and hoarse with hallooing--and two
flashing black eyes gazed from under his brows at his master, who
was silent. "Can you resist it?" those eyes seemed to be asking.

"It's a good day, eh? For a hunt and a gallop, eh?" asked
Nicholas, scratching Milka behind the ears.

Daniel did not answer, but winked instead.

"I sent Uvarka at dawn to listen," his bass boomed out after a
minute's pause. "He says she's moved them into the Otradnoe enclosure.
They were howling there." (This meant that the she-wolf, about whom
they both knew, had moved with her cubs to the Otradnoe copse, a small
place a mile and a half from the house.)

"We ought to go, don't you think so?" said Nicholas. "Come to me
with Uvarka."

"As you please."

"Then put off feeding them."

"Yes, sir."

Five minutes later Daniel and Uvarka were standing in Nicholas'
big study. Though Daniel was not a big man, to see him in a room was
like seeing a horse or a bear on the floor among the furniture and
surroundings of human life. Daniel himself felt this, and as usual
stood just inside the door, trying to speak softly and not move, for
fear of breaking something in the master's apartment, and he
hastened to say all that was necessary so as to get from under that
ceiling, out into the open under the sky once more.

Having finished his inquiries and extorted from Daniel an opinion
that the hounds were fit (Daniel himself wished to go hunting),
Nicholas ordered the horses to be saddled. But just as Daniel was
about to go Natasha came in with rapid steps, not having done up her
hair or finished dressing and with her old nurse's big shawl wrapped
round her. Petya ran in at the same time.

"You are going?" asked Natasha. "I knew you would! Sonya said you
wouldn't go, but I knew that today is the sort of day when you
couldn't help going."

"Yes, we are going," replied Nicholas reluctantly, for today, as
he intended to hunt seriously, he did not want to take Natasha and
Petya. "We are going, but only wolf hunting: it would be dull for
you."

"You know it is my greatest pleasure," said Natasha. "It's not fair;
you are going by yourself, are having the horses saddled and said
nothing to us about it."

"'No barrier bars a Russian's path'--we'll go!" shouted Petya.

"But you can't. Mamma said you mustn't," said Nicholas to Natasha.

"Yes, I'll go. I shall certainly go," said Natasha decisively.
"Daniel, tell them to saddle for us, and Michael must come with my
dogs," she added to the huntsman.

It seemed to Daniel irksome and improper to be in a room at all, but
to have anything to do with a young lady seemed to him impossible.
He cast down his eyes and hurried out as if it were none of his
business, careful as he went not to inflict any accidental injury on
the young lady.





CHAPTER IV


The old count, who had always kept up an enormous hunting
establishment but had now handed it all completely over to his son's
care, being in very good spirits on this fifteenth of September,
prepared to go out with the others.

In an hour's time the whole hunting party was at the porch.
Nicholas, with a stern and serious air which showed that now was no
time for attending to trifles, went past Natasha and Petya who were
trying to tell him something. He had a look at all the details of
the hunt, sent a pack of hounds and huntsmen on ahead to find the
quarry, mounted his chestnut Donets, and whistling to his own leash of
borzois, set off across the threshing ground to a field leading to the
Otradnoe wood. The old count's horse, a sorrel gelding called
Viflyanka, was led by the groom in attendance on him, while the
count himself was to drive in a small trap straight to a spot reserved
for him.

They were taking fifty-four hounds, with six hunt attendants and
whippers-in. Besides the family, there were eight borzoi kennelmen and
more than forty borzois, so that, with the borzois on the leash
belonging to members of the family, there were about a hundred and
thirty dogs and twenty horsemen.

Each dog knew its master and its call. Each man in the hunt knew his
business, his place, what he had to do. As soon as they had passed the
fence they all spread out evenly and quietly, without noise or talk,
along the road and field leading to the Otradnoe covert.

The horses stepped over the field as over a thick carpet, now and
then splashing into puddles as they crossed a road. The misty sky
still seemed to descend evenly and imperceptibly toward the earth, the
air was still, warm, and silent. Occasionally the whistle of a
huntsman, the snort of a horse, the crack of a whip, or the whine of a
straggling hound could be heard.

When they had gone a little less than a mile, five more riders
with dogs appeared out of the mist, approaching the Rostovs. In
front rode a fresh-looking, handsome old man with a large gray
mustache.

"Good morning, Uncle!" said Nicholas, when the old man drew near.

"That's it. Come on!... I was sure of it," began "Uncle." (He was
a distant relative of the Rostovs', a man of small means, and their
neighbor.) "I knew you wouldn't be able to resist it and it's a good
thing you're going. That's it! Come on! (This was "Uncle's" favorite
expression.) "Take the covert at once, for my Girchik says the Ilagins
are at Korniki with their hounds. That's it. Come on!... They'll
take the cubs from under your very nose."

"That's where I'm going. Shall we join up our packs?" asked
Nicholas.

The hounds were joined into one pack, and "Uncle" and Nicholas
rode on side by side. Natasha, muffled up in shawls which did not hide
her eager face and shining eyes, galloped up to them. She was followed
by Petya who always kept close to her, by Michael, a huntsman, and
by a groom appointed to look after her. Petya, who was laughing,
whipped and pulled at his horse. Natasha sat easily and confidently on
her black Arabchik and reined him in without effort with a firm hand.

"Uncle" looked round disapprovingly at Petya and Natasha. He did not
like to combine frivolity with the serious business of hunting.

"Good morning, Uncle! We are going too!" shouted Petya.

"Good morning, good morning! But don't go overriding the hounds,"
said "Uncle" sternly.

"Nicholas, what a fine dog Trunila is! He knew me," said Natasha,
referring to her favorite hound.

"In the first place, Trunila is not a 'dog,' but a harrier," thought
Nicholas, and looked sternly at his sister, trying to make her feel
the distance that ought to separate them at that moment. Natasha
understood it.

"You mustn't think we'll be in anyone's way, Uncle," she said.
"We'll go to our places and won't budge."

"A good thing too, little countess," said "Uncle," "only mind you
don't fall off your horse," he added, "because--that's it, come on!-
you've nothing to hold on to."

The oasis of the Otradnoe covert came in sight a few hundred yards
off, the huntsmen were already nearing it. Rostov, having finally
settled with "Uncle" where they should set on the hounds, and having
shown Natasha where she was to stand--a spot where nothing could
possibly run out--went round above the ravine.

"Well, nephew, you're going for a big wolf," said "Uncle." "Mind and
don't let her slip!"

"That's as may happen," answered Rostov. "Karay, here!" he
shouted, answering "Uncle's" remark by this call to his borzoi.
Karay was a shaggy old dog with a hanging jowl, famous for having
tackled a big wolf unaided. They all took up their places.

The old count, knowing his son's ardor in the hunt, hurried so as
not to be late, and the huntsmen had not yet reached their places when
Count Ilya Rostov, cheerful, flushed, and with quivering cheeks, drove
up with his black horses over the winter rye to the place reserved for
him, where a wolf might come out. Having straightened his coat and
fastened on his hunting knives and horn, he mounted his good, sleek,
well-fed, and comfortable horse, Viflyanka, which was turning gray,
like himself. His horses and trap were sent home. Count Ilya Rostov,
though not at heart a keen sportsman, knew the rules of the hunt well,
and rode to the bushy edge of the road where he was to stand, arranged
his reins, settled himself in the saddle, and, feeling that he was
ready, looked about with a smile.

Beside him was Simon Chekmar, his personal attendant, an old
horseman now somewhat stiff in the saddle. Chekmar held in leash three
formidable wolfhounds, who had, however, grown fat like their master
and his horse. Two wise old dogs lay down unleashed. Some hundred
paces farther along the edge of the wood stood Mitka, the count's
other groom, a daring horseman and keen rider to hounds. Before the
hunt, by old custom, the count had drunk a silver cupful of mulled
brandy, taken a snack, and washed it down with half a bottle of his
favorite Bordeaux.

He was somewhat flushed with the wine and the drive. His eyes were
rather moist and glittered more than usual, and as he sat in his
saddle, wrapped up in his fur coat, he looked like a child taken out
for an outing.

The thin, hollow-cheeked Chekmar, having got everything ready,
kept glancing at his master with whom he had lived on the best of
terms for thirty years, and understanding the mood he was in
expected a pleasant chat. A third person rode up circumspectly through
the wood (it was plain that he had had a lesson) and stopped behind
the count. This person was a gray-bearded old man in a woman's
cloak, with a tall peaked cap on his head. He was the buffoon, who
went by a woman's name, Nastasya Ivanovna.

"Well, Nastasya Ivanovna!" whispered the count, winking at him.
"If you scare away the beast, Daniel'll give it you!"

"I know a thing or two myself!" said Nastasya Ivanovna.

"Hush!" whispered the count and turned to Simon. "Have you seen
the young countess?" he asked. "Where is she?"

"With young Count Peter, by the Zharov rank grass," answered
Simon, smiling. "Though she's a lady, she's very fond of hunting."

"And you're surprised at the way she rides, Simon, eh?" said the
count. "She's as good as many a man!"

"Of course! It's marvelous. So bold, so easy!"

"And Nicholas? Where is he? By the Lyadov upland, isn't he?"

"Yes, sir. He knows where to stand. He understands the matter so
well that Daniel and I are often quite astounded," said Simon, well
knowing what would please his master.

"Rides well, eh? And how well he looks on his horse, eh?"

"A perfect picture! How he chased a fox out of the rank grass by the
Zavarzinsk thicket the other day! Leaped a fearful place; what a sight
when they rushed from the covert... the horse worth a thousand
rubles and the rider beyond all price! Yes, one would have to search
far to find another as smart."

"To search far..." repeated the count, evidently sorry Simon had not
said more. "To search far," he said, turning back the skirt of his
coat to get at his snuffbox.

"The other day when he came out from Mass in full uniform, Michael
Sidorych..." Simon did not finish, for on the still air he had
distinctly caught the music of the hunt with only two or three
hounds giving tongue. He bent down his head and listened, shaking a
warning finger at his master. "They are on the scent of the cubs..."
he whispered, "straight to the Lyadov uplands."

The count, forgetting to smooth out the smile on his face, looked
into the distance straight before him, down the narrow open space,
holding the snuffbox in his hand but not taking any. After the cry
of the hounds came the deep tones of the wolf call from Daniel's
hunting horn; the pack joined the first three hounds and they could be
heard in full cry, with that peculiar lift in the note that
indicates that they are after a wolf. The whippers-in no longer set on
the hounds, but changed to the cry of ulyulyu, and above the others
rose Daniel's voice, now a deep bass, now piercingly shrill. His voice
seemed to fill the whole wood and carried far beyond out into the open
field.

After listening a few moments in silence, the count and his
attendant convinced themselves that the hounds had separated into
two packs: the sound of the larger pack, eagerly giving tongue,
began to die away in the distance, the other pack rushed by the wood
past the count, and it was with this that Daniel's voice was heard
calling ulyulyu. The sounds of both packs mingled and broke apart
again, but both were becoming more distant.

Simon sighed and stooped to straighten the leash a young borzoi
had entangled; the count too sighed and, noticing the snuffbox in
his hand, opened it and took a pinch. "Back!" cried Simon to a
borzoi that was pushing forward out of the wood. The count started and
dropped the snuffbox. Nastasya Ivanovna dismounted to pick it up.
The count and Simon were looking at him.

Then, unexpectedly, as often happens, the sound of the hunt suddenly
approached, as if the hounds in full cry and Daniel ulyulyuing were
just in front of them.

The count turned and saw on his right Mitka staring at him with eyes
starting out of his head, raising his cap and pointing before him to
the other side.

"Look out!" he shouted, in a voice plainly showing that he had
long fretted to utter that word, and letting the borzois slip he
galloped toward the count.

The count and Simon galloped out of the wood and saw on their left a
wolf which, softly swaying from side to side, was coming at a quiet
lope farther to the left to the very place where they were standing.
The angry borzois whined and getting free of the leash rushed past the
horses' feet at the wolf.

The wolf paused, turned its heavy forehead toward the dogs
awkwardly, like a man suffering from the quinsy, and, still slightly
swaying from side to side, gave a couple of leaps and with a swish
of its tail disappeared into the skirt of the wood. At the same
instant, with a cry like a wail, first one hound, then another, and
then another, sprang helter-skelter from the wood opposite and the
whole pack rushed across the field toward the very spot where the wolf
had disappeared. The hazel bushes parted behind the hounds and
Daniel's chestnut horse appeared, dark with sweat. On its long back
sat Daniel, hunched forward, capless, his disheveled gray hair hanging
over his flushed, perspiring face.

"Ulyulyulyu! ulyulyu!..." he cried. When he caught sight of the
count his eyes flashed lightning.

"Blast you!" he shouted, holding up his whip threateningly at the
count.

"You've let the wolf go!... What sportsmen!" and as if scorning to
say more to the frightened and shamefaced count, he lashed the heaving
flanks of his sweating chestnut gelding with all the anger the count
had aroused and flew off after the hounds. The count, like a
punished schoolboy, looked round, trying by a smile to win Simon's
sympathy for his plight. But Simon was no longer there. He was
galloping round by the bushes while the field was coming up on both
sides, all trying to head the wolf, but it vanished into the wood
before they could do so.





CHAPTER V


Nicholas Rostov meanwhile remained at his post, waiting for the
wolf. By the way the hunt approached and receded, by the cries of
the dogs whose notes were familiar to him, by the way the voices of
the huntsmen approached, receded, and rose, he realized what was
happening at the copse. He knew that young and old wolves were
there, that the hounds had separated into two packs, that somewhere
a wolf was being chased, and that something had gone wrong. He
expected the wolf to come his way any moment. He made thousands of
different conjectures as to where and from what side the beast would
come and how he would set upon it. Hope alternated with despair.
Several times he addressed a prayer to God that the wolf should come
his way. He prayed with that passionate and shame-faced feeling with
which men pray at moments of great excitement arising from trivial
causes. "What would it be to Thee to do this for me?" he said to
God. "I know Thou art great, and that it is a sin to ask this of Thee,
but for God's sake do let the old wolf come my way and let Karay
spring at it--in sight of 'Uncle' who is watching from over there--and
seize it by the throat in a death grip!" A thousand times during
that half-hour Rostov cast eager and restless glances over the edge of
the wood, with the two scraggy oaks rising above the aspen undergrowth
and the gully with its water-worn side and "Uncle's" cap just
visible above the bush on his right.

"No, I shan't have such luck," thought Rostov, "yet what wouldn't it
be worth! It is not to be! Everywhere, at cards and in war, I am
always unlucky." Memories of Austerlitz and of Dolokhov flashed
rapidly and clearly through his mind. "Only once in my life to get
an old wolf, I want only that!" thought he, straining eyes and ears
and looking to the left and then to the right and listening to the
slightest variation of note in the cries of the dogs.

Again he looked to the right and saw something running toward him
across the deserted field. "No, it can't be!" thought Rostov, taking a
deep breath, as a man does at the coming of something long hoped
for. The height of happiness was reached--and so simply, without
warning, or noise, or display, that Rostov could not believe his
eyes and remained in doubt for over a second. The wolf ran forward and
jumped heavily over a gully that lay in her path. She was an old
animal with a gray back and big reddish belly. She ran without
hurry, evidently feeling sure that no one saw her. Rostov, holding his
breath, looked round at the borzois. They stood or lay not seeing
the wolf or understanding the situation. Old Karay had turned his head
and was angrily searching for fleas, baring his yellow teeth and
snapping at his hind legs.

"Ulyulyulyu!" whispered Rostov, pouting his lips. The borzois jumped
up, jerking the rings of the leashes and pricking their ears. Karay
finished scratching his hindquarters and, cocking his ears, got up
with quivering tail from which tufts of matted hair hung down.

"Shall I loose them or not?" Nicholas asked himself as the wolf
approached him coming from the copse. Suddenly the wolf's whole
physiognomy changed: she shuddered, seeing what she had probably never
seen before--human eyes fixed upon her--and turning her head a
little toward Rostov, she paused.

"Back or forward? Eh, no matter, forward..." the wolf seemed to
say to herself, and she moved forward without again looking round
and with a quiet, long, easy yet resolute lope.

"Ulyulyu!" cried Nicholas, in a voice not his own, and of its own
accord his good horse darted headlong downhill, leaping over gullies
to head off the wolf, and the borzois passed it, running faster still.
Nicholas did not hear his own cry nor feel that he was galloping,
nor see the borzois, nor the ground over which he went: he saw only
the wolf, who, increasing her speed, bounded on in the same
direction along the hollow. The first to come into view was Milka,
with her black markings and powerful quarters, gaining upon the
wolf. Nearer and nearer... now she was ahead of it; but the wolf
turned its head to face her, and instead of putting on speed as she
usually did Milka suddenly raised her tail and stiffened her forelegs.

"Ulyulyulyulyu!" shouted Nicholas.

The reddish Lyubim rushed forward from behind Milka, sprang
impetuously at the wolf, and seized it by its hindquarters, but
immediately jumped aside in terror. The wolf crouched, gnashed her
teeth, and again rose and bounded forward, followed at the distance of
a couple of feet by all the borzois, who did not get any closer to
her.

"She'll get away! No, it's impossible!" thought Nicholas, still
shouting with a hoarse voice.

"Karay, ulyulyu!..." he shouted, looking round for the old borzoi
who was now his only hope. Karay, with all the strength age had left
him, stretched himself to the utmost and, watching the wolf,
galloped heavily aside to intercept it. But the quickness of the
wolf's lope and the borzoi's slower pace made it plain that Karay
had miscalculated. Nicholas could already see not far in front of
him the wood where the wolf would certainly escape should she reach
it. But, coming toward him, he saw hounds and a huntsman galloping
almost straight at the wolf. There was still hope. A long, yellowish
young borzoi, one Nicholas did not know, from another leash, rushed
impetuously at the wolf from in front and almost knocked her over. But
the wolf jumped up more quickly than anyone could have expected and,
gnashing her teeth, flew at the yellowish borzoi, which, with a
piercing yelp, fell with its head on the ground, bleeding from a
gash in its side.

"Karay? Old fellow!..." wailed Nicholas.

Thanks to the delay caused by this crossing of the wolf's path,
the old dog with its felted hair hanging from its thigh was within
five paces of it. As if aware of her danger, the wolf turned her
eyes on Karay, tucked her tail yet further between her legs, and
increased her speed. But here Nicholas only saw that something
happened to Karay--the borzoi was suddenly on the wolf, and they
rolled together down into a gully just in front of them.

That instant, when Nicholas saw the wolf struggling in the gully
with the dogs, while from under them could be seen her gray hair and
outstretched hind leg and her frightened choking head, with her ears
laid back (Karay was pinning her by the throat), was the happiest
moment of his life. With his hand on his saddlebow, he was ready to
dismount and stab the wolf, when she suddenly thrust her head up
from among that mass of dogs, and then her forepaws were on the edge
of the gully. She clicked her teeth (Karay no longer had her by the
throat), leaped with a movement of her hind legs out of the gully, and
having disengaged herself from the dogs, with tail tucked in again,
went forward. Karay, his hair bristling, and probably bruised or
wounded, climbed with difficulty out of the gully.

"Oh my God! Why?" Nicholas cried in despair.

"Uncle's" huntsman was galloping from the other side across the
wolf's path and his borzois once more stopped the animal's advance.
She was again hemmed in.

Nicholas and his attendant, with "Uncle" and his huntsman, were
all riding round the wolf, crying "ulyulyu!" shouting and preparing to
dismount each moment that the wolf crouched back, and starting forward
again every time she shook herself and moved toward the wood where she
would be safe.

Already, at the beginning of this chase, Daniel, hearing the
ulyulyuing, had rushed out from the wood. He saw Karay seize the wolf,
and checked his horse, supposing the affair to be over. But when he
saw that the horsemen did not dismount and that the wolf shook herself
and ran for safety, Daniel set his chestnut galloping, not at the wolf
but straight toward the wood, just as Karay had run to cut the
animal off. As a result of this, he galloped up to the wolf just
when she had been stopped a second time by "Uncle's" borzois.

Daniel galloped up silently, holding a naked dagger in his left hand
and thrashing the laboring sides of his chestnut horse with his whip
as if it were a flail.

Nicholas neither saw nor heard Daniel until the chestnut,
breathing heavily, panted past him, and he heard the fall of a body
and saw Daniel lying on the wolf's back among the dogs, trying to
seize her by the ears. It was evident to the dogs, the hunters, and to
the wolf herself that all was now over. The terrified wolf pressed
back her ears and tried to rise, but the borzois stuck to her.
Daniel rose a little, took a step, and with his whole weight, as if
lying down to rest, fell on the wolf, seizing her by the ears.
Nicholas was about to stab her, but Daniel whispered, "Don't! We'll
gag her!" and, changing his position, set his foot on the wolf's neck.
A stick was thrust between her jaws and she was fastened with a leash,
as if bridled, her legs were bound together, and Daniel rolled her
over once or twice from side to side.

With happy, exhausted faces, they laid the old wolf, alive, on a
shying and snorting horse and, accompanied by the dogs yelping at her,
took her to the place where they were all to meet. The hounds had
killed two of the cubs and the borzois three. The huntsmen assembled
with their booty and their stories, and all came to look at the
wolf, which, with her broad-browed head hanging down and the bitten
stick between her jaws, gazed with great glassy eyes at this crowd
of dogs and men surrounding her. When she was touched, she jerked
her bound legs and looked wildly yet simply at everybody. Old Count
Rostov also rode up and touched the wolf.

"Oh, what a formidable one!" said he. "A formidable one, eh?" he
asked Daniel, who was standing near.

"Yes, your excellency," answered Daniel, quickly doffing his cap.

The count remembered the wolf he had let slip and his encounter with
Daniel.

"Ah, but you are a crusty fellow, friend!" said the count.

For sole reply Daniel gave him a shy, childlike, meek, and amiable
smile.





CHAPTER VI


The old count went home, and Natasha and Petya promised to return
very soon, but as it was still early the hunt went farther. At
midday they put the hounds into a ravine thickly overgrown with
young trees. Nicholas standing in a fallow field could see all his
whips.

Facing him lay a field of winter rye, there his own huntsman stood
alone in a hollow behind a hazel bush. The hounds had scarcely been
loosed before Nicholas heard one he knew, Voltorn, giving tongue at
intervals; other hounds joined in, now pausing and now again giving
tongue. A moment later he heard a cry from the wooded ravine that a
fox had been found, and the whole pack, joining together, rushed along
the ravine toward the ryefield and away from Nicholas.

He saw the whips in their red caps galloping along the edge of the
ravine, he even saw the hounds, and was expecting a fox to show itself
at any moment on the ryefield opposite.

The huntsman standing in the hollow moved and loosed his borzois,
and Nicholas saw a queer, short-legged red fox with a fine brush going
hard across the field. The borzois bore down on it.... Now they drew
close to the fox which began to dodge between the field in sharper and
sharper curves, trailing its brush, when suddenly a strange white
borzoi dashed in followed by a black one, and everything was in
confusion; the borzois formed a star-shaped figure, scarcely swaying
their bodies and with tails turned away from the center of the
group. Two huntsmen galloped up to the dogs; one in a red cap, the
other, a stranger, in a green coat.

"What's this?" thought Nicholas. "Where's that huntsman from? He
is not 'Uncle's' man."

The huntsmen got the fox, but stayed there a long time without
strapping it to the saddle. Their horses, bridled and with high
saddles, stood near them and there too the dogs were lying. The
huntsmen waved their arms and did something to the fox. Then from that
spot came the sound of a horn, with the signal agreed on in case of
a fight.

"That's Ilagin's huntsman having a row with our Ivan," said
Nicholas' groom.

Nicholas sent the man to call Natasha and Petya to him, and rode
at a footpace to the place where the whips were getting the hounds
together. Several of the field galloped to the spot where the fight
was going on.

Nicholas dismounted, and with Natasha and Petya, who had ridden
up, stopped near the hounds, waiting to see how the matter would
end. Out of the bushes came the huntsman who had been fighting and
rode toward his young master, with the fox tied to his crupper.
While still at a distance he took off his cap and tried to speak
respectfully, but he was pale and breathless and his face was angry.
One of his eyes was black, but he probably was not even aware of it.

"What has happened?" asked Nicholas.

"A likely thing, killing a fox our dogs had hunted! And it was my
gray bitch that caught it! Go to law, indeed!... He snatches at the
fox! I gave him one with the fox. Here it is on my saddle! Do you want
a taste of this?..." said the huntsman, pointing to his dagger and
probably imagining himself still speaking to his foe.

Nicholas, not stopping to talk to the man, asked his sister and
Petya to wait for him and rode to the spot where the enemy's,
Ilagin's, hunting party was.

The victorious huntsman rode off to join the field, and there,
surrounded by inquiring sympathizers, recounted his exploits.

The facts were that Ilagin, with whom the Rostovs had a quarrel
and were at law, hunted over places that belonged by custom to the
Rostovs, and had now, as if purposely, sent his men to the very
woods the Rostovs were hunting and let his man snatch a fox their dogs
had chased.

Nicholas, though he had never seen Ilagin, with his usual absence of
moderation in judgment, hated him cordially from reports of his
arbitrariness and violence, and regarded him as his bitterest foe.
He rode in angry agitation toward him, firmly grasping his whip and
fully prepared to take the most resolute and desperate steps to punish
his enemy.

Hardly had he passed an angle of the wood before a stout gentleman
in a beaver cap came riding toward him on a handsome raven-black
horse, accompanied by two hunt servants.

Instead of an enemy, Nicholas found in Ilagin a stately and
courteous gentleman who was particularly anxious to make the young
count's acquaintance. Having ridden up to Nicholas, Ilagin raised
his beaver cap and said he much regretted what had occurred and
would have the man punished who had allowed himself to seize a fox
hunted by someone else's borzois. He hoped to become better acquainted
with the count and invited him to draw his covert.

Natasha, afraid that her brother would do something dreadful, had
followed him in some excitement. Seeing the enemies exchanging
friendly greetings, she rode up to them. Ilagin lifted his beaver
cap still higher to Natasha and said, with a pleasant smile, that
the young countess resembled Diana in her passion for the chase as
well as in her beauty, of which he had heard much.

To expiate his huntsman's offense, Ilagin pressed the Rostovs to
come to an upland of his about a mile away which he usually kept for
himself and which, he said, swarmed with hares. Nicholas agreed, and
the hunt, now doubled, moved on.

The way to Iligin's upland was across the fields. The hunt
servants fell into line. The masters rode together. "Uncle," Rostov,
and Ilagin kept stealthily glancing at one another's dogs, trying
not to be observed by their companions and searching uneasily for
rivals to their own borzois.

Rostov was particularly struck by the beauty of a small,
pure-bred, red-spotted bitch on Ilagin's leash, slender but with
muscles like steel, a delicate muzzle, and prominent black eyes. He
had heard of the swiftness of Ilagin's borzois, and in that
beautiful bitch saw a rival to his own Milka.

In the middle of a sober conversation begun by Ilagin about the
year's harvest, Nicholas pointed to the red-spotted bitch.

"A fine little bitch, that!" said he in a careless tone. "Is she
swift?"

"That one? Yes, she's a good dog, gets what she's after," answered
Ilagin indifferently, of the red-spotted bitch Erza, for which, a year
before, he had given a neighbor three families of house serfs. "So
in your parts, too, the harvest is nothing to boast of, Count?" he
went on, continuing the conversation they had begun. And considering
it polite to return the young count's compliment, Ilagin looked at his
borzois and picked out Milka who attracted his attention by her
breadth. "That black-spotted one of yours is fine--well shaped!"
said he.

"Yes, she's fast enough," replied Nicholas, and thought: "If only
a full-grown hare would cross the field now I'd show you what sort
of borzoi she is," and turning to his groom, he said he would give a
ruble to anyone who found a hare.

"I don't understand," continued Ilagin, "how some sportsmen can be
so jealous about game and dogs. For myself, I can tell you, Count, I
enjoy riding in company such as this... what could be better?" (he
again raised his cap to Natasha) "but as for counting skins and what
one takes, I don't care about that."

"Of course not!"

"Or being upset because someone else's borzoi and not mine catches
something. All I care about is to enjoy seeing the chase, is it not
so, Count? For I consider that..."

"A-tu!" came the long-drawn cry of one of the borzoi whippers-in,
who had halted. He stood on a knoll in the stubble, holding his whip
aloft, and again repeated his long-drawn cry, "A-tu!" (This call and
the uplifted whip meant that he saw a sitting hare.)

"Ah, he has found one, I think," said Ilagin carelessly. "Yes, we
must ride up.... Shall we both course it?" answered Nicholas, seeing
in Erza and "Uncle's" red Rugay two rivals he had never yet had a
chance of pitting against his own borzois. "And suppose they outdo
my Milka at once!" he thought as he rode with "Uncle" and Ilagin
toward the hare.

"A full-grown one?" asked Ilagin as he approached the whip who had
sighted the hare--and not without agitation he looked round and
whistled to Erza.

"And you, Michael Nikanorovich?" he said, addressing "Uncle."

The latter was riding with a sullen expression on his face.

"How can I join in? Why, you've given a village for each of your
borzois! That's it, come on! Yours are worth thousands. Try yours
against one another, you two, and I'll look on!"

"Rugay, hey, hey!" he shouted. "Rugayushka!" he added, involuntarily
by this diminutive expressing his affection and the hopes he placed on
this red borzoi. Natasha saw and felt the agitation the two elderly
men and her brother were trying to conceal, and was herself excited by
it.

The huntsman stood halfway up the knoll holding up his whip and
the gentlefolk rode up to him at a footpace; the hounds that were
far off on the horizon turned away from the hare, and the whips, but
not the gentlefolk, also moved away. All were moving slowly and
sedately.

"How is it pointing?" asked Nicholas, riding a hundred paces
toward the whip who had sighted the hare.

But before the whip could reply, the hare, scenting the frost coming
next morning, was unable to rest and leaped up. The pack on leash
rushed downhill in full cry after the hare, and from all sides the
borzois that were not on leash darted after the hounds and the hare.
All the hunt, who had been moving slowly, shouted, "Stop!" calling
in the hounds, while the borzoi whips, with a cry of "A-tu!" galloped
across the field setting the borzois on the hare. The tranquil Ilagin,
Nicholas, Natasha, and "Uncle" flew, reckless of where and how they
went, seeing only the borzois and the hare and fearing only to lose
sight even for an instant of the chase. The hare they had started
was a strong and swift one. When he jumped up he did not run at
once, but pricked his ears listening to the shouting and trampling
that resounded from all sides at once. He took a dozen bounds, not
very quickly, letting the borzois gain on him, and, finally having
chosen his direction and realized his danger, laid back his ears and
rushed off headlong. He had been lying in the stubble, but in front of
him was the autumn sowing where the ground was soft. The two borzois
of the huntsman who had sighted him, having been the nearest, were the
first to see and pursue him, but they had not gone far before Ilagin's
red-spotted Erza passed them, got within a length, flew at the hare
with terrible swiftness aiming at his scut, and, thinking she had
seized him, rolled over like a ball. The hare arched his back and
bounded off yet more swiftly. From behind Erza rushed the
broad-haunched, black-spotted Milka and began rapidly gaining on the
hare.

"Milashka, dear!" rose Nicholas' triumphant cry. It looked as if
Milka would immediately pounce on the hare, but she overtook him and
flew past. The hare had squatted. Again the beautiful Erza reached
him, but when close to the hare's scut paused as if measuring the
distance, so as not to make a mistake this time but seize his hind
leg.

"Erza, darling!" Ilagin wailed in a voice unlike his own. Erza did
not hearken to his appeal. At the very moment when she would have
seized her prey, the hare moved and darted along the balk between
the winter rye and the stubble. Again Erza and Milka were abreast,
running like a pair of carriage horses, and began to overtake the
hare, but it was easier for the hare to run on the balk and the
borzois did not overtake him so quickly.

"Rugay, Rugayushka! That's it, come on!" came a third voice just
then, and "Uncle's" red borzoi, straining and curving its back, caught
up with the two foremost borzois, pushed ahead of them regardless of
the terrible strain, put on speed close to the hare, knocked it off
the balk onto the ryefield, again put on speed still more viciously,
sinking to his knees in the muddy field, and all one could see was
how, muddying his back, he rolled over with the hare. A ring of
borzois surrounded him. A moment later everyone had drawn up round the
crowd of dogs. Only the delighted "Uncle" dismounted, and cut off a
pad, shaking the hare for the blood to drip off, and anxiously
glancing round with restless eyes while his arms and legs twitched. He
spoke without himself knowing whom to or what about. "That's it,
come on! That's a dog!... There, it has beaten them all, the
thousand-ruble as well as the one-ruble borzois. That's it, come
on!" said he, panting and looking wrathfully around as if he were
abusing someone, as if they were all his enemies and had insulted him,
and only now had he at last succeeded in justifying himself. "There
are your thousand-ruble ones.... That's it, come on!..."

"Rugay, here's a pad for you!" he said, throwing down the hare's
muddy pad. "You've deserved it, that's it, come on!"

"She'd tired herself out, she'd run it down three times by herself,"
said Nicholas, also not listening to anyone and regardless of
whether he were heard or not.

"But what is there in running across it like that?" said Ilagin's
groom.

"Once she had missed it and turned it away, any mongrel could take
it," Ilagin was saying at the same time, breathless from his gallop
and his excitement. At the same moment Natasha, without drawing
breath, screamed joyously, ecstatically, and so piercingly that it set
everyone's ear tingling. By that shriek she expressed what the
others expressed by all talking at once, and it was so strange that
she must herself have been ashamed of so wild a cry and everyone
else would have been amazed at it at any other time. "Uncle" himself
twisted up the hare, threw it neatly and smartly across his horse's
back as if by that gesture he meant to rebuke everybody, and, with
an air of not wishing to speak to anyone, mounted his bay and rode
off. The others all followed, dispirited and shamefaced, and only much
later were they able to regain their former affectation of
indifference. For a long time they continued to look at red Rugay who,
his arched back spattered with mud and clanking the ring of his leash,
walked along just behind "Uncle's" horse with the serene air of a
conqueror.

"Well, I am like any other dog as long as it's not a question of
coursing. But when it is, then look out!" his appearance seemed to
Nicholas to be saying.

When, much later, "Uncle" rode up to Nicholas and began talking to
him, he felt flattered that, after what had happened, "Uncle"
deigned to speak to him.





CHAPTER VII


Toward evening Ilagin took leave of Nicholas, who found that they
were so far from home that he accepted "Uncle's" offer that the
hunting party should spend the night in his little village of
Mikhaylovna.

"And if you put up at my house that will be better still. That's it,
come on!" said "Uncle." "You see it's damp weather, and you could
rest, and the little countess could be driven home in a trap."

"Uncle's" offer was accepted. A huntsman was sent to Otradnoe for
a trap, while Nicholas rode with Natasha and Petya to "Uncle's" house.

Some five male domestic serfs, big and little, rushed out to the
front porch to meet their master. A score of women serfs, old and
young, as well as children, popped out from the back entrance to
have a look at the hunters who were arriving. The presence of Natasha-
a woman, a lady, and on horseback--raised the curiosity of the serfs
to such a degree that many of them came up to her, stared her in the
face, and unabashed by her presence made remarks about her as though
she were some prodigy on show and not a human being able to hear or
understand what was said about her.

"Arinka! Look, she sits sideways! There she sits and her skirt
dangles.... See, she's got a little hunting horn!"

"Goodness gracious! See her knife?..."

"Isn't she a Tartar!"

"How is it you didn't go head over heels?" asked the boldest of all,
addressing Natasha directly.

"Uncle" dismounted at the porch of his little wooden house which
stood in the midst of an overgrown garden and, after a glance at his
retainers, shouted authoritatively that the superfluous ones should
take themselves off and that all necessary preparations should be made
to receive the guests and the visitors.

The serfs all dispersed. "Uncle" lifted Natasha off her horse and
taking her hand led her up the rickety wooden steps of the porch.
The house, with its bare, unplastered log walls, was not overclean--it
did not seem that those living in it aimed at keeping it spotless--but
neither was it noticeably neglected. In the entry there was a smell of
fresh apples, and wolf and fox skins hung about.

"Uncle" led the visitors through the anteroom into a small hall with
a folding table and red chairs, then into the drawing room with a
round birchwood table and a sofa, and finally into his private room
where there was a tattered sofa, a worn carpet, and portraits of
Suvorov, of the host's father and mother, and of himself in military
uniform. The study smelt strongly of tobacco and dogs. "Uncle" asked
his visitors to sit down and make themselves at home, and then went
out of the room. Rugay, his back still muddy, came into the room and
lay down on the sofa, cleaning himself with his tongue and teeth.
Leading from the study was a passage in which a partition with
ragged curtains could be seen. From behind this came women's
laughter and whispers. Natasha, Nicholas, and Petya took off their
wraps and sat down on the sofa. Petya, leaning on his elbow, fell
asleep at once. Natasha and Nicholas were silent. Their faces
glowed, they were hungry and very cheerful. They looked at one another
(now that the hunt was over and they were in the house, Nicholas no
longer considered it necessary to show his manly superiority over
his sister), Natasha gave him a wink, and neither refrained long
from bursting into a peal of ringing laughter even before they had a
pretext ready to account for it.

After a while "Uncle" came in, in a Cossack coat, blue trousers, and
small top boots. And Natasha felt that this costume, the very one
she had regarded with surprise and amusement at Otradnoe, was just the
right thing and not at all worse than a swallow-tail or frock coat.
"Uncle" too was in high spirits and far from being offended by the
brother's and sister's laughter (it could never enter his head that
they might be laughing at his way of life) he himself joined in the
merriment.

"That's right, young countess, that's it, come on! I never saw
anyone like her!" said he, offering Nicholas a pipe with a long stem
and, with a practiced motion of three fingers, taking down another
that had been cut short. "She's ridden all day like a man, and is as
fresh as ever!"

Soon after "Uncle's" reappearance the door was opened, evidently
from the sound by a barefooted girl, and a stout, rosy, good-looking
woman of about forty, with a double chin and full red lips, entered
carrying a large loaded tray. With hospitable dignity and cordiality
in her glance and in every motion, she looked at the visitors and,
with a pleasant smile, bowed respectfully. In spite of her exceptional
stoutness, which caused her to protrude her chest and stomach and
throw back her head, this woman (who was "Uncle's" housekeeper) trod
very lightly. She went to the table, set down the tray, and with her
plump white hands deftly took from it the bottles and various hors
d'oeuvres and dishes and arranged them on the table. When she had
finished, she stepped aside and stopped at the door with a smile on
her face. "Here I am. I am she! Now do you understand 'Uncle'?" her
expression said to Rostov. How could one help understanding? Not
only Nicholas, but even Natasha understood the meaning of his puckered
brow and the happy complacent smile that slightly puckered his lips
when Anisya Fedorovna entered. On the tray was a bottle of herb
wine, different kinds of vodka, pickled mushrooms, rye cakes made with
buttermilk, honey in the comb, still mead and sparkling mead,
apples, nuts (raw and roasted), and nut-and-honey sweets. Afterwards
she brought a freshly roasted chicken, ham, preserves made with honey,
and preserves made with sugar.

All this was the fruit of Anisya Fedorovna's housekeeping,
gathered and prepared by her. The smell and taste of it all had a
smack of Anisya Fedorovna herself: a savor of juiciness,
cleanliness, whiteness, and pleasant smiles.

"Take this, little Lady-Countess!" she kept saying, as she offered
Natasha first one thing and then another.

Natasha ate of everything and thought she had never seen or eaten
such buttermilk cakes, such aromatic jam, such honey-and-nut sweets,
or such a chicken anywhere. Anisya Fedorovna left the room.

After supper, over their cherry brandy, Rostov and "Uncle" talked of
past and future hunts, of Rugay and Ilagin's dogs, while Natasha sat
upright on the sofa and listened with sparkling eyes. She tried
several times to wake Petya that he might eat something, but he only
muttered incoherent words without waking up. Natasha felt so
lighthearted and happy in these novel surroundings that she only
feared the trap would come for her too soon. After a casual pause,
such as often occurs when receiving friends for the first time in
one's own house, "Uncle," answering a thought that was in his
visitors' mind, said:

"This, you see, is how I am finishing my days... Death will come.
That's it, come on! Nothing will remain. Then why harm anyone?"

"Uncle's" face was very significant and even handsome as he said
this. Involuntarily Rostov recalled all the good he had heard about
him from his father and the neighbors. Throughout the whole province
"Uncle" had the reputation of being the most honorable and
disinterested of cranks. They called him in to decide family disputes,
chose him as executor, confided secrets to him, elected him to be a
justice and to other posts; but he always persistently refused
public appointments, passing the autumn and spring in the fields on
his bay gelding, sitting at home in winter, and lying in his overgrown
garden in summer.

"Why don't you enter the service, Uncle?"

"I did once, but gave it up. I am not fit for it. That's it, come
on! I can't make head or tail of it. That's for you--I haven't
brains enough. Now, hunting is another matter--that's it, come on!
Open the door, there!" he shouted. "Why have you shut it?"

The door at the end of the passage led to the huntsmen's room, as
they called the room for the hunt servants.

There was a rapid patter of bare feet, and an unseen hand opened the
door into the huntsmen's room, from which came the clear sounds of a
balalayka on which someone, who was evidently a master of the art, was
playing. Natasha had been listening to those strains for some time and
now went out into the passage to hear better.

"That's Mitka, my coachman.... I have got him a good balalayka.
I'm fond of it," said "Uncle."

It was the custom for Mitka to play the balalayka in the
huntsmen's room when "Uncle" returned from the chase. "Uncle" was fond
of such music.

"How good! Really very good!" said Nicholas with some
unintentional superciliousness, as if ashamed to confess that the
sounds pleased him very much.

"Very good?" said Natasha reproachfully, noticing her brother's
tone. "Not 'very good' it's simply delicious!"

Just as "Uncle's" pickled mushrooms, honey, and cherry brandy had
seemed to her the best in the world, so also that song, at that
moment, seemed to her the acme of musical delight.

"More, please, more!" cried Natasha at the door as soon as the
balalayka ceased. Mitka tuned up afresh, and recommenced thrumming the
balalayka to the air of My Lady, with trills and variations. "Uncle"
sat listening, slightly smiling, with his head on one side. The air
was repeated a hundred times. The balalayka was retuned several
times and the same notes were thrummed again, but the listeners did
not grow weary of it and wished to hear it again and again. Anisya
Fedorovna came in and leaned her portly person against the doorpost.

"You like listening?" she said to Natasha, with a smile extremely
like "Uncle's." "That's a good player of ours," she added.

"He doesn't play that part right!" said "Uncle" suddenly, with an
energetic gesture. "Here he ought to burst out--that's it, come on!-
ought to burst out."

"Do you play then?" asked Natasha.

"Uncle" did not answer, but smiled.

"Anisya, go and see if the strings of my guitar are all right. I
haven't touched it for a long time. That's it--come on! I've given
it up."

Anisya Fedorovna, with her light step, willingly went to fulfill her
errand and brought back the guitar.

Without looking at anyone, "Uncle" blew the dust off it and, tapping
the case with his bony fingers, tuned the guitar and settled himself
in his armchair. He took the guitar a little above the fingerboard,
arching his left elbow with a somewhat theatrical gesture, and, with a
wink at Anisya Fedorovna, struck a single chord, pure and sonorous,
and then quietly, smoothly, and confidently began playing in very slow
time, not My Lady, but the well-known song: Came a maiden down the
street. The tune, played with precision and in exact time, began to
thrill in the hearts of Nicholas and Natasha, arousing in them the
same kind of sober mirth as radiated from Anisya Fedorovna's whole
being. Anisya Fedorovna flushed, and drawing her kerchief over her
face went laughing out of the room. "Uncle" continued to play
correctly, carefully, with energetic firmness, looking with a
changed and inspired expression at the spot where Anisya Fedorovna had
just stood. Something seemed to be laughing a little on one side of
his face under his gray mustaches, especially as the song grew brisker
and the time quicker and when, here and there, as he ran his fingers
over the strings, something seemed to snap.

"Lovely, lovely! Go on, Uncle, go on!" shouted Natasha as soon as he
had finished. She jumped up and hugged and kissed him. "Nicholas,
Nicholas!" she said, turning to her brother, as if asking him: "What
is it moves me so?"

Nicholas too was greatly pleased by "Uncle's" playing, and "Uncle"
played the piece over again. Anisya Fedorovna's smiling face
reappeared in the doorway and behind hers other faces...

    Fetching water clear and sweet,
    Stop, dear maiden, I entreat-

played "Uncle" once more, running his fingers skillfully over the
strings, and then he stopped short and jerked his shoulders.

"Go on, Uncle dear," Natasha wailed in an imploring tone as if her
life depended on it.

"Uncle" rose, and it was as if there were two men in him: one of
them smiled seriously at the merry fellow, while the merry fellow
struck a naive and precise attitude preparatory to a folk dance.

"Now then, niece!" he exclaimed, waving to Natasha the hand that had
just struck a chord.

Natasha threw off the shawl from her shoulders, ran forward to
face "Uncle," and setting her arms akimbo also made a motion with
her shoulders and struck an attitude.

Where, how, and when had this young countess, educated by an emigree
French governess, imbibed from the Russian air she breathed that
spirit and obtained that manner which the pas de chale* would, one
would have supposed, long ago have effaced? But the spirit and the
movements were those inimitable and unteachable Russian ones that
"Uncle" had expected of her. As soon as she had struck her pose, and
smiled triumphantly, proudly, and with sly merriment, the fear that
had at first seized Nicholas and the others that she might not do
the right thing was at an end, and they were already admiring her.


*The French shawl dance.


She did the right thing with such precision, such complete
precision, that Anisya Fedorovna, who had at once handed her the
handkerchief she needed for the dance, had tears in her eyes, though
she laughed as she watched this slim, graceful countess, reared in
silks and velvets and so different from herself, who yet was able to
understand all that was in Anisya and in Anisya's father and mother
and aunt, and in every Russian man and woman.

"Well, little countess; that's it--come on!" cried "Uncle," with a
joyous laugh, having finished the dance. "Well done, niece! Now a fine
young fellow must be found as husband for you. That's it--come on!"

"He's chosen already," said Nicholas smiling.

"Oh?" said "Uncle" in surprise, looking inquiringly at Natasha,
who nodded her head with a happy smile.

"And such a one!" she said. But as soon as she had said it a new
train of thoughts and feelings arose in her. "What did Nicholas' smile
mean when he said 'chosen already'? Is he glad of it or not? It is
as if he thought my Bolkonski would not approve of or understand our
gaiety. But he would understand it all. Where is he now?" she thought,
and her face suddenly became serious. But this lasted only a second.
"Don't dare to think about it," she said to herself, and sat down
again smilingly beside "Uncle," begging him to play something more.

"Uncle" played another song and a valse; then after a pause he
cleared his throat and sang his favorite hunting song:

    As 'twas growing dark last night
    Fell the snow so soft and light...


"Uncle" sang as peasants sing, with full and naive conviction that
the whole meaning of a song lies in the words and that the tune
comes of itself, and that apart from the words there is no tune, which
exists only to give measure to the words. As a result of this the
unconsidered tune, like the song of a bird, was extraordinarily
good. Natasha was in ecstasies over "Uncle's" singing. She resolved to
give up learning the harp and to play only the guitar. She asked
"Uncle" for his guitar and at once found the chords of the song.

After nine o'clock two traps and three mounted men, who had been
sent to look for them, arrived to fetch Natasha and Petya. The count
and countess did not know where they were and were very anxious,
said one of the men.

Petya was carried out like a log and laid in the larger of the two
traps. Natasha and Nicholas got into the other. "Uncle" wrapped
Natasha up warmly and took leave of her with quite a new tenderness.
He accompanied them on foot as far as the bridge that could not be
crossed, so that they had to go round by the ford, and he sent
huntsmen to ride in front with lanterns.

"Good-by, dear niece," his voice called out of the darkness--not the
voice Natasha had known previously, but the one that had sung As 'twas
growing dark last night.

In the village through which they passed there were red lights and a
cheerful smell of smoke.

"What a darling Uncle is!" said Natasha, when they had come out onto
the highroad.

"Yes," returned Nicholas. "You're not cold?"

"No. I'm quite, quite all right. I feel so comfortable!" answered
Natasha, almost perplexed by her feelings. They remained silent a long
while. The night was dark and damp. They could not see the horses, but
only heard them splashing through the unseen mud.

What was passing in that receptive childlike soul that so eagerly
caught and assimilated all the diverse impressions of life? How did
they all find place in her? But she was very happy. As they were
nearing home she suddenly struck up the air of As 'twas growing dark
last night--the tune of which she had all the way been trying to get
and had at last caught.

"Got it?" said Nicholas.

"What were you thinking about just now, Nicholas?" inquired Natasha.

They were fond of asking one another that question.

"I?" said Nicholas, trying to remember. "Well, you see, first I
thought that Rugay, the red hound, was like Uncle, and that if he were
a man he would always keep Uncle near him, if not for his riding, then
for his manner. What a good fellow Uncle is! Don't you think so?...
Well, and you?"

"I? Wait a bit, wait.... Yes, first I thought that we are driving
along and imagining that we are going home, but that heaven knows
where we are really going in the darkness, and that we shall arrive
and suddenly find that we are not in Otradnoe, but in Fairyland. And
then I thought... No, nothing else."

"I know, I expect you thought of him," said Nicholas, smiling as
Natasha knew by the sound of his voice.

"No," said Natasha, though she had in reality been thinking about
Prince Andrew at the same time as of the rest, and of how he would
have liked "Uncle." "And then I was saying to myself all the way, 'How
well Anisya carried herself, how well!'" And Nicholas heard her
spontaneous, happy, ringing laughter. "And do you know," she
suddenly said, "I know that I shall never again be as happy and
tranquil as I am now."

"Rubbish, nonsense, humbug!" exclaimed Nicholas, and he thought:
"How charming this Natasha of mine is! I have no other friend like her
and never shall have. Why should she marry? We might always drive
about together!"

"What a darling this Nicholas of mine is!" thought Natasha.

"Ah, there are still lights in the drawingroom!" she said,
pointing to the windows of the house that gleamed invitingly in the
moist velvety darkness of the night.





CHAPTER VIII


Count Ilya Rostov had resigned the position of Marshal of the
Nobility because it involved him in too much expense, but still his
affairs did not improve. Natasha and Nicholas often noticed their
parents conferring together anxiously and privately and heard
suggestions of selling the fine ancestral Rostov house and estate near
Moscow. It was not necessary to entertain so freely as when the
count had been Marshal, and life at Otradnoe was quieter than in
former years, but still the enormous house and its lodges were full of
people and more than twenty sat down to table every day. These were
all their own people who had settled down in the house almost as
members of the family, or persons who were, it seemed, obliged to live
in the count's house. Such were Dimmler the musician and his wife,
Vogel the dancing master and his family, Belova, an old maiden lady,
an inmate of the house, and many others such as Petya's tutors, the
girls' former governess, and other people who simply found it
preferable and more advantageous to live in the count's house than
at home. They had not as many visitors as before, but the old habits
of life without which the count and countess could not conceive of
existence remained unchanged. There was still the hunting
establishment which Nicholas had even enlarged, the same fifty
horses and fifteen grooms in the stables, the same expensive
presents and dinner parties to the whole district on name days;
there were still the count's games of whist and boston, at which-
spreading out his cards so that everybody could see them--he let
himself be plundered of hundreds of rubles every day by his neighbors,
who looked upon an opportunity to play a rubber with Count Rostov as a
most profitable source of income.

The count moved in his affairs as in a huge net, trying not to
believe that he was entangled but becoming more and more so at every
step, and feeling too feeble to break the meshes or to set to work
carefully and patiently to disentangle them. The countess, with her
loving heart, felt that her children were being ruined, that it was
not the count's fault for he could not help being what he was--that
(though he tried to hide it) he himself suffered from the
consciousness of his own and his children's ruin, and she tried to
find means of remedying the position. From her feminine point of
view she could see only one solution, namely, for Nicholas to marry
a rich heiress. She felt this to be their last hope and that if
Nicholas refused the match she had found for him, she would have to
abandon the hope of ever getting matters right. This match was with
Julie Karagina, the daughter of excellent and virtuous parents, a girl
the Rostovs had known from childhood, and who had now become a wealthy
heiress through the death of the last of her brothers.

The countess had written direct to Julie's mother in Moscow
suggesting a marriage between their children and had received a
favorable answer from her. Karagina had replied that for her part
she was agreeable, and everything depend on her daughter's
inclination. She invited Nicholas to come to Moscow.

Several times the countess, with tears in her eyes, told her son
that now both her daughters were settled, her only wish was to see him
married. She said she could lie down in her grave peacefully if that
were accomplished. Then she told him that she knew of a splendid
girl and tried to discover what he thought about marriage.

At other times she praised Julie to him and advised him to go to
Moscow during the holidays to amuse himself. Nicholas guessed what his
mother's remarks were leading to and during one of these conversations
induced her to speak quite frankly. She told him that her only hope of
getting their affairs disentangled now lay in his marrying Julie
Karagina.

"But, Mamma, suppose I loved a girl who has no fortune, would you
expect me to sacrifice my feelings and my honor for the sake of
money?" he asked his mother, not realizing the cruelty of his question
and only wishing to show his noble-mindedness.

"No, you have not understood me," said his mother, not knowing how
to justify herself. "You have not understood me, Nikolenka. It is your
happiness I wish for," she added, feeling that she was telling an
untruth and was becoming entangled. She began to cry.

"Mamma, don't cry! Only tell me that you wish it, and you know I
will give my life, anything, to put you at ease," said Nicholas. "I
would sacrifice anything for you--even my feelings."

But the countess did not want the question put like that: she did
not want a sacrifice from her son, she herself wished to make a
sacrifice for him.

"No, you have not understood me, don't let us talk about it," she
replied, wiping away her tears.

"Maybe I do love a poor girl," said Nicholas to himself. "Am I to
sacrifice my feelings and my honor for money? I wonder how Mamma could
speak so to me. Because Sonya is poor I must not love her," he
thought, "must not respond to her faithful, devoted love? Yet I should
certainly be happier with her than with some doll-like Julie. I can
always sacrifice my feelings for my family's welfare," he said to
himself, "but I can't coerce my feelings. If I love Sonya, that
feeling is for me stronger and higher than all else."

Nicholas did not go to Moscow, and the countess did not renew the
conversation with him about marriage. She saw with sorrow, and
sometimes with exasperation, symptoms of a growing attachment
between her son and the portionless Sonya. Though she blamed herself
for it, she could not refrain from grumbling at and worrying Sonya,
often pulling her up without reason, addressing her stiffly as "my
dear," and using the formal "you" instead of the intimate "thou" in
speaking to her. The kindhearted countess was the more vexed with
Sonya because that poor, dark-eyed niece of hers was so meek, so kind,
so devotedly grateful to her benefactors, and so faithfully,
unchangingly, and unselfishly in love with Nicholas, that there were
no grounds for finding fault with her.

Nicholas was spending the last of his leave at home. A fourth letter
had come from Prince Andrew, from Rome, in which he wrote that he
would have been on his way back to Russia long ago had not his wound
unexpectedly reopened in the warm climate, which obliged him to
defer his return till the beginning of the new year. Natasha was still
as much in love with her betrothed, found the same comfort in that
love, and was still as ready to throw herself into all the pleasures
of life as before; but at the end of the fourth month of their
separation she began to have fits of depression which she could not
master. She felt sorry for herself: sorry that she was being wasted
all this time and of no use to anyone--while she felt herself so
capable of loving and being loved.

Things were not cheerful in the Rostovs' home.





CHAPTER IX


Christmas came and except for the ceremonial Mass, the solemn and
wearisome Christmas congratulations from neighbors and servants, and
the new dresses everyone put on, there were no special festivities,
though the calm frost of twenty degrees Reaumur, the dazzling sunshine
by day, and the starlight of the winter nights seemed to call for some
special celebration of the season.

On the third day of Christmas week, after the midday dinner, all the
inmates of the house dispersed to various rooms. It was the dullest
time of the day. Nicholas, who had been visiting some neighbors that
morning, was asleep on the sitting-room sofa. The old count was
resting in his study. Sonya sat in the drawing room at the round
table, copying a design for embroidery. The countess was playing
patience. Nastasya Ivanovna the buffoon sat with a sad face at the
window with two old ladies. Natasha came into the room, went up to
Sonya, glanced at what she was doing, and then went up to her mother
and stood without speaking.

"Why are you wandering about like an outcast?" asked her mother.
"What do you want?"

"Him... I want him... now, this minute! I want him!" said Natasha,
with glittering eyes and no sign of a smile.

The countess lifted her head and looked attentively at her daughter.

"Don't look at me, Mamma! Don't look; I shall cry directly."

"Sit down with me a little," said the countess.

"Mamma, I want him. Why should I be wasted like this, Mamma?"

Her voice broke, tears gushed from her eyes, and she turned
quickly to hide them and left the room.

She passed into the sitting room, stood there thinking awhile, and
then went into the maids' room. There an old maidservant was grumbling
at a young girl who stood panting, having just run in through the cold
from the serfs' quarters.

"Stop playing--there's a time for everything," said the old woman.

"Let her alone, Kondratevna," said Natasha. "Go, Mavrushka, go."

Having released Mavrushka, Natasha crossed the dancing hall and went
to the vestibule. There an old footman and two young ones were playing
cards. They broke off and rose as she entered.

"What can I do with them?" thought Natasha.

"Oh, Nikita, please go... where can I send him?... Yes, go to the
yard and fetch a fowl, please, a cock, and you, Misha, bring me some
oats."

"Just a few oats?" said Misha, cheerfully and readily.

"Go, go quickly," the old man urged him.

"And you, Theodore, get me a piece of chalk."

On her way past the butler's pantry she told them to set a
samovar, though it was not at all the time for tea.

Foka, the butler, was the most ill-tempered person in the house.
Natasha liked to test her power over him. He distrusted the order
and asked whether the samovar was really wanted.

"Oh dear, what a young lady!" said Foka, pretending to frown at
Natasha.

No one in the house sent people about or gave them as much trouble
as Natasha did. She could not see people unconcernedly, but had to
send them on some errand. She seemed to be trying whether any of
them would get angry or sulky with her; but the serfs fulfilled no
one's orders so readily as they did hers. "What can I do, where can
I go?" thought she, as she went slowly along the passage.

"Nastasya Ivanovna, what sort of children shall I have?" she asked
the buffoon, who was coming toward her in a woman's jacket.

"Why, fleas, crickets, grasshoppers," answered the buffoon.

"O Lord, O Lord, it's always the same! Oh, where am I to go? What am
I to do with myself?" And tapping with her heels, she ran quickly
upstairs to see Vogel and his wife who lived on the upper story.

Two governesses were sitting with the Vogels at a table, on which
were plates of raisins, walnuts, and almonds. The governesses were
discussing whether it was cheaper to live in Moscow or Odessa. Natasha
sat down, listened to their talk with a serious and thoughtful air,
and then got up again.

"The island of Madagascar," she said, "Ma-da-gas-car," she repeated,
articulating each syllable distinctly, and, not replying to Madame
Schoss who asked her what she was saying, she went out of the room.

Her brother Petya was upstairs too; with the man in attendance on
him he was preparing fireworks to let off that night.

"Petya! Petya!" she called to him. "Carry me downstairs."

Petya ran up and offered her his back. She jumped on it, putting her
arms round his neck, and he pranced along with her.

"No, don't... the island of Madagascar!" she said, and jumping off
his back she went downstairs.

Having as it were reviewed her kingdom, tested her power, and made
sure that everyone was submissive, but that all the same it was
dull, Natasha betook herself to the ballroom, picked up her guitar,
sat down in a dark corner behind a bookcase, and began to run her
fingers over the strings in the bass, picking out a passage she
recalled from an opera she had heard in Petersburg with Prince Andrew.
What she drew from the guitar would have had no meaning for other
listeners, but in her imagination a whole series of reminiscences
arose from those sounds. She sat behind the bookcase with her eyes
fixed on a streak of light escaping from the pantry door and
listened to herself and pondered. She was in a mood for brooding on
the past.

Sonya passed to the pantry with a glass in her hand. Natasha glanced
at her and at the crack in the pantry door, and it seemed to her
that she remembered the light failing through that crack once before
and Sonya passing with a glass in her hand. "Yes it was exactly the
same," thought Natasha.

"Sonya, what is this?" she cried, twanging a thick string.

"Oh, you are there!" said Sonya with a start, and came near and
listened. "I don't know. A storm?" she ventured timidly, afraid of
being wrong.

"There! That's just how she started and just how she came up smiling
timidly when all this happened before," thought Natasha, "and in
just the same way I thought there was something lacking in her."

"No, it's the chorus from The Water-Carrier, listen!" and Natasha
sang the air of the chorus so that Sonya should catch it. "Where
were you going?" she asked.

"To change the water in this glass. I am just finishing the design."

"You always find something to do, but I can't," said Natasha. "And
where's Nicholas?"

"Asleep, I think."

"Sonya, go and wake him," said Natasha. "Tell him I want him to come
and sing."

She sat awhile, wondering what the meaning of it all having happened
before could be, and without solving this problem, or at all
regretting not having done so, she again passed in fancy to the time
when she was with him and he was looking at her with a lover's eyes.

"Oh, if only he would come quicker! I am so afraid it will never be!
And, worst of all, I am growing old--that's the thing! There won't
then be in me what there is now. But perhaps he'll come today, will
come immediately. Perhaps he has come and is sitting in the drawing
room. Perhaps he came yesterday and I have forgotten it." She rose,
put down the guitar, and went to the drawing room.

All the domestic circle, tutors, governesses, and guests, were
already at the tea table. The servants stood round the table--but
Prince Andrew was not there and life was going on as before.

"Ah, here she is!" said the old count, when he saw Natasha enter.
"Well, sit down by me." But Natasha stayed by her mother and glanced
round as if looking for something.

"Mamma!" she muttered, "give him to me, give him, Mamma, quickly,
quickly!" and she again had difficulty in repressing her sobs.

She sat down at the table and listened to the conversation between
the elders and Nicholas, who had also come to the table. "My God, my
God! The same faces, the same talk, Papa holding his cup and blowing
in the same way!" thought Natasha, feeling with horror a sense of
repulsion rising up in her for the whole household, because they
were always the same.

After tea, Nicholas, Sonya, and Natasha went to the sitting room, to
their favorite corner where their most intimate talks always began.





CHAPTER X


"Does it ever happen to you," said Natasha to her brother, when
they settled down in the sitting room, "does it ever happen to you
to feel as if there were nothing more to come--nothing; that
everything good is past? And to feel not exactly dull, but sad?"

"I should think so!" he replied. "I have felt like that when
everything was all right and everyone was cheerful. The thought has
come into my mind that I was already tired of it all, and that we must
all die. Once in the regiment I had not gone to some merrymaking where
there was music... and suddenly I felt so depressed..."

"Oh yes, I know, I know, I know!" Natasha interrupted him. "When I
was quite little that used to be so with me. Do you remember when I
was punished once about some plums? You were all dancing, and I sat
sobbing in the schoolroom? I shall never forget it: I felt sad and
sorry for everyone, for myself, and for everyone. And I was
innocent--that was the chief thing," said Natasha. "Do you remember?"

"I remember," answered Nicholas. "I remember that I came to you
afterwards and wanted to comfort you, but do you know, I felt
ashamed to. We were terribly absurd. I had a funny doll then and
wanted to give it to you. Do you remember?"

"And do you remember," Natasha asked with a pensive smile, "how
once, long, long ago, when we were quite little, Uncle called us
into the study--that was in the old house--and it was dark--we went in
and suddenly there stood..."

"A Negro," chimed in Nicholas with a smile of delight. "Of course
I remember. Even now I don't know whether there really was a Negro, or
if we only dreamed it or were told about him."

"He was gray, you remember, and had white teeth, and stood and
looked at us..."

"Sonya, do you remember?" asked Nicholas.

"Yes, yes, I do remember something too," Sonya answered timidly.

"You know I have asked Papa and Mamma about that Negro," said
Natasha, "and they say there was no Negro at all. But you see, you
remember!"

"Of course I do, I remember his teeth as if I had just seen them."

"How strange it is! It's as if it were a dream! I like that."

"And do you remember how we rolled hard-boiled eggs in the ballroom,
and suddenly two old women began spinning round on the carpet? Was
that real or not? Do you remember what fun it was?"

"Yes, and you remember how Papa in his blue overcoat fired a gun
in the porch?"

So they went through their memories, smiling with pleasure: not
the sad memories of old age, but poetic, youthful ones--those
impressions of one's most distant past in which dreams and realities
blend--and they laughed with quiet enjoyment.

Sonya, as always, did not quite keep pace with them, though they
shared the same reminiscences.

Much that they remembered had slipped from her mind, and what she
recalled did not arouse the same poetic feeling as they experienced.
She simply enjoyed their pleasure and tried to fit in with it.

She only really took part when they recalled Sonya's first
arrival. She told them how afraid she had been of Nicholas because
he had on a corded jacket and her nurse had told her that she, too,
would be sewn up with cords.

"And I remember their telling me that you had been born under a
cabbage," said Natasha, "and I remember that I dared not disbelieve
it then, but knew that it was not true, and I felt so uncomfortable."

While they were talking a maid thrust her head in at the other
door of the sitting room.

"They have brought the cock, Miss," she said in a whisper.

"It isn't wanted, Petya. Tell them to take it away," replied
Natasha.

In the middle of their talk in the sitting room, Dimmler came in and
went up to the harp that stood there in a corner. He took off its
cloth covering, and the harp gave out a jarring sound.

"Mr. Dimmler, please play my favorite nocturne by Field," came the
old countess' voice from the drawing room.

Dimmler struck a chord and, turning to Natasha, Nicholas, and Sonya,
remarked: "How quiet you young people are!"

"Yes, we're philosophizing," said Natasha, glancing round for a
moment and then continuing the conversation. They were now
discussing dreams.

Dimmler began to play; Natasha went on tiptoe noiselessly to the
table, took up a candle, carried it out, and returned, seating herself
quietly in her former place. It was dark in the room especially
where they were sitting on the sofa, but through the big windows the
silvery light of the full moon fell on the floor. Dimmler had finished
the piece but still sat softly running his fingers over the strings,
evidently uncertain whether to stop or to play something else.

"Do you know," said Natasha in a whisper, moving closer to
Nicholas and Sonya, "that when one goes on and on recalling
memories, one at last begins to remember what happened before one
was in the world..."

"That is metempsychosis," said Sonya, who had always learned well,
and remembered everything. "The Egyptians believed that our souls have
lived in animals, and will go back into animals again."

"No, I don't believe we ever were in animals," said Natasha, still
in a whisper though the music had ceased. "But I am certain that we
were angels somewhere there, and have been here, and that is why we
remember...."

"May I join you?" said Dimmler who had come up quietly, and he sat
down by them.

"If we have been angels, why have we fallen lower?" said Nicholas.
"No, that can't be!"

"Not lower, who said we were lower?... How do I know what I was
before?" Natasha rejoined with conviction. "The soul is immortal--well
then, if I shall always live I must have lived before, lived for a
whole eternity."

"Yes, but it is hard for us to imagine eternity," remarked
Dimmler, who had joined the young folk with a mildly condescending
smile but now spoke as quietly and seriously as they.

"Why is it hard to imagine eternity?" said Natasha. "It is now
today, and it will be tomorrow, and always; and there was yesterday,
and the day before..."

"Natasha! Now it's your turn. Sing me something," they heard the
countess say. "Why are you sitting there like conspirators?"

"Mamma, I don't at all want to," replied Natasha, but all the same
she rose.

None of them, not even the middle-aged Dimmler, wanted to break
off their conversation and quit that corner in the sitting room, but
Natasha got up and Nicholas sat down at the clavichord. Standing as
usual in the middle of the hall and choosing the place where the
resonance was best, Natasha began to sing her mother's favorite song.

She had said she did not want to sing, but it was long since she had
sung, and long before she again sang, as she did that evening. The
count, from his study where he was talking to Mitenka, heard her
and, like a schoolboy in a hurry to run out to play, blundered in
his talk while giving orders to the steward, and at last stopped,
while Mitenka stood in front of him also listening and smiling.
Nicholas did not take his eyes off his sister and drew breath in
time with her. Sonya, as she listened, thought of the immense
difference there was between herself and her friend, and how
impossible it was for her to be anything like as bewitching as her
cousin. The old countess sat with a blissful yet sad smile and with
tears in her eyes, occasionally shaking her head. She thought of
Natasha and of her own youth, and of how there was something unnatural
and dreadful in this impending marriage of Natasha and Prince Andrew.

Dimmler, who had seated himself beside the countess, listened with
closed eyes.

"Ah, Countess," he said at last, "that's a European talent, she
has nothing to learn--what softness, tenderness, and strength...."

"Ah, how afraid I am for her, how afraid I am!" said the countess,
not realizing to whom she was speaking. Her maternal instinct told her
that Natasha had too much of something, and that because of this she
would not be happy. Before Natasha had finished singing,
fourteen-year-old Petya rushed in delightedly, to say that some
mummers had arrived.

Natasha stopped abruptly.

"Idiot!" she screamed at her brother and, running to a chair,
threw herself on it, sobbing so violently that she could not stop
for a long time.

"It's nothing, Mamma, really it's nothing; only Petya startled
me," she said, trying to smile, but her tears still flowed and sobs
still choked her.

The mummers (some of the house serfs) dressed up as bears, Turks,
innkeepers, and ladies--frightening and funny--bringing in with them
the cold from outside and a feeling of gaiety, crowded, at first
timidly, into the anteroom, then hiding behind one another they pushed
into the ballroom where, shyly at first and then more and more merrily
and heartily, they started singing, dancing, and playing Christmas
games. The countess, when she had identified them and laughed at their
costumes, went into the drawing room. The count sat in the ballroom,
smiling radiantly and applauding the players. The young people had
disappeared.

Half an hour later there appeared among the other mummers in the
ballroom an old lady in a hooped skirt--this was Nicholas. A Turkish
girl was Petya. A clown was Dimmler. An hussar was Natasha, and a
Circassian was Sonya with burnt-cork mustache and eyebrows.

After the condescending surprise, nonrecognition, and praise, from
those who were not themselves dressed up, the young people decided
that their costumes were so good that they ought to be shown
elsewhere.

Nicholas, who, as the roads were in splendid condition, wanted to
take them all for a drive in his troyka, proposed to take with them
about a dozen of the serf mummers and drive to "Uncle's."

"No, why disturb the old fellow?" said the countess. "Besides, you
wouldn't have room to turn round there. If you must go, go to the
Melyukovs'."

Melyukova was a widow, who, with her family and their tutors and
governesses, lived three miles from the Rostovs.

"That's right, my dear," chimed in the old count, thoroughly
aroused. "I'll dress up at once and go with them. I'll make Pashette
open her eyes."

But the countess would not agree to his going; he had had a bad
leg all these last days. It was decided that the count must not go,
but that if Louisa Ivanovna (Madame Schoss) would go with them, the
young ladies might go to the Melyukovs', Sonya, generally so timid and
shy, more urgently than anyone begging Louisa Ivanovna not to refuse.

Sonya's costume was the best of all. Her mustache and eyebrows
were extraordinarily becoming. Everyone told her she looked very
handsome, and she was in a spirited and energetic mood unusual with
her. Some inner voice told her that now or never her fate would be
decided, and in her male attire she seemed quite a different person.
Louisa Ivanovna consented to go, and in half an hour four troyka
sleighs with large and small bells, their runners squeaking and
whistling over the frozen snow, drove up to the porch.

Natasha was foremost in setting a merry holiday tone, which, passing
from one to another, grew stronger and reached its climax
when they all came out into the frost and got into the sleighs,
talking, calling to one another, laughing, and shouting.

Two of the troykas were the usual household sleighs, the third was
the old count's with a trotter from the Orlov stud as shaft horse, the
fourth was Nicholas' own with a short shaggy black shaft horse.
Nicholas, in his old lady's dress over which he had belted his
hussar overcoat, stood in the middle of the sleigh, reins in hand.

It was so light that he could see the moonlight reflected from the
metal harness disks and from the eyes of the horses, who looked
round in alarm at the noisy party under the shadow of the porch roof.

Natasha, Sonya, Madame Schoss, and two maids got into Nicholas'
sleigh; Dimmler, his wife, and Petya, into the old count's, and the
rest of the mummers seated themselves in the other two sleighs.

"You go ahead, Zakhar!" shouted Nicholas to his father's coachman,
wishing for a chance to race past him.

The old count's troyka, with Dimmler and his party, started forward,
squeaking on its runners as though freezing to the snow, its
deep-toned bell clanging. The side horses, pressing against the shafts
of the middle horse, sank in the snow, which was dry and glittered
like sugar, and threw it up.

Nicholas set off, following the first sleigh; behind him the
others moved noisily, their runners squeaking. At first they drove
at a steady trot along the narrow road. While they drove past the
garden the shadows of the bare trees often fell across the road and
hid the brilliant moonlight, but as soon as they were past the
fence, the snowy plain bathed in moonlight and motionless spread out
before them glittering like diamonds and dappled with bluish
shadows. Bang, bang! went the first sleigh over a cradle hole in the
snow of the road, and each of the other sleighs jolted in the same
way, and rudely breaking the frost-bound stillness, the troykas
began to speed along the road, one after the other.

"A hare's track, a lot of tracks!" rang out Natasha's voice
through the frost-bound air.

"How light it is, Nicholas!" came Sonya's voice.

Nicholas glanced round at Sonya, and bent down to see her face
closer. Quite a new, sweet face with black eyebrows and mustaches
peeped up at him from her sable furs--so close and yet so distant-
in the moonlight.

"That used to be Sonya," thought he, and looked at her closer and
smiled.

"What is it, Nicholas?"

"Nothing," said he and turned again to the horses.

When they came out onto the beaten highroad--polished by sleigh
runners and cut up by rough-shod hoofs, the marks of which were
visible in the moonlight--the horses began to tug at the reins of
their own accord and increased their pace. The near side horse,
arching his head and breaking into a short canter, tugged at his
traces. The shaft horse swayed from side to side, moving his ears as
if asking: "Isn't it time to begin now?" In front, already far ahead
the deep bell of the sleigh ringing farther and farther off, the black
horses driven by Zakhar could be clearly seen against the white
snow. From that sleigh one could hear the shouts, laughter, and voices
of the mummers.

"Gee up, my darlings!" shouted Nicholas, pulling the reins to one
side and flourishing the whip.

It was only by the keener wind that met them and the jerks given
by the side horses who pulled harder--ever increasing their gallop-
that one noticed how fast the troyka was flying. Nicholas looked back.
With screams squeals, and waving of whips that caused even the shaft
horses to gallop--the other sleighs followed. The shaft horse swung
steadily beneath the bow over its head, with no thought of
slackening pace and ready to put on speed when required.

Nicholas overtook the first sleigh. They were driving downhill and
coming out upon a broad trodden track across a meadow, near a river.

"Where are we?" thought he. "It's the Kosoy meadow, I suppose. But
no--this is something new I've never seen before. This isn't the Kosoy
meadow nor the Demkin hill, and heaven only knows what it is! It is
something new and enchanted. Well, whatever it may be..." And shouting
to his horses, he began to pass the first sleigh.

Zakhar held back his horses and turned his face, which was already
covered with hoarfrost to his eyebrows.

Nicholas gave the horses the rein, and Zakhar, stretching out his
arms, clucked his tongue and let his horses go.

"Now, look out, master!" he cried.

Faster still the two troykas flew side by side, and faster moved the
feet of the galloping side horses. Nicholas began to draw ahead.
Zakhar, while still keeping his arms extended, raised one hand with
the reins.

"No you won't, master!" he shouted.

Nicholas put all his horses to a gallop and passed Zakhar. The
horses showered the fine dry snow on the faces of those in the sleigh-
beside them sounded quick ringing bells and they caught confused
glimpses of swiftly moving legs and the shadows of the troyka they
were passing. The whistling sound of the runners on the snow and the
voices of girls shrieking were heard from different sides.

Again checking his horses, Nicholas looked around him. They were
still surrounded by the magic plain bathed in moonlight and spangled
with stars.

"Zakhar is shouting that I should turn to the left, but why to the
left?" thought Nicholas. "Are we getting to the Melyukovs'? Is this
Melyukovka? Heaven only knows where we are going, and heaven knows
what is happening to us--but it is very strange and pleasant
whatever it is." And he looked round in the sleigh.

"Look, his mustache and eyelashes are all white!" said one of the
strange, pretty, unfamiliar people--the one with fine eyebrows and
mustache.

"I think this used to be Natasha," thought Nicholas, "and that was
Madame Schoss, but perhaps it's not, and this Circassian with the
mustache I don't know, but I love her."

"Aren't you cold?" he asked.

They did not answer but began to laugh. Dimmler from the sleigh
behind shouted something--probably something funny--but they could not
make out what he said.

"Yes, yes!" some voices answered, laughing.

"But here was a fairy forest with black moving shadows, and a
glitter of diamonds and a flight of marble steps and the silver
roofs of fairy buildings and the shrill yells of some animals. And
if this is really Melyukovka, it is still stranger that we drove
heaven knows where and have come to Melyukovka," thought Nicholas.

It really was Melyukovka, and maids and footmen with merry faces
came running, out to the porch carrying candles.

"Who is it?" asked someone in the porch.

"The mummers from the count's. I know by the horses," replied some
voices.





CHAPTER XI


Pelageya Danilovna Melyukova, a broadly built, energetic woman
wearing spectacles, sat in the drawing room in a loose dress,
surrounded by her daughters whom she was trying to keep from feeling
dull. They were quietly dropping melted wax into snow and looking at
the shadows the wax figures would throw on the wall, when they heard
the steps and voices of new arrivals in the vestibule.

Hussars, ladies, witches, clowns, and bears, after clearing their
throats and wiping the hoarfrost from their faces in the vestibule,
came into the ballroom where candles were hurriedly lighted. The
clown--Dimmler--and the lady--Nicholas--started a dance. Surrounded by
the screaming children the mummers, covering their faces and
disguising their voices, bowed to their hostess and arranged
themselves about the room.

"Dear me! there's no recognizing them! And Natasha! See whom she
looks like! She really reminds me of somebody. But Herr Dimmler--isn't
he good! I didn't know him! And how he dances. Dear me, there's a
Circassian. Really, how becoming it is to dear Sonya. And who is that?
Well, you have cheered us up! Nikita and Vanya--clear away the tables!
And we were sitting so quietly. Ha, ha, ha!... The hussar, the hussar!
Just like a boy! And the legs!... I can't look at him..." different
voices were saying.

Natasha, the young Melyukovs' favorite, disappeared with them into
the back rooms where a cork and various dressing gowns and male
garments were called for and received from the footman by bare girlish
arms from behind the door. Ten minutes later, all the young
Melyukovs joined the mummers.

Pelageya Danilovna, having given orders to clear the rooms for the
visitors and arranged about refreshments for the gentry and the serfs,
went about among the mummers without removing her spectacles,
peering into their faces with a suppressed smile and failing to
recognize any of them. It was not merely Dimmler and the Rostovs she
failed to recognize, she did not even recognize her own daughters,
or her late husband's, dressing gowns and uniforms, which they had put
on.

"And who is is this?" she asked her governess, peering into the face
of her own daughter dressed up as a Kazan-Tartar. "I suppose it is one
of the Rostovs! Well, Mr. Hussar, and what regiment do you serve
in?" she asked Natasha. "Here, hand some fruit jelly to the Turk!" she
ordered the butler who was handing things round. "That's not forbidden
by his law."

Sometimes, as she looked at the strange but amusing capers cut by
the dancers, who--having decided once for all that being disguised, no
one would recognize them--were not at all shy, Pelageya Danilovna
hid her face in her handkerchief, and her whole stout body shook
with irrepressible, kindly, elderly laughter.

"My little Sasha! Look at Sasha!" she said.

After Russian country dances and chorus dances, Pelageya Danilovna
made the serfs and gentry join in one large circle: a ring, a
string, and a silver ruble were fetched and they all played games
together.

In an hour, all the costumes were crumpled and disordered. The
corked eyebrows and mustaches were smeared over the perspiring,
flushed, and merry faces. Pelageya Danilovna began to recognize the
mummers, admired their cleverly contrived costumes, and particularly
how they suited the young ladies, and she thanked them all for
having entertained her so well. The visitors were invited to supper in
the drawing room, and the serfs had something served to them in the
ballroom.

"Now to tell one's fortune in the empty bathhouse is frightening!"
said an old maid who lived with the Melyukovs, during supper.

"Why?" said the eldest Melyukov girl.

"You wouldn't go, it takes courage..."

"I'll go," said Sonya.

"Tell what happened to the young lady!" said the second Melyukov
girl.

"Well," began the old maid, "a young lady once went out, took a
cock, laid the table for two, all properly, and sat down. After
sitting a while, she suddenly hears someone coming... a sleigh
drives up with harness bells; she hears him coming! He comes in,
just in the shape of a man, like an officer--comes in and sits down to
table with her."

"Ah! ah!" screamed Natasha, rolling her eyes with horror.

"Yes? And how... did he speak?"

"Yes, like a man. Everything quite all right, and he began
persuading her; and she should have kept him talking till cockcrow,
but she got frightened, just got frightened and hid her face in her
hands. Then he caught her up. It was lucky the maids ran in just
then..."

"Now, why frighten them?" said Pelageya Danilovna.

"Mamma, you used to try your fate yourself..." said her daughter.

"And how does one do it in a barn?" inquired Sonya.

"Well, say you went to the barn now, and listened. It depends on
what you hear; hammering and knocking--that's bad; but a sound of
shifting grain is good and one sometimes hears that, too."

"Mamma, tell us what happened to you in the barn."

Pelageya Danilovna smiled.

"Oh, I've forgotten..." she replied. "But none of you would go?"

"Yes, I will; Pelageya Danilovna, let me! I'll go," said Sonya.

"Well, why not, if you're not afraid?"

"Louisa Ivanovna, may I?" asked Sonya.

Whether they were playing the ring and string game or the ruble game
or talking as now, Nicholas did not leave Sonya's side, and gazed at
her with quite new eyes. It seemed to him that it was only today,
thanks to that burnt-cork mustache, that he had fully learned to
know her. And really, that evening, Sonya was brighter, more animated,
and prettier than Nicholas had ever seen her before.

"So that's what she is like; what a fool I have been!" he thought
gazing at her sparkling eyes, and under the mustache a happy rapturous
smile dimpled her cheeks, a smile he had never seen before.

"I'm not afraid of anything," said Sonya. "May I go at once?" She
got up.

They told her where the barn was and how she should stand and
listen, and they handed her a fur cloak. She threw this over her
head and shoulders and glanced at Nicholas.

"What a darling that girl is!" thought he. "And what have I been
thinking of till now?"

Sonya went out into the passage to go to the barn. Nicholas went
hastily to the front porch, saying he felt too hot. The crowd of
people really had made the house stuffy.

Outside, there was the same cold stillness and the same moon, but
even brighter than before. The light was so strong and the snow
sparkled with so many stars that one did not wish to look up at the
sky and the real stars were unnoticed. The sky was black and dreary,
while the earth was gay.

"I am a fool, a fool! what have I been waiting for?" thought
Nicholas, and running out from the porch he went round the corner of
the house and along the path that led to the back porch. He knew Sonya
would pass that way. Halfway lay some snow-covered piles of firewood
and across and along them a network of shadows from the bare old
lime trees fell on the snow and on the path. This path led to the
barn. The log walls of the barn and its snow-covered roof, that looked
as if hewn out of some precious stone, sparkled in the moonlight. A
tree in the garden snapped with the frost, and then all was again
perfectly silent. His bosom seemed to inhale not air but the
strength of eternal youth and gladness.

From the back porch came the sound of feet descending the steps, the
bottom step upon which snow had fallen gave a ringing creak and he
heard the voice of an old maidservant saying, "Straight, straight,
along the path, Miss. Only, don't look back."

"I am not afraid," answered Sonya's voice, and along the path toward
Nicholas came the crunching, whistling sound of Sonya's feet in her
thin shoes.

Sonya came along, wrapped in her cloak. She was only a couple of
paces away when she saw him, and to her too he was not the Nicholas
she had known and always slightly feared. He was in a woman's dress,
with tousled hair and a happy smile new to Sonya. She ran rapidly
toward him.

"Quite different and yet the same," thought Nicholas, looking at her
face all lit up by the moonlight. He slipped his arms under the
cloak that covered her head, embraced her, pressed her to him, and
kissed her on the lips that wore a mustache and had a smell of burnt
cork. Sonya kissed him full on the lips, and disengaging her little
hands pressed them to his cheeks.

"Sonya!... Nicholas!"... was all they said. They ran to the barn and
then back again, re-entering, he by the front and she by the back
porch.





CHAPTER XII


When they all drove back from Pelageya Danilovna's, Natasha, who
always saw and noticed everything, arranged that she and Madame Schoss
should go back in the sleigh with Dimmler, and Sonya with Nicholas and
the maids.

On the way back Nicholas drove at a steady pace instead of racing
and kept peering by that fantastic all-transforming light into Sonya's
face and searching beneath the eyebrows and mustache for his former
and his present Sonya from whom he had resolved never to be parted
again. He looked and recognizing in her both the old and the new
Sonya, and being reminded by the smell of burnt cork of the
sensation of her kiss, inhaled the frosty air with a full breast
and, looking at the ground flying beneath him and at the sparkling
sky, felt himself again in fairyland.

"Sonya, is it well with thee?" he asked from time to time.

"Yes!" she replied. "And with thee?"

When halfway home Nicholas handed the reins to the coachman and
ran for a moment to Natasha's sleigh and stood on its wing.

"Natasha!" he whispered in French, "do you know I have made up my
mind about Sonya?"

"Have you told her?" asked Natasha, suddenly beaming all over with
joy.

"Oh, how strange you are with that mustache and those eyebrows!...
Natasha--are you glad?"

"I am so glad, so glad! I was beginning to be vexed with you. I
did not tell you, but you have been treating her badly. What a heart
she has, Nicholas! I am horrid sometimes, but I was ashamed to be
happy while Sonya was not," continued Natasha. "Now I am so glad!
Well, run back to her."

"No, wait a bit.... Oh, how funny you look!" cried Nicholas, peering
into her face and finding in his sister too something new, unusual,
and bewitchingly tender that he had not seen in her before.
"Natasha, it's magical, isn't it?"

"Yes," she replied. "You have done splendidly."

"Had I seen her before as she is now," thought Nicholas, "I should
long ago have asked her what to do and have done whatever she told me,
and all would have been well."

"So you are glad and I have done right?"

"Oh, quite right! I had a quarrel with Mamma some time ago about it.
Mamma said she was angling for you. How could she say such a thing!
I nearly stormed at Mamma. I will never let anyone say anything bad of
Sonya, for there is nothing but good in her."

"Then it's all right?" said Nicholas, again scrutinizing the
expression of his sister's face to see if she was in earnest. Then
he jumped down and, his boots scrunching the snow, ran back to his
sleigh. The same happy, smiling Circassian, with mustache and
beaming eyes looking up from under a sable hood, was still sitting
there, and that Circassian was Sonya, and that Sonya was certainly his
future happy and loving wife.

When they reached home and had told their mother how they had
spent the evening at the Melyukovs', the girls went to their
bedroom. When they had undressed, but without washing off the cork
mustaches, they sat a long time talking of their happiness. They
talked of how they would live when they were married, how their
husbands would be friends, and how happy they would be. On Natasha's
table stood two looking glasses which Dunyasha had prepared
beforehand.

"Only when will all that be? I am afraid never.... It would be too
good!" said Natasha, rising and going to the looking glasses.

"Sit down, Natasha; perhaps you'll see him," said Sonya.

Natasha lit the candles, one on each side of one of the looking
glasses, and sat down.

"I see someone with a mustache," said Natasha, seeing her own face.

"You mustn't laugh, Miss," said Dunyasha.

With Sonya's help and the maid's, Natasha got the glass she held
into the right position opposite the other; her face assumed a serious
expression and she sat silent. She sat a long time looking at the
receding line of candles reflected in the glasses and expecting
(from tales she had heard) to see a coffin, or him, Prince Andrew,
in that last dim, indistinctly outlined square. But ready as she was
to take the smallest speck for the image of a man or of a coffin,
she saw nothing. She began blinking rapidly and moved away from the
looking glasses.

"Why is it others see things and I don't?" she said. "You sit down
now, Sonya. You absolutely must, tonight! Do it for me.... Today I
feel so frightened!"

Sonya sat down before the glasses, got the right position, and began
looking.

"Now, Miss Sonya is sure to see something," whispered Dunyasha;
"while you do nothing but laugh."

Sonya heard this and Natasha's whisper:

"I know she will. She saw something last year."

For about three minutes all were silent.

"Of course she will!" whispered Natasha, but did not finish...
suddenly Sonya pushed away the glass she was holding and covered her
eyes with her hand.

"Oh, Natasha!" she cried.

"Did you see? Did you? What was it?" exclaimed Natasha, holding up
the looking glass.

Sonya had not seen anything, she was just wanting to blink and to
get up when she heard Natasha say, "Of course she will!" She did not
wish to disappoint either Dunyasha or Natasha, but it was hard to
sit still. She did not herself know how or why the exclamation escaped
her when she covered her eyes.

"You saw him?" urged Natasha, seizing her hand.

"Yes. Wait a bit... I... saw him," Sonya could not help saying,
not yet knowing whom Natasha meant by him, Nicholas or Prince Andrew.

"But why shouldn't I say I saw something? Others do see! Besides who
can tell whether I saw anything or not?" flashed through Sonya's mind.

"Yes, I saw him," she said.

"How? Standing or lying?"

"No, I saw... At first there was nothing, then I saw him lying
down."

"Andrew lying? Is he ill?" asked Natasha, her frightened eyes
fixed on her friend.

"No, on the contrary, on the contrary! His face was cheerful, and he
turned to me." And when saying this she herself fancied she had really
seen what she described.

"Well, and then, Sonya?..."

"After that, I could not make out what there was; something blue and
red..."

"Sonya! When will he come back? When shall I see him! O, God, how
afraid I am for him and for myself and about everything!..." Natasha
began, and without replying to Sonya's words of comfort she got into
bed, and long after her candle was out lay open-eyed and motionless,
gazing at the moonlight through the frosty windowpanes.





CHAPTER XIII


Soon after the Christmas holidays Nicholas told his mother of his
love for Sonya and of his firm resolve to marry her. The countess, who
had long noticed what was going on between them and was expecting this
declaration, listened to him in silence and then told her son that
he might marry whom he pleased, but that neither she nor his father
would give their blessing to such a marriage. Nicholas, for the
first time, felt that his mother was displeased with him and that,
despite her love for him, she would not give way. Coldly, without
looking at her son, she sent for her husband and, when he came,
tried briefly and coldly to inform him of the facts, in her son's
presence, but unable to restrain herself she burst into tears of
vexation and left the room. The old count began irresolutely to
admonish Nicholas and beg him to abandon his purpose. Nicholas replied
that he could not go back on his word, and his father, sighing and
evidently disconcerted, very soon became silent and went in to the
countess. In all his encounters with his son, the count was always
conscious of his own guilt toward him for having wasted the family
fortune, and so he could not be angry with him for refusing to marry
an heiress and choosing the dowerless Sonya. On this occasion, he
was only more vividly conscious of the fact that if his affairs had
not been in disorder, no better wife for Nicholas than Sonya could
have been wished for, and that no one but himself with his Mitenka and
his uncomfortable habits was to blame for the condition of the
family finances.

The father and mother did not speak of the matter to their son
again, but a few days later the countess sent for Sonya and, with a
cruelty neither of them expected, reproached her niece for trying to
catch Nicholas and for ingratitude. Sonya listened silently with
downcast eyes to the countess' cruel words, without understanding what
was required of her. She was ready to sacrifice everything for her
benefactors. Self-sacrifice was her most cherished idea but in this
case she could not see what she ought to sacrifice, or for whom. She
could not help loving the countess and the whole Rostov family, but
neither could she help loving Nicholas and knowing that his
happiness depended on that love. She was silent and sad and did not
reply. Nicholas felt the situation to be intolerable and went to
have an explanation with his mother. He first implored her to
forgive him and Sonya and consent to their marriage, then he
threatened that if she molested Sonya he would at once marry her
secretly.

The countess, with a coldness her son had never seen in her
before, replied that he was of age, that Prince Andrew was marrying
without his father's consent, and he could do the same, but that she
would never receive that intriguer as her daughter.

Exploding at the word intriguer, Nicholas, raising his voice, told
his mother he had never expected her to try to force him to sell his
feelings, but if that were so, he would say for the last time....
But he had no time to utter the decisive word which the expression
of his face caused his mother to await with terror, and which would
perhaps have forever remained a cruel memory to them both. He had
not time to say it, for Natasha, with a pale and set face, entered the
room from the door at which she had been listening.

"Nicholas, you are talking nonsense! Be quiet, be quiet, be quiet, I
tell you!..." she almost screamed, so as to drown his voice.

"Mamma darling, it's not at all so... my poor, sweet darling," she
said to her mother, who conscious that they had been on the brink of a
rupture gazed at her son with terror, but in the obstinacy and
excitement of the conflict could not and would not give way.

"Nicholas, I'll explain to you. Go away! Listen, Mamma darling,"
said Natasha.

Her words were incoherent, but they attained the purpose at which
she was aiming.

The countess, sobbing heavily, hid her face on her daughter's
breast, while Nicholas rose, clutching his head, and left the room.

Natasha set to work to effect a reconciliation, and so far succeeded
that Nicholas received a promise from his mother that Sonya should not
be troubled, while he on his side promised not to undertake anything
without his parents' knowledge.

Firmly resolved, after putting his affairs in order in the regiment,
to retire from the army and return and marry Sonya, Nicholas, serious,
sorrowful, and at variance with his parents, but, as it seemed to him,
passionately in love, left at the beginning of January to rejoin his
regiment.

After Nicholas had gone things in the Rostov household were more
depressing than ever, and the countess fell ill from mental agitation.

Sonya was unhappy at the separation from Nicholas and still more
so on account of the hostile tone the countess could not help adopting
toward her. The count was more perturbed than ever by the condition of
his affairs, which called for some decisive action. Their town house
and estate near Moscow had inevitably to be sold, and for this they
had to go to Moscow. But the countess' health obliged them to delay
their departure from day to day.

Natasha, who had borne the first period of separation from her
betrothed lightly and even cheerfully, now grew more agitated and
impatient every day. The thought that her best days, which she would
have employed in loving him, were being vainly wasted, with no
advantage to anyone, tormented her incessantly. His letters for the
most part irritated her. It hurt her to think that while she lived
only in the thought of him, he was living a real life, seeing new
places and new people that interested him. The more interesting his
letters were the more vexed she felt. Her letters to him, far from
giving her any comfort, seemed to her a wearisome and artificial
obligation. She could not write, because she could not conceive the
possibility of expressing sincerely in a letter even a thousandth part
of what she expressed by voice, smile, and glance. She wrote to him
formal, monotonous, and dry letters, to which she attached no
importance herself, and in the rough copies of which the countess
corrected her mistakes in spelling.

There was still no improvement in the countess' health, but it was
impossible to defer the journey to Moscow any longer. Natasha's
trousseau had to be ordered and the house sold. Moreover, Prince
Andrew was expected in Moscow, where old Prince Bolkonski was spending
the winter, and Natasha felt sure he had already arrived.

So the countess remained in the country, and the count, taking Sonya
and Natasha with him, went to Moscow at the end of January.




BOOK EIGHT: 1811 --12





CHAPTER I


After Prince Andrews engagement to Natasha, Pierre without any
apparent cause suddenly felt it impossible to go on living as
before. Firmly convinced as he was of the truths revealed to him by
his benefactor, and happy as he had been in perfecting his inner
man, to which he had devoted himself with such ardor--all the zest
of such a life vanished after the engagement of Andrew and Natasha and
the death of Joseph Alexeevich, the news of which reached him almost
at the same time. Only the skeleton of life remained: his house, a
brilliant wife who now enjoyed the favors of a very important
personage, acquaintance with all Petersburg, and his court service
with its dull formalities. And this life suddenly seemed to Pierre
unexpectedly loathsome. He ceased keeping a diary, avoided the company
of the Brothers, began going to the Club again, drank a great deal,
and came once more in touch with the bachelor sets, leading such a
life that the Countess Helene thought it necessary to speak severely
to him about it. Pierre felt that she right, and to avoid compromising
her went away to Moscow.

In Moscow as soon as he entered his huge house in which the faded
and fading princesses still lived, with its enormous retinue; as
soon as, driving through the town, he saw the Iberian shrine with
innumerable tapers burning before the golden covers of the icons,
the Kremlin Square with its snow undisturbed by vehicles, the sleigh
drivers and hovels of the Sivtsev Vrazhok, those old Moscovites who
desired nothing, hurried nowhere, and were ending their days
leisurely; when he saw those old Moscow ladies, the Moscow balls,
and the English Club, he felt himself at home in a quiet haven. In
Moscow he felt at peace, at home, warm and dirty as in an old dressing
gown.

Moscow society, from the old women down to the children, received
Pierre like a long-expected guest whose place was always ready
awaiting him. For Moscow society Pierre was the nicest, kindest,
most intellectual, merriest, and most magnanimous of cranks, a
heedless, genial nobleman of the old Russian type. His purse was
always empty because it was open to everyone.

Benefit performances, poor pictures, statues, benevolent
societies, gypsy choirs, schools, subscription dinners, sprees,
Freemasons, churches, and books--no one and nothing met with a refusal
from him, and had it not been for two friends who had borrowed large
sums from him and taken him under their protection, he would have
given everything away. There was never a dinner or soiree at the
Club without him. As soon as he sank into his place on the sofa
after two bottles of Margaux he was surrounded, and talking,
disputing, and joking began. When there were quarrels, his kindly
smile and well-timed jests reconciled the antagonists. The Masonic
dinners were dull and dreary when he was not there.

When after a bachelor supper he rose with his amiable and kindly
smile, yielding to the entreaties of the festive company to drive
off somewhere with them, shouts of delight and triumph arose among the
young men. At balls he danced if a partner was needed. Young ladies,
married and unmarried, liked him because without making love to any of
them, he was equally amiable to all, especially after supper. "Il
est charmant; il n'a pas de sexe,"* they said of him.


*"He is charming; he has no sex."


Pierre was one of those retired gentlemen-in-waiting of whom there
were hundreds good-humoredly ending their days in Moscow.

How horrified he would have been seven years before, when he first
arrived from abroad, had he been told that there was no need for him
to seek or plan anything, that his rut had long been shaped, eternally
predetermined, and that wriggle as he might, he would be what all in
his position were. He could not have believed it! Had he not at one
time longed with all his heart to establish a republic in Russia; then
himself to be a Napoleon; then to be a philosopher; and then a
strategist and the conqueror of Napoleon? Had he not seen the
possibility of, and passionately desired, the regeneration of the
sinful human race, and his own progress to the highest degree of
perfection? Had he not established schools and hospitals and liberated
his serfs?

But instead of all that--here he was, the wealthy husband of an
unfaithful wife, a retired gentleman-in-waiting, fond of eating and
drinking and, as he unbuttoned his waistcoat, of abusing the
government a bit, a member of the Moscow English Club, and a universal
favorite in Moscow society. For a long time he could not reconcile
himself to the idea that he was one of those same retired Moscow
gentlemen-in-waiting he had so despised seven years before.

Sometimes he consoled himself with the thought that he was only
living this life temporarily; but then he was shocked by the thought
of how many, like himself, had entered that life and that Club
temporarily, with all their teeth and hair, and had only left it
when not a single tooth or hair remained.

In moments of pride, when he thought of his position it seemed to
him that he was quite different and distinct from those other
retired gentlemen-in-waiting he had formerly despised: they were
empty, stupid, contented fellows, satisfied with their position,
"while I am still discontented and want to do something for mankind.
But perhaps all these comrades of mine struggled just like me and
sought something new, a path in life of their own, and like me were
brought by force of circumstances, society, and race--by that
elemental force against which man is powerless--to the condition I
am in," said he to himself in moments of humility; and after living
some time in Moscow he no longer despised, but began to grow fond
of, to respect, and to pity his comrades in destiny, as he pitied
himself.

Pierre longer suffered moments of despair, hypochondria, and disgust
with life, but the malady that had formerly found expression in such
acute attacks was driven inwards and never left him for a moment.
"What for? Why? What is going on in the world?" he would ask himself
in perplexity several times a day, involuntarily beginning to
reflect anew on the meaning of the phenomena of life; but knowing by
experience that there were no answers to these questions he made haste
to turn away from them, and took up a book, or hurried of to the
Club or to Apollon Nikolaevich's, to exchange the gossip of the town.

"Helene, who has never cared for anything but her own body and is
one of the stupidest women in the world," thought Pierre, "is regarded
by people as the acme of intelligence and refinement, and they pay
homage to her. Napoleon Bonaparte was despised by all as long as he
was great, but now that he has become a wretched comedian the
Emperor Francis wants to offer him his daughter in an illegal
marriage. The Spaniards, through the Catholic clergy, offer praise
to God for their victory over the French on the fourteenth of June,
and the French, also through the Catholic clergy, offer praise because
on that same fourteenth of June they defeated the Spaniards. My
brother Masons swear by the blood that they are ready to sacrifice
everything for their neighbor, but they do not give a ruble each to
the collections for the poor, and they intrigue, the Astraea Lodge
against the Manna Seekers, and fuss about an authentic Scotch carpet
and a charter that nobody needs, and the meaning of which the very man
who wrote it does not understand. We all profess the Christian law
of forgiveness of injuries and love of our neighbors, the law in honor
of which we have built in Moscow forty times forty churches--but
yesterday a deserter was knouted to death and a minister of that
same law of love and forgiveness, a priest, gave the soldier a cross
to kiss before his execution." So thought Pierre, and the whole of
this general deception which everyone accepts, accustomed as he was to
it, astonished him each time as if it were something new. "I
understand the deception and confusion," he thought, "but how am I
to tell them all that I see? I have tried, and have always found
that they too in the depths of their souls understand it as I do,
and only try not to see it. So it appears that it must be so! But I-
what is to become of me?" thought he. He had the unfortunate
capacity many men, especially Russians, have of seeing and believing
in the possibility of goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and
falsehood of life too clearly to be able to take a serious part in it.
Every sphere of work was connected, in his eyes, with evil and
deception. Whatever he tried to be, whatever he engaged in, the evil
and falsehood of it repulsed him and blocked every path of activity.
Yet he had to live and to find occupation. It was too dreadful to be
under the burden of these insoluble problems, so he abandoned
himself to any distraction in order to forget them. He frequented
every kind of society, drank much, bought pictures, engaged in
building, and above all--read.

He read, and read everything that came to hand. On coming home,
while his valets were still taking off his things, he picked up a book
and began to read. From reading he passed to sleeping, from sleeping
to gossip in drawing rooms of the Club, from gossip to carousals and
women; from carousals back to gossip, reading, and wine. Drinking
became more and more a physical and also a moral necessity. Though the
doctors warned him that with his corpulence wine was dangerous for
him, he drank a great deal. He was only quite at ease when having
poured several glasses of wine mechanically into his large mouth he
felt a pleasant warmth in his body, an amiability toward all his
fellows, and a readiness to respond superficially to every idea
without probing it deeply. Only after emptying a bottle or two did
he feel dimly that the terribly tangled skein of life which previously
had terrified him was not as dreadful as he had thought. He was always
conscious of some aspect of that skein, as with a buzzing in his
head after dinner or supper he chatted or listened to conversation
or read. But under the influence of wine he said to himself: "It
doesn't matter. I'll get it unraveled. I have a solution ready, but
have no time now--I'll think it all out later on!" But the later on
never came.

In the morning, on an empty stomach, all the old questions
appeared as insoluble and terrible as ever, and Pierre hastily
picked up a book, and if anyone came to see him he was glad.

Sometimes he remembered how he had heard that soldiers in war when
entrenched under the enemy's fire, if they have nothing to do, try
hard to find some occupation the more easily to bear the danger. To
Pierre all men seemed like those soldiers, seeking refuge from life:
some in ambition, some in cards, some in framing laws, some in
women, some in toys, some in horses, some in politics, some in
sport, some in wine, and some in governmental affairs. "Nothing is
trivial, and nothing is important, it's all the same--only to save
oneself from it as best one can," thought Pierre. "Only not to see it,
that dreadful it!"





CHAPTER II


At the beginning of winter Prince Nicholas Bolkonski and his
daughter moved to Moscow. At that time enthusiasm for the Emperor
Alexander's regime had weakened and a patriotic and anti-French
tendency prevailed there, and this, together with his past and his
intellect and his originality, at once made Prince Nicholas
Bolkonski an object of particular respect to the Moscovites and the
center of the Moscow opposition to the government.

The prince had aged very much that year. He showed marked signs of
senility by a tendency to fall asleep, forgetfulness of quite recent
events, remembrance of remote ones, and the childish vanity with which
he accepted the role of head of the Moscow opposition. In spite of
this the old man inspired in all his visitors alike a feeling of
respectful veneration--especially of an evening when he came in to tea
in his old-fashioned coat and powdered wig and, aroused by anyone,
told his abrupt stories of the past, or uttered yet more abrupt and
scathing criticisms of the present. For them all, that old-fashioned
house with its gigantic mirrors, pre-Revolution furniture, powdered
footmen, and the stern shrewd old man (himself a relic of the past
century) with his gentle daughter and the pretty Frenchwoman who
were reverently devoted to him presented a majestic and agreeable
spectacle. But the visitors did not reflect that besides the couple of
hours during which they saw their host, there were also twenty-two
hours in the day during which the private and intimate life of the
house continued.

Latterly that private life had become very trying for Princess Mary.
There in Moscow she was deprived of her greatest pleasures--talks with
the pilgrims and the solitude which refreshed her at Bald Hills--and
she had none of the advantages and pleasures of city life. She did not
go out into society; everyone knew that her father would not let her
go anywhere without him, and his failing health prevented his going
out himself, so that she was not invited to dinners and evening
parties. She had quite abandoned the hope of getting married. She
saw the coldness and malevolence with which the old prince received
and dismissed the young men, possible suitors, who sometimes
appeared at their house. She had no friends: during this visit to
Moscow she had been disappointed in the two who had been nearest to
her. Mademoiselle Bourienne, with whom she had never been able to be
quite frank, had now become unpleasant to her, and for various reasons
Princess Mary avoided her. Julie, with whom she had corresponded for
the last five years, was in Moscow, but proved to be quite alien to
her when they met. Just then Julie, who by the death of her brothers
had become one of the richest heiresses in Moscow, was in the full
whirl of society pleasures. She was surrounded by young men who, she
fancied, had suddenly learned to appreciate her worth. Julie was at
that stage in the life of a society woman when she feels that her last
chance of marrying has come and that her fate must be decided now or
never. On Thursdays Princess Mary remembered with a mournful smile
that she now had no one to write to, since Julie--whose presence
gave her no pleasure was here and they met every week. Like the old
emigre who declined to marry the lady with whom he had spent his
evenings for years, she regretted Julie's presence and having no one
to write to. In Moscow Princess Mary had no one to talk to, no one
to whom to confide her sorrow, and much sorrow fell to her lot just
then. The time for Prince Andrew's return and marriage was
approaching, but his request to her to prepare his father for it had
not been carried out; in fact, it seemed as if matters were quite
hopeless, for at every mention of the young Countess Rostova the old
prince (who apart from that was usually in a bad temper) lost
control of himself. Another lately added sorrow arose from the lessons
she gave her six year-old nephew. To her consternation she detected in
herself in relation to little Nicholas some symptoms of her father's
irritability. However often she told herself that she must not get
irritable when teaching her nephew, almost every time that, pointer in
hand, she sat down to show him the French alphabet, she so longed to
pour her own knowledge quickly and easily into the child--who was
already afraid that Auntie might at any moment get angry--that at
his slightest inattention she trembled, became flustered and heated,
raised her voice, and sometimes pulled him by the arm and put him in
the corner. Having put him in the corner she would herself begin to
cry over her cruel, evil nature, and little Nicholas, following her
example, would sob, and without permission would leave his corner,
come to her, pull her wet hands from her face, and comfort her. But
what distressed the princess most of all was her father's
irritability, which was always directed against her and had of late
amounted to cruelty. Had he forced her to prostrate herself to the
ground all night, had he beaten her or made her fetch wood or water,
it would never have entered her mind to think her position hard; but
this loving despot--the more cruel because he loved her and for that
reason tormented himself and her--knew how not merely to hurt and
humiliate her deliberately, but to show her that she was always to
blame for everything. Of late he had exhibited a new trait that
tormented Princess Mary more than anything else; this was his
ever-increasing intimacy with Mademoiselle Bourienne. The idea that at
the first moment of receiving the news of his son's intentions had
occurred to him in jest--that if Andrew got married he himself would
marry Bourienne--had evidently pleased him, and latterly he had
persistently, and as it seemed to Princess Mary merely to offend
her, shown special endearments to the companion and expressed his
dissatisfaction with his daughter by demonstrations of love of
Bourienne.

One day in Moscow in Princess Mary's presence (she thought her
father did it purposely when she was there) the old prince kissed
Mademoiselle Bourienne's hand and, drawing her to him, embraced her
affectionately. Princess Mary flushed and ran out of the room. A few
minutes later Mademoiselle Bourienne came into Princess Mary's room
smiling and making cheerful remarks in her agreeable voice. Princess
Mary hastily wiped away her tears, went resolutely up to
Mademoiselle Bourienne, and evidently unconscious of what she was
doing began shouting in angry haste at the Frenchwoman, her voice
breaking: "It's horrible, vile, inhuman, to take advantage of the
weakness..." She did not finish. "Leave my room," she exclaimed, and
burst into sobs.

Next day the prince did not say a word to his daughter, but she
noticed that at dinner he gave orders that Mademoiselle Bourienne
should be served first. After dinner, when the footman handed coffee
and from habit began with the princess, the prince suddenly grew
furious, threw his stick at Philip, and instantly gave instructions to
have him conscripted for the army.

"He doesn't obey... I said it twice... and he doesn't obey! She is
the first person in this house; she's my best friend," cried the
prince. "And if you allow yourself," he screamed in a fury, addressing
Princess Mary for the first time, "to forget yourself again before her
as you dared to do yesterday, I will show you who is master in this
house. Go! Don't let me set eyes on you; beg her pardon!"

Princess Mary asked Mademoiselle Bourienne's pardon, and also her
father's pardon for herself and for Philip the footman, who had begged
for her intervention.

At such moments something like a pride of sacrifice gathered in
her soul. And suddenly that father whom she had judged would look
for his spectacles in her presence, fumbling near them and not
seeing them, or would forget something that had just occurred, or take
a false step with his failing legs and turn to see if anyone had
noticed his feebleness, or, worst of all, at dinner when there were no
visitors to excite him would suddenly fall asleep, letting his
napkin drop and his shaking head sink over his plate. "He is old and
feeble, and I dare to condemn him!" she thought at such moments,
with a feeling of revulsion against herself.





CHAPTER III


In 1811 there was living in Moscow a French doctor--Metivier--who
had rapidly become the fashion. He was enormously tall, handsome,
amiable as Frenchmen are, and was, as all Moscow said, an
extraordinarily clever doctor. He was received in the best houses
not merely as a doctor, but as an equal.

Prince Nicholas had always ridiculed medicine, but latterly on
Mademoiselle Bourienne's advice had allowed this doctor to visit him
and had grown accustomed to him. Metivier came to see the prince about
twice a week.

On December 6--St. Nicholas' Day and the prince's name day--all
Moscow came to the prince's front door but he gave orders to admit
no one and to invite to dinner only a small number, a list of whom
he gave to Princess Mary.

Metivier, who came in the morning with his felicitations, considered
it proper in his quality of doctor de forcer la consigne,* as he
told Princess Mary, and went in to see the prince. It happened that on
that morning of his name day the prince was in one of his worst moods.
He had been going about the house all the morning finding fault with
everyone and pretending not to understand what was said to him and not
to be understood himself. Princess Mary well knew this mood of quiet
absorbed querulousness, which generally culminated in a burst of rage,
and she went about all that morning as though facing a cocked and
loaded gun and awaited the inevitable explosion. Until the doctor's
arrival the morning had passed off safely. After admitting the doctor,
Princess Mary sat down with a book in the drawing room near the door
through which she could hear all that passed in the study.


*To force the guard.


At first she heard only Metivier's voice, then her father's, then
both voices began speaking at the same time, the door was flung
open, and on the threshold appeared the handsome figure of the
terrified Metivier with his shock of black hair, and the prince in his
dressing gown and fez, his face distorted with fury and the pupils
of his eyes rolled downwards.

"You don't understand?" shouted the prince, "but I do! French spy,
slave of Buonaparte, spy, get out of my house! Be off, I tell you..."

Metivier, shrugging his shoulders, went up to Mademoiselle Bourienne
who at the sound of shouting had run in from an adjoining room.

"The prince is not very well: bile and rush of blood to the head.
Keep calm, I will call again tomorrow," said Metivier; and putting his
fingers to his lips he hastened away.

Through the study door came the sound of slippered feet and the cry:
"Spies, traitors, traitors everywhere! Not a moment's peace in my
own house!"

After Metivier's departure the old prince called his daughter in,
and the whole weight of his wrath fell on her. She was to blame that a
spy had been admitted. Had he not told her, yes, told her to make a
list, and not to admit anyone who was not on that list? Then why was
that scoundrel admitted? She was the cause of it all. With her, he
said, he could not have a moment's peace and could not die quietly.

"No, ma'am! We must part, we must part! Understand that,
understand it! I cannot endure any more," he said, and left the
room. Then, as if afraid she might find some means of consolation,
he returned and trying to appear calm added: "And don't imagine I have
said this in a moment of anger. I am calm. I have thought it over, and
it will be carried out--we must part; so find some place for
yourself...." But he could not restrain himself and with the virulence
of which only one who loves is capable, evidently suffering himself,
he shook his fists at her and screamed:

"If only some fool would marry her!" Then he slammed the door,
sent for Mademoiselle Bourienne, and subsided into his study.

At two o'clock the six chosen guests assembled for dinner.

These guests--the famous Count Rostopchin, Prince Lopukhin with
his nephew, General Chatrov an old war comrade of the prince's, and of
the younger generation Pierre and Boris Drubetskoy--awaited the prince
in the drawing room.

Boris, who had come to Moscow on leave a few days before, had been
anxious to be presented to Prince Nicholas Bolkonski, and had
contrived to ingratiate himself so well that the old prince in his
case made an exception to the rule of not receiving bachelors in his
house.

The prince's house did not belong to what is known as fashionable
society, but his little circle--though not much talked about in
town--was one it was more flattering to be received in than any other.
Boris had realized this the week before when the commander in chief in
his presence invited Rostopchin to dinner on St. Nicholas' Day, and
Rostopchin had replied that he could not come:

"On that day I always go to pay my devotions to the relics of Prince
Nicholas Bolkonski."

"Oh, yes, yes!" replied the commander in chief. "How is he?..."

The small group that assembled before dinner in the lofty
old-fashioned drawing room with its old furniture resembled the solemn
gathering of a court of justice. All were silent or talked in low
tones. Prince Nicholas came in serious and taciturn. Princess Mary
seemed even quieter and more diffident than usual. The guests were
reluctant to address her, feeling that she was in no mood for their
conversation. Count Rostopchin alone kept the conversation going,
now relating the latest town news, and now the latest political
gossip.

Lopukhin and the old general occasionally took part in the
conversation. Prince Bolkonski listened as a presiding judge
receives a report, only now and then, silently or by a brief word,
showing that he took heed of what was being reported to him. The
tone of the conversation was such as indicated that no one approved of
what was being done in the political world. Incidents were related
evidently confirming the opinion that everything was going from bad to
worse, but whether telling a story or giving an opinion the speaker
always stopped, or was stopped, at the point beyond which his
criticism might touch the sovereign himself.

At dinner the talk turned on the latest political news: Napoleon's
seizure of the Duke of Oldenburg's territory, and the Russian Note,
hostile to Napoleon, which had been sent to all the European courts.

"Bonaparte treats Europe as a pirate does a captured vessel," said
Count Rostopchin, repeating a phrase he had uttered several times
before. "One only wonders at the long-suffering or blindness of the
crowned heads. Now the Pope's turn has come and Bonaparte doesn't
scruple to depose the head of the Catholic Church--yet all keep
silent! Our sovereign alone has protested against the seizure of the
Duke of Oldenburg's territory, and even..." Count Rostopchin paused,
feeling that he had reached the limit beyond which censure was
impossible.

"Other territories have been offered in exchange for the Duchy of
Oldenburg," said Prince Bolkonski. "He shifts the Dukes about as I
might move my serfs from Bald Hills to Bogucharovo or my Ryazan
estates."

"The Duke of Oldenburg bears his misfortunes with admirable strength
of character and resignation," remarked Boris, joining in
respectfully.

He said this because on his journey from Petersburg he had had the
honor of being presented to the Duke. Prince Bolkonski glanced at
the young man as if about to say something in reply, but changed his
mind, evidently considering him too young.

"I have read our protests about the Oldenburg affair and was
surprised how badly the Note was worded," remarked Count Rostopchin in
the casual tone of a man dealing with a subject quite familiar to him.

Pierre looked at Rostopchin with naive astonishment, not
understanding why he should be disturbed by the bad composition of the
Note.

"Does it matter, Count, how the Note is worded," he asked, "so
long as its substance is forcible?"

"My dear fellow, with our five hundred thousand troops it should
be easy to have a good style," returned Count Rostopchin.

Pierre now understood the count's dissatisfaction with the wording
of the Note.

"One would have thought quill drivers enough had sprung up,"
remarked the old prince. "There in Petersburg they are always writing-
not notes only but even new laws. My Andrew there has written a
whole volume of laws for Russia. Nowadays they are always writing!"
and he laughed unnaturally.

There was a momentary pause in the conversation; the old general
cleared his throat to draw attention.

"Did you hear of the last event at the review in Petersburg? The
figure cut by the new French ambassador."

"Eh? Yes, I heard something: he said something awkward in His
Majesty's presence."

"His Majesty drew attention to the Grenadier division and to the
march past," continued the general, "and it seems the ambassador
took no notice and allowed himself to reply that: 'We in France pay no
attention to such trifles!' The Emperor did not condescend to reply.
At the next review, they say, the Emperor did not once deign to
address him."

All were silent. On this fact relating to the Emperor personally, it
was impossible to pass any judgment.

"Impudent fellows!" said the prince. "You know Metivier? I turned
him out of my house this morning. He was here; they admitted him spite
of my request that they should let no one in," he went on, glancing
angrily at his daughter.

And he narrated his whole conversation with the French doctor and
the reasons that convinced him that Metivier was a spy. Though these
reasons were very insufficient and obscure, no one made any rejoinder.

After the roast, champagne was served. The guests rose to
congratulate the old prince. Princess Mary, too, went round to him.

He gave her a cold, angry look and offered her his wrinkled,
clean-shaven cheek to kiss. The whole expression of his face told
her that he had not forgotten the morning's talk, that his decision
remained in force, and only the presence of visitors hindered his
speaking of it to her now.

When they went into the drawing room where coffee was served, the
old men sat together.

Prince Nicholas grew more animated and expressed his views on the
impending war.

He said that our wars with Bonaparte would be disastrous so long
as we sought alliances with the Germans and thrust ourselves into
European affairs, into which we had been drawn by the Peace of Tilsit.
"We ought not to fight either for or against Austria. Our political
interests are all in the East, and in regard to Bonaparte the only
thing is to have an armed frontier and a firm policy, and he will
never dare to cross the Russian frontier, as was the case in 1807!"

"How can we fight the French, Prince?" said Count Rostopchin. "Can
we arm ourselves against our teachers and divinities? Look at our
youths, look at our ladies! The French are our Gods: Paris is our
Kingdom of Heaven."

He began speaking louder, evidently to be heard by everyone.

"French dresses, French ideas, French feelings! There now, you
turned Metivier out by the scruff of his neck because he is a
Frenchman and a scoundrel, but our ladies crawl after him on their
knees. I went to a party last night, and there out of five ladies
three were Roman Catholics and had the Pope's indulgence for doing
woolwork on Sundays. And they themselves sit there nearly naked,
like the signboards at our Public Baths if I may say so. Ah, when
one looks at our young people, Prince, one would like to take Peter
the Great's old cudgel out of the museum and belabor them in the
Russian way till all the nonsense jumps out of them."

All were silent. The old prince looked at Rostopchin with a smile
and wagged his head approvingly.

"Well, good-by, your excellency, keep well!" said Rostopchin,
getting up with characteristic briskness and holding out his hand to
the prince.

"Good-by, my dear fellow.... His words are music, I never tire of
hearing him!" said the old prince, keeping hold of the hand and
offering his cheek to be kissed.

Following Rostopchin's example the others also rose.





CHAPTER IV


Princess Mary as she sat listening to the old men's talk and
faultfinding, understood nothing of what she heard; she only
wondered whether the guests had all observed her father's hostile
attitude toward her. She did not even notice the special attentions
and amiabilities shown her during dinner by Boris Drubetskoy, who
was visiting them for the third time already.

Princess Mary turned with absent-minded questioning look to
Pierre, who hat in hand and with a smile on his face was the last of
the guests to approach her after the old prince had gone out and
they were left alone in the drawing room.

"May I stay a little longer?" he said, letting his stout body sink
into an armchair beside her.

"Oh yes," she answered. "You noticed nothing?" her look asked.

Pierre was in an agreeable after-dinner mood. He looked straight
before him and smiled quietly.

"Have you known that young man long, Princess?" he asked.

"Who?"

"Drubetskoy."

"No, not long..."

"Do you like him?"

"Yes, he is an agreeable young man.... Why do you ask me that?" said
Princess Mary, still thinking of that morning's conversation with
her father.

"Because I have noticed that when a young man comes on leave from
Petersburg to Moscow it is usually with the object of marrying an
heiress."

"You have observed that?" said Princess Mary.

"Yes," returned Pierre with a smile, "and this young man now manages
matters so that where there is a wealthy heiress there he is too. I
can read him like a book. At present he is hesitating whom to lay
siege to--you or Mademoiselle Julie Karagina. He is very attentive
to her."

"He visits them?"

"Yes, very often. And do you know the new way of courting?" said
Pierre with an amused smile, evidently in that cheerful mood of good
humored raillery for which he so often reproached himself in his
diary.

"No," replied Princess Mary.

"To please Moscow girls nowadays one has to be melancholy. He is
very melancholy with Mademoiselle Karagina," said Pierre.

"Really?" asked Princess Mary, looking into Pierre's kindly face and
still thinking of her own sorrow. "It would be a relief," thought she,
"if I ventured to confide what I am feeling to someone. I should
like to tell everything to Pierre. He is kind and generous. It would
be a relief. He would give me advice."

"Would you marry him?"

"Oh, my God, Count, there are moments when I would marry anybody!"
she cried suddenly to her own surprise and with tears in her voice.
"Ah, how bitter it is to love someone near to you and to feel that..."
she went on in a trembling voice, "that you can do nothing for him but
grieve him, and to know that you cannot alter this. Then there is only
one thing left--to go away, but where could I go?"

"What is wrong? What is it, Princess?"

But without finishing what she was saying, Princess Mary burst
into tears.

"I don't know what is the matter with me today. Don't take any
notice--forget what I have said!"

Pierre's gaiety vanished completely. He anxiously questioned the
princess, asked her to speak out fully and confide her grief to him;
but she only repeated that she begged him to forget what she had said,
that she did not remember what she had said, and that she had no
trouble except the one he knew of--that Prince Andrew's marriage
threatened to cause a rupture between father and son.

"Have you any news of the Rostovs?" she asked, to change the
subject. "I was told they are coming soon. I am also expecting
Andrew any day. I should like them to meet here."

"And how does he now regard the matter?" asked Pierre, referring
to the old prince.

Princess Mary shook her head.

"What is to be done? In a few months the year will be up. The
thing is impossible. I only wish I could spare my brother the first
moments. I wish they would come sooner. I hope to be friends with her.
You have known them a long time," said Princess Mary. "Tell me
honestly the whole truth: what sort of girl is she, and what do you
think of her?--The real truth, because you know Andrew is risking so
much doing this against his father's will that I should like to
know..."

An undefined instinct told Pierre that these explanations, and
repeated requests to be told the whole truth, expressed ill-will on
the princess' part toward her future sister-in-law and a wish that
he should disapprove of Andrew's choice; but in reply he said what
he felt rather than what he thought.

"I don't know how to answer your question," he said, blushing
without knowing why. "I really don't know what sort of girl she is;
I can't analyze her at all. She is enchanting, but what makes her so I
don't know. That is all one can say about her."

Princess Mary sighed, and the expression on her face said: "Yes,
that's what I expected and feared."

"Is she clever?" she asked.

Pierre considered.

"I think not," he said, "and yet--yes. She does not deign to be
clever.... Oh no, she is simply enchanting, and that is all."

Princess Mary again shook her head disapprovingly.

"Ah, I so long to like her! Tell her so if you see her before I do."

"I hear they are expected very soon," said Pierre.

Princess Mary told Pierre of her plan to become intimate with her
future sister-in-law as soon as the Rostovs arrived and to try to
accustom the old prince to her.





CHAPTER V


Boris had not succeeded in making a wealthy match in Petersburg,
so with the same object in view he came to Moscow. There he wavered
between the two richest heiresses, Julie and Princess Mary. Though
Princess Mary despite her plainness seemed to him more attractive than
Julie, he, without knowing why, felt awkward about paying court to
her. When they had last met on the old prince's name day, she had
answered at random all his attempts to talk sentimentally, evidently
not listening to what he was saying.

Julie on the contrary accepted his attentions readily, though in a
manner peculiar to herself.

She was twenty-seven. After the death of her brothers she had become
very wealthy. She was by now decidedly plain, but thought herself
not merely as good-looking as before but even far more attractive. She
was confirmed in this delusion by the fact that she had become a
very wealthy heiress and also by the fact that the older she grew
the less dangerous she became to men, and the more freely they could
associate with her and avail themselves of her suppers, soirees, and
the animated company that assembled at her house, without incurring
any obligation. A man who would have been afraid ten years before of
going every day to the house when there was a girl of seventeen there,
for fear of compromising her and committing himself, would now go
boldly every day and treat her not as a marriageable girl but as a
sexless acquaintance.

That winter the Karagins' house was the most agreeable and
hospitable in Moscow. In addition to the formal evening and dinner
parties, a large company, chiefly of men, gathered there every day,
supping at midnight and staying till three in the morning. Julie never
missed a ball, a promenade, or a play. Her dresses were always of
the latest fashion. But in spite of that she seemed to be
disillusioned about everything and told everyone that she did not
believe either in friendship or in love, or any of the joys of life,
and expected peace only "yonder." She adopted the tone of one who
has suffered a great disappointment, like a girl who has either lost
the man she loved or been cruelly deceived by him. Though nothing of
the kind had happened to her she was regarded in that light, and had
even herself come to believe that she had suffered much in life.
This melancholy, which did not prevent her amusing herself, did not
hinder the young people who came to her house from passing the time
pleasantly. Every visitor who came to the house paid his tribute to
the melancholy mood of the hostess, and then amused himself with
society gossip, dancing, intellectual games, and bouts rimes, which
were in vogue at the Karagins'. Only a few of these young men, among
them Boris, entered more deeply into Julie's melancholy, and with
these she had prolonged conversations in private on the vanity of
all worldly things, and to them she showed her albums filled with
mournful sketches, maxims, and verses.

To Boris, Julie was particularly gracious: she regretted his early
disillusionment with life, offered him such consolation of
friendship as she who had herself suffered so much could render, and
showed him her album. Boris sketched two trees in the album and wrote:
"Rustic trees, your dark branches shed gloom and melancholy upon me."

On another page he drew a tomb, and wrote:

    La mort est secourable et la mort est tranquille.
    Ah! contre les douleurs il n'y a pas d'autre asile.*


*Death gives relief and death is peaceful.

 Ah! from suffering there is no other refuge.

Julia said this was charming

"There is something so enchanting in the smile of melancholy," she
said to Boris, repeating word for word a passage she had copied from a
book. "It is a ray of light in the darkness, a shade between sadness
and despair, showing the possibility of consolation."

In reply Boris wrote these lines:

    Aliment de poison d'une ame trop sensible,
    Toi, sans qui le bonheur me serait impossible,
    Tendre melancholie, ah, viens me consoler,
    Viens calmer les tourments de ma sombre retraite,
    Et mele une douceur secrete
    A ces pleurs que je sens couler.*


*Poisonous nourishment of a too sensitive soul,

 Thou, without whom happiness would for me be impossible,

 Tender melancholy, ah, come to console me,

 Come to calm the torments of my gloomy retreat,

 And mingle a secret sweetness

 With these tears that I feel to be flowing.


For Boris, Julie played most doleful nocturnes on her harp. Boris
read Poor Liza aloud to her, and more than once interrupted the
reading because of the emotions that choked him. Meeting at large
gatherings Julie and Boris looked on one another as the only souls who
understood one another in a world of indifferent people.

Anna Mikhaylovna, who often visited the Karagins, while playing
cards with the mother made careful inquiries as to Julie's dowry
(she was to have two estates in Penza and the Nizhegorod forests).
Anna Mikhaylovna regarded the refined sadness that united her son to
the wealthy Julie with emotion, and resignation to the Divine will.

"You are always charming and melancholy, my dear Julie," she said to
the daughter. "Boris says his soul finds repose at your house. He
has suffered so many disappointments and is so sensitive," said she to
the mother. "Ah, my dear, I can't tell you how fond I have grown of
Julie latterly," she said to her son. "But who could help loving
her? She is an angelic being! Ah, Boris, Boris!"--she paused. "And how
I pity her mother," she went on; "today she showed me her accounts and
letters from Penza (they have enormous estates there), and she, poor
thing, has no one to help her, and they do cheat her so!"

Boris smiled almost imperceptibly while listening to his mother.
He laughed blandly at her naive diplomacy but listened to what she had
to say, and sometimes questioned her carefully about the Penza and
Nizhegorod estates.

Julie had long been expecting a proposal from her melancholy
adorer and was ready to accept it; but some secret feeling of
repulsion for her, for her passionate desire to get married, for her
artificiality, and a feeling of horror at renouncing the possibility
of real love still restrained Boris. His leave was expiring. He
spent every day and whole days at the Karagins', and every day on
thinking the matter over told himself that he would propose
tomorrow. But in Julie's presence, looking at her red face and chin
(nearly always powdered), her moist eyes, and her expression of
continual readiness to pass at once from melancholy to an unnatural
rapture of married bliss, Boris could not utter the decisive words,
though in imagination he had long regarded himself as the possessor of
those Penza and Nizhegorod estates and had apportioned the use of
the income from them. Julie saw Boris' indecision, and sometimes the
thought occurred to her that she was repulsive to him, but her
feminine self-deception immediately supplied her with consolation, and
she told herself that he was only shy from love. Her melancholy,
however, began to turn to irritability, and not long before Boris'
departure she formed a definite plan of action. Just as Boris' leave
of absence was expiring, Anatole Kuragin made his appearance in
Moscow, and of course in the Karagins' drawing room, and Julie,
suddenly abandoning her melancholy, became cheerful and very attentive
to Kuragin.

"My dear," said Anna Mikhaylovna to her son, "I know from a reliable
source that Prince Vasili has sent his son to Moscow to get him
married to Julie. I am so fond of Julie that I should be sorry for
her. What do you think of it, my dear?"

The idea of being made a fool of and of having thrown away that
whole month of arduous melancholy service to Julie, and of seeing
all the revenue from the Penza estates which he had already mentally
apportioned and put to proper use fall into the hands of another,
and especially into the hands of that idiot Anatole, pained Boris.
He drove to the Karagins' with the firm intention of proposing.
Julie met him in a gay, careless manner, spoke casually of how she had
enjoyed yesterday's ball, and asked when he was leaving. Though
Boris had come intentionally to speak of his love and therefore
meant to be tender, he began speaking irritably of feminine
inconstancy, of how easily women can turn from sadness to joy, and how
their moods depend solely on who happens to be paying court to them.
Julie was offended and replied that it was true that a woman needs
variety, and the same thing over and over again would weary anyone.

"Then I should advise you..." Boris began, wishing to sting her; but
at that instant the galling thought occurred to him that he might have
to leave Moscow without having accomplished his aim, and have vainly
wasted his efforts--which was a thing he never allowed to happen.

He checked himself in the middle of the sentence, lowered his eyes
to avoid seeing her unpleasantly irritated and irresolute face, and
said:

"I did not come here at all to quarrel with you. On the contrary..."

He glanced at her to make sure that he might go on. Her irritability
had suddenly quite vanished, and her anxious, imploring eyes were
fixed on him with greedy expectation. "I can always arrange so as
not to see her often," thought Boris. "The affair has been begun and
must be finished!" He blushed hotly, raised his eyes to hers, and
said:

"You know my feelings for you!"

There was no need to say more: Julie's face shone with triumph and
self-satisfaction; but she forced Boris to say all that is said on
such occasions--that he loved her and had never loved any other
woman more than her. She knew that for the Penza estates and
Nizhegorod forests she could demand this, and she received what she
demanded.

The affianced couple, no longer alluding to trees that shed gloom
and melancholy upon them, planned the arrangements of a splendid house
in Petersburg, paid calls, and prepared everything for a brilliant
wedding.





CHAPTER VI


At the end of January old Count Rostov went to Moscow with Natasha
and Sonya. The countess was still unwell and unable to travel but it
was impossible to wait for her recovery. Prince Andrew was expected in
Moscow any day, the trousseau had to be ordered and the estate near
Moscow had to be sold, besides which the opportunity of presenting his
future daughter-in-law to old Prince Bolkonski while he was in
Moscow could not be missed. The Rostovs' Moscow house had not been
heated that winter and, as they had come only for a short time and the
countess was not with them, the count decided to stay with Marya
Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, who had long been pressing her hospitality
on them.

Late one evening the Rostovs' four sleighs drove into Marya
Dmitrievna's courtyard in the old Konyusheny street. Marya
Dmitrievna lived alone. She had already married off her daughter,
and her sons were all in the service.

She held herself as erect, told everyone her opinion as candidly,
loudly, and bluntly as ever, and her whole bearing seemed a reproach
to others for any weakness, passion, or temptation--the possibility of
which she did not admit. From early in the morning, wearing a dressing
jacket, she attended to her household affairs, and then she drove out:
on holy days to church and after the service to jails and prisons on
affairs of which she never spoke to anyone. On ordinary days, after
dressing, she received petitioners of various classes, of whom there
were always some. Then she had dinner, a substantial and appetizing
meal at which there were always three or four guests; after dinner she
played a game of boston, and at night she had the newspapers or a
new book read to her while she knitted. She rarely made an exception
and went out to pay visits, and then only to the most important
persons in the town.

She had not yet gone to bed when the Rostovs arrived and the
pulley of the hall door squeaked from the cold as it let in the
Rostovs and their servants. Marya Dmitrievna, with her spectacles
hanging down on her nose and her head flung back, stood in the hall
doorway looking with a stern, grim face at the new arrivals. One might
have thought she was angry with the travelers and would immediately
turn them out, had she not at the same time been giving careful
instructions to the servants for the accommodation of the visitors and
their belongings.

"The count's things? Bring them here," she said, pointing to the
portmanteaus and not greeting anyone. "The young ladies'? There to the
left. Now what are you dawdling for?" she cried to the maids. "Get the
samovar ready!... You've grown plumper and prettier," she remarked,
drawing Natasha (whose cheeks were glowing from the cold) to her by
the hood. "Foo! You are cold! Now take off your things, quick!" she
shouted to the count who was going to kiss her hand. "You're half
frozen, I'm sure! Bring some rum for tea!... Bonjour, Sonya dear!" she
added, turning to Sonya and indicating by this French greeting her
slightly contemptuous though affectionate attitude toward her.

When they came in to tea, having taken off their outdoor things
and tidied themselves up after their journey, Marya Dmitrievna
kissed them all in due order.

"I'm heartily glad you have come and are staying with me. It was
high time," she said, giving Natasha a significant look. "The old
man is here and his son's expected any day. You'll have to make his
acquaintance. But we'll speak of that later on," she added, glancing at
Sonya with a look that showed she did not want to speak of it in her
presence. "Now listen," she said to the count. "What do you want
tomorrow? Whom will you send for? Shinshin?" she crooked one of her
fingers. "The sniveling Anna Mikhaylovna? That's two. She's here
with her son. The son is getting married! Then Bezukhov, eh? He is
here too, with his wife. He ran away from her and she came galloping
after him. He dined with me on Wednesday. As for them"--and she
pointed to the girls--"tomorrow I'll take them first to the Iberian
shrine of the Mother of God, and then we'll drive to the
Super-Rogue's. I suppose you'll have everything new. Don't judge by
me: sleeves nowadays are this size! The other day young Princess Irina
Vasilevna came to see me; she was an awful sight--looked as if she had
put two barrels on her arms. You know not a day passes now without
some new fashion.... And what have you to do yourself?" she asked
the count sternly.

"One thing has come on top of another: her rags to buy, and now a
purchaser has turned up for the Moscow estate and for the house. If
you will be so kind, I'll fix a time and go down to the estate just
for a day, and leave my lassies with you."

"All right. All right. They'll be safe with me, as safe as in
Chancery! I'll take them where they must go, scold them a bit, and pet
them a bit," said Marya Dmitrievna, touching her goddaughter and
favorite, Natasha, on the cheek with her large hand.

Next morning Marya Dmitrievna took the young ladies to the Iberian
shrine of the Mother of God and to Madame Suppert-Roguet, who was so
afraid of Marya Dmitrievna that she always let her have costumes at
a loss merely to get rid of her. Marya Dmitrievna ordered almost the
whole trousseau. When they got home she turned everybody out of the
room except Nataisha, and then called her pet to her armchair.

"Well, now we'll talk. I congratulate you on your betrothed.
You've hooked a fine fellow! I am glad for your sake and I've known
him since he was so high." She held her hand a couple of feet from the
ground. Natasha blushed happily. "I like him and all his family. Now
listen! You know that old Prince Nicholas much dislikes his son's
marrying. The old fellow's crotchety! Of course Prince Andrew is not a
child and can shift without him, but it's not nice to enter a family
against a father's will. One wants to do it peacefully and lovingly.
You're a clever girl and you'll know how to manage. Be kind, and use
your wits. Then all will be well."

Natasha remained silent, from shyness Marya Dmitrievna supposed, but
really because she disliked anyone interfering in what touched her
love of Prince Andrew, which seemed to her so apart from all human
affairs that no one could understand it. She loved and knew Prince
Andrew, he loved her only, and was to come one of these days and
take her. She wanted nothing more.

"You see I have known him a long time and am also fond of Mary, your
future sister-in-law. 'Husbands' sisters bring up blisters,' but
this one wouldn't hurt a fly. She has asked me to bring you two
together. Tomorrow you'll go with your father to see her. Be very nice
and affectionate to her: you're younger than she. When he comes, he'll
find you already know his sister and father and are liked by them.
Am I right or not? Won't that be best?"

"Yes, it will," Natasha answered reluctantly.





CHAPTER VII


Next day, by Marya Dmitrievna's advice, Count Rostov took Natasha to
call on Prince Nicholas Bolkonski. The count did not set out
cheerfully on this visit, at heart he felt afraid. He well
remembered the last interview he had had with the old prince at the
time of the enrollment, when in reply to an invitation to dinner he
had had to listen to an angry reprimand for not having provided his
full quota of men. Natasha, on the other hand, having put on her
best gown, was in the highest spirits. "They can't help liking me,"
she thought. "Everybody always has liked me, and I am so willing to do
anything they wish, so ready to be fond of him--for being his
father--and of her--for being his sister--that there is no reason
for them not to like me..."

They drove up to the gloomy old house on the Vozdvizhenka and
entered the vestibule.

"Well, the Lord have mercy on us!" said the count, half in jest,
half in earnest; but Natasha noticed that her father was flurried on
entering the anteroom and inquired timidly and softly whether the
prince and princess were at home.

When they had been announced a perturbation was noticeable among the
servants. The footman who had gone to announce them was stopped by
another in the large hall and they whispered to one another. Then a
maidservant ran into the hall and hurriedly said something, mentioning
the princess. At last an old, cross looking footman came and announced
to the Rostovs that the prince was not receiving, but that the
princess begged them to walk up. The first person who came to meet the
visitors was Mademoiselle Bourienne. She greeted the father and
daughter with special politeness and showed them to the princess'
room. The princess, looking excited and nervous, her face flushed in
patches, ran in to meet the visitors, treading heavily, and vainly
trying to appear cordial and at ease. From the first glance Princess
Mary did not like Natasha. She thought her too fashionably dressed,
frivolously gay and vain. She did not at all realize that before
having seen her future sister-in-law she was prejudiced against her by
involuntary envy of her beauty, youth, and happiness, as well as by
jealousy of her brother's love for her. Apart from this insuperable
antipathy to her, Princess Mary was agitated just then because on
the Rostovs' being announced, the old prince had shouted that he did
not wish to see them, that Princess Mary might do so if she chose, but
they were not to be admitted to him. She had decided to receive
them, but feared lest the prince might at any moment indulge in some
freak, as he seemed much upset by the Rostovs' visit.

"There, my dear princess, I've brought you my songstress," said
the count, bowing and looking round uneasily as if afraid the old
prince might appear. "I am so glad you should get to know one
another... very sorry the prince is still ailing," and after a few
more commonplace remarks he rose. "If you'll allow me to leave my
Natasha in your hands for a quarter of an hour, Princess, I'll drive
round to see Anna Semenovna, it's quite near in the Dogs' Square,
and then I'll come back for her."

The count had devised this diplomatic ruse (as he afterwards told
his daughter) to give the future sisters-in-law an opportunity to talk
to one another freely, but another motive was to avoid the danger of
encountering the old prince, of whom he was afraid. He did not mention
this to his daughter, but Natasha noticed her father's nervousness and
anxiety and felt mortified by it. She blushed for him, grew still
angrier at having blushed, and looked at the princess with a bold
and defiant expression which said that she was not afraid of
anybody. The princess told the count that she would be delighted,
and only begged him to stay longer at Anna Semenovna's, and he
departed.

Despite the uneasy glances thrown at her by Princess Mary--who
wished to have a tete-a-tete with Natasha--Mademoiselle Bourienne
remained in the room and persistently talked about Moscow amusements
and theaters. Natasha felt offended by the hesitation she had
noticed in the anteroom, by her father's nervousness, and by the
unnatural manner of the princess who--she thought--was making a
favor of receiving her, and so everything displeased her. She did
not like Princess Mary, whom she thought very plain, affected, and
dry. Natasha suddenly shrank into herself and involuntarily assumed an
offhand air which alienated Princess Mary still more. After five
minutes of irksome, constrained conversation, they heard the sound
of slippered feet rapidly approaching. Princess Mary looked
frightened.

The door opened and the old prince, in a dress, ing gown and a white
nightcap, came in.

"Ah, madam!" he began. "Madam, Countess... Countess Rostova, if I am
not mistaken... I beg you to excuse me, to excuse me... I did not
know, madam. God is my witness, I did not know you had honored us with
a visit, and I came in such a costume only to see my daughter. I beg
you to excuse me... God is my witness, I didn't know-" he repeated,
stressing the word "God" so unnaturally and so unpleasantly that
Princess Mary stood with downcast eyes not daring to look either at
her father or at Natasha.

Nor did the latter, having risen and curtsied, know what to do.
Mademoiselle Bourienne alone smiled agreeably.

"I beg you to excuse me, excuse me! God is my witness, I did not
know," muttered the old man, and after looking Natasha over from
head to foot he went out.

Mademoiselle Bourienne was the first to recover herself after this
apparition and began speaking about the prince's indisposition.
Natasha and Princess Mary looked at one another in silence, and the
longer they did so without saying what they wanted to say, the greater
grew their antipathy to one another.

When the count returned, Natasha was impolitely pleased and hastened
to get away: at that moment she hated the stiff, elderly princess, who
could place her in such an embarrassing position and had spent half an
hour with her without once mentioning Prince Andrew. "I couldn't begin
talking about him in the presence of that Frenchwoman," thought
Natasha. The same thought was meanwhile tormenting Princess Mary.
She knew what she ought to have said to Natasha, but she had been
unable to say it because Mademoiselle Bourienne was in the way, and
because, without knowing why, she felt it very difficult to speak of
the marriage. When the count was already leaving the room, Princess
Mary went up hurriedly to Natasha, took her by the hand, and said with
a deep sigh:

"Wait, I must..."

Natasha glanced at her ironically without knowing why.

"Dear Natalie," said Princess Mary, "I want you to know that I am
glad my brother has found happiness...."

She paused, feeling that she was not telling the truth. Natasha
noticed this and guessed its reason.

"I think, Princess, it is not convenient to speak of that now,"
she said with external dignity and coldness, though she felt the tears
choking her.

"What have I said and what have I done?" thought she, as soon as she
was out of the room.

They waited a long time for Natasha to come to dinner that day.
She sat in her room crying like a child, blowing her nose and sobbing.
Sonya stood beside her, kissing her hair.

"Natasha, what is it about?" she asked. "What do they matter to you?
It will all pass, Natasha."

"But if you only knew how offensive it was... as if I..."

"Don't talk about it, Natasha. It wasn't your fault so why should
you mind? Kiss me," said Sonya.

Natasha raised her head and, kissing her friend on the lips, pressed
her wet face against her.

"I can't tell you, I don't know. No one's to blame," said Natasha-
"It's my fault. But it all hurts terribly. Oh, why doesn't he
come?..."

She came in to dinner with red eyes. Marya Dmitrievna, who knew
how the prince had received the Rostovs, pretended not to notice how
upset Natasha was and jested resolutely and loudly at table with the
count and the other guests.





CHAPTER VIII


That evening the Rostovs went to the Opera, for which Marya
Dmitrievna had taken a box.

Natasha did not want to go, but could not refuse Marya
Dmitrievna's kind offer which was intended expressly for her. When she
came ready dressed into the ballroom to await her father, and
looking in the large mirror there saw that she was pretty, very
pretty, she felt even more sad, but it was a sweet, tender sadness.

"O God, if he were here now I would not behave as I did then, but
differently. I would not be silly and afraid of things, I would simply
embrace him, cling to him, and make him look at me with those
searching inquiring eyes with which he has so often looked at me,
and then I would make him laugh as he used to laugh. And his eyes--how
I see those eyes!" thought Natasha. "And what do his father and sister
matter to me? I love him alone, him, him, with that face and those
eyes, with his smile, manly and yet childlike.... No, I had better not
think of him; not think of him but forget him, quite forget him for
the present. I can't bear this waiting and I shall cry in a minute!"
and she turned away from the glass, making an effort not to cry.
"And how can Sonya love Nicholas so calmly and quietly and wait so
long and so patiently?" thought she, looking at Sonya, who also came
in quite ready, with a fan in her hand. "No, she's altogether
different. I can't!"

Natasha at that moment felt so softened and tender that it was not
enough for her to love and know she was beloved, she wanted now, at
once, to embrace the man she loved, to speak and hear from him words
of love such as filled her heart. While she sat in the carriage beside
her father, pensively watching the lights of the street lamps
flickering on the frozen window, she felt still sadder and more in
love, and forgot where she was going and with whom. Having fallen into
the line of carriages, the Rostovs' carriage drove up to the
theater, its wheels squeaking over the snow. Natasha and Sonya,
holding up their dresses, jumped out quickly. The count got out helped
by the footmen, and, passing among men and women who were entering and
the program sellers, they all three went along the corridor to the
first row of boxes. Through the closed doors the music was already
audible.

"Natasha, your hair!..." whispered Sonya.

An attendant deferentially and quickly slipped before the ladies and
opened the door of their box. The music sounded louder and through the
door rows of brightly lit boxes in which ladies sat with bare arms and
shoulders, and noisy stalls brilliant with uniforms, glittered
before their eyes. A lady entering the next box shot a glance of
feminine envy at Natasha. The curtain had not yet risen and the
overture was being played. Natasha, smoothing her gown, went in with
Sonya and sat down, scanning the brilliant tiers of boxes opposite.
A sensation she had not experienced for a long time--that of
hundreds of eyes looking at her bare arms and neck--suddenly
affected her both agreeably and disagreeably and called up a whole
crowd of memories, desires and emotions associated with that feeling.

The two remarkably pretty girls, Natasha and Sonya, with Count
Rostov who had not been seen in Moscow for a long time, attracted
general attention. Moreover, everybody knew vaguely of Natasha's
engagement to Prince Andrew, and knew that the Rostovs had lived in
the country ever since, and all looked with curiosity at a fiancee who
was making one of the best matches in Russia.

Natasha's looks, as everyone told her, had improved in the
country, and that evening thanks to her agitation she was particularly
pretty. She struck those who saw her by her fullness of life and
beauty, combined with her indifference to everything about her. Her
black eyes looked at the crowd without seeking anyone, and her
delicate arm, bare to above the elbow, lay on the velvet edge of the
box, while, evidently unconsciously, she opened and closed her hand in
time to the music, crumpling her program. "Look, there's Alenina,"
said Sonya, "with her mother, isn't it?"

"Dear me, Michael Kirilovich has grown still stouter!" remarked
the count.

"Look at our Anna Mikhaylovna--what a headdress she has on!"

"The Karagins, Julie--and Boris with them. One can see at once
that they're engaged...."

"Drubetskoy has proposed?"

"Oh yes, I heard it today," said Shinshin, coming into the
Rostovs' box.

Natasha looked in the direction in which her father's eyes were
turned and saw Julie sitting beside her mother with a happy look on
her face and a string of pearls round her thick red neck--which
Natasha knew was covered with powder. Behind them, wearing a smile and
leaning over with an ear to Julie's mouth, was Boris' handsome
smoothly brushed head. He looked the Rostovs from under his brows
and said something, smiling, to his betrothed.

"They are talking about us, about me and him!" thought Natasha. "And
he no doubt is calming her jealousy of me. They needn't trouble
themselves! If only they knew how little I am concerned about any of
them."

Behind them sat Anna Mikhaylovna wearing a green headdress and
with a happy look of resignation to the will of God on her face. Their
box was pervaded by that atmosphere of an affianced couple which
Natasha knew so well and liked so much. She turned away and suddenly
remembered all that had been so humiliating in her morning's visit.

"What right has he not to wish to receive me into his family? Oh,
better not think of it--not till he comes back!" she told herself, and
began looking at the faces, some strange and some familiar, in the
stalls. In the front, in the very center, leaning back against the
orchestra rail, stood Dolokhov in a Persian dress, his curly hair
brushed up into a huge shock. He stood in full view of the audience,
well aware that he was attracting everyone's attention, yet as much at
ease as though he were in his own room. Around him thronged Moscow's
most brilliant young men, whom he evidently dominated.

The count, laughing, nudged the blushing Sonya and pointed to her
former adorer.

"Do you recognize him?" said he. "And where has he sprung from?"
he asked, turning to Shinshin. "Didn't he vanish somewhere?"

"He did," replied Shinshin. "He was in the Caucasus and ran away
from there. They say he has been acting as minister to some ruling
prince in Persia, where he killed the Shah's brother. Now all the
Moscow ladies are mad about him! It's 'Dolokhov the Persian' that does
it! We never hear a word but Dolokhov is mentioned. They swear by him,
they offer him to you as they would a dish of choice sterlet. Dolokhov
and Anatole Kuragin have turned all our ladies' heads."

A tall, beautiful woman with a mass of plaited hair and much exposed
plump white shoulders and neck, round which she wore a double string
of large pearls, entered the adjoining box rustling her heavy silk
dress and took a long time settling into her place.

Natasha involuntarily gazed at that neck, those shoulders, and
pearls and coiffure, and admired the beauty of the shoulders and the
pearls. While Natasha was fixing her gaze on her for the second time
the lady looked round and, meeting the count's eyes, nodded to him and
smiled. She was the Countess Bezukhova, Pierre's wife, and the
count, who knew everyone in society, leaned over and spoke to her.

"Have you been here long, Countess?" he inquired. "I'll call, I'll
call to kiss your hand. I'm here on business and have brought my girls
with me. They say Semenova acts marvelously. Count Pierre never used
to forget us. Is he here?"

"Yes, he meant to look in," answered Helene, and glanced attentively
at Natasha.

Count Rostov resumed his seat.

"Handsome, isn't she?" he whispered to Natasha.

"Wonderful!" answered Natasha. "She's a woman one could easily
fall in love with."

Just then the last chords of the overture were heard and the
conductor tapped with his stick. Some latecomers took their seats in
the stalls, and the curtain rose.

As soon as it rose everyone in the boxes and stalls became silent,
and all the men, old and young, in uniform and evening dress, and
all the women with gems on their bare flesh, turned their whole
attention with eager curiosity to the stage. Natasha too began to look
at it.





CHAPTER IX


The floor of the stage consisted of smooth boards, at the sides
was some painted cardboard representing trees, and at the back was a
cloth stretched over boards. In the center of the stage sat some girls
in red bodices and white skirts. One very fat girl in a white silk
dress sat apart on a low bench, to the back of which a piece of
green cardboard was glued. They all sang something. When they had
finished their song the girl in white went up to the prompter's box
and a man with tight silk trousers over his stout legs, and holding
a plume and a dagger, went up to her and began singing, waving his
arms about.

First the man in the tight trousers sang alone, then she sang,
then they both paused while the orchestra played and the man
fingered the hand of the girl in white, obviously awaiting the beat to
start singing with her. They sang together and everyone in the theater
began clapping and shouting, while the man and woman on the stage--who
represented lovers--began smiling, spreading out their arms, and
bowing.

After her life in the country, and in her present serious mood,
all this seemed grotesque and amazing to Natasha. She could not follow
the opera nor even listen to the music; she saw only the painted
cardboard and the queerly dressed men and women who moved, spoke,
and sang so strangely in that brilliant light. She knew what it was
all meant to represent, but it was so pretentiously false and
unnatural that she first felt ashamed for the actors and then amused
at them. She looked at the faces of the audience, seeking in them
the same sense of ridicule and perplexity she herself experienced, but
they all seemed attentive to what was happening on the stage, and
expressed delight which to Natasha seemed feigned. "I suppose it has
to be like this!" she thought. She kept looking round in turn at the
rows of pomaded heads in the stalls and then at the seminude women
in the boxes, especially at Helene in the next box, who--apparently
quite unclothed--sat with a quiet tranquil smile, not taking her
eyes off the stage. And feeling the bright light that flooded the
whole place and the warm air heated by the crowd, Natasha little by
little began to pass into a state of intoxication she had not
experienced for a long while. She did not realize who and where she
was, nor what was going on before her. As she looked and thought,
the strangest fancies unexpectedly and disconnectedly passed through
her mind: the idea occurred to her of jumping onto the edge of the box
and singing the air the actress was singing, then she wished to
touch with her fan an old gentleman sitting not far from her, then
to lean over to Helene and tickle her.

At a moment when all was quiet before the commencement of a song,
a door leading to the stalls on the side nearest the Rostovs' box
creaked, and the steps of a belated arrival were heard. "There's
Kuragin!" whispered Shinshin. Countess Bezukhova turned smiling to the
newcomer, and Natasha, following the direction of that look, saw an
exceptionally handsome adjutant approaching their box with a
self-assured yet courteous bearing. This was Anatole Kuragin whom
she had seen and noticed long ago at the ball in Petersburg. He was
now in an adjutant's uniform with one epaulet and a shoulder knot.
He moved with a restrained swagger which would have been ridiculous
had he not been so good-looking and had his handsome face not worn
such an expression of good-humored complacency and gaiety. Though
the performance was proceeding, he walked deliberately down the
carpeted gangway, his sword and spurs slightly jingling and his
handsome perfumed head held high. Having looked at Natasha he
approached his sister, laid his well gloved hand on the edge of her
box, nodded to her, and leaning forward asked a question, with a
motion toward Natasha.

"Mais charmante!" said he, evidently referring to Natasha, who did
not exactly hear his words but understood them from the movement of
his lips. Then he took his place in the first row of the stalls and
sat down beside Dolokhov, nudging with his elbow in a friendly and
offhand way that Dolokhov whom others treated so fawningly. He
winked at him gaily, smiled, and rested his foot against the orchestra
screen.

"How like the brother is to the sister," remarked the count. "And
how handsome they both are!"

Shinshin, lowering his voice, began to tell the count of some
intrigue of Kuragin's in Moscow, and Natasha tried to overhear it just
because he had said she was "charmante."

The first act was over. In the stalls everyone began moving about,
going out and coming in.

Boris came to the Rostovs' box, received their congratulations
very simply, and raising his eyebrows with an absent-minded smile
conveyed to Natasha and Sonya his fiancee's invitation to her wedding,
and went away. Natasha with a gay, coquettish smile talked to him, and
congratulated on his approaching wedding that same Boris with whom she
had formerly been in love. In the state of intoxication she was in,
everything seemed simple and natural.

The scantily clad Helene smiled at everyone in the same way, and
Natasha gave Boris a similar smile.

Helene's box was filled and surrounded from the stalls by the most
distinguished and intellectual men, who seemed to vie with one another
in their wish to let everyone see that they knew her.

During the whole of that entr'acte Kuragin stood with Dolokhov in
front of the orchestra partition, looking at the Rostovs' box. Natasha
knew he was talking about her and this afforded her pleasure. She even
turned so that he should see her profile in what she thought was its
most becoming aspect. Before the beginning of the second act Pierre
appeared in the stalls. The Rostovs had not seen him since their
arrival. His face looked sad, and he had grown still stouter since
Natasha last saw him. He passed up to the front rows, not noticing
anyone. Anatole went up to him and began speaking to him, looking at
and indicating the Rostovs' box. On seeing Natasha Pierre grew
animated and, hastily passing between the rows, came toward their box.
When he got there he leaned on his elbows and, smiling, talked to
her for a long time. While conversing with Pierre, Natasha heard a
man's voice in Countess Bezukhova's box and something told her it
was Kuragin. She turned and their eyes met. Almost smiling, he gazed
straight into her eyes with such an enraptured caressing look that
it seemed strange to be so near him, to look at him like that, to be
so sure he admired her, and not to be acquainted with him.

In the second act there was scenery representing tombstones, there
was a round hole in the canvas to represent the moon, shades were
raised over the footlights, and from horns and contrabass came deep
notes while many people appeared from right and left wearing black
cloaks and holding things like daggers in their hands. They began
waving their arms. Then some other people ran in and began dragging
away the maiden who had been in white and was now in light blue.
They did not drag her away at once, but sang with her for a long
time and then at last dragged her off, and behind the scenes something
metallic was struck three times and everyone knelt down and sang a
prayer. All these things were repeatedly interrupted by the
enthusiastic shouts of the audience.

During this act every time Natasha looked toward the stalls she
saw Anatole Kuragin with an arm thrown across the back of his chair,
staring at her. She was pleased to see that he was captivated by her
and it did not occur to her that there was anything wrong in it.

When the second act was over Countess Bezukhova rose, turned to
the Rostovs' box--her whole bosom completely exposed--beckoned the old
count with a gloved finger, and paying no attention to those who had
entered her box began talking to him with an amiable smile.

"Do make me acquainted with your charming daughters," said she. "The
whole town is singing their praises and I don't even know then!"

Natasha rose and curtsied to the splendid countess. She was so
pleased by praise from this brilliant beauty that she blushed with
pleasure.

"I want to become a Moscovite too, now," said Helene. "How is it
you're not ashamed to bury such pearls in the country?"

Countess Bezukhova quite deserved her reputation of being a
fascinating woman. She could say what she did not think--especially
what was flattering--quite simply and naturally.

"Dear count, you must let me look after your daughters! Though I
am not staying here long this time--nor are you--I will try to amuse
them. I have already heard much of you in Petersburg and wanted to get
to know you," said she to Natasha with her stereotyped and lovely
smile. "I had heard about you from my page, Drubetskoy. Have you heard
he is getting married? And also from my husband's friend Bolkonski,
Prince Andrew Bolkonski," she went on with special emphasis,
implying that she knew of his relation to Natasha. To get better
acquainted she asked that one of the young ladies should come into her
box for the rest of the performance, and Natasha moved over to it.

The scene of the third act represented a palace in which many
candles were burning and pictures of knights with short beards hung on
the walls. In the middle stood what were probably a king and a
queen. The king waved his right arm and, evidently nervous, sang
something badly and sat down on a crimson throne. The maiden who had
been first in white and then in light blue, now wore only a smock, and
stood beside the throne with her hair down. She sang something
mournfully, addressing the queen, but the king waved his arm severely,
and men and women with bare legs came in from both sides and began
dancing all together. Then the violins played very shrilly and merrily
and one of the women with thick bare legs and thin arms, separating
from the others, went behind the wings, adjusted her bodice,
returned to the middle of the stage, and began jumping and striking
one foot rapidly against the other. In the stalls everyone clapped and
shouted "bravo!" Then one of the men went into a corner of the
stage. The cymbals and horns in the orchestra struck up more loudly,
and this man with bare legs jumped very high and waved his feet
about very rapidly. (He was Duport, who received sixty thousand rubles
a year for this art.) Everybody in the stalls, boxes, and galleries
began clapping and shouting with all their might, and the man
stopped and began smiling and bowing to all sides. Then other men
and women danced with bare legs. Then the king again shouted to the
sound of music, and they all began singing. But suddenly a storm
came on, chromatic scales and diminished sevenths were heard in the
orchestra, everyone ran off, again dragging one of their number
away, and the curtain dropped. Once more there was a terrible noise
and clatter among the audience, and with rapturous faces everyone
began shouting: "Duport! Duport! Duport!" Natasha no longer thought
this strange. She look about with pleasure, smiling joyfully.

"Isn't Duport delightful?" Helene asked her.

"Oh, yes," replied Natasha.





CHAPTER X


During the entr'acte a whiff of cold air came into Helene's box, the
door opened, and Anatole entered, stooping and trying not to brush
against anyone.

"Let me introduce my brother to you," said Helene, her eyes shifting
uneasily from Natasha to Anatole.

Natasha turned her pretty little head toward the elegant young
officer and smiled at him over her bare shoulder. Anatole, who was
as handsome at close quarters as at a distance, sat down beside her
and told her he had long wished to have this happiness--ever since the
Naryshkins' ball in fact, at which he had had the well-remembered
pleasure of seeing her. Kuragin was much more sensible and simple with
women than among men. He talked boldly and naturally, and Natasha
was strangely and agreeably struck by the fact that there was
nothing formidable in this man about whom there was so much talk,
but that on the contrary his smile was most naive, cheerful, and
good-natured.

Kuragin asked her opinion of the performance and told her how at a
previous performance Semenova had fallen down on the stage.

"And do you know, Countess," he said, suddenly addressing her as
an old, familiar acquaintance, "we are getting up a costume
tournament; you ought to take part in it! It will be great fun. We
shall all meet at the Karagins'! Please come! No! Really, eh?" said
he.

While saying this he never removed his smiling eyes from her face,
her neck, and her bare arms. Natasha knew for certain that he was
enraptured by her. This pleased her, yet his presence made her feel
constrained and oppressed. When she was not looking at him she felt
that he was looking at her shoulders, and she involuntarily caught his
eye so that he should look into hers rather than this. But looking
into his eyes she was frightened, realizing that there was not that
barrier of modesty she had always felt between herself and other
men. She did not know how it was that within five minutes she had come
to feel herself terribly near to this man. When she turned away she
feared he might seize her from behind by her bare arm and kiss her
on the neck. They spoke of most ordinary things, yet she felt that
they were closer to one another than she had ever been to any man.
Natasha kept turning to Helene and to her father, as if asking what it
all meant, but Helene was engaged in conversation with a general and
did not answer her look, and her father's eyes said nothing but what
they always said: "Having a good time? Well, I'm glad of it!"

During one of these moments of awkward silence when Anatole's
prominent eyes were gazing calmly and fixedly at her, Natasha, to
break the silence, asked him how he liked Moscow. She asked the
question and blushed. She felt all the time that by talking to him she
was doing something improper. Anatole smiled as though to encourage
her.

"At first I did not like it much, because what makes a town pleasant
ce sont les jolies femmes,* isn't that so? But now I like it very much
indeed," he said, looking at her significantly. "You'll come to the
costume tournament, Countess? Do come!" and putting out his hand to
her bouquet and dropping his voice, he added, "You will be the
prettiest there. Do come, dear countess, and give me this flower as
a pledge!"


*Are the pretty women.


Natasha did not understand what he was saying any more than he did
himself, but she felt that his incomprehensible words had an
improper intention. She did not know what to say and turned away as if
she had not heard his remark. But as soon as she had turned away she
felt that he was there, behind, so close behind her.

"How is he now? Confused? Angry? Ought I to put it right?" she asked
herself, and she could not refrain from turning round. She looked
straight into his eyes, and his nearness, self-assurance, and the
good-natured tenderness of his smile vanquished her. She smiled just
as he was doing, gazing straight into his eyes. And again she felt
with horror that no barrier lay between him and her.

The curtain rose again. Anatole left the box, serene and gay.
Natasha went back to her father in the other box, now quite submissive
to the world she found herself in. All that was going on before her
now seemed quite natural, but on the other hand all her previous
thoughts of her betrothed, of Princess Mary, or of life in the country
did not once recur to her mind and were as if belonging to a remote
past.

In the fourth act there was some sort of devil who sang waving his
arm about, till the boards were withdrawn from under him and he
disappeared down below. That was the only part of the fourth act
that Natasha saw. She felt agitated and tormented, and the cause of
this was Kuragin whom she could not help watching. As they were
leaving the theater Anatole came up to them, called their carriage,
and helped them in. As he was putting Natasha in he pressed her arm
above the elbow. Agitated and flushed she turned round. He was looking
at her with glittering eyes, smiling tenderly.


Only after she had reached home was Natasha able clearly to think
over what had happened to her, and suddenly remembering Prince
Andrew she was horrified, and at tea to which all had sat down after
the opera, she gave a loud exclamation, flushed, and ran out of the
room.

"O God! I am lost!" she said to herself. "How could I let him?"
She sat for a long time hiding her flushed face in her hands trying to
realize what had happened to her, but was unable either to
understand what had happened or what she felt. Everything seemed dark,
obscure, and terrible. There in that enormous, illuminated theater
where the bare-legged Duport, in a tinsel-decorated jacket, jumped
about to the music on wet boards, and young girls and old men, and the
nearly naked Helene with her proud, calm smile, rapturously cried
"bravo!"--there in the presence of that Helene it had all seemed clear
and simple; but now, alone by herself, it was incomprehensible.
"What is it? What was that terror I felt of him? What is this
gnawing of conscience I am feeling now?" she thought.

Only to the old countess at night in bed could Natasha have told all
she was feeling. She knew that Sonya with her severe and simple
views would either not understand it at all or would be horrified at
such a confession. So Natasha tried to solve what was torturing her by
herself.

"Am I spoiled for Andrew's love or not?" she asked herself, and with
soothing irony replied: "What a fool I am to ask that! What did happen
to me? Nothing! I have done nothing, I didn't lead him on at all.
Nobody will know and I shall never see him again," she told herself.
"So it is plain that nothing has happened and there is nothing to
repent of, and Andrew can love me still. But why 'still?' O God, why
isn't he here?" Natasha quieted herself for a moment, but again some
instinct told her that though all this was true, and though nothing
had happened, yet the former purity of her love for Prince Andrew
had perished. And again in imagination she went over her whole
conversation with Kuragin, and again saw the face, gestures, and
tender smile of that bold handsome man when he pressed her arm.





CHAPTER XI

Anatole Kuragin was staying in Moscow because his father had sent
him away from Petersburg, where he had been spending twenty thousand
rubles a year in cash, besides running up debts for as much more,
which his creditors demanded from his father.

His father announced to him that he would now pay half his debts for
the last time, but only on condition that he went to Moscow as
adjutant to the commander in chief--a post his father had procured for
him--and would at last try to make a good match there. He indicated to
him Princess Mary and Julie Karagina.

Anatole consented and went to Moscow, where he put up at Pierre's
house. Pierre received him unwillingly at first, but got used to him
after a while, sometimes even accompanied him on his carousals, and
gave him money under the guise of loans.

As Shinshin had remarked, from the time of his arrival Anatole had
turned the heads of the Moscow ladies, especially by the fact that
he slighted them and plainly preferred the gypsy girls and French
actresses--with the chief of whom, Mademoiselle George, he was said to
be on intimate relations. He had never missed a carousal at
Danilov's or other Moscow revelers', drank whole nights through,
outvying everyone else, and was at all the balls and parties of the
best society. There was talk of his intrigues with some of the ladies,
and he flirted with a few of them at the balls. But he did not run
after the unmarried girls, especially the rich heiresses who were most
of them plain. There was a special reason for this, as he had got
married two years before--a fact known only to his most intimate
friends. At that time while with his regiment in Poland, a Polish
landowner of small means had forced him to marry his daughter. Anatole
had very soon abandoned his wife and, for a payment which he agreed to
send to his father-in-law, had arranged to be free to pass himself off
as a bachelor.

Anatole was always content with his position, with himself, and with
others. He was instinctively and thoroughly convinced that was
impossible for him to live otherwise than as he did and that he had
never in his life done anything base. He was incapable of
considering how his actions might affect others or what the
consequences of this or that action of his might be. He was
convinced that, as a duck is so made that it must live in water, so
God had made him such that he must spend thirty thousand rubles a year
and always occupy a prominent position in society. He believed this so
firmly that others, looking at him, were persuaded of it too and did
not refuse him either a leading place in society or money, which he
borrowed from anyone and everyone and evidently would not repay.

He was not a gambler, at any rate he did not care about winning.
He was not vain. He did not mind what people thought of him. Still
less could he be accused of ambition. More than once he had vexed
his father by spoiling his own career, and he laughed at
distinctions of all kinds. He was not mean, and did not refuse
anyone who asked of him. All he cared about was gaiety and women,
and as according to his ideas there was nothing dishonorable in
these tastes, and he was incapable of considering what the
gratification of his tastes entailed for others, he honestly
considered himself irreproachable, sincerely despised rogues and bad
people, and with a tranquil conscience carried his head high.

Rakes, those male Magdalenes, have a secret feeling of innocence
similar to that which female Magdalenes have, based on the same hope
of forgiveness. "All will be forgiven her, for she loved much; and all
will be forgiven him, for he enjoyed much."

Dolokhov, who had reappeared that year in Moscow after his exile and
his Persian adventures, and was leading a life of luxury, gambling,
and dissipation, associated with his old Petersburg comrade Kuragin
and made use of him for his own ends.

Anatole was sincerely fond of Dolokhov for his cleverness and
audacity. Dolokhov, who needed Anatole Kuragin's name, position, and
connections as a bait to draw rich young men into his gambling set,
made use of him and amused himself at his expense without letting
the other feel it. Apart from the advantage he derived from Anatole,
the very process of dominating another's will was in itself a
pleasure, a habit, and a necessity to Dolokhov.

Natasha had made a strong impression on Kuragin. At supper after the
opera he described to Dolokhov with the air of a connoisseur the
attractions of her arms, shoulders, feet, and hair and expressed his
intention of making love to her. Anatole had no notion and was
incapable of considering what might come of such love-making, as he
never had any notion of the outcome of any of his actions.

"She's first-rate, my dear fellow, but not for us," replied
Dolokhov.

"I will tell my sister to ask her to dinner," said Anatole. "Eh?"

"You'd better wait till she's married...."

"You know, I adore little girls, they lose their heads at once,"
pursued Anatole.

"You have been caught once already by a 'little girl,'" said
Dolokhov who knew of Kuragin's marriage. "Take care!"

"Well, that can't happen twice! Eh?" said Anatole, with a
good-humored laugh.





CHAPTER XII


The day after the opera the Rostovs went nowhere and nobody came
to see them. Marya Dmitrievna talked to the count about something
which they concealed from Natasha. Natasha guessed they were talking
about the old prince and planning something, and this disquieted and
offended her. She was expecting Prince Andrew any moment and twice
that day sent a manservant to the Vozdvizhenka to ascertain whether he
had come. He had not arrived. She suffered more now than during her
first days in Moscow. To her impatience and pining for him were now
added the unpleasant recollection of her interview with Princess
Mary and the old prince, and a fear and anxiety of which she did not
understand the cause. She continually fancied that either he would
never come or that something would happen to her before he came. She
could no longer think of him by herself calmly and continuously as she
had done before. As soon as she began to think of him, the
recollection of the old prince, of Princess Mary, of the theater,
and of Kuragin mingled with her thoughts. The question again presented
itself whether she was not guilty, whether she had not already
broken faith with Prince Andrew, and again she found herself recalling
to the minutest detail every word, every gesture, and every shade in
the play of expression on the face of the man who had been able to
arouse in her such an incomprehensible and terrifying feeling. To
the family Natasha seemed livelier than usual, but she was far less
tranquil and happy than before.

On Sunday morning Marya Dmitrievna invited her visitors to Mass at
her parish church--the Church of the Assumption built over the
graves of victims of the plague.

"I don't like those fashionable churches," she said, evidently
priding herself on her independence of thought. "God is the same every
where. We have an excellent priest, he conducts the service decently
and with dignity, and the deacon is the same. What holiness is there
in giving concerts in the choir? I don't like it, it's just
self-indulgence!"

Marya Dmitrievna liked Sundays and knew how to keep them. Her
whole house was scrubbed and cleaned on Saturdays; neither she nor the
servants worked, and they all wore holiday dress and went to church.
At her table there were extra dishes at dinner, and the servants had
vodka and roast goose or suckling pig. But in nothing in the house was
the holiday so noticeable as in Marya Dmitrievna's broad, stern
face, which on that day wore an invariable look of solemn festivity.

After Mass, when they had finished their coffee in the dining room
where the loose covers had been removed from the furniture, a
servant announced that the carriage was ready, and Marya Dmitrievna
rose with a stern air. She wore her holiday shawl, in which she paid
calls, and announced that she was going to see Prince Nicholas
Bolkonski to have an explanation with him about Natasha.

After she had gone, a dressmaker from Madame Suppert-Roguet waited
on the Rostovs, and Natasha, very glad of this diversion, having
shut herself into a room adjoining the drawing room, occupied
herself trying on the new dresses. Just as she had put on a bodice
without sleeves and only tacked together, and was turning her head
to see in the glass how the back fitted, she heard in the drawing room
the animated sounds of her father's voice and another's--a woman's-
that made her flush. It was Helene. Natasha had not time to take off
the bodice before the door opened and Countess Bezukhova, dressed in a
purple velvet gown with a high collar, came into the room beaming with
good-humored amiable smiles.

"Oh, my enchantress!" she cried to the blushing Natasha.
"Charming! No, this is really beyond anything, my dear count," said
she to Count Rostov who had followed her in. "How can you live in
Moscow and go nowhere? No, I won't let you off! Mademoiselle George
will recite at my house tonight and there'll be some people, and if
you don't bring your lovely girls--who are prettier than
Mademoiselle George--I won't know you! My husband is away in Tver or I
would send him to fetch you. You must come. You positively must!
Between eight and nine."

She nodded to the dressmaker, whom she knew and who had curtsied
respectfully to her, and seated herself in an armchair beside the
looking glass, draping the folds of her velvet dress picturesquely.
She did not cease chattering good-naturedly and gaily, continually
praising Natasha's beauty. She looked at Natasha's dresses and praised
them, as well as a new dress of her own made of "metallic gauze,"
which she had received from Paris, and advised Natasha to have one
like it.

"But anything suits you, my charmer!" she remarked.

A smile of pleasure never left Natasha's face. She felt happy and as
if she were blossoming under the praise of this dear Countess
Bezukhova who had formerly seemed to her so unapproachable and
important and was now so kind to her. Natasha brightened up and felt
almost in love with this woman, who was so beautiful and so kind.
Helene for her part was sincerely delighted with Natasha and wished to
give her a good time. Anatole had asked her to bring him and Natasha
together, and she was calling on the Rostovs for that purpose. The
idea of throwing her brother and Natasha together amused her.

Though at one time, in Petersburg, she had been annoyed with Natasha
for drawing Boris away, she did not think of that now, and in her
own way heartily wished Natasha well. As she was leaving the Rostovs
she called her protegee aside.

"My brother dined with me yesterday--we nearly died of laughter-
he ate nothing and kept sighing for you, my charmer! He is madly,
quite madly, in love with you, my dear."

Natasha blushed scarlet when she heard this.

"How she blushes, how she blushes, my pretty!" said Helene. "You
must certainly come. If you love somebody, my charmer, that is not a
reason to shut yourself up. Even if you are engaged, I am sure your
fiance would wish you to go into society rather than be bored to
death."

"So she knows I am engaged, and she and her husband Pierre--that
good Pierre--have talked and laughed about this. So it's all right."
And again, under Helene's influence, what had seemed terrible now
seemed simple and natural. "And she is such a grande dame, so kind,
and evidently likes me so much. And why not enjoy myself?" thought
Natasha, gazing at Helene with wide-open, wondering eyes.

Marya Dmitrievna came back to dinner taciturn and serious, having
evidently suffered a defeat at the old prince's. She was still too
agitated by the encounter to be able to talk of the affair calmly.
In answer to the count's inquiries she replied that things were all
right and that she would tell about it next day. On hearing of
Countess Bezukhova's visit and the invitation for that evening,
Marya Dmitrievna remarked:

"I don't care to have anything to do with Bezukhova and don't advise
you to; however, if you've promised--go. It will divert your
thoughts," she added, addressing Natasha.





CHAPTER XIII


Count Rostov took the girls to Countess Bezukhova's. There were a
good many people there, but nearly all strangers to Natasha. Count
Rostov was displeased to see that the company consisted almost
entirely of men and women known for the freedom of their conduct.
Mademoiselle George was standing in a corner of the drawing room
surrounded by young men. There were several Frenchmen present, among
them Metivier who from the time Helene reached Moscow had been an
intimate in her house. The count decided not to sit down to cards or
let his girls out of his sight and to get away as soon as Mademoiselle
George's performance was over.

Anatole was at the door, evidently on the lookout for the Rostovs.
Immediately after greeting the count he went up to Natasha and
followed her. As soon as she saw him she was seized by the same
feeling she had had at the opera--gratified vanity at his admiration
of her and fear at the absence of a moral barrier between them.

Helene welcomed Natasha delightedly and was loud in admiration of
her beauty and her dress. Soon after their arrival Mademoiselle George
went out of the room to change her costume. In the drawing room people
began arranging the chairs and taking their seats. Anatole moved a
chair for Natasha and was about to sit down beside her, but the count,
who never lost sight of her, took the seat himself. Anatole sat down
behind her.

Mademoiselle George, with her bare, fat, dimpled arms, and a red
shawl draped over one shoulder, came into the space left vacant for
her, and assumed an unnatural pose. Enthusiastic whispering was
audible.

Mademoiselle George looked sternly and gloomily at the audience
and began reciting some French verses describing her guilty love for
her son. In some places she raised her voice, in others she whispered,
lifting her head triumphantly; sometimes she paused and uttered hoarse
sounds, rolling her eyes.

"Adorable! divine! delicious!" was heard from every side.

Natasha looked at the fat actress, but neither saw nor heard nor
understood anything of what went on before her. She only felt
herself again completely borne away into this strange senseless world-
so remote from her old world--a world in which it was impossible to
know what was good or bad, reasonable or senseless. Behind her sat
Anatole, and conscious of his proximity she experienced a frightened
sense of expectancy.

After the first monologue the whole company rose and surrounded
Mademoiselle George, expressing their enthusiasm.

"How beautiful she is!" Natasha remarked to her father who had
also risen and was moving through the crowd toward the actress.

"I don't think so when I look at you!" said Anatole, following
Natasha. He said this at a moment when she alone could hear him.
"You are enchanting... from the moment I saw you I have never
ceased..."

"Come, come, Natasha!" said the count, as he turned back for his
daughter. "How beautiful she is!" Natasha without saying anything
stepped up to her father and looked at him with surprised inquiring
eyes.

After giving several recitations, Mademoiselle George left, and
Countess Bezukhova asked her visitors into the ballroom.

The count wished to go home, but Helene entreated him not to spoil
her improvised ball, and the Rostovs stayed on. Anatole asked
Natasha for a valse and as they danced he pressed her waist and hand
and told her she was bewitching and that he loved her. During the
ecossaise, which she also danced with him, Anatole said nothing when
they happened to be by themselves, but merely gazed at her. Natasha
lifted her frightened eyes to him, but there was such confident
tenderness in his affectionate look and smile that she could not,
whilst looking at him, say what she had to say. She lowered her eyes.

"Don't say such things to me. I am betrothed and love another,"
she said rapidly.... She glanced at him.

Anatole was not upset or pained by what she had said.

"Don't speak to me of that! What can I do?" said he. "I tell you I
am madly, madly, in love with you! Is it my fault that you are
enchanting?... It's our turn to begin."

Natasha, animated and excited, looked about her with wide-open
frightened eyes and seemed merrier than usual. She understood hardly
anything that went on that evening. They danced the ecossaise and
the Grossvater. Her father asked her to come home, but she begged to
remain. Wherever she went and whomever she was speaking to, she felt
his eyes upon her. Later on she recalled how she had asked her
father to let her go to the dressing room to rearrange her dress, that
Helene had followed her and spoken laughingly of her brother's love,
and that she again met Anatole in the little sitting room. Helene
had disappeared leaving them alone, and Anatole had taken her hand and
said in a tender voice:

"I cannot come to visit you but is it possible that I shall never
see you? I love you madly. Can I never...?" and, blocking her path, he
brought his face close to hers.

His large, glittering, masculine eyes were so close to hers that she
saw nothing but them.

"Natalie?" he whispered inquiringly while she felt her hands being
painfully pressed. "Natalie?"

"I don't understand. I have nothing to say," her eyes replied.

Burning lips were pressed to hers, and at the same instant she
felt herself released, and Helene's footsteps and the rustle of her
dress were heard in the room. Natasha looked round at her, and then,
red and trembling, threw a frightened look of inquiry at Anatole and
moved toward the door.

"One word, just one, for God's sake!" cried Anatole.

She paused. She so wanted a word from him that would explain to
her what had happened and to which she could find no answer.

"Natalie, just a word, only one!" he kept repeating, evidently not
knowing what to say and he repeated it till Helene came up to them.

Helene returned with Natasha to the drawing room. The Rostovs went
away without staying for supper.

After reaching home Natasha did not sleep all night. She was
tormented by the insoluble question whether she loved Anatole or
Prince Andrew. She loved Prince Andrew--she remembered distinctly
how deeply she loved him. But she also loved Anatole, of that there
was no doubt. "Else how could all this have happened?" thought she.
"If, after that, I could return his smile when saying good-by, if I
was able to let it come to that, it means that I loved him from the
first. It means that he is kind, noble, and splendid, and I could
not help loving him. What am I to do if I love him and the other one
too?" she asked herself, unable to find an answer to these terrible
questions.





CHAPTER XIV


Morning came with its cares and bustle. Everyone got up and began to
move about and talk, dressmakers came again. Marya Dmitrievna
appeared, and they were called to breakfast. Natasha kept looking
uneasily at everybody with wide-open eyes, as if wishing to
intercept every glance directed toward her, and tried to appear the
same as usual.

After breakfast, which was her best time, Marya Dmitrievna sat
down in her armchair and called Natasha and the count to her.

"Well, friends, I have now thought the whole matter over and this is
my advice," she began. "Yesterday, as you know, I went to see Prince
Bolkonski. Well, I had a talk with him.... He took it into his head to
begin shouting, but I am not one to be shouted down. I said what I had
to say!"

"Well, and he?" asked the count.

"He? He's crazy... he did not want to listen. But what's the use
of talking? As it is we have worn the poor girl out," said Marya
Dmitrievna. "My advice to you is finish your business and go back home
to Otradnoe... and wait there."

"Oh, no!" exclaimed Natasha.

"Yes, go back," said Marya Dmitrievna, "and wait there. If your
betrothed comes here now--there will be no avoiding a quarrel; but
alone with the old man he will talk things over and then come on to
you."

Count Rostov approved of this suggestion, appreciating its
reasonableness. If the old man came round it would be all the better
to visit him in Moscow or at Bald Hills later on; and if not, the
wedding, against his wishes, could only be arranged at Otradnoe.

"That is perfectly true. And I am sorry I went to see him and took
her," said the old count.

"No, why be sorry? Being here, you had to pay your respects. But
if he won't--that's his affair," said Marya Dmitrievna, looking for
something in her reticule. "Besides, the trousseau is ready, so
there is nothing to wait for; and what is not ready I'll send after
you. Though I don't like letting you go, it is the best way. So go,
with God's blessing!"

Having found what she was looking for in the reticule she handed
it to Natasha. It was a letter from Princess Mary.

"She has written to you. How she torments herself, poor thing! She's
afraid you might think that she does not like you."

"But she doesn't like me," said Natasha.

"Don't talk nonsense!" cried Marya Dmitrievna.

"I shan't believe anyone, I know she doesn't like me," replied
Natasha boldly as she took the letter, and her face expressed a cold
and angry resolution that caused Marya Dmitrievna to look at her
more intently and to frown.

"Don't answer like that, my good girl!" she said. "What I say is
true! Write an answer!" Natasha did not reply and went to her own room
to read Princess Mary's letter.

Princess Mary wrote that she was in despair at the
misunderstanding that had occurred between them. Whatever her father's
feelings might be, she begged Natasha to believe that she could not
help loving her as the one chosen by her brother, for whose
happiness she was ready to sacrifice everything.

"Do not think, however," she wrote, "that my father is
ill-disposed toward you. He is an invalid and an old man who must be
forgiven; but he is good and magnanimous and will love her who makes
his son happy." Princess Mary went on to ask Natasha to fix a time
when she could see her again.

After reading the letter Natasha sat down at the writing table to
answer it. "Dear Princess," she wrote in French quickly and
mechanically, and then paused. What more could she write after all
that had happened the evening before? "Yes, yes! All that has
happened, and now all is changed," she thought as she sat with the
letter she had begun before her. "Must I break off with him? Must I
really? That's awful..." and to escape from these dreadful thoughts
she went to Sonya and began sorting patterns with her.

After dinner Natasha went to her room and again took up Princess
Mary's letter. "Can it be that it is all over?" she thought. "Can it
be that all this has happened so quickly and has destroyed all that
went before?" She recalled her love for Prince Andrew in all its
former strength, and at the same time felt that she loved Kuragin. She
vividly pictured herself as Prince Andrew's wife, and the scenes of
happiness with him she had so often repeated in her imagination, and
at the same time, aglow with excitement, recalled every detail of
yesterday's interview with Anatole.

"Why could that not be as well?" she sometimes asked herself in
complete bewilderment. "Only so could I be completely happy; but now I
have to choose, and I can't be happy without either of them. Only,"
she thought, "to tell Prince Andrew what has happened or to hide it
from him are both equally impossible. But with that one nothing is
spoiled. But am I really to abandon forever the joy of Prince Andrew's
love, in which I have lived so long?"

"Please, Miss!" whispered a maid entering the room with a mysterious
air. "A man told me to give you this-" and she handed Natasha a
letter.

"Only, for Christ's sake..." the girl went on, as Natasha, without
thinking, mechanically broke the seal and read a love letter from
Anatole, of which, without taking in a word, she understood only
that it was a letter from him--from the man she loved. Yes, she
loved him, or else how could that have happened which had happened?
And how could she have a love letter from him in her hand?

With trembling hands Natasha held that passionate love letter
which Dolokhov had composed for Anatole, and as she read it she
found in it an echo of all that she herself imagined she was feeling.

"Since yesterday evening my fate has been sealed; to be loved by you
or to die. There is no other way for me," the letter began. Then he
went on to say that he knew her parents would not give her to him--for
this there were secret reasons he could reveal only to her--but that
if she loved him she need only say the word yes, and no human power
could hinder their bliss. Love would conquer all. He would steal her
away and carry her off to the ends of the earth.

"Yes, yes! I love him!" thought Natasha, reading the letter for
the twentieth time and finding some peculiarly deep meaning in each
word of it.

That evening Marya Dmitrievna was going to the Akharovs' and
proposed to take the girls with her. Natasha, pleading a headache,
remained at home.





CHAPTER XV


On returning late in the evening Sonya went to Natasha's room, and
to her surprise found her still dressed and asleep on the sofa. Open
on the table, beside her lay Anatole's letter. Sonya picked it up
and read it.

As she read she glanced at the sleeping Natasha, trying to find in
her face an explanation of what she was reading, but did not find
it. Her face was calm, gentle, and happy. Clutching her breast to keep
herself from choking, Sonya, pale and trembling with fear and
agitation, sat down in an armchair and burst into tears.

"How was it I noticed nothing? How could it go so far? Can she
have left off loving Prince Andrew? And how could she let Kuragin go
to such lengths? He is a deceiver and a villain, that's plain! What
will Nicholas, dear noble Nicholas, do when he hears of it? So this is
the meaning of her excited, resolute, unnatural look the day before
yesterday, yesterday, and today," thought Sonya. "But it can't be that
she loves him! She probably opened the letter without knowing who it
was from. Probably she is offended by it. She could not do such a
thing!"

Sonya wiped away her tears and went up to Natasha, again scanning
her face.

"Natasha!" she said, just audibly.

Natasha awoke and saw Sonya.

"Ah, you're back?"

And with the decision and tenderness that often come at the moment
of awakening, she embraced her friend, but noticing Sonya's look of
embarrassment, her own face expressed confusion and suspicion.

"Sonya, you've read that letter?" she demanded.

"Yes," answered Sonya softly.

Natasha smiled rapturously.

"No, Sonya, I can't any longer!" she said. "I can't hide it from you
any longer. You know, we love one another! Sonya, darling, he
writes... Sonya..."

Sonya stared open-eyed at Natasha, unable to believe her ears.

"And Bolkonski?" she asked.

"Ah, Sonya, if you only knew how happy I am!" cried Natasha. "You
don't know what love is...."

"But, Natasha, can that be all over?"

Natasha looked at Sonya with wide-open eyes as if she could not
grasp the question.

"Well, then, are you refusing Prince Andrew?" said Sonya.

"Oh, you don't understand anything! Don't talk nonsense, just
listen!" said Natasha, with momentary vexation.

"But I can't believe it," insisted Sonya. "I don't understand. How
is it you have loved a man for a whole year and suddenly... Why, you
have only seen him three times! Natasha, I don't believe you, you're
joking! In three days to forget everything and so..."

"Three days?" said Natasha. "It seems to me I've loved him a hundred
years. It seems to me that I have never loved anyone before. You can't
understand it.... Sonya, wait a bit, sit here," and Natasha embraced
and kissed her.

"I had heard that it happens like this, and you must have heard it
too, but it's only now that I feel such love. It's not the same as
before. As soon as I saw him I felt he was my master and I his
slave, and that I could not help loving him. Yes, his slave!
Whatever he orders I shall do. You don't understand that. What can I
do? What can I do, Sonya?" cried Natasha with a happy yet frightened
expression.

"But think what you are doing," cried Sonya. "I can't leave it
like this. This secret correspondence... How could you let him go so
far?" she went on, with a horror and disgust she could hardly conceal.

"I told you that I have no will," Natasha replied. "Why can't you
understand? I love him!"

"Then I won't let it come to that... I shall tell!" cried Sonya,
bursting into tears.

"What do you mean? For God's sake... If you tell, you are my enemy!"
declared Natasha. "You want me to be miserable, you want us to be
separated...."

When she saw Natasha's fright, Sonya shed tears of shame and pity
for her friend.

"But what has happened between you?" she asked. "What has he said to
you? Why doesn't he come to the house?"

Natasha did not answer her questions.

"For God's sake, Sonya, don't tell anyone, don't torture me,"
Natasha entreated. "Remember no one ought to interfere in such
matters! I have confided in you...."

"But why this secrecy? Why doesn't he come to the house?" asked
Sonya. "Why doesn't he openly ask for your hand? You know Prince
Andrew gave you complete freedom--if it is really so; but I don't
believe it! Natasha, have you considered what these secret reasons can
be?"

Natasha looked at Sonya with astonishment. Evidently this question
presented itself to her mind for the first time and she did not know
how to answer it.

"I don't know what the reasons are. But there must be reasons!"

Sonya sighed and shook her head incredulously.

"If there were reasons..." she began.

But Natasha, guessing her doubts, interrupted her in alarm.

"Sonya, one can't doubt him! One can't, one can't! Don't you
understand?" she cried.

"Does he love you?"

"Does he love me?" Natasha repeated with a smile of pity at her
friend's lack of comprehension. "Why, you have read his letter and you
have seen him."

"But if he is dishonorable?"

"He! dishonorable? If you only knew!" exclaimed Natasha.

"If he is an honorable man he should either declare his intentions
or cease seeing you; and if you won't do this, I will. I will write to
him, and I will tell Papa!" said Sonya resolutely.

"But I can't live without him!" cried Natasha.

"Natasha, I don't understand you. And what are you saying! Think
of your father and of Nicholas."

"I don't want anyone, I don't love anyone but him. How dare you
say he is dishonorable? Don't you know that I love him?" screamed
Natasha. "Go away, Sonya! I don't want to quarrel with you, but go,
for God's sake go! You see how I am suffering!" Natasha cried angrily,
in a voice of despair and repressed irritation. Sonya burst into
sobs and ran from the room.

Natasha went to the table and without a moment's reflection wrote
that answer to Princess Mary which she had been unable to write all
the morning. In this letter she said briefly that all their
misunderstandings were at an end; that availing herself of the
magnanimity of Prince Andrew who when he went abroad had given her her
freedom, she begged Princess Mary to forget everything and forgive her
if she had been to blame toward her, but that she could not be his wife.
At that moment this all seemed quite easy, simple, and clear to Natasha.


On Friday the Rostovs were to return to the country, but on
Wednesday the count went with the prospective purchaser to his
estate near Moscow.

On the day the count left, Sonya and Natasha were invited to a big
dinner party at the Karagins', and Marya Dmitrievna took them there.
At that party Natasha again met Anatole, and Sonya noticed that she
spoke to him, trying not to be overheard, and that all through
dinner she was more agitated than ever. When they got home Natasha was
the first to begin the explanation Sonya expected.

"There, Sonya, you were talking all sorts of nonsense about him,"
Natasha began in a mild voice such as children use when they wish to
be praised. "We have had an explanation today."

"Well, what happened? What did he say? Natasha, how glad I am you're
not angry with me! Tell me everything--the whole truth. What did he
say?"

Natasha became thoughtful.

"Oh, Sonya, if you knew him as I do! He said... He asked me what I
had promised Bolkonski. He was glad I was free to refuse him."

Sonya sighed sorrowfully.

"But you haven't refused Bolkonski?" said she.

"Perhaps I have. Perhaps all is over between me and Bolkonski. Why
do you think so badly of me?"

"I don't think anything, only I don't understand this..."

"Wait a bit, Sonya, you'll understand everything. You'll see what
a man he is! Now don't think badly of me or of him. I don't think
badly of anyone: I love and pity everybody. But what am I to do?"

Sonya did not succumb to the tender tone Natasha used toward her.
The more emotional and ingratiating the expression of Natasha's face
became, the more serious and stern grew Sonya's.

"Natasha," said she, "you asked me not to speak to you, and I
haven't spoken, but now you yourself have begun. I don't trust him,
Natasha. Why this secrecy?"

"Again, again!" interrupted Natasha.

"Natasha, I am afraid for you!"

"Afraid of what?"

"I am afraid you're going to your ruin," said Sonya resolutely,
and was herself horrified at what she had said.

Anger again showed in Natasha's face.

"And I'll go to my ruin, I will, as soon as possible! It's not
your business! It won't be you, but I, who'll suffer. Leave me
alone, leave me alone! I hate you!"

"Natasha!" moaned Sonya, aghast.

"I hate you, I hate you! You're my enemy forever!" And Natasha ran
out of the room.

Natasha did not speak to Sonya again and avoided her. With the
same expression of agitated surprise and guilt she went about the
house, taking up now one occupation, now another, and at once
abandoning them.

Hard as it was for Sonya, she watched her friend and did not let her
out of her sight.

The day before the count was to return, Sonya noticed that Natasha
sat by the drawingroom window all the morning as if expecting
something and that she made a sign to an officer who drove past,
whom Sonya took to be Anatole.

Sonya began watching her friend still more attentively and noticed
that at dinner and all that evening Natasha was in a strange and
unnatural state. She answered questions at random, began sentences she
did not finish, and laughed at everything.

After tea Sonya noticed a housemaid at Natasha's door timidly
waiting to let her pass. She let the girl go in, and then listening at
the door learned that another letter had been delivered.

Then suddenly it became clear to Sonya that Natasha had some
dreadful plan for that evening. Sonya knocked at her door. Natasha did
not let her in.

"She will run away with him!" thought Sonya. "She is capable of
anything. There was something particularly pathetic and resolute in
her face today. She cried as she said good-by to Uncle," Sonya
remembered. "Yes, that's it, she means to elope with him, but what
am I to do?" thought she, recalling all the signs that clearly
indicated that Natasha had some terrible intention. "The count is
away. What am I to do? Write to Kuragin demanding an explanation?
But what is there to oblige him to reply? Write to Pierre, as Prince
Andrew asked me to in case of some misfortune?... But perhaps she
really has already refused Bolkonski--she sent a letter to Princess
Mary yesterday. And Uncle is away...." To tell Marya Dmitrievna who
had such faith in Natasha seemed to Sonya terrible. "Well, anyway,"
thought Sonya as she stood in the dark passage, "now or never I must
prove that I remember the family's goodness to me and that I love
Nicholas. Yes! If I don't sleep for three nights I'll not leave this
passage and will hold her back by force and will and not let the
family be disgraced," thought she.





CHAPTER XVI


Anatole had lately moved to Dolokhov's. The plan for Natalie
Rostova's abduction had been arranged and the preparations made by
Dolokhov a few days before, and on the day that Sonya, after listening
at Natasha's door, resolved to safeguard her, it was to have been
put into execution. Natasha had promised to come out to Kuragin at the
back porch at ten that evening. Kuragin was to put her into a troyka
he would have ready and to drive her forty miles to the village of
Kamenka, where an unfrocked priest was in readiness to perform a
marriage ceremony over them. At Kamenka a relay of horses was to
wait which would take them to the Warsaw highroad, and from there they
would hasten abroad with post horses.

Anatole had a passport, an order for post horses, ten thousand
rubles he had taken from his sister and another ten thousand
borrowed with Dolokhov's help.

Two witnesses for the mock marriage--Khvostikov, a retired petty
official whom Dolokhov made use of in his gambling transactions, and
Makarin, a retired hussar, a kindly, weak fellow who had an
unbounded affection for Kuragin--were sitting at tea in Dolokhov's
front room.

In his large study, the walls of which were hung to the ceiling with
Persian rugs, bearskins, and weapons, sat Dolokhov in a traveling
cloak and high boots, at an open desk on which lay abacus and some
bundles of paper money. Anatole, with uniform unbuttoned, walked to
and fro from the room where the witnesses were sitting, through the
study to the room behind, where his French valet and others were
packing the last of his things. Dolokhov was counting the money and
noting something down.

"Well," he said, "Khvostikov must have two thousand."

"Give it to him, then," said Anatole.

"Makarka" (their name for Makarin) "will go through fire and water
for you for nothing. So here are our accounts all settled," said
Dolokhov, showing him the memorandum. "Is that right?"

"Yes, of course," returned Anatole, evidently not listening to
Dolokhov and looking straight before him with a smile that did not
leave his face.

Dolokhov banged down the or of his and turned to Anatole with an
ironic smile:

"Do you know? You'd really better drop it all. There's still time!"

"Fool," retorted Anatole. "Don't talk nonsense! If you only
knew... it's the devil knows what!"

"No, really, give it up!" said Dolokhov. "I am speaking seriously.
It's no joke, this plot you've hatched."

"What, teasing again? Go to the devil! Eh?" said Anatole, making a
grimace. "Really it's no time for your stupid jokes," and he left
the room.

Dolokhov smiled contemptuously and condescendingly when Anatole
had gone out.

"You wait a bit," he called after him. "I'm not joking, I'm
talking sense. Come here, come here!"

Anatole returned and looked at Dolokhov, trying to give him his
attention and evidently submitting to him involuntarily.

"Now listen to me. I'm telling you this for the last time. Why
should I joke about it? Did I hinder you? Who arranged everything
for you? Who found the priest and got the passport? Who raised the
money? I did it all."

"Well, thank you for it. Do you think I am not grateful?" And
Anatole sighed and embraced Dolokhov.

"I helped you, but all the same I must tell you the truth; it is a
dangerous business, and if you think about it--a stupid business.
Well, you'll carry her off--all right! Will they let it stop at
that? It will come out that you're already married. Why, they'll
have you in the criminal court...."

"Oh, nonsense, nonsense!" Anatole ejaculated and again made a
grimace. "Didn't I explain to you? What?" And Anatole, with the
partiality dull-witted people have for any conclusion they have
reached by their own reasoning, repeated the argument he had already
put to Dolokhov a hundred times. "Didn't I explain to you that I
have come to this conclusion: if this marriage is invalid," he went
on, crooking one finger, "then I have nothing to answer for; but if it
is valid, no matter! Abroad no one will know anything about it.
Isn't that so? And don't talk to me, don't, don't."

"Seriously, you'd better drop it! You'll only get yourself into a
mess!"

"Go to the devil!" cried Anatole and, clutching his hair, left the
room, but returned at once and dropped into an armchair in front of
Dolokhov with his feet turned under him. "It's the very devil! What?
Feel how it beats!" He took Dolokhov's hand and put it on his heart.
"What a foot, my dear fellow! What a glance! A goddess!" he added in
French. "What?"

Dolokhov with a cold smile and a gleam in his handsome insolent eyes
looked at him--evidently wishing to get some more amusement out of
him.

"Well and when the money's gone, what then?"

"What then? Eh?" repeated Anatole, sincerely perplexed by a
thought of the future. "What then?... Then, I don't know.... But why
talk nonsense!" He glanced at his watch. "It's time!"

Anatole went into the back room.

"Now then! Nearly ready? You're dawdling!" he shouted to the
servants.

Dolokhov put away the money, called a footman whom he ordered to
bring something for them to eat and drink before the journey, and went
into the room where Khvostikov and Makarin were sitting.

Anatole lay on the sofa in the study leaning on his elbow and
smiling pensively, while his handsome lips muttered tenderly to
himself.

"Come and eat something. Have a drink!" Dolokhov shouted to him from
the other room.

"I don't want to," answered Anatole continuing to smile.

"Come! Balaga is here."

Anatole rose and went into the dining room. Balaga was a famous
troyka driver who had known Dolokhov and Anatole some six years and
had given them good service with his troykas. More than once when
Anatole's regiment was stationed at Tver he had taken him from Tver in
the evening, brought him to Moscow by daybreak, and driven him back
again the next night. More than once he had enabled Dolokhov to escape
when pursued. More than once he had driven them through the town
with gypsies and "ladykins" as he called the cocottes. More than
once in their service he had run over pedestrians and upset vehicles
in the streets of Moscow and had always been protected from the
consequences by "my gentlemen" as he called them. He had ruined more
than one horse in their service. More than once they had beaten him,
and more than once they had made him drunk on champagne and Madeira,
which he loved; and he knew more than one thing about each of them
which would long ago have sent an ordinary man to Siberia. They
often called Balaga into their orgies and made him drink and dance
at the gypsies', and more than one thousand rubles of their money
had passed through his hands. In their service he risked his skin
and his life twenty times a year, and in their service had lost more
horses than the money he had from them would buy. But he liked them;
liked that mad driving at twelve miles an hour, liked upsetting a
driver or running down a pedestrian, and flying at full gallop through
the Moscow streets. He liked to hear those wild, tipsy shouts behind
him: "Get on! Get on!" when it was impossible to go any faster. He
liked giving a painful lash on the neck to some peasant who, more dead
than alive, was already hurrying out of his way. "Real gentlemen!"
he considered them.

Anatole and Dolokhov liked Balaga too for his masterly driving and
because he liked the things they liked. With others Balaga
bargained, charging twenty-five rubles for a two hours' drive, and
rarely drove himself, generally letting his young men do so. But
with "his gentlemen" he always drove himself and never demanded
anything for his work. Only a couple of times a year--when he knew
from their valets that they had money in hand--he would turn up of a
morning quite sober and with a deep bow would ask them to help him.
The gentlemen always made him sit down.

"Do help me out, Theodore Ivanych, sir," or "your excellency," he
would say. "I am quite out of horses. Let me have what you can to go
to the fair."

And Anatole and Dolokhov, when they had money, would give him a
thousand or a couple of thousand rubles.

Balaga was a fair-haired, short, and snub-nosed peasant of about
twenty-seven; red-faced, with a particularly red thick neck,
glittering little eyes, and a small beard. He wore a fine,
dark-blue, silk-lined cloth coat over a sheepskin.

On entering the room now he crossed himself, turning toward the
front corner of the room, and went up to Dolokhov, holding out a
small, black hand.

"Theodore Ivanych!" he said, bowing.

"How d'you do, friend? Well, here he is!"

"Good day, your excellency!" he said, again holding out his hand
to Anatole who had just come in.

"I say, Balaga," said Anatole, putting his hands on the man's
shoulders, "do you care for me or not? Eh? Now, do me a service....
What horses have you come with? Eh?"

"As your messenger ordered, your special beasts," replied Balaga.

"Well, listen, Balaga! Drive all three to death but get me there
in three hours. Eh?"

"When they are dead, what shall I drive?" said Balaga with a wink.

"Mind, I'll smash your face in! Don't make jokes!" cried Anatole,
suddenly rolling his eyes.

"Why joke?" said the driver, laughing. "As if I'd grudge my
gentlemen anything! As fast as ever the horses can gallop, so fast
we'll go!"

"Ah!" said Anatole. "Well, sit down."

"Yes, sit down!" said Dolokhov.

"I'll stand, Theodore Ivanych."

"Sit down; nonsense! Have a drink!" said Anatole, and filled a large
glass of Madeira for him.

The driver's eyes sparkled at the sight of the wine. After
refusing it for manners' sake, he drank it and wiped his mouth with
a red silk handkerchief he took out of his cap.

"And when are we to start, your excellency?"

"Well..." Anatole looked at his watch. "We'll start at once. Mind,
Balaga! You'll get there in time? Eh?"

"That depends on our luck in starting, else why shouldn't we be
there in time?" replied Balaga. "Didn't we get you to Tver in seven
hours? I think you remember that, your excellency?"

"Do you know, one Christmas I drove from Tver," said Anatole,
smilingly at the recollection and turning to Makarin who gazed
rapturously at him with wide-open eyes. "Will you believe it, Makarka,
it took one's breath away, the rate we flew. We came across a train of
loaded sleighs and drove right over two of them. Eh?"

"Those were horses!" Balaga continued the tale. "That time I'd
harnessed two young side horses with the bay in the shafts," he went
on, turning to Dolokhov. "Will you believe it, Theodore Ivanych, those
animals flew forty miles? I couldn't hold them in, my hands grew
numb in the sharp frost so that I threw down the reins--'Catch hold
yourself, your excellency!' says I, and I just tumbled on the bottom
of the sleigh and sprawled there. It wasn't a case of urging them
on, there was no holding them in till we reached the place. The devils
took us there in three hours! Only the near one died of it."





CHAPTER XVII


Anatole went out of the room and returned a few minutes later
wearing a fur coat girt with a silver belt, and a sable cap jauntily
set on one side and very becoming to his handsome face. Having
looked in a mirror, and standing before Dolokhov in the same pose he
had assumed before it, he lifted a glass of wine.

"Well, good-by, Theodore. Thank you for everything and farewell!"
said Anatole. "Well, comrades and friends..." he considered for a
moment "...of my youth, farewell!" he said, turning to Makarin and the
others.

Though they were all going with him, Anatole evidently wished to
make something touching and solemn out of this address to his
comrades. He spoke slowly in a loud voice and throwing out his chest
slightly swayed one leg.

"All take glasses; you too, Balaga. Well, comrades and friends of my
youth, we've had our fling and lived and reveled. Eh? And now, when
shall we meet again? I am going abroad. We have had a good time--now
farewell, lads! To our health! Hurrah!..." he cried, and emptying
his glass flung it on the floor.

"To your health!" said Balaga who also emptied his glass, and
wiped his mouth with his handkerchief.

Makarin embraced Anatole with tears in his eyes.

"Ah, Prince, how sorry I am to part from you!

"Let's go. Let's go!" cried Anatole.

Balaga was about to leave the room.

"No, stop!" said Anatole. "Shut the door; we have first to sit down.
That's the way."

They shut the door and all sat down.

"Now, quick march, lads!" said Anatole, rising.

Joseph, his valet, handed him his sabretache and saber, and they all
went out into the vestibule.

"And where's the fur cloak?" asked Dolokhov. "Hey, Ignatka! Go to
Matrena Matrevna and ask her for the sable cloak. I have heard what
elopements are like," continued Dolokhov with a wink. "Why, she'll
rush out more dead than alive just in the things she is wearing; if
you delay at all there'll be tears and 'Papa' and 'Mamma,' and she's
frozen in a minute and must go back--but you wrap the fur cloak
round her first thing and carry her to the sleigh."

The valet brought a woman's fox-lined cloak.

"Fool, I told you the sable one! Hey, Matrena, the sable!" he
shouted so that his voice rang far through the rooms.

A handsome, slim, and pale-faced gypsy girl with glittering black
eyes and curly blue-black hair, wearing a red shawl, ran out with a
sable mantle on her arm.

"Here, I don't grudge it--take it!" she said, evidently afraid of
her master and yet regretful of her cloak.

Dolokhov, without answering, took the cloak, threw it over
Matrena, and wrapped her up in it.

"That's the way," said Dolokhov, "and then so!" and he turned the
collar up round her head, leaving only a little of the face uncovered.
"And then so, do you see?" and he pushed Anatole's head forward to
meet the gap left by the collar, through which Matrena's brilliant
smile was seen.

"Well, good-by, Matrena," said Anatole, kissing her. "Ah, my
revels here are over. Remember me to Steshka. There, good-by! Good-by,
Matrena, wish me luck!"

"Well, Prince, may God give you great luck!" said Matrena in her
gypsy accent.

Two troykas were standing before the porch and two young drivers
were holding the horses. Balaga took his seat in the front one and
holding his elbows high arranged the reins deliberately. Anatole and
Dolokhov got in with him. Makarin, Khvostikov, and a valet seated
themselves in the other sleigh.

"Well, are you ready?" asked Balaga.

"Go!" he cried, twisting the reins round his hands, and the troyka
tore down the Nikitski Boulevard.

"Tproo! Get out of the way! Hi!... Tproo!..." The shouting of Balaga
and of the sturdy young fellow seated on the box was all that could be
heard. On the Arbat Square the troyka caught against a carriage;
something cracked, shouts were heard, and the troyka flew along the
Arbat Street.

After taking a turn along the Podnovinski Boulevard, Balaga began to
rein in, and turning back drew up at the crossing of the old
Konyusheny Street.

The young fellow on the box jumped down to hold the horses and
Anatole and Dolokhov went along the pavement. When they reached the
gate Dolokhov whistled. The whistle was answered, and a maidservant
ran out.

"Come into the courtyard or you'll be seen; she'll come out
directly," said she.

Dolokhov stayed by the gate. Anatole followed the maid into the
courtyard, turned the corner, and ran up into the porch.

He was met by Gabriel, Marya Dmitrievna's gigantic footman.

"Come to the mistress, please," said the footman in his deep bass,
intercepting any retreat.

"To what Mistress? Who are you?" asked Anatole in a breathless
whisper.

"Kindly step in, my orders are to bring you in."

"Kuragin! Come back!" shouted Dolokhov. "Betrayed! Back!"

Dolokhov, after Anatole entered, had remained at the wicket gate and
was struggling with the yard porter who was trying to lock it. With
a last desperate effort Dolokhov pushed the porter aside, and when
Anatole ran back seized him by the arm, pulled him through the wicket,
and ran back with him to the troyka.





CHAPTER XVIII


Marya Dmitrievna, having found Sonya weeping in the corridor, made
her confess everything, and intercepting the note to Natasha she
read it and went into Natasha's room with it in her hand.

"You shameless good-for-nothing!" said she. "I won't hear a word."

Pushing back Natasha who looked at her with astonished but
tearless eyes, she locked her in; and having given orders to the
yard porter to admit the persons who would be coming that evening, but
not to let them out again, and having told the footman to bring them
up to her, she seated herself in the drawing room to await the
abductors.

When Gabriel came to inform her that the men who had come had run
away again, she rose frowning, and clasping her hands behind her paced
through the rooms a long time considering what she should do. Toward
midnight she went to Natasha's room fingering the key in her pocket.
Sonya was sitting sobbing in the corridor. "Marya Dmitrievna, for
God's sake let me in to her!" she pleaded, but Marya Dmitrievna
unlocked the door and went in without giving her an answer....
"Disgusting, abominable... In my house... horrid girl, hussy! I'm only
sorry for her father!" thought she, trying to restrain her wrath.
"Hard as it may be, I'll tell them all to hold their tongues and
will hide it from the count." She entered the room with resolute
steps. Natasha lying on the sofa, her head hidden in her hands, and
she did not stir. She was in just the same position in which Marya
Dmitrievna had left her.

"A nice girl! Very nice!" said Marya Dmitrievna. "Arranging meetings
with lovers in my house! It's no use pretending: you listen when I
speak to you!" And Marya Dmitrievna touched her arm. "Listen when when
I speak! You've disgraced yourself like the lowest of hussies. I'd
treat you differently, but I'm sorry for your father, so I will
conceal it."

Natasha did not change her position, but her whole body heaved
with noiseless, convulsive sobs which choked her. Marya Dmitrievna
glanced round at Sonya and seated herself on the sofa beside Natasha.

"It's lucky for him that he escaped me; but I'll find him!" she said
in her rough voice. "Do you hear what I am saying or not?" she added.

She put her large hand under Natasha's face and turned it toward
her. Both Marya Dmitrievna and Sonya were amazed when they saw how
Natasha looked. Her eyes were dry and glistening, her lips compressed,
her cheeks sunken.

"Let me be!... What is it to me?... I shall die!" she muttered,
wrenching herself from Marya Dmitrievna's hands with a vicious
effort and sinking down again into her former position.

"Natalie!" said Marya Dmitrievna. "I wish for your good. Lie
still, stay like that then, I won't touch you. But listen. I won't
tell you how guilty you are. You know that yourself. But when your
father comes back tomorrow what am I to tell him? Eh?"

Again Natasha's body shook with sobs.

"Suppose he finds out, and your brother, and your betrothed?"

"I have no betrothed: I have refused him!" cried Natasha.

"That's all the same," continued Dmitrievna. "If they hear of
this, will they let it pass? He, your father, I know him... if he
challenges him to a duel will that be all right? Eh?"

"Oh, let me be! Why have you interfered at all? Why? Why? Who
asked you to?" shouted Natasha, raising herself on the sofa and
looking malignantly at Marya Dmitrievna.

"But what did you want?" cried Marya Dmitrievna, growing angry
again. "Were you kept under lock and key? Who hindered his coming to
the house? Why carry you off as if you were some gypsy singing
girl?... Well, if he had carried you off... do you think they wouldn't
have found him? Your father, or brother, or your betrothed? And he's a
scoundrel, a wretch--that's a fact!"

"He is better than any of you!" exclaimed Natasha getting up. "If
you hadn't interfered... Oh, my God! What is it all? What is it?
Sonya, why?... Go away!"

And she burst into sobs with the despairing vehemence with which
people bewail disasters they feel they have themselves occasioned.
Marya Dmitrievna was to speak again but Natasha cried out:

"Go away! Go away! You all hate and despise me!" and she threw
herself back on the sofa.

Marya Dmitrievna went on admonishing her for some time, enjoining on
her that it must all be kept from her father and assuring her that
nobody would know anything about it if only Natasha herself would
undertake to forget it all and not let anyone see that something had
happened. Natasha did not reply, nor did she sob any longer, but she
grew cold and had a shivering fit. Marya Dmitrievna put a pillow under
her head, covered her with two quilts, and herself brought her some
lime-flower water, but Natasha did not respond to her.

"Well, let her sleep," said Marya Dmitrievna as she went of the room
supposing Natasha to be asleep.

But Natasha was not asleep; with pale face and fixed wide-open
eyes she looked straight before her. All that night she did not
sleep or weep and did not speak to Sonya who got up and went to her
several times.

Next day Count Rostov returned from his estate near Moscow in time
for lunch as he had promised. He was in very good spirits; the
affair with the purchaser was going on satisfactorily, and there was
nothing to keep him any longer in Moscow, away from the countess
whom he missed. Marya Dmitrievna met him and told him that Natasha had
been very unwell the day before and that they had sent for the doctor,
but that she was better now. Natasha had not left her room that
morning. With compressed and parched lips and dry fixed eyes, she
sat at the window, uneasily watching the people who drove past and
hurriedly glancing round at anyone who entered the room. She was
evidently expecting news of him and that he would come or would
write to her.

When the count came to see her she turned anxiously round at the
sound of a man's footstep, and then her face resumed its cold and
malevolent expression. She did not even get up to greet him. "What
is the matter with you, my angel? Are you ill?" asked the count.

After a moment's silence Natasha answered: "Yes, ill."

In reply to the count's anxious inquiries as to why she was so
dejected and whether anything had happened to her betrothed, she
assured him that nothing had happened and asked him not to worry.
Marya Dmitrievna confirmed Natasha's assurances that nothing had
happened. From the pretense of illness, from his daughter's
distress, and by the embarrassed faces of Sonya and Marya
Dmitrievna, the count saw clearly that something had gone wrong during
his absence, but it was so terrible for him to think that anything
disgraceful had happened to his beloved daughter, and he so prized his
own cheerful tranquillity, that he avoided inquiries and tried to
assure himself that nothing particularly had happened; and he was only
dissatisfied that her indisposition delayed their return to the
country.





CHAPTER XIX


From the day his wife arrived in Moscow Pierre had been intending to
go away somewhere, so as not to be near her. Soon after the Rostovs
came to Moscow the effect Natasha had on him made him hasten to
carry out his intention. He went to Tver to see Joseph Alexeevich's
widow, who had long since promised to hand over to him some papers
of her deceased husband's.

When he returned to Moscow Pierre was handed a letter from Marya
Dmitrievna asking him to come and see her on a matter of great
importance relating to Andrew Bolkonski and his betrothed. Pierre
had been avoiding Natasha because it seemed to him that his feeling
for her was stronger than a married man's should be for his friend's
fiancee. Yet some fate constantly threw them together.

"What can have happened? And what can they want with me?" thought he
as he dressed to go to Marya Dmitrievna's. "If only Prince Andrew
would hurry up and come and marry her!" thought he on his way to the
house.

On the Tverskoy Boulevard a familiar voice called to him.

"Pierre! Been back long?" someone shouted. Pierre raised his head.
In a sleigh drawn by two gray trotting-horses that were bespattering
the dashboard with snow, Anatole and his constant companion Makarin
dashed past. Anatole was sitting upright in the classic pose of
military dandies, the lower part of his face hidden by his beaver
collar and his head slightly bent. His face was fresh and rosy, his
white-plumed hat, tilted to one side, disclosed his curled and pomaded
hair besprinkled with powdery snow.

"Yes, indeed, that's a true sage," thought Pierre. "He sees
nothing beyond the pleasure of the moment, nothing troubles him and so
he is always cheerful, satisfied, and serene. What wouldn't I give
to be like him!" he thought enviously.

In Marya Dmitrievna's anteroom the footman who helped him off with
his fur coat said that the mistress asked him to come to her bedroom.

When he opened the ballroom door Pierre saw Natasha sitting at the
window, with a thin, pale, and spiteful face. She glanced round at
him, frowned, and left the room with an expression of cold dignity.

"What has happened?" asked Pierre, entering Marya Dmitrievna's room.

"Fine doings!" answered Dmitrievna. "For fifty-eight years have I
lived in this world and never known anything so disgraceful!"

And having put him on his honor not to repeat anything she told him,
Marya Dmitrievna informed him that Natasha had refused Prince Andrew
without her parents' knowledge and that the cause of this was
Anatole Kuragin into whose society Pierre's wife had thrown her and
with whom Natasha had tried to elope during her father's absence, in
order to be married secretly.

Pierre raised his shoulders and listened open-mouthed to what was
told him, scarcely able to believe his own ears. That Prince
Andrew's deeply loved affianced wife--the same Natasha Rostova who
used to be so charming--should give up Bolkonski for that fool Anatole
who was already secretly married (as Pierre knew), and should be so in
love with him as to agree to run away with him, was something Pierre
could not conceive and could not imagine.

He could not reconcile the charming impression he had of Natasha,
whom he had known from a child, with this new conception of her
baseness, folly, and cruelty. He thought of his wife. "They are all
alike!" he said to himself, reflecting that he was not the only man
unfortunate enough to be tied to a bad woman. But still he pitied
Prince Andrew to the point of tears and sympathized with his wounded
pride, and the more he pitied his friend the more did he think with
contempt and even with disgust of that Natasha who had just passed him
in the ballroom with such a look of cold dignity. He did not know that
Natasha's soul was overflowing with despair, shame, and humiliation,
and that it was not her fault that her face happened to assume an
expression of calm dignity and severity.

"But how get married?" said Pierre, in answer to Marya Dmitrievna.
"He could not marry--he is married!"

"Things get worse from hour to hour!" ejaculated Marya Dmitrievna.
"A nice youth! What a scoundrel! And she's expecting him--expecting
him since yesterday. She must be told! Then at least she won't go on
expecting him."

After hearing the details of Anatole's marriage from Pierre, and
giving vent to her anger against Anatole in words of abuse, Marya
Dmitrievna told Pierre why she had sent for him. She was afraid that
the count or Bolkonski, who might arrive at any moment, if they knew
of this affair (which she hoped to hide from them) might challenge
Anatole to a duel, and she therefore asked Pierre to tell his
brother-in-law in her name to leave Moscow and not dare to let her set
eyes on him again. Pierre--only now realizing the danger to the old
count, Nicholas, and Prince Andrew--promised to do as she wished.
Having briefly and exactly explained her wishes to him, she let him go
to the drawing room.

"Mind, the count knows nothing. Behave as if you know nothing
either," she said. "And I will go and tell her it is no use
expecting him! And stay to dinner if you care to!" she called after
Pierre.

Pierre met the old count, who seemed nervous and upset. That morning
Natasha had told him that she had rejected Bolkonski.

"Troubles, troubles, my dear fellow!" he said to Pierre. "What
troubles one has with these girls without their mother! I do so regret
having come here.... I will be frank with you. Have you heard she
has broken off her engagement without consulting anybody? It's true
this engagement never was much to my liking. Of course he is an
excellent man, but still, with his father's disapproval they
wouldn't have been happy, and Natasha won't lack suitors. Still, it
has been going on so long, and to take such a step without father's or
mother's consent! And now she's ill, and God knows what! It's hard,
Count, hard to manage daughters in their mother's absence...."

Pierre saw that the count was much upset and tried to change the
subject, but the count returned to his troubles.

Sonya entered the room with an agitated face.

"Natasha is not quite well; she's in her room and would like to
see you. Marya Dmitrievna is with her and she too asks you to come."

"Yes, you are a great friend of Bolkonski's, no doubt she wants to
send him a message," said the count. "Oh dear! Oh dear! How happy it
all was!"

And clutching the spare gray locks on his temples the count left the
room.

When Marya Dmitrievna told Natasha that Anatole was married, Natasha
did not wish to believe it and insisted on having it confirmed by
Pierre himself. Sonya told Pierre this as she led him along the
corridor to Natasha's room.

Natasha, pale and stern, was sitting beside Marya Dmitrievna, and
her eyes, glittering feverishly, met Pierre with a questioning look
the moment he entered. She did not smile or nod, but only gazed
fixedly at him, and her look asked only one thing: was he a friend, or
like the others an enemy in regard to Anatole? As for Pierre, he
evidently did not exist for her.

"He knows all about it," said Marya Dmitrievna pointing to Pierre
and addressing Natasha. "Let him tell you whether I have told the
truth."

Natasha looked from one to the other as a hunted and wounded
animal looks at the approaching dogs and sportsmen.

"Natalya Ilynichna," Pierre began, dropping his eyes with a
feeling of pity for her and loathing for the thing he had to do,
"whether it is true or not should make no difference to you,
because..."

"Then it is not true that he's married!"

"Yes, it is true."

"Has he been married long?" she asked. "On your honor?..."

Pierre gave his word of honor.

"Is he still here?" she asked, quickly.

"Yes, I have just seen him."

She was evidently unable to speak and made a sign with her hands
that they should leave her alone.





CHAPTER XX


Pierre did not stay for dinner, but left the room and went away at
once. He drove through the town seeking Anatole Kuragin, at the
thought of whom now the blood rushed to his heart and he felt a
difficulty in breathing. He was not at the ice hills, nor at the
gypsies', nor at Komoneno's. Pierre drove to the Club. In the Club all
was going on as usual. The members who were assembling for dinner were
sitting about in groups; they greeted Pierre and spoke of the town
news. The footman having greeted him, knowing his habits and his
acquaintances, told him there was a place left for him in the small
dining room and that Prince Michael Zakharych was in the library,
but Paul Timofeevich had not yet arrived. One of Pierre's
acquaintances, while they were talking about the weather, asked if
he had heard of Kuragin's abduction of Rostova which was talked of
in the town, and was it true? Pierre laughed and said it was
nonsense for he had just come from the Rostovs'. He asked everyone
about Anatole. One man told him he had not come yet, and another
that he was coming to dinner. Pierre felt it strange to see this calm,
indifferent crowd of people unaware of what was going on in his
soul. He paced through the ballroom, waited till everyone had come,
and as Anatole had not turned up did not stay for dinner but drove
home.

Anatole, for whom Pierre was looking, dined that day with
Dolokhov, consulting him as to how to remedy this unfortunate
affair. It seemed to him essential to see Natasha. In the evening he
drove to his sister's to discuss with her how to arrange a meeting.
When Pierre returned home after vainly hunting all over Moscow, his
valet informed him that Prince Anatole was with the countess. The
countess' drawing room was full of guests.

Pierre without greeting his wife whom he had not seen since his
return--at that moment she was more repulsive to him than ever-
entered the drawing room and seeing Anatole went up to him.

"Ah, Pierre," said the countess going up to her husband. "You
don't know what a plight our Anatole..."

She stopped, seeing in the forward thrust of her husband's head,
in his glowing eyes and his resolute gait, the terrible indications of
that rage and strength which she knew and had herself experienced
after his duel with Dolokhov.

"Where you are, there is vice and evil!" said Pierre to his wife.
"Anatole, come with me! I must speak to you," he added in French.

Anatole glanced round at his sister and rose submissively, ready
to follow Pierre. Pierre, taking him by the arm, pulled him toward
himself and was leading him from the room.

"If you allow yourself in my drawing room..." whispered Helene,
but Pierre did not reply and went out of the room.

Anatole followed him with his usual jaunty step but his face
betrayed anxiety.

Having entered his study Pierre closed the door and addressed
Anatole without looking at him.

"You promised Countess Rostova to marry her and were about to
elope with her, is that so?"

"Mon cher," answered Anatole (their whole conversation was in
French), "I don't consider myself bound to answer questions put to
me in that tone."

Pierre's face, already pale, became distorted by fury. He seized
Anatole by the collar of his uniform with his big hand and shook him
from side to side till Anatole's face showed a sufficient degree of
terror.

"When I tell you that I must talk to you!..." repeated Pierre.

"Come now, this is stupid. What?" said Anatole, fingering a button
of his collar that had been wrenched loose with a bit of the cloth.

"You're a scoundrel and a blackguard, and I don't know what deprives
me from the pleasure of smashing your head with this!" said Pierre,
expressing himself so artificially because he was talking French.

He took a heavy paperweight and lifted it threateningly, but at once
put it back in its place.

"Did you promise to marry her?"

"I... I didn't think of it. I never promised, because..."

Pierre interrupted him.

"Have you any letters of hers? Any letters?" he said, moving
toward Anatole.

Anatole glanced at him and immediately thrust his hand into his
pocket and drew out his pocketbook.

Pierre took the letter Anatole handed him and, pushing aside a table
that stood in his way, threw himself on the sofa.

"I shan't be violent, don't be afraid!" said Pierre in answer to a
frightened gesture of Anatole's. "First, the letters," said he, as
if repeating a lesson to himself. "Secondly," he continued after a
short pause, again rising and again pacing the room, "tomorrow you
must get out of Moscow."

"But how can I?..."

"Thirdly," Pierre continued without listening to him, "you must
never breathe a word of what has passed between you and Countess
Rostova. I know I can't prevent your doing so, but if you have a spark
of conscience..." Pierre paced the room several times in silence.

Anatole sat at a table frowning and biting his lips.

"After all, you must understand that besides your pleasure there
is such a thing as other people's happiness and peace, and that you
are ruining a whole life for the sake of amusing yourself! Amuse
yourself with women like my wife--with them you are within your
rights, for they know what you want of them. They are armed against
you by the same experience of debauchery; but to promise a maid to
marry her... to deceive, to kidnap.... Don't you understand that it is
as mean as beating an old man or a child?..."

Pierre paused and looked at Anatole no longer with an angry but with
a questioning look.

"I don't know about that, eh?" said Anatole, growing more
confident as Pierre mastered his wrath. "I don't know that and don't
want to," he said, not looking at Pierre and with a slight tremor of
his lower jaw, "but you have used such words to me--'mean' and so
on--which as a man of honor I can't allow anyone to use."

Pierre glanced at him with amazement, unable to understand what he
wanted.

"Though it was tete-a-tete," Anatole continued, "still I can't..."

"Is it satisfaction you want?" said Pierre ironically.

"You could at least take back your words. What? If you want me to do
as you wish, eh?"

"I take them back, I take them back!" said Pierre, "and I ask you to
forgive me." Pierre involuntarily glanced at the loose button. "And if
you require money for your journey..."

Anatole smiled. The expression of that base and cringing smile,
which Pierre knew so well in his wife, revolted him.

"Oh, vile and heartless brood!" he exclaimed, and left the room.

Next day Anatole left for Petersburg.





CHAPTER XXI


Pierre drove to Marya Dmitrievna's to tell her of the fulfillment of
her wish that Kuragin should be banished from Moscow. The whole
house was in a state of alarm and commotion. Natasha was very ill,
having, as Marya Dmitrievna told him in secret, poisoned herself the
night after she had been told that Anatole was married, with some
arsenic she had stealthily procured. After swallowing a little she had
been so frightened that she woke Sonya and told her what she had done.
The necessary antidotes had been administered in time and she was
now out of danger, though still so weak that it was out of the
question to move her to the country, and so the countess had been sent
for. Pierre saw the distracted count, and Sonya, who had a
tear-stained face, but he could not see Natasha.

Pierre dined at the club that day and heard on all sides gossip
about the attempted abduction of Rostova. He resolutely denied these
rumors, assuring everyone that nothing had happened except that his
brother-in-law had proposed to her and been refused. It seemed to
Pierre that it was his duty to conceal the whole affair and
re-establish Natasha's reputation.

He was awaiting Prince Andrew's return with dread and went every day
to the old prince's for news of him.

Old Prince Bolkonski heard all the rumors current in the town from
Mademoiselle Bourienne and had read the note to Princess Mary in which
Natasha had broken off her engagement. He seemed in better spirits
than usual and awaited his son with great impatience.

Some days after Anatole's departure Pierre received a note from
Prince Andrew, informing him of his arrival and asking him to come
to see him.

As soon as he reached Moscow, Prince Andrew had received from his
father Natasha's note to Princess Mary breaking off her engagement
(Mademoiselle Bourienne had purloined it from Princess Mary and
given it to the old prince), and he heard from him the story of
Natasha's elopement, with additions.

Prince Andrew had arrived in the evening and Pierre came to see
him next morning. Pierre expected to find Prince Andrew in almost
the same state as Natasha and was therefore surprised on entering
the drawing room to hear him in the study talking in a loud animated
voice about some intrigue going on in Petersburg. The old prince's
voice and another now and then interrupted him. Princess Mary came out
to meet Pierre. She sighed, looking toward the door of the room
where Prince Andrew was, evidently intending to express her sympathy
with his sorrow, but Pierre saw by her face that she was glad both
at what had happened and at the way her brother had taken the news
of Natasha's faithlessness.

"He says he expected it," she remarked. "I know his pride will not
let him express his feelings, but still he has taken it better, far
better, than I expected. Evidently it had to be...."

"But is it possible that all is really ended?" asked Pierre.

Princess Mary looked at him with astonishment. She did not
understand how he could ask such a question. Pierre went into the
study. Prince Andrew, greatly changed and plainly in better health,
but with a fresh horizontal wrinkle between his brows, stood in
civilian dress facing his father and Prince Meshcherski, warmly
disputing and vigorously gesticulating. The conversation was about
Speranski--the news of whose sudden exile and alleged treachery had
just reached Moscow.

"Now he is censured and accused by all who were enthusiastic about
him a month ago," Prince Andrew was saying, "and by those who were
unable to understand his aims. To judge a man who is in disfavor and
to throw on him all the blame of other men's mistakes is very easy,
but I maintain that if anything good has been accomplished in this
reign it was done by him, by him alone."

He paused at the sight of Pierre. His face quivered and
immediately assumed a vindictive expression.

"Posterity will do him justice," he concluded, and at once turned to
Pierre.

"Well, how are you? Still getting stouter?" he said with
animation, but the new wrinkle on his forehead deepened. "Yes, I am
well," he said in answer to Pierre's question, and smiled.

To Pierre that smile said plainly: "I am well, but my health is
now of no use to anyone."

After a few words to Pierre about the awful roads from the Polish
frontier, about people he had met in Switzerland who knew Pierre,
and about M. Dessalles, whom he had brought from abroad to be his
son's tutor, Prince Andrew again joined warmly in the conversation
about Speranski which was still going on between the two old men.

"If there were treason, or proofs of secret relations with Napoleon,
they would have been made public," he said with warmth and haste. "I
do not, and never did, like Speranski personally, but I like justice!"

Pierre now recognized in his friend a need with which he was only
too familiar, to get excited and to have arguments about extraneous
matters in order to stifle thoughts that were too oppressive and too
intimate. When Prince Meshcherski had left, Prince Andrew took
Pierre's arm and asked him into the room that had been assigned him. A
bed had been made up there, and some open portmanteaus and trunks
stood about. Prince Andrew went to one and took out a small casket,
from which he drew a packet wrapped in paper. He did it all silently
and very quickly. He stood up and coughed. His face was gloomy and his
lips compressed.

"Forgive me for troubling you..."

Pierre saw that Prince Andrew was going to speak of Natasha, and his
broad face expressed pity and sympathy. This expression irritated
Prince Andrew, and in a determined, ringing, and unpleasant tone he
continued:

"I have received a refusal from Countess Rostova and have heard
reports of your brother-in-law having sought her hand, or something of
that kind. Is that true?"

"Both true and untrue," Pierre began; but Prince Andrew
interrupted him.

"Here are her letters and her portrait," said he.

He took the packet from the table and handed it to Pierre.

"Give this to the countess... if you see her."

"She is very ill," said Pierre.

"Then she is here still?" said Prince Andrew. "And Prince
Kuragin?" he added quickly.

"He left long ago. She has been at death's door."

"I much regret her illness," said Prince Andrew; and he smiled
like his father, coldly, maliciously, and unpleasantly.

"So Monsieur Kuragin has not honored Countess Rostova with his
hand?" said Prince Andrew, and he snorted several times.

"He could not marry, for he was married already," said Pierre.

Prince Andrew laughed disagreeably, again reminding one of his
father.

"And where is your brother-in-law now, if I may ask?" he said.

"He has gone to Peters... But I don't know," said Pierre.

"Well, it doesn't matter," said Prince Andrew. "Tell Countess
Rostova that she was and is perfectly free and that I wish her all
that is good."

Pierre took the packet. Prince Andrew, as if trying to remember
whether he had something more to say, or waiting to see if Pierre
would say anything, looked fixedly at him.

"I say, do you remember our discussion in Petersburg?" asked Pierre,
"about..."

"Yes," returned Prince Andrew hastily. "I said that a fallen woman
should be forgiven, but I didn't say I could forgive her. I can't."

"But can this be compared...?" said Pierre.

Prince Andrew interrupted him and cried sharply: "Yes, ask her
hand again, be magnanimous, and so on?... Yes, that would be very
noble, but I am unable to follow in that gentleman's footsteps. If you
wish to be my friend never speak to me of that... of all that! Well,
good-by. So you'll give her the packet?"

Pierre left the room and went to the old prince and Princess Mary.

The old man seemed livelier than usual. Princess Mary was the same
as always, but beneath her sympathy for her brother, Pierre noticed
her satisfaction that the engagement had been broken off. Looking at
them Pierre realized what contempt and animosity they all felt for the
Rostovs, and that it was impossible in their presence even to
mention the name of her who could give up Prince Andrew for anyone
else.

At dinner the talk turned on the war, the approach of which was
becoming evident. Prince Andrew talked incessantly, arguing now with
his father, now with the Swiss tutor Dessalles, and showing an
unnatural animation, the cause of which Pierre so well understood.





CHAPTER XXII


That same evening Pierre went to the Rostovs' to fulfill the
commission entrusted to him. Natasha was in bed, the count at the
Club, and Pierre, after giving the letters to Sonya, went to Marya
Dmitrievna who was interested to know how Prince Andrew had taken
the news. Ten minutes later Sonya came to Marya Dmitrievna.

"Natasha insists on seeing Count Peter Kirilovich," said she.

"But how? Are we to take him up to her? The room there has not
been tidied up."

"No, she has dressed and gone into the drawing room," said Sonya.

Marya Dmitrievna only shrugged her shoulders.

"When will her mother come? She has worried me to death! Now mind,
don't tell her everything!" said she to Pierre. "One hasn't the
heart to scold her, she is so much to be pitied, so much to be
pitied."

Natasha was standing in the middle of the drawing room, emaciated,
with a pale set face, but not at all shamefaced as Pierre expected
to find her. When he appeared at the door she grew flurried, evidently
undecided whether to go to meet him or to wait till he came up.

Pierre hastened to her. He thought she would give him her hand as
usual; but she, stepping up to him, stopped, breathing heavily, her
arms hanging lifelessly just in the pose she used to stand in when she
went to the middle of the ballroom to sing, but with quite a different
expression of face.

"Peter Kirilovich," she began rapidly, "Prince Bolkonski was your
friend--is your friend," she corrected herself. (It seemed to her that
everything that had once been must now be different.) "He told me once
to apply to you..."

Pierre sniffed as he looked at her, but did not speak. Till then
he had reproached her in his heart and tried to despise her, but he
now felt so sorry for her that there was no room in his soul for
reproach.

"He is here now: tell him... to for... forgive me!" She stopped
and breathed still more quickly, but did not shed tears.

"Yes... I will tell him," answered Pierre; "but..."

He did not know what to say.

Natasha was evidently dismayed at the thought of what he might think
she had meant.

"No, I know all is over," she said hurriedly. "No, that can never
be. I'm only tormented by the wrong I have done him. Tell him only
that I beg him to forgive, forgive, forgive me for everything...."

She trembled all over and sat down on a chair.

A sense of pity he had never before known overflowed Pierre's heart.

"I will tell him, I will tell him everything once more," said
Pierre. "But... I should like to know one thing...."

"Know what?" Natasha's eyes asked.

"I should like to know, did you love..." Pierre did not know how
to refer to Anatole and flushed at the thought of him--"did you love
that bad man?"

"Don't call him bad!" said Natasha. "But I don't know, don't know at
all...."

She began to cry and a still greater sense of pity, tenderness,
and love welled up in Pierre. He felt the tears trickle under his
spectacles and hoped they would not be noticed.

"We won't speak of it any more, my dear," said Pierre, and his
gentle, cordial tone suddenly seemed very strange to Natasha.

"We won't speak of it, my dear--I'll tell him everything; but one
thing I beg of you, consider me your friend and if you want help,
advice, or simply to open your heart to someone--not now, but when
your mind is clearer think of me!" He took her hand and kissed it.
"I shall be happy if it's in my power..."

Pierre grew confused.

"Don't speak to me like that. I am not worth it!" exclaimed
Natasha and turned to leave the room, but Pierre held her hand.

He knew he had something more to say to her. But when he said it
he was amazed at his own words.

"Stop, stop! You have your whole life before you," said he to her.

"Before me? No! All is over for me," she replied with shame and
self-abasement.

 "All over?" he repeated. "If I were not myself, but the handsomest,
cleverest, and best man in the world, and were free, I would this
moment ask on my knees for your hand and your love!"

For the first time for many days Natasha wept tears of gratitude and
tenderness, and glancing at Pierre she went out of the room.

Pierre too when she had gone almost ran into the anteroom,
restraining tears of tenderness and joy that choked him, and without
finding the sleeves of his fur cloak threw it on and got into his
sleigh.

"Where to now, your excellency?" asked the coachman.

"Where to?" Pierre asked himself. "Where can I go now? Surely not to
the Club or to pay calls?" All men seemed so pitiful, so poor, in
comparison with this feeling of tenderness and love he experienced: in
comparison with that softened, grateful, last look she had given him
through her tears.

"Home!" said Pierre, and despite twenty-two degrees of frost
Fahrenheit he threw open the bearskin cloak from his broad chest and
inhaled the air with joy.

It was clear and frosty. Above the dirty, ill-lit streets, above the
black roofs, stretched the dark starry sky. Only looking up at the sky
did Pierre cease to feel how sordid and humiliating were all mundane
things compared with the heights to which his soul had just been
raised. At the entrance to the Arbat Square an immense expanse of dark
starry sky presented itself to his eyes. Almost in the center of it,
above the Prechistenka Boulevard, surrounded and sprinkled on all
sides by stars but distinguished from them all by its nearness to
the earth, its white light, and its long uplifted tail, shone the
enormous and brilliant comet of 1812--the comet which was said to
portend all kinds of woes and the end of the world. In Pierre,
however, that comet with its long luminous tail aroused no feeling
of fear. On the contrary he gazed joyfully, his eyes moist with tears,
at this bright comet which, having traveled in its orbit with
inconceivable velocity through immeasurable space, seemed suddenly-
like an arrow piercing the earth--to remain fixed in a chosen spot,
vigorously holding its tail erect, shining and displaying its white
light amid countless other scintillating stars. It seemed to Pierre
that this comet fully responded to what was passing in his own
softened and uplifted soul, now blossoming into a new life.





BOOK NINE: 1812





CHAPTER I


From the close of the year 1811 intensified arming and concentrating
of the forces of Western Europe began, and in 1812 these forces-
millions of men, reckoning those transporting and feeding the army-
moved from the west eastwards to the Russian frontier, toward which
since 1811 Russian forces had been similarly drawn. On the twelfth
of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian
frontier and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to
human reason and to human nature. Millions of men perpetrated
against one another such innumerable crimes, frauds, treacheries,
thefts, forgeries, issues of false money, burglaries, incendiarisms,
and murders as in whole centuries are not recorded in the annals of
all the law courts of the world, but which those who committed them
did not at the time regard as being crimes.

What produced this extraordinary occurrence? What were its causes?
The historians tell us with naive assurance that its causes were the
wrongs inflicted on the Duke of Oldenburg, the nonobservance of the
Continental System, the ambition of Napoleon, the firmness of
Alexander, the mistakes of the diplomatists, and so on.

Consequently, it would only have been necessary for Metternich,
Rumyantsev, or Talleyrand, between a levee and an evening party, to
have taken proper pains and written a more adroit note, or for
Napoleon to have written to Alexander: "My respected Brother, I
consent to restore the duchy to the Duke of Oldenburg"--and there
would have been no war.

We can understand that the matter seemed like that to
contemporaries. It naturally seemed to Napoleon that the war was
caused by England's intrigues (as in fact he said on the island of St.
Helena). It naturally seemed to members of the English Parliament that
the cause of the war was Napoleon's ambition; to the Duke of
Oldenburg, that the cause of the war was the violence done to him;
to businessmen that the cause of the way was the Continental System
which was ruining Europe; to the generals and old soldiers that the
chief reason for the war was the necessity of giving them
employment; to the legitimists of that day that it was the need of
re-establishing les bons principes, and to the diplomatists of that
time that it all resulted from the fact that the alliance between
Russia and Austria in 1809 had not been sufficiently well concealed
from Napoleon, and from the awkward wording of Memorandum No. 178.
It is natural that these and a countless and infinite quantity of
other reasons, the number depending on the endless diversity of points
of view, presented themselves to the men of that day; but to us, to
posterity who view the thing that happened in all its magnitude and
perceive its plain and terrible meaning, these causes seem
insufficient. To us it is incomprehensible that millions of
Christian men killed and tortured each other either because Napoleon
was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was
astute or the Duke of Oldenburg wronged. We cannot grasp what
connection such circumstances have with the actual fact of slaughter
and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men
from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk
and Moscow and were killed by them.

To us, their descendants, who are not historians and are not carried
away by the process of research and can therefore regard the event
with unclouded common sense, an incalculable number of causes
present themselves. The deeper we delve in search of these causes
the more of them we find; and each separate cause or whole series of
causes appears to us equally valid in itself and equally false by
its insignificance compared to the magnitude of the events, and by its
impotence--apart from the cooperation of all the other coincident
causes--to occasion the event. To us, the wish or objection of this or
that French corporal to serve a second term appears as much a cause as
Napoleon's refusal to withdraw his troops beyond the Vistula and to
restore the duchy of Oldenburg; for had he not wished to serve, and
had a second, a third, and a thousandth corporal and private also
refused, there would have been so many less men in Napoleon's army and
the war could not have occurred.

Had Napoleon not taken offense at the demand that he should withdraw
beyond the Vistula, and not ordered his troops to advance, there would
have been no war; but had all his sergeants objected to serving a
second term then also there could have been no war. Nor could there
have been a war had there been no English intrigues and no Duke of
Oldenburg, and had Alexander not felt insulted, and had there not been
an autocratic government in Russia, or a Revolution in France and a
subsequent dictatorship and Empire, or all the things that produced
the French Revolution, and so on. Without each of these causes nothing
could have happened. So all these causes--myriads of causes--coincided
to bring it about. And so there was no one cause for that
occurrence, but it had to occur because it had to. Millions of men,
renouncing their human feelings and reason, had to go from west to
east to slay their fellows, just as some centuries previously hordes
of men had come from the east to the west, slaying their fellows.

The actions of Napoleon and Alexander, on whose words the event
seemed to hang, were as little voluntary as the actions of any soldier
who was drawn into the campaign by lot or by conscription. This
could not be otherwise, for in order that the will of Napoleon and
Alexander (on whom the event seemed to depend) should be carried
out, the concurrence of innumerable circumstances was needed without
any one of which the event could not have taken place. It was
necessary that millions of men in whose hands lay the real power-
the soldiers who fired, or transported provisions and guns--should
consent to carry out the will of these weak individuals, and should
have been induced to do so by an infinite number of diverse and
complex causes.

We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of
irrational events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of
which we do not understand). The more we try to explain such events in
history reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they
become to us.

Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain his personal
aims, and feels with his whole being that he can now do or abstain
from doing this or that action; but as soon as he has done it, that
action performed at a certain moment in time becomes irrevocable and
belongs to history, in which it has not a free but a predestined
significance.

There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life,
which is the more free the more abstract its interests, and his
elemental hive life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for
him.

Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious
instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of
humanity. A deed done is irrevocable, and its result coinciding in
time with the actions of millions of other men assumes an historic
significance. The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the more
people he is connected with and the more power he has over others, the
more evident is the predestination and inevitability of his every
action.

"The king's heart is in the hands of the Lord."

A king is history's slave.

History, that is, the unconscious, general, hive life of mankind,
uses every moment of the life of kings as a tool for its own purposes.

Though Napoleon at that time, in 1812, was more convinced than
ever that it depended on him, verser (ou ne pas verser) le sang de ses
peuples*--as Alexander expressed it in the last letter he wrote him-
he had never been so much in the grip of inevitable laws, which
compelled him, while thinking that he was acting on his own
volition, to perform for the hive life--that is to say, for history-
whatever had to be performed.


*"To shed (or not to shed) the blood of his peoples."


The people of the west moved eastwards to slay their fellow men, and
by the law of coincidence thousands of minute causes fitted in and
co-ordinated to produce that movement and war: reproaches for the
nonobservance of the Continental System, the Duke of Oldenburg's
wrongs, the movement of troops into Prussia--undertaken (as it
seemed to Napoleon) only for the purpose of securing an armed peace,
the French Emperor's love and habit of war coinciding with his
people's inclinations, allurement by the grandeur of the preparations,
and the expenditure on those preparations and the need of obtaining
advantages to compensate for that expenditure, the intoxicating honors
he received in Dresden, the diplomatic negotiations which, in the
opinion of contemporaries, were carried on with a sincere desire to
attain peace, but which only wounded the self-love of both sides,
and millions of other causes that adapted themselves to
the event that was happening or coincided with it.

When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of
its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it
is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes
it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it?

Nothing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of conditions
in which all vital organic and elemental events occur. And the
botanist who finds that the apple falls because the cellular tissue
decays and so forth is equally right with the child who stands under
the tree and says the apple fell because he wanted to eat it and
prayed for it. Equally right or wrong is he who says that Napoleon
went to Moscow because he wanted to, and perished because Alexander
desired his destruction, and he who says that an undermined hill
weighing a million tons fell because the last navvy struck it for
the last time with his mattock. In historic events the so-called great
men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but
the smallest connection with the event itself.

Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will,
is in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole
course of history and predestined from eternity.





CHAPTER II


On the twenty-ninth of May Napoleon left Dresden, where he had spent
three weeks surrounded by a court that included princes, dukes, kings,
and even an emperor. Before leaving, Napoleon showed favor to the
emperor, kings, and princes who had deserved it, reprimanded the kings
and princes with whom he was dissatisfied, presented pearls and
diamonds of his own--that is, which he had taken from other kings-
to the Empress of Austria, and having, as his historian tells us,
tenderly embraced the Empress Marie Louise--who regarded him as her
husband, though he had left another wife in Paris--left her grieved by
the parting which she seemed hardly able to bear. Though the
diplomatists still firmly believed in the possibility of peace and
worked zealously to that end, and though the Emperor Napoleon
himself wrote a letter to Alexander, calling him Monsieur mon frere,
and sincerely assured him that he did not want war and would always
love and honor him--yet he set off to join his army, and at every
station gave fresh orders to accelerate the movement of his troops
from west to east. He went in a traveling coach with six horses,
surrounded by pages, aides-de-camp, and an escort, along the road to
Posen, Thorn, Danzig, and Konigsberg. At each of these towns thousands
of people met him with excitement and enthusiasm.

The army was moving from west to east, and relays of six horses
carried him in the same direction. On the tenth of June,* coming up
with the army, he spent the night in apartments prepared for him on
the estate of a Polish count in the Vilkavisski forest.


*Old style.


Next day, overtaking the army, he went in a carriage to the
Niemen, and, changing into a Polish uniform, he drove to the riverbank
in order to select a place for the crossing.

Seeing, on the other side, some Cossacks (les Cosaques) and the
wide-spreading steppes in the midst of which lay the holy city of
Moscow (Moscou, la ville sainte), the capital of a realm such as the
Scythia into which Alexander the Great had marched--Napoleon
unexpectedly, and contrary alike to strategic and diplomatic
considerations, ordered an advance, and the next day his army began to
cross the Niemen.

Early in the morning of the twelfth of June he came out of his tent,
which was pitched that day on the steep left bank of the Niemen, and
looked through a spyglass at the streams of his troops pouring out
of the Vilkavisski forest and flowing over the three bridges thrown
across the river. The troops, knowing of the Emperor's presence,
were on the lookout for him, and when they caught sight of a figure in
an overcoat and a cocked hat standing apart from his suite in front of
his tent on the hill, they threw up their caps and shouted: "Vive
l'Empereur!" and one after another poured in a ceaseless stream out of
the vast forest that had concealed them and, separating, flowed on and
on by the three bridges to the other side.

"Now we'll go into action. Oh, when he takes it in hand himself,
things get hot... by heaven!... There he is!... Vive l'Empereur! So
these are the steppes of Asia! It's a nasty country all the same. Au
revoir, Beauche; I'll keep the best palace in Moscow for you! Au
revoir. Good luck!... Did you see the Emperor? Vive l'Empereur!...
preur!--If they make me Governor of India, Gerard, I'll make you
Minister of Kashmir--that's settled. Vive l'Empereur! Hurrah!
hurrah! hurrah! The Cossacks--those rascals--see how they run! Vive
l'Empereur! There he is, do you see him? I've seen him twice, as I see
you now. The little corporal... I saw him give the cross to one of the
veterans.... Vive l'Empereur!" came the voices of men, old and
young, of most diverse characters and social positions. On the faces
of all was one common expression of joy at the commencement of the
long-expected campaign and of rapture and devotion to the man in the
gray coat who was standing on the hill.

On the thirteenth of June a rather small, thoroughbred Arab horse
was brought to Napoleon. He mounted it and rode at a gallop to one
of the bridges over the Niemen, deafened continually by incessant
and rapturous acclamations which he evidently endured only because
it was impossible to forbid the soldiers to express their love of
him by such shouting, but the shouting which accompanied him
everywhere disturbed him and distracted him from the military cares
that had occupied him from the time he joined the army. He rode across
one of the swaying pontoon bridges to the farther side, turned sharply
to the left, and galloped in the direction of Kovno, preceded by
enraptured, mounted chasseurs of the Guard who, breathless with
delight, galloped ahead to clear a path for him through the troops. On
reaching the broad river Viliya, he stopped near a regiment of
Polish Uhlans stationed by the river.

"Vivat!" shouted the Poles, ecstatically, breaking their ranks and
pressing against one another to see him.

Napoleon looked up and down the river, dismounted, and sat down on a
log that lay on the bank. At a mute sign from him, a telescope was
handed him which he rested on the back of a happy page who had run
up to him, and he gazed at the opposite bank. Then he became
absorbed in a map laid out on the logs. Without lifting his head he
said something, and two of his aides-de-camp galloped off to the
Polish Uhlans.

"What? What did he say?" was heard in the ranks of the Polish Uhlans
when one of the aides-de-camp rode up to them.

The order was to find a ford and to cross the river. The colonel
of the Polish Uhlans, a handsome old man, flushed and, fumbling in his
speech from excitement, asked the aide-de-camp whether he would be
permitted to swim the river with his Uhlans instead of seeking a ford.
In evident fear of refusal, like a boy asking for permission to get on
a horse, he begged to be allowed to swim across the river before the
Emperor's eyes. The aide-de-camp replied that probably the Emperor
would not be displeased at this excess of zeal.

As soon as the aide-de-camp had said this, the old mustached
officer, with happy face and sparkling eyes, raised his saber, shouted
"Vivat!" and, commanding the Uhlans to follow him, spurred his horse
and galloped into the river. He gave an angry thrust to his horse,
which had grown restive under him, and plunged into the water, heading
for the deepest part where the current was swift. Hundreds of Uhlans
galloped in after him. It was cold and uncanny in the rapid current in
the middle of the stream, and the Uhlans caught hold of one another as
they fell off their horses. Some of the horses were drowned and some
of the men; the others tried to swim on, some in the saddle and some
clinging to their horses' manes. They tried to make their way
forward to the opposite bank and, though there was a ford one third of
a mile away, were proud that they were swimming and drowning in this
river under the eyes of the man who sat on the log and was not even
looking at what they were doing. When the aide-de-camp, having
returned and choosing an opportune moment, ventured to draw the
Emperor's attention to the devotion of the Poles to his person, the
little man in the gray overcoat got up and, having summoned
Berthier, began pacing up and down the bank with him, giving him
instructions and occasionally glancing disapprovingly at the
drowning Uhlans who distracted his attention.

For him it was no new conviction that his presence in any part of
the world, from Africa to the steppes of Muscovy alike, was enough
to dumfound people and impel them to insane self-oblivion. He called
for his horse and rode to his quarters.

Some forty Uhlans were drowned in the river, though boats were
sent to their assistance. The majority struggled back to the bank from
which they had started. The colonel and some of his men got across and
with difficulty clambered out on the further bank. And as soon as they
had got out, in their soaked and streaming clothes, they shouted
"Vivat!" and looked ecstatically at the spot where Napoleon had been
but where he no longer was and at that moment considered themselves
happy.

That evening, between issuing one order that the forged Russian
paper money prepared for use in Russia should be delivered as
quickly as possible and another that a Saxon should be shot, on whom a
letter containing information about the orders to the French army
had been found, Napoleon also gave instructions that the Polish
colonel who had needlessly plunged into the river should be enrolled
in the Legion d'honneur of which Napoleon was himself the head.

Quos vult perdere dementat.*


*Those whom (God) wishes to destroy he drives mad.





CHAPTER III


The Emperor of Russia had, meanwhile, been in Vilna for more than
a month, reviewing troops and holding maneuvers. Nothing was ready for
the war that everyone expected and to prepare for which the Emperor
had come from Petersburg. There was no general plan of action. The
vacillation between the various plans that were proposed had even
increased after the Emperor had been at headquarters for a month. Each
of the three armies had its own commander in chief, but there was no
supreme commander of all the forces, and the Emperor did not assume
that responsibility himself.

The longer the Emperor remained in Vilna the less did everybody-
tired of waiting--prepare for the war. All the efforts of those who
surrounded the sovereign seemed directed merely to making him spend
his time pleasantly and forget that war was impending.

In June, after many balls and fetes given by the Polish magnates, by
the courtiers, and by the Emperor himself, it occurred to one of the
Polish aides-de-camp in attendance that a dinner and ball should be
given for the Emperor by his aides-de-camp. This idea was eagerly
received. The Emperor gave his consent. The aides-de-camp collected
money by subscription. The lady who was thought to be most pleasing to
the Emperor was invited to act as hostess. Count Bennigsen, being a
landowner in the Vilna province, offered his country house for the
fete, and the thirteenth of June was fixed for a ball, dinner,
regatta, and fireworks at Zakret, Count Bennigsen's country seat.

The very day that Napoleon issued the order to cross the Niemen, and
his vanguard, driving off the Cossacks, crossed the Russian
frontier, Alexander spent the evening at the entertainment given by
his aides-de-camp at Bennigsen's country house.

It was a gay and brilliant fete. Connoisseurs of such matters
declared that rarely had so many beautiful women been assembled in one
place. Countess Bezukhova was present among other Russian ladies who
had followed the sovereign from Petersburg to Vilna and eclipsed the
refined Polish ladies by her massive, so called Russian type of
beauty. The Emperor noticed her and honored her with a dance.

Boris Drubetskoy, having left his wife in Moscow and being for the
present en garcon (as he phrased it), was also there and, though not
an aide-de-camp, had subscribed a large sum toward the expenses. Boris
was now a rich man who had risen to high honors and no longer sought
patronage but stood on an equal footing with the highest of those of
his own age. He was meeting Helene in Vilna after not having seen
her for a long time and did not recall the past, but as Helene was
enjoying the favors of a very important personage and Boris had only
recently married, they met as good friends of long standing.

At midnight dancing was still going on. Helene, not having a
suitable partner, herself offered to dance the mazurka with Boris.
They were the third couple. Boris, coolly looking at Helene's dazzling
bare shoulders which emerged from a dark, gold-embroidered, gauze
gown, talked to her of old acquaintances and at the same time, unaware
of it himself and unnoticed by others, never for an instant ceased
to observe the Emperor who was in the same room. The Emperor was not
dancing, he stood in the doorway, stopping now one pair and now
another with gracious words which he alone knew how to utter.

As the mazurka began, Boris saw that Adjutant General Balashev,
one of those in closest attendance on the Emperor, went up to him
and contrary to court etiquette stood near him while he was talking to
a Polish lady. Having finished speaking to her, the Emperor looked
inquiringly at Balashev and, evidently understanding that he only
acted thus because there were important reasons for so doing, nodded
slightly to the lady and turned to him. Hardly had Balashev begun to
speak before a look of amazement appeared on the Emperor's face. He
took Balashev by the arm and crossed the room with him,
unconsciously clearing a path seven yards wide as the people on both
sides made way for him. Boris noticed Arakcheev's excited face when
the sovereign went out with Balashev. Arakcheev looked at the
Emperor from under his brow and, sniffing with his red nose, stepped
forward from the crowd as if expecting the Emperor to address him.
(Boris understood that Arakcheev envied Balashev and was displeased
that evidently important news had reached the Emperor otherwise than
through himself.)

But the Emperor and Balashev passed out into the illuminated
garden without noticing Arakcheev who, holding his sword and
glancing wrathfully around, followed some twenty paces behind them.

All the time Boris was going through the figures of the mazurka,
he was worried by the question of what news Balashev had brought and
how he could find it out before others. In the figure in which he
had to choose two ladies, he whispered to Helene that he meant to
choose Countess Potocka who, he thought, had gone out onto the
veranda, and glided over the parquet to the door opening into the
garden, where, seeing Balashev and the Emperor returning to the
veranda, he stood still. They were moving toward the door. Boris,
fluttering as if he had not had time to withdraw, respectfully pressed
close to the doorpost with bowed head.

The Emperor, with the agitation of one who has been personally
affronted, was finishing with these words:

"To enter Russia without declaring war! I will not make peace as
long as a single armed enemy remains in my country!" It seemed to
Boris that it gave the Emperor pleasure to utter these words. He was
satisfied with the form in which he had expressed his thoughts, but
displeased that Boris had overheard it.

"Let no one know of it!" the Emperor added with a frown.

Boris understood that this was meant for him and, closing his
eyes, slightly bowed his head. The Emperor re-entered the ballroom and
remained there about another half-hour.

Boris was thus the first to learn the news that the French army
had crossed the Niemen and, thanks to this, was able to show certain
important personages that much that was concealed from others was
usually known to him, and by this means he rose higher in their
estimation.


The unexpected news of the French having crossed the Niemen was
particularly startling after a month of unfulfilled expectations,
and at a ball. On first receiving the news, under the influence of
indignation and resentment the Emperor had found a phrase that pleased
him, fully expressed his feelings, and has since become famous. On
returning home at two o'clock that night he sent for his secretary,
Shishkov, and told him to write an order to the troops and a
rescript to Field Marshal Prince Saltykov, in which he insisted on the
words being inserted that he would not make peace so long as a
single armed Frenchman remained on Russian soil.

Next day the following letter was sent to Napoleon:


Monsieur mon frere,

Yesterday I learned that, despite the loyalty which I have kept my
engagements with Your Majesty, your troops have crossed the Russian
frontier, and I have this moment received from Petersburg a note, in
which Count Lauriston informs me, as a reason for this aggression,
that Your Majesty has considered yourself to be in a state of war with
me from the time Prince Kuragin asked for his passports. The reasons
on which the Duc de Bassano based his refusal to deliver them to him
would never have led me to suppose that that could serve as a
pretext for aggression. In fact, the ambassador, as he himself has
declared, was never authorized to make that demand, and as soon as I
was informed of it I let him know how much I disapproved of it and
ordered him to remain at his post. If Your Majesty does not intend
to shed the blood of our peoples for such a misunderstanding, and
consents to withdraw your troops from Russian territory, I will regard
what has passed as not having occurred and an understanding between us
will be possible. In the contrary case, Your Majesty, I shall see
myself forced to repel an attack that nothing on my part has provoked.
It still depends on Your Majesty to preserve humanity from the
calamity of another war. I am, etc.,
                                         (signed) Alexander





CHAPTER IV


At two in the morning of the fourteenth of June, the Emperor, having
sent for Balashev and read him his letter to Napoleon, ordered him
to take it and hand it personally to the French Emperor. When
dispatching Balashev, the Emperor repeated to him the words that he
would not make peace so long as a single armed enemy remained on
Russian soil and told him to transmit those words to Napoleon.
Alexander did not insert them in his letter to Napoleon, because
with his characteristic tact he felt it would be injudicious to use
them at a moment when a last attempt at reconciliation was being made,
but he definitely instructed Balashev to repeat them personally to
Napoleon.

Having set off in the small hours of the fourteenth, accompanied
by a bugler and two Cossacks, Balashev reached the French outposts
at the village of Rykonty, on the Russian side of the Niemen, by dawn.
There he was stopped by French cavalry sentinels.

A French noncommissioned officer of hussars, in crimson uniform
and a shaggy cap, shouted to the approaching Balashev to halt.
Balashev did not do so at once, but continued to advance along the
road at a walking pace.

The noncommissioned officer frowned and, muttering words of abuse,
advanced his horse's chest against Balashev, put his hand to his
saber, and shouted rudely at the Russian general, asking: was he
deaf that he did not do as he was told? Balashev mentioned who he was.
The noncommissioned officer began talking with his comrades about
regimental matters without looking at the Russian general.

After living at the seat of the highest authority and power, after
conversing with the Emperor less than three hours before, and in
general being accustomed to the respect due to his rank in the
service, Balashev found it very strange here on Russian soil to
encounter this hostile, and still more this disrespectful, application
of brute force to himself.

The sun was only just appearing from behind the clouds, the air
was fresh and dewy. A herd of cattle was being driven along the road
from the village, and over the fields the larks rose trilling, one
after another, like bubbles rising in water.

Balashev looked around him, awaiting the arrival of an officer
from the village. The Russian Cossacks and bugler and the French
hussars looked silently at one another from time to time.

A French colonel of hussars, who had evidently just left his bed,
came riding from the village on a handsome sleek gray horse,
accompanied by two hussars. The officer, the soldiers, and their
horses all looked smart and well kept.

It was that first period of a campaign when troops are still in full
trim, almost like that of peacetime maneuvers, but with a shade of
martial swagger in their clothes, and a touch of the gaiety and spirit
of enterprise which always accompany the opening of a campaign.

The French colonel with difficulty repressed a yawn, but was
polite and evidently understood Balashev's importance. He led him past
his soldiers and behind the outposts and told him that his wish to
be presented to the Emperor would most likely be satisfied
immediately, as the Emperor's quarters were, he believed, not far off.

They rode through the village of Rykonty, past tethered French
hussar horses, past sentinels and men who saluted their colonel and
stared with curiosity at a Russian uniform, and came out at the
other end of the village. The colonel said that the commander of the
division was a mile and a quarter away and would receive Balashev
and conduct him to his destination.

The sun had by now risen and shone gaily on the bright verdure.

They had hardly ridden up a hill, past a tavern, before they saw a
group of horsemen coming toward them. In front of the group, on a
black horse with trappings that glittered in the sun, rode a tall
man with plumes in his hat and black hair curling down to his
shoulders. He wore a red mantle, and stretched his long legs forward
in French fashion. This man rode toward Balashev at a gallop, his
plumes flowing and his gems and gold lace glittering in the bright
June sunshine.

Balashev was only two horses' length from the equestrian with the
bracelets, plunies, necklaces, and gold embroidery, who was
galloping toward him with a theatrically solemn countenance, when
Julner, the French colonel, whispered respectfully: "The King of
Naples!" It was, in fact, Murat, now called "King of Naples." Though
it was quite incomprehensible why he should be King of Naples, he
was called so, and was himself convinced that he was so, and therefore
assumed a more solemn and important air than formerly. He was so
sure that he really was the King of Naples that when, on the eve of
his departure from that city, while walking through the streets with
his wife, some Italians called out to him: "Viva il re!"* he turned to
his wife with a pensive smile and said: "Poor fellows, they don't know
that I am leaving them tomorrow!"


*"Long live the king."


But though he firmly believed himself to be King of Naples and
pitied the grief felt by the subjects he was abandoning, latterly,
after he had been ordered to return to military service--and
especially since his last interview with Napoleon in Danzig, when
his august brother-in-law had told him: "I made you King that you
should reign in my way, but not in yours!"--he had cheerfully taken up
his familiar business, and--like a well-fed but not overfat horse that
feels himself in harness and grows skittish between the shafts--he
dressed up in clothes as variegated and expensive as possible, and
gaily and contentedly galloped along the roads of Poland, without
himself knowing why or whither.

On seeing the Russian general he threw back his head, with its
long hair curling to his shoulders, in a majestically royal manner,
and looked inquiringly at the French colonel. The colonel respectfully
informed His Majesty of Balashev's mission, whose name he could not
pronounce.

"De Bal-macheve!" said the King (overcoming by his assurance the
difficulty that had presented itself to the colonel). "Charmed to make
your acquaintance, General!" he added, with a gesture of kingly
condescension.

As soon as the King began to speak loud and fast his royal dignity
instantly forsook him, and without noticing it he passed into his
natural tone of good-natured familiarity. He laid his hand on the
withers of Balashev's horse and said:

"Well, General, it all looks like war," as if regretting a
circumstance of which he was unable to judge.

"Your Majesty," replied Balashev, "my master, the Emperor, does
not desire war and as Your Majesty sees..." said Balashev, using the
words Your Majesty at every opportunity, with the affectation
unavoidable in frequently addressing one to whom the title was still a
novelty.

Murat's face beamed with stupid satisfaction as he listened to
"Monsieur de Bal-macheve." But royaute oblige!* and he felt it
incumbent on him, as a king and an ally, to confer on state affairs
with Alexander's envoy. He dismounted, took Balashev's arm, and moving
a few steps away from his suite, which waited respectfully, began to
pace up and down with him, trying to speak significantly. He
referred to the fact that the Emperor Napoleon had resented the demand
that he should withdraw his troops from Prussia, especially when
that demand became generally known and the dignity of France was
thereby offended.


*"Royalty has its obligations."


Balashev replied that there was "nothing offensive in the demand,
because..." but Murat interrupted him.

"Then you don't consider the Emperor Alexander the aggressor?" he
asked unexpectedly, with a kindly and foolish smile.

Balashev told him why he considered Napoleon to be the originator of
the war.

"Oh, my dear general!" Murat again interrupted him, "with all my
heart I wish the Emperors may arrange the affair between them, and
that the war begun by no wish of mine may finish as quickly as
possible!" said he, in the tone of a servant who wants to remain
good friends with another despite a quarrel between their masters.

And he went on to inquiries about the Grand Duke and the state of
his health, and to reminiscences of the gay and amusing times he had
spent with him in Naples. Then suddenly, as if remembering his royal
dignity, Murat solemnly drew himself up, assumed the pose in which
he had stood at his coronation, and, waving his right arm, said:

"I won't detain you longer, General. I wish success to your
mission," and with his embroidered red mantle, his flowing feathers,
and his glittering ornaments, he rejoined his suite who were
respectfully awaiting him.

Balashev rode on, supposing from Murat's words that he would very
soon be brought before Napoleon himself. But instead of that, at the
next village the sentinels of Davout's infantry corps detained him
as the pickets of the vanguard had done, and an adjutant of the
corps commander, who was fetched, conducted him into the village to
Marshal Davout.





CHAPTER V


Davout was to Napoleon what Arakcheev was to Alexander--though not a
coward like Arakcheev, he was as precise, as cruel, and as unable to
express his devotion to his monarch except by cruelty.

In the organism of states such men are necessary, as wolves are
necessary in the organism of nature, and they always exist, always
appear and hold their own, however incongruous their presence and
their proximity to the head of the government may be. This
inevitability alone can explain how the cruel Arakcheev, who tore
out a grenadier's mustache with his own hands, whose weak nerves
rendered him unable to face danger, and who was neither an educated
man nor a courtier, was able to maintain his powerful position with
Alexander, whose own character was chivalrous, noble, and gentle.

Balashev found Davout seated on a barrel in the shed of a
peasant's hut, writing--he was auditing accounts. Better quarters
could have been found him, but Marshal Davout was one of those men who
purposely put themselves in most depressing conditions to have a
justification for being gloomy. For the same reason they are always
hard at work and in a hurry. "How can I think of the bright side of
life when, as you see, I am sitting on a barrel and working in a dirty
shed?" the expression of his face seemed to say. The chief pleasure
and necessity of such men, when they encounter anyone who shows
animation, is to flaunt their own dreary, persistent activity.
Davout allowed himself that pleasure when Balashev was brought in.
He became still more absorbed in his task when the Russian general
entered, and after glancing over his spectacles at Balashev's face,
which was animated by the beauty of the morning and by his talk with
Murat, he did not rise or even stir, but scowled still more and
sneered malevolently.

When he noticed in Balashev's face the disagreeable impression
this reception produced, Davout raised his head and coldly asked
what he wanted.

Thinking he could have been received in such a manner only because
Davout did not know that he was adjutant general to the Emperor
Alexander and even his envoy to Napoleon, Balashev hastened to
inform him of his rank and mission. Contrary to his expectation,
Davout, after hearing him, became still surlier and ruder.

"Where is your dispatch?" he inquired. "Give it to me. I will send
it to the Emperor."

Balashev replied that he had been ordered to hand it personally to
the Emperor.

"Your Emperor's orders are obeyed in your army, but here," said
Davout, "you must do as you're told."

And, as if to make the Russian general still more conscious of his
dependence on brute force, Davout sent an adjutant to call the officer
on duty.

Balashev took out the packet containing the Emperor's letter and
laid it on the table (made of a door with its hinges still hanging
on it, laid across two barrels). Davout took the packet and read the
inscription.

"You are perfectly at liberty to treat me with respect or not,"
protested Balashev, "but permit me to observe that I have the honor to
be adjutant general to His Majesty...."

Davout glanced at him silently and plainly derived pleasure from the
signs of agitation and confusion which appeared on Balashev's face.

"You will be treated as is fitting," said he and, putting the packet
in his pocket, left the shed.

A minute later the marshal's adjutant, de Castres, came in and
conducted Balashev to the quarters assigned him.

That day he dined with the marshal, at the same board on the
barrels.

Next day Davout rode out early and, after asking Balashev to come to
him, peremptorily requested him to remain there, to move on with the
baggage train should orders come for it to move, and to talk to no one
except Monsieur de Castres.

After four days of solitude, ennui, and consciousness of his
impotence and insignificance--particularly acute by contrast with
the sphere of power in which he had so lately moved--and after several
marches with the marshal's baggage and the French army, which occupied
the whole district, Balashev was brought to Vilna--now occupied by the
French--through the very gate by which he had left it four days
previously.

Next day the imperial gentleman-in-waiting, the Comte de Turenne,
came to Balashev and informed him of the Emperor Napoleon's wish to
honor him with an audience.

Four days before, sentinels of the Preobrazhensk regiment had
stood in front of the house to which Balashev was conducted, and now
two French grenadiers stood there in blue uniforms unfastened in front
and with shaggy caps on their heads, and an escort of hussars and
Uhlans and a brilliant suite of aides-de-camp, pages, and generals,
who were waiting for Napoleon to come out, were standing at the porch,
round his saddle horse and his Mameluke, Rustan. Napoleon received
Balashev in the very house in Vilna from which Alexander had
dispatched him on his mission.





CHAPTER VI


Though Balashev was used to imperial pomp, he was amazed at the
luxury and magnificence of Napoleon's court.

The Comte de Turenne showed him into a big reception room where many
generals, gentlemen-in-waiting, and Polish magnates--several of whom
Balashev had seen at the court of the Emperor of Russia--were waiting.
Duroc said that Napoleon would receive the Russian general before
going for his ride.

After some minutes, the gentleman-in-waiting who was on duty came
into the great reception room and, bowing politely, asked Balashev
to follow him.

Balashev went into a small reception room, one door of which led
into a study, the very one from which the Russian Emperor had
dispatched him on his mission. He stood a minute or two, waiting. He
heard hurried footsteps beyond the door, both halves of it were opened
rapidly; all was silent and then from the study the sound was heard of
other steps, firm and resolute--they were those of Napoleon. He had
just finished dressing for his ride, and wore a blue uniform,
opening in front over a white waistcoat so long that it covered his
rotund stomach, white leather breeches tightly fitting the fat
thighs of his short legs, and Hessian boots. His short hair had
evidently just been brushed, but one lock hung down in the middle of
his broad forehead. His plump white neck stood out sharply above the
black collar of his uniform, and he smelled of Eau de Cologne. His
full face, rather young-looking, with its prominent chin, wore a
gracious and majestic expression of imperial welcome.

He entered briskly, with a jerk at every step and his head
slightly thrown back. His whole short corpulent figure with broad
thick shoulders, and chest and stomach involuntarily protruding, had
that imposing and stately appearance one sees in men of forty who live
in comfort. It was evident, too, that he was in the best of spirits
that day.

He nodded in answer to Balashav's low and respectful bow, and coming
up to him at once began speaking like a man who values every moment of
his time and does not condescend to prepare what he has to say but
is sure he will always say the right thing and say it well.

"Good day, General!" said he. "I have received the letter you
brought from the Emperor Alexander and am very glad to see you." He
glanced with his large eyes into Balashav's face and immediately
looked past him.

It was plain that Balashev's personality did not interest him at
all. Evidently only what took place within his own mind interested
him. Nothing outside himself had any significance for him, because
everything in the world, it seemed to him, depended entirely on his
will.

"I do not, and did not, desire war," he continued, "but it has
been forced on me. Even now" (he emphasized the word) "I am ready to
receive any explanations you can give me."

And he began clearly and concisely to explain his reasons for
dissatisfaction with the Russian government. Judging by the calmly
moderate and amicable tone in which the French Emperor spoke, Balashev
was firmly persuaded that he wished for peace and intended to enter
into negotiations.

When Napoleon, having finished speaking, looked inquiringly at the
Russian envoy, Balashev began a speech he had prepared long before:
"Sire! The Emperor, my master..." but the sight of the Emperor's
eyes bent on him confused him. "You are flurried--compose yourself!"
Napoleon seemed to say, as with a scarcely perceptible smile he looked
at Balashev's uniform and sword.

Balashev recovered himself and began to speak. He said that the
Emperor Alexander did not consider Kurakin's demand for his
passports a sufficient cause for war; that Kurakin had acted on his
own initiative and without his sovereign's assent, that the Emperor
Alexander did not desire war, and had no relations with England.

"Not yet!" interposed Napoleon, and, as if fearing to give vent to
his feelings, he frowned and nodded slightly as a sign that Balashev
might proceed.

After saying all he had been instructed to say, Balashev added
that the Emperor Alexander wished for peace, but would not enter
into negotiations except on condition that... Here Balashev hesitated:
he remembered the words the Emperor Alexander had not written in his
letter, but had specially inserted in the rescript to Saltykov and had
told Balashev to repeat to Napoleon. Balashev remembered these
words, "So long as a single armed foe remains on Russian soil," but
some complex feeling restrained him. He could not utter them, though
he wished to do so. He grew confused and said: "On condition that
the French army retires beyond the Niemen."

Napoleon noticed Balashev's embarrassment when uttering these last
words; his face twitched and the calf of his left leg began to
quiver rhythmically. Without moving from where he stood he began
speaking in a louder tone and more hurriedly than before. During the
speech that followed, Balashev, who more than once lowered his eyes,
involuntarily noticed the quivering of Napoleon's left leg which
increased the more Napoleon raised his voice.

"I desire peace, no less than the Emperor Alexander," he began.
"Have I not for eighteen months been doing everything to obtain it?
I have waited eighteen months for explanations. But in order to
begin negotiations, what is demanded of me?" he said, frowning and
making an energetic gesture of inquiry with his small white plump
hand.

"The withdrawal of your army beyond the Niemen, sire," replied
Balashev.

"The Niemen?" repeated Napoleon. "So now you want me to retire
beyond the Niemen--only the Niemen?" repeated Napoleon, looking
straight at Balashev.

The latter bowed his head respectfully.

Instead of the demand of four months earlier to withdraw from
Pomerania, only a withdrawal beyond the Niemen was now demanded.
Napoleon turned quickly and began to pace the room.

"You say the demand now is that I am to withdraw beyond the Niemen
before commencing negotiations, but in just the same way two months
ago the demand was that I should withdraw beyond the Vistula and the
Oder, and yet you are willing to negotiate."

He went in silence from one corner of the room to the other and
again stopped in front of Balashev. Balashev noticed that his left leg
was quivering faster than before and his face seemed petrified in
its stern expression. This quivering of his left leg was a thing
Napoleon was conscious of. "The vibration of my left calf is a great
sign with me," he remarked at a later date.

"Such demands as to retreat beyond the Vistula and Oder may be
made to a Prince of Baden, but not to me!" Napoleon almost screamed,
quite to his own surprise. "If you gave me Petersburg and Moscow I
could not accept such conditions. You say I have begun this war! But
who first joined his army? The Emperor Alexander, not I! And you offer
me negotiations when I have expended millions, when you are in
alliance with England, and when your position is a bad one. You
offer me negotiations! But what is the aim of your alliance with
England? What has she given you?" he continued hurriedly, evidently no
longer trying to show the advantages of peace and discuss its
possibility, but only to prove his own rectitude and power and
Alexander's errors and duplicity.

The commencement of his speech had obviously been made with the
intention of demonstrating the advantages of his position and
showing that he was nevertheless willing to negotiate. But he had
begun talking, and the more he talked the less could he control his
words.

The whole purport of his remarks now was evidently to exalt
himself and insult Alexander--just what he had least desired at the
commencement of the interview.

"I hear you have made peace with Turkey?"

Balashev bowed his head affirmatively.

"Peace has been concluded..." he began.

But Napoleon did not let him speak. He evidently wanted to do all
the talking himself, and continued to talk with the sort of
eloquence and unrestrained irritability to which spoiled people are so
prone.

"Yes, I know you have made peace with the Turks without obtaining
Moldavia and Wallachia; I would have given your sovereign those
provinces as I gave him Finland. Yes," he went on, "I promised and
would have given the Emperor Alexander Moldavia and Wallachia, and now
he won't have those splendid provinces. Yet he might have united
them to his empire and in a single reign would have extended Russia
from the Gulf of Bothnia to the mouths of the Danube. Catherine the
Great could not have done more," said Napoleon, growing more and
more excited as he paced up and down the room, repeating to Balashev
almost the very words he had used to Alexander himself at Tilsit. "All
that, he would have owed to my friendship. Oh, what a splendid reign!"
he repeated several times, then paused, drew from his pocket a gold
snuffbox, lifted it to his nose, and greedily sniffed at it.

"What a splendid reign the Emperor Alexander's might have been!"

He looked compassionately at Balashev, and as soon as the latter
tried to make some rejoinder hastily interrupted him.

"What could he wish or look for that he would not have obtained
through my friendship?" demanded Napoleon, shrugging his shoulders
in perplexity. "But no, he has preferred to surround himself with my
enemies, and with whom? With Steins, Armfeldts, Bennigsens, and
Wintzingerodes! Stein, a traitor expelled from his own country;
Armfeldt, a rake and an intriguer; Wintzingerode, a fugitive French
subject; Bennigsen, rather more of a soldier than the others, but
all the same an incompetent who was unable to do anything in 1807
and who should awaken terrible memories in the Emperor Alexander's
mind.... Granted that were they competent they might be made use
of," continued Napoleon--hardly able to keep pace in words with the
rush of thoughts that incessantly sprang up, proving how right and
strong he was (in his perception the two were one and the same)-
"but they are not even that! They are neither fit for war nor peace!
Barclay is said to be the most capable of them all, but I cannot say
so, judging by his first movements. And what are they doing, all these
courtiers? Pfuel proposes, Armfeldt disputes, Bennigsen considers, and
Barclay, called on to act, does not know what to decide on, and time
passes bringing no result. Bagration alone is a military man. He's
stupid, but he has experience, a quick eye, and resolution.... And
what role is your young monarch playing in that monstrous crowd?
They compromise him and throw on him the responsibility for all that
happens. A sovereign should not be with the army unless he is a
general!" said Napoleon, evidently uttering these words as a direct
challenge to the Emperor. He knew how Alexander desired to be a
military commander.

"The campaign began only a week ago, and you haven't even been
able to defend Vilna. You are cut in two and have been driven out of
the Polish provinces. Your army is grumbling."

"On the contrary, Your Majesty," said Balashev, hardly able to
remember what had been said to him and following these verbal
fireworks with difficulty, "the troops are burning with eagerness..."

"I know everything!" Napoleon interrupted him. "I know everything. I
know the number of your battalions as exactly as I know my own. You
have not two hundred thousand men, and I have three times that number.
I give you my word of honor," said Napoleon, forgetting that his
word of honor could carry no weight--"I give you my word of honor that
I have five hundred and thirty thousand men this side of the
Vistula. The Turks will be of no use to you; they are worth nothing
and have shown it by making peace with you. As for the Swedes--it is
their fate to be governed by mad kings. Their king was insane and they
changed him for another--Bernadotte, who promptly went mad--for no
Swede would ally himself with Russia unless he were mad."

Napoleon grinned maliciously and again raised his snuffbox to his
nose.

Balashev knew how to reply to each of Napoleon's remarks, and
would have done so; he continually made the gesture of a man wishing
to say something, but Napoleon always interrupted him. To the
alleged insanity of the Swedes, Balashev wished to reply that when
Russia is on her side Sweden is practically an island: but Napoleon
gave an angry exclamation to drown his voice. Napoleon was in that
state of irritability in which a man has to talk, talk, and talk,
merely to convince himself that he is in the right. Balashev began
to feel uncomfortable: as envoy he feared to demean his dignity and
felt the necessity of replying; but, as a man, he shrank before the
transport of groundless wrath that had evidently seized Napoleon. He
knew that none of the words now uttered by Napoleon had any
significance, and that Napoleon himself would be ashamed of them
when he came to his senses. Balashev stood with downcast eyes, looking
at the movements of Napoleon's stout legs and trying to avoid
meeting his eyes.

"But what do I care about your allies?" said Napoleon. "I have
allies--the Poles. There are eighty thousand of them and they fight
like lions. And there will be two hundred thousand of them."

And probably still more perturbed by the fact that he had uttered
this obvious falsehood, and that Balashev still stood silently
before him in the same attitude of submission to fate, Napoleon
abruptly turned round, drew close to Balashev's face, and,
gesticulating rapidly and energetically with his white hands, almost
shouted:

"Know that if you stir up Prussia against me, I'll wipe it off the
map of Europe!" he declared, his face pale and distorted by anger, and
he struck one of his small hands energetically with the other. "Yes, I
will throw you back beyond the Dvina and beyond the Dnieper, and
will re-erect against you that barrier which it was criminal and blind
of Europe to allow to be destroyed. Yes, that is what will happen to
you. That is what you have gained by alienating me!" And he walked
silently several times up and down the room, his fat shoulders
twitching.

He put his snuffbox into his waistcoat pocket, took it out again,
lifted it several times to his nose, and stopped in front of Balashev.
He paused, looked ironically straight into Balashev's eyes, and said
in a quiet voice:

"And yet what a splendid reign your master might have had!"

Balashev, feeling it incumbent on him to reply, said that from the
Russian side things did not appear in so gloomy a light. Napoleon
was silent, still looking derisively at him and evidently not
listening to him. Balashev said that in Russia the best results were
expected from the war. Napoleon nodded condescendingly, as if to
say, "I know it's your duty to say that, but you don't believe it
yourself. I have convinced you."

When Balashev had ended, Napoleon again took out his snuffbox,
sniffed at it, and stamped his foot twice on the floor as a signal.
The door opened, a gentleman-in-waiting, bending respectfully,
handed the Emperor his hat and gloves; another brought him a pocket
handkerchief. Napoleon, without giving them a glance, turned to
Balashev:

"Assure the Emperor Alexander from me," said he, taking his hat,
"that I am as devoted to him as before: I know him thoroughly and very
highly esteem his lofty qualities. I will detain you no longer,
General; you shall receive my letter to the Emperor."

And Napoleon went quickly to the door. Everyone in the reception
room rushed forward and descended the staircase.





CHAPTER VII


After all that Napoleon had said to him--those bursts of anger and
the last dryly spoken words: "I will detain you no longer, General;
you shall receive my letter," Balashev felt convinced that Napoleon
would not wish to see him, and would even avoid another meeting with
him--an insulted envoy--especially as he had witnessed his unseemly
anger. But, to his surprise, Balashev received, through Duroc, an
invitation to dine with the Emperor that day.

Bessieres, Caulaincourt, and Berthier were present at that dinner.

Napoleon met Balashev cheerfully and amiably. He not only showed
no sign of constraint or self-reproach on account of his outburst that
morning, but, on the contrary, tried to reassure Balashev. It was
evident that he had long been convinced that it was impossible for him
to make a mistake, and that in his perception whatever he did was
right, not because it harmonized with any idea of right and wrong, but
because he did it.

The Emperor was in very good spirits after his ride through Vilna,
where crowds of people had rapturously greeted and followed him.
From all the windows of the streets through which he rode, rugs,
flags, and his monogram were displayed, and the Polish ladies,
welcoming him, waved their handkerchiefs to him.

At dinner, having placed Balashev beside him, Napoleon not only
treated him amiably but behaved as if Balashev were one of his own
courtiers, one of those who sympathized with his plans and ought to
rejoice at his success. In the course of conversation he mentioned
Moscow and questioned Balashev about the Russian capital, not merely
as an interested traveler asks about a new city he intends to visit,
but as if convinced that Balashev, as a Russian, must be flattered
by his curiosity.

"How many inhabitants are there in Moscow? How many houses? Is it
true that Moscow is called 'Holy Moscow'? How many churches are
there in Moscow?" he asked.

And receiving the reply that there were more than two hundred
churches, he remarked:

"Why such a quantity of churches?"

"The Russians are very devout," replied Balashev.

"But a large number of monasteries and churches is always a sign
of the backwardness of a people," said Napoleon, turning to
Caulaincourt for appreciation of this remark.

Balashev respectfully ventured to disagree with the French Emperor.

"Every country has its own character," said he.

"But nowhere in Europe is there anything like that," said Napoleon.

"I beg your Majesty's pardon," returned Balashev, "besides Russia
there is Spain, where there are also many churches and monasteries."

This reply of Balashev's, which hinted at the recent defeats of
the French in Spain, was much appreciated when he related it at
Alexander's court, but it was not much appreciated at Napoleon's
dinner, where it passed unnoticed.

The uninterested and perplexed faces of the marshals showed that
they were puzzled as to what Balashev's tone suggested. "If there is a
point we don't see it, or it is not at all witty," their expressions
seemed to say. So little was his rejoinder appreciated that Napoleon
did not notice it at all and naively asked Balashev through what towns
the direct road from there to Moscow passed. Balashev, who was on
the alert all through the dinner, replied that just as "all roads lead
to Rome," so all roads lead to Moscow: there were many roads, and
"among them the road through Poltava, which Charles XII chose."
Balashev involuntarily flushed with pleasure at the aptitude of this
reply, but hardly had he uttered the word Poltava before
Caulaincourt began speaking of the badness of the road from Petersburg
to Moscow and of his Petersburg reminiscences.

After dinner they went to drink coffee in Napoleon's study, which
four days previously had been that of the Emperor Alexander.
Napoleon sat down, toying with his Sevres coffee cup, and motioned
Balashev to a chair beside him.

Napoleon was in that well-known after-dinner mood which, more than
any reasoned cause, makes a man contented with himself and disposed to
consider everyone his friend. It seemed to him that he was
surrounded by men who adored him: and he felt convinced that, after
his dinner, Balashev too was his friend and worshiper. Napoleon turned
to him with a pleasant, though slightly ironic, smile.

"They tell me this is the room the Emperor Alexander occupied?
Strange, isn't it, General?" he said, evidently not doubting that this
remark would be agreeable to his hearer since it went to prove his,
Napoleon's, superiority to Alexander.

Balashev made no reply and bowed his head in silence.

"Yes. Four days ago in this room, Wintzingerode and Stein were
deliberating," continued Napoleon with the same derisive and
self-confident smile. "What I can't understand," he went on, "is
that the Emperor Alexander has surrounded himself with my personal
enemies. That I do not... understand. Has he not thought that I may
the same?" and he turned inquiringly to Balashev, and evidently this
thought turned him back on to the track of his morning's anger,
which was still fresh in him.

"And let him know that I will do so!" said Napoleon, rising and
pushing his cup away with his hand. "I'll drive all his Wurttemberg,
Baden, and Weimar relations out of Germany.... Yes. I'll drive them
out. Let him prepare an asylum for them in Russia!"

Balashev bowed his head with an air indicating that he would like to
make his bow and leave, and only listened because he could not help
hearing what was said to him. Napoleon did not notice this expression;
he treated Balashev not as an envoy from his enemy, but as a man now
fully devoted to him and who must rejoice at his former master's
humiliation.

"And why has the Emperor Alexander taken command of the armies? What
is the good of that? War is my profession, but his business is to
reign and not to command armies! Why has he taken on himself such a
responsibility?"

Again Napoleon brought out his snuffbox, paced several times up
and down the room in silence, and then, suddenly and unexpectedly,
went up to Balashev and with a slight smile, as confidently,
quickly, and simply as if he were doing something not merely
important but pleasing to Balashev, he raised his hand to the
forty-year-old Russian general's face and, taking him by the ear,
pulled it gently, smiling with his lips only.

To have one's ear pulled by the Emperor was considered the
greatest honor and mark of favor at the French court.

"Well, adorer and courtier of the Emperor Alexander, why don't you
say anything?" said he, as if it was ridiculous, in his presence, to
be the adorer and courtier of anyone but himself, Napoleon. "Are the
horses ready for the general?" he added, with a slight inclination
of his head in reply to Balashev's bow. "Let him have mine, he has a
long way to go!"

The letter taken by Balashev was the last Napoleon sent to
Alexander. Every detail of the interview was communicated to the
Russian monarch, and the war began...





CHAPTER VIII


After his interview with Pierre in Moscow, Prince Andrew went to
Petersburg, on business as he told his family, but really to meet
Anatole Kuragin whom he felt it necessary to encounter. On reaching
Petersburg he inquired for Kuragin but the latter had already left the
city. Pierre had warned his brother-in-law that Prince Andrew was on
his track. Anatole Kuragin promptly obtained an appointment from the
Minister of War and went to join the army in Moldavia. While in
Petersburg Prince Andrew met Kutuzov, his former commander who was
always well disposed toward him, and Kutuzov suggested that he
should accompany him to the army in Moldavia, to which the old general
had been appointed commander in chief. So Prince Andrew, having
received an appointment on the headquarters staff, left for Turkey.

Prince Andrew did not think it proper to write and challenge
Kuragin. He thought that if he challenged him without some fresh cause
it might compromise the young Countess Rostova and so he wanted to
meet Kuragin personally in order to find a fresh pretext for a duel.
But he again failed to meet Kuragin in Turkey, for soon after Prince
Andrew arrived, the latter returned to Russia. In a new country,
amid new conditions, Prince Andrew found life easier to bear. After
his betrothed had broken faith with him--which he felt the more
acutely the more he tried to conceal its effects--the surroundings
in which he had been happy became trying to him, and the freedom and
independence he had once prized so highly were still more so. Not only
could he no longer think the thoughts that had first come to him as he
lay gazing at the sky on the field of Austerlitz and had later
enlarged upon with Pierre, and which had filled his solitude at
Bogucharovo and then in Switzerland and Rome, but he even dreaded to
recall them and the bright and boundless horizons they had
revealed. He was now concerned only with the nearest practical matters
unrelated to his past interests, and he seized on these the more
eagerly the more those past interests were closed to him. It was as if
that lofty, infinite canopy of heaven that had once towered above
him had suddenly turned into a low, solid vault that weighed him down,
in which all was clear, but nothing eternal or mysterious.

Of the activities that presented themselves to him, army service was
the simplest and most familiar. As a general on duty on Kutuzov's
staff, he applied himself to business with zeal and perseverance and
surprised Kutuzov by his willingness and accuracy in work. Not
having found Kuragin in Turkey, Prince Andrew did not think it
necessary to rush back to Russia after him, but all the same he knew
that however long it might be before he met Kuragin, despite his
contempt for him and despite all the proofs he deduced to convince
himself that it was not worth stooping to a conflict with him--he knew
that when he did meet him he would not be able to resist calling him
out, any more than a ravenous man can help snatching at food. And
the consciousness that the insult was not yet avenged, that his rancor
was still unspent, weighed on his heart and poisoned the artificial
tranquillity which he managed to obtain in Turkey by means of
restless, plodding, and rather vainglorious and ambitious activity.

In the year 1812, when news of the war with Napoleon reached
Bucharest--where Kutuzov had been living for two months, passing his
days and nights with a Wallachian woman--Prince Andrew asked Kutuzov
to transfer him to the Western Army. Kutuzov, who was already weary of
Bolkonski's activity which seemed to reproach his own idleness, very
readily let him go and gave him a mission to Barclay de Tolly.

Before joining the Western Army which was then, in May, encamped
at Drissa, Prince Andrew visited Bald Hills which was directly on
his way, being only two miles off the Smolensk highroad. During the
last three years there had been so many changes in his life, he had
thought, felt, and seen so much (having traveled both in the east
and the west), that on reaching Bald Hills it struck him as strange
and unexpected to find the way of life there unchanged and still the
same in every detail. He entered through the gates with their stone
pillars and drove up the avenue leading to the house as if he were
entering an enchanted, sleeping castle. The same old stateliness,
the same cleanliness, the same stillness reigned there, and inside
there was the same furniture, the same walls, sounds, and smell, and
the same timid faces, only somewhat older. Princess Mary was still the
same timid, plain maiden getting on in years, uselessly and
joylessly passing the best years of her life in fear and constant
suffering. Mademoiselle Bourienne was the same coquettish,
self-satisfied girl, enjoying every moment of her existence and full
of joyous hopes for the future. She had merely become more
self-confident, Prince Andrew thought. Dessalles, the tutor he had
brought from Switzerland, was wearing a coat of Russian cut and
talking broken Russian to the servants, but was still the same
narrowly intelligent, conscientious, and pedantic preceptor. The old
prince had changed in appearance only by the loss of a tooth, which
left a noticeable gap on one side of his mouth; in character he was
the same as ever, only showing still more irritability and
skepticism as to what was happening in the world. Little Nicholas
alone had changed. He had grown, become rosier, had curly dark hair,
and, when merry and laughing, quite unconsciously lifted the upper lip
of his pretty little mouth just as the little princess used to do.
He alone did not obey the law of immutability in the enchanted,
sleeping castle. But though externally all remained as of old, the
inner relations of all these people had changed since Prince Andrew
had seen them last. The household was divided into two alien and
hostile camps, who changed their habits for his sake and only met
because he was there. To the one camp belonged the old prince,
Madmoiselle Bourienne, and the architect; to the other Princess
Mary, Dessalles, little Nicholas, and all the old nurses and maids.

During his stay at Bald Hills all the family dined together, but
they were ill at ease and Prince Andrew felt that he was a visitor for
whose sake an exception was being made and that his presence made them
all feel awkward. Involuntarily feeling this at dinner on the first
day, he was taciturn, and the old prince noticing this also became
morosely dumb and retired to his apartments directly after dinner.
In the evening, when Prince Andrew went to him and, trying to rouse
him, began to tell him of the young Count Kamensky's campaign, the old
prince began unexpectedly to talk about Princess Mary, blaming her for
her superstitions and her dislike of Mademoiselle Bourienne, who, he
said, was the only person really attached to him.

The old prince said that if he was ill it was only because of
Princess Mary: that she purposely worried and irritated him, and
that by indulgence and silly talk she was spoiling little Prince
Nicholas. The old prince knew very well that he tormented his daughter
and that her life was very hard, but he also knew that he could not
help tormenting her and that she deserved it. "Why does Prince Andrew,
who sees this, say nothing to me about his sister? Does he think me
a scoundrel, or an old fool who, without any reason, keeps his own
daughter at a distance and attaches this Frenchwoman to himself? He
doesn't understand, so I must explain it, and he must hear me out,"
thought the old prince. And he began explaining why he could not put
up with his daughter's unreasonable character.

"If you ask me," said Prince Andrew, without looking up (he was
censuring his father for the first time in his life), "I did not
wish to speak about it, but as you ask me I will give you my frank
opinion. If there is any misunderstanding and discord between you
and Mary, I can't blame her for it at all. I know how she loves and
respects you. Since you ask me," continued Prince Andrew, becoming
irritable--as he was always liable to do of late--"I can only say that
if there are any misunderstandings they are caused by that worthless
woman, who is not fit to be my sister's companion."

The old man at first stared fixedly at his son, and an unnatural
smile disclosed the fresh gap between his teeth to which Prince Andrew
could not get accustomed.

"What companion, my dear boy? Eh? You've already been talking it
over! Eh?"

"Father, I did not want to judge," said Prince Andrew, in a hard and
bitter tone, "but you challenged me, and I have said, and always shall
say, that Mary is not to blame, but those to blame--the one to
blame--is that Frenchwoman."

"Ah, he has passed judgment... passed judgement!" said the old man
in a low voice and, as it seemed to Prince Andrew, with some
embarrassment, but then he suddenly jumped up and cried: "Be off, be
off! Let not a trace of you remain here!..."


Prince Andrew wished to leave at once, but Princess Mary persuaded
him to stay another day. That day he did not see his father, who did
not leave his room and admitted no one but Mademoiselle Bourienne
and Tikhon, but asked several times whether his son had gone. Next
day, before leaving, Prince Andrew went to his son's rooms. The boy,
curly-headed like his mother and glowing with health, sat on his knee,
and Prince Andrew began telling him the story of Bluebeard, but fell
into a reverie without finishing the story. He thought not of this
pretty child, his son whom he held on his knee, but of himself. He
sought in himself either remorse for having angered his father or
regret at leaving home for the first time in his life on bad terms
with him, and was horrified to find neither. What meant still more
to him was that he sought and did not find in himself the former
tenderness for his son which he had hoped to reawaken by caressing the
boy and taking him on his knee.

"Well, go on!" said his son.

Prince Andrew, without replying, put him down from his knee and went
out of the room.

As soon as Prince Andrew had given up his daily occupations, and
especially on returning to the old conditions of life amid which he
had been happy, weariness of life overcame him with its former
intensity, and he hastened to escape from these memories and to find
some work as soon as possible.

"So you've decided to go, Andrew?" asked his sister.

"Thank God that I can," replied Prince Andrew. "I am very sorry
you can't."

"Why do you say that?" replied Princess Mary. "Why do you say
that, when you are going to this terrible war, and he is so old?
Mademoiselle Bourienne says he has been asking about you...."

As soon as she began to speak of that, her lips trembled and her
tears began to fall. Prince Andrew turned away and began pacing the
room.

"Ah, my God! my God! When one thinks who and what--what trash--can
cause people misery!" he said with a malignity that alarmed Princess
Mary.

She understood that when speaking of "trash" he referred not only to
Mademoiselle Bourienne, the cause of her misery, but also to the man
who had ruined his own happiness.

"Andrew! One thing I beg, I entreat of you!" she said, touching
his elbow and looking at him with eyes that shone through her tears.
"I understand you" (she looked down). "Don't imagine that sorrow is
the work of men. Men are His tools." She looked a little above
Prince Andrew's head with the confident, accustomed look with which
one looks at the place where a familiar portrait hangs. "Sorrow is
sent by Him, not by men. Men are His instruments, they are not to
blame. If you think someone has wronged you, forget it and forgive! We
have no right to punish. And then you will know the happiness of
forgiving."

"If I were a woman I would do so, Mary. That is a woman's virtue.
But a man should not and cannot forgive and forget," he replied, and
though till that moment he had not been thinking of Kuragin, all his
unexpended anger suddenly swelled up in his heart.

"If Mary is already persuading me forgive, it means that I ought
long ago to have punished him," he thought. And giving her no
further reply, he began thinking of the glad vindictive moment when he
would meet Kuragin who he knew was now in the army.

Princess Mary begged him to stay one day more, saying that she
knew how unhappy her father would be if Andrew left without being
reconciled to him, but Prince Andrew replied that he would probably
soon be back again from the army and would certainly write to his
father, but that the longer he stayed now the more embittered their
differences would become.

"Good-by, Andrew! Remember that misfortunes come from God, and men
are never to blame," were the last words he heard from his sister when
he took leave of her.

"Then it must be so!" thought Prince Andrew as he drove out of the
avenue from the house at Bald Hills. "She, poor innocent creature,
is left to be victimized by an old man who has outlived his wits.
The old man feels he is guilty, but cannot change himself. My boy is
growing up and rejoices in life, in which like everybody else he
will deceive or be deceived. And I am off to the army. Why? I myself
don't know. I want to meet that man whom I despise, so as to give
him a chance to kill and laugh at me!"

These conditions of life had been the same before, but then they
were all connected, while now they had all tumbled to pieces. Only
senseless things, lacking coherence, presented themselves one after
another to Prince Andrew's mind.





CHAPTER IX


Prince Andrew reached the general headquarters of the army at the
end of June. The first army, with which was the Emperor, occupied
the fortified camp at Drissa; the second army was retreating, trying
to effect a junction with the first one from which it was said to be
cut off by large French forces. Everyone was dissatisfied with the
general course of affairs in the Russian army, but no one
anticipated any danger of invasion of the Russian provinces, and no
one thought the war would extend farther than the western, the Polish,
provinces.

Prince Andrew found Barclay de Tolly, to whom he had been
assigned, on the bank of the Drissa. As there was not a single town or
large village in the vicinity of the camp, the immense number of
generals and courtiers accompanying the army were living in the best
houses of the villages on both sides of the river, over a radius of
six miles. Barclay de Tolly was quartered nearly three miles from
the Emperor. He received Bolkonski stiffly and coldly and told him
in his foreign accent that he would mention him to the Emperor for a
decision as to his employment, but asked him meanwhile to remain on
his staff. Anatole Kuragin, whom Prince Andrew had hoped to find
with the army, was not there. He had gone to Petersburg, but Prince
Andrew was glad to hear this. His mind was occupied by the interests
of the center that was conducting a gigantic war, and he was glad to
be free for a while from the distraction caused by the thought of
Kuragin. During the first four days, while no duties were required
of him, Prince Andrew rode round the whole fortified camp and, by
the aid of his own knowledge and by talks with experts, tried to
form a definite opinion about it. But the question whether the camp
was advantageous or disadvantageous remained for him undecided.
Already from his military experience and what he had seen in the
Austrian campaign, he had come to the conclusion that in war the
most deeply considered plans have no significance and that all depends
on the way unexpected movements of the enemy--that cannot be foreseen-
are met, and on how and by whom the whole matter is handled. To
clear up this last point for himself, Prince Andrew, utilizing his
position and acquaintances, tried to fathom the character of the
control of the army and of the men and parties engaged in it, and he
deduced for himself the following of the state of affairs.

While the Emperor had still been at Vilna, the forces had been
divided into three armies. First, the army under Barclay de Tolly,
secondly, the army under Bagration, and thirdly, the one commanded
by Tormasov. The Emperor was with the first army, but not as commander
in chief. In the orders issued it was stated, not that the Emperor
would take command, but only that he would be with the army. The
Emperor, moreover, had with him not a commander in chief's staff but
the imperial headquarters staff. In attendance on him was the head
of the imperial staff, Quartermaster General Prince Volkonski, as well
as generals, imperial aides-de-camp, diplomatic officials, and a large
number of foreigners, but not the army staff. Besides these, there
were in attendance on the Emperor without any definite appointments:
Arakcheev, the ex-Minister of War; Count Bennigsen, the senior general
in rank; the Grand Duke Tsarevich Constantine Pavlovich; Count
Rumyantsev, the Chancellor; Stein, a former Prussian minister;
Armfeldt, a Swedish general; Pfuel, the chief author of the plan of
campaign; Paulucci, an adjutant general and Sardinian emigre;
Wolzogen--and many others. Though these men had no military
appointment in the army, their position gave them influence, and often
a corps commander, or even the commander in chief, did not know in
what capacity he was questioned by Bennigsen, the Grand Duke,
Arakcheev, or Prince Volkonski, or was given this or that advice and
did not know whether a certain order received in the form of advice
emanated from the man who gave it or from the Emperor and whether it
had to be executed or not. But this was only the external condition;
the essential significance of the presence of the Emperor and of all
these people, from a courtier's point of view (and in an Emperor's
vicinity all became courtiers), was clear to everyone. It was this:
the Emperor did not assume the title of commander in chief, but
disposed of all the armies; the men around him were his assistants.
Arakcheev was a faithful custodian to enforce order and acted as the
sovereign's bodyguard. Bennigsen was a landlord in the Vilna
province who appeared to be doing the honors of the district, but
was in reality a good general, useful as an adviser and ready at
hand to replace Barclay. The Grand Duke was there because it suited
him to be. The ex-Minister Stein was there because his advice was
useful and the Emperor Alexander held him in high esteem personally.
Armfeldt virulently hated Napoleon and was a general full of
self-confidence, a quality that always influenced Alexander.
Paulucci was there because he was bold and decided in speech. The
adjutants general were there because they always accompanied the
Emperor, and lastly and chiefly Pfuel was there because he had drawn
up the plan of campaign against Napoleon and, having induced Alexander
to believe in the efficacy of that plan, was directing the whole
business of the war. With Pfuel was Wolzogen, who expressed Pfuel's
thoughts in a more comprehensible way than Pfuel himself (who was a
harsh, bookish theorist, self-confident to the point of despising
everyone else) was able to do.

Besides these Russians and foreigners who propounded new and
unexpected ideas every day--especially the foreigners, who did so with
a boldness characteristic of people employed in a country not their
own--there were many secondary personages accompanying the army
because their principals were there.

Among the opinions and voices in this immense, restless,
brilliant, and proud sphere, Prince Andrew noticed the following
sharply defined subdivisions of and parties:

The first party consisted of Pfuel and his adherents--military
theorists who believed in a science of war with immutable laws--laws
of oblique movements, outflankings, and so forth. Pfuel and his
adherents demanded a retirement into the depths of the country in
accordance with precise laws defined by a pseudo-theory of war, and
they saw only barbarism, ignorance, or evil intention in every
deviation from that theory. To this party belonged the foreign nobles,
Wolzogen, Wintzingerode, and others, chiefly Germans.

The second party was directly opposed to the first; one extreme,
as always happens, was met by representatives of the other. The
members of this party were those who had demanded an advance from
Vilna into Poland and freedom from all prearranged plans. Besides
being advocates of bold action, this section also represented
nationalism, which made them still more one-sided in the dispute. They
were Russians: Bagration, Ermolov (who was beginning to come to the
front), and others. At that time a famous joke of Ermolov's was
being circulated, that as a great favor he had petitioned the
Emperor to make him a German. The men of that party, remembering
Suvorov, said that what one had to do was not to reason, or stick pins
into maps, but to fight, beat the enemy, keep him out of Russia, and
not let the army get discouraged.

To the third party--in which the Emperor had most confidence-
belonged the courtiers who tried to arrange compromises between the
other two. The members of this party, chiefly civilians and to whom
Arakcheev belonged, thought and said what men who have no
convictions but wish to seem to have some generally say. They said
that undoubtedly war, particularly against such a genius as
Bonaparte (they called him Bonaparte now), needs most deeply devised
plans and profound scientific knowledge and in that respect Pfuel
was a genius, but at the same time it had to be acknowledged that
the theorists are often one sided, and therefore one should not
trust them absolutely, but should also listen to what Pfuel's
opponents and practical men of experience in warfare had to say, and
then choose a middle course. They insisted on the retention of the
camp at Drissa, according to Pfuel's plan, but on changing the
movements of the other armies. Though, by this course, neither one aim
nor the other could be attained, yet it seemed best to the adherents
of this third party.

Of a fourth opinion the most conspicuous representative was the
Tsarevich, who could not forget his disillusionment at Austerlitz,
where he had ridden out at the head of the Guards, in his casque and
cavalry uniform as to a review, expecting to crush the French
gallantly; but unexpectedly finding himself in the front line had
narrowly escaped amid the general confusion. The men of this party had
both the quality and the defect of frankness in their opinions. They
feared Napoleon, recognized his strength and their own weakness, and
frankly said so. They said: "Nothing but sorrow, shame, and ruin
will come of all this! We have abandoned Vilna and Vitebsk and shall
abandon Drissa. The only reasonable thing left to do is to conclude
peace as soon as possible, before we are turned out of Petersburg."

This view was very general in the upper army circles and found
support also in Petersburg and from the chancellor, Rumyantsev, who,
for other reasons of state, was in favor of peace.

The fifth party consisted of those who were adherents of Barclay
de Tolly, not so much as a man but as minister of war and commander in
chief. "Be he what he may" (they always began like that), "he is an
honest, practical man and we have nobody better. Give him real
power, for war cannot be conducted successfully without unity of
command, and he will show what he can do, as he did in Finland. If our
army is well organized and strong and has withdrawn to Drissa
without suffering any defeats, we owe this entirely to Barclay. If
Barclay is now to be superseded by Bennigsen all will be lost, for
Bennigsen showed his incapacity already in 1807."

The sixth party, the Bennigsenites, said, on the contrary, that at
any rate there was no one more active and experienced than
Bennigsen: "and twist about as you may, you will have to come to
Bennigsen eventually. Let the others make mistakes now!" said they,
arguing that our retirement to Drissa was a most shameful reverse
and an unbroken series of blunders. "The more mistakes that are made
the better. It will at any rate be understood all the sooner that
things cannot go on like this. What is wanted is not some Barclay or
other, but a man like Bennigsen, who made his mark in 1807, and to
whom Napoleon himself did justice--a man whose authority would be
willingly recognized, and Bennigsen is the only such man."

The seventh party consisted of the sort of people who are always
to be found, especially around young sovereigns, and of whom there
were particularly many round Alexander--generals and imperial
aides-de-camp passionately devoted to the Emperor, not merely as a
monarch but as a man, adoring him sincerely and disinterestedly, as
Rostov had done in 1805, and who saw in him not only all the virtues
but all human capabilities as well. These men, though enchanted with
the sovereign for refusing the command of the army, yet blamed him for
such excessive modesty, and only desired and insisted that their
adored sovereign should abandon his diffidence and openly announce
that he would place himself at the head of the army, gather round
him a commander in chief's staff, and, consulting experienced
theoreticians and practical men where necessary, would himself lead
the troops, whose spirits would thereby be raised to the highest
pitch.

The eighth and largest group, which in its enormous numbers was to
the others as ninety-nine to one, consisted of men who desired neither
peace nor war, neither an advance nor a defensive camp at the Drissa
or anywhere else, neither Barclay nor the Emperor, neither Pfuel nor
Bennigsen, but only the one most essential thing--as much advantage
and pleasure for themselves as possible. In the troubled waters of
conflicting and intersecting intrigues that eddied about the Emperor's
headquarters, it was possible to succeed in many ways unthinkable at
other times. A man who simply wished to retain his lucrative post
would today agree with Pfuel, tomorrow with his opponent, and the
day after, merely to avoid responsibility or to please the Emperor,
would declare that he had no opinion at all on the matter. Another who
wished to gain some advantage would attract the Emperor's attention by
loudly advocating the very thing the Emperor had hinted at the day
before, and would dispute and shout at the council, beating his breast
and challenging those who did not agree with him to duels, thereby
proving that he was prepared to sacrifice himself for the common good.
A third, in the absence of opponents, between two councils would
simply solicit a special gratuity for his faithful services, well
knowing that at that moment people would be too busy to refuse him.
A fourth while seemingly overwhelmed with work would often come
accidentally under the Emperor's eye. A fifth, to achieve his
long-cherished aim of dining with the Emperor, would stubbornly insist
on the correctness or falsity of some newly emerging opinion and for
this object would produce arguments more or less forcible and correct.

All the men of this party were fishing for rubles, decorations,
and promotions, and in this pursuit watched only the weathercock of
imperial favor, and directly they noticed it turning in any direction,
this whole drone population of the army began blowing hard that way,
so that it was all the harder for the Emperor to turn it elsewhere.
Amid the uncertainties of the position, with the menace of serious
danger giving a peculiarly threatening character to everything, amid
this vortex of intrigue, egotism, conflict of views and feelings,
and the diversity of race among these people--this eighth and
largest party of those preoccupied with personal interests imparted
great confusion and obscurity to the common task. Whatever question
arose, a swarm of these drones, without having finished their
buzzing on a previous theme, flew over to the new one and by their hum
drowned and obscured the voices of those who were disputing honestly.

From among all these parties, just at the time Prince Andrew reached
the army, another, a ninth party, was being formed and was beginning
to raise its voice. This was the party of the elders, reasonable men
experienced and capable in state affairs, who, without sharing any
of those conflicting opinions, were able to take a detached view of
what was going on at the staff at headquarters and to consider means
of escape from this muddle, indecision, intricacy, and weakness.

The men of this party said and thought that what was wrong
resulted chiefly from the Emperor's presence in the army with his
military court and from the consequent presence there of an
indefinite, conditional, and unsteady fluctuation of relations,
which is in place at court but harmful in an army; that a sovereign
should reign but not command the army, and that the only way out of
the position would be for the Emperor and his court to leave the army;
that the mere presence of the Emperor paralyzed the action of fifty
thousand men required to secure his personal safety, and that the
worst commander in chief if independent would be better than the
very best one trammeled by the presence and authority of the monarch.

Just at the time Prince Andrew was living unoccupied at Drissa,
Shishkov, the Secretary of State and one of the chief
representatives of this party, wrote a letter to the Emperor which
Arakcheev and Balashev agreed to sign. In this letter, availing
himself of permission given him by the Emperor to discuss the
general course of affairs, he respectfully suggested--on the plea that
it was necessary for the sovereign to arouse a warlike spirit in the
people of the capital--that the Emperor should leave the army.

That arousing of the people by their sovereign and his call to
them to defend their country--the very incitement which was the
chief cause of Russia's triumph in so far as it was produced by the
Tsar's personal presence in Moscow--was suggested to the Emperor,
and accepted by him, as a pretext for quitting the army.





CHAPTER X


This letter had not yet been presented to the Emperor when
Barclay, one day at dinner, informed Bolkonski that the sovereign
wished to see him personally, to question him about Turkey, and that
Prince Andrew was to present himself at Bennigsen's quarters at six
that evening.

News was received at the Emperor's quarters that very day of a fresh
movement by Napoleon which might endanger the army--news
subsequently found to be false. And that morning Colonel Michaud had
ridden round the Drissa fortifications with the Emperor and had
pointed out to him that this fortified camp constructed by Pfuel,
and till then considered a chef-d'oeuvre of tactical science which
would ensure Napoleon's destruction, was an absurdity, threatening the
destruction of the Russian army.

Prince Andrew arrived at Bennigsen's quarters--a country gentleman's
house of moderate size, situated on the very banks of the river.
Neither Bennigsen nor the Emperor was there, but Chernyshev, the
Emperor's aide-de-camp, received Bolkonski and informed him that the
Emperor, accompanied by General Bennigsen and Marquis Paulucci, had
gone a second time that day to inspect the fortifications of the
Drissa camp, of the suitability of which serious doubts were beginning
to be felt.

Chernyshev was sitting at a window in the first room with a French
novel in his hand. This room had probably been a music room; there was
still an organ in it on which some rugs were piled, and in one
corner stood the folding bedstead of Bennigsen's adjutant. This
adjutant was also there and sat dozing on the rolled-up bedding,
evidently exhausted by work or by feasting. Two doors led from the
room, one straight on into what had been the drawing room, and
another, on the right, to the study. Through the first door came the
sound of voices conversing in German and occasionally in French. In
that drawing room were gathered, by the Emperor's wish, not a military
council (the Emperor preferred indefiniteness), but certain persons
whose opinions he wished to know in view of the impending
difficulties. It was not a council of war, but, as it were, a
council to elucidate certain questions for the Emperor personally.
To this semicouncil had been invited the Swedish General Armfeldt,
Adjutant General Wolzogen, Wintzingerode (whom Napoleon had referred
to as a renegade French subject), Michaud, Toll, Count Stein who was
not a military man at all, and Pfuel himself, who, as Prince Andrew
had heard, was the mainspring of the whole affair. Prince Andrew had
an opportunity of getting a good look at him, for Pfuel arrived soon
after himself and, in passing through to the drawing room, stopped a
minute to speak to Chernyshev.

At first sight, Pfuel, in his ill-made uniform of a Russian general,
which fitted him badly like a fancy costume, seemed familiar to Prince
Andrew, though he saw him now for the first time. There was about
him something of Weyrother, Mack, and Schmidt, and many other German
theorist-generals whom Prince Andrew had seen in 1805, but he was more
typical than any of them. Prince Andrew had never yet seen a German
theorist in whom all the characteristics of those others were united
to such an extent.

Pfuel was short and very thin but broad-boned, of coarse, robust
build, broad in the hips, and with prominent shoulder blades. His face
was much wrinkled and his eyes deep set. His hair had evidently been
hastily brushed smooth in front of the temples, but stuck up behind in
quaint little tufts. He entered the room, looking restlessly and
angrily around, as if afraid of everything in that large apartment.
Awkwardly holding up his sword, he addressed Chernyshev and asked in
German where the Emperor was. One could see that he wished to pass
through the rooms as quickly as possible, finish with the bows and
greetings, and sit down to business in front of a map, where he
would feel at home. He nodded hurriedly in reply to Chernyshev, and
smiled ironically on hearing that the sovereign was inspecting the
fortifications that he, Pfuel, had planned in accord with his
theory. He muttered something to himself abruptly and in a bass voice,
as self-assured Germans do--it might have been "stupid fellow"... or
"the whole affair will be ruined," or "something absurd will come of
it."... Prince Andrew did not catch what he said and would have passed
on, but Chernyshev introduced him to Pfuel, remarking that Prince
Andrew was just back from Turkey where the war had terminated so
fortunately. Pfuel barely glanced--not so much at Prince Andrew as
past him--and said, with a laugh: "That must have been a fine tactical
war"; and, laughing contemptuously, went on into the room from which
the sound of voices was heard.

Pfuel, always inclined to be irritably sarcastic, was particularly
disturbed that day, evidently by the fact that they had dared to
inspect and criticize his camp in his absence. From this short
interview with Pfuel, Prince Andrew, thanks to his Austerlitz
experiences, was able to form a clear conception of the man. Pfuel was
one of those hopelessly and immutably self-confident men,
self-confident to the point of martyrdom as only Germans are,
because only Germans are self-confident on the basis of an abstract
notion--science, that is, the supposed knowledge of absolute truth.
A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally,
both in mind and body, as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An
Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-organized
state in the world, and therefore as an Englishman always knows what
he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is
undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is
excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is
self-assured just because he knows nothing does not want to know
anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The
German's self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive
than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth-
science--which he himself has invented but which is for him the
absolute truth.

Pfuel was evidently of that sort. He had a science--the theory of
oblique movements deduced by him from the history of Frederick the
Great's wars, and all he came across in the history of more recent
warfare seemed to him absurd and barbarous--monstrous collisions in
which so many blunders were committed by both sides that these wars
could not be called wars, they did not accord with the theory, and
therefore could not serve as material for science.

In 1806 Pfuel had been one of those responsible, for the plan of
campaign that ended in Jena and Auerstadt, but he did not see the
least proof of the fallibility of his theory in the disasters of
that war. On the contrary, the deviations made from his theory were,
in his opinion, the sole cause of the whole disaster, and with
characteristically gleeful sarcasm he would remark, "There, I said the
whole affair would go to the devil!" Pfuel was one of those
theoreticians who so love their theory that they lose sight of the
theory's object--its practical application. His love of theory made
him hate everything practical, and he would not listen to it. He was
even pleased by failures, for failures resulting from deviations in
practice from the theory only proved to him the accuracy of his
theory.

He said a few words to Prince Andrew and Chernyshev about the
present war, with the air of a man who knows beforehand that all
will go wrong, and who is not displeased that it should be so. The
unbrushed tufts of hair sticking up behind and the hastily brushed
hair on his temples expressed this most eloquently.

He passed into the next room, and the deep, querulous sounds of
his voice were at once heard from there.





CHAPTER XI


Prince Andrew's eyes were still following Pfuel out of the room when
Count Bennigsen entered hurriedly, and nodding to Bolkonski, but not
pausing, went into the study, giving instructions to his adjutant as
he went. The Emperor was following him, and Bennigsen had hastened
on to make some preparations and to be ready to receive the sovereign.
Chernyshev and Prince Andrew went out into the porch, where the
Emperor, who looked fatigued, was dismounting. Marquis Paulucci was
talking to him with particular warmth and the Emperor, with his head
bent to the left, was listening with a dissatisfied air. The Emperor
moved forward evidently wishing to end the conversation, but the
flushed and excited Italian, oblivious of decorum, followed him and
continued to speak.

"And as for the man who advised forming this camp--the Drissa camp,"
said Paulucci, as the Emperor mounted the steps and noticing Prince
Andrew scanned his unfamiliar face, "as to that person, sire..."
continued Paulucci, desperately, apparently unable to restrain
himself, "the man who advised the Drissa camp--I see no alternative
but the lunatic asylum or the gallows!"

Without heeding the end of the Italian's remarks, and as though
not hearing them, the Emperor, recognizing Bolkonski, addressed him
graciously.

"I am very glad to see you! Go in there where they are meeting,
and wait for me."

The Emperor went into the study. He was followed by Prince Peter
Mikhaylovich Volkonski and Baron Stein, and the door closed behind
them. Prince Andrew, taking advantage of the Emperor's permission,
accompanied Paulucci, whom he had known in Turkey, into the drawing
room where the council was assembled.

Prince Peter Mikhaylovich Volkonski occupied the position, as it
were, of chief of the Emperor's staff. He came out of the study into
the drawing room with some maps which he spread on a table, and put
questions on which he wished to hear the opinion of the gentlemen
present. What had happened was that news (which afterwards proved to
be false) had been received during the night of a movement by the
French to outflank the Drissa camp.

The first to speak was General Armfeldt who, to meet the
difficulty that presented itself, unexpectedly proposed a perfectly
new position away from the Petersburg and Moscow roads. The reason for
this was inexplicable (unless he wished to show that he, too, could
have an opinion), but he urged that at this point the army should
unite and there await the enemy. It was plain that Armfeldt had
thought out that plan long ago and now expounded it not so much to
answer the questions put--which, in fact, his plan did not answer-
as to avail himself of the opportunity to air it. It was one of the
millions of proposals, one as good as another, that could be made as
long as it was quite unknown what character the war would take. Some
disputed his arguments, others defended them. Young Count Toll
objected to the Swedish general's views more warmly than anyone
else, and in the course of the dispute drew from his side pocket a
well-filled notebook, which he asked permission to read to them. In
these voluminous notes Toll suggested another scheme, totally
different from Armfeldt's or Pfuel's plan of campaign. In answer to
Toll, Paulucci suggested an advance and an attack, which, he urged,
could alone extricate us from the present uncertainty and from the
trap (as he called the Drissa camp) in which we were situated.

During all these discussions Pfuel and his interpreter, Wolzogen
(his "bridge" in court relations), were silent. Pfuel only snorted
contemptuously and turned away, to show that he would never demean
himself by replying to such nonsense as he was now hearing. So when
Prince Volkonski, who was in the chair, called on him to give his
opinion, he merely said:

"Why ask me? General Armfeldt has proposed a splendid position
with an exposed rear, or why not this Italian gentleman's attack--very
fine, or a retreat, also good! Why ask me?" said he. "Why, you
yourselves know everything better than I do."

But when Volkonski said, with a frown, that it was in the
Emperor's name that he asked his opinion, Pfuel rose and, suddenly
growing animated, began to speak:

"Everything has been spoiled, everything muddled, everybody
thought they knew better than I did, and now you come to me! How
mend matters? There is nothing to mend! The principles laid down by me
must be strictly adhered to," said he, drumming on the table with
his bony fingers. "What is the difficulty? Nonsense, childishness!"

He went up to the map and speaking rapidly began proving that no
eventuality could alter the efficiency of the Drissa camp, that
everything had been foreseen, and that if the enemy were really
going to outflank it, the enemy would inevitably be destroyed.

Paulucci, who did not know German, began questioning him in
French. Wolzogen came to the assistance of his chief, who spoke French
badly, and began translating for him, hardly able to keep pace with
Pfuel, who was rapidly demonstrating that not only all that had
happened, but all that could happen, had been foreseen in his
scheme, and that if there were now any difficulties the whole fault
lay in the fact that his plan had not been precisely executed. He kept
laughing sarcastically, he demonstrated, and at last contemptuously
ceased to demonstrate, like a mathematician who ceases to prove in
various ways the accuracy of a problem that has already been proved.
Wolzogen took his place and continued to explain his views in
French, every now and then turning to Pfuel and saying, "Is it not so,
your excellency?" But Pfuel, like a man heated in a fight who
strikes those on his own side, shouted angrily at his own supporter,
Wolzogen:

"Well, of course, what more is there to explain?"

Paulucci and Michaud both attacked Wolzogen simultaneously in
French. Armfeldt addressed Pfuel in German. Toll explained to
Volkonski in Russian. Prince Andrew listened and observed in silence.

Of all these men Prince Andrew sympathized most with Pfuel, angry,
determined, and absurdly self-confident as he was. Of all those
present, evidently he alone was not seeking anything for himself,
nursed no hatred against anyone, and only desired that the plan,
formed on a theory arrived at by years of toil, should be carried out.
He was ridiculous, and unpleasantly sarcastic, but yet he inspired
involuntary respect by his boundless devotion to an idea. Besides
this, the remarks of all except Pfuel had one common trait that had
not been noticeable at the council of war in 1805: there was now a
panic fear of Napoleon's genius, which, though concealed, was
noticeable in every rejoinder. Everything was assumed to be possible
for Napoleon, they expected him from every side, and invoked his
terrible name to shatter each other's proposals. Pfuel alone seemed to
consider Napoleon a barbarian like everyone else who opposed his
theory. But besides this feeling of respect, Pfuel evoked pity in
Prince Andrew. From the tone in which the courtiers addressed him
and the way Paulucci had allowed himself to speak of him to the
Emperor, but above all from a certain desperation in Pfuel's own
expressions, it was clear that the others knew, and Pfuel himself
felt, that his fall was at hand. And despite his self-confidence and
grumpy German sarcasm he was pitiable, with his hair smoothly
brushed on the temples and sticking up in tufts behind. Though he
concealed the fact under a show of irritation and contempt, he was
evidently in despair that the sole remaining chance of verifying his
theory by a huge experiment and proving its soundness to the whole
world was slipping away from him.

The discussions continued a long time, and the longer they lasted
the more heated became the disputes, culminating in shouts and
personalities, and the less was it possible to arrive at any general
conclusion from all that had been said. Prince Andrew, listening to
this polyglot talk and to these surmises, plans, refutations, and
shouts, felt nothing but amazement at what they were saying. A thought
that had long since and often occurred to him during his military
activities--the idea that there is not and cannot be any science of
war, and that therefore there can be no such thing as a military
genius--now appeared to him an obvious truth. "What theory and science
is possible about a matter the conditions and circumstances of which
are unknown and cannot be defined, especially when the strength of the
acting forces cannot be ascertained? No one was or is able to
foresee in what condition our or the enemy's armies will be in a day's
time, and no one can gauge the force of this or that detachment.
Sometimes--when there is not a coward at the front to shout, 'We are
cut off!' and start running, but a brave and jolly lad who shouts,
'Hurrah!'--a detachment of five thousand is worth thirty thousand,
as at Schon Grabern, while at times fifty thousand run from eight
thousand, as at Austerlitz. What science can there be in a matter in
which, as in all practical matters, nothing can be defined and
everything depends on innumerable conditions, the significance of
which is determined at a particular moment which arrives no one
knows when? Armfeldt says our army is cut in half, and Paulucci says
we have got the French army between two fires; Michaud says that the
worthlessness of the Drissa camp lies in having the river behind it,
and Pfuel says that is what constitutes its strength; Toll proposes
one plan, Armfeldt another, and they are all good and all bad, and the
advantages of any suggestions can be seen only at the moment of trial.
And why do they all speak of a 'military genius'? Is a man a genius
who can order bread to be brought up at the right time and say who
is to go to the right and who to the left? It is only because military
men are invested with pomp and power and crowds of sychophants flatter
power, attributing to it qualities of genius it does not possess.
The best generals I have known were, on the contrary, stupid or
absent-minded men. Bagration was the best, Napoleon himself admitted
that. And of Bonaparte himself! I remember his limited, self-satisfied
face on the field of Austerlitz. Not only does a good army commander
not need any special qualities, on the contrary he needs the absence
of the highest and best human attributes--love, poetry, tenderness,
and philosophic inquiring doubt. He should be limited, firmly
convinced that what he is doing is very important (otherwise he will
not have sufficient patience), and only then will he be a brave
leader. God forbid that he should be humane, should love, or pity,
or think of what is just and unjust. It is understandable that a
theory of their 'genius' was invented for them long ago because they
have power! The success of a military action depends not on them,
but on the man in the ranks who shouts, 'We are lost!' or who
shouts, 'Hurrah!' And only in the ranks can one serve with assurance
of being useful."

So thought Prince Andrew as he listened to the talking, and he
roused himself only when Paulucci called him and everyone was leaving.

At the review next day the Emperor asked Prince Andrew where he
would like to serve, and Prince Andrew lost his standing in court
circles forever by not asking to remain attached to the sovereign's
person, but for permission to serve in the army.





CHAPTER XII


Before the beginning of the campaign, Rostov had received a letter
from his parents in which they told him briefly of Natasha's illness
and the breaking off of her engagement to Prince Andrew (which they
explained by Natasha's having rejected him) and again asked Nicholas
to retire from the army and return home. On receiving this letter,
Nicholas did not even make any attempt to get leave of absence or to
retire from the army, but wrote to his parents that he was sorry
Natasha was ill and her engagement broken off, and that he would do
all he could to meet their wishes. To Sonya he wrote separately.

"Adored friend of my soul!" he wrote. "Nothing but honor could
keep me from returning to the country. But now, at the commencement of
the campaign, I should feel dishonored, not only in my comrades'
eyes but in my own, if I preferred my own happiness to my love and
duty to the Fatherland. But this shall be our last separation. Believe
me, directly the war is over, if I am still alive and still loved by
you, I will throw up everything and fly to you, to press you forever
to my ardent breast."

It was, in fact, only the commencement of the campaign that
prevented Rostov from returning home as he had promised and marrying
Sonya. The autumn in Otradnoe with the hunting, and the winter with
the Christmas holidays and Sonya's love, had opened out to him a vista
of tranquil rural joys and peace such as he had never known before,
and which now allured him. "A splendid wife, children, a good pack
of hounds, a dozen leashes of smart borzois, agriculture, neighbors,
service by election..." thought he. But now the campaign was
beginning, and he had to remain with his regiment. And since it had to
be so, Nicholas Rostov, as was natural to him, felt contented with the
life he led in the regiment and was able to find pleasure in that
life.

On his return from his furlough Nicholas, having been joyfully
welcomed by his comrades, was sent to obtain remounts and brought back
from the Ukraine excellent horses which pleased him and earned him
commendation from his commanders. During his absence he had been
promoted captain, and when the regiment was put on war footing with an
increase in numbers, he was again allotted his old squadron.

The campaign began, the regiment was moved into Poland on double
pay, new officers arrived, new men and horses, and above all everybody
was infected with the merrily excited mood that goes with the
commencement of a war, and Rostov, conscious of his advantageous
position in the regiment, devoted himself entirely to the pleasures
and interests of military service, though he knew that sooner or later
he would have to relinquish them.

The troops retired from Vilna for various complicated reasons of
state, political and strategic. Each step of the retreat was
accompanied by a complicated interplay of interests, arguments, and
passions at headquarters. For the Pavlograd hussars, however, the
whole of this retreat during the finest period of summer and with
sufficient supplies was a very simple and agreeable business.

It was only at headquarters that there was depression, uneasiness,
and intriguing; in the body of the army they did not ask themselves
where they were going or why. If they regretted having to retreat,
it was only because they had to leave billets they had grown
accustomed to, or some pretty young Polish lady. If the thought that
things looked bad chanced to enter anyone's head, he tried to be as
cheerful as befits a good soldier and not to think of the general
trend of affairs, but only of the task nearest to hand. First they
camped gaily before Vilna, making acquaintance with the Polish
landowners, preparing for reviews and being reviewed by the Emperor
and other high commanders. Then came an order to retreat to Sventsyani
and destroy any provisions they could not carry away with them.
Sventsyani was remembered by the hussars only as the drunken camp, a
name the whole army gave to their encampment there, and because many
complaints were made against the troops, who, taking advantage of
the order to collect provisions, took also horses, carriages, and
carpets from the Polish proprietors. Rostov remembered Sventsyani,
because on the first day of their arrival at that small town he
changed his sergeant major and was unable to manage all the drunken
men of his squadron who, unknown to him, had appropriated five barrels
of old beer. From Sventsyani they retired farther and farther to
Drissa, and thence again beyond Drissa, drawing near to the frontier
of Russia proper.

On the thirteenth of July the Pavlograds took part in a serious
action for the first time.

On the twelfth of July, on the eve of that action, there was a heavy
storm of rain and hail. In general, the summer of 1812 was
remarkable for its storms.

The two Pavlograd squadrons were bivouacking on a field of rye,
which was already in ear but had been completely trodden down by
cattle and horses. The rain was descending in torrents, and Rostov,
with a young officer named Ilyin, his protege, was sitting in a
hastily constructed shelter. An officer of their regiment, with long
mustaches extending onto his cheeks, who after riding to the staff had
been overtaken by the rain, entered Rostov's shelter.

"I have come from the staff, Count. Have you heard of Raevski's
exploit?"

And the officer gave them details of the Saltanov battle, which he
had heard at the staff.

Rostov, smoking his pipe and turning his head about as the water
trickled down his neck, listened inattentively, with an occasional
glance at Ilyin, who was pressing close to him. This officer, a lad of
sixteen who had recently joined the regiment, was now in the same
relation to Nicholas that Nicholas had been to Denisov seven years
before. Ilyin tried to imitate Rostov in everything and adored him
as a girl might have done.

Zdrzhinski, the officer with the long mustache, spoke
grandiloquently of the Saltanov dam being "a Russian Thermopylae," and
of how a deed worthy of antiquity had been performed by General
Raevski. He recounted how Raevski had led his two sons onto the dam
under terrific fire and had charged with them beside him. Rostov heard
the story and not only said nothing to encourage Zdrzhinski's
enthusiasm but, on the contrary, looked like a man ashamed of what
he was hearing, though with no intention of contradicting it. Since
the campaigns of Austerlitz and of 1807 Rostov knew by experience that
men always lie when describing military exploits, as he himself had
done when recounting them; besides that, he had experience enough to
know that nothing happens in war at all as we can imagine or relate
it. And so he did not like Zdrzhinski's tale, nor did he like
Zdrzhinski himself who, with his mustaches extending over his
cheeks, bent low over the face of his hearer, as was his habit, and
crowded Rostov in the narrow shanty. Rostov looked at him in
silence. "In the first place, there must have been such a confusion
and crowding on the dam that was being attacked that if Raevski did
lead his sons there, it could have had no effect except perhaps on
some dozen men nearest to him," thought he, "the rest could not have
seen how or with whom Raevski came onto the dam. And even those who
did see it would not have been much stimulated by it, for what had
they to do with Raevski's tender paternal feelings when their own
skins were in danger? And besides, the fate of the Fatherland did
not depend on whether they took the Saltanov dam or not, as we are
told was the case at Thermopylae. So why should he have made such a
sacrifice? And why expose his own children in the battle? I would
not have taken my brother Petya there, or even Ilyin, who's a stranger
to me but a nice lad, but would have tried to put them somewhere under
cover," Nicholas continued to think, as he listened to Zdrzhinski. But
he did not express his thoughts, for in such matters, too, he had
gained experience. He knew that this tale redounded to the glory of
our arms and so one had to pretend not to doubt it. And he acted
accordingly.

"I can't stand this any more," said Ilyin, noticing that Rostov
did not relish Zdrzhinski's conversation. "My stockings and shirt...
and the water is running on my seat! I'll go and look for shelter. The
rain seems less heavy."

Ilyin went out and Zdrzhinski rode away.

Five minutes later Ilyin, splashing through the mud, came running
back to the shanty.

"Hurrah! Rostov, come quick! I've found it! About two hundred
yards away there's a tavern where ours have already gathered. We can
at least get dry there, and Mary Hendrikhovna's there."

Mary Hendrikhovna was the wife of the regimental doctor, a pretty
young German woman he had married in Poland. The doctor, whether
from lack of means or because he did not like to part from his young
wife in the early days of their marriage, took her about with him
wherever the hussar regiment went and his jealousy had become a
standing joke among the hussar officers.

Rostov threw his cloak over his shoulders, shouted to Lavrushka to
follow with the things, and--now slipping in the mud, now splashing
right through it--set off with Ilyin in the lessening rain and the
darkness that was occasionally rent by distant lightning.

"Rostov, where are you?"

"Here. What lightning!" they called to one another.





CHAPTER XIII


In the tavern, before which stood the doctor's covered cart, there
were already some five officers. Mary Hendrikhovna, a plump little
blonde German, in a dressing jacket and nightcap, was sitting on a
broad bench in the front corner. Her husband, the doctor, lay asleep
behind her. Rostov and Ilyin, on entering the room, were welcomed with
merry shouts and laughter.

"Dear me, how jolly we are!" said Rostov laughing.

"And why do you stand there gaping?"

"What swells they are! Why, the water streams from them! Don't
make our drawing room so wet."

"Don't mess Mary Hendrikhovna's dress!" cried other voices.

Rostov and Ilyin hastened to find a corner where they could change
into dry clothes without offending Mary Hendrikhovna's modesty. They
were going into a tiny recess behind a partition to change, but
found it completely filled by three officers who sat playing cards
by the light of a solitary candle on an empty box, and these
officers would on no account yield their position. Mary Hendrikhovna
obliged them with the loan of a petticoat to be used as a curtain, and
behind that screen Rostov and Ilyin, helped by Lavrushka who had
brought their kits, changed their wet things for dry ones.

A fire was made up in the dilapidated brick stove. A board was
found, fixed on two saddles and covered with a horsecloth, a small
samovar was produced and a cellaret and half a bottle of rum, and
having asked Mary Hendrikhovna to preside, they all crowded round her.
One offered her a clean handkerchief to wipe her charming hands,
another spread a jacket under her little feet to keep them from the
damp, another hung his coat over the window to keep out the draft, and
yet another waved the flies off her husband's face, lest he should
wake up.

"Leave him alone," said Mary Hendrikhovna, smiling timidly and
happily. "He is sleeping well as it is, after a sleepless night."

"Oh, no, Mary Hendrikhovna," replied the officer, "one must look
after the doctor. Perhaps he'll take pity on me someday, when it comes
to cutting off a leg or an arm for me."

There were only three tumblers, the water was so muddy that one
could not make out whether the tea was strong or weak, and the samovar
held only six tumblers of water, but this made it all the pleasanter
to take turns in order of seniority to receive one's tumbler from Mary
Hendrikhovna's plump little hands with their short and not overclean
nails. All the officers appeared to be, and really were, in love
with her that evening. Even those playing cards behind the partition
soon left their game and came over to the samovar, yielding to the
general mood of courting Mary Hendrikhovna. She, seeing herself
surrounded by such brilliant and polite young men, beamed with
satisfaction, try as she might to hide it, and perturbed as she
evidently was each time her husband moved in his sleep behind her.

There was only one spoon, sugar was more plentiful than anything
else, but it took too long to dissolve, so it was decided that Mary
Hendrikhovna should stir the sugar for everyone in turn. Rostov
received his tumbler, and adding some rum to it asked Mary
Hendrikhovna to stir it.

"But you take it without sugar?" she said, smiling all the time,
as if everything she said and everything the others said was very
amusing and had a double meaning.

"It is not the sugar I want, but only that your little hand should
stir my tea."

Mary Hendrikhovna assented and began looking for the spoon which
someone meanwhile had pounced on.

"Use your finger, Mary Hendrikhovna, it will be still nicer," said
Rostov.

"Too hot!" she replied, blushing with pleasure.

Ilyin put a few drops of rum into the bucket of water and brought it
to Mary Hendrikhovna, asking her to stir it with her finger.

"This is my cup," said he. "Only dip your finger in it and I'll
drink it all up."

When they had emptied the samovar, Rostov took a pack of cards and
proposed that they should play "Kings" with Mary Hendrikhovna. They
drew lots to settle who should make up her set. At Rostov's suggestion
it was agreed that whoever became "King" should have the right to kiss
Mary Hendrikhovna's hand, and that the "Booby" should go to refill and
reheat the samovar for the doctor when the latter awoke.

"Well, but supposing Mary Hendrikhovna is 'King'?" asked Ilyin.

"As it is, she is Queen, and her word is law!"

They had hardly begun to play before the doctor's disheveled head
suddenly appeared from behind Mary Hendrikhovna. He had been awake for
some time, listening to what was being said, and evidently found
nothing entertaining or amusing in what was going on. His face was sad
and depressed. Without greeting the officers, he scratched himself and
asked to be allowed to pass as they were blocking the way. As soon
as he had left the room all the officers burst into loud laughter
and Mary Hendrikhovna blushed till her eyes filled with tears and
thereby became still more attractive to them. Returning from the yard,
the doctor told his wife (who had ceased to smile so happily, and
looked at him in alarm, awaiting her sentence) that the rain had
ceased and they must go to sleep in their covered cart, or
everything in it would be stolen.

"But I'll send an orderly.... Two of them!" said Rostov. "What an
idea, doctor!"

"I'll stand guard on it myself!" said Ilyin.

"No, gentlemen, you have had your sleep, but I have not slept for
two nights," replied the doctor, and he sat down morosely beside his
wife, waiting for the game to end.

Seeing his gloomy face as he frowned at his wife, the officers
grew still merrier, and some of them could not refrain from
laughter, for which they hurriedly sought plausible pretexts. When
he had gone, taking his wife with him, and had settled down with her
in their covered cart, the officers lay down in the tavern, covering
themselves with their wet cloaks, but they did not sleep for a long
time; now they exchanged remarks, recalling the doctor's uneasiness
and his wife's delight, now they ran out into the porch and reported
what was taking place in the covered trap. Several times Rostov,
covering his head, tried to go to sleep, but some remark would
arouse him and conversation would be resumed, to the accompaniment
of unreasoning, merry, childlike laughter.





CHAPTER XIV


It was nearly three o'clock but no one was yet asleep, when the
quartermaster appeared with an order to move on to the little town
of Ostrovna. Still laughing and talking, the officers began
hurriedly getting ready and again boiled some muddy water
in the samovar. But Rostov went off to his squadron without waiting
for tea. Day was breaking, the rain had ceased, and the clouds were
dispersing. It felt damp and cold, especially in clothes that were
still moist. As they left the tavern in the twilight of the dawn,
Rostov and Ilyin both glanced under the wet and glistening leather
hood of the doctor's cart, from under the apron of which his feet were
sticking out, and in the middle of which his wife's nightcap was
visible and her sleepy breathing audible.

"She really is a dear little thing," said Rostov to Ilyin, who was
following him.

"A charming woman!" said Ilyin, with all the gravity of a boy of
sixteen.

Half an hour later the squadron was lined up on the road. The
command was heard to "mount" and the soldiers crossed themselves and
mounted. Rostov riding in front gave the order "Forward!" and the
hussars, with clanking sabers and subdued talk, their horses' hoofs
splashing in the mud, defiled in fours and moved along the broad
road planted with birch trees on each side, following the infantry and
a battery that had gone on in front.

Tattered, blue-purple clouds, reddening in the east, were scudding
before the wind. It was growing lighter and lighter. That curly
grass which always grows by country roadsides became clearly
visible, still wet with the night's rain; the drooping branches of the
birches, also wet, swayed in the wind and flung down bright drops of
water to one side. The soldiers' faces were more and more clearly
visible. Rostov, always closely followed by Ilyin, rode along the side
of the road between two rows of birch trees.

When campaigning, Rostov allowed himself the indulgence of riding
not a regimental but a Cossack horse. A judge of horses and a
sportsman, he had lately procured himself a large, fine, mettlesome,
Donets horse, dun-colored, with light mane and tail, and when he
rode it no one could outgallop him. To ride this horse was a
pleasure to him, and he thought of the horse, of the morning, of the
doctor's wife, but not once of the impending danger.

Formerly, when going into action, Rostov had felt afraid; now he had
not the least feeling of fear. He was fearless, not because he had
grown used to being under fire (one cannot grow used to danger), but
because he had learned how to manage his thoughts when in danger. He
had grown accustomed when going into action to think about anything
but what would seem most likely to interest him--the impending danger.
During the first period of his service, hard as he tried and much as
he reproached himself with cowardice, he had not been able to do this,
but with time it had come of itself. Now he rode beside Ilyin under
the birch trees, occasionally plucking leaves from a branch that met
his hand, sometimes touching his horse's side with his foot, or,
without turning round, handing a pipe he had finished to an hussar
riding behind him, with as calm and careless an air as though he
were merely out for a ride. He glanced with pity at the excited face
of Ilyin, who talked much and in great agitation. He knew from
experience the tormenting expectation of terror and death the cornet
was suffering and knew that only time could help him.

As soon as the sun appeared in a clear strip of sky beneath the
clouds, the wind fell, as if it dared not spoil the beauty of the
summer morning after the storm; drops still continued to fall, but
vertically now, and all was still. The whole sun appeared on the
horizon and disappeared behind a long narrow cloud that hung above it.
A few minutes later it reappeared brighter still from behind the top
of the cloud, tearing its edge. Everything grew bright and
glittered. And with that light, and as if in reply to it, came the
sound of guns ahead of them.

Before Rostov had had time to consider and determine the distance of
that firing, Count Ostermann-Tolstoy's adjutant came galloping from
Vitebsk with orders to advance at a trot along the road.

The squadron overtook and passed the infantry and the battery--which
had also quickened their pace--rode down a hill, and passing through
an empty and deserted village again ascended. The horses began to
lather and the men to flush.

"Halt! Dress your ranks!" the order of the regimental commander
was heard ahead. "Forward by the left. Walk, march!" came the order
from in front.

And the hussars, passing along the line of troops on the left
flank of our position, halted behind our Uhlans who were in the
front line. To the right stood our infantry in a dense column: they
were the reserve. Higher up the hill, on the very horizon, our guns
were visible through the wonderfully clear air, brightly illuminated
by slanting morning sunbeams. In front, beyond a hollow dale, could be
seen the enemy's columns and guns. Our advanced line, already in
action, could be heard briskly exchanging shots with the enemy in
the dale.

At these sounds, long unheard, Rostov's spirits rose, as at the
strains of the merriest music. Trap-ta-ta-tap! cracked the shots,
now together, now several quickly one after another. Again all was
silent and then again it sounded as if someone were walking on
detonators and exploding them.

The hussars remained in the same place for about an hour. A
cannonade began. Count Ostermann with his suite rode up behind the
squadron, halted, spoke to the commander of the regiment, and rode
up the hill to the guns.

After Ostermann had gone, a command rang out to the Uhlans.

"Form column! Prepare to charge!"

The infantry in front of them parted into platoons to allow the
cavalry to pass. The Uhlans started, the streamers on their spears
fluttering, and trotted downhill toward the French cavalry which was
seen below to the left.

As soon as the Uhlans descended the hill, the hussars were ordered
up the hill to support the battery. As they took the places vacated by
the Uhlans, bullets came from the front, whining and whistling, but
fell spent without taking effect.

The sounds, which he had not heard for so long, had an even more
pleasurable and exhilarating effect on Rostov than the previous sounds
of firing. Drawing himself up, he viewed the field of battle opening
out before him from the hill, and with his whole soul followed the
movement of the Uhlans. They swooped down close to the French
dragoons, something confused happened there amid the smoke, and five
minutes later our Uhlans were galloping back, not to the place they
had occupied but more to the left, and among the orange-colored Uhlans
on chestnut horses and behind them, in a large group, blue French
dragoons on gray horses could be seen.





CHAPTER XV


Rostov, with his keen sportsman's eye, was one of the first to catch
sight of these blue French dragoons pursuing our Uhlans. Nearer and
nearer in disorderly crowds came the Uhlans and the French dragoons
pursuing them. He could already see how these men, who looked so small
at the foot of the hill, jostled and overtook one another, waving
their arms and their sabers in the air.

Rostov gazed at what was happening before him as at a hunt. He
felt instinctively that if the hussars struck at the French dragoons
now, the latter could not withstand them, but if a charge was to be
made it must be done now, at that very moment, or it would be too
late. He looked around. A captain, standing beside him, was gazing
like himself with eyes fixed on the cavalry below them.

"Andrew Sevastyanych!" said Rostov. "You know, we could crush
them...."

"A fine thing too!" replied the captain, "and really..."

Rostov, without waiting to hear him out, touched his horse, galloped
to the front of his squadron, and before he had time to finish
giving the word of command, the whole squadron, sharing his feeling,
was following him. Rostov himself did not know how or why he did it.
He acted as he did when hunting, without reflecting or considering. He
saw the dragoons near and that they were galloping in disorder; he
knew they could not withstand an attack--knew there was only that
moment and that if he let it slip it would not return. The bullets
were whining and whistling so stimulatingly around him and his horse
was so eager to go that he could not restrain himself. He touched
his horse, gave the word of command, and immediately, hearing behind
him the tramp of the horses of his deployed squadron, rode at full
trot downhill toward the dragoons. Hardly had they reached the
bottom of the hill before their pace instinctively changed to a
gallop, which grew faster and faster as they drew nearer to our Uhlans
and the French dragoons who galloped after them. The dragoons were now
close at hand. On seeing the hussars, the foremost began to turn,
while those behind began to halt. With the same feeling with which
he had galloped across the path of a wolf, Rostov gave rein to his
Donets horse and galloped to intersect the path of the dragoons'
disordered lines. One Uhlan stopped, another who was on foot flung
himself to the ground to avoid being knocked over, and a riderless
horse fell in among the hussars. Nearly all the French dragoons were
galloping back. Rostov, picking out one on a gray horse, dashed
after him. On the way he came upon a bush, his gallant horse cleared
it, and almost before he had righted himself in his saddle he saw that
he would immediately overtake the enemy he had selected. That
Frenchman, by his uniform an officer, was going at a gallop, crouching
on his gray horse and urging it on with his saber. In another moment
Rostov's horse dashed its breast against the hindquarters of the
officer's horse, almost knocking it over, and at the same instant
Rostov, without knowing why, raised his saber and struck the Frenchman
with it.

The instant he had done this, all Rostov's animation vanished. The
officer fell, not so much from the blow--which had but slightly cut
his arm above the elbow--as from the shock to his horse and from
fright. Rostov reined in his horse, and his eyes sought his foe to see
whom he had vanquished. The French dragoon officer was hopping with
one foot on the ground, the other being caught in the stirrup. His
eyes, screwed up with fear as if he every moment expected another
blow, gazed up at Rostov with shrinking terror. His pale and
mud-stained face--fair and young, with a dimple in the chin and
light-blue eyes--was not an enemy's face at all suited to a
battlefield, but a most ordinary, homelike face. Before Rostov had
decided what to do with him, the officer cried, "I surrender!" He
hurriedly but vainly tried to get his foot out of the stirrup and
did not remove his frightened blue eyes from Rostov's face. Some
hussars who galloped up disengaged his foot and helped him into the
saddle. On all sides, the hussars were busy with the dragoons; one was
wounded, but though his face was bleeding, he would not give up his
horse; another was perched up behind an hussar with his arms round
him; a third was being helped by an hussar to mount his horse. In
front, the French infantry were firing as they ran. The hussars
galloped hastily back with their prisoners. Rostov galloped back
with the rest, aware of an unpleasant feeling of depression in his
heart. Something vague and confused, which he could not at all account
for, had come over him with the capture of that officer and the blow
he had dealt him.

Count Ostermann-Tolstoy met the returning hussars, sent for
Rostov, thanked him, and said he would report his gallant deed to
the Emperor and would recommend him for a St. George's Cross. When
sent for by Count Ostermann, Rostov, remembering that he had charged
without orders, felt sure his commander was sending for him to
punish him for breach of discipline. Ostermann's flattering words
and promise of a reward should therefore have struck him all the
more pleasantly, but he still felt that same vaguely disagreeable
feeling of moral nausea. "But what on earth is worrying me?" he
asked himself as he rode back from the general. "Ilyin? No, he's safe.
Have I disgraced myself in any way? No, that's not it." Something
else, resembling remorse, tormented him. "Yes, oh yes, that French
officer with the dimple. And I remember how my arm paused when I
raised it."

Rostov saw the prisoners being led away and galloped after them to
have a look at his Frenchman with the dimple on his chin. He was
sitting in his foreign uniform on an hussar packhorse and looked
anxiously about him; The sword cut on his arm could scarcely be called
a wound. He glanced at Rostov with a feigned smile and waved his
hand in greeting. Rostov still had the same indefinite feeling, as
of shame.

All that day and the next his friends and comrades noticed that
Rostov, without being dull or angry, was silent, thoughtful, and
preoccupied. He drank reluctantly, tried to remain alone, and kept
turning something over in his mind.

Rostov was always thinking about that brilliant exploit of his,
which to his amazement had gained him the St. George's Cross and
even given him a reputation for bravery, and there was something he
could not at all understand. "So others are even more afraid than I
am!" he thought. "So that's all there is in what is called heroism!
And heroism! And did I do it for my country's sake? And how was he
to blame, with his dimple and blue eyes? And how frightened he was! He
thought that I should kill him. Why should I kill him? My hand
trembled. And they have given me a St. George's Cross.... I can't make
it out at all."

But while Nicholas was considering these questions and still could
reach no clear solution of what puzzled him so, the wheel of fortune
in the service, as often happens, turned in his favor. After the
affair at Ostrovna he was brought into notice, received command of
an hussar battalion, and when a brave officer was needed he was
chosen.





CHAPTER XVI


On receiving news of Natasha's illness, the countess, though not
quite well yet and still weak, went to Moscow with Petya and the
rest of the household, and the whole family moved from Marya
Dmitrievna's house to their own and settled down in town.

Natasha's illness was so serious that, fortunately for her and for
her parents, the consideration of all that had caused the illness, her
conduct and the breaking off of her engagement, receded into the
background. She was so ill that it was impossible for them to consider
in how far she was to blame for what had happened. She could not eat
or sleep, grew visibly thinner, coughed, and, as the doctors made them
feel, was in danger. They could not think of anything but how to
help her. Doctors came to see her singly and in consultation, talked
much in French, German, and Latin, blamed one another, and
prescribed a great variety of medicines for all the diseases known
to them, but the simple idea never occurred to any of them that they
could not know the disease Natasha was suffering from, as no disease
suffered by a live man can be known, for every living person has his
own peculiarities and always has his own peculiar, personal, novel,
complicated disease, unknown to medicine--not a disease of the
lungs, liver, skin, heart, nerves, and so on mentioned in medical
books, but a disease consisting of one of the innumerable combinations
of the maladies of those organs. This simple thought could not occur
to the doctors (as it cannot occur to a wizard that he is unable to
work his charms) because the business of their lives was to cure,
and they received money for it and had spent the best years of their
lives on that business. But, above all, that thought was kept out of
their minds by the fact that they saw they were really useful, as in
fact they were to the whole Rostov family. Their usefulness did not
depend on making the patient swallow substances for the most part
harmful (the harm was scarcely perceptible, as they were given in
small doses), but they were useful, necessary, and indispensable
because they satisfied a mental need of the invalid and of those who
loved her--and that is why there are, and always will be,
pseudo-healers, wise women, homeopaths, and allopaths. They
satisfied that eternal human need for hope of relief, for sympathy,
and that something should be done, which is felt by those who are
suffering. They satisfied the need seen in its most elementary form in
a child, when it wants to have a place rubbed that has been hurt. A
child knocks itself and runs at once to the arms of its mother or
nurse to have the aching spot rubbed or kissed, and it feels better
when this is done. The child cannot believe that the strongest and
wisest of its people have no remedy for its pain, and the hope of
relief and the expression of its mother's sympathy while she rubs
the bump comforts it. The doctors were of use to Natasha because
they kissed and rubbed her bump, assuring her that it would soon
pass if only the coachman went to the chemist's in the Arbat and got a
powder and some pills in a pretty box of a ruble and seventy kopeks,
and if she took those powders in boiled water at intervals of
precisely two hours, neither more nor less.

What would Sonya and the count and countess have done, how would
they have looked, if nothing had been done, if there had not been
those pills to give by the clock, the warm drinks, the chicken
cutlets, and all the other details of life ordered by the doctors, the
carrying out of which supplied an occupation and consolation to the
family circle? How would the count have borne his dearly loved
daughter's illness had he not known that it was costing him a thousand
rubles, and that he would not grudge thousands more to benefit her, or
had he not known that if her illness continued he would not grudge yet
other thousands and would take her abroad for consultations there, and
had he not been able to explain the details of how Metivier and Feller
had not understood the symptoms, but Frise had, and Mudrov had
diagnosed them even better? What would the countess have done had
she not been able sometimes to scold the invalid for not strictly
obeying the doctor's orders?

"You'll never get well like that," she would say, forgetting her
grief in her vexation, "if you won't obey the doctor and take your
medicine at the right time! You mustn't trifle with it, you know, or
it may turn to pneumonia," she would go on, deriving much comfort from
the utterance of that foreign word, incomprehensible to others as well
as to herself.

What would Sonya have done without the glad consciousness that she
had not undressed during the first three nights, in order to be
ready to carry out all the doctor's injunctions with precision, and
that she still kept awake at night so as not to miss the proper time
when the slightly harmful pills in the little gilt box had to be
administered? Even to Natasha herself it was pleasant to see that so
many sacrifices were being made for her sake, and to know that she had
to take medicine at certain hours, though she declared that no
medicine would cure her and that it was all nonsense. And it was
even pleasant to be able to show, by disregarding the orders, that she
did not believe in medical treatment and did not value her life.

The doctor came every day, felt her pulse, looked at her tongue, and
regardless of her grief-stricken face joked with her. But when he
had gone into another room, to which the countess hurriedly followed
him, he assumed a grave air and thoughtfully shaking his head said
that though there was danger, he had hopes of the effect of this
last medicine and one must wait and see, that the malady was chiefly
mental, but... And the countess, trying to conceal the action from
herself and from him, slipped a gold coin into his hand and always
returned to the patient with a more tranquil mind.

The symptoms of Natasha's illness were that she ate little, slept
little, coughed, and was always low-spirited. The doctors said that
she could not get on without medical treatment, so they kept her in
the stifling atmosphere of the town, and the Rostovs did not move to
the country that summer of 1812.

In spite of the many pills she swallowed and the drops and powders
out of the little bottles and boxes of which Madame Schoss who was
fond of such things made a large collection, and in spite of being
deprived of the country life to which she was accustomed, youth
prevailed. Natasha's grief began to be overlaid by the impressions
of daily life, it ceased to press so painfully on her heart, it
gradually faded into the past, and she began to recover physically.





CHAPTER XVII


Natasha was calmer but no happier. She not merely avoided all
external forms of pleasure--balls, promenades, concerts, and theaters-
but she never laughed without a sound of tears in her laughter. She
could not sing. As soon as she began to laugh, or tried to sing by
herself, tears choked her: tears of remorse, tears at the recollection
of those pure times which could never return, tears of vexation that
she should so uselessly have ruined her young life which might have
been so happy. Laughter and singing in particular seemed to her like a
blasphemy, in face of her sorrow. Without any need of
self-restraint, no wish to coquet ever entered her head. She said
and felt at that time that no man was more to her than Nastasya
Ivanovna, the buffoon. Something stood sentinel within her and forbade
her every joy. Besides, she had lost all the old interests of her
carefree girlish life that had been so full of hope. The previous
autumn, the hunting, "Uncle," and the Christmas holidays spent with
Nicholas at Otradnoe were what she recalled oftenest and most
painfully. What would she not have given to bring back even a single
day of that time! But it was gone forever. Her presentiment at the
time had not deceived her--that that state of freedom and readiness
for any enjoyment would not return again. Yet it was necessary to live
on.

It comforted her to reflect that she was not better as she had
formerly imagined, but worse, much worse, than anybody else in the
world. But this was not enough. She knew that, and asked herself,
"What next?" But there was nothing to come. There was no joy in
life, yet life was passing. Natasha apparently tried not to be a
burden or a hindrance to anyone, but wanted nothing for herself. She
kept away from everyone in the house and felt at ease only with her
brother Petya. She liked to be with him better than with the others,
and when alone with him she sometimes laughed. She hardly ever left
the house and of those who came to see them was glad to see only one
person, Pierre. It would have been impossible to treat her with more
delicacy, greater care, and at the same time more seriously than did
Count Bezukhov. Natasha unconsciously felt this delicacy and so
found great pleasure in his society. But she was not even grateful
to him for it; nothing good on Pierre's part seemed to her to be an
effort, it seemed so natural for him to be kind to everyone that there
was no merit in his kindness. Sometimes Natasha noticed
embarrassment and awkwardness on his part in her presence,
especially when he wanted to do something to please her, or feared
that something they spoke of would awaken memories distressing to her.
She noticed this and attributed it to his general kindness and
shyness, which she imagined must be the same toward everyone as it was
to her. After those involuntary words--that if he were free he would
have asked on his knees for her hand and her love--uttered at a moment
when she was so strongly agitated, Pierre never spoke to Natasha of
his feelings; and it seemed plain to her that those words, which had
then so comforted her, were spoken as all sorts of meaningless words
are spoken to comfort a crying child. It was not because Pierre was
a married man, but because Natasha felt very strongly with him that
moral barrier the absence of which she had experienced with Kuragin
that it never entered her head that the relations between him and
herself could lead to love on her part, still less on his, or even
to the kind of tender, self-conscious, romantic friendship between a
man and a woman of which she had known several instances.

Before the end of the fast of St. Peter, Agrafena Ivanovna Belova, a
country neighbor of the Rostovs, came to Moscow to pay her devotions
at the shrines of the Moscow saints. She suggested that Natasha should
fast and prepare for Holy Communion, and Natasha gladly welcomed the
idea. Despite the doctor's orders that she should not go out early
in the morning, Natasha insisted on fasting and preparing for the
sacrament, not as they generally prepared for it in the Rostov
family by attending three services in their own house, but as Agrafena
Ivanovna did, by going to church every day for a week and not once
missing Vespers, Matins, or Mass.

The countess was pleased with Natasha's zeal; after the poor results
of the medical treatment, in the depths of her heart she hoped that
prayer might help her daughter more than medicines and, though not
without fear and concealing it from the doctor, she agreed to
Natasha's wish and entrusted her to Belova. Agrafena Ivanovna used
to come to wake Natasha at three in the morning, but generally found
her already awake. She was afraid of being late for Matins. Hastily
washing, and meekly putting on her shabbiest dress and an old
mantilla, Natasha, shivering in the fresh air, went out into the
deserted streets lit by the clear light of dawn. By Agrafena
Ivanovna's advice Natasha prepared herself not in their own parish,
but at a church where, according to the devout Agrafena Ivanovna,
the priest was a man of very severe and lofty life. There were never
many people in the church; Natasha always stood beside Belova in the
customary place before an icon of the Blessed Virgin, let into the
screen before the choir on the left side, and a feeling, new to her,
of humility before something great and incomprehensible, seized her
when at that unusual morning hour, gazing at the dark face of the
Virgin illuminated by the candles burning before it and by the morning
light falling from the window, she listened to the words of the
service which she tried to follow with understanding. When she
understood them her personal feeling became interwoven in the
prayers with shades of its own. When she did not understand, it was
sweeter still to think that the wish to understand everything is
pride, that it is impossible to understand all, that it is only
necessary to believe and to commit oneself to God, whom she felt
guiding her soul at those moments. She crossed herself, bowed low, and
when she did not understand, in horror at her own vileness, simply
asked God to forgive her everything, everything, to have mercy upon
her. The prayers to which she surrendered herself most of all were
those of repentance. On her way home at an early hour when she met
no one but bricklayers going to work or men sweeping the street, and
everybody within the houses was still asleep, Natasha experienced a
feeling new to her, a sense of the possibility of correcting her
faults, the possibility of a new, clean life, and of happiness.

During the whole week she spent in this way, that feeling grew every
day. And the happiness of taking communion, or "communing" as Agrafena
Ivanovna, joyously playing with the word, called it, seemed to Natasha
so great that she felt she should never live till that blessed Sunday.

But the happy day came, and on that memorable Sunday, when,
dressed in white muslin, she returned home after communion, for the
first time for many months she felt calm and not oppressed by the
thought of the life that lay before her.

The doctor who came to see her that day ordered her to continue
the powders he had prescribed a fortnight previously.

"She must certainly go on taking them morning and evening," said he,
evidently sincerely satisfied with his success. "Only, please be
particular about it.

"Be quite easy," he continued playfully, as he adroitly took the
gold coin in his palm. "She will soon be singing and frolicking about.
The last medicine has done her a very great deal of good. She has
freshened up very much."

The countess, with a cheerful expression on her face, looked down at
her nails and spat a little for luck as she returned to the drawing
room.





CHAPTER XVIII


At the beginning of July more and more disquieting reports about the
war began to spread in Moscow; people spoke of an appeal by the
Emperor to the people, and of his coming himself from the army to
Moscow. And as up to the eleventh of July no manifesto or appeal had
been received, exaggerated reports became current about them and about
the position of Russia. It was said that the Emperor was leaving the
army because it was in danger, it was said that Smolensk had
surrendered, that Napoleon had an army of a million and only a miracle
could save Russia.

On the eleventh of July, which was Saturday, the manifesto was
received but was not yet in print, and Pierre, who was at the
Rostovs', promised to come to dinner next day, Sunday, and bring a
copy of the manifesto and appeal, which he would obtain from Count
Rostopchin.

That Sunday, the Rostovs went to Mass at the Razumovskis' private
chapel as usual. It was a hot July day. Even at ten o'clock, when
the Rostovs got out of their carriage at the chapel, the sultry air,
the shouts of hawkers, the light and gay summer clothes of the
crowd, the dusty leaves of the trees on the boulevard, the sounds of
the band and the white trousers of a battalion marching to parade, the
rattling of wheels on the cobblestones, and the brilliant, hot
sunshine were all full of that summer languor, that content and
discontent with the present, which is most strongly felt on a
bright, hot day in town. All the Moscow notabilities, all the Rostovs'
acquaintances, were at the Razumovskis' chapel, for, as if expecting
something to happen, many wealthy families who usually left town for
their country estates had not gone away that summer. As Natasha, at
her mother's side, passed through the crowd behind a liveried
footman who cleared the way for them, she heard a young man speaking
about her in too loud a whisper.

"That's Rostova, the one who..."

"She's much thinner, but all the same she's pretty!"

She heard, or thought she heard, the names of Kuragin and Bolkonski.
But she was always imagining that. It always seemed to her that
everyone who looked at her was thinking only of what had happened to
her. With a sinking heart, wretched as she always was now when she
found herself in a crowd, Natasha in her lilac silk dress trimmed with
black lace walked--as women can walk--with the more repose and
stateliness the greater the pain and shame in her soul. She knew for
certain that she was pretty, but this no longer gave her
satisfaction as it used to. On the contrary it tormented her more than
anything else of late, and particularly so on this bright, hot
summer day in town. "It's Sunday again--another week past," she
thought, recalling that she had been here the Sunday before, "and
always the same life that is no life, and the same surroundings in
which it used to be so easy to live. I'm pretty, I'm young, and I know
that now I am good. I used to be bad, but now I know I am good," she
thought, "but yet my best years are slipping by and are no good to
anyone." She stood by her mother's side and exchanged nods with
acquaintances near her. From habit she scrutinized the ladies'
dresses, condemned the bearing of a lady standing close by who was not
crossing herself properly but in a cramped manner, and again she
thought with vexation that she was herself being judged and was
judging others, and suddenly, at the sound of the service, she felt
horrified at her own vileness, horrified that the former purity of her
soul was again lost to her.

A comely, fresh-looking old man was conducting the service with that
mild solemnity which has so elevating and soothing an effect on the
souls of the worshipers. The gates of the sanctuary screen were
closed, the curtain was slowly drawn, and from behind it a soft
mysterious voice pronounced some words. Tears, the cause of which
she herself did not understand, made Natasha's breast heave, and a
joyous but oppressive feeling agitated her.

"Teach me what I should do, how to live my life, how I may grow good
forever, forever!" she pleaded.

The deacon came out onto the raised space before the altar screen
and, holding his thumb extended, drew his long hair from under his
dalmatic and, making the sign of the cross on his breast, began in a
loud and solemn voice to recite the words of the prayer...

"In peace let us pray unto the Lord."

"As one community, without distinction of class, without enmity,
united by brotherly love--let us pray!" thought Natasha.

"For the peace that is from above, and for the salvation of our
souls."

"For the world of angels and all the spirits who dwell above us,"
prayed Natasha.

When they prayed for the warriors, she thought of her brother and
Denisov. When they prayed for all traveling by land and sea, she
remembered Prince Andrew, prayed for him, and asked God to forgive her
all the wrongs she had done him. When they prayed for those who love
us, she prayed for the members of her own family, her father and
mother and Sonya, realizing for the first time how wrongly she had
acted toward them, and feeling all the strength of her love for
them. When they prayed for those who hate us, she tried to think of
her enemies and people who hated her, in order to pray for them. She
included among her enemies the creditors and all who had business
dealings with her father, and always at the thought of enemies and
those who hated her she remembered Anatole who had done her so much
harm--and though he did not hate her she gladly prayed for him as
for an enemy. Only at prayer did she feel able to think clearly and
calmly of Prince Andrew and Anatole, as men for whom her feelings were
as nothing compared with her awe and devotion to God. When they prayed
for the Imperial family and the Synod, she bowed very low and made the
sign of the cross, saying to herself that even if she did not
understand, still she could not doubt, and at any rate loved the
governing Synod and prayed for it.

When he had finished the Litany the deacon crossed the stole over
his breast and said, "Let us commit ourselves and our whole lives to
Christ the Lord!"

"Commit ourselves to God," Natasha inwardly repeated. "Lord God, I
submit myself to Thy will!" she thought. "I want nothing, wish for
nothing; teach me what to do and how to use my will! Take me, take
me!" prayed Natasha, with impatient emotion in her heart, not crossing
herself but letting her slender arms hang down as if expecting some
invisible power at any moment to take her and deliver her from
herself, from her regrets, desires, remorse, hopes, and sins.

The countess looked round several times at her daughter's softened
face and shining eyes and prayed God to help her.

Unexpectedly, in the middle of the service, and not in the usual
order Natasha knew so well, the deacon brought out a small stool,
the one he knelt on when praying on Trinity Sunday, and placed it
before the doors of the sanctuary screen. The priest came out with his
purple velvet biretta on his head, adjusted his hair, and knelt down
with an effort. Everybody followed his example and they looked at
one another in surprise. Then came the prayer just received from the
Synod--a prayer for the deliverance of Russia from hostile invasion.

"Lord God of might, God of our salvation!" began the priest in
that voice, clear, not grandiloquent but mild, in which only the
Slav clergy read and which acts so irresistibly on a Russian heart.

"Lord God of might, God of our salvation! Look this day in mercy and
blessing on Thy humble people, and graciously hear us, spare us, and
have mercy upon us! This foe confounding Thy land, desiring to lay
waste the whole world, rises against us; these lawless men are
gathered together to overthrow Thy kingdom, to destroy Thy dear
Jerusalem, Thy beloved Russia; to defile Thy temples, to overthrow
Thine altars, and to desecrate our holy shrines. How long, O Lord, how
long shall the wicked triumph? How long shall they wield unlawful
power?

"Lord God! Hear us when we pray to Thee; strengthen with Thy might
our most gracious sovereign lord, the Emperor Alexander Pavlovich;
be mindful of his uprightness and meekness, reward him according to
his righteousness, and let it preserve us, Thy chosen Israel! Bless
his counsels, his undertakings, and his work; strengthen his kingdom
by Thine almighty hand, and give him victory over his enemy, even as
Thou gavest Moses the victory over Amalek, Gideon over Midian, and
David over Goliath. Preserve his army, put a bow of brass in the hands
of those who have armed themselves in Thy Name, and gird their loins
with strength for the fight. Take up the spear and shield and arise to
help us; confound and put to shame those who have devised evil against
us, may they be before the faces of Thy faithful warriors as dust
before the wind, and may Thy mighty Angel confound them and put them
to flight; may they be ensnared when they know it not, and may the
plots they have laid in secret be turned against them; let them fall
before Thy servants' feet and be laid low by our hosts! Lord, Thou art
able to save both great and small; Thou art God, and man cannot
prevail against Thee!

"God of our fathers! Remember Thy bounteous mercy and
loving-kindness which are from of old; turn not Thy face from us,
but be gracious to our unworthiness, and in Thy great goodness and Thy
many mercies regard not our transgressions and iniquities! Create in
us a clean heart and renew a right spirit within us, strengthen us all
in Thy faith, fortify our hope, inspire us with true love one for
another, arm us with unity of spirit in the righteous defense of the
heritage Thou gavest to us and to our fathers, and let not the scepter
of the wicked be exalted against the destiny of those Thou hast
sanctified.

"O Lord our God, in whom we believe and in whom we put our trust,
let us not be confounded in our hope of Thy mercy, and give us a token
of Thy blessing, that those who hate us and our Orthodox faith may see
it and be put to shame and perish, and may all the nations know that
Thou art the Lord and we are Thy people. Show Thy mercy upon us this
day, O Lord, and grant us Thy salvation; make the hearts of Thy
servants to rejoice in Thy mercy; smite down our enemies and destroy
them swiftly beneath the feet of Thy faithful servants! For Thou art
the defense, the succor, and the victory of them that put their
trust in Thee, and to Thee be all glory, to Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost, now and forever, world without end. Amen."

In Natasha's receptive condition of soul this prayer affected her
strongly. She listened to every word about the victory of Moses over
Amalek, of Gideon over Midian, and of David over Goliath, and about
the destruction of "Thy Jerusalem," and she prayed to God with the
tenderness and emotion with which her heart was overflowing, but
without fully understanding what she was asking of God in that prayer.
She shared with all her heart in the prayer for the spirit of
righteousness, for the strengthening of the heart by faith and hope,
and its animation by love. But she could not pray that her enemies
might be trampled under foot when but a few minutes before she had
been wishing she had more of them that she might pray for them. But
neither could she doubt the righteousness of the prayer that was being
read on bended knees. She felt in her heart a devout and tremulous awe
at the thought of the punishment that overtakes men for their sins,
and especially of her own sins, and she prayed to God to forgive
them all, and her too, and to give them all, and her too, peace and
happiness. And it seemed to her that God heard her prayer.





CHAPTER XIX


From the day when Pierre, after leaving the Rostovs' with
Natasha's grateful look fresh in his mind, had gazed at the comet that
seemed to be fixed in the sky and felt that something new was
appearing on his own horizon--from that day the problem of the
vanity and uselessness of all earthly things, that had incessantly
tormented him, no longer presented itself. That terrible question
"Why?" "Wherefore?" which had come to him amid every occupation, was
now replaced, not by another question or by a reply to the former
question, but by her image. When he listened to, or himself took
part in, trivial conversations, when he read or heard of human
baseness or folly, he was not horrified as formerly, and did not ask
himself why men struggled so about these things when all is so
transient and incomprehensible--but he remembered her as he had last
seen her, and all his doubts vanished--not because she had answered
the questions that had haunted him, but because his conception of
her transferred him instantly to another, a brighter, realm of
spiritual activity in which no one could be justified or guilty--a
realm of beauty and love which it was worth living for. Whatever
worldly baseness presented itself to him, he said to himself:

"Well, supposing N. N. swindled the country and the Tsar, and the
country and the Tsar confer honors upon him, what does that matter?
She smiled at me yesterday and asked me to come again, and I love her,
and no one will ever know it." And his soul felt calm and peaceful.

Pierre still went into society, drank as much and led the same
idle and dissipated life, because besides the hours he spent at the
Rostovs' there were other hours he had to spend somehow, and the
habits and acquaintances he had made in Moscow formed a current that
bore him along irresistibly. But latterly, when more and more
disquieting reports came from the seat of war and Natasha's health
began to improve and she no longer aroused in him the former feeling
of careful pity, an ever-increasing restlessness, which he could not
explain, took possession of him. He felt that the condition he was
in could not continue long, that a catastrophe was coming which
would change his whole life, and he impatiently sought everywhere
for signs of that approaching catastrophe. One of his brother Masons
had revealed to Pierre the following prophecy concerning Napoleon,
drawn from the Revelation of St. John.

In chapter 13, verse 18, of the Apocalypse, it is said:


Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number
of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six
hundred threescore and six.

And in the fifth verse of the same chapter:


And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and
blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two
months.


The French alphabet, written out with the same numerical values as
the Hebrew, in which the first nine letters denote units and the
others tens, will have the following significance:

      a   b   c   d   e   f   g   h   i   k
      1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10
       l    m    n    o    p    q    r    s
      20   30   40   50   60   70   80   90
             t    u    v    w    x    y
            100  110  120  130  140  150
                        z
                       160


Writing the words L'Empereur Napoleon in numbers, it appears that
the sum of them is 666, and that Napoleon therefore the beast foretold
in the Apocalypse. Moreover, by applying the same system to the
words quarante-deux,* which was the term allowed to the beast that
"spoke great things and blasphemies," the same number 666 was
obtained; from which it followed that the limit fixed for Napoleon's
power had come in the year 1812 when the French emperor was forty-two.
This prophecy pleased Pierre very much and he often asked himself what
would put an end to the power of the beast, that is, of Napoleon,
and tried by the same system of using letters as numbers and adding
them up, to find an answer to the question that engrossed him. He
wrote the words L'Empereur Alexandre, La nation russe and added up
their numbers, but the sums were either more or less than 666. Once
when making such calculations he wrote down his own name in French,
Comte Pierre Besouhoff, but the sum of the numbers did not come right.
Then he changed the spelling, substituting a z for the s and adding de
and the article le, still without obtaining the desired result. Then
it occurred to him: if the answer to the question were contained in
his name, his nationality would also be given in the answer. So he
wrote Le russe Besuhof and adding up the numbers got 671. This was
only five too much, and five was represented by e, the very letter
elided from the article le before the word Empereur. By omitting the
e, though incorrectly, Pierre got the answer he sought. L'russe
Besuhof made 666. This discovery excited him. How, or by what means,
he was connected with the great event foretold in the Apocalypse he
did not know, but he did not doubt that connection for a moment. His
love for Natasha, Antichrist, Napoleon, the invasion, the comet,
666, L'Empereur Napoleon, and L'russe Besuhof--all this had to
mature and culminate, to lift him out of that spellbound, petty sphere
of Moscow habits in which he felt himself held captive and lead him to
a great achievement and great happiness.


*Forty-two.



On the eve of the Sunday when the special prayer was read, Pierre
had promised the Rostovs to bring them, from Count Rostopchin whom
he knew well, both the appeal to the people and the news from the
army. In the morning, when he went to call at Rostopchin's he met
there a courier fresh from the army, an acquaintance of his own, who
often danced at Moscow balls.

"Do, please, for heaven's sake, relieve me of something!" said the
courier. "I have a sackful of letters to parents."

Among these letters was one from Nicholas Rostov to his father.
Pierre took that letter, and Rostopchin also gave him the Emperor's
appeal to Moscow, which had just been printed, the last army orders,
and his own most recent bulletin. Glancing through the army orders,
Pierre found in one of them, in the lists of killed, wounded, and
rewarded, the name of Nicholas Rostov, awarded a St. George's Cross of
the Fourth Class for courage shown in the Ostrovna affair, and in
the same order the name of Prince Andrew Bolkonski, appointed to the
command of a regiment of Chasseurs. Though he did not want to remind
the Rostovs of Bolkonski, Pierre could not refrain from making them
happy by the news of their son's having received a decoration, so he
sent that printed army order and Nicholas' letter to the Rostovs,
keeping the appeal, the bulletin, and the other orders to take with
him when he went to dinner.

His conversation with Count Rostopchin and the latter's tone of
anxious hurry, the meeting with the courier who talked casually of how
badly things were going in the army, the rumors of the discovery of
spies in Moscow and of a leaflet in circulation stating that
Napoleon promised to be in both the Russian capitals by the autumn,
and the talk of the Emperor's being expected to arrive next day--all
aroused with fresh force that feeling of agitation and expectation
in Pierre which he had been conscious of ever since the appearance
of the comet, and especially since the beginning of the war.

He had long been thinking of entering the army and would have done
so had he not been hindered, first, by his membership of the Society
of Freemasons to which he was bound by oath and which preached
perpetual peace and the abolition of war, and secondly, by the fact
that when he saw the great mass of Muscovites who had donned uniform
and were talking patriotism, he somehow felt ashamed to take the step.
But the chief reason for not carrying out his intention to enter the
army lay in the vague idea that he was L'russe Besuhof who had the
number of the beast, 666; that his part in the great affair of setting
a limit to the power of the beast that spoke great and blasphemous
things had been predestined from eternity, and that therefore he ought
not to undertake anything, but wait for what was bound to come to
pass.





CHAPTER XX


A few intimate friends were dining with the Rostovs that day, as
usual on Sundays.

Pierre came early so as to find them alone.

He had grown so stout this year that he would have been abnormal had
he not been so tall, so broad of limb, and so strong that he carried
his bulk with evident ease.

He went up the stairs, puffing and muttering something. His coachman
did not even ask whether he was to wait. He knew that when his
master was at the Rostovs' he stayed till midnight. The Rostovs'
footman rushed eagerly forward to help him off with his cloak and take
his hat and stick. Pierre, from club habit, always left both hat and
stick in the anteroom.

The first person he saw in the house was Natasha. Even before he saw
her, while taking off his cloak, he heard her. She was practicing
solfa exercises in the music room. He knew that she had not sung since
her illness, and so the sound of her voice surprised and delighted
him. He opened the door softly and saw her, in the lilac dress she had
worn at church, walking about the room singing. She had her back to
him when he opened the door, but when, turning quickly, she saw his
broad, surprised face, she blushed and came rapidly up to him.

"I want to try to sing again," she said, adding as if by way of
excuse, "it is, at least, something to do."

"That's capital!"

"How glad I am you've come! I am so happy today," she said, with the
old animation Pierre had not seen in her for along time. "You know
Nicholas has received a St. George's Cross? I am so proud of him."

"Oh yes, I sent that announcement. But I don't want to interrupt
you," he added, and was about to go to the drawing room.

Natasha stopped him.

"Count, is it wrong of me to sing?" she said blushing, and fixing
her eyes inquiringly on him.

"No... Why should it be? On the contrary... But why do you ask me?"

"I don't know myself," Natasha answered quickly, "but I should not
like to do anything you disapproved of. I believe in you completely.
You don't know how important you are to me, how much you've done for
me...." She spoke rapidly and did not notice how Pierre flushed at her
words. "I saw in that same army order that he, Bolkonski" (she
whispered the name hastily), "is in Russia, and in the army again.
What do you think?"--she was speaking hurriedly, evidently afraid
her strength might fail her--"Will he ever forgive me? Will he not
always have a bitter feeling toward me? What do you think? What do you
think?"

"I think..." Pierre replied, "that he has nothing to forgive....
If I were in his place..."

By association of ideas, Pierre was at once carried back to the
day when, trying to comfort her, he had said that if he were not
himself but the best man in the world and free, he would ask on his
knees for her hand; and the same feeling of pity, tenderness, and love
took possession of him and the same words rose to his lips. But she
did not give him time to say them.

"Yes, you... you..." she said, uttering the word you rapturously-
"that's a different thing. I know no one kinder, more generous, or
better than you; nobody could be! Had you not been there then, and now
too, I don't know what would have become of me, because..."

Tears suddenly rose in her eyes, she turned away, lifted her music
before her eyes, began singing again, and again began walking up and
down the room.

Just then Petya came running in from the drawing room.

Petya was now a handsome rosy lad of fifteen with full red lips
and resembled Natasha. He was preparing to enter the university, but
he and his friend Obolenski had lately, in secret, agreed to join
the hussars.

Petya had come rushing out to talk to his namesake about this
affair. He had asked Pierre to find out whether he would be accepted
in the hussars.

Pierre walked up and down the drawing room, not listening to what
Petya was saying.

Petya pulled him by the arm to attract his attention.

"Well, what about my plan? Peter Kirilych, for heaven's sake! You
are my only hope," said Petya.

"Oh yes, your plan. To join the hussars? I'll mention it, I'll bring
it all up today."

"Well, mon cher, have you got the manifesto?" asked the old count.
"The countess has been to Mass at the Razumovskis' and heard the new
prayer. She says it's very fine."

"Yes, I've got it," said Pierre. "The Emperor is to be here
tomorrow... there's to be an Extraordinary Meeting of the nobility,
and they are talking of a levy of ten men per thousand. Oh yes, let me
congratulate you!"

"Yes, yes, thank God! Well, and what news from the army?"

"We are again retreating. They say we're already near Smolensk,"
replied Pierre.

"O Lord, O Lord!" exclaimed the count. "Where is the manifesto?"

"The Emperor's appeal? Oh yes!"

Pierre began feeling in his pockets for the papers, but could not
find them. Still slapping his pockets, he kissed the hand of the
countess who entered the room and glanced uneasily around, evidently
expecting Natasha, who had left off singing but had not yet come
into the drawing room.

"On my word, I don't know what I've done with it," he said.

"There he is, always losing everything!" remarked the countess.

Natasha entered with a softened and agitated expression of face
and sat down looking silently at Pierre. As soon as she entered,
Pierre's features, which had been gloomy, suddenly lighted up, and
while still searching for the papers he glanced at her several times.

"No, really! I'll drive home, I must have left them there. I'll
certainly..."

"But you'll be late for dinner."

"Oh! And my coachman has gone."

But Sonya, who had gone to look for the papers in the anteroom,
had found them in Pierre's hat, where he had carefully tucked them
under the lining. Pierre was about to begin reading.

"No, after dinner," said the old count, evidently expecting much
enjoyment from that reading.

At dinner, at which champagne was drunk to the health of the new
chevalier of St. George, Shinshin told them the town news, of the
illness of the old Georgian princess, of Metivier's disappearance from
Moscow, and of how some German fellow had been brought to Rostopchin
and accused of being a French "spyer" (so Count Rostopchin had told
the story), and how Rostopchin let him go and assured the people
that he was "not a spire at all, but only an old German ruin."

"People are being arrested..." said the count. "I've told the
countess she should not speak French so much. It's not the time for it
now."

"And have you heard?" Shinshin asked. "Prince Golitsyn has engaged a
master to teach him Russian. It is becoming dangerous to speak
French in the streets."

"And how about you, Count Peter Kirilych? If they call up the
militia, you too will have to mount a horse," remarked the old
count, addressing Pierre.

Pierre had been silent and preoccupied all through dinner, seeming
not to grasp what was said. He looked at the count.

"Oh yes, the war," he said. "No! What sort of warrior should I make?
And yet everything is so strange, so strange! I can't make it out. I
don't know, I am very far from having military tastes, but in these
times no one can answer for himself."

After dinner the count settled himself comfortably in an easy
chair and with a serious face asked Sonya, who was considered an
excellent reader, to read the appeal.


"To Moscow, our ancient Capital!

"The enemy has entered the borders of Russia with immense forces. He
comes to despoil our beloved country,"


Sonya read painstakingly in her high-pitched voice. The count
listened with closed eyes, heaving abrupt sighs at certain passages.

Natasha sat erect, gazing with a searching look now at her father
and now at Pierre.

Pierre felt her eyes on him and tried not to look round. The
countess shook her head disapprovingly and angrily at every solemn
expression in the manifesto. In all these words she saw only that
the danger threatening her son would not soon be over. Shinshin,
with a sarcastic smile on his lips, was evidently preparing to make
fun of anything that gave him the opportunity: Sonya's reading, any
remark of the count's, or even the manifesto itself should no better
pretext present itself.

After reading about the dangers that threatened Russia, the hopes
the Emperor placed on Moscow and especially on its illustrious
nobility, Sonya, with a quiver in her voice due chiefly to the
attention that was being paid to her, read the last words:


"We ourselves will not delay to appear among our people in that
Capital and in others parts of our realm for consultation, and for the
direction of all our levies, both those now barring the enemy's path
and those freshly formed to defeat him wherever he may appear. May the
ruin he hopes to bring upon us recoil on his own head, and may
Europe delivered from bondage glorify the name of Russia!"


"Yes, that's it!" cried the count, opening his moist eyes and
sniffing repeatedly, as if a strong vinaigrette had been held to his
nose; and he added, "Let the Emperor but say the word and we'll
sacrifice everything and begrudge nothing."

Before Shinshin had time to utter the joke he was ready to make on
the count's patriotism, Natasha jumped up from her place and ran to
her father.

"What a darling our Papa is!" she cried, kissing him, and she
again looked at Pierre with the unconscious coquetry that had returned
to her with her better spirits.

"There! Here's a patriot for you!" said Shinshin.

"Not a patriot at all, but simply..." Natasha replied in an
injured tone. "Everything seems funny to you, but this isn't at all
a joke...."

"A joke indeed!" put in the count. "Let him but say the word and
we'll all go.... We're not Germans!"

"But did you notice, it says, 'for consultation'?" said Pierre.

"Never mind what it's for...."

At this moment, Petya, to whom nobody was paying any attention, came
up to his father with a very flushed face and said in his breaking
voice that was now deep and now shrill:

"Well, Papa, I tell you definitely, and Mamma too, it's as you
please, but I say definitely that you must let me enter the army,
because I can't... that's all...."

The countess, in dismay, looked up to heaven, clasped her hands, and
turned angrily to her husband.

"That comes of your talking!" said she.

But the count had already recovered from his excitement.

"Come, come!" said he. "Here's a fine warrior! No! Nonsense! You
must study."

"It's not nonsense, Papa. Fedya Obolenski is younger than I, and
he's going too. Besides, all the same I can't study now when..." Petya
stopped short, flushed till he perspired, but still got out the words,
"when our Fatherland is in danger."

"That'll do, that'll do--nonsense...."

"But you said yourself that we would sacrifice everything."

"Petya! Be quiet, I tell you!" cried the count, with a glance at his
wife, who had turned pale and was staring fixedly at her son.

"And I tell you--Peter Kirilych here will also tell you..."

"Nonsense, I tell you. Your mother's milk has hardly dried on your
lips and you want to go into the army! There, there, I tell you,"
and the count moved to go out of the room, taking the papers, probably
to reread them in his study before having a nap.

"Well, Peter Kirilych, let's go and have a smoke," he said.

Pierre was agitated and undecided. Natasha's unwontedly brilliant
eyes, continually glancing at him with a more than cordial look, had
reduced him to this condition.

"No, I think I'll go home."

"Home? Why, you meant to spend the evening with us.... You don't
often come nowadays as it is, and this girl of mine," said the count
good-naturedly, pointing to Natasha, "only brightens up when you're
here."

"Yes, I had forgotten... I really must go home... business..."
said Pierre hurriedly.

"Well, then, au revoir!" said the count, and went out of the room.

"Why are you going? Why are you upset?" asked Natasha, and she
looked challengingly into Pierre's eyes.

"Because I love you!" was what he wanted to say, but he did not
say it, and only blushed till the tears came, and lowered his eyes.

"Because it is better for me to come less often... because... No,
simply I have business...."

"Why? No, tell me!" Natasha began resolutely and suddenly stopped.

They looked at each other with dismayed and embarrassed faces. He
tried to smile but could not: his smile expressed suffering, and he
silently kissed her hand and went out.

Pierre made up his mind not to go to the Rostovs' any more.





CHAPTER XXI


After the definite refusal he had received, Petya went to his room
and there locked himself in and wept bitterly. When he came in to tea,
silent, morose, and with tear-stained face, everybody pretended not to
notice anything.

Next day the Emperor arrived in Moscow, and several of the
Rostovs' domestic serfs begged permission to go to have a look at him.
That morning Petya was a long time dressing and arranging his hair and
collar to look like a grown-up man. He frowned before his looking
glass, gesticulated, shrugged his shoulders, and finally, without
saying a word to anyone, took his cap and left the house by the back
door, trying to avoid notice. Petya decided to go straight to where
the Emperor was and to explain frankly to some gentleman-in-waiting
(he imagined the Emperor to be always surrounded by
gentlemen-in-waiting) that he, Count Rostov, in spite of his youth
wished to serve his country; that youth could be no hindrance to
loyalty, and that he was ready to... While dressing, Petya had
prepared many fine things he meant to say to the gentleman-in-waiting.

It was on the very fact of being so young that Petya counted for
success in reaching the Emperor--he even thought how surprised
everyone would be at his youthfulness--and yet in the arrangement of
his collar and hair and by his sedate deliberate walk he wished to
appear a grown-up man. But the farther he went and the more his
attention was diverted by the ever-increasing crowds moving toward the
Kremlin, the less he remembered to walk with the sedateness and
deliberation of a man. As he approached the Kremlin he even began to
avoid being crushed and resolutely stuck out his elbows in a
menacing way. But within the Trinity Gateway he was so pressed to
the wall by people who probably were unaware of the patriotic
intentions with which he had come that in spite of all his
determination he had to give in, and stop while carriages passed in,
rumbling beneath the archway. Beside Petya stood a peasant woman, a
footman, two tradesmen, and a discharged soldier. After standing
some time in the gateway, Petya tried to move forward in front of
the others without waiting for all the carriages to pass, and he began
resolutely working his way with his elbows, but the woman just in
front of him, who was the first against whom he directed his
efforts, angrily shouted at him:

"What are you shoving for, young lordling? Don't you see we're all
standing still? Then why push?"

"Anybody can shove," said the footman, and also began working his
elbows to such effect that he pushed Petya into a very filthy corner
of the gateway.

Petya wiped his perspiring face with his hands and pulled up the
damp collar which he had arranged so well at home to seem like a
man's.

He felt that he no longer looked presentable, and feared that if
he were now to approach the gentlemen-in-waiting in that plight he
would not be admitted to the Emperor. But it was impossible to smarten
oneself up or move to another place, because of the crowd. One of
the generals who drove past was an acquaintance of the Rostovs', and
Petya thought of asking his help, but came to the conclusion that that
would not be a manly thing to do. When the carriages had all passed
in, the crowd, carrying Petya with it, streamed forward into the
Kremlin Square which was already full of people. There were people not
only in the square, but everywhere--on the slopes and on the roofs. As
soon as Petya found himself in the square he clearly heard the sound
of bells and the joyous voices of the crowd that filled the whole
Kremlin.

For a while the crowd was less dense, but suddenly all heads were
bared, and everyone rushed forward in one direction. Petya was being
pressed so that he could scarcely breathe, and everybody shouted,
"Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!" Petya stood on tiptoe and pushed and
pinched, but could see nothing except the people about him.

All the faces bore the same expression of excitement and enthusiasm.
A tradesman's wife standing beside Petya sobbed, and the tears ran
down her cheeks.

"Father! Angel! Dear one!" she kept repeating, wiping away her tears
with her fingers.

"Hurrah!" was heard on all sides.

For a moment the crowd stood still, but then it made another rush
forward.

Quite beside himself, Petya, clinching his teeth and rolling his
eyes ferociously, pushed forward, elbowing his way and shouting
"hurrah!" as if he were prepared that instant to kill himself and
everyone else, but on both sides of him other people with similarly
ferocious faces pushed forward and everybody shouted "hurrah!"

"So this is what the Emperor is!" thought Petya. "No, I can't
petition him myself--that would be too bold." But in spite of this
he continued to struggle desperately forward, and from between the
backs of those in front he caught glimpses of an open space with a
strip of red cloth spread out on it; but just then the crowd swayed
back--the police in front were pushing back those who had pressed
too close to the procession: the Emperor was passing from the palace
to the Cathedral of the Assumption--and Petya unexpectedly received
such a blow on his side and ribs and was squeezed so hard that
suddenly everything grew dim before his eyes and he lost
consciousness. When he came to himself, a man of clerical appearance
with a tuft of gray hair at the back of his head and wearing a
shabby blue cassock--probably a church clerk and chanter--was
holding him under the arm with one hand while warding off the pressure
of the crowd with the other.

"You've crushed the young gentleman!" said the clerk. "What are
you up to? Gently!... They've crushed him, crushed him!"

The Emperor entered the Cathedral of the Assumption. The crowd
spread out again more evenly, and the clerk led Petya--pale and
breathless--to the Tsar-cannon. Several people were sorry for Petya,
and suddenly a crowd turned toward him and pressed round him. Those
who stood nearest him attended to him, unbuttoned his coat, seated him
on the raised platform of the cannon, and reproached those others
(whoever they might be) who had crushed him.

"One might easily get killed that way! What do they mean by it?
Killing people! Poor dear, he's as white as a sheet!"--various
voices were heard saying.

Petya soon came to himself, the color returned to his face, the pain
had passed, and at the cost of that temporary unpleasantness he had
obtained a place by the cannon from where he hoped to see the
Emperor who would be returning that way. Petya no longer thought of
presenting his petition. If he could only see the Emperor he would
be happy!

While the service was proceeding in the Cathedral of the Assumption-
it was a combined service of prayer on the occasion of the Emperor's
arrival and of thanksgiving for the conclusion of peace with the
Turks--the crowd outside spread out and hawkers appeared, selling
kvas, gingerbread, and poppyseed sweets (of which Petya was
particularly fond), and ordinary conversation could again be heard.
A tradesman's wife was showing a rent in her shawl and telling how
much the shawl had cost; another was saying that all silk goods had
now got dear. The clerk who had rescued Petya was talking to a
functionary about the priests who were officiating that day with the
bishop. The clerk several times used the word "plenary" (of the
service), a word Petya did not understand. Two young citizens were
joking with some serf girls who were cracking nuts. All these
conversations, especially the joking with the girls, were such as
might have had a particular charm for Petya at his age, but they did
not interest him now. He sat on his elevation--the pedestal of the
cannon--still agitated as before by the thought of the Emperor and
by his love for him. The feeling of pain and fear he had experienced
when he was being crushed, together with that of rapture, still
further intensified his sense of the importance of the occasion.

Suddenly the sound of a firing of cannon was heard from the
embankment, to celebrate the signing of peace with the Turks, and
the crowd rushed impetuously toward the embankment to watch the
firing. Petya too would have run there, but the clerk who had taken
the young gentleman under his protection stopped him. The firing was
still proceeding when officers, generals, and gentlemen-in-waiting
came running out of the cathedral, and after them others in a more
leisurely manner: caps were again raised, and those who had run to
look at the cannon ran back again. At last four men in uniforms and
sashes emerged from the cathedral doors. "Hurrah! hurrah!" shouted the
crowd again.

"Which is he? Which?" asked Petya in a tearful voice, of those
around him, but no one answered him, everybody was too excited; and
Petya, fixing on one of those four men, whom he could not clearly
see for the tears of joy that filled his eyes, concentrated all his
enthusiasm on him--though it happened not to be the Emperor-
frantically shouted "Hurrah!" and resolved that tomorrow, come what
might, he would join the army.

The crowd ran after the Emperor, followed him to the palace, and
began to disperse. It was already late, and Petya had not eaten
anything and was drenched with perspiration, yet he did not go home
but stood with that diminishing, but still considerable, crowd
before the palace while the Emperor dined--looking in at the palace
windows, expecting he knew not what, and envying alike the notables he
saw arriving at the entrance to dine with the Emperor and the court
footmen who served at table, glimpses of whom could be seen through
the windows.

While the Emperor was dining, Valuev, looking out of the window,
said:

"The people are still hoping to see Your Majesty again."

The dinner was nearly over, and the Emperor, munching a biscuit,
rose and went out onto the balcony. The people, with Petya among them,
rushed toward the balcony.

"Angel! Dear one! Hurrah! Father!..." cried the crowd, and Petya
with it, and again the women and men of weaker mold, Petya among them,
wept with joy.

A largish piece of the biscuit the Emperor was holding in his hand
broke off, fell on the balcony parapet, and then to the ground. A
coachman in a jerkin, who stood nearest, sprang forward and snatched
it up. Several people in the crowd rushed at the coachman. Seeing this
the Emperor had a plateful of biscuits brought him and began
throwing them down from the balcony. Petya's eyes grew bloodshot,
and still more excited by the danger of being crushed, he rushed at
the biscuits. He did not know why, but he had to have a biscuit from
the Tsar's hand and he felt that he must not give way. He sprang
forward and upset an old woman who was catching at a biscuit; the
old woman did not consider herself defeated though she was lying on
the ground--she grabbed at some biscuits but her hand did not reach
them. Petya pushed her hand away with his knee, seized a biscuit,
and as if fearing to be too late, again shouted "Hurrah!" with a voice
already hoarse.

The Emperor went in, and after that the greater part of the crowd
began to disperse.

"There! I said if only we waited--and so it was!" was being joyfully
said by various people.

Happy as Petya was, he felt sad at having to go home knowing that
all the enjoyment of that day was over. He did not go straight home
from the Kremlin, but called on his friend Obolenski, who was
fifteen and was also entering the regiment. On returning home Petya
announced resolutely and firmly that if he was not allowed to enter
the service he would run away. And next day, Count Ilya Rostov--though
he had not yet quite yielded--went to inquire how he could arrange for
Petya to serve where there would be least danger.





CHAPTER XXII


Two days later, on the fifteenth of July, an immense number of
carriages were standing outside the Sloboda Palace.

The great halls were full. In the first were the nobility and gentry
in their uniforms, in the second bearded merchants in full-skirted
coats of blue cloth and wearing medals. In the noblemen's hall there
was an incessant movement and buzz of voices. The chief magnates sat
on high-backed chairs at a large table under the portrait of the
Emperor, but most of the gentry were strolling about the room.

All these nobles, whom Pierre met every day at the Club or in
their own houses, were in uniform--some in that of Catherine's day,
others in that of Emperor Paul, others again in the new uniforms of
Alexander's time or the ordinary uniform of the nobility, and the
general characteristic of being in uniform imparted something
strange and fantastic to these diverse and familiar personalities,
both old and young. The old men, dim-eyed, toothless, bald, sallow,
and bloated, or gaunt and wrinkled, were especially striking. For
the most part they sat quietly in their places and were silent, or, if
they walked about and talked, attached themselves to someone
younger. On all these faces, as on the faces of the crowd Petya had
seen in the Square, there was a striking contradiction: the general
expectation of a solemn event, and at the same time the everyday
interests in a boston card party, Peter the cook, Zinaida Dmitrievna's
health, and so on.

Pierre was there too, buttoned up since early morning in a
nobleman's uniform that had become too tight for him. He was agitated;
this extraordinary gathering not only of nobles but also of the
merchant-class--les etats generaux (States-General)--evoked in him a
whole series of ideas he had long laid aside but which were deeply
graven in his soul: thoughts of the Contrat social and the French
Revolution. The words that had struck him in the Emperor's appeal-
that the sovereign was coming to the capital for consultation with his
people--strengthened this idea. And imagining that in this direction
something important which he had long awaited was drawing near, he
strolled about watching and listening to conversations, but nowhere
finding any confirmation of the ideas that occupied him.

The Emperor's manifesto was read, evoking enthusiasm, and then all
moved about discussing it. Besides the ordinary topics of
conversation, Pierre heard questions of where the marshals of the
nobility were to stand when the Emperor entered, when a ball should be
given in the Emperor's honor, whether they should group themselves
by districts or by whole provinces... and so on; but as soon as the
war was touched on, or what the nobility had been convened for, the
talk became undecided and indefinite. Then all preferred listening
to speaking.

A middle-aged man, handsome and virile, in the uniform of a
retired naval officer, was speaking in one of the rooms, and a small
crowd was pressing round him. Pierre went up to the circle that had
formed round the speaker and listened. Count Ilya Rostov, in a
military uniform of Catherine's time, was sauntering with a pleasant
smile among the crowd, with all of whom he was acquainted. He too
approached that group and listened with a kindly smile and nods of
approval, as he always did, to what the speaker was saying. The
retired naval man was speaking very boldly, as was evident from the
expression on the faces of the listeners and from the fact that some
people Pierre knew as the meekest and quietest of men walked away
disapprovingly or expressed disagreement with him. Pierre pushed his
way into the middle of the group, listened, and convinced himself that
the man was indeed a liberal, but of views quite different from his
own. The naval officer spoke in a particularly sonorous, musical,
and aristocratic baritone voice, pleasantly swallowing his r's and
generally slurring his consonants: the voice of a man calling out to
his servant, "Heah! Bwing me my pipe!" It was indicative of
dissipation and the exercise of authority.

"What if the Smolensk people have offahd to waise militia for the
Empewah? Ah we to take Smolensk as our patte'n? If the noble
awistocwacy of the pwovince of Moscow thinks fit, it can show its
loyalty to our sov'weign the Empewah in other ways. Have we
fo'gotten the waising of the militia in the yeah 'seven? All that
did was to enwich the pwiests' sons and thieves and wobbahs...."

Count Ilya Rostov smiled blandly and nodded approval.

"And was our militia of any use to the Empia? Not at all! It only
wuined our farming! Bettah have another conscwiption... o' ou' men
will wetu'n neithah soldiers no' peasants, and we'll get only
depwavity fwom them. The nobility don't gwudge theah lives--evewy
one of us will go and bwing in more wecwuits, and the sov'weign" (that
was the way he referred to the Emperor) "need only say the word and
we'll all die fo' him!" added the orator with animation.

Count Rostov's mouth watered with pleasure and he nudged Pierre, but
Pierre wanted to speak himself. He pushed forward, feeling stirred,
but not yet sure what stirred him or what he would say. Scarcely had
he opened his mouth when one of the senators, a man without a tooth in
his head, with a shrewd though angry expression, standing near the
first speaker, interrupted him. Evidently accustomed to managing
debates and to maintaining an argument, he began in low but distinct
tones:

"I imagine, sir," said he, mumbling with his toothless mouth,
"that we have been summoned here not to discuss whether it's best
for the empire at the present moment to adopt conscription or to
call out the militia. We have been summoned to reply to the appeal
with which our sovereign the Emperor has honored us. But to judge what
is best--conscription or the militia--we can leave to the supreme
authority...."

Pierre suddenly saw an outlet for his excitement. He hardened his
heart against the senator who was introducing this set and narrow
attitude into the deliberations of the nobility. Pierre stepped
forward and interrupted him. He himself did not yet know what he would
say, but he began to speak eagerly, occasionally lapsing into French
or expressing himself in bookish Russian.

"Excuse me, your excellency," he began. (He was well acquainted with
the senator, but thought it necessary on this occasion to address
him formally.) "Though I don't agree with the gentleman..." (he
hesitated: he wished to say, "Mon tres honorable preopinant"--"My very
honorable opponent") "with the gentleman... whom I have not the
honor of knowing, I suppose that the nobility have been summoned not
merely to express their sympathy and enthusiasm but also to consider
the means by which we can assist our Fatherland! I imagine," he went
on, warming to his subject, "that the Emperor himself would not be
satisfied to find in us merely owners of serfs whom we are willing
to devote to his service, and chair a canon* we are ready to make of
ourselves--and not to obtain from us any co-co-counsel."


*"Food for cannon."


Many persons withdrew from the circle, noticing the senator's
sarcastic smile and the freedom of Pierre's remarks. Only Count Rostov
was pleased with them as he had been pleased with those of the naval
officer, the senator, and in general with whatever speech he had
last heard.

"I think that before discussing these questions," Pierre
continued, "we should ask the Emperor--most respectfully ask His
Majesty--to let us know the number of our troops and the position in
which our army and our forces now are, and then..."

But scarcely had Pierre uttered these words before he was attacked
from three sides. The most vigorous attack came from an old
acquaintance, a boston player who had always been well disposed toward
him, Stepan Stepanovich Adraksin. Adraksin was in uniform, and whether
as a result of the uniform or from some other cause Pierre saw
before him quite a different man. With a sudden expression of
malevolence on his aged face, Adraksin shouted at Pierre:

"In the first place, I tell you we have no right to question the
Emperor about that, and secondly, if the Russian nobility had that
right, the Emperor could not answer such a question. The troops are
moved according to the enemy's movements and the number of men
increases and decreases..."

Another voice, that of a nobleman of medium height and about forty
years of age, whom Pierre had formerly met at the gypsies' and knew as
a bad cardplayer, and who, also transformed by his uniform, came up to
Pierre, interrupted Adraksin.

"Yes, and this is not a time for discussing," he continued, "but for
acting: there is war in Russia! The enemy is advancing to destroy
Russia, to desecrate the tombs of our fathers, to carry off our
wives and children." The nobleman smote his breast. "We will all
arise, every one of us will go, for our father the Tsar!" he
shouted, rolling his bloodshot eyes. Several approving voices were
heard in the crowd. "We are Russians and will not grudge our blood
in defense of our faith, the throne, and the Fatherland! We must cease
raving if we are sons of our Fatherland! We will show Europe how
Russia rises to the defense of Russia!"

Pierre wished to reply, but could not get in a word. He felt that
his words, apart from what meaning they conveyed, were less audible
than the sound of his opponent's voice.

Count Rostov at the back of the crowd was expressing approval;
several persons, briskly turning a shoulder to the orator at the end
of a phrase, said:

"That's right, quite right! Just so!"

Pierre wished to say that he was ready to sacrifice his money, his
serfs, or himself, only one ought to know the state of affairs in
order to be able to improve it, but he was unable to speak. Many
voices shouted and talked at the same time, so that Count Rostov had
not time to signify his approval of them all, and the group increased,
dispersed, re-formed, and then moved with a hum of talk into the
largest hall and to the big table. Not only was Pierre's attempt to
speak unsuccessful, but he was rudely interrupted, pushed aside, and
people turned away from him as from a common enemy. This happened
not because they were displeased by the substance of his speech, which
had even been forgotten after the many subsequent speeches, but to
animate it the crowd needed a tangible object to love and a tangible
object to hate. Pierre became the latter. Many other orators spoke
after the excited nobleman, and all in the same tone. Many spoke
eloquently and with originality.

Glinka, the editor of the Russian Messenger, who was recognized
(cries of "author! author!" were heard in the crowd), said that
"hell must be repulsed by hell," and that he had seen a child
smiling at lightning flashes and thunderclaps, but "we will not be
that child."

"Yes, yes, at thunderclaps!" was repeated approvingly in the back
rows of the crowd.

The crowd drew up to the large table, at which sat gray-haired or
bald seventy-year-old magnates, uniformed and besashed almost all of
whom Pierre had seen in their own homes with their buffoons, or
playing boston at the clubs. With an incessant hum of voices the crowd
advanced to the table. Pressed by the throng against the high backs of
the chairs, the orators spoke one after another and sometimes two
together. Those standing behind noticed what a speaker omitted to
say and hastened to supply it. Others in that heat and crush racked
their brains to find some thought and hastened to utter it. The old
magnates, whom Pierre knew, sat and turned to look first at one and
then at another, and their faces for the most part only expressed
the fact that they found it very hot. Pierre, however, felt excited,
and the general desire to show that they were ready to go to all
lengths--which found expression in the tones and looks more than in
the substance of the speeches--infected him too. He did not renounce
his opinions, but felt himself in some way to blame and wished to
justify himself.

"I only said that it would be more to the purpose to make sacrifices
when we know what is needed!" said he, trying to be heard above the
other voices.

One of the old men nearest to him looked round, but his attention
was immediately diverted by an exclamation at the other side of the
table.

"Yes, Moscow will be surrendered! She will be our expiation!"
shouted one man.

"He is the enemy of mankind!" cried another. "Allow me to speak...."
"Gentlemen, you are crushing me!..."





CHAPTER XXIII


At that moment Count Rostopchin with his protruding chin and alert
eyes, wearing the uniform of a general with sash over his shoulder,
entered the room, stepping briskly to the front of the crowd of
gentry.

"Our sovereign the Emperor will be here in a moment," said
Rostopchin. "I am straight from the palace. Seeing the position we are
in, I think there is little need for discussion. The Emperor has
deigned to summon us and the merchants. Millions will pour forth
from there"--he pointed to the merchants' hall--"but our business is
to supply men and not spare ourselves... That is the least we can do!"

A conference took place confined to the magnates sitting at the
table. The whole consultation passed more than quietly. After all
the preceding noise the sound of their old voices saying one after
another, "I agree," or for variety, "I too am of that opinion," and so
on had even a mournful effect.

The secretary was told to write down the resolution of the Moscow
nobility and gentry, that they would furnish ten men, fully
equipped, out of every thousand serfs, as the Smolensk gentry had
done. Their chairs made a scraping noise as the gentlemen who had
conferred rose with apparent relief, and began walking up and down,
arm in arm, to stretch their legs and converse in couples.

"The Emperor! The Emperor!" a sudden cry resounded through the halls
and the whole throng hurried to the entrance.

The Emperor entered the hall through a broad path between two
lines of nobles. Every face expressed respectful, awe-struck
curiosity. Pierre stood rather far off and could not hear all that the
Emperor said. From what he did hear he understood that the Emperor
spoke of the danger threatening the empire and of the hopes he
placed on the Moscow nobility. He was answered by a voice which
informed him of the resolution just arrived at.

"Gentlemen!" said the Emperor with a quivering voice.

There was a rustling among the crowd and it again subsided, so
that Pierre distinctly heard the pleasantly human voice of the Emperor
saying with emotion:

"I never doubted the devotion of the Russian nobles, but today it
has surpassed my expectations. I thank you in the name of the
Fatherland! Gentlemen, let us act! Time is most precious..."

The Emperor ceased speaking, the crowd began pressing round him, and
rapturous exclamations were heard from all sides.

"Yes, most precious... a royal word," said Count Rostov, with a sob.
He stood at the back, and, though he had heard hardly anything,
understood everything in his own way.

From the hall of the nobility the Emperor went to that of the
merchants. There he remained about ten minutes. Pierre was among those
who saw him come out from the merchants' hall with tears of emotion in
his eyes. As became known later, he had scarcely begun to address
the merchants before tears gushed from his eyes and he concluded in
a trembling voice. When Pierre saw the Emperor he was coming out
accompanied by two merchants, one of whom Pierre knew, a fat
otkupshchik. The other was the mayor, a man with a thin sallow face
and narrow beard. Both were weeping. Tears filled the thin man's eyes,
and the fat otkupshchik sobbed outright like a child and kept
repeating:

"Our lives and property--take them, Your Majesty!"

Pierre's one feeling at the moment was a desire to show that he
was ready to go all lengths and was prepared to sacrifice
everything. He now felt ashamed of his speech with its
constitutional tendency and sought an opportunity of effacing it.
Having heard that Count Mamonov was furnishing a regiment, Bezukhov at
once informed Rostopchin that he would give a thousand men and their
maintenance.

Old Rostov could not tell his wife of what had passed without tears,
and at once consented to Petya's request and went himself to enter his
name.

Next day the Emperor left Moscow. The assembled nobles all took
off their uniforms and settled down again in their homes and clubs,
and not without some groans gave orders to their stewards about the
enrollment, feeling amazed themselves at what they had done.





BOOK TEN: 1812





CHAPTER I


Napoleon began the war with Russia because he could not resist going
to Dresden, could not help having his head turned by the homage he
received, could not help donning a Polish uniform and yielding to
the stimulating influence of a June morning, and could not refrain
from bursts of anger in the presence of Kurakin and then of Balashev.

Alexander refused negotiations because he felt himself to be
personally insulted. Barclay de Tolly tried to command the army in the
best way, because he wished to fulfill his duty and earn fame as a
great commander. Rostov charged the French because he could not
restrain his wish for a gallop across a level field; and in the same
way the innumerable people who took part in the war acted in accord
with their personal characteristics, habits, circumstances, and
aims. They were moved by fear or vanity, rejoiced or were indignant,
reasoned, imagining that they knew what they were doing and did it
of their own free will, but they all were involuntary tools of
history, carrying on a work concealed from them but comprehensible
to us. Such is the inevitable fate of men of action, and the higher
they stand in the social hierarchy the less are they free.

The actors of 1812 have long since left the stage, their personal
interests have vanished leaving no trace, and nothing remains of
that time but its historic results.

Providence compelled all these men, striving to attain personal
aims, to further the accomplishment of a stupendous result no one of
them at all expected--neither Napoleon, nor Alexander, nor still
less any of those who did the actual fighting.

The cause of the destruction of the French army in 1812 is clear
to us now. No one will deny that that cause was, on the one hand,
its advance into the heart of Russia late in the season without any
preparation for a winter campaign and, on the other, the character
given to the war by the burning of Russian towns and the hatred of the
foe this aroused among the Russian people. But no one at the time
foresaw (what now seems so evident) that this was the only way an army
of eight hundred thousand men--the best in the world and led by the
best general--could be destroyed in conflict with a raw army of half
its numerical strength, and led by inexperienced commanders as the
Russian army was. Not only did no one see this, but on the Russian
side every effort was made to hinder the only thing that could save
Russia, while on the French side, despite Napoleon's experience and
so-called military genius, every effort was directed to pushing on
to Moscow at the end of the summer, that is, to doing the very thing
that was bound to lead to destruction.

In historical works on the year 1812 French writers are very fond of
saying that Napoleon felt the danger of extending his line, that he
sought a battle and that his marshals advised him to stop at Smolensk,
and of making similar statements to show that the danger of the
campaign was even then understood. Russian authors are still fonder of
telling us that from the commencement of the campaign a Scythian war
plan was adopted to lure Napoleon into the depths of Russia, and
this plan some of them attribute to Pfuel, others to a certain
Frenchman, others to Toll, and others again to Alexander himself-
pointing to notes, projects, and letters which contain hints of such a
line of action. But all these hints at what happened, both from the
French side and the Russian, are advanced only because they fit in
with the event. Had that event not occurred these hints would have
been forgotten, as we have forgotten the thousands and millions of
hints and expectations to the contrary which were current then but
have now been forgotten because the event falsified them. There are
always so many conjectures as to the issue of any event that however
it may end there will always be people to say: "I said then that it
would be so," quite forgetting that amid their innumerable conjectures
many were to quite the contrary effect.

Conjectures as to Napoleon's awareness of the danger of extending
his line, and (on the Russian side) as to luring the enemy into the
depths of Russia, are evidently of that kind, and only by much
straining can historians attribute such conceptions to Napoleon and
his marshals, or such plans to the Russian commanders. All the facts
are in flat contradiction to such conjectures. During the whole period
of the war not only was there no wish on the Russian side to draw
the French into the heart of the country, but from their first entry
into Russia everything was done to stop them. And not only was
Napoleon not afraid to extend his line, but he welcomed every step
forward as a triumph and did not seek battle as eagerly as in former
campaigns, but very lazily.

At the very beginning of the war our armies were divided, and our
sole aim was to unite them, though uniting the armies was no advantage
if we meant to retire and lure the enemy into the depths of the
country. Our Emperor joined the army to encourage it to defend every
inch of Russian soil and not to retreat. The enormous Drissa camp
was formed on Pfuel's plan, and there was no intention of retiring
farther. The Emperor reproached the commanders in chief for every step
they retired. He could not bear the idea of letting the enemy even
reach Smolensk, still less could he contemplate the burning of Moscow,
and when our armies did unite he was displeased that Smolensk was
abandoned and burned without a general engagement having been fought
under its walls.

So thought the Emperor, and the Russian commanders and people were
still more provoked at the thought that our forces were retreating
into the depths of the country.

Napoleon having cut our armies apart advanced far into the country
and missed several chances of forcing an engagement. In August he
was at Smolensk and thought only of how to advance farther, though
as we now see that advance was evidently ruinous to him.

The facts clearly show that Napoleon did not foresee the danger of
the advance on Moscow, nor did Alexander and the Russian commanders
then think of luring Napoleon on, but quite the contrary. The luring
of Napoleon into the depths of the country was not the result of any
plan, for no one believed it to be possible; it resulted from a most
complex interplay of intrigues, aims, and wishes among those who
took part in the war and had no perception whatever of the inevitable,
or of the one way of saving Russia. Everything came about
fortuitously. The armies were divided at the commencement of the
campaign. We tried to unite them, with the evident intention of giving
battle and checking the enemy's advance, and by this effort to unite
them while avoiding battle with a much stronger enemy, and necessarily
withdrawing the armies at an acute angle--we led the French on to
Smolensk. But we withdrew at an acute angle not only because the
French advanced between our two armies; the angle became still more
acute and we withdrew still farther, because Barclay de Tolly was an
unpopular foreigner disliked by Bagration (who would come his
command), and Bagration--being in command of the second army--tried to
postpone joining up and coming under Barclay's command as long as he
could. Bagration was slow in effecting the junction--though that was
the chief aim of all at headquarters--because, as he alleged, he
exposed his army to danger on this march, and it was best for him to
retire more to the left and more to the south, worrying the enemy from
flank and rear and securing from the Ukraine recruits for his army;
and it looks as if he planned this in order not to come under the
command of the detested foreigner Barclay, whose rank was inferior
to his own.

The Emperor was with the army to encourage it, but his presence
and ignorance of what steps to take, and the enormous number of
advisers and plans, destroyed the first army's energy and it retired.

The intention was to make a stand at the Drissa camp, but
Paulucci, aiming at becoming commander in chief, unexpectedly employed
his energy to influence Alexander, and Pfuel's whole plan was
abandoned and the command entrusted to Barclay. But as Barclay did not
inspire confidence his power was limited. The armies were divided,
there was no unity of command, and Barclay was unpopular; but from
this confusion, division, and the unpopularity of the foreign
commander in chief, there resulted on the one hand indecision and
the avoidance of a battle (which we could not have refrained from
had the armies been united and had someone else, instead of Barclay,
been in command) and on the other an ever-increasing indignation
against the foreigners and an increase in patriotic zeal.

At last the Emperor left the army, and as the most convenient and
indeed the only pretext for his departure it was decided that it was
necessary for him to inspire the people in the capitals and arouse the
nation in general to a patriotic war. And by this visit of the Emperor
to Moscow the strength of the Russian army was trebled.

He left in order not to obstruct the commander in chief's
undivided control of the army, and hoping that more decisive action
would then be taken, but the command of the armies became still more
confused and enfeebled. Bennigsen, the Tsarevich, and a swarm of
adjutants general remained with the army to keep the commander in
chief under observation and arouse his energy, and Barclay, feeling
less free than ever under the observation of all these "eyes of the
Emperor," became still more cautious of undertaking any decisive
action and avoided giving battle.

Barclay stood for caution. The Tsarevich hinted at treachery and
demanded a general engagement. Lubomirski, Bronnitski, Wlocki, and the
others of that group stirred up so much trouble that Barclay, under
pretext of sending papers to the Emperor, dispatched these Polish
adjutants general to Petersburg and plunged into an open struggle with
Bennigsen and the Tsarevich.

At Smolensk the armies at last reunited, much as Bagration
disliked it.

Bagration drove up in a carriage to to the house occupied by
Barclay. Barclay donned his sash and came out to meet and report to
his senior officer Bagration.

Despite his seniority in rank Bagration, in this contest of
magnanimity, took his orders from Barclay, but, having submitted,
agreed with him less than ever. By the Emperor's orders Bagration
reported direct to him. He wrote to Arakcheev, the Emperor's
confidant: "It must be as my sovereign pleases, but I cannot work with
the Minister (meaning Barclay). For God's sake send me somewhere
else if only in command of a regiment. I cannot stand it here.
Headquarters are so full of Germans that a Russian cannot exist and
there is no sense in anything. I thought I was really serving my
sovereign and the Fatherland, but it turns out that I am serving
Barclay. I confess I do not want to."

The swarm of Bronnitskis and Wintzingerodes and their like still
further embittered the relations between the commanders in chief,
and even less unity resulted. Preparations were made to fight the
French before Smolensk. A general was sent to survey the position.
This general, hating Barclay, rode to visit a friend of his own, a
corps commander, and, having spent the day with him, returned to
Barclay and condemned, as unsuitable from every point of view, the
battleground he had not seen.

While disputes and intrigues were going on about the future field of
battle, and while we were looking for the French--having lost touch
with them--the French stumbled upon Neverovski's division and
reached the walls of Smolensk.

It was necessary to fight an unexpected battle at Smolensk to save
our lines of communication. The battle was fought and thousands were
killed on both sides.

Smolensk was abandoned contrary to the wishes of the Emperor and
of the whole people. But Smolensk was burned by its own
inhabitants-who had been misled by their governor. And these ruined
inhabitants, setting an example to other Russians, went to Moscow
thinking only of their own losses but kindling hatred of the foe.
Napoleon advanced farther and we retired, thus arriving at the very
result which caused his destruction.





CHAPTER II


The day after his son had left, Prince Nicholas sent for Princess
Mary to come to his study.

"Well? Are you satisfied now?" said he. "You've made me quarrel with
my son! Satisfied, are you? That's all you wanted! Satisfied?... It
hurts me, it hurts. I'm old and weak and this is what you wanted. Well
then, gloat over it! Gloat over it!"

After that Princess Mary did not see her father for a whole week. He
was ill and did not leave his study.

Princess Mary noticed to her surprise that during this illness the
old prince not only excluded her from his room, but did not admit
Mademoiselle Bourienne either. Tikhon alone attended him.

At the end of the week the prince reappeared and resumed his
former way of life, devoting himself with special activity to building
operations and the arrangement of the gardens and completely
breaking off his relations with Mademoiselle Bourienne. His looks
and cold tone to his daughter seemed to say: "There, you see? You
plotted against me, you lied to Prince Andrew about my relations
with that Frenchwoman and made me quarrel with him, but you see I need
neither her nor you!"

Princess Mary spent half of every day with little Nicholas, watching
his lessons, teaching him Russian and music herself, and talking to
Dessalles; the rest of the day she spent over her books, with her
old nurse, or with "God's folk" who sometimes came by the back door to
see her.

Of the war Princess Mary thought as women do think about wars. She
feared for her brother who was in it, was horrified by and amazed at
the strange cruelty that impels men to kill one another, but she did
not understand the significance of this war, which seemed to her
like all previous wars. She did not realize the significance of this
war, though Dessalles with whom she constantly conversed was
passionately interested in its progress and tried to explain his own
conception of it to her, and though the "God's folk" who came to see
her reported, in their own way, the rumors current among the people of
an invasion by Antichrist, and though Julie (now Princess
Drubetskaya), who had resumed correspondence with her, wrote patriotic
letters from Moscow.

"I write you in Russian, my good friend," wrote Julie in her
Frenchified Russian, "because I have a detestation for all the French,
and the same for their language which I cannot support to hear
spoken.... We in Moscow are elated by enthusiasm for our adored
Emperor.

"My poor husband is enduring pains and hunger in Jewish taverns, but
the news which I have inspires me yet more.

"You heard probably of the heroic exploit of Raevski, embracing
his two sons and saying: 'I will perish with them but we will not be
shaken!' And truly though the enemy was twice stronger than we, we
were unshakable. We pass the time as we can, but in war as in war! The
princesses Aline and Sophie sit whole days with me, and we, unhappy
widows of live men, make beautiful conversations over our charpie,
only you, my friend, are missing..." and so on.

The chief reason Princess Mary did not realize the full significance
of this war was that the old prince never spoke of it, did not
recognize it, and laughed at Dessalles when he mentioned it at dinner.
The prince's tone was so calm and confident that Princess Mary
unhesitatingly believed him.

All that July the old prince was exceedingly active and even
animated. He planned another garden and began a new building for the
domestic serfs. The only thing that made Princess Mary anxious about
him was that he slept very little and, instead of sleeping in his
study as usual, changed his sleeping place every day. One day he would
order his camp bed to be set up in the glass gallery, another day he
remained on the couch or on the lounge chair in the drawing room and
dozed there without undressing, while--instead of Mademoiselle
Bourienne--a serf boy read to him. Then again he would spend a night
in the dining room.

On August 1, a second letter was received from Prince Andrew. In his
first letter which came soon after he had left home, Prince Andrew had
dutifully asked his father's forgiveness for what he had allowed
himself to say and begged to be restored to his favor. To this
letter the old prince had replied affectionately, and from that time
had kept the Frenchwoman at a distance. Prince Andrew's second letter,
written near Vitebsk after the French had occupied that town, gave a
brief account of the whole campaign, enclosed for them a plan he had
drawn and forecasts as to the further progress of the war. In this
letter Prince Andrew pointed out to his father the danger of staying
at Bald Hills, so near the theater of war and on the army's direct
line of march, and advised him to move to Moscow.

At dinner that day, on Dessalles' mentioning that the French were
said to have already entered Vitebsk, the old prince remembered his
son's letter.

"There was a letter from Prince Andrew today," he said to Princess
Mary--"Haven't you read it?"

"No, Father," she replied in a frightened voice.

She could not have read the letter as she did not even know it had
arrived.

"He writes about this war," said the prince, with the ironic smile
that had become habitual to him in speaking of the present war.

"That must be very interesting," said Dessalles. "Prince Andrew is
in a position to know..."

"Oh, very interesting!" said Mademoiselle Bourienne.

"Go and get it for me," said the old prince to Mademoiselle
Bourienne. "You know--under the paperweight on the little table."

Mademoiselle Bourienne jumped up eagerly.

"No, don't!" he exclaimed with a frown. "You go, Michael Ivanovich."

Michael Ivanovich rose and went to the study. But as soon as he
had left the room the old prince, looking uneasily round, threw down
his napkin and went himself.

"They can't do anything... always make some muddle," he muttered.

While he was away Princess Mary, Dessalles, Mademoiselle
Bourienne, and even little Nicholas exchanged looks in silence. The
old prince returned with quick steps, accompanied by Michael
Ivanovich, bringing the letter and a plan. These he put down beside
him--not letting anyone read them at dinner.

On moving to the drawing room he handed the letter to Princess
Mary and, spreading out before him the plan of the new building and
fixing his eyes upon it, told her to read the letter aloud. When she
had done so Princess Mary looked inquiringly at her father. He was
examining the plan, evidently engrossed in his own ideas.

"What do you think of it, Prince?" Dessalles ventured to ask.

"I? I?..." said the prince as if unpleasantly awakened, and not
taking his eyes from the plan of the building.

"Very possibly the theater of war will move so near to us that..."

"Ha ha ha! The theater of war!" said the prince. "I have said and
still say that the theater of war is Poland and the enemy will never
get beyond the Niemen."

Dessalles looked in amazement at the prince, who was talking of
the Niemen when the enemy was already at the Dnieper, but Princess
Mary, forgetting the geographical position of the Niemen, thought that
what her father was saying was correct.

"When the snow melts they'll sink in the Polish swamps. Only they
could fail to see it," the prince continued, evidently thinking of the
campaign of 1807 which seemed to him so recent. "Bennigsen should have
advanced into Prussia sooner, then things would have taken a different
turn..."

"But, Prince," Dessalles began timidly, "the letter mentions
Vitebsk...."

"Ah, the letter? Yes..." replied the prince peevishly. "Yes...
yes..." His face suddenly took on a morose expression. He paused.
"Yes, he writes that the French were beaten at... at... what river
is it?"

Dessalles dropped his eyes.

"The prince says nothing about that," he remarked gently.

"Doesn't he? But I didn't invent it myself."

No one spoke for a long time.

"Yes... yes... Well, Michael Ivanovich," he suddenly went on,
raising his head and pointing to the plan of the building, "tell me
how you mean to alter it...."

Michael Ivanovich went up to the plan, and the prince after speaking
to him about the building looked angrily at Princess Mary and
Dessalles and went to his own room.

Princess Mary saw Dessalles' embarrassed and astonished look fixed
on her father, noticed his silence, and was struck by the fact that
her father had forgotten his son's letter on the drawing-room table;
but she was not only afraid to speak of it and ask Dessalles the
reason of his confusion and silence, but was afraid even to think
about it.

In the evening Michael Ivanovich, sent by the prince, came to
Princess Mary for Prince Andrew's letter which had been forgotten in
the drawing room. She gave it to him and, unpleasant as it was to
her to do so, ventured to ask him what her father was doing.

"Always busy," replied Michael Ivanovich with a respectfully
ironic smile which caused Princess Mary to turn pale. "He's worrying
very much about the new building. He has been reading a little, but
now"--Michael Ivanovich went on, lowering his voice--"now he's at
his desk, busy with his will, I expect." (One of the prince's favorite
occupations of late had been the preparation of some papers he meant
to leave at his death and which he called his "will.")

"And Alpatych is being sent to Smolensk?" asked Princess Mary.

"Oh, yes, he has been waiting to start for some time."





CHAPTER III


When Michael Ivanovich returned to the study with the letter, the
old prince, with spectacles on and a shade over his eyes, was
sitting at his open bureau with screened candles, holding a paper in
his outstretched hand, and in a somewhat dramatic attitude was reading
his manuscript--his "Remarks" as he termed it--which was to be
transmitted to the Emperor after his death.

When Michael Ivanovich went in there were tears in the prince's eyes
evoked by the memory of the time when the paper he was now reading had
been written. He took the letter from Michael Ivanovich's hand, put it
in his pocket, folded up his papers, and called in Alpatych who had
long been waiting.

The prince had a list of things to be bought in Smolensk and,
walking up and down the room past Alpatych who stood by the door, he
gave his instructions.

"First, notepaper--do you hear? Eight quires, like this sample,
gilt-edged... it must be exactly like the sample. Varnish, sealing
wax, as in Michael Ivanovich's list."

He paced up and down for a while and glanced at his notes.

"Then hand to the governor in person a letter about the deed."

Next, bolts for the doors of the new building were wanted and had to
be of a special shape the prince had himself designed, and a leather
case had to be ordered to keep the "will" in.

The instructions to Alpatych took over two hours and still the
prince did not let him go. He sat down, sank into thought, closed
his eyes, and dozed off. Alpatych made a slight movement.

"Well, go, go! If anything more is wanted I'll send after you."

Alpatych went out. The prince again went to his bureau, glanced into
it, fingered his papers, closed the bureau again, and sat down at
the table to write to the governor.

It was already late when he rose after sealing the letter. He wished
to sleep, but he knew he would not be able to and that most depressing
thoughts came to him in bed. So he called Tikhon and went through
the rooms with him to show him where to set up the bed for that night.

He went about looking at every corner. Every place seemed
unsatisfactory, but worst of all was his customary couch in the study.
That couch was dreadful to him, probably because of the oppressive
thoughts he had had when lying there. It was unsatisfactory
everywhere, but the corner behind the piano in the sitting room was
better than other places: he had never slept there yet.

With the help of a footman Tikhon brought in the bedstead and
began putting it up.

"That's not right! That's not right!" cried the prince, and
himself pushed it a few inches from the corner and then closer in
again.

"Well, at last I've finished, now I'll rest," thought the prince,
and let Tikhon undress him.

Frowning with vexation at the effort necessary to divest himself
of his coat and trousers, the prince undressed, sat down heavily on
the bed, and appeared to be meditating as he looked contemptuously
at his withered yellow legs. He was not meditating, but only deferring
the moment of making the effort to lift those legs up and turn over on
the bed. "Ugh, how hard it is! Oh, that this toil might end and you
would release me!" thought he. Pressing his lips together he made that
effort for the twenty-thousandth time and lay down. But hardly had
he done so before he felt the bed rocking backwards and forwards
beneath him as if it were breathing heavily and jolting. This happened
to him almost every night. He opened his eyes as they were closing.

"No peace, damn them!" he muttered, angry he knew not with whom. "Ah
yes, there was something else important, very important, that I was
keeping till I should be in bed. The bolts? No, I told him about them.
No, it was something, something in the drawing room. Princess Mary
talked some nonsense. Dessalles, that fool, said something.
Something in my pocket--can't remember..."

"Tikhon, what did we talk about at dinner?"

"About Prince Michael..."

"Be quiet, quiet!" The prince slapped his hand on the table. "Yes, I
know, Prince Andrew's letter! Princess Mary read it. Dessalles said
something about Vitebsk. Now I'll read it."

He had the letter taken from his pocket and the table--on which
stood a glass of lemonade and a spiral wax candle--moved close to
the bed, and putting on his spectacles he began reading. Only now in
the stillness of the night, reading it by the faint light under the
green shade, did he grasp its meaning for a moment.

"The French at Vitebsk, in four days' march they may be at Smolensk;
perhaps are already there! Tikhon!" Tikhon jumped up. "No, no, I don't
want anything!" he shouted.

He put the letter under the candlestick and closed his eyes. And
there rose before him the Danube at bright noonday: reeds, the Russian
camp, and himself a young general without a wrinkle on his ruddy face,
vigorous and alert, entering Potemkin's gaily colored tent, and a
burning sense of jealousy of "the favorite" agitated him now as
strongly as it had done then. He recalled all the words spoken at that
first meeting with Potemkin. And he saw before him a plump, rather
sallow-faced, short, stout woman, the Empress Mother, with her smile
and her words at her first gracious reception of him, and then that
same face on the catafalque, and the encounter he had with Zubov
over her coffin about his right to kiss her hand.

"Oh, quicker, quicker! To get back to that time and have done with
all the present! Quicker, quicker--and that they should leave me in
peace!"





CHAPTER IV


Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Bolkonski's estate, lay forty miles east
from Smolensk and two miles from the main road to Moscow.

The same evening that the prince gave his instructions to
Alpatych, Dessalles, having asked to see Princess Mary, told her that,
as the prince was not very well and was taking no steps to secure
his safety, though from Prince Andrew's letter it was evident that
to remain at Bald Hills might be dangerous, he respectfully advised
her to send a letter by Alpatych to the Provincial Governor at
Smolensk, asking him to let her know the state of affairs and the
extent of the danger to which Bald Hills was exposed. Dessalles
wrote this letter to the Governor for Princess Mary, she signed it,
and it was given to Alpatych with instructions to hand it to the
Governor and to come back as quickly as possible if there was danger.

Having received all his orders Alpatych, wearing a white beaver hat-
a present from the prince--and carrying a stick as the prince did,
went out accompanied by his family. Three well-fed roans stood ready
harnessed to a small conveyance with a leather hood.

The larger bell was muffled and the little bells on the harness
stuffed with paper. The prince allowed no one at Bald Hills to drive
with ringing bells; but on a long journey Alpatych liked to have them.
His satellites--the senior clerk, a countinghouse clerk, a scullery
maid, a cook, two old women, a little pageboy, the coachman, and
various domestic serfs--were seeing him off.

His daughter placed chintz-covered down cushions for him to sit on
and behind his back. His old sister-in-law popped in a small bundle,
and one of the coachmen helped him into the vehicle.

"There! There! Women's fuss! Women, women!" said Alpatych, puffing
and speaking rapidly just as the prince did, and he climbed into the
trap.

After giving the clerk orders about the work to be done, Alpatych,
not trying to imitate the prince now, lifted the hat from his bald
head and crossed himself three times.

"If there is anything... come back, Yakov Alpatych! For Christ's
sake think of us!" cried his wife, referring to the rumors of war
and the enemy.

"Women, women! Women's fuss!" muttered Alpatych to himself and
started on his journey, looking round at the fields of yellow rye
and the still-green, thickly growing oats, and at other quite black
fields just being plowed a second time.

As he went along he looked with pleasure at the year's splendid crop
of corn, scrutinized the strips of ryefield which here and there
were already being reaped, made his calculations as to the sowing
and the harvest, and asked himself whether he had not forgotten any of
the prince's orders.

Having baited the horses twice on the way, he arrived at the town
toward evening on the fourth of August.

Alpatych kept meeting and overtaking baggage trains and troops on
the road. As he approached Smolensk he heard the sounds of distant
firing, but these did not impress him. What struck him most was the
sight of a splendid field of oats in which a camp had been pitched and
which was being mown down by the soldiers, evidently for fodder.
This fact impressed Alpatych, but in thinking about his own business
he soon forgot it.

All the interests of his life for more than thirty years had been
bounded by the will of the prince, and he never went beyond that
limit. Everything not connected with the execution of the prince's
orders did not interest and did not even exist for Alpatych.

On reaching Smolensk on the evening of the fourth of August he put
up in the Gachina suburb across the Dnieper, at the inn kept by
Ferapontov, where he had been in the habit of putting up for the
last thirty years. Some thirty years ago Ferapontov, by Alpatych's
advice, had bought a wood from the prince, had begun to trade, and now
had a house, an inn, and a corn dealer's shop in that province. He was
a stout, dark, red-faced peasant in the forties, with thick lips, a
broad knob of a nose, similar knobs over his black frowning brows, and
a round belly.

Wearing a waistcoat over his cotton shirt, Ferapontov was standing
before his shop which opened onto the street. On seeing Alpatych he
went up to him.

"You're welcome, Yakov Alpatych. Folks are leaving the town, but you
have come to it," said he.

"Why are they leaving the town?" asked Alpatych.

"That's what I say. Folks are foolish! Always afraid of the French."

"Women's fuss, women's fuss!" said Alpatych.

"Just what I think, Yakov Alpatych. What I say is: orders have
been given not to let them in, so that must be right. And the peasants
are asking three rubles for carting--it isn't Christian!"

Yakov Alpatych heard without heeding. He asked for a samovar and for
hay for his horses, and when he had had his tea he went to bed.

All night long troops were moving past the inn. Next morning
Alpatych donned a jacket he wore only in town and went out on
business. It was a sunny morning and by eight o'clock it was already
hot. "A good day for harvesting," thought Alpatych.

From beyond the town firing had been heard since early morning. At
eight o'clock the booming of cannon was added to the sound of
musketry. Many people were hurrying through the streets and there were
many soldiers, but cabs were still driving about, tradesmen stood at
their shops, and service was being held in the churches as usual.
Alpatych went to the shops, to government offices, to the post office,
and to the Governor's. In the offices and shops and at the post office
everyone was talking about the army and about the enemy who was
already attacking the town, everybody was asking what should be
done, and all were trying to calm one another.

In front of the Governor's house Alpatych found a large number of
people, Cossacks, and a traveling carriage of the Governor's. At the
porch he met two of the landed gentry, one of whom he knew. This
man, an ex-captain of police, was saying angrily:

"It's no joke, you know! It's all very well if you're single. 'One
man though undone is but one,' as the proverb says, but with
thirteen in your family and all the property... They've brought us
to utter ruin! What sort of governors are they to do that? They
ought to be hanged--the brigands!..."

"Oh come, that's enough!" said the other.

"What do I care? Let him hear! We're not dogs," said the
ex-captain of police, and looking round he noticed Alpatych.

"Oh, Yakov Alpatych! What have you come for?"

"To see the Governor by his excellency's order," answered
Alpatych, lifting his head and proudly thrusting his hand into the
bosom of his coat as he always did when he mentioned the prince....
"He has ordered me to inquire into the position of affairs," he added.

"Yes, go and find out!" shouted the angry gentleman. "They've
brought things to such a pass that there are no carts or
anything!... There it is again, do you hear?" said he, pointing
in the direction whence came the sounds of firing.

"They've brought us all to ruin... the brigands!" he repeated, and
descended the porch steps.

Alpatych swayed his head and went upstairs. In the waiting room were
tradesmen, women, and officials, looking silently at one another.
The door of the Governor's room opened and they all rose and moved
forward. An official ran out, said some words to a merchant, called
a stout official with a cross hanging on his neck to follow him, and
vanished again, evidently wishing to avoid the inquiring looks and
questions addressed to him. Alpatych moved forward and next time the
official came out addressed him, one hand placed in the breast of
his buttoned coat, and handed him two letters.

"To his Honor Baron Asch, from General-in-Chief Prince Bolkonski,"
he announced with such solemnity and significance that the official
turned to him and took the letters.

A few minutes later the Governor received Alpatych and hurriedly
said to him:

"Inform the prince and princess that I knew nothing: I acted on
the highest instructions--here..." and he handed a paper to
Alpatych. "Still, as the prince is unwell my advice is that they
should go to Moscow. I am just starting myself. Inform them..."

But the Governor did not finish: a dusty perspiring officer ran into
the room and began to say something in French. The Governor's face
expressed terror.

"Go," he said, nodding his head to Alpatych, and began questioning
the officer.

Eager, frightened, helpless glances were turned on Alpatych when
he came out of the Governor's room. Involuntarily listening now to the
firing, which had drawn nearer and was increasing in strength,
Alpatych hurried to his inn. The paper handed to him by the Governor
said this:


"I assure you that the town of Smolensk is not in the slightest
danger as yet and it is unlikely that it will be threatened with
any. I from the one side and Prince Bagration from the other are
marching to unite our forces before Smolensk, which junction will be
effected on the 22nd instant, and both armies with their united forces
will defend our compatriots of the province entrusted to your care
till our efforts shall have beaten back the enemies of our Fatherland,
or till the last warrior in our valiant ranks has perished. From
this you will see that you have a perfect right to reassure the
inhabitants of Smolensk, for those defended by two such brave armies
may feel assured of victory." (Instructions from Barclay de Tolly to
Baron Asch, the civil governor of Smolensk, 1812.)


People were anxiously roaming about the streets.

Carts piled high with household utensils, chairs, and cupboards kept
emerging from the gates of the yards and moving along the streets.
Loaded carts stood at the house next to Ferapontov's and women were
wailing and lamenting as they said good-by. A small watchdog ran round
barking in front of the harnessed horses.

Alpatych entered the innyard at a quicker pace than usual and went
straight to the shed where his horses and trap were. The coachman
was asleep. He woke him up, told him to harness, and went into the
passage. From the host's room came the sounds of a child crying, the
despairing sobs of a woman, and the hoarse angry shouting of
Ferapontov. The cook began running hither and thither in the passage
like a frightened hen, just as Alpatych entered.

"He's done her to death. Killed the mistress!... Beat her... dragged
her about so!..."

"What for?" asked Alpatych.

"She kept begging to go away. She's a woman! 'Take me away,' says
she, 'don't let me perish with my little children! Folks,' she says,
'are all gone, so why,' she says, 'don't we go?' And he began
beating and pulling her about so!"

At these words Alpatych nodded as if in approval, and not wishing to
hear more went to the door of the room opposite the innkeeper's, where
he had left his purchases.

"You brute, you murderer!" screamed a thin, pale woman who, with a
baby in her arms and her kerchief torn from her head, burst through
the door at that moment and down the steps into the yard.

Ferapontov came out after her, but on seeing Alpatych adjusted his
waistcoat, smoothed his hair, yawned, and followed Alpatych into the
opposite room.

"Going already?" said he.

Alpatych, without answering or looking at his host, sorted his
packages and asked how much he owed.

"We'll reckon up! Well, have you been to the Governor's?" asked
Ferapontov. "What has been decided?"

Alpatych replied that the Governor had not told him anything
definite.

"With our business, how can we get away?" said Ferapontov. "We'd
have to pay seven rubles a cartload to Dorogobuzh and I tell them
they're not Christians to ask it! Selivanov, now, did a good stroke
last Thursday--sold flour to the army at nine rubles a sack. Will
you have some tea?" he added.

While the horses were being harnessed Alpatych and Ferapontov over
their tea talked of the price of corn, the crops, and the good weather
for harvesting.

"Well, it seems to be getting quieter," remarked Ferapontov,
finishing his third cup of tea and getting up. "Ours must have got the
best of it. The orders were not to let them in. So we're in force,
it seems.... They say the other day Matthew Ivanych Platov drove
them into the river Marina and drowned some eighteen thousand in one
day."

Alpatych collected his parcels, handed them to the coachman who
had come in, and settled up with the innkeeper. The noise of wheels,
hoofs, and bells was heard from the gateway as a little trap passed
out.

It was by now late in the afternoon. Half the street was in
shadow, the other half brightly lit by the sun. Alpatych looked out of
the window and went to the door. Suddenly the strange sound of a
far-off whistling and thud was heard, followed by a boom of cannon
blending into a dull roar that set the windows rattling.

He went out into the street: two men were running past toward the
bridge. From different sides came whistling sounds and the thud of
cannon balls and bursting shells falling on the town. But these sounds
were hardly heard in comparison with the noise of the firing outside
the town and attracted little attention from the inhabitants. The town
was being bombarded by a hundred and thirty guns which Napoleon had
ordered up after four o'clock. The people did not at once realize
the meaning of this bombardment.

At first the noise of the falling bombs and shells only aroused
curiosity. Ferapontov's wife, who till then had not ceased wailing
under the shed, became quiet and with the baby in her arms went to the
gate, listening to the sounds and looking in silence at the people.

The cook and a shop assistant came to the gate. With lively
curiosity everyone tried to get a glimpse of the projectiles as they
flew over their heads. Several people came round the corner talking
eagerly.

"What force!" remarked one. "Knocked the roof and ceiling all to
splinters!"

"Routed up the earth like a pig," said another.

"That's grand, it bucks one up!" laughed the first. "Lucky you
jumped aside, or it would have wiped you out!"

Others joined those men and stopped and told how cannon balls had
fallen on a house close to them. Meanwhile still more projectiles, now
with the swift sinister whistle of a cannon ball, now with the
agreeable intermittent whistle of a shell, flew over people's heads
incessantly, but not one fell close by, they all flew over. Alpatych
was getting into his trap. The innkeeper stood at the gate.

"What are you staring at?" he shouted to the cook, who in her red
skirt, with sleeves rolled up, swinging her bare elbows, had stepped
to the corner to listen to what was being said.

"What marvels!" she exclaimed, but hearing her master's voice she
turned back, pulling down her tucked-up skirt.

Once more something whistled, but this time quite close, swooping
downwards like a little bird; a flame flashed in the middle of the
street, something exploded, and the street was shrouded in smoke.

"Scoundrel, what are you doing?" shouted the innkeeper, rushing to
the cook.

At that moment the pitiful wailing of women was heard from different
sides, the frightened baby began to cry, and people crowded silently
with pale faces round the cook. The loudest sound in that crowd was
her wailing.

"Oh-h-h! Dear souls, dear kind souls! Don't let me die! My good
souls!..."

Five minutes later no one remained in the street. The cook, with her
thigh broken by a shell splinter, had been carried into the kitchen.
Alpatych, his coachman, Ferapontov's wife and children and the house
porter were all sitting in the cellar, listening. The roar of guns,
the whistling of projectiles, and the piteous moaning of the cook,
which rose above the other sounds, did not cease for a moment. The
mistress rocked and hushed her baby and when anyone came into the
cellar asked in a pathetic whisper what had become of her husband
who had remained in the street. A shopman who entered told her that
her husband had gone with others to the cathedral, whence they were
fetching the wonder-working icon of Smolensk.

Toward dusk the cannonade began to subside. Alpatych left the cellar
and stopped in the doorway. The evening sky that had been so clear was
clouded with smoke, through which, high up, the sickle of the new moon
shone strangely. Now that the terrible din of the guns had ceased a
hush seemed to reign over the town, broken only by the rustle of
footsteps, the moaning, the distant cries, and the crackle of fires
which seemed widespread everywhere. The cook's moans had now subsided.
On two sides black curling clouds of smoke rose and spread from the
fires. Through the streets soldiers in various uniforms walked or
ran confusedly in different directions like ants from a ruined
ant-hill. Several of them ran into Ferapontov's yard before Alpatych's
eyes. Alpatych went out to the gate. A retreating regiment,
thronging and hurrying, blocked the street.

Noticing him, an officer said: "The town is being abandoned. Get
away, get away!" and then, turning to the soldiers, shouted:

"I'll teach you to run into the yards!"

Alpatych went back to the house, called the coachman, and told him
to set off. Ferapontov's whole household came out too, following
Alpatych and the coachman. The women, who had been silent till then,
suddenly began to wail as they looked at the fires--the smoke and even
the flames of which could be seen in the failing twilight--and as if
in reply the same kind of lamentation was heard from other parts of
the street. Inside the shed Alpatych and the coachman arranged the
tangled reins and traces of their horses with trembling hands.

As Alpatych was driving out of the gate he saw some ten soldiers
in Ferapontov's open shop, talking loudly and filling their bags and
knapsacks with flour and sunflower seeds. Just then Ferapontov
returned and entered his shop. On seeing the soldiers he was about
to shout at them, but suddenly stopped and, clutching at his hair,
burst into sobs and laughter:

"Loot everything, lads! Don't let those devils get it!" he cried,
taking some bags of flour himself and throwing them into the street.

Some of the soldiers were frightened and ran away, others went on
filling their bags. On seeing Alpatych, Ferapontov turned to him:

"Russia is done for!" he cried. "Alpatych, I'll set the place on
fire myself. We're done for!..." and Ferapontov ran into the yard.

Soldiers were passing in a constant stream along the street blocking
it completely, so that Alpatych could not pass out and had to wait.
Ferapontov's wife and children were also sitting in a cart waiting
till it was possible to drive out.

Night had come. There were stars in the sky and the new moon shone
out amid the smoke that screened it. On the sloping descent to the
Dnieper Alpatych's cart and that of the innkeeper's wife, which were
slowly moving amid the rows of soldiers and of other vehicles, had
to stop. In a side street near the crossroads where the vehicles had
stopped, a house and some shops were on fire. This fire was already
burning itself out. The flames now died down and were lost in the
black smoke, now suddenly flared up again brightly, lighting up with
strange distinctness the faces of the people crowding at the
crossroads. Black figures flitted about before the fire, and through
the incessant crackling of the flames talking and shouting could be
heard. Seeing that his trap would not be able to move on for some
time, Alpatych got down and turned into the side street to look at the
fire. Soldiers were continually rushing backwards and forwards near
it, and he saw two of them and a man in a frieze coat dragging burning
beams into another yard across the street, while others carried
bundles of hay.

Alpatych went up to a large crowd standing before a high barn
which was blazing briskly. The walls were all on fire and the back
wall had fallen in, the wooden roof was collapsing, and the rafters
were alight. The crowd was evidently watching for the roof to fall in,
and Alpatych watched for it too.

"Alpatych!" a familiar voice suddenly hailed the old man.

"Mercy on us! Your excellency!" answered Alpatych, immediately
recognizing the voice of his young prince.

Prince Andrew in his riding cloak, mounted on a black horse, was
looking at Alpatych from the back of the crowd.

"Why are you here?" he asked.

"Your... your excellency," stammered Alpatych and broke into sobs.
"Are we really lost? Master!..."

"Why are you here?" Prince Andrew repeated.

At that moment the flames flared up and showed his young master's
pale worn face. Alpatych told how he had been sent there and how
difficult it was to get away.

"Are we really quite lost, your excellency?" he asked again.

Prince Andrew without replying took out a notebook and raising his
knee began writing in pencil on a page he tore out. He wrote to his
sister:


"Smolensk is being abandoned. Bald Hills will be occupied by the
enemy within a week. Set off immediately for Moscow. Let me know at
once when you will start. Send by special messenger to Usvyazh."


Having written this and given the paper to Alpatych, he told him how
to arrange for departure of the prince, the princess, his son, and the
boy's tutor, and how and where to let him know immediately. Before
he had had time to finish giving these instructions, a chief of
staff followed by a suite galloped up to him.

"You are a colonel?" shouted the chief of staff with a German
accent, in a voice familiar to Prince Andrew. "Houses are set on
fire in your presence and you stand by! What does this mean? You
will answer for it!" shouted Berg, who was now assistant to the
chief of staff of the commander of the left flank of the infantry of
the first army, a place, as Berg said, "very agreeable and well en
evidence."

Prince Andrew looked at him and without replying went on speaking to
Alpatych.

"So tell them that I shall await a reply till the tenth, and if by
the tenth I don't receive news that they have all got away I shall
have to throw up everything and come myself to Bald Hills."

"Prince," said Berg, recognizing Prince Andrew, "I only spoke
because I have to obey orders, because I always do obey exactly....
You must please excuse me," he went on apologetically.

Something cracked in the flames. The fire died down for a moment and
wreaths of black smoke rolled from under the roof. There was another
terrible crash and something huge collapsed.

"Ou-rou-rou!" yelled the crowd, echoing the crash of the
collapsing roof of the barn, the burning grain in which diffused a
cakelike aroma all around. The flames flared up again, lighting the
animated, delighted, exhausted faces of the spectators.

The man in the frieze coat raised his arms and shouted:

"It's fine, lads! Now it's raging... It's fine!"

"That's the owner himself," cried several voices.

"Well then," continued Prince Andrew to Alpatych, "report to them as
I have told you"; and not replying a word to Berg who was now mute
beside him, he touched his horse and rode down the side street.





CHAPTER V


From Smolensk the troops continued to retreat, followed by the
enemy. On the tenth of August the regiment Prince Andrew commanded was
marching along the highroad past the avenue leading to Bald Hills.
Heat and drought had continued for more than three weeks. Each day
fleecy clouds floated across the sky and occasionally veiled the
sun, but toward evening the sky cleared again and the sun set in
reddish-brown mist. Heavy night dews alone refreshed the earth. The
unreaped corn was scorched and shed its grain. The marshes dried up.
The cattle lowed from hunger, finding no food on the sun-parched
meadows. Only at night and in the forests while the dew lasted was
there any freshness. But on the road, the highroad along which the
troops marched, there was no such freshness even at night or when
the road passed through the forest; the dew was imperceptible on the
sandy dust churned up more than six inches deep. As soon as day dawned
the march began. The artillery and baggage wagons moved noiselessly
through the deep dust that rose to the very hubs of the wheels, and
the infantry sank ankle-deep in that soft, choking, hot dust that
never cooled even at night. Some of this dust was kneaded by the
feet and wheels, while the rest rose and hung like a cloud over the
troops, settling in eyes, ears, hair, and nostrils, and worst of all
in the lungs of the men and beasts as they moved along that road.
The higher the sun rose the higher rose that cloud of dust, and
through the screen of its hot fine particles one could look with naked
eye at the sun, which showed like a huge crimson ball in the unclouded
sky. There was no wind, and the men choked in that motionless
atmosphere. They marched with handkerchiefs tied over their noses
and mouths. When they passed through a village they all rushed to
the wells and fought for the water and drank it down to the mud.

Prince Andrew was in command of a regiment, and the management of
that regiment, the welfare of the men and the necessity of receiving
and giving orders, engrossed him. The burning of Smolensk and its
abandonment made an epoch in his life. A novel feeling of anger
against the foe made him forget his own sorrow. He was entirely
devoted to the affairs of his regiment and was considerate and kind to
his men and officers. In the regiment they called him "our prince,"
were proud of him and loved him. But he was kind and gentle only to
those of his regiment, to Timokhin and the like--people quite new to
him, belonging to a different world and who could not know and
understand his past. As soon as he came across a former acquaintance
or anyone from the staff, he bristled up immediately and grew
spiteful, ironical, and contemptuous. Everything that reminded him
of his past was repugnant to him, and so in his relations with that
former circle he confined himself to trying to do his duty and not
to be unfair.

In truth everything presented itself in a dark and gloomy light to
Prince Andrew, especially after the abandonment of Smolensk on the
sixth of August (he considered that it could and should have been
defended) and after his sick father had had to flee to Moscow,
abandoning to pillage his dearly beloved Bald Hills which he had built
and peopled. But despite this, thanks to his regiment, Prince Andrew
had something to think about entirely apart from general questions.
Two days previously he had received news that his father, son, and
sister had left for Moscow; and though there was nothing for him to do
at Bald Hills, Prince Andrew with a characteristic desire to foment
his own grief decided that he must ride there.

He ordered his horse to be saddled and, leaving his regiment on
the march, rode to his father's estate where he had been born and
spent his childhood. Riding past the pond where there used always to
be dozens of women chattering as they rinsed their linen or beat it
with wooden beetles, Prince Andrew noticed that there was not a soul
about and that the little washing wharf, torn from its place and
half submerged, was floating on its side in the middle of the pond. He
rode to the keeper's lodge. No one at the stone entrance gates of
the drive and the door stood open. Grass had already begun to grow
on the garden paths, and horses and calves were straying in the
English park. Prince Andrew rode up to the hothouse; some of the glass
panes were broken, and of the trees in tubs some were overturned and
others dried up. He called for Taras the gardener, but no one replied.
Having gone round the corner of the hothouse to the ornamental garden,
he saw that the carved garden fence was broken and branches of the
plum trees had been torn off with the fruit. An old peasant whom
Prince Andrew in his childhood had often seen at the gate was
sitting on a green garden seat, plaiting a bast shoe.

He was deaf and did not hear Prince Andrew ride up. He was sitting
on the seat the old prince used to like to sit on, and beside him
strips of bast were hanging on the broken and withered branch of a
magnolia.

Prince Andrew rode up to the house. Several limes in the old
garden had been cut down and a piebald mare and her foal were
wandering in front of the house among the rosebushes. The shutters
were all closed, except at one window which was open. A little serf
boy, seeing Prince Andrew, ran into the house. Alpatych, having sent
his family away, was alone at Bald Hills and was sitting indoors
reading the Lives of the Saints. On hearing that Prince Andrew had
come, he went out with his spectacles on his nose, buttoning his coat,
and, hastily stepping up, without a word began weeping and kissing
Prince Andrew's knee.

Then, vexed at his own weakness, he turned away and began to
report on the position of affairs. Everything precious and valuable
had been removed to Bogucharovo. Seventy quarters of grain had also
been carted away. The hay and the spring corn, of which Alpatych
said there had been a remarkable crop that year, had been commandeered
by the troops and mown down while still green. The peasants were
ruined; some of them too had gone to Bogucharovo, only a few remained.

Without waiting to hear him out, Prince Andrew asked:

"When did my father and sister leave?" meaning when did they leave
for Moscow.

Alpatych, understanding the question to refer to their departure for
Bogucharovo, replied that they had left on the seventh and again
went into details concerning the estate management, asking for
instructions.

"Am I to let the troops have the oats, and to take a receipt for
them? We have still six hundred quarters left," he inquired.

"What am I to say to him?" thought Prince Andrew, looking down on
the old man's bald head shining in the sun and seeing by the
expression on his face that the old man himself understood how
untimely such questions were and only asked them to allay his grief.

"Yes, let them have it," replied Prince Andrew.

"If you noticed some disorder in the garden," said Alpatych, "it was
impossible to prevent it. Three regiments have been here and spent the
night, dragoons mostly. I took down the name and rank of their
commanding officer, to hand in a complaint about it."

"Well, and what are you going to do? Will you stay here if the enemy
occupies the place?" asked Prince Andrew.

Alpatych turned his face to Prince Andrew, looked at him, and
suddenly with a solemn gesture raised his arm.

"He is my refuge! His will be done!" he exclaimed.

A group of bareheaded peasants was approaching across the meadow
toward the prince.

"Well, good-by!" said Prince Andrew, bending over to Alpatych.
"You must go away too, take away what you can and tell the serfs to go
to the Ryazan estate or to the one near Moscow."

Alpatych clung to Prince Andrew's leg and burst into sobs. Gently
disengaging himself, the prince spurred his horse and rode down the
avenue at a gallop.

The old man was still sitting in the ornamental garden, like a fly
impassive on the face of a loved one who is dead, tapping the last
on which he was making the bast shoe, and two little girls, running
out from the hot house carrying in their skirts plums they had plucked
from the trees there, came upon Prince Andrew. On seeing the young
master, the elder one frightened look clutched her younger companion
by the hand and hid with her behind a birch tree, not stopping to pick
up some green plums they had dropped.

Prince Andrew turned away with startled haste, unwilling to let them
see that they had been observed. He was sorry for the pretty
frightened little girl, was afraid of looking at her, and yet felt
an irresistible desire to do so. A new sensation of comfort and relief
came over him when, seeing these girls, he realized the existence of
other human interests entirely aloof from his own and just as
legitimate as those that occupied him. Evidently these girls
passionately desired one thing--to carry away and eat those green
plums without being caught--and Prince Andrew shared their wish for
the success of their enterprise. He could not resist looking at them
once more. Believing their danger past, they sprang from their
ambush and, chirruping something in their shrill little voices and
holding up their skirts, their bare little sunburned feet scampered
merrily and quickly across the meadow grass.

Prince Andrew was somewhat refreshed by having ridden off the
dusty highroad along which the troops were moving. But not far from
Bald Hills he again came out on the road and overtook his regiment
at its halting place by the dam of a small pond. It was past one
o'clock. The sun, a red ball through the dust, burned and scorched his
back intolerably through his black coat. The dust always hung
motionless above the buzz of talk that came from the resting troops.
There was no wind. As he crossed the dam Prince Andrew smelled the
ooze and freshness of the pond. He longed to get into that water,
however dirty it might be, and he glanced round at the pool from
whence came sounds of shrieks and laughter. The small, muddy, green
pond had risen visibly more than a foot, flooding the dam, because
it was full of the naked white bodies of soldiers with brick-red
hands, necks, and faces, who were splashing about in it. All this
naked white human flesh, laughing and shrieking, floundered about in
that dirty pool like carp stuffed into a watering can, and the
suggestion of merriment in that floundering mass rendered it specially
pathetic.

One fair-haired young soldier of the third company, whom Prince
Andrew knew and who had a strap round the calf of one leg, crossed
himself, stepped back to get a good run, and plunged into the water;
another, a dark noncommissioned officer who was always shaggy, stood
up to his waist in the water joyfully wriggling his muscular figure
and snorted with satisfaction as he poured the water over his head
with hands blackened to the wrists. There were sounds of men
slapping one another, yelling, and puffing.

Everywhere on the bank, on the dam, and in the pond, there was
healthy, white, muscular flesh. The officer, Timokhin, with his red
little nose, standing on the dam wiping himself with a towel, felt
confused at seeing the prince, but made up his mind to address him
nevertheless.

"It's very nice, your excellency! Wouldn't you like to?" said he.

"It's dirty," replied Prince Andrew, making a grimace.

"We'll clear it out for you in a minute," said Timokhin, and,
still undressed, ran off to clear the men out of the pond.

"The prince wants to bathe."

"What prince? Ours?" said many voices, and the men were in such
haste to clear out that the prince could hardly stop them. He
decided that he would rather wash himself with water in the barn.

"Flesh, bodies, cannon fodder!" he thought, and he looked at his own
naked body and shuddered, not from cold but from a sense of disgust
and horror he did not himself understand, aroused by the sight of that
immense number of bodies splashing about in the dirty pond.


On the seventh of August Prince Bagration wrote as follows from
his quarters at Mikhaylovna on the Smolensk road:


Dear Count Alexis Andreevich--(He was writing to Arakcheev but
knew that his letter would be read by the Emperor, and therefore
weighed every word in it to the best of his ability.)

I expect the Minister [Barclay de Tolly] has already reported the
abandonment of Smolensk to the enemy. It is pitiable and sad, and
the whole army is in despair that this most important place has been
wantonly abandoned. I, for my part, begged him personally most
urgently and finally wrote him, but nothing would induce him to
consent. I swear to you on my honor that Napoleon was in such a fix as
never before and might have lost half his army but could not have
taken Smolensk. Our troops fought, and are fighting, as never
before. With fifteen thousand men I held the enemy at bay for
thirty-five hours and beat him; but he would not hold out even for
fourteen hours. It is disgraceful, a stain on our army, and as for
him, he ought, it seems to me, not to live. If he reports that our
losses were great, it is not true; perhaps about four thousand, not
more, and not even that; but even were they ten thousand, that's
war! But the enemy has lost masses...

What would it have cost him to hold out for another two days? They
would have had to retire of their own accord, for they had no water
for men or horses. He gave me his word he would not retreat, but
suddenly sent instructions that he was retiring that night. We
cannot fight in this way, or we may soon bring the enemy to Moscow...

There is a rumor that you are thinking of peace. God forbid that you
should make peace after all our sacrifices and such insane retreats!
You would set all Russia against you and every one of us would feel
ashamed to wear the uniform. If it has come to this--we must fight
as long as Russia can and as long as there are men able to stand...

One man ought to be in command, and not two. Your Minister may
perhaps be good as a Minister, but as a general he is not merely bad
but execrable, yet to him is entrusted the fate of our whole
country.... I am really frantic with vexation; forgive my writing
boldly. It is clear that the man who advocates the conclusion of a
peace, and that the Minister should command the army, does not love
our sovereign and desires the ruin of us all. So I write you
frankly: call out the militia. For the Minister is leading these
visitors after him to Moscow in a most masterly way. The whole army
feels great suspicion of the Imperial aide-de-camp Wolzogen. He is
said to be more Napoleon's man than ours, and he is always advising
the Minister. I am not merely civil to him but obey him like a
corporal, though I am his senior. This is painful, but, loving my
benefactor and sovereign, I submit. Only I am sorry for the Emperor
that he entrusts our fine army to such as he. Consider that on our
retreat we have lost by fatigue and left in the hospital more than
fifteen thousand men, and had we attacked this would not have
happened. Tell me, for God's sake, what will Russia, our mother
Russia, say to our being so frightened, and why are we abandoning
our good and gallant Fatherland to such rabble and implanting feelings
of hatred and shame in all our subjects? What are we scared at and
of whom are we afraid? I am not to blame that the Minister is
vacillating, a coward, dense, dilatory, and has all bad qualities. The
whole army bewails it and calls down curses upon him...





CHAPTER VI


Among the innumerable categories applicable to the phenomena of
human life one may discriminate between those in which substance
prevails and those in which form prevails. To the latter--as
distinguished from village, country, provincial, or even Moscow
life--we may allot Petersburg life, and especially the life of its
salons. That life of the salons is unchanging. Since the year 1805
we had made peace and had again quarreled with Bonaparte and had
made constitutions and unmade them again, but the salons of Anna
Pavlovna Helene remained just as they had been--the one seven and
the other five years before. At Anna Pavlovna's they talked with
perplexity of Bonaparte's successes just as before and saw in them and
in the subservience shown to him by the European sovereigns a
malicious conspiracy, the sole object of which was to cause
unpleasantness and anxiety to the court circle of which Anna
Pavlovna was the representative. And in Helene's salon, which
Rumyantsev himself honored with his visits, regarding Helene as a
remarkably intelligent woman, they talked with the same ecstasy in
1812 as in 1808 of the "great nation" and the "great man," and
regretted our rupture with France, a rupture which, according to them,
ought to be promptly terminated by peace.

Of late, since the Emperor's return from the army, there had been
some excitement in these conflicting salon circles and some
demonstrations of hostility to one another, but each camp retained its
own tendency. In Anna Pavlovna's circle only those Frenchmen were
admitted who were deep-rooted legitimists, and patriotic views were
expressed to the effect that one ought not to go to the French theater
and that to maintain the French troupe was costing the government as
much as a whole army corps. The progress of the war was eagerly
followed, and only the reports most flattering to our army were
circulated. In the French circle of Helene and Rumyantsev the
reports of the cruelty of the enemy and of the war were contradicted
and all Napoleon's attempts at conciliation were discussed. In that
circle they discountenanced those who advised hurried preparations for
a removal to Kazan of the court and the girls' educational
establishments under the patronage of the Dowager Empress. In Helene's
circle the war in general was regarded as a series of formal
demonstrations which would very soon end in peace, and the view
prevailed expressed by Bilibin--who now in Petersburg was quite at
home in Helene's house, which every clever man was obliged to visit-
that not by gunpowder but by those who invented it would matters be
settled. In that circle the Moscow enthusiasm--news of which had
reached Petersburg simultaneously with the Emperor's return--was
ridiculed sarcastically and very cleverly, though with much caution.

Anna Pavlovna's circle on the contrary was enraptured by this
enthusiasm and spoke of it as Plutarch speaks of the deeds of the
ancients. Prince Vasili, who still occupied his former important
posts, formed a connecting link between these two circles. He
visited his "good friend Anna Pavlovna" as well as his daughter's
"diplomatic salon," and often in his constant comings and goings
between the two camps became confused and said at Helene's what he
should have said at Anna Pavlovna's and vice versa.

Soon after the Emperor's return Prince Vasili in a conversation
about the war at Anna Pavlovna's severely condemned Barclay de
Tolly, but was undecided as to who ought to be appointed commander
in chief. One of the visitors, usually spoken of as "a man of great
merit," having described how he had that day seen Kutuzov, the newly
chosen chief of the Petersburg militia, presiding over the
enrollment of recruits at the Treasury, cautiously ventured to suggest
that Kutuzov would be the man to satisfy all requirements.

Anna Pavlovna remarked with a melancholy smile that Kutuzov had done
nothing but cause the Emperor annoyance.

"I have talked and talked at the Assembly of the Nobility," Prince
Vasili interrupted, "but they did not listen to me. I told them his
election as chief of the militia would not please the Emperor. They
did not listen to me.

"It's all this mania for opposition," he went on. "And who for? It
is all because we want to ape the foolish enthusiasm of those
Muscovites," Prince Vasili continued, forgetting for a moment that
though at Helene's one had to ridicule the Moscow enthusiasm, at
Anna Pavlovna's one had to be ecstatic about it. But he retrieved
his mistake at once. "Now, is it suitable that Count Kutuzov, the
oldest general in Russia, should preside at that tribunal? He will get
nothing for his pains! How could they make a man commander in chief
who cannot mount a horse, who drops asleep at a council, and has the
very worst morals! A good reputation he made for himself at Bucharest!
I don't speak of his capacity as a general, but at a time like this
how they appoint a decrepit, blind old man, positively
blind? A fine idea to have a blind general! He can't see anything.
To play blindman's bluff? He can't see at all!"

No one replied to his remarks.

This was quite correct on the twenty-fourth of July. But on the
twenty-ninth of July Kutuzov received the title of Prince. This
might indicate a wish to get rid of him, and therefore Prince Vasili's
opinion continued to be correct though he was not now in any hurry
to express it. But on the eighth of August a committee, consisting
of Field Marshal Saltykov, Arakcheev, Vyazmitinov, Lopukhin, and
Kochubey met to consider the progress of the war. This committee
came to the conclusion that our failures were due to a want of unity
in the command and though the members of the committee were aware of
the Emperor's dislike of Kutuzov, after a short deliberation they
agreed to advise his appointment as commander in chief. That same
day Kutuzov was appointed commander in chief with full powers over the
armies and over the whole region occupied by them.

On the ninth of August Prince Vasili at Anna Pavlovna's again met
the "man of great merit." The latter was very attentive to Anna
Pavlovna because he wanted to be appointed director of one of the
educational establishments for young ladies. Prince Vasili entered the
room with the air of a happy conqueror who has attained the object
of his desires.

"Well, have you heard the great news? Prince Kutuzov is field
marshal! All dissensions are at an end! I am so glad, so delighted! At
last we have a man!" said he, glancing sternly and significantly round
at everyone in the drawing room.

The "man of great merit," despite his desire to obtain the post of
director, could not refrain from reminding Prince Vasili of his former
opinion. Though this was impolite to Prince Vasili in Anna
Pavlovna's drawing room, and also to Anna Pavlovna herself who had
received the news with delight, he could not resist the temptation.

"But, Prince, they say he is blind!" said he, reminding Prince
Vasili of his own words.

"Eh? Nonsense! He sees well enough," said Prince Vasili rapidly,
in a deep voice and with a slight cough--the voice and cough with
which he was wont to dispose of all difficulties.

"He sees well enough," he added. "And what I am so pleased about,"
he went on, "is that our sovereign has given him full powers over
all the armies and the whole region--powers no commander in chief ever
had before. He is a second autocrat," he concluded with a victorious
smile.

"God grant it! God grant it!" said Anna Pavlovna.

The "man of great merit," who was still a novice in court circles,
wishing to flatter Anna Pavlovna by defending her former position on
this question, observed:

"It is said that the Emperor was reluctant to give Kutuzov those
powers. They say he blushed like a girl to whom Joconde is read,
when he said to Kutuzov: 'Your Emperor and the Fatherland award you
this honor.'"

"Perhaps the heart took no part in that speech," said Anna Pavlovna.

"Oh, no, no!" warmly rejoined Prince Vasili, who would not now yield
Kutuzov to anyone; in his opinion Kutuzov was not only admirable
himself, but was adored by everybody. "No, that's impossible," said
he, "for our sovereign appreciated him so highly before."

"God grant only that Prince Kutuzov assumes real power and does
not allow anyone to put a spoke in his wheel," observed Anna Pavlovna.

Understanding at once to whom she alluded, Prince Vasili said in a
whisper:

"I know for a fact that Kutuzov made it an absolute condition that
the Tsarevich should not be with the army. Do you know what he said to
the Emperor?"

And Prince Vasili repeated the words supposed to have been spoken by
Kutuzov to the Emperor. "I can neither punish him if he does wrong nor
reward him if he does right."

"Oh, a very wise man is Prince Kutuzov! I have known him a long
time!"

"They even say," remarked the "man of great merit" who did not yet
possess courtly tact, "that his excellency made it an express
condition that the sovereign himself should not be with the army."

As soon as he said this both Prince Vasili and Anna Pavlovna
turned away from him and glanced sadly at one another with a sigh at
his naivete.





CHAPTER VII


While this was taking place in Petersburg the French had already
passed Smolensk and were drawing nearer and nearer to Moscow.
Napoleon's historian Thiers, like other of his historians, trying to
justify his hero says that he was drawn to the walls of Moscow against
his will. He is as right as other historians who look for the
explanation of historic events in the will of one man; he is as
right as the Russian historians who maintain that Napoleon was drawn
to Moscow by the skill of the Russian commanders. Here besides the law
of retrospection, which regards all the past as a preparation for
events that subsequently occur, the law of reciprocity comes in,
confusing the whole matter. A good chessplayer having lost a game is
sincerely convinced that his loss resulted from a mistake he made
and looks for that mistake in the opening, but forgets that at each
stage of the game there were similar mistakes and that none of his
moves were perfect. He only notices the mistake to which he pays
attention, because his opponent took advantage of it. How much more
complex than this is the game of war, which occurs under certain
limits of time, and where it is not one will that manipulates lifeless
objects, but everything results from innumerable conflicts of
various wills!

After Smolensk Napoleon sought a battle beyond Dorogobuzh at Vyazma,
and then at Tsarevo-Zaymishche, but it happened that owing to a
conjunction of innumerable circumstances the Russians could not give
battle till they reached Borodino, seventy miles from Moscow. From
Vyazma Napoleon ordered a direct advance on Moscow.

Moscou, la capitale asiatique de ce grand empire, la ville sacree
des peuples d'Alexandre, Moscou avec ses innombrables eglises en forme
de pagodes chinoises,* this Moscow gave Napoleon's imagination no
rest. On the march from Vyazma to Tsarevo-Zaymishche he rode his light
bay bobtailed ambler accompanied by his Guards, his bodyguard, his
pages, and aides-de-camp. Berthier, his chief of staff, dropped behind
to question a Russian prisoner captured by the cavalry. Followed by
Lelorgne d'Ideville, an interpreter, he overtook Napoleon at a
gallop and reined in his horse with an amused expression.


*"Moscow, the Asiatic capital of this great empire, the sacred
city of Alexander's people, Moscow with its innumerable churches
shaped like Chinese pagodas."


"Well?" asked Napoleon.

"One of Platov's Cossacks says that Platov's corps is joining up
with the main army and that Kutuzov has been appointed commander in
chief. He is a very shrewd and garrulous fellow."

Napoleon smiled and told them to give the Cossack a horse and
bring the man to him. He wished to talk to him himself. Several
adjutants galloped off, and an hour later, Lavrushka, the serf Denisov
had handed over to Rostov, rode up to Napoleon in an orderly's
jacket and on a French cavalry saddle, with a merry, and tipsy face.
Napoleon told him to ride by his side and began questioning him.

"You are a Cossack?"

"Yes, a Cossack, your Honor."

"The Cossack, not knowing in what company he was, for Napoleon's
plain appearance had nothing about it that would reveal to an Oriental
mind the presence of a monarch, talked with extreme familiarity of the
incidents of the war," says Thiers, narrating this episode. In reality
Lavrushka, having got drunk the day before and left his master
dinnerless, had been whipped and sent to the village in quest of
chickens, where he engaged in looting till the French took him
prisoner. Lavrushka was one of those coarse, bare-faced lackeys who
have seen all sorts of things, consider it necessary to do
everything in a mean and cunning way, are ready to render any sort
of service to their master, and are keen at guessing their master's
baser impulses, especially those prompted by vanity and pettiness.

Finding himself in the company of Napoleon, whose identity he had
easily and surely recognized, Lavrushka was not in the least abashed
but merely did his utmost to gain his new master's favor.

He knew very well that this was Napoleon, but Napoleon's presence
could no more intimidate him than Rostov's, or a sergeant major's with
the rods, would have done, for he had nothing that either the sergeant
major or Napoleon could deprive him of.

So he rattled on, telling all the gossip he had heard among the
orderlies. Much of it true. But when Napoleon asked him whether the
Russians thought they would beat Bonaparte or not, Lavrushka screwed
up his eyes and considered.

In this question he saw subtle cunning, as men of his type see
cunning in everything, so he frowned and did not answer immediately.

"It's like this," he said thoughtfully, "if there's a battle soon,
yours will win. That's right. But if three days pass, then after that,
well, then that same battle will not soon be over."

Lelorgne d'Ideville smilingly interpreted this speech to Napoleon
thus: "If a battle takes place within the next three days the French
will win, but if later, God knows what will happen." Napoleon did
not smile, though he was evidently in high good humor, and he
ordered these words to be repeated.

Lavrushka noticed this and to entertain him further, pretending
not to know who Napoleon was, added:

"We know that you have Bonaparte and that he has beaten everybody in
the world, but we are a different matter..."--without knowing why or
how this bit of boastful patriotism slipped out at the end.

The interpreter translated these words without the last phrase,
and Bonaparte smiled. "The young Cossack made his mighty
interlocutor smile," says Thiers. After riding a few paces in silence,
Napoleon turned to Berthier and said he wished to see how the news
that he was talking to the Emperor himself, to that very Emperor who
had written his immortally victorious name on the Pyramids, would
affect this enfant du Don.*


*"Child of the Don."


The fact was accordingly conveyed to Lavrushka.

Lavrushka, understanding that this was done to perplex him and
that Napoleon expected him to be frightened, to gratify his new
masters promptly pretended to be astonished and awe-struck, opened his
eyes wide, and assumed the expression he usually put on when taken
to be whipped. "As soon as Napoleon's interpreter had spoken," says
Thiers, "the Cossack, seized by amazement, did not utter another word,
but rode on, his eyes fixed on the conqueror whose fame had reached
him across the steppes of the East. All his loquacity was suddenly
arrested and replaced by a naive and silent feeling of admiration.
Napoleon, after making the Cossack a present, had him set free like
a bird restored to its native fields."

Napoleon rode on, dreaming of the Moscow that so appealed to his
imagination, and "the bird restored to its native fields" galloped
to our outposts, inventing on the way all that had not taken place but
that he meant to relate to his comrades. What had really taken place
he did not wish to relate because it seemed to him not worth
telling. He found the Cossacks, inquired for the regiment operating
with Platov's detachment and by evening found his master, Nicholas
Rostov, quartered at Yankovo. Rostov was just mounting to go for a
ride round the neighboring villages with Ilyin; he let Lavrushka
have another horse and took him along with him.





CHAPTER VIII


Princess Mary was not in Moscow and out of danger as Prince Andrew
supposed.

After the return of Alpatych from Smolensk the old prince suddenly
seemed to awake as from a dream. He ordered the militiamen to be
called up from the villages and armed, and wrote a letter to the
commander in chief informing him that he had resolved to remain at
Bald Hills to the last extremity and to defend it, leaving to the
commander in chief's discretion to take measures or not for the
defense of Bald Hills, where one of Russia's oldest generals would
be captured or killed, and he announced to his household that he would
remain at Bald Hills.

But while himself remaining, he gave instructions for the
departure of the princess and Dessalles with the little prince to
Bogucharovo and thence to Moscow. Princess Mary, alarmed by her
father's feverish and sleepless activity after his previous apathy,
could not bring herself to leave him alone and for the first time in
her life ventured to disobey him. She refused to go away and her
father's fury broke over her in a terrible storm. He repeated every
injustice he had ever inflicted on her. Trying to convict her, he told
her she had worn him out, had caused his quarrel with his son, had
harbored nasty suspicions of him, making it the object of her life
to poison his existence, and he drove her from his study telling her
that if she did not go away it was all the same to him. He declared
that he did not wish to remember her existence and warned her not to
dare to let him see her. The fact that he did not, as she had
feared, order her to be carried away by force but only told her not to
let him see her cheered Princess Mary. She knew it was a proof that in
the depth of his soul he was glad she was remaining at home and had
not gone away.

The morning after little Nicholas had left, the old prince donned
his full uniform and prepared to visit the commander in chief. His
caleche was already at the door. Princess Mary saw him walk out of the
house in his uniform wearing all his orders and go down the garden
to review his armed peasants and domestic serfs. She sat by the window
listening to his voice which reached her from the garden. Suddenly
several men came running up the avenue with frightened faces.

Princess Mary ran out to the porch, down the flower-bordered path,
and into the avenue. A large crowd of militiamen and domestics were
moving toward her, and in their midst several men were supporting by
the armpits and dragging along a little old man in a uniform and
decorations. She ran up to him and, in the play of the sunlight that
fell in small round spots through the shade of the lime-tree avenue,
could not be sure what change there was in his face. All she could see
was that his former stern and determined expression had altered to one
of timidity and submission. On seeing his daughter he moved his
helpless lips and made a hoarse sound. It was impossible to make out
what he wanted. He was lifted up, carried to his study, and laid on
the very couch he had so feared of late.

The doctor, who was fetched that same night, bled him and said
that the prince had had a seizure paralyzing his right side.

It was becoming more and more dangerous to remain at Bald Hills, and
next day they moved the prince to Bogucharovo, the doctor accompanying
him.

By the time they reached Bogucharovo, Dessalles and the little
prince had already left for Moscow.

For three weeks the old prince lay stricken by paralysis in the
new house Prince Andrew had built at Bogucharovo, ever in the same
state, getting neither better nor worse. He was unconscious and lay
like a distorted corpse. He muttered unceasingly, his eyebrows and
lips twitching, and it was impossible to tell whether he understood
what was going on around him or not. One thing was certain--that he
was suffering and wished to say something. But what it was, no one
could tell: it might be some caprice of a sick and half-crazy man,
or it might relate to public affairs, or possibly to family concerns.

The doctor said this restlessness did not mean anything and was
due to physical causes; but Princess Mary thought he wished to tell
her something, and the fact that her presence always increased his
restlessness confirmed her opinion.

He was evidently suffering both physically and mentally. There was
no hope of recovery. It was impossible for him to travel, it would not
do to let him die on the road. "Would it not be better if the end
did come, the very end?" Princess Mary sometimes thought. Night and
day, hardly sleeping at all, she watched him and, terrible to say,
often watched him not with hope of finding signs of improvement but
wishing to find symptoms of the approach of the end.

Strange as it was to her to acknowledge this feeling in herself, yet
there it was. And what seemed still more terrible to her was that
since her father's illness began (perhaps even sooner, when she stayed
with him expecting something to happen), all the personal desires
and hopes that had been forgotten or sleeping within her had awakened.
Thoughts that had not entered her mind for years--thoughts of a life
free from the fear of her father, and even the possibility of love and
of family happiness--floated continually in her imagination like
temptations of the devil. Thrust them aside as she would, questions
continually recurred to her as to how she would order her life now,
after that. These were temptations of the devil and Princess Mary knew
it. She knew that the sole weapon against him was prayer, and she
tried to pray. She assumed an attitude of prayer, looked at the icons,
repeated the words of a prayer, but she could not pray. She felt
that a different world had now taken possession of her--the life of
a world of strenuous and free activity, quite opposed to the spiritual
world in which till now she had been confined and in which her
greatest comfort had been prayer. She could not pray, could not
weep, and worldly cares took possession of her.

It was becoming dangerous to remain in Bogucharovo. News of the
approach of the French came from all sides, and in one village, ten
miles from Bogucharovo, a homestead had been looted by French
marauders.

The doctor insisted on the necessity of moving the prince; the
provincial Marshal of the Nobility sent an official to Princess Mary
to persuade her to get away as quickly as possible, and the head of
the rural police having come to Bogucharovo urged the same thing,
saying that the French were only some twenty-five miles away, that
French proclamations were circulating in the villages, and that if the
princess did not take her father away before the fifteenth, he could
not answer for the consequences.

The princess decided to leave on the fifteenth. The cares of
preparation and giving orders, for which everyone came to her,
occupied her all day. She spent the night of the fourteenth as
usual, without undressing, in the room next to the one where the
prince lay. Several times, waking up, she heard his groans and
muttering, the creak of his bed, and the steps of Tikhon and the
doctor when they turned him over. Several times she listened at the
door, and it seemed to her that his mutterings were louder than
usual and that they turned him over oftener. She could not sleep and
several times went to the door and listened, wishing to enter but
not deciding to do so. Though he did not speak, Princess Mary saw
and knew how unpleasant every sign of anxiety on his account was to
him. She had noticed with what dissatisfaction he turned from the look
she sometimes involuntarily fixed on him. She knew that her going in
during the night at an unusual hour would irritate him.

But never had she felt so grieved for him or so much afraid of
losing him. She recalled all her life with him and in every word and
act of his found an expression of his love of her. Occasionally amid
these memories temptations of the devil would surge into her
imagination: thoughts of how things would be after his death, and
how her new, liberated life would be ordered. But she drove these
thoughts away with disgust. Toward morning he became quiet and she
fell asleep.

She woke late. That sincerity which often comes with waking showed
her clearly what chiefly concerned her about her father's illness.
On waking she listened to what was going on behind the door and,
hearing him groan, said to herself with a sigh that things were
still the same.

"But what could have happened? What did I want? I want his death!"
she cried with a feeling of loathing for herself.

She washed, dressed, said her prayers, and went out to the porch. In
front of it stood carriages without horses and things were being
packed into the vehicles.

It was a warm, gray morning. Princess Mary stopped at the porch,
still horrified by her spiritual baseness and trying to arrange her
thoughts before going to her father. The doctor came downstairs and
went out to her.

"He is a little better today," said he. "I was looking for you.
One can make out something of what he is saying. His head is
clearer. Come in, he is asking for you..."

Princess Mary's heart beat so violently at this news that she grew
pale and leaned against the wall to keep from falling. To see him,
talk to him, feel his eyes on her now that her whole soul was
overflowing with those dreadful, wicked temptations, was a torment
of joy and terror.

"Come," said the doctor.

Princess Mary entered her father's room and went up to his bed. He
was lying on his back propped up high, and his small bony hands with
their knotted purple veins were lying on the quilt; his left eye gazed
straight before him, his right eye was awry, and his brows and lips
motionless. He seemed altogether so thin, small, and pathetic. His
face seemed to have shriveled or melted; his features had grown
smaller. Princess Mary went up and kissed his hand. His left hand
pressed hers so that she understood that he had long been waiting
for her to come. He twitched her hand, and his brows and lips quivered
angrily.

She looked at him in dismay trying to guess what he wanted of her.
When she changed her position so that his left eye could see her
face he calmed down, not taking his eyes off her for some seconds.
Then his lips and tongue moved, sounds came, and he began to speak,
gazing timidly and imploringly at her, evidently afraid that she might
not understand.

Straining all her faculties Princess Mary looked at him. The comic
efforts with which he moved his tongue made her drop her eyes and with
difficulty repress the sobs that rose to her throat. He said
something, repeating the same words several times. She could not
understand them, but tried to guess what he was saying and inquiringly
repeated the words he uttered.

"Mmm...ar...ate...ate..." he repeated several times.

It was quite impossible to understand these sounds. The doctor
thought he had guessed them, and inquiringly repeated: "Mary, are
you afraid?" The prince shook his head, again repeated the same
sounds.

"My mind, my mind aches?" questioned Princess Mary.

He made a mumbling sound in confirmation of this, took her hand, and
began pressing it to different parts of his breast as if trying to
find the right place for it.

"Always thoughts... about you... thoughts..." he then uttered much
more clearly than he had done before, now that he was sure of being
understood.

Princess Mary pressed her head against his hand, trying to hide
her sobs and tears.

He moved his hand over her hair.

"I have been calling you all night..." he brought out.

"If only I had known..." she said through her tears. "I was afraid
to come in."

He pressed her hand.

"Weren't you asleep?"

"No, I did not sleep," said Princess Mary, shaking her head.

Unconsciously imitating her father, she now tried to express herself
as he did, as much as possible by signs, and her tongue too seemed
to move with difficulty.

"Dear one... Dearest..." Princess Mary could not quite make out what
he had said, but from his look it was clear that he had uttered a
tender caressing word such as he had never used to her before. "Why
didn't you come in?"

"And I was wishing for his death!" thought Princess Mary.

He was silent awhile.

"Thank you... daughter dear!... for all, for all... forgive!...
thank you!... forgive!... thank you!..." and tears began to flow
from his eyes. "Call Andrew!" he said suddenly, and a childish,
timid expression of doubt showed itself on his face as he spoke.

He himself seemed aware that his demand was meaningless. So at least
it seemed to Princess Mary.

"I have a letter from him," she replied.

He glanced at her with timid surprise.

"Where is he?"

"He's with the army, Father, at Smolensk."

He closed his eyes and remained silent a long time. Then as if in
answer to his doubts and to confirm the fact that now he understood
and remembered everything, he nodded his head and reopened his eyes.

"Yes," he said, softly and distinctly. "Russia has perished. They've
destroyed her."

And he began to sob, and again tears flowed from his eyes.
Princess Mary could no longer restrain herself and wept while she
gazed at his face.

Again he closed his eyes. His sobs ceased, he pointed to his eyes,
and Tikhon, understanding him, wiped away the tears.

Then he again opened his eyes and said something none of them
could understand for a long time, till at last Tikhon understood and
repeated it. Princess Mary had sought the meaning of his words in
the mood in which he had just been speaking. She thought he was
speaking of Russia, or Prince Andrew, of herself, of his grandson,
or of his own death, and so she could not guess his words.

"Put on your white dress. I like it," was what he said.

Having understood this Princess Mary sobbed still louder, and the
doctor taking her arm led her out to the veranda, soothing her and
trying to persuade her to prepare for her journey. When she had left
the room the prince again began speaking about his son, about the war,
and about the Emperor, angrily twitching his brows and raising his
hoarse voice, and then he had a second and final stroke.

Princess Mary stayed on the veranda. The day had cleared, it was hot
and sunny. She could understand nothing, think of nothing and feel
nothing, except passionate love for her father, love such as she
thought she had never felt till that moment. She ran out sobbing
into the garden and as far as the pond, along the avenues of young
lime trees Prince Andrew had planted.

"Yes... I... I... I wished for his death! Yes, I wanted it to end
quicker.... I wished to be at peace.... And what will become of me?
What use will peace be when he is no longer here?" Princess Mary
murmured, pacing the garden with hurried steps and pressing her
hands to her bosom which heaved with convulsive sobs.

When she had completed the tour of the garden, which brought her
again to the house, she saw Mademoiselle Bourienne--who had remained
at Bogucharovo and did not wish to leave it--coming toward her with
a stranger. This was the Marshal of the Nobility of the district,
who had come personally to point out to the princess the necessity for
her prompt departure. Princess Mary listened without understanding
him; she led him to the house, offered him lunch, and sat down with
him. Then, excusing herself, she went to the door of the old
prince's room. The doctor came out with an agitated face and said
she could not enter.

"Go away, Princess! Go away... go away!"

She returned to the garden and sat down on the grass at the foot
of the slope by the pond, where no one could see her. She did not know
how long she had been there when she was aroused by the sound of a
woman's footsteps running along the path. She rose and saw Dunyasha
her maid, who was evidently looking for her, and who stopped
suddenly as if in alarm on seeing her mistress.

"Please come, Princess... The Prince," said Dunyasha in a breaking
voice.

"Immediately, I'm coming, I'm coming!" replied the princess
hurriedly, not giving Dunyasha time to finish what she was saying, and
trying to avoid seeing the girl she ran toward the house.

"Princess, it's God's will! You must be prepared for everything,"
said the Marshal, meeting her at the house door.

"Let me alone; it's not true!" she cried angrily to him.

The doctor tried to stop her. She pushed him aside and ran to her
father's door. "Why are these people with frightened faces stopping
me? I don't want any of them! And what are they doing here?" she
thought. She opened the door and the bright daylight in that
previously darkened room startled her. In the room were her nurse
and other women. They all drew back from the bed, making way for
her. He was still lying on the bed as before, but the stern expression
of his quiet face made Princess Mary stop short on the threshold.

"No, he's not dead--it's impossible!" she told herself and
approached him, and repressing the terror that seized her, she pressed
her lips to his cheek. But she stepped back immediately. All the force
of the tenderness she had been feeling for him vanished instantly
and was replaced by a feeling of horror at what lay there before
her. "No, he is no more! He is not, but here where he was is something
unfamiliar and hostile, some dreadful, terrifying, and repellent
mystery!" And hiding her face in her hands, Princess Mary sank into
the arms of the doctor, who held her up.


In the presence of Tikhon and the doctor the women washed what had
been the prince, tied his head up with a handkerchief that the mouth
should not stiffen while open, and with another handkerchief tied
together the legs that were already spreading apart. Then they dressed
him in uniform with his decorations and placed his shriveled little
body on a table. Heaven only knows who arranged all this and when, but
it all got done as if of its own accord. Toward night candles were
burning round his coffin, a pall was spread over it, the floor was
strewn with sprays of juniper, a printed band was tucked in under
his shriveled head, and in a corner of the room sat a chanter
reading the psalms.

Just as horses shy and snort and gather about a dead horse, so the
inmates of the house and strangers crowded into the drawing room round
the coffin--the Marshal, the village Elder, peasant women--and all
with fixed and frightened eyes, crossing themselves, bowed and
kissed the old prince's cold and stiffened hand.





CHAPTER IX


Until Prince Andrew settled in Bogucharovo its owners had always
been absentees, and its peasants were of quite a different character
from those of Bald Hills. They differed from them in speech, dress,
and disposition. They were called steppe peasants. The old prince used
to approve of them for their endurance at work when they came to
Bald Hills to help with the harvest or to dig ponds, and ditches,
but he disliked them for their boorishness.

Prince Andrew's last stay at Bogucharovo, when he introduced
hospitals and schools and reduced the quitrent the peasants had to
pay, had not softened their disposition but had on the contrary
strengthened in them the traits of character the old prince called
boorishness. Various obscure rumors were always current among them: at
one time a rumor that they would all be enrolled as Cossacks; at
another of a new religion to which they were all to be converted; then
of some proclamation of the Tsar's and of an oath to the Tsar Paul
in 1797 (in connection with which it was rumored that freedom had been
granted them but the landowners had stopped it), then of Peter
Fedorovich's return to the throne in seven years' time, when
everything would be made free and so "simple" that there would be no
restrictions. Rumors of the war with Bonaparte and his invasion were
connected in their minds with the same sort of vague notions of
Antichrist, the end of the world, and "pure freedom."

In the vicinity of Bogucharovo were large villages belonging to
the crown or to owners whose serfs paid quitrent and could work
where they pleased. There were very few resident landlords in the
neighborhood and also very few domestic or literate serfs, and in
the lives of the peasantry of those parts the mysterious undercurrents
in the life of the Russian people, the causes and meaning of which are
so baffling to contemporaries, were more clearly and strongly
noticeable than among others. One instance, which had occurred some
twenty years before, was a movement among the peasants to emigrate
to some unknown "warm rivers." Hundreds of peasants, among them the
Bogucharovo folk, suddenly began selling their cattle and moving in
whole families toward the southeast. As birds migrate to somewhere
beyond the sea, so these men with their wives and children streamed to
the southeast, to parts where none of them had ever been. They set off
in caravans, bought their freedom one by one or ran away, and drove or
walked toward the "warm rivers." Many of them were punished, some sent
to Siberia, many died of cold and hunger on the road, many returned of
their own accord, and the movement died down of itself just as it
had sprung up, without apparent reason. But such undercurrents still
existed among the people and gathered new forces ready to manifest
themselves just as strangely, unexpectedly, and at the same time
simply, naturally, and forcibly. Now in 1812, to anyone living in
close touch with these people it was apparent that these undercurrents
were acting strongly and nearing an eruption.

Alpatych, who had reached Bogucharovo shortly before the old
prince's death, noticed an agitation among the peasants, and that
contrary to what was happening in the Bald Hills district, where
over a radius of forty miles all the peasants were moving away and
leaving their villages to be devastated by the Cossacks, the
peasants in the steppe region round Bogucharovo were, it was
rumored, in touch with the French, received leaflets from them that
passed from hand to hand, and did not migrate. He learned from
domestic serfs loyal to him that the peasant Karp, who possessed great
influence in the village commune and had recently been away driving
a government transport, had returned with news that the Cossacks
were destroying deserted villages, but that the French did not harm
them. Alpatych also knew that on the previous day another peasant
had even brought from the village of Visloukhovo, which was occupied
by the French, a proclamation by a French general that no harm would
be done to the inhabitants, and if they remained they would be paid
for anything taken from them. As proof of this the peasant had brought
from Visloukhovo a hundred rubles in notes (he did not know that
they were false) paid to him in advance for hay.

More important still, Alpatych learned that on the morning of the
very day he gave the village Elder orders to collect carts to move the
princess' luggage from Bogucharovo, there had been a village meeting
at which it had been decided not to move but to wait. Yet there was no
time to waste. On the fifteenth, the day of the old prince's death,
the Marshal had insisted on Princess Mary's leaving at once, as it was
becoming dangerous. He had told her that after the sixteenth he
could not be responsible for what might happen. On the evening of
the day the old prince died the Marshal went away, promising to return
next day for the funeral. But this he was unable to do, for he
received tidings that the French had unexpectedly advanced, and had
barely time to remove his own family and valuables from his estate.

For some thirty years Bogucharovo had been managed by the village
Elder, Dron, whom the old prince called by the diminutive "Dronushka."

Dron was one of those physically and mentally vigorous peasants
who grow big beards as soon as they are of age and go on unchanged
till they are sixty or seventy, without a gray hair or the loss of a
tooth, as straight and strong at sixty as at thirty.

Soon after the migration to the "warm rivers," in which he had taken
part like the rest, Dron was made village Elder and overseer of
Bogucharovo, and had since filled that post irreproachably for
twenty-three years. The peasants feared him more than they did their
master. The masters, both the old prince and the young, and the
steward respected him and jestingly called him "the Minister."
During the whole time of his service Dron had never been drunk or ill,
never after sleepless nights or the hardest tasks had he shown the
least fatigue, and though he could not read he had never forgotten a
single money account or the number of quarters of flour in any of
the endless cartloads he sold for the prince, nor a single shock of
the whole corn crop on any single acre of the Bogucharovo fields.

Alpatych, arriving from the devastated Bald Hills estate, sent for
his Dron on the day of the prince's funeral and told him to have
twelve horses got ready for the princess' carriages and eighteen carts
for the things to be removed from Bogucharovo. Though the peasants
paid quitrent, Alpatych thought no difficulty would be made about
complying with this order, for there were two hundred and thirty
households at work in Bogucharovo and the peasants were well to do.
But on hearing the order Dron lowered his eyes and remained silent.
Alpatych named certain peasants he knew, from whom he told him to take
the carts.

Dron replied that the horses of these peasants were away carting.
Alpatych named others, but they too, according to Dron, had no
horses available: some horses were carting for the government,
others were too weak, and others had died for want of fodder. It
seemed that no horses could be had even for the carriages, much less
for the carting.

Alpatych looked intently at Dron and frowned. Just as Dron was a
model village Elder, so Alpatych had not managed the prince's
estates for twenty years in vain. He a model steward, possessing in
the highest degree the faculty of divining the needs and instincts
of those he dealt with. Having glanced at Dron he at once understood
that his answers did not express his personal views but the general
mood of the Bogucharovo commune, by which the Elder had already been
carried away. But he also knew that Dron, who had acquired property
and was hated by the commune, must be hesitating between the two
camps: the masters' and the serfs'. He noticed this hesitation in
Dron's look and therefore frowned and moved closer up to him.

"Now just listen, Dronushka," said he. "Don't talk nonsense to me.
His excellency Prince Andrew himself gave me orders to move all the
people away and not leave them with the enemy, and there is an order
from the Tsar about it too. Anyone who stays is a traitor to the Tsar.
Do you hear?"

"I hear," Dron answered without lifting his eyes.

Alpatych was not satisfied with this reply.

"Eh, Dron, it will turn out badly!" he said, shaking his head.

"The power is in your hands," Dron rejoined sadly.

"Eh, Dron, drop it!" Alpatych repeated, withdrawing his hand from
his bosom and solemnly pointing to the floor at Dron's feet. "I can
see through you and three yards into the ground under you," he
continued, gazing at the floor in front of Dron.

Dron was disconcerted, glanced furtively at Alpatych and again
lowered his eyes.

"You drop this nonsense and tell the people to get ready to leave
their homes and go to Moscow and to get carts ready for tomorrow
morning for the princess' things. And don't go to any meeting
yourself, do you hear?"

Dron suddenly fell on his knees.

"Yakov Alpatych, discharge me! Take the keys from me and discharge
me, for Christ's sake!"

"Stop that!" cried Alpatych sternly. "I see through you and three
yards under you," he repeated, knowing that his skill in beekeeping,
his knowledge of the right time to sow the oats, and the fact that
he had been able to retain the old prince's favor for twenty years had
long since gained him the reputation of being a wizard, and that the
power of seeing three yards under a man is considered an attribute
of wizards.

Dron got up and was about to say something, but Alpatych interrupted
him.

"What is it you have got into your heads, eh?... What are you
thinking of, eh?"

"What am I to do with the people?" said Dron. "They're quite
beside themselves; I have already told them..."

"'Told them,' I dare say!" said Alpatych. "Are they drinking?" he
asked abruptly.

"Quite beside themselves, Yakov Alpatych; they've fetched another
barrel."

"Well, then, listen! I'll go to the police officer, and you tell
them so, and that they must stop this and the carts must be got
ready."

"I understand."

Alpatych did not insist further. He had managed people for a long
time and knew that the chief way to make them obey is to show no
suspicion that they can possibly disobey. Having wrung a submissive "I
understand" from Dron, Alpatych contented himself with that, though he
not only doubted but felt almost certain that without the help of
troops the carts would not be forthcoming.

And so it was, for when evening came no carts had been provided.
In the village, outside the drink shop, another meeting was being
held, which decided that the horses should be driven out into the
woods and the carts should not be provided. Without saying anything of
this to the princess, Alpatych had his own belongings taken out of the
carts which had arrived from Bald Hills and had those horses got ready
for the princess' carriages. Meanwhile he went himself to the police
authorities.





CHAPTER X


After her father's funeral Princess Mary shut herself up in her room
and did not admit anyone. A maid came to the door to say that Alpatych
was asking for orders about their departure. (This was before his talk
with Dron.) Princess Mary raised herself on the sofa on which she
had been lying and replied through the closed door that she did not
mean to go away and begged to be left in peace.

The windows of the room in which she was lying looked westward.
She lay on the sofa with her face to the wall, fingering the buttons
of the leather cushion and seeing nothing but that cushion, and her
confused thoughts were centered on one subject--the irrevocability
of death and her own spiritual baseness, which she had not
suspected, but which had shown itself during her father's illness. She
wished to pray but did not dare to, dared not in her present state
of mind address herself to God. She lay for a long time in that
position.

The sun had reached the other side of the house, and its slanting
rays shone into the open window, lighting up the room and part of
the morocco cushion at which Princess Mary was looking. The flow of
her thoughts suddenly stopped. Unconsciously she sat up, smoothed
her hair, got up, and went to the window, involuntarily inhaling the
freshness of the clear but windy evening.

"Yes, you can well enjoy the evening now! He is gone and no one will
hinder you," she said to herself, and sinking into a chair she let her
head fall on the window sill.

Someone spoke her name in a soft and tender voice from the garden
and kissed her head. She looked up. It was Mademoiselle Bourienne in a
black dress and weepers. She softly approached Princess Mary,
sighed, kissed her, and immediately began to cry. The princess
looked up at her. All their former disharmony and her own jealousy
recurred to her mind. But she remembered too how he had changed of
late toward Mademoiselle Bourienne and could not bear to see her,
thereby showing how unjust were the reproaches Princess Mary had
mentally addressed to her. "Besides, is it for me, for me who
desired his death, to condemn anyone?" she thought.

Princess Mary vividly pictured to herself the position of
Mademoiselle Bourienne, whom she had of late kept at a distance, but
who yet was dependent on her and living in her house. She felt sorry
for her and held out her hand with a glance of gentle inquiry.
Mademoiselle Bourienne at once began crying again and kissed that
hand, speaking of the princess' sorrow and making herself a partner in
it. She said her only consolation was the fact that the princess
allowed her to share her sorrow, that all the old misunderstandings
should sink into nothing but this great grief; that she felt herself
blameless in regard to everyone, and that he, from above, saw her
affection and gratitude. The princess heard her, not heeding her words
but occasionally looking up at her and listening to the sound of her
voice.

"Your position is doubly terrible, dear princess," said Mademoiselle
Bourienne after a pause. "I understand that you could not, and cannot,
think of yourself, but with my love for you I must do so.... Has
Alpatych been to you? Has he spoken to you of going away?" she asked.

Princess Mary did not answer. She did not understand who was to go
or where to. "Is it possible to plan or think of anything now? Is it
not all the same?" she thought, and did not reply.

"You know, chere Marie," said Mademoiselle Bourienne, "that we are
in danger--are surrounded by the French. It would be dangerous to move
now. If we go we are almost sure to be taken prisoners, and God
knows..."

Princess Mary looked at her companion without understanding what she
was talking about.

"Oh, if anyone knew how little anything matters to me now," she
said. "Of course I would on no account wish to go away from him....
Alpatych did say something about going.... Speak to him; I can do
nothing, nothing, and don't want to...."

"I've spoken to him. He hopes we should be in time to get away
tomorrow, but I think it would now be better to stay here," said
Mademoiselle Bourienne. "Because, you will agree, chere Marie, to fall
into the hands of the soldiers or of riotous peasants would be
terrible."

Mademoiselle Bourienne took from her reticule a proclamation (not
printed on ordinary Russian paper) of General Rameau's, telling people
not to leave their homes and that the French authorities would
afford them proper protection. She handed this to the princess.

"I think it would be best to appeal to that general," she continued,
"and and am sure that all due respect would be shown you."

Princess Mary read the paper, and her face began to quiver with
stifled sobs.

"From whom did you get this?" she asked.

"They probably recognized that I am French, by my name," replied
Mademoiselle Bourienne blushing.

Princess Mary, with the paper in her hand, rose from the window
and with a pale face went out of the room and into what had been
Prince Andrew's study.

"Dunyasha, send Alpatych, or Dronushka, or somebody to me!" she
said, "and tell Mademoiselle Bourienne not to come to me," she
added, hearing Mademoiselle Bourienne's voice. "We must go at once, at
once!" she said, appalled at the thought of being left in the hands of
the French.

"If Prince Andrew heard that I was in the power of the French!
That I, the daughter of Prince Nicholas Bolkonski, asked General
Rameau for protection and accepted his favor!" This idea horrified
her, made her shudder, blush, and feel such a rush of anger and
pride as she had never experienced before. All that was distressing,
and especially all that was humiliating, in her position rose
vividly to her mind. "They, the French, would settle in this house: M.
le General Rameau would occupy Prince Andrew's study and amuse himself
by looking through and reading his letters and papers. Mademoiselle
Bourienne would do the honors of Bogucharovo for him. I should be
given a small room as a favor, the soldiers would violate my
father's newly dug grave to steal his crosses and stars, they would
tell me of their victories over the Russians, and would pretend to
sympathize with my sorrow..." thought Princess Mary, not thinking
her own thoughts but feeling bound to think like her father and her
brother. For herself she did not care where she remained or what
happened to her, but she felt herself the representative of her dead
father and of Prince Andrew. Involuntarily she thought their
thoughts and felt their feelings. What they would have said and what
they would have done she felt bound to say and do. She went into
Prince Andrew's study, trying to enter completely into his ideas,
and considered her position.

The demands of life, which had seemed to her annihilated by her
father's death, all at once rose before her with a new, previously
unknown force and took possession of her.

Agitated and flushed she paced the room, sending now for Michael
Ivanovich and now for Tikhon or Dron. Dunyasha, the nurse, and the
other maids could not say in how far Mademoiselle Bourienne's
statement was correct. Alpatych was not at home, he had gone to the
police. Neither could the architect Michael Ivanovich, who on being
sent for came in with sleepy eyes, tell Princess Mary anything. With
just the same smile of agreement with which for fifteen years he had
been accustomed to answer the old prince without expressing views of
his own, he now replied to Princess Mary, so that nothing definite
could be got from his answers. The old valet Tikhon, with sunken,
emaciated face that bore the stamp of inconsolable grief, replied:
"Yes, Princess" to all Princess Mary's questions and hardly
refrained from sobbing as he looked at her.

At length Dron, the village Elder, entered the room and with a
deep bow to Princess Mary came to a halt by the doorpost.

Princess Mary walked up and down the room and stopped in front of
him.

"Dronushka," she said, regarding as a sure friend this Dronushka who
always used to bring a special kind of gingerbread from his visit to
the fair at Vyazma every year and smilingly offer it to her,
"Dronushka, now since our misfortune..." she began, but could not go
on.

"We are all in God's hands," said he, with a sigh.

They were silent for a while.

"Dronushka, Alpatych has gone off somewhere and I have no one to
turn to. Is true, as they tell me, that I can't even go away?"

"Why shouldn't you go away, your excellency? You can go," said Dron.

"I was told it would be dangerous because of the enemy. Dear friend,
I can do nothing. I understand nothing. I have nobody! I want to go
away tonight or early tomorrow morning."

Dron paused. He looked askance at Princess Mary and said: "There are
no horses; I told Yakov Alpatych so."

"Why are there none?" asked the princess.

"It's all God's scourge," said Dron. "What horses we had have been
taken for the army or have died--this is such a year! It's not a
case of feeding horses--we may die of hunger ourselves! As it is, some
go three days without eating. We've nothing, we've been ruined."

Princess Mary listened attentively to what he told her.

"The peasants are ruined? They have no bread?" she asked.

"They're dying of hunger," said Dron. "It's not a case of carting."

"But why didn't you tell me, Dronushka? Isn't it possible to help
them? I'll do all I can...."

To Princess Mary it was strange that now, at a moment when such
sorrow was filling her soul, there could be rich people and poor,
and the rich could refrain from helping the poor. She had heard
vaguely that there was such a thing as "landlord's corn" which was
sometimes given to the peasants. She also knew that neither her father
nor her brother would refuse to help the peasants in need, she only
feared to make some mistake in speaking about the distribution of
the grain she wished to give. She was glad such cares presented
themselves, enabling her without scruple to forget her own grief.
She began asking Dron about the peasants' needs and what there was
in Bogucharovo that belonged to the landlord.

"But we have grain belonging to my brother?" she said.

"The landlord's grain is all safe," replied Dron proudly. "Our
prince did not order it to be sold."

"Give it to the peasants, let them have all they need; I give you
leave in my brother's name," said she.

Dron made no answer but sighed deeply.

"Give them that corn if there is enough of it. Distribute it all.
I give this order in my brother's name; and tell them that what is
ours is theirs. We do not grudge them anything. Tell them so."

Dron looked intently at the princess while she was speaking.

"Discharge me, little mother, for God's sake! Order the keys to be
taken from me," said he. "I have served twenty-three years and have
done no wrong. Discharge me, for God's sake!"

Princess Mary did not understand what he wanted of her or why he was
asking to be discharged. She replied that she had never doubted his
devotion and that she was ready to do anything for him and for the
peasants.





CHAPTER XI


An hour later Dunyasha came to tell the princess that Dron had come,
and all the peasants had assembled at the barn by the princess'
order and wished to have word with their mistress.

"But I never told them to come," said Princess Mary. "I only told
Dron to let them have the grain."

"Only, for God's sake, Princess dear, have them sent away and
don't go out to them. It's all a trick," said Dunyasha, "and when
Yakov Alpatych returns let us get away... and please don't..."

"What is a trick?" asked Princess Mary in surprise.

"I know it is, only listen to me for God's sake! Ask nurse too. They
say they don't agree to leave Bogucharovo as you ordered."

"You're making some mistake. I never ordered them to go away,"
said Princess Mary. "Call Dronushka."

Dron came and confirmed Dunyasha's words; the peasants had come by
the princess' order.

"But I never sent for them," declared the princess. "You must have
given my message wrong. I only said that you were to give them the
grain."

Dron only sighed in reply.

"If you order it they will go away," said he.

"No, no. I'll go out to them," said Princess Mary, and in spite of
the nurse's and Dunyasha's protests she went out into the porch; Dron,
Dunyasha, the nurse, and Michael Ivanovich following her.

"They probably think I am offering them the grain to bribe them to
remain here, while I myself go away leaving them to the mercy of the
French," thought Princess Mary. "I will offer them monthly rations and
housing at our Moscow estate. I am sure Andrew would do even more in
my place," she thought as she went out in the twilight toward the
crowd standing on the pasture by the barn.

The men crowded closer together, stirred, and rapidly took off their
hats. Princess Mary lowered her eyes and, tripping over her skirt,
came close up to them. So many different eyes, old and young, were
fixed on her, and there were so many different faces, that she could
not distinguish any of them and, feeling that she must speak to them
all at once, did not know how to do it. But again the sense that she
represented her father and her brother gave her courage, and she
boldly began her speech.

"I am very glad you have come," she said without raising her eyes,
and feeling her heart beating quickly and violently. "Dronushka
tells me that the war has ruined you. That is our common misfortune,
and I shall grudge nothing to help you. I am myself going away because
it is dangerous here... the enemy is near... because... I am giving
you everything, my friends, and I beg you to take everything, all
our grain, so that you may not suffer want! And if you have been
told that I am giving you the grain to keep you here--that is not
true. On the contrary, I ask you to go with all your belongings to our
estate near Moscow, and I promise you I will see to it that there
you shall want for nothing. You shall be given food and lodging."

The princess stopped. Sighs were the only sound heard in the crowd.

"I am not doing this on my own account," she continued, "I do it
in the name of my dead father, who was a good master to you, and of my
brother and his son."

Again she paused. No one broke the silence.

"Ours is a common misfortune and we will share it together. All that
is mine is yours," she concluded, scanning the faces before her.

All eyes were gazing at her with one and the same expression. She
could not fathom whether it was curiosity, devotion, gratitude, or
apprehension and distrust--but the expression on all the faces was
identical.

"We are all very thankful for your bounty, but it won't do for us to
take the landlord's grain," said a voice at the back of the crowd.

"But why not?" asked the princess.

No one replied and Princess Mary, looking round at the crowd,
found that every eye she met now was immediately dropped.

"But why don't you want to take it?" she asked again.

No one answered.

The silence began to oppress the princess and she tried to catch
someone's eye.

"Why don't you speak?" she inquired of a very old man who stood just
in front of her leaning on his stick. "If you think something more
is wanted, tell me! I will do anything," said she, catching his eye.

But as if this angered him, he bent his head quite low and muttered:

"Why should we agree? We don't want the grain."

"Why should we give up everything? We don't agree. Don't agree....
We are sorry for you, but we're not willing. Go away yourself,
alone..." came from various sides of the crowd.

And again all the faces in that crowd bore an identical
expression, though now it was certainly not an expression of curiosity
or gratitude, but of angry resolve.

"But you can't have understood me," said Princess Mary with a sad
smile. "Why don't you want to go? I promise to house and feed you,
while here the enemy would ruin you..."

But her voice was drowned by the voices of the crowd.

"We're not willing. Let them ruin us! We won't take your grain. We
don't agree."

Again Princess Mary tried to catch someone's eye, but not a single
eye in the crowd was turned to her; evidently they were all trying
to avoid her look. She felt strange and awkward.

"Oh yes, an artful tale! Follow her into slavery! Pull down your
houses and go into bondage! I dare say! 'I'll give you grain, indeed!'
she says," voices in the crowd were heard saying.

With drooping head Princess Mary left the crowd and went back to the
house. Having repeated her order to Dron to have horses ready for
her departure next morning, she went to her room and remained alone
with her own thoughts.





CHAPTER XII


For a long time that night Princess Mary sat by the open window of
her room hearing the sound of the peasants' voices that reached her
from the village, but it was not of them she was thinking. She felt
that she could not understand them however much she might think
about them. She thought only of one thing, her sorrow, which, after
the break caused by cares for the present, seemed already to belong to
the past. Now she could remember it and weep or pray.

After sunset the wind had dropped. The night was calm and fresh.
Toward midnight the voices began to subside, a cock crowed, the full
moon began to show from behind the lime trees, a fresh white dewy mist
began to rise, and stillness reigned over the village and the house.

Pictures of the near past--her father's illness and last moments-
rose one after another to her memory. With mournful pleasure she now
lingered over these images, repelling with horror only the last one,
the picture of his death, which she felt she could not contemplate
even in imagination at this still and mystic hour of night. And
these pictures presented themselves to her so clearly and in such
detail that they seemed now present, now past, and now future.

She vividly recalled the moment when he had his first stroke and was
being dragged along by his armpits through the garden at Bald Hills,
muttering something with his helpless tongue, twitching his gray
eyebrows and looking uneasily and timidly at her.

"Even then he wanted to tell me what he told me the day he died,"
she thought. "He had always thought what he said then." And she
recalled in all its detail the night at Bald Hills before he had the
last stroke, when with a foreboding of disaster she had remained at
home against his will. She had not slept and had stolen downstairs
on tiptoe, and going to the door of the conservatory where he slept
that night had listened at the door. In a suffering and weary voice he
was saying something to Tikhon, speaking of the Crimea and its warm
nights and of the Empress. Evidently he had wanted to talk. "And why
didn't he call me? Why didn't he let me be there instead of Tikhon?"
Princess Mary had thought and thought again now. "Now he will never
tell anyone what he had in his soul. Never will that moment return for
him or for me when he might have said all he longed to say, and not
Tikhon but I might have heard and understood him. Why didn't I enter
the room?" she thought. "Perhaps he would then have said to me what he
said the day he died. While talking to Tikhon he asked about me twice.
He wanted to see me, and I was standing close by, outside the door. It
was sad and painful for him to talk to Tikhon who did not understand
him. I remember how he began speaking to him about Lise as if she were
alive--he had forgotten she was dead--and Tikhon reminded him that she
was no more, and he shouted, 'Fool!' He was greatly depressed. From
behind the door I heard how he lay down on his bed groaning and loudly
exclaimed, 'My God!' Why didn't I go in then? What could he have
done to me? What could I have lost? And perhaps he would then have
been comforted and would have said that word to me." And Princess Mary
uttered aloud the caressing word he had said to her on the day of
his death. "Dear-est!" she repeated, and began sobbing, with tears
that relieved her soul. She now saw his face before her. And not the
face she had known ever since she could remember and had always seen
at a distance, but the timid, feeble face she had seen for the first
time quite closely, with all its wrinkles and details, when she
stooped near to his mouth to catch what he said.

"Dear-est!" she repeated again.

"What was he thinking when he uttered that word? What is he thinking
now?" This question suddenly presented itself to her, and in answer
she saw him before her with the expression that was on his face as
he lay in his coffin with his chin bound up with a white handkerchief.
And the horror that had seized her when she touched him and
convinced herself that that was not he, but something mysterious and
horrible, seized her again. She tried to think of something else and
to pray, but could do neither. With wide-open eyes she gazed at the
moonlight and the shadows, expecting every moment to see his dead
face, and she felt that the silence brooding over the house and within
it held her fast.

"Dunyasha," she whispered. "Dunyasha!" she screamed wildly, and
tearing herself out of this silence she ran to the servants'
quarters to meet her old nurse and the maidservants who came running
toward her.





CHAPTER XIII


On the seventeenth of August Rostov and Ilyin, accompanied by
Lavrushka who had just returned from captivity and by an hussar
orderly, left their quarters at Yankovo, ten miles from Bogucharovo,
and went for a ride--to try a new horse Ilyin had bought and to find
out whether there was any hay to be had in the villages.

For the last three days Bogucharovo had lain between the two hostile
armies, so that it was as easy for the Russian rearguard to get to
it as for the French vanguard; Rostov, as a careful squadron
commander, wished to take such provisions as remained at Bogucharovo
before the French could get them.

Rostov and Ilyin were in the merriest of moods. On the way to
Bogucharovo, a princely estate with a dwelling house and farm where
they hoped to find many domestic serfs and pretty girls, they
questioned Lavrushka about Napoleon and laughed at his stories, and
raced one another to try Ilyin's horse.

Rostov had no idea that the village he was entering was the property
of that very Bolkonski who had been engaged to his sister.

Rostov and Ilyin gave rein to their horses for a last race along the
incline before reaching Bogucharovo, and Rostov, outstripping Ilyin,
was the first to gallop into the village street.

"You're first!" cried Ilyin, flushed.

"Yes, always first both on the grassland and here," answered Rostov,
stroking his heated Donets horse.

"And I'd have won on my Frenchy, your excellency," said Lavrushka
from behind, alluding to his shabby cart horse, "only I didn't wish to
mortify you."

They rode at a footpace to the barn, where a large crowd of peasants
was standing.

Some of the men bared their heads, others stared at the new arrivals
without doffing their caps. Two tall old peasants with wrinkled
faces and scanty beards emerged from the tavern, smiling,
staggering, and singing some incoherent song, and approached the
officers.

"Fine fellows!" said Rostov laughing. "Is there any hay here?"

"And how like one another," said Ilyin.

"A mo-o-st me-r-r-y co-o-m-pa...!" sang one of the peasants with a
blissful smile.

One of the men came out of the crowd and went up to Rostov.

"Who do you belong to?" he asked.

"The French," replied Ilyin jestingly, "and here is Napoleon
himself"--and he pointed to Lavrushka.

"Then you are Russians?" the peasant asked again.

"And is there a large force of you here?" said another, a short man,
coming up.

"Very large," answered Rostov. "But why have you collected here?" he
added. "Is it a holiday?"

"The old men have met to talk over the business of the commune,"
replied the peasant, moving away.

At that moment, on the road leading from the big house, two women
and a man in a white hat were seen coming toward the officers.

"The one in pink is mine, so keep off!" said Ilyin on seeing
Dunyasha running resolutely toward him.

"She'll be ours!" said Lavrushka to Ilyin, winking.

"What do you want, my pretty?" said Ilyin with a smile.

"The princess ordered me to ask your regiment and your name."

"This is Count Rostov, squadron commander, and I am your humble
servant."

"Co-o-om-pa-ny!" roared the tipsy peasant with a beatific smile as
he looked at Ilyin talking to the girl. Following Dunyasha, Alpatych
advanced to Rostov, having bared his head while still at a distance.

"May I make bold to trouble your honor?" said he respectfully, but
with a shade of contempt for the youthfulness of this officer and with
a hand thrust into his bosom. "My mistress, daughter of General in
Chief Prince Nicholas Bolkonski who died on the fifteenth of this
month, finding herself in difficulties owing to the boorishness of
these people"--he pointed to the peasants--"asks you to come up to the
house.... Won't you, please, ride on a little farther," said
Alpatych with a melancholy smile, "as it is not convenient in the
presence of...?" He pointed to the two peasants who kept as close to
him as horseflies to a horse.

"Ah!... Alpatych... Ah, Yakov Alpatych... Grand! Forgive us for
Christ's sake, eh?" said the peasants, smiling joyfully at him.

Rostov looked at the tipsy peasants and smiled.

"Or perhaps they amuse your honor?" remarked Alpatych with a staid
air, as he pointed at the old men with his free hand.

"No, there's not much to be amused at here," said Rostov, and rode
on a little way. "What's the matter?" he asked.

"I make bold to inform your honor that the rude peasants here
don't wish to let the mistress leave the estate, and threaten to
unharness her horses, so that though everything has been packed up
since morning, her excellency cannot get away."

"Impossible!" exclaimed Rostov.

"I have the honor to report to you the actual truth," said Alpatych.

Rostov dismounted, gave his horse to the orderly, and followed
Alpatych to the house, questioning him as to the state of affairs.
It appeared that the princess' offer of corn to the peasants the
previous day, and her talk with Dron and at the meeting, had
actually had so bad an effect that Dron had finally given up the
keys and joined the peasants and had not appeared when Alpatych sent
for him; and that in the morning when the princess gave orders to
harness for her journey, the peasants had come in a large crowd to the
barn and sent word that they would not let her leave the village: that
there was an order not to move, and that they would unharness the
horses. Alpatych had gone out to admonish them, but was told (it was
chiefly Karp who did the talking, Dron not showing himself in the
crowd) that they could not let the princess go, that there was an
order to the contrary, but that if she stayed they would serve her
as before and obey her in everything.

At the moment when Rostov and Ilyin were galloping along the road,
Princess Mary, despite the dissuasions of Alpatych, her nurse, and the
maids, had given orders to harness and intended to start, but when the
cavalrymen were espied they were taken for Frenchmen, the coachman ran
away, and the women in the house began to wail.

"Father! Benefactor! God has sent you!" exclaimed deeply moved
voices as Rostov passed through the anteroom.

Princess Mary was sitting helpless and bewildered in the large
sitting room, when Rostov was shown in. She could not grasp who he was
and why he had come, or what was happening to her. When she saw his
Russian face, and by his walk and the first words he uttered
recognized him as a man of her own class, she glanced at him with
her deep radiant look and began speaking in a voice that faltered
and trembled with emotion. This meeting immediately struck Rostov as a
romantic event. "A helpless girl overwhelmed with grief, left to the
mercy of coarse, rioting peasants! And what a strange fate sent me
here! What gentleness and nobility there are in her features and
expression!" thought he as he looked at her and listened to her
timid story.

When she began to tell him that all this had happened the day
after her father's funeral, her voiced trembled. She turned away,
and then, as if fearing he might take her words as meant to move him
to pity, looked at him with an apprehensive glance of inquiry. There
were tears in Rostov's eyes. Princess Mary noticed this and glanced
gratefully at him with that radiant look which caused the plainness of
her face to be forgotten.

"I cannot express, Princess, how glad I am that I happened to ride
here and am able to show my readiness to serve you," said Rostov,
rising. "Go when you please, and I give you my word of honor that no
one shall dare to cause you annoyance if only you will allow me to act
as your escort." And bowing respectfully, as if to a lady of royal
blood, he moved toward the door.

Rostov's deferential tone seemed to indicate that though he would
consider himself happy to be acquainted with her, he did not wish to
take advantage of her misfortunes to intrude upon her.

Princess Mary understood this and appreciated his delicacy.

"I am very, very grateful to you," she said in French, "but I hope
it was all a misunderstanding and that no one is to blame for it." She
suddenly began to cry.

"Excuse me!" she said.

Rostov, knitting his brows, left the room with another low bow.





CHAPTER XIV


"Well, is she pretty? Ah, friend--my pink one is delicious; her
name is Dunyasha...."

But on glancing at Rostov's face Ilyin stopped short. He saw that
his hero and commander was following quite a different train of
thought.

Rostov glanced angrily at Ilyin and without replying strode off with
rapid steps to the village.

"I'll show them; I'll give it to them, the brigands!" said he to
himself.

Alpatych at a gliding trot, only just managing not to run, kept up
with him with difficulty.

"What decision have you been pleased to come to?" said he.

Rostov stopped and, clenching his fists, suddenly and sternly turned
on Alpatych.

"Decision? What decision? Old dotard!..." cried he. "What have you
been about? Eh? The peasants are rioting, and you can't manage them?
You're a traitor yourself! I know you. I'll flay you all alive!..."
And as if afraid of wasting his store of anger, he left Alpatych and
went rapidly forward. Alpatych, mastering his offended feelings,
kept pace with Rostov at a gliding gait and continued to impart his
views. He said the peasants were obdurate and that at the present
moment it would be imprudent to "overresist" them without an armed
force, and would it not be better first to send for the military?

"I'll give them armed force... I'll 'overresist' them!" uttered
Rostov meaninglessly, breathless with irrational animal fury and the
need to vent it.

Without considering what he would do he moved unconciously with
quick, resolute steps toward the crowd. And the nearer he drew to it
the more Alpatych felt that this unreasonable action might produce
good results. The peasants in the crowd were similarly impressed
when they saw Rostov's rapid, firm steps and resolute, frowning face.

After the hussars had come to the village and Rostov had gone to see
the princess, a certain confusion and dissension had arisen among
the crowd. Some of the peasants said that these new arrivals were
Russians and might take it amiss that the mistress was being detained.
Dron was of this opinion, but as soon as he expressed it Karp and
others attacked their ex-Elder.

"How many years have you been fattening on the commune?" Karp
shouted at him. "It's all one to you! You'll dig up your pot of
money and take it away with you.... What does it matter to you whether
our homes are ruined or not?"

"We've been told to keep order, and that no one is to leave their
homes or take away a single grain, and that's all about it!" cried
another.

"It was your son's turn to be conscripted, but no fear! You
begrudged your lump of a son," a little old man suddenly began
attacking Dron--"and so they took my Vanka to be shaved for a soldier!
But we all have to die."

"To be sure, we all have to die. I'm not against the commune,"
said Dron.

"That's it--not against it! You've filled your belly...."

The two tall peasants had their say. As soon as Rostov, followed
by Ilyin, Lavrushka, and Alpatych, came up to the crowd, Karp,
thrusting his fingers into his belt and smiling a little, walked to
the front. Dron on the contrary retired to the rear and the crowd drew
closer together.

"Who is your Elder here? Hey?" shouted Rostov, coming up to the
crowd with quick steps.

"The Elder? What do you want with him?..." asked Karp.

But before the words were well out of his mouth, his cap flew off
and a fierce blow jerked his head to one side.

"Caps off, traitors!" shouted Rostov in a wrathful voice. "Where's
the Elder?" he cried furiously.

"The Elder.... He wants the Elder!... Dron Zakharych, you!" meek and
flustered voices here and there were heard calling and caps began to
come off their heads.

"We don't riot, we're following the orders," declared Karp, and at
that moment several voices began speaking together.

"It's as the old men have decided--there's too many of you giving
orders."

"Arguing? Mutiny!... Brigands! Traitors!" cried Rostov unmeaningly
in a voice not his own, gripping Karp by the collar. "Bind him, bind
him!" he shouted, though there was no one to bind him but Lavrushka
and Alpatych.

Lavrushka, however, ran up to Karp and seized him by the arms from
behind.

"Shall I call up our men from beyond the hill?" he called out.

Alpatych turned to the peasants and ordered two of them by name to
come and bind Karp. The men obediently came out of the crowd and began
taking off their belts.

"Where's the Elder?" demanded Rostov in a loud voice.

With a pale and frowning face Dron stepped out of the crowd.

"Are you the Elder? Bind him, Lavrushka!" shouted Rostov, as if that
order, too, could not possibly meet with any opposition.

And in fact two more peasants began binding Dron, who took off his
own belt and handed it to them, as if to aid them.

"And you all listen to me!" said Rostov to the peasants. "Be off
to your houses at once, and don't let one of your voices be heard!"

"Why, we've not done any harm! We did it just out of foolishness.
It's all nonsense... I said then that it was not in order," voices
were heard bickering with one another.

"There! What did I say?" said Alpatych, coming into his own again.
"It's wrong, lads!"

 "All our stupidity, Yakov Alpatych," came the answers, and the
crowd began at once to disperse through the village.

The two bound men were led off to the master's house. The two
drunken peasants followed them.

"Aye, when I look at you!..." said one of them to Karp.

"How can one talk to the masters like that? What were you thinking
of, you fool?" added the other--"A real fool!"

Two hours later the carts were standing in the courtyard of the
Bogucharovo house. The peasants were briskly carrying out the
proprietor's goods and packing them on the carts, and Dron,
liberated at Princess Mary's wish from the cupboard where he had
been confined, was standing in the yard directing the men.

"Don't put it in so carelessly," said one of the peasants, a man
with a round smiling face, taking a casket from a housemaid. "You know
it has cost money! How can you chuck it in like that or shove it under
the cord where it'll get rubbed? I don't like that way of doing
things. Let it all be done properly, according to rule. Look here, put
it under the bast matting and cover it with hay--that's the way!"

"Eh, books, books!" said another peasant, bringing out Prince
Andrew's library cupboards. "Don't catch up against it! It's heavy,
lads--solid books."

"Yes, they worked all day and didn't play!" remarked the tall,
round-faced peasant gravely, pointing with a significant wink at the
dictionaries that were on the top.


Unwilling to obtrude himself on the princess, Rostov did not go back
to the house but remained in the village awaiting her departure.
When her carriage drove out of the house, he mounted and accompanied
her eight miles from Bogucharovo to where the road was occupied by our
troops. At the inn at Yankovo he respectfully took leave of her, for
the first time permitting himself to kiss her hand.

"How can you speak so!" he blushingly replied to Princess Mary's
expressions of gratitude for her deliverance, as she termed what had
occurred. "Any police officer would have done as much! If we had had
only peasants to fight, we should not have let the enemy come so far,"
said he with a sense of shame and wishing to change the subject. "I am
only happy to have had the opportunity of making your acquaintance.
Good-by, Princess. I wish you happiness and consolation and hope to
meet you again in happier circumstances. If you don't want to make
me blush, please don't thank me!"

But the princess, if she did not again thank him in words, thanked
him with the whole expression of her face, radiant with gratitude
and tenderness. She could not believe that there was nothing to
thank him for. On the contrary, it seemed to her certain that had he
not been there she would have perished at the hands of the mutineers
and of the French, and that he had exposed himself to terrible and
obvious danger to save her, and even more certain was it that he was a
man of lofty and noble soul, able to understand her position and her
sorrow. His kind, honest eyes, with the tears rising in them when
she herself had begun to cry as she spoke of her loss, did leave her
memory.

When she had taken leave of him and remained alone she suddenly felt
her eyes filling with tears, and then not for the first time the
strange question presented itself to her: did she love him?

On the rest of the way to Moscow, though the princess' position
was not a cheerful one, Dunyasha, who went with her in the carriage,
more than once noticed that her mistress leaned out of the window
and smiled at something with an expression of mingled joy and sorrow.

"Well, supposing I do love him?" thought Princess Mary.

Ashamed as she was of acknowledging to herself that she had fallen
in love with a man who would perhaps never love her, she comforted
herself with the thought that no one would ever know it and that she
would not be to blame if, without ever speaking of it to anyone, she
continued to the end of her life to love the man with whom she had
fallen in love for the first and last time in her life.

Sometimes when she recalled his looks, his sympathy, and his
words, happiness did not appear impossible to her. It was at those
moments that Dunyasha noticed her smiling as she looked out of the
carriage window.

"Was it not fate that brought him to Bogucharovo, and at that very
moment?" thought Princess Mary. "And that caused his sister to
refuse my brother?" And in all this Princess Mary saw the hand of
Providence.

The impression the princess made on Rostov was a very agreeable one.
To remember her gave him pleasure, and when his comrades, hearing of
his adventure at Bogucharovo, rallied him on having gone to look for
hay and having picked up one of the wealthiest heiresses in Russia, he
grew angry. It made him angry just because the idea of marrying the
gentle Princess Mary, who was attractive to him and had an enormous
fortune, had against his will more than once entered his head. For
himself personally Nicholas could not wish for a better wife: by
marrying her he would make the countess his mother happy, would be
able to put his father's affairs in order, and would even--he felt it-
ensure Princess Mary's happiness.

But Sonya? And his plighted word? That was why Rostov grew angry
when he was rallied about Princess Bolkonskaya.





CHAPTER XV


On receiving command of the armies Kutuzov remembered Prince
Andrew and sent an order for him to report at headquarters.

Prince Andrew arrived at Tsarevo-Zaymishche on the very day and at
the very hour that Kutuzov was reviewing the troops for the first
time. He stopped in the village at the priest's house in front of
which stood the commander in chief's carriage, and he sat down on
the bench at the gate awaiting his Serene Highness, as everyone now
called Kutuzov. From the field beyond the village came now sounds of
regimental music and now the roar of many voices shouting "Hurrah!" to
the new commander in chief. Two orderlies, a courier and a major-domo,
stood near by, some ten paces from Prince Andrew, availing
themselves of Kutuzov's absence and of the fine weather. A short,
swarthy lieutenant colonel of hussars with thick mustaches and
whiskers rode up to the gate and, glancing at Prince Andrew,
inquired whether his Serene Highness was putting up there and
whether he would soon be back.

Prince Andrew replied that he was not on his Serene Highness'
staff but was himself a new arrival. The lieutenant colonel turned
to a smart orderly, who, with the peculiar contempt with which a
commander in chief's orderly speaks to officers, replied:

"What? His Serene Highness? I expect he'll be here soon. What do you
want?"

The lieutenant colonel of hussars smiled beneath his mustache at the
orderly's tone, dismounted, gave his horse to a dispatch runner, and
approached Bolkonski with a slight bow. Bolkonski made room for him on
the bench and the lieutenant colonel sat down beside him.

"You're also waiting for the commander in chief?" said he. "They say
he weceives evewyone, thank God!... It's awful with those sausage
eaters! Ermolov had weason to ask to be pwomoted to be a German! Now
p'waps Wussians will get a look in. As it was, devil only knows what
was happening. We kept wetweating and wetweating. Did you take part in
the campaign?" he asked.

"I had the pleasure," replied Prince Andrew, "not only of taking
part in the retreat but of losing in that retreat all I held dear--not
to mention the estate and home of my birth--my father, who died of
grief. I belong to the province of Smolensk."

"Ah? You're Pwince Bolkonski? Vewy glad to make your acquaintance!
I'm Lieutenant Colonel Denisov, better known as 'Vaska,'" said
Denisov, pressing Prince Andrew's hand and looking into his face
with a particularly kindly attention. "Yes, I heard," said he
sympathetically, and after a short pause added: "Yes, it's Scythian
warfare. It's all vewy well--only not for those who get it in the
neck. So you are Pwince Andwew Bolkonski?" He swayed his head. "Vewy
pleased, Pwince, to make your acquaintance!" he repeated again,
smiling sadly, and he again pressed Prince Andrew's hand.

Prince Andrew knew Denisov from what Natasha had told him of her
first suitor. This memory carried him sadly and sweetly back to
those painful feelings of which he had not thought lately, but which
still found place in his soul. Of late he had received so many new and
very serious impressions--such as the retreat from Smolensk, his visit
to Bald Hills, and the recent news of his father's death--and had
experienced so many emotions, that for a long time past those memories
had not entered his mind, and now that they did, they did not act on
him with nearly their former strength. For Denisov, too, the
memories awakened by the name of Bolkonski belonged to a distant,
romantic past, when after supper and after Natasha's singing he had
proposed to a little girl of fifteen without realizing what he was
doing. He smiled at the recollection of that time and of his love
for Natasha, and passed at once to what now interested him
passionately and exclusively. This was a plan of campaign he had
devised while serving at the outposts during the retreat. He had
proposed that plan to Barclay de Tolly and now wished to propose it to
Kutuzov. The plan was based on the fact that the French line of
operation was too extended, and it proposed that instead of, or
concurrently with, action on the front to bar the advance of the
French, we should attack their line of communication. He began
explaining his plan to Prince Andrew.

"They can't hold all that line. It's impossible. I will undertake to
bweak thwough. Give me five hundwed men and I will bweak the line,
that's certain! There's only one way--guewilla warfare!"

Denisov rose and began gesticulating as he explained his plan to
Bolkonski. In the midst of his explanation shouts were heard from
the army, growing more incoherent and more diffused, mingling with
music and songs and coming from the field where the review was held.
Sounds of hoofs and shouts were nearing the village.

"He's coming! He's coming!" shouted a Cossack standing at the gate.

Bolkonski and Denisov moved to the gate, at which a knot of soldiers
(a guard of honor) was standing, and they saw Kutuzov coming down
the street mounted on a rather small sorrel horse. A huge suite of
generals rode behind him. Barclay was riding almost beside him, and
a crowd of officers ran after and around them shouting, "Hurrah!"

His adjutants galloped into the yard before him. Kutuzov was
impatiently urging on his horse, which ambled smoothly under his
weight, and he raised his hand to his white Horse Guard's cap with a
red band and no peak, nodding his head continually. When he came up to
the guard of honor, a fine set of Grenadiers mostly wearing
decorations, who were giving him the salute, he looked at them
silently and attentively for nearly a minute with the steady gaze of a
commander and then turned to the crowd of generals and officers
surrounding him. Suddenly his face assumed a subtle expression, he
shrugged his shoulders with an air of perplexity.

"And with such fine fellows to retreat and retreat! Well, good-by,
General," he added, and rode into the yard past Prince Andrew and
Denisov.

"Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!" shouted those behind him.

Since Prince Andrew had last seen him Kutuzov had grown still more
corpulent, flaccid, and fat. But the bleached eyeball, the scar, and
the familiar weariness of his expression were still the same. He was
wearing the white Horse Guard's cap and a military overcoat with a
whip hanging over his shoulder by a thin strap. He sat heavily and
swayed limply on his brisk little horse.

"Whew... whew... whew!" he whistled just audibly as he rode into the
yard. His face expressed the relief of relaxed strain felt by a man
who means to rest after a ceremony. He drew his left foot out of the
stirrup and, lurching with his whole body and puckering his face
with the effort, raised it with difficulty onto the saddle, leaned
on his knee, groaned, and slipped down into the arms of the Cossacks
and adjutants who stood ready to assist him.

He pulled himself together, looked round, screwing up his eyes,
glanced at Prince Andrew, and, evidently not recognizing him, moved
with his waddling gait to the porch. "Whew... whew... whew!" he
whistled, and again glanced at Prince Andrew. As often occurs with old
men, it was only after some seconds that the impression produced by
Prince Andrew's face linked itself up with Kutuzov's remembrance of
his personality.

"Ah, how do you do, my dear prince? How do you do, my dear boy? Come
along..." said he, glancing wearily round, and he stepped onto the
porch which creaked under his weight.

He unbuttoned his coat and sat down on a bench in the porch.

"And how's your father?"

"I received news of his death, yesterday," replied Prince Andrew
abruptly.

Kutuzov looked at him with eyes wide open with dismay and then
took off his cap and crossed himself:

"May the kingdom of Heaven be his! God's will be done to us all!" He
sighed deeply, his whole chest heaving, and was silent for a while. "I
loved him and respected him, and sympathize with you with all my
heart."

He embraced Prince Andrew, pressing him to his fat breast, and for
some time did not let him go. When he released him Prince Andrew saw
that Kutuzov's flabby lips were trembling and that tears were in his
eyes. He sighed and pressed on the bench with both hands to raise
himself.

"Come! Come with me, we'll have a talk," said he.

But at that moment Denisov, no more intimidated by his superiors
than by the enemy, came with jingling spurs up the steps of the porch,
despite the angry whispers of the adjutants who tried to stop him.
Kutuzov, his hands still pressed on the seat, glanced at him glumly.
Denisov, having given his name, announced that he had to communicate
to his Serene Highness a matter of great importance for their
country's welfare. Kutuzov looked wearily at him and, lifting his
hands with a gesture of annoyance, folded them across his stomach,
repeating the words: "For our country's welfare? Well, what is it?
Speak!" Denisov blushed like a girl (it was strange to see the color
rise in that shaggy, bibulous, time-worn face) and boldly began to
expound his plan of cutting the enemy's lines of communication between
Smolensk and Vyazma. Denisov came from those parts and knew the
country well. His plan seemed decidedly a good one, especially from
the strength of conviction with which he spoke. Kutuzov looked down at
his own legs, occasionally glancing at the door of the adjoining hut
as if expecting something unpleasant to emerge from it. And from
that hut, while Denisov was speaking, a general with a portfolio under
his arm really did appear.

"What?" said Kutuzov, in the midst of Denisov's explanations, "are
you ready so soon?"

"Ready, your Serene Highness," replied the general.

Kutuzov swayed his head, as much as to say: "How is one man to
deal with it all?" and again listened to Denisov.

"I give my word of honor as a Wussian officer," said Denisov,
"that I can bweak Napoleon's line of communication!"

"What relation are you to Intendant General Kiril Andreevich
Denisov?" asked Kutuzov, interrupting him.

"He is my uncle, your Sewene Highness."

"Ah, we were friends," said Kutuzov cheerfully. "All right, all
right, friend, stay here at the staff and tomorrow we'll have a talk."

With a nod to Denisov he turned away and put out his hand for the
papers Konovnitsyn had brought him.

"Would not your Serene Highness like to come inside?" said the
general on duty in a discontented voice, "the plans must be examined
and several papers have to be signed."

An adjutant came out and announced that everything was in
readiness within. But Kutuzov evidently did not wish to enter that
room till he was disengaged. He made a grimace...

"No, tell them to bring a small table out here, my dear boy. I'll
look at them here," said he. "Don't go away," he added, turning to
Prince Andrew, who remained in the porch and listened to the general's
report.

While this was being given, Prince Andrew heard the whisper of a
woman's voice and the rustle of a silk dress behind the door.
Several times on glancing that way he noticed behind that door a
plump, rosy, handsome woman in a pink dress with a lilac silk kerchief
on her head, holding a dish and evidently awaiting the entrance of the
commander in chief. Kutuzov's adjutant whispered to Prince Andrew
that this was the wife of the priest whose home it was, and that she
intended to offer his Serene Highness bread and salt. "Her husband has
welcomed his Serene Highness with the cross at the church, and she
intends to welcome him in the house.... She's very pretty," added
the adjutant with a smile. At those words Kutuzov looked round. He was
listening to the general's report--which consisted chiefly of a
criticism of the position at Tsarevo-Zaymishche--as he had listened to
Denisov, and seven years previously had listened to the discussion
at the Austerlitz council of war. He evidently listened only because
he had ears which, though there was a piece of tow in one of them,
could not help hearing; but it was evident that nothing the general
could say would surprise or even interest him, that he knew all that
would be said beforehand, and heard it all only because he had to,
as one has to listen to the chanting of a service of prayer. All
that Denisov had said was clever and to the point. What the general
was saying was even more clever and to the point, but it was evident
that Kutuzov despised knowledge and cleverness, and knew of
something else that would decide the matter--something independent
of cleverness and knowledge. Prince Andrew watched the commander
in chief's face attentively, and the only expression he could see
there was one of boredom, curiosity as to the meaning of the
feminine whispering behind the door, and a desire to observe
propriety. It was evident that Kutuzov despised cleverness and
learning and even the patriotic feeling shown by Denisov, but despised
them not because of his own intellect, feelings, or knowledge--he
did not try to display any of these--but because of something else. He
despised them because of his old age and experience of life. The
only instruction Kutuzov gave of his own accord during that report
referred to looting by the Russian troops. At the end of the report
the general put before him for signature a paper relating to the
recovery of payment from army commanders for green oats mown down by
the soldiers, when landowners lodged petitions for compensation.

After hearing the matter, Kutuzov smacked his lips together and
shook his head.

"Into the stove... into the fire with it! I tell you once for all,
my dear fellow," said he, "into the fire with all such things! Let
them cut the crops and burn wood to their hearts' content. I don't
order it or allow it, but I don't exact compensation either. One can't
get on without it. 'When wood is chopped the chips will fly.'" He
looked at the paper again. "Oh, this German precision!" he muttered,
shaking his head.





CHAPTER XVI


"Well, that's all!" said Kutuzov as he signed the last of the
documents, and rising heavily and smoothing out the folds in his fat
white neck he moved toward the door with a more cheerful expression.

The priest's wife, flushing rosy red, caught up the dish she had
after all not managed to present at the right moment, though she had
so long been preparing for it, and with a low bow offered it to
Kutuzov.

He screwed up his eyes, smiled, lifted her chin with his hand, and
said:

"Ah, what a beauty! Thank you, sweetheart!"

He took some gold pieces from his trouser pocket and put them on the
dish for her. "Well, my dear, and how are we getting on?" he asked,
moving to the door of the room assigned to him. The priest's wife
smiled, and with dimples in her rosy cheeks followed him into the
room. The adjutant came out to the porch and asked Prince Andrew to
lunch with him. Half an hour later Prince Andrew was again called to
Kutuzov. He found him reclining in an armchair, still in the same
unbuttoned overcoat. He had in his hand a French book which he
closed as Prince Andrew entered, marking the place with a knife.
Prince Andrew saw by the cover that it was Les Chevaliers du Cygne
by Madame de Genlis.

"Well, sit down, sit down here. Let's have a talk," said Kutuzov.
"It's sad, very sad. But remember, my dear fellow, that I am a
father to you, a second father...."

Prince Andrew told Kutuzov all he knew of his father's death, and
what he had seen at Bald Hills when he passed through it.

"What... what they have brought us to!" Kutuzov suddenly cried in an
agitated voice, evidently picturing vividly to himself from Prince
Andrew's story the condition Russia was in. "But give me time, give me
time!" he said with a grim look, evidently not wishing to continue
this agitating conversation, and added: "I sent for you to keep you
with me."

"I thank your Serene Highness, but I fear I am no longer fit for the
staff," replied Prince Andrew with a smile which Kutuzov noticed.

Kutuzov glanced inquiringly at him.

"But above all," added Prince Andrew, "I have grown used to my
regiment, am fond of the officers, and I fancy the men also like me. I
should be sorry to leave the regiment. If I decline the honor of being
with you, believe me..."

A shrewd, kindly, yet subtly derisive expression lit up Kutuzov's
podgy face. He cut Bolkonski short.

"I am sorry, for I need you. But you're right, you're right! It's
not here that men are needed. Advisers are always plentiful, but men
are not. The regiments would not be what they are if the would-be
advisers served there as you do. I remember you at Austerlitz.... I
remember, yes, I remember you with the standard!" said Kutuzov, and
a flush of pleasure suffused Prince Andrew's face at this
recollection.

Taking his hand and drawing him downwards, Kutuzov offered his cheek
to be kissed, and again Prince Andrew noticed tears in the old man's
eyes. Though Prince Andrew knew that Kutuzov's tears came easily,
and that he was particularly tender to and considerate of him from a
wish to show sympathy with his loss, yet this reminder of Austerlitz
was both pleasant and flattering to him.

"Go your way and God be with you. I know your path is the path of
honor!" He paused. "I missed you at Bucharest, but I needed someone to
send." And changing the subject, Kutuzov began to speak of the Turkish
war and the peace that had been concluded. "Yes, I have been much
blamed," he said, "both for that war and the peace... but everything
came at the right time. Tout vient a point a celui qui sait attendre.*
And there were as many advisers there as here..." he went on,
returning to the subject of "advisers" which evidently occupied him.
"Ah, those advisers!" said he. "If we had listened to them all we
should not have made peace with Turkey and should not have been
through with that war. Everything in haste, but more haste, less
speed. Kamenski would have been lost if he had not died. He stormed
fortresses with thirty thousand men. It is not difficult to capture
a fortress but it is difficult to win a campaign. For that, storming
and attacking but patience and time are wanted. Kamenski sent soldiers
to Rustchuk, but I only employed these two things and took more
fortresses than Kamenski and made them but eat horseflesh!" He swayed
his head. "And the French shall too, believe me," he went on,
growing warmer and beating his chest, "I'll make them eat horseflesh!"
And tears again dimmed his eyes.


*"Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait."


"But shan't we have to accept battle?" remarked Prince Andrew.

"We shall if everybody wants it; it can't be helped.... But
believe me, my dear boy, there is nothing stronger than those two:
patience and time, they will do it all. But the advisers n'entendent
pas de cette oreille, voila le mal.* Some want a thing--others
don't. What's one to do?" he asked, evidently expecting an answer.
"Well, what do you want us to do?" he repeated and his eye shone
with a deep, shrewd look. "I'll tell you what to do," he continued, as
Prince Andrew still did not reply: "I will tell you what to do, and
what I do. Dans le doute, mon cher," he paused, "abstiens-toi"*[2]--he
articulated the French proverb deliberately.


*"Don't see it that way, that's the trouble."

*[2] "When in doubt, my dear fellow, do nothing."


"Well, good-by, my dear fellow; remember that with all my heart I
share your sorrow, and that for you I am not a Serene Highness, nor
a prince, nor a commander in chief, but a father! If you want anything
come straight to me. Good-by, my dear boy."

Again he embraced and kissed Prince Andrew, but before the latter
had left the room Kutuzov gave a sigh of relief and went on with his
unfinished novel, Les Chevaliers du Cygne by Madame de Genlis.

Prince Andrew could not have explained how or why it was, but
after that interview with Kutuzov he went back to his regiment
reassured as to the general course of affairs and as to the man to
whom it had been entrusted. The more he realized the absence of all
personal motive in that old man--in whom there seemed to remain only
the habit of passions, and in place of an intellect (grouping events
and drawing conclusions) only the capacity calmly to contemplate the
course of events--the more reassured he was that everything would be
as it should. "He will not bring in any plan of his own. He will not
devise or undertake anything," thought Prince Andrew, "but he will
hear everything, remember everything, and put everything in its place.
He will not hinder anything useful nor allow anything harmful. He
understands that there is something stronger and more important than
his own will--the inevitable course of events, and he can see them and
grasp their significance, and seeing that significance can refrain
from meddling and renounce his personal wish directed to something
else. And above all," thought Prince Andrew, "one believes in him
because he's Russian, despite the novel by Genlis and the French
proverbs, and because his voice shook when he said: 'What they have
brought us to!' and had a sob in it when he said he would 'make them
eat horseflesh!'"

On such feelings, more or less dimly shared by all, the unanimity
and general approval were founded with which, despite court
influences, the popular choice of Kutuzov as commander in chief was
received.





CHAPTER XVII


After the Emperor had left Moscow, life flowed on there in its usual
course, and its course was so very usual that it was difficult to
remember the recent days of patriotic elation and ardor, hard to
believe that Russia was really in danger and that the members of the
English Club were also sons of the Fatherland ready to sacrifice
everything for it. The one thing that recalled the patriotic fervor
everyone had displayed during the Emperor's stay was the call for
contributions of men and money, a necessity that as soon as the
promises had been made assumed a legal, official form and became
unavoidable.

With the enemy's approach to Moscow, the Moscovites' view of their
situation did not grow more serious but on the contrary became even
more frivolous, as always happens with people who see a great danger
approaching. At the approach of danger there are always two voices
that speak with equal power in the human soul: one very reasonably
tells a man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of
escaping it; the other, still more reasonably, says that it is too
depressing and painful to think of the danger, since it is not in
man's power to foresee everything and avert the general course of
events, and it is therefore better to disregard what is painful till
it comes, and to think about what is pleasant. In solitude a man
generally listens to the first voice, but in society to the second. So
it was now with the inhabitants of Moscow. It was long since people
had been as gay in Moscow as that year.

Rostopchin's broadsheets, headed by woodcuts of a drink shop, a
potman, and a Moscow burgher called Karpushka Chigirin, "who--having
been a militiaman and having had rather too much at the pub--heard
that Napoleon wished to come to Moscow, grew angry, abused the
French in very bad language, came out of the drink shop, and, under
the sign of the eagle, began to address the assembled people," were
read and discussed, together with the latest of Vasili Lvovich
Pushkin's bouts rimes.

In the corner room at the Club, members gathered to read these
broadsheets, and some liked the way Karpushka jeered at the French,
saying: "They will swell up with Russian cabbage, burst with our
buckwheat porridge, and choke themselves with cabbage soup. They are
all dwarfs and one peasant woman will toss three of them with a
hayfork." Others did not like that tone and said it was stupid and
vulgar. It was said that Rostopchin had expelled all Frenchmen and
even all foreigners from Moscow, and that there had been some spies
and agents of Napoleon among them; but this was told chiefly to
introduce Rostopchin's witty remark on that occasion. The foreigners
were deported to Nizhni by boat, and Rostopchin had said to them in
French: "Rentrez en vousmemes; entrez dans la barque, et n'en faites
pas une barque de Charon."* There was talk of all the government
offices having been already removed from Moscow, and to this
Shinshin's witticism was added--that for that alone Moscow ought to be
grateful to Napoleon. It was said that Mamonov's regiment would cost
him eight hundred thousand rubles, and that Bezukhov had spent even
more on his, but that the best thing about Bezukhov's action was
that he himself was going to don a uniform and ride at the head of his
regiment without charging anything for the show.


*"Think it over; get into the barque, and take care not to make it a
barque of Charon."


"You don't spare anyone," said Julie Drubetskaya as she collected
and pressed together a bunch of raveled lint with her thin, beringed
fingers.

Julie was preparing to leave Moscow next day and was giving a
farewell soiree.

"Bezukhov est ridicule, but he is so kind and good-natured. What
pleasure is there to be so caustique?"

"A forfeit!" cried a young man in militia uniform whom Julie
called "mon chevalier," and who was going with her to Nizhni.

In Julie's set, as in many other circles in Moscow, it had been
agreed that they would speak nothing but Russian and that those who
made a slip and spoke French should pay fines to the Committee of
Voluntary Contributions.

"Another forfeit for a Gallicism," said a Russian writer who was
present. "'What pleasure is there to be' is not Russian!"

"You spare no one," continued Julie to the young man without heeding
the author's remark.

"For caustique--I am guilty and will pay, and I am prepared to pay
again for the pleasure of telling you the truth. For Gallicisms I
won't be responsible," she remarked, turning to the author: "I have
neither the money nor the time, like Prince Galitsyn, to engage a
master to teach me Russian!"

"Ah, here he is!" she added. "Quand on... No, no," she said to the
militia officer, "you won't catch me. Speak of the sun and you see its
rays!" and she smiled amiably at Pierre. "We were just talking of
you," she said with the facility in lying natural to a society
woman. "We were saying that your regiment would be sure to be better
than Mamonov's."

"Oh, don't talk to me of my regiment," replied Pierre, kissing his
hostess' hand and taking a seat beside her. "I am so sick of it."

"You will, of course, command it yourself?" said Julie, directing
a sly, sarcastic glance toward the militia officer.

The latter in Pierre's presence had ceased to be caustic, and his
face expressed perplexity as to what Julie's smile might mean. In
spite of his absent-mindedness and good nature, Pierre's personality
immediately checked any attempt to ridicule him to his face.

"No," said Pierre, with a laughing glance at his big, stout body. "I
should make too good a target for the French, besides I am afraid I
should hardly be able to climb onto a horse."

Among those whom Julie's guests happened to choose to gossip about
were the Rostovs.

"I hear that their affairs are in a very bad way," said Julie.
"And he is so unreasonable, the count himself I mean. The
Razumovskis wanted to buy his house and his estate near Moscow, but it
drags on and on. He asks too much."

"No, I think the sale will come off in a few days," said someone.
"Though it is madness to buy anything in Moscow now."

"Why?" asked Julie. "You don't think Moscow is in danger?"

"Then why are you leaving?"

"I? What a question! I am going because... well, because everyone is
going: and besides--I am not Joan of Arc or an Amazon."

"Well, of course, of course! Let me have some more strips of linen."

"If he manages the business properly he will be able to pay off
all his debts," said the militia officer, speaking of Rostov.

"A kindly old man but not up to much. And why do they stay on so
long in Moscow? They meant to leave for the country long ago.
Natalie is quite well again now, isn't she?" Julie asked Pierre with a
knowing smile.

"They are waiting for their younger son," Pierre replied. "He joined
Obolenski's Cossacks and went to Belaya Tserkov where the regiment
is being formed. But now they have had him transferred to my
regiment and are expecting him every day. The count wanted to leave
long ago, but the countess won't on any account leave Moscow till
her son returns."

"I met them the day before yesterday at the Arkharovs'. Natalie
has recovered her looks and is brighter. She sang a song. How easily
some people get over everything!"

"Get over what?" inquired Pierre, looking displeased.

Julie smiled.

"You know, Count, such knights as you are only found in Madame de
Souza's novels."

"What knights? What do you mean?" demanded Pierre, blushing.

"Oh, come, my dear count! C'est la fable de tout Moscou. Je vous
admire, ma parole d'honneur!"*


*"It is the talk of all Moscow. My word, I admire you!"


"Forfeit, forfeit!" cried the militia officer.

"All right, one can't talk--how tiresome!"

"What is 'the talk of all Moscow'?" Pierre asked angrily, rising
to his feet.

"Come now, Count, you know!"

"I don't know anything about it," said Pierre.

"I know you were friendly with Natalie, and so... but I was always
more friendly with Vera--that dear Vera."

"No, madame!" Pierre continued in a tone of displeasure, "I have not
taken on myself the role of Natalie Rostova's knight at all, and
have not been their house for nearly a month. But I cannot
understand the cruelty..."

"Qui s'excuse s'accuse,"* said Julie, smiling and waving the lint
triumphantly, and to have the last word she promptly changed the
subject. "Do you know what I heard today? Poor Mary Bolkonskaya
arrived in Moscow yesterday. Do you know that she has lost her
father?"


*"Who excuses himself, accuses himself."


"Really? Where is she? I should like very much to see her," said
Pierre.

"I spent the evening with her yesterday. She is going to their
estate near Moscow either today or tomorrow morning, with her nephew."

"Well, and how is she?" asked Pierre.

"She is well, but sad. But do you know who rescued her? It is
quite a romance. Nicholas Rostov! She was surrounded, and they
wanted to kill her and had wounded some of her people. He rushed in
and saved her...."

"Another romance," said the militia officer. "Really, this general
flight has been arranged to get all the old maids married off. Catiche
is one and Princess Bolkonskaya another."

"Do you know, I really believe she is un petit peu amoureuse du
jeune homme."*


*"A little bit in love with the young man."


"Forfeit, forfeit, forfeit!"

"But how could one say that in Russian?"





CHAPTER XVIII


When Pierre returned home he was handed two of Rostopchin's
broadsheets that had been brought that day.

The first declared that the report that Count Rostopchin had
forbidden people to leave Moscow was false; on the contrary he was
glad that ladies and tradesmen's wives were leaving the city. "There
will be less panic and less gossip," ran the broadsheet "but I will
stake my life on it that that will not enter Moscow." These words
showed Pierre clearly for the first time that the French would enter
Moscow. The second broadsheet stated that our headquarters were at
Vyazma, that Count Wittgenstein had defeated the French, but that as
many of the inhabitants of Moscow wished to be armed, weapons were
ready for them at the arsenal: sabers, pistols, and muskets which
could be had at a low price. The tone of the proclamation was not as
jocose as in the former Chigirin talks. Pierre pondered over these
broadsheets. Evidently the terrible stormcloud he had desired with the
whole strength of his soul but which yet aroused involuntary horror in
him was drawing near.

"Shall I join the army and enter the service, or wait?" he asked
himself for the hundredth time. He took a pack of cards that lay on
the table and began to lay them out for a game of patience.

"If this patience comes out," he said to himself after shuffling the
cards, holding them in his hand, and lifting his head, "if it comes
out, it means... what does it mean?"

He had not decided what it should mean when he heard the voice of
the eldest princess at the door asking whether she might come in.

"Then it will mean that I must go to the army," said Pierre to
himself. "Come in, come in!" he added to the princess.

Only the eldest princess, the one with the stony face and long
waist, was still living in Pierre's house. The two younger ones had
both married.

"Excuse my coming to you, cousin," she said in a reproachful and
agitated voice. "You know some decision must be come to. What is going
to happen? Everyone has left Moscow and the people are rioting. How is
it that we are staying on?"

"On the contrary, things seem satisfactory, ma cousine," said Pierre
in the bantering tone he habitually adopted toward her, always feeling
uncomfortable in the role of her benefactor.

"Satisfactory, indeed! Very satisfactory! Barbara Ivanovna told me
today how our troops are distinguishing themselves. It certainly
does them credit! And the people too are quite mutinous--they no
longer obey, even my maid has taken to being rude. At this rate they
will soon begin beating us. One can't walk in the streets. But,
above all, the French will be here any day now, so what are we waiting
for? I ask just one thing of you, cousin," she went on, "arrange for
me to be taken to Petersburg. Whatever I may be, I can't live under
Bonaparte's rule."

"Oh, come, ma cousine! Where do you get your information from? On
the contrary..."

"I won't submit to your Napoleon! Others may if they please.... If
you don't want to do this..."

"But I will, I'll give the order at once."

The princess was apparently vexed at not having anyone to be angry
with. Muttering to herself, she sat down on a chair.

"But you have been misinformed," said Pierre. "Everything is quiet
in the city and there is not the slightest danger. See! I've just been
reading..." He showed her the broadsheet. "Count Rostopchin writes
that he will stake his life on it that the enemy will not enter
Moscow."

"Oh, that count of yours!" said the princess malevolently. "He is
a hypocrite, a rascal who has himself roused the people to riot.
Didn't he write in those idiotic broadsheets that anyone, 'whoever
it might be, should be dragged to the lockup by his hair'? (How
silly!) 'And honor and glory to whoever captures him,' he says. This
is what his cajolery has brought us to! Barbara Ivanovna told me the
mob near killed her because she said something in French."

"Oh, but it's so... You take everything so to heart," said Pierre,
and began laying out his cards for patience.

Although that patience did come out, Pierre did not join the army,
but remained in deserted Moscow ever in the same state of agitation,
irresolution, and alarm, yet at the same time joyfully expecting
something terrible.

Next day toward evening the princess set off, and Pierre's head
steward came to inform him that the money needed for the equipment
of his regiment could not be found without selling one of the estates.
In general the head steward made out to Pierre that his project of
raising a regiment would ruin him. Pierre listened to him, scarcely
able to repress a smile.

"Well then, sell it," said he. "What's to be done? I can't draw back
now!"

The worse everything became, especially his own affairs, the
better was Pierre pleased and the more evident was it that the
catastrophe he expected was approaching. Hardly anyone he knew was
left in town. Julie had gone, and so had Princess Mary. Of his
intimate friends only the Rostovs remained, but he did not go to see
them.

To distract his thoughts he drove that day to the village of
Vorontsovo to see the great balloon Leppich was constructing to
destroy the foe, and a trial balloon that was to go up next day. The
balloon was not yet ready, but Pierre learned that it was being
constructed by the Emperor's desire. The Emperor had written to
Count Rostopchin as follows:


As soon as Leppich is ready, get together a crew of reliable and
intelligent men for his car and send a courier to General Kutuzov to
let him know. I have informed him of the matter.

Please impress upon Leppich to be very careful where he descends for
the first time, that he may not make a mistake and fall into the
enemy's hands. It is essential for him to combine his movements with
those of the commander in chief.


On his way home from Vorontsovo, as he was passing the Bolotnoe
Place Pierre, seeing a large crowd round the Lobnoe Place, stopped and
got out of his trap. A French cook accused of being a spy was being
flogged. The flogging was only just over, and the executioner was
releasing from the flogging bench a stout man with red whiskers, in
blue stockings and a green jacket, who was moaning piteously.
Another criminal, thin and pale, stood near. Judging by their faces
they were both Frenchmen. With a frightened and suffering look
resembling that on the thin Frenchman's face, Pierre pushed his way in
through the crowd.

"What is it? Who is it? What is it for?" he kept asking.

But the attention of the crowd--officials, burghers, shopkeepers,
peasants, and women in cloaks and in pelisses--was so eagerly centered
on what was passing in Lobnoe Place that no one answered him. The
stout man rose, frowned, shrugged his shoulders, and evidently
trying to appear firm began to pull on his jacket without looking
about him, but suddenly his lips trembled and he began to cry, in
the way full-blooded grown-up men cry, though angry with himself for
doing so. In the crowd people began talking loudly, to stifle their
feelings of pity as it seemed to Pierre.

"He's cook to some prince."

"Eh, mounseer, Russian sauce seems to be sour to a Frenchman... sets
his teeth on edge!" said a wrinkled clerk who was standing behind
Pierre, when the Frenchman began to cry.

The clerk glanced round, evidently hoping that his joke would be
appreciated. Some people began to laugh, others continued to watch
in dismay the executioner who was undressing the other man.

Pierre choked, his face puckered, and he turned hastily away, went
back to his trap muttering something to himself as he went, and took
his seat. As they drove along he shuddered and exclaimed several times
so audibly that the coachman asked him:

"What is your pleasure?"

"Where are you going?" shouted Pierre to the man, who was driving to
Lubyanka Street.

"To the Governor's, as you ordered," answered the coachman.

"Fool! Idiot!" shouted Pierre, abusing his coachman--a thing he
rarely did. "Home, I told you! And drive faster, blockhead!" "I must
get away this very day," he murmured to himself.

At the sight of the tortured Frenchman and the crowd surrounding the
Lobnoe Place, Pierre had so definitely made up his mind that he
could no longer remain in Moscow and would leave for the army that
very day that it seemed to him that either he had told the coachman
this or that the man ought to have known it for himself.

On reaching home Pierre gave orders to Evstafey--his head coachman
who knew everything, could do anything, and was known to all Moscow-
that he would leave that night for the army at Mozhaysk, and that
his saddle horses should be sent there. This could not all be arranged
that day, so on Evstafey's representation Pierre had to put off his
departure till next day to allow time for the relay horses to be
sent on in advance.

On the twenty-fourth the weather cleared up after a spell of rain,
and after dinner Pierre left Moscow. When changing horses that night
in Perkhushkovo, he learned that there had been a great battle that
evening. (This was the battle of Shevardino.) He was told that there
in Perkhushkovo the earth trembled from the firing, but nobody could
answer his questions as to who had won. At dawn next day Pierre was
approaching Mozhaysk.

Every house in Mozhaysk had soldiers quartered in it, and at the
hostel where Pierre was met by his groom and coachman there was no
room to be had. It was full of officers.

Everywhere in Mozhaysk and beyond it, troops were stationed or on
the march. Cossacks, foot and horse soldiers, wagons, caissons, and
cannon were everywhere. Pierre pushed forward as fast as he could, and
the farther he left Moscow behind and the deeper he plunged into
that sea of troops the more was he overcome by restless agitation
and a new and joyful feeling he had not experienced before. It was a
feeling akin to what he had felt at the Sloboda Palace during the
Emperor's visit--a sense of the necessity of undertaking something and
sacrificing something. He now experienced a glad consciousness that
everything that constitutes men's happiness--the comforts of life,
wealth, even life itself--is rubbish it is pleasant to throw away,
compared with something... With what? Pierre could not say, and he did
not try to determine for whom and for what he felt such particular
delight in sacrificing everything. He was not occupied with the
question of what to sacrifice for; the fact of sacrificing in itself
afforded him a new and joyous sensation.





CHAPTER XIX


On the twenty-fourth of August the battle of the Shevardino
Redoubt was fought, on the twenty-fifth not a shot was fired by either
side, and on the twenty-sixth the battle of Borodino itself took
place.

Why and how were the battles of Shevardino and Borodino given and
accepted? Why was the battle of Borodino fought? There was not the
least sense in it for either the French or the Russians. Its immediate
result for the Russians was, and was bound to be, that we were brought
nearer to the destruction of Moscow--which we feared more than
anything in the world; and for the French its immediate result was
that they were brought nearer to the destruction of their whole
army--which they feared more than anything in the world. What the
result must be was quite obvious, and yet Napoleon offered and Kutuzov
accepted that battle.

If the commanders had been guided by reason, it would seem that it
must have been obvious to Napoleon that by advancing thirteen
hundred miles and giving battle with a probability of losing a quarter
of his army, he was advancing to certain destruction, and it must have
been equally clear to Kutuzov that by accepting battle and risking the
loss of a quarter of his army he would certainly lose Moscow. For
Kutuzov this was mathematically clear, as it is that if when playing
draughts I have one man less and go on exchanging, I shall certainly
lose, and therefore should not exchange. When my opponent has
sixteen men and I have fourteen, I am only one eighth weaker than
he, but when I have exchanged thirteen more men he will be three times
as strong as I am.

Before the battle of Borodino our strength in proportion to the
French was about as five to six, but after that battle it was little
more than one to two: previously we had a hundred thousand against a
hundred and twenty thousand; afterwards little more than fifty
thousand against a hundred thousand. Yet the shrewd and experienced
Kutuzov accepted the battle, while Napoleon, who was said to be a
commander of genius, gave it, losing a quarter of his army and
lengthening his lines of communication still more. If it is said
that he expected to end the campaign by occupying Moscow as he had
ended a previous campaign by occupying Vienna, there is much
evidence to the contrary. Napoleon's historians themselves tell us
that from Smolensk onwards he wished to stop, knew the danger of his
extended position, and knew that the occupation of Moscow would not be
the end of the campaign, for he had seen at Smolensk the state in
which Russian towns were left to him, and had not received a single
reply to his repeated announcements of his wish to negotiate.

In giving and accepting battle at Borodino, Kutuzov acted
involuntarily and irrationally. But later on, to fit what had
occurred, the historians provided cunningly devised evidence of the
foresight and genius the generals who, of all the blind tools of
history were the most enslaved and involuntary.

The ancients have left us model heroic poems in which the heroes
furnish the whole interest of the story, and we are still unable to
accustom ourselves to the fact that for our epoch histories of that
kind are meaningless.

On the other question, how the battle of Borodino and the
preceding battle of Shevardino were fought, there also exists a
definite and well-known, but quite false, conception. All the
historians describe the affair as follows:

The Russian army, they say, in its retreat from Smolensk sought
out for itself the best position for a general engagement and found
such a position at Borodino.

The Russians, they say, fortified this position in advance on the
left of the highroad (from Moscow to Smolensk) and almost at a right
angle to it, from Borodino to Utitsa, at the very place where the
battle was fought.

In front of this position, they say, a fortified outpost was set
up on the Shevardino mound to observe the enemy. On the twenty-fourth,
we are told, Napoleon attacked this advanced post and took it, and, on
the twenty-sixth, attacked the whole Russian army, which was in
position on the field of Borodino.

So the histories say, and it is all quite wrong, as anyone who cares
to look into the matter can easily convince himself.

The Russians did not seek out the best position but, on the
contrary, during the retreat passed many positions better than
Borodino. They did not stop at any one of these positions because
Kutuzov did not wish to occupy a position he had not himself chosen,
because the popular demand for a battle had not yet expressed itself
strongly enough, and because Miloradovich had not yet arrived with the
militia, and for many other reasons. The fact is that other
positions they had passed were stronger, and that the position at
Borodino (the one where the battle was fought), far from being strong,
was no more a position than any other spot one might find in the
Russian Empire by sticking a pin into the map at hazard.

Not only did the Russians not fortify the position on the field of
Borodino to the left of, and at a right angle to, the highroad (that
is, the position on which the battle took place), but never till the
twenty-fifth of August, 1812, did they think that a battle might be
fought there. This was shown first by the fact that there were no
entrenchments there by the twenty fifth and that those begun on the
twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth were not completed, and secondly, by the
position of the Shevardino Redoubt. That redoubt was quite senseless
in front of the position where the battle was accepted. Why was it
more strongly fortified than any other post? And why were all
efforts exhausted and six thousand men sacrificed to defend it till
late at night on the twenty-fourth? A Cossack patrol would have
sufficed to observe the enemy. Thirdly, as proof that the position
on which the battle was fought had not been foreseen and that the
Shevardino Redoubt was not an advanced post of that position, we
have the fact that up to the twenty-fifth, Barclay de Tolly and
Bagration were convinced that the Shevardino Redoubt was the left
flank of the position, and that Kutuzov himself in his report, written
in hot haste after the battle, speaks of the Shevardino Redoubt as the
left flank of the position. It was much later, when reports on the
battle of Borodino were written at leisure, that the incorrect and
extraordinary statement was invented (probably to justify the mistakes
of a commander in chief who had to be represented as infallible)
that the Shevardino Redoubt was an advanced post--whereas in reality
it was simply a fortified point on the left flank--and that the battle
of Borodino was fought by us on an entrenched position previously
selected, where as it was fought on a quite unexpected spot which
was almost unentrenched.

The case was evidently this: a position was selected along the river
Kolocha--which crosses the highroad not at a right angle but at an
acute angle--so that the left flank was at Shevardino, the right flank
near the village of Novoe, and the center at Borodino at the
confluence of the rivers Kolocha and Voyna.

To anyone who looks at the field of Borodino without thinking of how
the battle was actually fought, this position, protected by the
river Kolocha, presents itself as obvious for an army whose object was
to prevent an enemy from advancing along the Smolensk road to Moscow.

Napoleon, riding to Valuevo on the twenty-fourth, did not see (as
the history books say he did) the position of the Russians from Utitsa
to Borodino (he could not have seen that position because it did not
exist), nor did he see an advanced post of the Russian army, but while
pursuing the Russian rearguard he came upon the left flank of the
Russian position--at the Shevardino Redoubt--and unexpectedly for
the Russians moved his army across the Kolocha. And the Russians,
not having time to begin a general engagement, withdrew their left
wing from the position they had intended to occupy and took up a new
position which had not been foreseen and was not fortified. By
crossing to the other side of the Kolocha to the left of the highroad,
Napoleon shifted the whole forthcoming battle from right to left
(looking from the Russian side) and transferred it to the plain
between Utitsa, Semenovsk, and Borodino--a plain no more
advantageous as a position than any other plain in Russia--and there
the whole battle of the twenty-sixth of August took place.

Had Napoleon not ridden out on the evening of the twenty-fourth to
the Kolocha, and had he not then ordered an immediate attack on the
redoubt but had begun the attack next morning, no one would have
doubted that the Shevardino Redoubt was the left flank of our and
the battle would have taken place where we expected it. In that case
we should probably have defended the Shevardino Redoubt--our left
flank--still more obstinately. We should have attacked Napoleon in the
center or on the right, and the engagement would have taken place on
the twenty-fifth, in the position we intended and had fortified. But
as the attack on our left flank took place in the evening after the
retreat of our rear guard (that is, immediately after the fight at
Gridneva), and as the Russian commanders did not wish, or were not
in time, to begin a general engagement then on the evening of the
twenty-fourth, the first and chief action of the battle of Borodino
was already lost on the twenty-fourth, and obviously led to the loss
of the one fought on the twenty-sixth.

After the loss of the Shevardino Redoubt, we found ourselves on
the morning of the twenty-fifth without a position for our left flank,
and were forced to bend it back and hastily entrench it where it
chanced to be.

Not only was the Russian army on the twenty-sixth defended by
weak, unfinished entrenchments, but the disadvantage of that
position was increased by the fact that the Russian commanders--not
having fully realized what had happened, namely the loss of our
position on the left flank and the shifting of the whole field of
the forthcoming battle from right to left--maintained their extended
position from the village of Novoe to Utitsa, and consequently had
to move their forces from right to left during the battle. So it
happened that throughout the whole battle the Russians opposed the
entire French army launched against our left flank with but half as
many men. (Poniatowski's action against Utitsa, and Uvarov's on the
right flank against the French, were actions distinct from the main
course of the battle.) So the battle of Borodino did not take place at
all as (in an effort to conceal our commanders' mistakes even at the
cost of diminishing the glory due to the Russian army and people) it
has been described. The battle of Borodino was not fought on a
chosen and entrenched position with forces only slightly weaker than
those of the enemy, but, as a result of the loss of the Shevardino
Redoubt, the Russians fought the battle of Borodino on an open and
almost unentrenched position, with forces only half as numerous as the
French; that is to say, under conditions in which it was not merely
unthinkable to fight for ten hours and secure an indecisive result,
but unthinkable to keep an army even from complete disintegration
and flight.





CHAPTER XX


On the morning of the twenty-fifth Pierre was leaving Mozhaysk. At
the descent of the high steep hill, down which a winding road led
out of the town past the cathedral on the right, where a service was
being held and the bells were ringing, Pierre got out of his vehicle
and proceeded on foot. Behind him a cavalry regiment was coming down
the hill preceded by its singers. Coming up toward him was a train
of carts carrying men who had been wounded in the engagement the day
before. The peasant drivers, shouting and lashing their horses, kept
crossing from side to side. The carts, in each of which three or
four wounded soldiers were lying or sitting, jolted over the stones
that had been thrown on the steep incline to make it something like
a road. The wounded, bandaged with rags, with pale cheeks,
compressed lips, and knitted brows, held on to the sides of the
carts as they were jolted against one another. Almost all of them
stared with naive, childlike curiosity at Pierre's white hat and green
swallow-tail coat.

Pierre's coachman shouted angrily at the convoy of wounded to keep
to one side of the road. The cavalry regiment, as it descended the
hill with its singers, surrounded Pierre's carriage and blocked the
road. Pierre stopped, being pressed against the side of the cutting in
which the road ran. The sunshine from behind the hill did not
penetrate into the cutting and there it was cold and damp, but above
Pierre's head was the bright August sunshine and the bells sounded
merrily. One of the carts with wounded stopped by the side of the road
close to Pierre. The driver in his bast shoes ran panting up to it,
placed a stone under one of its tireless hind wheels, and began
arranging the breech-band on his little horse.

One of the wounded, an old soldier with a bandaged arm who was
following the cart on foot, caught hold of it with his sound hand
and turned to look at Pierre.

"I say, fellow countryman! Will they set us down here or take us
on to Moscow?" he asked.

Pierre was so deep in thought that he did not hear the question.
He was looking now at the cavalry regiment that had met the convoy
of wounded, now at the cart by which he was standing, in which two
wounded men were sitting and one was lying. One of those sitting up in
the cart had probably been wounded in the cheek. His whole head was
wrapped in rags and one cheek was swollen to the size of a baby's
head. His nose and mouth were twisted to one side. This soldier was
looking at the cathedral and crossing himself. Another, a young lad, a
fair-haired recruit as white as though there was no blood in his
thin face, looked at Pierre kindly, with a fixed smile. The third
lay prone so that his face was not visible. The cavalry singers were
passing close by:

   Ah lost, quite lost... is my head so keen,
   Living in a foreign land.

they sang their soldiers' dance song.

As if responding to them but with a different sort of merriment, the
metallic sound of the bells reverberated high above and the hot rays
of the sun bathed the top of the opposite slope with yet another
sort of merriment. But beneath the slope, by the cart with the wounded
near the panting little nag where Pierre stood, it was damp, somber,
and sad.

The soldier with the swollen cheek looked angrily at the cavalry
singers.

"Oh, the coxcombs!" he muttered reproachfully.

"It's not the soldiers only, but I've seen peasants today, too....
The peasants--even they have to go," said the soldier behind the cart,
addressing Pierre with a sad smile. "No distinctions made nowadays....
They want the whole nation to fall on them--in a word, it's Moscow!
They want to make an end of it."

In spite of the obscurity of the soldier's words Pierre understood
what he wanted to say and nodded approval.

The road was clear again; Pierre descended the hill and drove on.

He kept looking to either side of the road for familiar faces, but
only saw everywhere the unfamiliar faces of various military men of
different branches of the service, who all looked with astonishment at
his white hat and green tail coat.

Having gone nearly three miles he at last met an acquaintance and
eagerly addressed him. This was one of the head army doctors. He was
driving toward Pierre in a covered gig, sitting beside a young
surgeon, and on recognizing Pierre he told the Cossack who occupied
the driver's seat to pull up.

"Count! Your excellency, how come you to be here?" asked the doctor.

"Well, you know, I wanted to see..."

"Yes, yes, there will be something to see...."

Pierre got out and talked to the doctor, explaining his intention of
taking part in a battle.

The doctor advised him to apply direct to Kutuzov.

"Why should you be God knows where out of sight, during the battle?"
he said, exchanging glances with his young companion. "Anyhow his
Serene Highness knows you and will receive you graciously. That's what
you must do."

The doctor seemed tired and in a hurry.

"You think so?... Ah, I also wanted to ask you where our position is
exactly?" said Pierre.

"The position?" repeated the doctor. "Well, that's not my line.
Drive past Tatarinova, a lot of digging is going on there. Go up the
hillock and you'll see."

"Can one see from there?... If you would..."

But the doctor interrupted him and moved toward his gig.

"I would go with you but on my honor I'm up to here"--and he pointed
to his throat. "I'm galloping to the commander of the corps. How do
matters stand?... You know, Count, there'll be a battle tomorrow.
Out of an army of a hundred thousand we must expect at least twenty
thousand wounded, and we haven't stretchers, or bunks, or dressers, or
doctors enough for six thousand. We have ten thousand carts, but we
need other things as well--we must manage as best we can!"

The strange thought that of the thousands of men, young and old, who
had stared with merry surprise at his hat (perhaps the very men he had
noticed), twenty thousand were inevitably doomed to wounds and death
amazed Pierre.

"They may die tomorrow; why are they thinking of anything but
death?" And by some latent sequence of thought the descent of the
Mozhaysk hill, the carts with the wounded, the ringing bells, the
slanting rays of the sun, and the songs of the cavalrymen vividly
recurred to his mind.

"The cavalry ride to battle and meet the wounded and do not for a
moment think of what awaits them, but pass by, winking at the wounded.
Yet from among these men twenty thousand are doomed to die, and they
wonder at my hat! Strange!" thought Pierre, continuing his way to
Tatarinova.

In front of a landowner's house to the left of the road stood
carriages, wagons, and crowds of orderlies and sentinels. The
commander in chief was putting up there, but just when Pierre
arrived he was not in and hardly any of the staff were there--they had
gone to the church service. Pierre drove on toward Gorki.

When he had ascended the hill and reached the little village street,
he saw for the first time peasant militiamen in their white shirts and
with crosses on their caps, who, talking and laughing loudly, animated
and perspiring, were at work on a huge knoll overgrown with grass to
the right of the road.

Some of them were digging, others were wheeling barrowloads of earth
along planks, while others stood about doing nothing.

Two officers were standing on the knoll, directing the men. On
seeing these peasants, who were evidently still amused by the
novelty of their position as soldiers, Pierre once more thought of the
wounded men at Mozhaysk and understood what the soldier had meant when
he said: "They want the whole nation to fall on them." The sight of
these bearded peasants at work on the battlefield, with their queer,
clumsy boots and perspiring necks, and their shirts opening from the
left toward the middle, unfastened, exposing their sunburned
collarbones, impressed Pierre more strongly with the solemnity and
importance of the moment than anything he had yet seen or heard.





CHAPTER XXI


Pierre stepped out of his carriage and, passing the toiling
militiamen, ascended the knoll from which, according to the doctor,
the battlefield could be seen.

It was about eleven o'clock. The sun shone somewhat to the left
and behind him and brightly lit up the enormous panorama which, rising
like an amphitheater, extended before him in the clear rarefied
atmosphere.

From above on the left, bisecting that amphitheater, wound the
Smolensk highroad, passing through a village with a white church
some five hundred paces in front of the knoll and below it. This was
Borodino. Below the village the road crossed the river by a bridge
and, winding down and up, rose higher and higher to the village of
Valuevo visible about four miles away, where Napoleon was then
stationed. Beyond Valuevo the road disappeared into a yellowing forest
on the horizon. Far in the distance in that birch and fir forest to
the right of the road, the cross and belfry of the Kolocha Monastery
gleamed in the sun. Here and there over the whole of that blue
expanse, to right and left of the forest and the road, smoking
campfires could be seen and indefinite masses of troops--ours and
the enemy's. The ground to the right--along the course of the
Kolocha and Moskva rivers--was broken and hilly. Between the hollows
the villages of Bezubova and Zakharino showed in the distance. On
the left the ground was more level; there were fields of grain, and
the smoking ruins of Semenovsk, which had been burned down, could be
seen.

All that Pierre saw was so indefinite that neither the left nor
the right side of the field fully satisfied his expectations.
Nowhere could he see the battlefield he had expected to find, but only
fields, meadows, troops, woods, the smoke of campfires, villages,
mounds, and streams; and try as he would he could descry no military
"position" in this place which teemed with life, nor could he even
distinguish our troops from the enemy's.

"I must ask someone who knows," he thought, and addressed an officer
who was looking with curiosity at his huge unmilitary figure.

"May I ask you," said Pierre, "what village that is in front?"

"Burdino, isn't it?" said the officer, turning to his companion.

"Borodino," the other corrected him.

The officer, evidently glad of an opportunity for a talk, moved up
to Pierre.

"Are those our men there?" Pierre inquired.

"Yes, and there, further on, are the French," said the officer.
"There they are, there... you can see them."

"Where? Where?" asked Pierre.

"One can see them with the naked eye... Why, there!"

The officer pointed with his hand to the smoke visible on the left
beyond the river, and the same stern and serious expression that
Pierre had noticed on many of the faces he had met came into his face.

"Ah, those are the French! And over there?..." Pierre pointed to a
knoll on the left, near which some troops could be seen.

"Those are ours."

"Ah, ours! And there?..." Pierre pointed to another knoll in the
distance with a big tree on it, near a village that lay in a hollow
where also some campfires were smoking and something black was
visible.

"That's his again," said the officer. (It was the Shevardino
Redoubt.) "It was ours yesterday, but now it is his."

"Then how about our position?"

"Our position?" replied the officer with a smile of satisfaction. "I
can tell you quite clearly, because I constructed nearly all our
entrenchments. There, you see? There's our center, at Borodino, just
there," and he pointed to the village in front of them with the
white church. "That's where one crosses the Kolocha. You see down
there where the rows of hay are lying in the hollow, there's the
bridge. That's our center. Our right flank is over there"--he
pointed sharply to the right, far away in the broken ground--"That's
where the Moskva River is, and we have thrown up three redoubts there,
very strong ones. The left flank..." here the officer paused. "Well,
you see, that's difficult to explain.... Yesterday our left flank
was there at Shevardino, you see, where the oak is, but now we have
withdrawn our left wing--now it is over there, do you see that village
and the smoke? That's Semenovsk, yes, there," he pointed to
Raevski's knoll. "But the battle will hardly be there. His having
moved his troops there is only a ruse; he will probably pass round
to the right of the Moskva. But wherever it may be, many a man will be
missing tomorrow!" he remarked.

An elderly sergeant who had approached the officer while he was
giving these explanations had waited in silence for him to finish
speaking, but at this point, evidently not liking the officer's
remark, interrupted him.

"Gabions must be sent for," said he sternly.

The officer appeared abashed, as though he understood that one might
think of how many men would be missing tomorrow but ought not to speak
to speak of it.

"Well, send number three company again," the officer replied
hurriedly.

"And you, are you one of the doctors?"

"No, I've come on my own," answered Pierre, and he went down the
hill again, passing the militiamen.

"Oh, those damned fellows!" muttered the officer who followed him,
holding his nose as he ran past the men at work.

"There they are... bringing her, coming... There they are... They'll
be here in a minute..." voices were suddenly heard saying; and
officers, soldiers, and militiamen began running forward along the
road.

A church procession was coming up the hill from Borodino. First
along the dusty road came the infantry in ranks, bareheaded and with
arms reversed. From behind them came the sound of church singing.

Soldiers and militiamen ran bareheaded past Pierre toward the
procession.

"They are bringing her, our Protectress!... The Iberian Mother of
God!" someone cried.

"The Smolensk Mother of God," another corrected him.

The militiamen, both those who had been in the village and those who
had been at work on the battery, threw down their spades and ran to
meet the church procession. Following the battalion that marched along
the dusty road came priests in their vestments--one little old man
in a hood with attendants and singers. Behind them soldiers and
officers bore a large, dark-faced icon with an embossed metal cover.
This was the icon that had been brought from and had since accompanied
the army. Behind, before, and on both sides, crowds of militiamen with
bared heads walked, ran, and bowed to the ground.

At the summit of the hill they stopped with the icon; the men who
had been holding it up by the linen bands attached to it were relieved
by others, the chanters relit their censers, and service began. The
hot rays of the sun beat down vertically and a fresh soft wind
played with the hair of the bared heads and with the ribbons
decorating the icon. The singing did not sound loud under the open
sky. An immense crowd of bareheaded officers, soldiers, and militiamen
surrounded the icon. Behind the priest and a chanter stood the
notabilities on a spot reserved for them. A bald general with
general with a St. George's Cross on his neck stood just behind the
priest's back, and without crossing himself (he was evidently a
German) patiently awaited the end of the service, which he
considered it necessary to hear to the end, probably to arouse the
patriotism of the Russian people. Another general stood in a martial
pose, crossing himself by shaking his hand in front of his chest while
looking about him. Standing among the crowd of peasants, Pierre
recognized several acquaintances among these notables, but did not
look at them--his whole attention was absorbed in watching the serious
expression on the faces of the crowd of soldiers and militiamen who
were all gazing eagerly at the icon. As soon as the tired chanters,
who were singing the service for the twentieth time that day, began
lazily and mechanically to sing: "Save from calamity Thy servants, O
Mother of God," and the priest and deacon chimed in: "For to Thee
under God we all flee as to an inviolable bulwark and protection,"
there again kindled in all those faces the same expression of
consciousness of the solemnity of the impending moment that Pierre had
seen on the faces at the foot of the hill at Mozhaysk and
momentarily on many and many faces he had met that morning; and
heads were bowed more frequently and hair tossed back, and sighs and
the sound men made as they crossed themselves were heard.

The crowd round the icon suddenly parted and pressed against Pierre.
Someone, a very important personage judging by the haste with which
way was made for him, was approaching the icon.

It was Kutuzov, who had been riding round the position and on his
way back to Tatarinova had stopped where the service was being held.
Pierre recognized him at once by his peculiar figure, which
distinguished him from everybody else.

With a long overcoat on his his exceedingly stout,
round-shouldered body, with uncovered white head and puffy face
showing the white ball of the eye he had lost, Kutuzov walked with
plunging, swaying gait into the crowd and stopped behind the priest.
He crossed himself with an accustomed movement, bent till he touched
the ground with his hand, and bowed his white head with a deep sigh.
Behind Kutuzov was Bennigsen and the suite. Despite the presence of
the commander in chief, who attracted the attention of all the
superior officers, the militiamen and soldiers continued their prayers
without looking at him.

When the service was over, Kutuzov stepped up to the icon, sank
heavily to his knees, bowed to the ground, and for a long time tried
vainly to rise, but could not do so on account of his weakness and
weight. His white head twitched with the effort. At last he rose,
kissed the icon as a child does with naively pouting lips, and again
bowed till he touched the ground with his hand. The other generals
followed his example, then the officers, and after them with excited
faces, pressing on one another, crowding, panting, and pushing,
scrambled the soldiers and militiamen.





CHAPTER XXII


Staggering amid the crush, Pierre looked about him.

"Count Peter Kirilovich! How did you get here?" said a voice.

Pierre looked round. Boris Drubetskoy, brushing his knees with his
hand (he had probably soiled them when he, too, had knelt before the
icon), came up to him smiling. Boris was elegantly dressed, with a
slightly martial touch appropriate to a campaign. He wore a long
coat and like Kutuzov had a whip slung across his shoulder.

Meanwhile Kutuzov had reached the village and seated himself in
the shade of the nearest house, on a bench which one Cossack had run
to fetch and another had hastily covered with a rug. An immense and
brilliant suite surrounded him.

The icon was carried further, accompanied by the throng. Pierre
stopped some thirty paces from Kutuzov, talking to Boris.

He explained his wish to be present at the battle and to see the
position.

"This is what you must do," said Boris. "I will do the honors of the
camp to you. You will see everything best from where Count Bennigsen
will be. I am in attendance on him, you know; I'll mention it to
him. But if you want to ride round the position, come along with us.
We are just going to the left flank. Then when we get back, do spend
the night with me and we'll arrange a game of cards. Of course you
know Dmitri Sergeevich? Those are his quarters," and he pointed to the
third house in the village of Gorki.

"But I should like to see the right flank. They say it's very
strong," said Pierre. "I should like to start from the Moskva River
and ride round the whole position."

"Well, you can do that later, but the chief thing is the left
flank."

"Yes, yes. But where is Prince Bolkonski's regiment? Can you point
it out to me?"

"Prince Andrew's? We shall pass it and I'll take you to him."

"What about the left flank?" asked Pierre

"To tell you the truth, between ourselves, God only knows what state
our left flank is in," said Boris confidentially lowering his voice.
"It is not at all what Count Bennigsen intended. He meant to fortify
that knoll quite differently, but..." Boris shrugged his shoulders,
"his Serene Highness would not have it, or someone persuaded him.
You see..." but Boris did not finish, for at that moment Kaysarov,
Kutuzov's adjutant, came up to Pierre. "Ah, Kaysarov!" said Boris,
addressing him with an unembarrassed smile, "I was just trying to
explain our position to the count. It is amazing how his Serene
Highness could so the intentions of the French!"

"You mean the left flank?" asked Kaysarov.

"Yes, exactly; the left flank is now extremely strong."

Though Kutuzov had dismissed all unnecessary men from the staff,
Boris had contrived to remain at headquarters after the changes. He
had established himself with Count Bennigsen, who, like all on whom
Boris had been in attendance, considered young Prince Drubetskoy an
invaluable man.

In the higher command there were two sharply defined parties:
Kutuzov's party and that of Bennigsen, the chief of staff. Boris
belonged to the latter and no one else, while showing servile
respect to Kutuzov, could so create an impression that the old
fellow was not much good and that Bennigsen managed everything. Now
the decisive moment of battle had come when Kutuzov would be destroyed
and the power pass to Bennigsen, or even if Kutuzov won the battle
it would be felt that everything was done by Bennigsen. In any case
many great rewards would have to be given for tomorrow's action, and
new men would come to the front. So Boris was full of nervous vivacity
all day.

After Kaysarov, others whom Pierre knew came up to him, and he had
not time to reply to all the questions about Moscow that were showered
upon him, or to listen to all that was told him. The faces all
expressed animation and apprehension, but it seemed to Pierre that the
cause of the excitement shown in some of these faces lay chiefly in
questions of personal success; his mind, however, was occupied by
the different expression he saw on other faces--an expression that
spoke not of personal matters but of the universal questions of life
and death. Kutuzov noticed Pierre's figure and the group gathered
round him.

"Call him to me," said Kutuzov.

An adjutant told Pierre of his Serene Highness' wish, and Pierre
went toward Kutuzov's bench. But a militiaman got there before him. It
was Dolokhov.

"How did that fellow get here?" asked Pierre.

"He's a creature that wriggles in anywhere!" was the answer. "He has
been degraded, you know. Now he wants to bob up again. He's been
proposing some scheme or other and has crawled into the enemy's picket
line at night.... He's a brave fellow."

Pierre took off his hat and bowed respectfully to Kutuzov.

"I concluded that if I reported to your Serene Highness you might
send me away or say that you knew what I was reporting, but then I
shouldn't lose anything..." Dolokhov was saying.

"Yes, yes."

"But if I were right, I should be rendering a service to my
Fatherland for which I am ready to die."

"Yes, yes."

"And should your Serene Highness require a man who will not spare
his skin, please think of me.... Perhaps I may prove useful to your
Serene Highness."

"Yes... Yes..." Kutuzov repeated, his laughing eye narrowing more
and more as he looked at Pierre.

Just then Boris, with his courtierlike adroitness, stepped up to
Pierre's side near Kutuzov and in a most natural manner, without
raising his voice, said to Pierre, as though continuing an interrupted
conversation:

"The militia have put on clean white shirts to be ready to die. What
heroism, Count!"

Boris evidently said this to Pierre in order to be overheard by
his Serene Highness. He knew Kutuzov's attention would be caught by
those words, and so it was.

"What are you saying about the militia?" he asked Boris.

"Preparing for tomorrow, your Serene Highness--for death--they
have put on clean shirts."

"Ah... a wonderful, a matchless people!" said Kutuzov; and he closed
his eyes and swayed his head. "A matchless people!" he repeated with a
sigh.

"So you want to smell gunpowder?" he said to Pierre. "Yes, it's a
pleasant smell. I have the honor to be one of your wife's adorers.
Is she well? My quarters are at your service."

And as often happens with old people, Kutuzov began looking about
absent-mindedly as if forgetting all he wanted to say or do.

Then, evidently remembering what he wanted, he beckoned to Andrew
Kaysarov, his adjutant's brother.

"Those verses... those verses of Marin's... how do they go, eh?
Those he wrote about Gerakov: 'Lectures for the corps inditing'...
Recite them, recite them!" said he, evidently preparing to laugh.

Kaysarov recited.... Kutuzov smilingly nodded his head to the rhythm
of the verses.

When Pierre had left Kutuzov, Dolokhov came up to him and took his
hand.

"I am very glad to meet you here, Count," he said aloud,
regardless of the presence of strangers and in a particularly resolute
and solemn tone. "On the eve of a day when God alone knows who of us
is fated to survive, I am glad of this opportunity to tell you that
I regret the misunderstandings that occurred between us and should
wish you not to have any ill feeling for me. I beg you to forgive me."

Pierre looked at Dolokhov with a smile, not knowing what to say to
him. With tears in his eyes Dolokhov embraced Pierre and kissed him.

Boris said a few words to his general, and Count Bennigsen turned to
Pierre and proposed that he should ride with him along the line.

"It will interest you," said he.

"Yes, very much," replied Pierre.

Half an hour later Kutuzov left for Tatarinova, and Bennigsen and
his suite, with Pierre among them, set out on their ride along the
line.





CHAPTER XXIII


From Gorki, Bennigsen descended the highroad to the bridge which,
when they had looked it from the hill, the officer had pointed out
as being the center of our position and where rows of fragrant
new-mown hay lay by the riverside. They rode across that bridge into
the village of Borodino and thence turned to the left, passing an
enormous number of troops and guns, and came to a high knoll where
militiamen were digging. This was the redoubt, as yet unnamed, which
afterwards became known as the Raevski Redoubt, or the Knoll
Battery, but Pierre paid no special attention to it. He did not know
that it would become more memorable to him than any other spot on
the plain of Borodino.

They then crossed the hollow to Semenovsk, where the soldiers were
dragging away the last logs from the huts and barns. Then they rode
downhill and uphill, across a ryefield trodden and beaten down as if
by hail, following a track freshly made by the artillery over the
furrows of the plowed land, and reached some fleches* which were still
being dug.


*A kind of entrenchment.


At the fleches Bennigsen stopped and began looking at the Shevardino
Redoubt opposite, which had been ours the day before and where several
horsemen could be descried. The officers said that either Napoleon
or Murat was there, and they all gazed eagerly at this little group of
horsemen. Pierre also looked at them, trying to guess which of the
scarcely discernible figures was Napoleon. At last those mounted men
rode away from the mound and disappeared.

Bennigsen spoke to a general who approached him, and began
explaining the whole position of our troops. Pierre listened to him,
straining each faculty to understand the essential points of the
impending battle, but was mortified to feel that his mental capacity
was inadequate for the task. He could make nothing of it. Bennigsen
stopped speaking and, noticing that Pierre was listening, suddenly
said to him:

"I don't think this interests you?"

"On the contrary it's very interesting!" replied Pierre not quite
truthfully.

From the fleches they rode still farther to the left, along a road
winding through a thick, low-growing birch wood. In the middle of
the wood a brown hare with white feet sprang out and, scared by the
tramp of the many horses, grew so confused that it leaped along the
road in front of them for some time, arousing general attention and
laughter, and only when several voices shouted at it did it dart to
one side and disappear in the thicket. After going through the wood
for about a mile and a half they came out on a glade where troops of
Tuchkov's corps were stationed to defend the left flank.

Here, at the extreme left flank, Bennigsen talked a great deal and
with much heat, and, as it seemed to Pierre, gave orders of great
military importance. In front of Tuchkov's troops was some high ground
not occupied by troops. Bennigsen loudly criticized this mistake,
saying that it was madness to leave a height which commanded the
country around unoccupied and to place troops below it. Some of the
generals expressed the same opinion. One in particular declared with
martial heat that they were put there to be slaughtered. Bennigsen
on his own authority ordered the troops to occupy the high ground.
This disposition on the left flank increased Pierre's doubt of his own
capacity to understand military matters. Listening to Bennigsen and
the generals criticizing the position of the troops behind the hill,
he quite understood them and shared their opinion, but for that very
reason he could not understand how the man who put them there behind
the hill could have made so gross and palpable a blunder.

Pierre did not know that these troops were not, as Bennigsen
supposed, put there to defend the position, but were in a concealed
position as an ambush, that they should not be seen and might be
able to strike an approaching enemy unexpectedly. Bennigsen did not
know this and moved the troops forward according to his own ideas
without mentioning the matter to the commander in chief.





CHAPTER XXIV


On that bright evening of August 25, Prince Andrew lay leaning on
his elbow in a broken-down shed in the village of Knyazkovo at the
further end of his regiment's encampment. Through a gap in the
broken wall he could see, beside the wooden fence, a row of thirty
year-old birches with their lower branches lopped off, a field on
which shocks of oats were standing, and some bushes near which rose
the smoke of campfires--the soldiers' kitchens.

Narrow and burdensome and useless to anyone as his life now seemed
to him, Prince Andrew on the eve of battle felt agitated and irritable
as he had done seven years before at Austerlitz.

He had received and given the orders for next day's battle and had
nothing more to do. But his thoughts--the simplest, clearest, and
therefore most terrible thoughts--would give him no peace. He knew
that tomorrow's battle would be the most terrible of all he had
taken part in, and for the first time in his life the possibility of
death presented itself to him--not in relation to any worldly matter
or with reference to its effect on others, but simply in relation to
himself, to his own soul--vividly, plainly, terribly, and almost as
a certainty. And from the height of this perception all that had
previously tormented and preoccupied him suddenly became illumined
by a cold white light without shadows, without perspective, without
distinction of outline. All life appeared to him like magic-lantern
pictures at which he had long been gazing by artificial light
through a glass. Now he suddenly saw those badly daubed pictures in
clear daylight and without a glass. "Yes, yes! There they are, those
false images that agitated, enraptured, and tormented me," said he
to himself, passing in review the principal pictures of the magic
lantern of life and regarding them now in the cold white daylight of
his clear perception of death. "There they are, those rudely painted
figures that once seemed splendid and mysterious. Glory, the good of
society, love of a woman, the Fatherland itself--how important these
pictures appeared to me, with what profound meaning they seemed to
be filled! And it is all so simple, pale, and crude in the cold
white light of this morning which I feel is dawning for me." The three
great sorrows of his life held his attention in particular: his love
for a woman, his father's death, and the French invasion which had
overrun half Russia. "Love... that little girl who seemed to me
brimming over with mystic forces! Yes, indeed, I loved her. I made
romantic plans of love and happiness with her! Oh, what a boy I
was!" he said aloud bitterly. "Ah me! I believed in some ideal love
which was to keep her faithful to me for the whole year of my absence!
Like the gentle dove in the fable she was to pine apart from me....
But it was much simpler really.... It was all very simple and
horrible."

"When my father built Bald Hills he thought the place was his: his
land, his air, his peasants. But Napoleon came and swept him aside,
unconscious of his existence, as he might brush a chip from his
path, and his Bald Hills and his whole life fell to pieces. Princess
Mary says it is a trial sent from above. What is the trial for, when
he is not here and will never return? He is not here! For whom then is
the trial intended? The Fatherland, the destruction of Moscow! And
tomorrow I shall be killed, perhaps not even by a Frenchman but by one
of our own men, by a soldier discharging a musket close to my ear as
one of them did yesterday, and the French will come and take me by
head and heels and fling me into a hole that I may not stink under
their noses, and new conditions of life will arise, which will seem
quite ordinary to others and about which I shall know nothing. I shall
not exist..."

He looked at the row of birches shining in the sunshine, with
their motionless green and yellow foliage and white bark. "To die...
to be killed tomorrow... That I should not exist... That all this
should still be, but no me...."

And the birches with their light and shade, the curly clouds, the
smoke of the campfires, and all that was around him changed and seemed
terrible and menacing. A cold shiver ran down his spine. He rose
quickly, went out of the shed, and began to walk about.

After he had returned, voices were heard outside the shed. "Who's
that?" he cried.

The red-nosed Captain Timokhin, formerly Dolokhov's squadron
commander, but now from lack of officers a battalion commander,
shyly entered the shed followed by an adjutant and the regimental
paymaster.

Prince Andrew rose hastily, listened to the business they had come
about, gave them some further instructions, and was about to dismiss
them when he heard a familiar, lisping, voice behind the shed.

"Devil take it!" said the voice of a man stumbling over something.

Prince Andrew looked out of the shed and saw Pierre, who had tripped
over a pole on the ground and had nearly fallen, coming his way. It
was unpleasant to Prince Andrew to meet people of his own set in
general, and Pierre especially, for he reminded him of all the painful
moments of his last visit to Moscow.

"You? What a surprise!" said he. "What brings you here? This is
unexpected!"

As he said this his eyes and face expressed more than coldness--they
expressed hostility, which Pierre noticed at once. He had approached
the shed full of animation, but on seeing Prince Andrew's face he felt
constrained and ill at ease.

"I have come... simply... you know... come... it interests me," said
Pierre, who had so often that day senselessly repeated that word
"interesting." "I wish to see the battle."

"Oh yes, and what do the Masonic brothers say about war? How would
they stop it?" said Prince Andrew sarcastically. "Well, and how's
Moscow? And my people? Have they reached Moscow at last?" he asked
seriously.

"Yes, they have. Julie Drubetskaya told me so. I went to see them,
but missed them. They have gone to your estate near Moscow."





CHAPTER XXV


The officers were about to take leave, but Prince Andrew, apparently
reluctant to be left alone with his friend, asked them to stay and
have tea. Seats were brought in and so was the tea. The officers gazed
with surprise at Pierre's huge stout figure and listened to his talk
of Moscow and the position of our army, round which he had ridden.
Prince Andrew remained silent, and his expression was so forbidding
that Pierre addressed his remarks chiefly to the good-natured
battalion commander.

"So you understand the whole position of our troops?" Prince
Andrew interrupted him.

"Yes--that is, how do you mean?" said Pierre. "Not being a
military man I can't say I have understood it fully, but I
understand the general position."

"Well, then, you know more than anyone else, be it who it may," said
Prince Andrew.

"Oh!" said Pierre, looking over his spectacles in perplexity at
Prince Andrew. "Well, and what do think of Kutuzov's appointment?"
he asked.

"I was very glad of his appointment, that's all I know," replied
Prince Andrew.

"And tell me your opinion of Barclay de Tolly. In Moscow they are
saying heaven knows what about him.... What do you think of him?"

"Ask them," replied Prince Andrew, indicating the officers.

Pierre looked at Timokhin with the condescendingly interrogative
smile with which everybody involuntarily addressed that officer.

"We see light again, since his Serenity has been appointed, your
excellency," said Timokhin timidly, and continually turning to
glance at his colonel.

"Why so?" asked Pierre.

"Well, to mention only firewood and fodder, let me inform you.
Why, when we were retreating from Sventsyani we dare not touch a stick
or a wisp of hay or anything. You see, we were going away, so he would
get it all; wasn't it so, your excellency?" and again Timokhin
turned to the prince. "But we daren't. In our regiment two officers
were court-martialed for that kind of thing. But when his Serenity
took command everything became straight forward. Now we see light..."

"Then why was it forbidden?"

Timokhin looked about in confusion, not knowing what or how to
answer such a question. Pierre put the same question to Prince Andrew.

"Why, so as not to lay waste the country we were abandoning to the
enemy," said Prince Andrew with venomous irony. "It is very sound: one
can't permit the land to be pillaged and accustom the troops to
marauding. At Smolensk too he judged correctly that the French might
outflank us, as they had larger forces. But he could not understand
this," cried Prince Andrew in a shrill voice that seemed to escape him
involuntarily: "he could not understand that there, for the first
time, we were fighting for Russian soil, and that there was a spirit
in the men such as I had never seen before, that we had held the
French for two days, and that that success had increased our
strength tenfold. He ordered us to retreat, and all our efforts and
losses went for nothing. He had no thought of betraying us, he tried
to do the best he could, he thought out everything, and that is why he
is unsuitable. He is unsuitable now, just because he plans out
everything very thoroughly and accurately as every German has to.
How can I explain?... Well, say your father has a German valet, and he
is a splendid valet and satisfies your father's requirements better
than you could, then it's all right to let him serve. But if your
father is mortally sick you'll send the valet away and attend to
your father with your own unpracticed, awkward hands, and will
soothe him better than a skilled man who is a stranger could. So it
has been with Barclay. While Russia was well, a foreigner could
serve her and be a splendid minister; but as soon as she is in
danger she needs one of her own kin. But in your Club they have been
making him out a traitor! They slander him as a traitor, and the
only result will be that afterwards, ashamed of their false
accusations, they will make him out a hero or a genius instead of a
traitor, and that will be still more unjust. He is an honest and
very punctilious German."

"And they say he's a skillful commander," rejoined Pierre.

"I don't understand what is meant by 'a skillful commander,'"
replied Prince Andrew ironically.

"A skillful commander?" replied Pierre. "Why, one who foresees all
contingencies... and foresees the adversary's intentions."

"But that's impossible," said Prince Andrew as if it were a matter
settled long ago.

Pierre looked at him in surprise.

"And yet they say that war is like a game of chess?" he remarked.

"Yes," replied Prince Andrew, "but with this little difference, that
in chess you may think over each move as long as you please and are
not limited for time, and with this difference too, that a knight is
always stronger than a pawn, and two pawns are always stronger than
one, while in war a battalion is sometimes stronger than a division
and sometimes weaker than a company. The relative strength of bodies
of troops can never be known to anyone. Believe me," he went on, "if
things depended on arrangements made by the staff, I should be there
making arrangements, but instead of that I have the honor to serve
here in the regiment with these gentlemen, and I consider that on us
tomorrow's battle will depend and not on those others.... Success
never depends, and never will depend, on position, or equipment, or
even on numbers, and least of all on position."

"But on what then?"

"On the feeling that is in me and in him," he pointed to Timokhin,
"and in each soldier."

Prince Andrew glanced at Timokhin, who looked at his commander in
alarm and bewilderment. In contrast to his former reticent taciturnity
Prince Andrew now seemed excited. He could apparently not refrain from
expressing the thoughts that had suddenly occurred to him.

"A battle is won by those who firmly resolve to win it! Why did we
lose the battle at Austerlitz? The French losses were almost equal
to ours, but very early we said to ourselves that we were losing the
battle, and we did lose it. And we said so because we had nothing to
fight for there, we wanted to get away from the battlefield as soon as
we could. 'We've lost, so let us run,' and we ran. If we had not
said that till the evening, heaven knows what might not have happened.
But tomorrow we shan't say it! You talk about our position, the left
flank weak and the right flank too extended," he went on. "That's
all nonsense, there's nothing of the kind. But what awaits us
tomorrow? A hundred million most diverse chances which will be decided
on the instant by the fact that our men or theirs run or do not run,
and that this man or that man is killed, but all that is being done at
present is only play. The fact is that those men with whom you have
ridden round the position not only do not help matters, but hinder.
They are only concerned with their own petty interests."

"At such a moment?" said Pierre reproachfully.

"At such a moment!" Prince Andrew repeated. "To them it is only a
moment affording opportunities to undermine a rival and obtain an
extra cross or ribbon. For me tomorrow means this: a Russian army of a
hundred thousand and a French army of a hundred thousand have met to
fight, and the thing is that these two hundred thousand men will fight
and the side that fights more fiercely and spares itself least will
win. And if you like I will tell you that whatever happens and
whatever muddles those at the top may make, we shall win tomorrow's
battle. Tomorrow, happen what may, we shall win!"

"There now, your excellency! That's the truth, the real truth," said
Timokhin. "Who would spare himself now? The soldiers in my
battalion, believe me, wouldn't drink their vodka! 'It's not the day
for that!' they say."

All were silent. The officers rose. Prince Andrew went out of the
shed with them, giving final orders to the adjutant. After they had
gone Pierre approached Prince Andrew and was about to start a
conversation when they heard the clatter of three horses' hoofs on the
road not far from the shed, and looking in that direction Prince
Andrew recognized Wolzogen and Clausewitz accompanied by a Cossack.
They rode close by continuing to converse, and Prince Andrew
involuntarily heard these words:

"Der Krieg muss in Raum verlegt werden. Der Ansicht kann ich nicht
genug Preis geben,"* said one of them.


*"The war must be extended widely. I cannot sufficiently commend
that view."


"Oh, ja," said the other, "der Zweck ist nur den Feind zu schwachen,
so kann man gewiss nicht den Verlust der Privat-Personen in Achtung
nehmen."*


*"Oh, yes, the only aim is to weaken the enemy, so of course one
cannot take into account the loss of private individuals."


"Oh, no," agreed the other.

"Extend widely!" said Prince Andrew with an angry snort, when they
had ridden past. "In that 'extend' were my father, son, and sister, at
Bald Hills. That's all the same to him! That's what I was saying to
you--those German gentlemen won't win the battle tomorrow but will
only make all the mess they can, because they have nothing in their
German heads but theories not worth an empty eggshell and haven't in
their hearts the one thing needed tomorrow--that which Timokhin has.
They have yielded up all Europe to him, and have now come to teach us.
Fine teachers!" and again his voice grew shrill.

"So you think we shall win tomorrow's battle?" asked Pierre.

"Yes, yes," answered Prince Andrew absently. "One thing I would do
if I had the power," he began again, "I would not take prisoners.
Why take prisoners? It's chivalry! The French have destroyed my home
and are on their way to destroy Moscow, they have outraged and are
outraging me every moment. They are my enemies. In my opinion they are
all criminals. And so thinks Timokhin and the whole army. They
should be executed! Since they are my foes they cannot be my
friends, whatever may have been said at Tilsit."

"Yes, yes," muttered Pierre, looking with shining eyes at Prince
Andrew. "I quite agree with you!"

The question that had perturbed Pierre on the Mozhaysk hill and
all that day now seemed to him quite clear and completely solved. He
now understood the whole meaning and importance of this war and of the
impending battle. All he had seen that day, all the significant and
stern expressions on the faces he had seen in passing, were lit up for
him by a new light. He understood that latent heat (as they say in
physics) of patriotism which was present in all these men he had seen,
and this explained to him why they all prepared for death calmly,
and as it were lightheartedly.

"Not take prisoners," Prince Andrew continued: "That by itself would
quite change the whole war and make it less cruel. As it is we have
played at war--that's what's vile! We play at magnanimity and all that
stuff. Such magnanimity and sensibility are like the magnanimity and
sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed:
she is so kind-hearted that she can't look at blood, but enjoys eating
the calf served up with sauce. They talk to us of the rules of war, of
chivalry, of flags of truce, of mercy to the unfortunate and so on.
It's all rubbish! I saw chivalry and flags of truce in 1805; they
humbugged us and we humbugged them. They plunder other people's
houses, issue false paper money, and worst of all they kill my
children and my father, and then talk of rules of war and
magnanimity to foes! Take no prisoners, but kill and be killed! He who
has come to this as I have through the same sufferings..."

Prince Andrew, who had thought it was all the same to him whether or
not Moscow was taken as Smolensk had been, was suddenly checked in his
speech by an unexpected cramp in his throat. He paced up and down a
few times in silence, but his eyes glittered feverishly and his lips
quivered as he began speaking.

"If there was none of this magnanimity in war, we should go to war
only when it was worth while going to certain death, as now. Then
there would not be war because Paul Ivanovich had offended Michael
Ivanovich. And when there was a war, like this one, it would be war!
And then the determination of the troops would be quite different.
Then all these Westphalians and Hessians whom Napoleon is leading
would not follow him into Russia, and we should not go to fight in
Austria and Prussia without knowing why. War is not courtesy but the
most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that and not
play at war. We ought to accept this terrible necessity sternly and
seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be
war and not a game. As it is now, war is the favorite pastime of the
idle and frivolous. The military calling is the most highly honored.

"But what is war? What is needed for success in warfare? What are
the habits of the military? The aim of war is murder; the methods of
war are spying, treachery, and their encouragement, the ruin of a
country's inhabitants, robbing them or stealing to provision the army,
and fraud and falsehood termed military craft. The habits of the
military class are the absence of freedom, that is, discipline,
idleness, ignorance, cruelty, debauchery, and drunkenness. And in
spite of all this it is the highest class, respected by everyone.
All the kings, except the Chinese, wear military uniforms, and he
who kills most people receives the highest rewards.

"They meet, as we shall meet tomorrow, to murder one another; they
kill and maim tens of thousands, and then have thanksgiving services
for having killed so many people (they even exaggerate the number),
and they announce a victory, supposing that the more people they
have killed the greater their achievement. How does God above look
at them and hear them?" exclaimed Prince Andrew in a shrill,
piercing voice. "Ah, my friend, it has of late become hard for me to
live. I see that I have begun to understand too much. And it doesn't
do for man to taste of the tree of knowledge of good and evil....
Ah, well, it's not for long!" he added.

"However, you're sleepy, and it's time for me to sleep. Go back to
Gorki!" said Prince Andrew suddenly.

"Oh no!" Pierre replied, looking at Prince Andrew with frightened,
compassionate eyes.

"Go, go! Before a battle one must have one's sleep out," repeated
Prince Andrew.

He came quickly up to Pierre and embraced and kissed him.
"Good-by, be off!" he shouted. "Whether we meet again or not..."
and turning away hurriedly he entered the shed.

It was already dark, and Pierre could not make out whether the
expression of Prince Andrew's face was angry or tender.

For some time he stood in silence considering whether he should
follow him or go away. "No, he does not want it!" Pierre concluded.
"And I know that this is our last meeting!" He sighed deeply and
rode back to Gorki.

On re-entering the shed Prince Andrew lay down on a rug, but he
could not sleep.

He closed his eyes. One picture succeeded another in his
imagination. On one of them he dwelt long and joyfully. He vividly
recalled an evening in Petersburg. Natasha with animated and excited
face was telling him how she had gone to look for mushrooms the
previous summer and had lost her way in the big forest. She
incoherently described the depths of the forest, her feelings, and a
talk with a beekeeper she met, and constantly interrupted her story to
say: "No, I can't! I'm not telling it right; no, you don't
understand," though he encouraged her by saying that he did
understand, and he really had understood all she wanted to say. But
Natasha was not satisfied with her own words: she felt that they did
not convey the passionately poetic feeling she had experienced that
day and wished to convey. "He was such a delightful old man, and it
was so dark in the forest... and he had such kind... No, I can't
describe it," she had said, flushed and excited. Prince Andrew
smiled now the same happy smile as then when he had looked into her
eyes. "I understood her," he thought. "I not only understood her,
but it was just that inner, spiritual force, that sincerity, that
frankness of soul--that very soul of hers which seemed to be
fettered by her body--it was that soul I loved in her... loved so
strongly and happily..." and suddenly he remembered how his love had
ended. "He did not need anything of that kind. He neither saw nor
understood anything of the sort. He only saw in her a pretty and fresh
young girl, with whom he did not deign to unite his fate. And I?...
and he is still alive and gay!"

Prince Andrew jumped up as if someone had burned him, and again
began pacing up and down in front of the shed.





CHAPTER XXVI


On August 25, the eve of the battle of Borodino, M. de Beausset,
prefect of the French Emperor's palace, arrived at Napoleon's quarters
at Valuevo with Colonel Fabvier, the former from Paris and the
latter from Madrid.

Donning his court uniform, M. de Beausset ordered a box he had
brought for the Emperor to be carried before him and entered the first
compartment of Napoleon's tent, where he began opening the box while
conversing with Napoleon's aides-de-camp who surrounded him.

Fabvier, not entering the tent, remained at the entrance talking
to some generals of his acquaintance.

The Emperor Napoleon had not yet left his bedroom and was
finishing his toilet. Slightly snorting and grunting, he presented now
his back and now his plump hairy chest to the brush with which his
valet was rubbing him down. Another valet, with his finger over the
mouth of a bottle, was sprinkling Eau de Cologne on the Emperor's
pampered body with an expression which seemed to say that he alone
knew where and how much Eau de Cologne should be sprinkled. Napoleon's
short hair was wet and matted on the forehead, but his face, though
puffy and yellow, expressed physical satisfaction. "Go on, harder,
go on!" he muttered to the valet who was rubbing him, slightly
twitching and grunting. An aide-de-camp, who had entered the bedroom
to report to the Emperor the number of prisoners taken in
yesterday's action, was standing by the door after delivering his
message, awaiting permission to withdraw. Napoleon, frowning, looked
at him from under his brows.

"No prisoners!" said he, repeating the aide-de-camp's words. "They
are forcing us to exterminate them. So much the worse for the
Russian army.... Go on... harder, harder!" he muttered, hunching his
back and presenting his fat shoulders.

"All right. Let Monsieur de Beausset enter, and Fabvier too," he
said, nodding to the aide-de-camp.

"Yes, sire," and the aide-de-camp disappeared through the door of
the tent.

Two valets rapidly dressed His Majesty, and wearing the blue uniform
of the Guards he went with firm quick steps to the reception room.

De Beausset's hands meanwhile were busily engaged arranging the
present he had brought from the Empress, on two chairs directly in
front of the entrance. But Napoleon had dressed and come out with such
unexpected rapidity that he had not time to finish arranging the
surprise.

Napoleon noticed at once what they were about and guessed that
they were not ready. He did not wish to deprive them of the pleasure
of giving him a surprise, so he pretended not to see de Beausset and
called Fabvier to him, listening silently and with a stern frown to
what Fabvier told him of the heroism and devotion of his troops
fighting at Salamanca, at the other end of Europe, with but one
thought--to be worthy of their Emperor--and but one fear--to fail to
please him. The result of that battle had been deplorable. Napoleon
made ironic remarks during Fabvier's account, as if he had not
expected that matters could go otherwise in his absence.

"I must make up for that in Moscow," said Napoleon. "I'll see you
later," he added, and summoned de Beausset, who by that time had
prepared the surprise, having placed something on the chairs and
covered it with a cloth.

De Beausset bowed low, with that courtly French bow which only the
old retainers of the Bourbons knew how to make, and approached him,
presenting an envelope.

Napoleon turned to him gaily and pulled his ear.

"You have hurried here. I am very glad. Well, what is Paris saying?"
he asked, suddenly changing his former stern expression for a most
cordial tone.

"Sire, all Paris regrets your absence," replied de Beausset as was
proper.

But though Napoleon knew that de Beausset had to say something of
this kind, and though in his lucid moments he knew it was untrue, he
was pleased to hear it from him. Again he honored him by touching
his ear.

"I am very sorry to have made you travel so far," said he.

"Sire, I expected nothing less than to find you at the gates of
Moscow," replied de Beausset.

Napoleon smiled and, lifting his head absentmindedly, glanced to the
right. An aide-de-camp approached with gliding steps and offered him a
gold snuffbox, which he took.

"Yes, it has happened luckily for you," he said, raising the open
snuffbox to his nose. "You are fond of travel, and in three days you
will see Moscow. You surely did not expect to see that Asiatic
capital. You will have a pleasant journey."

De Beausset bowed gratefully at this regard for his taste for travel
(of which he had not till then been aware).

"Ha, what's this?" asked Napoleon, noticing that all the courtiers
were looking at something concealed under a cloth.

With courtly adroitness de Beausset half turned and without
turning his back to the Emperor retired two steps, twitching off the
cloth at the same time, and said:

"A present to Your Majesty from the Empress."

It was a portrait, painted in bright colors by Gerard, of the son
borne to Napoleon by the daughter of the Emperor of Austria, the boy
whom for some reason everyone called "The King of Rome."

A very pretty curly-headed boy with a look of the Christ in the
Sistine Madonna was depicted playing at stick and ball. The ball
represented the terrestrial globe and the stick in his other hand a
scepter.

Though it was not clear what the artist meant to express by
depicting the so-called King of Rome spiking the earth with a stick,
the allegory apparently seemed to Napoleon, as it had done to all
who had seen it in Paris, quite clear and very pleasing.

"The King of Rome!" he said, pointing to the portrait with a
graceful gesture. "Admirable!"

With the natural capacity of an Italian for changing the
expression of his face at will, he drew nearer to the portrait and
assumed a look of pensive tenderness. He felt that what he now said
and did would be historical, and it seemed to him that it would now be
best for him--whose grandeur enabled his son to play stick and ball
with the terrestrial globe--to show, in contrast to that grandeur, the
simplest paternal tenderness. His eyes grew dim, he moved forward,
glanced round at a chair (which seemed to place itself under him), and
sat down on it before the portrait. At a single gesture from him
everyone went out on tiptoe, leaving the great man to himself and
his emotion.

Having sat still for a while he touched--himself not knowing why-
the thick spot of paint representing the highest light in the
portrait, rose, and recalled de Beausset and the officer on duty. He
ordered the portrait to be carried outside his tent, that the Old
Guard, stationed round it, might not be deprived of the pleasure of
seeing the King of Rome, the son and heir of their adored monarch.

And while he was doing M. de Beausset the honor of breakfasting with
him, they heard, as Napoleon had anticipated, the rapturous cries of
the officers and men of the Old Guard who had run up to see the
portrait.

"Vive l'Empereur! Vive le roi de Rome! Vive l'Empereur!" came
those ecstatic cries.

After breakfast Napoleon in de Beausset's presence dictated his
order of the day to the army.

"Short and energetic!" he remarked when he had read over the
proclamation which he had dictated straight off without corrections.
It ran:


Soldiers! This is the battle you have so longed for. Victory depends
on you. It is essential for us; it will give us all we need:
comfortable quarters and a speedy return to our country. Behave as you
did at Austerlitz, Friedland, Vitebsk, and Smolensk. Let our
remotest posterity recall your achievements this day with pride. Let
it be said of each of you: "He was in the great battle before Moscow!"


"Before Moscow!" repeated Napoleon, and inviting M. de Beausset, who
was so fond of travel, to accompany him on his ride, he went out of
the tent to where the horses stood saddled.

"Your Majesty is too kind!" replied de Beausset to the invitation to
accompany the Emperor; he wanted to sleep, did not know how to ride
and was afraid of doing so.

But Napoleon nodded to the traveler, and de Beausset had to mount.
When Napoleon came out of the tent the shouting of the Guards before
his son's portrait grew still louder. Napoleon frowned.

"Take him away!" he said, pointing with a gracefully majestic
gesture to the portrait. "It is too soon for him to see a field of
battle."

De Beausset closed his eyes, bowed his head, and sighed deeply, to
indicate how profoundly he valued and comprehended the Emperor's
words.





CHAPTER XXVII


On the twenty-fifth of August, so his historians tell us, Napoleon
spent the whole day on horseback inspecting the locality,
considering plans submitted to him by his marshals, and personally
giving commands to his generals.

The original line of the Russian forces along the river Kolocha
had been dislocated by the capture of the Shevardino Redoubt on the
twenty-fourth, and part of the line--the left flank--had been drawn
back. That part of the line was not entrenched and in front of it
the ground was more open and level than elsewhere. It was evident to
anyone, military or not, that it was here the French should attack. It
would seem that not much consideration was needed to reach this
conclusion, nor any particular care or trouble on the part of the
Emperor and his marshals, nor was there any need of that special and
supreme quality called genius that people are so apt to ascribe to
Napoleon; yet the historians who described the event later and the men
who then surrounded Napoleon, and he himself, thought otherwise.

Napoleon rode over the plain and surveyed the locality with a
profound air and in silence, nodded with approval or shook his head
dubiously, and without communicating to the generals around him the
profound course of ideas which guided his decisions merely gave them
his final conclusions in the form of commands. Having listened to a
suggestion from Davout, who was now called Prince d'Eckmuhl, to turn
the Russian left wing, Napoleon said it should not be done, without
explaining why not. To a proposal made by General Campan (who was to
attack the fleches) to lead his division through the woods, Napoleon
agreed, though the so-called Duke of Elchingen (Ney) ventured to
remark that a movement through the woods was dangerous and might
disorder the division.

Having inspected the country opposite the Shevardino Redoubt,
Napoleon pondered a little in silence and then indicated the spots
where two batteries should be set up by the morrow to act against
the Russian entrenchments, and the places where, in line with them,
the field artillery should be placed.

After giving these and other commands he returned to his tent, and
the dispositions for the battle were written down from his dictation.

These dispositions, of which the French historians write with
enthusiasm and other historians with profound respect, were as
follows:


At dawn the two new batteries established during the night on the
plain occupied by the Prince d'Eckmuhl will open fire on the
opposing batteries of the enemy.

At the same time the commander of the artillery of the 1st Corps,
General Pernetti, with thirty cannon of Campan's division and all
the howitzers of Dessaix's and Friant's divisions, will move
forward, open fire, and overwhelm with shellfire the enemy's
battery, against which will operate:

        24 guns of the artillery of the Guards
        30 guns of Campan's division

and      8 guns of Friant's and Dessaix's divisions
        --

in all  62 guns.


The commander of the artillery of the 3rd Corps, General Fouche,
will place the howitzers of the 3rd and 8th Corps, sixteen in all,
on the flanks of the battery that is to bombard the entrenchment on
the left, which will have forty guns in all directed against it.

General Sorbier must be ready at the first order to advance with all
the howitzers of the Guard's artillery against either one or other
of the entrenchments.

During the cannonade Prince Poniatowski is to advance through the
wood on the village and turn the enemy's position.

General Campan will move through the wood to seize the first
fortification.

After the advance has begun in this manner, orders will be given
in accordance with the enemy's movements.

The cannonade on the left flank will begin as soon as the guns of
the right wing are heard. The sharpshooters of Morand's division and
of the vice-King's division will open a heavy fire on seeing the
attack commence on the right wing.

The vice-King will occupy the village and cross by its three
bridges, advancing to the same heights as Morand's and Gibrard's
divisions, which under his leadership will be directed against the
redoubt and come into line with the rest of the forces.

All this must be done in good order (le tout se fera avec ordre et
methode) as far as possible retaining troops in reserve.
   The Imperial Camp near Mozhaysk,
   September, 6, 1812.


These dispositions, which are very obscure and confused if one
allows oneself to regard the arrangements without religious awe of his
genius, related to Napoleon's orders to deal with four points--four
different orders. Not one of these was, or could be, carried out.

In the disposition it is said first that the batteries placed on the
spot chosen by Napoleon, with the guns of Pernetti and Fouche; which
were to come in line with them, 102 guns in all, were to open fire and
shower shells on the Russian fleches and redoubts. This could not be
done, as from the spots selected by Napoleon the projectiles did not
carry to the Russian works, and those 102 guns shot into the air until
the nearest commander, contrary to Napoleon's instructions, moved them
forward.

The second order was that Poniatowski, moving to the village through
the wood, should turn the Russian left flank. This could not be done
and was not done, because Poniatowski, advancing on the village
through the wood, met Tuchkov there barring his way, and could not and
did not turn the Russian position.

The third order was: General Campan will move through the wood to
seize the first fortification. General Campan's division did not seize
the first fortification but was driven back, for on emerging from
the wood it had to reform under grapeshot, of which Napoleon was
unaware.

The fourth order was: The vice-King will occupy the village
(Borodino) and cross by its three bridges, advancing to the same
heights as Morand's and Gdrard's divisions (for whose movements no
directions are given), which under his leadership will be directed
against the redoubt and come into line with the rest of the forces.

As far as one can make out, not so much from this unintelligible
sentence as from the attempts the vice-King made to execute the orders
given him, he was to advance from the left through Borodino to the
redoubt while the divisions of Morand and Gerard were to advance
simultaneously from the front.

All this, like the other parts of the disposition, was not and could
not be executed. After passing through Borodino the vice-King was
driven back to the Kolocha and could get no farther; while the
divisions of Morand and Gerard did not take the redoubt but were
driven back, and the redoubt was only taken at the end of the battle
by the cavalry (a thing probably unforeseen and not heard of by
Napoleon). So not one of the orders in the disposition was, or could
be, executed. But in the disposition it is said that, after the
fight has commenced in this manner, orders will be given in accordance
with the enemy's movements, and so it might be supposed that all
necessary arrangements would be made by Napoleon during the battle.
But this was not and could not be done, for during the whole battle
Napoleon was so far away that, as appeared later, he could not know
the course of the battle and not one of his orders during the fight
could be executed.





CHAPTER XXVIII


Many historians say that the French did not win the battle of
Borodino because Napoleon had a cold, and that if he had not had a
cold the orders he gave before and during the battle would have been
still more full of genius and Russia would have been lost and the face
of the world have been changed. To historians who believe that
Russia was shaped by the will of one man--Peter the Great--and that
France from a republic became an empire and French armies went to
Russia at the will of one man--Napoleon--to say that Russia remained a
power because Napoleon had a bad cold on the twenty-fourth of August
may seem logical and convincing.

If it had depended on Napoleon's will to fight or not to fight the
battle of Borodino, and if this or that other arrangement depended
on his will, then evidently a cold affecting the manifestation of
his will might have saved Russia, and consequently the valet who
omitted to bring Napoleon his waterproof boots on the twenty-fourth
would have been the savior of Russia. Along that line of thought
such a deduction is indubitable, as indubitable as the deduction
Voltaire made in jest (without knowing what he was jesting at) when he
saw that the Massacre of St. Bartholomew was due to Charles IX's
stomach being deranged. But to men who do not admit that Russia was
formed by the will of one man, Peter I, or that the French Empire
was formed and the war with Russia begun by the will of one man,
Napoleon, that argument seems not merely untrue and irrational, but
contrary to all human reality. To the question of what causes historic
events another answer presents itself, namely, that the course of
human events is predetermined from on high--depends on the coincidence
of the wills of all who take part in the events, and that a Napoleon's
influence on the course of these events is purely external and
fictitious.

Strange as at first glance it may seem to suppose that the
Massacre of St. Bartholomew was not due to Charles IX's will, though
he gave the order for it and thought it was done as a result of that
order; and strange as it may seem to suppose that the slaughter of
eighty thousand men at Borodino was not due to Napoleon's will, though
he ordered the commencement and conduct of the battle and thought it
was done because he ordered it; strange as these suppositions
appear, yet human dignity--which tells me that each of us is, if not
more at least not less a man than the great Napoleon--demands the
acceptance of that solution of the question, and historic
investigation abundantly confirms it.

At the battle of Borodino Napoleon shot at no one and killed no one.
That was all done by the soldiers. Therefore it was not he who
killed people.

The French soldiers went to kill and be killed at the battle of
Borodino not because of Napoleon's orders but by their own volition.
The whole army--French, Italian, German, Polish, and Dutch--hungry,
ragged, and weary of the campaign, felt at the sight of an army
blocking their road to Moscow that the wine was drawn and must be
drunk. Had Napoleon then forbidden them to fight the Russians, they
would have killed him and have proceeded to fight the Russians because
it was inevitable.

When they heard Napoleon's proclamation offering them, as
compensation for mutilation and death, the words of posterity about
their having been in the battle before Moscow, they cried "Vive
l'Empereur!" just as they had cried "Vive l'Empereur!" at the sight of
the portrait of the boy piercing the terrestrial globe with a toy
stick, and just as they would have cried "Vive l'Empereur!" at any
nonsense that might be told them. There was nothing left for them to
do but cry "Vive l'Empereur!" and go to fight, in order to get food
and rest as conquerors in Moscow. So it was not because of
Napoleon's commands that they killed their fellow men.

And it was not Napoleon who directed the course of the battle, for
none of his orders were executed and during the battle he did not know
what was going on before him. So the way in which these people
killed one another was not decided by Napoleon's will but occurred
independently of him, in accord with the will of hundreds of thousands
of people who took part in the common action. It only seemed to
Napoleon that it all took place by his will. And so the question
whether he had or had not a cold has no more historic interest than
the cold of the least of the transport soldiers.

Moreover, the assertion made by various writers that his cold was
the cause of his dispositions not being as well planned as on former
occasions, and of his orders during the battle not being as good as
previously, is quite baseless, which again shows that Napoleon's
cold on the twenty-sixth of August was unimportant.

The dispositions cited above are not at all worse, but are even
better, than previous dispositions by which he had won victories.
His pseudo-orders during the battle were also no worse than
formerly, but much the same as usual. These dispositions and orders
only seem worse than previous ones because the battle of Borodino
was the first Napoleon did not win. The profoundest and most excellent
dispositions and orders seem very bad, and every learned militarist
criticizes them with looks of importance, when they relate to a
battle that has been lost, and the very worst dispositions and
orders seem very good, and serious people fill whole volumes to
demonstrate their merits, when they relate to a battle that has been
won.

The dispositions drawn up by Weyrother for the battle of
Austerlitz were a model of perfection for that kind of composition,
but still they were criticized--criticized for their very
perfection, for their excessive minuteness.

Napoleon at the battle of Borodino fulfilled his office as
representative of authority as well as, and even better than, at other
battles. He did nothing harmful to the progress of the battle; he
inclined to the most reasonable opinions, he made no confusion, did
not contradict himself, did not get frightened or run away from the
field of battle, but with his great tact and military experience
carried out his role of appearing to command, calmly and with dignity.





CHAPTER XXIX


On returning from a second inspection of the lines, Napoleon
remarked:

"The chessmen are set up, the game will begin tomorrow!"

Having ordered punch and summoned de Beausset, he began to talk to
him about Paris and about some changes he meant to make the Empress'
household, surprising the prefect by his memory of minute details
relating to the court.

He showed an interest in trifles, joked about de Beausset's love
of travel, and chatted carelessly, as a famous, self-confident surgeon
who knows his job does when turning up his sleeves and putting on
his apron while a patient is being strapped to the operating table.
"The matter is in my hands and is clear and definite in my head.
When the times comes to set to work I shall do it as no one else
could, but now I can jest, and the more I jest and the calmer I am the
more tranquil and confident you ought to be, and the more amazed at my
genius."

Having finished his second glass of punch, Napoleon went to rest
before the serious business which, he considered, awaited him next
day. He was so much interested in that task that he was unable to
sleep, and in spite of his cold which had grown worse from the
dampness of the evening, he went into the large division of the tent
at three o'clock in the morning, loudly blowing his nose. He asked
whether the Russians had not withdrawn, and was told that the
enemy's fires were still in the same places. He nodded approval.

The adjutant in attendance came into the tent.

"Well, Rapp, do you think we shall do good business today?" Napoleon
asked him.

"Without doubt, sire," replied Rapp.

Napoleon looked at him.

"Do you remember, sire, what you did me the honor to say at
Smolensk?" continued Rapp. "The wine is drawn and must be drunk."

Napoleon frowned and sat silent for a long time leaning his head
on his hand.

"This poor army!" he suddenly remarked. "It has diminished greatly
since Smolensk. Fortune is frankly a courtesan, Rapp. I have always
said so and I am beginning to experience it. But the Guards, Rapp, the
Guards are intact?" he remarked interrogatively.

"Yes, sire," replied Rapp.

Napoleon took a lozenge, put it in his mouth, and glanced at his
watch. He was not sleepy and it was still not nearly morning. It was
impossible to give further orders for the sake of killing time, for
the orders had all been given and were now being executed.

"Have the biscuits and rice been served out to the regiments of
the Guards?" asked Napoleon sternly.

"Yes, sire."

"The rice too?"

Rapp replied that he had given the Emperor's order about the rice,
but Napoleon shook his head in dissatisfaction as if not believing
that his order had been executed. An attendant came in with punch.
Napoleon ordered another glass to be brought for Rapp, and silently
sipped his own.

"I have neither taste nor smell," he remarked, sniffing at his
glass. "This cold is tiresome. They talk about medicine--what is the
good of medicine when it can't cure a cold! Corvisart gave me these
lozenges but they don't help at all. What can doctors cure? One
can't cure anything. Our body is a machine for living. It is organized
for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it
defend itself, it will do more than if you paralyze it by
encumbering it with remedies. Our body is like a perfect watch that
should go for a certain time; watchmaker cannot open it, he can only
adjust it by fumbling, and that blindfold.... Yes, our body is just
a machine for living, that is all."

And having entered on the path of definition, of which he was
fond, Napoleon suddenly and unexpectedly gave a new one.

"Do you know, Rapp, what military art is?" asked he. "It is the
art of being stronger than the enemy at a given moment. That's all."

Rapp made no reply.

"Tomorrow we shall have to deal with Kutuzov!" said Napoleon. "We
shall see! Do you remember at Braunau he commanded an army for three
weeks and did not once mount a horse to inspect his
entrenchments.... We shall see!"

He looked at his watch. It was still only four o'clock. He did not
feel sleepy. The punch was finished and there was still nothing to do.
He rose, walked to and fro, put on a warm overcoat and a hat, and went
out of the tent. The night was dark and damp, a scarcely perceptible
moisture was descending from above. Near by, the campfires were
dimly burning among the French Guards, and in the distance those of
the Russian line shone through the smoke. The weather was calm, and
the rustle and tramp of the French troops already beginning to move to
take up their positions were clearly audible.

Napoleon walked about in front of his tent, looked at the fires
and listened to these sounds, and as he was passing a tall guardsman
in a shaggy cap, who was standing sentinel before his tent and had
drawn himself up like a black pillar at sight of the Emperor, Napoleon
stopped in front of him.

"What year did you enter the service?" he asked with that
affectation of military bluntness and geniality with which he always
addressed the soldiers.

The man answered the question.

"Ah! One of the old ones! Has your regiment had its rice?"

"It has, Your Majesty."

Napoleon nodded and walked away.


At half-past five Napoleon rode to the village of Shevardino.

It was growing light, the sky was clearing, only a single cloud
lay in the east. The abandoned campfires were burning themselves out
in the faint morning light.

On the right a single deep report of a cannon resounded and died
away in the prevailing silence. Some minutes passed. A second and a
third report shook the air, then a fourth and a fifth boomed
solemnly near by on the right.

The first shots had not yet ceased to reverberate before others rang
out and yet more were heard mingling with and overtaking one another.

Napoleon with his suite rode up to the Shevardino Redoubt where he
dismounted. The game had begun.





CHAPTER XXX


On returning to Gorki after having seen Prince Andrew, Pierre
ordered his groom to get the horses ready and to call him early in the
morning, and then immediately fell asleep behind a partition in a
corner Boris had given up to him.

Before he was thoroughly awake next morning everybody had already
left the hut. The panes were rattling in the little windows and his
groom was shaking him.

"Your excellency! Your excellency! Your excellency!" he kept
repeating pertinaciously while he shook Pierre by the shoulder without
looking at him, having apparently lost hope of getting him to wake up.

"What? Has it begun? Is it time?" Pierre asked, waking up.

"Hear the firing," said the groom, a discharged soldier. "All the
gentlemen have gone out, and his Serene Highness himself rode past
long ago."

Pierre dressed hastily and ran out to the porch. Outside all was
bright, fresh, dewy, and cheerful. The sun, just bursting forth from
behind a cloud that had concealed it, was shining, with rays still
half broken by the clouds, over the roofs of the street opposite, on
the dew-besprinkled dust of the road, on the walls of the houses, on
the windows, the fence, and on Pierre's horses standing before the
hut. The roar of guns sounded more distinct outside. An adjutant
accompanied by a Cossack passed by at a sharp trot.

"It's time, Count; it's time!" cried the adjutant.

Telling the groom to follow him with the horses, Pierre went down
the street to the knoll from which he had looked at the field of
battle the day before. A crowd of military men was assembled there,
members of the staff could be heard conversing in French, and
Kutuzov's gray head in a white cap with a red band was visible, his
gray nape sunk between his shoulders. He was looking through a field
glass down the highroad before him.

Mounting the steps to the knoll Pierre looked at the scene before
him, spellbound by beauty. It was the same panorama he had admired
from that spot the day before, but now the whole place was full of
troops and covered by smoke clouds from the guns, and the slanting
rays of the bright sun, rising slightly to the left behind Pierre,
cast upon it through the clear morning air penetrating streaks of
rosy, golden tinted light and long dark shadows. The forest at the
farthest extremity of the panorama seemed carved in some precious
stone of a yellowish-green color; its undulating outline was
silhouetted against the horizon and was pierced beyond Valuevo by
the Smolensk highroad crowded with troops. Nearer at hand glittered
golden cornfields interspersed with copses. There were troops to be
seen everywhere, in front and to the right and left. All this was
vivid, majestic, and unexpected; but what impressed Pierre most of all
was the view of the battlefield itself, of Borodino and the hollows on
both sides of the Kolocha.

Above the Kolocha, in Borodino and on both sides of it, especially
to the left where the Voyna flowing between its marshy banks falls
into the Kolocha, a mist had spread which seemed to melt, to dissolve,
and to become translucent when the brilliant sun appeared and
magically colored and outlined everything. The smoke of the guns
mingled with this mist, and over the whole expanse and through that
mist the rays of the morning sun were reflected, flashing back like
lightning from the water, from the dew, and from the bayonets of the
troops crowded together by the riverbanks and in Borodino. A white
church could be seen through the mist, and here and there the roofs of
huts in Borodino as well as dense masses of soldiers, or green
ammunition chests and ordnance. And all this moved, or seemed to move,
as the smoke and mist spread out over the whole space. Just as in
the mist-enveloped hollow near Borodino, so along the entire line
outside and above it and especially in the woods and fields to the
left, in the valleys and on the summits of the high ground, clouds
of powder smoke seemed continually to spring up out of nothing, now
singly, now several at a time, some translucent, others dense,
which, swelling, growing, rolling, and blending, extended over the
whole expanse.

These puffs of smoke and (strange to say) the sound of
the firing produced the chief beauty of the spectacle.

"Puff!"--suddenly a round compact cloud of smoke was seen merging
from violet into gray and milky white, and "boom!" came the report a
second later.

"Puff! puff!"--and two clouds arose pushing one another and blending
together; and "boom, boom!" came the sounds confirming what the eye
had seen.

Pierre glanced round at the first cloud, which he had seen as a
round compact ball, and in its place already were balloons of smoke
floating to one side, and--"puff" (with a pause)--"puff, puff!"
three and then four more appeared and then from each, with the same
interval--"boom--boom, boom!" came the fine, firm, precise sounds in
reply. It seemed as if those smoke clouds sometimes ran and
sometimes stood still while woods, fields, and glittering bayonets ran
past them. From the left, over fields and bushes, those large balls of
smoke were continually appearing followed by their solemn reports,
while nearer still, in the hollows and woods, there burst from the
muskets small cloudlets that had no time to become balls, but had
their little echoes in just the same way. "Trakh-ta-ta-takh!" came the
frequent crackle of musketry, but it was irregular and feeble in
comparison with the reports of the cannon.

Pierre wished to be there with that smoke, those shining bayonets,
that movement, and those sounds. He turned to look at Kutuzov and
his suite, to compare his impressions with those of others. They
were all looking at the field of battle as he was, and, as it seemed
to him, with the same feelings. All their faces were now shining
with that latent warmth of feeling Pierre had noticed the day before
and had fully understood after his talk with Prince Andrew.

"Go, my dear fellow, go... and Christ be with you!" Kutuzov was
saying to a general who stood beside him, not taking his eye from
the battlefield.

Having received this order the general passed by Pierre on his way
down the knoll.

"To the crossing!" said the general coldly and sternly in reply to
one of the staff who asked where he was going.

"I'll go there too, I too!" thought Pierre, and followed the
general.

The general mounted a horse a Cossack had brought him. Pierre went
to his groom who was holding his horses and, asking which was the
quietest, clambered onto it, seized it by the mane, and turning out
his toes pressed his heels against its sides and, feeling that his
spectacles were slipping off but unable to let go of the mane and
reins, he galloped after the general, causing the staff officers to
smile as they watched him from the knoll.





CHAPTER XXXI


Having descended the hill the general after whom Pierre was
galloping turned sharply to the left, and Pierre, losing sight of him,
galloped in among some ranks of infantry marching ahead of him. He
tried to pass either in front of them or to the right or left, but
there were soldiers everywhere, all with expression and busy with some
unseen but evidently important task. They all gazed with the same
dissatisfied and inquiring expression at this stout man in a white
hat, who for some unknown reason threatened to trample them under
his horse's hoofs.

"Why ride into the middle of the battalion?" one of them shouted
at him.

Another prodded his horse with the butt end of a musket, and Pierre,
bending over his saddlebow and hardly able to control his shying
horse, galloped ahead of the soldiers where there was a free space.

There was a bridge ahead of him, where other soldiers stood
firing. Pierre rode up to them. Without being aware of it he had
come to the bridge across the Kolocha between Gorki and Borodino,
which the French (having occupied Borodino) were attacking in the
first phase of the battle. Pierre saw that there was a bridge in front
of him and that soldiers were doing something on both sides of it
and in the meadow, among the rows of new-mown hay which he had taken
no notice of amid the smoke of the campfires the day before; but
despite the incessant firing going on there he had no idea that this
was the field of battle. He did not notice the sound of the bullets
whistling from every side, or the projectiles that flew over him,
did not see the enemy on the other side of the river, and for a long
time did not notice the killed and wounded, though many fell near him.
He looked about him with a smile which did not leave his face.

"Why's that fellow in front of the line?" shouted somebody at him
again.

"To the left!... Keep to the right!" the men shouted to him.

Pierre went to the right, and unexpectedly encountered one of
Raevski's adjutants whom he knew. The adjutant looked angrily at
him, evidently also intending to shout at him, but on recognizing
him he nodded.

"How have you got here?" he said, and galloped on.

Pierre, feeling out of place there, having nothing to do, and afraid
of getting in someone's way again, galloped after the adjutant.

"What's happening here? May I come with you?" he asked.

"One moment, one moment!" replied the adjutant, and riding up to a
stout colonel who was standing in the meadow, he gave him some message
and then addressed Pierre.

"Why have you come here, Count?" he asked with a smile. "Still
inquisitive?"

"Yes, yes," assented Pierre.

But the adjutant turned his horse about and rode on.

"Here it's tolerable," said he, "but with Bagration on the left
flank they're getting it frightfully hot."

"Really?" said Pierre. "Where is that?"

"Come along with me to our knoll. We can get a view from there and
in our battery it is still bearable," said the adjutant. "Will you
come?"

"Yes, I'll come with you," replied Pierre, looking round for his
groom.

It was only now that he noticed wounded men staggering along or
being carried on stretchers. On that very meadow he had ridden over
the day before, a soldier was lying athwart the rows of scented hay,
with his head thrown awkwardly back and his shako off.

"Why haven't they carried him away?" Pierre was about to ask, but
seeing the stern expression of the adjutant who was also looking
that way, he checked himself.

Pierre did not find his groom and rode along the hollow with the
adjutant to Raevski's Redoubt. His horse lagged behind the
adjutant's and jolted him at every step.

"You don't seem to be used to riding, Count?" remarked the adjutant.

"No it's not that, but her action seems so jerky," said Pierre in
a puzzled tone.

"Why... she's wounded!" said the adjutant. "In the off foreleg above
the knee. A bullet, no doubt. I congratulate you, Count, on your
baptism of fire!"

Having ridden in the smoke past the Sixth Corps, behind the
artillery which had been moved forward and was in action, deafening
them with the noise of firing, they came to a small wood. There it was
cool and quiet, with a scent of autumn. Pierre and the adjutant
dismounted and walked up the hill on foot.

"Is the general here?" asked the adjutant on reaching the knoll.

"He was here a minute ago but has just gone that way," someone
told him, pointing to the right.

The adjutant looked at Pierre as if puzzled what to do with him now.

"Don't trouble about me," said Pierre. "I'll go up onto the knoll if
I may?"

"Yes, do. You'll see everything from there and it's less
dangerous, and I'll come for you."

Pierre went to the battery and the adjutant rode on. They did not
meet again, and only much later did Pierre learn that he lost an arm
that day.

The knoll to which Pierre ascended was that famous one afterwards
known to the Russians as the Knoll Battery or Raevski's Redoubt, and
to the French as la grande redoute, la fatale redoute, la redoute du
centre, around which tens of thousands fell, and which the French
regarded as the key to the whole position.

This redoubt consisted of a knoll, on three sides of which
trenches had been dug. Within the entrenchment stood ten guns that
were being fired through openings in the earthwork.

In line with the knoll on both sides stood other guns which also
fired incessantly. A little behind the guns stood infantry. When
ascending that knoll Pierre had no notion that this spot, on which
small trenches had been dug and from which a few guns were firing, was
the most important point of the battle.

On the contrary, just because he happened to be there he thought
it one of the least significant parts of the field.

Having reached the knoll, Pierre sat down at one end of a trench
surrounding the battery and gazed at what was going on around him with
an unconsciously happy smile. Occasionally he rose and walked about
the battery still with that same smile, trying not to obstruct the
soldiers who were loading, hauling the guns, and continually running
past him with bags and charges. The guns of that battery were being
fired continually one after another with a deafening roar,
enveloping the whole neighborhood in powder smoke.

In contrast with the dread felt by the infantrymen placed in
support, here in the battery where a small number of men busy at their
work were separated from the rest by a trench, everyone experienced
a common and as it were family feeling of animation.

The intrusion of Pierre's nonmilitary figure in a white hat made
an unpleasant impression at first. The soldiers looked askance at
him with surprise and even alarm as they went past him. The senior
artillery officer, a tall, long-legged, pockmarked man, moved over
to Pierre as if to see the action of the farthest gun and looked at
him with curiosity.

A young round-faced officer, quite a boy still and evidently only
just out of the Cadet College, who was zealously commanding the two
guns entrusted to him, addressed Pierre sternly.

"Sir," he said, "permit me to ask you to stand aside. You must not
be here."

The soldiers shook their heads disapprovingly as they looked at
Pierre. But when they had convinced themselves that this man in the
white hat was doing no harm, but either sat quietly on the slope of
the trench with a shy smile or, politely making way for the
soldiers, paced up and down the battery under fire as calmly as if
he were on a boulevard, their feeling of hostile distrust gradually
began to change into a kindly and bantering sympathy, such as soldiers
feel for their dogs, cocks, goats, and in general for the animals that
live with the regiment. The men soon accepted Pierre into their
family, adopted him, gave him a nickname ("our gentleman"), and made
kindly fun of him among themselves.

A shell tore up the earth two paces from Pierre and he looked around
with a smile as he brushed from his clothes some earth it had thrown
up.

"And how's it you're not afraid, sir, really now?" a red-faced,
broad-shouldered soldier asked Pierre, with a grin that disclosed a
set of sound, white teeth.

"Are you afraid, then?" said Pierre.

"What else do you expect?" answered the soldier. "She has no
mercy, you know! When she comes spluttering down, out go your innards.
One can't help being afraid," he said laughing.

Several of the men, with bright kindly faces, stopped beside Pierre.
They seemed not to have expected him to talk like anybody else, and
the discovery that he did so delighted them.

"It's the business of us soldiers. But in a gentleman it's
wonderful! There's a gentleman for you!"

"To your places!" cried the young officer to the men gathered
round Pierre.

The young officer was evidently exercising his duties for the
first or second time and therefore treated both his superiors and
the men with great precision and formality.

The booming cannonade and the fusillade of musketry were growing
more intense over the whole field, especially to the left where
Bagration's fleches were, but where Pierre was the smoke of the firing
made it almost impossible to distinguish anything. Moreover, his whole
attention was engrossed by watching the family circle--separated
from all else--formed by the men in the battery. His first unconscious
feeling of joyful animation produced by the sights and sounds of the
battlefield was now replaced by another, especially since he had
seen that soldier lying alone in the hayfield. Now, seated on the
slope of the trench, he observed the faces of those around him.

By ten o'clock some twenty men had already been carried away from
the battery; two guns were smashed and cannon balls fell more and more
frequently on the battery and spent bullets buzzed and whistled
around. But the men in the battery seemed not to notice this, and
merry voices and jokes were heard on all sides.

"A live one!" shouted a man as a whistling shell approached.

"Not this way! To the infantry!" added another with loud laughter,
seeing the shell fly past and fall into the ranks of the supports.

"Are you bowing to a friend, eh?" remarked another, chaffing a
peasant who ducked low as a cannon ball flew over.

Several soldiers gathered by the wall of the trench, looking out
to see what was happening in front.

"They've withdrawn the front line, it has retired," said they,
pointing over the earthwork.

"Mind your own business," an old sergeant shouted at them. "If
they've retired it's because there's work for them to do farther
back."

And the sergeant, taking one of the men by the shoulders, gave him a
shove with his knee. This was followed by a burst of laughter.

"To the fifth gun, wheel it up!" came shouts from one side.

"Now then, all together, like bargees!" rose the merry voices of
those who were moving the gun.

"Oh, she nearly knocked our gentleman's hat off!" cried the
red-faced humorist, showing his teeth chaffing Pierre. "Awkward
baggage!" he added reproachfully to a cannon ball that struck a cannon
wheel and a man's leg.

"Now then, you foxes!" said another, laughing at some militiamen
who, stooping low, entered the battery to carry away the wounded man.

"So this gruel isn't to your taste? Oh, you crows! You're scared!"
they shouted at the militiamen who stood hesitating before the man
whose leg had been torn off.

"There, lads... oh, oh!" they mimicked the peasants, "they don't
like it at all!"

Pierre noticed that after every ball that hit the redoubt, and after
every loss, the liveliness increased more and more.

As the flames of the fire hidden within come more and more vividly
and rapidly from an approaching thundercloud, so, as if in
opposition to what was taking place, the lightning of hidden fire
growing more and more intense glowed in the faces of these men.

Pierre did not look out at the battlefield and was not concerned
to know what was happening there; he was entirely absorbed in watching
this fire which burned ever more brightly and which he felt was
flaming up in the same way in his own soul.

At ten o'clock the infantry that had been among the bushes in
front of the battery and along the Kamenka streamlet retreated. From
the battery they could be seen running back past it carrying their
wounded on their muskets. A general with his suite came to the
battery, and after speaking to the colonel gave Pierre an angry look
and went away again having ordered the infantry supports behind the
battery to lie down, so as to be less exposed to fire. After this from
amid the ranks of infantry to the right of the battery came the
sound of a drum and shouts of command, and from the battery one saw
how those ranks of infantry moved forward.

Pierre looked over the wall of the trench and was particularly
struck by a pale young officer who, letting his sword hang down, was
walking backwards and kept glancing uneasily around.

The ranks of the infantry disappeared amid the smoke but their
long-drawn shout and rapid musketry firing could still be heard. A few
minutes later crowds of wounded men and stretcher-bearers came back
from that direction. Projectiles began to fall still more frequently
in the battery. Several men were lying about who had not been removed.
Around the cannon the men moved still more briskly and busily. No
one any longer took notice of Pierre. Once or twice he was shouted
at for being in the way. The senior officer moved with big, rapid
strides from one gun to another with a frowning face. The young
officer, with his face still more flushed, commanded the men more
scrupulously than ever. The soldiers handed up the charges, turned,
loaded, and did their business with strained smartness. They gave
little jumps as they walked, as though they were on springs.

The stormcloud had come upon them, and in every face the fire
which Pierre had watched kindle burned up brightly. Pierre standing
beside the commanding officer. The young officer, his hand to his
shako, ran up to his superior.

"I have the honor to report, sir, that only eight rounds are left.
Are we to continue firing?" he asked.

"Grapeshot!" the senior shouted, without answering the question,
looking over the wall of the trench.

Suddenly something happened: the young officer gave a gasp and
bending double sat down on the ground like a bird shot on the wing.
Everything became strange, confused, and misty in Pierre's eyes.

One cannon ball after another whistled by and struck the
earthwork, a soldier, or a gun. Pierre, who had not noticed these
sounds before, now heard nothing else. On the right of the battery
soldiers shouting "Hurrah!" were running not forwards but backwards,
it seemed to Pierre.

A cannon ball struck the very end of the earth work by which he
was standing, crumbling down the earth; a black ball flashed before
his eyes and at the same instant plumped into something. Some
militiamen who were entering the battery ran back.

"All with grapeshot!" shouted the officer.

The sergeant ran up to the officer and in a frightened whisper
informed him (as a butler at dinner informs his master that there is
no more of some wine asked for) that there were no more charges.

"The scoundrels! What are they doing?" shouted the officer,
turning to Pierre.

The officer's face was red and perspiring and his eyes glittered
under his frowning brow.

"Run to the reserves and bring up the ammunition boxes!" he
yelled, angrily avoiding Pierre with his eyes and speaking to his men.

"I'll go," said Pierre.

The officer, without answering him, strode across to the opposite
side.

"Don't fire.... Wait!" he shouted.

The man who had been ordered to go for ammunition stumbled against
Pierre.

"Eh, sir, this is no place for you," said he, and ran down the
slope.

Pierre ran after him, avoiding the spot where the young officer
was sitting.

One cannon ball, another, and a third flew over him, falling in
front, beside, and behind him. Pierre ran down the slope. "Where am
I going?" he suddenly asked himself when he was already near the green
ammunition wagons. He halted irresolutely, not knowing whether to
return or go on. Suddenly a terrible concussion threw him backwards to
the ground. At the same instant he was dazzled by a great flash of
flame, and immediately a deafening roar, crackling, and whistling made
his ears tingle.

When he came to himself he was sitting on the ground leaning on
his hands; the ammunition wagons he had been approaching no longer
existed, only charred green boards and rags littered the scorched
grass, and a horse, dangling fragments of its shaft behind it,
galloped past, while another horse lay, like Pierre, on the ground,
uttering prolonged and piercing cries.





CHAPTER XXXII


Beside himself with terror Pierre jumped up and ran back to the
battery, as to the only refuge from the horrors that surrounded him.

On entering the earthwork he noticed that there were men doing
something there but that no shots were being fired from the battery.
He had no time to realize who these men were. He saw the senior
officer lying on the earth wall with his back turned as if he were
examining something down below and that one of the soldiers he had
noticed before was struggling forward shouting "Brothers!" and
trying to free himself from some men who were holding him by the
arm. He also saw something else that was strange.

But he had not time to realize that the colonel had been killed,
that the soldier shouting "Brothers!" was a prisoner, and that another
man had been bayoneted in the back before his eyes, for hardly had
he run into the redoubt before a thin, sallow-faced, perspiring man in
a blue uniform rushed on him sword in hand, shouting something.
Instinctively guarding against the shock--for they had been running
together at full speed before they saw one another--Pierre put out his
hands and seized the man (a French officer) by the shoulder with one
hand and by the throat with the other. The officer, dropping his
sword, seized Pierre by his collar.

For some seconds they gazed with frightened eyes at one another's
unfamiliar faces and both were perplexed at what they had done and
what they were to do next. "Am I taken prisoner or have I taken him
prisoner?" each was thinking. But the French officer was evidently
more inclined to think he had been taken prisoner because Pierre's
strong hand, impelled by instinctive fear, squeezed his throat ever
tighter and tighter. The Frenchman was about to say something, when
just above their heads, terrible and low, a cannon ball whistled,
and it seemed to Pierre that the French officer's head had been torn
off, so swiftly had he ducked it.

Pierre too bent his head and let his hands fall. Without further
thought as to who had taken whom prisoner, the Frenchman ran back to
the battery and Pierre ran down the slope stumbling over the dead
and wounded who, it seemed to him, caught at his feet. But before he
reached the foot of the knoll he was met by a dense crowd of Russian
soldiers who, stumbling, tripping up, and shouting, ran merrily and
wildly toward the battery. (This was the attack for which Ermolov
claimed the credit, declaring that only his courage and good luck made
such a feat possible: it was the attack in which he was said to have
thrown some St. George's Crosses he had in his pocket into the battery
for the first soldiers to take who got there.)

The French who had occupied the battery fled, and our troops
shouting "Hurrah!" pursued them so far beyond the battery that it
was difficult to call them back.

The prisoners were brought down from the battery and among them
was a wounded French general, whom the officers surrounded. Crowds
of wounded--some known to Pierre and some unknown--Russians and
French, with faces distorted by suffering, walked, crawled, and were
carried on stretchers from the battery. Pierre again went up onto
the knoll where he had spent over an hour, and of that family circle
which had received him as a member he did not find a single one. There
were many dead whom he did not know, but some he recognized. The young
officer still sat in the same way, bent double, in a pool of blood
at the edge of the earth wall. The red-faced man was still
twitching, but they did not carry him away.

Pierre ran down the slope once more.

"Now they will stop it, now they will be horrified at what they have
done!" he thought, aimlessly going toward a crowd of stretcher bearers
moving from the battlefield.

But behind the veil of smoke the sun was still high, and in front
and especially to the left, near Semenovsk, something seemed to be
seething in the smoke, and the roar of cannon and musketry did not
diminish, but even increased to desperation like a man who,
straining himself, shrieks with all his remaining strength.





CHAPTER XXXIII


The chief action of the battle of Borodino was fought within the
seven thousand feet between Borodino and Bagration's fleches. Beyond
that space there was, on the one side, a demonstration made by the
Russians with Uvarov's cavalry at midday, and on the other side,
beyond Utitsa, Poniatowski's collision with Tuchkov; but these two
were detached and feeble actions in comparison with what took place in
the center of the battlefield. On the field between Borodino and the
fleches, beside the wood, the chief action of the day took place on an
open space visible from both sides and was fought in the simplest
and most artless way.

The battle began on both sides with a cannonade from several hundred
guns.

Then when the whole field was covered with smoke, two divisions,
Campan's and Dessaix's, advanced from the French right, while
Murat's troops advanced on Borodino from their left.

From the Shevardino Redoubt where Napoleon was standing the
fleches were two thirds of a mile away, and it was more than a mile as
the crow flies to Borodino, so that Napoleon could not see what was
happening there, especially as the smoke mingling with the mist hid
the whole locality. The soldiers of Dessaix's division advancing
against the fleches could only be seen till they had entered the
hollow that lay between them and the fleches. As soon as they had
descended into that hollow, the smoke of the guns and musketry on
the fleches grew so dense that it covered the whole approach on that
side of it. Through the smoke glimpses could be caught of something
black--probably men--and at times the glint of bayonets. But whether
they were moving or stationary, whether they were French or Russian,
could not be discovered from the Shevardino Redoubt.

The sun had risen brightly and its slanting rays struck straight
into Napoleon's face as, shading his eyes with his hand, he looked
at the fleches. The smoke spread out before them, and at times it
looked as if the smoke were moving, at times as if the troops moved.
Sometimes shouts were heard through the firing, but it was
impossible to tell what was being done there.

Napoleon, standing on the knoll, looked through a field glass, and
in its small circlet saw smoke and men, sometimes his own and
sometimes Russians, but when he looked again with the naked eye, he
could not tell where what he had seen was.

He descended the knoll and began walking up and down before it.

Occasionally he stopped, listened to the firing, and gazed
intently at the battlefield.

But not only was it impossible to make out what was happening from
where he was standing down below, or from the knoll above on which
some of his generals had taken their stand, but even from the
fleches themselves--in which by this time there were now Russian and
now French soldiers, alternately or together, dead, wounded, alive,
frightened, or maddened--even at those fleches themselves it was
impossible to make out what was taking place. There for several
hours amid incessant cannon and musketry fire, now Russians were
seen alone, now Frenchmen alone, now infantry, and now cavalry: they
appeared, fired, fell, collided, not knowing what to do with one
another, screamed, and ran back again.

From the battlefield adjutants he had sent out, and orderlies from
his marshals, kept galloping up to Napoleon with reports of the
progress of the action, but all these reports were false, both because
it was impossible in the heat of battle to say what was happening at
any given moment and because many of the adjutants did not go to the
actual place of conflict but reported what they had heard from others;
and also because while an adjutant was riding more than a mile to
Napoleon circumstances changed and the news he brought was already
becoming false. Thus an adjutant galloped up from Murat with tidings
that Borodino had been occupied and the bridge over the Kolocha was in
the hands of the French. The adjutant asked whether Napoleon wished
the troops to cross it? Napoleon gave orders that the troops should
form up on the farther side and wait. But before that order was given-
almost as soon in fact as the adjutant had left Borodino--the bridge
had been retaken by the Russians and burned, in the very skirmish at
which Pierre had been present at the beginning of the battle.

An adjutant galloped up from the fleches with a pale and
frightened face and reported to Napoleon that their attack had been
repulsed, Campan wounded, and Davout killed; yet at the very time
the adjutant had been told that the French had been repulsed, the
fleches had in fact been recaptured by other French troops, and Davout
was alive and only slightly bruised. On the basis of these necessarily
untrustworthy reports Napoleon gave his orders, which had either
been executed before he gave them or could not be and were not
executed.

The marshals and generals, who were nearer to the field of battle
but, like Napoleon, did not take part in the actual fighting and
only occasionally went within musket range, made their own
arrangements without asking Napoleon and issued orders where and in
what direction to fire and where cavalry should gallop and infantry
should run. But even their orders, like Napoleon's, were seldom
carried out, and then but partially. For the most part things happened
contrary to their orders. Soldiers ordered to advance ran back on
meeting grapeshot; soldiers ordered to remain where they were,
suddenly, seeing Russians unexpectedly before them, sometimes rushed
back and sometimes forward, and the cavalry dashed without orders in
pursuit of the flying Russians. In this way two cavalry regiments
galloped through the Semenovsk hollow and as soon as they reached
the top of the incline turned round and galloped full speed back
again. The infantry moved in the same way, sometimes running to
quite other places than those they were ordered to go to. All orders
as to where and when to move the guns, when to send infantry to
shoot or horsemen to ride down the Russian infantry--all such orders
were given by the officers on the spot nearest to the units concerned,
without asking either Ney, Davout, or Murat, much less Napoleon.
They did not fear getting into trouble for not fulfilling orders or
for acting on their own initiative, for in battle what is at stake
is what is dearest to man--his own life--and it sometimes seems that
safety lies in running back, sometimes in running forward; and these
men who were right in the heat of the battle acted according to the
mood of the moment. In reality, however, all these movements forward
and backward did not improve or alter the position of the troops.
All their rushing and galloping at one another did little harm, the
harm of disablement and death was caused by the balls and bullets that
flew over the fields on which these men were floundering about. As
soon as they left the place where the balls and bullets were flying
about, their superiors, located in the background, re-formed them
and brought them under discipline and under the influence of that
discipline led them back to the zone of fire, where under the
influence of fear of death they lost their discipline and rushed about
according to the chance promptings of the throng.





CHAPTER XXXIV


Napoleon's generals--Davout, Ney, and Murat, who were near that
region of fire and sometimes even entered it--repeatedly led into it
huge masses of well-ordered troops. But contrary to what had always
happened in their former battles, instead of the news they expected of
the enemy's flight, these orderly masses returned thence as
disorganized and terrified mobs. The generals re-formed them, but
their numbers constantly decreased. In the middle of the day Murat
sent his adjutant to Napoleon to demand reinforcements.

Napoleon sat at the foot of the knoll, drinking punch, when
Murat's adjutant galloped up with an assurance that the Russians would
be routed if His Majesty would let him have another division.

"Reinforcements?" said Napoleon in a tone of stern surprise, looking
at the adjutant--a handsome lad with long black curls arranged like
Murat's own--as though he did not understand his words.

"Reinforcements!" thought Napoleon to himself. "How can they need
reinforcements when they already have half the army directed against a
weak, unentrenched Russian wing?"

"Tell the King of Naples," said he sternly, "that it is not noon
yet, and I don't yet see my chessboard clearly. Go!..."

The handsome boy adjutant with the long hair sighed deeply without
removing his hand from his hat and galloped back to where men were
being slaughtered.

Napoleon rose and having summoned Caulaincourt and Berthier began
talking to them about matters unconnected with the battle.

In the midst of this conversation, which was beginning to interest
Napoleon, Berthier's eyes turned to look at a general with a suite,
who was galloping toward the knoll on a lathering horse. It was
Belliard. Having dismounted he went up to the Emperor with rapid
strides and in a loud voice began boldly demonstrating the necessity
of sending reinforcements. He swore on his honor that the Russians
were lost if the Emperor would give another division.

Napoleon shrugged his shoulders and continued to pace up and down
without replying. Belliard began talking loudly and eagerly to the
generals of the suite around him.

"You are very fiery, Belliard," said Napoleon, when he again came up
to the general. "In the heat of a battle it is easy to make a mistake.
Go and have another look and then come back to me."

Before Belliard was out of sight, a messenger from another part of
the battlefield galloped up.

"Now then, what do you want?" asked Napoleon in the tone of a man
irritated at being continually disturbed.

"Sire, the prince..." began the adjutant.

"Asks for reinforcements?" said Napoleon with an angry gesture.

The adjutant bent his head affirmatively and began to report, but
the Emperor turned from him, took a couple of steps, stopped, came
back, and called Berthier.

"We must give reserves," he said, moving his arms slightly apart.
"Who do you think should be sent there?" he asked of Berthier (whom he
subsequently termed "that gosling I have made an eagle").

"Send Claparede's division, sire," replied Berthier, who knew all
the divisions regiments, and battalions by heart.

Napoleon nodded assent.

The adjutant galloped to Claparede's division and a few minutes
later the Young Guards stationed behind the knoll moved forward.
Napoleon gazed silently in that direction.

"No!" he suddenly said to Berthier. "I can't send Claparede. Send
Friant's division."

Though there was no advantage in sending Friant's division instead
of Claparede's, and even in obvious inconvenience and delay in
stopping Claparede and sending Friant now, the order was carried out
exactly. Napoleon did not notice that in regard to his army he was
playing the part of a doctor who hinders by his medicines--a role he
so justly understood and condemned.

Friant's division disappeared as the others had done into the
smoke of the battlefield. From all sides adjutants continued to arrive
at a gallop and as if by agreement all said the same thing. They all
asked for reinforcements and all said that the Russians were holding
their positions and maintaining a hellish fire under which the
French army was melting away.

Napoleon sat on a campstool, wrapped in thought.

M. de Beausset, the man so fond of travel, having fasted since
morning, came up to the Emperor and ventured respectfully to suggest
lunch to His Majesty.

"I hope I may now congratulate Your Majesty on a victory?" said he.

Napoleon silently shook his head in negation. Assuming the
negation to refer only to the victory and not to the lunch, M. de
Beausset ventured with respectful jocularity to remark that there is
no reason for not having lunch when one can get it.

"Go away..." exclaimed Napoleon suddenly and morosely, and turned
aside.

A beatific smile of regret, repentance, and ecstasy beamed on M.
de Beausset's face and he glided away to the other generals.

Napoleon was experiencing a feeling of depression like that of an
ever-lucky gambler who, after recklessly flinging money about and
always winning, suddenly just when he has calculated all the chances
of the game, finds that the more he considers his play the more surely
he loses.

His troops were the same, his generals the same, the same
preparations had been made, the same dispositions, and the same
proclamation courte et energique, he himself was still the same: he
knew that and knew that he was now even more experienced and
skillful than before. Even the enemy was the same as at Austerlitz and
Friedland--yet the terrible stroke of his arm had supernaturally
become impotent.

All the old methods that had been unfailingly crowned with
success: the concentration of batteries on one point, an attack by
reserves to break the enemy's line, and a cavalry attack by "the men
of iron," all these methods had already been employed, yet not only
was there no victory, but from all sides came the same news of
generals killed and wounded, of reinforcements needed, of the
impossibility of driving back the Russians, and of disorganization
among his own troops.

Formerly, after he had given two or three orders and uttered a few
phrases, marshals and adjutants had come galloping up with
congratulations and happy faces, announcing the trophies taken, the
corps of prisoners, bundles of enemy eagles and standards, cannon
and stores, and Murat had only begged leave to loose the cavalry to
gather in the baggage wagons. So it had been at Lodi, Marengo, Arcola,
Jena, Austerlitz, Wagram, and so on. But now something strange was
happening to his troops.

Despite news of the capture of the fleches, Napoleon saw that this
was not the same, not at all the same, as what had happened in his
former battles. He saw that what he was feeling was felt by all the
men about him experienced in the art of war. All their faces looked
dejected, and they all shunned one another's eyes--only a de
Beausset could fail to grasp the meaning of what was happening.

But Napoleon with his long experience of war well knew the meaning
of a battle not gained by the attacking side in eight hours, after all
efforts had been expended. He knew that it was a lost battle and
that the least accident might now--with the fight balanced on such a
strained center--destroy him and his army.

When he ran his mind over the whole of this strange Russian campaign
in which not one battle had been won, and in which not a flag, or
cannon, or army corps had been captured in two months, when he
looked at the concealed depression on the faces around him and heard
reports of the Russians still holding their ground--a terrible feeling
like a nightmare took possession of him, and all the unlucky accidents
that might destroy him occurred to his mind. The Russians might fall
on his left wing, might break through his center, he himself might
be killed by a stray cannon ball. All this was possible. In former
battles he had only considered the possibilities of success, but now
innumerable unlucky chances presented themselves, and he expected them
all. Yes, it was like a dream in which a man fancies that a ruffian is
coming to attack him, and raises his arm to strike that ruffian a
terrible blow which he knows should annihilate him, but then feels
that his arm drops powerless and limp like a rag, and the horror of
unavoidable destruction seizes him in his helplessness.

The news that the Russians were attacking the left flank of the
French army aroused that horror in Napoleon. He sat silently on a
campstool below the knoll, with head bowed and elbows on his knees.
Berthier approached and suggested that they should ride along the line
to ascertain the position of affairs.

"What? What do you say?" asked Napoleon. "Yes, tell them to bring me
my horse."

He mounted and rode toward Semenovsk.

Amid the powder smoke, slowly dispersing over the whole space
through which Napoleon rode, horses and men were lying in pools of
blood, singly or in heaps. Neither Napoleon nor any of his generals
had ever before seen such horrors or so many slain in such a small
area. The roar of guns, that had not ceased for ten hours, wearied the
ear and gave a peculiar significance to the spectacle, as music does
to tableaux vivants. Napoleon rode up the high ground at Semenovsk,
and through the smoke saw ranks of men in uniforms of a color
unfamiliar to him. They were Russians.

The Russians stood in serried ranks behind Semenovsk village and its
knoll, and their guns boomed incessantly along their line and sent
forth clouds of smoke. It was no longer a battle: it was a
continuous slaughter which could be of no avail either to the French
or the Russians. Napoleon stopped his horse and again fell into the
reverie from which Berthier had aroused him. He could not stop what
was going on before him and around him and was supposed to be directed
by him and to depend on him, and from its lack of success this affair,
for the first time, seemed to him unnecessary and horrible.

One of the generals rode up to Napoleon and ventured to offer to
lead the Old Guard into action. Ney and Berthier, standing near
Napoleon, exchanged looks and smiled contemptuously at this
general's senseless offer.

Napoleon bowed his head and remained silent a long time.

"At eight hundred leagues from France, I will not have my Guard
destroyed!" he said, and turning his horse rode back to Shevardino.





CHAPTER XXXV


On the rug-covered bench where Pierre had seen him in the morning
sat Kutuzov, his gray head hanging, his heavy body relaxed. He gave no
orders, but only assented to or dissented from what others suggested.

"Yes, yes, do that," he replied to various proposals. "Yes, yes: go,
dear boy, and have a look," he would say to one or another of those
about him; or, "No, don't, we'd better wait!" He listened to the
reports that were brought him and gave directions when his
subordinates demanded that of him; but when listening to the reports
it seemed as if he were not interested in the import of the words
spoken, but rather in something else--in the expression of face and
tone of voice of those who were reporting. By long years of military
experience he knew, and with the wisdom of age understood, that it
is impossible for one man to direct hundreds of thousands of others
struggling with death, and he knew that the result of a battle is
decided not by the orders of a commander in chief, nor the place where
the troops are stationed, nor by the number of cannon or of
slaughtered men, but by that intangible force called the spirit of the
army, and he watched this force and guided it in as far as that was in
his power.

Kutuzov's general expression was one of concentrated quiet
attention, and his face wore a strained look as if he found it
difficult to master the fatigue of his old and feeble body.

At eleven o'clock they brought him news that the fleches captured by
the French had been retaken, but that Prince Bagration was wounded.
Kutuzov groaned and swayed his head.

"Ride over to Prince Peter Ivanovich and find out about it exactly,"
he said to one of his adjutants, and then turned to the Duke of
Wurttemberg who was standing behind him.

"Will Your Highness please take command of the first army?"

Soon after the duke's departure--before he could possibly have
reached Semenovsk--his adjutant came back from him and told Kutuzov
that the duke asked for more troops.

Kutuzov made a grimace and sent an order to Dokhturov to take over
the command of the first army, and a request to the duke--whom he said
he could not spare at such an important moment--to return to him. When
they brought him news that Murat had been taken prisoner, and the
staff officers congratulated him, Kutuzov smiled.

"Wait a little, gentlemen," said he. "The battle is won, and there
is nothing extraordinary in the capture of Murat. Still, it is
better to wait before we rejoice."

But he sent an adjutant to take the news round the army.

When Scherbinin came galloping from the left flank with news that
the French had captured the fleches and the village of Semenovsk,
Kutuzov, guessing by the sounds of the battle and by Scherbinin's
looks that the news was bad, rose as if to stretch his legs and,
taking Scherbinin's arm, led him aside.

"Go, my dear fellow," he said to Ermolov, "and see whether something
can't be done."

Kutuzov was in Gorki, near the center of the Russian position. The
attack directed by Napoleon against our left flank had been several
times repulsed. In the center the French had not got beyond
Borodino, and on their left flank Uvarov's cavalry had put the
French to flight.

Toward three o'clock the French attacks ceased. On the faces of
all who came from the field of battle, and of those who stood around
him, Kutuzov noticed an expression of extreme tension. He was
satisfied with the day's success--a success exceeding his
expectations, but the old man's strength was failing him. Several
times his head dropped low as if it were falling and he dozed off.
Dinner was brought him.

Adjutant General Wolzogen, the man who when riding past Prince
Andrew had said, "the war should be extended widely," and whom
Bagration so detested, rode up while Kutuzov was at dinner. Wolzogen
had come from Barclay de Tolly to report on the progress of affairs on
the left flank. The sagacious Barclay de Tolly, seeing crowds of
wounded men running back and the disordered rear of the army,
weighed all the circumstances, concluded that the battle was lost, and
sent his favorite officer to the commander in chief with that news.

Kutuzov was chewing a piece of roast chicken with difficulty and
glanced at Wolzogen with eyes that brightened under their puckering
lids.

Wolzogen, nonchalantly stretching his legs, approached Kutuzov
with a half-contemptuous smile on his lips, scarcely touching the peak
of his cap.

He treated his Serene Highness with a somewhat affected
nonchalance intended to show that, as a highly trained military man,
he left it to Russians to make an idol of this useless old man, but
that he knew whom he was dealing with. "Der alte Herr" (as in their
own set the Germans called Kutuzov) "is making himself very
comfortable," thought Wolzogen, and looking severely at the dishes
in front of Kutuzov he began to report to "the old gentleman" the
position of affairs on the left flank as Barclay had ordered him to
and as he himself had seen and understood it.

"All the points of our position are in the enemy's hands and we
cannot dislodge them for lack of troops, the men are running away
and it is impossible to stop them," he reported.

Kutuzov ceased chewing and fixed an astonished gaze on Wolzogen,
as if not understand what was said to him. Wolzogen, noticing "the old
gentleman's" agitation, said with a smile:

"I have not considered it right to conceal from your Serene Highness
what I have seen. The troops are in complete disorder..."

"You have seen? You have seen?..." Kutuzov shouted frowning, and
rising quickly he went up to Wolzogen.

"How... how dare you!..." he shouted, choking and making a
threatening gesture with his trembling arms: "How dare you, sir, say
that to me? You know nothing about it. Tell General Barclay from me
that his information is incorrect and that the real course of the
battle is better known to me, the commander in chief, than to him."

Wolzogen was about to make a rejoinder, but Kutuzov interrupted him.

"The enemy has been repulsed on the left and defeated on the right
flank. If you have seen amiss, sir, do not allow yourself to say
what you don't know! Be so good as to ride to General Barclay and
inform him of my firm intention to attack the enemy tomorrow," said
Kutuzov sternly.

All were silent, and the only sound audible was the heavy
breathing of the panting old general.

"They are repulsed everywhere, for which I thank God and our brave
army! The enemy is beaten, and tomorrow we shall drive him from the
sacred soil of Russia," said Kutuzov crossing himself, and he suddenly
sobbed as his eyes filled with tears.

Wolzogen, shrugging his shoulders and curling his lips, stepped
silently aside, marveling at "the old gentleman's" conceited
stupidity.

"Ah, here he is, my hero!" said Kutuzov to a portly, handsome,
dark-haired general who was just ascending the knoll.

This was Raevski, who had spent the whole day at the most
important part of the field of Borodino.

Raevski reported that the troops were firmly holding their ground
and that the French no longer ventured to attack.

After hearing him, Kutuzov said in French:

"Then you do not think, like some others, that we must retreat?"

"On the contrary, your Highness, in indecisive actions it is
always the most stubborn who remain victors," replied Raevski, "and in
my opinion..."

"Kaysarov!" Kutuzov called to his adjutant. "Sit down and write
out the order of the day for tomorrow. And you," he continued,
addressing another, "ride along the line and that tomorrow we attack."

While Kutuzov was talking to Raevski and dictating the order of
the day, Wolzogen returned from Barclay and said that General
Barclay wished to have written confirmation of the order the field
marshal had given.

Kutuzov, without looking at Wolzogen, gave directions for the
order to be written out which the former commander in chief, to
avoid personal responsibility, very judiciously wished to receive.

And by means of that mysterious indefinable bond which maintains
throughout an army one and the same temper, known as "the spirit of
the army," and which constitutes the sinew of war, Kutuzov's words,
his order for a battle next day, immediately became known from one end
of the army to the other.

It was far from being the same words or the same order that
reached the farthest links of that chain. The tales passing from mouth
to mouth at different ends of the army did not even resemble what
Kutuzov had said, but the sense of his words spread everywhere because
what he said was not the outcome of cunning calculations, but of a
feeling that lay in the commander in chief's soul as in that of
every Russian.

And on learning that tomorrow they were to attack the enemy, and
hearing from the highest quarters a confirmation of what they wanted
to believe, the exhausted, wavering men felt comforted and inspirited.





CHAPTER XXXVI


Prince Andrew's regiment was among the reserves which till after one
o'clock were stationed inactive behind Semenovsk, under heavy
artillery fire. Toward two o'clock the regiment, having already lost
more than two hundred men, was moved forward into a trampled
oatfield in the gap between Semenovsk and the Knoll Battery, where
thousands of men perished that day and on which an intense,
concentrated fire from several hundred enemy guns was directed between
one and two o'clock.

Without moving from that spot or firing a single shot the regiment
here lost another third of its men. From in front and especially
from the right, in the unlifting smoke the guns boomed, and out of the
mysterious domain of smoke that overlay the whole space in front,
quick hissing cannon balls and slow whistling shells flew unceasingly.
At times, as if to allow them a respite, a quarter of an hour passed
during which the cannon balls and shells all flew overhead, but
sometimes several men were torn from the regiment in a minute and
the slain were continually being dragged away and the wounded
carried off.

With each fresh blow less and less chance of life remained for those
not yet killed. The regiment stood in columns of battalion, three
hundred paces apart, but nevertheless the men were always in one and
the same mood. All alike were taciturn and morose. Talk was rarely
heard in the ranks, and it ceased altogether every time the thud of
a successful shot and the cry of "stretchers!" was heard. Most of
the time, by their officers' order, the men sat on the ground. One,
having taken off his shako, carefully loosened the gathers of its
lining and drew them tight again; another, rubbing some dry clay
between his palms, polished his bayonet; another fingered the strap
and pulled the buckle of his bandolier, while another smoothed and
refolded his leg bands and put his boots on again. Some built little
houses of the tufts in the plowed ground, or plaited baskets from
the straw in the cornfield. All seemed fully absorbed in these
pursuits. When men were killed or wounded, when rows of stretchers
went past, when some troops retreated, and when great masses of the
enemy came into view through the smoke, no one paid any attention to
these things. But when our artillery or cavalry advanced or some of
our infantry were seen to move forward, words of approval were heard
on all sides. But the liveliest attention was attracted by occurrences
quite apart from, and unconnected with, the battle. It was as if the
minds of these morally exhausted men found relief in everyday,
commonplace occurrences. A battery of artillery was passing in front
of the regiment. The horse of an ammunition cart put its leg over a
trace. "Hey, look at the trace horse!... Get her leg out! She'll
fall.... Ah, they don't see it!" came identical shouts from the
ranks all along the regiment. Another time, general attention was
attracted by a small brown dog, coming heaven knows whence, which
trotted in a preoccupied manner in front of the ranks with tail
stiffly erect till suddenly a shell fell close by, when it yelped,
tucked its tail between its legs, and darted aside. Yells and
shrieks of laughter rose from the whole regiment. But such
distractions lasted only a moment, and for eight hours the men had
been inactive, without food, in constant fear of death, and their pale
and gloomy faces grew ever paler and gloomier.

Prince Andrew, pale and gloomy like everyone in the regiment,
paced up and down from the border of one patch to another, at the edge
of the meadow beside an oatfield, with head bowed and arms behind
his back. There was nothing for him to do and no orders to be given.
Everything went on of itself. The killed were dragged from the
front, the wounded carried away, and the ranks closed up. If any
soldiers ran to the rear they returned immediately and hastily. At
first Prince Andrew, considering it his duty to rouse the courage of
the men and to set them an example, walked about among the ranks,
but he soon became convinced that this was unnecessary and that
there was nothing he could teach them. All the powers of his soul,
as of every soldier there, were unconsciously bent on avoiding the
contemplation of the horrors of their situation. He walked along the
meadow, dragging his feet, rustling the grass, and gazing at the
dust that covered his boots; now he took big strides trying to keep to
the footprints left on the meadow by the mowers, then he counted his
steps, calculating how often he must walk from one strip to another to
walk a mile, then he stripped the flowers from the wormwood that
grew along a boundary rut, rubbed them in his palms, and smelled their
pungent, sweetly bitter scent. Nothing remained of the previous
day's thoughts. He thought of nothing. He listened with weary ears
to the ever-recurring sounds, distinguishing the whistle of flying
projectiles from the booming of the reports, glanced at the tiresomely
familiar faces of the men of the first battalion, and waited. "Here it
comes... this one is coming our way again!" he thought, listening to
an approaching whistle in the hidden region of smoke. "One, another!
Again! It has hit...." He stopped and looked at the ranks. "No, it has
gone over. But this one has hit!" And again he started trying to reach
the boundary strip in sixteen paces. A whizz and a thud! Five paces
from him, a cannon ball tore up the dry earth and disappeared. A chill
ran down his back. Again he glanced at the ranks. Probably many had
been hit--a large crowd had gathered near the second battalion.

"Adjutant!" he shouted. "Order them not to crowd together."

The adjutant, having obeyed this instruction, approached Prince
Andrew. From the other side a battalion commander rode up.

"Look out!" came a frightened cry from a soldier and, like a bird
whirring in rapid flight and alighting on the ground, a shell
dropped with little noise within two steps of Prince Andrew and
close to the battalion commander's horse. The horse first,
regardless of whether it was right or wrong to show fear, snorted,
reared almost throwing the major, and galloped aside. The horse's
terror infected the men.

"Lie down!" cried the adjutant, throwing himself flat on the ground.

Prince Andrew hesitated. The smoking shell spun like a top between
him and the prostrate adjutant, near a wormwood plant between the
field and the meadow.

"Can this be death?" thought Prince Andrew, looking with a quite
new, envious glance at the grass, the wormwood, and the streamlet of
smoke that curled up from the rotating black ball. "I cannot, I do not
wish to die. I love life--I love this grass, this earth, this air...."
He thought this, and at the same time remembered that people were
looking at him.

"It's shameful, sir!" he said to the adjutant. "What..."

He did not finish speaking. At one and the same moment came the
sound of an explosion, a whistle of splinters as from a breaking
window frame, a suffocating smell of powder, and Prince Andrew started
to one side, raising his arm, and fell on his chest. Several
officers ran up to him. From the right side of his abdomen, blood
was welling out making a large stain on the grass.

The militiamen with stretchers who were called up stood behind the
officers. Prince Andrew lay on his chest with his face in the grass,
breathing heavily and noisily.

"What are you waiting for? Come along!"

The peasants went up and took him by his shoulders and legs, but
he moaned piteously and, exchanging looks, they set him down again.

"Pick him up, lift him, it's all the same!" cried someone.

They again took him by the shoulders and laid him on the stretcher.

"Ah, God! My God! What is it? The stomach? That means death! My
God!"--voices among the officers were heard saying.

"It flew a hair's breadth past my ear," said the adjutant.

The peasants, adjusting the stretcher to their shoulders, started
hurriedly along the path they had trodden down, to the dressing
station.

"Keep in step! Ah... those peasants!" shouted an officer, seizing by
their shoulders and checking the peasants, who were walking unevenly
and jolting the stretcher.

"Get into step, Fedor... I say, Fedor!" said the foremost peasant.

"Now that's right!" said the one behind joyfully, when he had got
into step.

"Your excellency! Eh, Prince!" said the trembling voice of Timokhin,
who had run up and was looking down on the stretcher.

Prince Andrew opened his eyes and looked up at the speaker from
the stretcher into which his head had sunk deep and again his
eyelids drooped.


The militiamen carried Prince Andrew to dressing station by the
wood, where wagons were stationed. The dressing station consisted of
three tents with flaps turned back, pitched at the edge of a birch
wood. In the wood, wagons and horses were standing. The horses were
eating oats from their movable troughs and sparrows flew down and
pecked the grains that fell. Some crows, scenting blood, flew among
the birch trees cawing impatiently. Around the tents, over more than
five acres, bloodstained men in various garbs stood, sat, or lay.
Around the wounded stood crowds of soldier stretcher-bearers with
dismal and attentive faces, whom the officers keeping order tried in
vain to drive from the spot. Disregarding the officers' orders, the
soldiers stood leaning against their stretchers and gazing intently,
as if trying to comprehend the difficult problem of what was taking
place before them. From the tents came now loud angry cries and now
plaintive groans. Occasionally dressers ran out to fetch water, or
to point out those who were to be brought in next. The wounded men
awaiting their turn outside the tents groaned, sighed, wept, screamed,
swore, or asked for vodka. Some were delirious. Prince Andrew's
bearers, stepping over the wounded who had not yet been bandaged, took
him, as a regimental commander, close up to one of the tents and there
stopped, awaiting instructions. Prince Andrew opened his eyes and
for a long time could not make out what was going on around him. He
remembered the meadow, the wormwood, the field, the whirling black
ball, and his sudden rush of passionate love of life. Two steps from
him, leaning against a branch and talking loudly and attracting
general attention, stood a tall, handsome, black-haired
noncommissioned officer with a bandaged head. He had been wounded in
the head and leg by bullets. Around him, eagerly listening to his
talk, a crowd of wounded and stretcher-bearers was gathered.

"We kicked him out from there so that he chucked everything, we
grabbed the King himself!" cried he, looking around him with eyes that
glittered with fever. "If only reserves had come up just then, lads,
there wouldn't have been nothing left of him! I tell you surely..."

Like all the others near the speaker, Prince Andrew looked at him
with shining eyes and experienced a sense of comfort. "But isn't it
all the same now?" thought he. "And what will be there, and what has
there been here? Why was I so reluctant to part with life? There was
something in this life I did not and do not understand."





CHAPTER XXXVII


One of the doctors came out of the tent in a bloodstained apron,
holding a cigar between the thumb and little finger of one of his
small bloodstained hands, so as not to smear it. He raised his head
and looked about him, but above the level of the wounded men. He
evidently wanted a little respite. After turning his head from right
to left for some time, he sighed and looked down.

"All right, immediately," he replied to a dresser who pointed Prince
Andrew out to him, and he told them to carry him into the tent.

Murmurs arose among the wounded who were waiting.

"It seems that even in the next world only the gentry are to have
a chance!" remarked one.

Prince Andrew was carried in and laid on a table that had only
just been cleared and which a dresser was washing down. Prince
Andrew could not make out distinctly what was in that tent. The
pitiful groans from all sides and the torturing pain in his thigh,
stomach, and back distracted him. All he saw about him merged into a
general impression of naked, bleeding human bodies that seemed to fill
the whole of the low tent, as a few weeks previously, on that hot
August day, such bodies had filled the dirty pond beside the
Smolensk road. Yes, it was the same flesh, the same chair a canon, the
sight of which had even then filled him with horror, as by a
presentiment.

There were three operating tables in the tent. Two were occupied,
and on the third they placed Prince Andrew. For a little while he
was left alone and involuntarily witnessed what was taking place on
the other two tables. On the nearest one sat a Tartar, probably a
Cossack, judging by the uniform thrown down beside him. Four
soldiers were holding him, and a spectacled doctor was cutting into
his muscular brown back.

"Ooh, ooh, ooh!" grunted the Tartar, and suddenly lifting up his
swarthy snub-nosed face with its high cheekbones, and baring his white
teeth, he began to wriggle and twitch his body and utter piercing,
ringing, and prolonged yells. On the other table, round which many
people were crowding, a tall well-fed man lay on his back with his
head thrown back. His curly hair, its color, and the shape of his head
seemed strangely familiar to Prince Andrew. Several dressers were
pressing on his chest to hold him down. One large, white, plump leg
twitched rapidly all the time with a feverish tremor. The man was
sobbing and choking convulsively. Two doctors--one of whom was pale
and trembling--were silently doing something to this man's other, gory
leg. When he had finished with the Tartar, whom they covered with an
overcoat, the spectacled doctor came up to Prince Andrew, wiping his
hands.

He glanced at Prince Andrew's face and quickly turned away.

"Undress him! What are you waiting for?" he cried angrily to the
dressers.

His very first, remotest recollections of childhood came back to
Prince Andrew's mind when the dresser with sleeves rolled up began
hastily to undo the buttons of his clothes and undressed him. The
doctor bent down over the wound, felt it, and sighed deeply. Then he
made a sign to someone, and the torturing pain in his abdomen caused
Prince Andrew to lose consciousness. When he came to himself the
splintered portions of his thighbone had been extracted, the torn
flesh cut away, and the wound bandaged. Water was being sprinkled on
his face. As soon as Prince Andrew opened his eyes, the doctor bent
over, kissed him silently on the lips, and hurried away.

After the sufferings he had been enduring, Prince Andrew enjoyed a
blissful feeling such as he had not experienced for a long time. All
the best and happiest moments of his life--especially his earliest
childhood, when he used to be undressed and put to bed, and when
leaning over him his nurse sang him to sleep and he, burying his
head in the pillow, felt happy in the mere consciousness of life-
returned to his memory, not merely as something past but as
something present.

The doctors were busily engaged with the wounded man the shape of
whose head seemed familiar to Prince Andrew: they were lifting him
up and trying to quiet him.

"Show it to me.... Oh, ooh... Oh! Oh, ooh!" his frightened moans
could be heard, subdued by suffering and broken by sobs.

Hearing those moans Prince Andrew wanted to weep.
Whether because he was dying without glory, or because he was sorry to
part with life, or because of those memories of a childhood that could
not return, or because he was suffering and others were suffering
and that man near him was groaning so piteously--he felt like
weeping childlike, kindly, and almost happy tears.

The wounded man was shown his amputated leg stained with clotted
blood and with the boot still on.

"Oh! Oh, ooh!" he sobbed, like a woman.

The doctor who had been standing beside him, preventing Prince
Andrew from seeing his face, moved away.

"My God! What is this? Why is he here?" said Prince Andrew to
himself.

In the miserable, sobbing, enfeebled man whose leg had just been
amputated, he recognized Anatole Kuragin. Men were supporting him in
their arms and offering him a glass of water, but his trembling,
swollen lips could not grasp its rim. Anatole was sobbing painfully.
"Yes, it is he! Yes, that man is somehow closely and painfully
connected with me," thought Prince Andrew, not yet clearly grasping
what he saw before him. "What is the connection of that man with my
childhood and life?" he asked himself without finding an answer. And
suddenly a new unexpected memory from that realm of pure and loving
childhood presented itself to him. He remembered Natasha as he had
seen her for the first time at the ball in 1810, with her slender neck
and arms and with a frightened happy face ready for rapture, and
love and tenderness for her, stronger and more vivid than ever,
awoke in his soul. He now remembered the connection that existed
between himself and this man who was dimly gazing at him through tears
that filled his swollen eyes. He remembered everything, and ecstatic
pity and love for that man overflowed his happy heart.

Prince Andrew could no longer restrain himself and wept tender
loving tears for his fellow men, for himself, and for his own and
their errors.

"Compassion, love of our brothers, for those who love us and for
those who hate us, love of our enemies; yes, that love which God
preached on earth and which Princess Mary taught me and I did not
understand--that is what made me sorry to part with life, that is what
remained for me had I lived. But now it is too late. I know it!"





CHAPTER XXXVIII


The terrible spectacle of the battlefield covered with dead and
wounded, together with the heaviness of his head and the news that
some twenty generals he knew personally had been killed or wounded,
and the consciousness of the impotence of his once mighty arm,
produced an unexpected impression on Napoleon who usually liked to
look at the killed and wounded, thereby, he considered, testing his
strength of mind. This day the horrible appearance of the
battlefield overcame that strength of mind which he thought
constituted his merit and his greatness. He rode hurriedly from the
battlefield and returned to the Shevardino knoll, where he sat on
his campstool, his sallow face swollen and heavy, his eyes dim, his
nose red, and his voice hoarse, involuntarily listening, with downcast
eyes, to the sounds of firing. With painful dejection he awaited the
end of this action, in which he regarded himself as a participant
and which he was unable to arrest. A personal, human feeling for a
brief moment got the better of the artificial phantasm of life he
had served so long. He felt in his own person the sufferings and death
he had witnessed on the battlefield. The heaviness of his head and
chest reminded him of the possibility of suffering and death for
himself. At that moment he did not desire Moscow, or victory, or glory
(what need had he for any more glory?). The one thing he wished for
was rest, tranquillity, and freedom. But when he had been on the
Semenovsk heights the artillery commander had proposed to him to bring
several batteries of artillery up to those heights to strengthen the
fire on the Russian troops crowded in front of Knyazkovo. Napoleon had
assented and had given orders that news should be brought to him of
the effect those batteries produced.

An adjutant came now to inform him that the fire of two hundred guns
had been concentrated on the Russians, as he had ordered, but that
they still held their ground.

"Our fire is mowing them down by rows, but still they hold on," said
the adjutant.

"They want more!..." said Napoleon in a hoarse voice.

"Sire?" asked the adjutant who had not heard the remark.

"They want more!" croaked Napoleon frowning. "Let them have it!"

Even before he gave that order the thing he did not desire, and
for which he gave the order only because he thought it was expected of
him, was being done. And he fell back into that artificial realm of
imaginary greatness, and again--as a horse walking a treadmill
thinks it is doing something for itself--he submissively fulfilled the
cruel, sad, gloomy, and inhuman role predestined for him.

And not for that day and hour alone were the mind and conscience
darkened of this man on whom the responsibility for what was happening
lay more than on all the others who took part in it. Never to the
end of his life could he understand goodness, beauty, or truth, or the
significance of his actions which were too contrary to goodness and
truth, too remote from everything human, for him ever to be able to
grasp their meaning. He could not disavow his actions, belauded as
they were by half the world, and so he had to repudiate truth,
goodness, and all humanity.

Not only on that day, as he rode over the battlefield strewn with
men killed and maimed (by his will as he believed), did he reckon as
he looked at them how many Russians there were for each Frenchman and,
deceiving himself, find reason for rejoicing in the calculation that
there were five Russians for every Frenchman. Not on that day alone
did he write in a letter to Paris that "the battle field was
superb," because fifty thousand corpses lay there, but even on the
island of St. Helena in the peaceful solitude where he said he
intended to devote his leisure to an account of the great deeds he had
done, he wrote:


The Russian war should have been the most popular war of modern
times: it was a war of good sense, for real interests, for the
tranquillity and security of all; it was purely pacific and
conservative.

It was a war for a great cause, the end of uncertainties and the
beginning of security. A new horizon and new labors were opening
out, full of well-being and prosperity for all. The European system
was already founded; all that remained was to organize it.

Satisfied on these great points and with tranquility everywhere, I
too should have had my Congress and my Holy Alliance. Those ideas were
stolen from me. In that reunion of great sovereigns we should have
discussed our interests like one family, and have rendered account
to the peoples as clerk to master.

Europe would in this way soon have been, in fact, but one people,
and anyone who traveled anywhere would have found himself always in
the common fatherland. I should have demanded the freedom of all
navigable rivers for everybody, that the seas should be common to all,
and that the great standing armies should be reduced henceforth to
mere guards for the sovereigns.

On returning to France, to the bosom of the great, strong,
magnificent, peaceful, and glorious fatherland, I should have
proclaimed her frontiers immutable; all future wars purely
defensive, all aggrandizement antinational. I should have associated
my son in the Empire; my dictatorship would have been finished, and
his constitutional reign would have begun.

Paris would have been the capital of the world, and the French the
envy of the nations!

My leisure then, and my old age, would have been devoted, in company
with the Empress and during the royal apprenticeship of my son, to
leisurely visiting, with our own horses and like a true country
couple, every corner of the Empire, receiving complaints, redressing
wrongs, and scattering public buildings and benefactions on all
sides and everywhere.


Napoleon, predestined by Providence for the gloomy role of
executioner of the peoples, assured himself that the aim of his
actions had been the peoples' welfare and that he could control the
fate of millions and by the employment of power confer benefactions.


"Of four hundred thousand who crossed the Vistula," he wrote further
of the Russian war, "half were Austrians, Prussians, Saxons, Poles,
Bavarians, Wurttembergers, Mecklenburgers, Spaniards, Italians, and
Neapolitans. The Imperial army, strictly speaking, was one third
composed of Dutch, Belgians, men from the borders of the Rhine,
Piedmontese, Swiss, Genevese, Tuscans, Romans, inhabitants of the
Thirty-second Military Division, of Bremen, of Hamburg, and so on:
it included scarcely a hundred and forty thousand who spoke French.
The Russian expedition actually cost France less than fifty thousand
men; the Russian army in its retreat from Vilna to Moscow lost in
the various battles four times more men than the French army; the
burning of Moscow cost the lives of a hundred thousand Russians who
died of cold and want in the woods; finally, in its march from
Moscow to the Oder the Russian army also suffered from the severity of
the season; so that by the the time it reached Vilna it numbered
only fifty thousand, and at Kalisch less than eighteen thousand."


He imagined that the war with Russia came about by his will, and the
horrors that occurred did not stagger his soul. He boldly took the
whole responsibility for what happened, and his darkened mind found
justification in the belief that among the hundreds of thousands who
perished there were fewer Frenchmen than Hessians and Bavarians.





CHAPTER XXXIX


Several tens of thousands of the slain lay in diverse postures and
various uniforms on the fields and meadows belonging to the Davydov
family and to the crown serfs--those fields and meadows where for
hundreds of years the peasants of Borodino, Gorki, Shevardino, and
Semenovsk had reaped their harvests and pastured their cattle. At
the dressing stations the grass and earth were soaked with blood for a
space of some three acres around. Crowds of men of various arms,
wounded and unwounded, with frightened faces, dragged themselves
back to Mozhaysk from the one army and back to Valuevo from the other.
Other crowds, exhausted and hungry, went forward led by their
officers. Others held their ground and continued to fire.

Over the whole field, previously so gaily beautiful with the glitter
of bayonets and cloudlets of smoke in the morning sun, there now
spread a mist of damp and smoke and a strange acid smell of
saltpeter and blood. Clouds gathered and drops of rain began to fall
on the dead and wounded, on the frightened, exhausted, and
hesitating men, as if to say: "Enough, men! Enough! Cease... bethink
yourselves! What are you doing?"

To the men of both sides alike, worn out by want of food and rest,
it began equally to appear doubtful whether they should continue to
slaughter one another; all the faces expressed hesitation, and the
question arose in every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill and
be killed?... You may go and kill whom you please, but I don't want to
do so anymore!" By evening this thought had ripened in every soul.
At any moment these men might have been seized with horror at what
they were doing and might have thrown up everything and run away
anywhere.

But though toward the end of the battle the men felt all the
horror of what they were doing, though they would have been glad to
leave off, some incomprehensible, mysterious power continued to
control them, and they still brought up the charges, loaded, aimed,
and applied the match, though only one artilleryman survived out of
every three, and though they stumbled and panted with fatigue,
perspiring and stained with blood and powder. The cannon balls flew
just as swiftly and cruelly from both sides, crushing human bodies,
and that terrible work which was not done by the will of a man but
at the will of Him who governs men and worlds continued.

Anyone looking at the disorganized rear of the Russian army would
have said that, if only the French made one more slight effort, it
would disappear; and anyone looking at the rear of the French army
would have said that the Russians need only make one more slight
effort and the French would be destroyed. But neither the French nor
the Russians made that effort, and the flame of battle burned slowly
out.

The Russians did not make that effort because they were not
attacking the French. At the beginning of the battle they stood
blocking the way to Moscow and they still did so at the end of the
battle as at the beginning. But even had the aim of the Russians
been to drive the French from their positions, they could not have
made this last effort, for all the Russian troops had been broken
up, there was no part of the Russian army that had not suffered in the
battle, and though still holding their positions they had lost ONE
HALF of their army.

The French, with the memory of all their former victories during
fifteen years, with the assurance of Napoleon's invincibility, with
the consciousness that they had captured part of the battlefield and
had lost only a quarter of their men and still had their Guards
intact, twenty thousand strong, might easily have made that effort.
The French had attacked the Russian army in order to drive it from its
position ought to have made that effort, for as long as the Russians
continued to block the road to Moscow as before, the aim of the French
had not been attained and all their efforts and losses were in vain.
But the French did not make that effort. Some historians say that
Napoleon need only have used his Old Guards, who were intact, and
the battle would have been won. To speak of what would have happened
had Napoleon sent his Guards is like talking of what would happen if
autumn became spring. It could not be. Napoleon did not give his
Guards, not because he did not want to, but because it could not be
done. All the generals, officers, and soldiers of the French army knew
it could not be done, because the flagging spirit of the troops
would not permit it.

It was not Napoleon alone who had experienced that nightmare feeling
of the mighty arm being stricken powerless, but all the generals and
soldiers of his army whether they had taken part in the battle or not,
after all their experience of previous battles--when after one tenth
of such efforts the enemy had fled--experienced a similar feeling of
terror before an enemy who, after losing HALF his men, stood as
threateningly at the end as at the beginning of the battle. The
moral force of the attacking French army was exhausted. Not that
sort of victory which is defined by the capture of pieces of
material fastened to sticks, called standards, and of the ground on
which the troops had stood and were standing, but a moral victory that
convinces the enemy of the moral superiority of his opponent and of
his own impotence was gained by the Russians at Borodino. The French
invaders, like an infuriated animal that has in its onslaught received
a mortal wound, felt that they were perishing, but could not stop, any
more than the Russian army, weaker by one half, could help swerving.
By impetus gained, the French army was still able to roll forward to
Moscow, but there, without further effort on the part of the Russians,
it had to perish, bleeding from the mortal wound it had received at
Borodino. The direct consequence of the battle of Borodino was
Napoleon's senseless flight from Moscow, his retreat along the old
Smolensk road, the destruction of the invading army of five hundred
thousand men, and the downfall of Napoleonic France, on which at
Borodino for the first time the hand of an opponent of stronger spirit
had been laid.





BOOK ELEVEN: 1812





CHAPTER I


Absolute continuity of motion is not comprehensible to the human
mind. Laws of motion of any kind become comprehensible to man only
when he examines arbitrarily selected elements of that motion; but
at the same time, a large proportion of human error comes from the
arbitrary division of continuous motion into discontinuous elements.
There is a well known, so-called sophism of the ancients consisting in
this, that Achilles could never catch up with a tortoise he was
following, in spite of the fact that he traveled ten times as fast
as the tortoise. By the time Achilles has covered the distance that
separated him from the tortoise, the tortoise has covered one tenth of
that distance ahead of him: when Achilles has covered that tenth,
the tortoise has covered another one hundredth, and so on forever.
This problem seemed to the ancients insoluble. The absurd answer (that
Achilles could never overtake the tortoise) resulted from this: that
motion was arbitrarily divided into discontinuous elements, whereas
the motion both of Achilles and of the tortoise was continuous.

By adopting smaller and smaller elements of motion we only
approach a solution of the problem, but never reach it. Only when we
have admitted the conception of the infinitely small, and the
resulting geometrical progression with a common ratio of one tenth,
and have found the sum of this progression to infinity, do we reach
a solution of the problem.

A modern branch of mathematics having achieved the art of dealing
with the infinitely small can now yield solutions in other more
complex problems of motion which used to appear insoluble.

This modern branch of mathematics, unknown to the ancients, when
dealing with problems of motion admits the conception of the
infinitely small, and so conforms to the chief condition of motion
(absolute continuity) and thereby corrects the inevitable error
which the human mind cannot avoid when it deals with separate elements
of motion instead of examining continuous motion.

In seeking the laws of historical movement just the same thing
happens. The movement of humanity, arising as it does from innumerable
arbitrary human wills, is continuous.

To understand the laws of this continuous movement is the aim of
history. But to arrive at these laws, resulting from the sum of all
those human wills, man's mind postulates arbitrary and disconnected
units. The first method of history is to take an arbitrarily
selected series of continuous events and examine it apart from others,
though there is and can be no beginning to any event, for one event
always flows uninterruptedly from another.

The second method is to consider the actions of some one man--a king
or a commander--as equivalent to the sum of many individual wills;
whereas the sum of individual wills is never expressed by the activity
of a single historic personage.

Historical science in its endeavor to draw nearer to truth
continually takes smaller and smaller units for examination. But
however small the units it takes, we feel that to take any unit
disconnected from others, or to assume a beginning of any
phenomenon, or to say that the will of many men is expressed by the
actions of any one historic personage, is in itself false.

It needs no critical exertion to reduce utterly to dust any
deductions drawn from history. It is merely necessary to select some
larger or smaller unit as the subject of observation--as criticism has
every right to do, seeing that whatever unit history observes must
always be arbitrarily selected.

Only by taking infinitesimally small units for observation (the
differential of history, that is, the individual tendencies of men)
and attaining to the art of integrating them (that is, finding the sum
of these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of history.

The first fifteen years of the nineteenth century in Europe
present an extraordinary movement of millions of people. Men leave
their customary pursuits, hasten from one side of Europe to the other,
plunder and slaughter one another, triumph and are plunged in despair,
and for some years the whole course of life is altered and presents an
intensive movement which first increases and then slackens. What was
the cause of this movement, by what laws was it governed? asks the
mind of man.

The historians, replying to this question, lay before us the sayings
and doings of a few dozen men in a building in the city of Paris,
calling these sayings and doings "the Revolution"; then they give a
detailed biography of Napoleon and of certain people favorable or
hostile to him; tell of the influence some of these people had on
others, and say: that is why this movement took place and those are
its laws.

But the mind of man not only refuses to believe this explanation,
but plainly says that this method of explanation is fallacious,
because in it a weaker phenomenon is taken as the cause of a stronger.
The sum of human wills produced the Revolution and Napoleon, and
only the sum of those wills first tolerated and then destroyed them.

"But every time there have been conquests there have been
conquerors; every time there has been a revolution in any state
there have been great men," says history. And, indeed, human reason
replies: every time conquerors appear there have been wars, but this
does not prove that the conquerors caused the wars and that it is
possible to find the laws of a war in the personal activity of a
single man. Whenever I look at my watch and its hands point to ten,
I hear the bells of the neighboring church; but because the bells
begin to ring when the hands of the clock reach ten, I have no right
to assume that the movement of the bells is caused by the position
of the hands of the watch.

Whenever I see the movement of a locomotive I hear the whistle and
see the valves opening and wheels turning; but I have no right to
conclude that the whistling and the turning of wheels are the cause of
the movement of the engine.

The peasants say that a cold wind blows in late spring because the
oaks are budding, and really every spring cold winds do blow when
the oak is budding. But though I do not know what causes the cold
winds to blow when the oak buds unfold, I cannot agree with the
peasants that the unfolding of the oak buds is the cause of the cold
wind, for the force of the wind is beyond the influence of the buds. I
see only a coincidence of occurrences such as happens with all the
phenomena of life, and I see that however much and however carefully I
observe the hands of the watch, and the valves and wheels of the
engine, and the oak, I shall not discover the cause of the bells
ringing, the engine moving, or of the winds of spring. To that I
must entirely change my point of view and study the laws of the
movement of steam, of the bells, and of the wind. History must do
the same. And attempts in this direction have already been made.

To study the laws of history we must completely change the subject
of our observation, must leave aside kings, ministers, and generals,
and the common, infinitesimally small elements by which the masses are
moved. No one can say in how far it is possible for man to advance
in this way toward an understanding of the laws of history; but it
is evident that only along that path does the possibility of
discovering the laws of history lie, and that as yet not a millionth
part as much mental effort has been applied in this direction by
historians as has been devoted to describing the actions of various
kings, commanders, and ministers and propounding the historians' own
reflections concerning these actions.





CHAPTER II


The forces of a dozen European nations burst into Russia. The
Russian army and people avoided a collision till Smolensk was reached,
and again from Smolensk to Borodino. The French army pushed on to
Moscow, its goal, its impetus ever increasing as it neared its aim,
just as the velocity of a falling body increases as it approaches
the earth. Behind it were seven hundred miles of hunger-stricken,
hostile country; ahead were a few dozen miles separating it from its
goal. Every soldier in Napoleon's army felt this and the invasion
moved on by its own momentum.

The more the Russian army retreated the more fiercely a spirit of
hatred of the enemy flared up, and while it retreated the army
increased and consolidated. At Borodino a collision took place.
Neither army was broken up, but the Russian army retreated immediately
after the collision as inevitably as a ball recoils after colliding
with another having a greater momentum, and with equal inevitability
the ball of invasion that had advanced with such momentum rolled on
for some distance, though the collision had deprived it of all its
force.

The Russians retreated eighty miles--to beyond Moscow--and the
French reached Moscow and there came to a standstill. For five weeks
after that there was not a single battle. The French did not move.
As a bleeding, mortally wounded animal licks its wounds, they remained
inert in Moscow for five weeks, and then suddenly, with no fresh
reason, fled back: they made a dash for the Kaluga road, and (after
a victory--for at Malo-Yaroslavets the field of conflict again
remained theirs) without undertaking a single serious battle, they
fled still more rapidly back to Smolensk, beyond Smolensk, beyond
the Berezina, beyond Vilna, and farther still.

On the evening of the twenty-sixth of August, Kutuzov and the
whole Russian army were convinced that the battle of Borodino was a
victory. Kutuzov reported so to the Emperor. He gave orders to prepare
for a fresh conflict to finish the enemy and did this not to deceive
anyone, but because he knew that the enemy was beaten, as everyone who
had taken part in the battle knew it.

But all that evening and next day reports came in one after
another of unheard-of losses, of the loss of half the army, and a
fresh battle proved physically impossible.

It was impossible to give battle before information had been
collected, the wounded gathered in, the supplies of ammunition
replenished, the slain reckoned up, new officers appointed to
replace those who had been killed, and before the men had had food and
sleep. And meanwhile, the very next morning after the battle, the
French army advanced of itself upon the Russians, carried forward by
the force of its own momentum now seemingly increased in inverse
proportion to the square of the distance from its aim. Kutuzov's
wish was to attack next day, and the whole army desired to do so.
But to make an attack the wish to do so is not sufficient, there
must also be a possibility of doing it, and that possibility did not
exist. It was impossible not to retreat a day's march, and then in the
same way it was impossible not to retreat another and a third day's
march, and at last, on the first of September when the army drew
near Moscow--despite the strength of the feeling that had arisen in
all ranks--the force of circumstances compelled it to retire beyond
Moscow. And the troops retired one more, last, day's march, and
abandoned Moscow to the enemy.

For people accustomed to think that plans of campaign and battles
are made by generals--as any one of us sitting over a map in his study
may imagine how he would have arranged things in this or that
battle--the questions present themselves: Why did Kutuzov during the
retreat not do this or that? Why did he not take up a position
before reaching Fili? Why did he not retire at once by the Kaluga
road, abandoning Moscow? and so on. People accustomed to think in that
way forget, or do not know, the inevitable conditions which always
limit the activities of any commander in chief. The activity of a
commander in chief does not all resemble the activity we imagine to
ourselves when we sit at case in our studies examining some campaign
on the map, with a certain number of troops on this and that side in a
certain known locality, and begin our plans from some given moment.
A commander in chief is never dealing with the beginning of any event-
the position from which we always contemplate it. The commander in
chief is always in the midst of a series of shifting events and so
he never can at any moment consider the whole import of an event
that is occurring. Moment by moment the event is imperceptibly shaping
itself, and at every moment of this continuous, uninterrupted
shaping of events the commander in chief is in the midst of a most
complex play of intrigues, worries, contingencies, authorities,
projects, counsels, threats, and deceptions and is continually obliged
to reply to innumerable questions addressed to him, which constantly
conflict with one another.

Learned military authorities quite seriously tell us that Kutuzov
should have moved his army to the Kaluga road long before reaching
Fili, and that somebody actually submitted such a proposal to him. But
a commander in chief, especially at a difficult moment, has always
before him not one proposal but dozens simultaneously. And all these
proposals, based on strategics and tactics, contradict each other.

A commander in chief's business, it would seem, is simply to
choose one of these projects. But even that he cannot do. Events and
time do not wait. For instance, on the twenty-eighth it is suggested
to him to cross to the Kaluga road, but just then an adjutant
gallops up from Miloradovich asking whether he is to engage the French
or retire. An order must be given him at once, that instant. And the
order to retreat carries us past the turn to the Kaluga road. And
after the adjutant comes the commissary general asking where the
stores are to be taken, and the chief of the hospitals asks where
the wounded are to go, and a courier from Petersburg brings a letter
from the sovereign which does not admit of the possibility of
abandoning Moscow, and the commander in chief's rival, the man who
is undermining him (and there are always not merely one but several
such), presents a new project diametrically opposed to that of turning
to the Kaluga road, and the commander in chief himself needs sleep and
refreshment to maintain his energy and a respectable general who has
been overlooked in the distribution of rewards comes to complain,
and the inhabitants of the district pray to be defended, and an
officer sent to inspect the locality comes in and gives a report quite
contrary to what was said by the officer previously sent; and a spy, a
prisoner, and a general who has been on reconnaissance, all describe
the position of the enemy's army differently. People accustomed to
misunderstand or to forget these inevitable conditions of a
commander in chief's actions describe to us, for instance, the
position of the army at Fili and assume that the commander in chief
could, on the first of September, quite freely decide whether to
abandon Moscow or defend it; whereas, with the Russian army less
than four miles from Moscow, no such question existed. When had that
question been settled? At Drissa and at Smolensk and most palpably
of all on the twenty-fourth of August at Shevardino and on the
twenty-sixth at Borodino, and each day and hour and minute of the
retreat from Borodino to Fili.





CHAPTER III


When Ermolov, having been sent by Kutuzov to inspect the position,
told the field marshal that it was impossible to fight there before
Moscow and that they must retreat, Kutuzov looked at him in silence.

"Give me your hand," said he and, turning it over so as to feel
the pulse, added: "You are not well, my dear fellow. Think what you
are saying!"

Kutuzov could not yet admit the possibility of retreating beyond
Moscow without a battle.

On the Poklonny Hill, four miles from the Dorogomilov gate of
Moscow, Kutuzov got out of his carriage and sat down on a bench by the
roadside. A great crowd of generals gathered round him, and Count
Rostopchin, who had come out from Moscow, joined them. This
brilliant company separated into several groups who all discussed
the advantages and disadvantages of the position, the state of the
army, the plans suggested, the situation of Moscow, and military
questions generally. Though they had not been summoned for the
purpose, and though it was not so called, they all felt that this
was really a council of war. The conversations all dealt with public
questions. If anyone gave or asked for personal news, it was done in a
whisper and they immediately reverted to general matters. No jokes, or
laughter, or smiles even, were seen among all these men. They
evidently all made an effort to hold themselves at the height the
situation demanded. And all these groups, while talking among
themselves, tried to keep near the commander in chief (whose bench
formed the center of the gathering) and to speak so that he might
overhear them. The commander in chief listened to what was being
said and sometimes asked them to repeat their remarks, but did not
himself take part in the conversations or express any opinion. After
hearing what was being said by one or other of these groups he
generally turned away with an air of disappointment, as though they
were not speaking of anything he wished to hear. Some discussed the
position that had been chosen, criticizing not the position itself
so much as the mental capacity of those who had chosen it. Others
argued that a mistake had been made earlier and that a battle should
have been fought two days before. Others again spoke of the battle
of Salamanca, which was described by Crosart, a newly arrived
Frenchman in a Spanish uniform. (This Frenchman and one of the
German princes serving with the Russian army were discussing the siege
of Saragossa and considering the possibility of defending Moscow in
a similar manner.) Count Rostopchin was telling a fourth group that he
was prepared to die with the city train bands under the walls of the
capital, but that he still could not help regretting having been
left in ignorance of what was happening, and that had he known it
sooner things would have been different.... A fifth group,
displaying the profundity of their strategic perceptions, discussed
the direction the troops would now have to take. A sixth group was
talking absolute nonsense. Kutuzov's expression grew more and more
preoccupied and gloomy. From all this talk he saw only one thing: that
to defend Moscow was a physical impossibility in the full meaning of
those words, that is to say, so utterly impossible that if any
senseless commander were to give orders to fight, confusion would
result but the battle would still not take place. It would not take
place because the commanders not merely all recognized the position to
be impossible, but in their conversations were only discussing what
would happen after its inevitable abandonment. How could the
commanders lead their troops to a field of battle they considered
impossible to hold? The lower-grade officers and even the soldiers
(who too reason) also considered the position impossible and therefore
could not go to fight, fully convinced as they were of defeat. If
Bennigsen insisted on the position being defended and others still
discussed it, the question was no longer important in itself but
only as a pretext for disputes and intrigue. This Kutuzov knew well.

Bennigsen, who had chosen the position, warmly displayed his Russian
patriotism (Kutuzov could not listen to this without wincing) by
insisting that Moscow must be defended. His aim was as clear as
daylight to Kutuzov: if the defense failed, to throw the blame on
Kutuzov who had brought the army as far as the Sparrow Hills without
giving battle; if it succeeded, to claim the success as his own; or if
battle were not given, to clear himself of the crime of abandoning
Moscow. But this intrigue did not now occupy the old man's mind. One
terrible question absorbed him and to that question he heard no
reply from anyone. The question for him now was: "Have I really
allowed Napoleon to reach Moscow, and when did I do so? When was it
decided? Can it have been yesterday when I ordered Platov to
retreat, or was it the evening before, when I had a nap and told
Bennigsen to issue orders? Or was it earlier still?... When, when
was this terrible affair decided? Moscow must be abandoned. The army
must retreat and the order to do so must be given." To give that
terrible order seemed to him equivalent to resigning the command of
the army. And not only did he love power to which he was accustomed
(the honours awarded to Prince Prozorovski, under whom he had served
in Turkey, galled him), but he was convinced that he was destined to
save Russia and that that was why, against the Emperor's wish and by
the will of the people, he had been chosen commander in chief. He
was convinced that he alone could maintain command of the army in
these difficult circumstances, and that in all the world he alone
could encounter the invincible Napoleon without fear, and he was
horrified at the thought of the order he had to issue. But something
had to be decided, and these conversations around him which were
assuming too free a character must be stopped.

He called the most important generals to him.

"My head, be it good or bad, must depend on itself," said he, rising
from the bench, and he rode to Fili where his carriages were waiting.





CHAPTER IV


The Council of War began to assemble at two in the afternoon in
the better and roomier part of Andrew Savostyanov's hut. The men,
women, and children of the large peasant family crowded into the
back room across the passage. Only Malasha, Andrew's six-year-old
granddaughter whom his Serene Highness had petted and to whom he had
given a lump of sugar while drinking his tea, remained on the top of
the brick oven in the larger room. Malasha looked down from the oven
with shy delight at the faces, uniforms, and decorations of the
generals, who one after another came into the room and sat down on the
broad benches in the corner under the icons. "Granddad" himself, as
Malasha in her own mind called Kutuzov, sat apart in a dark corner
behind the oven. He sat, sunk deep in a folding armchair, and
continually cleared his throat and pulled at the collar of his coat
which, though it was unbuttoned, still seemed to pinch his neck. Those
who entered went up one by one to the field marshal; he pressed the
hands of some and nodded to others. His adjutant Kaysarov was about to
draw back the curtain of the window facing Kutuzov, but the latter
moved his hand angrily and Kaysarov understood that his Serene
Highness did not wish his face to be seen.

Round the peasant's deal table, on which lay maps, plans, pencils,
and papers, so many people gathered that the orderlies brought in
another bench and put it beside the table. Ermolov, Kaysarov, and
Toll, who had just arrived, sat down on this bench. In the foremost
place, immediately under the icons, sat Barclay de Tolly, his high
forehead merging into his bald crown. He had a St. George's Cross
round his neck and looked pale and ill. He had been feverish for two
days and was now shivering and in pain. Beside him sat Uvarov, who
with rapid gesticulations was giving him some information, speaking in
low tones as they all did. Chubby little Dokhturov was listening
attentively with eyebrows raised and arms folded on his stomach. On
the other side sat Count Ostermann-Tolstoy, seemingly absorbed in
his own thoughts. His broad head with its bold features and glittering
eyes was resting on his hand. Raevski, twitching forward the black
hair on his temples as was his habit, glanced now at Kutuzov and now
at the door with a look of impatience. Konovnitsyn's firm, handsome,
and kindly face was lit up by a tender, sly smile. His glance met
Malasha's, and the expression of his eyes caused the little girl to
smile.

They were all waiting for Bennigsen, who on the pretext of
inspecting the position was finishing his savory dinner. They waited
for him from four till six o'clock and did not begin their
deliberations all that time talked in low tones of other matters.

Only when Bennigsen had entered the hut did Kutuzov leave his corner
and draw toward the table, but not near enough for the candles that
had been placed there to light up his face.

Bennigsen opened the council with the question: "Are we to abandon
Russia's ancient and sacred capital without a struggle, or are we to
defend it?" A prolonged and general silence followed. There was a
frown on every face and only Kutuzov's angry grunts and occasional
cough broke the silence. All eyes were gazing at him. Malasha too
looked at "Granddad." She was nearest to him and saw how his face
puckered; he seemed about to cry, but this did not last long.

"Russia's ancient and sacred capital!" he suddenly said, repeating
Bennigsen's words in an angry voice and thereby drawing attention to
the false note in them. "Allow me to tell you, your excellency, that
that question has no meaning for a Russian." (He lurched his heavy
body forward.) "Such a question cannot be put; it is senseless! The
question I have asked these gentlemen to meet to discuss is a military
one. The question is that of saving Russia. Is it better to give up
Moscow without a battle, or by accepting battle to risk losing the
army as well as Moscow? That is the question on which I want your
opinion," and he sank back in his chair.

The discussion began. Bennigsen did not yet consider his game
lost. Admitting the view of Barclay and others that a defensive battle
at Fili was impossible, but imbued with Russian patriotism and the
love of Moscow, he proposed to move troops from the right to the
left flank during the night and attack the French right flank the
following day. Opinions were divided, and arguments were advanced
for and against that project. Ermolov, Dokhturov, and Raevski agreed
with Bennigsen. Whether feeling it necessary to make a sacrifice
before abandoning the capital or guided by other, personal
considerations, these generals seemed not to understand that this
council could not alter the inevitable course of events and that
Moscow was in effect already abandoned. The other generals, however,
understood it and, leaving aside the question of Moscow, of the
direction the army should take in its retreat. Malasha, who kept her
eyes fixed on what was going on before her, understood the meaning
of the council differently. It seemed to her that it was only a
personal struggle between "Granddad" and "Long-coat" as she termed
Bennigsen. She saw that they grew spiteful when they spoke to one
another, and in her heart she sided with "Granddad." In the midst of
the conversation she noticed "Granddad" give Bennigsen a quick, subtle
glance, and then to her joys he saw that "Granddad" said something
to "Long-coat" which settled him. Bennigsen suddenly reddened and
paced angrily up and down the room. What so affected him was Kutuzov's
calm and quiet comment on the advantage or disadvantage of Bennigsen's
proposal to move troops by night from the right to the left flank to
attack the French right wing.

"Gentlemen," said Kutuzov, "I cannot approve of the count's plan.
Moving troops in close proximity to an enemy is always dangerous,
and military history supports that view. For instance..." Kutuzov
seemed to reflect, searching for an example, then with a clear,
naive look at Bennigsen he added: "Oh yes; take the battle of
Friedland, which I think the count well remembers, and which was...
not fully successful, only because our troops were rearranged too near
the enemy..."

There followed a momentary pause, which seemed very long to them
all.

The discussion recommenced, but pauses frequently occurred and
they all felt that there was no more to be said.

During one of these pauses Kutuzov heaved a deep sigh as if
preparing to speak. They all looked at him.

"Well, gentlemen, I see that it is I who will have to pay for the
broken crockery," said he, and rising slowly he moved to the table.
"Gentlemen, I have heard your views. Some of you will not agree with
me. But I," he paused, "by the authority entrusted to me by my
Sovereign and country, order a retreat."

After that the generals began to disperse with the solemnity and
circumspect silence of people who are leaving, after a funeral.

Some of the generals, in low tones and in a strain very different
from the way they had spoken during the council, communicated
something to their commander in chief.

Malasha, who had long been expected for supper, climbed carefully
backwards down from the oven, her bare little feet catching at its
projections, and slipping between the legs of the generals she
darted out of the room.

When he had dismissed the generals Kutuzov sat a long time with
his elbows on the table, thinking always of the same terrible
question: "When, when did the abandonment of Moscow become inevitable?
When was that done which settled the matter? And who was to blame
for it?"

"I did not expect this," said he to his adjutant Schneider when
the latter came in late that night. "I did not expect this! I did
not think this would happen."

"You should take some rest, your Serene Highness," replied
Schneider.

"But no! They shall eat horseflesh yet, like the Turks!" exclaimed
Kutuzov without replying, striking the table with his podgy fist.
"They shall too, if only..."





CHAPTER V


At that very time, in circumstances even more important than
retreating without a battle, namely the evacuation and burning of
Moscow, Rostopchin, who is usually represented as being the instigator
of that event, acted in an altogether different manner from Kutuzov.

After the battle of Borodino the abandonment and burning of Moscow
was as inevitable as the retreat of the army beyond Moscow without
fighting.

Every Russian might have predicted it, not by reasoning but by the
feeling implanted in each of us and in our fathers.

The same thing that took place in Moscow had happened in all the
towns and villages on Russian soil beginning with Smolensk, without
the participation of Count Rostopchin and his broadsheets. The
people awaited the enemy unconcernedly, did not riot or become excited
or tear anyone to pieces, but faced its fate, feeling within it the
strength to find what it should do at that most difficult moment.
And as soon as the enemy drew near the wealthy classes went away
abandoning their property, while the poorer remained and burned and
destroyed what was left.

The consciousness that this would be so and would always be so was
and is present in the heart of every Russian. And a consciousness of
this, and a foreboding that Moscow would be taken, was present in
Russian Moscow society in 1812. Those who had quitted Moscow already
in July and at the beginning of August showed that they expected this.
Those who went away, taking what they could and abandoning their
houses and half their belongings, did so from the latent patriotism
which expresses itself not by phrases or by giving one's children to
save the fatherland and similar unnatural exploits, but unobtrusively,
simply, organically, and therefore in the way that always produces the
most powerful results.

"It is disgraceful to run away from danger; only cowards are running
away from Moscow," they were told. In his broadsheets Rostopchin
impressed on them that to leave Moscow was shameful. They were ashamed
to be called cowards, ashamed to leave, but still they left, knowing
it had to be done. Why did they go? It is impossible to suppose that
Rostopchin had scared them by his accounts of horrors Napoleon had
committed in conquered countries. The first people to go away were the
rich educated people who knew quite well that Vienna and Berlin had
remained intact and that during Napoleon's occupation the
inhabitants had spent their time pleasantly in the company of the
charming Frenchmen whom the Russians, and especially the Russian
ladies, then liked so much.

They went away because for Russians there could be no question as to
whether things would go well or ill under French rule in Moscow. It
was out of the question to be under French rule, it would be the worst
thing that could happen. They went away even before the battle of
Borodino and still more rapidly after it, despite Rostopchin's calls
to defend Moscow or the announcement of his intention to take the
wonder-working icon of the Iberian Mother of God and go to fight, or
of the balloons that were to destroy the French, and despite all the
nonsense Rostopchin wrote in his broadsheets. They knew that it was
for the army to fight, and that if it could not succeed it would not
do to take young ladies and house serfs to the Three Hills quarter
of Moscow to fight Napoleon, and that they must go away, sorry as they
were to abandon their property to destruction. They went away
without thinking of the tremendous significance of that immense and
wealthy city being given over to destruction, for a great city with
wooden buildings was certain when abandoned by its inhabitants to be
burned. They went away each on his own account, and yet it was only in
consequence of their going away that the momentous event was
accomplished that will always remain the greatest glory of the Russian
people. The lady who, afraid of being stopped by Count Rostopchin's
orders, had already in June moved with her Negroes and her women
jesters from Moscow to her Saratov estate, with a vague
consciousness that she was not Bonaparte's servant, was really,
simply, and truly carrying out the great work which saved Russia.
But Count Rostopchin, who now taunted those who left Moscow and now
had the government offices removed; now distributed quite useless
weapons to the drunken rabble; now had processions displaying the
icons, and now forbade Father Augustin to remove icons or the relics
of saints; now seized all the private carts in Moscow and on one
hundred and thirty-six of them removed the balloon that was being
constructed by Leppich; now hinted that he would burn Moscow and
related how he had set fire to his own house; now wrote a proclamation
to the French solemnly upbraiding them for having destroyed his
Orphanage; now claimed the glory of having hinted that he would burn
Moscow and now repudiated the deed; now ordered the people to catch
all spies and bring them to him, and now reproached them for doing so;
now expelled all the French residents from Moscow, and now allowed
Madame Aubert-Chalme (the center of the whole French colony in Moscow)
to remain, but ordered the venerable old postmaster Klyucharev to be
arrested and exiled for no particular offense; now assembled the
people at the Three Hills to fight the French and now, to get rid of
them, handed over to them a man to be killed and himself drove away by
a back gate; now declared that he would not survive the fall of
Moscow, and now wrote French verses in albums concerning his share
in the affair--this man did not understand the meaning of what was
happening but merely wanted to do something himself that would
astonish people, to perform some patriotically heroic feat; and like a
child he made sport of the momentous, and unavoidable event--the
abandonment and burning of Moscow--and tried with his puny hand now to
speed and now to stay the enormous, popular tide that bore him along
with it.





CHAPTER VI


Helene, having returned with the court from Vilna to Petersburg,
found herself in a difficult position.

In Petersburg she had enjoyed the special protection of a grandee
who occupied one of the highest posts in the Empire. In Vilna she
had formed an intimacy with a young foreign prince. When she
returned to Petersburg both the magnate and the prince were there, and
both claimed their rights. Helene was faced by a new problem--how to
preserve her intimacy with both without offending either.

What would have seemed difficult or even impossible to another woman
did not cause the least embarrassment to Countess Bezukhova, who
evidently deserved her reputation of being a very clever woman. Had
she attempted concealment, or tried to extricate herself from her
awkward position by cunning, she would have spoiled her case by
acknowledging herself guilty. But Helene, like a really great man
who can do whatever he pleases, at once assumed her own position to be
correct, as she sincerely believed it to be, and that everyone else
was to blame.

The first time the young foreigner allowed himself to reproach
her, she lifted her beautiful head and, half turning to him, said
firmly: "That's just like a man--selfish and cruel! I expected nothing
else. A woman sacrifices herself for you, she suffers, and this is her
reward! What right have you, monseigneur, to demand an account of my
attachments and friendships? He is a man who has been more than a
father to me!" The prince was about to say something, but Helene
interrupted him.

"Well, yes," said she, "it may be that he has other sentiments for
me than those of a father, but that is not a reason for me to shut
my door on him. I am not a man, that I should repay kindness with
ingratitude! Know, monseigneur, that in all that relates to my
intimate feelings I render account only to God and to my
conscience," she concluded, laying her hand on her beautiful, fully
expanded bosom and looking up to heaven.

"But for heaven's sake listen to me!"

"Marry me, and I will be your slave!"

"But that's impossible."

"You won't deign to demean yourself by marrying me, you..." said
Helene, beginning to cry.

The prince tried to comfort her, but Helene, as if quite distraught,
said through her tears that there was nothing to prevent her marrying,
that there were precedents (there were up to that time very few, but
she mentioned Napoleon and some other exalted personages), that she
had never been her husband's wife, and that she had been sacrificed.

"But the law, religion..." said the prince, already yielding.

"The law, religion... What have they been invented for if they can't
arrange that?" said Helene.

The prince was surprised that so simple an idea had not occurred
to him, and he applied for advice to the holy brethren of the
Society of Jesus, with whom he was on intimate terms.

A few days later at one of those enchanting fetes which Helene
gave at her country house on the Stone Island, the charming Monsieur
de Jobert, a man no longer young, with snow white hair and brilliant
black eyes, a Jesuit a robe courte* was presented to her, and in the
garden by the light of the illuminations and to the sound of music
talked to her for a long time of the love of God, of Christ, of the
Sacred Heart, and of the consolations the one true Catholic religion
affords in this world and the next. Helene was touched, and more
than once tears rose to her eyes and to those of Monsieur de Jobert
and their voices trembled. A dance, for which her partner came to seek
her, put an end to her discourse with her future directeur de
conscience, but the next evening Monsieur de Jobert came to see Helene
when she was alone, and after that often came again.


*Lay member of the Society of Jesus.


One day he took the countess to a Roman Catholic church, where she
knelt down before the altar to which she was led. The enchanting,
middle-aged Frenchman laid his hands on her head and, as she herself
afterward described it, she felt something like a fresh breeze
wafted into her soul. It was explained to her that this was la grace.

After that a long-frocked abbe was brought to her. She confessed
to him, and he absolved her from her sins. Next day she received a box
containing the Sacred Host, which was left at her house for her to
partake of. A few days later Helene learned with pleasure that she had
now been admitted to the true Catholic Church and that in a few days
the Pope himself would hear of her and would send her a certain
document.

All that was done around her and to her at this time, all the
attention devoted to her by so many clever men and expressed in such
pleasant, refined ways, and the state of dove-like purity she was
now in (she wore only white dresses and white ribbons all that time)
gave her pleasure, but her pleasure did not cause her for a moment
to forget her aim. And as it always happens in contests of cunning
that a stupid person gets the better of cleverer ones, Helene-
having realized that the main object of all these words and all this
trouble was, after converting her to Catholicism, to obtain money from
her for Jesuit institutions (as to which she received indications)-
before parting with her money insisted that the various operations
necessary to free her from her husband should be performed. In her
view the aim of every religion was merely to preserve certain
proprieties while affording satisfaction to human desires. And with
this aim, in one of her talks with her Father Confessor, she
insisted on an answer to the question, in how far was she bound by her
marriage?

They were sitting in the twilight by a window in the drawing room.
The scent of flowers came in at the window. Helene was wearing a white
dress, transparent over her shoulders and bosom. The abbe, a
well-fed man with a plump, clean-shaven chin, a pleasant firm mouth,
and white hands meekly folded on his knees, sat close to Helene and,
with a subtle smile on his lips and a peaceful look of delight at
her beauty, occasionally glanced at her face as he explained his
opinion on the subject. Helene with an uneasy smile looked at his
curly hair and his plump, clean-shaven, blackish cheeks and every
moment expected the conversation to take a fresh turn. But the abbe,
though he evidently enjoyed the beauty of his companion, was
absorbed in his mastery of the matter.

The course of the Father Confessor's arguments ran as follows:
"Ignorant of the import of what you were undertaking, you made a vow
of conjugal fidelity to a man who on his part, by entering the married
state without faith in the religious significance of marriage,
committed an act of sacrilege. That marriage lacked the dual
significance it should have had. Yet in spite of this your vow was
binding. You swerved from it. What did you commit by so acting? A
venial, or a mortal, sin? A venial sin, for you acted without evil
intention. If now you married again with the object of bearing
children, your sin might be forgiven. But the question is again a
twofold one: firstly..."

But suddenly Helene, who was getting bored, said with one of her
bewitching smiles: "But I think that having espoused the true religion
I cannot be bound by what a false religion laid upon me."

The director of her conscience was astounded at having the case
presented to him thus with the simplicity of Columbus' egg. He was
delighted at the unexpected rapidity of his pupil's progress, but
could not abandon the edifice of argument he had laboriously
constructed.

"Let us understand one another, Countess," said he with a smile, and
began refuting his spiritual daughter's arguments.





CHAPTER VII


Helene understood that the question was very simple and easy from
the ecclesiastical point of view, and that her directors were making
difficulties only because they were apprehensive as to how the
matter would be regarded by the secular authorities.

So she decided that it was necessary to prepare the opinion of
society. She provoked the jealousy of the elderly magnate and told him
what she had told her other suitor; that is, she put the matter so
that the only way for him to obtain a right over her was to marry her.
The elderly magnate was at first as much taken aback by this
suggestion of marriage with a woman whose husband was alive, as the
younger man had been, but Helene's imperturbable conviction that it
was as simple and natural as marrying a maiden had its effect on him
too. Had Helene herself shown the least sign of hesitation, shame,
or secrecy, her cause would certainly have been lost; but not only did
she show no signs of secrecy or shame, on the contrary, with
good-natured naivete she told her intimate friends (and these were all
Petersburg) that both the prince and the magnate had proposed to her
and that she loved both and was afraid of grieving either.

A rumor immediately spread in Petersburg, not that Helene wanted
to be divorced from her husband (had such a report spread many would
have opposed so illegal an intention) but simply that the
unfortunate and interesting Helene was in doubt which of the two men
she should marry. The question was no longer whether this was
possible, but only which was the better match and how the matter would
be regarded at court. There were, it is true, some rigid individuals
unable to rise to the height of such a question, who saw in the
project a desecration of the sacrament of marriage, but there were not
many such and they remained silent, while the majority were interested
in Helene's good fortune and in the question which match would be
the more advantageous. Whether it was right or wrong to remarry
while one had a husband living they did not discuss, for that question
had evidently been settled by people "wiser than you or me," as they
said, and to doubt the correctness of that decision would be to risk
exposing one's stupidity and incapacity to live in society.

Only Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, had come to Petersburg that
summer to see one of her sons, allowed herself plainly to express an
opinion contrary to the general one. Meeting Helene at a ball she
stopped her in the middle of the room and, amid general silence,
said in her gruff voice: "So wives of living men have started marrying
again! Perhaps you think you have invented a novelty? You have been
forestalled, my dear! It was thought of long ago. It is done in all
the brothels," and with these words Marya Dmitrievna, turning up her
wide sleeves with her usual threatening gesture and glancing sternly
round, moved across the room.

Though people were afraid of Marya Dmitrievna she was regarded in
Petersburg as a buffoon, and so of what she had said they only
noticed, and repeated in a whisper, the one coarse word she had
used, supposing the whole sting of her remark to lie in that word.

Prince Vasili, who of late very often forgot what he had said and
repeated one and the same thing a hundred times, remarked to his
daughter whenever he chanced to see her:

"Helene, I have a word to say to you," and he would lead her
aside, drawing her hand downward. "I have heard of certain projects
concerning... you know. Well my dear child, you know how your father's
heart rejoices to know that you... You have suffered so much....
But, my dear child, consult only your own heart. That is all I have to
say," and concealing his unvarying emotion he would press his cheek
against his daughter's and move away.

Bilibin, who had not lost his reputation of an exceedingly clever
man, and who was one of the disinterested friends so
brilliant a woman as Helene always has--men friends who can never
change into lovers--once gave her his view of the matter at a small
and intimate gathering.

"Listen, Bilibin," said Helene (she always called friends of that
sort by their surnames), and she touched his coat sleeve with her
white, beringed fingers. "Tell me, as you would a sister, what I ought
to do. Which of the two?"

Bilibin wrinkled up the skin over his eyebrows and pondered, with
a smile on his lips.

"You are not taking me unawares, you know," said he. "As a true
friend, I have thought and thought again about your affair. You see,
if you marry the prince"--he meant the younger man--and he crooked one
finger, "you forever lose the chance of marrying the other, and you
will displease the court besides. (You know there is some kind of
connection.) But if you marry the old count you will make his last
days happy, and as widow of the Grand... the prince would no longer be
making a mesalliance by marrying you," and Bilibin smoothed out his
forehead.

"That's a true friend!" said Helene beaming, and again touching
Bilibin's sleeve. "But I love them, you know, and don't want to
distress either of them. I would give my life for the happiness of
them both."

Bilibin shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say that not even he
could help in that difficulty.

"Une maitresse-femme!* That's what is called putting things
squarely. She would like to be married to all three at the same time,"
thought he.


*A masterly woman.


"But tell me, how will your husband look at the matter?" Bilibin
asked, his reputation being so well established that he did not fear
to ask so naive a question. "Will he agree?"

"Oh, he loves me so!" said Helene, who for some reason imagined that
Pierre too loved her. "He will do anything for me."

Bilibin puckered his skin in preparation for something witty.

"Even divorce you?" said he.

Helene laughed.

Among those who ventured to doubt the justifiability of the proposed
marriage was Helene's mother, Princess Kuragina. She was continually
tormented by jealousy of her daughter, and now that jealousy concerned
a subject near to her own heart, she could not reconcile herself to
the idea. She consulted a Russian priest as to the possibility of
divorce and remarriage during a husband's lifetime, and the priest
told her that it was impossible, and to her delight showed her a
text in the Gospel which (as it seemed to him) plainly remarriage
while the husband is alive.

Armed with these arguments, which appeared to her unanswerable,
she drove to her daughter's early one morning so as to find her alone.

Having listened to her mother's objections, Helene smiled blandly
and ironically.

"But it says plainly: 'Whosoever shall marry her that is
divorced...'" said the old princess.

"Ah, Maman, ne dites pas de betises. Vous ne comprenez rein. Dans ma
position j'ai des devoirs,"* said Helene changing from Russian, in
which language she always felt that her case did not sound quite
clear, into French which suited it better.


*"Oh, Mamma, don't talk nonsense! You don't understand anything.
In my position I have obligations.


"But, my dear...."

"Oh, Mamma, how is it you don't understand that the Holy Father, who
has the right to grant dispensations..."

Just then the lady companion who lived with Helene came in to
announce that His Highness was in the ballroom and wished to see her.

"Non, dites-lui que je ne veux pas le voir, que je suis furieuse
contre lui, parce qu'il m' a manque parole."*


*"No, tell him I don't wish to see him, I am furious with him for
not keeping his word to me."


"Comtesse, a tout peche misericorde,"* said a fair-haired young
man with a long face and nose, as he entered the room.


*"Countess, there is mercy for every sin."


The old princess rose respectfully and curtsied. The young man who
had entered took no notice of her. The princess nodded to her daughter
and sidled out of the room.

"Yes, she is right," thought the old princess, all her convictions
dissipated by the appearance of His Highness. "She is right, but how
is it that we in our irrecoverable youth did not know it? Yet it is so
simple," she thought as she got into her carriage.


By the beginning of August Helene's affairs were clearly defined and
she wrote a letter to her husband--who, as she imagined, loved her
very much--informing him of her intention to marry N.N. and of her
having embraced the one true faith, and asking him to carry out all
the formalities necessary for a divorce, which would be explained to
him by the bearer of the letter.


And so I pray God to have you, my friend, in His holy and powerful
keeping--Your friend Helene.


This letter was brought to Pierre's house when he was on the field
of Borodino.





CHAPTER VIII


Toward the end of the battle of Borodino, Pierre, having run down
from Raevski's battery a second time, made his way through a gully
to Knyazkovo with a crowd of soldiers, reached the dressing station,
and seeing blood and hearing cries and groans hurried on, still
entangled in the crowds of soldiers.

The one thing he now desired with his whole soul was to get away
quickly from the terrible sensations amid which he had lived that
day and return to ordinary conditions of life and sleep quietly in a
room in his own bed. He felt that only in the ordinary conditions of
life would he be able to understand himself and all he had seen and
felt. But such ordinary conditions of life were nowhere to be found.

Though shells and bullets did not whistle over the road along
which he was going, still on all sides there was what there had been
on the field of battle. There were still the same suffering,
exhausted, and sometimes strangely indifferent faces, the same
blood, the same soldiers' overcoats, the same sounds of firing
which, though distant now, still aroused terror, and besides this
there were the foul air and the dust.

Having gone a couple of miles along the Mozhaysk road, Pierre sat
down by the roadside.

Dusk had fallen, and the roar of guns died away. Pierre lay
leaning on his elbow for a long time, gazing at the shadows that moved
past him in the darkness. He was continually imagining that a cannon
ball was flying toward him with a terrific whizz, and then he
shuddered and sat up. He had no idea how long he had been there. In
the middle of the night three soldiers, having brought some
firewood, settled down near him and began lighting a fire.

The soldiers, who threw sidelong glances at Pierre, got the fire
to burn and placed an iron pot on it into which they broke some
dried bread and put a little dripping. The pleasant odor of greasy
viands mingled with the smell of smoke. Pierre sat up and sighed.
The three soldiers were eating and talking among themselves, taking no
notice of him.

"And who may you be?" one of them suddenly asked Pierre, evidently
meaning what Pierre himself had in mind, namely: "If you want to eat
we'll give you some food, only let us know whether you are an honest
man."

"I, I..." said Pierre, feeling it necessary to minimize his social
position as much as possible so as to be nearer to the soldiers and
better understood by them. "By rights I am a militia officer, but my
men are not here. I came to the battle and have lost them."

"There now!" said one of the soldiers.

Another shook his head.

"Would you like a little mash?" the first soldier asked, and
handed Pierre a wooden spoon after licking it clean.

Pierre sat down by the fire and began eating the mash, as they
called the food in the cauldron, and he thought it more delicious than
any food he had ever tasted. As he sat bending greedily over it,
helping himself to large spoonfuls and chewing one after another,
his was lit up by the fire and the soldiers looked at him in silence.

"Where have you to go to? Tell us!" said one of them.

"To Mozhaysk."

"You're a gentleman, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"And what's your name?"

"Peter Kirilych."

"Well then, Peter Kirilych, come along with us, we'll take you
there."

In the total darkness the soldiers walked with Pierre to Mozhaysk.

By the time they got near Mozhaysk and began ascending the steep
hill into the town, the cocks were already crowing. Pierre went on
with the soldiers, quite forgetting that his inn was at the bottom
of the hill and that he had already passed it. He would not soon
have remembered this, such was his state of forgetfulness, had he
not halfway up the hill stumbled upon his groom, who had been to
look for him in the town and was returning to the inn. The groom
recognized Pierre in the darkness by his white hat.

"Your excellency!" he said. "Why, we were beginning to despair!
How is it you are on foot? And where are you going, please?"

"Oh, yes!" said Pierre.

The soldiers stopped.

"So you've found your folk?" said one of them. "Well, good-by, Peter
Kirilych--isn't it?"

"Good-by, Peter Kirilych!" Pierre heard the other voices repeat.

"Good-by!" he said and turned with his groom toward the inn.

"I ought to give them something!" he thought, and felt in his
pocket. "No, better not!" said another, inner voice.

There was not a room to be had at the inn, they were all occupied.
Pierre went out into the yard and, covering himself up head and all,
lay down in his carriage.





CHAPTER IX


Scarcely had Pierre laid his head on the pillow before he felt
himself falling asleep, but suddenly, almost with the distinctness
of reality, he heard the boom, boom, boom of firing, the thud of
projectiles, groans and cries, and smelled blood and powder, and a
feeling of horror and dread of death seized him. Filled with fright he
opened his eyes and lifted his head from under his cloak. All was
tranquil in the yard. Only someone's orderly passed through the
gateway, splashing through the mud, and talked to the innkeeper. Above
Pierre's head some pigeons, disturbed by the movement he had made in
sitting up, fluttered under the dark roof of the penthouse. The
whole courtyard was permeated by a strong peaceful smell of stable
yards, delightful to Pierre at that moment. He could see the clear
starry sky between the dark roofs of two penthouses.

"Thank God, there is no more of that!" he thought, covering up his
head again. "Oh, what a terrible thing is fear, and how shamefully I
yielded to it! But they... they were steady and calm all the time,
to the end..." thought he.

They, in Pierre's mind, were the soldiers, those who had been at the
battery, those who had given him food, and those who had prayed before
the icon. They, those strange men he had not previously known, stood
out clearly and sharply from everyone else.

"To be a soldier, just a soldier!" thought Pierre as he fell asleep,
"to enter communal life completely, to be imbued by what makes them
what they are. But how cast off all the superfluous, devilish burden
of my outer man? There was a time when I could have done it. I could
have run away from my father, as I wanted to. Or I might have been
sent to serve as a soldier after the duel with Dolokhov." And the
memory of the dinner at the English Club when he had challenged
Dolokhov flashed through Pierre's mind, and then he remembered his
benefactor at Torzhok. And now a picture of a solemn meeting of the
lodge presented itself to his mind. It was taking place at the English
Club and someone near and dear to him sat at the end of the table.
"Yes, that is he! It is my benefactor. But he died!" thought Pierre.
"Yes, he died, and I did not know he was alive. How sorry I am that he
died, and how glad I am that he is alive again!" On one side of the
table sat Anatole, Dolokhov, Nesvitski, Denisov, and others like
them (in his dream the category to which these men belonged was as
clearly defined in his mind as the category of those he termed
they), and he heard those people, Anatole and Dolokhov, shouting and
singing loudly; yet through their shouting the voice of his benefactor
was heard speaking all the time and the sound of his words was as
weighty and uninterrupted as the booming on the battlefield, but
pleasant and comforting. Pierre did not understand what his benefactor
was saying, but he knew (the categories of thoughts were also quite
distinct in his dream) that he was talking of goodness and the
possibility of being what they were. And they with their simple, kind,
firm faces surrounded his benefactor on all sides. But though they
were kindly they did not look at Pierre and did not know him.
Wishing to speak and to attract their attention, he got up, but at
that moment his legs grew cold and bare.

He felt ashamed, and with one arm covered his legs from which his
cloak had in fact slipped. For a moment as he was rearranging his
cloak Pierre opened his eyes and saw the same penthouse roofs,
posts, and yard, but now they were all bluish, lit up, and
glittering with frost or dew.

"It is dawn," thought Pierre. "But that's not what I want. I want to
hear and understand my benefactor's words." Again he covered himself
up with his cloak, but now neither the lodge nor his benefactor was
there. There were only thoughts clearly expressed in words, thoughts
that someone was uttering or that he himself was formulating.

Afterwards when he recalled those thoughts Pierre was convinced that
someone outside himself had spoken them, though the impressions of
that day had evoked them. He had never, it seemed to him, been able to
think and express his thoughts like that when awake.

"To endure war is the most difficult subordination of man's
freedom to the law of God," the voice had said. "Simplicity is
submission to the will of God; you cannot escape from Him. And they
are simple. They do not talk, but act. The spoken word is silver but
the unspoken is golden. Man can be master of nothing while he fears
death, but he who does not fear it possesses all. If there were no
suffering, man would not know his limitations, would not know himself.
The hardest thing [Pierre went on thinking, or hearing, in his
dream] is to be able in your soul to unite the meaning of all. To
unite all?" he asked himself. "No, not to unite. Thoughts cannot be
united, but to harness all these thoughts together is what we need!
Yes, one must harness them, must harness them!" he repeated to himself
with inward rapture, feeling that these words and they alone expressed
what he wanted to say and solved the question that tormented him.

"Yes, one must harness, it is time to harness."

"Time to harness, time to harness, your excellency! Your
excellency!" some voice was repeating. "We must harness, it is time to
harness...."

It was the voice of the groom, trying to wake him. The sun shone
straight into Pierre's face. He glanced at the dirty innyard in the
middle of which soldiers were watering their lean horses at the pump
while carts were passing out of the gate. Pierre turned away with
repugnance, and closing his eyes quickly fell back on the carriage
seat. "No, I don't want that, I don't want to see and understand that.
I want to understand what was revealing itself to me in my dream.
One second more and I should have understood it all! But what am I
to do? Harness, but how can I harness everything?" and Pierre felt
with horror that the meaning of all he had seen and thought in the
dream had been destroyed.

The groom, the coachman, and the innkeeper told Pierre that an
officer had come with news that the French were already near
Mozhaysk and that our men were leaving it.

Pierre got up and, having told them to harness and overtake him,
went on foot through the town.

The troops were moving on, leaving about ten thousand wounded behind
them. There were wounded in the yards, at the windows of the houses,
and the streets were crowded with them. In the streets, around carts
that were to take some of the wounded away, shouts, curses, and
blows could be heard. Pierre offered the use of his carriage, which
had overtaken him, to a wounded general he knew, and drove with him
to Moscow. On the way Pierre was told of the death of his
brother-in-law Anatole and of that of Prince Andrew.





CHAPTER X


On the thirteenth of August Pierre reached Moscow. Close to the
gates of the city he was met by Count Rostopchin's adjutant.

"We have been looking for you everywhere," said the adjutant. "The
count wants to see you particularly. He asks you to come to him at
once on a very important matter."

Without going home, Pierre took a cab and drove to see the Moscow
commander in chief.

Count Rostopchin had only that morning returned to town from his
summer villa at Sokolniki. The anteroom and reception room of his
house were full of officials who had been summoned or had come for
orders. Vasilchikov and Platov had already seen the count and
explained to him that it was impossible to defend Moscow and that it
would have to be surrendered. Though this news was being concealed
from the inhabitants, the officials--the heads of the various
government departments--knew that Moscow would soon be in the
enemy's hands, just as Count Rostopchin himself knew it, and to escape
personal responsibility they had all come to the governor to ask how
they were to deal with their various departments.

As Pierre was entering the reception room a courier from the army
came out of Rostopchin's private room.

In answer to questions with which he was greeted, the courier made a
despairing gesture with his hand and passed through the room.

While waiting in the reception room Pierre with weary eyes watched
the various officials, old and young, military and civilian, who
were there. They all seemed dissatisfied and uneasy. Pierre went up to
a group of men, one of whom he knew. After greeting Pierre they
continued their conversation.

"If they're sent out and brought back again later on it will do no
harm, but as things are now one can't answer for anything."

"But you see what he writes..." said another, pointing to a
printed sheet he held in his hand.

"That's another matter. That's necessary for the people," said the
first.

"What is it?" asked Pierre.

"Oh, it's a fresh broadsheet."

Pierre took it and began reading.


His Serene Highness has passed through Mozhaysk in order to join
up with the troops moving toward him and has taken up a strong
position where the enemy will not soon attack him. Forty eight guns
with ammunition have been sent him from here, and his Serene
Highness says he will defend Moscow to the last drop of blood and is
even ready to fight in the streets. Do not be upset, brothers, that
the law courts are closed; things have to be put in order, and we will
deal with villains in our own way! When the time comes I shall want
both town and peasant lads and will raise the cry a day or two
beforehand, but they are not wanted yet so I hold my peace. An ax will
be useful, a hunting spear not bad, but a three-pronged fork will be
best of all: a Frenchman is no heavier than a sheaf of rye. Tomorrow
after dinner I shall take the Iberian icon of the Mother of God to the
wounded in the Catherine Hospital where we will have some water
blessed. That will help them to get well quicker. I, too, am well now:
one of my eyes was sore but now I am on the lookout with both.


"But military men have told me that it is impossible to fight in the
town," said Pierre, "and that the position..."

"Well, of course! That's what we were saying," replied the first
speaker.

"And what does he mean by 'One of my eyes was sore but now I am on
the lookout with both'?" asked Pierre.

"The count had a sty," replied the adjutant smiling, "and was very
much upset when I told him people had come to ask what was the
matter with him. By the by, Count," he added suddenly, addressing
Pierre with a smile, "we heard that you have family troubles and
that the countess, your wife..."

"I have heard nothing," Pierre replied unconcernedly. "But what have
you heard?"

"Oh, well, you know people often invent things. I only say what I
heard."

"But what did you hear?"

"Well, they say," continued the adjutant with the same smile,
"that the countess, your wife, is preparing to go abroad. I expect
it's nonsense...."

"Possibly," remarked Pierre, looking about him absent-mindedly. "And
who is that?" he asked, indicating a short old man in a clean blue
peasant overcoat, with a big snow-white beard and eyebrows and a ruddy
face.

"He? That's a tradesman, that is to say, he's the restaurant keeper,
Vereshchagin. Perhaps you have heard of that affair with the
proclamation."

"Oh, so that is Vereshchagin!" said Pierre, looking at the firm,
calm face of the old man and seeking any indication of his being a
traitor.

"That's not he himself, that's the father of the fellow who wrote
the proclamation," said the adjutant. "The young man is in prison
and I expect it will go hard with him."

An old gentleman wearing a star and another official, a German
wearing a cross round his neck, approached the speaker.

"It's a complicated story, you know," said the adjutant. "That
proclamation appeared about two months ago. The count was informed
of it. He gave orders to investigate the matter. Gabriel Ivanovich
here made the inquiries. The proclamation had passed through exactly
sixty-three hands. He asked one, 'From whom did you get it?' 'From
so-and-so.' He went to the next one. 'From whom did you get it?' and
so on till he reached Vereshchagin, a half educated tradesman, you
know, 'a pet of a trader,'" said the adjutant smiling. "They asked
him, 'Who gave it you?' And the point is that we knew whom he had it
from. He could only have had it from the Postmaster. But evidently
they had come to some understanding. He replied: 'From no one; I
made it up myself.' They threatened and questioned him, but he stuck
to that: 'I made it up myself.' And so it was reported to the count,
who sent for the man. 'From whom did you get the proclamation?' 'I
wrote it myself.' Well, you know the count," said the adjutant
cheerfully, with a smile of pride, "he flared up dreadfully--and
just think of the fellow's audacity, lying, and obstinacy!"

 "And the count wanted him to say it was from Klyucharev? I
understand!" said Pierre.

"Not at all," rejoined the adjutant in dismay. "Klyucharev had his
own sins to answer for without that and that is why he has been
banished. But the point is that the count was much annoyed. 'How could
you have written it yourself?' said he, and he took up the Hamburg
Gazette that was lying on the table. 'Here it is! You did not write it
yourself but translated it, and translated it abominably, because
you don't even know French, you fool.' And what do you think? 'No,'
said he, 'I have not read any papers, I made it up myself.' 'If that's
so, you're a traitor and I'll have you tried, and you'll be hanged!
Say from whom you had it.' 'I have seen no papers, I made it up
myself.' And that was the end of it. The count had the father fetched,
but the fellow stuck to it. He was sent for trial and condemned to
hard labor, I believe. Now the father has come to intercede for him.
But he's a good-for-nothing lad! You know that sort of tradesman's
son, a dandy and lady-killer. He attended some lectures somewhere
and imagines that the devil is no match for him. That's the sort of
fellow he is. His father keeps a cookshop here by the Stone Bridge,
and you know there was a large icon of God Almighty painted with a
scepter in one hand and an orb in the other. Well, he took that icon
home with him for a few days and what did he do? He found some
scoundrel of a painter..."





CHAPTER XI


In the middle of this fresh tale Pierre was summoned to the
commander in chief.

When he entered the private room Count Rostopchin, puckering his
face, was rubbing his forehead and eyes with his hand. A short man was
saying something, but when Pierre entered he stopped speaking and went
out.

"Ah, how do you do, great warrior?" said Rostopchin as soon as the
short man had left the room. "We have heard of your prowess. But
that's not the point. Between ourselves, mon cher, do you belong to
the Masons?" he went on severely, as though there were something wrong
about it which he nevertheless intended to pardon. Pierre remained
silent. "I am well informed, my friend, but I am aware that there
are Masons and I hope that you are not one of those who
on pretense of saving mankind wish to ruin Russia."

"Yes, I am a Mason," Pierre replied.

"There, you see, mon cher! I expect you know that Messrs.
Speranski and Magnitski have been deported to their proper place.
Mr. Klyucharev has been treated in the same way, and so have others
who on the plea of building up the temple of Solomon have tried to
destroy the temple of their fatherland. You can understand that
there are reasons for this and that I could not have exiled the
Postmaster had he not been a harmful person. It has now come to my
knowledge that you lent him your carriage for his removal from town,
and that you have even accepted papers from him for safe custody. I
like you and don't wish you any harm and--as you are only half my age-
I advise you, as a father would, to cease all communication with men
of that stamp and to leave here as soon as possible."

"But what did Klyucharev do wrong, Count?" asked Pierre.

"That is for me to know, but not for you to ask," shouted
Rostopchin.

"If he is accused of circulating Napoleon's proclamation it is not
proved that he did so," said Pierre without looking at Rostopchin,
"and Vereshchagin..."

"There we are!" Rostopchin shouted at Pierre louder than before,
frowning suddenly. "Vereshchagin is a renegade and a traitor who
will be punished as he deserves," said he with the vindictive heat
with which people speak when recalling an insult. "But I did not
summon you to discuss my actions, but to give you advice--or an
order if you prefer it. I beg you to leave the town and break off
all communication with such men as Klyucharev. And I will knock the
nonsense out of anybody"--but probably realizing that he was
shouting at Bezukhov who so far was not guilty of anything, he
added, taking Pierre's hand in a friendly manner, "We are on the eve
of a public disaster and I haven't time to be polite to everybody
who has business with me. My head is sometimes in a whirl. Well, mon
cher, what are you doing personally?"

"Why, nothing," answered Pierre without raising his eyes or changing
the thoughtful expression of his face.

The count frowned.

"A word of friendly advice, mon cher. Be off as soon as you can,
that's all I have to tell you. Happy he who has ears to hear. Good-by,
my dear fellow. Oh, by the by!" he shouted through the doorway after
Pierre, "is it true that the countess has fallen into the clutches
of the holy fathers of the Society of Jesus?"

Pierre did not answer and left Rostopchin's room more sullen and
angry than he had ever before shown himself.

When he reached home it was already getting dark. Some eight
people had come to see him that evening: the secretary of a committee,
the colonel of his battalion, his steward, his major-domo, and various
petitioners. They all had business with Pierre and wanted decisions
from him. Pierre did not understand and was not interested in any of
these questions and only answered them in order to get rid of these
people. When left alone at last he opened and read his wife's letter.

"They, the soldiers at the battery, Prince Andrew killed... that old
man... Simplicity is submission to God. Suffering is necessary...
the meaning of all... one must harness... my wife is getting
married... One must forget and understand..." And going to his bed
he threw himself on it without undressing and immediately fell asleep.

When he awoke next morning the major-domo came to inform him that
a special messenger, a police officer, had come from Count
Rostopchin to know whether Count Bezukhov had left or was leaving
the town.

A dozen persons who had business with Pierre were awaiting him in
the drawing room. Pierre dressed hurriedly and, instead of going to
see them, went to the back porch and out through the gate.

From that time till the end of the destruction of Moscow no one of
Bezukhov's household, despite all the search they made, saw Pierre
again or knew where he was.





CHAPTER XII


The Rostovs remained in Moscow till the first of September, that is,
till the eve of the enemy's entry into the city.

After Petya had joined Obolenski's regiment of Cossacks and left for
Belaya Tserkov where that regiment was forming, the countess was
seized with terror. The thought that both her sons were at the war,
had both gone from under her wing, that today or tomorrow either or
both of them might be killed like the three sons of one of her
acquaintances, struck her that summer for the first time with cruel
clearness. She tried to get Nicholas back and wished to go herself
to join Petya, or to get him an appointment somewhere in Petersburg,
but neither of these proved possible. Petya could not return unless
his regiment did so or unless he was transferred to another regiment
on active service. Nicholas was somewhere with the army and had not
sent a word since his last letter, in which he had given a detailed
account of his meeting with Princess Mary. The countess did not
sleep at night, or when she did fall asleep dreamed that she saw her
sons lying dead. After many consultations and conversations, the count
at last devised means to tranquillize her. He got Petya transferred
from Obolenski's regiment to Bezukhov's, which was in training near
Moscow. Though Petya would remain in the service, this transfer
would give the countess the consolation of seeing at least one of
her sons under her wing, and she hoped to arrange matters for her
Petya so as not to let him go again, but always get him appointed to
places where he could not possibly take part in a battle. As long as
Nicholas alone was in danger the countess imagined that she loved
her first-born more than all her other children and even reproached
herself for it; but when her youngest: the scapegrace who had been bad
at lessons, was always breaking things in the house and making himself
a nuisance to everybody, that snub-nosed Petya with his merry black
eyes and fresh rosy cheeks where soft down was just beginning to show-
when he was thrown amid those big, dreadful, cruel men who were
fighting somewhere about something and apparently finding pleasure
in it--then his mother thought she loved him more, much more, than all
her other children. The nearer the time came for Petya to return,
the more uneasy grew the countess. She began to think she would
never live to see such happiness. The presence of Sonya, of her
beloved Natasha, or even of her husband irritated her. "What do I want
with them? I want no one but Petya," she thought.

At the end of August the Rostovs received another letter from
Nicholas. He wrote from the province of Voronezh where he had been
sent to procure remounts, but that letter did not set the countess
at ease. Knowing that one son was out of danger she became the more
anxious about Petya.

Though by the twentieth of August nearly all the Rostovs'
acquaintances had left Moscow, and though everybody tried to
persuade the countess to get away as quickly as possible, she would
not bear of leaving before her treasure, her adored Petya, returned.
On the twenty-eighth of August he arrived. The passionate tenderness
with which his mother received him did not please the sixteen-year-old
officer. Though she concealed from him her intention of keeping him
under her wing, Petya guessed her designs, and instinctively fearing
that he might give way to emotion when with her--might "become
womanish" as he termed it to himself--he treated her coldly, avoided
her, and during his stay in Moscow attached himself exclusively to
Natasha for whom he had always had a particularly brotherly
tenderness, almost lover-like.

Owing to the count's customary carelessness nothing was ready for
their departure by the twenty-eighth of August and the carts that were
to come from their Ryazan and Moscow estates to remove their household
belongings did not arrive till the thirtieth.

From the twenty-eighth till the thirty-first all Moscow was in a
bustle and commotion. Every day thousands of men wounded at Borodino
were brought in by the Dorogomilov gate and taken to various parts
of Moscow, and thousands of carts conveyed the inhabitants and their
possessions out by the other gates. In spite of Rostopchin's
broadsheets, or because of them or independently of them, the
strangest and most contradictory rumors were current in the town. Some
said that no one was to be allowed to leave the city, others on the
contrary said that all the icons had been taken out of the churches
and everybody was to be ordered to leave. Some said there had been
another battle after Borodino at which the French had been routed,
while others on the contrary reported that the Russian army bad been
destroyed. Some talked about the Moscow militia which, preceded by the
clergy, would go to the Three Hills; others whispered that Augustin
had been forbidden to leave, that traitors had been seized, that the
peasants were rioting and robbing people on their way from Moscow, and
so on. But all this was only talk; in reality (though the Council of
Fili, at which it was decided to abandon Moscow, had not yet been
held) both those who went away and those who remained behind felt,
though they did not show it, that Moscow would certainly be abandoned,
and that they ought to get away as quickly as possible and save
their belongings. It was felt that everything would suddenly break
up and change, but up to the first of September nothing had done so.
As a criminal who is being led to execution knows that he must die
immediately, but yet looks about him and straightens the cap that is
awry on his head, so Moscow involuntarily continued its wonted life,
though it knew that the time of its destruction was near when the
conditions of life to which its people were accustomed to submit would
be completely upset.

During the three days preceding the occupation of Moscow the whole
Rostov family was absorbed in various activities. The head of the
family, Count Ilya Rostov, continually drove about the city collecting
the current rumors from all sides and gave superficial and hasty
orders at home about the preparations for their departure.

The countess watched the things being packed, was dissatisfied
with everything, was constantly in pursuit of Petya who was always
running away from her, and was jealous of Natasha with whom he spent
all his time. Sonya alone directed the practical side of matters by
getting things packed. But of late Sonya had been particularly sad and
silent. Nicholas' letter in which he mentioned Princess Mary had
elicited, in her presence, joyous comments from the countess, who
saw an intervention of Providence in this meeting of the princess
and Nicholas.

"I was never pleased at Bolkonski's engagement to Natasha," said the
countess, "but I always wanted Nicholas to marry the princess, and had
a presentiment that it would happen. What a good thing it would be!"

Sonya felt that this was true: that the only possibility of
retrieving the Rostovs' affairs was by Nicholas marrying a rich woman,
and that the princess was a good match. It was very bitter for her.
But despite her grief, or perhaps just because of it, she took on
herself all the difficult work of directing the storing and packing of
their things and was busy for whole days. The count and countess
turned to her when they had any orders to give. Petya and Natasha on
the contrary, far from helping their parents, were generally a
nuisance and a hindrance to everyone. Almost all day long the house
resounded with their running feet, their cries, and their
spontaneous laughter. They laughed and were gay not because there
was any reason to laugh, but because gaiety and mirth were in their
hearts and so everything that happened was a cause for gaiety and
laughter to them. Petya was in high spirits because having left home a
boy he had returned (as everybody told him) a fine young man,
because he was at home, because he had left Belaya Tserkov where there
was no hope of soon taking part in a battle and had come to Moscow
where there was to be fighting in a few days, and chiefly because
Natasha, whose lead he always followed, was in high spirits. Natasha
was gay because she had been sad too long and now nothing reminded her
of the cause of her sadness, and because she was feeling well. She was
also happy because she had someone to adore her: the adoration of
others was a lubricant the wheels of her machine needed to make them
run freely--and Petya adored her. Above all, they were gay because
there was a war near Moscow, there would be fighting at the town
gates, arms were being given out, everybody was escaping--going away
somewhere, and in general something extraordinary was happening, and
that is always exciting, especially to the young.





CHAPTER XIII


On Saturday, the thirty-first of August, everything in the
Rostovs' house seemed topsy-turvy. All the doors were open, all the
furniture was being carried out or moved about, and the mirrors and
pictures had been taken down. There were trunks in the rooms, and hay,
wrapping paper, and ropes were scattered about. The peasants and house
serfs carrying out the things were treading heavily on the parquet
floors. The yard was crowded with peasant carts, some loaded high
and already corded up, others still empty.

The voices and footsteps of the many servants and of the peasants
who had come with the carts resounded as they shouted to one another
in the yard and in the house. The count bad been out since morning.
The countess had a headache brought on by all the noise and turmoil
and was lying down in the new sitting room with a vinegar compress
on her head. Petya was not at home, he had gone to visit a friend with
whom he meant to obtain a transfer from the militia to the active
army. Sonya was in the ballroom looking after the packing of the glass
and china. Natasha was sitting on the floor of her dismantled room
with dresses, ribbons, and scarves strewn all about her, gazing
fixedly at the floor and holding in her hands the old ball dress
(already out of fashion) which she had worn at her first Petersburg
ball.

Natasha was ashamed of doing nothing when everyone else was so busy,
and several times that morning had tried to set to work, but her heart
was not in it, and she could not and did not know how to do anything
except with all her heart and all her might. For a while she had stood
beside Sonya while the china was being packed and tried to help, but
soon gave it up and went to her room to pack her own things. At
first she found it amusing to give away dresses and ribbons to the
maids, but when that was done and what was left had still to be
packed, she found it dull.

"Dunyasha, you pack! You will, won't you, dear?" And when Dunyasha
willingly promised to do it all for her, Natasha sat down on the
floor, took her old ball dress, and fell into a reverie quite
unrelated to what ought to have occupied her thoughts now. She was
roused from her reverie by the talk of the maids in the next room
(which was theirs) and by the sound of their hurried footsteps going
to the back porch. Natasha got up and looked out of the window. An
enormously long row of carts full of wounded men had stopped in the
street.

The housekeeper, the old nurse, the cooks, coachmen, maids, footmen,
postilions, and scullions stood at the gate, staring at the wounded.

Natasha, throwing a clean pocket handkerchief over her hair and
holding an end of it in each hand, went out into the street.

The former housekeeper, old Mavra Kuzminichna, had stepped out of
the crowd by the gate, gone up to a cart with a hood constructed of
bast mats, and was speaking to a pale young officer who lay inside.
Natasha moved a few steps forward and stopped shyly, still holding her
handkerchief, and listened to what the housekeeper was saying.

"Then you have nobody in Moscow?" she was saying. "You would be more
comfortable somewhere in a house... in ours, for instance... the
family are leaving."

"I don't know if it would be allowed," replied the officer in a weak
voice. "Here is our commanding officer... ask him," and he pointed
to a stout major who was walking back along the street past the row of
carts.

Natasha glanced with frightened eyes at the face of the wounded
officer and at once went to meet the major.

"May the wounded men stay in our house?" she asked.

The major raised his hand to his cap with a smile.

"Which one do you want, Ma'am'selle?" said he, screwing up his
eyes and smiling.

Natasha quietly repeated her question, and her face and whole manner
were so serious, though she was still holding the ends of her
handkerchief, that the major ceased smiling and after some reflection-
as if considering in how far the thing was possible--replied in the
affirmative.

"Oh yes, why not? They may," he said.

With a slight inclination of her head, Natasha stepped back
quickly to Mavra Kuzminichna, who stood talking compassionately to the
officer.

"They may. He says they may!" whispered Natasha.

The cart in which the officer lay was turned into the Rostovs' yard,
and dozens of carts with wounded men began at the invitation of the
townsfolk to turn into the yards and to draw up at the entrances of
the houses in Povarskaya Street. Natasha was evidently pleased to be
dealing with new people outside the ordinary routine of her life.
She and Mavra Kuzminichna tried to get as many of the wounded as
possible into their yard.

"Your Papa must be told, though," said Mavra Kuzminichna.

"Never mind, never mind, what does it matter? For one day we can
move into the drawing room. They can have all our half of the house."

"There now, young lady, you do take things into your head! Even if
we put them into the wing, the men's room, or the nurse's room, we
must ask permission."

"Well, I'll ask."

Natasha ran into the house and went on tiptoe through the
half-open door into the sitting room, where there was a smell of
vinegar and Hoffman's drops.

"Are you asleep, Mamma?"

"Oh, what sleep-?" said the countess, waking up just as she was
dropping into a doze.

"Mamma darling!" said Natasha, kneeling by her mother and bringing
her face close to her mother's, "I am sorry, forgive me, I'll never do
it again; I woke you up! Mavra Kuzminichna has sent me: they have
brought some wounded here--officers. Will you let them come? They have
nowhere to go. I knew you'd let them come!" she said quickly all in
one breath.

"What officers? Whom have they brought? I don't understand
anything about it," said the countess.

Natasha laughed, and the countess too smiled slightly.

"I knew you'd give permission... so I'll tell them," and, having
kissed her mother, Natasha got up and went to the door.

In the hall she met her father, who had returned with bad news.

"We've stayed too long!" said the count with involuntary vexation.
"The Club is closed and the police are leaving."

"Papa, is it all right--I've invited some of the wounded into the
house?" said Natasha.

"Of course it is," he answered absently. "That's not the point. I
beg you not to indulge in trifles now, but to help to pack, and
tomorrow we must go, go, go!...."

And the count gave a similar order to the major-domo and the
servants.

At dinner Petya having returned home told them the news he had
heard. He said the people had been getting arms in the Kremlin, and
that though Rostopchin's broadsheet had said that he would sound a
call two or three days in advance, the order had certainly already
been given for everyone to go armed to the Three Hills tomorrow, and
that there would be a big battle there.

The countess looked with timid horror at her son's eager, excited
face as he said this. She realized that if she said a word about his
not going to the battle (she knew he enjoyed the thought of the
impending engagement) he would say something about men, honor, and the
fatherland--something senseless, masculine, and obstinate which
there would be no contradicting, and her plans would be spoiled; and
so, hoping to arrange to leave before then and take Petya with her
as their protector and defender, she did not answer him, but after
dinner called the count aside and implored him with tears to take
her away quickly, that very night if possible. With a woman's
involuntary loving cunning she, who till then had not shown any alarm,
said that she would die of fright if they did not leave that very
night. Without any pretense she was now afraid of everything.





CHAPTER XIV


Madame Schoss, who had been out to visit her daughter, increased the
countess' fears still more by telling what she had seen at a spirit
dealer's in Myasnitski Street. When returning by that street she had
been unable to pass because of a drunken crowd rioting in front of the
shop. She had taken a cab and driven home by a side street and the
cabman had told her that the people were breaking open the barrels
at the drink store, having received orders to do so.

After dinner the whole Rostov household set to work with
enthusiastic haste packing their belongings and preparing for their
departure. The old count, suddenly setting to work, kept passing
from the yard to the house and back again, shouting confused
instructions to the hurrying people, and flurrying them still more.
Petya directed things in the yard. Sonya, owing to the count's
contradictory orders, lost her head and did not know what to do. The
servants ran noisily about the house and yard, shouting and disputing.
Natasha, with the ardor characteristic of all she did suddenly set
to work too. At first her intervention in the business of packing
was received skeptically. Everybody expected some prank from her and
did not wish to obey her; but she resolutely and passionately demanded
obedience, grew angry and nearly cried because they did not heed
her, and at last succeeded in making them believe her. Her first
exploit, which cost her immense effort and established her
authority, was the packing of the carpets. The count had valuable
Gobelin tapestries and Persian carpets in the house. When Natasha
set to work two cases were standing open in the ballroom, one almost
full up with crockery, the other with carpets. There was also much
china standing on the tables, and still more was being brought in from
the storeroom. A third case was needed and servants had gone to
fetch it.

"Sonya, wait a bit--we'll pack everything into these," said Natasha.

"You can't, Miss, we have tried to," said the butler's assistant.

"No, wait a minute, please."

And Natasha began rapidly taking out of the case dishes and plates
wrapped in paper.

"The dishes must go in here among the carpets," said she.

"Why, it's a mercy if we can get the carpets alone into three
cases," said the butler's assistant.

"Oh, wait, please!" And Natasha began rapidly and deftly sorting out
the things. "These aren't needed," said she, putting aside some plates
of Kiev ware. "These--yes, these must go among the carpets," she said,
referring to the Saxony china dishes.

"Don't, Natasha! Leave it alone! We'll get it all packed," urged
Sonya reproachfully.

"What a young lady she is!" remarked the major-domo.

But Natasha would not give in. She turned everything out and began
quickly repacking, deciding that the inferior Russian carpets and
unnecessary crockery should not be taken at all. When everything had
been taken out of the cases, they recommenced packing, and it turned
out that when the cheaper things not worth taking had nearly all
been rejected, the valuable ones really did all go into the two cases.
Only the lid of the case containing the carpets would not shut down. A
few more things might have been taken out, but Natasha insisted on
having her own way. She packed, repacked, pressed, made the butler's
assistant and Petya--whom she had drawn into the business of
packing--press on the lid, and made desperate efforts herself.

"That's enough, Natasha," said Sonya. "I see you were right, but
just take out the top one."

"I won't!" cried Natasha, with one hand bolding back the hair that
hung over her perspiring face, while with the other she pressed down
the carpets. "Now press, Petya! Press, Vasilich, press hard!" she
cried.

The carpets yielded and the lid closed; Natasha, clapping her hands,
screamed with delight and tears fell from her eyes. But this only
lasted a moment. She at once set to work afresh and they now trusted
her completely. The count was not angry even when they told him that
Natasha had countermanded an order of his, and the servants now came
to her to ask whether a cart was sufficiently loaded, and whether it
might be corded up. Thanks to Natasha's directions the work now went
on expeditiously, unnecessary things were left, and the most
valuable packed as compactly as possible.

But hard as they all worked till quite late that night, they could
not get everything packed. The countess had fallen asleep and the
count, having put off their departure till next morning, went to bed.

Sonya and Natasha slept in the sitting room without undressing.

That night another wounded man was driven down the Povarskaya, and
Mavra Kuzminichna, who was standing at the gate, had him brought
into the Rostovs' yard. Mavra Kuzminichna concluded that he was a very
important man. He was being conveyed in a caleche with a raised
hood, and was quite covered by an apron. On the box beside the
driver sat a venerable old attendant. A doctor and two soldiers
followed the carriage in a cart.

"Please come in here. The masters are going away and the whole house
will be empty," said the old woman to the old attendant.

"Well, perhaps," said he with a sigh. "We don't expect to get him
home alive! We have a house of our own in Moscow, but it's a long
way from here, and there's nobody living in it."

"Do us the honor to come in, there's plenty of everything in the
master's house. Come in," said Mavra Kuzminichna. "Is he very ill?"
she asked.

The attendant made a hopeless gesture.

"We don't expect to get him home! We must ask the doctor."

And the old servant got down from the box and went up to the cart.

"All right!" said the doctor.

The old servant returned to the caleche, looked into it, shook his
head disconsolately, told the driver to turn into the yard, and
stopped beside Mavra Kuzminichna.

"O, Lord Jesus Christ!" she murmured.

She invited them to take the wounded man into the house.

"The masters won't object..." she said.

But they had to avoid carrying the man upstairs, and so they took
him into the wing and put him in the room that had been Madame
Schoss'.

This wounded man was Prince Andrew Bolkonski.





CHAPTER XV


Moscow's last day had come. It was a clear bright autumn day, a
Sunday. The church bells everywhere were ringing for service, just
as usual on Sundays. Nobody seemed yet to realize what awaited the
city.

Only two things indicated the social condition of Moscow--the
rabble, that is the poor people, and the price of commodities. An
enormous crowd of factory hands, house serfs, and peasants, with
whom some officials, seminarists, and gentry were mingled, had gone
early that morning to the Three Hills. Having waited there for
Rostopchin who did not turn up, they became convinced that Moscow
would be surrendered, and then dispersed all about the town to the
public houses and cookshops. Prices too that day indicated the state
of affairs. The price of weapons, of gold, of carts and horses, kept
rising, but the value of paper money and city articles kept falling,
so that by midday there were instances of carters removing valuable
goods, such as cloth, and receiving in payment a half of what they
carted, while peasant horses were fetching five hundred rubles each,
and furniture, mirrors, and bronzes were being given away for nothing.

In the Rostovs' staid old-fashioned house the dissolution of
former conditions of life was but little noticeable. As to the serfs
the only indication was that three out of their huge retinue
disappeared during the night, but nothing was stolen; and as to the
value of their possessions, the thirty peasant carts that had come
in from their estates and which many people envied proved to be
extremely valuable and they were offered enormous sums of money for
them. Not only were huge sums offered for the horses and carts, but on
the previous evening and early in the morning of the first of
September, orderlies and servants sent by wounded officers came to the
Rostovs' and wounded men dragged themselves there from the Rostovs'
and from neighboring houses where they were accommodated, entreating
the servants to try to get them a lift out of Moscow. The major-domo
to whom these entreaties were addressed, though he was sorry for the
wounded, resolutely refused, saying that he dare not even mention
the matter to the count. Pity these wounded men as one might, it was
evident that if they were given one cart there would be no reason to
refuse another, or all the carts and one's own carriages as well.
Thirty carts could not save all the wounded and in the general
catastrophe one could not disregard oneself and one's own family. So
thought the major-domo on his master's behalf.

On waking up that morning Count Ilya Rostov left his bedroom softly,
so as not to wake the countess who had fallen asleep only toward
morning, and came out to the porch in his lilac silk dressing gown. In
the yard stood the carts ready corded. The carriages were at the front
porch. The major-domo stood at the porch talking to an elderly orderly
and to a pale young officer with a bandaged arm. On seeing the count
the major-domo made a significant and stern gesture to them both to go
away.

"Well, Vasilich, is everything ready?" asked the count, and stroking
his bald head he looked good-naturedly at the officer and the
orderly and nodded to them. (He liked to see new faces.)

"We can harness at once, your excellency."

"Well, that's right. As soon as the countess wakes we'll be off, God
willing! What is it, gentlemen?" he added, turning to the officer.
"Are you staying in my house?"

The officer came nearer and suddenly his face flushed crimson.

"Count, be so good as to allow me... for God's sake, to get into
some corner of one of your carts! I have nothing here with me.... I
shall be all right on a loaded cart..."

Before the officer had finished speaking the orderly made the same
request on behalf of his master.

"Oh, yes, yes, yes!" said the count hastily. "I shall be very
pleased, very pleased. Vasilich, you'll see to it. Just unload one
or two carts. Well, what of it... do what's necessary..." said the
count, muttering some indefinite order.

But at the same moment an expression of warm gratitude on the
officer's face had already sealed the order. The count looked around
him. In the yard, at the gates, at the window of the wings, wounded
officers and their orderlies were to be seen. They were all looking at
the count and moving toward the porch.

"Please step into the gallery, your excellency," said the
major-domo. "What are your orders about the pictures?"

The count went into the house with him, repeating his order not to
refuse the wounded who asked for a lift.

"Well, never mind, some of the things can be unloaded," he added
in a soft, confidential voice, as though afraid of being overheard.

At nine o'clock the countess woke up, and Matrena Timofeevna, who
had been her lady's maid before her marriage and now performed a
sort of chief gendarme's duty for her, came to say that Madame
Schoss was much offended and the young ladies' summer dresses could
not be left behind. On inquiry, the countess learned that Madame
Schoss was offended because her trunk had been taken down from its
cart, and all the loads were being uncorded and the luggage taken
out of the carts to make room for wounded men whom the count in the
simplicity of his heart had ordered that they should take with them.
The countess sent for her husband.

"What is this, my dear? I hear that the luggage is being unloaded."

"You know, love, I wanted to tell you... Countess dear... an officer
came to me to ask for a few carts for the wounded. After all, ours are
things that can be bought but think what being left behind means to
them!... Really now, in our own yard--we asked them in ourselves and
there are officers among them.... You know, I think, my dear... let
them be taken... where's the hurry?"

The count spoke timidly, as he always did when talking of money
matters. The countess was accustomed to this tone as a precursor of
news of something detrimental to the children's interests, such as the
building of a new gallery or conservatory, the inauguration of a
private theater or an orchestra. She was accustomed always to oppose
anything announced in that timid tone and considered it her duty to do
so.

She assumed her dolefully submissive manner and said to her husband:
"Listen to me, Count, you have managed matters so that we are
getting nothing for the house, and now you wish to throw away all our-
all the children's property! You said yourself that we have a
hundred thousand rubles' worth of things in the house. I don't
consent, my dear, I don't! Do as you please! It's the government's
business to look after the wounded; they know that. Look at the
Lopukhins opposite, they cleared out everything two days ago. That's
what other people do. It's only we who are such fools. If you have
no pity on me, have some for the children."

Flourishing his arms in despair the count left the room without
replying.

"Papa, what are you doing that for?" asked Natasha, who had followed
him into her mother's room.

"Nothing! What business is it of yours?" muttered the count angrily.

"But I heard," said Natasha. "Why does Mamma object?"

"What business is it of yours?" cried the count.

Natasha stepped up to the window and pondered.

"Papa! Here's Berg coming to see us," said she, looking out of the
window.





CHAPTER XVI


Berg, the Rostovs' son-in-law, was already a colonel wearing the
orders of Vladimir and Anna, and he still filled the quiet and
agreeable post of assistant to the head of the staff of the
assistant commander of the first division of the Second Army.

On the first of September he had come to Moscow from the army.

He had nothing to do in Moscow, but he had noticed that everyone
in the army was asking for leave to visit Moscow and had something
to do there. So he considered it necessary to ask for leave of absence
for family and domestic reasons.

Berg drove up to his father-in-law's house in his spruce little trap
with a pair of sleek roans, exactly like those of a certain prince. He
looked attentively at the carts in the yard and while going up to
the porch took out a clean pocket handkerchief and tied a knot in it.

From the anteroom Berg ran with smooth though impatient steps into
the drawing room, where he embraced the count, kissed the hands of
Natasha and Sonya, and hastened to inquire after "Mamma's" health.

"Health, at a time like this?" said the count. "Come, tell us the
news! Is the army retreating or will there be another battle?"

"God Almighty alone can decide the fate of our fatherland, Papa,"
said Berg. "The army is burning with a spirit of heroism and the
leaders, so to say, have now assembled in council. No one knows what
is coming. But in general I can tell you, Papa, that such a heroic
spirit, the truly antique valor of the Russian army, which they--which
it" (he corrected himself) "has shown or displayed in the battle of
the twenty-sixth--there are no words worthy to do it justice! I tell
you, Papa" (he smote himself on the breast as a general he had heard
speaking had done, but Berg did it a trifle late for he should have
struck his breast at the words "Russian army"), "I tell you frankly
that we, the commanders, far from having to urge the men on or
anything of that kind, could hardly restrain those... those... yes,
those exploits of antique valor," he went on rapidly. "General Barclay
de Tolly risked his life everywhere at the head of the troops, I can
assure you. Our corps was stationed on a hillside. You can imagine!"

And Berg related all that he remembered of the various tales he
had heard those days. Natasha watched him with an intent gaze that
confused him, as if she were trying to find in his face the answer
to some question.

"Altogether such heroism as was displayed by the Russian warriors
cannot be imagined or adequately praised!" said Berg, glancing round
at Natasha, and as if anxious to conciliate her, replying to her
intent look with a smile. "'Russia is not in Moscow, she lives in
the hearts of her sons!' Isn't it so, Papa?" said he.

Just then the countess came in from the sitting room with a weary
and dissatisfied expression. Berg hurriedly jumped up, kissed her
hand, asked about her health, and, swaying his head from side to
side to express sympathy, remained standing beside her.

"Yes, Mamma, I tell you sincerely that these are hard and sad
times for every Russian. But why are you so anxious? You have still
time to get away...."

"I can't think what the servants are about," said the countess,
turning to her husband. "I have just been told that nothing is ready
yet. Somebody after all must see to things. One misses Mitenka at such
times. There won't be any end to it."

The count was about to say something, but evidently restrained
himself. He got up from his chair and went to the door.

At that moment Berg drew out his handkerchief as if to blow his nose
and, seeing the knot in it, pondered, shaking his head sadly and
significantly.

"And I have a great favor to ask of you, Papa," said he.

"Hm..." said the count, and stopped.

"I was driving past Yusupov's house just now," said Berg with a
laugh, "when the steward, a man I know, ran out and asked me whether I
wouldn't buy something. I went in out of curiosity, you know, and
there is a small chiffonier and a dressing table. You know how dear
Vera wanted a chiffonier like that and how we had a dispute about it."
(At the mention of the chiffonier and dressing table Berg
involuntarily changed his tone to one of pleasure at his admirable
domestic arrangements.) "And it's such a beauty! It pulls out and
has a secret English drawer, you know! And dear Vera has long wanted
one. I wish to give her a surprise, you see. I saw so many of those
peasant carts in your yard. Please let me have one, I will pay the man
well, and..."

The count frowned and coughed.

"Ask the countess, I don't give orders."

"If it's inconvenient, please don't," said Berg. "Only I so wanted
it, for dear Vera's sake."

"Oh, go to the devil, all of you! To the devil, the devil, the
devil..." cried the old count. "My head's in a whirl!"

And he left the room. The countess began to cry.

"Yes, Mamma! Yes, these are very hard times!" said Berg.

Natasha left the room with her father and, as if finding it
difficult to reach some decision, first followed him and then ran
downstairs.

Petya was in the porch, engaged in giving out weapons to the
servants who were to leave Moscow. The loaded carts were still
standing in the yard. Two of them had been uncorded and a wounded
officer was climbing into one of them helped by an orderly.

"Do you know what it's about?" Petya asked Natasha.

She understood that he meant what were their parents quarreling
about. She did not answer.

"It's because Papa wanted to give up all the carts to the
wounded," said Petya. "Vasilich told me. I consider..."

"I consider," Natasha suddenly almost shouted, turning her angry
face to Petya, "I consider it so horrid, so abominable, so... I
don't know what. Are we despicable Germans?"

Her throat quivered with convulsive sobs and, afraid of weakening
and letting the force of her anger run to waste, she turned and rushed
headlong up the stairs.

Berg was sitting beside the countess consoling her with the
respectful attention of a relative. The count, pipe in hand, was
pacing up and down the room, when Natasha, her face distorted by
anger, burst in like a tempest and approached her mother with rapid
steps.

"It's horrid! It's abominable!" she screamed. "You can't possibly
have ordered it!"

Berg and the countess looked at her, perplexed and frightened. The
count stood still at the window and listened.

"Mamma, it's impossible: see what is going on in the yard!" she
cried. "They will be left!..."

"What's the matter with you? Who are 'they'? What do you want?"

"Why, the wounded! It's impossible, Mamma. It's monstrous!... No,
Mamma darling, it's not the thing. Please forgive me, darling....
Mamma, what does it matter what we take away? Only look what is
going on in the yard... Mamma!... It's impossible!"

The count stood by the window and listened without turning round.
Suddenly he sniffed and put his face closer to the window.

The countess glanced at her daughter, saw her face full of shame for
her mother, saw her agitation, and understood why her husband did
not turn to look at her now, and she glanced round quite disconcerted.

"Oh, do as you like! Am I hindering anyone?" she said, not
surrendering at once.

"Mamma, darling, forgive me!"

But the countess pushed her daughter away and went up to her
husband.

"My dear, you order what is right.... You know I don't understand
about it," said she, dropping her eyes shamefacedly.

"The eggs... the eggs are teaching the hen," muttered the count
through tears of joy, and he embraced his wife who was glad to hide
her look of shame on his breast.

"Papa! Mamma! May I see to it? May I?..." asked Natasha. "We will
still take all the most necessary things."

The count nodded affirmatively, and Natasha, at the rapid pace at
which she used to run when playing at tag, ran through the ballroom to
the anteroom and downstairs into the yard.

The servants gathered round Natasha, but could not believe the
strange order she brought them until the count himself, in his
wife's name, confirmed the order to give up all the carts to the
wounded and take the trunks to the storerooms. When they understood
that order the servants set to work at this new task with pleasure and
zeal. It no longer seemed strange to them but on the contrary it
seemed the only thing that could be done, just as a quarter of an hour
before it had not seemed strange to anyone that the wounded should
be left behind and the goods carted away but that had seemed the
only thing to do.

The whole household, as if to atone for not having done it sooner,
set eagerly to work at the new task of placing the wounded in the
carts. The wounded dragged themselves out of their rooms and stood
with pale but happy faces round the carts. The news that carts were to
be had spread to the neighboring houses, from which wounded men
began to come into the Rostovs' yard. Many of the wounded asked them
not to unload the carts but only to let them sit on the top of the
things. But the work of unloading, once started, could not be
arrested. It seemed not to matter whether all or only half the
things were left behind. Cases full of china, bronzes, pictures, and
mirrors that had been so carefully packed the night before now lay
about the yard, and still they went on searching for and finding
possibilities of unloading this or that and letting the wounded have
another and yet another cart.

"We can take four more men," said the steward. "They can have my
trap, or else what is to become of them?"

"Let them have my wardrobe cart," said the countess. "Dunyasha can
go with me in the carriage."

They unloaded the wardrobe cart and sent it to take wounded men from
a house two doors off. The whole household, servants included, was
bright and animated. Natasha was in a state of rapturous excitement
such as she had not known for a long time.

"What could we fasten this onto?" asked the servants, trying to
fix a trunk on the narrow footboard behind a carriage. "We must keep
at least one cart."

"What's in it?" asked Natasha.

"The count's books."

"Leave it, Vasilich will put it away. It's not wanted."

The phaeton was full of people and there was a doubt as to where
Count Peter could sit.

"On the box. You'll sit on the box, won't you, Petya?" cried
Natasha.

Sonya too was busy all this time, but the aim of her efforts was
quite different from Natasha's. She was putting away the things that
had to be left behind and making a list of them as the countess
wished, and she tried to get as much taken away with them as possible.





CHAPTER XVII


Before two o'clock in the afternoon the Rostovs' four carriages,
packed full and with the horses harnessed, stood at the front door.
One by one the carts with the wounded had moved out of the yard.

The caleche in which Prince Andrew was being taken attracted Sonya's
attention as it passed the front porch. With the help of a maid she
was arranging a seat for the countess in the huge high coach that
stood at the entrance.

"Whose caleche is that?" she inquired, leaning out of the carriage
window.

"Why, didn't you know, Miss?" replied the maid. "The wounded prince:
he spent the night in our house and is going with us."

"But who is it? What's his name?"

"It's our intended that was--Prince Bolkonski himself! They say he
is dying," replied the maid with a sigh.

Sonya jumped out of the coach and ran to the countess. The countess,
tired out and already dressed in shawl and bonnet for her journey, was
pacing up and down the drawing room, waiting for the household to
assemble for the usual silent prayer with closed doors before
starting. Natasha was not in the room.

"Mamma," said Sonya, "Prince Andrew is here, mortally wounded. He is
going with us."

The countess opened her eyes in dismay and, seizing Sonya's arm,
glanced around.

"Natasha?" she murmured.

At that moment this news had only one significance for both of them.
They knew their Natasha, and alarm as to what would happen if she
heard this news stifled all sympathy for the man they both liked.

"Natasha does not know yet, but he is going with us," said Sonya.

"You say he is dying?"

Sonya nodded.

The countess put her arms around Sonya and began to cry.

"The ways of God are past finding out!" she thought, feeling that
the Almighty Hand, hitherto unseen, was becoming manifest in all
that was now taking place.

"Well, Mamma? Everything is ready. What's the matter?" asked
Natasha, as with animated face she ran into the room.

"Nothing," answered the countess. "If everything is ready let us
start."

And the countess bent over her reticule to hide her agitated face.
Sonya embraced Natasha and kissed her.

Natasha looked at her inquiringly.

"What is it? What has happened?"

"Nothing... No..."

"Is it something very bad for me? What is it?" persisted Natasha
with her quick intuition.

Sonya sighed and made no reply. The count, Petya, Madame Schoss,
Mavra Kuzminichna, and Vasilich came into the drawing room and, having
closed the doors, they all sat down and remained for some moments
silently seated without looking at one another.

The count was the first to rise, and with a loud sigh crossed
himself before the icon. All the others did the same. Then the count
embraced Mavra Kuzminichna and Vasilich, who were to remain in Moscow,
and while they caught at his hand and kissed his shoulder he patted
their backs lightly with some vaguely affectionate and comforting
words. The countess went into the oratory and there Sonya found her on
her knees before the icons that had been left here and there hanging
on the wall. (The most precious ones, with which some family tradition
was connected, were being taken with them.)

In the porch and in the yard the men whom Petya had armed with
swords and daggers, with trousers tucked inside their high boots and
with belts and girdles tightened, were taking leave of those remaining
behind.

As is always the case at a departure, much had been forgotten or put
in the wrong place, and for a long time two menservants stood one on
each side of the open door and the carriage steps waiting to help
the countess in, while maids rushed with cushions and bundles from the
house to the carriages, the caleche, the phaeton, and back again.

"They always will forget everything!" said the countess. "Don't
you know I can't sit like that?"

And Dunyasha, with clenched teeth, without replying but with an
aggrieved look on her face, hastily got into the coach to rearrange
the seat.

"Oh, those servants!" said the count, swaying his head.

Efim, the old coachman, who was the only one the countess trusted to
drive her, sat perched up high on the box and did not so much as
glance round at what was going on behind him. From thirty years'
experience he knew it would be some time yet before the order, "Be
off, in God's name!" would be given him: and he knew that even when it
was said he would be stopped once or twice more while they sent back
to fetch something that had been forgotten, and even after that he
would again be stopped and the countess herself would lean out of
the window and beg him for the love of heaven to drive carefully
down the hill. He knew all this and therefore waited calmly for what
would happen, with more patience than the horses, especially the
near one, the chestnut Falcon, who was pawing the ground and
champing his bit. At last all were seated, the carriage steps were
folded and pulled up, the door was shut, somebody was sent for a
traveling case, and the countess leaned out and said what she had to
say. Then Efim deliberately doffed his hat and began crossing himself.
The postilion and all the other servants did the same. "Off, in
God's name!" said Efim, putting on his hat. "Start!" The postilion
started the horses, the off pole horse tugged at his collar, the
high springs creaked, and the body of the coach swayed. The footman
sprang onto the box of the moving coach which jolted as it passed
out of the yard onto the uneven roadway; the other vehicles jolted
in their turn, and the procession of carriages moved up the street. In
the carriages, the caleche, and the phaeton, all crossed themselves as
they passed the church opposite the house. Those who were to remain in
Moscow walked on either side of the vehicles seeing the travelers off.

Rarely had Natasha experienced so joyful a feeling as now, sitting
in the carriage beside the countess and gazing at the slowly
receding walls of forsaken, agitated Moscow. Occasionally she leaned
out of the carriage window and looked back and then forward at the
long train of wounded in front of them. Almost at the head of the line
she could see the raised hood of Prince Andrew's caleche. She did
not know who was in it, but each time she looked at the procession her
eyes sought that caleche. She knew it was right in front.

In Kudrino, from the Nikitski, Presnya, and Podnovinsk Streets
came several other trains of vehicles similar to the Rostovs', and
as they passed along the Sadovaya Street the carriages and carts
formed two rows abreast.

As they were going round the Sukharev water tower Natasha, who was
inquisitively and alertly scrutinizing the people driving or walking
past, suddenly cried out in joyful surprise:

"Dear me! Mamma, Sonya, look, it's he!"

"Who? Who?"

"Look! Yes, on my word, it's Bezukhov!" said Natasha, putting her
head out of the carriage and staring at a tall, stout man in a
coachman's long coat, who from his manner of walking and moving was
evidently a gentleman in disguise, and who was passing under the
arch of the Sukharev tower accompanied by a small, sallow-faced,
beardless old man in a frieze coat.

"Yes, it really is Bezukhov in a coachman's coat, with a
queer-looking old boy. Really," said Natasha, "look, look!"

"No, it's not he. How can you talk such nonsense?"

"Mamma," screamed Natasha, "I'll stake my head it's he! I assure
you! Stop, stop!" she cried to the coachman.

But the coachman could not stop, for from the Meshchanski Street
came more carts and carriages, and the Rostovs were being shouted at
to move on and not block the way.

In fact, however, though now much farther off than before, the
Rostovs all saw Pierre--or someone extraordinarily like him--in a
coachman's coat, going down the street with head bent and a serious
face beside a small, beardless old man who looked like a footman. That
old man noticed a face thrust out of the carriage window gazing at
them, and respectfully touching Pierre's elbow said something to him
and pointed to the carriage. Pierre, evidently engrossed in thought,
could not at first understand him. At length when he had understood
and looked in the direction the old man indicated, he recognized
Natasha, and following his first impulse stepped instantly and rapidly
toward the coach. But having taken a dozen steps he seemed to remember
something and stopped.

Natasha's face, leaning out of the window, beamed with quizzical
kindliness.

"Peter Kirilovich, come here! We have recognized you! This is
wonderful!" she cried, holding out her hand to him. "What are you
doing? Why are you like this?"

Pierre took her outstretched hand and kissed it awkwardly as he
walked along beside her while the coach still moved on.

"What is the matter, Count?" asked the countess in a surprised and
commiserating tone.

"What? What? Why? Don't ask me," said Pierre, and looked round at
Natasha whose radiant, happy expression--of which he was conscious
without looking at her--filled him with enchantment.

"Are you remaining in Moscow, then?"

Pierre hesitated.

"In Moscow?" he said in a questioning tone. "Yes, in Moscow.
Goodby!"

"Ah, if only I were a man? I'd certainly stay with you. How
splendid!" said Natasha. "Mamma, if you'll let me, I'll stay!"

Pierre glanced absently at Natasha and was about to say something,
but the countess interrupted him.

"You were at the battle, we heard."

"Yes, I was," Pierre answered. "There will be another battle
tomorrow..." he began, but Natasha interrupted him.

"But what is the matter with you, Count? You are not like
yourself...."

"Oh, don't ask me, don't ask me! I don't know myself. Tomorrow...
But no! Good-by, good-by!" he muttered. "It's an awful time!" and
dropping behind the carriage he stepped onto the pavement.

Natasha continued to lean out of the window for a long time, beaming
at him with her kindly, slightly quizzical, happy smile.





CHAPTER XVIII


For the last two days, ever since leaving home, Pierre had been
living in the empty house of his deceased benefactor, Bazdeev. This is
how it happened.

When he woke up on the morning after his return to Moscow and his
interview with Count Rostopchin, he could not for some time make out
where he was and what was expected of him. When he was informed that
among others awaiting him in his reception room there was a
Frenchman who had brought a letter from his wife, the Countess Helene,
he felt suddenly overcome by that sense of confusion and
hopelessness to which he was apt to succumb. He felt that everything
was now at an end, all was in confusion and crumbling to pieces,
that nobody was right or wrong, the future held nothing, and there was
no escape from this position. Smiling unnaturally and muttering to
himself, he first sat down on the sofa in an attitude of despair, then
rose, went to the door of the reception room and peeped through the
crack, returned flourishing his arms, and took up a book. His
major-domo came in a second time to say that the Frenchman who had
brought the letter from the countess was very anxious to see him if
only for a minute, and that someone from Bazdeev's widow had called to
ask Pierre to take charge of her husband's books, as she herself was
leaving for the country.

"Oh, yes, in a minute; wait... or no! No, of course... go and say
I will come directly," Pierre replied to the major-domo.

But as soon as the man had left the room Pierre took up his hat
which was lying on the table and went out of his study by the other
door. There was no one in the passage. He went along the whole
length of this passage to the stairs and, frowning and rubbing his
forehead with both hands, went down as far as the first landing. The
hall porter was standing at the front door. From the landing where
Pierre stood there was a second staircase leading to the back
entrance. He went down that staircase and out into the yard. No one
had seen him. But there were some carriages waiting, and as soon as
Pierre stepped out of the gate the coachmen and the yard porter
noticed him and raised their caps to him. When he felt he was being
looked at he behaved like an ostrich which hides its head in a bush in
order not to be seen: he hung his head and quickening his pace went
down the street.

Of all the affairs awaiting Pierre that day the sorting of Joseph
Bazdeev's books and papers appeared to him the most necessary.

He hired the first cab he met and told the driver to go to the
Patriarch's Ponds, where the widow Bazdeev's house was.

Continually turning round to look at the rows of loaded carts that
were making their way from all sides out of Moscow, and balancing
his bulky body so as not to slip out of the ramshackle old vehicle,
Pierre, experiencing the joyful feeling of a boy escaping from school,
began to talk to his driver.

The man told him that arms were being distributed today at the
Kremlin and that tomorrow everyone would be sent out beyond the
Three Hills gates and a great battle would be fought there.

Having reached the Patriarch's Ponds Pierre found the Bazdeevs'
house, where he had not been for a long time past. He went up to the
gate. Gerasim, that sallow beardless old man Pierre had seen at
Torzhok five years before with Joseph Bazdeev, came out in answer to
his knock.

"At home?" asked Pierre.

"Owing to the present state of things Sophia Danilovna has gone to
the Torzhok estate with the children, your excellency."

"I will come in all the same, I have to look through the books,"
said Pierre.

"Be so good as to step in. Makar Alexeevich, the brother of my
late master--may the kingdom of heaven be his--has remained here,
but he is in a weak state as you know," said the old servant.

Pierre knew that Makar Alexeevich was Joseph Bazdeev's half-insane
brother and a hard drinker.

"Yes, yes, I know. Let us go in..." said Pierre and entered the
house.

A tall, bald-headed old man with a red nose, wearing a dressing gown
and with galoshes on his bare feet, stood in the anteroom. On seeing
Pierre he muttered something angrily and went away along the passage.

"He was a very clever man but has now grown quite feeble, as your
honor sees," said Gerasim. "Will you step into the study?" Pierre
nodded. "As it was sealed up so it has remained, but Sophia
Danilovna gave orders that if anyone should come from you they were to
have the books."

Pierre went into that gloomy study which he had entered with such
trepidation in his benefactor's lifetime. The room, dusty and
untouched since the death of Joseph Bazdeev was now even gloomier.

Gerasim opened one of the shutters and left the room on tiptoe.
Pierre went round the study, approached the cupboard in which the
manuscripts were kept, and took out what had once been one of the most
important, the holy of holies of the order. This was the authentic
Scotch Acts with Bazdeev's notes and explanations. He sat down at
the dusty writing table, and, having laid the manuscripts before
him, opened them out, closed them, finally pushed them away, and
resting his head on his hand sank into meditation.

Gerasim looked cautiously into the study several times and saw
Pierre always sitting in the same attitude.

More than two hours passed and Gerasim took the liberty of making
a slight noise at the door to attract his attention, but Pierre did
not hear him.

"Is the cabman to be discharged, your honor?"

"Oh yes!" said Pierre, rousing himself and rising hurriedly. "Look
here," he added, taking Gerasim by a button of his coat and looking
down at the old man with moist, shining, and ecstatic eyes, "I say, do
you know that there is going to be a battle tomorrow?"

"We heard so," replied the man.

"I beg you not to tell anyone who I am, and to do what I ask you."

"Yes, your excellency," replied Gerasim. "Will you have something to
eat?"

"No, but I want something else. I want peasant clothes and a
pistol," said Pierre, unexpectedly blushing.

"Yes, your excellency," said Gerasim after thinking for a moment.

All the rest of that day Pierre spent alone in his benefactor's
study, and Gerasim heard him pacing restlessly from one corner to
another and talking to himself. And he spent the night on a bed made
up for him there.

Gerasim, being a servant who in his time had seen many strange
things, accepted Pierre's taking up his residence in the house without
surprise, and seemed pleased to have someone to wait on. That same
evening--without even asking himself what they were wanted for--he
procured a coachman's coat and cap for Pierre, and promised to get him
the pistol next day. Makar Alexeevich came twice that evening
shuffling along in his galoshes as far as the door and stopped and
looked ingratiatingly at Pierre. But as soon as Pierre turned toward
him he wrapped his dressing gown around him with a shamefaced and
angry look and hurried away. It was when Pierre (wearing the
coachman's coat which Gerasim had procured for him and had disinfected
by steam) was on his way with the old man to buy the pistol at the
Sukharev market that he met the Rostovs.





CHAPTER XIX


Kutuzov's order to retreat through Moscow to the Ryazan road was
issued at night on the first of September.

The first troops started at once, and during the night they
marched slowly and steadily without hurry. At daybreak, however, those
nearing the town at the Dorogomilov bridge saw ahead of them masses of
soldiers crowding and hurrying across the bridge, ascending on the
opposite side and blocking the streets and alleys, while endless
masses of troops were bearing down on them from behind, and an
unreasoning hurry and alarm overcame them. They all rushed forward
to the bridge, onto it, and to the fords and the boats. Kutuzov
himself had driven round by side streets to the other side of Moscow.

By ten o'clock in the morning of the second of September, only the
rear guard remained in the Dorogomilov suburb, where they had ample
room. The main army was on the other side of Moscow or beyond it.

At that very time, at ten in the morning of the second of September,
Napoleon was standing among his troops on the Poklonny Hill looking at
the panorama spread out before him. From the twenty-sixth of August to
the second of September, that is from the battle of Borodino to the
entry of the French into Moscow, during the whole of that agitating,
memorable week, there had been the extraordinary autumn weather that
always comes as a surprise, when the sun hangs low and gives more heat
than in spring, when everything shines so brightly in the rare clear
atmosphere that the eyes smart, when the lungs are strengthened and
refreshed by inhaling the aromatic autumn air, when even the nights
are warm, and when in those dark warm nights, golden stars startle and
delight us continually by falling from the sky.

At ten in the morning of the second of September this weather
still held.

The brightness of the morning was magical. Moscow seen from the
Poklonny Hill lay spaciously spread out with her river, her gardens,
and her churches, and she seemed to be living her usual life, her
cupolas glittering like stars in the sunlight.

The view of the strange city with its peculiar architecture, such as
he had never seen before, filled Napoleon with the rather envious
and uneasy curiosity men feel when they see an alien form of life that
has no knowledge of them. This city was evidently living with the full
force of its own life. By the indefinite signs which, even at a
distance, distinguish a living body from a dead one, Napoleon from the
Poklonny Hill perceived the throb of life in the town and felt, as
it were, the breathing of that great and beautiful body.

Every Russian looking at Moscow feels her to be a mother; every
foreigner who sees her, even if ignorant of her significance as the
mother city, must feel her feminine character, and Napoleon felt it.

"Cette ville asiatique aux innombrables eglises, Moscou la sainte.
La voila done enfin, cette fameuse ville! Il etait temps,"* said he,
and dismounting he ordered a plan of Moscow to be spread out before
him, and summoned Lelorgne d'Ideville, the interpreter.


*"That Asiatic city of the innumerable churches, holy Moscow! Here
it is then at last, that famous city. It was high time."


"A town captured by the enemy is like a maid who has lost her
honor," thought he (he had said so to Tuchkov at Smolensk). From
that point of view he gazed at the Oriental beauty he had not seen
before. It seemed strange to him that his long-felt wish, which had
seemed unattainable, had at last been realized. In the clear morning
light he gazed now at the city and now at the plan, considering its
details, and the assurance of possessing it agitated and awed him.

"But could it be otherwise?" he thought. "Here is this capital at my
feet. Where is Alexander now, and of what is he thinking? A strange,
beautiful, and majestic city; and a strange and majestic moment! In
what light must I appear to them!" thought he, thinking of his troops.
"Here she is, the reward for all those fainthearted men," he
reflected, glancing at those near him and at the troops who were
approaching and forming up. "One word from me, one movement of my
hand, and that ancient capital of the Tsars would perish. But my
clemency is always ready to descend upon the vanquished. I must be
magnanimous and truly great. But no, it can't be true that I am in
Moscow," he suddenly thought. "Yet here she is lying at my feet,
with her golden domes and crosses scintillating and twinkling in the
sunshine. But I shall spare her. On the ancient monuments of barbarism
and despotism I will inscribe great words of justice and mercy....
It is just this which Alexander will feel most painfully, I know him."
(It seemed to Napoleon that the chief import of what was taking
place lay in the personal struggle between himself and Alexander.)
"From the height of the Kremlin--yes, there is the Kremlin, yes--I
will give them just laws; I will teach them the meaning of true
civilization, I will make generations of boyars remember their
conqueror with love. I will tell the deputation that I did not, and do
not, desire war, that I have waged war only against the false policy
of their court; that I love and respect Alexander and that in Moscow I
will accept terms of peace worthy of myself and of my people. I do not
wish to utilize the fortunes of war to humiliate an honored monarch.
'Boyars,' I will say to them, 'I do not desire war, I desire the peace
and welfare of all my subjects.' However, I know their presence will
inspire me, and I shall speak to them as I always do: clearly,
impressively, and majestically. But can it be true that I am in
Moscow? Yes, there she lies."

"Qu'on m'amene les boyars,"* said he to his suite.


*"Bring the boyars to me."


A general with a brilliant suite galloped off at once to fetch the
boyars.

Two hours passed. Napoleon had lunched and was again standing in the
same place on the Poklonny Hill awaiting the deputation. His speech to
the boyars had already taken definite shape in his imagination. That
speech was full of dignity and greatness as Napoleon understood it.

He was himself carried away by the tone of magnanimity he intended
to adopt toward Moscow. In his imagination he appointed days for
assemblies at the palace of the Tsars, at which Russian notables and
his own would mingle. He mentally appointed a governor, one who
would win the hearts of the people. Having learned that there were
many charitable institutions in Moscow he mentally decided that he
would shower favors on them all. He thought that, as in Africa he
had to put on a burnoose and sit in a mosque, so in Moscow he must
be beneficent like the Tsars. And in order finally to touch the hearts
of the Russians--and being like all Frenchmen unable to imagine
anything sentimental without a reference to ma chere, ma tendre, ma
pauvre mere* --he decided that he would place an inscription on all
these establishments in large letters: "This establishment is
dedicated to my dear mother." Or no, it should be simply: Maison de ma
Mere,*[2] he concluded. "But am I really in Moscow? Yes, here it
lies before me, but why is the deputation from the city so long in
appearing?" he wondered.


*"My dear, my tender, my poor mother."

*[2] "House of my Mother."


Meanwhile an agitated consultation was being carried on in
whispers among his generals and marshals at the rear of his suite.
Those sent to fetch the deputation had returned with the news that
Moscow was empty, that everyone had left it. The faces of those who
were not conferring together were pale and perturbed. They were not
alarmed by the fact that Moscow had been abandoned by its
inhabitants (grave as that fact seemed), but by the question how to
tell the Emperor--without putting him in the terrible position of
appearing ridiculous--that he had been awaiting the boyars so long
in vain: that there were drunken mobs left in Moscow but no one
else. Some said that a deputation of some sort must be scraped
together, others disputed that opinion and maintained that the Emperor
should first be carefully and skillfully prepared, and then told the
truth.

"He will have to be told, all the same," said some gentlemen of
the suite. "But, gentlemen..."

The position was the more awkward because the Emperor, meditating
upon his magnanimous plans, was pacing patiently up and down before
the outspread map, occasionally glancing along the road to Moscow from
under his lifted hand with a bright and proud smile.

"But it's impossible..." declared the gentlemen of the suite,
shrugging their shoulders but not venturing to utter the implied word-
le ridicule...

At last the Emperor, tired of futile expectation, his actor's
instinct suggesting to him that the sublime moment having been too
long drawn out was beginning to lose its sublimity, gave a sign with
his hand. A single report of a signaling gun followed, and the troops,
who were already spread out on different sides of Moscow, moved into
the city through Tver, Kaluga, and Dorogomilov gates. Faster and
faster, vying with one another, they moved at the double or at a trot,
vanishing amid the clouds of dust they raised and making the air
ring with a deafening roar of mingling shouts.

Drawn on by the movement of his troops Napoleon rode with them as
far as the Dorogomilov gate, but there again stopped and,
dismounting from his horse, paced for a long time by the
Kammer-Kollezski rampart, awaiting the deputation.





CHAPTER XX

Meanwhile Moscow was empty. There were still people in it, perhaps a
fiftieth part of its former inhabitants had remained, but it was
empty. It was empty in the sense that a dying queenless hive is empty.

In a queenless hive no life is left though to a superficial glance
it seems as much alive as other hives.

The bees circle round a queenless hive in the hot beams of the
midday sun as gaily as around the living hives; from a distance it
smells of honey like the others, and bees fly in and out in the same
way. But one has only to observe that hive to realize that there is no
longer any life in it. The bees do not fly in the same way, the
smell and the sound that meet the beekeeper are not the same. To the
beekeeper's tap on the wall of the sick hive, instead of the former
instant unanimous humming of tens of thousands of bees with their
abdomens threateningly compressed, and producing by the rapid
vibration of their wings an aerial living sound, the only reply is a
disconnected buzzing from different parts of the deserted hive. From
the alighting board, instead of the former spirituous fragrant smell
of honey and venom, and the warm whiffs of crowded life, comes an odor
of emptiness and decay mingling with the smell of honey. There are
no longer sentinels sounding the alarm with their abdomens raised, and
ready to die in defense of the hive. There is no longer the measured
quiet sound of throbbing activity, like the sound of boiling water,
but diverse discordant sounds of disorder. In and out of the hive long
black robber bees smeared with honey fly timidly and shiftily. They do
not sting, but crawl away from danger. Formerly only bees laden with
honey flew into the hive, and they flew out empty; now they fly out
laden. The beekeeper opens the lower part of the hive and peers in.
Instead of black, glossy bees--tamed by toil, clinging to one
another's legs and drawing out the wax, with a ceaseless hum of labor-
that used to hang in long clusters down to the floor of the hive,
drowsy shriveled bees crawl about separately in various directions
on the floor and walls of the hive. Instead of a neatly glued floor,
swept by the bees with the fanning of their wings, there is a floor
littered with bits of wax, excrement, dying bees scarcely moving their
legs, and dead ones that have not been cleared away.

The beekeeper opens the upper part of the hive and examines the
super. Instead of serried rows of bees sealing up every gap in the
combs and keeping the brood warm, he sees the skillful complex
structures of the combs, but no longer in their former state of
purity. All is neglected and foul. Black robber bees are swiftly and
stealthily prowling about the combs, and the short home bees,
shriveled and listless as if they were old, creep slowly about without
trying to hinder the robbers, having lost all motive and all sense
of life. Drones, bumblebees, wasps, and butterflies knock awkwardly
against the walls of the hive in their flight. Here and there among
the cells containing dead brood and honey an angry buzzing can
sometimes be heard. Here and there a couple of bees, by force of habit
and custom cleaning out the brood cells, with efforts beyond their
strength laboriously drag away a dead bee or bumblebee without knowing
why they do it. In another corner two old bees are languidly fighting,
or cleaning themselves, or feeding one another, without themselves
knowing whether they do it with friendly or hostile intent. In a third
place a crowd of bees, crushing one another, attack some victim and
fight and smother it, and the victim, enfeebled or killed, drops
from above slowly and lightly as a feather, among the heap of corpses.
The keeper opens the two center partitions to examine the brood cells.
In place of the former close dark circles formed by thousands of
bees sitting back to back and guarding the high mystery of generation,
he sees hundreds of dull, listless, and sleepy shells of bees. They
have almost all died unawares, sitting in the sanctuary they had
guarded and which is now no more. They reek of decay and death. Only a
few of them still move, rise, and feebly fly to settle on the
enemy's hand, lacking the spirit to die stinging him; the rest are
dead and fall as lightly as fish scales. The beekeeper closes the
hive, chalks a mark on it, and when he has time tears out its contents
and burns it clean.

So in the same way Moscow was empty when Napoleon, weary, uneasy,
and morose, paced up and down in front of the Kammer-Kollezski
rampart, awaiting what to his mind was a necessary, if but formal,
observance of the proprieties--a deputation.

In various corners of Moscow there still remained a few people
aimlessly moving about, following their old habits and hardly aware of
what they were doing.

When with due circumspection Napoleon was informed that Moscow was
empty, he looked angrily at his informant, turned away, and silently
continued to walk to and fro.

"My carriage!" he said.

He took his seat beside the aide-de-camp on duty and drove into
the suburb. "Moscow deserted!" he said to himself. "What an incredible
event!"

He did not drive into the town, but put up at an inn in the
Dorogomilov suburb.

The coup de theatre had not come off.





CHAPTER XXI


The Russian troops were passing through Moscow from two o'clock at
night till two in the afternoon and bore away with them the wounded
and the last of the inhabitants who were leaving.

The greatest crush during the movement of the troops took place at
the Stone, Moskva, and Yauza bridges.

While the troops, dividing into two parts when passing around the
Kremlin, were thronging the Moskva and the Stone bridges, a great many
soldiers, taking advantage of the stoppage and congestion, turned back
from the bridges and slipped stealthily and silently past the church
of Vasili the Beatified and under the Borovitski gate, back up the
hill to the Red Square where some instinct told them they could easily
take things not belonging to them. Crowds of the kind seen at cheap
sales filled all the passages and alleys of the Bazaar. But there were
no dealers with voices of ingratiating affability inviting customers
to enter; there were no hawkers, nor the usual motley crowd of
female purchasers--but only soldiers, in uniforms and overcoats though
without muskets, entering the Bazaar empty-handed and silently
making their way out through its passages with bundles. Tradesmen
and their assistants (of whom there were but few) moved about among
the soldiers quite bewildered. They unlocked their shops and locked
them up again, and themselves carried goods away with the help their
assistants. On the square in front of the Bazaar were drummers beating
the muster call. But the roll of the drums did not make the looting
soldiers run in the direction of the drum as formerly, but made
them, on the contrary, run farther away. Among the soldiers in the
shops and passages some men were to be seen in gray coats, with
closely shaven heads. Two officers, one with a scarf over his
uniform and mounted on a lean, dark-gray horse, the other in an
overcoat and on foot, stood at the corner of Ilyinka Street,
talking. A third officer galloped up to them.

"The general orders them all to be driven out at once, without fail.
This is outrageous! Half the men have dispersed."

"Where are you off to?... Where?..." he shouted to three infantrymen
without muskets who, holding up the skirts of their overcoats, were
slipping past him into the Bazaar passage. "Stop, you rascals!"

"But how are you going to stop them?" replied another officer.
"There is no getting them together. The army should push on before the
rest bolt, that's all!"

"How can one push on? They are stuck there, wedged on the bridge,
and don't move. Shouldn't we put a cordon round to prevent the rest
from running away?"

"Come, go in there and drive them out!" shouted the senior officer.

The officer in the scarf dismounted, called up a drummer, and went
with him into the arcade. Some soldiers started running away in a
group. A shopkeeper with red pimples on his cheeks near the nose,
and a calm, persistent, calculating expression on his plump face,
hurriedly and ostentatiously approached the officer, swinging his
arms.

"Your honor!" said he. "Be so good as to protect us! We won't grudge
trifles, you are welcome to anything--we shall be delighted!
Pray!... I'll fetch a piece of cloth at once for such an honorable
gentleman, or even two pieces with pleasure. For we feel how it is;
but what's all this--sheer robbery! If you please, could not guards be
placed if only to let us close the shop...."

Several shopkeepers crowded round the officer.

"Eh, what twaddle!" said one of them, a thin, stern-looking man.
"When one's head is gone one doesn't weep for one's hair! Take what
any of you like!" And flourishing his arm energetically he turned
sideways to the officer.

"It's all very well for you, Ivan Sidorych, to talk," said the first
tradesman angrily. "Please step inside, your honor!"

"Talk indeed!" cried the thin one. "In my three shops here I have
a hundred thousand rubles' worth of goods. Can they be saved when
the army has gone? Eh, what people! 'Against God's might our hands
can't fight.'"

"Come inside, your honor!" repeated the tradesman, bowing.

The officer stood perplexed and his face showed indecision.

"It's not my business!" he exclaimed, and strode on quickly down one
of the passages.

From one open shop came the sound of blows and vituperation, and
just as the officer came up to it a man in a gray coat with a shaven
head was flung out violently.

This man, bent double, rushed past the tradesman and the officer.
The officer pounced on the soldiers who were in the shops, but at that
moment fearful screams reached them from the huge crowd on the
Moskva bridge and the officer ran out into the square.

"What is it? What is it?" he asked, but his comrade was already
galloping off past Vasili the Beatified in the direction from which
the screams came.

The officer mounted his horse and rode after him. When he reached
the bridge he saw two unlimbered guns, the infantry crossing the
bridge, several overturned carts, and frightened and laughing faces
among the troops. Beside the cannon a cart was standing to which two
horses were harnessed. Four borzois with collars were pressing close
to the wheels. The cart was loaded high, and at the very top, beside a
child's chair with its legs in the air, sat a peasant woman uttering
piercing and desperate shrieks. He was told by his fellow officers
that the screams of the crowd and the shrieks of the woman were due to
the fact that General Ermolov, coming up to the crowd and learning
that soldiers were dispersing among the shops while crowds of
civilians blocked the bridge, had ordered two guns to be unlimbered
and made a show of firing at the bridge. The crowd, crushing one
another, upsetting carts, and shouting and squeezing desperately,
had cleared off the bridge and the troops were now moving forward.





CHAPTER XXII


Meanwhile, the city itself was deserted. There was hardly anyone
in the streets. The gates and shops were all closed, only here and
there round the taverns solitary shouts or drunken songs could be
heard. Nobody drove through the streets and footsteps were rarely
heard. The Povarskaya was quite still and deserted. The huge courtyard
of the Rostovs' house was littered with wisps of hay and with dung
from the horses, and not a soul was to be seen there. In the great
drawing room of the house, which had been left with all it
contained, were two people. They were the yard porter Ignat, and the
page boy Mishka, Vasilich's grandson who had stayed in Moscow with his
grandfather. Mishka had opened the clavichord and was strumming on
it with one finger. The yard porter, his arms akimbo, stood smiling
with satisfaction before the large mirror.

"Isn't it fine, eh, Uncle Ignat?" said the boy, suddenly beginning
to strike the keyboard with both hands.

"Only fancy!" answered Ignat, surprised at the broadening grin on
his face in the mirror.

"Impudence! Impudence!" they heard behind them the voice of Mavra
Kuzminichna who had entered silently. "How he's grinning, the fat mug!
Is that what you're here for? Nothing's cleared away down there and
Vasilich is worn out. Just you wait a bit!"

Ignat left off smiling, adjusted his belt, and went out of the
room with meekly downcast eyes.

"Aunt, I did it gently," said the boy.

"I'll give you something gently, you monkey you!" cried Mavra
Kuzminichna, raising her arm threateningly. "Go and get the samovar to
boil for your grandfather."

Mavra Kuzminichna flicked the dust off the clavichord and closed it,
and with a deep sigh left the drawing room and locked its main door.

Going out into the yard she paused to consider where she should go
next--to drink tea in the servants' wing with Vasilich, or into the
storeroom to put away what still lay about.

She heard the sound of quick footsteps in the quiet street.
Someone stopped at the gate, and the latch rattled as someone tried to
open it. Mavra Kuzminichna went to the gate.

"Who do you want?"

"The count--Count Ilya Andreevich Rostov."

"And who are you?"

"An officer, I have to see him," came the reply in a pleasant,
well-bred Russian voice.

Mavra Kuzminichna opened the gate and an officer of eighteen, with
the round face of a Rostov, entered the yard.

"They have gone away, sir. Went away yesterday at vespertime,"
said Mavra Kuzminichna cordially.

The young officer standing in the gateway, as if hesitating
whether to enter or not, clicked his tongue.

"Ah, how annoying!" he muttered. "I should have come yesterday....
Ah, what a pity."

Meanwhile, Mavra Kuzminichna was attentively and sympathetically
examining the familiar Rostov features of the young man's face, his
tattered coat and trodden-down boots.

"What did you want to see the count for?" she asked.

"Oh well... it can't be helped!" said he in a tone of vexation and
placed his hand on the gate as if to leave.

He again paused in indecision.

"You see," he suddenly said, "I am a kinsman of the count's and he
has been very kind to me. As you see" (he glanced with an amused air
and good-natured smile at his coat and boots) "my things are worn
out and I have no money, so I was going to ask the count..."

Mavra Kuzminichna did not let him finish.

"Just wait a minute, sir. One little moment," said she.

And as soon as the officer let go of the gate handle she turned and,
hurrying away on her old legs, went through the back yard to the
servants' quarters.

While Mavra Kuzminichna was running to her room the officer walked
about the yard gazing at his worn-out boots with lowered head and a
faint smile on his lips. "What a pity I've missed Uncle! What a nice
old woman! Where has she run off to? And how am I to find the
nearest way to overtake my regiment, which must by now be getting near
the Rogozhski gate?" thought he. Just then Mavra Kuzminichna
appeared from behind the corner of the house with a frightened yet
resolute look, carrying a rolled-up check kerchief in her hand.
While still a few steps from the officer she unfolded the kerchief and
took out of it a white twenty-five-ruble assignat and hastily handed
it to him.

"If his excellency had been at home, as a kinsman he would of
course... but as it is..."

Mavra Kuzminichna grew abashed and confused. The officer did not
decline, but took the note quietly and thanked her.

"If the count had been at home..." Mavra Kuzminichna went on
apologetically. "Christ be with you, sir! May God preserve you!"
said she, bowing as she saw him out.

Swaying his head and smiling as if amused at himself, the officer
ran almost at a trot through the deserted streets toward the Yauza
bridge to overtake his regiment.

But Mavra Kuzminichna stood at the closed gate for some time with
moist eyes, pensively swaying her head and feeling an unexpected
flow of motherly tenderness and pity for the unknown young officer.





CHAPTER XXIII


From an unfinished house on the Varvarka, the ground floor of
which was a dramshop, came drunken shouts and songs. On benches
round the tables in a dirty little room sat some ten factory hands.
Tipsy and perspiring, with dim eyes and wide-open mouths, they were
all laboriously singing some song or other. They were singing
discordantly, arduously, and with great effort, evidently not
because they wished to sing, but because they wanted to show they were
drunk and on a spree. One, a tall, fair-haired lad in a clean blue
coat, was standing over the others. His face with its fine straight
nose would have been handsome had it not been for his thin,
compressed, twitching lips and dull, gloomy, fixed eyes. Evidently
possessed by some idea, he stood over those who were singing, and
solemnly and jerkily flourished above their heads his white arm with
the sleeve turned up to the elbow, trying unnaturally to spread out
his dirty fingers. The sleeve of his coat kept slipping down and he
always carefully rolled it up again with his left hand, as if it
were most important that the sinewy white arm he was flourishing
should be bare. In the midst of the song cries were heard, and
fighting and blows in the passage and porch. The tall lad waved his
arm.

"Stop it!" he exclaimed peremptorily. "There's a fight, lads!"
And, still rolling up his sleeve, he went out to the porch.

The factory hands followed him. These men, who under the
leadership of the tall lad were drinking in the dramshop that morning,
had brought the publican some skins from the factory and for this
had had drink served them. The blacksmiths from a neighboring
smithy, hearing the sounds of revelry in the tavern and supposing it
to have been broken into, wished to force their way in too and a fight
in the porch had resulted.

The publican was fighting one of the smiths at the door, and when
the workmen came out the smith, wrenching himself free from the tavern
keeper, fell face downward on the pavement.

Another smith tried to enter the doorway, pressing against the
publican with his chest.

The lad with the turned-up sleeve gave the smith a blow in the
face and cried wildly: "They're fighting us, lads!"

At that moment the first smith got up and, scratching his bruised
face to make it bleed, shouted in a tearful voice: "Police! Murder!...
They've killed a man, lads!"

"Oh, gracious me, a man beaten to death--killed!..." screamed a
woman coming out of a gate close by.

A crowd gathered round the bloodstained smith.

"Haven't you robbed people enough--taking their last shirts?" said a
voice addressing the publican. "What have you killed a man for, you
thief?"

The tall lad, standing in the porch, turned his bleared eyes from
the publican to the smith and back again as if considering whom he
ought to fight now.

"Murderer!" he shouted suddenly to the publican. "Bind him, lads!"

"I daresay you would like to bind me!" shouted the publican, pushing
away the men advancing on him, and snatching his cap from his head
he flung it on the ground.

As if this action had some mysterious and menacing significance, the
workmen surrounding the publican paused in indecision.

"I know the law very well, mates! I'll take the matter to the
captain of police. You think I won't get to him? Robbery is not
permitted to anybody now a days!" shouted the publican, picking up his
cap.

"Come along then! Come along then!" the publican and the tall
young fellow repeated one after the other, and they moved up the
street together.

The bloodstained smith went beside them. The factory hands and
others followed behind, talking and shouting.

At the corner of the Moroseyka, opposite a large house with closed
shutters and bearing a bootmaker's signboard, stood a score of thin,
worn-out, gloomy-faced bootmakers, wearing overalls and long
tattered coats.

"He should pay folks off properly," a thin workingman, with frowning
brows and a straggly beard, was saying.

"But he's sucked our blood and now he thinks he's quit of us. He's
been misleading us all the week and now that he's brought us to this
pass he's made off."

On seeing the crowd and the bloodstained man the workman ceased
speaking, and with eager curiosity all the bootmakers joined the
moving crowd.

"Where are all the folks going?"

"Why, to the police, of course!"

"I say, is it true that we have been beaten?" "And what did you
think? Look what folks are saying."

Questions and answers were heard. The publican, taking advantage
of the increased crowd, dropped behind and returned to his tavern.

The tall youth, not noticing the disappearance of his foe, waved his
bare arm and went on talking incessantly, attracting general attention
to himself. It was around him that the people chiefly crowded,
expecting answers from him to the questions that occupied all their
minds.

"He must keep order, keep the law, that's what the government is
there for. Am I not right, good Christians?" said the tall youth, with
a scarcely perceptible smile. "He thinks there's no government! How
can one do without government? Or else there would be plenty who'd rob
us."

"Why talk nonsense?" rejoined voices in the crowd. "Will they give
up Moscow like this? They told you that for fun, and you believed
it! Aren't there plenty of troops on the march? Let him in, indeed!
That's what the government is for. You'd better listen to what
people are saying," said some of the mob pointing to the tall youth.

By the wall of China-Town a smaller group of people were gathered
round a man in a frieze coat who held a paper in his hand.

"An ukase, they are reading an ukase! Reading an ukase!" cried
voices in the crowd, and the people rushed toward the reader.

The man in the frieze coat was reading the broadsheet of August 31
When the crowd collected round him he seemed confused, but at the
demand of the tall lad who had pushed his way up to him, he began in a
rather tremulous voice to read the sheet from the beginning.

"Early tomorrow I shall go to his Serene Highness," he read
("Sirin Highness," said the tall fellow with a triumphant smile on his
lips and a frown on his brow), "to consult with him to act, and to aid
the army to exterminate these scoundrels. We too will take part..."
the reader went on, and then paused ("Do you see," shouted the youth
victoriously, "he's going to clear up the whole affair for
you...."), "in destroying them, and will send these visitors to the
devil. I will come back to dinner, and we'll set to work. We will
do, completely do, and undo these scoundrels."

The last words were read out in the midst of complete silence. The
tall lad hung his head gloomily. It was evident that no one had
understood the last part. In particular, the words "I will come back
to dinner," evidently displeased both reader and audience. The
people's minds were tuned to a high pitch and this was too simple
and needlessly comprehensible--it was what any one of them might
have said and therefore was what an ukase emanating from the highest
authority should not say.

They all stood despondent and silent. The tall youth moved his
lips and swayed from side to side.

"We should ask him... that's he himself?"... "Yes, ask him
indeed!... Why not? He'll explain"... voices in the rear of the
crowd were suddenly heard saying, and the general attention turned
to the police superintendent's trap which drove into the square
attended by two mounted dragoons.

The superintendent of police, who had that morning by Count
Rostopchin's orders to burn the barges and had in connection with that
matter acquired a large sum of money which was at that moment in his
pocket, on seeing a crowd bearing down upon him told his coachman to
stop.

"What people are these?" he shouted to the men, who were moving
singly and timidly in the direction of his trap.

"What people are these?" he shouted again, receiving no answer.

"Your honor..." replied the shopman in the frieze coat, "your honor,
in accord with the proclamation of his highest excellency the count,
they desire to serve, not sparing their lives, and it is not any
kind of riot, but as his highest excellence said..."

"The count has not left, he is here, and an order will be issued
concerning you," said the superintendent of police. "Go on!" he
ordered his coachman.

The crowd halted, pressing around those who had heard what the
superintendent had said, and looking at the departing trap.

The superintendent of police turned round at that moment with a
scared look, said something to his coachman, and his horses
increased their speed.

"It's a fraud, lads! Lead the way to him, himself!" shouted the tall
youth. "Don't let him go, lads! Let him answer us! Keep him!"
shouted different people and the people dashed in pursuit of the trap.

Following the superintendent of police and talking loudly the
crowd went in the direction of the Lubyanka Street.

"There now, the gentry and merchants have gone away and left us to
perish. Do they think we're dogs?" voices in the crowd were heard
saying more and more frequently.





CHAPTER XXIV


On the evening of the first of September, after his interview with
Kutuzov, Count Rostopchin had returned to Moscow mortified and
offended because he had not been invited to attend the council of war,
and because Kutuzov had paid no attention to his offer to take part in
the defense of the city; amazed also at the novel outlook revealed
to him at the camp, which treated the tranquillity of the capital
and its patriotic fervor as not merely secondary but quite
irrelevant and unimportant matters. Distressed, offended, and
surprised by all this, Rostopchin had returned to Moscow. After supper
he lay down on a sofa without undressing, and was awakened soon
after midnight by a courier bringing him a letter from Kutuzov. This
letter requested the count to send police officers to guide the troops
through the town, as the army was retreating to the Ryazan road beyond
Moscow. This was not news to Rostopchin. He had known that Moscow
would be abandoned not merely since his interview the previous day
with Kutuzov on the Poklonny Hill but ever since the battle of
Borodino, for all the generals who came to Moscow after that battle
had said unanimously that it was impossible to fight another battle,
and since then the government property had been removed every night,
and half the inhabitants had left the city with Rostopchin's own
permission. Yet all the same this information astonished and irritated
the count, coming as it did in the form of a simple note with an order
from Kutuzov, and received at night, breaking in on his beauty sleep.

When later on in his memoirs Count Rostopchin explained his
actions at this time, he repeatedly says that he was then actuated
by two important considerations: to maintain tranquillity in Moscow
and expedite the departure of the inhabitants. If one accepts this
twofold aim all Rostopchin's actions appear irreproachable. "Why
were the holy relics, the arms, ammunition, gunpowder, and stores of
corn not removed? Why were thousands of inhabitants deceived into
believing that Moscow would not be given up--and thereby ruined?"
"To presence the tranquillity of the city," explains Count Rostopchin.
"Why were bundles of useless papers from the government offices, and
Leppich's balloon and other articles removed?" "To leave the town
empty," explains Count Rostopchin. One need only admit that public
tranquillity is in danger and any action finds a justification.

All the horrors of the reign of terror were based only on solicitude
for public tranquillity.

On what, then, was Count Rostopchin's fear for the tranquillity of
Moscow based in 1812? What reason was there for assuming any
probability of an uprising in the city? The inhabitants were leaving
it and the retreating troops were filling it. Why should that cause
the masses to riot?

Neither in Moscow nor anywhere in Russia did anything resembling
an insurrection ever occur when the enemy entered a town. More than
ten thousand people were still in Moscow on the first and second of
September, and except for a mob in the governor's courtyard, assembled
there at his bidding, nothing happened. It is obvious that there would
have been even less reason to expect a disturbance among the people if
after the battle of Borodino, when the surrender of Moscow became
certain or at least probable, Rostopchin instead of exciting the
people by distributing arms and broadsheets had taken steps to
remove all the holy relics, the gunpowder, munitions, and money, and
had told the population plainly that the town would be abandoned.

Rostopchin, though he had patriotic sentiments, was a sanguine and
impulsive man who had always moved in the highest administrative
circles and had no understanding at all of the people he supposed
himself to be guiding. Ever since the enemy's entry into Smolensk he
had in imagination been playing the role of director of the popular
feeling of "the heart of Russia." Not only did it seem to him (as to
all administrators) that he controlled the external actions of
Moscow's inhabitants, but he also thought he controlled their mental
attitude by means of his broadsheets and posters, written in a
coarse tone which the people despise in their own class and do not
understand from those in authority. Rostopchin was so pleased with the
fine role of leader of popular feeling, and had grown so used to it,
that the necessity of relinquishing that role and abandoning Moscow
without any heroic display took him unawares and he suddenly felt
the ground slip away from under his feet, so that he positively did
not know what to do. Though he knew it was coming, he did not till the
last moment wholeheartedly believe that Moscow would be abandoned, and
did not prepare for it. The inhabitants left against his wishes. If
the government offices were removed, this was only done on the
demand of officials to whom the count yielded reluctantly. He was
absorbed in the role he had created for himself. As is often the
case with those gifted with an ardent imagination, though he had
long known that Moscow would be abandoned he knew it only with his
intellect, he did not believe it in his heart and did not adapt
himself mentally to this new position of affairs.

All his painstaking and energetic activity (in how far it was useful
and had any effect on the people is another question) had been
simply directed toward arousing in the masses his own feeling of
patriotic hatred of the French.

But when events assumed their true historical character, when
expressing hatred for the French in words proved insufficient, when it
was not even possible to express that hatred by fighting a battle,
when self-confidence was of no avail in relation to the one question
before Moscow, when the whole population streamed out of Moscow as one
man, abandoning their belongings and proving by that negative action
all the depth of their national feeling, then the role chosen by
Rostopchin suddenly appeared senseless. He unexpectedly felt himself
ridiculous, weak, and alone, with no ground to stand on.

When, awakened from his sleep, he received that cold, peremptory
note from Kutuzov, he felt the more irritated the more he felt himself
to blame. All that he had been specially put in charge of, the state
property which he should have removed, was still in Moscow and it
was no longer possible to take the whole of it away.

"Who is to blame for it? Who has let things come to such a pass?" he
ruminated. "Not I, of course. I had everything ready. I had Moscow
firmly in hand. And this is what they have let it come to! Villains!
Traitors!" he thought, without clearly defining who the villains and
traitors were, but feeling it necessary to hate those traitors whoever
they might be who were to blame for the false and ridiculous
position in which he found himself.

All that night Count Rostopchin issued orders, for which people came
to him from all parts of Moscow. Those about him had never seen the
count so morose and irritable.

"Your excellency, the Director of the Registrar's Department has
sent for instructions... From the Consistory, from the Senate, from
the University, from the Foundling Hospital, the Suffragan has sent...
asking for information.... What are your orders about the Fire
Brigade? From the governor of the prison... from the superintendent of
the lunatic asylum..." All night long such announcements were
continually being received by the count.

To all these inquiries he gave brief and angry replies indicating
that orders from him were not now needed, that the whole affair,
carefully prepared by him, had now been ruined by somebody, and that
that somebody would have to bear the whole responsibility for all that
might happen.

"Oh, tell that blockhead," he said in reply to the question from the
Registrar's Department, "that he should remain to guard his documents.
Now why are you asking silly questions about the Fire Brigade? They
have horses, let them be off to Vladimir, and not leave them to the
French."

"Your excellency, the superintendent of the lunatic asylum has come:
what are your commands?"

"My commands? Let them go away, that's all.... And let the
lunatics out into the town. When lunatics command our armies God
evidently means these other madmen to be free."

In reply to an inquiry about the convicts in the prison, Count
Rostopchin shouted angrily at the governor:

"Do you expect me to give you two battalions--which we have not got-
for a convoy? Release them, that's all about it!"

"Your excellency, there are some political prisoners, Meshkov,
Vereshchagin..."

"Vereshchagin! Hasn't he been hanged yet?" shouted Rostopchin.
"Bring him to me!"





CHAPTER XXV


Toward nine o'clock in the morning, when the troops were already
moving through Moscow, nobody came to the count any more for
instructions. Those who were able to get away were going of their
own accord, those who remained behind decided for themselves what they
must do.

The count ordered his carriage that he might drive to Sokolniki, and
sat in his study with folded hands, morose, sallow, and taciturn.

In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that
it is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule
is kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable
every administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts.
While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his
frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people
and himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the
ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea
begins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer
possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion,
the boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the
administrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power,
becomes an insignificant, useless, feeble man.

Rostopchin felt this, and it was this which exasperated him.

The superintendent of police, whom the crowd had stopped, went in to
see him at the same time as an adjutant who informed the count that
the horses were harnessed. They were both pale, and the superintendent
of police, after reporting that he had executed the instructions he
had received, informed the count that an immense crowd had collected
in the courtyard and wished to see him.

Without saying a word Rostopchin rose and walked hastily to his
light, luxurious drawing room, went to the balcony door, took hold
of the handle, let it go again, and went to the window from which he
had a better view of the whole crowd. The tall lad was standing in
front, flourishing his arm and saying something with a stern look. The
blood stained smith stood beside him with a gloomy face. A drone of
voices was audible through the closed window.

"Is my carriage ready?" asked Rostopchin, stepping back from the
window.

"It is, your excellency," replied the adjutant.

Rostopchin went again to the balcony door.

"But what do they want?" he asked the superintendent of police.

"Your excellency, they say they have got ready, according to your
orders, to go against the French, and they shouted something about
treachery. But it is a turbulent crowd, your excellency--I hardly
managed to get away from it. Your excellency, I venture to suggest..."

"You may go. I don't need you to tell me what to do!" exclaimed
Rostopchin angrily.

He stood by the balcony door looking at the crowd.

"This is what they have done with Russia! This is what they have
done with me!" thought he, full of an irrepressible fury that welled
up within him against the someone to whom what was happening might
be attributed. As often happens with passionate people, he was
mastered by anger but was still seeking an object on which to vent it.
"Here is that mob, the dregs of the people," he thought as he gazed at
the crowd: "this rabble they have roused by their folly! They want a
victim," he thought as he looked at the tall lad flourishing his
arm. And this thought occurred to him just because he himself
desired a victim, something on which to vent his rage.

"Is the carriage ready?" he asked again.

"Yes, your excellency. What are your orders about Vereshchagin? He
is waiting at the porch," said the adjutant.

"Ah!" exclaimed Rostopchin, as if struck by an unexpected
recollection.

And rapidly opening the door he went resolutely out onto the
balcony. The talking instantly ceased, hats and caps were doffed,
and all eyes were raised to the count.

"Good morning, lads!" said the count briskly and loudly. "Thank
you for coming. I'll come out to you in a moment, but we must first
settle with the villain. We must punish the villain who has caused the
ruin of Moscow. Wait for me!"

And the count stepped as briskly back into the room and slammed
the door behind him.

A murmur of approbation and satisfaction ran through the crowd.
"He'll settle with all the villains, you'll see! And you said the
French... He'll show you what law is!" the mob were saying as if
reproving one another for their lack of confidence.

A few minutes later an officer came hurriedly out of the front door,
gave an order, and the dragoons formed up in line. The crowd moved
eagerly from the balcony toward the porch. Rostopchin, coming out
there with quick angry steps, looked hastily around as if seeking
someone.

"Where is he?" he inquired. And as he spoke he saw a young man
coming round the corner of the house between two dragoons. He had a
long thin neck, and his head, that had been half shaved, was again
covered by short hair. This young man was dressed in a threadbare blue
cloth coat lined with fox fur, that had once been smart, and dirty
hempen convict trousers, over which were pulled his thin, dirty,
trodden-down boots. On his thin, weak legs were heavy chains which
hampered his irresolute movements.

"Ah!" said Rostopchin, hurriedly turning away his eyes from the
young man in the fur-lined coat and pointing to the bottom step of the
porch. "Put him there."

The young man in his clattering chains stepped clumsily to the
spot indicated, holding away with one finger the coat collar which
chafed his neck, turned his long neck twice this way and that, sighed,
and submissively folded before him his thin hands, unused to work.

For several seconds while the young man was taking his place on
the step the silence continued. Only among the back rows of the
people, who were all pressing toward the one spot, could sighs,
groans, and the shuffling of feet be heard.

While waiting for the young man to take his place on the step
Rostopchin stood frowning and rubbing his face with his hand.

"Lads!" said he, with a metallic ring in his voice. "This man,
Vereshchagin, is the scoundrel by whose doing Moscow is perishing."

The young man in the fur-lined coat, stooping a little, stood in a
submissive attitude, his fingers clasped before him. His emaciated
young face, disfigured by the half-shaven head, hung down
hopelessly. At the count's first words he raised it slowly and
looked up at him as if wishing to say something or at least to meet
his eye. But Rostopchin did not look at him. A vein in the young man's
long thin neck swelled like a cord and went blue behind the ear, and
suddenly his face flushed.

All eyes were fixed on him. He looked at the crowd, and rendered
more hopeful by the expression he read on the faces there, he smiled
sadly and timidly, and lowering his head shifted his feet on the step.

"He has betrayed his Tsar and his country, he had gone over to
Bonaparte. He alone of all the Russians has disgraced the Russian
name, he has caused Moscow to perish," said Rostopchin in a sharp,
even voice, but suddenly he glanced down at Vereshchagin who continued
to stand in the same submissive attitude. As if inflamed by the sight,
he raised his arm and addressed the people, almost shouting:

"Deal with him as you think fit! I hand him over to you."

The crowd remained silent and only pressed closer and closer to
one another. To keep one another back, to breathe in that stifling
atmosphere, to be unable to stir, and to await something unknown,
uncomprehended, and terrible, was becoming unbearable. Those
standing in front, who had seen and heard what had taken place
before them, all stood with wide open eyes and mouths, straining
with all their strength, and held back the crowd that was pushing
behind them.

"Beat him!... Let the traitor perish and not disgrace the Russian
name!" shouted Rostopchin. "Cut him down. I command it."

Hearing not so much the words as the angry tone of Rostopchin's
voice, the crowd moaned and heaved forward, but again paused.

"Count!" exclaimed the timid yet theatrical voice of Vereshchagin in
the midst of the momentary silence that ensued, "Count! One God is
above us both...." He lifted his head and again the thick vein in
his thin neck filled with blood and the color rapidly came and went in
his face.

He did not finish what he wished to say.

"Cut him down! I command it..." shouted Rostopchin, suddenly growing
pale like Vereshchagin.

"Draw sabers!" cried the dragoon officer, drawing his own.

Another still stronger wave flowed through the crowd and reaching
the front ranks carried it swaying to the very steps of the porch. The
tall youth, with a stony look on his face, and rigid and uplifted arm,
stood beside Vereshchagin.

"Saber him!" the dragoon officer almost whispered.

And one of the soldiers, his face all at once distorted with fury,
struck Vereshchagin on the head with the blunt side of his saber.

"Ah!" cried Vereshchagin in meek surprise, looking round with a
frightened glance as if not understanding why this was done to him.
A similar moan of surprise and horror ran through the crowd. "O Lord!"
exclaimed a sorrowful voice.

But after the exclamation of surprise that had escaped from
Vereshchagin he uttered a plaintive cry of pain, and that cry was
fatal. The barrier of human feeling, strained to the utmost, that
had held the crowd in check suddenly broke. The crime had begun and
must now be completed. The plaintive moan of reproach was drowned by
the threatening and angry roar of the crowd. Like the seventh and last
wave that shatters a ship, that last irresistible wave burst from
the rear and reached the front ranks, carrying them off their feet and
engulfing them all. The dragoon was about to repeat his blow.
Vereshchagin with a cry of horror, covering his head with his hands,
rushed toward the crowd. The tall youth, against whom he stumbled,
seized his thin neck with his hands and, yelling wildly, fell with him
under the feet of the pressing, struggling crowd.

Some beat and tore at Vereshchagin, others at the tall youth. And
the screams of those that were being trampled on and of those who
tried to rescue the tall lad only increased the fury of the crowd.
It was a long time before the dragoons could extricate the bleeding
youth, beaten almost to death. And for a long time, despite the
feverish haste with which the mob tried to end the work that had
been begun, those who were hitting, throttling, and tearing at
Vereshchagin were unable to kill him, for the crowd pressed from all
sides, swaying as one mass with them in the center and rendering it
impossible for them either to kill him or let him go.

"Hit him with an ax, eh!... Crushed?... Traitor, he sold
Christ.... Still alive... tenacious... serves him right! Torture
serves a thief right. Use the hatchet!... What--still alive?"

Only when the victim ceased to struggle and his cries changed to a
long-drawn, measured death rattle did the crowd around his
prostrate, bleeding corpse begin rapidly to change places. Each one
came up, glanced at what had been done, and with horror, reproach, and
astonishment pushed back again.

"O Lord! The people are like wild beasts! How could he be alive?"
voices in the crowd could be heard saying. "Quite a young fellow
too... must have been a merchant's son. What men!... and they say he's
not the right one.... How not the right one?... O Lord! And there's
another has been beaten too--they say he's nearly done for.... Oh, the
people... Aren't they afraid of sinning?..." said the same mob now,
looking with pained distress at the dead body with its long, thin,
half-severed neck and its livid face stained with blood and dust.

A painstaking police officer, considering the presence of a corpse
in his excellency's courtyard unseemly, told the dragoons to take it
away. Two dragoons took it by its distorted legs and dragged it
along the ground. The gory, dust-stained, half-shaven head with its
long neck trailed twisting along the ground. The crowd shrank back
from it.

At the moment when Vereshchagin fell and the crowd closed in with
savage yells and swayed about him, Rostopchin suddenly turned pale
and, instead of going to the back entrance where his carriage
awaited him, went with hurried steps and bent head, not knowing
where and why, along the passage leading to the rooms on the ground
floor. The count's face was white and he could not control the
feverish twitching of his lower jaw.

"This way, your excellency... Where are you going?... This way,
please..." said a trembling, frightened voice behind him.

Count Rostopchin was unable to reply and, turning obediently, went
in the direction indicated. At the back entrance stood his caleche.
The distant roar of the yelling crowd was audible even there. He
hastily took his seat and told the coachman to drive him to his
country house in Sokolniki.

When they reached the Myasnitski Street and could no longer hear the
shouts of the mob, the count began to repent. He remembered with
dissatisfaction the agitation and fear he had betrayed before his
subordinates. "The mob is terrible--disgusting," he said to himself in
French. "They are like wolves whom nothing but flesh can appease."
"Count! One God is above us both!"--Vereshchagin's words suddenly
recurred to him, and a disagreeable shiver ran down his back. But this
was only a momentary feeling and Count Rostopchin smiled
disdainfully at himself. "I had other duties," thought he. "The people
had to be appeased. Many other victims have perished and are perishing
for the public good"--and he began thinking of his social duties to
his family and to the city entrusted to him, and of himself--not
himself as Theodore Vasilyevich Rostopchin (he fancied that Theodore
Vasilyevich Rostopchin was sacrificing himself for the public good)
but himself as governor, the representative of authority and of the
Tsar. "Had I been simply Theodore Vasilyevich my course of action
would have been quite different, but it was my duty to safeguard my
life and dignity as commander in chief."

Lightly swaying on the flexible springs of his carriage and no
longer hearing the terrible sounds of the crowd, Rostopchin grew
physically calm and, as always happens, as soon as he became
physically tranquil his mind devised reasons why he should be mentally
tranquil too. The thought which tranquillized Rostopchin was not a new
one. Since the world began and men have killed one another no one
has ever committed such a crime against his fellow man without
comforting himself with this same idea. This idea is le bien public,
the hypothetical welfare of other people.

To a man not swayed by passion that welfare is never certain, but he
who commits such a crime always knows just where that welfare lies.
And Rostopchin now knew it.

Not only did his reason not reproach him for what he had done, but
he even found cause for self-satisfaction in having so successfully
contrived to avail himself of a convenient opportunity to punish a
criminal and at the same time pacify the mob.

"Vereshchagin was tried and condemned to death," thought
Rostopchin (though the Senate had only condemned Vereshchagin to
hard labor), "he was a traitor and a spy. I could not let him go
unpunished and so I have killed two birds with one stone: to appease
the mob I gave them a victim and at the same time punished a
miscreant."

Having reached his country house and begun to give orders about
domestic arrangements, the count grew quite tranquil.

Half an hour later he was driving with his fast horses across the
Sokolniki field, no longer thinking of what had occurred but
considering what was to come. He was driving to the Yauza bridge where
he had heard that Kutuzov was. Count Rostopchin was mentally preparing
the angry and stinging reproaches he meant to address to Kutuzov for
his deception. He would make that foxy old courtier feel that the
responsibility for all the calamities that would follow the
abandonment of the city and the ruin of Russia (as Rostopchin regarded
it) would fall upon his doting old head. Planning beforehand what he
would say to Kutuzov, Rostopchin turned angrily in his caleche and
gazed sternly from side to side.

The Sokolniki field was deserted. Only at the end of it, in front of
the almshouse and the lunatic asylum, could be seen some people in
white and others like them walking singly across the field shouting
and gesticulating.

One of these was running to cross the path of Count Rostopchin's
carriage, and the count himself, his coachman, and his dragoons looked
with vague horror and curiosity at these released lunatics and
especially at the one running toward them.

Swaying from side to side on his long, thin legs in his fluttering
dressing gown, this lunatic was running impetuously, his gaze fixed on
Rostopchin, shouting something in a hoarse voice and making signs to
him to stop. The lunatic's solemn, gloomy face was thin and yellow,
with its beard growing in uneven tufts. His black, agate pupils with
saffron-yellow whites moved restlessly near the lower eyelids.

"Stop! Pull up, I tell you!" he cried in a piercing voice, and again
shouted something breathlessly with emphatic intonations and gestures.

Coming abreast of the caleche he ran beside it.

"Thrice have they slain me, thrice have I risen from the dead.
They stoned me, crucified me... I shall rise... shall rise... shall
rise. They have torn my body. The kingdom of God will be overthrown...
Thrice will I overthrow it and thrice re-establish it!" he cried,
raising his voice higher and higher.

Count Rostopchin suddenly grew pale as he had done when the crowd
closed in on Vereshchagin. He turned away. "Go fas... faster!" he
cried in a trembling voice to his coachman. The caleche flew over
the ground as fast as the horses could draw it, but for a long time
Count Rostopchin still heard the insane despairing screams growing
fainter in the distance, while his eyes saw nothing but the
astonished, frightened, bloodstained face of "the traitor" in the
fur-lined coat.

Recent as that mental picture was, Rostopchin already felt that it
had cut deep into his heart and drawn blood. Even now he felt
clearly that the gory trace of that recollection would not pass with
time, but that the terrible memory would, on the contrary, dwell in
his heart ever more cruelly and painfully to the end of his life. He
seemed still to hear the sound of his own words: "Cut him down! I
command it...."

"Why did I utter those words? It was by some accident I said
them.... I need not have said them," he thought. "And then nothing
would have happened." He saw the frightened and then infuriated face
of the dragoon who dealt the blow, the look of silent, timid
reproach that boy in the fur-lined coat had turned upon him. "But I
did not do it for my own sake. I was bound to act that way.... The
mob, the traitor... the public welfare," thought he.

Troops were still crowding at the Yauza bridge. It was hot. Kutuzov,
dejected and frowning, sat on a bench by the bridge toying with his
whip in the sand when a caleche dashed up noisily. A man in a
general's uniform with plumes in his hat went up to Kutuzov and said
something in French. It was Count Rostopchin. He told Kutuzov that
he had come because Moscow, the capital, was no more and only the army
remained.

"Things would have been different if your Serene Highness had not
told me that you would not abandon Moscow without another battle;
all this would not have happened," he said.

Kutuzov looked at Rostopchin as if, not grasping what was said to
him, he was trying to read something peculiar written at that moment
on the face of the man addressing him. Rostopchin grew confused and
became silent. Kutuzov slightly shook his head and not taking his
penetrating gaze from Rostopchin's face muttered softly:

"No! I shall not give up Moscow without a battle!"

Whether Kutuzov was thinking of something entirely different when he
spoke those words, or uttered them purposely, knowing them to be
meaningless, at any rate Rostopchin made no reply and hastily left
him. And strange to say, the Governor of Moscow, the proud Count
Rostopchin, took up a Cossack whip and went to the bridge where he
began with shouts to drive on the carts that blocked the way.





CHAPTER XXVI


Toward four o'clock in the afternoon Murat's troops were entering
Moscow. In front rode a detachment of Wurttemberg hussars and behind
them rode the King of Naples himself accompanied by a numerous suite.

About the middle of the Arbat Street, near the Church of the
Miraculous Icon of St. Nicholas, Murat halted to await news from the
advanced detachment as to the condition in which they had found the
citadel, le Kremlin.

Around Murat gathered a group of those who had remained in Moscow.
They all stared in timid bewilderment at the strange, long-haired
commander dressed up in feathers and gold.

"Is that their Tsar himself? He's not bad!" low voices could be
heard saying.

An interpreter rode up to the group.

"Take off your cap... your caps!" These words went from one to
another in the crowd. The interpreter addressed an old porter and
asked if it was far to the Kremlin. The porter, listening in
perplexity to the unfamiliar Polish accent and not realizing that
the interpreter was speaking Russian, did not understand what was
being said to him and slipped behind the others.

Murat approached the interpreter and told him to ask where the
Russian army was. One of the Russians understood what was asked and
several voices at once began answering the interpreter. A French
officer, returning from the advanced detachment, rode up to Murat
and reported that the gates of the citadel had been barricaded and
that there was probably an ambuscade there.

"Good!" said Murat and, turning to one of the gentlemen in his
suite, ordered four light guns to be moved forward to fire at the
gates.

The guns emerged at a trot from the column following Murat and
advanced up the Arbat. When they reached the end of the Vozdvizhenka
Street they halted and drew in the Square. Several French officers
superintended the placing of the guns and looked at the Kremlin
through field glasses.

The bells in the Kremlin were ringing for vespers, and this sound
troubled the French. They imagined it to be a call to arms. A few
infantrymen ran to the Kutafyev Gate. Beams and wooden screens had
been put there, and two musket shots rang out from under the gate as
soon as an officer and men began to run toward it. A general who was
standing by the guns shouted some words of command to the officer, and
the latter ran back again with his men.

The sound of three more shots came from the gate.

One shot struck a French soldier's foot, and from behind the screens
came the strange sound of a few voices shouting. Instantly as at a
word of command the expression of cheerful serenity on the faces of
the French general, officers, and men changed to one of determined
concentrated readiness for strife and suffering. To all of them from
the marshal to the least soldier, that place was not the Vozdvizhenka,
Mokhavaya, or Kutafyev Street, nor the Troitsa Gate (places familiar
in Moscow), but a new battlefield which would probably prove
sanguinary. And all made ready for that battle. The cries from the
gates ceased. The guns were advanced, the artillerymen blew the ash
off their linstocks, and an officer gave the word "Fire!" This was
followed by two whistling sounds of canister shot, one after
another. The shot rattled against the stone of the gate and upon the
wooden beams and screens, and two wavering clouds of smoke rose over
the Square.

A few instants after the echo of the reports resounding over the
stone-built Kremlin had died away the French heard a strange sound
above their head. Thousands of crows rose above the walls and
circled in the air, cawing and noisily flapping their wings.
Together with that sound came a solitary human cry from the gateway
and amid the smoke appeared the figure of a bareheaded man in a
peasant's coat. He grasped a musket and took aim at the French.
"Fire!" repeated the officer once more, and the reports of a musket
and of two cannon shots were heard simultaneously. The gate again
hidden by smoke.

Nothing more stirred behind the screens and the French infantry
soldiers and officers advanced to the gate. In the gateway lay three
wounded and four dead. Two men in peasant coats ran away at the foot
of the wall, toward the Znamenka.

"Clear that away!" said the officer, pointing to the beams and the
corpses, and the French soldiers, after dispatching the wounded, threw
the corpses over the parapet.

Who these men were nobody knew. "Clear that away!" was all that
was said of them, and they were thrown over the parapet and removed
later on that they might not stink. Thiers alone dedicates a few
eloquent lines to their memory: "These wretches had occupied the
sacred citadel, having supplied themselves with guns from the arsenal,
and fired" (the wretches) "at the French. Some of them were sabered
and the Kremlin was purged of their presence."

Murat was informed that the way had been cleared. The French entered
the gates and began pitching their camp in the Senate Square. Out of
the windows of the Senate House the soldiers threw chairs into the
Square for fuel and kindled fires there.

Other detachments passed through the Kremlin and encamped along
the Moroseyka, the Lubyanka, and Pokrovka Streets. Others quartered
themselves along the Vozdvizhenka, the Nikolski, and the Tverskoy
Streets. No masters of the houses being found anywhere, the French
were not billeted on the inhabitants as is usual in towns but lived in
it as in a camp.

Though tattered, hungry, worn out, and reduced to a third of their
original number, the French entered Moscow in good marching order.
It was a weary and famished, but still a fighting and menacing army.
But it remained an army only until its soldiers had dispersed into
their different lodgings. As soon as the men of the various
regiments began to disperse among the wealthy and deserted houses, the
army was lost forever and there came into being something nondescript,
neither citizens nor soldiers but what are known as marauders. When
five weeks later these same men left Moscow, they no longer formed
an army. They were a mob of marauders, each carrying a quantity of
articles which seemed to him valuable or useful. The aim of each man
when he left Moscow was no longer, as it had been, to conquer, but
merely to keep what he had acquired. Like a monkey which puts its
paw into the narrow neck of a jug, and having seized a handful of nuts
will not open its fist for fear of losing what it holds, and therefore
perishes, the French when they left Moscow had inevitably to perish
because they carried their loot with them, yet to abandon what they
had stolen was as impossible for them as it is for the monkey to
open its paw and let go of its nuts. Ten minutes after each regiment
had entered a Moscow district, not a soldier or officer was left.
Men in military uniforms and Hessian boots could be seen through the
windows, laughing and walking through the rooms. In cellars and
storerooms similar men were busy among the provisions, and in the
yards unlocking or breaking open coach house and stable doors,
lighting fires in kitchens and kneading and baking bread with
rolled-up sleeves, and cooking; or frightening, amusing, or
caressing women and children. There were many such men both in the
shops and houses--but there was no army.

Order after order was issued by the French commanders that day
forbidding the men to disperse about the town, sternly forbidding
any violence to the inhabitants or any looting, and announcing a
roll call for that very evening. But despite all these measures the
men, who had till then constituted an army, flowed all over the
wealthy, deserted city with its comforts and plentiful supplies. As
a hungry herd of cattle keeps well together when crossing a barren
field, but gets out of hand and at once disperses uncontrollably as
soon as it reaches rich pastures, so did the army disperse all over
the wealthy city.

No residents were left in Moscow, and the soldiers--like water
percolating through sand--spread irresistibly through the city in
all directions from the Kremlin into which they had first marched. The
cavalry, on entering a merchant's house that had been abandoned and
finding there stabling more than sufficient for their horses, went on,
all the same, to the next house which seemed to them better. Many of
them appropriated several houses, chalked their names on them, and
quarreled and even fought with other companies for them. Before they
had had time to secure quarters the soldiers ran out into the
streets to see the city and, hearing that everything had been
abandoned, rushed to places where valuables were to be had for the
taking. The officers followed to check the soldiers and were
involuntarily drawn into doing the same. In Carriage Row carriages had
been left in the shops, and generals flocked there to select
caleches and coaches for themselves. The few inhabitants who had
remained invited commanding officers to their houses, hoping thereby
to secure themselves from being plundered. There were masses of wealth
and there seemed no end to it. All around the quarters occupied by the
French were other regions still unexplored and unoccupied where,
they thought, yet greater riches might be found. And Moscow engulfed
the army ever deeper and deeper. When water is spilled on dry ground
both the dry ground and the water disappear and mud results; and in
the same way the entry of the famished army into the rich and deserted
city resulted in fires and looting and the destruction of both the
army and the wealthy city.


The French attributed the Fire of Moscow au patriotisme feroce de
Rostopchine,* the Russians to the barbarity of the French. In reality,
however, it was not, and could not be, possible to explain the burning
of Moscow by making any individual, or any group of people,
responsible for it. Moscow was burned because it found itself in a
position in which any town built of wood was bound to burn, quite
apart from whether it had, or had not, a hundred and thirty inferior
fire engines. Deserted Moscow had to burn as inevitably as a heap of
shavings has to burn on which sparks continually fall for several
days. A town built of wood, where scarcely a day passes without
conflagrations when the house owners are in residence and a police
force is present, cannot help burning when its inhabitants have left
it and it is occupied by soldiers who smoke pipes, make campfires of
the Senate chairs in the Senate Square, and cook themselves meals
twice a day. In peacetime it is only necessary to billet troops in the
villages of any district and the number of fires in that district
immediately increases. How much then must the probability of fire be
increased in an abandoned, wooden town where foreign troops are
quartered. "Le patriotisme feroce de Rostopchine" and the barbarity of
the French were not to blame in the matter. Moscow was set on fire
by the soldiers' pipes, kitchens, and campfires, and by the
carelessness of enemy soldiers occupying houses they did not own. Even
if there was any arson (which is very doubtful, for no one had any
reason to burn the houses--in any case a troublesome and dangerous
thing to do), arson cannot be regarded as the cause, for the same
thing would have happened without any incendiarism.


*To Rostopchin's ferocious patriotism.


However tempting it might be for the French to blame Rostopchin's
ferocity and for Russians to blame the scoundrel Bonaparte, or later
on to place an heroic torch in the hands of their own people, it is
impossible not to see that there could be no such direct cause of
the fire, for Moscow had to burn as every village, factory, or house
must burn which is left by its owners and in which strangers are
allowed to live and cook their porridge. Moscow was burned by its
inhabitants, it is true, but by those who had abandoned it and not
by those who remained in it. Moscow when occupied by the enemy did not
remain intact like Berlin, Vienna, and other towns, simply because its
inhabitants abandoned it and did not welcome the French with bread and
salt, nor bring them the keys of the city.





CHAPTER XXVII


The absorption of the French by Moscow, radiating starwise as it
did, only reached the quarter where Pierre was staying by the
evening of the second of September.

After the last two days spent in solitude and unusual circumstances,
Pierre was in a state bordering on insanity. He was completely
obsessed by one persistent thought. He did not know how or when this
thought had taken such possession of him, but he remembered nothing of
the past, understood nothing of the present, and all he saw and
heard appeared to him like a dream.

He had left home only to escape the intricate tangle of life's
demands that enmeshed him, and which in his present condition he was
unable to unravel. He had gone to Joseph Alexeevich's house, on the
plea of sorting the deceased's books and papers, only in search of
rest from life's turmoil, for in his mind the memory of Joseph
Alexeevich was connected with a world of eternal, solemn, and calm
thoughts, quite contrary to the restless confusion into which he
felt himself being drawn. He sought a quiet refuge, and in Joseph
Alexeevich's study he really found it. When he sat with his elbows
on the dusty writing table in the deathlike stillness of the study,
calm and significant memories of the last few days rose one after
another in his imagination, particularly of the battle of Borodino and
of that vague sense of his own insignificance and insincerity compared
with the truth, simplicity, and strength of the class of men he
mentally classed as they. When Gerasim roused him from his reverie the
idea occurred to him of taking part in the popular defense of Moscow
which he knew was projected. And with that object he had asked Gerasim
to get him a peasant's coat and a pistol, confiding to him his
intentions of remaining in Joseph Alexeevich's house and keeping his
name secret. Then during the first day spent in inaction and
solitude (he tried several times to fix his attention on the Masonic
manuscripts, but was unable to do so) the idea that had previously
occurred to him of the cabalistic significance of his name in
connection with Bonaparte's more than once vaguely presented itself.
But the idea that he, L'russe Besuhof, was destined to set a limit
to the power of the Beast was as yet only one of the fancies that
often passed through his mind and left no trace behind.

When, having bought the coat merely with the object of taking part
among the people in the defense of Moscow, Pierre had met the
Rostovs and Natasha had said to him: "Are you remaining in
Moscow?... How splendid!" the thought flashed into his mind that it
really would be a good thing, even if Moscow were taken, for him to
remain there and do what he was predestined to do.

Next day, with the sole idea of not sparing himself and not
lagging in any way behind them, Pierre went to the Three Hills gate.
But when he returned to the house convinced that Moscow would not be
defended, he suddenly felt that what before had seemed to him merely a
possibility had now become absolutely necessary and inevitable. He
must remain in Moscow, concealing his name, and must meet Napoleon and
kill him, and either perish or put an end to the misery of all Europe-
which it seemed to him was solely due to Napoleon.

Pierre knew all the details of the attempt on Bonaparte's life in
1809 by a German student in Vienna, and knew that the student had been
shot. And the risk to which he would expose his life by carrying out
his design excited him still more.

Two equally strong feelings drew Pierre irresistibly to this
purpose. The first was a feeling of the necessity of sacrifice and
suffering in view of the common calamity, the same feeling that had
caused him to go to Mozhaysk on the twenty-fifth and to make his way
to the very thick of the battle and had now caused him to run away
from his home and, in place of the luxury and comfort to which he
was accustomed, to sleep on a hard sofa without undressing and eat the
same food as Gerasim. The other was that vague and quite Russian
feeling of contempt for everything conventional, artificial, and
human--for everything the majority of men regard as the greatest
good in the world. Pierre had first experienced this strange and
fascinating feeling at the Sloboda Palace, when he had suddenly felt
that wealth, power, and life--all that men so painstakingly acquire
and guard--if it has any worth has so only by reason the joy with
which it can all be renounced.

It was the feeling that induces a volunteer recruit to spend his
last penny on drink, and a drunken man to smash mirrors or glasses for
no apparent reason and knowing that it will cost him all the money
he possesses: the feeling which causes a man to perform actions
which from an ordinary point of view are insane, to test, as it
were, his personal power and strength, affirming the existence of a
higher, nonhuman criterion of life.

From the very day Pierre had experienced this feeling for the
first time at the Sloboda Palace he had been continuously under its
influence, but only now found full satisfaction for it. Moreover, at
this moment Pierre was supported in his design and prevented from
renouncing it by what he had already done in that direction. If he
were now to leave Moscow like everyone else, his flight from home, the
peasant coat, the pistol, and his announcement to the Rostovs that
he would remain in Moscow would all become not merely meaningless
but contemptible and ridiculous, and to this Pierre was very
sensitive.

Pierre's physical condition, as is always the case, corresponded
to his mental state. The unaccustomed coarse food, the vodka he
drank during those days, the absence of wine and cigars, his dirty
unchanged linen, two almost sleepless nights passed on a short sofa
without bedding--all this kept him in a state of excitement
bordering on insanity.

It was two o'clock in the afternoon. The French had already
entered Moscow. Pierre knew this, but instead of acting he only
thought about his undertaking, going over its minutest details in
his mind. In his fancy he did not clearly picture to himself either
the striking of the blow or the death of Napoleon, but with
extraordinary vividness and melancholy enjoyment imagined his own
destruction and heroic endurance.

"Yes, alone, for the sake of all, I must do it or perish!" he
thought. "Yes, I will approach... and then suddenly... with pistol
or dagger? But that is all the same! 'It is not I but the hand of
Providence that punishes thee,' I shall say," thought he, imagining
what he would say when killing Napoleon. "Well then, take me and
execute me!" he went on, speaking to himself and bowing his head
with a sad but firm expression.

While Pierre, standing in the middle of the room, was talking to
himself in this way, the study door opened and on the threshold
appeared the figure of Makar Alexeevich, always so timid before but
now quite transformed.

His dressing gown was unfastened, his face red and distorted. He was
obviously drunk. On seeing Pierre he grew confused at first, but
noticing embarrassment on Pierre's face immediately grew bold and,
staggering on his thin legs, advanced into the middle of the room.

"They're frightened," he said confidentially in a hoarse voice. "I
say I won't surrender, I say... Am I not right, sir?"

He paused and then suddenly seeing the pistol on the table seized it
with unexpected rapidity and ran out into the corridor.

Gerasim and the porter, who had followed Makar Alexeevich, stopped
him in the vestibule and tried to take the pistol from him. Pierre,
coming out into the corridor, looked with pity and repulsion at the
half-crazy old man. Makar Alexeevich, frowning with exertion, held
on to the pistol and screamed hoarsely, evidently with some heroic
fancy in his head.

"To arms! Board them! No, you shan't get it," he yelled.

"That will do, please, that will do. Have the goodness--please, sir,
to let go! Please, sir..." pleaded Gerasim, trying carefully to
steer Makar Alexeevich by the elbows back to the door.

"Who are you? Bonaparte!..." shouted Makar Alexeevich.

"That's not right, sir. Come to your room, please, and rest. Allow
me to have the pistol."

"Be off, thou base slave! Touch me not! See this?" shouted Makar
Alexeevich, brandishing the pistol. "Board them!"

"Catch hold!" whispered Gerasim to the porter.

They seized Makar Alexeevich by the arms and dragged him to the
door.

The vestibule was filled with the discordant sounds of a struggle
and of a tipsy, hoarse voice.

Suddenly a fresh sound, a piercing feminine scream, reverberated
from the porch and the cook came running into the vestibule.

"It's them! Gracious heavens! O Lord, four of them, horsemen!" she
cried.

Gerasim and the porter let Makar Alexeevich go, and in the now
silent corridor the sound of several hands knocking at the front
door could be heard.





CHAPTER XXVIII


Pierre, having decided that until he had carried out his design he
would disclose neither his identity nor his knowledge of French, stood
at the half-open door of the corridor, intending to conceal himself as
soon as the French entered. But the French entered and still Pierre
did not retire--an irresistible curiosity kept him there.

There were two of them. One was an officer--a tall, soldierly,
handsome man--the other evidently a private or an orderly,
sunburned, short, and thin, with sunken cheeks and a dull
expression. The officer walked in front, leaning on a stick and
slightly limping. When he had advanced a few steps he stopped,
having apparently decided that these were good quarters, turned
round to the soldiers standing at the entrance, and in a loud voice of
command ordered them to put up the horses. Having done that, the
officer, lifting his elbow with a smart gesture, stroked his
mustache and lightly touched his hat.

"Bonjour, la compagnie!"* said he gaily, smiling and looking about
him.


*"Good day, everybody!"


No one gave any reply.

"Vous etes le bourgeois?"* the officer asked Gerasim.


*"Are you the master here?"


Gerasim gazed at the officer with an alarmed and inquiring look.

"Quartier, quartier, logement!" said the officer, looking down at
the little man with a condescending and good-natured smile. "Les
francais sont de bons enfants. Que diable! Voyons! Ne nous fachons
pas, mon vieux!"* added he, clapping the scared and silent Gerasim
on the shoulder. "Well, does no one speak French in this
establishment?" he asked again in French, looking around and meeting
Pierre's eyes. Pierre moved away from the door.


*"Quarters, quarters, lodgings! The French are good fellows. What
the devil! There, don't let us be cross, old fellow!"


Again the officer turned to Gerasim and asked him to show him the
rooms in the house.

"Master, not here--don't understand... me, you..." said Gerasim,
trying to render his words more comprehensible by contorting them.

Still smiling, the French officer spread out his hands before
Gerasim's nose, intimating that he did not understand him either,
and moved, limping, to the door at which Pierre was standing. Pierre
wished to go away and conceal himself, but at that moment he saw Makar
Alexeevich appearing at the open kitchen door with the pistol in his
hand. With a madman's cunning, Makar Alexeevich eyed the Frenchman,
raised his pistol, and took aim.

"Board them!" yelled the tipsy man, trying to press the trigger.
Hearing the yell the officer turned round, and at the same moment
Pierre threw himself on the drunkard. Just when Pierre snatched at and
struck up the pistol Makar Alexeevich at last got his fingers on the
trigger, there was a deafening report, and all were enveloped in a
cloud of smoke. The Frenchman turned pale and rushed to the door.

Forgetting his intention of concealing his knowledge of French,
Pierre, snatching away the pistol and throwing it down, ran up to
the officer and addressed him in French.

"You are not wounded?" he asked.

"I think not," answered the Frenchman, feeling himself over. "But
I have had a lucky escape this time," he added, pointing to the
damaged plaster of the wall. "Who is that man?" said he, looking
sternly at Pierre.

"Oh, I am really in despair at what has occurred," said Pierre
rapidly, quite forgetting the part he had intended to play. "He is
an unfortunate madman who did not know what he was doing."

The officer went up to Makar Alexeevich and took him by the collar.

Makar Alexeevich was standing with parted lips, swaying, as if about
to fall asleep, as he leaned against the wall.

"Brigand! You shall pay for this," said the Frenchman, letting go of
him. "We French are merciful after victory, but we do not pardon
traitors," he added, with a look of gloomy dignity and a fine
energetic gesture.

Pierre continued, in French, to persuade the officer not to hold
that drunken imbecile to account. The Frenchman listened in silence
with the same gloomy expression, but suddenly turned to Pierre with
a smile. For a few seconds he looked at him in silence. His handsome
face assumed a melodramatically gentle expression and he held out
his hand.

"You have saved my life. You are French," said he.

For a Frenchman that deduction was indubitable. Only a Frenchman
could perform a great deed, and to save his life--the life of M.
Ramballe, captain of the 13th Light Regiment--was undoubtedly a very
great deed.

But however indubitable that conclusion and the officer's conviction
based upon it, Pierre felt it necessary to disillusion him.

"I am Russian," he said quickly.

"Tut, tut, tut! Tell that to others," said the officer, waving his
finger before his nose and smiling. "You shall tell me all about
that presently. I am delighted to meet a compatriot. Well, and what
are we to do with this man?" he added, addressing himself to Pierre as
to a brother.

Even if Pierre were not a Frenchman, having once received that
loftiest of human appellations he could not renounce it, said the
officer's look and tone. In reply to his last question Pierre again
explained who Makar Alexeevich was and how just before their arrival
that drunken imbecile had seized the loaded pistol which they had
not had time to recover from him, and begged the officer to let the
deed go unpunished.

The Frenchman expanded his chest and made a majestic gesture with
his arm.

"You have saved my life! You are French. You ask his pardon? I grant
it you. Lead that man away!" said he quickly and energetically, and
taking the arm of Pierre whom he had promoted to be a Frenchman for
saving his life, he went with him into the room.

The soldiers in the yard, hearing the shot, came into the passage
asking what had happened, and expressed their readiness to punish
the culprits, but the officer sternly checked them.

"You will be called in when you are wanted," he said.

The soldiers went out again, and the orderly, who had meanwhile
had time to visit the kitchen, came up to his officer.

"Captain, there is soup and a leg of mutton in the kitchen," said
he. "Shall I serve them up?"

"Yes, and some wine," answered the captain.





CHAPTER XXIX


When the French officer went into the room with Pierre the latter
again thought it his duty to assure him that he was not French and
wished to go away, but the officer would not hear of it. He was so
very polite, amiable, good-natured, and genuinely grateful to Pierre
for saving his life that Pierre had not the heart to refuse, and sat
down with him in the parlor--the first room they entered. To
Pierre's assurances that he was not a Frenchman, the captain,
evidently not understanding how anyone could decline so flattering
an appellation, shrugged his shoulders and said that if Pierre
absolutely insisted on passing for a Russian let it be so, but for all
that he would be forever bound to Pierre by gratitude for saving his
life.

Had this man been endowed with the slightest capacity for perceiving
the feelings of others, and had he at all understood what Pierre's
feelings were, the latter would probably have left him, but the
man's animated obtuseness to everything other than himself disarmed
Pierre.

"A Frenchman or a Russian prince incognito," said the officer,
looking at Pierre's fine though dirty linen and at the ring on his
finger. "I owe my life to you and offer you my friendship. A Frenchman
never forgets either an insult or a service. I offer you my
friendship. That is all I can say."

There was so much good nature and nobility (in the French sense of
the word) in the officer's voice, in the expression of his face and in
his gestures, that Pierre, unconsciously smiling in response to the
Frenchman's smile, pressed the hand held out to him.

"Captain Ramballe, of the 13th Light Regiment, Chevalier of the
Legion of Honor for the affair on the seventh of September," he
introduced himself, a self-satisfied irrepressible smile puckering his
lips under his mustache. "Will you now be so good as to tell me with
whom I have the honor of conversing so pleasantly, instead of being in
the ambulance with that maniac's bullet in my body?"

Pierre replied that he could not tell him his name and, blushing,
began to try to invent a name and to say something about his reason
for concealing it, but the Frenchman hastily interrupted him.

"Oh, please!" said he. "I understand your reasons. You are an
officer... a superior officer perhaps. You have borne arms against us.
That's not my business. I owe you my life. That is enough for me. I am
quite at your service. You belong to the gentry?" he concluded with
a shade of inquiry in his tone. Pierre bent his head. "Your
baptismal name, if you please. That is all I ask. Monsieur Pierre, you
say.... That's all I want to know."

When the mutton and an omelet had been served and a samovar and
vodka brought, with some wine which the French had taken from a
Russian cellar and brought with them, Ramballe invited Pierre to share
his dinner, and himself began to eat greedily and quickly like a
healthy and hungry man, munching his food rapidly with his strong
teeth, continually smacking his lips, and repeating--"Excellent!
Delicious!" His face grew red and was covered with perspiration.
Pierre was hungry and shared the dinner with pleasure. Morel, the
orderly, brought some hot water in a saucepan and placed a bottle of
claret in it. He also brought a bottle of kvass, taken from the
kitchen for them to try. That beverage was already known to the French
and had been given a special name. They called it limonade de cochon
(pig's lemonade), and Morel spoke well of the limonade de cochon he
had found in the kitchen. But as the captain had the wine they had
taken while passing through Moscow, he left the kvass to Morel and
applied himself to the bottle of Bordeaux. He wrapped the bottle up to
its neck in a table napkin and poured out wine for himself and for
Pierre. The satisfaction of his hunger and the wine rendered the
captain still more lively and he chatted incessantly all through
dinner.

"Yes, my dear Monsieur Pierre, I owe you a fine votive candle for
saving me from that maniac.... You see, I have bullets enough in my
body already. Here is one I got at Wagram" (he touched his side)
"and a second at Smolensk"--he showed a scar on his cheek--"and this
leg which as you see does not want to march, I got that on the seventh
at the great battle of la Moskowa. Sacre Dieu! It was splendid! That
deluge of fire was worth seeing. It was a tough job you set us
there, my word! You may be proud of it! And on my honor, in spite of
the cough I caught there, I should be ready to begin again. I pity
those who did not see it."

"I was there," said Pierre.

"Bah, really? So much the better! You are certainly brave foes.
The great redoubt held out well, by my pipe!" continued the Frenchman.
"And you made us pay dear for it. I was at it three times--sure as I
sit here. Three times we reached the guns and three times we were
thrown back like cardboard figures. Oh, it was beautiful, Monsieur
Pierre! Your grenadiers were splendid, by heaven! I saw them close
up their ranks six times in succession and march as if on parade. Fine
fellows! Our King of Naples, who knows what's what, cried 'Bravo!' Ha,
ha! So you are one of us soldiers!" he added, smiling, after a
momentary pause. "So much the better, so much the better, Monsieur
Pierre! Terrible in battle... gallant... with the fair" (he winked and
smiled), "that's what the French are, Monsieur Pierre, aren't they?"

The captain was so naively and good-humoredly gay, so real, and so
pleased with himself that Pierre almost winked back as he looked
merrily at him. Probably the word "gallant" turned the captain's
thoughts to the state of Moscow.

"Apropos, tell me please, is it true that the women have all left
Moscow? What a queer idea! What had they to be afraid of?"

"Would not the French ladies leave Paris if the Russians entered
it?" asked Pierre.

"Ha, ha, ha!" The Frenchman emitted a merry, sanguine chuckle,
patting Pierre on the shoulder. "What a thing to say!" he exclaimed.
"Paris?... But Paris, Paris..."

"Paris--the capital of the world," Pierre finished his remark for
him.

The captain looked at Pierre. He had a habit of stopping short in
the middle of his talk and gazing intently with his laughing, kindly
eyes.

"Well, if you hadn't told me you were Russian, I should have wagered
that you were Parisian! You have that... I don't know what, that..."
and having uttered this compliment, he again gazed at him in silence.

"I have been in Paris. I spent years there," said Pierre.

"Oh yes, one sees that plainly. Paris!... A man who doesn't know
Paris is a savage. You can tell a Parisian two leagues off. Paris is
Talma, la Duchenois, Potier, the Sorbonne, the boulevards," and
noticing that his conclusion was weaker than what had gone before,
he added quickly: "There is only one Paris in the world. You have been
to Paris and have remained Russian. Well, I don't esteem you the
less for it."

Under the influence of the wine he had drunk, and after the days
he had spent alone with his depressing thoughts, Pierre
involuntarily enjoyed talking with this cheerful and good-natured man.

"To return to your ladies--I hear they are lovely. What a wretched
idea to go and bury themselves in the steppes when the French army
is in Moscow. What a chance those girls have missed! Your peasants,
now--that's another thing; but you civilized people, you ought to know
us better than that. We took Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, Naples, Rome,
Warsaw, all the world's capitals.... We are feared, but we are
loved. We are nice to know. And then the Emperor..." he began, but
Pierre interrupted him.

"The Emperor," Pierre repeated, and his face suddenly became sad and
embarrassed, "is the Emperor...?"

"The Emperor? He is generosity, mercy, justice, order, genius-
that's what the Emperor is! It is I, Ramballe, who tell you so.... I
assure you I was his enemy eight years ago. My father was an
emigrant count.... But that man has vanquished me. He has taken hold
of me. I could not resist the sight of the grandeur and glory with
which he has covered France. When I understood what he wanted--when
I saw that he was preparing a bed of laurels for us, you know, I
said to myself: 'That is a monarch,' and I devoted myself to him! So
there! Oh yes, mon cher, he is the greatest man of the ages past or
future."

"Is he in Moscow?" Pierre stammered with a guilty look.

The Frenchman looked at his guilty face and smiled.

"No, he will make his entry tomorrow," he replied, and continued his
talk.

Their conversation was interrupted by the cries of several voices at
the gate and by Morel, who came to say that some Wurttemberg hussars
had come and wanted to put up their horses in the yard where the
captain's horses were. This difficulty had arisen chiefly because
the hussars did not understand what was said to them in French.

The captain had their senior sergeant called in, and in a stern
voice asked him to what regiment he belonged, who was his commanding
officer, and by what right he allowed himself to claim quarters that
were already occupied. The German who knew little French, answered the
two first questions by giving the names of his regiment and of his
commanding officer, but in reply to the third question which he did
not understand said, introducing broken French into his own German,
that he was the quartermaster of the regiment and his commander had
ordered him to occupy all the houses one after another. Pierre, who
knew German, translated what the German said to the captain and gave
the captain's reply to the Wurttemberg hussar in German. When he had
understood what was said to him, the German submitted and took his men
elsewhere. The captain went out into the porch and gave some orders in
a loud voice.

When he returned to the room Pierre was sitting in the same place as
before, with his head in his hands. His face expressed suffering. He
really was suffering at that moment. When the captain went out and
he was left alone, suddenly he came to himself and realized the
position he was in. It was not that Moscow had been taken or that
the happy conquerors were masters in it and were patronizing him.
Painful as that was it was not that which tormented Pierre at the
moment. He was tormented by the consciousness of his own weakness. The
few glasses of wine he had drunk and the conversation with this
good-natured man had destroyed the mood of concentrated gloom in which
he had spent the last few days and which was essential for the
execution of his design. The pistol, dagger, and peasant coat were
ready. Napoleon was to enter the town next day. Pierre still
considered that it would be a useful and worthy action to slay the
evildoer, but now he felt that he would not do it. He did not know
why, but he felt a foreboding that he would not carry out his
intention. He struggled against the confession of his weakness but
dimly felt that he could not overcome it and that his former gloomy
frame of mind, concerning vengeance, killing, and self-sacrifice,
had been dispersed like dust by contact with the first man he met.

The captain returned to the room, limping slightly and whistling a
tune.

The Frenchman's chatter which had previously amused Pierre now
repelled him. The tune he was whistling, his gait, and the gesture
with which he twirled his mustache, all now seemed offensive. "I
will go away immediately. I won't say another word to him," thought
Pierre. He thought this, but still sat in the same place. A strange
feeling of weakness tied him to the spot; he wished to get up and go
away, but could not do so.

The captain, on the other hand, seemed very cheerful. He paced up
and down the room twice. His eyes shone and his mustache twitched as
if he were smiling to himself at some amusing thought.

"The colonel of those Wurttembergers is delightful," he suddenly
said. "He's a German, but a nice fellow all the same.... But he's a
German." He sat down facing Pierre. "By the way, you know German,
then?"

Pierre looked at him in silence.

"What is the German for 'shelter'?"

"Shelter?" Pierre repeated. "The German for shelter is Unterkunft."

"How do you say it?" the captain asked quickly and doubtfully.

"Unterkunft," Pierre repeated.

"Onterkoff," said the captain and looked at Pierre for some
seconds with laughing eyes. "These Germans are first-rate fools, don't
you think so, Monsieur Pierre?" he concluded.

"Well, let's have another bottle of this Moscow Bordeaux, shall
we? Morel will warm us up another little bottle. Morel!" he called out
gaily.

Morel brought candles and a bottle of wine. The captain looked at
Pierre by the candlelight and was evidently struck by the troubled
expression on his companion's face. Ramballe, with genuine distress
and sympathy in his face, went up to Pierre and bent over him.

"There now, we're sad," said he, touching Pierre's hand. "Have I
upset you? No, really, have you anything against me?" he asked Pierre.
"Perhaps it's the state of affairs?"

Pierre did not answer, but looked cordially into the Frenchman's
eyes whose expression of sympathy was pleasing to him.

"Honestly, without speaking of what I owe you, I feel friendship for
you. Can I do anything for you? Dispose of me. It is for life and
death. I say it with my hand on my heart!" said he, striking his
chest.

"Thank you," said Pierre.

The captain gazed intently at him as he had done when he learned
that "shelter" was Unterkunft in German, and his face suddenly
brightened.

"Well, in that case, I drink to our friendship!" he cried gaily,
filling two glasses with wine.

Pierre took one of the glasses and emptied it. Ramballe emptied
his too, again pressed Pierre's hand, and leaned his elbows on the
table in a pensive attitude.

"Yes, my dear friend," he began, "such is fortune's caprice. Who
would have said that I should be a soldier and a captain of dragoons
in the service of Bonaparte, as we used to call him? Yet here I am
in Moscow with him. I must tell you, mon cher," he continued in the
sad and measured tones of a man who intends to tell a long story,
"that our name is one of the most ancient in France."

And with a Frenchman's easy and naive frankness the captain told
Pierre the story of his ancestors, his childhood, youth, and
manhood, and all about his relations and his financial and family
affairs, "ma pauvre mere" playing of course an important part in the
story.

"But all that is only life's setting, the real thing is love-
love! Am I not right, Monsieur Pierre?" said he, growing animated.
"Another glass?"

Pierre again emptied his glass and poured himself out a third.

"Oh, women, women!" and the captain, looking with glistening eyes at
Pierre, began talking of love and of his love affairs.

There were very many of these, as one could easily believe,
looking at the officer's handsome, self-satisfied face, and noting the
eager enthusiasm with which he spoke of women. Though all Ramballe's
love stories had the sensual character which Frenchmen regard as the
special charm and poetry of love, yet he told his story with such
sincere conviction that he alone had experienced and known all the
charm of love and he described women so alluringly that Pierre
listened to him with curiosity.

It was plain that l'amour which the Frenchman was so fond of was not
that low and simple kind that Pierre had once felt for his wife, nor
was it the romantic love stimulated by himself that he experienced for
Natasha. (Ramballe despised both these kinds of love equally: the
one he considered the "love of clodhoppers" and the other the "love of
simpletons.") L'amour which the Frenchman worshiped consisted
principally in the unnaturalness of his relation to the woman and in a
combination of incongruities giving the chief charm to the feeling.

Thus the captain touchingly recounted the story of his love for a
fascinating marquise of thirty-five and at the same time for a
charming, innocent child of seventeen, daughter of the bewitching
marquise. The conflict of magnanimity between the mother and the
daughter, ending in the mother's sacrificing herself and offering
her daughter in marriage to her lover, even now agitated the
captain, though it was the memory of a distant past. Then he recounted
an episode in which the husband played the part of the lover, and
he--the lover--assumed the role of the husband, as well as several
droll incidents from his recollections of Germany, where "shelter"
is called Unterkunft and where the husbands eat sauerkraut and the
young girls are "too blonde."

Finally, the latest episode in Poland still fresh in the captain's
memory, and which he narrated with rapid gestures and glowing face,
was of how he had saved the life of a Pole (in general, the saving
of life continually occurred in the captain's stories) and the Pole
had entrusted to him his enchanting wife (parisienne de coeur) while
himself entering the French service. The captain was happy, the
enchanting Polish lady wished to elope with him, but, prompted by
magnanimity, the captain restored the wife to the husband, saying as
he did so: "I have saved your life, and I save your honor!" Having
repeated these words the captain wiped his eyes and gave himself a
shake, as if driving away the weakness which assailed him at this
touching recollection.

Listening to the captain's tales, Pierre--as often happens late in
the evening and under the influence of wine--followed all that was
told him, understood it all, and at the same time followed a train
of personal memories which, he knew not why, suddenly arose in his
mind. While listening to these love stories his own love for Natasha
unexpectedly rose to his mind, and going over the pictures of that
love in his imagination he mentally compared them with Ramballe's
tales. Listening to the story of the struggle between love and duty,
Pierre saw before his eyes every minutest detail of his last meeting
with the object of his love at the Sukharev water tower. At the time
of that meeting it had not produced an effect upon him--he had not
even once recalled it. But now it seemed to him that that meeting
had had in it something very important and poetic.

"Peter Kirilovich, come here! We have recognized you," he now seemed
to hear the words she had uttered and to see before him her eyes,
her smile, her traveling hood, and a stray lock of her hair... and
there seemed to him something pathetic and touching in all this.

Having finished his tale about the enchanting Polish lady, the
captain asked Pierre if he had ever experienced a similar impulse to
sacrifice himself for love and a feeling of envy of the legitimate
husband.

Challenged by this question Pierre raised his head and felt a need
to express the thoughts that filled his mind. He began to explain that
he understood love for a women somewhat differently. He said that in
all his life he had loved and still loved only one woman, and that she
could never be his.

"Tiens!" said the captain.

Pierre then explained that he had loved this woman from his earliest
years, but that he had not dared to think of her because she was too
young, and because he had been an illegitimate son without a name.
Afterwards when he had received a name and wealth he dared not think
of her because he loved her too well, placing her far above everything
in the world, and especially therefore above himself.

When he had reached this point, Pierre asked the captain whether
he understood that.

The captain made a gesture signifying that even if he did not
understand it he begged Pierre to continue.

"Platonic love, clouds..." he muttered.

Whether it was the wine he had drunk, or an impulse of frankness, or
the thought that this man did not, and never would, know any of
those who played a part in his story, or whether it was all these
things together, something loosened Pierre's tongue. Speaking
thickly and with a faraway look in his shining eyes, he told the whole
story of his life: his marriage, Natasha's love for his best friend,
her betrayal of him, and all his own simple relations with her.
Urged on by Ramballe's questions he also told what he had at first
concealed--his own position and even his name.

More than anything else in Pierre's story the captain was
impressed by the fact that Pierre was very rich, had two mansions in
Moscow, and that he had abandoned everything and not left the city,
but remained there concealing his name and station.

When it was late at night they went out together into the street.
The night was warm and light. To the left of the house on the Pokrovka
a fire glowed--the first of those that were beginning in Moscow. To
the right and high up in the sky was the sickle of the waning moon and
opposite to it hung that bright comet which was connected in
Pierre's heart with his love. At the gate stood Gerasim, the cook, and
two Frenchmen. Their laughter and their mutually incomprehensible
remarks in two languages could be heard. They were looking at the glow
seen in the town.

There was nothing terrible in the one small, distant fire in the
immense city.

Gazing at the high starry sky, at the moon, at the comet, and at the
glow from the fire, Pierre experienced a joyful emotion. "There now,
how good it is, what more does one need?" thought he. And suddenly
remembering his intention he grew dizzy and felt so faint that he
leaned against the fence to save himself from falling.

Without taking leave of his new friend, Pierre left the gate with
unsteady steps and returning to his room lay down on the sofa and
immediately fell asleep.





CHAPTER XXX


The glow of the first fire that began on the second of September was
watched from the various roads by the fugitive Muscovites and by the
retreating troops, with many different feelings.

The Rostov party spent the night at Mytishchi, fourteen miles from
Moscow. They had started so late on the first of September, the road
had been so blocked by vehicles and troops, so many things had been
forgotten for which servants were sent back, that they had decided
to spend that night at a place three miles out of Moscow. The next
morning they woke late and were again delayed so often that they
only got as far as Great Mytishchi. At ten o'clock that evening the
Rostov family and the wounded traveling with them were all distributed
in the yards and huts of that large village. The Rostovs' servants and
coachmen and the orderlies of the wounded officers, after attending to
their masters, had supper, fed the horses, and came out into the
porches.

In a neighboring hut lay Raevski's adjutant with a fractured
wrist. The awful pain he suffered made him moan incessantly and
piteously, and his moaning sounded terrible in the darkness of the
autumn night. He had spent the first night in the same yard as the
Rostovs. The countess said she had been unable to close her eyes on
account of his moaning, and at Mytishchi she moved into a worse hut
simply to be farther away from the wounded man.

In the darkness of the night one of the servants noticed, above
the high body of a coach standing before the porch, the small glow
of another fire. One glow had long been visible and everybody knew
that it was Little Mytishchi burning--set on fire by Mamonov's
Cossacks.

"But look here, brothers, there's another fire!" remarked an
orderly.

All turned their attention to the glow.

"But they told us Little Mytishchi had been set on fire by Mamonov's
Cossacks."

"But that's not Mytishchi, it's farther away."

"Look, it must be in Moscow!"

Two of the gazers went round to the other side of the coach and
sat down on its steps.

"It's more to the left, why, Little Mytishchi is over there, and
this is right on the other side."

Several men joined the first two.

"See how it's flaring," said one. "That's a fire in Moscow: either
in the Sushchevski or the Rogozhski quarter."

No one replied to this remark and for some time they all gazed
silently at the spreading flames of the second fire in the distance.

Old Daniel Terentich, the count's valet (as he was called), came
up to the group and shouted at Mishka.

"What are you staring at, you good-for-nothing?... The count will be
calling and there's nobody there; go and gather the clothes together."

"I only ran out to get some water," said Mishka.

"But what do you think, Daniel Terentich? Doesn't it look as if that
glow were in Moscow?" remarked one of the footmen.

Daniel Terentich made no reply, and again for a long time they
were all silent. The glow spread, rising and failing, farther and
farther still.

"God have mercy.... It's windy and dry..." said another voice.

"Just look! See what it's doing now. O Lord! You can even see the
crows flying. Lord have mercy on us sinners!"

"They'll put it out, no fear!"

"Who's to put it out?" Daniel Terentich, who had hitherto been
silent, was heard to say. His voice was calm and deliberate. "Moscow
it is, brothers," said he. "Mother Moscow, the white..." his voice
faltered, and he gave way to an old man's sob.

And it was as if they had all only waited for this to realize the
significance for them of the glow they were watching. Sighs were
heard, words of prayer, and the sobbing of the count's old valet.





CHAPTER XXXI


The valet, returning to the cottage, informed the count that
Moscow was burning. The count donned his dressing gown and went out to
look. Sonya and Madame Schoss, who had not yet undressed, went out
with him. Only Natasha and the countess remained in the room. Petya
was no longer with the family, he had gone on with his regiment
which was making for Troitsa.

The countess, on hearing that Moscow was on fire, began to cry.
Natasha, pale, with a fixed look, was sitting on the bench under the
icons just where she had sat down on arriving and paid no attention to
her father's words. She was listening to the ceaseless moaning of
the adjutant, three houses off.

"Oh, how terrible," said Sonya returning from the yard chilled and
frightened. "I believe the whole of Moscow will burn, there's an awful
glow! Natasha, do look! You can see it from the window," she said to
her cousin, evidently wishing to distract her mind.

But Natasha looked at her as if not understanding what was said to
her and again fixed her eyes on the corner of the stove. She had
been in this condition of stupor since the morning, when Sonya, to the
surprise and annoyance of the countess, had for some unaccountable
reason found it necessary to tell Natasha of Prince Andrew's wound and
of his being with their party. The countess had seldom been so angry
with anyone as she was with Sonya. Sonya had cried and begged to be
forgiven and now, as if trying to atone for her fault, paid
unceasing attention to her cousin.

"Look, Natasha, how dreadfully it is burning!" said she.

"What's burning?" asked Natasha. "Oh, yes, Moscow."

And as if in order not to offend Sonya and to get rid of her, she
turned her face to the window, looked out in such a way that it was
evident that she could not see anything, and again settled down in her
former attitude.

"But you didn't see it!"

"Yes, really I did," Natasha replied in a voice that pleaded to be
left in peace.

Both the countess and Sonya understood that, naturally, neither
Moscow nor the burning of Moscow nor anything else could seem of
importance to Natasha.

The count returned and lay down behind the partition. The countess
went up to her daughter and touched her head with the back of her hand
as she was wont to do when Natasha was ill, then touched her
forehead with her lips as if to feel whether she was feverish, and
finally kissed her.

"You are cold. You are trembling all over. You'd better lie down,"
said the countess.

"Lie down? All right, I will. I'll lie down at once," said Natasha.

When Natasha had been told that morning that Prince Andrew was
seriously wounded and was traveling with their party, she had at first
asked many questions: Where was he going? How was he wounded? Was it
serious? And could she see him? But after she had been told that she
could not see him, that he was seriously wounded but that his life was
not in danger, she ceased to ask questions or to speak at all,
evidently disbelieving what they told her, and convinced that say what
she might she would still be told the same. All the way she had sat
motionless in a corner of the coach with wide open eyes, and the
expression in them which the countess knew so well and feared so much,
and now she sat in the same way on the bench where she had seated
herself on arriving. She was planning something and either deciding or
had already decided something in her mind. The countess knew this, but
what it might be she did not know, and this alarmed and tormented her.

"Natasha, undress, darling; lie down on my bed."

A bed had been made on a bedstead for the countess only. Madame
Schoss and the two girls were to sleep on some hay on the floor.

"No, Mamma, I will lie down here on the floor," Natasha replied
irritably and she went to the window and opened it. Through the open
window the moans of the adjutant could be heard more distinctly. She
put her head out into the damp night air, and the countess saw her
slim neck shaking with sobs and throbbing against the window frame.
Natasha knew it was not Prince Andrew who was moaning. She knew Prince
Andrew was in the same yard as themselves and in a part of the hut
across the passage; but this dreadful incessant moaning made her
sob. The countess exchanged a look with Sonya.

"Lie down, darling; lie down, my pet," said the countess, softly
touching Natasha's shoulders. "Come, lie down."

"Oh, yes... I'll lie down at once," said Natasha, and began
hurriedly undressing, tugging at the tapes of her petticoat.

When she had thrown off her dress and put on a dressing jacket,
she sat down with her foot under her on the bed that had been made
up on the floor, jerked her thin and rather short plait of hair to the
front, and began replaiting it. Her long, thin, practiced fingers
rapidly unplaited, replaited, and tied up her plait. Her head moved
from side to side from habit, but her eyes, feverishly wide, looked
fixedly before her. When her toilet for the night was finished she
sank gently onto the sheet spread over the hay on the side nearest the
door.

"Natasha, you'd better lie in the middle," said Sonya.

"I'll stay here," muttered Natasha. "Do lie down," she added
crossly, and buried her face in the pillow.

The countess, Madame Schoss, and Sonya undressed hastily and lay
down. The small lamp in front of the icons was the only light left
in the room. But in the yard there was a light from the fire at Little
Mytishchi a mile and a half away, and through the night came the noise
of people shouting at a tavern Mamonov's Cossacks had set up across
the street, and the adjutant's unceasing moans could still be heard.

For a long time Natasha listened attentively to the sounds that
reached her from inside and outside the room and did not move. First
she heard her mother praying and sighing and the creaking of her bed
under her, then Madame Schoss' familiar whistling snore and Sonya's
gentle breathing. Then the countess called to Natasha. Natasha did not
answer.

"I think she's asleep, Mamma," said Sonya softly.

After short silence the countess spoke again but this time no one
replied.

Soon after that Natasha heard her mother's even breathing. Natasha
did not move, though her little bare foot, thrust out from under the
quilt, was growing cold on the bare floor.

As if to celebrate a victory over everybody, a cricket chirped in
a crack in the wall. A cock crowed far off and another replied near
by. The shouting in the tavern had died down; only the moaning of
the adjutant was heard. Natasha sat up.

"Sonya, are you asleep? Mamma?" she whispered.

No one replied. Natasha rose slowly and carefully, crossed
herself, and stepped cautiously on the cold and dirty floor with her
slim, supple, bare feet. The boards of the floor creaked. Stepping
cautiously from one foot to the other she ran like a kitten the few
steps to the door and grasped the cold door handle.

It seemed to her that something heavy was beating rhythmically
against all the walls of the room: it was her own heart, sinking
with alarm and terror and overflowing with love.

She opened the door and stepped across the threshold and onto the
cold, damp earthen floor of the passage. The cold she felt refreshed
her. With her bare feet she touched a sleeping man, stepped over
him, and opened the door into the part of the hut where Prince
Andrew lay. It was dark in there. In the farthest corner, on a bench
beside a bed on which something was lying, stood a tallow candle
with a long, thick, and smoldering wick.

From the moment she had been told that of Prince Andrew's wound
and his presence there, Natasha had resolved to see him. She did not
know why she had to, she knew the meeting would be painful, but felt
the more convinced that it was necessary.

All day she had lived only in hope of seeing him that night. But now
that the moment had come she was filled with dread of what she might
see. How was he maimed? What was left of him? Was he like that
incessant moaning of the adjutant's? Yes, he was altogether like that.
In her imagination he was that terrible moaning personified. When
she saw an indistinct shape in the corner, and mistook his knees
raised under the quilt for his shoulders, she imagined a horrible body
there, and stood still in terror. But an irresistible impulse drew her
forward. She cautiously took one step and then another, and found
herself in the middle of a small room containing baggage. Another man-
Timokhin--was lying in a corner on the benches beneath the icons,
and two others--the doctor and a valet--lay on the floor.

The valet sat up and whispered something. Timokhin, kept awake by
the pain in his wounded leg, gazed with wide-open eyes at this strange
apparition of a girl in a white chemise, dressing jacket, and
nightcap. The valet's sleepy, frightened exclamation, "What do you
want? What's the matter?" made Natasha approach more swiftly to what
was lying in the corner. Horribly unlike a man as that body looked,
she must see him. She passed the valet, the snuff fell from the candle
wick, and she saw Prince Andrew clearly with his arms outside the
quilt, and such as she had always seen him.

He was the same as ever, but the feverish color of his face, his
glittering eyes rapturously turned toward her, and especially his
neck, delicate as a child's, revealed by the turn-down collar of his
shirt, gave him a peculiarly innocent, childlike look, such as she had
never seen on him before. She went up to him and with a swift,
flexible, youthful movement dropped on her knees.

He smiled and held out his hand to her.





CHAPTER XXXII


Seven days had passed since Prince Andrew found himself in the
ambulance station on the field of Borodino. His feverish state and the
inflammation of his bowels, which were injured, were in the doctor's
opinion sure to carry him off. But on the seventh day he ate with
pleasure a piece of bread with some tea, and the doctor noticed that
his temperature was lower. He had regained consciousness that morning.
The first night after they left Moscow had been fairly warm and he had
remained in the caleche, but at Mytishchi the wounded man himself
asked to be taken out and given some tea. The pain caused by his
removal into the hut had made him groan aloud and again lose
consciousness. When he had been placed on his camp bed he lay for a
long time motionless with closed eyes. Then he opened them and
whispered softly: "And the tea?" His remembering such a small detail
of everyday life astonished the doctor. He felt Prince Andrew's pulse,
and to his surprise and dissatisfaction found it had improved. He
was dissatisfied because he knew by experience that if his patient did
not die now, he would do so a little later with greater suffering.
Timokhin, the red-nosed major of Prince Andrew's regiment, had
joined him in Moscow and was being taken along with him, having been
wounded in the leg at the battle of Borodino. They were accompanied by
a doctor, Prince Andrew's valet, his coachman, and two orderlies.

They gave Prince Andrew some tea. He drank it eagerly, looking
with feverish eyes at the door in front of him as if trying to
understand and remember something.

"I don't want any more. Is Timokhin here?" he asked.

Timokhin crept along the bench to him.

"I am here, your excellency."

"How's your wound?"

"Mine, sir? All right. But how about you?"

Prince Andrew again pondered as if trying to remember something.

"Couldn't one get a book?" he asked.

"What book?"

"The Gospels. I haven't one."

The doctor promised to procure it for him and began to ask how he
was feeling. Prince Andrew answered all his questions reluctantly
but reasonably, and then said he wanted a bolster placed under him
as he was uncomfortable and in great pain. The doctor and valet lifted
the cloak with which he was covered and, making wry faces at the
noisome smell of mortifying flesh that came from the wound, began
examining that dreadful place. The doctor was very much displeased
about something and made a change in the dressings, turning the
wounded man over so that he groaned again and grew unconscious and
delirious from the agony. He kept asking them to get him the book
and put it under him.

"What trouble would it be to you?" he said. "I have not got one.
Please get it for me and put it under for a moment," he pleaded in a
piteous voice.

The doctor went into the passage to wash his hands.

"You fellows have no conscience," said he to the valet who was
pouring water over his hands. "For just one moment I didn't look after
you... It's such pain, you know, that I wonder how he can bear it."

"By the Lord Jesus Christ, I thought we had put something under
him!" said the valet.

The first time Prince Andrew understood where he was and what was
the matter with him and remembered being wounded and how was when he
asked to be carried into the hut after his caleche had stopped at
Mytishchi. After growing confused from pain while being carried into
the hut he again regained consciousness, and while drinking tea once
more recalled all that had happened to him, and above all vividly
remembered the moment at the ambulance station when, at the sight of
the sufferings of a man he disliked, those new thoughts had come to
him which promised him happiness. And those thoughts, though now vague
and indefinite, again possessed his soul. He remembered that he had
now a new source of happiness and that this happiness had something to
do with the Gospels. That was why he asked for a copy of them. The
uncomfortable position in which they had put him and turned him over
again confused his thoughts, and when he came to himself a third
time it was in the complete stillness of the night. Everybody near him
was sleeping. A cricket chirped from across the passage; someone was
shouting and singing in the street; cockroaches rustled on the
table, on the icons, and on the walls, and a big fly flopped at the
head of the bed and around the candle beside him, the wick of which
was charred and had shaped itself like a mushroom.

His mind was not in a normal state. A healthy man usually thinks of,
feels, and remembers innumerable things simultaneously, but has the
power and will to select one sequence of thoughts or events on which
to fix his whole attention. A healthy man can tear himself away from
the deepest reflections to say a civil word to someone who comes in
and can then return again to his own thoughts. But Prince Andrew's
mind was not in a normal state in that respect. All the powers of
his mind were more active and clearer than ever, but they acted
apart from his will. Most diverse thoughts and images occupied him
simultaneously. At times his brain suddenly began to work with a
vigor, clearness, and depth it had never reached when he was in
health, but suddenly in the midst of its work it would turn to some
unexpected idea and he had not the strength to turn it back again.

"Yes, a new happiness was revealed to me of which man cannot be
deprived," he thought as he lay in the semi-darkness of the quiet hut,
gazing fixedly before him with feverish wide open eyes. "A happiness
lying beyond material forces, outside the material influences that act
on man--a happiness of the soul alone, the happiness of loving.
Every man can understand it, but to conceive it and enjoin it was
possible only for God. But how did God enjoin that law? And why was
the Son...?"

And suddenly the sequence of these thoughts broke off, and Prince
Andrew heard (without knowing whether it was a delusion or reality)
a soft whispering voice incessantly and rhythmically repeating
"piti-piti-piti," and then "titi," and then again "piti-piti-piti,"
and "ti-ti" once more. At the same time he felt that above his face,
above the very middle of it, some strange airy structure was being
erected out of slender needles or splinters, to the sound of this
whispered music. He felt that he had to balance carefully (though it
was difficult) so that this airy structure should not collapse; but
nevertheless it kept collapsing and again slowly rising to the sound
of whispered rhythmic music--"it stretches, stretches, spreading out
and stretching," said Prince Andrew to himself. While listening to
this whispering and feeling the sensation of this drawing out and
the construction of this edifice of needles, he also saw by glimpses a
red halo round the candle, and heard the rustle of the cockroaches and
the buzzing of the fly that flopped against his pillow and his face.
Each time the fly touched his face it gave him a burning sensation and
yet to his surprise it did not destroy the structure, though it
knocked against the very region of his face where it was rising. But
besides this there was something else of importance. It was
something white by the door--the statue of a sphinx, which also
oppressed him.

"But perhaps that's my shirt on the table," he thought, "and
that's my legs, and that is the door, but why is it always
stretching and drawing itself out, and 'piti-piti-piti' and 'ti-ti'
and 'piti-piti-piti'...? That's enough, please leave off!" Prince
Andrew painfully entreated someone. And suddenly thoughts and feelings
again swam to the surface of his mind with peculiar clearness and
force.

"Yes--love," he thought again quite clearly. "But not love which
loves for something, for some quality, for some purpose, or for some
reason, but the love which I--while dying--first experienced when I
saw my enemy and yet loved him. I experienced that feeling of love
which is the very essence of the soul and does not require an
object. Now again I feel that bliss. To love one's neighbors, to
love one's enemies, to love everything, to love God in all His
manifestations. It is possible to love someone dear to you with
human love, but an enemy can only be loved by divine love. That is why
I experienced such joy when I felt that I loved that man. What has
become of him? Is he alive?...

"When loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred, but
divine love cannot change. No, neither death nor anything else can
destroy it. It is the very essence of the soul. Yet how many people
have I hated in my life? And of them all, I loved and hated none as
I did her." And he vividly pictured to himself Natasha, not as he
had done in the past with nothing but her charms which gave him
delight, but for the first time picturing to himself her soul. And
he understood her feelings, her sufferings, shame, and remorse. He now
understood for the first time all the cruelty of his rejection of her,
the cruelty of his rupture with her. "If only it were possible for
me to see her once more! Just once, looking into those eyes to say..."


"Piti-piti-piti and ti-ti and piti-piti-piti boom!" flopped the
fly... And his attention was suddenly carried into another world, a
world of reality and delirium in which something particular was
happening. In that world some structure was still being erected and
did not fall, something was still stretching out, and the candle
with its red halo was still burning, and the same shirtlike sphinx lay
near the door; but besides all this something creaked, there was a
whiff of fresh air, and a new white sphinx appeared, standing at the
door. And that sphinx had the pale face and shining eyes of the very
Natasha of whom he had just been thinking.

"Oh, how oppressive this continual delirium is," thought Prince
Andrew, trying to drive that face from his imagination. But the face
remained before him with the force of reality and drew nearer.
Prince Andrew wished to return that former world of pure thought,
but he could not, and delirium drew him back into its domain. The soft
whispering voice continued its rhythmic murmur, something oppressed
him and stretched out, and the strange face was before him. Prince
Andrew collected all his strength in an effort to recover his
senses, he moved a little, and suddenly there was a ringing in his
ears, a dimness in his eyes, and like a man plunged into water he lost
consciousness. When he came to himself, Natasha, that same living
Natasha whom of all people he most longed to love with this new pure
divine love that had been revealed to him, was kneeling before him. He
realized that it was the real living Natasha, and he was not surprised
but quietly happy. Natasha, motionless on her knees (she was unable to
stir), with frightened eyes riveted on him, was restraining her
sobs. Her face was pale and rigid. Only in the lower part of it
something quivered.

Prince Andrew sighed with relief, smiled, and held out his hand.

"You?" he said. "How fortunate!"

With a rapid but careful movement Natasha drew nearer to him on
her knees and, taking his hand carefully, bent her face over it and
began kissing it, just touching it lightly with her lips.

"Forgive me!" she whispered, raising her head and glancing at him.
"Forgive me!"

"I love you," said Prince Andrew.

"Forgive...!"

"Forgive what?" he asked.

"Forgive me for what I ha-ve do-ne!" faltered Natasha in a
scarcely audible, broken whisper, and began kissing his hand more
rapidly, just touching it with her lips.

"I love you more, better than before," said Prince Andrew, lifting
her face with his hand so as to look into her eyes.

Those eyes, filled with happy tears, gazed at him timidly,
compassionately, and with joyous love. Natasha's thin pale face,
with its swollen lips, was more than plain--it was dreadful. But
Prince Andrew did not see that, he saw her shining eyes which were
beautiful. They heard the sound of voices behind them.

Peter the valet, who was now wide awake, had roused the doctor.
Timokhin, who had not slept at all because of the pain in his leg, had
long been watching all that was going on, carefully covering his
bare body with the sheet as he huddled up on his bench.

"What's this?" said the doctor, rising from his bed. "Please go
away, madam!"

At that moment a maid sent by the countess, who had noticed her
daughter's absence, knocked at the door.

Like a somnambulist aroused from her sleep Natasha went out of the
room and, returning to her hut, fell sobbing on her bed.


From that time, during all the rest of the Rostovs' journey, at
every halting place and wherever they spent a night, Natasha never
left the wounded Bolkonski, and the doctor had to admit that he had
not expected from a young girl either such firmness or such skill in
nursing a wounded man.

Dreadful as the countess imagined it would be should Prince Andrew
die in her daughter's arms during the journey--as, judging by what the
doctor said, it seemed might easily happen--she could not oppose
Natasha. Though with the intimacy now established between the
wounded man and Natasha the thought occurred that should he recover
their former engagement would be renewed, no one--least of all Natasha
and Prince Andrew--spoke of this: the unsettled question of life and
death, which hung not only over Bolkonski but over all Russia, shut
out all other considerations.





CHAPTER XXXIII


On the third of September Pierre awoke late. His head was aching,
the clothes in which he had slept without undressing felt
uncomfortable on his body, and his mind had a dim consciousness of
something shameful he had done the day before. That something shameful
was his yesterday's conversation with Captain Ramballe.

It was eleven by the clock, but it seemed peculiarly dark out of
doors. Pierre rose, rubbed his eyes, and seeing the pistol with an
engraved stock which Gerasim had replaced on the writing table, he
remembered where he was and what lay before him that very day.

"Am I not too late?" he thought. "No, probably he won't make his
entry into Moscow before noon."

Pierre did not allow himself to reflect on what lay before him,
but hastened to act.

After arranging his clothes, he took the pistol and was about to
go out. But it then occurred to him for the first time that he
certainly could not carry the weapon in his hand through the
streets. It was difficult to hide such a big pistol even under his
wide coat. He could not carry it unnoticed in his belt or under his
arm. Besides, it had been discharged, and he had not had time to
reload it. "No matter, dagger will do," he said to himself, though
when planning his design he had more than once come to the
conclusion that the chief mistake made by the student in 1809 had been
to try to kill Napoleon with a dagger. But as his chief aim
consisted not in carrying out his design, but in proving to himself
that he would not abandon his intention and was doing all he could
to achieve it, Pierre hastily took the blunt jagged dagger in a
green sheath which he had bought at the Sukharev market with the
pistol, and hid it under his waistcoat.

Having tied a girdle over his coat and pulled his cap low on his
head, Pierre went down the corridor, trying to avoid making a noise or
meeting the captain, and passed out into the street.

The conflagration, at which he had looked with so much
indifference the evening before, had greatly increased during the
night. Moscow was on fire in several places. The buildings in Carriage
Row, across the river, in the Bazaar and the Povarskoy, as well as the
barges on the Moskva River and the timber yards by the Dorogomilov
Bridge, were all ablaze.

Pierre's way led through side streets to the Povarskoy and from
there to the church of St. Nicholas on the Arbat, where he had long
before decided that the deed should should be done. The gates of
most of the houses were locked and the shutters up. The streets and
lanes were deserted. The air was full of smoke and the smell of
burning. Now and then he met Russians with anxious and timid faces,
and Frenchmen with an air not of the city but of the camp, walking
in the middle of the streets. Both the Russians and the French
looked at Pierre with surprise. Besides his height and stoutness,
and the strange morose look of suffering in his face and whole figure,
the Russians stared at Pierre because they could not make out to
what class he could belong. The French followed him with
astonishment in their eyes chiefly because Pierre, unlike all the
other Russians who gazed at the French with fear and curiosity, paid
no attention to them. At the gate of one house three Frenchmen, who
were explaining something to some Russians who did not understand
them, stopped Pierre asking if he did not know French.

Pierre shook his head and went on. In another side street a sentinel
standing beside a green caisson shouted at him, but only when the
shout was threateningly repeated and he heard the click of the man's
musket as he raised it did Pierre understand that he had to pass on
the other side of the street. He heard nothing and saw nothing of what
went on around him. He carried his resolution within himself in terror
and haste, like something dreadful and alien to him, for, after the
previous night's experience, he was afraid of losing it. But he was
not destined to bring his mood safely to his destination. And even had
he not been hindered by anything on the way, his intention could not
now have been carried out, for Napoleon had passed the Arbat more than
four hours previously on his way from the Dorogomilov suburb to the
Kremlin, and was now sitting in a very gloomy frame of mind in a royal
study in the Kremlin, giving detailed and exact orders as to
measures to be taken immediately to extinguish the fire, to prevent
looting, and to reassure the inhabitants. But Pierre did not know
this; he was entirely absorbed in what lay before him, and was
tortured--as those are who obstinately undertake a task that is
impossible for them not because of its difficulty but because of its
incompatibility with their natures--by the fear of weakening at the
decisive moment and so losing his self-esteem.

Though he heard and saw nothing around him he found his way by
instinct and did not go wrong in the side streets that led to the
Povarskoy.

As Pierre approached that street the smoke became denser and denser-
he even felt the heat of the fire. Occasionally curly tongues of flame
rose from under the roofs of the houses. He met more people in the
streets and they were more excited. But Pierre, though he felt that
something unusual was happening around him, did not realize that he
was approaching the fire. As he was going along a foot path across a
wide-open space adjoining the Povarskoy on one side and the gardens of
Prince Gruzinski's house on the other, Pierre suddenly heard the
desperate weeping of a woman close to him. He stopped as if
awakening from a dream and lifted his head.

By the side of the path, on the dusty dry grass, all sorts of
household goods lay in a heap: featherbeds, a samovar, icons, and
trunks. On the ground, beside the trunks, sat a thin woman no longer
young, with long, prominent upper teeth, and wearing a black cloak and
cap. This woman, swaying to and fro and muttering something, was
choking with sobs. Two girls of about ten and twelve, dressed in dirty
short frocks and cloaks, were staring at their mother with a look of
stupefaction on their pale frightened faces. The youngest child, a boy
of about seven, who wore an overcoat and an immense cap evidently
not his own, was crying in his old nurse's arms. A dirty, barefooted
maid was sitting on a trunk, and, having undone her pale-colored
plait, was pulling it straight and sniffing at her singed hair. The
woman's husband, a short, round-shouldered man in the undress
uniform of a civilian official, with sausage-shaped whiskers and
showing under his square-set cap the hair smoothly brushed forward
over his temples, with expressionless face was moving the trunks,
which were placed one on another, and was dragging some garments
from under them.

As soon as she saw Pierre, the woman almost threw herself at his
feet.

"Dear people, good Christians, save me, help me, dear friends...
help us, somebody," she muttered between her sobs. "My girl... My
daughter! My youngest daughter is left behind. She's burned! Ooh!
Was it for this I nursed you.... Ooh!"

"Don't, Mary Nikolievna!" said her husband to her in a low voice,
evidently only to justify himself before the stranger. "Sister must
have taken her, or else where can she be?" he added.

"Monster! Villain!" shouted the woman angrily, suddenly ceasing to
weep. "You have no heart, you don't feel for your own child! Another
man would have rescued her from the fire. But this is a monster and
neither a man nor a father! You, honored sir, are a noble man," she
went on, addressing Pierre rapidly between her sobs. "The fire broke
out alongside, and blew our way, the maid called out 'Fire!' and we
rushed to collect our things. We ran out just as we were.... This is
what we have brought away.... The icons, and my dowry bed, all the
rest is lost. We seized the children. But not Katie! Ooh! O
Lord!..." and again she began to sob. "My child, my dear one!
Burned, burned!"

"But where was she left?" asked Pierre.

From the expression of his animated face the woman saw that this man
might help her.

"Oh, dear sir!" she cried, seizing him by the legs. "My
benefactor, set my heart at ease.... Aniska, go, you horrid girl, show
him the way!" she cried to the maid, angrily opening her mouth and
still farther exposing her long teeth.

"Show me the way, show me, I... I'll do it," gasped Pierre rapidly.

The dirty maidservant stepped from behind the trunk, put up her
plait, sighed, and went on her short, bare feet along the path. Pierre
felt as if he had come back to life after a heavy swoon. He held his
head higher, his eyes shone with the light of life, and with swift
steps he followed the maid, overtook her, and came out on the
Povarskoy. The whole street was full of clouds of black smoke. Tongues
of flame here and there broke through that cloud. A great number of
people crowded in front of the conflagration. In the middle of the
street stood a French general saying something to those around him.
Pierre, accompanied by the maid, was advancing to the spot where the
general stood, but the French soldiers stopped him.

"On ne passe pas!"* cried a voice.


*"You can't pass!


"This way, uncle," cried the girl. "We'll pass through the side
street, by the Nikulins'!"

Pierre turned back, giving a spring now and then to keep up with
her. She ran across the street, turned down a side street to the left,
and, passing three houses, turned into a yard on the right.

"It's here, close by," said she and, running across the yard, opened
a gate in a wooden fence and, stopping, pointed out to him a small
wooden wing of the house, which was burning brightly and fiercely. One
of its sides had fallen in, another was on fire, and bright flames
issued from the openings of the windows and from under the roof.

As Pierre passed through the fence gate, he was enveloped by hot air
and involuntarily stopped.

"Which is it? Which is your house?" he asked.

"Ooh!" wailed the girl, pointing to the wing. "That's it, that was
our lodging. You've burned to death, our treasure, Katie, my
precious little missy! Ooh!" lamented Aniska, who at the sight of
the fire felt that she too must give expression to her feelings.

Pierre rushed to the wing, but the heat was so great that he
involuntarily passed round in a curve and came upon the large house
that was as yet burning only at one end, just below the roof, and
around which swarmed a crowd of Frenchmen. At first Pierre did not
realize what these men, who were dragging something out, were about;
but seeing before him a Frenchman hitting a peasant with a blunt saber
and trying to take from him a fox-fur coat, he vaguely understood that
looting was going on there, but he had no time to dwell on that idea.

The sounds of crackling and the din of falling walls and ceilings,
the whistle and hiss of the flames, the excited shouts of the
people, and the sight of the swaying smoke, now gathering into thick
black clouds and now soaring up with glittering sparks, with here
and there dense sheaves of flame (now red and now like golden fish
scales creeping along the walls), and the heat and smoke and
rapidity of motion, produced on Pierre the usual animating effects
of a conflagration. It had a peculiarly strong effect on him because
at the sight of the fire he felt himself suddenly freed from the ideas
that had weighed him down. He felt young, bright, adroit, and
resolute. He ran round to the other side of the lodge and was about to
dash into that part of it which was still standing, when just above
his head he heard several voices shouting and then a cracking sound
and the ring of something heavy falling close beside him.

Pierre looked up and saw at a window of the large house some
Frenchmen who had just thrown out the drawer of a chest, filled with
metal articles. Other French soldiers standing below went up to the
drawer.

"What does this fellow want?" shouted one of them referring to
Pierre.

"There's a child in that house. Haven't you seen a child?" cried
Pierre.

"What's he talking about? Get along!" said several voices, and one
of the soldiers, evidently afraid that Pierre might want to take
from them some of the plate and bronzes that were in the drawer, moved
threateningly toward him.

"A child?" shouted a Frenchman from above. "I did hear something
squealing in the garden. Perhaps it's his brat that the fellow is
looking for. After all, one must be human, you know...."

"Where is it? Where?" said Pierre.

"There! There!" shouted the Frenchman at the window, pointing to the
garden at the back of the house. "Wait a bit--I'm coming down."

And a minute or two later the Frenchman, a black-eyed fellow with
a spot on his cheek, in shirt sleeves, really did jump out of a window
on the ground floor, and clapping Pierre on the shoulder ran with
him into the garden.

"Hurry up, you others!" he called out to his comrades. "It's getting
hot."

When they reached a gravel path behind the house the Frenchman
pulled Pierre by the arm and pointed to a round, graveled space
where a three-year-old girl in a pink dress was lying under a seat.

"There is your child! Oh, a girl, so much the better!" said the
Frenchman. "Good-by, Fatty. We must be human, we are all mortal you
know!" and the Frenchman with the spot on his cheek ran back to his
comrades.

Breathless with joy, Pierre ran to the little girl and was going
to take her in his arms. But seeing a stranger the sickly,
scrofulous-looking child, unattractively like her mother, began to
yell and run away. Pierre, however, seized her and lifted her in his
arms. She screamed desperately and angrily and tried with her little
hands to pull Pierre's hands away and to bite them with her slobbering
mouth. Pierre was seized by a sense of horror and repulsion such as he
had experienced when touching some nasty little animal. But he made an
effort not to throw the child down and ran with her to the large
house. It was now, however, impossible to get back the way he had
come; the maid, Aniska, was no longer there, and Pierre with a feeling
of pity and disgust pressed the wet, painfully sobbing child to
himself as tenderly as he could and ran with her through the garden
seeking another way out.





CHAPTER XXXIV


Having run through different yards and side streets, Pierre got back
with his little burden to the Gruzinski garden at the corner of the
Povarskoy. He did not at first recognize the place from which he had
set out to look for the child, so crowded was it now with people and
goods that had been dragged out of the houses. Besides Russian
families who had taken refuge here from the fire with their
belongings, there were several French soldiers in a variety of
clothing. Pierre took no notice of them. He hurried to find the family
of that civil servant in order to restore the daughter to her mother
and go to save someone else. Pierre felt that he had still much to
do and to do quickly. Glowing with the heat and from running, he
felt at that moment more strongly than ever the sense of youth,
animation, and determination that had come on him when he ran to
save the child. She had now become quiet and, clinging with her little
hands to Pierre's coat, sat on his arm gazing about her like some
little wild animal. He glanced at her occasionally with a slight
smile. He fancied he saw something pathetically innocent in that
frightened, sickly little face.

He did not find the civil servant or his wife where he had left
them. He walked among the crowd with rapid steps, scanning the various
faces he met. Involuntarily he noticed a Georgian or Armenian family
consisting of a very handsome old man of Oriental type, wearing a new,
cloth-covered, sheepskin coat and new boots, an old woman of similar
type, and a young woman. That very young woman seemed to Pierre the
perfection of Oriental beauty, with her sharply outlined, arched,
black eyebrows and the extraordinarily soft, bright color of her long,
beautiful, expressionless face. Amid the scattered property and the
crowd on the open space, she, in her rich satin cloak with a bright
lilac shawl on her head, suggested a delicate exotic plant thrown
out onto the snow. She was sitting on some bundles a little behind the
old woman, and looked from under her long lashes with motionless,
large, almond-shaped eyes at the ground before her. Evidently she
was aware of her beauty and fearful because of it. Her face struck
Pierre and, hurrying along by the fence, he turned several times to
look at her. When he had reached the fence, still without finding
those he sought, he stopped and looked about him.

With the child in his arms his figure was now more conspicuous
than before, and a group of Russians, both men and women, gathered
about him.

"Have you lost anyone, my dear fellow? You're of the gentry
yourself, aren't you? Whose child is it?" they asked him.

Pierre replied that the child belonged to a woman in a black coat
who had been sitting there with her other children, and he asked
whether anyone knew where she had gone.

"Why, that must be the Anferovs," said an old deacon, addressing a
pockmarked peasant woman. "Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy!" he added
in his customary bass.

"The Anferovs? No," said the woman. "They left in the morning.
That must be either Mary Nikolievna's or the Ivanovs'!"

"He says 'a woman,' and Mary Nikolievna is a lady," remarked a house
serf.

"Do you know her? She's thin, with long teeth," said Pierre.

"That's Mary Nikolievna! They went inside the garden when these
wolves swooped down," said the woman, pointing to the French soldiers.

"O Lord, have mercy!" added the deacon.

"Go over that way, they're there. It's she! She kept on lamenting
and crying," continued the woman. "It's she. Here, this way!"

But Pierre was not listening to the woman. He had for some seconds
been intently watching what was going on a few steps away. He was
looking at the Armenian family and at two French soldiers who had gone
up to them. One of these, a nimble little man, was wearing a blue coat
tied round the waist with a rope. He had a nightcap on his head and
his feet were bare. The other, whose appearance particularly struck
Pierre, was a long, lank, round-shouldered, fair-haired man, slow in
his movements and with an idiotic expression of face. He wore a
woman's loose gown of frieze, blue trousers, and large torn Hessian
boots. The little barefooted Frenchman in the blue coat went up to the
Armenians and, saying something, immediately seized the old man by his
legs and the old man at once began pulling off his boots. The other in
the frieze gown stopped in front of the beautiful Armenian girl and
with his hands in his pockets stood staring at her, motionless and
silent.

"Here, take the child!" said Pierre peremptorily and hurriedly to
the woman, handing the little girl to her. "Give her back to them,
give her back!" he almost shouted, putting the child, who began
screaming, on the ground, and again looking at the Frenchman and the
Armenian family.

The old man was already sitting barefoot. The little Frenchman had
secured his second boot and was slapping one boot against the other.
The old man was saying something in a voice broken by sobs, but Pierre
caught but a glimpse of this, his whole attention was directed to
the Frenchman in the frieze gown who meanwhile, swaying slowly from
side to side, had drawn nearer to the young woman and taking his hands
from his pockets had seized her by the neck.

The beautiful Armenian still sat motionless and in the same
attitude, with her long lashes drooping as if she did not see or
feel what the soldier was doing to her.

While Pierre was running the few steps that separated him from the
Frenchman, the tall marauder in the frieze gown was already tearing
from her neck the necklace the young Armenian was wearing, and the
young woman, clutching at her neck, screamed piercingly.

"Let that woman alone!" exclaimed Pierre hoarsely in a furious
voice, seizing the soldier by his round shoulders and throwing him
aside.

The soldier fell, got up, and ran away. But his comrade, throwing
down the boots and drawing his sword, moved threateningly toward
Pierre.

"Voyons, Pas de betises!"* he cried.


*"Look here, no nonsense!"


Pierre was in such a transport of rage that he remembered nothing
and his strength increased tenfold. He rushed at the barefooted
Frenchman and, before the latter had time to draw his sword, knocked
him off his feet and hammered him with his fists. Shouts of approval
were heard from the crowd around, and at the same moment a mounted
patrol of French Uhlans appeared from round the corner. The Uhlans
came up at a trot to Pierre and the Frenchman and surrounded them.
Pierre remembered nothing of what happened after that. He only
remembered beating someone and being beaten and finally feeling that
his hands were bound and that a crowd of French soldiers stood
around him and were searching him.

"Lieutenant, he has a dagger," were the first words Pierre
understood.

"Ah, a weapon?" said the officer and turned to the barefooted
soldier who had been arrested with Pierre. "All right, you can tell
all about it at the court-martial." Then he turned to Pierre. "Do
you speak French?"

Pierre looked around him with bloodshot eyes and did not reply.
His face probably looked very terrible, for the officer said something
in a whisper and four more Uhlans left the ranks and placed themselves
on both sides of Pierre.

"Do you speak French?" the officer asked again, keeping at a
distance from Pierre. "Call the interpreter."

A little man in Russian civilian clothes rode out from the ranks,
and by his clothes and manner of speaking Pierre at once knew him to
be a French salesman from one of the Moscow shops.

"He does not look like a common man," said the interpreter, after
a searching look at Pierre.

"Ah, he looks very much like an incendiary," remarked the officer.
"And ask him who he is," he added.

"Who are you?" asked the interpreter in poor Russian. "You must
answer the chief."

"I will not tell you who I am. I am your prisoner--take me!"
Pierre suddenly replied in French.

"Ah, ah!" muttered the officer with a frown. "Well then, march!"

A crowd had collected round the Uhlans. Nearest to Pierre stood
the pockmarked peasant woman with the little girl, and when the patrol
started she moved forward.

"Where are they taking you to, you poor dear?" said she. "And the
little girl, the little girl, what am I to do with her if she's not
theirs?" said the woman.

"What does that woman want?" asked the officer.

Pierre was as if intoxicated. His elation increased at the sight
of the little girl he had saved.

"What does she want?" he murmured. "She is bringing me my daughter
whom I have just saved from the flames," said he. "Good-by!" And
without knowing how this aimless lie had escaped him, he went along
with resolute and triumphant steps between the French soldiers.

The French patrol was one of those sent out through the various
streets of Moscow by Durosnel's order to put a stop to the pillage,
and especially to catch the incendiaries who, according to the general
opinion which had that day originated among the higher French
officers, were the cause of the conflagrations. After marching through
a number of streets the patrol arrested five more Russian suspects:
a small shopkeeper, two seminary students, a peasant, and a house
serf, besides several looters. But of all these various suspected
characters, Pierre was considered to be the most suspicious of all.
When they had all been brought for the night to a large house on the
Zubov Rampart that was being used as a guardhouse, Pierre was placed
apart under strict guard.





BOOK TWELVE: 1812





CHAPTER I


In Petersburg at that time a complicated struggle was being
carried on with greater heat than ever in the highest circles, between
the parties of Rumyantsev, the French, Marya Fedorovna, the Tsarevich,
and others, drowned as usual by the buzzing of the court drones. But
the calm, luxurious life of Petersburg, concerned only about
phantoms and reflections of real life, went on in its old way and made
it hard, except by a great effort, to realize the danger and the
difficult position of the Russian people. There were the same
receptions and balls, the same French theater, the same court
interests and service interests and intrigues as usual. Only in the
very highest circles were attempts made to keep in mind the
difficulties of the actual position. Stories were whispered of how
differently the two Empresses behaved in these difficult
circumstances. The Empress Marya, concerned for the welfare of the
charitable and educational institutions under her patronage, had given
directions that they should all be removed to Kazan, and the things
belonging to these institutions had already been packed up. The
Empress Elisabeth, however, when asked what instructions she would
be pleased to give--with her characteristic Russian patriotism had
replied that she could give no directions about state institutions for
that was the affair of the sovereign, but as far as she personally was
concerned she would be the last to quit Petersburg.

At Anna Pavlovna's on the twenty-sixth of August, the very day of
the battle of Borodino, there was a soiree, the chief feature of which
was to be the reading of a letter from His Lordship the Bishop when
sending the Emperor an icon of the Venerable Sergius. It was
regarded as a model of ecclesiastical, patriotic eloquence. Prince
Vasili himself, famed for his elocution, was to read it. (He used to
read at the Empress'.) The art of his reading was supposed to lie in
rolling out the words, quite independently of their meaning, in a loud
and singsong voice alternating between a despairing wail and a
tender murmur, so that the wail fell quite at random on one word and
the murmur on another. This reading, as was always the case at Anna
Pavlovna's soirees, had a political significance. That evening she
expected several important personages who had to be made ashamed of
their visits to the French theater and aroused to a patriotic
temper. A good many people had already arrived, but Anna Pavlovna, not
yet seeing all those whom she wanted in her drawing room, did not
let the reading begin but wound up the springs of a general
conversation.

The news of the day in Petersburg was the illness of Countess
Bezukhova. She had fallen ill unexpectedly a few days previously,
had missed several gatherings of which she was usually ornament, and
was said to be receiving no one, and instead of the celebrated
Petersburg doctors who usually attended her had entrusted herself to
some Italian doctor who was treating her in some new and unusual way.

They all knew very well that the enchanting countess' illness
arose from an inconvenience resulting from marrying two husbands at
the same time, and that the Italian's cure consisted in removing
such inconvenience; but in Anna Pavlovna's presence no one dared to
think of this or even appear to know it.

"They say the poor countess is very ill. The doctor says it is
angina pectoris."

"Angina? Oh, that's a terrible illness!"

"They say that the rivals are reconciled, thanks to the angina..."
and the word angina was repeated with great satisfaction.

"The count is pathetic, they say. He cried like a child when the
doctor told him the case was dangerous."

"Oh, it would be a terrible loss, she is an enchanting woman."

"You are speaking of the poor countess?" said Anna Pavlovna,
coming up just then. "I sent to ask for news, and hear that she is a
little better. Oh, she is certainly the most charming woman in the
world," she went on, with a smile at her own enthusiasm. "We belong to
different camps, but that does not prevent my esteeming her as she
deserves. She is very unfortunate!" added Anna Pavlovna.

Supposing that by these words Anna Pavlovna was somewhat lifting the
veil from the secret of the countess' malady, an unwary young man
ventured to express surprise that well known doctors had not been
called in and that the countess was being attended by a charlatan
who might employ dangerous remedies.

"Your information maybe better than mine," Anna Pavlovna suddenly
and venomously retorted on the inexperienced young man, "but I know on
good authority that this doctor is a very learned and able man. He
is private physician to the Queen of Spain."

And having thus demolished the young man, Anna Pavlovna turned to
another group where Bilibin was talking about the Austrians: having
wrinkled up his face he was evidently preparing to smooth it out again
and utter one of his mots.

"I think it is delightful," he said, referring to a diplomatic
note that had been sent to Vienna with some Austrian banners
captured from the French by Wittgenstein, "the hero of Petropol" as he
was then called in Petersburg.

"What? What's that?" asked Anna Pavlovna, securing silence for the
mot, which she had heard before.

And Bilibin repeated the actual words of the diplomatic dispatch,
which he had himself composed.

"The Emperor returns these Austrian banners," said Bilibin,
"friendly banners gone astray and found on a wrong path," and his brow
became smooth again.

"Charming, charming!" observed Prince Vasili.

"The path to Warsaw, perhaps," Prince Hippolyte remarked loudly
and unexpectedly. Everybody looked at him, understanding what he
meant. Prince Hippolyte himself glanced around with amused surprise.
He knew no more than the others what his words meant. During his
diplomatic career he had more than once noticed that such utterances
were received as very witty, and at every opportunity he uttered in
that way the first words that entered his head. "It may turn out
very well," he thought, "but if not, they'll know how to arrange
matters." And really, during the awkward silence that ensued, that
insufficiently patriotic person entered whom Anna Pavlovna had been
waiting for and wished to convert, and she, smiling and shaking a
finger at Hippolyte, invited Prince Vasili to the table and bringing
him two candles and the manuscript begged him to begin. Everyone
became silent.


"Most Gracious Sovereign and Emperor!" Prince Vasili sternly
declaimed, looking round at his audience as if to inquire whether
anyone had anything to say to the contrary. But no one said
anything. "Moscow, our ancient capital, the New Jerusalem, receives
her Christ"--he placed a sudden emphasis on the word her--"as a mother
receives her zealous sons into her arms, and through the gathering
mists, foreseeing the brilliant glory of thy rule, sings in
exultation, 'Hosanna, blessed is he that cometh!'"


Prince Vasili pronounced these last words in a tearful voice.

Bilibin attentively examined his nails, and many of those present
appeared intimidated, as if asking in what they were to blame. Anna
Pavlovna whispered the next words in advance, like an old woman
muttering the prayer at Communion: "Let the bold and insolent
Goliath..." she whispered.

Prince Vasili continued.


"Let the bold and insolent Goliath from the borders of France
encompass the realms of Russia with death-bearing terrors; humble
Faith, the sling of the Russian David, shall suddenly smite his head
in his blood-thirsty pride. This icon of the Venerable Sergius, the
servant of God and zealous champion of old of our country's weal, is
offered to Your Imperial Majesty. I grieve that my waning strength
prevents rejoicing in the sight of your most gracious presence. I
raise fervent prayers to Heaven that the Almighty may exalt the race
of the just, and mercifully fulfill the desires of Your Majesty."


"What force! What a style!" was uttered in approval both of reader
and of author.

Animated by that address Anna Pavlovna's guests talked for a long
time of the state of the fatherland and offered various conjectures as
to the result of the battle to be fought in a few days.

"You will see," said Anna Pavlovna, "that tomorrow, on the Emperor's
birthday, we shall receive news. I have a favorable presentiment!"





CHAPTER II


Anna Pavlovna's presentiment was in fact fulfilled. Next day
during the service at the palace church in honor of the Emperor's
birthday, Prince Volkonski was called out of the church and received a
dispatch from Prince Kutuzov. It was Kutuzov's report, written from
Tatarinova on the day of the battle. Kutuzov wrote that the Russians
had not retreated a step, that the French losses were much heavier
than ours, and that he was writing in haste from the field of battle
before collecting full information. It followed that there must have
been a victory. And at once, without leaving the church, thanks were
rendered to the Creator for His help and for the victory.

Anna Pavlovna's presentiment was justified, and all that morning a
joyously festive mood reigned in the city. Everyone believed the
victory to have been complete, and some even spoke of Napoleon's
having been captured, of his deposition, and of the choice of a new
ruler for France.

It is very difficult for events to be reflected in their real
strength and completeness amid the conditions of court life and far
from the scene of action. General events involuntarily group
themselves around some particular incident. So now the courtiers'
pleasure was based as much on the fact that the news had arrived on
the Emperor's birthday as on the fact of the victory itself. It was
like a successfully arranged surprise. Mention was made in Kutuzov's
report of the Russian losses, among which figured the names of
Tuchkov, Bagration, and Kutaysov. In the Petersburg world this sad
side of the affair again involuntarily centered round a single
incident: Kutaysov's death. Everybody knew him, the Emperor liked him,
and he was young and interesting. That day everyone met with the
words:

"What a wonderful coincidence! Just during the service. But what a
loss Kutaysov is! How sorry I am!"

"What did I tell about Kutuzov?" Prince Vasili now said with a
prophet's pride. "I always said he was the only man capable of
defeating Napoleon."

But next day no news arrived from the army and the public mood
grew anxious. The courtiers suffered because of the suffering the
suspense occasioned the Emperor.

"Fancy the Emperor's position!" said they, and instead of
extolling Kutuzov as they had done the day before, they condemned
him as the cause of the Emperor's anxiety. That day Prince Vasili no
longer boasted of his protege Kutuzov, but remained silent when the
commander in chief was mentioned. Moreover, toward evening, as if
everything conspired to make Petersburg society anxious and uneasy,
a terrible piece of news was added. Countess Helene Bezukhova had
suddenly died of that terrible malady it had been so agreeable to
mention. Officially, at large gatherings, everyone said that
Countess Bezukhova had died of a terrible attack of angina pectoris,
but in intimate circles details were mentioned of how the private
physician of the Queen of Spain had prescribed small doses of a
certain drug to produce a certain effect; but Helene, tortured by
the fact that the old count suspected her and that her husband to whom
she had written (that wretched, profligate Pierre) had not replied,
had suddenly taken a very large dose of the drug, and had died in
agony before assistance could be rendered her. It was said that Prince
Vasili and the old count had turned upon the Italian, but the latter
had produced such letters from the unfortunate deceased that they
had immediately let the matter drop.

Talk in general centered round three melancholy facts: the Emperor's
lack of news, the loss of Kutuzov, and the death of Helene.

On the third day after Kutuzov's report a country gentleman
arrived from Moscow, and news of the surrender of Moscow to the French
spread through the whole town. This was terrible! What a position
for the Emperor to be in! Kutuzov was a traitor, and Prince Vasili
during the visits of condolence paid to him on the occasion of his
daughter's death said of Kutuzov, whom he had formerly praised (it was
excusable for him in his grief to forget what he had said), that it
was impossible to expect anything else from a blind and depraved old
man.

"I only wonder that the fate of Russia could have been entrusted
to such a man."

As long as this news remained unofficial it was possible to doubt
it, but the next day the following communication was received from
Count Rostopchin:


Prince Kutuzov's adjutant has brought me a letter in which he
demands police officers to guide the army to the Ryazan road. He
writes that he is regretfully abandoning Moscow. Sire! Kutuzov's
action decides the fate of the capital and of your empire! Russia will
shudder to learn of the abandonment of the city in which her greatness
is centered and in which lie the ashes of your ancestors! I shall
follow the army. I have had everything removed, and it only remains
for me to weep over the fate of my fatherland.


On receiving this dispatch the Emperor sent Prince Volkonski to
Kutuzov with the following rescript:


Prince Michael Ilarionovich! Since the twenty-ninth of August I have
received no communication from you, yet on the first of September I
received from the commander in chief of Moscow, via Yaroslavl, the sad
news that you, with the army, have decided to abandon Moscow. You
can yourself imagine the effect this news has had on me, and your
silence increases my astonishment. I am sending this by
Adjutant-General Prince Volkonski, to hear from you the situation of
the army and the reasons that have induced you to take this melancholy
decision.





CHAPTER III


Nine days after the abandonment of Moscow, a messenger from
Kutuzov reached Petersburg with the official announcement of that
event. This messenger was Michaud, a Frenchman who did not know
Russian, but who was quoique etranger, russe de coeur et d'ame,* as he
said of himself.


*Though a foreigner, Russian in heart and soul.


The Emperor at once received this messenger in his study at the
palace on Stone Island. Michaud, who had never seen Moscow before
the campaign and who did not know Russian, yet felt deeply moved (as
he wrote) when he appeared before notre tres gracieux souverain*
with the news of the burning of Moscow, dont les flammes eclairaient
sa route.*[2]


*Our most gracious sovereign.

*[2] Whose flames illumined his route.


Though the source of M. Michaud's chagrin must have been different
from that which caused Russians to grieve, he had such a sad face when
shown into the Emperor's study that the latter at once asked:

"Have you brought me sad news, Colonel?"

"Very sad, sire," replied Michaud, lowering his eyes with a sigh.
"The abandonment of Moscow."

"Have they surrendered my ancient capital without a battle?" asked
the Emperor quickly, his face suddenly flushing.

Michaud respectfully delivered the message Kutuzov had entrusted
to him, which was that it had been impossible to fight before
Moscow, and that as the only remaining choice was between losing the
army as well as Moscow, or losing Moscow alone, the field marshal
had to choose the latter.

The Emperor listened in silence, not looking at Michaud.

"Has the enemy entered the city?" he asked.

"Yes, sire, and Moscow is now in ashes. I left it all in flames,"
replied Michaud in a decided tone, but glancing at the Emperor he
was frightened by what he had done.

The Emperor began to breathe heavily and rapidly, his lower lip
trembled, and tears instantly appeared in his fine blue eyes.

But this lasted only a moment. He suddenly frowned, as if blaming
himself for his weakness, and raising his head addressed Michaud in
a firm voice:

"I see, Colonel, from all that is happening, that Providence
requires great sacrifices of us... I am ready to submit myself in
all things to His will; but tell me, Michaud, how did you leave the
army when it saw my ancient capital abandoned without a battle? Did
you not notice discouragement?..."

Seeing that his most gracious ruler was calm once more, Michaud also
grew calm, but was not immediately ready to reply to the Emperor's
direct and relevant question which required a direct answer.

"Sire, will you allow me to speak frankly as befits a loyal
soldier?" he asked to gain time.

"Colonel, I always require it," replied the Emperor. "Conceal
nothing from me, I wish to know absolutely how things are."

"Sire!" said Michaud with a subtle, scarcely perceptible smile on
his lips, having now prepared a well-phrased reply, "sire, I left
the whole army, from its chiefs to the lowest soldier, without
exception in desperate and agonized terror..."

"How is that?" the Emperor interrupted him, frowning sternly. "Would
misfortune make my Russians lose heart?... Never!"

Michaud had only waited for this to bring out the phrase he had
prepared.

"Sire," he said, with respectful playfulness, "they are only
afraid lest Your Majesty, in the goodness of your heart, should
allow yourself to be persuaded to make peace. They are burning for the
combat," declared this representative of the Russian nation, "and to
prove to Your Majesty by the sacrifice of their lives how devoted they
are...."

"Ah!" said the Emperor reassured, and with a kindly gleam in his
eyes, he patted Michaud on the shoulder. "You set me at ease,
Colonel."

He bent his head and was silent for some time.

"Well, then, go back to the army," he said, drawing himself up to
his full height and addressing Michaud with a gracious and majestic
gesture, "and tell our brave men and all my good subjects wherever you
go that when I have not a soldier left I shall put myself at the
head of my beloved nobility and my good peasants and so use the last
resources of my empire. It still offers me more than my enemies
suppose," said the Emperor growing more and more animated; "but should
it ever be ordained by Divine Providence," he continued, raising to
heaven his fine eyes shining with emotion, "that my dynasty should
cease to reign on the throne of my ancestors, then after exhausting
all the means at my command, I shall let my beard grow to here" (he
pointed halfway down his chest) "and go and eat potatoes with the
meanest of my peasants, rather than sign the disgrace of my country
and of my beloved people whose sacrifices I know how to appreciate."

Having uttered these words in an agitated voice the Emperor suddenly
turned away as if to hide from Michaud the tears that rose to his
eyes, and went to the further end of his study. Having stood there a
few moments, he strode back to Michaud and pressed his arm below the
elbow with a vigorous movement. The Emperor's mild and handsome face
was flushed and his eyes gleamed with resolution and anger.

"Colonel Michaud, do not forget what I say to you here, perhaps we
may recall it with pleasure someday... Napoleon or I," said the
Emperor, touching his breast. "We can no longer both reign together. I
have learned to know him, and he will not deceive me any more...."

And the Emperor paused, with a frown.

When he heard these words and saw the expression of firm
resolution in the Emperor's eyes, Michaud--quoique etranger, russe
de coeur et d'ame--at that solemn moment felt himself enraptured by
all that he had heard (as he used afterwards to say), and gave
expression to his own feelings and those of the Russian people whose
representative he considered himself to be, in the following words:

"Sire!" said he, "Your Majesty is at this moment signing the glory
of the nation and the salvation of Europe!"

With an inclination of the head the Emperor dismissed him.





CHAPTER IV


It is natural for us who were not living in those days to imagine
that when half Russia had been conquered and the inhabitants were
fleeing to distant provinces, and one levy after another was being
raised for the defense of the fatherland, all Russians from the
greatest to the least were solely engaged in sacrificing themselves,
saving their fatherland, or weeping over its downfall. The tales and
descriptions of that time without exception speak only of the
self-sacrifice, patriotic devotion, despair, grief, and the heroism of
the Russians. But it was not really so. It appears so to us because we
see only the general historic interest of that time and do not see all
the personal human interests that people had. Yet in reality those
personal interests of the moment so much transcend the general
interests that they always prevent the public interest from being felt
or even noticed. Most of the people at that time paid no attention
to the general progress of events but were guided only by their
private interests, and they were the very people whose activities at
that period were most useful.

Those who tried to understand the general course of events and to
take part in it by self-sacrifice and heroism were the most useless
members of society, they saw everything upside down, and all they
did for the common good turned out to be useless and foolish--like
Pierre's and Mamonov's regiments which looted Russian villages, and
the lint the young ladies prepared and that never reached the wounded,
and so on. Even those, fond of intellectual talk and of expressing
their feelings, who discussed Russia's position at the time
involuntarily introduced into their conversation either a shade of
pretense and falsehood or useless condemnation and anger directed
against people accused of actions no one could possibly be guilty
of. In historic events the rule forbidding us to eat of the fruit of
the Tree of Knowledge is specially applicable. Only unconscious action
bears fruit, and he who plays a part in an historic event never
understands its significance. If he tries to realize it his efforts
are fruitless.

The more closely a man was engaged in the events then taking place
in Russia the less did he realize their significance. In Petersburg
and in the provinces at a distance from Moscow, ladies, and
gentlemen in militia uniforms, wept for Russia and its ancient capital
and talked of self-sacrifice and so on; but in the army which
retired beyond Moscow there was little talk or thought of Moscow,
and when they caught sight of its burned ruins no one swore to be
avenged on the French, but they thought about their next pay, their
next quarters, of Matreshka the vivandiere, and like matters.

As the war had caught him in the service, Nicholas Rostov took a
close and prolonged part in the defense of his country, but did so
casually, without any aim at self-sacrifice, and he therefore looked
at what was going on in Russia without despair and without dismally
racking his brains over it. Had he been asked what he thought of the
state of Russia, he would have said that it was not his business to
think about it, that Kutuzov and others were there for that purpose,
but that he had heard that the regiments were to be made up to their
full strength, that fighting would probably go on for a long time yet,
and that things being so it was quite likely he might be in command of
a regiment in a couple of years' time.

As he looked at the matter in this way, he learned that he was being
sent to Voronezh to buy remounts for his division, not only without
regret at being prevented from taking part in the coming battle, but
with the greatest pleasure--which he did not conceal and which his
comrades fully understood.

A few days before the battle of Borodino, Nicholas received the
necessary money and warrants, and having sent some hussars on in
advance, he set out with post horses for Voronezh.

Only a man who has experienced it--that is, has passed some months
continuously in an atmosphere of campaigning and war--can understand
the delight Nicholas felt when he escaped from the region covered by
the army's foraging operations, provision trains, and hospitals. When-
free from soldiers, wagons, and the filthy traces of a camp--he saw
villages with peasants and peasant women, gentlemen's country
houses, fields where cattle were grazing, posthouses with
stationmasters asleep in them, he rejoiced as though seeing all this
for the first time. What for a long while specially surprised and
delighted him were the women, young and healthy, without a dozen
officers making up to each of them; women, too, who were pleased and
flattered that a passing officer should joke with them.

In the highest spirits Nicholas arrived at night at a hotel in
Voronezh, ordered things he had long been deprived of in camp, and
next day, very clean-shaven and in a full-dress uniform he had not
worn for a long time, went to present himself to the authorities.

The commander of the militia was a civilian general, an old man
who was evidently pleased with his military designation and rank. He
received Nicholas brusquely (imagining this to be characteristically
military) and questioned him with an important air, as if
considering the general progress of affairs and approving and
disapproving with full right to do so. Nicholas was in such good
spirits that this merely amused him.

From the commander of the militia he drove to the governor. The
governor was a brisk little man, very simple and affable. He indicated
the stud farms at which Nicholas might procure horses, recommended
to him a horse dealer in the town and a landowner fourteen miles out
of town who had the best horses, and promised to assist him in every
way.

"You are Count Ilya Rostov's son? My wife was a great friend of your
mother's. We are at home on Thursdays--today is Thursday, so please
come and see us quite informally," said the governor, taking leave
of him.

Immediately on leaving the governor's, Nicholas hired post horses
and, taking his squadron quartermaster with him, drove at a gallop
to the landowner, fourteen miles away, who had the stud. Everything
seemed to him pleasant and easy during that first part of his stay
in Voronezh and, as usually happens when a man is in a pleasant
state of mind, everything went well and easily.

The landowner to whom Nicholas went was a bachelor, an old
cavalryman, a horse fancier, a sportsman, the possessor of some
century-old brandy and some old Hungarian wine, who had a snuggery
where he smoked, and who owned some splendid horses.

In very few words Nicholas bought seventeen picked stallions for six
thousand rubles--to serve, as he said, as samples of his remounts.
After dining and taking rather too much of the Hungarian wine,
Nicholas--having exchanged kisses with the landowner, with whom he was
already on the friendliest terms--galloped back over abominable roads,
in the brightest frame of mind, continually urging on the driver so as
to be in time for the governor's party.

When he had changed, poured water over his head, and scented
himself, Nicholas arrived at the governor's rather late, but with
the phrase "better late than never" on his lips.

It was not a ball, nor had dancing been announced, but everyone knew
that Catherine Petrovna would play valses and the ecossaise on the
clavichord and that there would be dancing, and so everyone had come
as to a ball.

Provincial life in 1812 went on very much as usual, but with this
difference, that it was livelier in the towns in consequence of the
arrival of many wealthy families from Moscow, and as in everything
that went on in Russia at that time a special recklessness was
noticeable, an "in for a penny, in for a pound--who cares?" spirit,
and the inevitable small talk, instead of turning on the weather and
mutual acquaintances, now turned on Moscow, the army, and Napoleon.

The society gathered together at the governor's was the best in
Voronezh.

There were a great many ladies and some of Nicholas' Moscow
acquaintances, but there were no men who could at all vie with the
cavalier of St. George, the hussar remount officer, the good-natured
and well-bred Count Rostov. Among the men was an Italian prisoner,
an officer of the French army; and Nicholas felt that the presence
of that prisoner enhanced his own importance as a Russian hero. The
Italian was, as it were, a war trophy. Nicholas felt this, it seemed
to him that everyone regarded the Italian in the same light, and he
treated him cordially though with dignity and restraint.

As soon as Nicholas entered in his hussar uniform, diffusing
around him a fragrance of perfume and wine, and had uttered the
words "better late than never" and heard them repeated several times
by others, people clustered around him; all eyes turned on him, and he
felt at once that he had entered into his proper position in the
province--that of a universal favorite: a very pleasant position,
and intoxicatingly so after his long privations. At posting
stations, at inns, and in the landowner's snuggery, maidservants had
been flattered by his notice, and here too at the governor's party
there were (as it seemed to Nicholas) an inexhaustible number of
pretty young women, married and unmarried, impatiently awaiting his
notice. The women and girls flirted with him and, from the first
day, the people concerned themselves to get this fine young
daredevil of an hussar married and settled down. Among these was the
governor's wife herself, who welcomed Rostov as a near relative and
called him "Nicholas."

Catherine Petrovna did actually play valses and the ecossaise, and
dancing began in which Nicholas still further captivated the
provincial society by his agility. His particularly free manner of
dancing even surprised them all. Nicholas was himself rather surprised
at the way he danced that evening. He had never danced like that in
Moscow and would even have considered such a very free and easy manner
improper and in bad form, but here he felt it incumbent on him to
astonish them all by something unusual, something they would have to
accept as the regular thing in the capital though new to them in the
provinces.

All the evening Nicholas paid attention to a blue-eyed, plump and
pleasing little blonde, the wife of one of the provincial officials.
With the naive conviction of young men in a merry mood that other
men's wives were created for them, Rostov did not leave the lady's
side and treated her husband in a friendly and conspiratorial style,
as if, without speaking of it, they knew how capitally Nicholas and
the lady would get on together. The husband, however, did not seem
to share that conviction and tried to behave morosely with Rostov. But
the latter's good-natured naivete was so boundless that sometimes even
he involuntarily yielded to Nicholas' good humor. Toward the end of
the evening, however, as the wife's face grew more flushed and
animated, the husband's became more and more melancholy and solemn, as
though there were but a given amount of animation between them and
as the wife's share increased the husband's diminished.





CHAPTER V


Nicholas sat leaning slightly forward in an armchair, bending
closely over the blonde lady and paying her mythological compliments
with a smile that never left his face. Jauntily shifting the
position of his legs in their tight riding breeches, diffusing an odor
of perfume, and admiring his partner, himself, and the fine outlines
of his legs in their well-fitting Hessian boots, Nicholas told the
blonde lady that he wished to run away with a certain lady here in
Voronezh.

"Which lady?"

"A charming lady, a divine one. Her eyes" (Nicholas looked at his
partner) "are blue, her mouth coral and ivory; her figure" (he glanced
at her shoulders) "like Diana's...."

The husband came up and sullenly asked his wife what she was talking
about.

"Ah, Nikita Ivanych!" cried Nicholas, rising politely, and as if
wishing Nikita Ivanych to share his joke, he began to tell him of
his intention to elope with a blonde lady.

The husband smiled gloomily, the wife gaily. The governor's
good-natured wife came up with a look of disapproval.

"Anna Ignatyevna wants to see you, Nicholas," said she,
pronouncing the name so that Nicholas at once understood that Anna
Ignatyevna was a very important person. "Come, Nicholas! You know
you let me call you so?"

"Oh, yes, Aunt. Who is she?"

"Anna Ignatyevna Malvintseva. She has heard from her niece how you
rescued her... Can you guess?"

"I rescued such a lot of them!" said Nicholas.

"Her niece, Princess Bolkonskaya. She is here in Voronezh with her
aunt. Oho! How you blush. Why, are...?"

"Not a bit! Please don't, Aunt!"

"Very well, very well!... Oh, what a fellow you are!"

The governor's wife led him up to a tall and very stout old lady
with a blue headdress, who had just finished her game of cards with
the most important personages of the town. This was Malvintseva,
Princess Mary's aunt on her mother's side, a rich, childless widow who
always lived in Voronezh. When Rostov approached her she was
standing settling up for the game. She looked at him and, screwing
up her eyes sternly, continued to upbraid the general who had won from
her.

"Very pleased, mon cher," she then said, holding out her hand to
Nicholas. "Pray come and see me."

After a few words about Princess Mary and her late father, whom
Malvintseva had evidently not liked, and having asked what Nicholas
knew of Prince Andrew, who also was evidently no favorite of hers, the
important old lady dismissed Nicholas after repeating her invitation
to come to see her.

Nicholas promised to come and blushed again as he bowed. At the
mention of Princess Mary he experienced a feeling of shyness and
even of fear, which he himself did not understand.

When he had parted from Malvintseva Nicholas wished to return to the
dancing, but the governor's little wife placed her plump hand on his
sleeve and, saying that she wanted to have a talk with him, led him to
her sitting room, from which those who were there immediately withdrew
so as not to be in her way.

"Do you know, dear boy," began the governor's wife with a serious
expression on her kind little face, "that really would be the match
for you: would you like me to arrange it?"

"Whom do you mean, Aunt?" asked Nicholas.

"I will make a match for you with the princess. Catherine Petrovna
speaks of Lily, but I say, no--the princess! Do you want me to do
it? I am sure your mother will be grateful to me. What a charming girl
she is, really! And she is not at all so plain, either."

"Not at all," replied Nicholas as if offended at the idea. "As
befits a soldier, Aunt, I don't force myself on anyone or refuse
anything," he said before he had time to consider what he was saying.

"Well then, remember, this is not a joke!"

"Of course not!"

"Yes, yes," the governor's wife said as if talking to herself. "But,
my dear boy, among other things you are too attentive to the other,
the blonde. One is sorry for the husband, really...."

"Oh no, we are good friends with him," said Nicholas in the
simplicity of his heart; it did not enter his head that a pastime so
pleasant to himself might not be pleasant to someone else.

"But what nonsense I have been saying to the governor's wife!"
thought Nicholas suddenly at supper. "She will really begin to arrange
a match... and Soyna...?" And on taking leave of the governor's
wife, when she again smilingly said to him, "Well then, remember!"
he drew her aside.

"But see here, to tell the truth, Aunt..."

"What is it, my dear? Come, let's sit down here," said she.

Nicholas suddenly felt a desire and need to tell his most intimate
thoughts (which he would not have told to his mother, his sister, or
his friend) to this woman who was almost a stranger. When he
afterwards recalled that impulse to unsolicited and inexplicable
frankness which had very important results for him, it seemed to
him--as it seems to everyone in such cases--that it was merely some
silly whim that seized him: yet that burst of frankness, together with
other trifling events, had immense consequences for him and for all
his family.

"You see, Aunt, Mamma has long wanted me to marry an heiress, but
the very idea of marrying for money is repugnant to me."

"Oh yes, I understand," said the governor's wife.

"But Princess Bolkonskaya--that's another matter. I will tell you
the truth. In the first place I like her very much, I feel drawn to
her; and then, after I met her under such circumstances--so strangely,
the idea often occurred to me: 'This is fate.' Especially if you
remember that Mamma had long been thinking of it; but I had never
happened to meet her before, somehow it had always happened that we
did not meet. And as long as my sister Natasha was engaged to her
brother it was of course out of the question for me to think of
marrying her. And it must needs happen that I should meet her just
when Natasha's engagement had been broken off... and then
everything... So you see... I never told this to anyone and never
will, only to you."

The governor's wife pressed his elbow gratefully.

"You know Sonya, my cousin? I love her, and promised to marry her,
and will do so.... So you see there can be no question about-" said
Nicholas incoherently and blushing.

"My dear boy, what a way to look at it! You know Sonya has nothing
and you yourself say your Papa's affairs are in a very bad way. And
what about your mother? It would kill her, that's one thing. And
what sort of life would it be for Sonya--if she's a girl with a heart?
Your mother in despair, and you all ruined.... No, my dear, you and
Sonya ought to understand that."

Nicholas remained silent. It comforted him to hear these arguments.

"All the same, Aunt, it is impossible," he rejoined with a sigh,
after a short pause. "Besides, would the princess have me? And
besides, she is now in mourning. How can one think of it!"

"But you don't suppose I'm going to get you married at once? There
is always a right way of doing things," replied the governor's wife.

"What a matchmaker you are, Aunt..." said Nicholas, kissing her
plump little hand.





CHAPTER VI


On reaching Moscow after her meeting with Rostov, Princess Mary
had found her nephew there with his tutor, and a letter from Prince
Andrew giving her instructions how to get to her Aunt Malvintseva at
Voronezh. That feeling akin to temptation which had tormented her
during her father's illness, since his death, and especially since her
meeting with Rostov was smothered by arrangements for the journey,
anxiety about her brother, settling in a new house, meeting new
people, and attending to her nephew's education. She was sad. Now,
after a month passed in quiet surroundings, she felt more and more
deeply the loss of her father which was associated in her mind with
the ruin of Russia. She was agitated and incessantly tortured by the
thought of the dangers to which her brother, the only intimate
person now remaining to her, was exposed. She was worried too about
her nephew's education for which she had always felt herself
incompetent, but in the depths of her soul she felt at peace--a
peace arising from consciousness of having stifled those personal
dreams and hopes that had been on the point of awakening within her
and were related to her meeting with Rostov.

The day after her party the governor's wife came to see
Malvintseva and, after discussing her plan with the aunt, remarked
that though under present circumstances a formal betrothal was, of
course, not to be thought of, all the same the young people might be
brought together and could get to know one another. Malvintseva
expressed approval, and the governor's wife began to speak of Rostov
in Mary's presence, praising him and telling how he had blushed when
Princess Mary's name was mentioned. But Princess Mary experienced a
painful rather than a joyful feeling--her mental tranquillity was
destroyed, and desires, doubts, self-reproach, and hopes reawoke.

During the two days that elapsed before Rostov called, Princess Mary
continually thought of how she ought to behave to him. First she
decided not to come to the drawing room when he called to see her
aunt--that it would not be proper for her, in her deep mourning, to
receive visitors; then she thought this would be rude after what he
had done for her; then it occurred to her that her aunt and the
governor's wife had intentions concerning herself and Rostov--their
looks and words at times seemed to confirm this supposition--then
she told herself that only she, with her sinful nature, could think
this of them: they could not forget that situated as she was, while
still wearing deep mourning, such matchmaking would be an insult to
her and to her father's memory. Assuming that she did go down to see
him, Princess Mary imagined the words he would say to her and what she
would say to him, and these words sometimes seemed undeservedly cold
and then to mean too much. More than anything she feared lest the
confusion she felt might overwhelm her and betray her as soon as she
saw him.

But when on Sunday after church the footman announced in the drawing
room that Count Rostov had called, the princess showed no confusion,
only a slight blush suffused her cheeks and her eyes lit up with a new
and radiant light.

"You have met him, Aunt?" said she in a calm voice, unable herself
to understand that she could be outwardly so calm and natural.

When Rostov entered the room, the princess dropped her eyes for an
instant, as if to give the visitor time to greet her aunt, and then
just as Nicholas turned to her she raised her head and met his look
with shining eyes. With a movement full of dignity and grace she
half rose with a smile of pleasure, held out her slender, delicate
hand to him, and began to speak in a voice in which for the first time
new deep womanly notes vibrated. Mademoiselle Bourienne, who was in
the drawing room, looked at Princess Mary in bewildered surprise.
Herself a consummate coquette, she could not have maneuvered better on
meeting a man she wished to attract.

"Either black is particularly becoming to her or she really has
greatly improved without my having noticed it. And above all, what
tact and grace!" thought Mademoiselle Bourienne.

Had Princess Mary been capable of reflection at that moment, she
would have been more surprised than Mademoiselle Bourienne at the
change that had taken place in herself. From the moment she recognized
that dear, loved face, a new life force took possession of her and
compelled her to speak and act apart from her own will. From the
time Rostov entered, her face became suddenly transformed. It was as
if a light had been kindled in a carved and painted lantern and the
intricate, skillful, artistic work on its sides, that previously
seemed dark, coarse, and meaningless, was suddenly shown up in
unexpected and striking beauty. For the first time all that pure,
spiritual, inward travail through which she had lived appeared on
the surface. All her inward labor, her dissatisfaction with herself,
her sufferings, her strivings after goodness, her meekness, love,
and self-sacrifice--all this now shone in those radiant eyes, in her
delicate smile, and in every trait of her gentle face.

Rostov saw all this as clearly as if he had known her whole life. He
felt that the being before him was quite different from, and better
than, anyone he had met before, and above all better than himself.

Their conversation was very simple and unimportant. They spoke of
the war, and like everyone else unconsciously exaggerated their sorrow
about it; they spoke of their last meeting--Nicholas trying to
change the subject--they talked of the governor's kind wife, of
Nicholas' relations, and of Princess Mary's.

She did not talk about her brother, diverting the conversation as
soon as her aunt mentioned Andrew. Evidently she could speak of
Russia's misfortunes with a certain artificiality, but her brother was
too near her heart and she neither could nor would speak lightly of
him. Nicholas noticed this, as he noticed every shade of Princess
Mary's character with an observation unusual to him, and everything
confirmed his conviction that she was a quite unusual and
extraordinary being. Nicholas blushed and was confused when people
spoke to him about the princess (as she did when he was mentioned) and
even when he thought of her, but in her presence he felt quite at
ease, and said not at all what he had prepared, but what, quite
appropriately, occurred to him at the moment.

When a pause occurred during his short visit, Nicholas, as is
usual when there are children, turned to Prince Andrew's little son,
caressing him and asking whether he would like to be an hussar. He
took the boy on his knee, played with him, and looked round at
Princess Mary. With a softened, happy, timid look she watched the
boy she loved in the arms of the man she loved. Nicholas also
noticed that look and, as if understanding it, flushed with pleasure
and began to kiss the boy with good natured playfulness.

As she was in mourning Princess Mary did not go out into society,
and Nicholas did not think it the proper thing to visit her again; but
all the same the governor's wife went on with her matchmaking, passing
on to Nicholas the flattering things Princess Mary said of him and
vice versa, and insisting on his declaring himself to Princess Mary.
For this purpose she arranged a meeting between the young people at
the bishop's house before Mass.

Though Rostov told the governeor's wife that he would not make any
declaration to Princess Mary, he promised to go.

As at Tilsit Rostov had not allowed himself to doubt that what
everybody considered right was right, so now, after a short but
sincere struggle between his effort to arrange his life by his own
sense of justice, and in obedient submission to circumstances, he
chose the latter and yielded to the power he felt irresistibly
carrying him he knew not where. He knew that after his promise to
Sonya it would be what he deemed base to declare his feelings to
Princess Mary. And he knew that he would never act basely. But he also
knew (or rather felt at the bottom of his heart) that by resigning
himself now to the force of circumstances and to those who were
guiding him, he was not only doing nothing wrong, but was doing
something very important--more important than anything he had ever
done in his life.

After meeting Princess Mary, though the course of his life went on
externally as before, all his former amusements lost their charm for
him and he often thought about her. But he never thought about her
as he had thought of all the young ladies without exception whom he
had met in society, nor as he had for a long time, and at one time
rapturously, thought about Sonya. He had pictured each of those
young ladies as almost all honest-hearted young men do, that is, as
a possible wife, adapting her in his imagination to all the conditions
of married life: a white dressing gown, his wife at the tea table, his
wife's carriage, little ones, Mamma and Papa, their relations to
her, and so on--and these pictures of the future had given him
pleasure. But with Princess Mary, to whom they were trying to get
him engaged, he could never picture anything of future married life.
If he tried, his pictures seemed incongruous and false. It made him
afraid.





CHAPTER VII


The dreadful news of the battle of Borodino, of our losses in killed
and wounded, and the still more terrible news of the loss of Moscow
reached Voronezh in the middle of September. Princess Mary, having
learned of her brother's wound only from the Gazette and having no
definite news of him, prepared (so Nicholas heard, he had not seen her
again himself) to set off in search of Prince Andrew.

When he received the news of the battle of Borodino and the
abandonment of Moscow, Rostov was not seized with despair, anger,
the desire for vengeance, or any feeling of that kind, but
everything in Voronezh suddenly seemed to him dull and tiresome, and
he experienced an indefinite feeling of shame and awkwardness. The
conversations he heard seemed to him insincere; he did not know how to
judge all these affairs and felt that only in the regiment would
everything again become clear to him. He made haste to finish buying
the horses, and often became unreasonably angry with his servant and
squadron quartermaster.

A few days before his departure a special thanksgiving, at which
Nicholas was present, was held in the cathedral for the Russian
victory. He stood a little behind the governor and held himself with
military decorum through the service, meditating on a great variety of
subjects. When the service was over the governor's wife beckoned him
to her.

"Have you seen the princess?" she asked, indicating with a
movement of her head a lady standing on the opposite side, beyond
the choir.

Nicholas immediately recognized Princess Mary not so much by the
profile he saw under her bonnet as by the feeling of solicitude,
timidity, and pity that immediately overcame him. Princess Mary,
evidently engrossed by her thoughts, was crossing herself for the last
time before leaving the church.

Nicholas looked at her face with surprise. It was the same face he
had seen before, there was the same general expression of refined,
inner, spiritual labor, but now it was quite differently lit up. There
was a pathetic expression of sorrow, prayer, and hope in it. As had
occurred before when she was present, Nicholas went up to her
without waiting to be prompted by the governor's wife and not asking
himself whether or not it was right and proper to address her here
in church, and told her he had heard of her trouble and sympathized
with his whole soul. As soon as she heard his voice a vivid glow
kindled in her face, lighting up both her sorrow and her joy.

"There is one thing I wanted to tell you, Princess," said Rostov.
"It is that if your brother, Prince Andrew Nikolievich, were not
living, it would have been at once announced in the Gazette, as he
is a colonel."

The princess looked at him, not grasping what he was saying, but
cheered by the expression of regretful sympathy on his face.

"And I have known so many cases of a splinter wound" (the Gazette
said it was a shell) "either proving fatal at once or being very
slight," continued Nicholas. "We must hope for the best, and I am
sure..."

Princess Mary interrupted him.

"Oh, that would be so dread..." she began and, prevented by
agitation from finishing, she bent her head with a movement as
graceful as everything she did in his presence and, looking up at
him gratefully, went out, following her aunt.

That evening Nicholas did not go out, but stayed at home to settle
some accounts with the horse dealers. When he had finished that
business it was already too late to go anywhere but still too early to
go to bed, and for a long time he paced up and down the room,
reflecting on his life, a thing he rarely did.

Princess Mary had made an agreeable impression on him when he had
met her in Smolensk province. His having encountered her in such
exceptional circumstances, and his mother having at one time mentioned
her to him as a good match, had drawn his particular attention to her.
When he met her again in Voronezh the impression she made on him was
not merely pleasing but powerful. Nicholas had been struck by the
peculiar moral beauty he observed in her at this time. He was,
however, preparing to go away and it had not entered his head to
regret that he was thus depriving himself of chances of meeting her.
But that day's encounter in church had, he felt, sunk deeper than
was desirable for his peace of mind. That pale, sad, refined face,
that radiant look, those gentle graceful gestures, and especially
the deep and tender sorrow expressed in all her features agitated
him and evoked his sympathy. In men Rostov could not bear to see the
expression of a higher spiritual life (that was why he did not like
Prince Andrew) and he referred to it contemptuously as philosophy
and dreaminess, but in Princess Mary that very sorrow which revealed
the depth of a whole spiritual world foreign to him was an
irresistible attraction.

"She must be a wonderful woman. A real angel!" he said to himself.
"Why am I not free? Why was I in such a hurry with Sonya?" And he
involuntarily compared the two: the lack of spirituality in the one
and the abundance of it in the other--a spirituality he himself lacked
and therefore valued most highly. He tried to picture what would
happen were he free. How he would propose to her and how she would
become his wife. But no, he could not imagine that. He felt awed,
and no clear picture presented itself to his mind. He had long ago
pictured to himself a future with Sonya, and that was all clear and
simple just because it had all been thought out and he knew all
there was in Sonya, but it was impossible to picture a future with
Princess Mary, because he did not understand her but simply loved her.

Reveries about Sonya had had something merry and playful in them,
but to dream of Princess Mary was always difficult and a little
frightening.

"How she prayed!" he thought. "It was plain that her whole soul
was in her prayer. Yes, that was the prayer that moves mountains,
and I am sure her prayer will be answered. Why don't I pray for what I
want?" he suddenly thought. "What do I want? To be free, released from
Sonya... She was right," he thought, remembering what the governor's
wife had said: "Nothing but misfortune can come of marrying Sonya.
Muddles, grief for Mamma... business difficulties... muddles, terrible
muddles! Besides, I don't love her--not as I should. O, God! release
me from this dreadful, inextricable position!" he suddenly began to
pray. "Yes, prayer can move mountains, but one must have faith and not
pray as Natasha and I used to as children, that the snow might turn
into sugar--and then run out into the yard to see whether it had
done so. No, but I am not praying for trifles now," he thought as he
put his pipe down in a corner, and folding his hands placed himself
before the icon. Softened by memories of Princess Mary he began to
pray as he had not done for a long time. Tears were in his eyes and in
his throat when the door opened and Lavrushka came in with some
papers.

"Blockhead! Why do you come in without being called?" cried
Nicholas, quickly changing his attitude.

"From the governor," said Lavrushka in a sleepy voice. "A courier
has arrived and there's a letter for you."

"Well, all right, thanks. You can go!"

Nicholas took the two letters, one of which was from his mother
and the other from Sonya. He recognized them by the handwriting and
opened Sonya's first. He had read only a few lines when he turned pale
and his eyes opened wide with fear and joy.

"No, it's not possible!" he cried aloud.

Unable to sit still he paced up and down the room holding the letter
and reading it. He glanced through it, then read it again, and then
again, and standing still in the middle of the room he raised his
shoulders, stretching out his hands, with his mouth wide open and
his eyes fixed. What he had just been praying for with confidence that
God would hear him had come to pass; but Nicholas was as much
astonished as if it were something extraordinary and unexpected, and
as if the very fact that it had happened so quickly proved that it had
not come from God to whom he had prayed, but by some ordinary
coincidence.

This unexpected and, as it seemed to Nicholas, quite voluntary
letter from Sonya freed him from the knot that fettered him and from
which there had seemed no escape. She wrote that the last
unfortunate events--the loss of almost the whole of the Rostovs'
Moscow property--and the countess' repeatedly expressed wish that
Nicholas should marry Princess Bolkonskaya, together with his
silence and coldness of late, had all combined to make her decide to
release him from his promise and set him completely free.


It would be too painful to me to think that I might be a cause of
sorrow or discord in the family that has been so good to me (she
wrote), and my love has no aim but the happiness of those I love;
so, Nicholas, I beg you to consider yourself free, and to be assured
that, in spite of everything, no one can love you more than does

Your Sonya


Both letters were written from Troitsa. The other, from the
countess, described their last days in Moscow, their departure, the
fire, and the destruction of all their property. In this letter the
countess also mentioned that Prince Andrew was among the wounded
traveling with them; his state was very critical, but the doctor
said there was now more hope. Sonya and Natasha were nursing him.

Next day Nicholas took his mother's letter and went to see
Princess Mary. Neither he nor she said a word about what "Natasha
nursing him" might mean, but thanks to this letter Nicholas suddenly
became almost as intimate with the princess as if they were relations.

The following day he saw Princess Mary off on her journey to
Yaroslavl, and a few days later left to rejoin his regiment.





CHAPTER VIII


Sonya's letter written from Troitsa, which had come as an answer
to Nicholas' prayer, was prompted by this: the thought of getting
Nicholas married to an heiress occupied the old countess' mind more
and more. She knew that Sonya was the chief obstacle to this
happening, and Sonya's life in the countess' house had grown harder
and harder, especially after they had received a letter from
Nicholas telling of his meeting with Princess Mary in Bogucharovo. The
countess let no occasion slip of making humiliating or cruel allusions
to Sonya.

But a few days before they left Moscow, moved and excited by all
that was going on, she called Sonya to her and, instead of reproaching
and making demands on her, tearfully implored her to sacrifice herself
and repay all that the family had done for her by breaking off her
engagement with Nicholas.

"I shall not be at peace till you promise me this."

Sonya burst into hysterical tears and replied through her sobs
that she would do anything and was prepared for anything, but gave
no actual promise and could not bring herself to decide to do what was
demanded of her. She must sacrifice herself for the family that had
reared and brought her up. To sacrifice herself for others was Sonya's
habit. Her position in the house was such that only by sacrifice could
she show her worth, and she was accustomed to this and loved doing it.
But in all her former acts of self-sacrifice she had been happily
conscious that they raised her in her own esteem and in that of
others, and so made her more worthy of Nicholas whom she loved more
than anything in the world. But now they wanted her to sacrifice the
very thing that constituted the whole reward for her self-sacrifice
and the whole meaning of her life. And for the first time she felt
bitterness against those who had been her benefactors only to
torture her the more painfully; she felt jealous of Natasha who had
never experienced anything of this sort, had never needed to sacrifice
herself, but made others sacrifice themselves for her and yet was
beloved by everybody. And for the first time Sonya felt that out of
her pure, quiet love for Nicholas a passionate feeling was beginning
to grow up which was stronger than principle, virtue, or religion.
Under the influence of this feeling Sonya, whose life of dependence
had taught her involuntarily to be secretive, having answered the
countess in vague general terms, avoided talking with her and resolved
to wait till she should see Nicholas, not in order to set him free but
on the contrary at that meeting to bind him to her forever.

The bustle and terror of the Rostovs' last days in Moscow stifled
the gloomy thoughts that oppressed Sonya. She was glad to find
escape from them in practical activity. But when she heard of Prince
Andrew's presence in their house, despite her sincere pity for him and
for Natasha, she was seized by a joyful and superstitious feeling that
God did not intend her to be separated from Nicholas. She knew that
Natasha loved no one but Prince Andrew and had never ceased to love
him. She knew that being thrown together again under such terrible
circumstances they would again fall in love with one another, and that
Nicholas would then not be able to marry Princess Mary as they would
be within the prohibited degrees of affinity. Despite all the terror
of what had happened during those last days and during the first
days of their journey, this feeling that Providence was intervening in
her personal affairs cheered Sonya.

At the Troitsa monastery the Rostovs first broke their journey for a
whole day.

Three large rooms were assigned to them in the monastery hostelry,
one of which was occupied by Prince Andrew. The wounded man was much
better that day and Natasha was sitting with him. In the next room sat
the count and countess respectfully conversing with the prior, who was
calling on them as old acquaintances and benefactors of the monastery.
Sonya was there too, tormented by curiosity as to what Prince Andrew
and Natasha were talking about. She heard the sound of their voices
through the door. That door opened and Natasha came out, looking
excited. Not noticing the monk, who had risen to greet her and was
drawing back the wide sleeve on his right arm, she went up to Sonya
and took her hand.

"Natasha, what are you about? Come here!" said the countess.

Natasha went up to the monk for his blessing, and advised her to
pray for aid to God and His saint.

As soon as the prior withdrew, Natasha took her friend by the hand
and went with her into the unoccupied room.

"Sonya, will he live?" she asked. "Sonya, how happy I am, and how
unhappy!... Sonya, dovey, everything is as it used to be. If only he
lives! He cannot... because... because... of" and Natasha burst into
tears.

"Yes! I knew it! Thank God!" murmured Sonya. "He will live."

Sonya was not less agitated than her friend by the latter's fear and
grief and by her own personal feelings which she shared with no one.
Sobbing, she kissed and comforted Natasha. "If only he lives!" she
thought. Having wept, talked, and wiped away their tears, the two
friends went together to Prince Andrew's door. Natasha opened it
cautiously and glanced into the room, Sonya standing beside her at the
half-open door.

Prince Andrew was lying raised high on three pillows. His pale
face was calm, his eyes closed, and they could see his regular
breathing.

"O, Natasha!" Sonya suddenly almost screamed, catching her
companion's arm and stepping back from the door.

"What? What is it?" asked Natasha.

"It's that, that..." said Sonya, with a white face and trembling
lips.

Natasha softly closed the door and went with Sonya to the window,
not yet understanding what the latter was telling her.

"You remember," said Sonya with a solemn and frightened
expression. "You remember when I looked in the mirror for you... at
Otradnoe at Christmas? Do you remember what I saw?"

"Yes, yes!" cried Natasha opening her eyes wide, and vaguely
recalling that Sonya had told her something about Prince Andrew whom
she had seen lying down.

"You remember?" Sonya went on. "I saw it then and told everybody,
you and Dunyasha. I saw him lying on a bed," said she, making a
gesture with her hand and a lifted finger at each detail, "and that he
had his eyes closed and was covered just with a pink quilt, and that
his hands were folded," she concluded, convincing herself that the
details she had just seen were exactly what she had seen in the
mirror.

She had in fact seen nothing then but had mentioned the first
thing that came into her head, but what she had invented then seemed
to her now as real as any other recollection. She not only
remembered what she had then said--that he turned to look at her and
smiled and was covered with something red--but was firmly convinced
that she had then seen and said that he was covered with a pink
quilt and that his eyes were closed.

"Yes, yes, it really was pink!" cried Natasha, who now thought she
too remembered the word pink being used, and saw in this the most
extraordinary and mysterious part of the prediction.

"But what does it mean?" she added meditatively.

"Oh, I don't know, it is all so strange," replied Sonya, clutching
at her head.

A few minutes later Prince Andrew rang and Natasha went to him,
but Sonya, feeling unusually excited and touched, remained at the
window thinking about the strangeness of what had occurred.


They had an opportunity that day to send letters to the army, and
the countess was writing to her son.

"Sonya!" said the countess, raising her eyes from her letter as
her niece passed, "Sonya, won't you write to Nicholas?" She spoke in a
soft, tremulous voice, and in the weary eyes that looked over her
spectacles Sonya read all that the countess meant to convey with these
words. Those eyes expressed entreaty, shame at having to ask, fear
of a refusal, and readiness for relentless hatred in case of such
refusal.

Sonya went up to the countess and, kneeling down, kissed her hand.

"Yes, Mamma, I will write," said she.

Sonya was softened, excited, and touched by all that had occurred
that day, especially by the mysterious fulfillment she had just seen
of her vision. Now that she knew that the renewal of Natasha's
relations with Prince Andrew would prevent Nicholas from marrying
Princess Mary, she was joyfully conscious of a return of that
self-sacrificing spirit in which she was accustomed to live and
loved to live. So with a joyful consciousness of performing a
magnanimous deed--interrupted several times by the tears that dimmed
her velvety black eyes--she wrote that touching letter the arrival
of which had so amazed Nicholas.





CHAPTER IX


The officer and soldiers who had arrested Pierre treated him with
hostility but yet with respect, in the guardhouse to which he was
taken. In their attitude toward him could still be felt both
uncertainty as to who he might be--perhaps a very important person-
and hostility as a result of their recent personal conflict with him.

But when the guard was relieved next morning, Pierre felt that for
the new guard--both officers and men--he was not as interesting as
he had been to his captors; and in fact the guard of the second day
did not recognize in this big, stout man in a peasant coat the
vigorous person who had fought so desperately with the marauder and
the convoy and had uttered those solemn words about saving a child;
they saw in him only No. 17 of the captured Russians, arrested and
detained for some reason by order of the Higher Command. If they
noticed anything remarkable about Pierre, it was only his unabashed,
meditative concentration and thoughtfulness, and the way he spoke
French, which struck them as surprisingly good. In spite of this he
was placed that day with the other arrested suspects, as the
separate room he had occupied was required by an officer.

All the Russians confined with Pierre were men of the lowest class
and, recognizing him as a gentleman, they all avoided him, more
especially as he spoke French. Pierre felt sad at hearing them
making fun of him.

That evening he learned that all these prisoners (he, probably,
among them) were to be tried for incendiarism. On the third day he was
taken with the others to a house where a French general with a white
mustache sat with two colonels and other Frenchmen with scarves on
their arms. With the precision and definiteness customary in
addressing prisoners, and which is supposed to preclude human frailty,
Pierre like the others was questioned as to who he was, where he had
been, with what object, and so on.

These questions, like questions put at trials generally, left the
essence of the matter aside, shut out the possibility of that
essence's being revealed, and were designed only to form a channel
through which the judges wished the answers of the accused to flow
so as to lead to the desired result, namely a conviction. As soon as
Pierre began to say anything that did not fit in with that aim, the
channel was removed and the water could flow to waste. Pierre felt,
moreover, what the accused always feel at their trial, perplexity as
to why these questions were put to him. He had a feeling that it was
only out of condescension or a kind of civility that this device of
placing a channel was employed. He knew he was in these men's power,
that only by force had they brought him there, that force alone gave
them the right to demand answers to their questions, and that the sole
object of that assembly was to inculpate him. And so, as they had
the power and wish to inculpate him, this expedient of an inquiry
and trial seemed unnecessary. It was evident that any answer would
lead to conviction. When asked what he was doing when he was arrested,
Pierre replied in a rather tragic manner that he was restoring to
its parents a child he had saved from the flames. Why had he fought
the marauder? Pierre answered that he "was protecting a woman," and
that "to protect a woman who was being insulted was the duty of
every man; that..." They interrupted him, for this was not to the
point. Why was he in the yard of a burning house where witnesses had
seen him? He replied that he had gone out to see what was happening in
Moscow. Again they interrupted him: they had not asked where he was
going, but why he was found near the fire? Who was he? they asked,
repeating their first question, which he had declined to answer. Again
he replied that he could not answer it.

"Put that down, that's bad... very bad," sternly remarked the
general with the white mustache and red flushed face.


On the fourth day fires broke out on the Zubovski rampart.

Pierre and thirteen others were moved to the coach house of a
merchant's house near the Crimean bridge. On his way through the
streets Pierre felt stifled by the smoke which seemed to hang over the
whole city. Fires were visible on all sides. He did not then realize
the significance of the burning of Moscow, and looked at the fires
with horror.

He passed four days in the coach house near the Crimean bridge and
during that time learned, from the talk of the French soldiers, that
all those confined there were awaiting a decision which might come any
day from the marshal. What marshal this was, Pierre could not learn
from the soldiers. Evidently for them "the marshal" represented a very
high and rather mysterious power.

These first days, before the eighth of September when the
prisoners were had up for a second examination, were the hardest of
all for Pierre.





CHAPTER X


On the eighth of September an officer--a very important one
judging by the respect the guards showed him--entered the coach
house where the prisoners were. This officer, probably someone on
the staff, was holding a paper in his hand, and called over all the
Russians there, naming Pierre as "the man who does not give his name."
Glancing indolently and indifferently at all the prisoners, he ordered
the officer in charge to have them decently dressed and tidied up
before taking them to the marshal. An hour later a squad of soldiers
arrived and Pierre with thirteen others was led to the Virgin's Field.
It was a fine day, sunny after rain, and the air was unusually pure.
The smoke did not hang low as on the day when Pierre had been taken
from the guardhouse on the Zubovski rampart, but rose through the pure
air in columns. No flames were seen, but columns of smoke rose on
all sides, and all Moscow as far as Pierre could see was one vast
charred ruin. On all sides there were waste spaces with only stoves
and chimney stacks still standing, and here and there the blackened
walls of some brick houses. Pierre gazed at the ruins and did not
recognize districts he had known well. Here and there he could see
churches that had not been burned. The Kremlin, which was not
destroyed, gleamed white in the distance with its towers and the
belfry of Ivan the Great. The domes of the New Convent of the Virgin
glittered brightly and its bells were ringing particularly clearly.
These bells reminded Pierre that it was Sunday and the feast of the
Nativity of the Virgin. But there seemed to be no one to celebrate
this holiday: everywhere were blackened ruins, and the few Russians to
be seen were tattered and frightened people who tried to hide when
they saw the French.

It was plain that the Russian nest was ruined and destroyed, but
in place of the Russian order of life that had been destroyed,
Pierre unconsciously felt that a quite different, firm, French order
had been established over this ruined nest. He felt this in the
looks of the soldiers who, marching in regular ranks briskly and
gaily, were escorting him and the other criminals; he felt it in the
looks of an important French official in a carriage and pair driven by
a soldier, whom they met on the way. He felt it in the merry sounds of
regimental music he heard from the left side of the field, and felt
and realized it especially from the list of prisoners the French
officer had read out when he came that morning. Pierre had been
taken by one set of soldiers and led first to one and then to
another place with dozens of other men, and it seemed that they
might have forgotten him, or confused him with the others. But no: the
answers he had given when questioned had come back to him in his
designation as "the man who does not give his name," and under that
appellation, which to Pierre seemed terrible, they were now leading
him somewhere with unhesitating assurance on their faces that he and
all the other prisoners were exactly the ones they wanted and that
they were being taken to the proper place. Pierre felt himself to be
an insignificant chip fallen among the wheels of a machine whose
action he did not understand but which was working well.

He and the other prisoners were taken to the right side of the
Virgin's Field, to a large white house with an immense garden not
far from the convent. This was Prince Shcherbitov's house, where
Pierre had often been in other days, and which, as he learned from the
talk of the soldiers, was now occupied by the marshal, the Duke of
Eckmuhl (Davout).

They were taken to the entrance and led into the house one by one.
Pierre was the sixth to enter. He was conducted through a glass
gallery, an anteroom, and a hall, which were familiar to him, into a
long low study at the door of which stood an adjutant.

Davout, spectacles on nose, sat bent over a table at the further end
of the room. Pierre went close up to him, but Davout, evidently
consulting a paper that lay before him, did not look up. Without
raising his eyes, he said in a low voice:

"Who are you?"

Pierre was silent because he was incapable of uttering a word. To
him Davout was not merely a French general, but a man notorious for
his cruelty. Looking at his cold face, as he sat like a stern
schoolmaster who was prepared to wait awhile for an answer, Pierre
felt that every instant of delay might cost him his life; but he did
not know what to say. He did not venture to repeat what he had said at
his first examination, yet to disclose his rank and position was
dangerous and embarrassing. So he was silent. But before he had
decided what to do, Davout raised his head, pushed his spectacles back
on his forehead, screwed up his eyes, and looked intently at him.

"I know that man," he said in a cold, measured tone, evidently
calculated to frighten Pierre.

The chill that had been running down Pierre's back now seized his
head as in a vise.

"You cannot know me, General, I have never seen you..."

"He is a Russian spy," Davout interrupted, addressing another
general who was present, but whom Pierre had not noticed.

Davout turned away. With an unexpected reverberation in his voice
Pierre rapidly began:

"No, monseigneur," he said, suddenly remembering that Davout was a
duke. "No, monseigneur, you cannot have known me. I am a militia
officer and have not quitted Moscow."

"Your name?" asked Davout.

"Bezukhov."

"What proof have I that you are not lying?"

"Monseigneur!" exclaimed Pierre, not in an offended but in a
pleading voice.

Davout looked up and gazed intently at him. For some seconds they
looked at one another, and that look saved Pierre. Apart from
conditions of war and law, that look established human relations
between the two men. At that moment an immense number of things passed
dimly through both their minds, and they realized that they were
both children of humanity and were brothers.

At the first glance, when Davout had only raised his head from the
papers where human affairs and lives were indicated by numbers, Pierre
was merely a circumstance, and Davout could have shot him without
burdening his conscience with an evil deed, but now he saw in him a
human being. He reflected for a moment.

"How can you show me that you are telling the truth?" said Davout
coldly.

Pierre remembered Ramballe, and named him and his regiment and the
street where the house was.

"You are not what you say," returned Davout.

In a trembling, faltering voice Pierre began adducing proofs of
the truth of his statements.

But at that moment an adjutant entered and reported something to
Davout.

Davout brightened up at the news the adjutant brought, and began
buttoning up his uniform. It seemed that he had quite forgotten
Pierre.

When the adjutant reminded him of the prisoner, he jerked his head
in Pierre's direction with a frown and ordered him to be led away. But
where they were to take him Pierre did not know: back to the coach
house or to the place of execution his companions had pointed out to
him as they crossed the Virgin's Field.

He turned his head and saw that the adjutant was putting another
question to Davout.

"Yes, of course!" replied Davout, but what this "yes" meant,
Pierre did not know.

Pierre could not afterwards remember how he went, whether it was
far, or in which direction. His faculties were quite numbed, he was
stupefied, and noticing nothing around him went on moving his legs
as the others did till they all stopped and he stopped too. The only
thought in his mind at that time was: who was it that had really
sentenced him to death? Not the men on the commission that had first
examined him--not one of them wished to or, evidently, could have done
it. It was not Davout, who had looked at him in so human a way. In
another moment Davout would have realized that he was doing wrong, but
just then the adjutant had come in and interrupted him. The
adjutant, also, had evidently had no evil intent though he might
have refrained from coming in. Then who was executing him, killing
him, depriving him of life--him, Pierre, with all his memories,
aspirations, hopes, and thoughts? Who was doing this? And Pierre
felt that it was no one.

It was a system--a concurrence of circumstances.

A system of some sort was killing him--Pierre--depriving him of
life, of everything, annihilating him.





CHAPTER XI


From Prince Shcherbatov's house the prisoners were led straight down
the Virgin's Field, to the left of the nunnery, as far as a kitchen
garden in which a post had been set up. Beyond that post a fresh pit
had been dug in the ground, and near the post and the pit a large
crowd stood in a semicircle. The crowd consisted of a few Russians and
many of Napoleon's soldiers who were not on duty--Germans, Italians,
and Frenchmen, in a variety of uniforms. To the right and left of
the post stood rows of French troops in blue uniforms with red
epaulets and high boots and shakos.

The prisoners were placed in a certain order, according to the
list (Pierre was sixth), and were led to the post. Several drums
suddenly began to beat on both sides of them, and at that sound Pierre
felt as if part of his soul had been torn away. He lost the power of
thinking or understanding. He could only hear and see. And he had only
one wish--that the frightful thing that had to happen should happen
quickly. Pierre looked round at his fellow prisoners and scrutinized
them.

The two first were convicts with shaven heads. One was tall and
thin, the other dark, shaggy, and sinewy, with a flat nose. The
third was a domestic serf, about forty-five years old, with grizzled
hair and a plump, well-nourished body. The fourth was a peasant, a
very handsome man with a broad, light-brown beard and black eyes.
The fifth was a factory hand, a thin, sallow-faced lad of eighteen
in a loose coat.

Pierre heard the French consulting whether to shoot them
separately or two at a time. "In couples," replied the officer in
command in a calm voice. There was a stir in the ranks of the soldiers
and it was evident that they were all hurrying--not as men hurry to do
something they understand, but as people hurry to finish a necessary
but unpleasant and incomprehensible task.

A French official wearing a scarf came up to the right of the row of
prisoners and read out the sentence in Russian and in French.

Then two pairs of Frenchmen approached the criminals and at the
officer's command took the two convicts who stood first in the row.
The convicts stopped when they reached the post and, while sacks
were being brought, looked dumbly around as a wounded beast looks at
an approaching huntsman. One crossed himself continually, the other
scratched his back and made a movement of the lips resembling a smile.
With hurried hands the soldiers blindfolded them, drawing the sacks
over their heads, and bound them to the post.

Twelve sharpshooters with muskets stepped out of the ranks with a
firm regular tread and halted eight paces from the post. Pierre turned
away to avoid seeing what was going to happen. Suddenly a crackling,
rolling noise was heard which seemed to him louder than the most
terrific thunder, and he looked round. There was some smoke, and the
Frenchmen were doing something near the pit, with pale faces and
trembling hands. Two more prisoners were led up. In the same way and
with similar looks, these two glanced vainly at the onlookers with
only a silent appeal for protection in their eyes, evidently unable to
understand or believe what was going to happen to them. They could not
believe it because they alone knew what their life meant to them,
and so they neither understood nor believed that it could be taken
from them.

Again Pierre did not wish to look and again turned away; but again
the sound as of a frightful explosion struck his ear, and at the
same moment he saw smoke, blood, and the pale, scared faces of the
Frenchmen who were again doing something by the post, their
trembling hands impeding one another. Pierre, breathing heavily,
looked around as if asking what it meant. The same question was
expressed in all the looks that met his.

On the faces of all the Russians and of the French soldiers and
officers without exception, he read the same dismay, horror, and
conflict that were in his own heart. "But who, after all, is doing
this? They are all suffering as I am. Who then is it? Who?" flashed
for an instant through his mind.

"Sharpshooters of the 86th, forward!" shouted someone. The fifth
prisoner, the one next to Pierre, was led away--alone. Pierre did
not understand that he was saved, that he and the rest had been
brought there only to witness the execution. With ever-growing horror,
and no sense of joy or relief, he gazed at what was taking place.
The fifth man was the factory lad in the loose cloak. The moment
they laid hands on him he sprang aside in terror and clutched at
Pierre. (Pierre shuddered and shook himself free.) The lad was
unable to walk. They dragged him along, holding him up under the arms,
and he screamed. When they got him to the post he grew quiet, as if he
suddenly understood something. Whether he understood that screaming
was useless or whether he thought it incredible that men should kill
him, at any rate he took his stand at the post, waiting to be
blindfolded like the others, and like a wounded animal looked around
him with glittering eyes.

Pierre was no longer able to turn away and close his eyes. His
curiosity and agitation, like that of the whole crowd, reached the
highest pitch at this fifth murder. Like the others this fifth man
seemed calm; he wrapped his loose cloak closer and rubbed one bare
foot with the other.

When they began to blindfold him he himself adjusted the knot
which hurt the back of his head; then when they propped him against
the bloodstained post, he leaned back and, not being comfortable in
that position, straightened himself, adjusted his feet, and leaned
back again more comfortably. Pierre did not take his eyes from him and
did not miss his slightest movement.

Probably a word of command was given and was followed by the reports
of eight muskets; but try as he would Pierre could not afterwards
remember having heard the slightest sound of the shots. He only saw
how the workman suddenly sank down on the cords that held him, how
blood showed itself in two places, how the ropes slackened under the
weight of the hanging body, and how the workman sat down, his head
hanging unnaturally and one leg bent under him. Pierre ran up to the
post. No one hindered him. Pale, frightened people were doing
something around the workman. The lower jaw of an old Frenchman with a
thick mustache trembled as he untied the ropes. The body collapsed.
The soldiers dragged it awkwardly from the post and began pushing it
into the pit.

They all plainly and certainly knew that they were criminals who
must hide the traces of their guilt as quickly as possible.

Pierre glanced into the pit and saw that the factory lad was lying
with his knees close up to his head and one shoulder higher than the
other. That shoulder rose and fell rhythmically and convulsively,
but spadefuls of earth were already being thrown over the whole
body. One of the soldiers, evidently suffering, shouted gruffly and
angrily at Pierre to go back. But Pierre did not understand him and
remained near the post, and no one drove him away.

When the pit had been filled up a command was given. Pierre was
taken back to his place, and the rows of troops on both sides of the
post made a half turn and went past it at a measured pace. The
twenty-four sharpshooters with discharged muskets, standing in the
center of the circle, ran back to their places as the companies passed
by.

Pierre gazed now with dazed eyes at these sharpshooters who ran in
couples out of the circle. All but one rejoined their companies.
This one, a young soldier, his face deadly pale, his shako pushed
back, and his musket resting on the ground, still stood near the pit
at the spot from which he had fired. He swayed like a drunken man,
taking some steps forward and back to save himself from falling. An
old, noncommissioned officer ran out of the ranks and taking him by
the elbow dragged him to his company. The crowd of Russians and
Frenchmen began to disperse. They all went away silently and with
drooping heads.

"That will teach them to start fires," said one of the Frenchmen.

Pierre glanced round at the speaker and saw that it was a soldier
who was trying to find some relief after what had been done, but was
not able to do so. Without finishing what he had begun to say he
made a hopeless movement with his arm and went away.





CHAPTER XII


After the execution Pierre was separated from the rest of the
prisoners and placed alone in a small, ruined, and befouled church.

Toward evening a noncommissioned officer entered with two soldiers
and told him that he had been pardoned and would now go to the
barracks for the prisoners of war. Without understanding what was said
to him, Pierre got up and went with the soldiers. They took him to the
upper end of the field, where there were some sheds built of charred
planks, beams, and battens, and led him into one of them. In the
darkness some twenty different men surrounded Pierre. He looked at
them without understanding who they were, why they were there, or what
they wanted of him. He heard what they said, but did not understand
the meaning of the words and made no kind of deduction from or
application of them. He replied to questions they put to him, but
did not consider who was listening to his replies, nor how they
would understand them. He looked at their faces and figures, but
they all seemed to him equally meaningless.

From the moment Pierre had witnessed those terrible murders
committed by men who did not wish to commit them, it was as if the
mainspring of his life, on which everything depended and which made
everything appear alive, had suddenly been wrenched out and everything
had collapsed into a heap of meaningless rubbish. Though he did not
acknowledge it to himself, his faith in the right ordering of the
universe, in humanity, in his own soul, and in God, had been
destroyed. He had experienced this before, but never so strongly as
now. When similar doubts had assailed him before, they had been the
result of his own wrongdoing, and at the bottom of his heart he had
felt that relief from his despair and from those doubts was to be
found within himself. But now he felt that the universe had crumbled
before his eyes and only meaningless ruins remained, and this not by
any fault of his own. He felt that it was not in his power to regain
faith in the meaning of life.

Around him in the darkness men were standing and evidently something
about him interested them greatly. They were telling him something and
asking him something. Then they led him away somewhere, and at last he
found himself in a corner of the shed among men who were laughing
and talking on all sides.

"Well, then, mates... that very prince who..." some voice at the
other end of the shed was saying, with a strong emphasis on the word
who.

Sitting silent and motionless on a heap of straw against the wall,
Pierre sometimes opened and sometimes closed his eyes. But as soon
as he closed them he saw before him the dreadful face of the factory
lad--especially dreadful because of its simplicity--and the faces of
the murderers, even more dreadful because of their disquiet. And he
opened his eyes again and stared vacantly into the darkness around
him.

Beside him in a stooping position sat a small man of whose
presence he was first made aware by a strong smell of perspiration
which came from him every time he moved. This man was doing
something to his legs in the darkness, and though Pierre could not see
his face he felt that the man continually glanced at him. On growing
used to the darkness Pierre saw that the man was taking off his leg
bands, and the way he did it aroused Pierre's interest.

Having unwound the string that tied the band on one leg, he
carefully coiled it up and immediately set to work on the other leg,
glancing up at Pierre. While one hand hung up the first string the
other was already unwinding the band on the second leg. In this way,
having carefully removed the leg bands by deft circular motions of his
arm following one another uninterruptedly, the man hung the leg
bands up on some pegs fixed above his head. Then he took out a
knife, cut something, closed the knife, placed it under the head of
his bed, and, seating himself comfortably, clasped his arms round
his lifted knees and fixed his eyes on Pierre. The latter was
conscious of something pleasant, comforting, and well rounded in these
deft movements, in the man's well-ordered arrangements in his
corner, and even in his very smell, and he looked at the man without
taking his eyes from him.

"You've seen a lot of trouble, sir, eh?" the little man suddenly
said.

And there was so much kindliness and simplicity in his singsong
voice that Pierre tried to reply, but his jaw trembled and he felt
tears rising to his eyes. The little fellow, giving Pierre no time
to betray his confusion, instantly continued in the same pleasant
tones:

"Eh, lad, don't fret!" said he, in the tender singsong caressing
voice old Russian peasant women employ. "Don't fret, friend--'suffer
an hour, live for an age!' that's how it is, my dear fellow. And
here we live, thank heaven, without offense. Among these folk, too,
there are good men as well as bad," said he, and still speaking, he
turned on his knees with a supple movement, got up, coughed, and
went off to another part of the shed.

"Eh, you rascal!" Pierre heard the same kind voice saying at the
other end of the shed. "So you've come, you rascal? She remembers...
Now, now, that'll do!"

And the soldier, pushing away a little dog that was jumping up at
him, returned to his place and sat down. In his hands he had something
wrapped in a rag.

"Here, eat a bit, sir," said he, resuming his former respectful tone
as he unwrapped and offered Pierre some baked potatoes. "We had soup
for dinner and the potatoes are grand!"

Pierre had not eaten all day and the smell of the potatoes seemed
extremely pleasant to him. He thanked the soldier and began to eat.

"Well, are they all right?" said the soldier with a smile. "You
should do like this."

He took a potato, drew out his clasp knife, cut the potato into
two equal halves on the palm of his hand, sprinkled some salt on it
from the rag, and handed it to Pierre.

"The potatoes are grand!" he said once more. "Eat some like that!"

Pierre thought he had never eaten anything that tasted better.

"Oh, I'm all right," said he, "but why did they shoot those poor
fellows? The last one was hardly twenty."

"Tss, tt...!" said the little man. "Ah, what a sin... what a sin!"
he added quickly, and as if his words were always waiting ready in his
mouth and flew out involuntarily he went on: "How was it, sir, that
you stayed in Moscow?"

"I didn't think they would come so soon. I stayed accidentally,"
replied Pierre.

"And how did they arrest you, dear lad? At your house?"

"No, I went to look at the fire, and they arrested me there, and
tried me as an incendiary."

"Where there's law there's injustice," put in the little man.

"And have you been here long?" Pierre asked as he munched the last
of the potato.

"I? It was last Sunday they took me, out of a hospital in Moscow."

"Why, are you a soldier then?"

"Yes, we are soldiers of the Apsheron regiment. I was dying of
fever. We weren't told anything. There were some twenty of us lying
there. We had no idea, never guessed at all."

"And do you feel sad here?" Pierre inquired.

"How can one help it, lad? My name is Platon, and the surname is
Karataev," he added, evidently wishing to make it easier for Pierre to
address him. "They call me 'little falcon' in the regiment. How is one
to help feeling sad? Moscow--she's the mother of cities. How can one
see all this and not feel sad? But 'the maggot gnaws the cabbage,
yet dies first'; that's what the old folks used to tell us," he
added rapidly.

"What? What did you say?" asked Pierre.

"Who? I?" said Karataev. "I say things happen not as we plan but
as God judges," he replied, thinking that he was repeating what he had
said before, and immediately continued:

"Well, and you, have you a family estate, sir? And a house? So you
have abundance, then? And a housewife? And your old parents, are
they still living?" he asked.

And though it was too dark for Pierre to see, he felt that a
suppressed smile of kindliness puckered the soldier's lips as he put
these questions. He seemed grieved that Pierre had no parents,
especially that he had no mother.

"A wife for counsel, a mother-in-law for welcome, but there's none
as dear as one's own mother!" said he. "Well, and have you little
ones?" he went on asking.

Again Pierre's negative answer seemed to distress him, and he
hastened to add:

"Never mind! You're young folks yet, and please God may still have
some. The great thing is to live in harmony...."

"But it's all the same now," Pierre could not help saying.

"Ah, my dear fellow!" rejoined Karataev, "never decline a prison
or a beggar's sack!"

He seated himself more comfortably and coughed, evidently
preparing to tell a long story.

"Well, my dear fellow, I was still living at home," he began. "We
had a well-to-do homestead, plenty of land, we peasants lived well and
our house was one to thank God for. When Father and we went out mowing
there were seven of us. We lived well. We were real peasants. It so
happened..."

And Platon Karataev told a long story of how he had gone into
someone's copse to take wood, how he had been caught by the keeper,
had been tried, flogged, and sent to serve as a soldier.

"Well, lad," and a smile changed the tone of his voice "we thought
it was a misfortune but it turned out a blessing! If it had not been
for my sin, my brother would have had to go as a soldier. But he, my
younger brother, had five little ones, while I, you see, only left a
wife behind. We had a little girl, but God took her before I went as a
soldier. I come home on leave and I'll tell you how it was, I look and
see that they are living better than before. The yard full of
cattle, the women at home, two brothers away earning wages, and only
Michael the youngest, at home. Father, he says, 'All my children are
the same to me: it hurts the same whichever finger gets bitten. But if
Platon hadn't been shaved for a soldier, Michael would have had to
go.' called us all to him and, will you believe it, placed us in front
of the icons. 'Michael,' he says, 'come here and bow down to his feet;
and you, young woman, you bow down too; and you, grandchildren, also
bow down before him! Do you understand?' he says. That's how it is,
dear fellow. Fate looks for a head. But we are always judging, 'that's
not well--that's not right!' Our luck is like water in a dragnet:
you pull at it and it bulges, but when you've drawn it out it's empty!
That's how it is."

And Platon shifted his seat on the straw.

After a short silence he rose.

"Well, I think you must be sleepy," said he, and began rapidly
crossing himself and repeating:

"Lord Jesus Christ, holy Saint Nicholas, Frola and Lavra! Lord Jesus
Christ, holy Saint Nicholas, Frola and Lavra! Lord Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us and save us!" he concluded, then bowed to the ground,
got up, sighed, and sat down again on his heap of straw. "That's the
way. Lay me down like a stone, O God, and raise me up like a loaf," he
muttered as he lay down, pulling his coat over him.

"What prayer was that you were saying?" asked Pierre.

"Eh?" murmured Platon, who had almost fallen asleep. "What was I
saying? I was praying. Don't you pray?"

"Yes, I do," said Pierre. "But what was that you said: Frola and
Lavra?"

"Well, of course," replied Platon quickly, "the horses' saints.
One must pity the animals too. Eh, the rascal! Now you've curled up
and got warm, you daughter of a bitch!" said Karataev, touching the
dog that lay at his feet, and again turning over he fell asleep
immediately.

Sounds of crying and screaming came from somewhere in the distance
outside, and flames were visible through the cracks of the shed, but
inside it was quiet and dark. For a long time Pierre did not sleep,
but lay with eyes open in the darkness, listening to the regular
snoring of Platon who lay beside him, and he felt that the world
that had been shattered was once more stirring in his soul with a
new beauty and on new and unshakable foundations.





CHAPTER XIII


Twenty-three soldiers, three officers, and two officials were
confined in the shed in which Pierre had been placed and where he
remained for four weeks.

When Pierre remembered them afterwards they all seemed misty figures
to him except Platon Karataev, who always remained in his mind a
most vivid and precious memory and the personification of everything
Russian, kindly, and round. When Pierre saw his neighbor next
morning at dawn the first impression of him, as of something round,
was fully confirmed: Platon's whole figure--in a French overcoat
girdled with a cord, a soldier's cap, and bast shoes--was round. His
head was quite round, his back, chest, shoulders, and even his arms,
which he held as if ever ready to embrace something, were rounded, his
pleasant smile and his large, gentle brown eyes were also round.

Platon Karataev must have been fifty, judging by his stories of
campaigns he had been in, told as by an old soldier. He did not
himself know his age and was quite unable to determine it. But his
brilliantly white, strong teeth which showed in two unbroken
semicircles when he laughed--as he often did--were all sound and good,
there was not a gray hair in his beard or on his head, and his whole
body gave an impression of suppleness and especially of firmness and
endurance.

His face, despite its fine, rounded wrinkles, had an expression of
innocence and youth, his voice was pleasant and musical. But the chief
peculiarity of his speech was its directness and appositeness. It
was evident that he never considered what he had said or was going
to say, and consequently the rapidity and justice of his intonation
had an irresistible persuasiveness.

His physical strength and agility during the first days of his
imprisonment were such that he seemed not to know what fatigue and
sickness meant. Every night before lying down, he said: "Lord, lay
me down as a stone and raise me up as a loaf!" and every morning on
getting up, he said: "I lay down and curled up, I get up and shake
myself." And indeed he only had to lie down, to fall asleep like a
stone, and he only had to shake himself, to be ready without a
moment's delay for some work, just as children are ready to play
directly they awake. He could do everything, not very well but not
badly. He baked, cooked, sewed, planed, and mended boots. He was
always busy, and only at night allowed himself conversation--of
which he was fond--and songs. He did not sing like a trained singer
who knows he is listened to, but like the birds, evidently giving vent
to the sounds in the same way that one stretches oneself or walks
about to get rid of stiffness, and the sounds were always
high-pitched, mournful, delicate, and almost feminine, and his face at
such times was very serious.

Having been taken prisoner and allowed his beard to grow, he
seemed to have thrown off all that had been forced upon him-
everything military and alien to himself--and had returned to his
former peasant habits.

"A soldier on leave--a shirt outside breeches," he would say.

He did not like talking about his life as a soldier, though he did
not complain, and often mentioned that he had not been flogged once
during the whole of his army service. When he related anything it
was generally some old and evidently precious memory of his
"Christian" life, as he called his peasant existence. The proverbs, of
which his talk was full, were for the most part not the coarse and
indecent saws soldiers employ, but those folk sayings which taken
without a context seem so insignificant, but when used appositely
suddenly acquire a significance of profound wisdom.

He would often say the exact opposite of what he had said on a
previous occasion, yet both would be right. He liked to talk and he
talked well, adorning his speech with terms of endearment and with
folk sayings which Pierre thought he invented himself, but the chief
charm of his talk lay in the fact that the commonest events--sometimes
just such as Pierre had witnessed without taking notice of them-
assumed in Karataev's a character of solemn fitness. He liked to
hear the folk tales one of the soldiers used to tell of an evening
(they were always the same), but most of all he liked to hear
stories of real life. He would smile joyfully when listening to such
stories, now and then putting in a word or asking a question to make
the moral beauty of what he was told clear to himself. Karataev had no
attachments, friendships, or love, as Pierre understood them, but
loved and lived affectionately with everything life brought him in
contact with, particularly with man--not any particular man, but those
with whom he happened to be. He loved his dog, his comrades, the
French, and Pierre who was his neighbor, but Pierre felt that in spite
of Karataev's affectionate tenderness for him (by which he
unconsciously gave Pierre's spiritual life its due) he would not
have grieved for a moment at parting from him. And Pierre began to
feel in the same way toward Karataev.

To all the other prisoners Platon Karataev seemed a most ordinary
soldier. They called him "little falcon" or "Platosha," chaffed him
good-naturedly, and sent him on errands. But to Pierre he always
remained what he had seemed that first night: an unfathomable,
rounded, eternal personification of the spirit of simplicity and
truth.

Platon Karataev knew nothing by heart except his prayers. When he
began to speak he seemed not to know how he would conclude.

Sometimes Pierre, struck by the meaning of his words, would ask
him to repeat them, but Platon could never recall what he had said a
moment before, just as he never could repeat to Pierre the words of
his favorite song: native and birch tree and my heart is sick occurred
in it, but when spoken and not sung, no meaning could be got out of
it. He did not, and could not, understand the meaning of words apart
from their context. Every word and action of his was the manifestation
of an activity unknown to him, which was his life. But his life, as he
regarded it, had no meaning as a separate thing. It had meaning only
as part of a whole of which he was always conscious. His words and
actions flowed from him as evenly, inevitably, and spontaneously as
fragrance exhales from a flower. He could not understand the value
or significance of any word or deed taken separately.





CHAPTER XIV


When Princess Mary heard from Nicholas that her brother was with the
Rostovs at Yaroslavl she at once prepared to go there, in spite of her
aunt's efforts to dissuade her--and not merely to go herself but to
take her nephew with her. Whether it were difficult or easy,
possible or impossible, she did not ask and did not want to know: it
was her duty not only herself to be near her brother who was perhaps
dying, but to do everything possible to take his son to him, and so
she prepared to set off. That she had not heard from Prince Andrew
himself, Princess Mary attributed to his being too weak to write or to
his considering the long journey too hard and too dangerous for her
and his son.

In a few days Princess Mary was ready to start. Her equipages were
the huge family coach in which she had traveled to Voronezh, a
semiopen trap, and a baggage cart. With her traveled Mademoiselle
Bourienne, little Nicholas and his tutor, her old nurse, three
maids, Tikhon, and a young footman and courier her aunt had sent to
accompany her.

The usual route through Moscow could not be thought of, and the
roundabout way Princess Mary was obliged to take through Lipetsk,
Ryazan, Vladimir, and Shuya was very long and, as post horses were not
everywhere obtainable, very difficult, and near Ryazan where the
French were said to have shown themselves was even dangerous.

During this difficult journey Mademoiselle Bourienne, Dessalles, and
Princess Mary's servants were astonished at her energy and firmness of
spirit. She went to bed later and rose earlier than any of them, and
no difficulties daunted her. Thanks to her activity and energy,
which infected her fellow travelers, they approached Yaroslavl by
the end of the second week.

The last days of her stay in Voronezh had been the happiest of her
life. Her love for Rostov no longer tormented or agitated her. It
filled her whole soul, had become an integral part of herself, and she
no longer struggled against it. Latterly she had become convinced that
she loved and was beloved, though she never said this definitely to
herself in words. She had become convinced of it at her last interview
with Nicholas, when he had come to tell her that her brother was
with the Rostovs. Not by a single word had Nicholas alluded to the
fact that Prince Andrew's relations with Natasha might, if he
recovered, be renewed, but Princess Mary saw by his face that he
knew and thought of this.

Yet in spite of that, his relation to her--considerate, delicate,
and loving--not only remained unchanged, but it sometimes seemed to
Princess Mary that he was even glad that the family connection between
them allowed him to express his friendship more freely. She knew
that she loved for the first and only time in her life and felt that
she was beloved, and was happy in regard to it.

But this happiness on one side of her spiritual nature did not
prevent her feeling grief for her brother with full force; on the
contrary, that spiritual tranquility on the one side made it the
more possible for her to give full play to her feeling for her
brother. That feeling was so strong at the moment of leaving
Voronezh that those who saw her off, as they looked at her careworn,
despairing face, felt sure she would fall ill on the journey. But
the very difficulties and preoccupations of the journey, which she
took so actively in hand, saved her for a while from her grief and
gave her strength.

As always happens when traveling, Princess Mary thought only of
the journey itself, forgetting its object. But as she approached
Yaroslavl the thought of what might await her there--not after many
days, but that very evening--again presented itself to her and her
agitation increased to its utmost limit.

The courier who had been sent on in advance to find out where the
Rostovs were staying in Yaroslavl, and in what condition Prince Andrew
was, when he met the big coach just entering the town gates was
appalled by the terrible pallor of the princess' face that looked
out at him from the window.

"I have found out everything, your excellency: the Rostovs are
staying at the merchant Bronnikov's house, in the Square not far
from here, right above the Volga," said the courier.

Princess Mary looked at him with frightened inquiry, not
understanding why he did not reply to what she chiefly wanted to know:
how was her brother? Mademoiselle Bourienne put that question for her.

"How is the prince?" she asked.

"His excellency is staying in the same house with them."

"Then he is alive," thought Princess Mary, and asked in a low voice:
"How is he?"

"The servants say he is still the same."

What "still the same" might mean Princess Mary did not ask, but with
an unnoticed glance at little seven-year-old Nicholas, who was sitting
in front of her looking with pleasure at the town, she bowed her
head and did not raise it again till the heavy coach, rumbling,
shaking and swaying, came to a stop. The carriage steps clattered as
they were let down.

The carriage door was opened. On the left there was water--a great
river--and on the right a porch. There were people at the entrance:
servants, and a rosy girl with a large plait of black hair, smiling as
it seemed to Princess Mary in an unpleasantly affected way. (This
was Sonya.) Princess Mary ran up the steps. "This way, this way!" said
the girl, with the same artificial smile, and the princess found
herself in the hall facing an elderly woman of Oriental type, who came
rapidly to meet her with a look of emotion. This was the countess. She
embraced Princess Mary and kissed her.

"Mon enfant!" she muttered, "je vous aime et vous connais depuis
longtemps."*


*"My child! I love you and have known you a long time."

 Despite her excitement, Princess Mary realized that this was the
countess and that it was necessary to say something to her. Hardly
knowing how she did it, she contrived to utter a few polite phrases in
French in the same tone as those that had been addressed to her, and
asked: "How is he?"

"The doctor says that he is not in danger," said the countess, but
as she spoke she raised her eyes with a sigh, and her gesture conveyed
a contradiction of her words.

"Where is he? Can I see him--can I?" asked the princess.

"One moment, Princess, one moment, my dear! Is this his son?" said
the countess, turning to little Nicholas who was coming in with
Dessalles. "There will be room for everybody, this is a big house. Oh,
what a lovely boy!"

The countess took Princess Mary into the drawing room, where Sonya
was talking to Mademoiselle Bourienne. The countess caressed the
boy, and the old count came in and welcomed the princess. He had
changed very much since Princess Mary had last seen him. Then he had
been a brisk, cheerful, self-assured old man; now he seemed a pitiful,
bewildered person. While talking to Princess Mary he continually
looked round as if asking everyone whether he was doing the right
thing. After the destruction of Moscow and of his property, thrown out
of his accustomed groove he seemed to have lost the sense of his own
significance and to feel that there was no longer a place for him in
life.

In spite of her one desire to see her brother as soon as possible,
and her vexation that at the moment when all she wanted was to see him
they should be trying to entertain her and pretending to admire her
nephew, the princess noticed all that was going on around her and felt
the necessity of submitting, for a time, to this new order of things
which she had entered. She knew it to be necessary, and though it
was hard for her she was not vexed with these people.

"This is my niece," said the count, introducing Sonya--"You don't
know her, Princess?"

Princess Mary turned to Sonya and, trying to stifle the hostile
feeling that arose in her toward the girl, she kissed her. But she
felt oppressed by the fact that the mood of everyone around her was so
far from what was in her own heart.

"Where is he?" she asked again, addressing them all.

"He is downstairs. Natasha is with him," answered Sonya, flushing.
"We have sent to ask. I think you must be tired, Princess."

Tears of vexation showed themselves in Princess Mary's eyes. She
turned away and was about to ask the countess again how to go to
him, when light, impetuous, and seemingly buoyant steps were heard
at the door. The princess looked round and saw Natasha coming in,
almost running--that Natasha whom she had liked so little at their
meeting in Moscow long since.

But hardly had the princess looked at Natasha's face before she
realized that here was a real comrade in her grief, and consequently a
friend. She ran to meet her, embraced her, and began to cry on her
shoulder.

As soon as Natasha, sitting at the head of Prince Andrew's bed,
heard of Princess Mary's arrival, she softly left his room and
hastened to her with those swift steps that had sounded buoyant to
Princess Mary.

There was only one expression on her agitated face when she ran into
the drawing room--that of love--boundless love for him, for her, and
for all that was near to the man she loved; and of pity, suffering for
others, and passionate desire to give herself entirely to helping
them. It was plain that at that moment there was in Natasha's heart no
thought of herself or of her own relations with Prince Andrew.

Princess Mary, with her acute sensibility, understood all this at
the first glance at Natasha's face, and wept on her shoulder with
sorrowful pleasure.

"Come, come to him, Mary," said Natasha, leading her into the
other room.

Princess Mary raised her head, dried her eyes, and turned to
Natasha. She felt that from her she would be able to understand and
learn everything.

"How..." she began her question but stopped short.

She felt that it was impossible to ask, or to answer, in words.
Natasha's face eyes would have to tell her all more clearly
and profoundly.

Natasha was gazing at her, but seemed afraid and in doubt whether to
say all she knew or not; she seemed to feel that before those luminous
eyes which penetrated into the very depths of her heart, it was
impossible not to tell the whole truth which she saw. And suddenly,
Natasha's lips twitched, ugly wrinkles gathered round her mouth, and
covering her face with her hands she burst into sobs.

Princess Mary understood.

But she still hoped, and asked, in words she herself did not trust:

"But how is his wound? What is his general condition?"

"You, you... will see," was all Natasha could say.

They sat a little while downstairs near his room till they had
left off crying and were able to go to him with calm faces.

"How has his whole illness gone? Is it long since he grew worse?
When did this happen?" Princess Mary inquired.

Natasha told her that at first there had been danger from his
feverish condition and the pain he suffered, but at Troitsa that had
passed and the doctor had only been afraid of gangrene. That danger
had also passed. When they reached Yaroslavl the wound had begun to
fester (Natasha knew all about such things as festering) and the
doctor had said that the festering might take a normal course. Then
fever set in, but the doctor had said the fever was not very serious.

"But two days ago this suddenly happened," said Natasha,
struggling with her sobs. "I don't know why, but you will see what
he is like."

"Is he weaker? Thinner?" asked the princess.

"No, it's not that, but worse. You will see. O, Mary, he is too
good, he cannot, cannot live, because..."





CHAPTER XV


When Natasha opened Prince Andrew's door with a familiar movement
and let Princess Mary pass into the room before her, the princess felt
the sobs in her throat. Hard as she had tried to prepare herself,
and now tried to remain tranquil, she knew that she would be unable to
look at him without tears.

The princess understood what Natasha had meant by the words: "two
days ago this suddenly happened." She understood those words to mean
that he had suddenly softened and that this softening and gentleness
were signs of approaching death. As she stepped to the door she
already saw in imagination Andrew's face as she remembered it in
childhood, a gentle, mild, sympathetic face which he had rarely shown,
and which therefore affected her very strongly. She was sure he
would speak soft, tender words to her such as her father had uttered
before his death, and that she would not be able to bear it and
would burst into sobs in his presence. Yet sooner or later it had to
be, and she went in. The sobs rose higher and higher in her throat
as she more and more clearly distinguished his form and her
shortsighted eyes tried to make out his features, and then she saw his
face and met his gaze.

He was lying in a squirrel-fur dressing gown on a divan,
surrounded by pillows. He was thin and pale. In one thin,
translucently white hand he held a handkerchief, while with the
other he stroked the delicate mustache he had grown, moving his
fingers slowly. His eyes gazed at them as they entered.

On seeing his face and meeting his eyes Princess Mary's pace
suddenly slackened, she felt her tears dry up and her sobs ceased. She
suddenly felt guilty and grew timid on catching the expression of
his face and eyes.

"But in what am I to blame?" she asked herself. And his cold,
stern look replied: "Because you are alive and thinking of the living,
while I..."

In the deep gaze that seemed to look not outwards but
inwards there was an almost hostile expression as he slowly regarded
his sister and Natasha.

He kissed his sister, holding her hand in his as was their wont.

"How are you, Mary? How did you manage to get here?" said he in a
voice as calm and aloof as his look.

Had he screamed in agony, that scream would not have struck such
horror into Princess Mary's heart as the tone of his voice.

"And have you brought little Nicholas?" he asked in the same slow,
quiet manner and with an obvious effort to remember.

"How are you now?" said Princess Mary, herself surprised at what she
was saying.

"That, my dear, you must ask the doctor," he replied, and again
making an evident effort to be affectionate, he said with his lips
only (his words clearly did not correspond to his thoughts):

"Merci, chere amie, d'etre venue."*


*"Thank you for coming, my dear."


Princess Mary pressed his hand. The pressure made him wince just
perceptibly. He was silent, and she did not know what to say. She
now understood what had happened to him two days before. In his words,
his tone, and especially in that calm, almost antagonistic look
could be felt an estrangement from everything belonging to this world,
terrible in one who is alive. Evidently only with an effort did he
understand anything living; but it was obvious that he failed to
understand, not because he lacked the power to do so but because he
understood something else--something the living did not and could
not understand--and which wholly occupied his mind.

"There, you see how strangely fate has brought us together," said
he, breaking the silence and pointing to Natasha. "She looks after
me all the time."

Princess Mary heard him and did not understand how he could say such
a thing. He, the sensitive, tender Prince Andrew, how could he say
that, before her whom he loved and who loved him? Had he expected to
live he could not have said those words in that offensively cold tone.
If he had not known that he was dying, how could he have failed to
pity her and how could he speak like that in her presence? The only
explanation was that he was indifferent, because something else,
much more important, had been revealed to him.

The conversation was cold and disconnected and continually broke
off.

"Mary came by way of Ryazan," said Natasha.

Prince Andrew did not notice that she called his sister Mary, and
only after calling her so in his presence did Natasha notice it
herself.

"Really?" he asked.

"They told her that all Moscow has been burned down, and that..."

Natasha stopped. It was impossible to talk. It was plain that he was
making an effort to listen, but could not do so.

"Yes, they say it's burned," he said. "It's a great pity," and he
gazed straight before him, absently stroking his mustache with his
fingers.

"And so you have met Count Nicholas, Mary?" Prince Andrew suddenly
said, evidently wishing to speak pleasantly to them. "He wrote here
that he took a great liking to you," he went on simply and calmly,
evidently unable to understand all the complex significance his
words had for living people. "If you liked him too, it would be a good
thing for you to get married," he added rather more quickly, as if
pleased at having found words he had long been seeking.

Princess Mary heard his words but they had no meaning for her,
except as a proof of how far away he now was from everything living.

"Why talk of me?" she said quietly and glanced at Natasha.

Natasha, who felt her glance, did not look at her. All three were
again silent.

"Andrew, would you like..." Princess Mary suddenly said in a
trembling voice, "would you like to see little Nicholas? He is
always talking about you!"

Prince Andrew smiled just perceptibly and for the first time, but
Princess Mary, who knew his face so well, saw with horror that he
did not smile with pleasure or affection for his son, but with
quiet, gentle irony because he thought she was trying what she
believed to be the last means of arousing him.

"Yes, I shall be very glad to see him. Is he quite well?"

When little Nicholas was brought into Prince Andrew's room he looked
at his father with frightened eyes, but did not cry, because no one
else was crying. Prince Andrew kissed him and evidently did not know
what to say to him.

When Nicholas had been led away, Princess Mary again went up to
her brother, kissed him, and unable to restrain her tears any longer
began to cry.

He looked at her attentively.

"Is it about Nicholas?" he asked.

Princess Mary nodded her head, weeping.

"Mary, you know the Gosp..." but he broke off.

"What did you say?"

"Nothing. You mustn't cry here," he said, looking at her with the
same cold expression.


When Princess Mary began to cry, he understood that she was crying
at the thought that little Nicholas would be left without a father.
With a great effort he tried to return to life and to see things
from their point of view.

"Yes, to them it must seem sad!" he thought. "But how simple it is.

"The fowls of the air sow not, neither do they reap, yet your Father
feedeth them," he said to himself and wished to say to Princess
Mary; "but no, they will take it their own way, they won't understand!
They can't understand that all those feelings they prize so--all our
feelings, all those ideas that seem so important to us, are
unnecessary. We cannot understand one another," and he remained
silent.


Prince Andrew's little son was seven. He could scarcely read, and
knew nothing. After that day he lived through many things, gaining
knowledge, observation, and experience, but had he possessed all the
faculties he afterwards acquired, he could not have had a better or
more profound understanding of the meaning of the scene he had
witnessed between his father, Mary, and Natasha, than he had then.
He understood it completely, and, leaving the room without crying,
went silently up to Natasha who had come out with him and looked shyly
at her with his beautiful, thoughtful eyes, then his uplifted, rosy
upper lip trembled and leaning his head against her he began to cry.

After that he avoided Dessalles and the countess who caressed him
and either sat alone or came timidly to Princess Mary, or to Natasha
of whom he seemed even fonder than of his aunt, and clung to them
quietly and shyly.

When Princess Mary had left Prince Andrew she fully understood
what Natasha's face had told her. She did not speak any more to
Natasha of hopes of saving his life. She took turns with her beside
his sofa, and did not cry any more, but prayed continually, turning in
soul to that Eternal and Unfathomable, whose presence above the
dying man was now so evident.





CHAPTER XVI


Not only did Prince Andrew know he would die, but he felt that he
was dying and was already half dead. He was conscious of an
aloofness from everything earthly and a strange and joyous lightness
of existence. Without haste or agitation he awaited what was coming.
That inexorable, eternal, distant, and unknown the presence of which
he had felt continually all his life--was now near to him and, by
the strange lightness he experienced, almost comprehensible and
palpable...


Formerly he had feared the end. He had twice experienced that
terribly tormenting fear of death--the end--but now he no longer
understood that fear.

 He had felt it for the first time when the shell spun like a top
before him, and he looked at the fallow field, the bushes, and the
sky, and knew that he was face to face with death. When he came to
himself after being wounded and the flower of eternal, unfettered love
had instantly unfolded itself in his soul as if freed from the bondage
of life that had restrained it, he no longer feared death and ceased
to think about it.

During the hours of solitude, suffering, and partial delirium he
spent after he was wounded, the more deeply he penetrated into the new
principle of eternal love revealed to him, the more he unconsciously
detached himself from earthly life. To love everything and everybody
and always to sacrifice oneself for love meant not to love anyone, not
to live this earthly life. And the more imbued he became with that
principle of love, the more he renounced life and the more
completely he destroyed that dreadful barrier which--in the absence of
such love--stands between life and death. When during those first days
he remembered that he would have to die, he said to himself: "Well,
what of it? So much the better!"

But after the night in Mytishchi when, half delirious, he had seen
her for whom he longed appear before him and, having pressed her
hand to his lips, had shed gentle, happy tears, love for a
particular woman again crept unobserved into his heart and once more
bound him to life. And joyful and agitating thoughts began to occupy
his mind. Recalling the moment at the ambulance station when he had
seen Kuragin, he could not now regain the feeling he then had, but was
tormented by the question whether Kuragin was alive. And he dared
not inquire.

His illness pursued its normal physical course, but what Natasha
referred to when she said: "This suddenly happened," had occurred
two days before Princess Mary arrived. It was the last spiritual
struggle between life and death, in which death gained the victory. It
was the unexpected realization of the fact that he still valued life
as presented to him in the form of his love for Natasha, and a last,
though ultimately vanquished, attack of terror before the unknown.

It was evening. As usual after dinner he was slightly feverish,
and his thoughts were preternaturally clear. Sonya was sitting by
the table. He began to doze. Suddenly a feeling of happiness seized
him.

"Ah, she has come!" thought he.

And so it was: in Sonya's place sat Natasha who had just come in
noiselessly.

Since she had begun looking after him, he had always experienced
this physical consciousness of her nearness. She was sitting in an
armchair placed sideways, screening the light of the candle from
him, and was knitting a stocking. She had learned to knit stockings
since Prince Andrew had casually mentioned that no one nursed the sick
so well as old nurses who knit stockings, and that there is
something soothing in the knitting of stockings. The needles clicked
lightly in her slender, rapidly moving hands, and he could clearly see
the thoughtful profile of her drooping face. She moved, and the ball
rolled off her knees. She started, glanced round at him, and screening
the candle with her hand stooped carefully with a supple and exact
movement, picked up the ball, and regained her former position.

He looked at her without moving and saw that she wanted to draw a
deep breath after stooping, but refrained from doing so and breathed
cautiously.

At the Troitsa monastery they had spoken of the past, and he had
told her that if he lived he would always thank God for his wound
which had brought them together again, but after that they never spoke
of the future.

"Can it or can it not be?" he now thought as he looked at her and
listened to the light click of the steel needles. "Can fate have
brought me to her so strangely only for me to die?... Is it possible
that the truth of life has been revealed to me only to show me that
I have spent my life in falsity? I love her more than anything in
the world! But what am I to do if I love her?" he thought, and he
involuntarily groaned, from a habit acquired during his sufferings.

On hearing that sound Natasha put down the stocking, leaned nearer
to him, and suddenly, noticing his shining eyes, stepped lightly up to
him and bent over him.

"You are not asleep?"

"No, I have been looking at you a long time. I felt you come in.
No one else gives me that sense of soft tranquillity that you do...
that light. I want to weep for joy."

Natasha drew closer to him. Her face shone with rapturous joy.

"Natasha, I love you too much! More than anything in the world."

"And I!"--She turned away for an instant. "Why too much?" she asked.

"Why too much?... Well, what do you, what do you feel in your
soul, your whole soul--shall I live? What do you think?"

"I am sure of it, sure!" Natasha almost shouted, taking hold of both
his hands with a passionate movement.

He remained silent awhile.

"How good it would be!" and taking her hand he kissed it.

Natasha felt happy and agitated, but at once remembered that this
would not do and that he had to be quiet.

"But you have not slept," she said, repressing her joy. "Try to
sleep... please!"

He pressed her hand and released it, and she went back to the candle
and sat down again in her former position. Twice she turned and looked
at him, and her eyes met his beaming at her. She set herself a task on
her stocking and resolved not to turn round till it was finished.

Soon he really shut his eyes and fell asleep. He did not sleep
long and suddenly awoke with a start and in a cold perspiration.

As he fell asleep he had still been thinking of the subject that now
always occupied his mind--about life and death, and chiefly about
death. He felt himself nearer to it.

"Love? What is love?" he thought.

"Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I
understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is,
everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it
alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall
return to the general and eternal source." These thoughts seemed to
him comforting. But they were only thoughts. Something was lacking
in them, they were not clear, they were too one-sidedly personal and
brain-spun. And there was the former agitation and obscurity. He
fell asleep.

He dreamed that he was lying in the room he really was in, but
that he was quite well and unwounded. Many various, indifferent, and
insignificant people appeared before him. He talked to them and
discussed something trivial. They were preparing to go away somewhere.
Prince Andrew dimly realized that all this was trivial and that he had
more important cares, but he continued to speak, surprising them by
empty witticisms. Gradually, unnoticed, all these persons began to
disappear and a single question, that of the closed door, superseded
all else. He rose and went to the door to bolt and lock it. Everything
depended on whether he was, or was not, in time to lock it. He went,
and tried to hurry, but his legs refused to move and he knew he
would not be in time to lock the door though he painfully strained all
his powers. He was seized by an agonizing fear. And that fear was
the fear of death. It stood behind the door. But just when he was
clumsily creeping toward the door, that dreadful something on the
other side was already pressing against it and forcing its way in.
Something not human--death--was breaking in through that door, and had
to be kept out. He seized the door, making a final effort to hold it
back--to lock it was no longer possible--but his efforts were weak and
clumsy and the door, pushed from behind by that terror, opened and
closed again.

Once again it pushed from outside. His last superhuman efforts
were vain and both halves of the door noiselessly opened. It
entered, and it was death, and Prince Andrew died.

But at the instant he died, Prince Andrew remembered that he was
asleep, and at the very instant he died, having made an effort, he
awoke.

"Yes, it was death! I died--and woke up. Yes, death is an
awakening!" And all at once it grew light in his soul and the veil
that had till then concealed the unknown was lifted from his spiritual
vision. He felt as if powers till then confined within him had been
liberated, and that strange lightness did not again leave him.

When, waking in a cold perspiration, he moved on the divan,
Natasha went up and asked him what was the matter. He did not answer
and looked at her strangely, not understanding.

That was what had happened to him two days before Princess Mary's
arrival. From that day, as the doctor expressed it, the wasting
fever assumed a malignant character, but what the doctor said did
not interest Natasha, she saw the terrible moral symptoms which to her
were more convincing.

From that day an awakening from life came to Prince Andrew
together with his awakening from sleep. And compared to the duration
of life it did not seem to him slower than an awakening from sleep
compared to the duration of a dream.

There was nothing terrible or violent in this comparatively slow
awakening.

His last days and hours passed in an ordinary and simple way. Both
Princess Mary and Natasha, who did not leave him, felt this. They
did not weep or shudder and during these last days they themselves
felt that they were not attending on him (he was no longer there, he
had left them) but on what reminded them most closely of him--his
body. Both felt this so strongly that the outward and terrible side of
death did not affect them and they did not feel it necessary to foment
their grief. Neither in his presence nor out of it did they weep,
nor did they ever talk to one another about him. They felt that they
could not express in words what they understood.

They both saw that he was sinking slowly and quietly, deeper and
deeper, away from them, and they both knew that this had to be so
and that it was right.

He confessed, and received communion: everyone came to take leave of
him. When they brought his son to him, he pressed his lips to the
boy's and turned away, not because he felt it hard and sad (Princess
Mary and Natasha understood that) but simply because he thought it was
all that was required of him, but when they told him to bless the boy,
he did what was demanded and looked round as if asking whether there
was anything else he should do.

When the last convulsions of the body, which the spirit was leaving,
occurred, Princess Mary and Natasha were present.

"Is it over?" said Princess Mary when his body had for a few minutes
lain motionless, growing cold before them. Natasha went up, looked
at the dead eyes, and hastened to close them. She closed them but
did not kiss them, but clung to that which reminded her most nearly of
him--his body.

"Where has he gone? Where is he now?..."

When the body, washed and dressed, lay in the coffin on a table,
everyone came to take leave of him and they all wept.

Little Nicholas cried because his heart was rent by painful
perplexity. The countess and Sonya cried from pity for Natasha and
because he was no more. The old count cried because he felt that
before long, he, too, must take the same terrible step.

Natasha and Princess Mary also wept now, but not because of their
own personal grief; they wept with a reverent and softening emotion
which had taken possession of their souls at the consciousness of
the simple and solemn mystery of death that had been accomplished in
their presence.





BOOK THIRTEEN: 1812





CHAPTER I


Man's mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their
completeness, but the desire to find those causes is implanted in
man's soul. And without considering the multiplicity and complexity of
the conditions any one of which taken separately may seem to be the
cause, he snatches at the first approximation to a cause that seems to
him intelligible and says: "This is the cause!" In historical events
(where the actions of men are the subject of observation) the first
and most primitive approximation to present itself was the will of the
gods and, after that, the will of those who stood in the most
prominent position--the heroes of history. But we need only
penetrate to the essence of any historic event--which lies in the
activity of the general mass of men who take part in it--to be
convinced that the will of the historic hero does not control the
actions of the mass but is itself continually controlled. It may
seem to be a matter of indifference whether we understand the
meaning of historical events this way or that; yet there is the same
difference between a man who says that the people of the West moved on
the East because Napoleon wished it and a man who says that this
happened because it had to happen, as there is between those who
declared that the earth was stationary and that the planets moved
round it and those who admitted that they did not know what upheld the
earth, but knew there were laws directing its movement and that of the
other planets. There is, and can be, no cause of an historical event
except the one cause of all causes. But there are laws directing
events, and some of these laws are known to us while we are
conscious of others we cannot comprehend. The discovery of these
laws is only possible when we have quite abandoned the
attempt to find the cause in the will of some one man, just as the
discovery of the laws of the motion of the planets was possible only
when men abandoned the conception of the fixity of the earth.

The historians consider that, next to the battle of Borodino and the
occupation of Moscow by the enemy and its destruction by fire, the
most important episode of the war of 1812 was the movement of the
Russian army from the Ryazana to the Kaluga road and to the Tarutino
camp--the so-called flank march across the Krasnaya Pakhra River. They
ascribe the glory of that achievement of genius to different men and
dispute as to whom the honor is due. Even foreign historians,
including the French, acknowledge the genius of the Russian commanders
when they speak of that flank march. But it is hard to understand
why military writers, and following them others, consider this flank
march to be the profound conception of some one man who saved Russia
and destroyed Napoleon. In the first place it is hard to understand
where the profundity and genius of this movement lay, for not much
mental effort was needed to see that the best position for an army
when it is not being attacked is where there are most provisions;
and even a dull boy of thirteen could have guessed that the best
position for an army after its retreat from Moscow in 1812 was on
the Kaluga road. So it is impossible to understand by what reasoning
the historians reach the conclusion that this maneuver was a
profound one. And it is even more difficult to understand just why
they think that this maneuver was calculated to save Russia and
destroy the French; for this flank march, had it been preceded,
accompanied, or followed by other circumstances, might have proved
ruinous to the Russians and salutary for the French. If the position
of the Russian army really began to improve from the time of that
march, it does not at all follow that the march was the cause of it.

That flank march might not only have failed to give any advantage to
the Russian army, but might in other circumstances have led to its
destruction. What would have happened had Moscow not burned down? If
Murat had not lost sight of the Russians? If Napoleon had not remained
inactive? If the Russian army at Krasnaya Pakhra had given battle as
Bennigsen and Barclay advised? What would have happened had the French
attacked the Russians while they were marching beyond the Pakhra? What
would have happened if on approaching Tarutino, Napoleon had
attacked the Russians with but a tenth of the energy he had shown when
he attacked them at Smolensk? What would have happened had the
French moved on Petersburg?... In any of these eventualities the flank
march that brought salvation might have proved disastrous.

The third and most incomprehensible thing is that people studying
history deliberately avoid seeing that this flank march cannot be
attributed to any one man, that no one ever foresaw it, and that in
reality, like the retreat from Fili, it did not suggest itself to
anyone in its entirety, but resulted--moment by moment, step by
step, event by event--from an endless number of most diverse
circumstances and was only seen in its entirety when it had been
accomplished and belonged to the past.

At the council at Fili the prevailing thought in the minds of the
Russian commanders was the one naturally suggesting itself, namely,
a direct retreat by the Nizhni road. In proof of this there is the
fact that the majority of the council voted for such a retreat, and
above all there is the well-known conversation after the council,
between the commander in chief and Lanskoy, who was in charge of the
commissariat department. Lanskoy informed the commander in chief
that the army supplies were for the most part stored along the Oka
in the Tula and Ryazan provinces, and that if they retreated on Nizhni
the army would be separated from its supplies by the broad river
Oka, which cannot be crossed early in winter. This was the first
indication of the necessity of deviating from what had previously
seemed the most natural course--a direct retreat on Nizhni-Novgorod.
The army turned more to the south, along the Ryazan road and nearer to
its supplies. Subsequently the inactivity of the French (who even
lost sight of the Russian army), concern for the safety of the arsenal
at Tula, and especially the advantages of drawing nearer to its
supplies caused the army to turn still further south to the Tula road.
Having crossed over, by a forced march, to the Tula road beyond the
Pakhra, the Russian commanders intended to remain at Podolsk and had
no thought of the Tarutino position; but innumerable circumstances and
the reappearance of French troops who had for a time lost touch with
the Russians, and projects of giving battle, and above all the
abundance of provisions in Kaluga province, obliged our army to turn
still more to the south and to cross from the Tula to the Kaluga
road and go to Tarutino, which was between the roads along which those
supplies lay. Just as it is impossible to say when it was decided to
abandon Moscow, so it is impossible to say precisely when, or by whom,
it was decided to move to Tarutino. Only when the army had got
there, as the result of innumerable and varying forces, did people
begin to assure themselves that they had desired this movement and
long ago foreseen its result.





CHAPTER II


The famous flank movement merely consisted in this: after the
advance of the French had ceased, the Russian army, which had been
continually retreating straight back from the invaders, deviated
from that direct course and, not finding itself pursued, was naturally
drawn toward the district where supplies were abundant.

If instead of imagining to ourselves commanders of genius leading
the Russian army, we picture that army without any leaders, it could
not have done anything but make a return movement toward Moscow,
describing an arc in the direction where most provisions were to be
found and where the country was richest.

That movement from the Nizhni to the Ryazan, Tula, and Kaluga
roads was so natural that even the Russian marauders moved in that
direction, and demands were sent from Petersburg for Kutuzov to take
his army that way. At Tarutino Kutuzov received what was almost a
reprimand from the Emperor for having moved his army along the
Ryazan road, and the Emperor's letter indicated to him the very
position he had already occupied near Kaluga.

Having rolled like a ball in the direction of the impetus given by
the whole campaign and by the battle of Borodino, the Russian army-
when the strength of that impetus was exhausted and no fresh push
was received--assumed the position natural to it.

Kutuzov's merit lay, not in any strategic maneuver of genius, as
it is called, but in the fact that he alone understood the
significance of what had happened. He alone then understood the
meaning of the French army's inactivity, he alone continued to
assert that the battle of Borodino had been a victory, he alone--who
as commander in chief might have been expected to be eager to
attack--employed his whole strength to restrain the Russian army
from useless engagements.

The beast wounded at Borodino was lying where the fleeing hunter had
left him; but whether he was still alive, whether he was strong and
merely lying low, the hunter did not know. Suddenly the beast was
heard to moan.

The moan of that wounded beast (the French army) which betrayed
its calamitous condition was the sending of Lauriston to Kutuzov's
camp with overtures for peace.

Napoleon, with his usual assurance that whatever entered his head
was right, wrote to Kutuzov the first words that occurred to him,
though they were meaningless.


MONSIEUR LE PRINCE KOUTOUZOV: I am sending one of my
adjutants-general to discuss several interesting questions with you. I
beg your Highness to credit what he says to you, especially when he
expresses the sentiment of esteem and special regard I have long
entertained for your person. This letter having no other object, I
pray God, monsieur le Prince Koutouzov, to keep you in His holy and
gracious protection!

NAPOLEON

MOSCOW, OCTOBER 30, 1812


Kutuzov replied: "I should be cursed by posterity were I looked on
as the initiator of a settlement of any sort. Such is the present
spirit of my nation." But he continued to exert all his powers to
restrain his troops from attacking.

During the month that the French troops were pillaging in Moscow and
the Russian troops were quietly encamped at Tarutino, a change had
taken place in the relative strength of the two armies--both in spirit
and in number--as a result of which the superiority had passed to
the Russian side. Though the condition and numbers of the French
army were unknown to the Russians, as soon as that change occurred the
need of attacking at once showed itself by countless signs. These
signs were: Lauriston's mission; the abundance of provisions at
Tarutino; the reports coming in from all sides of the inactivity and
disorder of the French; the flow of recruits to our regiments; the
fine weather; the long rest the Russian soldiers had enjoyed, and
the impatience to do what they had been assembled for, which usually
shows itself in an army that has been resting; curiosity as to what
the French army, so long lost sight of, was doing; the boldness with
which our outposts now scouted close up to the French stationed at
Tarutino; the news of easy successes gained by peasants and
guerrilla troops over the French, the envy aroused by this; the desire
for revenge that lay in the heart of every Russian as long as the
French were in Moscow, and (above all) a dim consciousness in every
soldier's mind that the relative strength of the armies had changed
and that the advantage was now on our side. There was a substantial
change in the relative strength, and an advance had become inevitable.
And at once, as a clock begins to strike and chime as soon as the
minute hand has completed a full circle, this change was shown by an
increased activity, whirring, and chiming in the higher spheres.





CHAPTER III


The Russian army was commanded by Kutuzov and his staff, and also by
the Emperor from Petersburg. Before the news of the abandonment of
Moscow had been received in Petersburg, a detailed plan of the whole
campaign had been drawn up and sent to Kutuzov for his guidance.
Though this plan had been drawn up on the supposition that Moscow
was still in our hands, it was approved by the staff and accepted as a
basis for action. Kutuzov only replied that movements arranged from
a distance were always difficult to execute. So fresh instructions
were sent for the solution of difficulties that might be
encountered, as well as fresh people who were to watch Kutuzov's
actions and report upon them.

Besides this, the whole staff of the Russian army was now
reorganized. The posts left vacant by Bagration, who had been
killed, and by Barclay, who had gone away in dudgeon, had to be
filled. Very serious consideration was given to the question whether
it would be better to put A in B's place and B in D's, or on the
contrary to put D in A's place, and so on--as if anything more than
A's or B's satisfaction depended on this.

As a result of the hostility between Kutuzov and Bennigsen, his
Chief of Staff, the presence of confidential representatives of the
Emperor, and these transfers, a more than usually complicated play
of parties was going on among the staff of the army. A was undermining
B, D was undermining C, and so on in all possible combinations and
permutations. In all these plottings the subject of intrigue was
generally the conduct of the war, which all these men believed they
were directing; but this affair of the war went on independently of
them, as it had to go: that is, never in the way people devised, but
flowing always from the essential attitude of the masses. Only in
the highest spheres did all these schemes, crossings, and
interminglings appear to be a true reflection of what had to happen.


Prince Michael Ilarionovich! (wrote the Emperor on the second of
October in a letter that reached Kutuzov after the battle at Tarutino)
Since September 2 Moscow has been in the hands of the enemy. Your last
reports were written on the twentieth, and during all this time not
only has no action been taken against the enemy or for the relief of
the ancient capital, but according to your last report you have even
retreated farther. Serpukhov is already occupied by an enemy
detachment and Tula with its famous arsenal so indispensable to the
army, is in danger. From General Wintzingerode's reports, I see that
an enemy corps of ten thousand men is moving on the Petersburg road.
Another corps of several thousand men is moving on Dmitrov. A third
has advanced along the Vladimir road, and a fourth, rather
considerable detachment is stationed between Ruza and Mozhaysk.
Napoleon himself was in Moscow as late as the twenty-fifth. In view of
all this information, when the enemy has scattered his forces in large
detachments, and with Napoleon and his Guards in Moscow, is it
possible that the enemy's forces confronting you are so considerable
as not to allow of your taking the offensive? On the contrary, he is
probably pursuing you with detachments, or at most with an army
corps much weaker than the army entrusted to you. It would seem
that, availing yourself of these circumstances, you might
advantageously attack a weaker one and annihilate him, or at least
oblige him to retreat, retaining in our hands an important part of the
provinces now occupied by the enemy, and thereby averting danger
from Tula and other towns in the interior. You will be responsible
if the enemy is able to direct a force of any size against
Petersburg to threaten this capital in which it has not been
possible to retain many troops; for with the army entrusted to you,
and acting with resolution and energy, you have ample means to avert
this fresh calamity. Remember that you have still to answer to our
offended country for the loss of Moscow. You have experienced my
readiness to reward you. That readiness will not weaken in me, but I
and Russia have a right to expect from you all the zeal, firmness, and
success which your intellect, military talent, and the courage of
the troops you command justify us in expecting.


But by the time this letter, which proved that the real relation
of the forces had already made itself felt in Petersburg, was
dispatched, Kutuzov had found himself unable any longer to restrain
the army he commanded from attacking and a battle had taken place.

On the second of October a Cossack, Shapovalov, who was out
scouting, killed one hare and wounded another. Following the wounded
hare he made his way far into the forest and came upon the left
flank of Murat's army, encamped there without any precautions. The
Cossack laughingly told his comrades how he had almost fallen into the
hands of the French. A cornet, hearing the story, informed his
commander.

The Cossack was sent for and questioned. The Cossack officers wished
to take advantage of this chance to capture some horses, but one of
the superior officers, who was acquainted with the higher authorities,
reported the incident to a general on the staff.  The state of
things on the staff had of late been exceedingly strained. Ermolov had
been to see Bennigsen a few days previously and had entreated him to
use his influence with the commander in chief to induce him to take
the offensive.

"If I did not know you I should think you did not want what you
are asking for. I need only advise anything and his Highness is sure
to do the opposite," replied Bennigsen.

The Cossack's report, confirmed by horse patrols who were sent
out, was the final proof that events had matured. The tightly coiled
spring was released, the clock began to whirr and the chimes to
play. Despite all his supposed power, his intellect, his experience,
and his knowledge of men, Kutuzov--having taken into consideration the
Cossack's report, a note from Bennigsen who sent personal reports to
the Emperor, the wishes he supposed the Emperor to hold, and the
fact that all the generals expressed the same wish--could no longer
check the inevitable movement, and gave the order to do what he
regarded as useless and harmful--gave his approval, that is, to the
accomplished fact.





CHAPTER IV


Bennigsen's note and the Cossack's information that the left flank
of the French was unguarded were merely final indications that it
was necessary to order an attack, and it was fixed for the fifth of
October.

On the morning of the fourth of October Kutuzov signed the
dispositions. Toll read them to Ermolov, asking him to attend to the
further arrangements.

"All right--all right. I haven't time just now," replied Ermolov,
and left the hut.

The dispositions drawn up by Toll were very good. As in the
Austerlitz dispositions, it was written--though not in German this
time:

"The First Column will march here and here," "the Second Column will
march there and there," and so on; and on paper, all these columns
arrived at their places at the appointed time and destroyed the enemy.
Everything had been admirably thought out as is usual in dispositions,
and as is always the case, not a single column reached its place at
the appointed time.

When the necessary number of copies of the dispositions had been
prepared, an officer was summoned and sent to deliver them to
Ermolov to deal with. A young officer of the Horse Guards, Kutuzov's
orderly, pleased at the importance of the mission entrusted to him,
went to Ermolov's quarters.

"Gone away," said Ermolov's orderly.

The officer of the Horse Guards went to a general with whom
Ermolov was often to be found.

"No, and the general's out too."

The officer, mounting his horse, rode off to someone else.

"No, he's gone out."

"If only they don't make me responsible for this delay! What a
nuisance it is!" thought the officer, and he rode round the whole
camp. One man said he had seen Ermolov ride past with some other
generals, others said he must have returned home. The officer searched
till six o'clock in the evening without even stopping to eat.
Ermolov was nowhere to be found and no one knew where he was. The
officer snatched a little food at a comrade's, and rode again to the
vanguard to find Miloradovich. Miloradovich too was away, but here
he was told that he had gone to a ball at General Kikin's and that
Ermolov was probably there too.

"But where is it?"

"Why, there, over at Echkino," said a Cossack officer, pointing to a
country house in the far distance.

"What, outside our line?"

"They've put two regiments as outposts, and they're having such a
spree there, it's awful! Two bands and three sets of singers!"

The officer rode out beyond our lines to Echkino. While still at a
distance he heard as he rode the merry sounds of a soldier's dance
song proceeding from the house.

"In the meadows... in the meadows!" he heard, accompanied by
whistling and the sound of a torban, drowned every now and then by
shouts. These sounds made his spirits rise, but at the same time he
was afraid that he would be blamed for not having executed sooner
the important order entrusted to him. It was already past eight
o'clock. He dismounted and went up into the porch of a large country
house which had remained intact between the Russian and French forces.
In the refreshment room and the hall, footmen were bustling about with
wine and viands. Groups of singers stood outside the windows. The
officer was admitted and immediately saw all the chief generals of the
army together, and among them Ermolov's big imposing figure. They
all had their coats unbuttoned and were standing in a semicircle
with flushed and animated faces, laughing loudly. In the middle of the
room a short handsome general with a red face was dancing the trepak
with much spirit and agility.

"Ha, ha, ha! Bravo, Nicholas Ivanych! Ha, ha, ha!"

The officer felt that by arriving with important orders at such a
moment he was doubly to blame, and he would have preferred to wait;
but one of the generals espied him and, hearing what he had come
about, informed Ermolov.

Ermolov came forward with a frown on his face and, hearing what
the officer had to say, took the papers from him without a word.


"You think he went off just by chance?" said a comrade, who was on
the staff that evening, to the officer of the Horse Guards,
referring to Ermolov. "It was a trick. It was done on purpose to get
Konovnitsyn into trouble. You'll see what a mess there'll be
tomorrow."





CHAPTER V


Next day the decrepit Kutuzov, having given orders to be called
early, said his prayers, dressed, and, with an unpleasant
consciousness of having to direct a battle he did not approve of,
got into his caleche and drove from Letashovka (a village three and
a half miles from Tarutino) to the place where the attacking columns
were to meet. He sat in the caleche, dozing and waking up by turns,
and listening for any sound of firing on the right as an indication
that the action had begun. But all was still quiet. A damp dull autumn
morning was just dawning. On approaching Tarutino Kutuzov noticed
cavalrymen leading their horses to water across the road along which
he was driving. Kutuzov looked at them searchingly, stopped his
carriage, and inquired what regiment they belonged to. They belonged
to a column that should have been far in front and in ambush long
before then. "It may be a mistake," thought the old commander in
chief. But a little further on he saw infantry regiments with their
arms piled and the soldiers, only partly dressed, eating their rye
porridge and carrying fuel. He sent for an officer. The officer
reported that no order to advance had been received.

"How! Not rec..." Kutuzov began, but checked himself immediately and
sent for a senior officer. Getting out of his caleche, he waited
with drooping head and breathing heavily, pacing silently up and down.
When Eykhen, the officer of the general staff whom he had summoned,
appeared, Kutuzov went purple in the face, not because that officer
was to blame for the mistake, but because he was an object of
sufficient importance for him to vent his wrath on. Trembling and
panting the old man fell into that state of fury in which he sometimes
used to roll on the ground, and he fell upon Eykhen, threatening him
with his hands, shouting and loading him with gross abuse. Another
man, Captain Brozin, who happened to turn up and who was not at all to
blame, suffered the same fate.

"What sort of another blackguard are you? I'll have you shot!
Scoundrels!" yelled Kutuzov in a hoarse voice, waving his arms and
reeling.

He was suffering physically. He, the commander in chief, a Serene
Highness who everybody said possessed powers such as no man had ever
had in Russia, to be placed in this position--made the laughingstock
of the whole army! "I needn't have been in such a hurry to pray
about today, or have kept awake thinking everything over all night,"
thought he to himself. "When I was a chit of an officer no one would
have dared to mock me so... and now!" He was in a state of physical
suffering as if from corporal punishment, and could not avoid
expressing it by cries of anger and distress. But his strength soon
began to fail him, and looking about him, conscious of having said
much that was amiss, he again got into his caleche and drove back in
silence.

His wrath, once expended, did not return, and blinking feebly he
listened to excuses and self-justifications (Ermolov did not come to
see him till the next day) and to the insistence of Bennigsen,
Konovnitsyn, and Toll that the movement that had miscarried should
be executed next day. And once more Kutuzov had to consent.





CHAPTER VI


Next day the troops assembled in their appointed places in the
evening and advanced during the night. It was an autumn night with
dark purple clouds, but no rain. The ground was damp but not muddy,
and the troops advanced noiselessly, only occasionally a jingling of
the artillery could be faintly heard. The men were forbidden to talk
out loud, to smoke their pipes, or to strike a light, and they tried
to prevent their horses neighing. The secrecy of the undertaking
heightened its charm and they marched gaily. Some columns,
supposing they had reached their destination, halted, piled arms, and
settled down on the cold ground, but the majority marched all night
and arrived at places where they evidently should not have been.

Only Count Orlov-Denisov with his Cossacks (the least important
detachment of all) got to his appointed place at the right time.
This detachment halted at the outskirts of a forest, on the path
leading from the village of Stromilova to Dmitrovsk.

Toward dawn, Count Orlov-Denisov, who had dozed off, was awakened by
a deserter from the French army being brought to him. This was a
Polish sergeant of Poniatowski's corps, who explained in Polish that
he had come over because he had been slighted in the service: that
he ought long ago to have been made an officer, that he was braver
than any of them, and so he had left them and wished to pay them
out. He said that Murat was spending the night less than a mile from
where they were, and that if they would let him have a convoy of a
hundred men he would capture him alive. Count Orlov-Denisov
consulted his fellow officers.

The offer was too tempting to be refused. Everyone volunteered to go
and everybody advised making the attempt. After much disputing and
arguing, Major-General Grekov with two Cossack regiments decided to go
with the Polish sergeant.

"Now, remember," said Count Orlov-Denisov to the sergeant at
parting, "if you have been lying I'll have you hanged like a dog;
but if it's true you shall have a hundred gold pieces!"

Without replying, the sergeant, with a resolute air, mounted and
rode away with Grekov whose men had quickly assembled. They
disappeared into the forest, and Count Orlov-Denisov, having seen
Grekov off, returned, shivering from the freshness of the early dawn
and excited by what he had undertaken on his own responsibility, and
began looking at the enemy camp, now just visible in the deceptive
light of dawn and the dying campfires. Our columns ought to have begun
to appear on an open declivity to his right. He looked in that
direction, but though the columns would have been visible quite far
off, they were not to be seen. It seemed to the count that things were
beginning to stir in the French camp, and his keen-sighted adjutant
confirmed this.

"Oh, it is really too late," said Count Orlov, looking at the camp.

As often happens when someone we have trusted is no longer before
our eyes, it suddenly seemed quite clear and obvious to him that the
sergeant was an impostor, that he had lied, and that the whole Russian
attack would be ruined by the absence of those two regiments, which he
would lead away heaven only knew where. How could one capture a
commander in chief from among such a mass of troops!

"I am sure that rascal was lying," said the count.

"They can still be called back," said one of his suite, who like
Count Orlov felt distrustful of the adventure when he looked at the
enemy's camp.

"Eh? Really... what do you think? Should we let them go on or not?"

"Will you have them fetched back?"

"Fetch them back, fetch them back!" said Count Orlov with sudden
determination, looking at his watch. "It will be too late. It is quite
light."

And the adjutant galloped through the forest after Grekov. When
Grekov returned, Count Orlov-Denisov, excited both by the abandoned
attempt and by vainly awaiting the infantry columns that still did not
appear, as well as by the proximity of the enemy, resolved to advance.
All his men felt the same excitement.

"Mount!" he commanded in a whisper. The men took their places and
crossed themselves.... "Forward, with God's aid!"

"Hurrah-ah-ah!" reverberated in the forest, and the Cossack
companies, trailing their lances and advancing one after another as if
poured out of a sack, dashed gaily across the brook toward the camp.

One desperate, frightened yell from the first French soldier who saw
the Cossacks, and all who were in the camp, undressed and only just
waking up, ran off in all directions, abandoning cannons, muskets, and
horses.

Had the Cossacks pursued the French, without heeding what was behind
and around them, they would have captured Murat and everything
there. That was what the officers desired. But it was impossible to
make the Cossacks budge when once they had got booty and prisoners.
None of them listened to orders. Fifteen hundred prisoners and
thirty-eight guns were taken on the spot, besides standards and
(what seemed most important to the Cossacks) horses, saddles,
horsecloths, and the like. All this had to be dealt with, the
prisoners and guns secured, the booty divided--not without some
shouting and even a little themselves--and it was on this that the
Cossacks all busied themselves.

The French, not being farther pursued, began to recover
themselves: they formed into detachments and began firing.
Orlov-Denisov, still waiting for the other columns to arrive, advanced
no further.

Meantime, according to the dispositions which said that "the First
Column will march" and so on, the infantry of the belated columns,
commanded by Bennigsen and directed by Toll, had started in due
order and, as always happens, had got somewhere, but not to their
appointed places. As always happens the men, starting cheerfully,
began to halt; murmurs were heard, there was a sense of confusion, and
finally a backward movement. Adjutants and generals galloped about,
shouted, grew angry, quarreled, said they had come quite wrong and
were late, gave vent to a little abuse, and at last gave it all up and
went forward, simply to get somewhere. "We shall get somewhere or
other!" And they did indeed get somewhere, though not to their right
places; a few eventually even got to their right place, but too late
to be of any use and only in time to be fired at. Toll, who in this
battle played the part of Weyrother at Austerlitz, galloped
assiduously from place to place, finding everything upside down
everywhere. Thus he stumbled on Bagovut's corps in a wood when it
was already broad daylight, though the corps should long before have
joined Orlov-Denisov. Excited and vexed by the failure and supposing
that someone must be responsible for it, Toll galloped up to the
commander of the corps and began upbraiding him severely, saying
that he ought to be shot. General Bagovut, a fighting old soldier of
placid temperament, being also upset by all the delay, confusion,
and cross-purposes, fell into a rage to everybody's surprise and quite
contrary to his usual character and said disagreeable things to Toll.

"I prefer not to take lessons from anyone, but I can die with my men
as well as anybody," he said, and advanced with a single division.

Coming out onto a field under the enemy's fire, this brave general
went straight ahead, leading his men under fire, without considering
in his agitation whether going into action now, with a single
division, would be of any use or no. Danger, cannon balls, and bullets
were just what he needed in his angry mood. One of the first bullets
killed him, and other bullets killed many of his men. And his division
remained under fire for some time quite uselessly.





CHAPTER VII


Meanwhile another column was to have attacked the French from the
front, but Kutuzov accompanied that column. He well knew that
nothing but confusion would come of this battle undertaken against his
will, and as far as was in his power held the troops back. He did
not advance.

He rode silently on his small gray horse, indolently answering
suggestions that they should attack.

"The word attack is always on your tongue, but you don't see that we
are unable to execute complicated maneuvers," said he to
Miloradovich who asked permission to advance.

"We couldn't take Murat prisoner this morning or get to the place in
time, and nothing can be done now!" he replied to someone else.

When Kutuzov was informed that at the French rear--where according
to the reports of the Cossacks there had previously been nobody--there
were now two battalions of Poles, he gave a sidelong glance at Ermolov
who was behind him and to whom he had not spoken since the previous
day.

"You see! They are asking to attack and making plans of all kinds,
but as soon as one gets to business nothing is ready, and the enemy,
forewarned, takes measures accordingly."

Ermolov screwed up his eyes and smiled faintly on hearing these
words. He understood that for him the storm had blown over, and that
Kutuzov would content himself with that hint.

"He's having a little fun at my expense," said Ermolov softly,
nudging with his knee Raevski who was at his side.

Soon after this, Ermolov moved up to Kutuzov and respectfully
remarked:

"It is not too late yet, your Highness--the enemy has not gone away-
if you were to order an attack! If not, the Guards will not so much as
see a little smoke."

Kutuzov did not reply, but when they reported to him that Murat's
troops were in retreat he ordered an advance, though at every
hundred paces he halted for three quarters of an hour.

The whole battle consisted in what Orlov-Denisov's Cossacks had
done: the rest of the army merely lost some hundreds of men uselessly.

In consequence of this battle Kutuzov received a diamond decoration,
and Bennigsen some diamonds and a hundred thousand rubles, others also
received pleasant recognitions corresponding to their various
grades, and following the battle fresh changes were made in the staff.

"That's how everything is done with us, all topsy-turvy!" said the
Russian officers and generals after the Tarutino battle, letting it be
understood that some fool there is doing things all wrong but that
we ourselves should not have done so, just as people speak today.
But people who talk like that either do not know what they are talking
about or deliberately deceive themselves. No battle--Tarutino,
Borodino, or Austerlitz--takes place as those who planned it
anticipated. That is an essential condition.

A countless number of free forces (for nowhere is man freer than
during a battle, where it is a question of life and death) influence
the course taken by the fight, and that course never can be known in
advance and never coincides with the direction of any one force.

If many simultaneously and variously directed forces act on a
given body, the direction of its motion cannot coincide with any one
of those forces, but will always be a mean--what in mechanics is
represented by the diagonal of a parallelogram of forces.

If in the descriptions given by historians, especially French
ones, we find their wars and battles carried out in accordance with
previously formed plans, the only conclusion to be drawn is that those
descriptions are false.

The battle of Tarutino obviously did not attain the aim Toll had
in view--to lead the troops into action in the order prescribed by the
dispositions; nor that which Count Orlov-Denisov may have had in view-
to take Murat prisoner; nor the result of immediately destroying the
whole corps, which Bennigsen and others may have had in view; nor
the aim of the officer who wished to go into action to distinguish
himself; nor that of the Cossack who wanted more booty than he got,
and so on. But if the aim of the battle was what actually resulted and
what all the Russians of that day desired--to drive the French out
of Russia and destroy their army--it is quite clear that the battle of
Tarutino, just because of its incongruities, was exactly what was
wanted at that stage of the campaign. It would be difficult and even
impossible to imagine any result more opportune than the actual
outcome of this battle. With a minimum of effort and insignificant
losses, despite the greatest confusion, the most important results
of the whole campaign were attained: the transition from retreat to
advance, an exposure of the weakness of the French, and the
administration of that shock which Napoleon's army had only awaited to
begin its flight.





CHAPTER VIII


Napoleon enters Moscow after the brilliant victory de la Moskowa;
there can be no doubt about the victory for the battlefield remains in
the hands of the French. The Russians retreat and abandon their
ancient capital. Moscow, abounding in provisions, arms, munitions, and
incalculable wealth, is in Napoleon's hands. The Russian army, only
half the strength of the French, does not make a single attempt to
attack for a whole month. Napoleon's position is most brilliant. He
can either fall on the Russian army with double its strength and
destroy it; negotiate an advantageous peace, or in case of a refusal
make a menacing move on Petersburg, or even, in the case of a reverse,
return to Smolensk or Vilna; or remain in Moscow; in short, no special
genius would seem to be required to retain the brilliant position
the French held at that time. For that, only very simple and easy
steps were necessary: not to allow the troops to loot, to prepare
winter clothing--of which there was sufficient in Moscow for the whole
army--and methodically to collect the provisions, of which
(according to the French historians) there were enough in Moscow to
supply the whole army for six months. Yet Napoleon, that greatest of
all geniuses, who the historians declare had control of the army, took
none of these steps.

He not merely did nothing of the kind, but on the contrary he used
his power to select the most foolish and ruinous of all the courses
open to him. Of all that Napoleon might have done: wintering in
Moscow, advancing on Petersburg or on Nizhni-Novgorod, or retiring
by a more northerly or more southerly route (say by the road Kutuzov
afterwards took), nothing more stupid or disastrous can be imagined
than what he actually did. He remained in Moscow till October, letting
the troops plunder the city; then, hesitating whether to leave a
garrison behind him, he quitted Moscow, approached Kutuzov without
joining battle, turned to the right and reached Malo-Yaroslavets,
again without attempting to break through and take the road Kutuzov
took, but retiring instead to Mozhaysk along the devastated Smolensk
road. Nothing more stupid than that could have been devised, or more
disastrous for the army, as the sequel showed. Had Napoleon's aim been
to destroy his army, the most skillful strategist could hardly have
devised any series of actions that would so completely have
accomplished that purpose, independently of anything the Russian
army might do.

Napoleon, the man of genius, did this! But to say that he
destroyed his army because he wished to, or because he was very
stupid, would be as unjust as to say that he had brought his troops to
Moscow because he wished to and because he was very clever and a
genius.

In both cases his personal activity, having no more force than the
personal activity of any soldier, merely coincided with the laws
that guided the event.

The historians quite falsely represent Napoleon's faculties as
having weakened in Moscow, and do so only because the results did
not justify his actions. He employed all his ability and strength to
do the best he could for himself and his army, as he had done
previously and as he did subsequently in 1813. His activity at that
time was no less astounding than it was in Egypt, in Italy, in
Austria, and in Prussia. We do not know for certain in how far his
genius was genuine in Egypt--where forty centuries looked down upon
his grandeur--for his great exploits there are all told us by
Frenchmen. We cannot accurately estimate his genius in Austria or
Prussia, for we have to draw our information from French or German
sources, and the incomprehensible surrender of whole corps without
fighting and of fortresses without a siege must incline Germans to
recognize his genius as the only explanation of the war carried on
in Germany. But we, thank God, have no need to recognize his genius in
order to hide our shame. We have paid for the right to look at the
matter plainly and simply, and we will not abandon that right.

His activity in Moscow was as amazing and as full of genius as
elsewhere. Order after order order and plan after plan were issued
by him from the time he entered Moscow till the time he left it. The
absence of citizens and of a deputation, and even the burning of
Moscow, did not disconcert him. He did not lose sight either of the
welfare of his army or of the doings of the enemy, or of the welfare
of the people of Russia, or of the direction of affairs in Paris, or
of diplomatic considerations concerning the terms of the anticipated
peace.





CHAPTER IX


With regard to military matters, Napoleon immediately on his entry
into Moscow gave General Sabastiani strict orders to observe the
movements of the Russian army, sent army corps out along the different
roads, and charged Murat to find Kutuzov. Then he gave careful
directions about the fortification of the Kremlin, and drew up a
brilliant plan for a future campaign over the whole map of Russia.

With regard to diplomatic questions, Napoleon summoned Captain
Yakovlev, who had been robbed and was in rags and did not know how
to get out of Moscow, minutely explained to him his whole policy and
his magnanimity, and having written a letter to the Emperor
Alexander in which he considered it his duty to inform his Friend
and Brother that Rostopchin had managed affairs badly in Moscow, he
dispatched Yakovlev to Petersburg.

Having similarly explained his views and his magnanimity to
Tutolmin, he dispatched that old man also to Petersburg to negotiate.

With regard to legal matters, immediately after the fires he gave
orders to find and execute the incendiaries. And the scoundrel
Rostopchin was punished by an order to burn down his houses.

With regard to administrative matters, Moscow was granted a
constitution. A municipality was established and the following
announcement issued:


INHABITANTS OF MOSCOW!

Your misfortunes are cruel, but His Majesty the Emperor and King
desires to arrest their course. Terrible examples have taught you
how he punishes disobedience and crime. Strict measures have been
taken to put an end to disorder and to re-establish public security. A
paternal administration, chosen from among yourselves, will form
your municipality or city government. It will take care of you, of
your needs, and of your welfare. Its members will be distinguished
by a red ribbon worn across the shoulder, and the mayor of the city
will wear a white belt as well. But when not on duty they will only
wear a red ribbon round the left arm.

The city police is established on its former footing, and better
order already prevails in consequence of its activity. The
government has appointed two commissaries general, or chiefs of
police, and twenty commissaries or captains of wards have been
appointed to the different wards of the city. You will recognize
them by the white ribbon they will wear on the left arm. Several
churches of different denominations are open, and divine service is
performed in them unhindered. Your fellow citizens are returning every
day to their homes. and orders have been given that they should find
in them the help and protection due to their misfortunes. These are
the measures the government has adopted to re-establish order and
relieve your condition. But to achieve this aim it is necessary that
you should add your efforts and should, if possible, forget the
misfortunes you have suffered, should entertain the hope of a less
cruel fate, should be certain that inevitable and ignominious death
awaits those who make any attempt on your persons or on what remains
of your property, and finally that you should not doubt that these
will be safeguarded, since such is the will of the greatest and most
just of monarchs. Soldiers and citizens, of whatever nation you may
be, re-establish public confidence, the source of the welfare of a
state, live like brothers, render mutual aid and protection one to
another, unite to defeat the intentions of the evil-minded, obey the
military and civil authorities, and your tears will soon cease to
flow!


With regard to supplies for the army, Napoleon decreed that all
the troops in turn should enter Moscow a la maraude* to obtain
provisions for themselves, so that the army might have its future
provided for.


*As looters.


With regard to religion, Napoleon ordered the priests to be
brought back and services to be again performed in the churches.

With regard to commerce and to provisioning the army, the
following was placarded everywhere:


PROCLAMATION!

You, peaceful inhabitants of Moscow, artisans and workmen whom
misfortune has driven from the city, and you scattered tillers of
the soil, still kept out in the fields by groundless fear, listen!
Tranquillity is returning to this capital and order is being
restored in it. Your fellow countrymen are emerging boldly from
their hiding places on finding that they are respected. Any violence
to them or to their property is promptly punished. His Majesty the
Emperor and King protects them, and considers no one among you his
enemy except those who disobey his orders. He desires to end your
misfortunes and restore you to your homes and families. Respond,
therefore, to his benevolent intentions and come to us without fear.
Inhabitants, return with confidence to your abodes! You will soon find
means of satisfying your needs. Craftsmen and industrious artisans,
return to your work, your houses, your shops, where the protection
of guards awaits you! You shall receive proper pay for your work.
And lastly you too, peasants, come from the forests where you are
hiding in terror, return to your huts without fear, in full
assurance that you will find protection! Markets are established in
the city where peasants can bring their surplus supplies and the
products of the soil. The government has taken the following steps
to ensure freedom of sale for them: (1) From today, peasants,
husbandmen, and those living in the neighborhood of Moscow may without
any danger bring their supplies of all kinds to two appointed markets,
of which one is on the Mokhovaya Street and the other at the Provision
Market. (2) Such supplies will be bought from them at such prices as
seller and buyer may agree on, and if a seller is unable to obtain a
fair price he will be free to take his goods back to his village and
no one may hinder him under any pretense. (3) Sunday and Wednesday
of each week are appointed as the chief market days and to that end
a sufficient number of troops will be stationed along the highroads on
Tuesdays and Saturdays at such distances from the town as to protect
the carts. (4) Similar measures will be taken that peasants with their
carts and horses may meet with no hindrance on their return journey.
(5) Steps will immediately be taken to re-establish ordinary trading.

Inhabitants of the city and villages, and you, workingmen and
artisans, to whatever nation you belong, you are called on to carry
out the paternal intentions of His Majesty the Emperor and King and to
co-operate with him for the public welfare! Lay your respect and
confidence at his feet and do not delay to unite with us!


With the object of raising the spirits of the troops and of the
people, reviews were constantly held and rewards distributed. The
Emperor rode through the streets to comfort the inhabitants, and,
despite his preoccupation with state affairs, himself visited the
theaters that were established by his order.

In regard to philanthropy, the greatest virtue of crowned heads,
Napoleon also did all in his power. He caused the words Maison de ma
Mere to be inscribed on the charitable institutions, thereby combining
tender filial affection with the majestic benevolence of a monarch. He
visited the Foundling Hospital and, allowing the orphans saved by
him to kiss his white hands, graciously conversed with Tutolmin. Then,
as Thiers eloquently recounts, he ordered his soldiers to be paid in
forged Russian money which he had prepared: "Raising the use of
these means by an act worthy of himself and of the French army, he let
relief be distributed to those who had been burned out. But as food
was too precious to be given to foreigners, who were for the most part
enemies, Napoleon preferred to supply them with money with which to
purchase food from outside, and had paper rubles distributed to them."

With reference to army discipline, orders were continually being
issued to inflict severe punishment for the nonperformance of military
duties and to suppress robbery.





CHAPTER X


But strange to say, all these measures, efforts, and plans--which
were not at all worse than others issued in similar circumstances--did
not affect the essence of the matter but, like the hands of a clock
detached from the mechanism, swung about in an arbitrary and aimless
way without engaging the cogwheels.

With reference to the military side--the plan of campaign--that work
of genius of which Thiers remarks that, "His genius never devised
anything more profound, more skillful, or more admirable," and
enters into a polemic with M. Fain to prove that this work of genius
must be referred not to the fourth but to the fifteenth of October-
that plan never was or could be executed, for it was quite out of
touch with the facts of the case. The fortifying of the Kremlin, for
which la Mosquee (as Napoleon termed the church of Basil the
Beatified) was to have been razed to the ground, proved quite useless.
The mining of the Kremlin only helped toward fulfilling Napoleon's
wish that it should be blown up when he left Moscow--as a child
wants the floor on which he has hurt himself to be beaten. The pursuit
of the Russian army, about which Napoleon was so concerned, produced
an unheard-of result. The French generals lost touch with the
Russian army of sixty thousand men, and according to Thiers it was
only eventually found, like a lost pin, by the skill--and apparently
the genius--of Murat.

With reference to diplomacy, all Napoleon's arguments as to his
magnanimity and justice, both to Tutolmin and to Yakovlev (whose chief
concern was to obtain a greatcoat and a conveyance), proved useless;
Alexander did not receive these envoys and did not reply to their
embassage.

With regard to legal matters, after the execution of the supposed
incendiaries the rest of Moscow burned down.

With regard to administrative matters, the establishment of a
municipality did not stop the robberies and was only of use to certain
people who formed part of that municipality and under pretext of
preserving order looted Moscow or saved their own property from
being looted.

With regard to religion, as to which in Egypt matters had so
easily been settled by Napoleon's visit to a mosque, no results were
achieved. Two or three priests who were found in Moscow did try to
carry out Napoleon's wish, but one of them was slapped in the face
by a French soldier while conducting service, and a French official
reported of another that: "The priest whom I found and invited to
say Mass cleaned and locked up the church. That night the doors were
again broken open, the padlocks smashed, the books mutilated, and
other disorders perpetrated."

With reference to commerce, the proclamation to industrious
workmen and to peasants evoked no response. There were no
industrious workmen, and the peasants caught the commissaries who
ventured too far out of town with the proclamation and killed them.

As to the theaters for the entertainment of the people and the
troops, these did not meet with success either. The theaters set up in
the Kremlin and in Posnyakov's house were closed again at once because
the actors and actresses were robbed.

Even philanthropy did not have the desired effect. The genuine as
well as the false paper money which flooded Moscow lost its value. The
French, collecting booty, cared only for gold. Not only was the
paper money valueless which Napoleon so graciously distributed to
the unfortunate, but even silver lost its value in relation to gold.

But the most amazing example of the ineffectiveness of the orders
given by the authorities at that time was Napoleon's attempt to stop
the looting and re-establish discipline.

This is what the army authorities were reporting:

"Looting continues in the city despite the decrees against it. Order
is not yet restored and not a single merchant is carrying on trade
in a lawful manner. The sutlers alone venture to trade, and they
sell stolen goods."

"The neighborhood of my ward continues to be pillaged by soldiers of
the 3rd Corps who, not satisfied with taking from the unfortunate
inhabitants hiding in the cellars the little they have left, even have
the ferocity to wound them with their sabers, as I have repeatedly
witnessed."

"Nothing new, except that the soldiers are robbing and pillaging-
October 9."

"Robbery and pillaging continue. There is a band of thieves in our
district who ought to be arrested by a strong force--October 11."

"The Emperor is extremely displeased that despite the strict
orders to stop pillage, parties of marauding Guards are continually
seen returning to the Kremlin. Among the Old Guard disorder and
pillage were renewed more violently than ever yesterday evening,
last night, and today. The Emperor sees with regret that the picked
soldiers appointed to guard his person, who should set an example of
discipline, carry disobedience to such a point that they break into
the cellars and stores containing army supplies. Others have disgraced
themselves to the extent of disobeying sentinels and officers, and
have abused and beaten them."

"The Grand Marshal of the palace," wrote the governor, "complains
bitterly that in spite of repeated orders, the soldiers continue to
commit nuisances in all the courtyards and even under the very windows
of the Emperor."

That army, like a herd of cattle run wild and trampling underfoot
the provender which might have saved it from starvation, disintegrated
and perished with each additional day it remained in Moscow. But it
did not go away.

It began to run away only when suddenly seized by a panic caused
by the capture of transport trains on the Smolensk road, and by the
battle of Tarutino. The news of that battle of Tarutino,
unexpectedly received by Napoleon at a review, evoked in him a
desire to punish the Russians (Thiers says), and he issued the order
for departure which the whole army was demanding.

Fleeing from Moscow the soldiers took with them everything they
had stolen. Napoleon, too, carried away his own personal tresor, but
on seeing the baggage trains that impeded the army, he was (Thiers
says) horror-struck. And yet with his experience of war he did not
order all the superfluous vehicles to be burned, as he had done with
those of a certain marshal when approaching Moscow. He gazed at the
caleches and carriages in which soldiers were riding and remarked that
it was a very good thing, as those vehicles could be used to carry
provisions, the sick, and the wounded.

The plight of the whole army resembled that of a wounded animal
which feels it is perishing and does not know what it is doing. To
study the skillful tactics and aims of Napoleon and his army from
the time it entered Moscow till it was destroyed is like studying
the dying leaps and shudders of a mortally wounded animal. Very
often a wounded animal, hearing a rustle, rushes straight at the
hunter's gun, runs forward and back again, and hastens its own end.
Napoleon, under pressure from his whole army, did the same thing.
The rustle of the battle of Tarutino frightened the beast, and it
rushed forward onto the hunter's gun, reached him, turned back, and
finally--like any wild beast--ran back along the most
disadvantageous and dangerous path, where the old scent was familiar.

During the whole of that period Napoleon, who seems to us to have
been the leader of all these movements--as the figurehead of a ship
may seem to a savage to guide the vessel--acted like a child who,
holding a couple of strings inside a carriage, thinks he is driving
it.





CHAPTER XI


Early in the morning of the sixth of October Pierre went out of
the shed, and on returning stopped by the door to play with a little
blue-gray dog, with a long body and short bandy legs, that jumped
about him. This little dog lived in their shed, sleeping beside
Karataev at night; it sometimes made excursions into the town but
always returned again. Probably it had never had an owner, and it
still belonged to nobody and had no name. The French called it Azor;
the soldier who told stories called it Femgalka; Karataev and others
called it Gray, or sometimes Flabby. Its lack of a master, a name,
or even of a breed or any definite color did not seem to trouble the
blue-gray dog in the least. Its furry tail stood up firm and round
as a plume, its bandy legs served it so well that it would often
gracefully lift a hind leg and run very easily and quickly on three
legs, as if disdaining to use all four. Everything pleased it. Now
it would roll on its back, yelping with delight, now bask in the sun
with a thoughtful air of importance, and now frolic about playing with
a chip of wood or a straw.

Pierre's attire by now consisted of a dirty torn shirt (the only
remnant of his former clothing), a pair of soldier's trousers which by
Karataev's advice he tied with string round the ankles for warmth, and
a peasant coat and cap. Physically he had changed much during this
time. He no longer seemed stout, though he still had the appearance of
solidity and strength hereditary in his family. A beard and mustache
covered the lower part of his face, and a tangle of hair, infested
with lice, curled round his head like a cap. The look of his eyes
was resolute, calm, and animatedly alert, as never before. The
former slackness which had shown itself even in his eyes was now
replaced by an energetic readiness for action and resistance. His feet
were bare.

Pierre first looked down the field across which vehicles and
horsemen were passing that morning, then into the distance across
the river, then at the dog who was pretending to be in earnest about
biting him, and then at his bare feet which he placed with pleasure in
various positions, moving his dirty thick big toes. Every time he
looked at his bare feet a smile of animated self-satisfaction
flitted across his face. The sight of them reminded him of all he
had experienced and learned during these weeks and this recollection
was pleasant to him.

For some days the weather had been calm and clear with slight frosts
in the mornings--what is called an "old wives' summer."

In the sunshine the air was warm, and that warmth was particularly
pleasant with the invigorating freshness of the morning frost still in
the air.

On everything--far and near--lay the magic crystal glitter seen only
at that time autumn. The Sparrow Hills were visible in the distance,
with the village, the church, and the large white house. The bare
trees, the sand, the bricks and roofs of the houses, the green
church spire, and the corners of the white house in the distance,
all stood out in the transparent air in most delicate outline and with
unnatural clearness. Near by could be seen the familiar ruins of a
half-burned mansion occupied by the French, with lilac bushes still
showing dark green beside the fence. And even that ruined and befouled
house--which in dull weather was repulsively ugly--seemed quietly
beautiful now, in the clear, motionless brilliance.

A French corporal, with coat unbuttoned in a homely way, a
skullcap on his head, and a short pipe in his mouth, came from
behind a corner of the shed and approached Pierre with a friendly
wink.

"What sunshine, Monsieur Kiril!" (Their name for Pierre.) "Eh?
Just like spring!"

And the corporal leaned against the door and offered Pierre his
pipe, though whenever he offered it Pierre always declined it.

"To be on the march in such weather..." he began.

Pierre inquired what was being said about leaving, and the
corporal told him that nearly all the troops were starting and there
ought to be an order about the prisoners that day. Sokolov, one of the
soldiers in the shed with Pierre, was dying, and Pierre told the
corporal that something should be done about him. The corporal replied
that Pierre need not worry about that as they had an ambulance and a
permanent hospital and arrangements would be made for the sick, and
that in general everything that could happen had been foreseen by
the authorities.

"Besides, Monsieur Kiril, you have only to say a word to the
captain, you know. He is a man who never forgets anything. Speak to
the captain when he makes his round, he will do anything for you."

(The captain of whom the corporal spoke often had long chats with
Pierre and showed him all sorts of favors.)

"'You see, St. Thomas,' he said to me the other day. 'Monsieur Kiril
is a man of education, who speaks French. He is a Russian seigneur who
has had misfortunes, but he is a man. He knows what's what.... If he
wants anything and asks me, he won't get a refusal. When one has
studied, you see, one likes education and well-bred people.' It is for
your sake I mention it, Monsieur Kiril. The other day if it had not
been for you that affair would have ended ill."

And after chatting a while longer, the corporal went away. (The
affair he had alluded to had happened a few days before--a fight
between the prisoners and the French soldiers, in which Pierre had
succeeded in pacifying his comrades.) Some of the prisoners who had
heard Pierre talking to the corporal immediately asked what the
Frenchman had said. While Pierre was repeating what he had been told
about the army leaving Moscow, a thin, sallow, tattered French soldier
came up to the door of the shed. Rapidly and timidly raising his
fingers to his forehead by way of greeting, he asked Pierre whether
the soldier Platoche to whom he had given a shirt to sew was in that
shed.

A week before the French had had boot leather and linen issued to
them, which they had given out to the prisoners to make up into
boots and shirts for them.

"Ready, ready, dear fellow!" said Karataev, coming out with a neatly
folded shirt.

Karataev, on account of the warm weather and for convenience at
work, was wearing only trousers and a tattered shirt as black as soot.
His hair was bound round, workman fashion, with a wisp of lime-tree
bast, and his round face seemed rounder and pleasanter than ever.

"A promise is own brother to performance! I said Friday and here
it is, ready," said Platon, smiling and unfolding the shirt he had
sewn.

The Frenchman glanced around uneasily and then, as if overcoming his
hesitation, rapidly threw off his uniform and put on the shirt. He had
a long, greasy, flowered silk waistcoat next to his sallow, thin
bare body, but no shirt. He was evidently afraid the prisoners looking
on would laugh at him, and thrust his head into the shirt hurriedly.
None of the prisoners said a word.

"See, it fits well!" Platon kept repeating, pulling the shirt
straight.

The Frenchman, having pushed his head and hands through, without
raising his eyes, looked down at the shirt and examined the seams.

"You see, dear man, this is not a sewing shop, and I had no proper
tools; and, as they say, one needs a tool even to kill a louse,"
said Platon with one of his round smiles, obviously pleased with his
work.

"It's good, quite good, thank you," said the Frenchman, in French,
"but there must be some linen left over.

"It will fit better still when it sets to your body," said Karataev,
still admiring his handiwork. "You'll be nice and comfortable...."

"Thanks, thanks, old fellow.... But the bits left over?" said the
Frenchman again and smiled. He took out an assignation ruble note
and gave it to Karataev. "But give me the pieces that are over."

Pierre saw that Platon did not want to understand what the Frenchman
was saying, and he looked on without interfering. Karataev thanked the
Frenchman for the money and went on admiring his own work. The
Frenchman insisted on having the pieces returned that were left over
and asked Pierre to translate what he said.

"What does he want the bits for?" said Karataev. "They'd make fine
leg bands for us. Well, never mind."

And Karataev, with a suddenly changed and saddened expression,
took a small bundle of scraps from inside his shirt and gave it to the
Frenchman without looking at him. "Oh dear!" muttered Karataev and
went away. The Frenchman looked at the linen, considered for a moment,
then looked inquiringly at Pierre and, as if Pierre's look had told
him something, suddenly blushed and shouted in a squeaky voice:

"Platoche! Eh, Platoche! Keep them yourself!" And handing back the
odd bits he turned and went out.

"There, look at that," said Karataev, swaying his head. "People said
they were not Christians, but they too have souls. It's what the old
folk used to say: 'A sweating hand's an open hand, a dry hand's
close.' He's naked, but yet he's given it back."

Karataev smiled thoughtfully and was silent awhile looking at the
pieces.

"But they'll make grand leg bands, dear friend," he said, and went
back into the shed.





CHAPTER XII


Four weeks had passed since Pierre had been taken prisoner and
though the French had offered to move him from the men's to the
officers' shed, he had stayed in the shed where he was first put.

In burned and devastated Moscow Pierre experienced almost the
extreme limits of privation a man can endure; but thanks to his
physical strength and health, of which he had till then been
unconscious, and thanks especially to the fact that the privations
came so gradually that it was impossible to say when they began, he
endured his position not only lightly but joyfully. And just at this
time he obtained the tranquillity and ease of mind he had formerly
striven in vain to reach. He had long sought in different ways that
tranquillity of mind, that inner harmony which had so impressed him in
the soldiers at the battle of Borodino. He had sought it in
philanthropy, in Freemasonry, in the dissipations of town life, in
wine, in heroic feats of self-sacrifice, and in romantic love for
Natasha; he had sought it by reasoning--and all these quests and
experiments had failed him. And now without thinking about it he had
found that peace and inner harmony only through the horror of death,
through privation, and through what he recognized in Karataev.

Those dreadful moments he had lived through at the executions had as
it were forever washed away from his imagination and memory the
agitating thoughts and feelings that had formerly seemed so important.
It did not now occur to him to think of Russia, or the war, or
politics, or Napoleon. It was plain to him that all these things
were no business of his, and that he was not called on to judge
concerning them and therefore could not do so. "Russia and summer
weather are not bound together," he thought, repeating words of
Karataev's which he found strangely consoling. His intention of
killing Napoleon and his calculations of the cabalistic number of
the beast of the Apocalypse now seemed to him meaningless and even
ridiculous. His anger with his wife and anxiety that his name should
not be smirched now seemed not merely trivial but even amusing. What
concern was it of his that somewhere or other that woman was leading
the life she preferred? What did it matter to anybody, and
especially to him, whether or not they found out that their prisoner's
name was Count Bezukhov?

He now often remembered his conversation with Prince Andrew and
quite agreed with him, though he understood Prince Andrew's thoughts
somewhat differently. Prince Andrew had thought and said that
happiness could only be negative, but had said it with a shade of
bitterness and irony as though he was really saying that all desire
for positive happiness is implanted in us merely to torment us and
never be satisfied. But Pierre believed it without any mental
reservation. The absence of suffering, the satisfaction of one's needs
and consequent freedom in the choice of one's occupation, that is,
of one's way of life, now seemed to Pierre to be indubitably man's
highest happiness. Here and now for the first time he fully
appreciated the enjoyment of eating when he wanted to eat, drinking
when he wanted to drink, sleeping when he wanted to sleep, of warmth
when he was cold, of talking to a fellow man when he wished to talk
and to hear a human voice. The satisfaction of one's needs--good food,
cleanliness, and freedom--now that he was deprived of all this, seemed
to Pierre to constitute perfect happiness; and the choice of
occupation, that is, of his way of life--now that that was so
restricted--seemed to him such an easy matter that he forgot that a
superfluity of the comforts of life destroys all joy in satisfying
one's needs, while great freedom in the choice of occupation--such
freedom as his wealth, his education, and his social position had
given him in his own life--is just what makes the choice of occupation
insolubly difficult and destroys the desire and possibility of
having an occupation.

All Pierre's daydreams now turned on the time when he would be free.
Yet subsequently, and for the rest of his life, he thought and spoke
with enthusiasm of that month of captivity, of those irrecoverable,
strong, joyful sensations, and chiefly of the complete peace of mind
and inner freedom which he experienced only during those weeks.

When on the first day he got up early, went out of the shed at dawn,
and saw the cupolas and crosses of the New Convent of the Virgin still
dark at first, the hoarfrost on the dusty grass, the Sparrow Hills,
and the wooded banks above the winding river vanishing in the purple
distance, when he felt the contact of the fresh air and heard the
noise of the crows flying from Moscow across the field, and when
afterwards light gleamed from the east and the sun's rim appeared
solemnly from behind a cloud, and the cupolas and crosses, the
hoarfrost, the distance and the river, all began to sparkle in the
glad light--Pierre felt a new joy and strength in life such as he
had never before known. And this not only stayed with him during the
whole of his imprisonment, but even grew in strength as the
hardships of his position increased.

That feeling of alertness and of readiness for anything was still
further strengthened in him by the high opinion his fellow prisoners
formed of him soon after his arrival at the shed. With his knowledge
of languages, the respect shown him by the French, his simplicity, his
readiness to give anything asked of him (he received the allowance
of three rubles a week made to officers); with his strength, which
he showed to the soldiers by pressing nails into the walls of the hut;
his gentleness to his companions, and his capacity for sitting still
and thinking without doing anything (which seemed to them
incomprehensible), he appeared to them a rather mysterious and
superior being. The very qualities that had been a hindrance, if not
actually harmful, to him in the world he had lived in--his strength,
his disdain for the comforts of life, his absent-mindedness and
simplicity--here among these people gave him almost the status of a
hero. And Pierre felt that their opinion placed responsibilities
upon him.




CHAPTER XIII


The French evacuation began on the night between the sixth and
seventh of October: kitchens and sheds were dismantled, carts
loaded, and troops and baggage trains started.

At seven in the morning a French convoy in marching trim, wearing
shakos and carrying muskets, knapsacks, and enormous sacks, stood in
front of the sheds, and animated French talk mingled with curses
sounded all along the lines.

In the shed everyone was ready, dressed, belted, shod, and only
awaited the order to start. The sick soldier, Sokolov, pale and thin
with dark shadows round his eyes, alone sat in his place barefoot
and not dressed. His eyes, prominent from the emaciation of his
face, gazed inquiringly at his comrades who were paying no attention
to him, and he moaned regularly and quietly. It was evidently not so
much his sufferings that caused him to moan (he had dysentery) as
his fear and grief at being left alone.

Pierre, girt with a rope round his waist and wearing shoes
Karataev had made for him from some leather a French soldier had
torn off a tea chest and brought to have his boots mended with, went
up to the sick man and squatted down beside him.

"You know, Sokolov, they are not all going away! They have a
hospital here. You may be better off than we others," said Pierre.

"O Lord! Oh, it will be the death of me! O Lord!" moaned the man
in a louder voice.

"I'll go and ask them again directly," said Pierre, rising and going
to the door of the shed.

Just as Pierre reached the door, the corporal who had offered him
a pipe the day before came up to it with two soldiers. The corporal
and soldiers were in marching kit with knapsacks and shakos that had
metal straps, and these changed their familiar faces.

The corporal came, according to orders, to shut the door. The
prisoners had to be counted before being let out.

"Corporal, what will they do with the sick man?..." Pierre began.

But even as he spoke he began to doubt whether this was the corporal
he knew or a stranger, so unlike himself did the corporal seem at that
moment. Moreover, just as Pierre was speaking a sharp rattle of
drums was suddenly heard from both sides. The corporal frowned at
Pierre's words and, uttering some meaningless oaths, slammed the door.
The shed became semidark, and the sharp rattle of the drums on two
sides drowned the sick man's groans.

"There it is!... It again!..." said Pierre to himself, and an
involuntary shudder ran down his spine. In the corporal's changed
face, in the sound of his voice, in the stirring and deafening noise
of the drums, he recognized that mysterious, callous force which
compelled people against their will to kill their fellow men--that
force the effect of which he had witnessed during the executions. To
fear or to try to escape that force, to address entreaties or
exhortations to those who served as its tools, was useless. Pierre
knew this now. One had to wait and endure. He did not again go to
the sick man, nor turn to look at him, but stood frowning by the
door of the hut.

When that door was opened and the prisoners, crowding against one
another like a flock of sheep, squeezed into the exit, Pierre pushed
his way forward and approached that very captain who as the corporal
had assured him was ready to do anything for him. The captain was also
in marching kit, and on his cold face appeared that same it which
Pierre had recognized in the corporal's words and in the roll of the
drums.

"Pass on, pass on!" the captain reiterated, frowning sternly, and
looking at the prisoners who thronged past him.

Pierre went up to him, though he knew his attempt would be vain.

"What now?" the officer asked with a cold look as if not recognizing
Pierre.

Pierre told him about the sick man.

"He'll manage to walk, devil take him!" said the captain. "Pass
on, pass on!" he continued without looking at Pierre.

"But he is dying," Pierre again began.

"Be so good..." shouted the captain, frowning angrily.

"Dram-da-da-dam, dam-dam..." rattled the drums, and Pierre
understood that this mysterious force completely controlled these
men and that it was now useless to say any more.

The officer prisoners were separated from the soldiers and told to
march in front. There were about thirty officers, with Pierre among
them, and about three hundred men.

The officers, who had come from the other sheds, were all
strangers to Pierre and much better dressed than he. They looked at
him and at his shoes mistrustfully, as at an alien. Not far from him
walked a fat major with a sallow, bloated, angry face, who was wearing
a Kazan dressing grown tied round with a towel, and who evidently
enjoyed the respect of his fellow prisoners. He kept one hand, in
which he clasped his tobacco pouch, inside the bosom of his dressing
gown and held the stem of his pipe firmly with the other. Panting
and puffing, the major grumbled and growled at everybody because he
thought he was being pushed and that they were all hurrying when
they had nowhere to hurry to and were all surprised at something
when there was nothing to be surprised at. Another, a thin little
officer, was speaking to everyone, conjecturing where they were now
being taken and how far they would get that day. An official in felt
boots and wearing a commissariat uniform ran round from side to side
and gazed at the ruins of Moscow, loudly announcing his observations
as to what had been burned down and what this or that part of the city
was that they could see. A third officer, who by his accent was a
Pole, disputed with the commissariat officer, arguing that he was
mistaken in his identification of the different wards of Moscow.

"What are you disputing about?" said the major angrily. "What does
it matter whether it is St. Nicholas or St. Blasius? You see it's
burned down, and there's an end of it.... What are you pushing for?
Isn't the road wide enough?" said he, turning to a man behind him
who was not pushing him at all.

"Oh, oh, oh! What have they done?" the prisoners on one side and
another were heard saying as they gazed on the charred ruins. "All
beyond the river, and Zubova, and in the Kremlin.... Just look!
There's not half of it left. Yes, I told you--the whole quarter beyond
the river, and so it is."

"Well, you know it's burned, so what's the use of talking?" said the
major.

As they passed near a church in the Khamovniki (one of the few
unburned quarters of Moscow) the whole mass of prisoners suddenly
started to one side and exclamations of horror and disgust were heard.

"Ah, the villains! What heathens! Yes; dead, dead, so he is... And
smeared with something!"

Pierre too drew near the church where the thing was that evoked
these exclamations, and dimly made out something leaning against the
palings surrounding the church. From the words of his comrades who saw
better than he did, he found that this was the body of a man, set
upright against the palings with its face smeared with soot.

"Go on! What the devil... Go on! Thirty thousand devils!..." the
convoy guards began cursing and the French soldiers, with fresh
virulence, drove away with their swords the crowd of prisoners who
were gazing at the dead man.





CHAPTER XIV


Through the cross streets of the Khamovniki quarter the prisoners
marched, followed only by their escort and the vehicles and wagons
belonging to that escort, but when they reached the supply stores they
came among a huge and closely packed train of artillery mingled with
private vehicles.

At the bridge they all halted, waiting for those in front to get
across. From the bridge they had a view of endless lines of moving
baggage trains before and behind them. To the right, where the
Kaluga road turns near Neskuchny, endless rows of troops and carts
stretched away into the distance. These were troops of Beauharnais'
corps which had started before any of the others. Behind, along the
riverside and across the Stone Bridge, were Ney's troops and
transport.

Davout's troops, in whose charge were the prisoners, were crossing
the Crimean bridge and some were already debouching into the Kaluga
road. But the baggage trains stretched out so that the last of
Beauharnais' train had not yet got out of Moscow and reached the
Kaluga road when the vanguard of Ney's army was already emerging
from the Great Ordynka Street.

When they had crossed the Crimean bridge the prisoners moved a few
steps forward, halted, and again moved on, and from all sides vehicles
and men crowded closer and closer together. They advanced the few
hundred paces that separated the bridge from the Kaluga road, taking
more than an hour to do so, and came out upon the square where the
streets of the Transmoskva ward and the Kaluga road converge, and
the prisoners jammed close together had to stand for some hours at
that crossway. From all sides, like the roar of the sea, were heard
the rattle of wheels, the tramp of feet, and incessant shouts of anger
and abuse. Pierre stood pressed against the wall of a charred house,
listening to that noise which mingled in his imagination with the roll
of the drums.

To get a better view, several officer prisoners climbed onto the
wall of the half-burned house against which Pierre was leaning.

"What crowds! Just look at the crowds!... They've loaded goods
even on the cannon! Look there, those are furs!" they exclaimed. "Just
see what the blackguards have looted.... There! See what that one
has behind in the cart.... Why, those are settings taken from some
icons, by heaven!... Oh, the rascals!... See how that fellow has
loaded himself up, he can hardly walk! Good lord, they've even grabbed
those chaises!... See that fellow there sitting on the trunks....
Heavens! They're fighting."

"That's right, hit him on the snout--on his snout! Like this, we
shan't get away before evening. Look, look there.... Why, that must be
Napoleon's own. See what horses! And the monograms with a crown!
It's like a portable house.... That fellow's dropped his sack and
doesn't see it. Fighting again... A woman with a baby, and not
bad-looking either! Yes, I dare say, that's the way they'll let you
pass... Just look, there's no end to it. Russian wenches, by heaven,
so they are! In carriages--see how comfortably they've settled
themselves!"

Again, as at the church in Khamovniki, a wave of general curiosity
bore all the prisoners forward onto the road, and Pierre, thanks to
his stature, saw over the heads of the others what so attracted
their curiosity. In three carriages involved among the munition carts,
closely squeezed together, sat women with rouged faces, dressed in
glaring colors, who were shouting something in shrill voices.

From the moment Pierre had recognized the appearance of the
mysterious force nothing had seemed to him strange or dreadful:
neither the corpse smeared with soot for fun nor these women
hurrying away nor the burned ruins of Moscow. All that he now
witnessed scarcely made an impression on him--as if his soul, making
ready for a hard struggle, refused to receive impressions that might
weaken it.

The women's vehicles drove by. Behind them came more carts,
soldiers, wagons, soldiers, gun carriages, carriages, soldiers,
ammunition carts, more soldiers, and now and then women.

Pierre did not see the people as individuals but saw their movement.

All these people and horses seemed driven forward by some
invisible power. During the hour Pierre watched them they all came
flowing from the different streets with one and the same desire to get
on quickly; they all jostled one another, began to grow angry and to
fight, white teeth gleamed, brows frowned, ever the same words of
abuse flew from side to side, and all the faces bore the same
swaggeringly resolute and coldly cruel expression that had struck
Pierre that morning on the corporal's face when the drums were
beating.

It was not till nearly evening that the officer commanding the
escort collected his men and with shouts and quarrels forced his way
in among the baggage trains, and the prisoners, hemmed in on all
sides, emerged onto the Kaluga road.

They marched very quickly, without resting, and halted only when the
sun began to set. The baggage carts drew up close together and the men
began to prepare for their night's rest. They all appeared angry and
dissatisfied. For a long time, oaths, angry shouts, and fighting could
be heard from all sides. A carriage that followed the escort ran
into one of the carts and knocked a hole in it with its pole.
Several soldiers ran toward the cart from different sides: some beat
the carriage horses on their heads, turning them aside, others
fought among themselves, and Pierre saw that one German was badly
wounded on the head by a sword.

It seemed that all these men, now that they had stopped amid
fields in the chill dusk of the autumn evening, experienced one and
the same feeling of unpleasant awakening from the hurry and
eagerness to push on that had seized them at the start. Once at a
standstill they all seemed to understand that they did not yet know
where they were going, and that much that was painful and difficult
awaited them on this journey.

During this halt the escort treated the prisoners even worse than
they had done at the start. It was here that the prisoners for the
first time received horseflesh for their meat ration.

From the officer down to the lowest soldier they showed what
seemed like personal spite against each of the prisoners, in
unexpected contrast to their former friendly relations.

This spite increased still more when, on calling over the roll of
prisoners, it was found that in the bustle of leaving Moscow one
Russian soldier, who had pretended to suffer from colic, had
escaped. Pierre saw a Frenchman beat a Russian soldier cruelly for
straying too far from the road, and heard his friend the captain
reprimand and threaten to court-martial a noncommissioned officer on
account of the escape of the Russian. To the noncommissioned officer's
excuse that the prisoner was ill and could not walk, the officer
replied that the order was to shoot those who lagged behind. Pierre
felt that that fatal force which had crushed him during the
executions, but which he had not felt during his imprisonment, now
again controlled his existence. It was terrible, but he felt that in
proportion to the efforts of that fatal force to crush him, there grew
and strengthened in his soul a power of life independent of it.

He ate his supper of buckwheat soup with horseflesh and chatted with
his comrades.

Neither Pierre nor any of the others spoke of what they had seen
in Moscow, or of the roughness of their treatment by the French, or of
the order to shoot them which had been announced to them. As if in
reaction against the worsening of their position they were all
particularly animated and gay. They spoke of personal reminiscences,
of amusing scenes they had witnessed during the campaign, and
avoided all talk of their present situation.

The sun had set long since. Bright stars shone out here and there in
the sky. A red glow as of a conflagration spread above the horizon
from the rising full moon, and that vast red ball swayed strangely
in the gray haze. It grew light. The evening was ending, but the night
had not yet come. Pierre got up and left his new companions,
crossing between the campfires to the other side of the road where
he had been told the common soldier prisoners were stationed. He
wanted to talk to them. On the road he was stopped by a French
sentinel who ordered him back.

Pierre turned back, not to his companions by the campfire, but to an
unharnessed cart where there was nobody. Tucking his legs under him
and dropping his head he sat down on the cold ground by the wheel of
the cart and remained motionless a long while sunk in thought.
Suddenly he burst out into a fit of his broad, good-natured
laughter, so loud that men from various sides turned with surprise
to see what this strange and evidently solitary laughter could mean.

"Ha-ha-ha!" laughed Pierre. And he said aloud to himself: "The
soldier did not let me pass. They took me and shut me up. They hold me
captive. What, me? Me? My immortal soul? Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!..." and
he laughed till tears started to his eyes.

A man got up and came to see what this queer big fellow was laughing
at all by himself. Pierre stopped laughing, got up, went farther
away from the inquisitive man, and looked around him.

The huge, endless bivouac that had previously resounded with the
crackling of campfires and the voices of many men had grown quiet, the
red campfires were growing paler and dying down. High up in the
light sky hung the full moon. Forests and fields beyond the camp,
unseen before, were now visible in the distance. And farther still,
beyond those forests and fields, the bright, oscillating, limitless
distance lured one to itself. Pierre glanced up at the sky and the
twinkling stars in its faraway depths. "And all that is me, all that
is within me, and it is all I!" thought Pierre. "And they caught all
that and put it into a shed boarded up with planks!" He smiled, and
went and lay down to sleep beside his companions.





CHAPTER XV


In the early days of October another envoy came to Kutuzov with a
letter from Napoleon proposing peace and falsely dated from Moscow,
though Napoleon was already not far from Kutuzov on the old Kaluga
road. Kutuzov replied to this letter as he had done to the one
formerly brought by Lauriston, saying that there could be no
question of peace.

Soon after that a report was received from Dorokhov's guerrilla
detachment operating to the left of Tarutino that troops of
Broussier's division had been seen at Forminsk and that being
separated from the rest of the French army they might easily be
destroyed. The soldiers and officers again demanded action. Generals
on the staff, excited by the memory of the easy victory at Tarutino,
urged Kutuzov to carry out Dorokhov's suggestion. Kutuzov did not
consider any offensive necessary. The result was a compromise which
was inevitable: a small detachment was sent to Forminsk to attack
Broussier.

By a strange coincidence, this task, which turned out to be a most
difficult and important one, was entrusted to Dokhturov--that same
modest little Dokhturov whom no one had described to us as drawing
up plans of battles, dashing about in front of regiments, showering
crosses on batteries, and so on, and who was thought to be and was
spoken of as undecided and undiscerning--but whom we find commanding
wherever the position was most difficult all through the
Russo-French wars from Austerlitz to the year 1813. At Austerlitz he
remained last at the Augezd dam, rallying the regiments, saving what
was possible when all were flying and perishing and not a single
general was left in the rear guard. Ill with fever he went to Smolensk
with twenty thousand men to defend the town against Napoleon's whole
army. In Smolensk, at the Malakhov Gate, he had hardly dozed off in
a paroxysm of fever before he was awakened by the bombardment of the
town--and Smolensk held out all day long. At the battle of Borodino,
when Bagration was killed and nine tenths of the men of our left flank
had fallen and the full force of the French artillery fire was
directed against it, the man sent there was this same irresolute and
undiscerning Dokhturov--Kutuzov hastening to rectify a mistake he
had made by sending someone else there first. And the quiet little
Dokhturov rode thither, and Borodino became the greatest glory of
the Russian army. Many heroes have been described to us in verse and
prose, but of Dokhturov scarcely a word has been said.

It was Dokhturov again whom they sent to Forminsk and from there
to Malo-Yaroslavets, the place where the last battle with the French
was fought and where the obvious disintegration of the French army
began; and we are told of many geniuses and heroes of that period of
the campaign, but of Dokhturov nothing or very little is said and that
dubiously. And this silence about Dokhturov is the clearest
testimony to his merit.

It is natural for a man who does not understand the workings of a
machine to imagine that a shaving that has fallen into it by chance
and is interfering with its action and tossing about in it is its most
important part. The man who does not understand the construction of
the machine cannot conceive that the small connecting cogwheel which
revolves quietly is one of the most essential parts of the machine,
and not the shaving which merely harms and hinders the working.

On the tenth of October when Dokhturov had gone halfway to
Forminsk and stopped at the village of Aristovo, preparing
faithfully to execute the orders he had received, the whole French
army having, in its convulsive movement, reached Murat's position
apparently in order to give battle--suddenly without any reason turned
off to the left onto the new Kaluga road and began to enter
Forminsk, where only Broussier had been till then. At that time
Dokhturov had under his command, besides Dorokhov's detachment, the
two small guerrilla detachments of Figner and Seslavin.

On the evening of October 11 Seslavin came to the Aristovo
headquarters with a French guardsman he had captured. The prisoner
said that the troops that had entered Forminsk that day were the
vanguard of the whole army, that Napoleon was there and the whole army
had left Moscow four days previously. That same evening a house serf
who had come from Borovsk said he had seen an immense army entering
the town. Some Cossacks of Dokhturov's detachment reported having
sighted the French Guards marching along the road to Borovsk. From all
these reports it was evident that where they had expected to meet a
single division there was now the whole French army marching from
Moscow in an unexpected direction--along the Kaluga road. Dokhturov
was unwilling to undertake any action, as it was not clear to him
now what he ought to do. He had been ordered to attack Forminsk. But
only Broussier had been there at that time and now the whole French
army was there. Ermolov wished to act on his own judgment, but
Dokhturov insisted that he must have Kutuzov's instructions. So it was
decided to send a dispatch to the staff.

For this purpose a capable officer, Bolkhovitinov, was chosen, who
was to explain the whole affair by word of mouth, besides delivering a
written report. Toward midnight Bolkhovitinov, having received the
dispatch and verbal instructions, galloped off to the General Staff
accompanied by a Cossack with spare horses.





CHAPTER XVI


It was a warm, dark, autumn night. It had been raining for four
days. Having changed horses twice and galloped twenty miles in an hour
and a half over a sticky, muddy road, Bolkhovitinov reached Litashevka
after one o'clock at night. Dismounting at a cottage on whose wattle
fence hung a signboard, GENERAL STAFF, and throwing down his reins, he
entered a dark passage.

"The general on duty, quick! It's very important!" said he to
someone who had risen and was sniffing in the dark passage.

"He has been very unwell since the evening and this is the third
night he has not slept," said the orderly pleadingly in a whisper.
"You should wake the captain first."

"But this is very important, from General Dokhturov," said
Bolkhovitinov, entering the open door which he had found by feeling in
the dark.

The orderly had gone in before him and began waking somebody.

"Your honor, your honor! A courier."

"What? What's that? From whom?" came a sleepy voice.

"From Dokhturov and from Alexey Petrovich. Napoleon is at Forminsk,"
said Bolkhovitinov, unable to see in the dark who was speaking but
guessing by the voice that it was not Konovnitsyn.

The man who had wakened yawned and stretched himself.

"I don't like waking him," he said, fumbling for something. "He is
very ill. Perhaps this is only a rumor."

"Here is the dispatch," said Bolkhovitinov. "My orders are to give
it at once to the general on duty."

"Wait a moment, I'll light a candle. You damned rascal, where do you
always hide it?" said the voice of the man who was stretching himself,
to the orderly. (This was Shcherbinin, Konovnitsyn's adjutant.)
"I've found it, I've found it!" he added.

The orderly was striking a light and Shcherbinin was fumbling for
something on the candlestick.

"Oh, the nasty beasts!" said he with disgust.

By the light of the sparks Bolkhovitinov saw Shcherbinin's
youthful face as he held the candle, and the face of another man who
was still asleep. This was Konovnitsyn.

When the flame of the sulphur splinters kindled by the tinder burned
up, first blue and then red, Shcherbinin lit the tallow candle, from
the candlestick of which the cockroaches that had been gnawing it were
running away, and looked at the messenger. Bolkhovitinov was
bespattered all over with mud and had smeared his face by wiping it
with his sleeve.

"Who gave the report?" inquired Shcherbinin, taking the envelope.

"The news is reliable," said Bolkhovitinov. "Prisoners, Cossacks,
and the scouts all say the same thing."

"There's nothing to be done, we'll have to wake him," said
Shcherbinin, rising and going up to the man in the nightcap who lay
covered by a greatcoat. "Peter Petrovich!" said he. (Konovnitsyn did
not stir.) "To the General Staff!" he said with a smile, knowing
that those words would be sure to arouse him.

And in fact the head in the nightcap was lifted at once. On
Konovnitsyn's handsome, resolute face with cheeks flushed by fever,
there still remained for an instant a faraway dreamy expression remote
from present affairs, but then he suddenly started and his face
assumed its habitual calm and firm appearance.

"Well, what is it? From whom?" he asked immediately but without
hurry, blinking at the light.

While listening to the officer's report Konovnitsyn broke the seal
and read the dispatch. Hardly had he done so before he lowered his
legs in their woolen stockings to the earthen floor and began
putting on his boots. Then he took off his nightcap, combed his hair
over his temples, and donned his cap.

"Did you get here quickly? Let us go to his Highness."

Konovnitsyn had understood at once that the news brought was of
great importance and that no time must be lost. He did not consider or
ask himself whether the news was good or bad. That did not interest
him. He regarded the whole business of the war not with his
intelligence or his reason but by something else. There was within him
a deep unexpressed conviction that all would be well, but that one
must not trust to this and still less speak about it, but must only
attend to one's own work. And he did his work, giving his whole
strength to the task.

Peter Petrovich Konovnitsyn, like Dokhturov, seems to have been
included merely for propriety's sake in the list of the so-called
heroes of 1812--the Barclays, Raevskis, Ermolovs, Platovs, and
Miloradoviches. Like Dokhturov he had the reputation of being a man of
very limited capacity and information, and like Dokhturov he never
made plans of battle but was always found where the situation was most
difficult. Since his appointment as general on duty he had always
slept with his door open, giving orders that every messenger should be
allowed to wake him up. In battle he was always under fire, so that
Kutuzov reproved him for it and feared to send him to the front, and
like Dokhturov he was one of those unnoticed cogwheels that, without
clatter or noise, constitute the most essential part of the machine.

Coming out of the hut into the damp, dark night Konovnitsyn frowned-
partly from an increased pain in his head and partly at the unpleasant
thought that occurred to him, of how all that nest of influential
men on the staff would be stirred up by this news, especially
Bennigsen, who ever since Tarutino had been at daggers drawn with
Kutuzov; and how they would make suggestions, quarrel, issue orders,
and rescind them. And this premonition was disagreeable to him
though he knew it could not be helped.

And in fact Toll, to whom he went to communicate the news,
immediately began to expound his plans to a general sharing his
quarters, until Konovnitsyn, who listened in weary silence, reminded
him that they must go to see his Highness.





CHAPTER XVII


Kutuzov like all old people did not sleep much at night. He often
fell asleep unexpectedly in the daytime, but at night, lying on his
bed without undressing, he generally remained awake thinking.

So he lay now on his bed, supporting his large, heavy, scarred
head on his plump hand, with his one eye open, meditating and
peering into the darkness.

Since Bennigsen, who corresponded with the Emperor and had more
influence than anyone else on the staff, had begun to avoid him,
Kutuzov was more at ease as to the possibility of himself and his
troops being obliged to take part in useless aggressive movements. The
lesson of the Tarutino battle and of the day before it, which
Kutuzov remembered with pain, must, he thought, have some effect on
others too.

"They must understand that we can only lose by taking the offensive.
Patience and time are my warriors, my champions," thought Kutuzov.
He knew that an apple should not be plucked while it is green. It will
fall of itself when ripe, but if picked unripe the apple is spoiled,
the tree is harmed, and your teeth are set on edge. Like an
experienced sportsman he knew that the beast was wounded, and
wounded as only the whole strength of Russia could have wounded it,
but whether it was mortally wounded or not was still an undecided
question. Now by the fact of Lauriston and Barthelemi having been
sent, and by the reports of the guerrillas, Kutuzov was almost sure
that the wound was mortal. But he needed further proofs and it was
necessary to wait.

"They want to run to see how they have wounded it. Wait and we shall
see! Continual maneuvers, continual advances!" thought he. "What
for? Only to distinguish themselves! As if fighting were fun. They are
like children from whom one can't get any sensible account of what has
happened because they all want to show how well they can fight. But
that's not what is needed now.

"And what ingenious maneuvers they all propose to me! It seems to
them that when they have thought of two or three contingencies" (he
remembered the general plan sent him from Petersburg) "they have
foreseen everything. But the contingencies are endless."

The undecided question as to whether the wound inflicted at Borodino
was mortal or not had hung over Kutuzov's head for a whole month. On
the one hand the French had occupied Moscow. On the other Kutuzov felt
assured with all his being that the terrible blow into which he and
all the Russians had put their whole strength must have been mortal.
But in any case proofs were needed; he had waited a whole month for
them and grew more impatient the longer he waited. Lying on his bed
during those sleepless nights he did just what he reproached those
younger generals for doing. He imagined all sorts of possible
contingencies, just like the younger men, but with this difference,
that he saw thousands of contingencies instead of two or three and
based nothing on them. The longer he thought the more contingencies
presented themselves. He imagined all sorts of movements of the
Napoleonic army as a whole or in sections--against Petersburg, or
against him, or to outflank him. He thought too of the possibility
(which he feared most of all) that Napoleon might fight him with his
own weapon and remain in Moscow awaiting him. Kutuzov even imagined
that Napoleon's army might turn back through Medyn and Yukhnov, but
the one thing he could not foresee was what happened--the insane,
convulsive stampede of Napoleon's army during its first eleven days
after leaving Moscow: a stampede which made possible what Kutuzov
had not yet even dared to think of--the complete extermination of
the French. Dorokhov's report about Broussier's division, the
guerrillas' reports of distress in Napoleon's army, rumors of
preparations for leaving Moscow, all confirmed the supposition that
the French army was beaten and preparing for flight. But these were
only suppositions, which seemed important to the younger men but not
to Kutuzov. With his sixty years' experience he knew what value to
attach to rumors, knew how apt people who desire anything are to group
all news so that it appears to confirm what they desire, and he knew
how readily in such cases they omit all that makes for the contrary.
And the more he desired it the less he allowed himself to believe
it. This question absorbed all his mental powers. All else was to
him only life's customary routine. To such customary routine
belonged his conversations with the staff, the letters he wrote from
Tarutino to Madame de Stael, the reading of novels, the distribution
of awards, his correspondence with Petersburg, and so on. But the
destruction of the French, which he alone foresaw, was his heart's one
desire.

On the night of the eleventh of October he lay leaning on his arm
and thinking of that.

There was a stir in the next room and he heard the steps of Toll,
Konovnitsyn, and Bolkhovitinov.

"Eh, who's there? Come in, come in! What news?" the field marshal
called out to them.

While a footman was lighting a candle, Toll communicated the
substance of the news.

"Who brought it?" asked Kutuzov with a look which, when the candle
was lit, struck Toll by its cold severity.

"There can be no doubt about it, your Highness."

"Call him in, call him here."

Kutuzov sat up with one leg hanging down from the bed and his big
paunch resting against the other which was doubled under him. He
screwed up his seeing eye to scrutinize the messenger more
carefully, as if wishing to read in his face what preoccupied his
own mind.

"Tell me, tell me, friend," said he to Bolkhovitinov in his low,
aged voice, as he pulled together the shirt which gaped open on his
chest, "come nearer--nearer. What news have you brought me? Eh? That
Napoleon has left Moscow? Are you sure? Eh?"

Bolkhovitinov gave a detailed account from the beginning of all he
had been told to report.

"Speak quicker, quicker! Don't torture me!" Kutuzov interrupted him.

Bolkhovitinov told him everything and was then silent, awaiting
instructions. Toll was beginning to say something but Kutuzov
checked him. He tried to say something, but his face suddenly puckered
and wrinkled; he waved his arm at Toll and turned to the opposite side
of the room, to the corner darkened by the icons that hung there.

"O Lord, my Creator, Thou has heard our prayer..." said he in a
tremulous voice with folded hands. "Russia is saved. I thank Thee, O
Lord!" and he wept.





CHAPTER XVIII


From the time he received this news to the end of the campaign all
Kutuzov's activity was directed toward restraining his troops, by
authority, by guile, and by entreaty, from useless attacks, maneuvers,
or encounters with the perishing enemy. Dokhturov went to
Malo-Yaroslavets, but Kutuzov lingered with the main army and gave
orders for the evacuation of Kaluga--a retreat beyond which town
seemed to him quite possible.

Everywhere Kutuzov retreated, but the enemy without waiting for
his retreat fled in the opposite direction.

Napoleon's historians describe to us his skilled maneuvers at
Tarutino and Malo-Yaroslavets, and make conjectures as to what would
have happened had Napoleon been in time to penetrate into the rich
southern provinces.

But not to speak of the fact that nothing prevented him from
advancing into those southern provinces (for the Russian army did
not bar his way), the historians forget that nothing could have
saved his army, for then already it bore within itself the germs of
inevitable ruin. How could that army--which had found abundant
supplies in Moscow and had trampled them underfoot instead of
keeping them, and on arriving at Smolensk had looted provisions
instead of storing them--how could that army recuperate in Kaluga
province, which was inhabited by Russians such as those who lived in
Moscow, and where fire had the same property of consuming what was set
ablaze?

That army could not recover anywhere. Since the battle of Borodino
and the pillage of Moscow it had borne within itself, as it were,
the chemical elements of dissolution.

The members of what had once been an army--Napoleon himself and
all his soldiers fled--without knowing whither, each concerned only to
make his escape as quickly as possible from this position, of the
hopelessness of which they were all more or less vaguely conscious.

So it came about that at the council at Malo-Yaroslavets, when the
generals pretending to confer together expressed various opinions, all
mouths were closed by the opinion uttered by the simple-minded soldier
Mouton who, speaking last, said what they all felt: that the one thing
needful was to get away as quickly as possible; and no one, not even
Napoleon, could say anything against that truth which they all
recognized.

But though they all realized that it was necessary to get away,
there still remained a feeling of shame at admitting that they must
flee. An external shock was needed to overcome that shame, and this
shock came in due time. It was what the French called "le hourra de
l'Empereur."

The day after the council at Malo-Yaroslavets Napoleon rode out
early in the morning amid the lines of his army with his suite of
marshals and an escort, on the pretext of inspecting the army and
the scene of the previous and of the impending battle. Some Cossacks
on the prowl for booty fell in with the Emperor and very nearly
captured him. If the Cossacks did not capture Napoleon then, what
saved him was the very thing that was destroying the French army,
the booty on which the Cossacks fell. Here as at Tarutino they went
after plunder, leaving the men. Disregarding Napoleon they rushed
after the plunder and Napoleon managed to escape.

When les enfants du Don might so easily have taken the Emperor
himself in the midst of his army, it was clear that there was
nothing for it but to fly as fast as possible along the nearest,
familiar road. Napoleon with his forty-year-old stomach understood
that hint, not feeling his former agility and boldness, and under
the influence of the fright the Cossacks had given him he at once
agreed with Mouton and issued orders--as the historians tell us--to
retreat by the Smolensk road.

That Napoleon agreed with Mouton, and that the army retreated,
does not prove that Napoleon caused it to retreat, but that the forces
which influenced the whole army and directed it along the Mozhaysk
(that is, the Smolensk) road acted simultaneously on him also.





CHAPTER XIX


A man in motion always devises an aim for that motion. To be able to
go a thousand miles he must imagine that something good awaits him
at the end of those thousand miles. One must have the prospect of a
promised land to have the strength to move.

The promised land for the French during their advance had been
Moscow, during their retreat it was their native land. But that native
land was too far off, and for a man going a thousand miles it is
absolutely necessary to set aside his final goal and to say to
himself: "Today I shall get to a place twenty-five miles off where I
shall rest and spend the night," and during the first day's journey
that resting place eclipses his ultimate goal and attracts all his
hopes and desires. And the impulses felt by a single person are always
magnified in a crowd.

For the French retreating along the old Smolensk road, the final
goal--their native land--was too remote, and their immediate goal
was Smolensk, toward which all their desires and hopes, enormously
intensified in the mass, urged them on. It was not that they knew that
much food and fresh troops awaited them in Smolensk, nor that they
were told so (on the contrary their superior officers, and Napoleon
himself, knew that provisions were scarce there), but because this
alone could give them strength to move on and endure their present
privations. So both those who knew and those who did not know deceived
themselves, and pushed on to Smolensk as to a promised land.

Coming out onto the highroad the French fled with surprising
energy and unheard-of rapidity toward the goal they had fixed on.
Besides the common impulse which bound the whole crowd of French
into one mass and supplied them with a certain energy, there was
another cause binding them together--their great numbers. As with
the physical law of gravity, their enormous mass drew the individual
human atoms to itself. In their hundreds of thousands they moved
like a whole nation.

Each of them desired nothing more than to give himself up as a
prisoner to escape from all this horror and misery; but on the one
hand the force of this common attraction to Smolensk, their goal, drew
each of them in the same direction; on the other hand an army corps
could not surrender to a company, and though the French availed
themselves of every convenient opportunity to detach themselves and to
surrender on the slightest decent pretext, such pretexts did not
always occur. Their very numbers and their crowded and swift
movement deprived them of that possibility and rendered it not only
difficult but impossible for the Russians to stop this movement, to
which the French were directing all their energies. Beyond a certain
limit no mechanical disruption of the body could hasten the process of
decomposition.

A lump of snow cannot be melted instantaneously. There is a
certain limit of time in less than which no amount of heat can melt
the snow. On the contrary the greater the heat the more solidified the
remaining snow becomes.

Of the Russian commanders Kutuzov alone understood this. When the
flight of the French army along the Smolensk road became well defined,
what Konovnitsyn had foreseen on the night of the eleventh of
October began to occur. The superior officers all wanted to
distinguish themselves, to cut off, to seize, to capture, and to
overthrow the French, and all clamored for action.

Kutuzov alone used all his power (and such power is very limited
in the case of any commander in chief) to prevent an attack.

He could not tell them what we say now: "Why fight, why block the
road, losing our own men and inhumanly slaughtering unfortunate
wretches? What is the use of that, when a third of their army has
melted away on the road from Moscow to Vyazma without any battle?" But
drawing from his aged wisdom what they could understand, he told
them of the golden bridge, and they laughed at and slandered him,
flinging themselves on, rending and exulting over the dying beast.

Ermolov, Miloradovich, Platov, and others in proximity to the French
near Vyazma could not resist their desire to cut off and break up
two French corps, and by way of reporting their intention to Kutuzov
they sent him a blank sheet of paper in an envelope.

And try as Kutuzov might to restrain the troops, our men attacked,
trying to bar the road. Infantry regiments, we are told, advanced to
the attack with music and with drums beating, and killed and lost
thousands of men.

But they did not cut off or overthrow anybody and the French army,
closing up more firmly at the danger, continued, while steadily
melting away, to pursue its fatal path to Smolensk.






BOOK FOURTEEN: 1812





CHAPTER I


The Battle of Borodino, with the occupation of Moscow that
followed it and the flight of the French without further conflicts, is
one of the most instructive phenomena in history.

All historians agree that the external activity of states and
nations in their conflicts with one another is expressed in wars,
and that as a direct result of greater or less success in war the
political strength of states and nations increases or decreases.

Strange as may be the historical account of how some king or
emperor, having quarreled with another, collects an army, fights his
enemy's army, gains a victory by killing three, five, or ten
thousand men, and subjugates a kingdom and an entire nation of several
millions, all the facts of history (as far as we know it) confirm
the truth of the statement that the greater or lesser success of one
army against another is the cause, or at least an essential
indication, of an increase or decrease in the strength of the
nation--even though it is unintelligible why the defeat of an army-
a hundredth part of a nation--should oblige that whole nation to
submit. An army gains a victory, and at once the rights of the
conquering nation have increased to the detriment of the defeated.
An army has suffered defeat, and at once a people loses its rights
in proportion to the severity of the reverse, and if its army
suffers a complete defeat the nation is quite subjugated.

So according to history it has been found from the most ancient
times, and so it is to our own day. All Napoleon's wars serve to
confirm this rule. In proportion to the defeat of the Austrian army
Austria loses its rights, and the rights and the strength of France
increase. The victories of the French at Jena and Auerstadt destroy
the independent existence of Prussia.

But then, in 1812, the French gain a victory near Moscow. Moscow
is taken and after that, with no further battles, it is not Russia
that ceases to exist, but the French army of six hundred thousand, and
then Napoleonic France itself. To strain the facts to fit the rules of
history: to say that the field of battle at Borodino remained in the
hands of the Russians, or that after Moscow there were other battles
that destroyed Napoleon's army, is impossible.

After the French victory at Borodino there was no general engagement
nor any that were at all serious, yet the French army ceased to exist.
What does this mean? If it were an example taken from the history of
China, we might say that it was not an historic phenomenon (which is
the historians' usual expedient when anything does not fit their
standards); if the matter concerned some brief conflict in which
only a small number of troops took part, we might treat it as an
exception; but this event occurred before our fathers' eyes, and for
them it was a question of the life or death of their fatherland, and
it happened in the greatest of all known wars.

The period of the campaign of 1812 from the battle of Borodino to
the expulsion of the French proved that the winning of a battle does
not produce a conquest and is not even an invariable indication of
conquest; it proved that the force which decides the fate of peoples
lies not in the conquerors, nor even in armies and battles, but in
something else.

The French historians, describing the condition of the French army
before it left Moscow, affirm that all was in order in the Grand Army,
except the cavalry, the artillery, and the transport--there was no
forage for the horses or the cattle. That was a misfortune no one
could remedy, for the peasants of the district burned their hay rather
than let the French have it.

The victory gained did not bring the usual results because the
peasants Karp and Vlas (who after the French had evacuated Moscow
drove in their carts to pillage the town, and in general personally
failed to manifest any heroic feelings), and the whole innumerable
multitude of such peasants, did not bring their hay to Moscow for
the high price offered them, but burned it instead.

Let us imagine two men who have come out to fight a duel with
rapiers according to all the rules of the art of fencing. The
fencing has gone on for some time; suddenly one of the combatants,
feeling himself wounded and understanding that the matter is no joke
but concerns his life, throws down his rapier, and seizing the first
cudgel that comes to hand begins to brandish it. Then let us imagine
that the combatant who so sensibly employed the best and simplest
means to attain his end was at the same time influenced by
traditions of chivalry and, desiring to conceal the facts of the case,
insisted that he had gained his victory with the rapier according to
all the rules of art. One can imagine what confusion and obscurity
would result from such an account of the duel.

The fencer who demanded a contest according to the rules of
fencing was the French army; his opponent who threw away the rapier
and snatched up the cudgel was the Russian people; those who try to
explain the matter according to the rules of fencing are the
historians who have described the event.

After the burning of Smolensk a war began which did not follow any
previous traditions of war. The burning of towns and villages, the
retreats after battles, the blow dealt at Borodino and the renewed
retreat, the burning of Moscow, the capture of marauders, the
seizure of transports, and the guerrilla war were all departures
from the rules.

Napoleon felt this, and from the time he took up the correct fencing
attitude in Moscow and instead of his opponent's rapier saw a cudgel
raised above his head, he did not cease to complain to Kutuzov and
to the Emperor Alexander that the war was being carried on contrary to
all the rules--as if there were any rules for killing people. In spite
of the complaints of the French as to the nonobservance of the
rules, in spite of the fact that to some highly placed Russians it
seemed rather disgraceful to fight with a cudgel and they wanted to
assume a pose en quarte or en tierce according to all the rules, and
to make an adroit thrust en prime, and so on--the cudgel of the
people's war was lifted with all its menacing and majestic strength,
and without consulting anyone's tastes or rules and regardless of
anything else, it rose and fell with stupid simplicity, but
consistently, and belabored the French till the whole invasion had
perished.

And it is well for a people who do not--as the French did in 1813-
salute according to all the rules of art, and, presenting the hilt
of their rapier gracefully and politely, hand it to their
magnanimous conqueror, but at the moment of trial, without asking what
rules others have adopted in similar cases, simply and easily pick
up the first cudgel that comes to hand and strike with it till the
feeling of resentment and revenge in their soul yields to a feeling of
contempt and compassion.





CHAPTER II


One of the most obvious and advantageous departures from the
so-called laws of war is the action of scattered groups against men
pressed together in a mass. Such action always occurs in wars that
take on a national character. In such actions, instead of two crowds
opposing each other, the men disperse, attack singly, run away when
attacked by stronger forces, but again attack when opportunity offers.
This was done by the guerrillas in Spain, by the mountain tribes in
the Caucasus, and by the Russians in 1812.

People have called this kind of war "guerrilla warfare" and assume
that by so calling it they have explained its meaning. But such a
war does not fit in under any rule and is directly opposed to a
well-known rule of tactics which is accepted as infallible. That
rule says that an attacker should concentrate his forces in order to
be stronger than his opponent at the moment of conflict.

Guerrilla war (always successful, as history shows) directly
infringes that rule.

This contradiction arises from the fact that military science
assumes the strength of an army to be identical with its numbers.
Military science says that the more troops the greater the strength.
Les gros bataillons ont toujours raison.*


*Large battalions are always victorious.


For military science to say this is like defining momentum in
mechanics by reference to the mass only: stating that momenta are
equal or unequal to each other simply because the masses involved
are equal or unequal.

Momentum (quantity of motion) is the product of mass and velocity.

In military affairs the strength of an army is the product of its
mass and some unknown x.

Military science, seeing in history innumerable instances of the
fact that the size of any army does not coincide with its strength and
that small detachments defeat larger ones, obscurely admits the
existence of this unknown factor and tries to discover it--now in a
geometric formation, now in the equipment employed, now, and most
usually, in the genius of the commanders. But the assignment of
these various meanings to the factor does not yield results which
accord with the historic facts.

Yet it is only necessary to abandon the false view (adopted to
gratify the "heroes") of the efficacy of the directions issued in
wartime by commanders, in order to find this unknown quantity.

That unknown quantity is the spirit of the army, that is to say, the
greater or lesser readiness to fight and face danger felt by all the
men composing an army, quite independently of whether they are, or are
not, fighting under the command of a genius, in two--or three-line
formation, with cudgels or with rifles that repeat thirty times a
minute. Men who want to fight will always put themselves in the most
advantageous conditions for fighting.

The spirit of an army is the factor which multiplied by the mass
gives the resulting force. To define and express the significance of
this unknown factor--the spirit of an army--is a problem for science.

This problem is only solvable if we cease arbitrarily to
substitute for the unknown x itself the conditions under which that
force becomes apparent--such as the commands of the general, the
equipment employed, and so on--mistaking these for the real
significance of the factor, and if we recognize this unknown
quantity in its entirety as being the greater or lesser desire to
fight and to face danger. Only then, expressing known historic facts
by equations and comparing the relative significance of this factor,
can we hope to define the unknown.

Ten men, battalions, or divisions, fighting fifteen men, battalions,
or divisions, conquer--that is, kill or take captive--all the
others, while themselves losing four, so that on the one side four and
on the other fifteen were lost. Consequently the four were equal to
the fifteen, and therefore 4x = 15y. Consequently x/y = 15/4. This
equation does not give us the value of the unknown factor but gives us
a ratio between two unknowns. And by bringing variously selected
historic units (battles, campaigns, periods of war) into such
equations, a series of numbers could be obtained in which certain laws
should exist and might be discovered.

The tactical rule that an army should act in masses when
attacking, and in smaller groups in retreat, unconsciously confirms
the truth that the strength of an army depends on its spirit. To
lead men forward under fire more discipline (obtainable only by
movement in masses) is needed than is needed to resist attacks. But
this rule which leaves out of account the spirit of the army
continually proves incorrect and is in particularly striking
contrast to the facts when some strong rise or fall in the spirit of
the troops occurs, as in all national wars.

The French, retreating in 1812--though according to tactics they
should have separated into detachments to defend themselves-
congregated into a mass because the spirit of the army had so fallen
that only the mass held the army together. The Russians, on the
contrary, ought according to tactics to have attacked in mass, but
in fact they split up into small units, because their spirit had so
risen that separate individuals, without orders, dealt blows at the
French without needing any compulsion to induce them to expose
themselves to hardships and dangers.





CHAPTER III


The so-called partisan war began with the entry of the French into
Smolensk.

Before partisan warfare had been officially recognized by the
government, thousands of enemy stragglers, marauders, and foragers had
been destroyed by the Cossacks and the peasants, who killed them off
as instinctively as dogs worry a stray mad dog to death. Denis
Davydov, with his Russian instinct, was the first to recognize the
value of this terrible cudgel which regardless of the rules of
military science destroyed the French, and to him belongs the credit
for taking the first step toward regularizing this method of warfare.

On August 24 Davydov's first partisan detachment was formed and then
others were recognized. The further the campaign progressed the more
numerous these detachments became.

The irregulars destroyed the great army piecemeal. They gathered the
fallen leaves that dropped of themselves from that withered tree-
the French army--and sometimes shook that tree itself. By October,
when the French were fleeing toward Smolensk, there were hundreds of
such companies, of various sizes and characters. There were some
that adopted all the army methods and had infantry, artillery, staffs,
and the comforts of life. Others consisted solely of Cossack
cavalry. There were also small scratch groups of foot and horse, and
groups of peasants and landowners that remained unknown. A sacristan
commanded one party which captured several hundred prisoners in the
course of a month; and there was Vasilisa, the wife of a village
elder, who slew hundreds of the French.

The partisan warfare flamed up most fiercely in the latter days of
October. Its first period had passed: when the partisans themselves,
amazed at their own boldness, feared every minute to be surrounded and
captured by the French, and hid in the forests without unsaddling,
hardly daring to dismount and always expecting to be pursued. By the
end of October this kind of warfare had taken definite shape: it had
become clear to all what could be ventured against the French and what
could not. Now only the commanders of detachments with staffs, and
moving according to rules at a distance from the French, still
regarded many things as impossible. The small bands that had started
their activities long before and had already observed the French
closely considered things possible which the commanders of the big
detachments did not dare to contemplate. The Cossacks and peasants who
crept in among the French now considered everything possible.

On October 22, Denisov (who was one of the irregulars) was with
his group at the height of the guerrilla enthusiasm. Since early
morning he and his party had been on the move. All day long he had
been watching from the forest that skirted the highroad a large French
convoy of cavalry baggage and Russian prisoners separated from the
rest of the army, which--as was learned from spies and prisoners-
was moving under a strong escort to Smolensk. Besides Denisov and
Dolokhov (who also led a small party and moved in Denisov's vicinity),
the commanders of some large divisions with staffs also knew of this
convoy and, as Denisov expressed it, were sharpening their teeth for
it. Two of the commanders of large parties--one a Pole and the other a
German--sent invitations to Denisov almost simultaneously,
requesting him to join up with their divisions to attack the convoy.

"No, bwother, I have gwown mustaches myself," said Denisov on
reading these documents, and he wrote to the German that, despite
his heartfelt desire to serve under so valiant and renowned a general,
he had to forgo that pleasure because he was already under the command
of the Polish general. To the Polish general he replied to the same
effect, informing him that he was already under the command of the
German.

Having arranged matters thus, Denisov and Dolokhov intended, without
reporting matters to the higher command, to attack and seize that
convoy with their own small forces. On October 22 it was moving from
the village of Mikulino to that of Shamshevo. To the left of the
road between Mikulino and Shamshevo there were large forests,
extending in some places up to the road itself though in others a mile
or more back from it. Through these forests Denisov and his party rode
all day, sometimes keeping well back in them and sometimes coming to
the very edge, but never losing sight of the moving French. That
morning, Cossacks of Denisov's party had seized and carried off into
the forest two wagons loaded with cavalry saddles, which had stuck
in the mud not far from Mikulino where the forest ran close to the
road. Since then, and until evening, the party had the movements of
the French without attacking. It was necessary to let the French reach
Shamshevo quietly without alarming them and then, after joining
Dolokhov who was to come that evening to a consultation at a
watchman's hut in the forest less than a mile from Shamshevo, to
surprise the French at dawn, falling like an avalanche on their
heads from two sides, and rout and capture them all at one blow.

In their rear, more than a mile from Mikulino where the forest
came right up to the road, six Cossacks were posted to report if any
fresh columns of French should show themselves.

Beyond Shamshevo, Dolokhov was to observe the road in the same
way, to find out at what distance there were other French troops. They
reckoned that the convoy had fifteen hundred men. Denisov had two
hundred, and Dolokhov might have as many more, but the disparity of
numbers did not deter Denisov. All that he now wanted to know was what
troops these were and to learn that he had to capture a "tongue"--that
is, a man from the enemy column. That morning's attack on the wagons
had been made so hastily that the Frenchmen with the wagons had all
been killed; only a little drummer boy had been taken alive, and as he
was a straggler he could tell them nothing definite about the troops
in that column.

Denisov considered it dangerous to make a second attack for fear
of putting the whole column on the alert, so he sent Tikhon
Shcherbaty, a peasant of his party, to Shamshevo to try and seize at
least one of the French quartermasters who had been sent on in
advance.




CHAPTER IV


It was a warm rainy autumn day. The sky and the horizon were both
the color of muddy water. At times a sort of mist descended, and
then suddenly heavy slanting rain came down.

Denisov in a felt cloak and a sheepskin cap from which the rain
ran down was riding a thin thoroughbred horse with sunken sides.
Like his horse, which turned its head and laid its ears back, he
shrank from the driving rain and gazed anxiously before him. His
thin face with its short, thick black beard looked angry.

Beside Denisov rode an esaul,* Denisov's fellow worker, also in felt
cloak and sheepskin cap, and riding a large sleek Don horse.


*A captain of Cossacks.


Esaul Lovayski the Third was a tall man as straight as an arrow,
pale-faced, fair-haired, with narrow light eyes and with calm
self-satisfaction in his face and bearing. Though it was impossible to
say in what the peculiarity of the horse and rider lay, yet at first
glance at the esaul and Denisov one saw that the latter was wet and
uncomfortable and was a man mounted on a horse, while looking at the
esaul one saw that he was as comfortable and as much at ease as always
and that he was not a man who had mounted a horse, but a man who was
one with his horse, a being consequently possessed of twofold
strength.

A little ahead of them walked a peasant guide, wet to the skin and
wearing a gray peasant coat and a white knitted cap.

A little behind, on a poor, small, lean Kirghiz mount with an
enormous tail and mane and a bleeding mouth, rode a young officer in a
blue French overcoat.

Beside him rode an hussar, with a boy in a tattered French uniform
and blue cap behind him on the crupper of his horse. The boy held on
to the hussar with cold, red hands, and raising his eyebrows gazed
about him with surprise. This was the French drummer boy captured that
morning.

Behind them along the narrow, sodden, cutup forest road came hussars
in threes and fours, and then Cossacks: some in felt cloaks, some in
French greatcoats, and some with horsecloths over their heads. The
horses, being drenched by the rain, all looked black whether
chestnut or bay. Their necks, with their wet, close-clinging manes,
looked strangely thin. Steam rose from them. Clothes, saddles,
reins, were all wet, slippery, and sodden, like the ground and the
fallen leaves that strewed the road. The men sat huddled up trying not
to stir, so as to warm the water that had trickled to their bodies and
not admit the fresh cold water that was leaking in under their
seats, their knees, and at the back of their necks. In the midst of
the outspread line of Cossacks two wagons, drawn by French horses
and by saddled Cossack horses that had been hitched on in front,
rumbled over the tree stumps and branches and splashed through the
water that lay in the ruts.

Denisov's horse swerved aside to avoid a pool in the track and
bumped his rider's knee against a tree.

"Oh, the devil!" exclaimed Denisov angrily, and showing his teeth he
struck his horse three times with his whip, splashing himself and
his comrades with mud.

Denisov was out of sorts both because of the rain and also from
hunger (none of them had eaten anything since morning), and yet more
because he still had no news from Dolokhov and the man sent to capture
a "tongue" had not returned.

"There'll hardly be another such chance to fall on a transport as
today. It's too risky to attack them by oneself, and if we put it
off till another day one of the big guerrilla detachments will
snatch the prey from under our noses," thought Denisov, continually
peering forward, hoping to see a messenger from Dolokhov.

On coming to a path in the forest along which he could see far to
the right, Denisov stopped.

"There's someone coming," said he.

The esaul looked in the direction Denisov indicated.

"There are two, an officer and a Cossack. But it is not
presupposable that it is the lieutenant colonel himself," said the
esaul, who was fond of using words the Cossacks did not know.

The approaching riders having descended a decline were no longer
visible, but they reappeared a few minutes later. In front, at a weary
gallop and using his leather whip, rode an officer, disheveled and
drenched, whose trousers had worked up to above his knees. Behind him,
standing in the stirrups, trotted a Cossack. The officer, a very young
lad with a broad rosy face and keen merry eyes, galloped up to Denisov
and handed him a sodden envelope.

"From the general," said the officer. "Please excuse its not being
quite dry."

Denisov, frowning, took the envelope and opened it.

"There, they kept telling us: 'It's dangerous, it's dangerous,'"
said the officer, addressing the esaul while Denisov was reading the
dispatch. "But Komarov and I"--he pointed to the Cossack--"were
prepared. We have each of us two pistols.... But what's this?" he
asked, noticing the French drummer boy. "A prisoner? You've already
been in action? May I speak to him?"

"Wostov! Petya!" exclaimed Denisov, having run through the dispatch.
"Why didn't you say who you were?" and turning with a smile he held
out his hand to the lad.

The officer was Petya Rostov.

All the way Petya had been preparing himself to behave with
Denisov as befitted a grownup man and an officer--without hinting at
their previous acquaintance. But as soon as Denisov smiled at him
Petya brightened up, blushed with pleasure, forgot the official manner
he had been rehearsing, and began telling him how he had already
been in a battle near Vyazma and how a certain hussar had
distinguished himself there.

"Well, I am glad to see you," Denisov interrupted him, and his
face again assumed its anxious expression.

"Michael Feoklitych," said he to the esaul, "this is again fwom that
German, you know. He"--he indicated Petya--"is serving under him."

And Denisov told the esaul that the dispatch just delivered was a
repetition of the German general's demand that he should join forces
with him for an attack on the transport.

"If we don't take it tomowwow, he'll snatch it fwom under our
noses," he added.

While Denisov was talking to the esaul, Petya--abashed by
Denisov's cold tone and supposing that it was due to the condition
of his trousers--furtively tried to pull them down under his greatcoat
so that no one should notice it, while maintaining as martial an air
as possible.

"Will there be any orders, your honor?" he asked Denisov, holding
his hand at the salute and resuming the game of adjutant and general
for which he had prepared himself, "or shall I remain with your
honor?"

"Orders?" Denisov repeated thoughtfully. "But can you stay till
tomowwow?"

"Oh, please... May I stay with you?" cried Petya.

"But, just what did the genewal tell you? To weturn at once?"
asked Denisov.

Petya blushed.

"He gave me no instructions. I think I could?" he returned,
inquiringly.

"Well, all wight," said Denisov.

And turning to his men he directed a party to go on to the halting
place arranged near the watchman's hut in the forest, and told the
officer on the Kirghiz horse (who performed the duties of an adjutant)
to go and find out where Dolokhov was and whether he would come that
evening. Denisov himself intended going with the esaul and Petya to
the edge of the forest where it reached out to Shamshevo, to have a
look at the part of the French bivouac they were to attack next day.

"Well, old fellow," said he to the peasant guide, "lead us to
Shamshevo."

Denisov, Petya, and the esaul, accompanied by some Cossacks and
the hussar who had the prisoner, rode to the left across a ravine to
the edge of the forest.





CHAPTER V


The rain had stopped, and only the mist was falling and drops from
the trees. Denisov, the esaul, and Petya rode silently, following
the peasant in the knitted cap who, stepping lightly with outturned
toes and moving noiselessly in his bast shoes over the roots and wet
leaves, silently led them to the edge of the forest.

He ascended an incline, stopped, looked about him, and advanced to
where the screen of trees was less dense. On reaching a large oak tree
that had not yet shed its leaves, he stopped and beckoned mysteriously
to them with his hand.

Denisov and Petya rode up to him. From the spot where the peasant
was standing they could see the French. Immediately beyond the forest,
on a downward slope, lay a field of spring rye. To the right, beyond a
steep ravine, was a small village and a landowner's house with a
broken roof. In the village, in the house, in the garden, by the well,
by the pond, over all the rising ground, and all along the road uphill
from the bridge leading to the village, not more than five hundred
yards away, crowds of men could be seen through the shimmering mist.
Their un-Russian shouting at their horses which were straining
uphill with the carts, and their calls to one another, could be
clearly heard.

"Bwing the prisoner here," said Denisov in a low voice, not taking
his eyes off the French.

A Cossack dismounted, lifted the boy down, and took him to
Denisov. Pointing to the French troops, Denisov asked him what these
and those of them were. The boy, thrusting his cold hands into his
pockets and lifting his eyebrows, looked at Denisov in affright, but
in spite of an evident desire to say all he knew gave confused
answers, merely assenting to everything Denisov asked him. Denisov
turned away from him frowning and addressed the esaul, conveying his
own conjectures to him.

Petya, rapidly turning his head, looked now at the drummer boy,
now at Denisov, now at the esaul, and now at the French in the village
and along the road, trying not to miss anything of importance.

"Whether Dolokhov comes or not, we must seize it, eh?" said
Denisov with a merry sparkle in his eyes.

"It is a very suitable spot," said the esaul.

"We'll send the infantwy down by the swamps," Denisov continued.
"They'll cweep up to the garden; you'll wide up fwom there with the
Cossacks"--he pointed to a spot in the forest beyond the village--"and
I with my hussars fwom here. And at the signal shot..."

"The hollow is impassable--there's a swamp there," said the esaul.
"The horses would sink. We must ride round more to the left...."

While they were talking in undertones the crack of a shot sounded
from the low ground by the pond, a puff of white smoke appeared,
then another, and the sound of hundreds of seemingly merry French
voices shouting together came up from the slope. For a moment
Denisov and the esaul drew back. They were so near that they thought
they were the cause of the firing and shouting. But the firing and
shouting did not relate to them. Down below, a man wearing something
red was running through the marsh. The French were evidently firing
and shouting at him.

"Why, that's our Tikhon," said the esaul.

"So it is! It is!"

"The wascal!" said Denisov.

"He'll get away!" said the esaul, screwing up his eyes.

The man whom they called Tikhon, having run to the stream, plunged
in so that the water splashed in the air, and, having disappeared
for an instant, scrambled out on all fours, all black with the wet,
and ran on. The French who had been pursuing him stopped.

"Smart, that!" said the esaul.

"What a beast!" said Denisov with his former look of vexation. "What
has he been doing all this time?"

"Who is he?" asked Petya.

"He's our plastun. I sent him to capture a 'tongue.'"

"Oh, yes," said Petya, nodding at the first words Denisov uttered as
if he understood it all, though he really did not understand
anything of it.

Tikhon Shcherbaty was one of the most indispensable men in their
band. He was a peasant from Pokrovsk, near the river Gzhat. When
Denisov had come to Pokrovsk at the beginning of his operations and
had as usual summoned the village elder and asked him what he knew
about the French, the elder, as though shielding himself, had replied,
as all village elders did, that he had neither seen nor heard anything
of them. But when Denisov explained that his purpose was to kill the
French, and asked if no French had strayed that way, the elder replied
that some "more-orderers" had really been at their village, but that
Tikhon Shcherbaty was the only man who dealt with such matters.
Denisov had Tikhon called and, having praised him for his activity,
said a few words in the elder's presence about loyalty to the Tsar and
the country and the hatred of the French that all sons of the
fatherland should cherish.

"We don't do the French any harm," said Tikhon, evidently frightened
by Denisov's words. "We only fooled about with the lads for fun, you
know! We killed a score or so of 'more-orderers,' but we did no harm
else..."

Next day when Denisov had left Pokrovsk, having quite forgotten
about this peasant, it was reported to him that Tikhon had attached
himself to their party and asked to be allowed to remain with it.
Denisov gave orders to let him do so.

Tikhon, who at first did rough work, laying campfires, fetching
water, flaying dead horses, and so on, soon showed a great liking
and aptitude for partisan warfare. At night he would go out for
booty and always brought back French clothing and weapons, and when
told to would bring in French captives also. Denisov then relieved him
from drudgery and began taking him with him when he went out on
expeditions and had him enrolled among the Cossacks.

Tikhon did not like riding, and always went on foot, never lagging
behind the cavalry. He was armed with a musketoon (which he carried
rather as a joke), a pike and an ax, which latter he used as a wolf
uses its teeth, with equal case picking fleas out of its fur or
crunching thick bones. Tikhon with equal accuracy would split logs
with blows at arm's length, or holding the head of the ax would cut
thin little pegs or carve spoons. In Denisov's party he held a
peculiar and exceptional position. When anything particularly
difficult or nasty had to be done--to push a cart out of the mud
with one's shoulders, pull a horse out of a swamp by its tail, skin
it, slink in among the French, or walk more than thirty miles in a
day--everybody pointed laughingly at Tikhon.

"It won't hurt that devil--he's as strong as a horse!" they said
of him.

Once a Frenchman Tikhon was trying to capture fired a pistol at
him and shot him in the fleshy part of the back. That wound (which
Tikhon treated only with internal and external applications of
vodka) was the subject of the liveliest jokes by the whole detachment-
jokes in which Tikhon readily joined.

"Hallo, mate! Never again? Gave you a twist?" the Cossacks would
banter him. And Tikhon, purposely writhing and making faces, pretended
to be angry and swore at the French with the funniest curses. The only
effect of this incident on Tikhon was that after being wounded he
seldom brought in prisoners.

He was the bravest and most useful man in the party. No one found
more opportunities for attacking, no one captured or killed more
Frenchmen, and consequently he was made the buffoon of all the
Cossacks and hussars and willingly accepted that role. Now he had been
sent by Denisov overnight to Shamshevo to capture a "tongue." But
whether because he had not been content to take only one Frenchman
or because he had slept through the night, he had crept by day into
some bushes right among the French and, as Denisov had witnessed
from above, had been detected by them.





CHAPTER VI


After talking for some time with the esaul about next day's
attack, which now, seeing how near they were to the French, he
seemed to have definitely decided on, Denisov turned his horse and
rode back.

"Now, my lad, we'll go and get dwy," he said to Petya.

As they approached the watchhouse Denisov stopped, peering into
the forest. Among the trees a man with long legs and long, swinging
arms, wearing a short jacket, bast shoes, and a Kazan hat, was
approaching with long, light steps. He had a musketoon over his
shoulder and an ax stuck in his girdle. When he espied Denisov he
hastily threw something into the bushes, removed his sodden hat by its
floppy brim, and approached his commander. It was Tikhon. His wrinkled
and pockmarked face and narrow little eyes beamed with
self-satisfied merriment. He lifted his head high and gazed at Denisov
as if repressing a laugh.

"Well, where did you disappear to?" inquired Denisov.

"Where did I disappear to? I went to get Frenchmen," answered Tikhon
boldly and hurriedly, in a husky but melodious bass voice.

"Why did you push yourself in there by daylight? You ass! Well,
why haven't you taken one?"

"Oh, I took one all right," said Tikhon.

"Where is he?"

"You see, I took him first thing at dawn," Tikhon continued,
spreading out his flat feet with outturned toes in their bast shoes.
"I took him into the forest. Then I see he's no good and think I'll go
and fetch a likelier one."

"You see?... What a wogue--it's just as I thought," said Denisov
to the esaul. "Why didn't you bwing that one?"

"What was the good of bringing him?" Tikhon interrupted hastily
and angrily--"that one wouldn't have done for you. As if I don't
know what sort you want!"

"What a bwute you are!... Well?"

"I went for another one," Tikhon continued, "and I crept like this
through the wood and lay down." (He suddenly lay down on his stomach
with a supple movement to show how he had done it.) "One turned up and
I grabbed him, like this." (He jumped up quickly and lightly.)
"'Come along to the colonel,' I said. He starts yelling, and
suddenly there were four of them. They rushed at me with their
little swords. So I went for them with my ax, this way: 'What are
you up to?' says I. 'Christ be with you!'" shouted Tikhon, waving
his arms with an angry scowl and throwing out his chest.

"Yes, we saw from the hill how you took to your heels through the
puddles!" said the esaul, screwing up his glittering eyes.

Petya badly wanted to laugh, but noticed that they all refrained
from laughing. He turned his eyes rapidly from Tikhon's face to the
esaul's and Denisov's, unable to make out what it all meant.

"Don't play the fool!" said Denisov, coughing angrily. "Why didn't
you bwing the first one?"

Tikhon scratched his back with one hand and his head with the other,
then suddenly his whole face expanded into a beaming, foolish grin,
disclosing a gap where he had lost a tooth (that was why he was called
Shcherbaty--the gap-toothed). Denisov smiled, and Petya burst into a
peal of merry laughter in which Tikhon himself joined.

"Oh, but he was a regular good-for-nothing," said Tikhon. "The
clothes on him--poor stuff! How could I bring him? And so rude, your
honor! Why, he says: 'I'm a general's son myself, I won't go!' he
says."

"You are a bwute!" said Denisov. "I wanted to question..."

"But I questioned him," said Tikhon. "He said he didn't know much.
'There are a lot of us,' he says, 'but all poor stuff--only soldiers
in name,' he says. 'Shout loud at them,' he says, 'and you'll take
them all,'" Tikhon concluded, looking cheerfully and resolutely into
Denisov's eyes.

"I'll give you a hundwed sharp lashes--that'll teach you to play the
fool!" said Denisov severely.

"But why are you angry?" remonstrated Tikhon, "just as if I'd
never seen your Frenchmen! Only wait till it gets dark and I'll
fetch you any of them you want--three if you like."

"Well, let's go," said Denisov, and rode all the way to the
watchhouse in silence and frowning angrily.

Tikhon followed behind and Petya heard the Cossacks laughing with
him and at him, about some pair of boots he had thrown into the
bushes.

When the fit of laughter that had seized him at Tikhon's words and
smile had passed and Petya realized for a moment that this Tikhon
had killed a man, he felt uneasy. He looked round at the captive
drummer boy and felt a pang in his heart. But this uneasiness lasted
only a moment. He felt it necessary to hold his head higher, to
brace himself, and to question the esaul with an air of importance
about tomorrow's undertaking, that he might not be unworthy of the
company in which he found himself.

The officer who had been sent to inquire met Denisov on the way with
the news that Dolokhov was soon coming and that all was well with him.

Denisov at once cheered up and, calling Petya to him, said: "Well,
tell me about yourself."





CHAPTER VII


Petya, having left his people after their departure from Moscow,
joined his regiment and was soon taken as orderly by a general
commanding a large guerrilla detachment. From the time he received his
commission, and especially since he had joined the active army and
taken part in the battle of Vyazma, Petya had been in a constant state
of blissful excitement at being grown-up and in a perpetual ecstatic
hurry not to miss any chance to do something really heroic. He was
highly delighted with what he saw and experienced in the army, but
at the same time it always seemed to him that the really heroic
exploits were being performed just where he did not happen to be.
And he was always in a hurry to get where he was not.

When on the twenty-first of October his general expressed a wish
to send somebody to Denisov's detachment, Petya begged so piteously to
be sent that the general could not refuse. But when dispatching him he
recalled Petya's mad action at the battle of Vyazma, where instead
of riding by the road to the place to which he had been sent, he had
galloped to the advanced line under the fire of the French and had
there twice fired his pistol. So now the general explicitly forbade
his taking part in any action whatever of Denisov's. That was why
Petya had blushed and grown confused when Denisov asked him whether he
could stay. Before they had ridden to the outskirts of the forest
Petya had considered he must carry out his instructions strictly and
return at once. But when he saw the French and saw Tikhon and
learned that there would certainly be an attack that night, he
decided, with the rapidity with which young people change their views,
that the general, whom he had greatly respected till then, was a
rubbishy German, that Denisov was a hero, the esaul a hero, and Tikhon
a hero too, and that it would be shameful for him to leave them at a
moment of difficulty.

It was already growing dusk when Denisov, Petya, and the esaul
rode up to the watchhouse. In the twilight saddled horses could be
seen, and Cossacks and hussars who had rigged up rough shelters in the
glade and were kindling glowing fires in a hollow of the forest
where the French could not see the smoke. In the passage of the
small watchhouse a Cossack with sleeves rolled up was chopping some
mutton. In the room three officers of Denisov's band were converting a
door into a tabletop. Petya took off his wet clothes, gave them to
be dried, and at once began helping the officers to fix up the
dinner table.

In ten minutes the table was ready and a napkin spread on it. On the
table were vodka, a flask of rum, white bread, roast mutton, and salt.

Sitting at table with the officers and tearing the fat savory mutton
with his hands, down which the grease trickled, Petya was in an
ecstatic childish state of love for all men, and consequently of
confidence that others loved him in the same way.

"So then what do you think, Vasili Dmitrich?" said he to Denisov.
"It's all right my staying a day with you?" And not waiting for a
reply he answered his own question: "You see I was told to find out-
well, I am finding out.... Only do let me into the very... into the
chief... I don't want a reward... But I want..."

Petya clenched his teeth and looked around, throwing back his head
and flourishing his arms.

"Into the vewy chief..." Denisov repeated with a smile.

"Only, please let me command something, so that I may really
command..." Petya went on. "What would it be to you?... Oh, you want a
knife?" he said, turning to an officer who wished to cut himself a
piece of mutton.

And he handed him his clasp knife. The officer admired it.

"Please keep it. I have several like it," said Petya, blushing.
"Heavens! I was quite forgetting!" he suddenly cried. "I have some
raisins, fine ones; you know, seedless ones. We have a new sutler
and he has such capital things. I bought ten pounds. I am used to
something sweet. Would you like some?..." and Petya ran out into the
passage to his Cossack and brought back some bags which contained
about five pounds of raisins. "Have some, gentlemen, have some!"

"You want a coffeepot, don't you?" he asked the esaul. "I bought a
capital one from our sutler! He has splendid things. And he's very
honest, that's the chief thing. I'll be sure to send it to you. Or
perhaps your flints are giving out, or are worn out--that happens
sometimes, you know. I have brought some with me, here they are"-
and he showed a bag--"a hundred flints. I bought them very cheap.
Please take as many as you want, or all if you like...."

Then suddenly, dismayed lest he had said too much, Petya stopped and
blushed.

He tried to remember whether he had not done anything else that
was foolish. And running over the events of the day he remembered
the French drummer boy. "It's capital for us here, but what of him?
Where have they put him? Have they fed him? Haven't they hurt his
feelings?" he thought. But having caught himself saying too much about
the flints, he was now afraid to speak out.

"I might ask," he thought, "but they'll say: 'He's a boy himself and
so he pities the boy.' I'll show them tomorrow whether I'm a boy. Will
it seem odd if I ask?" Petya thought. "Well, never mind!" and
immediately, blushing and looking anxiously at the officers to see
if they appeared ironical, he said:

"May I call in that boy who was taken prisoner and give him
something to eat?... Perhaps..."

"Yes, he's a poor little fellow," said Denisov, who evidently saw
nothing shameful in this reminder. "Call him in. His name is Vincent
Bosse. Have him fetched."

"I'll call him," said Petya.

"Yes, yes, call him. A poor little fellow," Denisov repeated.

Petya was standing at the door when Denisov said this. He slipped in
between the officers, came close to Denisov, and said:

"Let me kiss you, dear old fellow! Oh, how fine, how splendid!"

And having kissed Denisov he ran out of the hut.

"Bosse! Vincent!" Petya cried, stopping outside the door.

"Who do you want, sir?" asked a voice in the darkness.

Petya replied that he wanted the French lad who had been captured
that day.

"Ah, Vesenny?" said a Cossack.

Vincent, the boy's name, had already been changed by the Cossacks
into Vesenny (vernal) and into Vesenya by the peasants and soldiers.
In both these adaptations the reference to spring (vesna) matched
the impression made by the young lad.

"He is warming himself there by the bonfire. Ho, Vesenya!
Vesenya!--Vesenny!" laughing voices were heard calling to one
another in the darkness.

"He's a smart lad," said an hussar standing near Petya. "We gave him
something to eat a while ago. He was awfully hungry!"

The sound of bare feet splashing through the mud was heard in the
darkness, and the drummer boy came to the door.

"Ah, c'est vous!" said Petya. "Voulez-vous manger? N'ayez pas
peur, on ne vous fera pas de mal,"* he added shyly and affectionately,
touching the boy's hand. "Entrez, entrez."*[2]


*"Ah, it's you! Do you want something to eat? Don't be afraid,
they won't hurt you."

*[2] "Come in, come in."


"Merci, monsieur,"* said the drummer boy in a trembling almost
childish voice, and he began scraping his dirty feet on the threshold.


*"Thank you, sir."


There were many things Petya wanted to say to the drummer boy, but
did not dare to. He stood irresolutely beside him in the passage. Then
in the darkness he took the boy's hand and pressed it.

"Come in, come in!" he repeated in a gentle whisper. "Oh, what can I
do for him?" he thought, and opening the door he let the boy pass in
first.

When the boy had entered the hut, Petya sat down at a distance
from him, considering it beneath his dignity to pay attention to
him. But he fingered the money in his pocket and wondered whether it
would seem ridiculous to give some to the drummer boy.





CHAPTER VIII


The arrival of Dolokhov diverted Petya's attention from the
drummer boy, to whom Denisov had had some mutton and vodka given,
and whom he had had dressed in a Russian coat so that he might be kept
with their band and not sent away with the other prisoners. Petya
had heard in the army many stories of Dolokhov's extraordinary bravery
and of his cruelty to the French, so from the moment he entered the
hut Petya did not take his eyes from him, but braced himself up more
and more and held his head high, that he might not be unworthy even of
such company.

Dolokhov's appearance amazed Petya by its simplicity.

Denisov wore a Cossack coat, had a beard, had an icon of Nicholas
the Wonder-Worker on his breast, and his way of speaking and
everything he did indicated his unusual position. But Dolokhov, who in
Moscow had worn a Persian costume, had now the appearance of a most
correct officer of the Guards. He was clean-shaven and wore a
Guardsman's padded coat with an Order of St. George at his
buttonhole and a plain forage cap set straight on his head. He took
off his wet felt cloak in a corner of the room, and without greeting
anyone went up to Denisov and began questioning him about the matter
in hand. Denisov told him of the designs the large detachments had
on the transport, of the message Petya had brought, and his own
replies to both generals. Then he told him all he knew of the French
detachment.

"That's so. But we must know what troops they are and their
numbers," said Dolokhov. "It will be necessary to go there. We can't
start the affair without knowing for certain how many there are. I
like to work accurately. Here now--wouldn't one of these gentlemen
like to ride over to the French camp with me? I have brought a spare
uniform."

"I, I... I'll go with you!" cried Petya.

"There's no need for you to go at all," said Denisov, addressing
Dolokhov, "and as for him, I won't let him go on any account."

"I like that!" exclaimed Petya. "Why shouldn't I go?"

"Because it's useless."

"Well, you must excuse me, because... because... I shall go, and
that's all. You'll take me, won't you?" he said, turning to Dolokhov.

"Why not?" Dolokhov answered absently, scrutinizing the face of
the French drummer boy. "Have you had that youngster with you long?"
he asked Denisov.

"He was taken today but he knows nothing. I'm keeping him with me."

"Yes, and where do you put the others?" inquired Dolokhov.

"Where? I send them away and take a weceipt for them," shouted
Denisov, suddenly flushing. "And I say boldly that I have not a single
man's life on my conscience. Would it be difficult for you to send
thirty or thwee hundwed men to town under escort, instead of staining-
I speak bluntly--staining the honor of a soldier?"

"That kind of amiable talk would be suitable from this young count
of sixteen," said Dolokhov with cold irony, "but it's time for you
to drop it."

"Why, I've not said anything! I only say that I'll certainly go with
you," said Petya shyly.

"But for you and me, old fellow, it's time to drop these amenities,"
continued Dolokhov, as if he found particular pleasure in speaking
of this subject which irritated Denisov. "Now, why have you kept
this lad?" he went on, swaying his head. "Because you are sorry for
him! Don't we know those 'receipts' of yours? You send a hundred men
away, and thirty get there. The rest either starve or get killed. So
isn't it all the same not to send them?"

The esaul, screwing up his light-colored eyes, nodded approvingly.

"That's not the point. I'm not going to discuss the matter. I do not
wish to take it on my conscience. You say they'll die. All wight. Only
not by my fault!"

Dolokhov began laughing.

"Who has told them not to capture me these twenty times over? But if
they did catch me they'd string me up to an aspen tree, and with all
your chivalry just the same." He paused. "However, we must get to
work. Tell the Cossack to fetch my kit. I have two French uniforms
in it. Well, are you coming with me?" he asked Petya.

"I? Yes, yes, certainly!" cried Petya, blushing almost to tears
and glancing at Denisov.

While Dolokhov had been disputing with Denisov what should be done
with prisoners, Petya had once more felt awkward and restless; but
again he had no time to grasp fully what they were talking about.
"If grown-up, distinguished men think so, it must be necessary and
right," thought he. "But above all Denisov must not dare to imagine
that I'll obey him and that he can order me about. I will certainly go
to the French camp with Dolokhov. If he can, so can I!"

And to all Denisov's persuasions, Petya replied that he too was
accustomed to do everything accurately and not just anyhow, and that
he never considered personal danger.

"For you'll admit that if we don't know for sure how many of them
there are... hundreds of lives may depend on it, while there are
only two of us. Besides, I want to go very much and certainly will go,
so don't hinder me," said he. "It will only make things worse..."





CHAPTER IX


Having put on French greatcoats and shakos, Petya and Dolokhov
rode to the clearing from which Denisov had reconnoitered the French
camp, and emerging from the forest in pitch darkness they descended
into the hollow. On reaching the bottom, Dolokhov told the Cossacks
accompanying him to await him there and rode on at a quick trot
along the road to the bridge. Petya, his heart in his mouth with
excitement, rode by his side.

"If we're caught, I won't be taken alive! I have a pistol,"
whispered he.

"Don't talk Russian," said Dolokhov in a hurried whisper, and at
that very moment they heard through the darkness the challenge: "Qui
vive?"* and the click of a musket.


*"Who goes there?"


The blood rushed to Petya's face and he grasped his pistol.

"Lanciers du 6-me,"* replied Dolokhov, neither hastening nor
slackening his horse's pace.


*"Lancers of the 6th Regiment."


The black figure of a sentinel stood on the bridge.

"Mot d'ordre."*


*"Password."


Dolokhov reined in his horse and advanced at a walk.

"Dites donc, le colonel Gerard est ici?"* he asked.


*"Tell me, is Colonel Gerard here?"


"Mot d'ordre," repeated the sentinel, barring the way and not
replying.

"Quand un officier fait sa ronde, les sentinelles ne demandent pas
le mot d'ordre..." cried Dolokhov suddenly flaring up and riding
straight at the sentinel. "Je vous demande si le colonel est ici."*


*"When an officer is making his round, sentinels don't ask him for
the password.... I am asking you if the colonel is here."


And without waiting for an answer from the sentinel, who had stepped
aside, Dolokhov rode up the incline at a walk.

Noticing the black outline of a man crossing the road, Dolokhov
stopped him and inquired where the commander and officers were. The
man, a soldier with a sack over his shoulder, stopped, came close up
to Dolokhov's horse, touched it with his hand, and explained simply
and in a friendly way that the commander and the officers were
higher up the hill to the right in the courtyard of the farm, as he
called the landowner's house.

Having ridden up the road, on both sides of which French talk
could be heard around the campfires, Dolokhov turned into the
courtyard of the landowner's house. Having ridden in, he dismounted
and approached a big blazing campfire, around which sat several men
talking noisily. Something was boiling in a small cauldron at the edge
of the fire and a soldier in a peaked cap and blue overcoat, lit up by
the fire, was kneeling beside it stirring its contents with a ramrod.

"Oh, he's a hard nut to crack," said one of the officers who was
sitting in the shadow at the other side of the fire.

"He'll make them get a move on, those fellows!" said another,
laughing.

Both fell silent, peering out through the darkness at the sound of
Dolokhov's and Petya's steps as they advanced to the fire leading
their horses.

"Bonjour, messieurs!"* said Dolokhov loudly and clearly.


*"Good day, gentlemen."


There was a stir among the officers in the shadow beyond the fire,
and one tall, long-necked officer, walking round the fire, came up
to Dolokhov.

"Is that you, Clement?" he asked. "Where the devil...?" But, noticing
his mistake, he broke off short and, with a frown, greeted Dolokhov as
a stranger, asking what he could do for him.

Dolokhov said that he and his companion were trying to overtake
their regiment, and addressing the company in general asked whether
they knew anything of the 6th Regiment. None of them knew anything,
and Petya thought the officers were beginning to look at him and
Dolokhov with hostility and suspicion. For some seconds all were
silent.

"If you were counting on the evening soup, you have come too
late," said a voice from behind the fire with a repressed laugh.

Dolokhov replied that they were not hungry and must push on
farther that night.

He handed the horses over to the soldier who was stirring the pot
and squatted down on his heels by the fire beside the officer with the
long neck. That officer did not take his eyes from Dolokhov and
again asked to what regiment he belonged. Dolokhov, as if he had not
heard the question, did not reply, but lighting a short French pipe
which he took from his pocket began asking the officer in how far
the road before them was safe from Cossacks.

"Those brigands are everywhere," replied an officer from behind
the fire.

Dolokhov remarked that the Cossacks were a danger only to stragglers
such as his companion and himself, "but probably they would not dare
to attack large detachments?" he added inquiringly. No one replied.

"Well, now he'll come away," Petya thought every moment as he
stood by the campfire listening to the talk.

But Dolokhov restarted the conversation which had dropped and
began putting direct questions as to how many men there were in the
battalion, how many battalions, and how many prisoners. Asking about
the Russian prisoners with that detachment, Dolokhov said:

"A horrid business dragging these corpses about with one! It would
be better to shoot such rabble," and burst into loud laughter, so
strange that Petya thought the French would immediately detect their
disguise, and involuntarily took a step back from the campfire.

No one replied a word to Dolokhov's laughter, and a French officer
whom they could not see (he lay wrapped in a greatcoat) rose and
whispered something to a companion. Dolokhov got up and called to
the soldier who was holding their horses.

"Will they bring our horses or not?" thought Petya, instinctively
drawing nearer to Dolokhov.

The horses were brought.

"Good evening, gentlemen," said Dolokhov.

Petya wished to say "Good night" but could not utter a word. The
officers were whispering together. Dolokhov was a long time mounting
his horse which would not stand still, then he rode out of the yard at
a footpace. Petya rode beside him, longing to look round to see
whether or no the French were running after them, but not daring to.

Coming out onto the road Dolokhov did not ride back across the
open country, but through the village. At one spot he stopped and
listened. "Do you hear?" he asked. Petya recognized the sound of
Russian voices and saw the dark figures of Russian prisoners round
their campfires. When they had descended to the bridge Petya and
Dolokhov rode past the sentinel, who without saying a word paced
morosely up and down it, then they descended into the hollow where the
Cossacks awaited them.

"Well now, good-by. Tell Denisov, 'at the first shot at
daybreak,'" said Dolokhov and was about to ride away, but Petya seized
hold of him.

"Really!" he cried, "you are such a hero! Oh, how fine, how
splendid! How I love you!"

"All right, all right!" said Dolokhov. But Petya did not let go of
him and Dolokhov saw through the gloom that Petya was bending toward
him and wanted to kiss him. Dolokhov kissed him, laughed, turned his
horse, and vanished into the darkness.





CHAPTER X


Having returned to the watchman's hut, Petya found Denisov in the
passage. He was awaiting Petya's return in a state of agitation,
anxiety, and self-reproach for having let him go.

"Thank God!" he exclaimed. "Yes, thank God!" he repeated,
listening to Petya's rapturous account. "But, devil take you, I
haven't slept because of you! Well, thank God. Now lie down. We can
still get a nap before morning."

"But... no," said Petya, "I don't want to sleep yet. Besides I
know myself, if I fall asleep it's finished. And then I am used to not
sleeping before a battle."

He sat awhile in the hut joyfully recalling the details of his
expedition and vividly picturing to himself what would happen next
day.

Then, noticing that Denisov was asleep, he rose and went out of
doors.

It was still quite dark outside. The rain was over, but drops were
still falling from the trees. Near the watchman's hut the black shapes
of the Cossacks' shanties and of horses tethered together could be
seen. Behind the hut the dark shapes of the two wagons with their
horses beside them were discernible, and in the hollow the dying
campfire gleamed red. Not all the Cossacks and hussars were asleep;
here and there, amid the sounds of falling drops and the munching of
the horses near by, could be heard low voices which seemed to be
whispering.

Petya came out, peered into the darkness, and went up to the wagons.
Someone was snoring under them, and around them stood saddled horses
munching their oats. In the dark Petya recognized his own horse, which
he called "Karabakh" though it was of Ukranian breed, and went up to
it.

"Well, Karabakh! We'll do some service tomorrow," said he,
sniffing its nostrils and kissing it.

"Why aren't you asleep, sir?" said a Cossack who was sitting under a
wagon.

"No, ah... Likhachev--isn't that your name? Do you know I have
only just come back! We've been into the French camp."

And Petya gave the Cossack a detailed account not only of his ride
but also of his object, and why he considered it better to risk his
life than to act "just anyhow."

"Well, you should get some sleep now," said the Cossack.

"No, I am used to this," said Petya. "I say, aren't the flints in
your pistols worn out? I brought some with me. Don't you want any? You
can have some."

The Cossack bent forward from under the wagon to get a closer look
at Petya.

"Because I am accustomed to doing everything accurately," said
Petya. "Some fellows do things just anyhow, without preparation, and
then they're sorry for it afterwards. I don't like that."

"Just so," said the Cossack.

"Oh yes, another thing! Please, my dear fellow, will you sharpen
my saber for me? It's got bl..." (Petya feared to tell a lie, and
the saber never had been sharpened.) "Can you do it?"

"Of course I can."

Likhachev got up, rummaged in his pack, and soon Petya heard the
warlike sound of steel on whetstone. He climbed onto the wagon and sat
on its edge. The Cossack was sharpening the saber under the wagon.

"I say! Are the lads asleep?" asked Petya.

"Some are, and some aren't--like us."

"Well, and that boy?"

"Vesenny? Oh, he's thrown himself down there in the passage. Fast
asleep after his fright. He was that glad!"

After that Petya remained silent for a long time, listening to the
sounds. He heard footsteps in the darkness and a black figure
appeared.

"What are you sharpening?" asked a man coming up to the wagon.

"Why, this gentleman's saber."

"That's right," said the man, whom Petya took to be an hussar.
"Was the cup left here?"

"There, by the wheel!"

The hussar took the cup.

"It must be daylight soon," said he, yawning, and went away.

Petya ought to have known that he was in a forest with Denisov's
guerrilla band, less than a mile from the road, sitting on a wagon
captured from the French beside which horses were tethered, that under
it Likhachev was sitting sharpening a saber for him, that the big dark
blotch to the right was the watchman's hut, and the red blotch below
to the left was the dying embers of a campfire, that the man who had
come for the cup was an hussar who wanted a drink; but he neither knew
nor waited to know anything of all this. He was in a fairy kingdom
where nothing resembled reality. The big dark blotch might really be
the watchman's hut or it might be a cavern leading to the very
depths of the earth. Perhaps the red spot was a fire, or it might be
the eye of an enormous monster. Perhaps he was really sitting on a
wagon, but it might very well be that he was not sitting on a wagon
but on a terribly high tower from which, if he fell, he would have
to fall for a whole day or a whole month, or go on falling and never
reach the bottom. Perhaps it was just the Cossack, Likhachev, who
was sitting under the wagon, but it might be the kindest, bravest,
most wonderful, most splendid man in the world, whom no one knew of.
It might really have been that the hussar came for water and went back
into the hollow, but perhaps he had simply vanished--disappeared
altogether and dissolved into nothingness.

Nothing Petya could have seen now would have surprised him. He was
in a fairy kingdom where everything was possible.

He looked up at the sky. And the sky was a fairy realm like the
earth. It was clearing, and over the tops of the trees clouds were
swiftly sailing as if unveiling the stars. Sometimes it looked as if
the clouds were passing, and a clear black sky appeared. Sometimes
it seemed as if the black spaces were clouds. Sometimes the sky seemed
to be rising high, high overhead, and then it seemed to sink so low
that one could touch it with one's hand.

Petya's eyes began to close and he swayed a little.

The trees were dripping. Quiet talking was heard. The horses neighed
and jostled one another. Someone snored.

"Ozheg-zheg, Ozheg-zheg..." hissed the saber against the
whetstone, and suddenly Petya heard an harmonious orchestra playing
some unknown, sweetly solemn hymn. Petya was as musical as Natasha and
more so than Nicholas, but had never learned music or thought about
it, and so the melody that unexpectedly came to his mind seemed to him
particularly fresh and attractive. The music became more and more
audible. The melody grew and passed from one instrument to another.
And what was played was a fugue--though Petya had not the least
conception of what a fugue is. Each instrument--now resembling a
violin and now a horn, but better and clearer than violin or horn-
played its own part, and before it had finished the melody merged with
another instrument that began almost the same air, and then with a
third and a fourth; and they all blended into one and again became
separate and again blended, now into solemn church music, now into
something dazzlingly brilliant and triumphant.

"Oh--why, that was in a dream!" Petya said to himself, as he lurched
forward. "It's in my ears. But perhaps it's music of my own. Well,
go on, my music! Now!..."

He closed his eyes, and, from all sides as if from a distance,
sounds fluttered, grew into harmonies, separated, blended, and again
all mingled into the same sweet and solemn hymn. "Oh, this is
delightful! As much as I like and as I like!" said Petya to himself.
He tried to conduct that enormous orchestra.

"Now softly, softly die away!" and the sounds obeyed him. "Now
fuller, more joyful. Still more and more joyful!" And from an
unknown depth rose increasingly triumphant sounds. "Now voices join
in!" ordered Petya. And at first from afar he heard men's voices and
then women's. The voices grew in harmonious triumphant strength, and
Petya listened to their surpassing beauty in awe and joy.

With a solemn triumphal march there mingled a song, the drip from
the trees, and the hissing of the saber, "Ozheg-zheg-zheg..." and
again the horses jostled one another and neighed, not disturbing the
choir but joining in it.

Petya did not know how long this lasted: he enjoyed himself all
the time, wondered at his enjoyment and regretted that there was no
one to share it. He was awakened by Likhachev's kindly voice.

"It's ready, your honor; you can split a Frenchman in half with it!"

Petya woke up.

"It's getting light, it's really getting light!" he exclaimed.

The horses that had previously been invisible could now be seen to
their very tails, and a watery light showed itself through the bare
branches. Petya shook himself, jumped up, took a ruble from his pocket
and gave it to Likhachev; then he flourished the saber, tested it, and
sheathed it. The Cossacks were untying their horses and tightening
their saddle girths.

"And here's the commander," said Likhachev.

Denisov came out of the watchman's hut and, having called Petya,
gave orders to get ready.




CHAPTER XI


The men rapidly picked out their horses in the semidarkness,
tightened their saddle girths, and formed companies. Denisov stood
by the watchman's hut giving final orders. The infantry of the
detachment passed along the road and quickly disappeared amid the
trees in the mist of early dawn, hundreds of feet splashing through
the mud. The esaul gave some orders to his men. Petya held his horse
by the bridle, impatiently awaiting the order to mount. His face,
having been bathed in cold water, was all aglow, and his eyes were
particularly brilliant. Cold shivers ran down his spine and his
whole body pulsed rhythmically.

"Well, is ev'wything weady?" asked Denisov. "Bwing the horses."

The horses were brought. Denisov was angry with the Cossack
because the saddle girths were too slack, reproved him, and mounted.
Petya put his foot in the stirrup. His horse by habit made as if to
nip his leg, but Petya leaped quickly into the saddle unconscious of
his own weight and, turning to look at the hussars starting in the
darkness behind him, rode up to Denisov.

"Vasili Dmitrich, entrust me with some commission! Please... for
God's sake...!" said he.

Denisov seemed to have forgotten Petya's very existence. He turned
to glance at him.

"I ask one thing of you," he said sternly, "to obey me and not shove
yourself forward anywhere."

He did not say another word to Petya but rode in silence all the
way. When they had come to the edge of the forest it was noticeably
growing light over the field. Denisov talked in whispers with the
esaul and the Cossacks rode past Petya and Denisov. When they had
all ridden by, Denisov touched his horse and rode down the hill.
Slipping onto their haunches and sliding, the horses descended with
their riders into the ravine. Petya rode beside Denisov, the pulsation
of his body constantly increasing. It was getting lighter and lighter,
but the mist still hid distant objects. Having reached the valley,
Denisov looked back and nodded to a Cossack beside him.

"The signal!" said he.

The Cossack raised his arm and a shot rang out. In an instant the
tramp of horses galloping forward was heard, shouts came from
various sides, and then more shots.

At the first sound of trampling hoofs and shouting, Petya lashed his
horse and loosening his rein galloped forward, not heeding Denisov who
shouted at him. It seemed to Petya that at the moment the shot was
fired it suddenly became as bright as noon. He galloped to the bridge.
Cossacks were galloping along the road in front of him. On the
bridge he collided with a Cossack who had fallen behind, but he
galloped on. In front of him soldiers, probably Frenchmen, were
running from right to left across the road. One of them fell in the
mud under his horse's feet.

Cossacks were crowding about a hut, busy with something. From the
midst of that crowd terrible screams arose. Petya galloped up, and the
first thing he saw was the pale face and trembling jaw of a Frenchman,
clutching the handle of a lance that had been aimed at him.

"Hurrah!... Lads!... ours!" shouted Petya, and giving rein to his
excited horse he galloped forward along the village street.

He could hear shooting ahead of him. Cossacks, hussars, and ragged
Russian prisoners, who had come running from both sides of the road,
were shouting something loudly and incoherently. A gallant-looking
Frenchman, in a blue overcoat, capless, and with a frowning red
face, had been defending himself against the hussars. When Petya
galloped up the Frenchman had already fallen. "Too late again!"
flashed through Petya's mind and he galloped on to the place from
which the rapid firing could be heard. The shots came from the yard of
the landowner's house he had visited the night before with Dolokhov.
The French were making a stand there behind a wattle fence in a garden
thickly overgrown with bushes and were firing at the Cossacks who
crowded at the gateway. Through the smoke, as he approached the
gate, Petya saw Dolokhov, whose face was of a pale-greenish tint,
shouting to his men. "Go round! Wait for the infantry!" he exclaimed
as Petya rode up to him.

"Wait?... Hurrah-ah-ah!" shouted Petya, and without pausing a moment
galloped to the place whence came the sounds of firing and where the
smoke was thickest.

A volley was heard, and some bullets whistled past, while others
plashed against something. The Cossacks and Dolokhov galloped after
Petya into the gateway of the courtyard. In the dense wavering smoke
some of the French threw down their arms and ran out of the bushes
to meet the Cossacks, while others ran down the hill toward the
pond. Petya was galloping along the courtyard, but instead of
holding the reins he waved both his arms about rapidly and
strangely, slipping farther and farther to one side in his saddle. His
horse, having galloped up to a campfire that was smoldering in the
morning light, stopped suddenly, and Petya fell heavily on to the
wet ground. The Cossacks saw that his arms and legs jerked rapidly
though his head was quite motionless. A bullet had pierced his skull.

After speaking to the senior French officer, who came out of the
house with a white handkerchief tied to his sword and announced that
they surrendered, Dolokhov dismounted and went up to Petya, who lay
motionless with outstretched arms.

"Done for!" he said with a frown, and went to the gate to meet
Denisov who was riding toward him.

"Killed?" cried Denisov, recognizing from a distance the
unmistakably lifeless attitude--very familiar to him--in which Petya's
body was lying.

"Done for!" repeated Dolokhov as if the utterance of these words
afforded him pleasure, and he went quickly up to the prisoners, who
were surrounded by Cossacks who had hurried up. "We won't take
them!" he called out to Denisov.

Denisov did not reply; he rode up to Petya, dismounted, and with
trembling hands turned toward himself the bloodstained,
mud-bespattered face which had already gone white.

"I am used to something sweet. Raisins, fine ones... take them all!"
he recalled Petya's words. And the Cossacks looked round in surprise
at the sound, like the yelp of a dog, with which Denisov turned
away, walked to the wattle fence, and seized hold of it.

Among the Russian prisoners rescued by Denisov and Dolokhov was
Pierre Bezukhov.





CHAPTER XII

During the whole of their march from Moscow no fresh orders had been
issued by the French authorities concerning the party of prisoners
among whom was Pierre. On the twenty-second of October that party
was no longer with the same troops and baggage trains with which it
had left Moscow. Half the wagons laden with hardtack that had traveled
the first stages with them had been captured by Cossacks, the other
half had gone on ahead. Not one of those dismounted cavalrymen who had
marched in front of the prisoners was left; they had all
disappeared. The artillery the prisoners had seen in front of them
during the first days was now replaced by Marshal Junot's enormous
baggage train, convoyed by Westphalians. Behind the prisoners came a
cavalry baggage train.

From Vyazma onwards the French army, which had till then moved in
three columns, went on as a single group. The symptoms of disorder
that Pierre had noticed at their first halting place after leaving
Moscow had now reached the utmost limit.

The road along which they moved was bordered on both sides by dead
horses; ragged men who had fallen behind from various regiments
continually changed about, now joining the moving column, now again
lagging behind it.

Several times during the march false alarms had been given and the
soldiers of the escort had raised their muskets, fired, and run
headlong, crushing one another, but had afterwards reassembled and
abused each other for their causeless panic.

These three groups traveling together--the cavalry stores, the
convoy of prisoners, and Junot's baggage train--still constituted a
separate and united whole, though each of the groups was rapidly
melting away.

Of the artillery baggage train which had consisted of a hundred
and twenty wagons, not more than sixty now remained; the rest had been
captured or left behind. Some of Junot's wagons also had been captured
or abandoned. Three wagons had been raided and robbed by stragglers
from Davout's corps. From the talk of the Germans Pierre learned
that a larger guard had been allotted to that baggage train than to
the prisoners, and that one of their comrades, a German soldier, had
been shot by the marshal's own order because a silver spoon
belonging to the marshal had been found in his possession.

The group of prisoners had melted away most of all. Of the three
hundred and thirty men who had set out from Moscow fewer than a
hundred now remained. The prisoners were more burdensome to the escort
than even the cavalry saddles or Junot's baggage. They understood that
the saddles and Junot's spoon might be of some use, but that cold
and hungry soldiers should have to stand and guard equally cold and
hungry Russians who froze and lagged behind on the road (in which case
the order was to shoot them) was not merely incomprehensible but
revolting. And the escort, as if afraid, in the grievous condition
they themselves were in, of giving way to the pity they felt for the
prisoners and so rendering their own plight still worse, treated
them with particular moroseness and severity.

At Dorogobuzh while the soldiers of the convoy, after locking the
prisoners in a stable, had gone off to pillage their own stores,
several of the soldier prisoners tunneled under the wall and ran away,
but were recaptured by the French and shot.

The arrangement adopted when they started, that the officer
prisoners should be kept separate from the rest, had long since been
abandoned. All who could walk went together, and after the third stage
Pierre had rejoined Karataev and the gray-blue bandy-legged dog that
had chosen Karataev for its master.

On the third day after leaving Moscow Karataev again fell ill with
the fever he had suffered from in the hospital in Moscow, and as he
grew gradually weaker Pierre kept away from him. Pierre did not know
why, but since Karataev had begun to grow weaker it had cost him an
effort to go near him. When he did so and heard the subdued moaning
with which Karataev generally lay down at the halting places, and when
he smelled the odor emanating from him which was now stronger than
before, Pierre moved farther away and did not think about him.

While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his
intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is
created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the
satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises
not from privation but from superfluity. And now during these last
three weeks of the march he had learned still another new, consolatory
truth--that nothing in this world is terrible. He had learned that
as there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely
free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack
freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their limits and
that those limits are very near together; that the person in a bed
of roses with one crumpled petal suffered as keenly as he now,
sleeping on the bare damp earth with one side growing chilled while
the other was warming; and that when he had put on tight dancing shoes
he had suffered just as he did now when he walked with bare feet
that were covered with sores--his footgear having long since fallen to
pieces. He discovered that when he had married his wife--of his own
free will as it had seemed to him--he had been no more free than now
when they locked him up at night in a stable. Of all that he himself
subsequently termed his sufferings, but which at the time he
scarcely felt, the worst was the state of his bare, raw, and
scab-covered feet. (The horseflesh was appetizing and nourishing,
the saltpeter flavor of the gunpowder they used instead of salt was
even pleasant; there was no great cold, it was always warm walking
in the daytime, and at night there were the campfires; the lice that
devoured him warmed his body.) The one thing that was at first hard to
bear was his feet.

After the second day's march Pierre, having examined his feet by the
campfire, thought it would be impossible to walk on them; but when
everybody got up he went along, limping, and, when he had warmed up,
walked without feeling the pain, though at night his feet were more
terrible to look at than before. However, he did not look at them now,
but thought of other things.

Only now did Pierre realize the full strength of life in man and the
saving power he has of transferring his attention from one thing to
another, which is like the safety valve of a boiler that allows
superfluous steam to blow off when the pressure exceeds a certain
limit.

He did not see and did not hear how they shot the prisoners who
lagged behind, though more than a hundred perished in that way. He did
not think of Karataev who grew weaker every day and evidently would
soon have to share that fate. Still less did Pierre think about
himself. The harder his position became and the more terrible the
future, the more independent of that position in which he found
himself were the joyful and comforting thoughts, memories, and
imaginings that came to him.





CHAPTER XIII


At midday on the twenty-second of October Pierre was going uphill
along the muddy, slippery road, looking at his feet and at the
roughness of the way. Occasionally he glanced at the familiar crowd
around him and then again at his feet. The former and the latter
were alike familiar and his own. The blue-gray bandy legged dog ran
merrily along the side of the road, sometimes in proof of its
agility and self-satisfaction lifting one hind leg and hopping along
on three, and then again going on all four and rushing to bark at
the crows that sat on the carrion. The dog was merrier and sleeker
than it had been in Moscow. All around lay the flesh of different
animals--from men to horses--in various stages of decomposition; and
as the wolves were kept off by the passing men the dog could eat all
it wanted.

It had been raining since morning and had seemed as if at any moment
it might cease and the sky clear, but after a short break it began
raining harder than before. The saturated road no longer absorbed
the water, which ran along the ruts in streams.

Pierre walked along, looking from side to side, counting his steps
in threes, and reckoning them off on his fingers. Mentally
addressing the rain, he repeated: "Now then, now then, go on! Pelt
harder!"

It seemed to him that he was thinking of nothing, but far down and
deep within him his soul was occupied with something important and
comforting. This something was a most subtle spiritual deduction
from a conversation with Karataev the day before.

At their yesterday's halting place, feeling chilly by a dying
campfire, Pierre had got up and gone to the next one, which was
burning better. There Platon Karataev was sitting covered up--head and
all--with his greatcoat as if it were a vestment, telling the soldiers
in his effective and pleasant though now feeble voice a story Pierre
knew. It was already past midnight, the hour when Karataev was usually
free of his fever and particularly lively. When Pierre reached the
fire and heard Platon's voice enfeebled by illness, and saw his
pathetic face brightly lit up by the blaze, he felt a painful prick at
his heart. His feeling of pity for this man frightened him and he
wished to go away, but there was no other fire, and Pierre sat down,
trying not to look at Platon.

"Well, how are you?" he asked.

"How am I? If we grumble at sickness, God won't grant us death,"
replied Platon, and at once resumed the story he had begun.

"And so, brother," he continued, with a smile on his pale
emaciated face and a particularly happy light in his eyes, "you
see, brother..."

Pierre had long been familiar with that story. Karataev had told
it to him alone some half-dozen times and always with a specially
joyful emotion. But well as he knew it, Pierre now listened to that
tale as to something new, and the quiet rapture Karataev evidently
felt as he told it communicated itself also to Pierre. The story was
of an old merchant who lived a good and God-fearing life with his
family, and who went once to the Nizhni fair with a companion--a
rich merchant.

Having put up at an inn they both went to sleep, and next morning
his companion was found robbed and with his throat cut. A bloodstained
knife was found under the old merchant's pillow. He was tried,
knouted, and his nostrils having been torn off, "all in due form" as
Karataev put it, he was sent to hard labor in Siberia.

"And so, brother" (it was at this point that Pierre came up), "ten
years or more passed by. The old man was living as a convict,
submitting as he should and doing no wrong. Only he prayed to God
for death. Well, one night the convicts were gathered just as we
are, with the old man among them. And they began telling what each was
suffering for, and how they had sinned against God. One told how he
had taken a life, another had taken two, a third had set a house on
fire, while another had simply been a vagrant and had done nothing. So
they asked the old man: 'What are you being punished for, Daddy?'--'I,
my dear brothers,' said he, 'am being punished for my own and other
men's sins. But I have not killed anyone or taken anything that was
not mine, but have only helped my poorer brothers. I was a merchant,
my dear brothers, and had much property. 'And he went on to tell
them all about it in due order. 'I don't grieve for myself,' he
says, 'God, it seems, has chastened me. Only I am sorry for my old
wife and the children,' and the old man began to weep. Now it happened
that in the group was the very man who had killed the other
merchant. 'Where did it happen, Daddy?' he said. 'When, and in what
month?' He asked all about it and his heart began to ache. So he comes
up to the old man like this, and falls down at his feet! 'You are
perishing because of me, Daddy,' he says. 'It's quite true, lads, that
this man,' he says, 'is being tortured innocently and for nothing! I,'
he says, 'did that deed, and I put the knife under your head while you
were asleep. Forgive me, Daddy,' he says, 'for Christ's sake!'"

Karataev paused, smiling joyously as he gazed into the fire, and
he drew the logs together.

"And the old man said, 'God will forgive you, we are all sinners
in His sight. I suffer for my own sins,' and he wept bitter tears.
Well, and what do you think, dear friends?" Karataev continued, his
face brightening more and more with a rapturous smile as if what he
now had to tell contained the chief charm and the whole meaning of his
story: "What do you think, dear fellows? That murderer confessed to
the authorities. 'I have taken six lives,' he says (he was a great
sinner), 'but what I am most sorry for is this old man. Don't let
him suffer because of me.' So he confessed and it was all written down
and the papers sent off in due form. The place was a long way off, and
while they were judging, what with one thing and another, filling in
the papers all in due form--the authorities I mean--time passed. The
affair reached the Tsar. After a while the Tsar's decree came: to
set the merchant free and give him a compensation that had been
awarded. The paper arrived and they began to look for the old man.
'Where is the old man who has been suffering innocently and in vain? A
paper has come from the Tsar!' so they began looking for him," here
Karataev's lower jaw trembled, "but God had already forgiven him--he
was dead! That's how it was, dear fellows!" Karataev concluded and sat
for a long time silent, gazing before him with a smile.

And Pierre's soul was dimly but joyfully filled not by the story
itself but by its mysterious significance: by the rapturous joy that
lit up Karataev's face as he told it, and the mystic significance of
that joy.





CHAPTER XIV


"A vos places!"* suddenly cried a voice.


*"To your places."


A pleasant feeling of excitement and an expectation of something
joyful and solemn was aroused among the soldiers of the convoy and the
prisoners. From all sides came shouts of command, and from the left
came smartly dressed cavalrymen on good horses, passing the
prisoners at a trot. The expression on all faces showed the tension
people feel at the approach of those in authority. The prisoners
thronged together and were pushed off the road. The convoy formed up.

"The Emperor! The Emperor! The Marshal! The Duke!" and hardly had
the sleek cavalry passed, before a carriage drawn by six gray horses
rattled by. Pierre caught a glimpse of a man in a three-cornered hat
with a tranquil look on his handsome, plump, white face. It was one of
the marshals. His eye fell on Pierre's large and striking figure,
and in the expression with which he frowned and looked away Pierre
thought he detected sympathy and a desire to conceal that sympathy.

The general in charge of the stores galloped after the carriage with
a red and frightened face, whipping up his skinny horse. Several
officers formed a group and some soldiers crowded round them. Their
faces all looked excited and worried.

"What did he say? What did he say?" Pierre heard them ask.

While the marshal was passing, the prisoners had huddled together in
a crowd, and Pierre saw Karataev whom he had not yet seen that
morning. He sat in his short overcoat leaning against a birch tree. On
his face, besides the look of joyful emotion it had worn yesterday
while telling the tale of the merchant who suffered innocently,
there was now an expression of quiet solemnity.

Karataev looked at Pierre with his kindly round eyes now filled with
tears, evidently wishing him to come near that he might say
something to him. But Pierre was not sufficiently sure of himself.
He made as if he did not notice that look and moved hastily away.

When the prisoners again went forward Pierre looked round.
Karataev was still sitting at the side of the road under the birch
tree and two Frenchmen were talking over his head. Pierre did not look
round again but went limping up the hill.

From behind, where Karataev had been sitting, came the sound of a
shot. Pierre heard it plainly, but at that moment he remembered that
he had not yet finished reckoning up how many stages still remained to
Smolensk--a calculation he had begun before the marshal went by. And
he again started reckoning. Two French soldiers ran past Pierre, one
of whom carried a lowered and smoking gun. They both looked pale,
and in the expression on their faces--one of them glanced timidly at
Pierre--there was something resembling what he had seen on the face of
the young soldier at the execution. Pierre looked at the soldier and
remembered that, two days before, that man had burned his shirt
while drying it at the fire and how they had laughed at him.

Behind him, where Karataev had been sitting, the dog began to
howl. "What a stupid beast! Why is it howling?" thought Pierre.

His comrades, the prisoner soldiers walking beside him, avoided
looking back at the place where the shot had been fired and the dog
was howling, just as Pierre did, but there was a set look on all their
faces.





CHAPTER XV


The stores, the prisoners, and the marshal's baggage train stopped
at the village of Shamshevo. The men crowded together round the
campfires. Pierre went up to the fire, ate some roast horseflesh,
lay down with his back to the fire, and immediately fell asleep. He
again slept as he had done at Mozhaysk after the battle of Borodino.

Again real events mingled with dreams and again someone, he or
another, gave expression to his thoughts, and even to the same
thoughts that had been expressed in his dream at Mozhaysk.

"Life is everything. Life is God. Everything changes and moves and
that movement is God. And while there is life there is joy in
consciousness of the divine. To love life is to love God. Harder and
more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings,
in innocent sufferings."

"Karataev!" came to Pierre's mind.

And suddenly he saw vividly before him a long-forgotten, kindly
old man who had given him geography lessons in Switzerland. "Wait a
bit," said the old man, and showed Pierre a globe. This globe was
alive--a vibrating ball without fixed dimensions. Its whole surface
consisted of drops closely pressed together, and all these drops moved
and changed places, sometimes several of them merging into one,
sometimes one dividing into many. Each drop tried to spread out and
occupy as much space as possible, but others striving to do the same
compressed it, sometimes destroyed it, and sometimes merged with it.

"That is life," said the old teacher.

"How simple and clear it is," thought Pierre. "How is it I did not
know it before?"

"God is in the midst, and each drop tries to expand so as to reflect
Him to the greatest extent. And it grows, merges, disappears from
the surface, sinks to the depths, and again emerges. There now,
Karataev has spread out and disappeared. Do you understand, my child?"
said the teacher.

"Do you understand, damn you?" shouted a voice, and Pierre woke up.

He lifted himself and sat up. A Frenchman who had just pushed a
Russian soldier away was squatting by the fire, engaged in roasting
a piece of meat stuck on a ramrod. His sleeves were rolled up and
his sinewy, hairy, red hands with their short fingers deftly turned
the ramrod. His brown morose face with frowning brows was clearly
visible by the glow of the charcoal.

"It's all the same to him," he muttered, turning quickly to a
soldier who stood behind him. "Brigand! Get away!"

And twisting the ramrod he looked gloomily at Pierre, who turned
away and gazed into the darkness. A prisoner, the Russian soldier
the Frenchman had pushed away, was sitting near the fire patting
something with his hand. Looking more closely Pierre recognized the
blue-gray dog, sitting beside the soldier, wagging its tail.

"Ah, he's come?" said Pierre. "And Plat-" he began, but did not
finish.

Suddenly and simultaneously a crowd of memories awoke in his
fancy--of the look Platon had given him as he sat under the tree, of
the shot heard from that spot, of the dog's howl, of the guilty
faces of the two Frenchmen as they ran past him, of the lowered and
smoking gun, and of Karataev's absence at this halt--and he was on the
point of realizing that Karataev had been killed, but just at that
instant, he knew not why, the recollection came to his mind of a
summer evening he had spent with a beautiful Polish lady on the
veranda of his house in Kiev. And without linking up the events of the
day or drawing a conclusion from them, Pierre closed his eyes,
seeing a vision of the country in summertime mingled with memories
of bathing and of the liquid, vibrating globe, and he sank into
water so that it closed over his head.

Before sunrise he was awakened by shouts and loud and rapid
firing. French soldiers were running past him.

"The Cossacks!" one of them shouted, and a moment later a crowd of
Russians surrounded Pierre.

For a long time he could not understand what was happening to him.
All around he heard his comrades sobbing with joy.

"Brothers! Dear fellows! Darlings!" old soldiers exclaimed, weeping,
as they embraced Cossacks and hussars.

The hussars and Cossacks crowded round the prisoners; one offered
them clothes, another boots, and a third bread. Pierre sobbed as he
sat among them and could not utter a word. He hugged the first soldier
who approached him, and kissed him, weeping.

Dolokhov stood at the gate of the ruined house, letting a crowd of
disarmed Frenchmen pass by. The French, excited by all that had
happened, were talking loudly among themselves, but as they passed
Dolokhov who gently switched his boots with his whip and watched
them with cold glassy eyes that boded no good, they became silent.
On the opposite side stood Dolokhov's Cossack, counting the
prisoners and marking off each hundred with a chalk line on the gate.

"How many?" Dolokhov asked the Cossack.

"The second hundred," replied the Cossack.

"Filez, filez!"* Dolokhov kept saying, having adopted this
expression from the French, and when his eyes met those of the
prisoners they flashed with a cruel light.


*"Get along, get along!"


Denisov, bareheaded and with a gloomy face, walked behind some
Cossacks who were carrying the body of Petya Rostov to a hole that had
been dug in the garden.





CHAPTER XVI


After the twenty-eighth of October when the frosts began, the flight
of the French assumed a still more tragic character, with men
freezing, or roasting themselves to death at the campfires, while
carriages with people dressed in furs continued to drive past,
carrying away the property that had been stolen by the Emperor, kings,
and dukes; but the process of the flight and disintegration of the
French army went on essentially as before.

From Moscow to Vyazma the French army of seventy-three thousand
men not reckoning the Guards (who did nothing during the whole war but
pillage) was reduced to thirty-six thousand, though not more than five
thousand had fallen in battle. From this beginning the succeeding
terms of the progression could be determined mathematically. The
French army melted away and perished at the same rate from Moscow to
Vyazma, from Vyazma to Smolensk, from Smolensk to the Berezina, and
from the Berezina to Vilna--independently of the greater or lesser
intensity of the cold, the pursuit, the barring of the way, or any
other particular conditions. Beyond Vyazma the French army instead
of moving in three columns huddled together into one mass, and so went
on to the end. Berthier wrote to his Emperor (we know how far
commanding officers allow themselves to diverge from the truth in
describing the condition of an army) and this is what he said:


I deem it my duty to report to Your Majesty the condition of the
various corps I have had occasion to observe during different stages
of the last two or three days' march. They are almost disbanded.
Scarcely a quarter of the soldiers remain with the standards of
their regiments, the others go off by themselves in different
directions hoping to find food and escape discipline. In general
they regard Smolensk as the place where they hope to recover. During
the last few days many of the men have been seen to throw away their
cartridges and their arms. In such a state of affairs, whatever your
ultimate plans may be, the interest of Your Majesty's service
demands that the army should be rallied at Smolensk and should first
of all be freed from ineffectives, such as dismounted cavalry,
unnecessary baggage, and artillery material that is no longer in
proportion to the present forces. The soldiers, who are worn out
with hunger and fatigue, need these supplies as well as a few days'
rest. Many have died last days on the road or at the bivouacs. This
state of things is continually becoming worse and makes one fear
that unless a prompt remedy is applied the troops will no longer be
under control in case of an engagement.

November 9: twenty miles from Smolensk.


After staggering into Smolensk which seemed to them a promised land,
the French, searching for food, killed one another, sacked their own
stores, and when everything had been plundered fled farther.

They all went without knowing whither or why they were going.
Still less did that genius, Napoleon, know it, for no one issued any
orders to him. But still he and those about him retained their old
habits: wrote commands, letters, reports, and orders of the day;
called one another sire, mon cousin, prince d'Eckmuhl, roi de
Naples, and so on. But these orders and reports were only on paper,
nothing in them was acted upon for they could not be carried out,
and though they entitled one another Majesties, Highnesses, or
Cousins, they all felt that they were miserable wretches who had
done much evil for which they had now to pay. And though they
pretended to be concerned about the army, each was thinking only of
himself and of how to get away quickly and save himself.




CHAPTER XVII


The movements of the Russian and French armies during the campaign
from Moscow back to the Niemen were like those in a game of Russian
blindman's bluff, in which two players are blindfolded and one of them
occasionally rings a little bell to inform the catcher of his
whereabouts. First he rings his bell fearlessly, but when he gets into
a tight place he runs away as quietly as he can, and often thinking to
escape runs straight into his opponent's arms.

At first while they were still moving along the Kaluga road,
Napoleon's armies made their presence known, but later when they
reached the Smolensk road they ran holding the clapper of their bell
tight--and often thinking they were escaping ran right into the
Russians.

Owing to the rapidity of the French flight and the Russian pursuit
and the consequent exhaustion of the horses, the chief means of
approximately ascertaining the enemy's position--by cavalry
scouting--was not available. Besides, as a result of the frequent
and rapid change of position by each army, even what information was
obtained could not be delivered in time. If news was received one
day that the enemy had been in a certain position the day before, by
the third day when something could have been done, that army was
already two days' march farther on and in quite another position.

One army fled and the other pursued. Beyond Smolensk there were
several different roads available for the French, and one would have
thought that during their stay of four days they might have learned
where the enemy was, might have arranged some more advantageous plan
and undertaken something new. But after a four days' halt the mob,
with no maneuvers or plans, again began running along the beaten
track, neither to the right nor to the left but along the old--the
worst--road, through Krasnoe and Orsha.

Expecting the enemy from behind and not in front, the French
separated in their flight and spread out over a distance of
twenty-four hours. In front of them all fled the Emperor, then the
kings, then the dukes. The Russian army, expecting Napoleon to take
the road to the right beyond the Dnieper--which was the only
reasonable thing for him to do--themselves turned to the right and
came out onto the highroad at Krasnoe. And here as in a game of
blindman's buff the French ran into our vanguard. Seeing their enemy
unexpectedly the French fell into confusion and stopped short from the
sudden fright, but then they resumed their flight, abandoning their
comrades who were farther behind. Then for three days separate
portions of the French army--first Murat's (the vice-king's), then
Davout's, and then Ney's--ran, as it were, the gauntlet of the Russian
army. They abandoned one another, abandoned all their heavy baggage,
their artillery, and half their men, and fled, getting past the
Russians by night by making semicircles to the right.

Ney, who came last, had been busying himself blowing up the walls of
Smolensk which were in nobody's way, because despite the unfortunate
plight of the French or because of it, they wished to punish the floor
against which they had hurt themselves. Ney, who had had a corps of
ten thousand men, reached Napoleon at Orsha with only one thousand men
left, having abandoned all the rest and all his cannon, and having
crossed the Dnieper at night by stealth at a wooded spot.

From Orsha they fled farther along the road to Vilna, still
playing at blindman's buff with the pursuing army. At the Berezina
they again became disorganized, many were drowned and many
surrendered, but those who got across the river fled farther. Their
supreme chief donned a fur coat and, having seated himself in a
sleigh, galloped on alone, abandoning his companions. The others who
could do so drove away too, leaving those who could not to surrender
or die.





CHAPTER XVIII


This campaign consisted in a flight of the French during which
they did all they could to destroy themselves. From the time they
turned onto the Kaluga road to the day their leader fled from the
army, none of the movements of the crowd had any sense. So one might
have thought that regarding this period of the campaign the
historians, who attributed the actions of the mass to the will of
one man, would have found it impossible to make the story of the
retreat fit their theory. But no! Mountains of books have been written
by the historians about this campaign, and everywhere are described
Napoleon's arrangements, the maneuvers, and his profound plans which
guided the army, as well as the military genius shown by his marshals.

The retreat from Malo-Yaroslavets when he had a free road into a
well-supplied district and the parallel road was open to him along
which Kutuzov afterwards pursued him--this unnecessary retreat along a
devastated road--is explained to us as being due to profound
considerations. Similarly profound considerations are given for his
retreat from Smolensk to Orsha. Then his heroism at Krasnoe is
described, where he is reported to have been prepared to accept battle
and take personal command, and to have walked about with a birch stick
and said:

"J'ai assez fait l'empereur; il est temps de faire le general,"* but
nevertheless immediately ran away again, abandoning to its fate the
scattered fragments of the army he left behind.


*"I have acted the Emperor long enough; it is time to act the
general."


Then we are told of the greatness of soul of the marshals,
especially of Ney--a greatness of soul consisting in this: that he
made his way by night around through the forest and across the Dnieper
and escaped to Orsha, abandoning standards, artillery, and nine tenths
of his men.

And lastly, the final departure of the great Emperor from his heroic
army is presented to us by the historians as something great and
characteristic of genius. Even that final running away, described in
ordinary language as the lowest depth of baseness which every child is
taught to be ashamed of--even that act finds justification in the
historians' language.

When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of
historical ratiocination any farther, when actions are clearly
contrary to all that humanity calls right or even just, the historians
produce a saving conception of "greatness." "Greatness," it seems,
excludes the standards of right and wrong. For the "great" man nothing
is wrong, there is no atrocity for which a "great" man can be blamed.

"C'est grand!"* say the historians, and there no longer exists
either good or evil but only "grand" and "not grand." Grand is good,
not grand is bad. Grand is the characteristic, in their conception, of
some special animals called "heroes." And Napoleon, escaping home in a
warm fur coat and leaving to perish those who were not merely his
comrades but were (in his opinion) men he had brought there, feels que
c'est grand,*[2] and his soul is tranquil.


*"It is great."

*[2] That it is great.


"Du sublime (he saw something sublime in himself) au ridicule il n'y
a qu'un pas,"* said he. And the whole world for fifty years has been
repeating: "Sublime! Grand! Napoleon le Grand!" Du sublime au ridicule
il n'y a qu'un pas.


*"From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step."


And it occurs to no one that to admit a greatness not
commensurable with the standard of right and wrong is merely to
admit one's own nothingness and immeasurable meanness.

For us with the standard of good and evil given us by Christ, no
human actions are incommensurable. And there is no greatness where
simplicity, goodness, and truth are absent.





CHAPTER XIX


What Russian, reading the account of the last part of the campaign
of 1812, has not experienced an uncomfortable feeling of regret,
dissatisfaction, and perplexity? Who has not asked himself how it is
that the French were not all captured or destroyed when our three
armies surrounded them in superior numbers, when the disordered
French, hungry and freezing, surrendered in crowds, and when (as the
historians relate) the aim of the Russians was to stop the French,
to cut them off, and capture them all?

How was it that the Russian army, which when numerically weaker than
the French had given battle at Borodino, did not achieve its purpose
when it had surrounded the French on three sides and when its aim
was to capture them? Can the French be so enormously superior to us
that when we had surrounded them with superior forces we could not
beat them? How could that happen?

History (or what is called by that name) replying to these questions
says that this occurred because Kutuzov and Tormasov and Chichagov,
and this man and that man, did not execute such and such maneuvers...

But why did they not execute those maneuvers? And why if they were
guilty of not carrying out a prearranged plan were they not tried
and punished? But even if we admitted that Kutuzov, Chichagov, and
others were the cause of the Russian failures, it is still
incomprehensible why, the position of the Russian army being what it
was at Krasnoe and at the Berezina (in both cases we had superior
forces), the French army with its marshals, kings, and Emperor was not
captured, if that was what the Russians aimed at.

The explanation of this strange fact given by Russian military
historians (to the effect that Kutuzov hindered an attack) is
unfounded, for we know that he could not restrain the troops from
attacking at Vyazma and Tarutino.

Why was the Russian army--which with inferior forces had withstood
the enemy in full strength at Borodino--defeated at Krasnoe and the
Berezina by the disorganized crowds of the French when it was
numerically superior?

If the aim of the Russians consisted in cutting off and capturing
Napoleon and his marshals--and that aim was not merely frustrated
but all attempts to attain it were most shamefully baffled--then
this last period of the campaign is quite rightly considered by the
French to be a series of victories, and quite wrongly considered
victorious by Russian historians.

The Russian military historians in so far as they submit to claims
of logic must admit that conclusion, and in spite of their lyrical
rhapsodies about valor, devotion, and so forth, must reluctantly admit
that the French retreat from Moscow was a series of victories for
Napoleon and defeats for Kutuzov.

But putting national vanity entirely aside one feels that such a
conclusion involves a contradiction, since the series of French
victories brought the French complete destruction, while the series of
Russian defeats led to the total destruction of their enemy and the
liberation of their country.

The source of this contradiction lies in the fact that the
historians studying the events from the letters of the sovereigns
and the generals, from memoirs, reports, projects, and so forth,
have attributed to this last period of the war of 1812 an aim that
never existed, namely that of cutting off and capturing Napoleon
with his marshals and his army.

There never was or could have been such an aim, for it would have
been senseless and its attainment quite impossible.

It would have been senseless, first because Napoleon's
disorganized army was flying from Russia with all possible speed, that
is to say, was doing just what every Russian desired. So what was
the use of performing various operations on the French who were
running away as fast as they possibly could?

Secondly, it would have been senseless to block the passage of men
whose whole energy was directed to flight.

Thirdly, it would have been senseless to sacrifice one's own
troops in order to destroy the French army, which without external
interference was destroying itself at such a rate that, though its
path was not blocked, it could not carry across the frontier more than
it actually did in December, namely a hundredth part of the original
army.

Fourthly, it would have been senseless to wish to take captive the
Emperor, kings, and dukes--whose capture would have been in the
highest degree embarrassing for the Russians, as the most adroit
diplomatists of the time (Joseph de Maistre and others) recognized.
Still more senseless would have been the wish to capture army corps of
the French, when our own army had melted away to half before
reaching Krasnoe and a whole division would have been needed to convoy
the corps of prisoners, and when our men were not always getting
full rations and the prisoners already taken were perishing of hunger.

All the profound plans about cutting off and capturing Napoleon
and his army were like the plan of a market gardener who, when driving
out of his garden a cow that had trampled down the beds he had
planted, should run to the gate and hit the cow on the head. The
only thing to be said in excuse of that gardener would be that he
was very angry. But not even that could be said for those who drew
up this project, for it was not they who had suffered from the
trampled beds.

But besides the fact that cutting off Napoleon with his army would
have been senseless, it was impossible.

It was impossible first because--as experience shows that a
three-mile movement of columns on a battlefield never coincides with
the plans--the probability of Chichagov, Kutuzov, and Wittgenstein
effecting a junction on time at an appointed place was so remote as to
be tantamount to impossibility, as in fact thought Kutuzov, who when
he received the plan remarked that diversions planned over great
distances do not yield the desired results.

Secondly it was impossible, because to paralyze the momentum with
which Napoleon's army was retiring, incomparably greater forces than
the Russians possessed would have been required.

Thirdly it was impossible, because the military term "to cut off"
has no meaning. One can cut off a slice of bread, but not an army.
To cut off an army--to bar its road--is quite impossible, for there is
always plenty of room to avoid capture and there is the night when
nothing can be seen, as the military scientists might convince
themselves by the example of Krasnoe and of the Berezina. It is only
possible to capture prisoners if they agree to be captured, just as it
is only possible to catch a swallow if it settles on one's hand. Men
can only be taken prisoners if they surrender according to the rules
of strategy and tactics, as the Germans did. But the French troops
quite rightly did not consider that this suited them, since death by
hunger and cold awaited them in flight or captivity alike.

Fourthly and chiefly it was impossible, because never since the
world began has a war been fought under such conditions as those
that obtained in 1812, and the Russian army in its pursuit of the
French strained its strength to the utmost and could not have done
more without destroying itself.

During the movement of the Russian army from Tarutino to Krasnoe
it lost fifty thousand sick or stragglers, that is a number equal to
the population of a large provincial town. Half the men fell out of
the army without a battle.

And it is of this period of the campaign--when the army lacked boots
and sheepskin coats, was short of provisions and without vodka, and
was camping out at night for months in the snow with fifteen degrees
of frost, when there were only seven or eight hours of daylight and
the rest was night in which the influence of discipline cannot be
maintained, when men were taken into that region of death where
discipline fails, not for a few hours only as in a battle, but for
months, where they were every moment fighting death from hunger and
cold, when half the army perished in a single month--it is of this
period of the campaign that the historians tell us how Miloradovich
should have made a flank march to such and such a place, Tormasov to
another place, and Chichagov should have crossed (more than
knee-deep in snow) to somewhere else, and how so-and-so "routed" and
"cut off" the French and so on and so on.

The Russians, half of whom died, did all that could and should
have been done to attain an end worthy of the nation, and they are not
to blame because other Russians, sitting in warm rooms, proposed
that they should do what was impossible.

All that strange contradiction now difficult to understand between
the facts and the historical accounts only arises because the
historians dealing with the matter have written the history of the
beautiful words and sentiments of various generals, and not the
history of the events.

To them the words of Miloradovich seem very interesting, and so do
their surmises and the rewards this or that general received; but
the question of those fifty thousand men who were left in hospitals
and in graves does not even interest them, for it does not come within
the range of their investigation.

Yet one need only discard the study of the reports and general plans
and consider the movement of those hundreds of thousands of men who
took a direct part in the events, and all the questions that seemed
insoluble easily and simply receive an immediate and certain solution.

The aim of cutting off Napoleon and his army never existed except in
the imaginations of a dozen people. It could not exist because it
was senseless and unattainable.

The people had a single aim: to free their land from invasion.
That aim was attained in the first place of itself, as the French
ran away, and so it was only necessary not to stop their flight.
Secondly it was attained by the guerrilla warfare which was destroying
the French, and thirdly by the fact that a large Russian army was
following the French, ready to use its strength in case their movement
stopped.

The Russian army had to act like a whip to a running animal. And the
experienced driver knew it was better to hold the whip raised as a
menace than to strike the running animal on the head.





BOOK FIFTEEN: 1812 --13





CHAPTER I


When seeing a dying animal a man feels a sense of horror:
substance similar to his own is perishing before his eyes. But when it
is a beloved and intimate human being that is dying, besides this
horror at the extinction of life there is a severance, a spiritual
wound, which like a physical wound is sometimes fatal and sometimes
heals, but always aches and shrinks at any external irritating touch.

After Prince Andrew's death Natasha and Princess Mary alike felt
this. Drooping in spirit and closing their eyes before the menacing
cloud of death that overhung them, they dared not look life in the
face. They carefully guarded their open wounds from any rough and
painful contact. Everything: a carriage passing rapidly in the street,
a summons to dinner, the maid's inquiry what dress to prepare, or
worse still any word of insincere or feeble sympathy, seemed an
insult, painfully irritated the wound, interrupting that necessary
quiet in which they both tried to listen to the stern and dreadful
choir that still resounded in their imagination, and hindered their
gazing into those mysterious limitless vistas that for an instant
had opened out before them.

Only when alone together were they free from such outrage and
pain. They spoke little even to one another, and when they did it
was of very unimportant matters.

Both avoided any allusion to the future. To admit the possibility of
a future seemed to them to insult his memory. Still more carefully did
they avoid anything relating to him who was dead. It seemed to them
that what they had lived through and experienced could not be
expressed in words, and that any reference to the details of his
life infringed the majesty and sacredness of the mystery that had been
accomplished before their eyes.

Continued abstention from speech, and constant avoidance of
everything that might lead up to the subject--this halting on all
sides at the boundary of what they might not mention--brought before
their minds with still greater purity and clearness what they were
both feeling.

But pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete
joy. Princess Mary, in her position as absolute and independent
arbiter of her own fate and guardian and instructor of her nephew, was
the first to be called back to life from that realm of sorrow in which
she had dwelt for the first fortnight. She received letters from her
relations to which she had to reply; the room in which little Nicholas
had been put was damp and he began to cough; Alpatych came to
Yaroslavl with reports on the state of their affairs and with advice
and suggestions that they should return to Moscow to the house on
the Vozdvizhenka Street, which had remained uninjured and needed
only slight repairs. Life did not stand still and it was necessary
to live. Hard as it was for Princess Mary to emerge from the realm
of secluded contemplation in which she had lived till then, and
sorry and almost ashamed as she felt to leave Natasha alone, yet the
cares of life demanded her attention and she involuntarily yielded
to them. She went through the accounts with Alpatych, conferred with
Dessalles about her nephew, and gave orders and made preparations
for the journey to Moscow.

Natasha remained alone and, from the time Princess Mary began making
preparations for departure, held aloof from her too.

Princess Mary asked the countess to let Natasha go with her to
Moscow, and both parents gladly accepted this offer, for they saw
their daughter losing strength every day and thought that a change
of scene and the advice of Moscow doctors would be good for her.

"I am not going anywhere," Natasha replied when this was proposed to
her. "Do please just leave me alone!" And she ran out of the room,
with difficulty refraining from tears of vexation and irritation
rather than of sorrow.

After she felt herself deserted by Princes Mary and alone in her
grief, Natasha spent most of the time in her room by herself,
sitting huddled up feet and all in the corner of the sofa, tearing and
twisting something with her slender nervous fingers and gazing
intently and fixedly at whatever her eyes chanced to fall on. This
solitude exhausted and tormented her but she was in absolute need of
it. As soon as anyone entered she got up quickly, changed her position
and expression, and picked up a book or some sewing, evidently waiting
impatiently for the intruder to go.

She felt all the time as if she might at any moment penetrate that
on which--with a terrible questioning too great for her strength-
her spiritual gaze was fixed.

One day toward the end of December Natasha, pale and thin, dressed
in a black woolen gown, her plaited hair negligently twisted into a
knot, was crouched feet and all in the corner of her sofa, nervously
crumpling and smoothing out the end of her sash while she looked at
a corner of the door.

She was gazing in the direction in which he had gone--to the other
side of life. And that other side of life, of which she had never
before thought and which had formerly seemed to her so far away and
improbable, was now nearer and more akin and more comprehensible
than this side of life, where everything was either emptiness and
desolation or suffering and indignity.

She was gazing where she knew him to be; but she could not imagine
him otherwise than as he had been here. She now saw him again as he
had been at Mytishchi, at Troitsa, and at Yaroslavl.

She saw his face, heard his voice, repeated his words and her own,
and sometimes devised other words they might have spoken.

There he is lying back in an armchair in his velvet cloak, leaning
his head on his thin pale hand. His chest is dreadfully hollow and his
shoulders raised. His lips are firmly closed, his eyes glitter, and
a wrinkle comes and goes on his pale forehead. One of his legs
twitches just perceptibly, but rapidly. Natasha knows that he is
struggling with terrible pain. "What is that pain like? Why does he
have that pain? What does he feel? How does it hurt him?" thought
Natasha. He noticed her watching him, raised his eyes, and began to
speak seriously:

"One thing would be terrible," said he: "to bind oneself forever
to a suffering man. It would be continual torture." And he looked
searchingly at her. Natasha as usual answered before she had time to
think what she would say. She said: "This can't go on--it won't. You
will get well--quite well."

She now saw him from the commencement of that scene and relived what
she had then felt. She recalled his long sad and severe look at
those words and understood the meaning of the rebuke and despair in
that protracted gaze.

"I agreed," Natasha now said to herself, "that it would be
dreadful if he always continued to suffer. I said it then only because
it would have been dreadful for him, but he understood it differently.
He thought it would be dreadful for me. He then still wished to live
and feared death. And I said it so awkwardly and stupidly! I did not
say what I meant. I thought quite differently. Had I said what I
thought, I should have said: even if he had to go on dying, to die
continually before my eyes, I should have been happy compared with
what I am now. Now there is nothing... nobody. Did he know that? No,
he did not and never will know it. And now it will never, never be
possible to put it right." And now he again seemed to be saying the
same words to her, only in her imagination Natasha this time gave
him a different answer. She stopped him and said: "Terrible for you,
but not for me! You know that for me there is nothing in life but you,
and to suffer with you is the greatest happiness for me," and he
took her hand and pressed it as he had pressed it that terrible
evening four days before his death. And in her imagination she said
other tender and loving words which she might have said then but
only spoke now: "I love thee!... thee! I love, love..." she said,
convulsively pressing her hands and setting her teeth with a desperate
effort...

She was overcome by sweet sorrow and tears were already rising in
her eyes; then she suddenly asked herself to whom she was saying this.
Again everything was shrouded in hard, dry perplexity, and again
with a strained frown she peered toward the world where he was. And
now, now it seemed to her she was penetrating the mystery.... But at
the instant when it seemed that the incomprehensible was revealing
itself to her a loud rattle of the door handle struck painfully on her
ears. Dunyasha, her maid, entered the room quickly and abruptly with a
frightened look on her face and showing no concern for her mistress.

"Come to your Papa at once, please!" said she with a strange,
excited look. "A misfortune... about Peter Ilynich... a letter," she
finished with a sob.





CHAPTER II


Besides a feeling of aloofness from everybody Natasha was feeling
a special estrangement from the members of her own family. All of
them--her father, mother, and Sonya--were so near to her, so familiar,
so commonplace, that all their words and feelings seemed an insult
to the world in which she had been living of late, and she felt not
merely indifferent to them but regarded them with hostility. She heard
Dunyasha's words about Peter Ilynich and a misfortune, but did not
grasp them.

"What misfortune? What misfortune can happen to them? They just live
their own old, quiet, and commonplace life," thought Natasha.

As she entered the ballroom her father was hurriedly coming out of
her mother's room. His face was puckered up and wet with tears. He had
evidently run out of that room to give vent to the sobs that were
choking him. When he saw Natasha he waved his arms despairingly and
burst into convulsively painful sobs that distorted his soft round
face.

"Pe... Petya... Go, go, she... is calling..." and weeping like a
child and quickly shuffling on his feeble legs to a chair, he almost
fell into it, covering his face with his hands.

Suddenly an electric shock seemed to run through Natasha's whole
being. Terrible anguish struck her heart, she felt a dreadful ache
as if something was being torn inside her and she were dying. But
the pain was immediately followed by a feeling of release from the
oppressive constraint that had prevented her taking part in life.
The sight of her father, the terribly wild cries of her mother that
she heard through the door, made her immediately forget herself and
her own grief.

She ran to her father, but he feebly waved his arm, pointing to
her mother's door. Princess Mary, pale and with quivering chin, came
out from that room and taking Natasha by the arm said something to
her. Natasha neither saw nor heard her. She went in with rapid
steps, pausing at the door for an instant as if struggling with
herself, and then ran to her mother.

The countess was lying in an armchair in a strange and awkward
position, stretching out and beating her head against the wall.
Sonya and the maids were holding her arms.

"Natasha! Natasha!..." cried the countess. "It's not true... it's
not true... He's lying... Natasha!" she shrieked, pushing those around
her away. "Go away, all of you; it's not true! Killed!... ha, ha,
ha!... It's not true!"

Natasha put one knee on the armchair, stooped over her mother,
embraced her, and with unexpected strength raised her, turned her face
toward herself, and clung to her.

"Mummy!... darling!... I am here, my dearest Mummy," she kept on
whispering, not pausing an instant.

She did not let go of her mother but struggled tenderly with her,
demanded a pillow and hot water, and unfastened and tore open her
mother's dress.

"My dearest darling... Mummy, my precious!..." she whispered
incessantly, kissing her head, her hands, her face, and feeling her
own irrepressible and streaming tears tickling her nose and cheeks.

The countess pressed her daughter's hand, closed her eyes, and
became quiet for a moment. Suddenly she sat up with unaccustomed
swiftness, glanced vacantly around her, and seeing Natasha began to
press her daughter's head with all her strength. Then she turned
toward her daughter's face which was wincing with pain and gazed
long at it.

"Natasha, you love me?" she said in a soft trustful whisper.
"Natasha, you would not deceive me? You'll tell me the whole truth?"

Natasha looked at her with eyes full of tears and in her look
there was nothing but love and an entreaty for forgiveness.

"My darling Mummy!" she repeated, straining all the power of her
love to find some way of taking on herself the excess of grief that
crushed her mother.

And again in a futile struggle with reality her mother, refusing
to believe that she could live when her beloved boy was killed in
the bloom of life, escaped from reality into a world of delirium.

Natasha did not remember how that day passed nor that night, nor the
next day and night. She did not sleep and did not leave her mother.
Her persevering and patient love seemed completely to surround the
countess every moment, not explaining or consoling, but recalling
her to life.

During the third night the countess kept very quiet for a few
minutes, and Natasha rested her head on the arm of her chair and
closed her eyes, but opened them again on hearing the bedstead
creak. The countess was sitting up in bed and speaking softly.

"How glad I am you have come. You are tired. Won't you have some
tea?" Natasha went up to her. "You have improved in looks and grown
more manly," continued the countess, taking her daughter's hand.

"Mamma! What are you saying..."

"Natasha, he is no more, no more!"

And embracing her daughter, the countess began to weep for the first
time.





CHAPTER III


Princess Mary postponed her departure. Sonya and the count tried
to replace Natasha but could not. They saw that she alone was able
to restrain her mother from unreasoning despair. For three weeks
Natasha remained constantly at her mother's side, sleeping on a lounge
chair in her room, making her eat and drink, and talking to her
incessantly because the mere sound of her tender, caressing tones
soothed her mother.

The mother's wounded spirit could not heal. Petya's
death had torn from her half her life. When the news of Petya's
death had come she had been a fresh and vigorous woman of fifty, but a
month later she left her room a listless old woman taking no
interest in life. But the same blow that almost killed the countess,
this second blow, restored Natasha to life.

A spiritual wound produced by a rending of the spiritual body is
like a physical wound and, strange as it may seem, just as a deep
wound may heal and its edges join, physical and spiritual wounds alike
can yet heal completely only as the result of a vital force from
within.

Natasha's wound healed in that way. She thought her life was
ended, but her love for her mother unexpectedly showed her that the
essence of life--love--was still active within her. Love awoke and
so did life.

Prince Andrew's last days had bound Princess Mary and Natasha
together; this new sorrow brought them still closer to one another.
Princess Mary put off her departure, and for three weeks looked
after Natasha as if she had been a sick child. The last weeks passed
in her mother's bedroom had strained Natasha's physical strength.

One afternoon noticing Natasha shivering with fever, Princess Mary
took her to her own room and made her lie down on the bed. Natasha lay
down, but when Princess Mary had drawn the blinds and was going away
she called her back.

"I don't want to sleep, Mary, sit by me a little."

"You are tired--try to sleep."

"No, no. Why did you bring me away? She will be asking for me."

"She is much better. She spoke so well today," said Princess Mary.

Natasha lay on the bed and in the semidarkness of the room scanned
Princess Mary's face.

"Is she like him?" thought Natasha. "Yes, like and yet not like. But
she is quite original, strange, new, and unknown. And she loves me.
What is in her heart? All that is good. But how? What is her mind
like? What does she think about me? Yes, she is splendid!"

"Mary," she said timidly, drawing Princess Mary's hand to herself,
"Mary, you mustn't think me wicked. No? Mary darling, how I love
you! Let us be quite, quite friends."

And Natasha, embracing her, began kissing her face and hands, making
Princess Mary feel shy but happy by this demonstration of her
feelings.

From that day a tender and passionate friendship such as exists only
between women was established between Princess Mary and Natasha.
They were continually kissing and saying tender things to one
another and spent most of their time together. When one went out the
other became restless and hastened to rejoin her. Together they felt
more in harmony with one another than either of them felt with herself
when alone. A feeling stronger than friendship sprang up between them;
an exclusive feeling of life being possible only in each other's
presence.

Sometimes they were silent for hours; sometimes after they were
already in bed they would begin talking and go on till morning. They
spoke most of what was long past. Princess Mary spoke of her
childhood, of her mother, her father, and her daydreams; and
Natasha, who with a passive lack of understanding had formerly
turned away from that life of devotion, submission, and the poetry
of Christian self-sacrifice, now feeling herself bound to Princess
Mary by affection, learned to love her past too and to understand a
side of life previously incomprehensible to her. She did not think
of applying submission and self-abnegation to her own life, for she
was accustomed to seek other joys, but she understood and loved in
another those previously incomprehensible virtues. For Princess
Mary, listening to Natasha's tales of childhood and early youth, there
also opened out a new and hitherto uncomprehended side of life: belief
in life and its enjoyment.

Just as before, they never mentioned him so as not to lower (as they
thought) their exalted feelings by words; but this silence about him
had the effect of making them gradually begin to forget him without
being conscious of it.

Natasha had grown thin and pale and physically so weak that they all
talked about her health, and this pleased her. But sometimes she was
suddenly overcome by fear not only of death but of sickness, weakness,
and loss of good looks, and involuntarily she examined her bare arm
carefully, surprised at its thinness, and in the morning noticed her
drawn and, as it seemed to her, piteous face in her glass. It seemed
to her that things must be so, and yet it was dreadfully sad.

One day she went quickly upstairs and found herself out of breath.
Unconsciously she immediately invented a reason for going down, and
then, testing her strength, ran upstairs again, observing the result.

Another time when she called Dunyasha her voice trembled, so she
called again--though she could hear Dunyasha coming--called her in the
deep chest tones in which she had been wont to sing, sing, and
listened attentively to herself.

She did not know and would not have believed it, but beneath the
layer of slime that covered her soul and seemed to her impenetrable,
delicate young shoots of grass were already sprouting, which taking
root would so cover with their living verdure the grief that weighed
her down that it would soon no longer be seen or noticed. The wound
had begun to heal from within.

At the end of January Princess Mary left for Moscow, and the count
insisted on Natasha's going with her to consult the doctors.





CHAPTER IV


After the encounter at Vyazma, where Kutuzov had been unable to hold
back his troops in their anxiety to overwhelm and cut off the enemy
and so on, the farther movement of the fleeing French, and of the
Russians who pursued them, continued as far as Krasnoe without a
battle. The flight was so rapid that the Russian army pursuing the
French could not keep up with them; cavalry and artillery horses broke
down, and the information received of the movements of the French
was never reliable.

The men in the Russian army were so worn out by this continuous
marching at the rate of twenty-seven miles a day that they could not
go any faster.

To realize the degree of exhaustion of the Russian army it is only
necessary to grasp clearly the meaning of the fact that, while not
losing more than five thousand killed and wounded after Tarutino and
less than a hundred prisoners, the Russian army which left that
place a hundred thousand strong reached Krasnoe with only fifty
thousand.

The rapidity of the Russian pursuit was just as destructive to our
army as the flight of the French was to theirs. The only difference
was that the Russian army moved voluntarily, with no such threat of
destruction as hung over the French, and that the sick Frenchmen
were left behind in enemy hands while the sick Russians left behind
were among their own people. The chief cause of the wastage of
Napoleon's army was the rapidity of its movement, and a convincing
proof of this is the corresponding decrease of the Russian army.

Kutuzov as far as was in his power, instead of trying to check the
movement of the French as was desired in Petersburg and by the Russian
army generals, directed his whole activity here, as he had done at
Tarutino and Vyazma, to hastening it on while easing the movement of
our army.

But besides this, since the exhaustion and enormous diminution of
the army caused by the rapidity of the advance had become evident,
another reason for slackening the pace and delaying presented itself
to Kutuzov. The aim of the Russian army was to pursue the French.
The road the French would take was unknown, and so the closer our
troops trod on their heels the greater distance they had to cover.
Only by following at some distance could one cut across the zigzag
path of the French. All the artful maneuvers suggested by our generals
meant fresh movements of the army and a lengthening of its marches,
whereas the only reasonable aim was to shorten those marches. To
that end Kutuzov's activity was directed during the whole campaign
from Moscow to Vilna--not casually or intermittently but so
consistently that he never once deviated from it.

Kutuzov felt and knew--not by reasoning or science but with the
whole of his Russian being--what every Russian soldier felt: that
the French were beaten, that the enemy was flying and must be driven
out; but at the same time he like the soldiers realized all the
hardship of this march, the rapidity of which was unparalleled for
such a time of the year.

But to the generals, especially the foreign ones in the Russian
army, who wished to distinguish themselves, to astonish somebody,
and for some reason to capture a king or a duke--it seemed that now-
when any battle must be horrible and senseless--was the very time to
fight and conquer somebody. Kutuzov merely shrugged his shoulders when
one after another they presented projects of maneuvers to be made with
those soldiers--ill-shod, insufficiently clad, and half starved--who
within a month and without fighting a battle had dwindled to half
their number, and who at the best if the flight continued would have
to go a greater distance than they had already traversed, before
they reached the frontier.

This longing to distinguish themselves, to maneuver, to overthrow,
and to cut off showed itself particularly whenever the Russians
stumbled on the French army.

So it was at Krasnoe, where they expected to find one of the three
French columns and stumbled instead on Napoleon himself with sixteen
thousand men. Despite all Kutuzov's efforts to avoid that ruinous
encounter and to preserve his troops, the massacre of the broken mob
of French soldiers by worn-out Russians continued at Krasnoe for three
days.

Toll wrote a disposition: "The first column will march to so and
so," etc. And as usual nothing happened in accord with the
disposition. Prince Eugene of Wurttemberg fired from a hill over the
French crowds that were running past, and demanded reinforcements
which did not arrive. The French, avoiding the Russians, dispersed and
hid themselves in the forest by night, making their way round as
best they could, and continued their flight.

Miloradovich, who said he did not want to know anything about the
commissariat affairs of his detachment, and could never be found
when he was wanted--that chevalier sans peur et sans reproche* as he
styled himself--who was fond of parleys with the French, sent envoys
demanding their surrender, wasted time, and did not do what he was
ordered to do.


*Knight without fear and without reproach.


"I give you that column, lads," he said, riding up to the troops and
pointing out the French to the cavalry.

And the cavalry, with spurs and sabers urging on horses that could
scarcely move, trotted with much effort to the column presented to
them--that is to say, to a crowd of Frenchmen stark with cold,
frost-bitten, and starving--and the column that had been presented
to them threw down its arms and surrendered as it had long been
anxious to do.

At Krasnoe they took twenty-six thousand prisoners, several
hundred cannon, and a stick called a "marshal's staff," and disputed
as to who had distinguished himself and were pleased with their
achievement--though they much regretted not having taken Napoleon,
or at least a marshal or a hero of some sort, and reproached one
another and especially Kutuzov for having failed to do so.

These men, carried away by their passions, were but blind tools of
the most melancholy law of necessity, but considered themselves heroes
and imagined that they were accomplishing a most noble and honorable
deed. They blamed Kutuzov and said that from the very beginning of the
campaign he had prevented their vanquishing Napoleon, that he
thought nothing but satisfying his passions and would not advance from
the Linen Factories because he was comfortable there, that at
Krasnoe he checked the advance because on learning that Napoleon was
there he had quite lost his head, and that it was probable that he had
an understanding with Napoleon and had been bribed by him, and so
on, and so on.

Not only did his contemporaries, carried away by their passions,
talk in this way, but posterity and history have acclaimed Napoleon as
grand, while Kutuzov is described by foreigners as a crafty,
dissolute, weak old courtier, and by Russians as something indefinite-
a sort of puppet useful only because he had a Russian name.





CHAPTER V


In 1812 and 1813 Kutuzov was openly accused of blundering. The
Emperor was dissatisfied with him. And in a history recently written
by order of the Highest Authorities it is said that Kutuzov was a
cunning court liar, frightened of the name of Napoleon, and that by
his blunders at Krasnoe and the Berezina he deprived the Russian
army of the glory of complete victory over the French.*


*History of the year 1812. The character of Kutuzov and
reflections on the unsatisfactory results of the battles at Krasnoe,
by Bogdanovich.


Such is the fate not of great men (grands hommes) whom the Russian
mind does not acknowledge, but of those rare and always solitary
individuals who, discerning the will of Providence, submit their
personal will to it. The hatred and contempt of the crowd punish
such men for discerning the higher laws.

For Russian historians, strange and terrible to say, Napoleon-
that most insignificant tool of history who never anywhere, even in
exile, showed human dignity--Napoleon is the object of adulation and
enthusiasm; he is grand. But Kutuzov--the man who from the beginning
to the end of his activity in 1812, never once swerving by word or
deed from Borodino to Vilna, presented an example exceptional in
history of self-sacrifice and a present consciousness of the future
importance of what was happening--Kutuzov seems to them something
indefinite and pitiful, and when speaking of him and of the year
1812 they always seem a little ashamed.

And yet it is difficult to imagine an historical character whose
activity was so unswervingly directed to a single aim; and it would be
difficult to imagine any aim more worthy or more consonant with the
will of the whole people. Still more difficult would it be to find
an instance in history of the aim of an historical personage being
so completely accomplished as that to which all Kutuzov's efforts were
directed in 1812.

Kutuzov never talked of "forty centuries looking down from the
Pyramids," of the sacrifices he offered for the fatherland, or of what
he intended to accomplish or had accomplished; in general he said
nothing about himself, adopted no prose, always appeared to be the
simplest and most ordinary of men, and said the simplest and most
ordinary things. He wrote letters to his daughters and to Madame de
Stael, read novels, liked the society of pretty women, jested with
generals, officers, and soldiers, and never contradicted those who
tried to prove anything to him. When Count Rostopchin at the Yauza
bridge galloped up to Kutuzov with personal reproaches for having
caused the destruction of Moscow, and said: "How was it you promised
not to abandon Moscow without a battle?" Kutuzov replied: "And I shall
not abandon Moscow without a battle," though Moscow was then already
abandoned. When Arakcheev, coming to him from the Emperor, said that
Ermolov ought to be appointed chief of the artillery, Kutuzov replied:
"Yes, I was just saying so myself," though a moment before he had said
quite the contrary. What did it matter to him--who then alone amid a
senseless crowd understood the whole tremendous significance of what
was happening--what did it matter to him whether Rostopchin attributed
the calamities of Moscow to him or to himself? Still less could it
matter to him who was appointed chief of the artillery.

Not merely in these cases but continually did that old man--who by
experience of life had reached the conviction that thoughts and the
words serving as their expression are not what move people--use
quite meaningless words that happened to enter his head.

But that man, so heedless of his words, did not once during the
whole time of his activity utter one word inconsistent with the single
aim toward which he moved throughout the whole war. Obviously in spite
of himself, in very diverse circumstances, he repeatedly expressed his
real thoughts with the bitter conviction that he would not be
understood. Beginning with the battle of Borodino, from which time his
disagreement with those about him began, he alone said that the battle
of Borodino was a victory, and repeated this both verbally and in
his dispatches and reports up to the time of his death. He alone
said that the loss of Moscow is not the loss of Russia. In reply to
Lauriston's proposal of peace, he said: There can be no peace, for
such is the people's will. He alone during the retreat of the French
said that all our maneuvers are useless, everything is being
accomplished of itself better than we could desire; that the enemy
must be offered "a golden bridge"; that neither the Tarutino, the
Vyazma, nor the Krasnoe battles were necessary; that we must keep some
force to reach the frontier with, and that he would not sacrifice a
single Russian for ten Frenchmen.

And this courtier, as he is described to us, who lies to Arakcheev
to please the Emperor, he alone--incurring thereby the Emperor's
displeasure--said in Vilna that to carry the war beyond the frontier
is useless and harmful.

Nor do words alone prove that only he understood the meaning of
the events. His actions--without the smallest deviation--were all
directed to one and the same threefold end: (1) to brace all his
strength for conflict with the French, (2) to defeat them, and (3)
to drive them out of Russia, minimizing as far as possible the
sufferings of our people and of our army.

This procrastinator Kutuzov, whose motto was "Patience and Time,"
this enemy of decisive action, gave battle at Borodino, investing
the preparations for it with unparalleled solemnity. This Kutuzov
who before the battle of Austerlitz began said that it would be
lost, he alone, in contradiction to everyone else, declared till his
death that Borodino was a victory, despite the assurance of generals
that the battle was lost and despite the fact that for an army to have
to retire after winning a battle was unprecedented. He alone during
the whole retreat insisted that battles, which were useless then,
should not be fought, and that a new war should not be begun nor the
frontiers of Russia crossed.

It is easy now to understand the significance of these events--if
only we abstain from attributing to the activity of the mass aims that
existed only in the heads of a dozen individuals--for the events and
results now lie before us.

But how did that old man, alone, in opposition to the general
opinion, so truly discern the importance of the people's view of the
events that in all his activity he was never once untrue to it?

The source of that extraordinary power of penetrating the meaning of
the events then occuring lay in the national feeling which he
possessed in full purity and strength.

Only the recognition of the fact that he possessed this feeling
caused the people in so strange a manner, contrary to the Tsar's wish,
to select him--an old man in disfavor--to be their representative in
the national war. And only that feeling placed him on that highest
human pedestal from which he, the commander in chief, devoted all
his powers not to slaying and destroying men but to saving and showing
pity on them.

That simple, modest, and therefore truly great, figure could not
be cast in the false mold of a European hero--the supposed ruler of
men--that history has invented.

To a lackey no man can be great, for a lackey has his own conception
of greatness.





CHAPTER VI


The fifth of November was the first day of what is called the battle
of Krasnoe. Toward evening--after much disputing and many mistakes
made by generals who did not go to their proper places, and after
adjutants had been sent about with counterorders--when it had become
plain that the enemy was everywhere in flight and that there could and
would be no battle, Kutuzov left Krasnoe and went to Dobroe whither
his headquarters had that day been transferred.

The day was clear and frosty. Kutuzov rode to Dobroe on his plump
little white horse, followed by an enormous suite of discontented
generals who whispered among themselves behind his back. All along the
road groups of French prisoners captured that day (there were seven
thousand of them) were crowding to warm themselves at campfires.
Near Dobroe an immense crowd of tattered prisoners, buzzing with
talk and wrapped and bandaged in anything they had been able to get
hold of, were standing in the road beside a long row of unharnessed
French guns. At the approach of the commander in chief the buzz of
talk ceased and all eyes were fixed on Kutuzov who, wearing a white
cap with a red band and a padded overcoat that bulged on his round
shoulders, moved slowly along the road on his white horse. One of
the generals was reporting to him where the guns and prisoners had
been captured.

Kutuzov seemed preoccupied and did not listen to what the general
was saying. He screwed up his eyes with a dissatisfied look as he
gazed attentively and fixedly at these prisoners, who presented a
specially wretched appearance. Most of them were disfigured by
frost-bitten noses and cheeks, and nearly all had red, swollen and
festering eyes.

One group of the French stood close to the road, and two of them,
one of whom had his face covered with sores, were tearing a piece of
raw flesh with their hands. There was something horrible and bestial
in the fleeting glance they threw at the riders and in the
malevolent expression with which, after a glance at Kutuzov, the
soldier with the sores immediately turned away and went on with what
he was doing.

Kutuzov looked long and intently at these two soldiers. He
puckered his face, screwed up his eyes, and pensively swayed his head.
At another spot he noticed a Russian soldier laughingly patting a
Frenchman on the shoulder, saying something to him in a friendly
manner, and Kutuzov with the same expression on his face again
swayed his head.

"What were you saying?" he asked the general, who continuing his
report directed the commander in chief's attention to some standards
captured from the French and standing in front of the Preobrazhensk
regiment.

"Ah, the standards!" said Kutuzov, evidently detaching himself
with difficulty from the thoughts that preoccupied him.

He looked about him absently. Thousands of eyes were looking at
him from all sides awaiting a word from him.

He stopped in front of the Preobrazhensk regiment, sighed deeply,
and closed his eyes. One of his suite beckoned to the soldiers
carrying the standards to advance and surround the commander in
chief with them. Kutuzov was silent for a few seconds and then,
submitting with evident reluctance to the duty imposed by his
position, raised his head and began to speak. A throng of officers
surrounded him. He looked attentively around at the circle of
officers, recognizing several of them.

"I thank you all!" he said, addressing the soldiers and then again
the officers. In the stillness around him his slowly uttered words
were distinctly heard. "I thank you all for your hard and faithful
service. The victory is complete and Russia will not forget you! Honor
to you forever."

He paused and looked around.

"Lower its head, lower it!" he said to a soldier who had
accidentally lowered the French eagle he was holding before the
Preobrazhensk standards. "Lower, lower, that's it. Hurrah lads!" he
added, addressing the men with a rapid movement of his chin.

"Hur-r-rah!" roared thousands of voices.

While the soldiers were shouting Kutuzov leaned forward in his
saddle and bowed his head, and his eye lit up with a mild and
apparently ironic gleam.

"You see, brothers..." said he when the shouts had ceased... and all
at once his voice and the expression of his face changed. It was no
longer the commander in chief speaking but an ordinary old man who
wanted to tell his comrades something very important.

There was a stir among the throng of officers and in the ranks of
the soldiers, who moved that they might hear better what he was
going to say.

"You see, brothers, I know it's hard for you, but it can't be
helped! Bear up; it won't be for long now! We'll see our visitors
off and then we'll rest. The Tsar won't forget your service. It is
hard for you, but still you are at home while they--you see what
they have come to," said he, pointing to the prisoners. "Worse off
than our poorest beggars. While they were strong we didn't spare
ourselves, but now we may even pity them. They are human beings too.
Isn't it so, lads?"

He looked around, and in the direct, respectful, wondering gaze
fixed upon him he read sympathy with what he had said. His face grew
brighter and brighter with an old man's mild smile, which drew the
corners of his lips and eyes into a cluster of wrinkles. He ceased
speaking and bowed his head as if in perplexity.

"But after all who asked them here? Serves them right, the bloody
bastards!" he cried, suddenly lifting his head.

And flourishing his whip he rode off at a gallop for the first
time during the whole campaign, and left the broken ranks of the
soldiers laughing joyfully and shouting "Hurrah!"

Kutuzov's words were hardly understood by the troops. No one could
have repeated the field marshal's address, begun solemnly and then
changing into an old man's simplehearted talk; but the hearty
sincerity of that speech, the feeling of majestic triumph combined
with pity for the foe and consciousness of the justice of our cause,
exactly expressed by that old man's good-natured expletives, was not
merely understood but lay in the soul of every soldier and found
expression in their joyous and long-sustained shouts. Afterwards
when one of the generals addressed Kutuzov asking whether he wished
his caleche to be sent for, Kutuzov in answering unexpectedly gave a
sob, being evidently greatly moved.





CHAPTER VII


When the troops reached their night's halting place on the eighth of
November, the last day of the Krasnoe battles, it was already
growing dusk. All day it had been calm and frosty with occasional
lightly falling snow and toward evening it began to clear. Through the
falling snow a purple-black and starry sky showed itself and the frost
grew keener.

An infantry regiment which had left Tarutino three thousand strong
but now numbered only nine hundred was one of the first to arrive that
night at its halting place--a village on the highroad. The
quartermasters who met the regiment announced that all the huts were
full of sick and dead Frenchmen, cavalrymen, and members of the staff.
There was only one hut available for the regimental commander.

The commander rode up to his hut. The regiment passed through the
village and stacked its arms in front of the last huts.

Like some huge many-limbed animal, the regiment began to prepare its
lair and its food. One part of it dispersed and waded knee-deep
through the snow into a birch forest to the right of the village,
and immediately the sound of axes and swords, the crashing of
branches, and merry voices could be heard from there. Another
section amid the regimental wagons and horses which were standing in a
group was busy getting out caldrons and rye biscuit, and feeding the
horses. A third section scattered through the village arranging
quarters for the staff officers, carrying out the French corpses
that were in the huts, and dragging away boards, dry wood, and
thatch from the roofs, for the campfires, or wattle fences to serve
for shelter.

Some fifteen men with merry shouts were shaking down the high wattle
wall of a shed, the roof of which had already been removed.

"Now then, all together--shove!" cried the voices, and the huge
surface of the wall, sprinkled with snow and creaking with frost,
was seen swaying in the gloom of the night. The lower stakes cracked
more and more and at last the wall fell, and with it the men who had
been pushing it. Loud, coarse laughter and joyous shouts ensued.

"Now then, catch hold in twos! Hand up the lever! That's it... Where
are you shoving to?"

"Now, all together! But wait a moment, boys... With a song!"

All stood silent, and a soft, pleasant velvety voice began to
sing. At the end of the third verse as the last note died away, twenty
voices roared out at once: "Oo-oo-oo-oo! That's it. All together!
Heave away, boys!..." but despite their united efforts the wattle
hardly moved, and in the silence that followed the heavy breathing
of the men was audible.

"Here, you of the Sixth Company! Devils that you are! Lend a hand...
will you? You may want us one of these days."

Some twenty men of the Sixth Company who were on their way into
the village joined the haulers, and the wattle wall, which was about
thirty-five feet long and seven feet high, moved forward along the
village street, swaying, pressing upon and cutting the shoulders of
the gasping men.

"Get along... Falling? What are you stopping for? There now..."

Merry senseless words of abuse flowed freely.

"What are you up to?" suddenly came the authoritative voice of a
sergeant major who came upon the men who were hauling their burden.
"There are gentry here; the general himself is in that hut, and you
foul-mouthed devils, you brutes, I'll give it to you!" shouted he,
hitting the first man who came in his way a swinging blow on the back.
"Can't you make less noise?"

The men became silent. The soldier who had been struck groaned and
wiped his face, which had been scratched till it bled by his falling
against the wattle.

"There, how that devil hits out! He's made my face all bloody," said
he in a frightened whisper when the sergeant major had passed on.

"Don't you like it?" said a laughing voice, and moderating their
tones the men moved forward.

When they were out of the village they began talking again as loud
as before, interlarding their talk with the same aimless expletives.

In the hut which the men had passed, the chief officers had gathered
and were in animated talk over their tea about the events of the day
and the maneuvers suggested for tomorrow. It was proposed to make a
flank march to the left, cut off the Vice-King (Murat) and capture
him.

By the time the soldiers had dragged the wattle fence to its place
the campfires were blazing on all sides ready for cooking, the wood
crackled, the snow was melting, and black shadows of soldiers
flitted to and fro all over the occupied space where the snow had been
trodden down.

Axes and choppers were plied all around. Everything was done without
any orders being given. Stores of wood were brought for the night,
shelters were rigged up for the officers, caldrons were being
boiled, and muskets and accouterments put in order.

The wattle wall the men had brought was set up in a semicircle by
the Eighth Company as a shelter from the north, propped up by musket
rests, and a campfire was built before it. They beat the tattoo,
called the roll, had supper, and settled down round the fires for
the night--some repairing their footgear, some smoking pipes, and some
stripping themselves naked to steam the lice out of their shirts.





CHAPTER VIII


One would have thought that under the almost incredibly wretched
conditions the Russian soldiers were in at that time--lacking warm
boots and sheepskin coats, without a roof over their heads, in the
snow with eighteen degrees of frost, and without even full rations
(the commissariat did not always keep up with the troops)--they
would have presented a very sad and depressing spectacle.

On the contrary, the army had never under the best material
conditions presented a more cheerful and animated aspect. This was
because all who began to grow depressed or who lost strength were
sifted out of the army day by day. All the physically or morally
weak had long since been left behind and only the flower of the
army--physically and mentally--remained.

More men collected behind the wattle fence of the Eighth Company
than anywhere else. Two sergeants major were sitting with them and
their campfire blazed brighter than others. For leave to sit by
their wattle they demanded contributions of fuel.

"Eh, Makeev! What has become of you, you son of a bitch? Are you
lost or have the wolves eaten you? Fetch some more wood!" shouted a
red-haired and red-faced man, screwing up his eyes and blinking
because of the smoke but not moving back from the fire. "And you,
Jackdaw, go and fetch some wood!" said he to another soldier.

This red-haired man was neither a sergeant nor a corporal, but being
robust he ordered about those weaker than himself. The soldier they
called "Jackdaw," a thin little fellow with a sharp nose, rose
obediently and was about to go but at that instant there came into the
light of the fire the slender, handsome figure of a young soldier
carrying a load of wood.

"Bring it here--that's fine!"

They split up the wood, pressed it down on the fire, blew at it with
their mouths, and fanned it with the skirts of their greatcoats,
making the flames hiss and crackle. The men drew nearer and lit
their pipes. The handsome young soldier who had brought the wood,
setting his arms akimbo, began stamping his cold feet rapidly and
deftly on the spot where he stood.

"Mother! The dew is cold but clear.... It's well that I'm a
musketeer..." he sang, pretending to hiccough after each syllable.

"Look out, your soles will fly off!" shouted the red-haired man,
noticing that the sole of the dancer's boot was hanging loose. "What a
fellow you are for dancing!"

The dancer stopped, pulled off the loose piece of leather, and threw
it on the fire.

"Right enough, friend," said he, and, having sat down, took out of
his knapsack a scrap of blue French cloth, and wrapped it round his
foot. "It's the steam that spoils them," he added, stretching out
his feet toward the fire.

"They'll soon be issuing us new ones. They say that when we've
finished hammering them, we're to receive double kits!"

"And that son of a bitch Petrov has lagged behind after all, it
seems," said one sergeant major.

"I've had an eye on him this long while," said the other.

"Well, he's a poor sort of soldier..."

"But in the Third Company they say nine men were missing yesterday."

"Yes, it's all very well, but when a man's feet are frozen how can
he walk?"

"Eh? Don't talk nonsense!" said a sergeant major.

"Do you want to be doing the same?" said an old soldier, turning
reproachfully to the man who had spoken of frozen feet.

"Well, you know," said the sharp-nosed man they called Jackdaw in
a squeaky and unsteady voice, raising himself at the other side of the
fire, "a plump man gets thin, but for a thin one it's death. Take
me, now! I've got no strength left," he added, with sudden
resolution turning to the sergeant major. "Tell them to send me to
hospital; I'm aching all over; anyway I shan't be able to keep up."

"That'll do, that'll do!" replied the sergeant major quietly.

The soldier said no more and the talk went on.

"What a lot of those Frenchies were taken today, and the fact is
that not one of them had what you might call real boots on," said a
soldier, starting a new theme. "They were no more than make-believes."

"The Cossacks have taken their boots. They were clearing the hut for
the colonel and carried them out. It was pitiful to see them, boys,"
put in the dancer. "As they turned them over one seemed still alive
and, would you believe it, he jabbered something in their lingo."

"But they're a clean folk, lads," the first man went on; "he was
white--as white as birchbark--and some of them are such fine
fellows, you might think they were nobles."

"Well, what do you think? They make soldiers of all classes there."

"But they don't understand our talk at all," said the dancer with
a puzzled smile. "I asked him whose subject he was, and he jabbered in
his own way. A queer lot!"

"But it's strange, friends," continued the man who had wondered at
their whiteness, "the peasants at Mozhaysk were saying that when
they began burying the dead--where the battle was you know--well,
those dead had been lying there for nearly a month, and says the
peasant, 'they lie as white as paper, clean, and not as much smell
as a puff of powder smoke.'"

"Was it from the cold?" asked someone.

"You're a clever fellow! From the cold indeed! Why, it was hot. If
it had been from the cold, ours would not have rotted either. 'But,'
he says, 'go up to ours and they are all rotten and maggoty. So,' he
says, 'we tie our faces up with kerchiefs and turn our heads away as
we drag them off: we can hardly do it. But theirs,' he says, 'are
white as paper and not so much smell as a whiff of gunpowder.'"

All were silent.

"It must be from their food," said the sergeant major. "They used to
gobble the same food as the gentry."

No one contradicted him.

"That peasant near Mozhaysk where the battle was said the men were
all called up from ten villages around and they carted for twenty days
and still didn't finish carting the dead away. And as for the
wolves, he says..."

"That was a real battle," said an old soldier. "It's the only one
worth remembering; but since that... it's only been tormenting folk."

"And do you know, Daddy, the day before yesterday we ran at them
and, my word, they didn't let us get near before they just threw
down their muskets and went on their knees. 'Pardon!' they say. That's
only one case. They say Platov took 'Poleon himself twice. But he
didn't know the right charm. He catches him and catches him--no
good! He turns into a bird in his hands and flies away. And there's no
way of killing him either."

"You're a first-class liar, Kiselev, when I come to look at you!"

"Liar, indeed! It's the real truth."

"If he fell into my hands, when I'd caught him I'd bury him in the
ground with an aspen stake to fix him down. What a lot of men he's
ruined!"

"Well, anyhow we're going to end it. He won't come here again,"
remarked the old soldier, yawning.

The conversation flagged, and the soldiers began settling down to
sleep.

"Look at the stars. It's wonderful how they shine! You would think
the women had spread out their linen," said one of the men, gazing
with admiration at the Milky Way.

"That's a sign of a good harvest next year."

"We shall want some more wood."

"You warm your back and your belly gets frozen. That's queer."

"O Lord!"

"What are you pushing for? Is the fire only for you? Look how he's
sprawling!"

In the silence that ensued, the snoring of those who had fallen
asleep could be heard. Others turned over and warmed themselves, now
and again exchanging a few words. From a campfire a hundred paces
off came a sound of general, merry laughter.

"Hark at them roaring there in the Fifth Company!" said one of the
soldiers, "and what a lot of them there are!"

One of the men got up and went over to the Fifth Company.

"They're having such fun," said he, coming back. "Two Frenchies have
turned up. One's quite frozen and the other's an awful swaggerer. He's
singing songs...."

"Oh, I'll go across and have a look...."

And several of the men went over to the Fifth Company.





CHAPTER IX


The fifth company was bivouacking at the very edge of the forest.
A huge campfire was blazing brightly in the midst of the snow,
lighting up the branches of trees heavy with hoarfrost.

About midnight they heard the sound of steps in the snow of the
forest, and the crackling of dry branches.

"A bear, lads," said one of the men.

They all raised their heads to listen, and out of the forest into
the bright firelight stepped two strangely clad human figures clinging
to one another.

These were two Frenchmen who had been hiding in the forest. They
came up to the fire, hoarsely uttering something in a language our
soldiers did not understand. One was taller than the other; he wore an
officer's hat and seemed quite exhausted. On approaching the fire he
had been going to sit down, but fell. The other, a short sturdy
soldier with a shawl tied round his head, was stronger. He raised
his companion and said something, pointing to his mouth. The
soldiers surrounded the Frenchmen, spread a greatcoat on the ground
for the sick man, and brought some buckwheat porridge and vodka for
both of them.

The exhausted French officer was Ramballe and the man with his
head wrapped in the shawl was Morel, his orderly.

When Morel had drunk some vodka and finished his bowl of porridge he
suddenly became unnaturally merry and chattered incessantly to the
soldiers, who could not understand him. Ramballe refused food and
resting his head on his elbow lay silent beside the campfire,
looking at the Russian soldiers with red and vacant eyes. Occasionally
he emitted a long-drawn groan and then again became silent. Morel,
pointing to his shoulders, tried to impress on the soldiers the fact
that Ramballe was an officer and ought to be warmed. A Russian officer
who had come up to the fire sent to ask his colonel whether he would
not take a French officer into his hut to warm him, and when the
messenger returned and said that the colonel wished the officer to
be brought to him, Ramballe was told to go. He rose and tried to walk,
but staggered and would have fallen had not a soldier standing by held
him up.

"You won't do it again, eh?" said one of the soldiers, winking and
turning mockingly to Ramballe.

"Oh, you fool! Why talk rubbish, lout that you are--a real peasant!"
came rebukes from all sides addressed to the jesting soldier.

They surrounded Ramballe, lifted him on the crossed arms of two
soldiers, and carried him to the hut. Ramballe put his arms around
their necks while they carried him and began wailing plaintively:

"Oh, you fine fellows, my kind, kind friends! These are men! Oh,
my brave, kind friends," and he leaned his head against the shoulder
of one of the men like a child.

Meanwhile Morel was sitting in the best place by the fire,
surrounded by the soldiers.

Morel, a short sturdy Frenchman with inflamed and streaming eyes,
was wearing a woman's cloak and had a shawl tied woman fashion round
his head over his cap. He was evidently tipsy, and was singing a
French song in a hoarse broken voice, with an arm thrown round the
nearest soldier. The soldiers simply held their sides as they
watched him.

"Now then, now then, teach us how it goes! I'll soon pick it up. How
is it?" said the man--a singer and a wag--whom Morel was embracing.

"Vive Henri Quatre! Vive ce roi valiant!" sang Morel, winking. "Ce
diable a quatre..."*


*"Long live Henry the Fourth, that valiant king! That rowdy devil."


"Vivarika! Vif-seruvaru! Sedyablyaka!" repeated the soldier,
flourishing his arm and really catching the tune.

"Bravo! Ha, ha, ha!" rose their rough, joyous laughter from all
sides.

Morel, wrinkling up his face, laughed too.

"Well, go on, go on!"

    "Qui eut le triple talent,
    De boire, de battre,
    Et d'etre un vert galant."*


*Who had a triple talent

 For drinking, for fighting,

 And for being a gallant old boy...


"It goes smoothly, too. Well, now, Zaletaev!"

"Ke..." Zaletaev, brought out with effort: "ke-e-e-e," he drawled,
laboriously pursing his lips, "le-trip-ta-la-de-bu-de-ba, e
de-tra-va-ga-la" he sang.

"Fine! Just like the Frenchie! Oh, ho ho! Do you want some more to
eat?"

"Give him some porridge: it takes a long time to get filled up after
starving."

They gave him some more porridge and Morel with a laugh set to
work on his third bowl. All the young soldiers smiled gaily as they
watched him. The older men, who thought it undignified to amuse
themselves with such nonsense, continued to lie at the opposite side
of the fire, but one would occasionally raise himself on an elbow
and glance at Morel with a smile.

"They are men too," said one of them as he wrapped himself up in his
coat. "Even wormwood grows on its own root."

"O Lord, O Lord! How starry it is! Tremendous! That means a hard
frost...."

They all grew silent. The stars, as if knowing that no one was
looking at them, began to disport themselves in the dark sky: now
flaring up, now vanishing, now trembling, they were busy whispering
something gladsome and mysterious to one another.





CHAPTER X


The French army melted away at the uniform rate of a mathematical
progression; and that crossing of the Berezina about which so much has
been written was only one intermediate stage in its destruction, and
not at all the decisive episode of the campaign. If so much has been
and still is written about the Berezina, on the French side this is
only because at the broken bridge across that river the calamities
their army had been previously enduring were suddenly concentrated
at one moment into a tragic spectacle that remained in every memory,
and on the Russian side merely because in Petersburg--far from the
seat of war--a plan (again one of Pfuel's) had been devised to catch
Napoleon in a strategic trap at the Berezina River. Everyone assured
himself that all would happen according to plan, and therefore
insisted that it was just the crossing of the Berezina that
destroyed the French army. In reality the results of the crossing were
much less disastrous to the French--in guns and men lost--than Krasnoe
had been, as the figures show.

The sole importance of the crossing of the Berezina lies in the fact
that it plainly and indubitably proved the fallacy of all the plans
for cutting off the enemy's retreat and the soundness of the only
possible line of action--the one Kutuzov and the general mass of the
army demanded--namely, simply to follow the enemy up. The French crowd
fled at a continually increasing speed and all its energy was directed
to reaching its goal. It fled like a wounded animal and it was
impossible to block its path. This was shown not so much by the
arrangements it made for crossing as by what took place at the
bridges. When the bridges broke down, unarmed soldiers, people from
Moscow and women with children who were with the French transport,
all--carried on by vis inertiae--pressed forward into boats and into
the ice-covered water and did not, surrender.

That impulse was reasonable. The condition of fugitives and of
pursuers was equally bad. As long as they remained with their own
people each might hope for help from his fellows and the definite
place he held among them. But those who surrendered, while remaining
in the same pitiful plight, would be on a lower level to claim a share
in the necessities of life. The French did not need to be informed
of the fact that half the prisoners--with whom the Russians did not
know what to do--perished of cold and hunger despite their captors'
desire to save them; they felt that it could not be otherwise. The
most compassionate Russian commanders, those favorable to the
French--and even the Frenchmen in the Russian service--could do
nothing for the prisoners. The French perished from the conditions
to which the Russian army was itself exposed. It was impossible to
take bread and clothes from our hungry and indispensable soldiers to
give to the French who, though not harmful, or hated, or guilty,
were simply unnecessary. Some Russians even did that, but they were
exceptions.

Certain destruction lay behind the French but in front there was
hope. Their ships had been burned, there was no salvation save in
collective flight, and on that the whole strength of the French was
concentrated.

The farther they fled the more wretched became the plight of the
remnant, especially after the Berezina, on which (in consequence of
the Petersburg plan) special hopes had been placed by the Russians,
and the keener grew the passions of the Russian commanders, blamed one
another and Kutuzov most of all. Anticipation that the failure of
the Petersburg Berezina plan would be attributed to Kutuzov led to
dissatisfaction, contempt, and ridicule, more and more strongly
expressed. The ridicule and contempt were of course expressed in a
respectful form, making it impossible for him to ask wherein he was to
blame. They did not talk seriously to him; when reporting to him or
asking for his sanction they appeared to be fulfilling a regrettable
formality, but they winked behind his back and tried to mislead him at
every turn.

Because they could not understand him all these people assumed
that it was useless to talk to the old man; that he would never
grasp the profundity of their plans, that he would answer with his
phrases (which they thought were mere phrases) about a "golden
bridge," about the impossibility of crossing the frontier with a crowd
of tatterdemalions, and so forth. They had heard all that before.
And all he said--that it was necessary to await provisions, or that
the men had no boots--was so simple, while what they proposed was so
complicated and clever, that it was evident that he was old and stupid
and that they, though not in power, were commanders of genius.

After the junction with the army of the brilliant admiral and
Petersburg hero Wittgenstein, this mood and the gossip of the staff
reached their maximum. Kutuzov saw this and merely sighed and shrugged
his shoulders. Only once, after the affair of the Berezina, did he get
angry and write to Bennigsen (who reported separately to the
Emperor) the following letter:

"On account of your spells of ill health, will your excellency
please be so good as to set off for Kaluga on receipt of this, and
there await further commands and appointments from His Imperial
Majesty."

But after Bennigsen's departure, the Grand Duke Tsarevich
Constantine Pavlovich joined the army. He had taken part in the
beginning of the campaign but had subsequently been removed from the
army by Kutuzov. Now having come to the army, he informed Kutuzov of
the Emperor's displeasure at the poor success of our forces and the
slowness of their advance. The Emperor intended to join the army
personally in a few days' time.

The old man, experienced in court as well as in military affairs-
this same Kutuzov who in August had been chosen commander in chief
against the sovereign's wishes and who had removed the Grand Duke
and heir--apparent from the army--who on his own authority and
contrary to the Emperor's will had decided on the abandonment of
Moscow, now realized at once that his day was over, that his part
was played, and that the power he was supposed to hold was no longer
his. And he understood this not merely from the attitude of the court.
He saw on the one hand that the military business in which he had
played his part was ended and felt that his mission was
accomplished; and at the same time he began to be conscious of the
physical weariness of his aged body and of the necessity of physical
rest.

On the twenty-ninth of November Kutuzov entered Vilna--his "dear
Vilna" as he called it. Twice during his career Kutuzov had been
governor of Vilna. In that wealthy town, which had not been injured,
he found old friends and associations, besides the comforts of life of
which he had so long been deprived. And he suddenly turned from the
cares of army and state and, as far as the passions that seethed
around him allowed, immersed himself in the quiet life to which he had
formerly been accustomed, as if all that was taking place and all that
had still to be done in the realm of history did not concern him at
all.

Chichagov, one of the most zealous "cutters-off" and
"breakers-up," who had first wanted to effect a diversion in Greece
and then in Warsaw but never wished to go where he was sent:
Chichagov, noted for the boldness with which he spoke to the
Emperor, and who considered Kutuzov to be under an obligation to him
because when he was sent to make peace with Turkey in 1811
independently of Kutuzov, and found that peace had already been
concluded, he admitted to the Emperor that the merit of securing
that peace was really Kutuzov's; this Chichagov was the first to
meet Kutuzov at the castle where the latter was to stay. In undress
naval uniform, with a dirk, and holding his cap under his arm, he
handed Kutuzov a garrison report and the keys of the town. The
contemptuously respectful attitude of the younger men to the old man
in his dotage was expressed in the highest degree by the behavior of
Chichagov, who knew of the accusations that were being directed
against Kutuzov.

When speaking to Chichagov, Kutuzov incidentally mentioned that
the vehicles packed with china that had been captured from him at
Borisov had been recovered and would be restored to him.

"You mean to imply that I have nothing to eat out of.... On the
contrary, I can supply you with everything even if you want to give
dinner parties," warmly replied Chichagov, who tried by every word
he spoke to prove his own rectitude and therefore imagined Kutuzov
to be animated by the same desire.

Kutuzov, shrugging his shoulders, replied with his subtle
penetrating smile: "I meant merely to say what I said."

Contrary to the Emperor's wish Kutuzov detained the greater part
of the army at Vilna. Those about him said that he became
extraordinarily slack and physically feeble during his stay in that
town. He attended to army affairs reluctantly, left everything to
his generals, and while awaiting the Emperor's arrival led a
dissipated life.

Having left Petersburg on the seventh of December with his suite-
Count Tolstoy, Prince Volkonski, Arakcheev, and others--the Emperor
reached Vilna on the eleventh, and in his traveling sleigh drove
straight to the castle. In spite of the severe frost some hundred
generals and staff officers in full parade uniform stood in front of
the castle, as well as a guard of honor of the Semenov regiment.

A courier who galloped to the castle in advance, in a troyka with
three foam-flecked horses, shouted "Coming!" and Konovnitsyn rushed
into the vestibule to inform Kutuzov, who was waiting in the hall
porter's little lodge.

A minute later the old man's large stout figure in full-dress
uniform, his chest covered with orders and a scarf drawn round his
stomach, waddled out into the porch. He put on his hat with its
peaks to the sides and, holding his gloves in his hand and walking
with an effort sideways down the steps to the level of the street,
took in his hand the report he had prepared for the Emperor.

There was running to and fro and whispering; another troyka
furiously up, and then all eyes were turned on an approaching sleigh
in which the figures of the Emperor and Volkonski could already be
descried.

From the habit of fifty years all this had a physically agitating
effect on the old general. He carefully and hastily felt himself all
over, readjusted his hat, and pulling himself together drew himself up
and, at the very moment when the Emperor, having alighted from the
sleigh, lifted his eyes to him, handed him the report and began
speaking in his smooth, ingratiating voice.

The Emperor with a rapid glance scanned Kutuzov from head to foot,
frowned for an instant, but immediately mastering himself went up to
the old man, extended his arms and embraced him. And this embrace too,
owing to a long-standing impression related to his innermost feelings,
had its usual effect on Kutuzov and he gave a sob.

The Emperor greeted the officers and the Semenov guard, and again
pressing the old man's hand went with him into the castle.

When alone with the field marshal the Emperor expressed his
dissatisfaction at the slowness of the pursuit and at the mistakes
made at Krasnoe and the Berezina, and informed him of his intentions
for a future campaign abroad. Kutuzov made no rejoinder or remark. The
same submissive, expressionless look with which he had listened to the
Emperor's commands on the field of Austerlitz seven years before
settled on his face now.

When Kutuzov came out of the study and with lowered head was
crossing the ballroom with his heavy waddling gait, he was arrested by
someone's voice saying:

"Your Serene Highness!"

Kutuzov raised his head and looked for a long while into the eyes of
Count Tolstoy, who stood before him holding a silver salver on which
lay a small object. Kutuzov seemed not to understand what was expected
of him.

Suddenly he seemed to remember; a scarcely perceptible smile flashed
across his puffy face, and bowing low and respectfully he took the
object that lay on the salver. It was the Order of St. George of the
First Class.





CHAPTER XI


Next day the field marshal gave a dinner and ball which the
Emperor honored by his presence. Kutuzov had received the Order of St.
George of the First Class and the Emperor showed him the highest
honors, but everyone knew of the imperial dissatisfaction with him.
The proprieties were observed and the Emperor was the first to set
that example, but everybody understood that the old man was
blameworthy and good-for-nothing. When Kutuzov, conforming to a custom
of Catherine's day, ordered the standards that had been captured to be
lowered at the Emperor's feet on his entering the ballroom, the
Emperor made a wry face and muttered something in which some people
caught the words, "the old comedian."

The Emperor's displeasure with Kutuzov was specially increased at
Vilna by the fact that Kutuzov evidently could not or would not
understand the importance of the coming campaign.

When on the following morning the Emperor said to the officers
assembled about him: "You have not only saved Russia, you have saved
Europe!" they all understood that the war was not ended.

Kutuzov alone would not see this and openly expressed his opinion
that no fresh war could improve the position or add to the glory of
Russia, but could only spoil and lower the glorious position that
Russia had gained. He tried to prove to the Emperor the
impossibility of levying fresh troops, spoke of the hardships
already endured by the people, of the possibility of failure and so
forth.

This being the field marshal's frame of mind he was naturally
regarded as merely a hindrance and obstacle to the impending war.

To avoid unpleasant encounters with the old man, the natural
method was to do what had been done with him at Austerlitz and with
Barclay at the beginning of the Russian campaign--to transfer the
authority to the Emperor himself, thus cutting the ground from under
the commander in chief's feet without upsetting the old man by
informing him of the change.

With this object his staff was gradually reconstructed and its
real strength removed and transferred to the Emperor. Toll,
Konovnitsyn, and Ermolov received fresh appointments. Everyone spoke
loudly of the field marshal's great weakness and failing health.

His health had to be bad for his place to be taken away and given to
another. And in fact his health was poor.

So naturally, simply, and gradually--just as he had come from Turkey
to the Treasury in Petersburg to recruit the militia, and then to
the army when he was needed there--now when his part was played out,
Kutuzov's place was taken by a new and necessary performer.

The war 1812, besides its national significance dear to every
Russian heart, was now to assume another, a European, significance.

The movement of peoples from west to east was to be succeeded by a
movement of peoples from east to west, and for this fresh war
another leader was necessary, having qualities and views differing
from Kutuzov's and animated by different motives.

Alexander I was as necessary for the movement of the peoples from
east to west and for the refixing of national frontiers as Kutuzov had
been for the salvation and glory of Russia.

Kutuzov did not understand what Europe, the balance of power, or
Napoleon meant. He could not understand it. For the representative
of the Russian people, after the enemy had been destroyed and Russia
had been liberated and raised to the summit of her glory, there was
nothing left to do as a Russian. Nothing remained for the
representative of the national war but to die, and Kutuzov died.





CHAPTER XII


As generally happens, Pierre did not feel the full effects of the
physical privation and strain he had suffered as prisoner until
after they were over. After his liberation he reached Orel, and on the
third day there, when preparing to go to Kiev, he fell ill and was
laid up for three months. He had what the doctors termed "bilious
fever." But despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him,
and gave him medicines to drink, he recovered.

Scarcely any impression was left on Pierre's mind by all that
happened to him from the time of his rescue till his illness. He
remembered only the dull gray weather now rainy and now snowy,
internal physical distress, and pains in his feet and side. He
remembered a general impression of the misfortunes and sufferings of
people and of being worried by the curiosity of officers and
generals who questioned him, he also remembered his difficulty in
procuring a conveyance and horses, and above all he remembered his
incapacity to think and feel all that time. On the day of his rescue
he had seen the body of Petya Rostov. That same day he had learned
that Prince Andrew, after surviving the battle of Borodino for more
than a month had recently died in the Rostovs' house at Yaroslavl, and
Denisov who told him this news also mentioned Helene's death,
supposing that Pierre had heard of it long before. All this at the
time seemed merely strange to Pierre: he felt he could not grasp its
significance. Just then he was only anxious to get away as quickly
as possible from places where people were killing one another, to some
peaceful refuge where he could recover himself, rest, and think over
all the strange new facts he had learned; but on reaching Orel he
immediately fell ill. When he came to himself after his illness he saw
in attendance on him two of his servants, Terenty and Vaska, who had
come from Moscow; and also his cousin the eldest princess, who had
been living on his estate at Elets and hearing of his rescue and
illness had come to look after him.

It was only gradually during his convalescence that Pierre lost
the impressions he had become accustomed to during the last few months
and got used to the idea that no one would oblige him to go anywhere
tomorrow, that no one would deprive him of his warm bed, and that he
would be sure to get his dinner, tea, and supper. But for a long
time in his dreams he still saw himself in the conditions of
captivity. In the same way little by little he came to understand
the news he had been told after his rescue, about the death of
Prince Andrew, the death of his wife, and the destruction of the
French.

A joyous feeling of freedom--that complete inalienable freedom
natural to man which he had first experienced at the first halt
outside Moscow--filled Pierre's soul during his convalescence. He
was surprised to find that this inner freedom, which was independent
of external conditions, now had as it were an additional setting of
external liberty. He was alone in a strange town, without
acquaintances. No one demanded anything of him or sent him anywhere.
He had all he wanted: the thought of his wife which had been a
continual torment to him was no longer there, since she was no more.

"Oh, how good! How splendid!" said he to himself when a cleanly laid
table was moved up to him with savory beef tea, or when he lay down
for the night on a soft clean bed, or when he remembered that the
French had gone and that his wife was no more. "Oh, how good, how
splendid!"

And by old habit he asked himself the question: "Well, and what
then? What am I going to do?" And he immediately gave himself the
answer: "Well, I shall live. Ah, how splendid!"

The very question that had formerly tormented him, the thing he
had continually sought to find--the aim of life--no longer existed for
him now. That search for the aim of life had not merely disappeared
temporarily--he felt that it no longer existed for him and could not
present itself again. And this very absence of an aim gave him the
complete, joyous sense of freedom which constituted his happiness at
this time.

He could not see an aim, for he now had faith--not faith in any kind
of rule, or words, or ideas, but faith in an ever-living,
ever-manifest God. Formerly he had sought Him in aims he set
himself. That search for an aim had been simply a search for God,
and suddenly in his captivity he had learned not by words or reasoning
but by direct feeling what his nurse had told him long ago: that God
is here and everywhere. In his captivity he had learned that in
Karataev God was greater, more infinite and unfathomable than in the
Architect of the Universe recognized by the Freemasons. He felt like a
man who after straining his eyes to see into the far distance finds
what he sought at his very feet. All his life he had looked over the
heads of the men around him, when he should have merely looked in
front of him without straining his eyes.

In the past he had never been able to find that great inscrutable
infinite something. He had only felt that it must exist somewhere
and had looked for it. In everything near and comprehensible he had
only what was limited, petty, commonplace, and senseless. He had
equipped himself with a mental telescope and looked into remote space,
where petty worldliness hiding itself in misty distance had seemed
to him great and infinite merely because it was not clearly seen.
And such had European life, politics, Freemasonry, philosophy, and
philanthropy seemed to him. But even then, at moments of weakness as
he had accounted them, his mind had penetrated to those distances
and he had there seen the same pettiness, worldliness, and
senselessness. Now, however, he had learned to see the great, eternal,
and infinite in everything, and therefore--to see it and enjoy its
contemplation--he naturally threw away the telescope through which
he had till now gazed over men's heads, and gladly regarded the
ever-changing, eternally great, unfathomable, and infinite life around
him. And the closer he looked the more tranquil and happy he became.
That dreadful question, "What for?" which had formerly destroyed all
his mental edifices, no longer existed for him. To that question,
"What for?" a simple answer was now always ready in his soul: "Because
there is a God, that God without whose will not one hair falls from
a man's head."





CHAPTER XIII


In external ways Pierre had hardly changed at all. In appearance
he was just what he used to be. As before he was absent-minded and
seemed occupied not with what was before his eyes but with something
special of his own. The difference between his former and present self
was that formerly when he did not grasp what lay before him or was
said to him, he had puckered his forehead painfully as if vainly
seeking to distinguish something at a distance. At present he still
forgot what was said to him and still did not see what was before
his eyes, but he now looked with a scarcely perceptible and
seemingly ironic smile at what was before him and listened to what was
said, though evidently seeing and hearing something quite different.
Formerly he had appeared to be a kindhearted but unhappy man, and so
people had been inclined to avoid him. Now a smile at the joy of
life always played round his lips, and sympathy for others, shone in
his eyes with a questioning look as to whether they were as
contented as he was, and people felt pleased by his presence.

Previously he had talked a great deal, grew excited when he
talked, and seldom listened; now he was seldom carried away in
conversation and knew how to listen so that people readily told him
their most intimate secrets.

The princess, who had never liked Pierre and had been particularly
hostile to him since she had felt herself under obligations to him
after the old count's death, now after staying a short time in Orel-
where she had come intending to show Pierre that in spite of his
ingratitude she considered it her duty to nurse him--felt to her
surprise and vexation that she had become fond of him. Pierre did
not in any way seek her approval, he merely studied her with interest.
Formerly she had felt that he regarded her with indifference and
irony, and so had shrunk into herself as she did with others and had
shown him only the combative side of her nature; but now he seemed
to be trying to understand the most intimate places of her heart, and,
mistrustfully at first but afterwards gratefully, she let him see
the hidden, kindly sides of her character.

The most cunning man could not have crept into her confidence more
successfully, evoking memories of the best times of her youth and
showing sympathy with them. Yet Pierre's cunning consisted simply in
finding pleasure in drawing out the human qualities of the embittered,
hard, and (in her own way) proud princess.

"Yes, he is a very, very kind man when he is not under the influence
of bad people but of people such as myself," thought she.

His servants too--Terenty and Vaska--in their own way noticed the
change that had taken place in Pierre. They considered that he had
become much "simpler." Terenty, when he had helped him undress and
wished him good night, often lingered with his master's boots in his
hands and clothes over his arm, to see whether he would not start a
talk. And Pierre, noticing that Terenty wanted a chat, generally
kept him there.

"Well, tell me... now, how did you get food?" he would ask.

And Terenty would begin talking of the destruction of Moscow, and of
the old count, and would stand for a long time holding the clothes and
talking, or sometimes listening to Pierre's stories, and then would go
out into the hall with a pleasant sense of intimacy with his master
and affection for him.

The doctor who attended Pierre and visited him every day, though
he considered it his duty as a doctor to pose as a man whose every
moment was of value to suffering humanity, would sit for hours with
Pierre telling him his favorite anecdotes and his observations on
the characters of his patients in general, and especially of the
ladies.

"It's a pleasure to talk to a man like that; he is not like our
provincials," he would say.

There were several prisoners from the French army in Orel, and the
doctor brought one of them, a young Italian, to see Pierre.

This officer began visiting Pierre, and the princess used to make
fun of the tenderness the Italian expressed for him.

The Italian seemed happy only when he could come to see Pierre, talk
with him, tell him about his past, his life at home, and his love, and
pour out to him his indignation against the French and especially
against Napoleon.

"If all Russians are in the least like you, it is sacrilege to fight
such a nation," he said to Pierre. "You, who have suffered so from the
French, do not even feel animosity toward them."

Pierre had evoked the passionate affection of the Italian merely
by evoking the best side of his nature and taking a pleasure in so
doing.

During the last days of Pierre's stay in Orel his old Masonic
acquaintance Count Willarski, who had introduced him to the lodge in
1807, came to see him. Willarski was married to a Russian heiress
who had a large estate in Orel province, and he occupied a temporary
post in the commissariat department in that town.

Hearing that Bezukhov was in Orel, Willarski, though they had
never been intimate, came to him with the professions of friendship
and intimacy that people who meet in a desert generally express for
one another. Willarski felt dull in Orel and was pleased to meet a man
of his own circle and, as he supposed, of similar interests.

But to his surprise Willarski soon noticed that Pierre had lagged
much behind the times, and had sunk, as he expressed it to himself,
into apathy and egotism.

"You are letting yourself go, my dear fellow," he said.

But for all that Willarski found it pleasanter now than it had
been formerly to be with Pierre, and came to see him every day. To
Pierre as he looked at and listened to Willarski, it seemed strange to
think that he had been like that himself but a short time before.

Willarski was a married man with a family, busy with his family
affairs, his wife's affairs, and his official duties. He regarded
all these occupations as hindrances to life, and considered that
they were all contemptible because their aim was the welfare of
himself and his family. Military, administrative, political, and
Masonic interests continually absorbed his attention. And Pierre,
without trying to change the other's views and without condemning him,
but with the quiet, joyful, and amused smile now habitual to him,
was interested in this strange though very familiar phenomenon.

There was a new feature in Pierre's relations with Willarski, with
the princess, with the doctor, and with all the people he now met,
which gained for him the general good will. This was his
acknowledgment of the impossibility of changing a man's convictions by
words, and his recognition of the possibility of everyone thinking,
feeling, and seeing things each from his own point of view. This
legitimate peculiarity of each individual which used to excite and
irritate Pierre now became a basis of the sympathy he felt for, and
the interest he took in, other people. The difference, and sometimes
complete contradiction, between men's opinions and their lives, and
between one man and another, pleased him and drew from him an amused
and gentle smile.

In practical matters Pierre unexpectedly felt within himself a
center of gravity he had previously lacked. Formerly all pecuniary
questions, especially requests for money to which, as an extremely
wealthy man, he was very exposed, produced in him a state of
hopeless agitation and perplexity. "To give or not to give?" he had
asked himself. "I have it and he needs it. But someone else needs it
still more. Who needs it most? And perhaps they are both impostors?"
In the old days he had been unable to find a way out of all these
surmises and had given to all who asked as long as he had anything
to give. Formerly he had been in a similar state of perplexity with
regard to every question concerning his property, when one person
advised one thing and another something else.

Now to his surprise he found that he no longer felt either doubt
or perplexity about these questions. There was now within him a
judge who by some rule unknown to him decided what should or should
not be done.

He was as indifferent as heretofore to money matters, but now he
felt certain of what ought and what ought not to be done. The first
time he had recourse to his new judge was when a French prisoner, a
colonel, came to him and, after talking a great deal about his
exploits, concluded by making what amounted to a demand that Pierre
should give him four thousand francs to send to his wife and children.
Pierre refused without the least difficulty or effort, and was
afterwards surprised how simple and easy had been what used to
appear so insurmountably difficult. At the same time that he refused
the colonel's demand he made up his mind that he must have recourse to
artifice when leaving Orel, to induce the Italian officer to accept
some money of which he was evidently in need. A further proof to
Pierre of his own more settled outlook on practical matters was
furnished by his decision with regard to his wife's debts and to the
rebuilding of his houses in and near Moscow.

His head steward came to him at Orel and Pierre reckoned up with him
his diminished income. The burning of Moscow had cost him, according
to the head steward's calculation, about two million rubles.

To console Pierre for these losses the head steward gave him an
estimate showing that despite these losses his income would not be
diminished but would even be increased if he refused to pay his wife's
debts which he was under no obligation to meet, and did not rebuild
his Moscow house and the country house on his Moscow estate, which had
cost him eighty thousand rubles a year and brought in nothing.

"Yes, of course that's true," said Pierre with a cheerful smile.
"I don't need all that at all. By being ruined I have become much
richer."

But in January Savelich came from Moscow and gave him an account
of the state of things there, and spoke of the estimate an architect
had made of the cost of rebuilding the town and country houses,
speaking of this as of a settled matter. About the same time he
received letters from Prince Vasili and other Petersburg acquaintances
speaking of his wife's debts. And Pierre decided that the steward's
proposals which had so pleased him were wrong and that he must go to
Petersburg and settle his wife's affairs and must rebuild in Moscow.
Why this was necessary he did not know, but he knew for certain that
it was necessary. His income would be reduced by three fourths, but he
felt it must be done.

Willarski was going to Moscow and they agreed to travel together.

During the whole time of his convalescence in Orel Pierre had
experienced a feeling of joy, freedom, and life; but when during his
journey he found himself in the open world and saw hundreds of new
faces, that feeling was intensified. Throughout his journey he felt
like a schoolboy on holiday. Everyone--the stagecoach driver, the
post-house overseers, the peasants on the roads and in the villages-
had a new significance for him. The presence and remarks of
Willarski who continually deplored the ignorance and poverty of Russia
and its backwardness compared with Europe only heightened Pierre's
pleasure. Where Willarski saw deadness Pierre saw an extraordinary
strength and vitality--the strength which in that vast space amid
the snows maintained the life of this original, peculiar, and unique
people. He did not contradict Willarski and even seemed to agree
with him--an apparent agreement being the simplest way to avoid
discussions that could lead to nothing--and he smiled joyfully as he
listened to him.





CHAPTER XIV


It would be difficult to explain why and whither ants whose heap has
been destroyed are hurrying: some from the heap dragging bits of
rubbish, larvae, and corpses, others back to the heap, or why they
jostle, overtake one another, and fight, and it would be equally
difficult to explain what caused the Russians after the departure of
the French to throng to the place that had formerly been Moscow. But
when we watch the ants round their ruined heap, the tenacity,
energy, and immense number of the delving insects prove that despite
the destruction of the heap, something indestructible, which though
intangible is the real strength of the colony, still exists; and
similarly, though in Moscow in the month of October there was no
government no churches, shrines, riches, or houses--it was still the
Moscow it had been in August. All was destroyed, except something
intangible yet powerful and indestructible.

The motives of those who thronged from all sides to Moscow after
it had been cleared of the enemy were most diverse and personal, and
at first for the most part savage and brutal. One motive only they all
had in common: a desire to get to the place that had been called
Moscow, to apply their activities there.

Within a week Moscow already had fifteen thousand inhabitants, in
a fortnight twenty-five thousand, and so on. By the autumn of 1813 the
number, ever increasing and increasing, exceeded what it had been in
1812.

The first Russians to enter Moscow were the Cossacks of
Wintzingerode's detachment, peasants from the adjacent villages, and
residents who had fled from Moscow and had been hiding in its
vicinity. The Russians who entered Moscow, finding it plundered,
plundered it in their turn. They continued what the French had
begun. Trains of peasant carts came to Moscow to carry off to the
villages what had been abandoned in the ruined houses and the streets.
The Cossacks carried off what they could to their camps, and the
householders seized all they could find in other houses and moved it
to their own, pretending that it was their property.

But the first plunderers were followed by a second and a third
contingent, and with increasing numbers plundering became more and
more difficult and assumed more definite forms.

The French found Moscow abandoned but with all the organizations
of regular life, with diverse branches of commerce and
craftsmanship, with luxury, and governmental and religious
institutions. These forms were lifeless but still existed. There
were bazaars, shops, warehouses, market stalls, granaries--for the
most part still stocked with goods--and there were factories and
workshops, palaces and wealthy houses filled with luxuries, hospitals,
prisons, government offices, churches, and cathedrals. The longer
the French remained the more these forms of town life perished,
until finally all was merged into one confused, lifeless scene of
plunder.

The more the plundering by the French continued, the more both the
wealth of Moscow and the strength of its plunderers was destroyed. But
plundering by the Russians, with which the reoccupation of the city
began, had an opposite effect: the longer it continued and the greater
the number of people taking part in it the more rapidly was the wealth
of the city and its regular life restored.

Besides the plunderers, very various people, some drawn by
curiosity, some by official duties, some by self-interest--house
owners, clergy, officials of all kinds, tradesmen, artisans, and
peasants--streamed into Moscow as blood flows to the heart.

Within a week the peasants who came with empty carts to carry off
plunder were stopped by the authorities and made to cart the corpses
out of the town. Other peasants, having heard of their comrades'
discomfiture, came to town bringing rye, oats, and hay, and beat
down one another's prices to below what they had been in former
days. Gangs of carpenters hoping for high pay arrived in Moscow
every day, and on all sides logs were being hewn, new houses built,
and old, charred ones repaired. Tradesmen began trading in booths.
Cookshops and taverns were opened in partially burned houses. The
clergy resumed the services in many churches that had not been burned.
Donors contributed Church property that had been stolen. Government
clerks set up their baize-covered tables and their pigeonholes of
documents in small rooms. The higher authorities and the police
organized the distribution of goods left behind by the French. The
owners of houses in which much property had been left, brought there
from other houses, complained of the injustice of taking everything to
the Faceted Palace in the Kremlin; others insisted that as the
French had gathered things from different houses into this or that
house, it would be unfair to allow its owner to keep all that was
found there. They abused the police and bribed them, made out
estimates at ten times their value for government stores that had
perished in the fire, and demanded relief. And Count Rostopchin
wrote proclamations.





CHAPTER XV


At the end of January Pierre went to Moscow and stayed in an annex
of his house which had not been burned. He called on Count
Rostopchin and on some acquaintances who were back in Moscow, and he
intended to leave for Petersburg two days later. Everybody was
celebrating the victory, everything was bubbling with life in the
ruined but reviving city. Everyone was pleased to see Pierre, everyone
wished to meet him, and everyone questioned him about what he had
seen. Pierre felt particularly well disposed toward them all, but
was now instinctively on his guard for fear of binding himself in
any way. To all questions put to him--whether important or quite
trifling--such as: Where would he live? Was he going to rebuild?
When was he going to Petersburg and would he mind taking a parcel
for someone?--he replied: "Yes, perhaps," or, "I think so," and so on.

He had heard that the Rostovs were at Kostroma but the thought of
Natasha seldom occurred to him. If it did it was only as a pleasant
memory of the distant past. He felt himself not only free from
social obligations but also from that feeling which, it seemed to him,
he had aroused in himself.

On the third day after his arrival he heard from the Drubetskoys
that Princess Mary was in Moscow. The death, sufferings, and last days
of Prince Andrew had often occupied Pierre's thoughts and now recurred
to him with fresh vividness. Having heard at dinner that Princess Mary
was in Moscow and living in her house--which had not been burned--in
Vozdvizhenka Street, he drove that same evening to see her.

On his way to the house Pierre kept thinking of Prince Andrew, of
their friendship, of his various meetings with him, and especially
of the last one at Borodino.

"Is it possible that he died in the bitter frame of mind he was then
in? Is it possible that the meaning of life was not disclosed to him
before he died?" thought Pierre. He recalled Karataev and his death
and involuntarily began to compare these two men, so different, and
yet so similar in that they had both lived and both died and in the
love he felt for both of them.

Pierre drove up to the house of the old prince in a most serious
mood. The house had escaped the fire; it showed signs of damage but
its general aspect was unchanged. The old footman, who met Pierre with
a stern face as if wishing to make the visitor feel that the absence
of the old prince had not disturbed the order of things in the
house, informed him that the princess had gone to her own
apartments, and that she received on Sundays.

"Announce me. Perhaps she will see me," said Pierre.

"Yes, sir," said the man. "Please step into the portrait gallery."

A few minutes later the footman returned with Dessalles, who brought
word from the princess that she would be very glad to see Pierre if he
would excuse her want of ceremony and come upstairs to her apartment.

In a rather low room lit by one candle sat the princess and with her
another person dressed in black. Pierre remembered that the princess
always had lady companions, but who they were and what they were
like he never knew or remembered. "This must be one of her
companions," he thought, glancing at the lady in the black dress.

The princess rose quickly to meet him and held out her hand.

"Yes," she said, looking at his altered face after he had kissed her
hand, "so this is how we meet again. He spoke of you even at the
very last," she went on, turning her eyes from Pierre to her companion
with a shyness that surprised him for an instant.

"I was so glad to hear of your safety. It was the first piece of
good news we had received for a long time."

Again the princess glanced round at her companion with even more
uneasiness in her manner and was about to add something, but Pierre
interrupted her.

"Just imagine--I knew nothing about him!" said he. "I thought he had
been killed. All I know I heard at second hand from others. I only
know that he fell in with the Rostovs.... What a strange coincidence!"

Pierre spoke rapidly and with animation. He glanced once at the
companion's face, saw her attentive and kindly gaze fixed on him, and,
as often happens when one is talking, felt somehow that this companion
in the black dress was a good, kind, excellent creature who would
not hinder his conversing freely with Princess Mary.

But when he mentioned the Rostovs, Princess Mary's face expressed
still greater embarrassment. She again glanced rapidly from Pierre's
face to that of the lady in the black dress and said:

"Do you really not recognize her?"

Pierre looked again at the companion's pale, delicate face with
its black eyes and peculiar mouth, and something near to him, long
forgotten and more than sweet, looked at him from those attentive
eyes.

"But no, it can't be!" he thought. "This stern, thin, pale face that
looks so much older! It cannot be she. It merely reminds me of her."
But at that moment Princess Mary said, "Natasha!" And with difficulty,
effort, and stress, like the opening of a door grown rusty on its
hinges, a smile appeared on the face with the attentive eyes, and from
that opening door came a breath of fragrance which suffused Pierre
with a happiness he had long forgotten and of which he had not even
been thinking--especially at that moment. It suffused him, seized him,
and enveloped him completely. When she smiled doubt was no longer
possible, it was Natasha and he loved her.

At that moment Pierre involuntarily betrayed to her, to Princess
Mary, and above all to himself, a secret of which he himself had
been unaware. He flushed joyfully yet with painful distress. He
tried to hide his agitation. But the more he tried to hide it the more
clearly--clearer than any words could have done--did he betray to
himself, to her, and to Princess Mary that he loved her.

"No, it's only the unexpectedness of it," thought Pierre. But as
soon as he tried to continue the conversation he had begun with
Princess Mary he again glanced at Natasha, and a still-deeper flush
suffused his face and a still-stronger agitation of mingled joy and
fear seized his soul. He became confused in his speech and stopped
in the middle of what he was saying.

Pierre had failed to notice Natasha because he did not at all expect
to see her there, but he had failed to recognize her because the
change in her since he last saw her was immense. She had grown thin
and pale, but that was not what made her unrecognizable; she was
unrecognizable at the moment he entered because on that face whose
eyes had always shone with a suppressed smile of the joy of life,
now when he first entered and glanced at her there was not the least
shadow of a smile: only her eyes were kindly attentive and sadly
interrogative.

Pierre's confusion was not reflected by any confusion on Natasha's
part, but only by the pleasure that just perceptibly lit up her
whole face.





CHAPTER XVI


"She has come to stay with me," said Princess Mary. "The count and
countess will be here in a few days. The countess is in a dreadful
state; but it was necessary for Natasha herself to see a doctor.
They insisted on her coming with me."

"Yes, is there a family free from sorrow now?" said Pierre,
addressing Natasha. "You know it happened the very day we were
rescued. I saw him. What a delightful boy he was!"

Natasha looked at him, and by way of answer to his words her eyes
widened and lit up.

"What can one say or think of as a consolation?" said Pierre.
"Nothing! Why had such a splendid boy, so full of life, to die?"

"Yes, in these days it would be hard to live without faith..."
remarked Princess Mary.

"Yes, yes, that is really true," Pierre hastily interrupted her.

"Why is it true?" Natasha asked, looking attentively into Pierre's
eyes.

"How can you ask why?" said Princess Mary. "The thought alone of
what awaits..."

Natasha without waiting for Princess Mary to finish again looked
inquiringly at Pierre.

"And because," Pierre continued, "only one who believes that there
is a God ruling us can bear a loss such as hers and... yours."

Natasha had already opened her mouth to speak but suddenly
stopped. Pierre hurriedly turned away from her and again addressed
Princess Mary, asking about his friend's last days.

Pierre's confusion had now almost vanished, but at the same time
he felt that his freedom had also completely gone. He felt that
there was now a judge of his every word and action whose judgment
mattered more to him than that of all the rest of the world. As he
spoke now he was considering what impression his words would make on
Natasha. He did not purposely say things to please her, but whatever
he was saying he regarded from her standpoint.

Princess Mary--reluctantly as is usual in such cases--began
telling of the condition in which she had found Prince Andrew. But
Pierre's face quivering with emotion, his questions and his eager
restless expression, gradually compelled her to go into details
which she feared to recall for her own sake.

"Yes, yes, and so...?" Pierre kept saying as he leaned toward her
with his whole body and eagerly listened to her story. "Yes, yes... so
he grew tranquil and softened? With all his soul he had always
sought one thing--to be perfectly good--so he could not be afraid of
death. The faults he had--if he had any--were not of his making. So he
did soften?... What a happy thing that he saw you again," he added,
suddenly turning to Natasha and looking at her with eyes full of
tears.

Natasha's face twitched. She frowned and lowered her eyes for a
moment. She hesitated for an instant whether to speak or not.

"Yes, that was happiness," she then said in her quiet voice with its
deep chest notes. "For me it certainly was happiness." She paused.
"And he... he... he said he was wishing for it at the very moment I
entered the room...."

Natasha's voice broke. She blushed, pressed her clasped hands on her
knees, and then controlling herself with an evident effort lifted
her head and began to speak rapidly.

"We knew nothing of it when we started from Moscow. I did not dare
to ask about him. Then suddenly Sonya told me he was traveling with
us. I had no idea and could not imagine what state he was in, all I
wanted was to see him and be with him," she said, trembling, and
breathing quickly.

And not letting them interrupt her she went on to tell what she
had never yet mentioned to anyone--all she had lived through during
those three weeks of their journey and life at Yaroslavl.

Pierre listened to her with lips parted and eyes fixed upon her full
of tears. As he listened he did not think of Prince Andrew, nor of
death, nor of what she was telling. He listened to her and felt only
pity for her, for what she was suffering now while she was speaking.

Princess Mary, frowning in her effort to hold back her tears, sat
beside Natasha, and heard for the first time the story of those last
days of her brother's and Natasha's love.

Evidently Natasha needed to tell that painful yet joyful tale.

She spoke, mingling most trifling details with the intimate
secrets of her soul, and it seemed as if she could never finish.
Several times she repeated the same thing twice.

Dessalles' voice was heard outside the door asking whether little
Nicholas might come in to say good night.

"Well, that's all--everything," said Natasha.

She got up quickly just as Nicholas entered, almost ran to the
door which was hidden by curtains, struck her head against it, and
rushed from the room with a moan either of pain or sorrow.

Pierre gazed at the door through which she had disappeared and did
not understand why he suddenly felt all alone in the world.

Princess Mary roused him from his abstraction by drawing his
attention to her nephew who had entered the room.

At that moment of emotional tenderness young Nicholas' face, which
resembled his father's, affected Pierre so much that when he had
kissed the boy he got up quickly, took out his handkerchief, and
went to the window. He wished to take leave of Princess Mary, but
she would not let him go.

"No, Natasha and I sometimes don't go to sleep till after two, so
please don't go. I will order supper. Go downstairs, we will come
immediately."

Before Pierre left the room Princess Mary told him: "This is the
first time she has talked of him like that."





CHAPTER XVII


Pierre was shown into the large, brightly lit dining room; a few
minutes later he heard footsteps and Princess Mary entered with
Natasha. Natasha was calm, though a severe and grave expression had
again settled on her face. They all three of them now experienced that
feeling of awkwardness which usually follows after a serious and
heartfelt talk. It is impossible to go back to the same
conversation, to talk of trifles is awkward, and yet the desire to
speak is there and silence seems like affectation. They went
silently to table. The footmen drew back the chairs and pushed them up
again. Pierre unfolded his cold table napkin and, resolving to break
the silence, looked at Natasha and at Princess Mary. They had
evidently both formed the same resolution; the eyes of both shone with
satisfaction and a confession that besides sorrow life also has joy.

"Do you take vodka, Count?" asked Princess Mary, and those words
suddenly banished the shadows of the past. "Now tell us about
yourself," said she. "One hears such improbable wonders about you."

"Yes," replied Pierre with the smile of mild irony now habitual to
him. "They even tell me wonders I myself never dreamed of! Mary
Abramovna invited me to her house and kept telling me what had
happened, or ought to have happened, to me. Stepan Stepanych also
instructed me how I ought to tell of my experiences. In general I have
noticed that it is very easy to be an interesting man (I am an
interesting man now); people invite me out and tell me all about
myself."

Natasha smiled and was on the point of speaking.

"We have been told," Princess Mary interrupted her, "that you lost
two millions in Moscow. Is that true?"

"But I am three times as rich as before," returned Pierre.

Though the position was now altered by his decision to pay his
wife's debts and to rebuild his houses, Pierre still maintained that
he had become three times as rich as before.

"What I have certainly gained is freedom," he began seriously, but
did not continue, noticing that this theme was too egotistic.

"And are you building?"

"Yes. Savelich says I must!"

"Tell me, you did not know of the countess' death when you decided
to remain in Moscow?" asked Princess Mary and immediately blushed,
noticing that her question, following his mention of freedom, ascribed
to his words a meaning he had perhaps not intended.

"No," answered Pierre, evidently not considering awkward the meaning
Princess Mary had given to his words. "I heard of it in Orel and you
cannot imagine how it shocked me. We were not an exemplary couple," he
added quickly, glancing at Natasha and noticing on her face
curiosity as to how he would speak of his wife, "but her death shocked
me terribly. When two people quarrel they are always both in fault,
and one's own guilt suddenly becomes terribly serious when the other
is no longer alive. And then such a death... without friends and
without consolation! I am very, very sorry for her," he concluded, and
was pleased to notice a look of glad approval on Natasha's face.

"Yes, and so you are once more an eligible bachelor," said
Princess Mary.

Pierre suddenly flushed crimson and for a long time tried not to
look at Natasha. When he ventured to glance her way again her face was
cold, stern, and he fancied even contemptuous.

"And did you really see and speak to Napoleon, as we have been
told?" said Princess Mary.

Pierre laughed.

"No, not once! Everybody seems to imagine that being taken
prisoner means being Napoleon's guest. Not only did I never see him
but I heard nothing about him--I was in much lower company!"

Supper was over, and Pierre who at first declined to speak about his
captivity was gradually led on to do so.

"But it's true that you remained in Moscow to kill Napoleon?"
Natasha asked with a slight smile. "I guessed it then when we met at
the Sukharev tower, do you remember?"

Pierre admitted that it was true, and from that was gradually led by
Princess Mary's questions and especially by Natasha's into giving a
detailed account of his adventures.

At first he spoke with the amused and mild irony now customary
with him toward everybody and especially toward himself, but when he
came to describe the horrors and sufferings he had witnessed he was
unconsciously carried away and began speaking with the suppressed
emotion of a man re-experiencing in recollection strong impressions he
has lived through.

Princess Mary with a gentle smile looked now at Pierre and now at
Natasha. In the whole narrative she saw only Pierre and his
goodness. Natasha, leaning on her elbow, the expression of her face
constantly changing with the narrative, watched Pierre with an
attention that never wandered--evidently herself experiencing all that
he described. Not only her look, but her exclamations and the brief
questions she put, showed Pierre that she understood just what he
wished to convey. It was clear that she understood not only what he
said but also what he wished to, but could not, express in words.
The account Pierre gave of the incident with the child and the woman
for protecting whom he was arrested was this: "It was an awful
sight--children abandoned, some in the flames... One was snatched
out before my eyes... and there were women who had their things
snatched off and their earrings torn out..." he flushed and grew
confused. "Then a patrol arrived and all the men--all those who were
not looting, that is--were arrested, and I among them."

"I am sure you're not telling us everything; I am sure you did
something..." said Natasha and pausing added, "something fine?"

Pierre continued. When he spoke of the execution he wanted to pass
over the horrible details, but Natasha insisted that he should not
omit anything.

Pierre began to tell about Karataev, but paused. By this time he had
risen from the table and was pacing the room, Natasha following him
with her eyes. Then he added:

"No, you can't understand what I learned from that illiterate man-
that simple fellow."

"Yes, yes, go on!" said Natasha. "Where is he?"

"They killed him almost before my eyes."

And Pierre, his voice trembling continually, went on to tell of
the last days of their retreat, of Karataev's illness and his death.

He told of his adventures as he had never yet recalled them. He now,
as it were, saw a new meaning in all he had gone through. Now that
he was telling it all to Natasha he experienced that pleasure which
a man has when women listen to him--not clever women who when
listening either try to remember what they hear to enrich their
minds and when opportunity offers to retell it, or who wish to adopt
it to some thought of their own and promptly contribute their own
clever comments prepared in their little mental workshop--but the
pleasure given by real women gifted with a capacity to select and
absorb the very best a man shows of himself. Natasha without knowing
it was all attention: she did not lose a word, no single quiver in
Pierre's voice, no look, no twitch of a muscle in his face, nor a
single gesture. She caught the unfinished word in its flight and
took it straight into her open heart, divining the secret meaning of
all Pierre's mental travail.

Princess Mary understood his story and sympathized with him, but she
now saw something else that absorbed all her attention. She saw the
possibility of love and happiness between Natasha and Pierre, and
the first thought of this filled her heart with gladness.

It was three o'clock in the morning. The footmen came in with sad
and stern faces to change the candles, but no one noticed them.

Pierre finished his story. Natasha continued to look at him intently
with bright, attentive, and animated eyes, as if trying to
understand something more which he had perhaps left untold. Pierre
in shamefaced and happy confusion glanced occasionally at her, and
tried to think what to say next to introduce a fresh subject. Princess
Mary was silent. It occurred to none of them that it was three o'clock
and time to go to bed.

"People speak of misfortunes and sufferings," remarked Pierre,
"but if at this moment I were asked: 'Would you rather be what you
were before you were taken prisoner, or go through all this again?'
then for heaven's sake let me again have captivity and horseflesh!
We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is
lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins. While
there is life there is happiness. There is much, much before us. I say
this to you," he added, turning to Natasha.

"Yes, yes," she said, answering something quite different. "I too
should wish nothing but to relive it all from the beginning."

Pierre looked intently at her.

"Yes, and nothing more." said Natasha.

"It's not true, not true!" cried Pierre. "I am not to blame for
being alive and wishing to live--nor you either."

Suddenly Natasha bent her head, covered her face with her hands, and
began to cry.

"What is it, Natasha?" said Princess Mary.

"Nothing, nothing." She smiled at Pierre through her tears. "Good
night! It is time for bed."

Pierre rose and took his leave.


Princess Mary and Natasha met as usual in the bedroom. They talked
of what Pierre had told them. Princess Mary did not express her
opinion of Pierre nor did Natasha speak of him.

"Well, good night, Mary!" said Natasha. "Do you know, I am often
afraid that by not speaking of him" (she meant Prince Andrew) "for
fear of not doing justice to our feelings, we forget him."

Princess Mary sighed deeply and thereby acknowledged the justice
of Natasha's remark, but she did not express agreement in words.

"Is it possible to forget?" said she.

"It did me so much good to tell all about it today. It was hard
and painful, but good, very good!" said Natasha. "I am sure he
really loved him. That is why I told him... Was it all right?" she
added, suddenly blushing.

"To tell Pierre? Oh, yes. What a splendid man he is!" said
Princess Mary.

"Do you know, Mary..." Natasha suddenly said with a mischievous
smile such as Princess Mary had not seen on her face for a long
time, "he has somehow grown so clean, smooth, and fresh--as if he
had just come out of a Russian bath; do you understand? Out of a moral
bath. Isn't it true?"

"Yes," replied Princess Mary. "He has greatly improved."

"With a short coat and his hair cropped; just as if, well, just as
if he had come straight from the bath... Papa used to..."

"I understand why he" (Prince Andrew) "liked no one so much as him,"
said Princess Mary.

"Yes, and yet he is quite different. They say men are friends when
they are quite different. That must be true. Really he is quite unlike
him--in everything."

"Yes, but he's wonderful."

"Well, good night," said Natasha.

And the same mischievous smile lingered for a long time on her
face as if it had been forgotten there.




CHAPTER XVIII


It was a long time before Pierre could fall asleep that night. He
paced up and down his room, now turning his thoughts on a difficult
problem and frowning, now suddenly shrugging his shoulders and
wincing, and now smiling happily.

He was thinking of Prince Andrew, of Natasha, and of their love,
at one moment jealous of her past, then reproaching himself for that
feeling. It was already six in the morning and he still paced up and
down the room.

"Well, what's to be done if it cannot be avoided? What's to be done?
Evidently it has to be so," said he to himself, and hastily undressing
he got into bed, happy and agitated but free from hesitation or
indecision.

"Strange and impossible as such happiness seems, I must do
everything that she and I may be man and wife," he told himself.

A few days previously Pierre had decided to go to Petersburg on
the Friday. When he awoke on the Thursday, Savelich came to ask him
about packing for the journey.

"What, to Petersburg? What is Petersburg? Who is there in
Petersburg?" he asked involuntarily, though only to himself. "Oh, yes,
long ago before this happened I did for some reason mean to go to
Petersburg," he reflected. "Why? But perhaps I shall go. What a good
fellow he is and how attentive, and how he remembers everything," he
thought, looking at Savelich's old face, "and what a pleasant smile he
has!"

"Well, Savelich, do you still not wish to accept your freedom?"
Pierre asked him.

"What's the good of freedom to me, your excellency? We lived under
the late count--the kingdom of heaven be his!--and we have lived under
you too, without ever being wronged."

"And your children?"

"The children will live just the same. With such masters one can
live."

"But what about my heirs?" said Pierre. "Supposing I suddenly
marry... it might happen," he added with an involuntary smile.

"If I may take the liberty, your excellency, it would be a good
thing."

"How easy he thinks it," thought Pierre. "He doesn't know how
terrible it is and how dangerous. Too soon or too late... it is
terrible!"

"So what are your orders? Are you starting tomorrow?" asked
Savelich.

"No, I'll put it off for a bit. I'll tell you later. You must
forgive the trouble I have put you to," said Pierre, and seeing
Savelich smile, he thought: "But how strange it is that he should
not know that now there is no Petersburg for me, and that that must be
settled first of all! But probably he knows it well enough and is only
pretending. Shall I have a talk with him and see what he thinks?"
Pierre reflected. "No, another time."

At breakfast Pierre told the princess, his cousin, that he had
been to see Princess Mary the day before and had there met--"Whom do
you think? Natasha Rostova!"

The princess seemed to see nothing more extraordinary in that than
if he had seen Anna Semenovna.

"Do you know her?" asked Pierre.

"I have seen the princess," she replied. "I heard that they were
arranging a match for her with young Rostov. It would be a very good
thing for the Rostovs, they are said to be utterly ruined."

"No; I mean do you know Natasha Rostova?"

"I heard about that affair of hers at the time. It was a great
pity."

"No, she either doesn't understand or is pretending," thought
Pierre. "Better not say anything to her either."

The princess too had prepared provisions for Pierre's journey.

"How kind they all are," thought Pierre. "What is surprising is that
they should trouble about these things now when it can no longer be of
interest to them. And all for me!"

On the same day the Chief of Police came to Pierre, inviting him
to send a representative to the Faceted Palace to recover things
that were to be returned to their owners that day.

"And this man too," thought Pierre, looking into the face of the
Chief of Police. "What a fine, good-looking officer and how kind.
Fancy bothering about such trifies now! And they actually say he is
not honest and takes bribes. What nonsense! Besides, why shouldn't
he take bribes? That's the way he was brought up, and everybody does
it. But what a kind, pleasant face and how he smiles as he looks at
me."

Pierre went to Princess Mary's to dinner.

As he drove through the streets past the houses that had been burned
down, he was surprised by the beauty of those ruins. The
picturesqueness of the chimney stacks and tumble-down walls of the
burned-out quarters of the town, stretching out and concealing one
another, reminded him of the Rhine and the Colosseum. The cabmen he
met and their passengers, the carpenters cutting the timber for new
houses with axes, the women hawkers, and the shopkeepers, all looked
at him with cheerful beaming eyes that seemed to say: "Ah, there he
is! Let's see what will come of it!"

At the entrance to Princess Mary's house Pierre felt doubtful
whether he had really been there the night before and really seen
Natasha and talked to her. "Perhaps I imagined it; perhaps I shall
go in and find no one there." But he had hardly entered the room
before he felt her presence with his whole being by the loss of his
sense of freedom. She was in the same black dress with soft folds
and her hair was done the same way as the day before, yet she was
quite different. Had she been like this when he entered the day before
he could not for a moment have failed to recognize her.

She was as he had known her almost as a child and later on as Prince
Andrew's fiancee. A bright questioning light shone in her eyes, and on
her face was a friendly and strangely roguish expression.

Pierre dined with them and would have spent the whole evening there,
but Princess Mary was going to vespers and Pierre left the house
with her.

Next day he came early, dined, and stayed the whole evening.
Though Princess Mary and Natasha were evidently glad to see their
visitor and though all Pierre's interest was now centered in that
house, by the evening they had talked over everything and the
conversation passed from one trivial topic to another and repeatedly
broke off. He stayed so long that Princess Mary and Natasha
exchanged glances, evidently wondering when he would go. Pierre
noticed this but could not go. He felt uneasy and embarrassed, but sat
on because he simply could not get up and take his leave.

Princess Mary, foreseeing no end to this, rose first, and
complaining of a headache began to say good night.

"So you are going to Petersburg tomorrow?" she asked.

"No, I am not going," Pierre replied hastily, in a surprised tone
and as though offended. "Yes... no... to Petersburg? Tomorrow--but I
won't say good-by yet. I will call round in case you have any
commissions for me," said he, standing before Princess Mary and
turning red, but not taking his departure.

Natasha gave him her hand and went out. Princess Mary on the other
hand instead of going away sank into an armchair, and looked sternly
and intently at him with her deep, radiant eyes. The weariness she had
plainly shown before had now quite passed off. With a deep and
long-drawn sigh she seemed to be prepared for a lengthy talk.

When Natasha left the room Pierre's confusion and awkwardness
immediately vanished and were replaced by eager excitement. He quickly
moved an armchair toward Princess Mary.

"Yes, I wanted to tell you," said he, answering her look as if she
had spoken. "Princess, help me! What am I to do? Can I hope? Princess,
my dear friend, listen! I know it all. I know I am not worthy of
her, I know it's impossible to speak of it now. But I want to be a
brother to her. No, not that, I don't, I can't..."

He paused and rubbed his face and eyes with his hands.

"Well," he went on with an evident effort at self-control and
coherence. "I don't know when I began to love her, but I have loved
her and her alone all my life, and I love her so that I cannot imagine
life without her. I cannot propose to her at present, but the
thought that perhaps she might someday be my wife and that I may be
missing that possibility... that possibility... is terrible. Tell
me, can I hope? Tell me what I am to do, dear princess!" he added
after a pause, and touched her hand as she did not reply.

"I am thinking of what you have told me," answered Princess Mary.
"This is what I will say. You are right that to speak to her of love
at present..."

Princess Mary stopped. She was going to say that to speak of love
was impossible, but she stopped because she had seen by the sudden
change in Natasha two days before that she would not only not be
hurt if Pierre spoke of his love, but that it was the very thing she
wished for.

"To speak to her now wouldn't do," said the princess all the same.

"But what am I to do?"

"Leave it to me," said Princess Mary. "I know..."

Pierre was looking into Princess Mary's eyes.

"Well?... Well?..." he said.

"I know that she loves... will love you," Princess Mary corrected
herself.

Before her words were out, Pierre had sprung up and with a
frightened expression seized Princess Mary's hand.

"What makes you think so? You think I may hope? You think...?"

"Yes, I think so," said Princess Mary with a smile. "Write to her
parents, and leave it to me. I will tell her when I can. I wish it
to happen and my heart tells me it will."

"No, it cannot be! How happy I am! But it can't be.... How happy I
am! No, it can't be!" Pierre kept saying as he kissed Princess
Mary's hands.

"Go to Petersburg, that will be best. And I will write to you,"
she said.

"To Petersburg? Go there? Very well, I'll go. But I may come again
tomorrow?"

Next day Pierre came to say good-by. Natasha was less animated
than she had been the day before; but that day as he looked at her
Pierre sometimes felt as if he was vanishing and that neither he nor
she existed any longer, that nothing existed but happiness. "Is it
possible? No, it can't be," he told himself at every look, gesture,
and word that filled his soul with joy.

When on saying good-by he took her thin, slender hand, he could
not help holding it a little longer in his own.

"Is it possible that this hand, that face, those eyes, all this
treasure of feminine charm so strange to me now, is it possible that
it will one day be mine forever, as familiar to me as I am to
myself?... No, that's impossible!..."

"Good-by, Count," she said aloud. "I shall look forward very much to
your return," she added in a whisper.

And these simple words, her look, and the expression on her face
which accompanied them, formed for two months the subject of
inexhaustible memories, interpretations, and happy meditations for
Pierre. "'I shall look forward very much to your return....' Yes, yes,
how did she say it? Yes, 'I shall look forward very much to your
return.' Oh, how happy I am! What is happening to me? How happy I am!"
said Pierre to himself.





CHAPTER XIX


There was nothing in Pierre's soul now at all like what had troubled
it during his courtship of Helene.

He did not repeat to himself with a sickening feeling of shame the
words he had spoken, or say: "Oh, why did I not say that?" and,
"Whatever made me say 'Je vous aime'?" On the contrary, he now
repeated in imagination every word that he or Natasha had spoken and
pictured every detail of her face and smile, and did not wish to
diminish or add anything, but only to repeat it again and again. There
was now not a shadow of doubt in his mind as to whether what he had
undertaken was right or wrong. Only one terrible doubt sometimes
crossed his mind: "Wasn't it all a dream? Isn't Princess Mary
mistaken? Am I not too conceited and self-confident? I believe all
this--and suddenly Princess Mary will tell her, and she will be sure
to smile and say: 'How strange! He must be deluding himself. Doesn't
he know that he is a man, just a man, while I...? I am something
altogether different and higher.'"

That was the only doubt often troubling Pierre. He did not now
make any plans. The happiness before him appeared so inconceivable
that if only he could attain it, it would be the end of all things.
Everything ended with that.

A joyful, unexpected frenzy, of which he had thought himself
incapable, possessed him. The whole meaning of life--not for him alone
but for the whole world--seemed to him centered in his love and the
possibility of being loved by her. At times everybody seemed to him to
be occupied with one thing only--his future happiness. Sometimes it
seemed to him that other people were all as pleased as he was
himself and merely tried to hide that pleasure by pretending to be
busy with other interests. In every word and gesture he saw
allusions to his happiness. He often surprised those he met by his
significantly happy looks and smiles which seemed to express a
secret understanding between him and them. And when he realized that
people might not be aware of his happiness, he pitied them with his
whole heart and felt a desire somehow to explain to them that all that
occupied them was a mere frivolous trifle unworthy of attention.

When it was suggested to him that he should enter the civil service,
or when the war or any general political affairs were discussed on the
assumption that everybody's welfare depended on this or that issue
of events, he would listen with a mild and pitying smile and
surprise people by his strange comments. But at this time he saw
everybody--both those who, as he imagined, understood the real meaning
of life (that is, what he was feeling) and those unfortunates who
evidently did not understand it--in the bright light of the emotion
that shone within himself, and at once without any effort saw in
everyone he met everything that was good and worthy of being loved.

When dealing with the affairs and papers of his dead wife, her
memory aroused in him no feeling but pity that she had not known the
bliss he now knew. Prince Vasili, who having obtained a new post and
some fresh decorations was particularly proud at this time, seemed
to him a pathetic, kindly old man much to be pitied.

Often in afterlife Pierre recalled this period of blissful insanity.
All the views he formed of men and circumstances at this time remained
true for him always. He not only did not renounce them subsequently,
but when he was in doubt or inwardly at variance, he referred to the
views he had held at this time of his madness and they always proved
correct.

"I may have appeared strange and queer then," he thought, "but I was
not so mad as I seemed. On the contrary I was then wiser and had
more insight than at any other time, and understood all that is
worth understanding in life, because... because I was happy."

Pierre's insanity consisted in not waiting, as he used to do, to
discover personal attributes which he termed "good qualities" in
people before loving them; his heart was now overflowing with love,
and by loving people without cause he discovered indubitable causes
for loving them.





CHAPTER XX


After Pierre's departure that first evening, when Natasha had said
to Princess Mary with a gaily mocking smile: "He looks just, yes, just
as if he had come out of a Russian bath--in a short coat and with
his hair cropped," something hidden and unknown to herself, but
irrepressible, awoke in Natasha's soul.

Everything: her face, walk, look, and voice, was suddenly altered.
To her own surprise a power of life and hope of happiness rose to
the surface and demanded satisfaction. From that evening she seemed to
have forgotten all that had happened to her. She no longer
complained of her position, did not say a word about the past, and
no longer feared to make happy plans for the future. She spoke
little of Pierre, but when Princess Mary mentioned him a
long-extinguished light once more kindled in her eyes and her lips
curved with a strange smile.

The change that took place in Natasha at first surprised Princess
Mary; but when she understood its meaning it grieved her. "Can she
have loved my brother so little as to be able to forget him so
soon?" she thought when she reflected on the change. But when she
was with Natasha she was not vexed with her and did not reproach
her. The reawakened power of life that had seized Natasha was so
evidently irrepressible and unexpected by her that in her presence
Princess Mary felt that she had no right to reproach her even in her
heart.

 Natasha gave herself up so fully and frankly to this new feeling
that she did not try to hide the fact that she was no longer sad,
but bright and cheerful.

When Princess Mary returned to her room after her nocturnal talk
with Pierre, Natasha met her on the threshold.

"He has spoken? Yes? He has spoken?" she repeated.

And a joyful yet pathetic expression which seemed to beg forgiveness
for her joy settled on Natasha's face.

"I wanted to listen at the door, but I knew you would tell me."

Understandable and touching as the look with which Natasha gazed
at her seemed to Princess Mary, and sorry as she was to see her
agitation, these words pained her for a moment. She remembered her
brother and his love.

"But what's to be done? She can't help it," thought the princess.

And with a sad and rather stern look she told Natasha all that
Pierre had said. On hearing that he was going to Petersburg Natasha
was astounded.

"To Petersburg!" she repeated as if unable to understand.

But noticing the grieved expression on Princess Mary's face she
guessed the reason of that sadness and suddenly began to cry.

"Mary," said she, "tell me what I should do! I am afraid of being
bad. Whatever you tell me, I will do. Tell me...."

"You love him?"

"Yes," whispered Natasha.

"Then why are you crying? I am happy for your sake," said Princess
Mary, who because of those tears quite forgave Natasha's joy.

"It won't be just yet--someday. Think what fun it will be when I
am his wife and you marry Nicholas!"

"Natasha, I have asked you not to speak of that. Let us talk about
you."

They were silent awhile.

"But why go to Petersburg?" Natasha suddenly asked, and hastily
replied to her own question. "But no, no, he must... Yes, Mary, He
must...."






FIRST EPILOGUE: 1813 --20





CHAPTER I


Seven years had passed. The storm-tossed sea of European history had
subsided within its shores and seemed to have become calm. But the
mysterious forces that move humanity (mysterious because the laws of
their motion are unknown to us) continued to operate.

Though the surface of the sea of history seemed motionless, the
movement of humanity went on as unceasingly as the flow of time.
Various groups of people formed and dissolved, the coming formation
and dissolution of kingdoms and displacement of peoples was in
course of preparation.

The sea of history was not driven spasmodically from shore to
shore as previously. It was seething in its depths. Historic figures
were not borne by the waves from one shore to another as before.
They now seemed to rotate on one spot. The historical figures at the
head of armies, who formerly reflected the movement of the masses by
ordering wars, campaigns, and battles, now reflected the restless
movement by political and diplomatic combinations, laws, and treaties.

The historians call this activity of the historical figures "the
reaction."

In dealing with this period they sternly condemn the historical
personages who, in their opinion, caused what they describe as the
reaction. All the well-known people of that period, from Alexander and
Napoleon to Madame de Stael, Photius, Schelling, Fichte,
Chateaubriand, and the rest, pass before their stern judgment seat and
are acquitted or condemned according to whether they conduced to
progress or to reaction.

According to their accounts a reaction took place at that time in
Russia also, and the chief culprit was Alexander I, the same man who
according to them was the chief cause of the liberal movement at the
commencement of his reign, being the savior of Russia.

There is no one in Russian literature now, from schoolboy essayist
to learned historian, who does not throw his little stone at Alexander
for things he did wrong at this period of his reign.

"He ought to have acted in this way and in that way. In this case he
did well and in that case badly. He behaved admirably at the beginning
of his reign and during 1812, but acted badly by giving a constitution
to Poland, forming the Holy Alliance, entrusting power to Arakcheev,
favoring Golitsyn and mysticism, and afterwards Shishkov and
Photius. He also acted badly by concerning himself with the active
army and disbanding the Semenov regiment."

It would take a dozen pages to enumerate all the reproaches the
historians address to him, based on their knowledge of what is good
for humanity.

What do these reproaches mean?

Do not the very actions for which the historians praise Alexander
I (the liberal attempts at the beginning of his reign, his struggle
with Napoleon, the firmness he displayed in 1812 and the campaign of
1813) flow from the same sources--the circumstances of his birth,
education, and life--that made his personality what it was and from
which the actions for which they blame him (the Holy Alliance, the
restoration of Poland, and the reaction of 1820 and later) also
flowed?

In what does the substance of those reproaches lie?

It lies in the fact that an historic character like Alexander I,
standing on the highest possible pinnacle of human power with the
blinding light of history focused upon him; a character exposed to
those strongest of all influences: the intrigues, flattery, and
self-deception inseparable from power; a character who at every moment
of his life felt a responsibility for all that was happening in
Europe; and not a fictitious but a live character who like every man
had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness,
beauty, and truth--that this character--though not lacking in virtue
(the historians do not accuse him of that)--had not the same
conception of the welfare of humanity fifty years ago as a present-day
professor who from his youth upwards has been occupied with
learning: that is, with books and lectures and with taking notes
from them.

But even if we assume that fifty years ago Alexander I was
mistaken in his view of what was good for the people, we must
inevitably assume that the historian who judges Alexander will also
after the lapse of some time turn out to be mistaken in his view of
what is good for humanity. This assumption is all the more natural and
inevitable because, watching the movement of history, we see that
every year and with each new writer, opinion as to what is good for
mankind changes; so that what once seemed good, ten years later
seems bad, and vice versa. And what is more, we find at one and the
same time quite contradictory views as to what is bad and what is good
in history: some people regard giving a constitution to Poland and
forming the Holy Alliance as praiseworthy in Alexander, while others
regard it as blameworthy.

The activity of Alexander or of Napoleon cannot be called useful
or harmful, for it is impossible to say for what it was useful or
harmful. If that activity displeases somebody, this is only because it
does not agree with his limited understanding of what is good. Whether
the preservation of my father's house in Moscow, or the glory of the
Russian arms, or the prosperity of the Petersburg and other
universities, or the freedom of Poland or the greatness of Russia,
or the balance of power in Europe, or a certain kind of European
culture called "progress" appear to me to be good or bad, I must admit
that besides these things the action of every historic character has
other more general purposes inaccessible to me.

But let us assume that what is called science can harmonize all
contradictions and possesses an unchanging standard of good and bad by
which to try historic characters and events; let us say that Alexander
could have done everything differently; let us say that with
guidance from those who blame him and who profess to know the ultimate
aim of the movement of humanity, he might have arranged matters
according to the program his present accusers would have given him--of
nationality, freedom, equality, and progress (these, I think, cover
the ground). Let us assume that this program was possible and had then
been formulated, and that Alexander had acted on it. What would then
have become of the activity of all those who opposed the tendency that
then prevailed in the government--an activity that in the opinion of
the historians was good and beneficent? Their activity would not
have existed: there would have been no life, there would have been
nothing.

If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the
possibility of life is destroyed.





CHAPTER II


If we assume as the historians do that great men lead humanity to
the attainment of certain ends--the greatness of Russia or of
France, the balance of power in Europe, the diffusion of the ideas
of the Revolution general progress or anything else--then it is
impossible to explain the facts of history without introducing the
conceptions of chance and genius.

If the aim of the European wars at the beginning of the nineteenth
century had been the aggrandizement of Russia, that aim might have
been accomplished without all the preceding wars and without the
invasion. If the aim was the aggrandizement of France, that might have
been attained without the Revolution and without the Empire. If the
aim was the dissemination of ideas, the printing press could have
accomplished that much better than warfare. If the aim was the
progress of civilization, it is easy to see that there are other
ways of diffusing civilization more expedient than by the
destruction of wealth and of human lives.

Why did it happen in this and not in some other way?

Because it happened so! "Chance created the situation; genius
utilized it," says history.

But what is chance? What is genius?

The words chance and genius do not denote any really existing
thing and therefore cannot be defined. Those words only denote a
certain stage of understanding of phenomena. I do not know why a
certain event occurs; I think that I cannot know it; so I do not try
to know it and I talk about chance. I see a force producing effects
beyond the scope of ordinary human agencies; I do not understand why
this occurs and I talk of genius.

To a herd of rams, the ram the herdsman drives each evening into a
special enclosure to feed and that becomes twice as fat as the
others must seem to be a genius. And it must appear an astonishing
conjunction of genius with a whole series of extraordinary chances
that this ram, who instead of getting into the general fold every
evening goes into a special enclosure where there are oats--that
this very ram, swelling with fat, is killed for meat.

But the rams need only cease to suppose that all that happens to
them happens solely for the attainment of their sheepish aims; they
need only admit that what happens to them may also have purposes
beyond their ken, and they will at once perceive a unity and coherence
in what happened to the ram that was fattened. Even if they do not
know for what purpose they are fattened, they will at least know
that all that happened to the ram did not happen accidentally, and
will no longer need the conceptions of chance or genius.

Only by renouncing our claim to discern a purpose immediately
intelligible to us, and admitting the ultimate purpose to be beyond
our ken, may we discern the sequence of experiences in the lives of
historic characters and perceive the cause of the effect they
produce (incommensurable with ordinary human capabilities), and then
the words chance and genius become superfluous.

We need only confess that we do not know the purpose of the European
convulsions and that we know only the facts--that is, the murders,
first in France, then in Italy, in Africa, in Prussia, in Austria,
in Spain, and in Russia--and that the movements from the west to the
east and from the east to the west form the essence and purpose of
these events, and not only shall we have no need to see exceptional
ability and genius in Napoleon and Alexander, but we shall be unable
to consider them to be anything but like other men, and we shall not
be obliged to have recourse to chance for an explanation of those
small events which made these people what they were, but it will be
clear that all those small events were inevitable.

By discarding a claim to knowledge of the ultimate purpose, we shall
clearly perceive that just as one cannot imagine a blossom or seed for
any single plant better suited to it than those it produces, so it
is impossible to imagine any two people more completely adapted down
to the smallest detail for the purpose they had to fulfill, than
Napoleon and Alexander with all their antecedents.





CHAPTER III


The fundamental and essential significance of the European events of
the beginning of the nineteenth century lies in the movement of the
mass of the European peoples from west to east and afterwards from
east to west. The commencement of that movement was the movement
from west to east. For the peoples of the west to be able to make
their warlike movement to Moscow it was necessary: (1) that they
should form themselves into a military group of a size able to
endure a collision with the warlike military group of the east, (2)
that they should abandon all established traditions and customs, and
(3) that during their military movement they should have at their head
a man who could justify to himself and to them the deceptions,
robberies, and murders which would have to be committed during that
movement.

And beginning with the French Revolution the old inadequately
large group was destroyed, as well as the old habits and traditions,
and step by step a group was formed of larger dimensions with new
customs and traditions, and a man was produced who would stand at
the head of the coming movement and bear the responsibility for all
that had to be done.

A man without convictions, without habits, without traditions,
without a name, and not even a Frenchman, emerges--by what seem the
strangest chances--from among all the seething French parties, and
without joining any one of them is borne forward to a prominent
position.

The ignorance of his colleagues, the weakness and insignificance
of his opponents, the frankness of his falsehoods, and the dazzling
and self-confident limitations of this man raise him to the head of
the army. The brilliant qualities of the soldiers of the army sent
to Italy, his opponents' reluctance to fight, and his own childish
audacity and self-confidence secure him military fame. Innumerable
so called chances accompany him everywhere. The disfavor into which he
falls with the rulers of France turns to his advantage. His attempts
to avoid his predestined path are unsuccessful: he is not received
into the Russian service, and the appointment he seeks in Turkey comes
to nothing. During the war in Italy he is several times on the verge
of destruction and each time is saved in an unexpected manner. Owing
to various diplomatic considerations the Russian armies--just those
which might have destroyed his prestige--do not appear upon the
scene till he is no longer there.

On his return from Italy he finds the government in Paris in a
process of dissolution in which all those who are in it are inevitably
wiped out and destroyed. And by chance an escape from this dangerous
position presents itself in the form of an aimless and senseless
expedition to Africa. Again so-called chance accompanies him.
Impregnable Malta surrenders without a shot; his most reckless schemes
are crowned with success. The enemy's fleet, which subsequently did
not let a single boat pass, allows his entire army to elude it. In
Africa a whole series of outrages are committed against the almost
unarmed inhabitants. And the men who commit these crimes, especially
their leader, assure themselves that this is admirable, this is glory-
it resembles Caesar and Alexander the Great and is therefore good.

This ideal of glory and grandeur--which consists not merely in
considering nothing wrong that one does but in priding oneself on
every crime one commits, ascribing to it an incomprehensible
supernatural significance--that ideal, destined to guide this man
and his associates, had scope for its development in Africa.
Whatever he does succeeds. The plague does not touch him. The
cruelty of murdering prisoners is not imputed to him as a fault. His
childishly rash, uncalled-for, and ignoble departure from Africa,
leaving his comrades in distress, is set down to his credit, and again
the enemy's fleet twice lets him slip past. When, intoxicated by the
crimes he has committed so successfully, he reaches Paris, the
dissolution of the republican government, which a year earlier might
have ruined him, has reached its extreme limit, and his presence there
now as a newcomer free from party entanglements can only serve to
exalt him--and though he himself has no plan, he is quite ready for
his new role.

He had no plan, he was afraid of everything, but the parties
snatched at him and demanded his participation.

He alone--with his ideal of glory and grandeur developed in Italy
and Egypt, his insane self-adulation, his boldness in crime and
frankness in lying--he alone could justify what had to be done.

He is needed for the place that awaits him, and so almost apart from
his will and despite his indecision, his lack of a plan, and all his
mistakes, he is drawn into a conspiracy that aims at seizing power and
the conspiracy is crowned with success.

He is pushed into a meeting of the legislature. In alarm he wishes
to flee, considering himself lost. He pretends to fall into a swoon
and says senseless things that should have ruined him. But the once
proud and shrewd rulers of France, feeling that their part is played
out, are even more bewildered than he, and do not say the words they
should have said to destroy him and retain their power.

Chance, millions of chances, give him power, and all men as if by
agreement co-operate to confirm that power. Chance forms the
characters of the rulers of France, who submit to him; chance forms
the character of Paul I of Russia who recognizes his government;
chance contrives a plot against him which not only fails to harm him
but confirms his power. Chance puts the Duc d'Enghien in his hands and
unexpectedly causes him to kill him--thereby convincing the mob more
forcibly than in any other way that he had the right, since he had the
might. Chance contrives that though he directs all his efforts to
prepare an expedition against England (which would inevitably have
ruined him) he never carries out that intention, but unexpectedly
falls upon Mack and the Austrians, who surrender without a battle.
Chance and genius give him the victory at Austerlitz; and by chance
all men, not only the French but all Europe--except England which does
not take part in the events about to happen--despite their former
horror and detestation of his crimes, now recognize his authority, the
title he has given himself, and his ideal of grandeur and glory, which
seems excellent and reasonable to them all.

As if measuring themselves and preparing for the coming movement,
the western forces push toward the east several times in 1805, 1806,
1807, and 1809, gaining strength and growing. In 1811 the group of
people that had formed in France unites into one group with the
peoples of Central Europe. The strength of the justification of the
man who stands at the head of the movement grows with the increased
size of the group. During the ten-year preparatory period this man had
formed relations with all the crowned heads of Europe. The discredited
rulers of the world can oppose no reasonable ideal to the insensate
Napoleonic ideal of glory and grandeur. One after another they
hasten to display their insignificance before him. The King of Prussia
sends his wife to seek the great man's mercy; the Emperor of Austria
considers it a favor that this man receives a daughter the Caesars
into his bed; the Pope, the guardian of all that the nations hold
sacred, utilizes religion for the aggrandizement of the great man.
It is not Napoleon who prepares himself for the accomplishment of
his role, so much as all those round him who prepare him to take on
himself the whole responsibility for what is happening and has to
happen. There is no step, no crime or petty fraud he commits, which in
the mouths of those around him is not at once represented as a great
deed. The most suitable fete the Germans can devise for him is a
celebration of Jena and Auerstadt. Not only is he great, but so are
his ancestors, his brothers, his stepsons, and his brothers-in-law.
Everything is done to deprive him of the remains of his reason and
to prepare him for his terrible part. And when he is ready so too
are the forces.

The invasion pushes eastward and reaches its final goal--Moscow.
That city is taken; the Russian army suffers heavier losses than the
opposing armies had suffered in the former war from Austerlitz to
Wagram. But suddenly instead of those chances and that genius which
hitherto had so consistently led him by an uninterrupted series of
successes to the predestined goal, an innumerable sequence of
inverse chances occur--from the cold in his head at Borodino to the
sparks which set Moscow on fire, and the frosts--and instead of
genius, stupidity and immeasurable baseness become evident.

The invaders flee, turn back, flee again, and all the chances are
now not for Napoleon but always against him.

A countermovement is then accomplished from east to west with a
remarkable resemblance to the preceding movement from west to east.
Attempted drives from east to west--similar to the contrary
movements of 1805, 1807, and 1809--precede the great westward
movement; there is the same coalescence into a group of enormous
dimensions; the same adhesion of the people of Central Europe to the
movement; the same hesitation midway, and the same increasing rapidity
as the goal is approached.

Paris, the ultimate goal, is reached. The Napoleonic government
and army are destroyed. Napoleon himself is no longer of any
account; all his actions are evidently pitiful and mean, but again
an inexplicable chance occurs. The allies detest Napoleon whom they
regard as the cause of their sufferings. Deprived of power and
authority, his crimes and his craft exposed, he should have appeared
to them what he appeared ten years previously and one year later--an
outlawed brigand. But by some strange chance no one perceives this.
His part is not yet ended. The man who ten years before and a year
later was considered an outlawed brigand is sent to an island two
days' sail from France, which for some reason is presented to him as
his dominion, and guards are given to him and millions of money are
paid him.





CHAPTER IV


The flood of nations begins to subside into its normal channels. The
waves of the great movement abate, and on the calm surface eddies
are formed in which float the diplomatists, who imagine that they have
caused the floods to abate.

But the smooth sea again suddenly becomes disturbed. The
diplomatists think that their disagreements are the cause of this
fresh pressure of natural forces; they anticipate war between their
sovereigns; the position seems to them insoluble. But the wave they
feel to be rising does not come from the quarter they expect. It rises
again from the same point as before--Paris. The last backwash of the
movement from the west occurs: a backwash which serves to solve the
apparently insuperable diplomatic difficulties and ends the military
movement of that period of history.

The man who had devastated France returns to France alone, without
any conspiracy and without soldiers. Any guard might arrest him, but
by strange chance no one does so and all rapturously greet the man
they cursed the day before and will curse again a month later.

This man is still needed to justify the final collective act.

That act is performed.

The last role is played. The actor is bidden to disrobe and wash off
his powder and paint: he will not be wanted any more.

And some years pass during which he plays a pitiful comedy to
himself in solitude on his island, justifying his actions by intrigues
and lies when the justification is no longer needed, and displaying to
the whole world what it was that people had mistaken for strength as
long as an unseen hand directed his actions.

The manager having brought the drama to a close and stripped the
actor shows him to us.

"See what you believed in! This is he! Do you now see that it was
not he but I who moved you?"

But dazed by the force of the movement, it was long before people
understood this.

Still greater coherence and inevitability is seen in the life of
Alexander I, the man who stood at the head of the countermovement from
east to west.

What was needed for him who, overshadowing others, stood at the head
of that movement from east to west?

What was needed was a sense of justice and a sympathy with
European affairs, but a remote sympathy not dulled by petty interests;
a moral superiority over those sovereigns of the day who co-operated
with him; a mild and attractive personality; and a personal
grievance against Napoleon. And all this was found in Alexander I; all
this had been prepared by innumerable so-called chances in his life:
his education, his early liberalism, the advisers who surrounded
him, and by Austerlitz, and Tilsit, and Erfurt.

During the national war he was inactive because he was not needed.
But as soon as the necessity for a general European war presented
itself he appeared in his place at the given moment and, uniting the
nations of Europe, led them to the goal.

The goal is reached. After the final war of 1815 Alexander possesses
all possible power. How does he use it?

Alexander I--the pacifier of Europe, the man who from his early
years had striven only for his people's welfare, the originator of the
liberal innovations in his fatherland--now that he seemed to possess
the utmost power and therefore to have the possibility of bringing
about the welfare of his peoples--at the time when Napoleon in exile
was drawing up childish and mendacious plans of how he would have made
mankind happy had he retained power--Alexander I, having fulfilled his
mission and feeling the hand of God upon him, suddenly recognizes
the insignificance of that supposed power, turns away from it, and
gives it into the hands of contemptible men whom he despises, saying
only:

"Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy Name!... I too am a man like
the rest of you. Let me live like a man and think of my soul and of
God."

As the sun and each atom of ether is a sphere complete in itself,
and yet at the same time only a part of a whole too immense for man to
comprehend, so each individual has within himself his own aims and yet
has them to serve a general purpose incomprehensible to man.

A bee settling on a flower has stung a child. And the child is
afraid of bees and declares that bees exist to sting people. A poet
admires the bee sucking from the chalice of a flower and says it
exists to suck the fragrance of flowers. A beekeeper, seeing the bee
collect pollen from flowers and carry it to the hive, says that it
exists to gather honey. Another beekeeper who has studied the life
of the hive more closely says that the bee gathers pollen dust to feed
the young bees and rear a queen, and that it exists to perpetuate
its race. A botanist notices that the bee flying with the pollen of
a male flower to a pistil fertilizes the latter, and sees in this
the purpose of the bee's existence. Another, observing the migration
of plants, notices that the bee helps in this work, and may say that
in this lies the purpose of the bee. But the ultimate purpose of the
bee is not exhausted by the first, the second, or any of the processes
the human mind can discern. The higher the human intellect rises in
the discovery of these purposes, the more obvious it becomes, that the
ultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension.

All that is accessible to man is the relation of the life of the bee
to other manifestations of life. And so it is with the purpose of
historic characters and nations.





CHAPTER V


Natasha's wedding to Bezukhov, which took place in 1813, was the
last happy event in the family of the old Rostovs. Count Ilya Rostov
died that same year and, as always happens, after the father's death
the family group broke up.

The events of the previous year: the burning of Moscow and the
flight from it, the death of Prince Andrew, Natasha's despair, Petya's
death, and the old countess' grief fell blow after blow on the old
count's head. He seemed to be unable to understand the meaning of
all these events, and bowed his old head in a spiritual sense as if
expecting and inviting further blows which would finish him. He seemed
now frightened and distraught and now unnaturally animated and
enterprising.

The arrangements for Natasha's marriage occupied him for a while. He
ordered dinners and suppers and obviously tried to appear cheerful,
but his cheerfulness was not infectious as it used to be: on the
contrary it evoked the compassion of those who knew and liked him.

When Pierre and his wife had left, he grew very quiet and began to
complain of depression. A few days later he fell ill and took to his
bed. He realized from the first that he would not get up again,
despite the doctor's encouragement. The countess passed a fortnight in
an armchair by his pillow without undressing. Every time she gave
him his medicine he sobbed and silently kissed her hand. On his last
day, sobbing, he asked her and his absent son to forgive him for
having dissipated their property--that being the chief fault of
which he was conscious. After receiving communion and unction he
quietly died; and next day a throng of acquaintances who came to pay
their last respects to the deceased filled the house rented by the
Rostovs. All these acquaintances, who had so often dined and danced at
his house and had so often laughed at him, now said, with a common
feeling of self-reproach and emotion, as if justifying themselves:
"Well, whatever he may have been he was a most worthy man. You don't
meet such men nowadays.... And which of us has not weaknesses of his
own?"

It was just when the count's affairs had become so involved that
it was impossible to say what would happen if he lived another year
that he unexpectedly died.

Nicholas was with the Russian army in Paris when the news of his
father's death reached him. He at once resigned his commission, and
without waiting for it to be accepted took leave of absence and went
to Moscow. The state of the count's affairs became quite obvious a
month after his death, surprising everyone by the immense total of
small debts the existence of which no one had suspected. The debts
amounted to double the value of the property.

Friends and relations advised Nicholas to decline the inheritance.
But he regarded such a refusal as a slur on his father's memory, which
he held sacred, and therefore would not hear of refusing and
accepted the inheritance together with the obligation to pay the
debts.

The creditors who had so long been silent, restrained by a vague but
powerful influence exerted on them while he lived by the count's
careless good nature, all proceeded to enforce their claims at once.
As always happens in such cases rivalry sprang up as to which should
get paid first, and those who like Mitenka held promissory notes given
them as presents now became the most exacting of the creditors.
Nicholas was allowed no respite and no peace, and those who had seemed
to pity the old man--the cause of their losses (if they were
losses)--now remorselessly pursued the young heir who had
voluntarily undertaken the debts and was obviously not guilty of
contracting them.

Not one of the plans Nicholas tried succeeded; the estate was sold
by auction for half its value, and half the debts still remained
unpaid. Nicholas accepted thirty thousand rubles offered him by his
brother-in-law Bezukhov to pay off debts he regarded as genuinely
due for value received. And to avoid being imprisoned for the
remainder, as the creditors threatened, he re-entered the government
service.

He could not rejoin the army where he would have been made colonel
at the next vacancy, for his mother now clung to him as her one hold
on life; and so despite his reluctance to remain in Moscow among people
who had known him before, and despite his abhorrence of the civil
service, he accepted a post in Moscow in that service, doffed the
uniform of which he was so fond, and moved with his mother and Sonya
to a small house on the Sivtsev Vrazhek.

Natasha and Pierre were living in Petersburg at the time and had
no clear idea of Nicholas' circumstances. Having borrowed money from
his brother-in-law, Nicholas tried to hide his wretched condition from
him. His position was the more difficult because with his salary of
twelve hundred rubles he had not only to keep himself, his mother, and
Sonya, but had to shield his mother from knowledge of their poverty.
The countess could not conceive of life without the luxurious
conditions she had been used to from childhood and, unable to
realize how hard it was for her son, kept demanding now a carriage
(which they did not keep) to send for a friend, now some expensive
article of food for herself, or wine for her son, or money to buy a
present as a surprise for Natasha or Sonya, or for Nicholas himself.

Sonya kept house, attended on her aunt, read to her, put up with her
whims and secret ill-will, and helped Nicholas to conceal their
poverty from the old countess. Nicholas felt himself irredeemably
indebted to Sonya for all she was doing for his mother and greatly
admired her patience and devotion, but tried to keep aloof from her.

He seemed in his heart to reproach her for being too perfect, and
because there was nothing to reproach her with. She had all that
people are valued for, but little that could have made him love her.
He felt that the more he valued her the less he loved her. He had
taken her at her word when she wrote giving him his freedom and now
behaved as if all that had passed between them had been long forgotten
and could never in any case be renewed.

Nicholas' position became worse and worse. The idea of putting
something aside out of his salary proved a dream. Not only did he
not save anything, but to comply with his mother's demands he even
incurred some small debts. He could see no way out of this
situation. The idea of marrying some rich woman, which was suggested
to him by his female relations, was repugnant to him. The other way
out--his mother's death--never entered his head. He wished for nothing
and hoped for nothing, and deep in his heart experienced a gloomy
and stern satisfaction in an uncomplaining endurance of his
position. He tried to avoid his old acquaintances with their
commiseration and offensive offers of assistance; he avoided all
distraction and recreation, and even at home did nothing but play
cards with his mother, pace silently up and down the room, and smoke
one pipe after another. He seemed carefully to cherish within
himself the gloomy mood which alone enabled him to endure his
position.





CHAPTER VI


At the beginning of winter Princess Mary came to Moscow. From
reports current in town she learned how the Rostovs were situated, and
how "the son has sacrificed himself for his mother," as people were
saying.

"I never expected anything else of him," said Princess Mary to
herself, feeling a joyous sense of her love for him. Remembering her
friendly relations with all the Rostovs which had made her almost a
member of the family, she thought it her duty to go to see them. But
remembering her relations with Nicholas in Voronezh she was shy
about doing so. Making a great effort she did however go to call on
them a few weeks after her arrival in Moscow.

Nicholas was the first to meet her, as the countess' room could only
be reached through his. But instead of being greeted with pleasure
as she had expected, at his first glance at her his face assumed a
cold, stiff, proud expression she had not seen on it before. He
inquired about her health, led the way to his mother, and having sat
there for five minutes left the room.

When the princess came out of the countess' room Nicholas met her
again, and with marked solemnity and stiffness accompanied her to
the anteroom. To her remarks about his mother's health he made no
reply. "What's that to you? Leave me in peace," his looks seemed to
say.

"Why does she come prowling here? What does she want? I can't bear
these ladies and all these civilities!" said he aloud in Sonya's
presence, evidently unable to repress his vexation, after the
princess' carriage had disappeared.

"Oh, Nicholas, how can you talk like that?" cried Sonya, hardly able
to conceal her delight. "She is so kind and Mamma is so fond of her!"

Nicholas did not reply and tried to avoid speaking of the princess
any more. But after her visit the old countess spoke of her several
times a day.

She sang her praises, insisted that her son must call on her,
expressed a wish to see her often, but yet always became ill-humored
when she began to talk about her.

Nicholas tried to keep silence when his mother spoke of the
princess, but his silence irritated her.

"She is a very admirable and excellent young woman," said she,
"and you must go and call on her. You would at least be seeing
somebody, and I think it must be dull for you only seeing us."

"But I don't in the least want to, Mamma."

"You used to want to, and now you don't. Really I don't understand
you, my dear. One day you are dull, and the next you refuse to see
anyone."

"But I never said I was dull."

"Why, you said yourself you don't want even to see her. She is a
very admirable young woman and you always liked her, but now
suddenly you have got some notion or other in your head. You hide
everything from me."

"Not at all, Mamma."

"If I were asking you to do something disagreeable now--but I only
ask you to return a call. One would think mere politeness required
it.... Well, I have asked you, and now I won't interfere any more
since you have secrets from your mother."

"Well, then, I'll go if you wish it."

"It doesn't matter to me. I only wish it for your sake."

Nicholas sighed, bit his mustache, and laid out the cards for a
patience, trying to divert his mother's attention to another topic.

The same conversation was repeated next day and the day after, and
the day after that.

After her visit to the Rostovs and her unexpectedly chilly reception
by Nicholas, Princess Mary confessed to herself that she had been
right in not wishing to be the first to call.

"I expected nothing else," she told herself, calling her pride to
her aid. "I have nothing to do with him and I only wanted to see the
old lady, who was always kind to me and to whom I am under many
obligations."

But she could not pacify herself with these reflections; a feeling
akin to remorse troubled her when she thought of her visit. Though she
had firmly resolved not to call on the Rostovs again and to forget the
whole matter, she felt herself all the time in an awkward position.
And when she asked herself what distressed her, she had to admit
that it was her relation to Rostov. His cold, polite manner did not
express his feeling for her (she knew that) but it concealed
something, and until she could discover what that something was, she
felt that she could not be at ease.

One day in midwinter when sitting in the schoolroom attending to her
nephew's lessons, she was informed that Rostov had called. With a firm
resolution not to betray herself and not show her agitation, she
sent for Mademoiselle Bourienne and went with her to the drawing room.

Her first glance at Nicholas' face told her that he had only come to
fulfill the demands of politeness, and she firmly resolved to maintain
the tone in which he addressed her.

They spoke of the countess' health, of their mutual friends, of
the latest war news, and when the ten minutes required by propriety
had elapsed after which a visitor may rise, Nicholas got up to say
good-by.

With Mademoiselle Bourienne's help the princess had maintained the
conversation very well, but at the very last moment, just when he
rose, she was so tired of talking of what did not interest her, and
her mind was so full of the question why she alone was granted so
little happiness in life, that in a fit of absent-mindedness she sat
still, her luminous eyes gazing fixedly before her, not noticing
that he had risen.

Nicholas glanced at her and, wishing to appear not to notice her
abstraction, made some remark to Mademoiselle Bourienne and then again
looked at the princess. She still sat motionless with a look of
suffering on her gentle face. He suddenly felt sorry for her and was
vaguely conscious that he might be the cause of the sadness her face
expressed. He wished to help her and say something pleasant, but could
think of nothing to say.

"Good-by, Princess!" said he.

She started, flushed, and sighed deeply.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," she said as if waking up. "Are you going
already, Count? Well then, good-by! Oh, but the cushion for the
countess!"

"Wait a moment, I'll fetch it," said Mademoiselle Bourienne, and she
left the room.

They both sat silent, with an occasional glance at one another.

"Yes, Princess," said Nicholas at last with a sad smile, "it doesn't
seem long ago since we first met at Bogucharovo, but how much water
has flowed since then! In what distress we all seemed to be then,
yet I would give much to bring back that time... but there's no
bringing it back."

Princess Mary gazed intently into his eyes with her own luminous
ones as he said this. She seemed to be trying to fathom the hidden
meaning of his words which would explain his feeling for her.

"Yes, yes," said she, "but you have no reason to regret the past,
Count. As I understand your present life, I think you will always
recall it with satisfaction, because the self-sacrifice that fills
it now..."

"I cannot accept your praise," he interrupted her hurriedly. "On the
contrary I continually reproach myself.... But this is not at all an
interesting or cheerful subject."

His face again resumed its former stiff and cold expression. But the
princess had caught a glimpse of the man she had known and loved,
and it was to him that she now spoke.

"I thought you would allow me to tell you this," she said. "I had
come so near to you... and to all your family that I thought you would
not consider my sympathy misplaced, but I was mistaken," and
suddenly her voice trembled. "I don't know why," she continued,
recovering herself, "but you used to be different, and..."

"There are a thousand reasons why," laying special emphasis on the
why. "Thank you, Princess," he added softly. "Sometimes it is hard."

"So that's why! That's why!" a voice whispered in Princess Mary's
soul. "No, it was not only that gay, kind, and frank look, not only
that handsome exterior, that I loved in him. I divined his noble,
resolute, self-sacrificing spirit too," she said to herself. "Yes,
he is poor now and I am rich.... Yes, that's the only reason....
Yes, were it not for that..." And remembering his former tenderness,
and looking now at his kind, sorrowful face, she suddenly understood
the cause of his coldness.

"But why, Count, why?" she almost cried, unconsciously moving closer
to him. "Why? Tell me. You must tell me!"

He was silent.

"I don't understand your why, Count," she continued, "but it's
hard for me... I confess it. For some reason you wish to deprive me of
our former friendship. And that hurts me." There were tears in her
eyes and in her voice. "I have had so little happiness in life that
every loss is hard for me to bear.... Excuse me, good-by!" and
suddenly she began to cry and was hurrying from the room.

"Princess, for God's sake!" he exclaimed, trying to stop her.
"Princess!"

She turned round. For a few seconds they gazed silently into one
another's eyes--and what had seemed impossible and remote suddenly
became possible, inevitable, and very near.





CHAPTER VII


In the winter of 1813 Nicholas married Princess Mary and moved to
Bald Hills with his wife, his mother, and Sonya.

Within four years he had paid off all his remaining debts without
selling any of his wife's property, and having received a small
inheritance on the death of a cousin he paid his debt to Pierre as
well.

In another three years, by 1820, he had so managed his affairs
that he was able to buy a small estate adjoining Bald Hills and was
negotiating to buy back Otradnoe--that being his pet dream.

Having started farming from necessity, he soon grew so devoted to it
that it became his favorite and almost his sole occupation. Nicholas
was a plain farmer: he did not like innovations, especially the
English ones then coming into vogue. He laughed at theoretical
treatises on estate management, disliked factories, the raising of
expensive products, and the buying of expensive seed corn, and did not
make a hobby of any particular part of the work on his estate. He
always had before his mind's eye the estate as a whole and not any
particular part of it. The chief thing in his eyes was not the
nitrogen in the soil, nor the oxygen in the air, nor manures, nor
special plows, but that most important agent by which nitrogen,
oxygen, manure, and plow were made effective--the peasant laborer.
When Nicholas first began farming and began to understand its
different branches, it was the serf who especially attracted his
attention. The peasant seemed to him not merely a tool, but also a
judge of farming and an end in himself. At first he watched the serfs,
trying to understand their aims and what they considered good and bad,
and only pretended to direct them and give orders while in reality
learning from them their methods, their manner of speech, and their
judgment of what was good and bad. Only when he had understood the
peasants' tastes and aspirations, had learned to talk their
language, to grasp the hidden meaning of their words, and felt akin to
them did he begin boldly to manage his serfs, that is, to perform
toward them the duties demanded of him. And Nicholas' management
produced very brilliant results.

Guided by some gift of insight, on taking up the management of the
estates he at once unerringly appointed as bailiff, village elder, and
delegate, the very men the serfs would themselves have chosen had they
had the right to choose, and these posts never changed hands. Before
analyzing the properties of manure, before entering into the debit and
credit (as he ironically called it), he found out how many cattle
the peasants had and increased the number by all possible means. He
kept the peasant families together in the largest groups possible, not
allowing the family groups to divide into separate households. He
was hard alike on the lazy, the depraved, and the weak, and tried to
get them expelled from the commune.

He was as careful of the sowing and reaping of the peasants' hay and
corn as of his own, and few landowners had their crops sown and
harvested so early and so well, or got so good a return, as did
Nicholas.

He disliked having anything to do with the domestic serfs--the
"drones" as he called them--and everyone said he spoiled them by his
laxity. When a decision had to be taken regarding a domestic serf,
especially if one had to be punished, he always felt undecided and
consulted everybody in the house; but when it was possible to have a
domestic serf conscripted instead of a land worker he did so without
the least hesitation. He never felt any hesitation in dealing with the
peasants. He knew that his every decision would be approved by them
all with very few exceptions.

He did not allow himself either to be hard on or punish a man, or to
make things easy for or reward anyone, merely because he felt inclined
to do so. He could not have said by what standard he judged what he
should or should not do, but the standard was quite firm and
definite in his own mind.

Often, speaking with vexation of some failure or irregularity, he
would say: "What can one do with our Russian peasants?" and imagined
that he could not bear them.

Yet he loved "our Russian peasants" and their way of life with his
whole soul, and for that very reason had understood and assimilated
the one way and manner of farming which produced good results.

Countess Mary was jealous of this passion of her husband's and
regretted that she could not share it; but she could not understand
the joys and vexations he derived from that world, to her so remote
and alien. She could not understand why he was so particularly
animated and happy when, after getting up at daybreak and spending the
whole morning in the fields or on the threshing floor, he returned
from the sowing or mowing or reaping to have tea with her. She did not
understand why he spoke with such admiration and delight of the
farming of the thrifty and well-to-do peasant Matthew Ermishin, who
with his family had carted corn all night; or of the fact that his
(Nicholas') sheaves were already stacked before anyone else had his
harvest in. She did not understand why he stepped out from the
window to the veranda and smiled under his mustache and winked so
joyfully, when warm steady rain began to fall on the dry and thirsty
shoots of the young oats, or why when the wind carried away a
threatening cloud during the hay harvest he would return from the
barn, flushed, sunburned, and perspiring, with a smell of wormwood and
gentian in his hair and, gleefully rubbing his hands, would say:
"Well, one more day and my grain and the peasants' will all be under
cover."

Still less did she understand why he, kindhearted and always ready
to anticipate her wishes, should become almost desperate when she
brought him a petition from some peasant men or women who had appealed
to her to be excused some work; why he, that kind Nicholas, should
obstinately refuse her, angrily asking her not to interfere in what
was not her business. She felt he had a world apart, which he loved
passionately and which had laws she had not fathomed.

Sometimes when, trying to understand him, she spoke of the good work
he was doing for his serfs, he would be vexed and reply: "Not in the
least; it never entered my head and I wouldn't do that for their good!
That's all poetry and old wives' talk--all that doing good to one's
neighbor! What I want is that our children should not have to go
begging. I must put our affairs in order while I am alive, that's all.
And to do that, order and strictness are essential.... That's all
about it!" said he, clenching his vigorous fist. "And fairness, of
course," he added, "for if the peasant is naked and hungry and has
only one miserable horse, he can do no good either for himself or
for me."

And all Nicholas did was fruitful--probably just because he
refused to allow himself to think that he was doing good to others for
virtue's sake. His means increased rapidly; serfs from neighboring
estates came to beg him to buy them, and long after his death the
memory of his administration was devoutly preserved among the serfs.
"He was a master... the peasants' affairs first and then his own. Of
course he was not to be trifled with either--in a word, he was a
real master!"





CHAPTER VIII

One matter connected with his management sometimes worried Nicholas,
and that was his quick temper together with his old hussar habit of
making free use of his fists. At first he saw nothing reprehensible in
this, but in the second year of his marriage his view of that form
of punishment suddenly changed.

Once in summer he had sent for the village elder from Bogucharovo, a
man who had succeeded to the post when Dron died and who was accused
of dishonesty and various irregularities. Nicholas went out into the
porch to question him, and immediately after the elder had given a few
replies the sound of cries and blows were heard. On returning to lunch
Nicholas went up to his wife, who sat with her head bent low over
her embroidery frame, and as usual began to tell her what he had
been doing that morning. Among other things he spoke of the
Bogucharovo elder. Countess Mary turned red and then pale, but
continued to sit with head bowed and lips compressed and gave her
husband no reply.

"Such an insolent scoundrel!" he cried, growing hot again at the
mere recollection of him. "If he had told me he was drunk and did
not see... But what is the matter with you, Mary?" he suddenly asked.

Countess Mary raised her head and tried to speak, but hastily looked
down again and her lips puckered.

"Why, whatever is the matter, my dearest?"

The looks of the plain Countess Mary always improved when she was in
tears. She never cried from pain or vexation, but always from sorrow
or pity, and when she wept her radiant eyes acquired an irresistible
charm.

The moment Nicholas took her hand she could no longer restrain
herself and began to cry.

"Nicholas, I saw it... he was to blame, but why do you... Nicholas!"
and she covered her face with her hands.

Nicholas said nothing. He flushed crimson, left her side, and
paced up and down the room. He understood what she was weeping
about, but could not in his heart at once agree with her that what
he had regarded from childhood as quite an everyday event was wrong.
"Is it just sentimentality, old wives' tales, or is she right?" he
asked himself. Before he had solved that point he glanced again at her
face filled with love and pain, and he suddenly realized that she
was right and that he had long been sinning against himself.

"Mary," he said softly, going up to her, "it will never happen
again; I give you my word. Never," he repeated in a trembling voice
like a boy asking for forgiveness.

The tears flowed faster still from the countess' eyes. She took
his hand and kissed it.

"Nicholas, when did you break your cameo?" she asked to change the
subject, looking at his finger on which he wore a ring with a cameo
of Laocoon's head.

"Today--it was the same affair. Oh, Mary, don't remind me of it!"
and again he flushed. "I give you my word of honor it shan't occur
again, and let this always be a reminder to me," and he pointed to the
broken ring.

After that, when in discussions with his village elders or
stewards the blood rushed to his face and his fists began to clench,
Nicholas would turn the broken ring on his finger and would drop his
eyes before the man who was making him angry. But he did forget
himself once or twice within a twelvemonth, and then he would go and
confess to his wife, and would again promise that this should really
be the very last time.

"Mary, you must despise me!" he would say. "I deserve it."

"You should go, go away at once, if you don't feel strong enough
to control yourself," she would reply sadly, trying to comfort her
husband.

Among the gentry of the province Nicholas was respected but not
liked. He did not concern himself with the interests of his own class,
and consequently some thought him proud and others thought him stupid.
The whole summer, from spring sowing to harvest, he was busy with
the work on his farm. In autumn he gave himself up to hunting with the
same business like seriousness--leaving home for a month, or even two,
with his hunt. In winter he visited his other villages or spent his
time reading. The books he read were chiefly historical, and on
these he spent a certain sum every year. He was collecting, as he
said, a serious library, and he made it a rule to read through all the
books he bought. He would sit in his study with a grave air,
reading--a task he first imposed upon himself as a duty, but which
afterwards became a habit affording him a special kind of pleasure and
a consciousness of being occupied with serious matters. In winter,
except for business excursions, he spent most of his time at home
making himself one with his family and entering into all the details
of his children's relations with their mother. The harmony between him
and his wife grew closer and closer and he daily discovered fresh
spiritual treasures in her.

From the time of his marriage Sonya had lived in his house. Before
that, Nicholas had told his wife all that had passed between himself
and Sonya, blaming himself and commending her. He had asked Princess
Mary to be gentle and kind to his cousin. She thoroughly realized
the wrong he had done Sonya, felt herself to blame toward her, and
imagined that her wealth had influenced Nicholas' choice. She could
not find fault with Sonya in any way and tried to be fond of her,
but often felt ill-will toward her which she could not overcome.

Once she had a talk with her friend Natasha about Sonya and about
her own injustice toward her.

"You know," said Natasha, "you have read the Gospels a great deal-
there is a passage in them that just fits Sonya."

"What?" asked Countess Mary, surprised.

"'To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not
shall be taken away.' You remember? She is one that hath not; why, I
don't know. Perhaps she lacks egotism, I don't know, but from her is
taken away, and everything has been taken away. Sometimes I am
dreadfully sorry for her. Formerly I very much wanted Nicholas to
marry her, but I always had a sort of presentiment that it would not
come off. She is a sterile flower, you know--like some strawberry
blossoms. Sometimes I am sorry for her, and sometimes I think she
doesn't feel it as you or I would."

Though Countess Mary told Natasha that those words in the Gospel
must be understood differently, yet looking at Sonya she agreed with
Natasha's explanation. It really seemed that Sonya did not feel her
position trying, and had grown quite reconciled to her lot as a
sterile flower. She seemed to be fond not so much of individuals as of
the family as a whole. Like a cat, she had attached herself not to the
people but to the home. She waited on the old countess, petted and
spoiled the children, was always ready to render the small services
for which she had a gift, and all this was unconsciously accepted from
her with insufficient gratitude.

The country seat at Bald Hills had been rebuilt, though not on the
same scale as under the old prince.

The buildings, begun under straitened circumstances, were more
than simple. The immense house on the old stone foundations was of
wood, plastered only inside. It had bare deal floors and was furnished
with very simple hard sofas, armchairs, tables, and chairs made by
their own serf carpenters out of their own birchwood. The house was
spacious and had rooms for the house serfs and apartments for
visitors. Whole families of the Rostovs' and Bolkonskis' relations
sometimes came to Bald Hills with sixteen horses and dozens of
servants and stayed for months. Besides that, four times a year, on
the name days and birthdays of the hosts, as many as a hundred
visitors would gather there for a day or two. The rest of the year
life pursued its unbroken routine with its ordinary occupations, and
its breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and suppers, provided out of the
produce of the estate.





CHAPTER IX


It was the eve of St. Nicholas, the fifth of December, 1820. Natasha
had been staying at her brother's with her husband and children
since early autumn. Pierre had gone to Petersburg on business of his
own for three weeks as he said, but had remained there nearly seven
weeks and was expected back every minute.

Besides the Bezukhov family, Nicholas' old friend the retired
General Vasili Dmitrich Denisov was staying with the Rostovs this
fifth of December.

On the sixth, which was his name day when the house would be full of
visitors, Nicholas knew he would have to exchange his Tartar tunic for
a tail coat, and put on narrow boots with pointed toes, and drive to
the new church he had built, and then receive visitors who would
come to congratulate him, offer them refreshments, and talk about
the elections of the nobility; but he considered himself entitled to
spend the eve of that day in his usual way. He examined the
bailiff's accounts of the village in Ryazan which belonged to his
wife's nephew, wrote two business letters, and walked over to the
granaries, cattle yards and stables before dinner. Having taken
precautions against the general drunkenness to be expected on the
morrow because it was a great saint's day, he returned to dinner,
and without having time for a private talk with his wife sat down at
the long table laid for twenty persons, at which the whole household
had assembled. At that table were his mother, his mother's old lady
companion Belova, his wife, their three children with their
governess and tutor, his wife's nephew with his tutor, Sonya, Denisov,
Natasha, her three children, their governess, and old Michael
Ivanovich, the late prince's architect, who was living on in
retirement at Bald Hills.

Countess Mary sat at the other end of the table. When her husband
took his place she concluded, from the rapid manner in which after
taking up his table napkin he pushed back the tumbler and wineglass
standing before him, that he was out of humor, as was sometimes the
case when he came in to dinner straight from the farm--especially
before the soup. Countess Mary well knew that mood of his, and when
she herself was in a good frame of mind quietly waited till he had had
his soup and then began to talk to him and make him admit that there
was no cause for his ill-humor. But today she quite forgot that and
was hurt that he should be angry with her without any reason, and
she felt unhappy. She asked him where he had been. He replied. She
again inquired whether everything was going well on the farm. Her
unnatural tone made him wince unpleasantly and he replied hastily.

"Then I'm not mistaken," thought Countess Mary. "Why is he cross
with me?" She concluded from his tone that he was vexed with her and
wished to end the conversation. She knew her remarks sounded
unnatural, but could not refrain from asking some more questions.

Thanks to Denisov the conversation at table soon became general
and lively, and she did not talk to her husband. When they left the
table and went as usual to thank the old countess, Countess Mary
held out her hand and kissed her husband, and asked him why he was
angry with her.

"You always have such strange fancies! I didn't even think of
being angry," he replied.

But the word always seemed to her to imply: "Yes, I am angry but I
won't tell you why."

Nicholas and his wife lived together so happily that even Sonya
and the old countess, who felt jealous and would have liked them to
disagree, could find nothing to reproach them with; but even they
had their moments of antagonism. Occasionally, and it was always
just after they had been happiest together, they suddenly had a
feeling of estrangement and hostility, which occurred most
frequently during Countess Mary's pregnancies, and this was such a
time.

"Well, messieurs et mesdames," said Nicholas loudly and with
apparent cheerfulness (it seemed to Countess Mary that he did it on
purpose to vex her), "I have been on my feet since six this morning.
Tomorrow I shall have to suffer, so today I'll go and rest."

And without a word to his wife he went to the little sitting room
and lay down on the sofa.

"That's always the way," thought Countess Mary. "He talks to
everyone except me. I see... I see that I am repulsive to him,
especially when I am in this condition." She looked down at her
expanded figure and in the glass at her pale, sallow, emaciated face
in which her eyes now looked larger than ever.

And everything annoyed her--Denisov's shouting and laughter,
Natasha's talk, and especially a quick glance Sonya gave her.

Sonya was always the first excuse Countess Mary found for feeling
irritated.

Having sat awhile with her visitors without understanding anything
of what they were saying, she softly left the room and went to the
nursery.

The children were playing at "going to Moscow" in a carriage made of
chairs and invited her to go with them. She sat down and played with
them a little, but the thought of her husband and his unreasonable
crossness worried her. She got up and, walking on tiptoe with
difficulty, went to the small sitting room.

"Perhaps he is not asleep; I'll have an explanation with him," she
said to herself. Little Andrew, her eldest boy, imitating his
mother, followed her on tiptoe. She not notice him.

"Mary, dear, I think he is asleep--he was so tired," said Sonya,
meeting her in the large sitting room (it seemed to Countess Mary that
she crossed her path everywhere). "Andrew may wake him."

Countess Mary looked round, saw little Andrew following her, felt
that Sonya was right, and for that very reason flushed and with
evident difficulty refrained from saying something harsh. She made
no reply, but to avoid obeying Sonya beckoned to Andrew to follow
her quietly and went to the door. Sonya went away by another door.
From the room in which Nicholas was sleeping came the sound of his
even breathing, every slightest tone of which was familiar to his
wife. As she listened to it she saw before her his smooth handsome
forehead, his mustache, and his whole face, as she had so often seen
it in the stillness of the night when he slept. Nicholas suddenly
moved and cleared his throat. And at that moment little Andrew shouted
from outside the door: "Papa! Mamma's standing here!" Countess Mary
turned pale with fright and made signs to the boy. He grew silent, and
quiet ensued for a moment, terrible to Countess Mary. She knew how
Nicholas disliked being waked. Then through the door she heard
Nicholas clearing his throat again and stirring, and his voice said
crossly:

"I can't get a moment's peace.... Mary, is that you? Why did you
bring him here?"

"I only came in to look and did not notice... forgive me..."

Nicholas coughed and said no more. Countess Mary moved away from the
door and took the boy back to the nursery. Five minutes later little
black-eyed three-year-old Natasha, her father's pet, having learned
from her brother that Papa was asleep and Mamma was in the sitting
room, ran to her father unobserved by her mother. The dark-eyed little
girl boldly opened the creaking door, went up to the sofa with
energetic steps of her sturdy little legs, and having examined the
position of her father, who was asleep with his back to her, rose on
tiptoe and kissed the hand which lay under his head. Nicholas turned
with a tender smile on his face.

"Natasha, Natasha!" came Countess Mary's frightened whisper from the
door. "Papa wants to sleep."

"No, Mamma, he doesn't want to sleep," said little Natasha with
conviction. "He's laughing."

Nicholas lowered his legs, rose, and took his daughter in his arms.

"Come in, Mary," he said to his wife.

She went in and sat down by her husband.

"I did not notice him following me," she said timidly. "I just
looked in."

Holding his little girl with one arm, Nicholas glanced at his wife
and, seeing her guilty expression, put his other arm around her and
kissed her hair.

"May I kiss Mamma?" he asked Natasha.

Natasha smiled bashfully.

"Again!" she commanded, pointing with a peremptory gesture to the
spot where Nicholas had placed the kiss.

"I don't know why you think I am cross," said Nicholas, replying
to the question he knew was in his wife's mind.

"You have no idea how unhappy, how lonely, I feel when you are
like that. It always seems to me... "

"Mary, don't talk nonsense. You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" he
said gaily.

"It seems to be that you can't love me, that I am so plain...
always... and now... in this cond..."

"Oh, how absurd you are! It is not beauty that endears, it's love
that makes us see beauty. It is only Malvinas and women of that kind
who are loved for their beauty. But do I love my wife? I don't love
her, but... I don't know how to put it. Without you, or when something
comes between us like this, I seem lost and can't do anything. Now
do I love my finger? I don't love it, but just try to cut it off!"

"I'm not like that myself, but I understand. So you're not angry
with me?"

"Awfully angry!" he said, smiling and getting up. And smoothing
his hair he began to pace the room.

"Do you know, Mary, what I've been thinking?" he began,
immediately thinking aloud in his wife's presence now that they had
made it up.

He did not ask if she was ready to listen to him. He did not care. A
thought had occurred to him and so it belonged to her also. And he
told her of his intention to persuade Pierre to stay with them till
spring.

Countess Mary listened till he had finished, made some remark, and
in her turn began thinking aloud. Her thoughts were about the
children.

"You can see the woman in her already," she said in French, pointing
to little Natasha. "You reproach us women with being illogical. Here
is our logic. I say: 'Papa wants to sleep!' but she says, 'No, he's
laughing.' And she was right," said Countess Mary with a happy smile.

"Yes, yes." And Nicholas, taking his little daughter in his strong
hand, lifted her high, placed her on his shoulder, held her by the
legs, and paced the room with her. There was an expression of carefree
happiness on the faces of both father and daughter.

"But you know you may be unfair. You are too fond of this one,"
his wife whispered in French.

"Yes, but what am I to do?... I try not to show..."

At that moment they heard the sound of the door pulley and footsteps
in the hall and anteroom, as if someone had arrived.

"Somebody has come."

"I am sure it is Pierre. I will go and see," said Countess Mary
and left the room.

In her absence Nicholas allowed himself to give his little
daughter a gallop round the room. Out of breath, he took the
laughing child quickly from his shoulder and pressed her to his heart.
His capers reminded him of dancing, and looking at the child's round
happy little face he thought of what she would be like when he was
an old man, taking her into society and dancing the mazurka with her
as his old father had danced Daniel Cooper with his daughter.

"It is he, it is he, Nicholas!" said Countess Mary, re-entering
the room a few minutes later. "Now our Natasha has come to life. You
should have seen her ecstasy, and how he caught it for having stayed
away so long. Well, come along now, quick, quick! It's time you two
were parted," she added, looking smilingly at the little girl who
clung to her father.

Nicholas went out holding the child by the hand.

Countess Mary remained in the sitting room.

"I should never, never have believed that one could be so happy,"
she whispered to herself. A smile lit up her face but at the same time
she sighed, and her deep eyes expressed a quiet sadness as though
she felt, through her happiness, that there is another sort of
happiness unattainable in this life and of which she involuntarily
thought at that instant.





CHAPTER X


Natasha had married in the early spring of 1813, and in 1820 already
had three daughters besides a son for whom she had longed and whom she
was now nursing. She had grown stouter and broader, so that it was
difficult to recognize in this robust, motherly woman the slim, lively
Natasha of former days. Her features were more defined and had a calm,
soft, and serene expression. In her face there was none of the
ever-glowing animation that had formerly burned there and
constituted its charm. Now her face and body were of all that one saw,
and her soul was not visible at all. All that struck the eye was a
strong, handsome, and fertile woman. The old fire very rarely
kindled in her face now. That happened only when, as was the case that
day, her husband returned home, or a sick child was convalescent, or
when she and Countess Mary spoke of Prince Andrew (she never mentioned
him to her husband, who she imagined was jealous of Prince Andrew's
memory), or on the rare occasions when something happened to induce
her to sing, a practice she had quite abandoned since her marriage. At
the rare moments when the old fire did kindle in her handsome, fully
developed body she was even more attractive than in former days.

Since their marriage Natasha and her husband had lived in Moscow, in
Petersburg, on their estate near Moscow, or with her mother, that is
to say, in Nicholas' house. The young Countess Bezukhova was not often
seen in society, and those who met her there were not pleased with her
and found her neither attractive nor amiable. Not that Natasha liked
solitude--she did not know whether she liked it or not, she even
thought that she did not--but with her pregnancies, her
confinements, the nursing of her children, and sharing every moment of
her husband's life, she had demands on her time which could be
satisfied only by renouncing society. All who had known Natasha before
her marriage wondered at the change in her as at something
extraordinary. Only the old countess with her maternal instinct had
realized that all Natasha's outbursts had been due to her need of
children and a husband--as she herself had once exclaimed at
Otradnoe not so much in fun as in earnest--and her mother was now
surprised at the surprise expressed by those who had never
understood Natasha, and she kept saying that she had always known that
Natasha would make an exemplary wife and mother.

"Only she lets her love of her husband and children overflow all
bounds," said the countess, "so that it even becomes absurd."

Natasha did not follow the golden rule advocated by clever folk,
especially by the French, which says that a girl should not let
herself go when she marries, should not neglect her accomplishments,
should be even more careful of her appearance than when she was
unmarried, and should fascinate her husband as much as she did
before he became her husband. Natasha on the contrary had at once
abandoned all her witchery, of which her singing had been an unusually
powerful part. She gave it up just because it was so powerfully
seductive. She took no pains with her manners or with of speech, or
with her toilet, or to show herself to her husband in her most
becoming attitudes, or to avoid inconveniencing him by being too
exacting. She acted in contradiction to all those rules. She felt that
the allurements instinct had formerly taught her to use would now be
merely ridiculous in the eyes of her husband, to whom she had from the
first moment given herself up entirely--that is, with her whole
soul, leaving no corner of it hidden from him. She felt that her unity
with her husband was not maintained by the poetic feelings that had
attracted him to her, but by something else--indefinite but firm as
the bond between her own body and soul.

To fluff out her curls, put on fashionable dresses, and sing
romantic songs to fascinate her husband would have seemed as strange
as to adorn herself to attract herself. To adorn herself for others
might perhaps have been agreeable--she did not know--but she had no
time at all for it. The chief reason for devoting no time either to
singing, to dress, or to choosing her words was that she really had no
time to spare for these things.

We know that man has the faculty of becoming completely absorbed
in a subject however trivial it may be, and that there is no subject
so trivial that it will not grow to infinite proportions if one's
entire attention is devoted to it.

The subject which wholly engrossed Natasha's attention was her
family: that is, her husband whom she had to keep so that he should
belong entirely to her and to the home, and the children whom she
had to bear, bring into the world, nurse, and bring up.

And the deeper she penetrated, not with her mind only but with her
whole soul, her whole being, into the subject that absorbed her, the
larger did that subject grow and the weaker and more inadequate did
her powers appear, so that she concentrated them wholly on that one
thing and yet was unable to accomplish all that she considered
necessary.

There were then as now conversations and discussions about women's
rights, the relations of husband and wife and their freedom and
rights, though these themes were not yet termed questions as they
are now; but these topics were not merely uninteresting to Natasha,
she positively did not understand them.

These questions, then as now, existed only for those who see nothing
in marriage but the pleasure married people get from one another, that
is, only the beginnings of marriage and not its whole significance,
which lies in the family.

Discussions and questions of that kind, which are like the
question of how to get the greatest gratification from one's dinner,
did not then and do not now exist for those for whom the purpose of
a dinner is the nourishment it affords; and the purpose of marriage is
the family.

If the purpose of dinner is to nourish the body, a man who eats
two dinners at once may perhaps get more enjoyment but will not attain
his purpose, for his stomach will not digest the two dinners.

If the purpose of marriage is the family, the person who wishes to
have many wives or husbands may perhaps obtain much pleasure, but in
that case will not have a family.

If the purpose of food is nourishment and the purpose of marriage is
the family, the whole question resolves itself into not eating more
than one can digest, and not having more wives or husbands than are
needed for the family--that is, one wife or one husband. Natasha
needed a husband. A husband was given her and he gave her a family.
And she not only saw no need of any other or better husband, but as
all the powers of her soul were intent on serving that husband and
family, she could not imagine and saw no interest in imagining how
it would be if things were different.

Natasha did not care for society in general, but prized the more the
society of her relatives--Countess Mary, and her brother, her
mother, and Sonya. She valued the company of those to whom she could
come striding disheveled from the nursery in her dressing gown, and
with joyful face show a yellow instead of a green stain on baby's
napkin, and from whom she could hear reassuring words to the effect
that baby was much better.

To such an extent had Natasha let herself go that the way she
dressed and did her hair, her ill-chosen words, and her jealousy-
she was jealous of Sonya, of the governess, and of every woman, pretty
or plain--were habitual subjects of jest to those about her. The
general opinion was that Pierre was under his wife's thumb, which
was really true. From the very first days of their married life
Natasha had announced her demands. Pierre was greatly surprised by his
wife's view, to him a perfectly novel one, that every moment of his
life belonged to her and to the family. His wife's demands
astonished him, but they also flattered him, and he submitted to them.

Pierre's subjection consisted in the fact that he not only dared not
flirt with, but dared not even speak smilingly to, any other woman;
did not dare dine at the Club as a pastime, did not dare spend money a
whim, and did not dare absent himself for any length of time, except
on business--in which his wife included his intellectual pursuits,
which she did not in the least understand but to which she
attributed great importance. To make up for this, at home Pierre had
the right to regulate his life and that of the whole family exactly as
he chose. At home Natasha placed herself in the position of a slave to
her husband, and the whole household went on tiptoe when he was
occupied--that is, was reading or writing in his study. Pierre had but
to show a partiality for anything to get just what he liked done
always. He had only to express a wish and Natasha would jump up and
run to fulfill it.

The entire household was governed according to Pierre's supposed
orders, that is, by his wishes which Natasha tried to guess. Their way
of life and place of residence, their acquaintances and ties,
Natasha's occupations, the children's upbringing, were all selected
not merely with regard to Pierre's expressed wishes, but to what
Natasha from the thoughts he expressed in conversation supposed his
wishes to be. And she deduced the essentials of his wishes quite
correctly, and having once arrived at them clung to them
tenaciously. When Pierre himself wanted to change his mind she would
fight him with his own weapons.

Thus in a time of trouble ever memorable to him after the birth of
their first child who was delicate, when they had to change the wet
nurse three times and Natasha fell ill from despair, Pierre one day
told her of Rousseau's view, with which he quite agreed, that to
have a wet nurse is unnatural and harmful. When her next baby was
born, despite the opposition of her mother, the doctors, and even of
her husband himself--who were all vigorously opposed to her nursing
her baby herself, a thing then unheard of and considered injurious-
she insisted on having her own way, and after that nursed all her
babies herself.

It very often happened that in a moment of irritation husband and
wife would have a dispute, but long afterwards Pierre to his
surprise and delight would find in his wife's ideas and actions the
very thought against which she had argued, but divested of
everything superfluous that in the excitement of the dispute he had
added when expressing his opinion.

After seven years of marriage Pierre had the joyous and firm
consciousness that he was not a bad man, and he felt this because he
saw himself reflected in his wife. He felt the good and bad within
himself inextricably mingled and overlapping. But only what was really
good in him was reflected in his wife, all that was not quite good was
rejected. And this was not the result of logical reasoning but was a
direct and mysterious reflection.





CHAPTER XI


Two months previously when Pierre was already staying with the
Rostovs he had received a letter from Prince Theodore, asking him to
come to Petersburg to confer on some important questions that were
being discussed there by a society of which Pierre was one of the
principal founders.

On reading that letter (she always read her husband's letters)
Natasha herself suggested that he should go to Petersburg, though
she would feel his absence very acutely. She attributed immense
importance to all her husband's intellectual and abstract interests
though she did not understand them, and she always dreaded being a
hindrance to him in such matters. To Pierre's timid look of inquiry
after reading the letter she replied by asking him to go, but to fix a
definite date for his return. He was given four weeks' leave of
absence.

Ever since that leave of absence had expired, more than a
fortnight before, Natasha had been in a constant state of alarm,
depression, and irritability.

Denisov, now a general on the retired list and much dissatisfied
with the present state of affairs, had arrived during that
fortnight. He looked at Natasha with sorrow and surprise as at a bad
likeness of a person once dear. A dull, dejected look, random replies,
and talk about the nursery was all he saw and heard from his former
enchantress.

Natasha was sad and irritable all that time, especially when her
mother, her brother, Sonya, or Countess Mary in their efforts to
console her tried to excuse Pierre and suggested reasons for his delay
in returning.

"It's all nonsense, all rubbish--those discussions which lead to
nothing and all those idiotic societies!" Natasha declared of the very
affairs in the immense importance of which she firmly believed.

And she would go to the nursery to nurse Petya, her only boy. No one
else could tell her anything so comforting or so reasonable as this
little three-month-old creature when he lay at her breast and she
was conscious of the movement of his lips and the snuffling of his
little nose. That creature said: "You are angry, you are jealous,
you would like to pay him out, you are afraid--but here am I! And I am
he..." and that was unanswerable. It was more than true.

During that fortnight of anxiety Natasha resorted to the baby for
comfort so often, and fussed over him so much, that she overfed him
and he fell ill. She was terrified by his illness, and yet that was
just what she needed. While attending to him she bore the anxiety
about her husband more easily.

She was nursing her boy when the sound of Pierre's sleigh was
heard at the front door, and the old nurse--knowing how to please
her mistress--entered the room inaudibly but hurriedly and with a
beaming face.

"Has he come?" Natasha asked quickly in a whisper, afraid to move
lest she should rouse the dozing baby.

"He's come, ma'am," whispered the nurse.

The blood rushed to Natasha's face and her feet involuntarily moved,
but she could not jump up and run out. The baby again opened his
eyes and looked at her. "You're here?" he seemed to be saying, and
again lazily smacked his lips.

Cautiously withdrawing her breast, Natasha rocked him a little,
handed him to the nurse, and went with rapid steps toward the door.
But at the door she stopped as if her conscience reproached her for
having in her joy left the child too soon, and she glanced round.
The nurse with raised elbows was lifting the infant over the rail of
his cot.

"Go, ma'am! Don't worry, go!" she whispered, smiling, with the
kind of familiarity that grows up between a nurse and her mistress.

Natasha ran with light footsteps to the anteroom.

Denisov, who had come out of the study into the dancing room with
his pipe, now for the first time recognized the old Natasha. A flood
of brilliant, joyful light poured from her transfigured face.

"He's come!" she exclaimed as she ran past, and Denisov felt that he
too was delighted that Pierre, whom he did not much care for, had
returned.

On reaching the vestibule Natasha saw a tall figure in a fur coat
unwinding his scarf. "It's he! It's really he! He has come!" she
said to herself, and rushing at him embraced him, pressed his head
to her breast, and then pushed him back and gazed at his ruddy,
happy face, covered with hoarfrost. "Yes, it is he, happy and
contented..."

Then all at once she remembered the tortures of suspense she had
experienced for the last fortnight, and the joy that had lit up her
face vanished; she frowned and overwhelmed Pierre with a torrent of
reproaches and angry words.

"Yes, it's all very well for you. You are pleased, you've had a good
time.... But what about me? You might at least have shown
consideration for the children. I am nursing and my milk was
spoiled.... Petya was at death's door. But you were enjoying yourself.
Yes, enjoying..."

Pierre knew he was not to blame, for he could not have come
sooner; he knew this outburst was unseemly and would blow over in a
minute or two; above all he knew that he himself was bright and happy.
He wanted to smile but dared not even think of doing so. He made a
piteous, frightened face and bent down.

"I could not, on my honor. But how is Petya?"

"All right now. Come along! I wonder you're not ashamed! If only you
could see what I was like without you, how I suffered!"

"You are well?"

"Come, come!" she said, not letting go of his arm. And they went
to their rooms.

When Nicholas and his wife came to look for Pierre he was in the
nursery holding his baby son, who was again awake, on his huge right
palm and dandling him. A blissful bright smile was fixed on the baby's
broad face with its toothless open mouth. The storm was long since
over and there was bright, joyous sunshine on Natasha's face as she
gazed tenderly at her husband and child.

"And have you talked everything well over with Prince Theodore?" she
asked.

"Yes, capitally."

"You see, he holds it up." (She meant the baby's head.) "But how
he did frighten me... You've seen the princess? Is it true she's in
love with that..."

"Yes, just fancy..."

At that moment Nicholas and Countess Mary came in. Pierre with the
baby on his hand stooped, kissed them, and replied to their inquiries.
But in spite of much that was interesting and had to be discussed, the
baby with the little cap on its unsteady head evidently absorbed all
his attention.

"How sweet!" said Countess Mary, looking at and playing with the
baby. "Now, Nicholas," she added, turning to her husband, "I can't
understand how it is you don't see the charm of these delicious
marvels."

"I don't and can't," replied Nicholas, looking coldly at the baby.
"A lump of flesh. Come along, Pierre!"

"And yet he's such an affectionate father," said Countess Mary,
vindicating her husband, "but only after they are a year old or so..."

"Now, Pierre nurses them splendidly," said Natasha. "He says his
hand is just made for a baby's seat. Just look!"

"Only not for this..." Pierre suddenly exclaimed with a laugh, and
shifting the baby he gave him to the nurse.





CHAPTER XII


As in every large household, there were at Bald Hills several
perfectly distinct worlds which merged into one harmonious whole,
though each retained its own peculiarities and made concessions to the
others. Every event, joyful or sad, that took place in that house
was important to all these worlds, but each had its own special
reasons to rejoice or grieve over that occurrence independently of the
others.

For instance, Pierre's return was a joyful and important event and
they all felt it to be so.

The servants--the most reliable judges of their masters because they
judge not by their conversation or expressions of feeling but by their
acts and way of life--were glad of Pierre's return because they knew
that when he was there Count Nicholas would cease going every day
to attend to the estate, and would be in better spirits and temper,
and also because they would all receive handsome presents for the
holidays.

The children and their governesses were glad of Pierre's return
because no one else drew them into the social life of the household as
he did. He alone could play on the clavichord that ecossaise (his only
piece) to which, as he said, all possible dances could be danced,
and they felt sure he had brought presents for them all.

Young Nicholas, now a slim lad of fifteen, delicate and intelligent,
with curly light-brown hair and beautiful eyes, was delighted
because Uncle Pierre as he called him was the object of his
rapturous and passionate affection. No one had instilled into him this
love for Pierre whom he saw only occasionally. Countess Mary who had
brought him up had done her utmost to make him love her husband as she
loved him, and little Nicholas did love his uncle, but loved him
with just a shade of contempt. Pierre, however, he adored. He did
not want to be an hussar or a Knight of St. George like his uncle
Nicholas; he wanted to be learned, wise, and kind like Pierre. In
Pierre's presence his face always shone with pleasure and he flushed
and was breathless when Pierre spoke to him. He did not miss a
single word he uttered, and would afterwards, with Dessalles or by
himself, recall and reconsider the meaning of everything Pierre had
said. Pierre's past life and his unhappiness prior to 1812 (of which
young Nicholas had formed a vague poetic picture from some words he
had overheard), his adventures in Moscow, his captivity, Platon
Karataev (of whom he had heard from Pierre), his love for Natasha
(of whom the lad was also particularly fond), and especially
Pierre's friendship with the father whom Nicholas could not
remember--all this made Pierre in his eyes a hero and a saint.

From broken remarks about Natasha and his father, from the emotion
with which Pierre spoke of that dead father, and from the careful,
reverent tenderness with which Natasha spoke of him, the boy, who
was only just beginning to guess what love is, derived the notion that
his father had loved Natasha and when dying had left her to his
friend. But the father whom the boy did not remember appeared to him a
divinity who could not be pictured, and of whom he never thought
without a swelling heart and tears of sadness and rapture. So the
boy also was happy that Pierre had arrived.

The guests welcomed Pierre because he always helped to enliven and
unite any company he was in.

The grown-up members of the family, not to mention his wife, were
pleased to have back a friend whose presence made life run more
smoothly and peacefully.

The old ladies were pleased with the presents he brought them, and
especially that Natasha would now be herself again.

Pierre felt the different outlooks of these various worlds and
made haste to satisfy all their expectations.

Though the most absent-minded and forgetful of men, Pierre, with the
aid of a list his wife drew up, had now bought everything, not
forgetting his mother--and brother-in-law's commissions, nor the dress
material for a present to Belova, nor toys for his wife's nephews.
In the early days of his marriage it had seemed strange to him that
his wife should expect him not to forget to procure all the things
he undertook to buy, and he had been taken aback by her serious
annoyance when on his first trip he forgot everything. But in time
he grew used to this demand. Knowing that Natasha asked nothing for
herself, and gave him commissions for others only when he himself
had offered to undertake them, he now found an unexpected and
childlike pleasure in this purchase of presents for everyone in the
house, and never forgot anything. If he now incurred Natasha's censure
it was only for buying too many and too expensive things. To her other
defects (as most people thought them, but which to Pierre were
qualities) of untidiness and neglect of herself, she now added
stinginess.

From the time that Pierre began life as a family man on a footing
entailing heavy expenditure, he had noticed to his surprise that he
spent only half as much as before, and that his affairs--which had
been in disorder of late, chiefly because of his first wife's debts-
had begun to improve.

Life was cheaper because it was circumscribed: that most expensive
luxury, the kind of life that can be changed at any moment, was no
longer his nor did he wish for it. He felt that his way of life had
now been settled once for all till death and that to change it was not
in his power, and so that way of life proved economical.

With a merry, smiling face Pierre was sorting his purchases.

"What do you think of this?" said he, unrolling a piece of stuff
like a shopman.

Natasha, who was sitting opposite to him with her eldest daughter on
her lap, turned her sparkling eyes swiftly from her husband to the
things he showed her.

"That's for Belova? Excellent!" She felt the quality of the
material. "It was a ruble an arshin, I suppose?"

Pierre told her the price.

"Too dear!" Natasha remarked. "How pleased the children will be
and Mamma too! Only you need not have bought me this," she added,
unable to suppress a smile as she gazed admiringly at a gold comb
set with pearls, of a kind then just coming into fashion.

"Adele tempted me: she kept on telling me to buy it," returned
Pierre.

"When am I to wear it?" and Natasha stuck it in her coil of hair.
"When I take little Masha into society? Perhaps they will be
fashionable again by then. Well, let's go now."

And collecting the presents they went first to the nursery and
then to the old countess' rooms.

The countess was sitting with her companion Belova, playing
grand-patience as usual, when Pierre and Natasha came into the drawing
room with parcels under their arms.

The countess was now over sixty, was quite gray, and wore a cap with
a frill that surrounded her face. Her face had shriveled, her upper
lip had sunk in, and her eyes were dim.

After the deaths of her son and husband in such rapid succession,
she felt herself a being accidentally forgotten in this world and left
without aim or object for her existence. She ate, drank, slept, or
kept awake, but did not live. Life gave her no new impressions. She
wanted nothing from life but tranquillity, and that tranquillity
only death could give her. But until death came she had to go on
living, that is, to use her vital forces. A peculiarity one sees in
very young children and very old people was particularly evident in
her. Her life had no external aims--only a need to exercise her
various functions and inclinations was apparent. She had to eat,
sleep, think, speak, weep, work, give vent to her anger, and so on,
merely because she had a stomach, a brain, muscles, nerves, and a
liver. She did these things not under any external impulse as people
in the full vigor of life do, when behind the purpose for which they
strive that of exercising their functions remains unnoticed. She
talked only because she physically needed to exercise her tongue and
lungs. She cried as a child does, because her nose had to be
cleared, and so on. What for people in their full vigor is an aim
was for her evidently merely a pretext.

Thus in the morning--especially if she had eaten anything rich the
day before--she felt a need of being angry and would choose as the
handiest pretext Belova's deafness.

She would begin to say something to her in a low tone from the other
end of the room.

"It seems a little warmer today, my dear," she would murmur.

And when Belova replied: "Oh yes, they've come," she would mutter
angrily: "O Lord! How stupid and deaf she is!"

Another pretext would be her snuff, which would seem too dry or
too damp or not rubbed fine enough. After these fits of irritability
her face would grow yellow, and her maids knew by infallible
symptoms when Belova would again be deaf, the snuff damp, and the
countess' face yellow. Just as she needed to work off her spleen so
she had sometimes to exercise her still-existing faculty of
thinking--and the pretext for that was a game of patience. When she
needed to cry, the deceased count would be the pretext. When she
wanted to be agitated, Nicholas and his health would be the pretext,
and when she felt a need to speak spitefully, the pretext would be
Countess Mary. When her vocal organs needed exercise, which was
usually toward seven o'clock when she had had an after-dinner rest
in a darkened room, the pretext would be the retelling of the same
stories over and over again to the same audience.

The old lady's condition was understood by the whole household
though no one ever spoke of it, and they all made every possible
effort to satisfy her needs. Only by a rare glance exchanged with a
sad smile between Nicholas, Pierre, Natasha, and Countess Mary was the
common understanding of her condition expressed.

But those glances expressed something more: they said that she had
played her part in life, that what they now saw was not her whole
self, that we must all become like her, and that they were glad to
yield to her, to restrain themselves for this once precious being
formerly as full of life as themselves, but now so much to be
pitied. "Memento mori," said these glances.

Only the really heartless, the stupid ones of that household, and
the little children failed to understand this and avoided her.





CHAPTER XIII


When Pierre and his wife entered the drawing room the countess was
in one of her customary states in which she needed the mental exertion
of playing patience, and so--though by force of habit she greeted
him with the words she always used when Pierre or her son returned
after an absence: "High time, my dear, high time! We were all weary of
waiting for you. Well, thank God!" and received her presents with
another customary remark: "It's not the gift that's precious, my dear,
but that you give it to me, an old woman..."--yet it was evident
that she was not pleased by Pierre's arrival at that moment when it
diverted her attention from the unfinished game.

She finished her game of patience and only then examined the
presents. They consisted of a box for cards, of splendid
workmanship, a bright-blue Sevres tea cup with shepherdesses
depicted on it and with a lid, and a gold snuffbox with the count's
portrait on the lid which Pierre had had done by a miniaturist in
Petersburg. The countess had long wished for such a box, but as she
did not want to cry just then she glanced indifferently at the
portrait and gave her attention chiefly to the box for cards.

"Thank you, my dear, you have cheered me up," said she as she always
did. "But best of all you have brought yourself back--for I never
saw anything like it, you ought to give your wife a scolding! What are
we to do with her? She is like a mad woman when you are away.
Doesn't see anything, doesn't remember anything," she went on,
repeating her usual phrases. "Look, Anna Timofeevna," she added to her
companion, "see what a box for cards my son has brought us!"

Belova admired the presents and was delighted with her dress
material.

Though Pierre, Natasha, Nicholas, Countess Mary, and Denisov had
much to talk about that they could not discuss before the old
countess--not that anything was hidden from her, but because she had
dropped so far behindhand in many things that had they begun to
converse in her presence they would have had to answer inopportune
questions and to repeat what they had already told her many times:
that so-and-so was dead and so-and-so was married, which she would
again be unable to remember--yet they sat at tea round the samovar
in the drawing room from habit, and Pierre answered the countess'
questions as to whether Prince Vasili had aged and whether Countess
Mary Alexeevna had sent greetings and still thought of them, and other
matters that interested no one and to which she herself was
indifferent.

Conversation of this kind, interesting to no one yet unavoidable,
continued all through teatime. All the grown-up members of the
family were assembled near the round tea table at which Sonya presided
beside the samovar. The children with their tutors and governesses had
had tea and their voices were audible from the next room. At tea all
sat in their accustomed places: Nicholas beside the stove at a small
table where his tea was handed to him; Milka, the old gray borzoi
bitch (daughter of the first Milka), with a quite gray face and
large black eyes that seemed more prominent than ever, lay on the
armchair beside him; Denisov, whose curly hair, mustache, and whiskers
had turned half gray, sat beside countess Mary with his general's
tunic unbuttoned; Pierre sat between his wife and the old countess. He
spoke of what he knew might interest the old lady and that she could
understand. He told her of external social events and of the people
who had formed the circle of her contemporaries and had once been a
real, living, and distinct group, but who were now for the most part
scattered about the world and like herself were garnering the last
ears of the harvests they had sown in earlier years. But to the old
countess those contemporaries of hers seemed to be the only serious
and real society. Natasha saw by Pierre's animation that his visit had
been interesting and that he had much to tell them but dare not say it
before the old countess. Denisov, not being a member of the family,
did not understand Pierre's caution and being, as a malcontent, much
interested in what was occurring in Petersburg, kept urging Pierre
to tell them about what had happened in the Semenovsk regiment, then
about Arakcheev, and then about the Bible Society. Once or twice
Pierre was carried away and began to speak of these things, but
Nicholas and Natasha always brought him back to the health of Prince
Ivan and Countess Mary Alexeevna.

"Well, and all this idiocy--Gossner and Tatawinova?" Denisov
asked. "Is that weally still going on?"

"Going on?" Pierre exclaimed. "Why more than ever! The Bible Society
is the whole government now!"

 "What is that, mon cher ami?" asked the countess, who had
finished her tea and evidently needed a pretext for being angry
after her meal. "What are you saying about the government? I don't
understand."

"Well, you know, Maman," Nicholas interposed, knowing how to
translate things into his mother's language, "Prince Alexander
Golitsyn has founded a society and in consequence has great influence,
they say."

"Arakcheev and Golitsyn," incautiously remarked Pierre, "are now the
whole government! And what a government! They see treason everywhere
and are afraid of everything."

"Well, and how is Prince Alexander to blame? He is a most
estimable man. I used to meet him at Mary Antonovna's," said the
countess in an offended tone; and still more offended that they all
remained silent, she went on: "Nowadays everyone finds fault. A Gospel
Society! Well, and what harm is there in that?" and she rose
(everybody else got up too) and with a severe expression sailed back
to her table in the sitting room.

The melancholy silence that followed was broken by the sounds of the
children's voices and laughter from the next room. Evidently some
jolly excitement was going on there.

"Finished, finished!" little Natasha's gleeful yell rose above
them all.

Pierre exchanged glances with Countess Mary and Nicholas (Natasha he
never lost sight of) and smiled happily.

"That's delightful music!" said he.

"It means that Anna Makarovna has finished her stocking," said
Countess Mary.

"Oh, I'll go and see," said Pierre, jumping up. "You know," he
added, stopping at the door, "why I'm especially fond of that music?
It is always the first thing that tells me all is well. When I was
driving here today, the nearer I got to the house the more anxious I
grew. As I entered the anteroom I heard Andrusha's peals of laughter
and that meant that all was well."

"I know! I know that feeling," said Nicholas. "But I mustn't go
there--those stockings are to be a surprise for me."

Pierre went to the children, and the shouting and laughter grew
still louder.

"Come, Anna Makarovna," Pierre's voice was heard saying, "come
here into the middle of the room and at the word of command, 'One,
two,' and when I say 'three'... You stand here, and you in my arms-
well now! One, two!..." said Pierre, and a silence followed:
"three!" and a rapturously breathless cry of children's voices
filled the room. "Two, two!" they shouted.

This meant two stockings, which by a secret process known only to
herself Anna Makarovna used to knit at the same time on the same
needles, and which, when they were ready, she always triumphantly
drew, one out of the other, in the children's presence.





CHAPTER XIV


Soon after this the children came in to say good night. They
kissed everyone, the tutors and governesses made their bows, and
they went out. Only young Nicholas and his tutor remained. Dessalles
whispered to the boy to come downstairs.

"No, Monsieur Dessalles, I will ask my aunt to let me stay," replied
Nicholas Bolkonski also in a whisper.

"Ma tante, please let me stay," said he, going up to his aunt.

His face expressed entreaty, agitation, and ecstasy. Countess Mary
glanced at him and turned to Pierre.

"When you are here he can't tear himself away," she said.

"I will bring him to you directly, Monsieur Dessalles. Good
night!" said Pierre, giving his hand to the Swiss tutor, and he turned
to young Nicholas with a smile. "You and I haven't seen anything of
one another yet... How like he is growing, Mary!" he added, addressing
Countess Mary.

"Like my father?" asked the boy, flushing crimson and looking up
at Pierre with bright, ecstatic eyes.

Pierre nodded, and went on with what he had been saying when the
children had interrupted. Countess Mary sat down doing woolwork;
Natasha did not take her eyes off her husband. Nicholas and Denisov
rose, asked for their pipes, smoked, went to fetch more tea from
Sonya--who sat weary but resolute at the samovar--and questioned
Pierre. The curly-headed, delicate boy sat with shining eyes unnoticed
in a corner, starting every now and then and muttering something to
himself, and evidently experiencing a new and powerful emotion as he
turned his curly head, with his thin neck exposed by his turn-down
collar, toward the place where Pierre sat.

The conversation turned on the contemporary gossip about those in
power, in which most people see the chief interest of home politics.
Denisov, dissatisfied with the government on account of his own
disappointments in the service, heard with pleasure of the things done
in Petersburg which seemed to him stupid, and made forcible and
sharp comments on what Pierre told them.

"One used to have to be a German--now one must dance with Tatawinova
and Madame Kwudener, and wead Ecka'tshausen and the bwethwen. Oh, they
should let that fine fellow Bonaparte lose--he'd knock all this
nonsense out of them! Fancy giving the command of the Semenov wegiment
to a fellow like that Schwa'tz!" he cried.

Nicholas, though free from Denisov's readiness to find fault with
everything, also thought that discussion of the government was a
very serious and weighty matter, and the fact that A had been
appointed Minister of This and B Governor General of That, and that
the Emperor had said so-and-so and this minister so-and-so, seemed
to him very important. And so he thought it necessary to take an
interest in these things and to question Pierre. The questions put
by these two kept the conversation from changing its ordinary
character of gossip about the higher government circles.

But Natasha, knowing all her husband's ways and ideas, saw that he
had long been wishing but had been unable to divert the conversation
to another channel and express his own deeply felt idea for the sake
of which he had gone to Petersburg to consult with his new friend
Prince Theodore, and she helped him by asking how his affairs with
Prince Theodore had gone.

"What was it about?" asked Nicholas.

"Always the same thing," said Pierre, looking round at his
listeners. "Everybody sees that things are going so badly that they
cannot be allowed to go on so and that it is the duty of all decent
men to counteract it as far as they can."

"What can decent men do?" Nicholas inquired, frowning slightly.
"What can be done?"

"Why, this..."

"Come into my study," said Nicholas.

Natasha, who had long expected to be fetched to nurse her baby,
now heard the nurse calling her and went to the nursery. Countess Mary
followed her. The men went into the study and little Nicholas
Bolkonski followed them unnoticed by his uncle and sat down at the
writing table in a shady corner by the window.

"Well, what would you do?" asked Denisov.

"Always some fantastic schemes," said Nicholas.

"Why this," began Pierre, not sitting down but pacing the room,
sometimes stopping short, gesticulating, and lisping: "the position in
Petersburg is this: the Emperor does not look into anything. He has
abandoned himself altogether to this mysticism" (Pierre could not
tolerate mysticism in anyone now). "He seeks only for peace, and
only these people sans foi ni loi* can give it him--people who
recklessly hack at and strangle everything--Magnitski, Arakcheev,
and tutti quanti.... You will agree that if you did not look after
your estates yourself but only wanted a quiet life, the harsher your
steward was the more readily your object might be attained," he said
to Nicholas.


*Without faith or law.


"Well, what does that lead up to?" said Nicholas.

"Well, everything is going to ruin! Robbery in the law courts, in
the army nothing but flogging, drilling, and Military Settlements; the
people are tortured, enlightenment is suppressed. All that is young
and honest is crushed! Everyone sees that this cannot go on.
Everything is strained to such a degree that it will certainly break,"
said Pierre (as those who examine the actions of any government have
always said since governments began). "I told them just one thing in
Petersburg."

"Told whom?"

"Well, you know whom," said Pierre, with a meaning glance from under
his brows. "Prince Theodore and all those. To encourage culture and
philanthropy is all very well of course. The aim is excellent but in
the present circumstances something else is needed."

At that moment Nicholas noticed the presence of his nephew. His face
darkened and he went up to the boy.

"Why are you here?"

"Why? Let him be," said Pierre, taking Nicholas by the arm and
continuing. "That is not enough, I told them. Something else is
needed. When you stand expecting the overstrained string to snap at
any moment, when everyone is expecting the inevitable catastrophe,
as many as possible must join hands as closely as they can to
withstand the general calamity. Everything that is young and strong is
being enticed away and depraved. One is lured by women, another by
honors, a third by ambition or money, and they go over to that camp.
No independent men, such as you or I, are left. What I say is widen
the scope of our society, let the mot d'ordre be not virtue alone
but independence and action as well!"

Nicholas, who had left his nephew, irritably pushed up an
armchair, sat down in it, and listened to Pierre, coughing
discontentedly and frowning more and more.

"But action with what aim?" he cried. "And what position will you
adopt toward the government?"

"Why, the position of assistants. The society need not be secret
if the government allows it. Not merely is it not hostile to
government, but it is a society of true conservatives--a society of
gentlemen in the full meaning of that word. It is only to prevent some
Pugachev or other from killing my children and yours, and Arakcheev
from sending me off to some Military Settlement. We join hands only
for the public welfare and the general safety."

"Yes, but it's a secret society and therefore a hostile and
harmful one which can only cause harm."

"Why? Did the Tugendbund which saved Europe" (they did not then
venture to suggest that Russia had saved Europe) "do any harm? The
Tugendbund is an alliance of virtue: it is love, mutual help... it
is what Christ preached on the Cross."

Natasha, who had come in during the conversation, looked joyfully at
her husband. It was not what he was saying that pleased her--that
did not even interest her, for it seemed to her that was all extremely
simple and that she had known it a long time (it seemed so to her
because she knew that it sprang from Pierre's whole soul), but it
was his animated and enthusiastic appearance that made her glad.

The boy with the thin neck stretching out from the turn-down collar-
whom everyone had forgotten--gazed at Pierre with even greater and
more rapturous joy. Every word of Pierre's burned into his heart,
and with a nervous movement of his fingers he unconsciously broke
the sealing wax and quill pens his hands came upon on his uncle's
table.

"It is not at all what you suppose; but that is what the German
Tugendbund was, and what I am proposing."

"No, my fwiend! The Tugendbund is all vewy well for the sausage
eaters, but I don't understand it and can't even pwonounce it,"
interposed Denisov in a loud and resolute voice. "I agwee that
evewything here is wotten and howwible, but the Tugendbund I don't
understand. If we're not satisfied, let us have a bunt of our own.
That's all wight. Je suis vot'e homme!"*


*"I'm your man."


Pierre smiled, Natasha began to laugh, but Nicholas knitted his
brows still more and began proving to Pierre that there was no
prospect of any great change and that all the danger he spoke of
existed only in his imagination. Pierre maintained the contrary, and
as his mental faculties were greater and more resourceful, Nicholas
felt himself cornered. This made him still angrier, for he was fully
convinced, not by reasoning but by something within him stronger
than reason, of the justice of his opinion.

"I will tell you this," he said, rising and trying with nervously
twitching fingers to prop up his pipe in a corner, but finally
abandoning the attempt. "I can't prove it to you. You say that
everything here is rotten and that an overthrow is coming: I don't see
it. But you also say that our oath of allegiance is a conditional
matter, and to that I reply: 'You are my best friend, as you know, but
if you formed a secret society and began working against the
government--be it what it may--I know it is my duty to obey the
government. And if Arakcheev ordered me to lead a squadron against you
and cut you down, I should not hesitate an instant, but should do it.'
And you may argue about that as you like!"

An awkward silence followed these words. Natasha was the first to
speak, defending her husband and attacking her brother. Her defense
was weak and inapt but she attained her object. The conversation was
resumed, and no longer in the unpleasantly hostile tone of Nicholas'
last remark.

When they all got up to go in to supper, little Nicholas Bolkonski
went up to Pierre, pale and with shining, radiant eyes.

"Uncle Pierre, you... no... If Papa were alive... would he agree
with you?" he asked.

And Pierre suddenly realized what a special, independent, complex,
and powerful process of thought and feeling must have been going on in
this boy during that conversation, and remembering all he had said
he regretted that the lad should have heard him. He had, however, to
give him an answer.

"Yes, I think so," he said reluctantly, and left the study.

The lad looked down and seemed now for the first time to notice what
he had done to the things on the table. He flushed and went up to
Nicholas.

"Uncle, forgive me, I did that... unintentionally," he said,
pointing to the broken sealing wax and pens.

Nicholas started angrily.

"All right, all right," he said, throwing the bits under the table.

And evidently suppressing his vexation with difficulty, he turned
away from the boy.

"You ought not to have been here at all," he said.





CHAPTER XV


The conversation at supper was not about politics or societies,
but turned on the subject Nicholas liked best--recollections of
1812. Denisov started these and Pierre was particularly agreeable
and amusing about them. The family separated on the most friendly
terms.

After supper Nicholas, having undressed in his study and given
instructions to the steward who had been waiting for him, went to
the bedroom in his dressing gown, where he found his wife still at her
table, writing.

"What are you writing, Mary?" Nicholas asked.

Countess Mary blushed. She was afraid that what she was writing
would not be understood or approved by her husband.

She had wanted to conceal what she was writing from him, but at
the same time was glad he had surprised her at it and that she would
now have to tell him.

"A diary, Nicholas," she replied, handing him a blue exercise book
filled with her firm, bold writing.

"A diary?" Nicholas repeated with a shade of irony, and he took up
the book.

It was in French.


December 4. Today when Andrusha (her eldest boy) woke up he did
not wish to dress and Mademoiselle Louise sent for me. He was
naughty and obstinate. I tried threats, but he only grew angrier. Then
I took the matter in hand: I left him alone and began with nurse's
help to get the other children up, telling him that I did not love
him. For a long time he was silent, as if astonished, then he jumped
out of bed, ran to me in his shirt, and sobbed so that I could not
calm him for a long time. It was plain that what troubled him most was
that he had grieved me. Afterwards in the evening when I gave him
his ticket, he again began crying piteously and kissing me. One can do
anything with him by tenderness.


"What is a 'ticket'?" Nicholas inquired.

"I have begun giving the elder ones marks every evening, showing how
they have behaved."

Nicholas looked into the radiant eyes that were gazing at him, and
continued to turn over the pages and read. In the diary was set down
everything in the children's lives that seemed noteworthy to their
mother as showing their characters or suggesting general reflections
on educational methods. They were for the most part quite
insignificant trifles, but did not seem so to the mother or to the
father either, now that he read this diary about his children for
the first time.

Under the date "5" was entered:


Mitya was naughty at table. Papa said he was to have no pudding.
He had none, but looked so unhappily and greedily at the others
while they were eating! I think that punishment by depriving
children of sweets only develops their greediness. Must tell
Nicholas this.


Nicholas put down the book and looked at his wife. The radiant
eyes gazed at him questioningly: would he approve or disapprove of her
diary? There could be no doubt not only of his approval but also of
his admiration for his wife.

Perhaps it need not be done so pedantically, thought Nicholas, or
even done at all, but this untiring, continual spiritual effort of
which the sole aim was the children's moral welfare delighted him. Had
Nicholas been able to analyze his feelings he would have found that
his steady, tender, and proud love of his wife rested on his feeling
of wonder at her spirituality and at the lofty moral world, almost
beyond his reach, in which she had her being.

He was proud of her intelligence and goodness, recognized his own
insignificance beside her in the spiritual world, and rejoiced all the
more that she with such a soul not only belonged to him but was part
of himself.

"I quite, quite approve, my dearest!" said he with a significant
look, and after a short pause he added: "And I behaved badly today.
You weren't in the study. We began disputing--Pierre and I--and I lost
my temper. But he is impossible: such a child! I don't know what would
become of him if Natasha didn't keep him in hand.... Have you any idea
why he went to Petersburg? They have formed..."

"Yes, I know," said Countess Mary. "Natasha told me."

"Well, then, you know," Nicholas went on, growing hot at the mere
recollection of their discussion, "he wanted to convince me that it is
every honest man's duty to go against the government, and that the
oath of allegiance and duty... I am sorry you weren't there. They
all fell on me--Denisov and Natasha... Natasha is absurd. How she
rules over him! And yet there need only be a discussion and she has no
words of her own but only repeats his sayings..." added Nicholas,
yielding to that irresistible inclination which tempts us to judge
those nearest and dearest to us. He forgot that what he was saying
about Natasha could have been applied word for word to himself in
relation to his wife.

"Yes, I have noticed that," said Countess Mary.

"When I told him that duty and the oath were above everything, he
started proving goodness knows what! A pity you were not there--what
would you have said?"

"As I see it you were quite right, and I told Natasha so. Pierre
says everybody is suffering, tortured, and being corrupted, and that
it is our duty to help our neighbor. Of course he is right there,"
said Countess Mary, "but he forgets that we have other duties nearer
to us, duties indicated to us by God Himself, and that though we might
expose ourselves to risks we must not risk our children."

"Yes, that's it! That's just what I said to him," put in Nicholas,
who fancied he really had said it. "But they insisted on their own
view: love of one's neighbor and Christianity--and all this in the
presence of young Nicholas, who had gone into my study and broke all
my things."

"Ah, Nicholas, do you know I am often troubled about little
Nicholas," said Countess Mary. "He is such an exceptional boy. I am
afraid I neglect him in favor of my own: we all have children and
relations while he has no one. He is constantly alone with his
thoughts."

"Well, I don't think you need reproach yourself on his account.
All that the fondest mother could do for her son you have done and are
doing for him, and of course I am glad of it. He is a fine lad, a fine
lad! This evening he listened to Pierre in a sort of trance, and
fancy--as we were going in to supper I looked and he had broken
everything on my table to bits, and he told me of it himself at
once! I never knew him to tell an untruth. A fine lad, a fine lad!"
repeated Nicholas, who at heart was not fond of Nicholas Bolkonski but
was always anxious to recognize that he was a fine lad.

"Still, I am not the same as his own mother," said Countess Mary. "I
feel I am not the same and it troubles me. A wonderful boy, but I am
dreadfully afraid for him. It would be good for him to have
companions."

"Well it won't be for long. Next summer I'll take him to
Petersburg," said Nicholas. "Yes, Pierre always was a dreamer and
always will be," he continued, returning to the talk in the study
which had evidently disturbed him. "Well, what business is it of
mine what goes on there--whether Arakcheev is bad, and all that?
What business was it of mine when I married and was so deep in debt
that I was threatened with prison, and had a mother who could not
see or understand it? And then there are you and the children and
our affairs. Is it for my own pleasure that I am at the farm or in the
office from morning to night? No, but I know I must work to comfort my
mother, to repay you, and not to leave the children such beggars as
I was."

Countess Mary wanted to tell him that man does not live by bread
alone and that he attached too much importance to these matters. But
she knew she must not say this and that it would be useless to do
so. She only took his hand and kissed it. He took this as a sign of
approval and a confirmation of his thoughts, and after a few
minutes' reflection continued to think aloud.

"You know, Mary, today Elias Mitrofanych" (this was his overseer)
"came back from the Tambov estate and told me they are already
offering eighty thousand rubles for the forest."

And with an eager face Nicholas began to speak of the possibility of
repurchasing Otradnoe before long, and added: "Another ten years of
life and I shall leave the children... in an excellent position."

Countess Mary listened to her husband and understood all that he
told her. She knew that when he thought aloud in this way he would
sometimes ask her what he had been saying, and be vexed if he
noticed that she had been thinking about something else. But she had
to force herself to attend, for what he was saying did not interest
her at all. She looked at him and did not think, but felt, about
something different. She felt a submissive tender love for this man
who would never understand all that she understood, and this seemed to
make her love for him still stronger and added a touch of passionate
tenderness. Besides this feeling which absorbed her altogether and
hindered her from following the details of her husband's plans,
thoughts that had no connection with what he was saying flitted
through her mind. She thought of her nephew. Her husband's account
of the boy's agitation while Pierre was speaking struck her
forcibly, and various traits of his gentle, sensitive character
recurred to her mind; and while thinking of her nephew she thought
also of her own children. She did not compare them with him, but
compared her feeling for them with her feeling for him, and felt
with regret that there was something lacking in her feeling for
young Nicholas.

Sometimes it seemed to her that this difference arose from the
difference in their ages, but she felt herself to blame toward him and
promised in her heart to do better and to accomplish the impossible-
in this life to love her husband, her children, little Nicholas, and
all her neighbors, as Christ loved mankind. Countess Mary's soul
always strove toward the infinite, the eternal, and the absolute,
and could therefore never be at peace. A stern expression of the
lofty, secret suffering of a soul burdened by the body appeared on her
face. Nicholas gazed at her. "O God! What will become of us if she
dies, as I always fear when her face is like that?" thought he, and
placing himself before the icon he began to say his evening prayers.





CHAPTER XVI


Natasha and Pierre, left alone, also began to talk as only a husband
and wife can talk, that is, with extraordinary clearness and rapidity,
understanding and expressing each other's thoughts in ways contrary to
all rules of logic, without premises, deductions, or conclusions,
and in a quite peculiar way. Natasha was so used to this kind of
talk with her husband that for her it was the surest sign of something
being wrong between them if Pierre followed a line of logical
reasoning. When he began proving anything, or talking
argumentatively and calmly and she, led on by his example, began to do
the same, she knew that they were on the verge of a quarrel.

From the moment they were alone and Natasha came up to him with
wide-open happy eyes, and quickly seizing his head pressed it to her
bosom, saying: "Now you are all mine, mine! You won't escape!"--from
that moment this conversation began, contrary to all the laws of logic
and contrary to them because quite different subjects were talked
about at one and the same time. This simultaneous discussion of many
topics did not prevent a clear understanding but on the contrary was
the surest sign that they fully understood one another.

Just as in a dream when all is uncertain, unreasoning, and
contradictory, except the feeling that guides the dream, so in this
intercourse contrary to all laws of reason, the words themselves
were not consecutive and clear but only the feeling that prompted
them.

Natasha spoke to Pierre about her brother's life and doings, of
how she had suffered and lacked life during his own absence, and of
how she was fonder than ever of Mary, and how Mary was in every way
better than herself. In saying this Natasha was sincere in
acknowledging Mary's superiority, but at the same time by saying it
she made a demand on Pierre that he should, all the same, prefer her
to Mary and to all other women, and that now, especially after
having seen many women in Petersburg, he should tell her so afresh.

Pierre, answering Natasha's words, told her how intolerable it had
been for him to meet ladies at dinners and balls in Petersburg.

"I have quite lost the knack of talking to ladies," he said. "It was
simply dull. Besides, I was very busy."

Natasha looked intently at him and went on:

"Mary is so splendid," she said. "How she understands children! It
is as if she saw straight into their souls. Yesterday, for instance,
Mitya was naughty..."

"How like his father he is," Pierre interjected.

Natasha knew why he mentioned Mitya's likeness to Nicholas: the
recollection of his dispute with his brother-in-law was unpleasant and
he wanted to know what Natasha thought of it.

"Nicholas has the weakness of never agreeing with anything not
generally accepted. But I understand that you value what opens up a
fresh line," said she, repeating words Pierre had once uttered.

"No, the chief point is that to Nicholas ideas and discussions are
an amusement--almost a pastime," said Pierre. "For instance, he is
collecting a library and has made it a rule not to buy a new book till
he has read what he had already bought--Sismondi and Rousseau and
Montesquieu," he added with a smile. "You know how much I..." he began
to soften down what he had said; but Natasha interrupted him to show
that this was unnecessary.

"So you say ideas are an amusement to him...."

"Yes, and for me nothing else is serious. All the time in Petersburg
I saw everyone as in a dream. When I am taken up by a thought, all
else is mere amusement."

"Ah, I'm so sorry I wasn't there when you met the children," said
Natasha. "Which was most delighted? Lisa, I'm sure."

"Yes," Pierre replied, and went on with what was in his mind.
"Nicholas says we ought not to think. But I can't help it. Besides,
when I was in Petersburg I felt (I can this to you) that the whole
affair would go to pieces without me--everyone was pulling his own
way. But I succeeded in uniting them all; and then my idea is so clear
and simple. You see, I don't say that we ought to oppose this and
that. We may be mistaken. What I say is: 'Join hands, you who love the
right, and let there be but one banner--that of active virtue.' Prince
Sergey is a fine fellow and clever."

Natasha would have had no doubt as to the greatness of Pierre's
idea, but one thing disconcerted her. "Can a man so important and
necessary to society be also my husband? How did this happen?" She
wished to express this doubt to him. "Now who could decide whether
he is really cleverer than all the others?" she asked herself, and
passed in review all those whom Pierre most respected. Judging by what
he had said there was no one he had respected so highly as Platon
Karataev.

"Do you know what I am thinking about?" she asked. "About Platon
Karataev. Would he have approved of you now, do you think?"

Pierre was not at all surprised at this question. He understood
his wife's line of thought.

"Platon Karataev?" he repeated, and pondered, evidently sincerely
trying to imagine Karataev's opinion on the subject. "He would not
have understood... yet perhaps he would."

"I love you awfully!" Natasha suddenly said. "Awfully, awfully!"

"No, he would not have approved," said Pierre, after reflection.
"What he would have approved of is our family life. He was always so
anxious to find seemliness, happiness, and peace in everything, and
I should have been proud to let him see us. There now--you talk of
my absence, but you wouldn't believe what a special feeling I have for
you after a separation...."

"Yes, I should think..." Natasha began.

"No, it's not that. I never leave off loving you. And one couldn't
love more, but this is something special.... Yes, of course-" he did
not finish because their eyes meeting said the rest.

"What nonsense it is," Natasha suddenly exclaimed, "about
honeymoons, and that the greatest happiness is at first! On the
contrary, now is the best of all. If only you did not go away! Do
you remember how we quarreled? And it was always my fault. Always
mine. And what we quarreled about--I don't even remember!"

"Always about the same thing," said Pierre with a smile. "Jealo..."

"Don't say it! I can't bear it!" Natasha cried, and her eyes
glittered coldly and vindictively. "Did you see her?" she added, after
a pause.

"No, and if I had I shouldn't have recognized her."

They were silent for a while.

"Oh, do you know? While you were talking in the study I was
looking at you," Natasha began, evidently anxious to disperse the
cloud that had come over them. "You are as like him as two peas-
like the boy." (She meant her little son.) "Oh, it's time to go to
him.... The milk's come.... But I'm sorry to leave you."

They were silent for a few seconds. Then suddenly turning to one
another at the same time they both began to speak. Pierre began with
self-satisfaction and enthusiasm, Natasha with a quiet, happy smile.
Having interrupted one another they both stopped to let the other
continue.

"No. What did you say? Go on, go on."

"No, you go on, I was talking nonsense," said Natasha.

Pierre finished what he had begun. It was the sequel to his
complacent reflections on his success in Petersburg. At that moment it
seemed to him that he was chosen to give a new direction to the
whole of Russian society and to the whole world.

"I only wished to say that ideas that have great results are
always simple ones. My whole idea is that if vicious people are united
and constitute a power, then honest folk must do the same. Now
that's simple enough."

"Yes."

"And what were you going to say?"

"I? Only nonsense."

"But all the same?"

"Oh nothing, only a trifle," said Natasha, smilingly still more
brightly. "I only wanted to tell you about Petya: today nurse was
coming to take him from me, and he laughed, shut his eyes, and clung
to me. I'm sure he thought he was hiding. Awfully sweet! There, now
he's crying. Well, good-by!" and she left the room.


Meanwhile downstairs in young Nicholas Bolkonski's bedroom a
little lamp was burning as usual. (The boy was afraid of the dark
and they could not cure him of it.) Dessalles slept propped up on four
pillows and his Roman nose emitted sounds of rhythmic snoring.
Little Nicholas, who had just waked up in a cold perspiration, sat
up in bed and gazed before him with wide-open eyes. He had awaked from
a terrible dream. He had dreamed that he and Uncle Pierre, wearing
helmets such as were depicted in his Plutarch, were leading a huge
army. The army was made up of white slanting lines that filled the air
like the cobwebs that float about in autumn and which Dessalles called
les fils de la Vierge. In front was Glory, which was similar to
those threads but rather thicker. He and Pierre were borne along
lightly and joyously, nearer and nearer to their goal. Suddenly the
threads that moved them began to slacken and become entangled and it
grew difficult to move. And Uncle Nicholas stood before them in a
stern and threatening attitude.

"Have you done this?" he said, pointing to some broken sealing wax
and pens. "I loved you, but I have orders from Arakcheev and will kill
the first of you who moves forward." Little Nicholas turned to look at
Pierre but Pierre was no longer there. In his place was his father-
Prince Andrew--and his father had neither shape nor form, but he
existed, and when little Nicholas perceived him he grew faint with
love: he felt himself powerless, limp, and formless. His father
caressed and pitied him. But Uncle Nicholas came nearer and nearer
to them. Terror seized young Nicholas and he awoke.

"My father!" he thought. (Though there were two good portraits of
Prince Andrew in the house, Nicholas never imagined him in human
form.) "My father has been with me and caressed me. He approved of
me and of Uncle Pierre. Whatever he may tell me, I will do it.
Mucius Scaevola burned his hand. Why should not the same sort of thing
happen to me? I know they want me to learn. And I will learn. But
someday I shall have finished learning, and then I will do
something. I only pray God that something may happen to me such as
happened to Plutarch's men, and I will act as they did. I will do
better. Everyone shall know me, love me, and be delighted with me!"
And suddenly his bosom heaved with sobs and he began to cry.

"Are you ill?" he heard Dessalles' voice asking.

"No," answered Nicholas, and lay back on his pillow.

"He is good and kind and I am fond of him!" he thought of Dessalles.
"But Uncle Pierre! Oh, what a wonderful man he is! And my father?
Oh, Father, Father! Yes, I will do something with which even he
would be satisfied...."







SECOND EPILOGUE





CHAPTER I


History is the life of nations and of humanity. To seize and put
into words, to describe directly the life of humanity or even of a
single nation, appears impossible.

The ancient historians all employed one and the same method to
describe and seize the apparently elusive--the life of a people.
They described the activity of individuals who ruled the people, and
regarded the activity of those men as representing the activity of the
whole nation.

The question: how did individuals make nations act as they wished
and by what was the will of these individuals themselves guided? the
ancients met by recognizing a divinity which subjected the nations
to the will of a chosen man, and guided the will of that chosen man so
as to accomplish ends that were predestined.

For the ancients these questions were solved by a belief in the
direct participation of the Deity in human affairs.

Modern history, in theory, rejects both these principles.

It would seem that having rejected the belief of the ancients in
man's subjection to the Deity and in a predetermined aim toward
which nations are led, modern history should study not the
manifestations of power but the causes that produce it. But modern
history has not done this. Having in theory rejected the view held
by the ancients, it still follows them in practice.

Instead of men endowed with divine authority and directly guided
by the will of God, modern history has given us either heroes
endowed with extraordinary, superhuman capacities, or simply men of
very various kinds, from monarchs to journalists, who lead the masses.
Instead of the former divinely appointed aims of the Jewish, Greek, or
Roman nations, which ancient historians regarded as representing the
progress of humanity, modern history has postulated its own aims-
the welfare of the French, German, or English people, or, in its
highest abstraction, the welfare and civilization of humanity in
general, by which is usually meant that of the peoples occupying a
small northwesterly portion of a large continent.

Modern history has rejected the beliefs of the ancients without
replacing them by a new conception, and the logic of the situation has
obliged the historians, after they had apparently rejected the
divine authority of the kings and the "fate" of the ancients, to reach
the same conclusion by another road, that is, to recognize (1) nations
guided by individual men, and (2) the existence of a known aim to
which these nations and humanity at large are tending.

At the basis of the works of all the modern historians from Gibbon
to Buckle, despite their seeming disagreements and the apparent
novelty of their outlooks, lie those two old, unavoidable assumptions.

In the first place the historian describes the activity of
individuals who in his opinion have directed humanity (one historian
considers only monarchs, generals, and ministers as being such men,
while another includes also orators, learned men, reformers,
philosophers, and poets). Secondly, it is assumed that the goal toward
which humanity is being led is known to the historians: to one of them
this goal is the greatness of the Roman, Spanish, or French realm;
to another it is liberty, equality, and a certain kind of civilization
of a small corner of the world called Europe.

In 1789 a ferment arises in Paris; it grows, spreads, and is
expressed by a movement of peoples from west to east. Several times it
moves eastward and collides with a countermovement from the east
westward. In 1812 it reaches its extreme limit, Moscow, and then, with
remarkable symmetry, a countermovement occurs from east to west,
attracting to it, as the first movement had done, the nations of
middle Europe. The counter movement reaches the starting point of
the first movement in the west--Paris--and subsides.

During that twenty-year period an immense number of fields were left
untilled, houses were burned, trade changed its direction, millions of
men migrated, were impoverished, or were enriched, and millions of
Christian men professing the law of love of their fellows slew one
another.

What does all this mean? Why did it happen? What made those people
burn houses and slay their fellow men? What were the causes of these
events? What force made men act so? These are the instinctive,
plain, and most legitimate questions humanity asks itself when it
encounters the monuments and tradition of that period.

For a reply to these questions the common sense of mankind turns
to the science of history, whose aim is to enable nations and humanity
to know themselves.

If history had retained the conception of the ancients it would have
said that God, to reward or punish his people, gave Napoleon power and
directed his will to the fulfillment of the divine ends, and that
reply, would have been clear and complete. One might believe or
disbelieve in the divine significance of Napoleon, but for anyone
believing in it there would have been nothing unintelligible in the
history of that period, nor would there have been any contradictions.

But modern history cannot give that reply. Science does not admit
the conception of the ancients as to the direct participation of the
Deity in human affairs, and therefore history ought to give other
answers.

Modern history replying to these questions says: you want to know
what this movement means, what caused it, and what force produced
these events? Then listen:

"Louis XIV was a very proud and self-confident man; he had such
and such mistresses and such and such ministers and he ruled France
badly. His descendants were weak men and they too ruled France
badly. And they had such and such favorites and such and such
mistresses. Moreover, certain men wrote some books at that time. At
the end of the eighteenth century there were a couple of dozen men
in Paris who began to talk about all men being free and equal. This
caused people all over France to begin to slash at and drown one
another. They killed the king and many other people. At that time
there was in France a man of genius--Napoleon. He conquered
everybody everywhere--that is, he killed many people because he was
a great genius. And for some reason he went to kill Africans, and
killed them so well and was so cunning and wise that when he
returned to France he ordered everybody to obey him, and they all
obeyed him. Having become an Emperor he again went out to kill
people in Italy, Austria, and Prussia. And there too he killed a great
many. In Russia there was an Emperor, Alexander, who decided to
restore order in Europe and therefore fought against Napoleon. In 1807
he suddenly made friends with him, but in 1811 they again quarreled
and again began killing many people. Napoleon led six hundred thousand
men into Russia and captured Moscow; then he suddenly ran away from
Moscow, and the Emperor Alexander, helped by the advice of Stein and
others, united Europe to arm against the disturber of its peace. All
Napoleon's allies suddenly became his enemies and their forces
advanced against the fresh forces he raised. The Allies defeated
Napoleon, entered Paris, forced Napoleon to abdicate, and sent him
to the island of Elba, not depriving him of the title of Emperor and
showing him every respect, though five years before and one year later
they all regarded him as an outlaw and a brigand. Then Louis XVIII,
who till then had been the laughingstock both of the French and the
Allies, began to reign. And Napoleon, shedding tears before his Old
Guards, renounced the throne and went into exile. Then the skillful
statesmen and diplomatists (especially Talleyrand, who managed to
sit down in a particular chair before anyone else and thereby extended
the frontiers of France) talked in Vienna and by these conversations
made the nations happy or unhappy. Suddenly the diplomatists and
monarchs nearly quarreled and were on the point of again ordering
their armies to kill one another, but just then Napoleon arrived in
France with a battalion, and the French, who had been hating him,
immediately all submitted to him. But the Allied monarchs were angry
at this and went to fight the French once more. And they defeated
the genius Napoleon and, suddenly recognizing him as a brigand, sent
him to the island of St. Helena. And the exile, separated from the
beloved France so dear to his heart, died a lingering death on that
rock and bequeathed his great deeds to posterity. But in Europe a
reaction occurred and the sovereigns once again all began to oppress
their subjects."

It would be a mistake to think that this is ironic--a caricature
of the historical accounts. On the contrary it is a very mild
expression of the contradictory replies, not meeting the questions,
which all the historians give, from the compilers of memoirs and the
histories of separate states to the writers of general histories and
the new histories of the culture of that period.

The strangeness and absurdity of these replies arise from the fact
that modern history, like a deaf man, answers questions no one has
asked.

If the purpose of history be to give a description of the movement
of humanity and of the peoples, the first question--in the absence
of a reply to which all the rest will be incomprehensible--is: what is
the power that moves peoples? To this, modern history laboriously
replies either that Napoleon was a great genius, or that Louis XIV was
very proud, or that certain writers wrote certain books.

All that may be so and mankind is ready to agree with it, but it
is not what was asked. All that would be interesting if we
recognized a divine power based on itself and always consistently
directing its nations through Napoleons, Louis-es, and writers; but we
do not acknowledge such a power, and therefore before speaking about
Napoleons, Louis-es, and authors, we ought to be shown the
connection existing between these men and the movement of the nations.

If instead of a divine power some other force has appeared, it
should be explained in what this new force consists, for the whole
interest of history lies precisely in that force.

History seems to assume that this force is self-evident and known to
everyone. But in spite of every desire to regard it as known, anyone
reading many historical works cannot help doubting whether this new
force, so variously understood by the historians themselves, is really
quite well known to everybody.





CHAPTER II


What force moves the nations?

Biographical historians and historians of separate nations
understand this force as a power inherent in heroes and rulers. In
their narration events occur solely by the will of a Napoleon, and
Alexander, or in general of the persons they describe. The answers
given by this kind of historian to the question of what force causes
events to happen are satisfactory only as long as there is but one
historian to each event. As soon as historians of different
nationalities and tendencies begin to describe the same event, the
replies they give immediately lose all meaning, for this force is
understood by them all not only differently but often in quite
contradictory ways. One historian says that an event was produced by
Napoleon's power, another that it was produced by Alexander's, a third
that it was due to the power of some other person. Besides this,
historians of that kind contradict each other even in their
statement as to the force on which the authority of some particular
person was based. Thiers, a Bonapartist, says that Napoleon's power
was based on his virtue and genius. Lanfrey, a Republican, says it was
based on his trickery and deception of the people. So the historians
of this class, by mutually destroying one another's positions, destroy
the understanding of the force which produces events, and furnish no
reply to history's essential question.

Writers of universal history who deal with all the nations seem to
recognize how erroneous is the specialist historians' view of the
force which produces events. They do not recognize it as a power
inherent in heroes and rulers, but as the resultant of a
multiplicity of variously directed forces. In describing a war or
the subjugation of a people, a general historian looks for the cause
of the event not in the power of one man, but in the interaction of
many persons connected with the event.

According to this view the power of historical personages,
represented as the product of many forces, can no longer, it would
seem, be regarded as a force that itself produces events. Yet in
most cases universal historians still employ the conception of power
as a force that itself produces events, and treat it as their cause.
In their exposition, an historic character is first the product of his
time, and his power only the resultant of various forces, and then his
power is itself a force producing events. Gervinus, Schlosser, and
others, for instance, at one time prove Napoleon to be a product of
the Revolution, of the ideas of 1789 and so forth, and at another
plainly say that the campaign of 1812 and other things they do not
like were simply the product of Napoleon's misdirected will, and
that the very ideas of 1789 were arrested in their development by
Napoleon's caprice. The ideas of the Revolution and the general temper
of the age produced Napoleon's power. But Napoleon's power
suppressed the ideas of the Revolution and the general temper of the
age.

This curious contradiction is not accidental. Not only does it occur
at every step, but the universal historians' accounts are all made
up of a chain of such contradictions. This contradiction occurs
because after entering the field of analysis the universal
historians stop halfway.

To find component forces equal to the composite or resultant
force, the sum of the components must equal the resultant. This
condition is never observed by the universal historians, and so to
explain the resultant forces they are obliged to admit, in addition to
the insufficient components, another unexplained force affecting the
resultant action.

Specialist historians describing the campaign of 1813 or the
restoration of the Bourbons plainly assert that these events were
produced by the will of Alexander. But the universal historian
Gervinus, refuting this opinion of the specialist historian, tries
to prove that the campaign of 1813 and the restoration of the Bourbons
were due to other things beside Alexander's will--such as the activity
of Stein, Metternich, Madame de Stael, Talleyrand, Fichte
Chateaubriand, and others. The historian evidently decomposes
Alexander's power into the components: Talleyrand, Chateaubriand,
and the rest--but the sum of the components, that is, the interactions
of Chateaubriand, Talleyrand, Madame de Stael, and the others,
evidently does not equal the resultant, namely the phenomenon of
millions of Frenchmen submitting to the Bourbons. That
Chateaubriand, Madame de Stael, and others spoke certain words to
one another only affected their mutual relations but does not
account for the submission of millions. And therefore to explain how
from these relations of theirs the submission of millions of people
resulted--that is, how component forces equal to one A gave a
resultant equal to a thousand times A--the historian is again
obliged to fall back on power--the force he had denied--and to
recognize it as the resultant of the forces, that is, he has to
admit an unexplained force acting on the resultant. And that is just
what the universal historians do, and consequently they not only
contradict the specialist historians but contradict themselves.

Peasants having no clear idea of the cause of rain, say, according
to whether they want rain or fine weather: "The wind has blown the
clouds away," or, "The wind has brought up the clouds." And in the
same way the universal historians sometimes, when it pleases them
and fits in with their theory, say that power is the result of events,
and sometimes, when they want to prove something else, say that
power produces events.

A third class of historians--the so-called historians of culture-
following the path laid down by the universal historians who sometimes
accept writers and ladies as forces producing events--again take
that force to be something quite different. They see it in what is
called culture--in mental activity.

The historians of culture are quite consistent in regard to their
progenitors, the writers of universal histories, for if historical
events may be explained by the fact that certain persons treated one
another in such and such ways, why not explain them by the fact that
such and such people wrote such and such books? Of the immense
number of indications accompanying every vital phenomenon, these
historians select the indication of intellectual activity and say that
this indication is the cause. But despite their endeavors to prove
that the cause of events lies in intellectual activity, only by a
great stretch can one admit that there is any connection between
intellectual activity and the movement of peoples, and in no case
can one admit that intellectual activity controls people's actions,
for that view is not confirmed by such facts as the very cruel murders
of the French Revolution resulting from the doctrine of the equality
of man, or the very cruel wars and executions resulting from the
preaching of love.

But even admitting as correct all the cunningly devised arguments
with which these histories are filled--admitting that nations are
governed by some undefined force called an idea--history's essential
question still remains unanswered, and to the former power of monarchs
and to the influence of advisers and other people introduced by the
universal historians, another, newer force--the idea--is added, the
connection of which with the masses needs explanation. It is
possible to understand that Napoleon had power and so events occurred;
with some effort one may even conceive that Napoleon together with
other influences was the cause of an event; but how a book, Le Contrat
social, had the effect of making Frenchmen begin to drown one
another cannot be understood without an explanation of the causal
nexus of this new force with the event.

Undoubtedly some relation exists between all who live
contemporaneously, and so it is possible to find some connection
between the intellectual activity of men and their historical
movements, just as such a connection may be found between the
movements of humanity and commerce, handicraft, gardening, or anything
else you please. But why intellectual activity is considered by the
historians of culture to be the cause or expression of the whole
historical movement is hard to understand. Only the following
considerations can have led the historians to such a conclusion: (1)
that history is written by learned men, and so it is natural and
agreeable for them to think that the activity of their class
supplies the basis of the movement of all humanity, just as a
similar belief is natural and agreeable to traders, agriculturists,
and soldiers (if they do not express it, that is merely because
traders and soldiers do not write history), and (2) that spiritual
activity, enlightenment, civilization, culture, ideas, are all
indistinct, indefinite conceptions under whose banner it is very
easy to use words having a still less definite meaning, and which
can therefore be readily introduced into any theory.

But not to speak of the intrinsic quality of histories of this
kind (which may possibly even be of use to someone for something)
the histories of culture, to which all general histories tend more and
more to approximate, are significant from the fact that after
seriously and minutely examining various religious, philosophic, and
political doctrines as causes of events, as soon as they have to
describe an actual historic event such as the campaign of 1812 for
instance, they involuntarily describe it as resulting from an exercise
of power--and say plainly that that was the result of Napoleon's will.
Speaking so, the historians of culture involuntarily contradict
themselves, and show that the new force they have devised does not
account for what happens in history, and that history can only be
explained by introducing a power which they apparently do not
recognize.





CHAPTER III


A locomotive is moving. Someone asks: "What moves it?" A peasant
says the devil moves it. Another man says the locomotive moves because
its wheels go round. A third asserts that the cause of its movement
lies in the smoke which the wind carries away.

The peasant is irrefutable. He has devised a complete explanation.
To refute him someone would have to prove to him that there is no
devil, or another peasant would have to explain to him that it is
not the devil but a German, who moves the locomotive. Only then, as
a result of the contradiction, will they see that they are both wrong.
But the man who says that the movement of the wheels is the cause
refutes himself, for having once begun to analyze he ought to go on
and explain further why the wheels go round; and till he has reached
the ultimate cause of the movement of the locomotive in the pressure
of steam in the boiler, he has no right to stop in his search for
the cause. The man who explains the movement of the locomotive by
the smoke that is carried back has noticed that the wheels do not
supply an explanation and has taken the first sign that occurs to
him and in his turn has offered that as an explanation.

The only conception that can explain the movement of the
locomotive is that of a force commensurate with the movement observed.

The only conception that can explain the movement of the peoples
is that of some force commensurate with the whole movement of the
peoples.

Yet to supply this conception various historians take forces of
different kinds, all of which are incommensurate with the movement
observed. Some see it as a force directly inherent in heroes, as the
peasant sees the devil in the locomotive; others as a force
resulting from several other forces, like the movement of the
wheels; others again as an intellectual influence, like the smoke that
is blown away.

So long as histories are written of separate individuals, whether
Caesars, Alexanders, Luthers, or Voltaires, and not the histories of
all, absolutely all those who take part in an event, it is quite
impossible to describe the movement of humanity without the conception
of a force compelling men to direct their activity toward a certain
end. And the only such conception known to historians is that of
power.

This conception is the one handle by means of which the material
of history, as at present expounded, can be dealt with, and anyone who
breaks that handle off, as Buckle did, without finding some other
method of treating historical material, merely deprives himself of the
one possible way of dealing with it. The necessity of the conception
of power as an explanation of historical events is best demonstrated
by the universal historians and historians of culture themselves,
for they professedly reject that conception but inevitably have
recourse to it at every step.

In dealing with humanity's inquiry, the science of history up to now
is like money in circulation--paper money and coin. The biographies
and special national histories are like paper money. They can be
used and can circulate and fulfill their purpose without harm to
anyone and even advantageously, as long as no one asks what is the
security behind them. You need only forget to ask how the will of
heroes produces events, and such histories as Thiers' will be
interesting and instructive and may perhaps even possess a tinge of
poetry. But just as doubts of the real value of paper money arise
either because, being easy to make, too much of it gets made or
because people try to exchange it for gold, so also doubts
concerning the real value of such histories arise either because too
many of them are written or because in his simplicity of heart someone
inquires: by what force did Napoleon do this?--that is, wants to
exchange the current paper money for the real gold of actual
comprehension.

The writers of universal histories and of the history of culture are
like people who, recognizing the defects of paper money, decide to
substitute for it money made of metal that has not the specific
gravity of gold. It may indeed make jingling coin, but will do no more
than that. Paper money may deceive the ignorant, but nobody is
deceived by tokens of base metal that have no value but merely jingle.
As gold is gold only if it is serviceable not merely for exchange
but also for use, so universal historians will be valuable only when
they can reply to history's essential question: what is power? The
universal historians give contradictory replies to that question,
while the historians of culture evade it and answer something quite
different. And as counters of imitation gold can be used only among
a group of people who agree to accept them as gold, or among those who
do not know the nature of gold, so universal historians and historians
of culture, not answering humanity's essential question, serve as
currency for some purposes of their own, only in universities and
among the mass of readers who have a taste for what they call "serious
reading."





CHAPTER IV


Having abandoned the conception of the ancients as to the divine
subjection of the will of a nation to some chosen man and the
subjection of that man's will to the Deity, history cannot without
contradictions take a single step till it has chosen one of two
things: either a return to the former belief in the direct
intervention of the Deity in human affairs or a definite explanation
of the meaning of the force producing historical events and termed
"power."

A return to the first is impossible, the belief has been
destroyed; and so it is essential to explain what is meant by power.

Napoleon ordered an army to be raised and go to war. We are so
accustomed to that idea and have become so used to it that the
question: why did six hundred thousand men go to fight when Napoleon
uttered certain words, seems to us senseless. He had the power and
so what he ordered was done.

This reply is quite satisfactory if we believe that the power was
given him by God. But as soon as we do not admit that, it becomes
essential to determine what is this power of one man over others.

It cannot be the direct physical power of a strong man over a weak
one--a domination based on the application or threat of physical
force, like the power of Hercules; nor can it be based on the effect
of moral force, as in their simplicity some historians think who say
that the leading figures in history are heroes, that is, men gifted
with a special strength of soul and mind called genius. This power
cannot be based on the predominance of moral strength, for, not to
mention heroes such as Napoleon about whose moral qualities opinions
differ widely, history shows us that neither a Louis XI nor a
Metternich, who ruled over millions of people, had any particular
moral qualities, but on the contrary were generally morally weaker
than any of the millions they ruled over.

If the source of power lies neither in the physical nor in the moral
qualities of him who possesses it, it must evidently be looked for
elsewhere--in the relation to the people of the man who wields the
power.

And that is how power is understood by the science of jurisprudence,
that exchange bank of history which offers to exchange history's
understanding of power for true gold.

Power is the collective will of the people transferred, by expressed
or tacit consent, to their chosen rulers.

In the domain of jurisprudence, which consists of discussions of how
a state and power might be arranged were it possible for all that to
be arranged, it is all very clear; but when applied to history that
definition of power needs explanation.

The science of jurisprudence regards the state and power as the
ancients regarded fire--namely, as something existing absolutely.
But for history, the state and power are merely phenomena, just as for
modern physics fire is not an element but a phenomenon.

From this fundamental difference between the view held by history
and that held by jurisprudence, it follows that jurisprudence can tell
minutely how in its opinion power should be constituted and what
power--existing immutably outside time--is, but to history's questions
about the meaning of the mutations of power in time it can answer
nothing.

If power be the collective will of the people transferred to their
ruler, was Pugachev a representative of the will of the people? If
not, then why was Napoleon I? Why was Napoleon III a criminal when
he was taken prisoner at Boulogne, and why, later on, were those
criminals whom he arrested?

Do palace revolutions--in which sometimes only two or three people
take part--transfer the will of the people to a new ruler? In
international relations, is the will of the people also transferred to
their conqueror? Was the will of the Confederation of the Rhine
transferred to Napoleon in 1806? Was the will of the Russian people
transferred to Napoleon in 1809, when our army in alliance with the
French went to fight the Austrians?

To these questions three answers are possible:

Either to assume (1) that the will of the people is always
unconditionally transferred to the ruler or rulers they have chosen,
and that therefore every emergence of a new power, every struggle
against the power once appointed, should be absolutely regarded as
an infringement of the real power; or (2) that the will of the
people is transferred to the rulers conditionally, under definite
and known conditions, and to show that all limitations, conflicts, and
even destructions of power result from a nonobservance by the rulers
of the conditions under which their power was entrusted to them; or
(3) that the will of the people is delegated to the rulers
conditionally, but that the conditions are unknown and indefinite, and
that the appearance of several authorities, their struggles and
their falls, result solely from the greater or lesser fulfillment by
the rulers of these unknown conditions on which the will of the people
is transferred from some people to others.

And these are the three ways in which the historians do explain
the relation of the people to their rulers.

Some historians--those biographical and specialist historians
already referred to--in their simplicity failing to understand the
question of the meaning of power, seem to consider that the collective
will of the people is unconditionally transferred to historical
persons, and therefore when describing some single state they assume
that particular power to be the one absolute and real power, and
that any other force opposing this is not a power but a violation of
power--mere violence.

Their theory, suitable for primitive and peaceful periods of
history, has the inconvenience--in application to complex and stormy
periods in the life of nations during which various powers arise
simultaneously and struggle with one another--that a Legitimist
historian will prove that the National Convention, the Directory,
and Bonaparte were mere infringers of the true power, while a
Republican and a Bonapartist will prove: the one that the Convention
and the other that the Empire was the real power, and that all the
others were violations of power. Evidently the explanations
furnished by these historians being mutually contradictory can only
satisfy young children.

Recognizing the falsity of this view of history, another set of
historians say that power rests on a conditional delegation of the
will of the people to their rulers, and that historical leaders have
power only conditionally on carrying out the program that the will
of the people has by tacit agreement prescribed to them. But what this
program consists in these historians do not say, or if they do they
continually contradict one another.

Each historian, according to his view of what constitutes a nation's
progress, looks for these conditions in the greatness, wealth,
freedom, or enlightenment of citizens of France or some other country.
But not to mention the historians' contradictions as to the nature
of this program--or even admitting that some one general program of
these conditions exists--the facts of history almost always contradict
that theory. If the conditions under which power is entrusted
consist in the wealth, freedom, and enlightenment of the people, how
is it that Louis XIV and Ivan the Terrible end their reigns
tranquilly, while Louis XVI and Charles I are executed by their
people? To this question historians reply that Louis XIV's activity,
contrary to the program, reacted on Louis XVI. But why did it not
react on Louis XIV or on Louis XV--why should it react just on Louis
XVI? And what is the time limit for such reactions? To these questions
there are and can be no answers. Equally little does this view explain
why for several centuries the collective will is not withdrawn from
certain rulers and their heirs, and then suddenly during a period of
fifty years is transferred to the Convention, to the Directory, to
Napoleon, to Alexander, to Louis XVIII, to Napoleon again, to
Charles X, to Louis Philippe, to a Republican government, and to
Napoleon III. When explaining these rapid transfers of the people's
will from one individual to another, especially in view of
international relations, conquests, and alliances, the historians
are obliged to admit that some of these transfers are not normal
delegations of the people's will but are accidents dependent on
cunning, on mistakes, on craft, or on the weakness of a diplomatist, a
ruler, or a party leader. So that the greater part of the events of
history--civil wars, revolutions, and conquests--are presented by
these historians not as the results of free transferences of the
people's will, but as results of the ill-directed will of one or
more individuals, that is, once again, as usurpations of power. And so
these historians also see and admit historical events which are
exceptions to the theory.

These historians resemble a botanist who, having noticed that some
plants grow from seeds producing two cotyledons, should insist that
all that grows does so by sprouting into two leaves, and that the
palm, the mushroom, and even the oak, which blossom into full growth
and no longer resemble two leaves, are deviations from the theory.

Historians of the third class assume that the will of the people
is transferred to historic personages conditionally, but that the
conditions are unknown to us. They say that historical personages have
power only because they fulfill the will of the people which has
been delegated to them.

But in that case, if the force that moves nations lies not in the
historic leaders but in the nations themselves, what significance have
those leaders?

The leaders, these historians tell us, express the will of the
people: the activity of the leaders represents the activity of the
people.

But in that case the question arises whether all the activity of the
leaders serves as an expression of the people's will or only some part
of it. If the whole activity of the leaders serves as the expression
of the people's will, as some historians suppose, then all the details
of the court scandals contained in the biographies of a Napoleon or
a Catherine serve to express the life of the nation, which is
evident nonsense; but if it is only some particular side of the
activity of an historical leader which serves to express the
people's life, as other so-called "philosophical" historians
believe, then to determine which side of the activity of a leader
expresses the nation's life, we have first of all to know in what
the nation's life consists.

Met by this difficulty historians of that class devise some most
obscure, impalpable, and general abstraction which can cover all
conceivable occurrences, and declare this abstraction to be the aim of
humanity's movement. The most usual generalizations adopted by
almost all the historians are: freedom, equality, enlightenment,
progress, civilization, and culture. Postulating some generalization
as the goal of the movement of humanity, the historians study the
men of whom the greatest number of monuments have remained: kings,
ministers, generals, authors, reformers, popes, and journalists, to
the extent to which in their opinion these persons have promoted or
hindered that abstraction. But as it is in no way proved that the
aim of humanity does consist in freedom, equality, enlightenment, or
civilization, and as the connection of the people with the rulers
and enlighteners of humanity is only based on the arbitrary assumption
that the collective will of the people is always transferred to the
men whom we have noticed, it happens that the activity of the millions
who migrate, burn houses, abandon agriculture, and destroy one another
never is expressed in the account of the activity of some dozen people
who did not burn houses, practice agriculture, or slay their fellow
creatures.

History proves this at every turn. Is the ferment of the peoples
of the west at the end of the eighteenth century and their drive
eastward explained by the activity of Louis XIV, XV, and XVI, their
mistresses and ministers, and by the lives of Napoleon, Rousseau,
Diderot, Beaumarchais, and others?

Is the movement of the Russian people eastward to Kazan and
Siberia expressed by details of the morbid character of Ivan the
Terrible and by his correspondence with Kurbski?

Is the movement of the peoples at the time of the Crusades explained
by the life and activity of the Godfreys and the Louis-es and their
ladies? For us that movement of the peoples from west to east, without
leaders, with a crowd of vagrants, and with Peter the Hermit,
remains incomprehensible. And yet more incomprehensible is the
cessation of that movement when a rational and sacred aim for the
Crusade--the deliverance of Jerusalem--had been clearly defined by
historic leaders. Popes, kings, and knights incited the peoples to
free the Holy Land; but the people did not go, for the unknown cause
which had previously impelled them to go no longer existed. The
history of the Godfreys and the Minnesingers can evidently not cover
the life of the peoples. And the history of the Godfreys and the
Minnesingers has remained the history of Godfreys and Minnesingers,
but the history of the life of the peoples and their impulses has
remained unknown.

Still less does the history of authors and reformers explain to us
the life of the peoples.

The history of culture explains to us the impulses and conditions of
life and thought of a writer or a reformer. We learn that Luther had a
hot temper and said such and such things; we learn that Rousseau was
suspicious and wrote such and such books; but we do not learn why
after the Reformation the peoples massacred one another, nor why
during the French Revolution they guillotined one another.

If we unite both these kinds of history, as is done by the newest
historians, we shall have the history of monarchs and writers, but not
the history of the life of the peoples.





CHAPTER V


The life of the nations is not contained in the lives of a few
men, for the connection between those men and the nations has not been
found. The theory that this connection is based on the transference of
the collective will of a people to certain historical personages is an
hypothesis unconfirmed by the experience of history.

The theory of the transference of the collective will of the
people to historic persons may perhaps explain much in the domain of
jurisprudence and be essential for its purposes, but in its
application to history, as soon as revolutions, conquests, or civil
wars occur--that is, as soon as history begins--that theory explains
nothing.

The theory seems irrefutable just because the act of transference of
the people's will cannot be verified, for it never occurred.

Whatever happens and whoever may stand at the head of affairs, the
theory can always say that such and such a person took the lead
because the collective will was transferred to him.

The replies this theory gives to historical questions are like the
replies of a man who, watching the movements of a herd of cattle and
paying no attention to the varying quality of the pasturage in
different parts of the field, or to the driving of the herdsman,
should attribute the direction the herd takes to what animal happens
to be at its head.

"The herd goes in that direction because the animal in front leads
it and the collective will of all the other animals is vested in
that leader." This is what historians of the first class say--those
who assume the unconditional transference of the people's will.

"If the animals leading the herd change, this happens because the
collective will of all the animals is transferred from one leader to
another, according to whether the animal is or is not leading them
in the direction selected by the whole herd." Such is the reply
historians who assume that the collective will of the people is
delegated to rulers under conditions which they regard as known. (With
this method of observation it often happens that the observer,
influenced by the direction he himself prefers, regards those as
leaders who, owing to the people's change of direction, are no
longer in front, but on one side, or even in the rear.)

"If the animals in front are continually changing and the
direction of the whole herd is constantly altered, this is because
in order to follow a given direction the animals transfer their will
to the animals that have attracted our attention, and to study the
movements of the herd we must watch the movements of all the prominent
animals moving on all sides of the herd." So say the third class of
historians who regard all historical persons, from monarchs to
journalists, as the expression of their age.

The theory of the transference of the will of the people to historic
persons is merely a paraphrase--a restatement of the question in other
words.

What causes historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the
collective will of the people transferred to one person. Under what
condition is the will of the people delegated to one person? On
condition that that person expresses the will of the whole people.
That is, power is power: in other words, power is a word the meaning
of which we do not understand.


If the realm of human knowledge were confined to abstract reasoning,
then having subjected to criticism the explanation of "power" that
juridical science gives us, humanity would conclude that power is
merely a word and has no real existence. But to understand phenomena
man has, besides abstract reasoning, experience by which he verifies
his reflections. And experience tells us that power is not merely a
word but an actually existing phenomenon.

Not to speak of the fact that no description of the collective
activity of men can do without the conception of power, the
existence of power is proved both by history and by observing
contemporary events.

Whenever an event occurs a man appears or men appear, by whose
will the event seems to have taken place. Napoleon III issues a decree
and the French go to Mexico. The King of Prussia and Bismarck issue
decrees and an army enters Bohemia. Napoleon I issues a decree and
an army enters Russia. Alexander I gives a command and the French
submit to the Bourbons. Experience shows us that whatever event occurs
it is always related to the will of one or of several men who have
decreed it.

The historians, in accord with the old habit of acknowledging divine
intervention in human affairs, want to see the cause of events in
the expression of the will of someone endowed with power, but that
supposition is not confirmed either by reason or by experience.

On the one side reflection shows that the expression of a man's
will--his words--are only part of the general activity expressed in an
event, as for instance in a war or a revolution, and so without
assuming an incomprehensible, supernatural force--a miracle--one
cannot admit that words can be the immediate cause of the movements of
millions of men. On the other hand, even if we admitted that words
could be the cause of events, history shows that the expression of the
will of historical personages does not in most cases produce any
effect, that is to say, their commands are often not executed, and
sometimes the very opposite of what they order occurs.

Without admitting divine intervention in the affairs of humanity
we cannot regard "power" as the cause of events.

Power, from the standpoint of experience, is merely the relation
that exists between the expression of someone's will and the execution
of that will by others.

To explain the conditions of that relationship we must first
establish a conception of the expression of will, referring it to
man and not to the Deity.

If the Deity issues a command, expresses His will, as ancient
history tells us, the expression of that will is independent of time
and is not caused by anything, for the Divinity is not controlled by
an event. But speaking of commands that are the expression of the will
of men acting in time and in relation to one another, to explain the
connection of commands with events we must restore: (1) the
condition of all that takes place: the continuity of movement in
time both of the events and of the person who commands, and (2) the
inevitability of the connection between the person commanding and
those who execute his command.





CHAPTER VI


Only the expression of the will of the Deity, not dependent on time,
can relate to a whole series of events occurring over a period of
years or centuries, and only the Deity, independent of everything, can
by His sole will determine the direction of humanity's movement; but
man acts in time and himself takes part in what occurs.

Reinstating the first condition omitted, that of time, we see that
no command can be executed without some preceding order having been
given rendering the execution of the last command possible.

No command ever appears spontaneously, or itself covers a whole
series of occurrences; but each command follows from another, and
never refers to a whole series of events but always to one moment only
of an event.

When, for instance, we say that Napoleon ordered armies to go to
war, we combine in one simultaneous expression a whole series of
consecutive commands dependent one on another. Napoleon could not have
commanded an invasion of Russia and never did so. Today he ordered
such and such papers to be written to Vienna, to Berlin, and to
Petersburg; tomorrow such and such decrees and orders to the army, the
fleet, the commissariat, and so on and so on--millions of commands,
which formed a whole series corresponding to a series of events
which brought the French armies into Russia.

If throughout his reign Napoleon gave commands concerning an
invasion of England and expended on no other undertaking so much
time and effort, and yet during his whole reign never once attempted
to execute that design but undertook an expedition into Russia, with
which country he considered it desirable to be in alliance (a
conviction he repeatedly expressed)--this came about because his
commands did not correspond to the course of events in the first case,
but did so correspond in the latter.

For an order to be certainly executed, it is necessary that a man
should order what can be executed. But to know what can and what
cannot be executed is impossible, not only in the case of Napoleon's
invasion of Russia in which millions participated, but even in the
simplest event, for in either case millions of obstacles may arise
to prevent its execution. Every order executed is always one of an
immense number unexecuted. All the impossible orders inconsistent with
the course of events remain unexecuted. Only the possible ones get
linked up with a consecutive series of commands corresponding to a
series of events, and are executed.

Our false conception that an event is caused by a command which
precedes it is due to the fact that when the event has taken place and
out of thousands of others those few commands which were consistent
with that event have been executed, we forget about the others that
were not executed because they could not be. Apart from that, the
chief source of our error in this matter is due to the fact that in
the historical accounts a whole series of innumerable, diverse, and
petty events, such for instance as all those which led the French
armies to Russia, is generalized into one event in accord with the
result produced by that series of events, and corresponding with
this generalization the whole series of commands is also generalized
into a single expression of will.

We say that Napoleon wished to invade Russia and invaded it. In
reality in all Napoleon's activity we never find anything resembling
an expression of that wish, but find a series of orders, or
expressions of his will, very variously and indefinitely directed.
Amid a long series of unexecuted orders of Napoleon's one series,
for the campaign of 1812, was carried out--not because those orders
differed in any way from the other, unexecuted orders but because they
coincided with the course of events that led the French army into
Russia; just as in stencil work this or that figure comes out not
because the color was laid on from this side or in that way, but
because it was laid on from all sides over the figure cut in the
stencil.

So that examining the relation in time of the commands to the
events, we find that a command can never be the cause of the event,
but that a certain definite dependence exists between the two.

To understand in what this dependence consists it is necessary to
reinstate another omitted condition of every command proceeding not
from the Deity but from a man, which is, that the man who gives the
command himself takes part in.

This relation of the commander to those he commands is just what
is called power. This relation consists in the following:

For common action people always unite in certain combinations, in
which regardless of the difference of the aims set for the common
action, the relation between those taking part in it is always the
same.

Men uniting in these combinations always assume such relations
toward one another that the larger number take a more direct share,
and the smaller number a less direct share, in the collective action
for which they have combined.

Of all the combinations in which men unite for collective action one
of the most striking and definite examples is an army.

Every army is composed of lower grades of the service--the rank
and file--of whom there are always the greatest number; of the next
higher military rank--corporals and noncommissioned officers of whom
there are fewer, and of still-higher officers of whom there are
still fewer, and so on to the highest military command which is
concentrated in one person.

A military organization may be quite correctly compared to a cone,
of which the base with the largest diameter consists of the rank and
file; the next higher and smaller section of the cone consists of
the next higher grades of the army, and so on to the apex, the point
of which will represent the commander in chief.

The soldiers, of whom there are the most, form the lower section
of the cone and its base. The soldier himself does the stabbing,
hacking, burning, and pillaging, and always receives orders for
these actions from men above him; he himself never gives an order. The
noncommissioned officers (of whom there are fewer) perform the
action itself less frequently than the soldiers, but they already give
commands. An officer still less often acts directly himself, but
commands still more frequently. A general does nothing but command the
troops, indicates the objective, and hardly ever uses a weapon
himself. The commander in chief never takes direct part in the
action itself, but only gives general orders concerning the movement
of the mass of the troops. A similar relation of people to one another
is seen in every combination of men for common activity--in
agriculture, trade, and every administration.

And so without particularly analyzing all the contiguous sections of
a cone and of the ranks of an army, or the ranks and positions in
any administrative or public business whatever from the lowest to
the highest, we see a law by which men, to take associated action,
combine in such relations that the more directly they participate in
performing the action the less they can command and the more
numerous they are, while the less their direct participation in the
action itself, the more they command and the fewer of them there
are; rising in this way from the lowest ranks to the man at the top,
who takes the least direct share in the action and directs his
activity chiefly to commanding.

This relation of the men who command to those they command is what
constitutes the essence of the conception called power.

Having restored the condition of time under which all events
occur, find that a command is executed only when it is related to a
corresponding series of events. Restoring the essential condition of
relation between those who command and those who execute, we find that
by the very nature of the case those who command take the smallest
part in the action itself and that their activity is exclusively
directed to commanding.





CHAPTER VII


When an event is taking place people express their opinions and
wishes about it, and as the event results from the collective activity
of many people, some one of the opinions or wishes expressed is sure
to be fulfilled if but approximately. When one of the opinions
expressed is fulfilled, that opinion gets connected with the event
as a command preceding it.

Men are hauling a log. Each of them expresses his opinion as to
how and where to haul it. They haul the log away, and it happens
that this is done as one of them said. He ordered it. There we have
command and power in their primary form. The man who worked most
with his hands could not think so much about what he was doing, or
reflect on or command what would result from the common activity;
while the man who commanded more would evidently work less with his
hands on account of his greater verbal activity.

When some larger concourse of men direct their activity to a
common aim there is a yet sharper division of those who, because their
activity is given to directing and commanding, take less less part
in the direct work.

When a man works alone he always has a certain set of reflections
which as it seems to him directed his past activity, justify his
present activity, and guide him in planning his future actions. Just
the same is done by a concourse of people, allowing those who do not
take a direct part in the activity to devise considerations,
justifications, and surmises concerning their collective activity.

For reasons known or unknown to us the French began to drown and
kill one another. And corresponding to the event its justification
appears in people's belief that this was necessary for the welfare
of France, for liberty, and for equality. People ceased to kill one
another, and this event was accompanied by its justification in the
necessity for a centralization of power, resistance to Europe, and
so on. Men went from the west to the east killing their fellow men,
and the event was accompanied by phrases about the glory of France,
the baseness of England, and so on. History shows us that these
justifications of the events have no common sense and are all
contradictory, as in the case of killing a man as the result of
recognizing his rights, and the killing of millions in Russia for
the humiliation of England. But these justifications have a very
necessary significance in their own day.

These justifications release those who produce the events from moral
responsibility. These temporary aims are like the broom fixed in front
of a locomotive to clear the snow from the rails in front: they
clear men's moral responsibilities from their path.

Without such justification there would be no reply to the simplest
question that presents itself when examining each historical event.
How is it that millions of men commit collective crimes--make war,
commit murder, and so on?

With the present complex forms of political and social life in
Europe can any event that is not prescribed, decreed, or ordered by
monarchs, ministers, parliaments, or newspapers be imagined? Is
there any collective action which cannot find its justification in
political unity, in patriotism, in the balance of power, or in
civilization? So that every event that occurs inevitably coincides
with some expressed wish and, receiving a justification, presents
itself as the result of the will of one man or of several men.

In whatever direction a ship moves, the flow of the waves it cuts
will always be noticeable ahead of it. To those on board the ship
the movement of those waves will be the only perceptible motion.

Only by watching closely moment by moment the movement of that
flow and comparing it with the movement of the ship do we convince
ourselves that every bit of it is occasioned by the forward movement
of the ship, and that we were led into error by the fact that we
ourselves were imperceptibly moving.

We see the same if we watch moment by moment the movement of
historical characters (that is, re-establish the inevitable
condition of all that occurs--the continuity of movement in time)
and do not lose sight of the essential connection of historical
persons with the masses.

When the ship moves in one direction there is one and the same
wave ahead of it, when it turns frequently the wave ahead of it also
turns frequently. But wherever it may turn there always will be the
wave anticipating its movement.

Whatever happens it always appears that just that event was foreseen
and decreed. Wherever the ship may go, the rush of water which neither
directs nor increases its movement foams ahead of it, and at a
distance seems to us not merely to move of itself but to govern the
ship's movement also.


Examining only those expressions of the will of historical persons
which, as commands, were related to events, historians have assumed
that the events depended on those commands. But examining the events
themselves and the connection in which the historical persons stood to
the people, we have found that they and their orders were dependent on
events. The incontestable proof of this deduction is that, however
many commands were issued, the event does not take place unless
there are other causes for it, but as soon as an event occurs--be it
what it may--then out of all the continually expressed wishes of
different people some will always be found which by their meaning
and their time of utterance are related as commands to the events.

Arriving at this conclusion we can reply directly and positively
to these two essential questions of history:

(1) What is power?

(2) What force produces the movement of the nations?

(1) Power is the relation of a given person to other individuals, in
which the more this person expresses opinions, predictions, and
justifications of the collective action that is performed, the less is
his participation in that action.

(2) The movement of nations is caused not by power, nor by
intellectual activity, nor even by a combination of the two as
historians have supposed, but by the activity of all the people who
participate in the events, and who always combine in such a way that
those taking the largest direct share in the event take on
themselves the least responsibility and vice versa.

Morally the wielder of power appears to cause the event;
physically it is those who submit to the power. But as the moral
activity is inconceivable without the physical, the cause of the event
is neither in the one nor in the other but in the union of the two.

Or in other words, the conception of a cause is inapplicable to
the phenomena we are examining.

In the last analysis we reach the circle of infinity--that final
limit to which in every domain of thought man's reason arrives if it
is not playing with the subject. Electricity produces heat, heat
produces electricity. Atoms attract each other and atoms repel one
another.

Speaking of the interaction of heat and electricity and of atoms, we
cannot say why this occurs, and we say that it is so because it is
inconceivable otherwise, because it must be so and that it is a law.
The same applies to historical events. Why war and revolution occur we
do not know. We only know that to produce the one or the other action,
people combine in a certain formation in which they all take part, and
we say that this is so because it is unthinkable otherwise, or in
other words that it is a law.





CHAPTER VIII


If history dealt only with external phenomena, the establishment
of this simple and obvious law would suffice and we should have
finished our argument. But the law of history relates to man. A
particle of matter cannot tell us that it does not feel the law of
attraction or repulsion and that that law is untrue, but man, who is
the subject of history, says plainly: I am free and am therefore not
subject to the law.

The presence of the problem of man's free will, though
unexpressed, is felt at every step of history.

All seriously thinking historians have involuntarily encountered
this question. All the contradictions and obscurities of history and
the false path historical science has followed are due solely to the
lack of a solution of that question.

If the will of every man were free, that is, if each man could act
as he pleased, all history would be a series of disconnected
incidents.

If in a thousand years even one man in a million could act freely,
that is, as he chose, it is evident that one single free act of that
man's in violation of the laws governing human action would destroy
the possibility of the existence of any laws for the whole of
humanity.

If there be a single law governing the actions of men, free will
cannot exist, for then man's will is subject to that law.

In this contradiction lies the problem of free will, which from most
ancient times has occupied the best human minds and from most
ancient times has been presented in its whole tremendous significance.

The problem is that regarding man as a subject of observation from
whatever point of view--theological, historical, ethical, or
philosophic--we find a general law of necessity to which he (like
all that exists) is subject. But regarding him from within ourselves
as what we are conscious of, we feel ourselves to be free.

This consciousness is a source of self-cognition quite apart from
and independent of reason. Through his reason man observes himself,
but only through consciousness does he know himself.

Apart from consciousness of self no observation or application of
reason is conceivable.

To understand, observe, and draw conclusions, man must first of
all be conscious of himself as living. A man is only conscious of
himself as a living being by the fact that he wills, that is, is
conscious of his volition. But his will--which forms the essence of
his life--man recognizes (and can but recognize) as free.

If, observing himself, man sees that his will is always directed
by one and the same law (whether he observes the necessity of taking
food, using his brain, or anything else) he cannot recognize this
never-varying direction of his will otherwise than as a limitation
of it. Were it not free it could not be limited. A man's will seems to
him to be limited just because he is not conscious of it except as
free.

You say: I am not and am not free. But I have lifted my hand and let
it fall. Everyone understands that this illogical reply is an
irrefutable demonstration of freedom.

That reply is the expression of a consciousness that is not
subject to reason.

If the consciousness of freedom were not a separate and
independent source of self-consciousness it would be subject to
reasoning and to experience, but in fact such subjection does not
exist and is inconceivable.

A series of experiments and arguments proves to every man that he,
as an object of observation, is subject to certain laws, and man
submits to them and never resists the laws of gravity or
impermeability once he has become acquainted with them. But the same
series of experiments and arguments proves to him that the complete
freedom of which he is conscious in himself is impossible, and that
his every action depends on his organization, his character, and the
motives acting upon him; yet man never submits to the deductions of
these experiments and arguments. Having learned from experiment and
argument that a stone falls downwards, a man indubitably believes this
and always expects the law that he has learned to be fulfilled.

But learning just as certainly that his will is subject to laws,
he does not and cannot believe this.

However often experiment and reasoning may show a man that under the
same conditions and with the same character he will do the same
thing as before, yet when under the same conditions and with the
same character he approaches for the thousandth time the action that
always ends in the same way, he feels as certainly convinced as before
the experiment that he can act as he pleases. Every man, savage or
sage, however incontestably reason and experiment may prove to him
that it is impossible to imagine two different courses of action in
precisely the same conditions, feels that without this irrational
conception (which constitutes the essence of freedom) he cannot
imagine life. He feels that however impossible it may be, it is so,
for without this conception of freedom not only would he be unable
to understand life, but he would be unable to live for a single
moment.

He could not live, because all man's efforts, all his impulses to
life, are only efforts to increase freedom. Wealth and poverty, fame
and obscurity, power and subordination, strength and weakness,
health and disease, culture and ignorance, work and leisure, repletion
and hunger, virtue and vice, are only greater or lesser degrees of
freedom.

A man having no freedom cannot be conceived of except as deprived of
life.

If the conception of freedom appears to reason to be a senseless
contradiction like the possibility of performing two actions at one
and the same instant of time, or of an effect without a cause, that
only proves that consciousness is not subject to reason.

This unshakable, irrefutable consciousness of freedom,
uncontrolled by experiment or argument, recognized by all thinkers and
felt by everyone without exception, this consciousness without which
no conception of man is possible constitutes the other side of the
question.

Man is the creation of an all-powerful, all-good, and all-seeing
God. What is sin, the conception of which arises from the
consciousness of man's freedom? That is a question for theology.

The actions of men are subject to general immutable laws expressed
in statistics. What is man's responsibility to society, the conception
of which results from the conception of freedom? That is a question
for jurisprudence.

Man's actions proceed from his innate character and the motives
acting upon him. What is conscience and the perception of right and
wrong in actions that follows from the consciousness of freedom?
That is a question for ethics.

Man in connection with the general life of humanity appears
subject to laws which determine that life. But the same man apart from
that connection appears to free. How should the past life of nations
and of humanity be regarded--as the result of the free, or as the
result of the constrained, activity of man? That is a question for
history.

Only in our self-confident day of the popularization of knowledge-
thanks to that most powerful engine of ignorance, the diffusion of
printed matter--has the question of the freedom of will been put on
a level on which the question itself cannot exist. In our time the
majority of so-called advanced people--that is, the crowd of
ignoramuses--have taken the work of the naturalists who deal with
one side of the question for a solution of the whole problem.

They say and write and print that the soul and freedom do not exist,
for the life of man is expressed by muscular movements and muscular
movements are conditioned by the activity of the nerves; the soul
and free will do not exist because at an unknown period of time we
sprang from the apes. They say this, not at all suspecting that
thousands of years ago that same law of necessity which with such
ardor they are now trying to prove by physiology and comparative
zoology was not merely acknowledged by all the religions and all the
thinkers, but has never been denied. They do not see that the role
of the natural sciences in this matter is merely to serve as an
instrument for the illumination of one side of it. For the fact
that, from the point of view of observation, reason and the will are
merely secretions of the brain, and that man following the general law
may have developed from lower animals at some unknown period of
time, only explains from a fresh side the truth admitted thousands
of years ago by all the religious and philosophic theories--that
from the point of view of reason man is subject to the law of
necessity; but it does not advance by a hair's breadth the solution of
the question, which has another, opposite, side, based on the
consciousness of freedom.

If men descended from the apes at an unknown period of time, that is
as comprehensible as that they were made from a handful of earth at
a certain period of time (in the first case the unknown quantity is
the time, in the second case it is the origin); and the question of
how man's consciousness of freedom is to be reconciled with the law of
necessity to which he is subject cannot be solved by comparative
physiology and zoology, for in a frog, a rabbit, or an ape, we can
observe only the muscular nervous activity, but in man we observe
consciousness as well as the muscular and nervous activity.

The naturalists and their followers, thinking they can solve this
question, are like plasterers set to plaster one side of the walls
of a church who, availing themselves of the absence of the chief
superintendent of the work, should in an access of zeal plaster over
the windows, icons, woodwork, and still unbuttressed walls, and should
be delighted that from their point of view as plasterers, everything
is now so smooth and regular.





CHAPTER IX


For the solution of the question of free will or inevitability,
history has this advantage over other branches of knowledge in which
the question is dealt with, that for history this question does not
refer to the essence of man's free will but its manifestation in the
past and under certain conditions.

In regard to this question, history stands to the other sciences
as experimental science stands to abstract science.

The subject for history is not man's will itself but our
presentation of it.

And so for history, the insoluble mystery presented by the
incompatibility of free will and inevitability does not exist as it
does for theology, ethics, and philosophy. History surveys a
presentation of man's life in which the union of these two
contradictions has already taken place.

In actual life each historic event, each human action, is very
clearly and definitely understood without any sense of
contradiction, although each event presents itself as partly free
and partly compulsory.

To solve the question of how freedom and necessity are combined
and what constitutes the essence of these two conceptions, the
philosophy of history can and should follow a path contrary to that
taken by other sciences. Instead of first defining the conceptions
of freedom and inevitability in themselves, and then ranging the
phenomena of life under those definitions, history should deduce a
definition of the conception of freedom and inevitability themselves
from the immense quantity of phenomena of which it is cognizant and
that always appear dependent on these two elements.

Whatever presentation of the activity of many men or of an
individual we may consider, we always regard it as the result partly
of man's free will and partly of the law of inevitability.

Whether we speak of the migration of the peoples and the
incursions of the barbarians, or of the decrees of Napoleon III, or of
someone's action an hour ago in choosing one direction out of
several for his walk, we are unconscious of any contradiction. The
degree of freedom and inevitability governing the actions of these
people is clearly defined for us.

Our conception of the degree of freedom often varies according to
differences in the point of view from which we regard the event, but
every human action appears to us as a certain combination of freedom
and inevitability. In every action we examine we see a certain measure
of freedom and a certain measure of inevitability. And always the more
freedom we see in any action the less inevitability do we perceive,
and the more inevitability the less freedom.

The proportion of freedom to inevitability decreases and increases
according to the point of view from which the action is regarded,
but their relation is always one of inverse proportion.

A sinking man who clutches at another and drowns him; or a hungry
mother exhausted by feeding her baby, who steals some food; or a man
trained to discipline who on duty at the word of command kills a
defenseless man--seem less guilty, that is, less free and more subject
to the law of necessity, to one who knows the circumstances in which
these people were placed, and more free to one who does not know
that the man was himself drowning, that the mother was hungry, that
the soldier was in the ranks, and so on. Similarly a man who committed
a murder twenty years ago and has since lived peaceably and harmlessly
in society seems less guilty and his action more due to the law of
inevitability, to someone who considers his action after twenty
years have elapsed than to one who examined it the day after it was
committed. And in the same way every action of an insane, intoxicated,
or highly excited man appears less free and more inevitable to one who
knows the mental condition of him who committed the action, and
seems more free and less inevitable to one who does not know it. In
all these cases the conception of freedom is increased or diminished
and the conception of compulsion is correspondingly decreased or
increased, according to the point of view from which the action is
regarded. So that the greater the conception of necessity the
smaller the conception of freedom and vice versa.

Religion, the common sense of mankind, the science of jurisprudence,
and history itself understand alike this relation between necessity
and freedom.

All cases without exception in which our conception of freedom and
necessity is increased and diminished depend on three considerations:

(1) The relation to the external world of the man who commits the
deeds.

(2) His relation to time.

(3) His relation to the causes leading to the action.

The first consideration is the clearness of our perception of the
man's relation to the external world and the greater or lesser
clearness of our understanding of the definite position occupied by
the man in relation to everything coexisting with him. This is what
makes it evident that a drowning man is less free and more subject
to necessity than one standing on dry ground, and that makes the
actions of a man closely connected with others in a thickly
populated district, or of one bound by family, official, or business
duties, seem certainly less free and more subject to necessity than
those of a man living in solitude and seclusion.

If we consider a man alone, apart from his relation to everything
around him, each action of his seems to us free. But if we see his
relation to anything around him, if we see his connection with
anything whatever--with a man who speaks to him, a book he reads,
the work on which he is engaged, even with the air he breathes or
the light that falls on the things about him--we see that each of
these circumstances has an influence on him and controls at least some
side of his activity. And the more we perceive of these influences the
more our conception of his freedom diminishes and the more our
conception of the necessity that weighs on him increases.

The second consideration is the more or less evident time relation
of the man to the world and the clearness of our perception of the
place the man's action occupies in time. That is the ground which
makes the fall of the first man, resulting in the production of the
human race, appear evidently less free than a man's entry into
marriage today. It is the reason why the life and activity of people
who lived centuries ago and are connected with me in time cannot
seem to me as free as the life of a contemporary, the consequences
of which are still unknown to me.

The degree of our conception of freedom or inevitability depends
in this respect on the greater or lesser lapse of time between the
performance of the action and our judgment of it.

If I examine an act I performed a moment ago in approximately the
same circumstances as those I am in now, my action appears to me
undoubtedly free. But if I examine an act performed a month ago,
then being in different circumstances, I cannot help recognizing
that if that act had not been committed much that resulted from it-
good, agreeable, and even essential--would not have taken place. If
I reflect on an action still more remote, ten years ago or more,
then the consequences of my action are still plainer to me and I
find it hard to imagine what would have happened had that action not
been performed. The farther I go back in memory, or what is the same
thing the farther I go forward in my judgment, the more doubtful
becomes my belief in the freedom of my action.

In history we find a very similar progress of conviction
concerning the part played by free will in the general affairs of
humanity. A contemporary event seems to us to be indubitably the doing
of all the known participants, but with a more remote event we already
see its inevitable results which prevent our considering anything else
possible. And the farther we go back in examining events the less
arbitrary do they appear.

The Austro-Prussian war appears to us undoubtedly the result of
the crafty conduct of Bismarck, and so on. The Napoleonic wars still
seem to us, though already questionably, to be the outcome of their
heroes' will. But in the Crusades we already see an event occupying
its definite place in history and without which we cannot imagine
the modern history of Europe, though to the chroniclers of the
Crusades that event appeared as merely due to the will of certain
people. In regard to the migration of the peoples it does not enter
anyone's head today to suppose that the renovation of the European
world depended on Attila's caprice. The farther back in history the
object of our observation lies, the more doubtful does the free will
of those concerned in the event become and the more manifest the law
of inevitability.

The third consideration is the degree to which we apprehend that
endless chain of causation inevitably demanded by reason, in which
each phenomenon comprehended, and therefore man's every action, must
have its definite place as a result of what has gone before and as a
cause of what will follow.

The better we are acquainted with the physiological,
psychological, and historical laws deduced by observation and by which
man is controlled, and the more correctly we perceive the
physiological, psychological, and historical causes of the action, and
the simpler the action we are observing and the less complex the
character and mind of the man in question, the more subject to
inevitability and the less free do our actions and those of others
appear.

When we do not at all understand the cause of an action, whether a
crime, a good action, or even one that is simply nonmoral, we
ascribe a greater amount of freedom to it. In the case of a crime we
most urgently demand the punishment for such an act; in the case of
a virtuous act we rate its merit most highly. In an indifferent case
we recognize in it more individuality, originality, and
independence. But if even one of the innumerable causes of the act
is known to us we recognize a certain element of necessity and are
less insistent on punishment for the crime, or the acknowledgment of
the merit of the virtuous act, or the freedom of the apparently
original action. That a criminal was reared among male factors
mitigates his fault in our eyes. The self-sacrifice of a father or
mother, or self-sacrifice with the possibility of a reward, is more
comprehensible than gratuitous self-sacrifice, and therefore seems
less deserving of sympathy and less the result of free will. The
founder of a sect or party, or an inventor, impresses us less when
we know how or by what the way was prepared for his activity. If we
have a large range of examples, if our observation is constantly
directed to seeking the correlation of cause and effect in people's
actions, their actions appear to us more under compulsion and less
free the more correctly we connect the effects with the causes. If
we examined simple actions and had a vast number of such actions under
observation, our conception of their inevitability would be still
greater. The dishonest conduct of the son of a dishonest father, the
misconduct of a woman who had fallen into bad company, a drunkard's
relapse into drunkenness, and so on are actions that seem to us less
free the better we understand their cause. If the man whose actions we
are considering is on a very low stage of mental development, like a
child, a madman, or a simpleton--then, knowing the causes of the act
and the simplicity of the character and intelligence in question, we
see so large an element of necessity and so little free will that as
soon as we know the cause prompting the action we can foretell the
result.

On these three considerations alone is based the conception of
irresponsibility for crimes and the extenuating circumstances admitted
by all legislative codes. The responsibility appears greater or less
according to our greater or lesser knowledge of the circumstances in
which the man was placed whose action is being judged, and according
to the greater or lesser interval of time between the commission of
the action and its investigation, and according to the greater or
lesser understanding of the causes that led to the action.





CHAPTER X


Thus our conception of free will and inevitability gradually
diminishes or increases according to the greater or lesser
connection with the external world, the greater or lesser remoteness
of time, and the greater or lesser dependence on the causes in
relation to which we contemplate a man's life.

So that if we examine the case of a man whose connection with the
external world is well known, where the time between the action and
its examination is great, and where the causes of the action are
most accessible, we get the conception of a maximum of inevitability
and a minimum of free will. If we examine a man little dependent on
external conditions, whose action was performed very recently, and the
causes of whose action are beyond our ken, we get the conception of
a minimum of inevitability and a maximum of freedom.

In neither case--however we may change our point of view, however
plain we may make to ourselves the connection between the man and
the external world, however inaccessible it may be to us, however long
or short the period of time, however intelligible or
incomprehensible the causes of the action may be--can we ever conceive
either complete freedom or complete necessity.

(1) To whatever degree we may imagine a man to be exempt from the
influence of the external world, we never get a conception of
freedom in space. Every human action is inevitably conditioned by what
surrounds him and by his own body. I lift my arm and let it fall. My
action seems to me free; but asking myself whether I could raise my
arm in every direction, I see that I raised it in the direction in
which there was least obstruction to that action either from things
around me or from the construction of my own body. I chose one out
of all the possible directions because in it there were fewest
obstacles. For my action to be free it was necessary that it should
encounter no obstacles. To conceive of a man being free we must
imagine him outside space, which is evidently impossible.

(2) However much we approximate the time of judgment to the time
of the deed, we never get a conception of freedom in time. For if I
examine an action committed a second ago I must still recognize it
as not being free, for it is irrevocably linked to the moment at which
it was committed. Can I lift my arm? I lift it, but ask myself:
could I have abstained from lifting my arm at the moment that has
already passed? To convince myself of this I do not lift it the next
moment. But I am not now abstaining from doing so at the first
moment when I asked the question. Time has gone by which I could not
detain, the arm I then lifted is no longer the same as the arm I now
refrain from lifting, nor is the air in which I lifted it the same
that now surrounds me. The moment in which the first movement was made
is irrevocable, and at that moment I could make only one movement, and
whatever movement I made would be the only one. That I did not lift my
arm a moment later does not prove that I could have abstained from
lifting it then. And since I could make only one movement at that
single moment of time, it could not have been any other. To imagine it
as free, it is necessary to imagine it in the present, on the boundary
between the past and the future--that is, outside time, which is
impossible.

(3) However much the difficulty of understanding the causes may be
increased, we never reach a conception of complete freedom, that is,
an absence of cause. However inaccessible to us may be the cause of
the expression of will in any action, our own or another's, the
first demand of reason is the assumption of and search for a cause,
for without a cause no phenomenon is conceivable. I raise my arm to
perform an action independently of any cause, but my wish to perform
an action without a cause is the cause of my action.

But even if--imagining a man quite exempt from all influences,
examining only his momentary action in the present, unevoked by any
cause--we were to admit so infinitely small a remainder of
inevitability as equaled zero, we should even then not have arrived at
the conception of complete freedom in man, for a being uninfluenced by
the external world, standing outside of time and independent of cause,
is no longer a man.

In the same way we can never imagine the action of a man quite
devoid of freedom and entirely subject to the law of inevitability.

(1) However we may increase our knowledge of the conditions of space
in which man is situated, that knowledge can never be complete, for
the number of those conditions is as infinite as the infinity of
space. And therefore so long as not all the conditions influencing men
are defined, there is no complete inevitability but a certain
measure of freedom remains.

(2) However we may prolong the period of time between the action
we are examining and the judgment upon it, that period will be finite,
while time is infinite, and so in this respect too there can never
be absolute inevitability.

(3) However accessible may be the chain of causation of any
action, we shall never know the whole chain since it is endless, and
so again we never reach absolute inevitability.

But besides this, even if, admitting the remaining minimum of
freedom to equal zero, we assumed in some given case--as for
instance in that of a dying man, an unborn babe, or an idiot--complete
absence of freedom, by so doing we should destroy the very
conception of man in the case we are examining, for as soon as there
is no freedom there is also no man. And so the conception of the
action of a man subject solely to the law of inevitability without any
element of freedom is just as impossible as the conception of a
man's completely free action.

And so to imagine the action of a man entirely subject to the law of
inevitability without any freedom, we must assume the knowledge of
an infinite number of space relations, an infinitely long period of
time, and an infinite series of causes.

To imagine a man perfectly free and not subject to the law of
inevitability, we must imagine him all alone, beyond space, beyond
time, and free from dependence on cause.

In the first case, if inevitability were possible without freedom we
should have reached a definition of inevitability by the laws of
inevitability itself, that is, a mere form without content.

In the second case, if freedom were possible without inevitability
we should have arrived at unconditioned freedom beyond space, time,
and cause, which by the fact of its being unconditioned and
unlimited would be nothing, or mere content without form.

We should in fact have reached those two fundamentals of which man's
whole outlook on the universe is constructed--the incomprehensible
essence of life, and the laws defining that essence.

Reason says: (1) space with all the forms of matter that give it
visibility is infinite, and cannot be imagined otherwise. (2) Time
is infinite motion without a moment of rest and is unthinkable
otherwise. (3) The connection between cause and effect has no
beginning and can have no end.

Consciousness says: (1) I alone am, and all that exists is but me,
consequently I include space. (2) I measure flowing time by the
fixed moment of the present in which alone I am conscious of myself as
living, consequently I am outside time. (3) I am beyond cause, for I
feel myself to be the cause of every manifestation of my life.

Reason gives expression to the laws of inevitability.
Consciousness gives expression to the essence of freedom.

Freedom not limited by anything is the essence of life, in man's
consciousness. Inevitability without content is man's reason in its
three forms.

Freedom is the thing examined. Inevitability is what examines.
Freedom is the content. Inevitability is the form.

Only by separating the two sources of cognition, related to one
another as form to content, do we get the mutually exclusive and
separately incomprehensible conceptions of freedom and inevitability.

Only by uniting them do we get a clear conception of man's life.

Apart from these two concepts which in their union mutually define
one another as form and content, no conception of life is possible.

All that we know of the life of man is merely a certain relation
of free will to inevitability, that is, of consciousness to the laws
of reason.

All that we know of the external world of nature is only a certain
relation of the forces of nature to inevitability, or of the essence
of life to the laws of reason.

The great natural forces lie outside us and we are not conscious
of them; we call those forces gravitation, inertia, electricity,
animal force, and so on, but we are conscious of the force of life
in man and we call that freedom.

But just as the force of gravitation, incomprehensible in itself but
felt by every man, is understood by us only to the extent to which
we know the laws of inevitability to which it is subject (from the
first knowledge that all bodies have weight, up to Newton's law), so
too the force of free will, incomprehensible in itself but of which
everyone is conscious, is intelligible to us only in as far as we know
the laws of inevitability to which it is subject (from the fact that
every man dies, up to the knowledge of the most complex economic and
historic laws).

All knowledge is merely a bringing of this essence of life under the
laws of reason.

Man's free will differs from every other force in that man is
directly conscious of it, but in the eyes of reason it in no way
differs from any other force. The forces of gravitation,
electricity, or chemical affinity are only distinguished from one
another in that they are differently defined by reason. Just so the
force of man's free will is distinguished by reason from the other
forces of nature only by the definition reason gives it. Freedom,
apart from necessity, that is, apart from the laws of reason that
define it, differs in no way from gravitation, or heat, or the force
that makes things grow; for reason, it is only a momentary undefinable
sensation of life.

And as the undefinable essence of the force moving the heavenly
bodies, the undefinable essence of the forces of heat and electricity,
or of chemical affinity, or of the vital force, forms the content of
astronomy, physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, and so on, just in the
same way does the force of free will form the content of history.
But just as the subject of every science is the manifestation of
this unknown essence of life while that essence itself can only be the
subject of metaphysics, even the manifestation of the force of free
will in human beings in space, in time, and in dependence on cause
forms the subject of history, while free will itself is the subject of
metaphysics.

In the experimental sciences what we know we call the laws of
inevitability, what is unknown to us we call vital force. Vital
force is only an expression for the unknown remainder over and above
what we know of the essence of life.

So also in history what is known to us we call laws of
inevitability, what is unknown we call free will. Free will is for
history only an expression for the unknown remainder of what we know
about the laws of human life.





CHAPTER XI


History examines the manifestations of man's free will in connection
with the external world in time and in dependence on cause, that is,
it defines this freedom by the laws of reason, and so history is a
science only in so far as this free will is defined by those laws.

The recognition of man's free will as something capable of
influencing historical events, that is, as not subject to laws, is the
same for history as the recognition of a free force moving the
heavenly bodies would be for astronomy.

That assumption would destroy the possibility of the existence of
laws, that is, of any science whatever. If there is even a single body
moving freely, then the laws of Kepler and Newton are negatived and no
conception of the movement of the heavenly bodies any longer exists.
If any single action is due to free will, then not a single historical
law can exist, nor any conception of historical events.

For history, lines exist of the movement of human wills, one end
of which is hidden in the unknown but at the other end of which a
consciousness of man's will in the present moves in space, time, and
dependence on cause.

The more this field of motion spreads out before our eyes, the
more evident are the laws of that movement. To discover and define
those laws is the problem of history.

From the standpoint from which the science of history now regards
its subject on the path it now follows, seeking the causes of events
in man's freewill, a scientific enunciation of those laws is
impossible, for however man's free will may be restricted, as soon
as we recognize it as a force not subject to law, the existence of law
becomes impossible.

Only by reducing this element of free will to the infinitesimal,
that is, by regarding it as an infinitely small quantity, can we
convince ourselves of the absolute inaccessibility of the causes,
and then instead of seeking causes, history will take the discovery of
laws as its problem.

The search for these laws has long been begun and the new methods of
thought which history must adopt are being worked out simultaneously
with the self-destruction toward which--ever dissecting and dissecting
the causes of phenomena--the old method of history is moving.

All human sciences have traveled along that path. Arriving at
infinitesimals, mathematics, the most exact of sciences, abandons
the process of analysis and enters on the new process of the
integration of unknown, infinitely small, quantities. Abandoning the
conception of cause, mathematics seeks law, that is, the property
common to all unknown, infinitely small, elements.

In another form but along the same path of reflection the other
sciences have proceeded. When Newton enunciated the law of gravity
he did not say that the sun or the earth had a property of attraction;
he said that all bodies from the largest to the smallest have the
property of attracting one another, that is, leaving aside the
question of the cause of the movement of the bodies, he expressed
the property common to all bodies from the infinitely large to the
infinitely small. The same is done by the natural sciences: leaving
aside the question of cause, they seek for laws. History stands on the
same path. And if history has for its object the study of the movement
of the nations and of humanity and not the narration of episodes in
the lives of individuals, it too, setting aside the conception of
cause, should seek the laws common to all the inseparably
interconnected infinitesimal elements of free will.





CHAPTER XII


From the time the law of Copernicus was discovered and proved, the
mere recognition of the fact that it was not the sun but the earth
that moves sufficed to destroy the whole cosmography of the
ancients. By disproving that law it might have been possible to retain
the old conception of the movements of the bodies, but without
disproving it, it would seem impossible to continue studying the
Ptolemaic worlds. But even after the discovery of the law of
Copernicus the Ptolemaic worlds were still studied for a long time.

From the time the first person said and proved that the number of
births or of crimes is subject to mathematical laws, and that this
or that mode of government is determined by certain geographical and
economic conditions, and that certain relations of population to
soil produce migrations of peoples, the foundations on which history
had been built were destroyed in their essence.

By refuting these new laws the former view of history might have
been retained; but without refuting them it would seem impossible to
continue studying historic events as the results of man's free will.
For if a certain mode of government was established or certain
migrations of peoples took place in consequence of such and such
geographic, ethnographic, or economic conditions, then the free will
of those individuals who appear to us to have established that mode of
government or occasioned the migrations can no longer be regarded as
the cause.

And yet the former history continues to be studied side by side with
the laws of statistics, geography, political economy, comparative
philology, and geology, which directly contradict its assumptions.

The struggle between the old views and the new was long and
stubbornly fought out in physical philosophy. Theology stood on
guard for the old views and accused the new of violating revelation.
But when truth conquered, theology established itself just as firmly
on the new foundation.

Just as prolonged and stubborn is the struggle now proceeding
between the old and the new conception of history, and theology in the
same way stands on guard for the old view, and accuses the new view of
subverting revelation.

In the one case as in the other, on both sides the struggle provokes
passion and stifles truth. On the one hand there is fear and regret
for the loss of the whole edifice constructed through the ages, on the
other is the passion for destruction.

To the men who fought against the rising truths of physical
philosophy, it seemed that if they admitted that truth it would
destroy faith in God, in the creation of the firmament, and in the
miracle of Joshua the son of Nun. To the defenders of the laws of
Copernicus and Newton, to Voltaire for example, it seemed that the
laws of astronomy destroyed religion, and he utilized the law of
gravitation as a weapon against religion.

Just so it now seems as if we have only to admit the law of
inevitability, to destroy the conception of the soul, of good and
evil, and all the institutions of state and church that have been
built up on those conceptions.

So too, like Voltaire in his time, uninvited defenders of the law of
inevitability today use that law as a weapon against religion,
though the law of inevitability in history, like the law of Copernicus
in astronomy, far from destroying, even strengthens the foundation
on which the institutions of state and church are erected.

As in the question of astronomy then, so in the question of
history now, the whole difference of opinion is based on the
recognition or nonrecognition of something absolute, serving as the
measure of visible phenomena. In astronomy it was the immovability
of the earth, in history it is the independence of personality--free
will.

As with astronomy the difficulty of recognizing the motion of the
earth lay in abandoning the immediate sensation of the earth's
fixity and of the motion of the planets, so in history the
difficulty of recognizing the subjection of personality to the laws of
space, time, and cause lies in renouncing the direct feeling of the
independence of one's own personality. But as in astronomy the new
view said: "It is true that we do not feel the movement of the
earth, but by admitting its immobility we arrive at absurdity, while
by admitting its motion (which we do not feel) we arrive at laws,"
so also in history the new view says: "It is true that we are not
conscious of our dependence, but by admitting our free will we
arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our dependence on the external
world, on time, and on cause, we arrive at laws."

In the first case it was necessary to renounce the consciousness
of an unreal immobility in space and to recognize a motion we did
not feel; in the present case it is similarly necessary to renounce
a freedom that does not exist, and to recognize a dependence of
which we are not conscious.



























                             Anna Karenina

                             by Leo Tolstoy






PART ONE



Chapter 1


Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own
way.

Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys' house. The wife had
discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue with a French
girl, who had been a governess in their family, and she had announced to
her husband that she could not go on living in the same house with him.
This position of affairs had now lasted three days, and not only the
husband and wife themselves, but all the members of their family and
household, were painfully conscious of it. Every person in the house
felt that there was no sense in their living together, and that the
stray people brought together by chance in any inn had more in common
with one another than they, the members of the family and household of
the Oblonskys. The wife did not leave her own room, the husband had not
been at home for three days. The children ran wild all over the house;
the English governess quarreled with the housekeeper, and wrote to a
friend asking her to look out for a new situation for her; the man-cook
had walked off the day before just at dinner time; the kitchen-maid, and
the coachman had given warning.

Three days after the quarrel, Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch
Oblonsky--Stiva, as he was called in the fashionable world--woke up at
his usual hour, that is, at eight o'clock in the morning, not in his
wife's bedroom, but on the leather-covered sofa in his study. He turned
over his stout, well-cared-for person on the springy sofa, as though he
would sink into a long sleep again; he vigorously embraced the pillow on
the other side and buried his face in it; but all at once he jumped up,
sat up on the sofa, and opened his eyes.

"Yes, yes, how was it now?" he thought, going over his dream. "Now, how
was it? To be sure! Alabin was giving a dinner at Darmstadt; no, not
Darmstadt, but something American. Yes, but then, Darmstadt was in
America. Yes, Alabin was giving a dinner on glass tables, and the tables
sang, _Il mio tesoro_--not _Il mio tesoro_ though, but something better,
and there were some sort of little decanters on the table, and they were
women, too," he remembered.

Stepan Arkadyevitch's eyes twinkled gaily, and he pondered with a smile.
"Yes, it was nice, very nice. There was a great deal more that was
delightful, only there's no putting it into words, or even expressing it
in one's thoughts awake." And noticing a gleam of light peeping in
beside one of the serge curtains, he cheerfully dropped his feet over
the edge of the sofa, and felt about with them for his slippers, a
present on his last birthday, worked for him by his wife on gold-colored
morocco. And, as he had done every day for the last nine years, he
stretched out his hand, without getting up, towards the place where his
dressing-gown always hung in his bedroom. And thereupon he suddenly
remembered that he was not sleeping in his wife's room, but in his
study, and why: the smile vanished from his face, he knitted his brows.

"Ah, ah, ah! Oo!..." he muttered, recalling everything that had
happened. And again every detail of his quarrel with his wife was
present to his imagination, all the hopelessness of his position, and
worst of all, his own fault.

"Yes, she won't forgive me, and she can't forgive me. And the most awful
thing about it is that it's all my fault--all my fault, though I'm not
to blame. That's the point of the whole situation," he reflected. "Oh,
oh, oh!" he kept repeating in despair, as he remembered the acutely
painful sensations caused him by this quarrel.

Most unpleasant of all was the first minute when, on coming, happy and
good-humored, from the theater, with a huge pear in his hand for his
wife, he had not found his wife in the drawing-room, to his surprise had
not found her in the study either, and saw her at last in her bedroom
with the unlucky letter that revealed everything in her hand.

She, his Dolly, forever fussing and worrying over household details, and
limited in her ideas, as he considered, was sitting perfectly still with
the letter in her hand, looking at him with an expression of horror,
despair, and indignation.

"What's this? this?" she asked, pointing to the letter.

And at this recollection, Stepan Arkadyevitch, as is so often the case,
was not so much annoyed at the fact itself as at the way in which he had
met his wife's words.

There happened to him at that instant what does happen to people when
they are unexpectedly caught in something very disgraceful. He did not
succeed in adapting his face to the position in which he was placed
towards his wife by the discovery of his fault. Instead of being hurt,
denying, defending himself, begging forgiveness, instead of remaining
indifferent even--anything would have been better than what he did
do--his face utterly involuntarily (reflex spinal action, reflected
Stepan Arkadyevitch, who was fond of physiology)--utterly involuntarily
assumed its habitual, good-humored, and therefore idiotic smile.

This idiotic smile he could not forgive himself. Catching sight of that
smile, Dolly shuddered as though at physical pain, broke out with her
characteristic heat into a flood of cruel words, and rushed out of the
room. Since then she had refused to see her husband.

"It's that idiotic smile that's to blame for it all," thought Stepan
Arkadyevitch.

"But what's to be done? What's to be done?" he said to himself in
despair, and found no answer.



Chapter 2


Stepan Arkadyevitch was a truthful man in his relations with himself. He
was incapable of deceiving himself and persuading himself that he
repented of his conduct. He could not at this date repent of the fact
that he, a handsome, susceptible man of thirty-four, was not in love
with his wife, the mother of five living and two dead children, and only
a year younger than himself. All he repented of was that he had not
succeeded better in hiding it from his wife. But he felt all the
difficulty of his position and was sorry for his wife, his children, and
himself. Possibly he might have managed to conceal his sins better from
his wife if he had anticipated that the knowledge of them would have had
such an effect on her. He had never clearly thought out the subject, but
he had vaguely conceived that his wife must long ago have suspected him
of being unfaithful to her, and shut her eyes to the fact. He had even
supposed that she, a worn-out woman no longer young or good-looking, and
in no way remarkable or interesting, merely a good mother, ought from a
sense of fairness to take an indulgent view. It had turned out quite the
other way.

"Oh, it's awful! oh dear, oh dear! awful!" Stepan Arkadyevitch kept
repeating to himself, and he could think of nothing to be done. "And how
well things were going up till now! how well we got on! She was
contented and happy in her children; I never interfered with her in
anything; I let her manage the children and the house just as she liked.
It's true it's bad _her_ having been a governess in our house. That's
bad! There's something common, vulgar, in flirting with one's governess.
But what a governess!" (He vividly recalled the roguish black eyes of
Mlle. Roland and her smile.) "But after all, while she was in the house,
I kept myself in hand. And the worst of it all is that she's already ...
it seems as if ill-luck would have it so! Oh, oh! But what, what is to
be done?"

There was no solution, but that universal solution which life gives to
all questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one
must live in the needs of the day--that is, forget oneself. To forget
himself in sleep was impossible now, at least till nighttime; he could
not go back now to the music sung by the decanter-women; so he must
forget himself in the dream of daily life.

"Then we shall see," Stepan Arkadyevitch said to himself, and getting up
he put on a gray dressing-gown lined with blue silk, tied the tassels in
a knot, and, drawing a deep breath of air into his broad, bare chest, he
walked to the window with his usual confident step, turning out his feet
that carried his full frame so easily. He pulled up the blind and rang
the bell loudly. It was at once answered by the appearance of an old
friend, his valet, Matvey, carrying his clothes, his boots, and a
telegram. Matvey was followed by the barber with all the necessaries for
shaving.

"Are there any papers from the office?" asked Stepan Arkadyevitch,
taking the telegram and seating himself at the looking-glass.

"On the table," replied Matvey, glancing with inquiring sympathy at his
master; and, after a short pause, he added with a sly smile, "They've
sent from the carriage-jobbers."

Stepan Arkadyevitch made no reply, he merely glanced at Matvey in the
looking-glass. In the glance, in which their eyes met in the
looking-glass, it was clear that they understood one another. Stepan
Arkadyevitch's eyes asked: "Why do you tell me that? don't you know?"

Matvey put his hands in his jacket pockets, thrust out one leg, and
gazed silently, good-humoredly, with a faint smile, at his master.

"I told them to come on Sunday, and till then not to trouble you or
themselves for nothing," he said. He had obviously prepared the sentence
beforehand.

Stepan Arkadyevitch saw Matvey wanted to make a joke and attract
attention to himself. Tearing open the telegram, he read it through,
guessing at the words, misspelt as they always are in telegrams, and his
face brightened.

"Matvey, my sister Anna Arkadyevna will be here tomorrow," he said,
checking for a minute the sleek, plump hand of the barber, cutting a
pink path through his long, curly whiskers.

"Thank God!" said Matvey, showing by this response that he, like his
master, realized the significance of this arrival--that is, that Anna
Arkadyevna, the sister he was so fond of, might bring about a
reconciliation between husband and wife.

"Alone, or with her husband?" inquired Matvey.

Stepan Arkadyevitch could not answer, as the barber was at work on his
upper lip, and he raised one finger. Matvey nodded at the looking-glass.

"Alone. Is the room to be got ready upstairs?"

"Inform Darya Alexandrovna: where she orders."

"Darya Alexandrovna?" Matvey repeated, as though in doubt.

"Yes, inform her. Here, take the telegram; give it to her, and then do
what she tells you."

"You want to try it on," Matvey understood, but he only said, "Yes sir."

Stepan Arkadyevitch was already washed and combed and ready to be
dressed, when Matvey, stepping deliberately in his creaky boots, came
back into the room with the telegram in his hand. The barber had gone.

"Darya Alexandrovna told me to inform you that she is going away. Let
him do--that is you--do as he likes," he said, laughing only with his
eyes, and putting his hands in his pockets, he watched his master with
his head on one side. Stepan Arkadyevitch was silent a minute. Then a
good-humored and rather pitiful smile showed itself on his handsome
face.

"Eh, Matvey?" he said, shaking his head.

"It's all right, sir; she will come round," said Matvey.

"Come round?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do you think so? Who's there?" asked Stepan Arkadyevitch, hearing the
rustle of a woman's dress at the door.

"It's I," said a firm, pleasant, woman's voice, and the stern,
pockmarked face of Matrona Philimonovna, the nurse, was thrust in at the
doorway.

"Well, what is it, Matrona?" queried Stepan Arkadyevitch, going up to
her at the door.

Although Stepan Arkadyevitch was completely in the wrong as regards his
wife, and was conscious of this himself, almost every one in the house
(even the nurse, Darya Alexandrovna's chief ally) was on his side.

"Well, what now?" he asked disconsolately.

"Go to her, sir; own your fault again. Maybe God will aid you. She is
suffering so, it's sad to see her; and besides, everything in the house
is topsy-turvy. You must have pity, sir, on the children. Beg her
forgiveness, sir. There's no help for it! One must take the
consequences..."

"But she won't see me."

"You do your part. God is merciful; pray to God, sir, pray to God."

"Come, that'll do, you can go," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, blushing
suddenly. "Well now, do dress me." He turned to Matvey and threw off his
dressing-gown decisively.

Matvey was already holding up the shirt like a horse's collar, and,
blowing off some invisible speck, he slipped it with obvious pleasure
over the well-groomed body of his master.



Chapter 3


When he was dressed, Stepan Arkadyevitch sprinkled some scent on
himself, pulled down his shirt-cuffs, distributed into his pockets his
cigarettes, pocketbook, matches, and watch with its double chain and
seals, and shaking out his handkerchief, feeling himself clean,
fragrant, healthy, and physically at ease, in spite of his unhappiness,
he walked with a slight swing on each leg into the dining-room, where
coffee was already waiting for him, and beside the coffee, letters and
papers from the office.

He read the letters. One was very unpleasant, from a merchant who was
buying a forest on his wife's property. To sell this forest was
absolutely essential; but at present, until he was reconciled with his
wife, the subject could not be discussed. The most unpleasant thing of
all was that his pecuniary interests should in this way enter into the
question of his reconciliation with his wife. And the idea that he might
be led on by his interests, that he might seek a reconciliation with his
wife on account of the sale of the forest--that idea hurt him.

When he had finished his letters, Stepan Arkadyevitch moved the
office-papers close to him, rapidly looked through two pieces of
business, made a few notes with a big pencil, and pushing away the
papers, turned to his coffee. As he sipped his coffee, he opened a still
damp morning paper, and began reading it.

Stepan Arkadyevitch took in and read a liberal paper, not an extreme
one, but one advocating the views held by the majority. And in spite of
the fact that science, art, and politics had no special interest for
him, he firmly held those views on all these subjects which were held by
the majority and by his paper, and he only changed them when the
majority changed them--or, more strictly speaking, he did not change
them, but they imperceptibly changed of themselves within him.

Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views;
these political opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just
as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took
those that were being worn. And for him, living in a certain
society--owing to the need, ordinarily developed at years of discretion,
for some degree of mental activity--to have views was just as
indispensable as to have a hat. If there was a reason for his preferring
liberal to conservative views, which were held also by many of his
circle, it arose not from his considering liberalism more rational, but
from its being in closer accordance with his manner of life. The liberal
party said that in Russia everything is wrong, and certainly Stepan
Arkadyevitch had many debts and was decidedly short of money. The
liberal party said that marriage is an institution quite out of date,
and that it needs reconstruction; and family life certainly afforded
Stepan Arkadyevitch little gratification, and forced him into lying and
hypocrisy, which was so repulsive to his nature. The liberal party said,
or rather allowed it to be understood, that religion is only a curb to
keep in check the barbarous classes of the people; and Stepan
Arkadyevitch could not get through even a short service without his legs
aching from standing up, and could never make out what was the object of
all the terrible and high-flown language about another world when life
might be so very amusing in this world. And with all this, Stepan
Arkadyevitch, who liked a joke, was fond of puzzling a plain man by
saying that if he prided himself on his origin, he ought not to stop at
Rurik and disown the first founder of his family--the monkey. And so
Liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch's, and he liked his
newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it
diffused in his brain. He read the leading article, in which it was
maintained that it was quite senseless in our day to raise an outcry
that radicalism was threatening to swallow up all conservative elements,
and that the government ought to take measures to crush the
revolutionary hydra; that, on the contrary, "in our opinion the danger
lies not in that fantastic revolutionary hydra, but in the obstinacy of
traditionalism clogging progress," etc., etc. He read another article,
too, a financial one, which alluded to Bentham and Mill, and dropped
some innuendoes reflecting on the ministry. With his characteristic
quickwittedness he caught the drift of each innuendo, divined whence it
came, at whom and on what ground it was aimed, and that afforded him, as
it always did, a certain satisfaction. But today that satisfaction was
embittered by Matrona Philimonovna's advice and the unsatisfactory state
of the household. He read, too, that Count Beist was rumored to have
left for Wiesbaden, and that one need have no more gray hair, and of the
sale of a light carriage, and of a young person seeking a situation; but
these items of information did not give him, as usual, a quiet, ironical
gratification. Having finished the paper, a second cup of coffee and a
roll and butter, he got up, shaking the crumbs of the roll off his
waistcoat; and, squaring his broad chest, he smiled joyously: not
because there was anything particularly agreeable in his mind--the
joyous smile was evoked by a good digestion.

But this joyous smile at once recalled everything to him, and he grew
thoughtful.

Two childish voices (Stepan Arkadyevitch recognized the voices of
Grisha, his youngest boy, and Tanya, his eldest girl) were heard outside
the door. They were carrying something, and dropped it.

"I told you not to sit passengers on the roof," said the little girl in
English; "there, pick them up!"

"Everything's in confusion," thought Stepan Arkadyevitch; "there are the
children running about by themselves." And going to the door, he called
them. They threw down the box, that represented a train, and came in to
their father.

The little girl, her father's favorite, ran up boldly, embraced him, and
hung laughingly on his neck, enjoying as she always did the smell of
scent that came from his whiskers. At last the little girl kissed his
face, which was flushed from his stooping posture and beaming with
tenderness, loosed her hands, and was about to run away again; but her
father held her back.

"How is mamma?" he asked, passing his hand over his daughter's smooth,
soft little neck. "Good morning," he said, smiling to the boy, who had
come up to greet him. He was conscious that he loved the boy less, and
always tried to be fair; but the boy felt it, and did not respond with a
smile to his father's chilly smile.

"Mamma? She is up," answered the girl.

Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed. "That means that she's not slept again all
night," he thought.

"Well, is she cheerful?"

The little girl knew that there was a quarrel between her father and
mother, and that her mother could not be cheerful, and that her father
must be aware of this, and that he was pretending when he asked about it
so lightly. And she blushed for her father. He at once perceived it, and
blushed too.

"I don't know," she said. "She did not say we must do our lessons, but
she said we were to go for a walk with Miss Hoole to grandmamma's."

"Well, go, Tanya, my darling. Oh, wait a minute, though," he said, still
holding her and stroking her soft little hand.

He took off the mantelpiece, where he had put it yesterday, a little box
of sweets, and gave her two, picking out her favorites, a chocolate and
a fondant.

"For Grisha?" said the little girl, pointing to the chocolate.

"Yes, yes." And still stroking her little shoulder, he kissed her on the
roots of her hair and neck, and let her go.

"The carriage is ready," said Matvey; "but there's some one to see you
with a petition."

"Been here long?" asked Stepan Arkadyevitch.

"Half an hour."

"How many times have I told you to tell me at once?"

"One must let you drink your coffee in peace, at least," said Matvey, in
the affectionately gruff tone with which it was impossible to be angry.

"Well, show the person up at once," said Oblonsky, frowning with
vexation.

The petitioner, the widow of a staff captain Kalinin, came with a
request impossible and unreasonable; but Stepan Arkadyevitch, as he
generally did, made her sit down, heard her to the end attentively
without interrupting her, and gave her detailed advice as to how and to
whom to apply, and even wrote her, in his large, sprawling, good and
legible hand, a confident and fluent little note to a personage who
might be of use to her. Having got rid of the staff captain's widow,
Stepan Arkadyevitch took his hat and stopped to recollect whether he had
forgotten anything. It appeared that he had forgotten nothing except
what he wanted to forget--his wife.

"Ah, yes!" He bowed his head, and his handsome face assumed a harassed
expression. "To go, or not to go!" he said to himself; and an inner
voice told him he must not go, that nothing could come of it but
falsity; that to amend, to set right their relations was impossible,
because it was impossible to make her attractive again and able to
inspire love, or to make him an old man, not susceptible to love. Except
deceit and lying nothing could come of it now; and deceit and lying were
opposed to his nature.

"It must be some time, though: it can't go on like this," he said,
trying to give himself courage. He squared his chest, took out a
cigarette, took two whiffs at it, flung it into a mother-of-pearl
ashtray, and with rapid steps walked through the drawing room, and
opened the other door into his wife's bedroom.



Chapter 4


Darya Alexandrovna, in a dressing jacket, and with her now scanty, once
luxuriant and beautiful hair fastened up with hairpins on the nape of
her neck, with a sunken, thin face and large, startled eyes, which
looked prominent from the thinness of her face, was standing among a
litter of all sorts of things scattered all over the room, before an
open bureau, from which she was taking something. Hearing her husband's
steps, she stopped, looking towards the door, and trying assiduously to
give her features a severe and contemptuous expression. She felt she was
afraid of him, and afraid of the coming interview. She was just
attempting to do what she had attempted to do ten times already in these
last three days--to sort out the children's things and her own, so as to
take them to her mother's--and again she could not bring herself to do
this; but now again, as each time before, she kept saying to herself,
"that things cannot go on like this, that she must take some step" to
punish him, put him to shame, avenge on him some little part at least of
the suffering he had caused her. She still continued to tell herself
that she should leave him, but she was conscious that this was
impossible; it was impossible because she could not get out of the habit
of regarding him as her husband and loving him. Besides this, she
realized that if even here in her own house she could hardly manage to
look after her five children properly, they would be still worse off
where she was going with them all. As it was, even in the course of
these three days, the youngest was unwell from being given unwholesome
soup, and the others had almost gone without their dinner the day
before. She was conscious that it was impossible to go away; but,
cheating herself, she went on all the same sorting out her things and
pretending she was going.

Seeing her husband, she dropped her hands into the drawer of the bureau
as though looking for something, and only looked round at him when he
had come quite up to her. But her face, to which she tried to give a
severe and resolute expression, betrayed bewilderment and suffering.

"Dolly!" he said in a subdued and timid voice. He bent his head towards
his shoulder and tried to look pitiful and humble, but for all that he
was radiant with freshness and health. In a rapid glance she scanned his
figure that beamed with health and freshness. "Yes, he is happy and
content!" she thought; "while I.... And that disgusting good nature,
which every one likes him for and praises--I hate that good nature of
his," she thought. Her mouth stiffened, the muscles of the cheek
contracted on the right side of her pale, nervous face.

"What do you want?" she said in a rapid, deep, unnatural voice.

"Dolly!" he repeated, with a quiver in his voice. "Anna is coming
today."

"Well, what is that to me? I can't see her!" she cried.

"But you must, really, Dolly..."

"Go away, go away, go away!" she shrieked, not looking at him, as though
this shriek were called up by physical pain.

Stepan Arkadyevitch could be calm when he thought of his wife, he could
hope that she would _come round_, as Matvey expressed it, and could
quietly go on reading his paper and drinking his coffee; but when he saw
her tortured, suffering face, heard the tone of her voice, submissive to
fate and full of despair, there was a catch in his breath and a lump in
his throat, and his eyes began to shine with tears.

"My God! what have I done? Dolly! For God's sake!.... You know...." He
could not go on; there was a sob in his throat.

She shut the bureau with a slam, and glanced at him.

"Dolly, what can I say?.... One thing: forgive... Remember, cannot nine
years of my life atone for an instant...."

She dropped her eyes and listened, expecting what he would say, as it
were beseeching him in some way or other to make her believe
differently.

"--instant of passion?" he said, and would have gone on, but at that
word, as at a pang of physical pain, her lips stiffened again, and again
the muscles of her right cheek worked.

"Go away, go out of the room!" she shrieked still more shrilly, "and
don't talk to me of your passion and your loathsomeness."

She tried to go out, but tottered, and clung to the back of a chair to
support herself. His face relaxed, his lips swelled, his eyes were
swimming with tears.

"Dolly!" he said, sobbing now; "for mercy's sake, think of the children;
they are not to blame! I am to blame, and punish me, make me expiate my
fault. Anything I can do, I am ready to do anything! I am to blame, no
words can express how much I am to blame! But, Dolly, forgive me!"

She sat down. He listened to her hard, heavy breathing, and he was
unutterably sorry for her. She tried several times to begin to speak,
but could not. He waited.

"You remember the children, Stiva, to play with them; but I remember
them, and know that this means their ruin," she said--obviously one of
the phrases she had more than once repeated to herself in the course of
the last few days.

She had called him "Stiva," and he glanced at her with gratitude, and
moved to take her hand, but she drew back from him with aversion.

"I think of the children, and for that reason I would do anything in the
world to save them, but I don't myself know how to save them. By taking
them away from their father, or by leaving them with a vicious
father--yes, a vicious father.... Tell me, after what ... has happened,
can we live together? Is that possible? Tell me, eh, is it possible?"
she repeated, raising her voice, "after my husband, the father of my
children, enters into a love affair with his own children's governess?"

"But what could I do? what could I do?" he kept saying in a pitiful
voice, not knowing what he was saying, as his head sank lower and lower.

"You are loathsome to me, repulsive!" she shrieked, getting more and
more heated. "Your tears mean nothing! You have never loved me; you have
neither heart nor honorable feeling! You are hateful to me, disgusting,
a stranger--yes, a complete stranger!" With pain and wrath she uttered
the word so terrible to herself--_stranger_.

He looked at her, and the fury expressed in her face alarmed and amazed
him. He did not understand how his pity for her exasperated her. She saw
in him sympathy for her, but not love. "No, she hates me. She will not
forgive me," he thought.

"It is awful! awful!" he said.

At that moment in the next room a child began to cry; probably it had
fallen down. Darya Alexandrovna listened, and her face suddenly
softened.

She seemed to be pulling herself together for a few seconds, as though
she did not know where she was, and what she was doing, and getting up
rapidly, she moved towards the door.

"Well, she loves my child," he thought, noticing the change of her face
at the child's cry, "my child: how can she hate me?"

"Dolly, one word more," he said, following her.

"If you come near me, I will call in the servants, the children! They
may all know you are a scoundrel! I am going away at once, and you may
live here with your mistress!"

And she went out, slamming the door.

Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed, wiped his face, and with a subdued tread
walked out of the room. "Matvey says she will come round; but how? I
don't see the least chance of it. Ah, oh, how horrible it is! And how
vulgarly she shouted," he said to himself, remembering her shriek and
the words--"scoundrel" and "mistress." "And very likely the maids were
listening! Horribly vulgar! horrible!" Stepan Arkadyevitch stood a few
seconds alone, wiped his face, squared his chest, and walked out of the
room.

It was Friday, and in the dining room the German watchmaker was winding
up the clock. Stepan Arkadyevitch remembered his joke about this
punctual, bald watchmaker, "that the German was wound up for a whole
lifetime himself, to wind up watches," and he smiled. Stepan
Arkadyevitch was fond of a joke: "And maybe she will come round! That's
a good expression, '_come round,_'" he thought. "I must repeat that."

"Matvey!" he shouted. "Arrange everything with Darya in the sitting room
for Anna Arkadyevna," he said to Matvey when he came in.

"Yes, sir."

Stepan Arkadyevitch put on his fur coat and went out onto the steps.

"You won't dine at home?" said Matvey, seeing him off.

"That's as it happens. But here's for the housekeeping," he said, taking
ten roubles from his pocketbook. "That'll be enough."

"Enough or not enough, we must make it do," said Matvey, slamming the
carriage door and stepping back onto the steps.

Darya Alexandrovna meanwhile having pacified the child, and knowing from
the sound of the carriage that he had gone off, went back again to her
bedroom. It was her solitary refuge from the household cares which
crowded upon her directly she went out from it. Even now, in the short
time she had been in the nursery, the English governess and Matrona
Philimonovna had succeeded in putting several questions to her, which
did not admit of delay, and which only she could answer: "What were the
children to put on for their walk? Should they have any milk? Should not
a new cook be sent for?"

"Ah, let me alone, let me alone!" she said, and going back to her
bedroom she sat down in the same place as she had sat when talking to
her husband, clasping tightly her thin hands with the rings that slipped
down on her bony fingers, and fell to going over in her memory all the
conversation. "He has gone! But has he broken it off with her?" she
thought. "Can it be he sees her? Why didn't I ask him! No, no,
reconciliation is impossible. Even if we remain in the same house, we
are strangers--strangers forever!" She repeated again with special
significance the word so dreadful to her. "And how I loved him! my God,
how I loved him!.... How I loved him! And now don't I love him? Don't I
love him more than before? The most horrible thing is," she began, but
did not finish her thought, because Matrona Philimonovna put her head in
at the door.

"Let us send for my brother," she said; "he can get a dinner anyway, or
we shall have the children getting nothing to eat till six again, like
yesterday."

"Very well, I will come directly and see about it. But did you send for
some new milk?"

And Darya Alexandrovna plunged into the duties of the day, and drowned
her grief in them for a time.



Chapter 5


Stepan Arkadyevitch had learned easily at school, thanks to his
excellent abilities, but he had been idle and mischievous, and therefore
was one of the lowest in his class. But in spite of his habitually
dissipated mode of life, his inferior grade in the service, and his
comparative youth, he occupied the honorable and lucrative position of
president of one of the government boards at Moscow. This post he had
received through his sister Anna's husband, Alexey Alexandrovitch
Karenin, who held one of the most important positions in the ministry to
whose department the Moscow office belonged. But if Karenin had not got
his brother-in-law this berth, then through a hundred other
personages--brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles, and aunts--Stiva
Oblonsky would have received this post, or some other similar one,
together with the salary of six thousand absolutely needful for him, as
his affairs, in spite of his wife's considerable property, were in an
embarrassed condition.

Half Moscow and Petersburg were friends and relations of Stepan
Arkadyevitch. He was born in the midst of those who had been and are the
powerful ones of this world. One-third of the men in the government, the
older men, had been friends of his father's, and had known him in
petticoats; another third were his intimate chums, and the remainder
were friendly acquaintances. Consequently the distributors of earthly
blessings in the shape of places, rents, shares, and such, were all his
friends, and could not overlook one of their own set; and Oblonsky had
no need to make any special exertion to get a lucrative post. He had
only not to refuse things, not to show jealousy, not to be quarrelsome
or take offense, all of which from his characteristic good nature he
never did. It would have struck him as absurd if he had been told that
he would not get a position with the salary he required, especially as
he expected nothing out of the way; he only wanted what the men of his
own age and standing did get, and he was no worse qualified for
performing duties of the kind than any other man.

Stepan Arkadyevitch was not merely liked by all who knew him for his
good humor, but for his bright disposition, and his unquestionable
honesty. In him, in his handsome, radiant figure, his sparkling eyes,
black hair and eyebrows, and the white and red of his face, there was
something which produced a physical effect of kindliness and good humor
on the people who met him. "Aha! Stiva! Oblonsky! Here he is!" was
almost always said with a smile of delight on meeting him. Even though
it happened at times that after a conversation with him it seemed that
nothing particularly delightful had happened, the next day, and the
next, every one was just as delighted at meeting him again.

After filling for three years the post of president of one of the
government boards at Moscow, Stepan Arkadyevitch had won the respect, as
well as the liking, of his fellow-officials, subordinates, and
superiors, and all who had had business with him. The principal
qualities in Stepan Arkadyevitch which had gained him this universal
respect in the service consisted, in the first place, of his extreme
indulgence for others, founded on a consciousness of his own
shortcomings; secondly, of his perfect liberalism--not the liberalism he
read of in the papers, but the liberalism that was in his blood, in
virtue of which he treated all men perfectly equally and exactly the
same, whatever their fortune or calling might be; and thirdly--the most
important point--his complete indifference to the business in which he
was engaged, in consequence of which he was never carried away, and
never made mistakes.

On reaching the offices of the board, Stepan Arkadyevitch, escorted by a
deferential porter with a portfolio, went into his little private room,
put on his uniform, and went into the boardroom. The clerks and copyists
all rose, greeting him with good-humored deference. Stepan Arkadyevitch
moved quickly, as ever, to his place, shook hands with his colleagues,
and sat down. He made a joke or two, and talked just as much as was
consistent with due decorum, and began work. No one knew better than
Stepan Arkadyevitch how to hit on the exact line between freedom,
simplicity, and official stiffness necessary for the agreeable conduct
of business. A secretary, with the good-humored deference common to
every one in Stepan Arkadyevitch's office, came up with papers, and
began to speak in the familiar and easy tone which had been introduced
by Stepan Arkadyevitch.

"We have succeeded in getting the information from the government
department of Penza. Here, would you care?...."

"You've got them at last?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laying his finger
on the paper. "Now, gentlemen...."

And the sitting of the board began.

"If they knew," he thought, bending his head with a significant air as
he listened to the report, "what a guilty little boy their president was
half an hour ago." And his eyes were laughing during the reading of the
report. Till two o'clock the sitting would go on without a break, and at
two o'clock there would be an interval and luncheon.

It was not yet two, when the large glass doors of the boardroom suddenly
opened and someone came in.

All the officials sitting on the further side under the portrait of the
Tsar and the eagle, delighted at any distraction, looked round at the
door; but the doorkeeper standing at the door at once drove out the
intruder, and closed the glass door after him.

When the case had been read through, Stepan Arkadyevitch got up and
stretched, and by way of tribute to the liberalism of the times took out
a cigarette in the boardroom and went into his private room. Two of the
members of the board, the old veteran in the service, Nikitin, and the
_Kammerjunker Grinevitch_, went in with him.

"We shall have time to finish after lunch," said Stepan Arkadyevitch.

"To be sure we shall!" said Nikitin.

"A pretty sharp fellow this Fomin must be," said Grinevitch of one of
the persons taking part in the case they were examining.

Stepan Arkadyevitch frowned at Grinevitch's words, giving him thereby to
understand that it was improper to pass judgment prematurely, and made
him no reply.

"Who was that came in?" he asked the doorkeeper.

"Someone, your excellency, crept in without permission directly my back
was turned. He was asking for you. I told him: when the members come
out, then...."

"Where is he?"

"Maybe he's gone into the passage, but here he comes anyway. That is
he," said the doorkeeper, pointing to a strongly built, broad-shouldered
man with a curly beard, who, without taking off his sheepskin cap, was
running lightly and rapidly up the worn steps of the stone staircase.
One of the members going down--a lean official with a portfolio--stood
out of his way and looked disapprovingly at the legs of the stranger,
then glanced inquiringly at Oblonsky.

Stepan Arkadyevitch was standing at the top of the stairs. His
good-naturedly beaming face above the embroidered collar of his uniform
beamed more than ever when he recognized the man coming up.

"Why, it's actually you, Levin, at last!" he said with a friendly
mocking smile, scanning Levin as he approached. "How is it you have
deigned to look me up in this den?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, and not
content with shaking hands, he kissed his friend. "Have you been here
long?"

"I have just come, and very much wanted to see you," said Levin, looking
shyly and at the same time angrily and uneasily around.

"Well, let's go into my room," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, who knew his
friend's sensitive and irritable shyness, and, taking his arm, he drew
him along, as though guiding him through dangers.

Stepan Arkadyevitch was on familiar terms with almost all his
acquaintances, and called almost all of them by their Christian names:
old men of sixty, boys of twenty, actors, ministers, merchants, and
adjutant-generals, so that many of his intimate chums were to be found
at the extreme ends of the social ladder, and would have been very much
surprised to learn that they had, through the medium of Oblonsky,
something in common. He was the familiar friend of everyone with whom he
took a glass of champagne, and he took a glass of champagne with
everyone, and when in consequence he met any of his disreputable chums,
as he used in joke to call many of his friends, in the presence of his
subordinates, he well knew how, with his characteristic tact, to
diminish the disagreeable impression made on them. Levin was not a
disreputable chum, but Oblonsky, with his ready tact, felt that Levin
fancied he might not care to show his intimacy with him before his
subordinates, and so he made haste to take him off into his room.

Levin was almost of the same age as Oblonsky; their intimacy did not
rest merely on champagne. Levin had been the friend and companion of his
early youth. They were fond of one another in spite of the difference of
their characters and tastes, as friends are fond of one another who have
been together in early youth. But in spite of this, each of them--as is
often the way with men who have selected careers of different
kinds--though in discussion he would even justify the other's career, in
his heart despised it. It seemed to each of them that the life he led
himself was the only real life, and the life led by his friend was a
mere phantasm. Oblonsky could not restrain a slight mocking smile at the
sight of Levin. How often he had seen him come up to Moscow from the
country where he was doing something, but what precisely Stepan
Arkadyevitch could never quite make out, and indeed he took no interest
in the matter. Levin arrived in Moscow always excited and in a hurry,
rather ill at ease and irritated by his own want of ease, and for the
most part with a perfectly new, unexpected view of things. Stepan
Arkadyevitch laughed at this, and liked it. In the same way Levin in his
heart despised the town mode of life of his friend, and his official
duties, which he laughed at, and regarded as trifling. But the
difference was that Oblonsky, as he was doing the same as every one did,
laughed complacently and good-humoredly, while Levin laughed without
complacency and sometimes angrily.

"We have long been expecting you," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, going into
his room and letting Levin's hand go as though to show that here all
danger was over. "I am very, very glad to see you," he went on. "Well,
how are you? Eh? When did you come?"

Levin was silent, looking at the unknown faces of Oblonsky's two
companions, and especially at the hand of the elegant Grinevitch, which
had such long white fingers, such long yellow filbert-shaped nails, and
such huge shining studs on the shirt-cuff, that apparently they absorbed
all his attention, and allowed him no freedom of thought. Oblonsky
noticed this at once, and smiled.

"Ah, to be sure, let me introduce you," he said. "My colleagues: Philip
Ivanitch Nikitin, Mihail Stanislavitch Grinevitch"--and turning to
Levin--"a district councilor, a modern district councilman, a gymnast
who lifts thirteen stone with one hand, a cattle-breeder and sportsman,
and my friend, Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin, the brother of Sergey
Ivanovitch Koznishev."

"Delighted," said the veteran.

"I have the honor of knowing your brother, Sergey Ivanovitch," said
Grinevitch, holding out his slender hand with its long nails.

Levin frowned, shook hands coldly, and at once turned to Oblonsky.
Though he had a great respect for his half-brother, an author well known
to all Russia, he could not endure it when people treated him not as
Konstantin Levin, but as the brother of the celebrated Koznishev.

"No, I am no longer a district councilor. I have quarreled with them
all, and don't go to the meetings any more," he said, turning to
Oblonsky.

"You've been quick about it!" said Oblonsky with a smile. "But how?
why?"

"It's a long story. I will tell you some time," said Levin, but he began
telling him at once. "Well, to put it shortly, I was convinced that
nothing was really done by the district councils, or ever could be," he
began, as though some one had just insulted him. "On one side it's a
plaything; they play at being a parliament, and I'm neither young enough
nor old enough to find amusement in playthings; and on the other side"
(he stammered) "it's a means for the coterie of the district to make
money. Formerly they had wardships, courts of justice, now they have the
district council--not in the form of bribes, but in the form of unearned
salary," he said, as hotly as though someone of those present had
opposed his opinion.

"Aha! You're in a new phase again, I see--a conservative," said Stepan
Arkadyevitch. "However, we can go into that later."

"Yes, later. But I wanted to see you," said Levin, looking with hatred
at Grinevitch's hand.

Stepan Arkadyevitch gave a scarcely perceptible smile.

"How was it you used to say you would never wear European dress again?"
he said, scanning his new suit, obviously cut by a French tailor. "Ah! I
see: a new phase."

Levin suddenly blushed, not as grown men blush, slightly, without being
themselves aware of it, but as boys blush, feeling that they are
ridiculous through their shyness, and consequently ashamed of it and
blushing still more, almost to the point of tears. And it was so strange
to see this sensible, manly face in such a childish plight, that
Oblonsky left off looking at him.

"Oh, where shall we meet? You know I want very much to talk to you,"
said Levin.

Oblonsky seemed to ponder.

"I'll tell you what: let's go to Gurin's to lunch, and there we can
talk. I am free till three."

"No," answered Levin, after an instant's thought, "I have got to go on
somewhere else."

"All right, then, let's dine together."

"Dine together? But I have nothing very particular, only a few words to
say, and a question I want to ask you, and we can have a talk
afterwards."

"Well, say the few words, then, at once, and we'll gossip after dinner."

"Well, it's this," said Levin; "but it's of no importance, though."

His face all at once took an expression of anger from the effort he was
making to surmount his shyness.

"What are the Shtcherbatskys doing? Everything as it used to be?" he
said.

Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had long known that Levin was in love with his
sister-in-law, Kitty, gave a hardly perceptible smile, and his eyes
sparkled merrily.

"You said a few words, but I can't answer in a few words, because....
Excuse me a minute..."

A secretary came in, with respectful familiarity and the modest
consciousness, characteristic of every secretary, of superiority to his
chief in the knowledge of their business; he went up to Oblonsky with
some papers, and began, under pretense of asking a question, to explain
some objection. Stepan Arkadyevitch, without hearing him out, laid his
hand genially on the secretary's sleeve.

"No, you do as I told you," he said, softening his words with a smile,
and with a brief explanation of his view of the matter he turned away
from the papers, and said: "So do it that way, if you please, Zahar
Nikititch."

The secretary retired in confusion. During the consultation with the
secretary Levin had completely recovered from his embarrassment. He was
standing with his elbows on the back of a chair, and on his face was a
look of ironical attention.

"I don't understand it, I don't understand it," he said.

"What don't you understand?" said Oblonsky, smiling as brightly as ever,
and picking up a cigarette. He expected some queer outburst from Levin.

"I don't understand what you are doing," said Levin, shrugging his
shoulders. "How can you do it seriously?"

"Why not?"

"Why, because there's nothing in it."

"You think so, but we're overwhelmed with work."

"On paper. But, there, you've a gift for it," added Levin.

"That's to say, you think there's a lack of something in me?"

"Perhaps so," said Levin. "But all the same I admire your grandeur, and
am proud that I've a friend in such a great person. You've not answered
my question, though," he went on, with a desperate effort looking
Oblonsky straight in the face.

"Oh, that's all very well. You wait a bit, and you'll come to this
yourself. It's very nice for you to have over six thousand acres in the
Karazinsky district, and such muscles, and the freshness of a girl of
twelve; still you'll be one of us one day. Yes, as to your question,
there is no change, but it's a pity you've been away so long."

"Oh, why so?" Levin queried, panic-stricken.

"Oh, nothing," responded Oblonsky. "We'll talk it over. But what's
brought you up to town?"

"Oh, we'll talk about that, too, later on," said Levin, reddening again
up to his ears.

"All right. I see," said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "I should ask you to come
to us, you know, but my wife's not quite the thing. But I tell you what;
if you want to see them, they're sure now to be at the Zoological
Gardens from four to five. Kitty skates. You drive along there, and I'll
come and fetch you, and we'll go and dine somewhere together."

"Capital. So good-bye till then."

"Now mind, you'll forget, I know you, or rush off home to the country!"
Stepan Arkadyevitch called out laughing.

"No, truly!"

And Levin went out of the room, only when he was in the doorway
remembering that he had forgotten to take leave of Oblonsky's
colleagues.

"That gentleman must be a man of great energy," said Grinevitch, when
Levin had gone away.

"Yes, my dear boy," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, nodding his head, "he's a
lucky fellow! Over six thousand acres in the Karazinsky district;
everything before him; and what youth and vigor! Not like some of us."

"You have a great deal to complain of, haven't you, Stepan
Arkadyevitch?"

"Ah, yes, I'm in a poor way, a bad way," said Stepan Arkadyevitch with a
heavy sigh.



Chapter 6


When Oblonsky asked Levin what had brought him to town, Levin blushed,
and was furious with himself for blushing, because he could not answer,
"I have come to make your sister-in-law an offer," though that was
precisely what he had come for.

The families of the Levins and the Shtcherbatskys were old, noble Moscow
families, and had always been on intimate and friendly terms. This
intimacy had grown still closer during Levin's student days. He had both
prepared for the university with the young Prince Shtcherbatsky, the
brother of Kitty and Dolly, and had entered at the same time with him.
In those days Levin used often to be in the Shtcherbatskys' house, and
he was in love with the Shtcherbatsky household. Strange as it may
appear, it was with the household, the family, that Konstantin Levin was
in love, especially with the feminine half of the household. Levin did
not remember his own mother, and his only sister was older than he was,
so that it was in the Shtcherbatskys' house that he saw for the first
time that inner life of an old, noble, cultivated, and honorable family
of which he had been deprived by the death of his father and mother. All
the members of that family, especially the feminine half, were pictured
by him, as it were, wrapped about with a mysterious poetical veil, and
he not only perceived no defects whatever in them, but under the
poetical veil that shrouded them he assumed the existence of the
loftiest sentiments and every possible perfection. Why it was the three
young ladies had one day to speak French, and the next English; why it
was that at certain hours they played by turns on the piano, the sounds
of which were audible in their brother's room above, where the students
used to work; why they were visited by those professors of French
literature, of music, of drawing, of dancing; why at certain hours all
the three young ladies, with Mademoiselle Linon, drove in the coach to
the Tversky boulevard, dressed in their satin cloaks, Dolly in a long
one, Natalia in a half-long one, and Kitty in one so short that her
shapely legs in tightly-drawn red stockings were visible to all
beholders; why it was they had to walk about the Tversky boulevard
escorted by a footman with a gold cockade in his hat--all this and much
more that was done in their mysterious world he did not understand, but
he was sure that everything that was done there was very good, and he
was in love precisely with the mystery of the proceedings.

In his student days he had all but been in love with the eldest, Dolly,
but she was soon married to Oblonsky. Then he began being in love with
the second. He felt, as it were, that he had to be in love with one of
the sisters, only he could not quite make out which. But Natalia, too,
had hardly made her appearance in the world when she married the
diplomat Lvov. Kitty was still a child when Levin left the university.
Young Shtcherbatsky went into the navy, was drowned in the Baltic, and
Levin's relations with the Shtcherbatskys, in spite of his friendship
with Oblonsky, became less intimate. But when early in the winter of
this year Levin came to Moscow, after a year in the country, and saw the
Shtcherbatskys, he realized which of the three sisters he was indeed
destined to love.

One would have thought that nothing could be simpler than for him, a man
of good family, rather rich than poor, and thirty-two years old, to make
the young Princess Shtcherbatskaya an offer of marriage; in all
likelihood he would at once have been looked upon as a good match. But
Levin was in love, and so it seemed to him that Kitty was so perfect in
every respect that she was a creature far above everything earthly; and
that he was a creature so low and so earthly that it could not even be
conceived that other people and she herself could regard him as worthy
of her.

After spending two months in Moscow in a state of enchantment, seeing
Kitty almost every day in society, into which he went so as to meet her,
he abruptly decided that it could not be, and went back to the country.

Levin's conviction that it could not be was founded on the idea that in
the eyes of her family he was a disadvantageous and worthless match for
the charming Kitty, and that Kitty herself could not love him. In her
family's eyes he had no ordinary, definite career and position in
society, while his contemporaries by this time, when he was thirty-two,
were already, one a colonel, and another a professor, another director
of a bank and railways, or president of a board like Oblonsky. But he
(he knew very well how he must appear to others) was a country
gentleman, occupied in breeding cattle, shooting game, and building
barns; in other words, a fellow of no ability, who had not turned out
well, and who was doing just what, according to the ideas of the world,
is done by people fit for nothing else.

The mysterious, enchanting Kitty herself could not love such an ugly
person as he conceived himself to be, and, above all, such an ordinary,
in no way striking person. Moreover, his attitude to Kitty in the
past--the attitude of a grown-up person to a child, arising from his
friendship with her brother--seemed to him yet another obstacle to love.
An ugly, good-natured man, as he considered himself, might, he supposed,
be liked as a friend; but to be loved with such a love as that with
which he loved Kitty, one would need to be a handsome and, still more, a
distinguished man.

He had heard that women often did care for ugly and ordinary men, but he
did not believe it, for he judged by himself, and he could not himself
have loved any but beautiful, mysterious, and exceptional women.

But after spending two months alone in the country, he was convinced
that this was not one of those passions of which he had had experience
in his early youth; that this feeling gave him not an instant's rest;
that he could not live without deciding the question, would she or would
she not be his wife, and that his despair had arisen only from his own
imaginings, that he had no sort of proof that he would be rejected. And
he had now come to Moscow with a firm determination to make an offer,
and get married if he were accepted. Or ... he could not conceive what
would become of him if he were rejected.



Chapter 7


On arriving in Moscow by a morning train, Levin had put up at the house
of his elder half-brother, Koznishev. After changing his clothes he went
down to his brother's study, intending to talk to him at once about the
object of his visit, and to ask his advice; but his brother was not
alone. With him there was a well-known professor of philosophy, who had
come from Harkov expressly to clear up a difference that had arisen
between them on a very important philosophical question. The professor
was carrying on a hot crusade against materialists. Sergey Koznishev had
been following this crusade with interest, and after reading the
professor's last article, he had written him a letter stating his
objections. He accused the professor of making too great concessions to
the materialists. And the professor had promptly appeared to argue the
matter out. The point in discussion was the question then in vogue: Is
there a line to be drawn between psychological and physiological
phenomena in man? and if so, where?

Sergey Ivanovitch met his brother with the smile of chilly friendliness
he always had for everyone, and introducing him to the professor, went
on with the conversation.

A little man in spectacles, with a narrow forehead, tore himself from
the discussion for an instant to greet Levin, and then went on talking
without paying any further attention to him. Levin sat down to wait till
the professor should go, but he soon began to get interested in the
subject under discussion.

Levin had come across the magazine articles about which they were
disputing, and had read them, interested in them as a development of the
first principles of science, familiar to him as a natural science
student at the university. But he had never connected these scientific
deductions as to the origin of man as an animal, as to reflex action,
biology, and sociology, with those questions as to the meaning of life
and death to himself, which had of late been more and more often in his
mind.

As he listened to his brother's argument with the professor, he noticed
that they connected these scientific questions with those spiritual
problems, that at times they almost touched on the latter; but every
time they were close upon what seemed to him the chief point, they
promptly beat a hasty retreat, and plunged again into a sea of subtle
distinctions, reservations, quotations, allusions, and appeals to
authorities, and it was with difficulty that he understood what they
were talking about.

"I cannot admit it," said Sergey Ivanovitch, with his habitual
clearness, precision of expression, and elegance of phrase. "I cannot in
any case agree with Keiss that my whole conception of the external world
has been derived from perceptions. The most fundamental idea, the idea
of existence, has not been received by me through sensation; indeed,
there is no special sense-organ for the transmission of such an idea."

"Yes, but they--Wurt, and Knaust, and Pripasov--would answer that your
consciousness of existence is derived from the conjunction of all your
sensations, that that consciousness of existence is the result of your
sensations. Wurt, indeed, says plainly that, assuming there are no
sensations, it follows that there is no idea of existence."

"I maintain the contrary," began Sergey Ivanovitch.

But here it seemed to Levin that just as they were close upon the real
point of the matter, they were again retreating, and he made up his mind
to put a question to the professor.

"According to that, if my senses are annihilated, if my body is dead, I
can have no existence of any sort?" he queried.

The professor, in annoyance, and, as it were, mental suffering at the
interruption, looked round at the strange inquirer, more like a bargeman
than a philosopher, and turned his eyes upon Sergey Ivanovitch, as
though to ask: What's one to say to him? But Sergey Ivanovitch, who had
been talking with far less heat and one-sidedness than the professor,
and who had sufficient breadth of mind to answer the professor, and at
the same time to comprehend the simple and natural point of view from
which the question was put, smiled and said:

"That question we have no right to answer as yet."

"We have not the requisite data," chimed in the professor, and he went
back to his argument. "No," he said; "I would point out the fact that
if, as Pripasov directly asserts, perception is based on sensation, then
we are bound to distinguish sharply between these two conceptions."

Levin listened no more, and simply waited for the professor to go.



Chapter 8


When the professor had gone, Sergey Ivanovitch turned to his brother.

"Delighted that you've come. For some time, is it? How's your farming
getting on?"

Levin knew that his elder brother took little interest in farming, and
only put the question in deference to him, and so he only told him about
the sale of his wheat and money matters.

Levin had meant to tell his brother of his determination to get married,
and to ask his advice; he had indeed firmly resolved to do so. But after
seeing his brother, listening to his conversation with the professor,
hearing afterwards the unconsciously patronizing tone in which his
brother questioned him about agricultural matters (their mother's
property had not been divided, and Levin took charge of both their
shares), Levin felt that he could not for some reason begin to talk to
him of his intention of marrying. He felt that his brother would not
look at it as he would have wished him to.

"Well, how is your district council doing?" asked Sergey Ivanovitch, who
was greatly interested in these local boards and attached great
importance to them.

"I really don't know."

"What! Why, surely you're a member of the board?"

"No, I'm not a member now; I've resigned," answered Levin, "and I no
longer attend the meetings."

"What a pity!" commented Sergey Ivanovitch, frowning.

Levin in self-defense began to describe what took place in the meetings
in his district.

"That's how it always is!" Sergey Ivanovitch interrupted him. "We
Russians are always like that. Perhaps it's our strong point, really,
the faculty of seeing our own shortcomings; but we overdo it, we comfort
ourselves with irony which we always have on the tip of our tongues. All
I say is, give such rights as our local self-government to any other
European people--why, the Germans or the English would have worked their
way to freedom from them, while we simply turn them into ridicule."

"But how can it be helped?" said Levin penitently. "It was my last
effort. And I did try with all my soul. I can't. I'm no good at it."

"It's not that you're no good at it," said Sergey Ivanovitch; "it is
that you don't look at it as you should."

"Perhaps not," Levin answered dejectedly.

"Oh! do you know brother Nikolay's turned up again?"

This brother Nikolay was the elder brother of Konstantin Levin, and
half-brother of Sergey Ivanovitch; a man utterly ruined, who had
dissipated the greater part of his fortune, was living in the strangest
and lowest company, and had quarreled with his brothers.

"What did you say?" Levin cried with horror. "How do you know?"

"Prokofy saw him in the street."

"Here in Moscow? Where is he? Do you know?" Levin got up from his chair,
as though on the point of starting off at once.

"I am sorry I told you," said Sergey Ivanovitch, shaking his head at his
younger brother's excitement. "I sent to find out where he is living,
and sent him his IOU to Trubin, which I paid. This is the answer he sent
me."

And Sergey Ivanovitch took a note from under a paper-weight and handed
it to his brother.

Levin read in the queer, familiar handwriting: "I humbly beg you to
leave me in peace. That's the only favor I ask of my gracious
brothers.--Nikolay Levin."

Levin read it, and without raising his head stood with the note in his
hands opposite Sergey Ivanovitch.

There was a struggle in his heart between the desire to forget his
unhappy brother for the time, and the consciousness that it would be
base to do so.

"He obviously wants to offend me," pursued Sergey Ivanovitch; "but he
cannot offend me, and I should have wished with all my heart to assist
him, but I know it's impossible to do that."

"Yes, yes," repeated Levin. "I understand and appreciate your attitude
to him; but I shall go and see him."

"If you want to, do; but I shouldn't advise it," said Sergey Ivanovitch.
"As regards myself, I have no fear of your doing so; he will not make
you quarrel with me; but for your own sake, I should say you would do
better not to go. You can't do him any good; still, do as you please."

"Very likely I can't do any good, but I feel--especially at such a
moment--but that's another thing--I feel I could not be at peace."

"Well, that I don't understand," said Sergey Ivanovitch. "One thing I do
understand," he added; "it's a lesson in humility. I have come to look
very differently and more charitably on what is called infamous since
brother Nikolay has become what he is ... you know what he did..."

"Oh, it's awful, awful!" repeated Levin.

After obtaining his brother's address from Sergey Ivanovitch's footman,
Levin was on the point of setting off at once to see him, but on second
thought he decided to put off his visit till the evening. The first
thing to do to set his heart at rest was to accomplish what he had come
to Moscow for. From his brother's Levin went to Oblonsky's office, and
on getting news of the Shtcherbatskys from him, he drove to the place
where he had been told he might find Kitty.



Chapter 9


At four o'clock, conscious of his throbbing heart, Levin stepped out of
a hired sledge at the Zoological Gardens, and turned along the path to
the frozen mounds and the skating ground, knowing that he would
certainly find her there, as he had seen the Shtcherbatskys' carriage at
the entrance.

It was a bright, frosty day. Rows of carriages, sledges, drivers, and
policemen were standing in the approach. Crowds of well-dressed people,
with hats bright in the sun, swarmed about the entrance and along the
well-swept little paths between the little houses adorned with carving
in the Russian style. The old curly birches of the gardens, all their
twigs laden with snow, looked as though freshly decked in sacred
vestments.

He walked along the path towards the skating-ground, and kept saying to
himself--"You mustn't be excited, you must be calm. What's the matter
with you? What do you want? Be quiet, stupid," he conjured his heart.
And the more he tried to compose himself, the more breathless he found
himself. An acquaintance met him and called him by his name, but Levin
did not even recognize him. He went towards the mounds, whence came the
clank of the chains of sledges as they slipped down or were dragged up,
the rumble of the sliding sledges, and the sounds of merry voices. He
walked on a few steps, and the skating-ground lay open before his eyes,
and at once, amidst all the skaters, he knew her.

He knew she was there by the rapture and the terror that seized on his
heart. She was standing talking to a lady at the opposite end of the
ground. There was apparently nothing striking either in her dress or her
attitude. But for Levin she was as easy to find in that crowd as a rose
among nettles. Everything was made bright by her. She was the smile that
shed light on all round her. "Is it possible I can go over there on the
ice, go up to her?" he thought. The place where she stood seemed to him
a holy shrine, unapproachable, and there was one moment when he was
almost retreating, so overwhelmed was he with terror. He had to make an
effort to master himself, and to remind himself that people of all sorts
were moving about her, and that he too might come there to skate. He
walked down, for a long while avoiding looking at her as at the sun, but
seeing her, as one does the sun, without looking.

On that day of the week and at that time of day people of one set, all
acquainted with one another, used to meet on the ice. There were crack
skaters there, showing off their skill, and learners clinging to chairs
with timid, awkward movements, boys, and elderly people skating with
hygienic motives. They seemed to Levin an elect band of blissful beings
because they were here, near her. All the skaters, it seemed, with
perfect self-possession, skated towards her, skated by her, even spoke
to her, and were happy, quite apart from her, enjoying the capital ice
and the fine weather.

Nikolay Shtcherbatsky, Kitty's cousin, in a short jacket and tight
trousers, was sitting on a garden seat with his skates on. Seeing Levin,
he shouted to him:

"Ah, the first skater in Russia! Been here long? First-rate ice--do put
your skates on."

"I haven't got my skates," Levin answered, marveling at this boldness
and ease in her presence, and not for one second losing sight of her,
though he did not look at her. He felt as though the sun were coming
near him. She was in a corner, and turning out her slender feet in their
high boots with obvious timidity, she skated towards him. A boy in
Russian dress, desperately waving his arms and bowed down to the ground,
overtook her. She skated a little uncertainly; taking her hands out of
the little muff that hung on a cord, she held them ready for emergency,
and looking towards Levin, whom she had recognized, she smiled at him,
and at her own fears. When she had got round the turn, she gave herself
a push off with one foot, and skated straight up to Shtcherbatsky.
Clutching at his arm, she nodded smiling to Levin. She was more splendid
than he had imagined her.

When he thought of her, he could call up a vivid picture of her to
himself, especially the charm of that little fair head, so freely set on
the shapely girlish shoulders, and so full of childish brightness and
good humor. The childishness of her expression, together with the
delicate beauty of her figure, made up her special charm, and that he
fully realized. But what always struck him in her as something unlooked
for, was the expression of her eyes, soft, serene, and truthful, and
above all, her smile, which always transported Levin to an enchanted
world, where he felt himself softened and tender, as he remembered
himself in some days of his early childhood.

"Have you been here long?" she said, giving him her hand. "Thank you,"
she added, as he picked up the handkerchief that had fallen out of her
muff.

"I? I've not long ... yesterday ... I mean today ... I arrived,"
answered Levin, in his emotion not at once understanding her question.
"I was meaning to come and see you," he said; and then, recollecting
with what intention he was trying to see her, he was promptly overcome
with confusion and blushed.

"I didn't know you could skate, and skate so well."

She looked at him earnestly, as though wishing to make out the cause of
his confusion.

"Your praise is worth having. The tradition is kept up here that you are
the best of skaters," she said, with her little black-gloved hand
brushing a grain of hoarfrost off her muff.

"Yes, I used once to skate with passion; I wanted to reach perfection."

"You do everything with passion, I think," she said smiling. "I should
so like to see how you skate. Put on skates, and let us skate together."

"Skate together! Can that be possible?" thought Levin, gazing at her.

"I'll put them on directly," he said.

And he went off to get skates.

"It's a long while since we've seen you here, sir," said the attendant,
supporting his foot, and screwing on the heel of the skate. "Except you,
there's none of the gentlemen first-rate skaters. Will that be all
right?" said he, tightening the strap.

"Oh, yes, yes; make haste, please," answered Levin, with difficulty
restraining the smile of rapture which would overspread his face. "Yes,"
he thought, "this now is life, this is happiness! _Together,_ she said;
_let us skate together!_ Speak to her now? But that's just why I'm
afraid to speak--because I'm happy now, happy in hope, anyway.... And
then?.... But I must! I must! I must! Away with weakness!"

Levin rose to his feet, took off his overcoat, and scurrying over the
rough ice round the hut, came out on the smooth ice and skated without
effort, as it were, by simple exercise of will, increasing and
slackening speed and turning his course. He approached with timidity,
but again her smile reassured him.

She gave him her hand, and they set off side by side, going faster and
faster, and the more rapidly they moved the more tightly she grasped his
hand.

"With you I should soon learn; I somehow feel confidence in you," she
said to him.

"And I have confidence in myself when you are leaning on me," he said,
but was at once panic-stricken at what he had said, and blushed. And
indeed, no sooner had he uttered these words, when all at once, like the
sun going behind a cloud, her face lost all its friendliness, and Levin
detected the familiar change in her expression that denoted the working
of thought; a crease showed on her smooth brow.

"Is there anything troubling you?--though I've no right to ask such a
question," he added hurriedly.

"Oh, why so?.... No, I have nothing to trouble me," she responded
coldly; and she added immediately: "You haven't seen Mlle. Linon, have
you?"

"Not yet."

"Go and speak to her, she likes you so much."

"What's wrong? I have offended her. Lord help me!" thought Levin, and he
flew towards the old Frenchwoman with the gray ringlets, who was sitting
on a bench. Smiling and showing her false teeth, she greeted him as an
old friend.

"Yes, you see we're growing up," she said to him, glancing towards
Kitty, "and growing old. _Tiny bear_ has grown big now!" pursued the
Frenchwoman, laughing, and she reminded him of his joke about the three
young ladies whom he had compared to the three bears in the English
nursery tale. "Do you remember that's what you used to call them?"

He remembered absolutely nothing, but she had been laughing at the joke
for ten years now, and was fond of it.

"Now, go and skate, go and skate. Our Kitty has learned to skate nicely,
hasn't she?"

When Levin darted up to Kitty her face was no longer stern; her eyes
looked at him with the same sincerity and friendliness, but Levin
fancied that in her friendliness there was a certain note of deliberate
composure. And he felt depressed. After talking a little of her old
governess and her peculiarities, she questioned him about his life.

"Surely you must be dull in the country in the winter, aren't you?" she
said.

"No, I'm not dull, I am very busy," he said, feeling that she was
holding him in check by her composed tone, which he would not have the
force to break through, just as it had been at the beginning of the
winter.

"Are you going to stay in town long?" Kitty questioned him.

"I don't know," he answered, not thinking of what he was saying. The
thought that if he were held in check by her tone of quiet friendliness
he would end by going back again without deciding anything came into his
mind, and he resolved to make a struggle against it.

"How is it you don't know?"

"I don't know. It depends upon you," he said, and was immediately
horror-stricken at his own words.

Whether it was that she had heard his words, or that she did not want to
hear them, she made a sort of stumble, twice struck out, and hurriedly
skated away from him. She skated up to Mlle. Linon, said something to
her, and went towards the pavilion where the ladies took off their
skates.

"My God! what have I done! Merciful God! help me, guide me," said Levin,
praying inwardly, and at the same time, feeling a need of violent
exercise, he skated about describing inner and outer circles.

At that moment one of the young men, the best of the skaters of the day,
came out of the coffee-house in his skates, with a cigarette in his
mouth. Taking a run, he dashed down the steps in his skates, crashing
and bounding up and down. He flew down, and without even changing the
position of his hands, skated away over the ice.

"Ah, that's a new trick!" said Levin, and he promptly ran up to the top
to do this new trick.

"Don't break your neck! it needs practice!" Nikolay Shtcherbatsky
shouted after him.

Levin went to the steps, took a run from above as best he could, and
dashed down, preserving his balance in this unwonted movement with his
hands. On the last step he stumbled, but barely touching the ice with
his hand, with a violent effort recovered himself, and skated off,
laughing.

"How splendid, how nice he is!" Kitty was thinking at that time, as she
came out of the pavilion with Mlle. Linon, and looked towards him with a
smile of quiet affection, as though he were a favorite brother. "And can
it be my fault, can I have done anything wrong? They talk of flirtation.
I know it's not he that I love; but still I am happy with him, and he's
so jolly. Only, why did he say that?..." she mused.

Catching sight of Kitty going away, and her mother meeting her at the
steps, Levin, flushed from his rapid exercise, stood still and pondered
a minute. He took off his skates, and overtook the mother and daughter
at the entrance of the gardens.

"Delighted to see you," said Princess Shtcherbatskaya. "On Thursdays we
are home, as always."

"Today, then?"

"We shall be pleased to see you," the princess said stiffly.

This stiffness hurt Kitty, and she could not resist the desire to smooth
over her mother's coldness. She turned her head, and with a smile said:

"Good-bye till this evening."

At that moment Stepan Arkadyevitch, his hat cocked on one side, with
beaming face and eyes, strode into the garden like a conquering hero.
But as he approached his mother-in-law, he responded in a mournful and
crestfallen tone to her inquiries about Dolly's health. After a little
subdued and dejected conversation with his mother-in-law, he threw out
his chest again, and put his arm in Levin's.

"Well, shall we set off?" he asked. "I've been thinking about you all
this time, and I'm very, very glad you've come," he said, looking him in
the face with a significant air.

"Yes, come along," answered Levin in ecstasy, hearing unceasingly the
sound of that voice saying, "Good-bye till this evening," and seeing the
smile with which it was said.

"To the England or the Hermitage?"

"I don't mind which."

"All right, then, the England," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, selecting that
restaurant because he owed more there than at the Hermitage, and
consequently considered it mean to avoid it. "Have you got a sledge?
That's first-rate, for I sent my carriage home."

The friends hardly spoke all the way. Levin was wondering what that
change in Kitty's expression had meant, and alternately assuring himself
that there was hope, and falling into despair, seeing clearly that his
hopes were insane, and yet all the while he felt himself quite another
man, utterly unlike what he had been before her smile and those words,
"Good-bye till this evening."

Stepan Arkadyevitch was absorbed during the drive in composing the menu
of the dinner.

"You like turbot, don't you?" he said to Levin as they were arriving.

"Eh?" responded Levin. "Turbot? Yes, I'm _awfully_ fond of turbot."



Chapter 10


When Levin went into the restaurant with Oblonsky, he could not help
noticing a certain peculiarity of expression, as it were, a restrained
radiance, about the face and whole figure of Stepan Arkadyevitch.
Oblonsky took off his overcoat, and with his hat over one ear walked
into the dining room, giving directions to the Tatar waiters, who were
clustered about him in evening coats, bearing napkins. Bowing to right
and left to the people he met, and here as everywhere joyously greeting
acquaintances, he went up to the sideboard for a preliminary appetizer
of fish and vodka, and said to the painted Frenchwoman decked in
ribbons, lace, and ringlets, behind the counter, something so amusing
that even that Frenchwoman was moved to genuine laughter. Levin for his
part refrained from taking any vodka simply because he felt such a
loathing of that Frenchwoman, all made up, it seemed, of false hair,
_poudre de riz,_ and _vinaigre de toilette_. He made haste to move away
from her, as from a dirty place. His whole soul was filled with memories
of Kitty, and there was a smile of triumph and happiness shining in his
eyes.

"This way, your excellency, please. Your excellency won't be disturbed
here," said a particularly pertinacious, white-headed old Tatar with
immense hips and coat-tails gaping widely behind. "Walk in, your
excellency," he said to Levin; by way of showing his respect to Stepan
Arkadyevitch, being attentive to his guest as well.

Instantly flinging a fresh cloth over the round table under the bronze
chandelier, though it already had a table cloth on it, he pushed up
velvet chairs, and came to a standstill before Stepan Arkadyevitch with
a napkin and a bill of fare in his hands, awaiting his commands.

"If you prefer it, your excellency, a private room will be free
directly; Prince Golistin with a lady. Fresh oysters have come in."

"Ah! oysters."

Stepan Arkadyevitch became thoughtful.

"How if we were to change our program, Levin?" he said, keeping his
finger on the bill of fare. And his face expressed serious hesitation.
"Are the oysters good? Mind now."

"They're Flensburg, your excellency. We've no Ostend."

"Flensburg will do, but are they fresh?"

"Only arrived yesterday."

"Well, then, how if we were to begin with oysters, and so change the
whole program? Eh?"

"It's all the same to me. I should like cabbage soup and porridge better
than anything; but of course there's nothing like that here."

"_Porridge a la Russe,_ your honor would like?" said the Tatar, bending
down to Levin, like a nurse speaking to a child.

"No, joking apart, whatever you choose is sure to be good. I've been
skating, and I'm hungry. And don't imagine," he added, detecting a look
of dissatisfaction on Oblonsky's face, "that I shan't appreciate your
choice. I am fond of good things."

"I should hope so! After all, it's one of the pleasures of life," said
Stepan Arkadyevitch. "Well, then, my friend, you give us two--or better
say three--dozen oysters, clear soup with vegetables...."

"_Printaniere,_" prompted the Tatar. But Stepan Arkadyevitch apparently
did not care to allow him the satisfaction of giving the French names of
the dishes.

"With vegetables in it, you know. Then turbot with thick sauce, then ...
roast beef; and mind it's good. Yes, and capons, perhaps, and then
sweets."

The Tatar, recollecting that it was Stepan Arkadyevitch's way not to
call the dishes by the names in the French bill of fare, did not repeat
them after him, but could not resist rehearsing the whole menu to
himself according to the bill:--"_Soupe printaniere, turbot, sauce
Beaumarchais, poulard a l'estragon, macedoine de fruits_ ... etc.," and
then instantly, as though worked by springs, laying down one bound bill
of fare, he took up another, the list of wines, and submitted it to
Stepan Arkadyevitch.

"What shall we drink?"

"What you like, only not too much. Champagne," said Levin.

"What! to start with? You're right though, I dare say. Do you like the
white seal?"

"_Cachet blanc,_" prompted the Tatar.

"Very well, then, give us that brand with the oysters, and then we'll
see."

"Yes, sir. And what table wine?"

"You can give us Nuits. Oh, no, better the classic Chablis."

"Yes, sir. And _your_ cheese, your excellency?"

"Oh, yes, Parmesan. Or would you like another?"

"No, it's all the same to me," said Levin, unable to suppress a smile.

And the Tatar ran off with flying coat-tails, and in five minutes darted
in with a dish of opened oysters on mother-of-pearl shells, and a bottle
between his fingers.

Stepan Arkadyevitch crushed the starchy napkin, tucked it into his
waistcoat, and settling his arms comfortably, started on the oysters.

"Not bad," he said, stripping the oysters from the pearly shell with a
silver fork, and swallowing them one after another. "Not bad," he
repeated, turning his dewy, brilliant eyes from Levin to the Tatar.

Levin ate the oysters indeed, though white bread and cheese would have
pleased him better. But he was admiring Oblonsky. Even the Tatar,
uncorking the bottle and pouring the sparkling wine into the delicate
glasses, glanced at Stepan Arkadyevitch, and settled his white cravat
with a perceptible smile of satisfaction.

"You don't care much for oysters, do you?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
emptying his wine glass, "or you're worried about something. Eh?"

He wanted Levin to be in good spirits. But it was not that Levin was not
in good spirits; he was ill at ease. With what he had in his soul, he
felt sore and uncomfortable in the restaurant, in the midst of private
rooms where men were dining with ladies, in all this fuss and bustle;
the surroundings of bronzes, looking glasses, gas, and waiters--all of
it was offensive to him. He was afraid of sullying what his soul was
brimful of.

"I? Yes, I am; but besides, all this bothers me," he said. "You can't
conceive how queer it all seems to a country person like me, as queer as
that gentleman's nails I saw at your place..."

"Yes, I saw how much interested you were in poor Grinevitch's nails,"
said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laughing.

"It's too much for me," responded Levin. "Do try, now, and put yourself
in my place, take the point of view of a country person. We in the
country try to bring our hands into such a state as will be most
convenient for working with. So we cut our nails; sometimes we turn up
our sleeves. And here people purposely let their nails grow as long as
they will, and link on small saucers by way of studs, so that they can
do nothing with their hands."

Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled gaily.

"Oh, yes, that's just a sign that he has no need to do coarse work. His
work is with the mind..."

"Maybe. But still it's queer to me, just as at this moment it seems
queer to me that we country folks try to get our meals over as soon as
we can, so as to be ready for our work, while here are we trying to drag
out our meal as long as possible, and with that object eating
oysters..."

"Why, of course," objected Stepan Arkadyevitch. "But that's just the aim
of civilization--to make everything a source of enjoyment."

"Well, if that's its aim, I'd rather be a savage."

"And so you are a savage. All you Levins are savages."

Levin sighed. He remembered his brother Nikolay, and felt ashamed and
sore, and he scowled; but Oblonsky began speaking of a subject which at
once drew his attention.

"Oh, I say, are you going tonight to our people, the Shtcherbatskys', I
mean?" he said, his eyes sparkling significantly as he pushed away the
empty rough shells, and drew the cheese towards him.

"Yes, I shall certainly go," replied Levin; "though I fancied the
princess was not very warm in her invitation."

"What nonsense! That's her manner.... Come, boy, the soup!.... That's
her manner--_grande dame,_" said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "I'm coming, too,
but I have to go to the Countess Bonina's rehearsal. Come, isn't it true
that you're a savage? How do you explain the sudden way in which you
vanished from Moscow? The Shtcherbatskys were continually asking me
about you, as though I ought to know. The only thing I know is that you
always do what no one else does."

"Yes," said Levin, slowly and with emotion, "you're right. I am a
savage. Only, my savageness is not in having gone away, but in coming
now. Now I have come..."

"Oh, what a lucky fellow you are!" broke in Stepan Arkadyevitch, looking
into Levin's eyes.

"Why?"

    "I know a gallant steed by tokens sure,
    And by his eyes I know a youth in love,"

declaimed Stepan Arkadyevitch. "Everything is before you."

"Why, is it over for you already?"

"No; not over exactly, but the future is yours, and the present is mine,
and the present--well, it's not all that it might be."

"How so?"

"Oh, things go wrong. But I don't want to talk of myself, and besides I
can't explain it all," said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "Well, why have you
come to Moscow, then?.... Hi! take away!" he called to the Tatar.

"You guess?" responded Levin, his eyes like deep wells of light fixed on
Stepan Arkadyevitch.

"I guess, but I can't be the first to talk about it. You can see by that
whether I guess right or wrong," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, gazing at
Levin with a subtle smile.

"Well, and what have you to say to me?" said Levin in a quivering voice,
feeling that all the muscles of his face were quivering too. "How do you
look at the question?"

Stepan Arkadyevitch slowly emptied his glass of Chablis, never taking
his eyes off Levin.

"I?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, "there's nothing I desire so much as
that--nothing! It would be the best thing that could be."

"But you're not making a mistake? You know what we're speaking of?" said
Levin, piercing him with his eyes. "You think it's possible?"

"I think it's possible. Why not possible?"

"No! do you really think it's possible? No, tell me all you think! Oh,
but if ... if refusal's in store for me!... Indeed I feel sure..."

"Why should you think that?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling at his
excitement.

"It seems so to me sometimes. That will be awful for me, and for her
too."

"Oh, well, anyway there's nothing awful in it for a girl. Every girl's
proud of an offer."

"Yes, every girl, but not she."

Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled. He so well knew that feeling of Levin's,
that for him all the girls in the world were divided into two classes:
one class--all the girls in the world except her, and those girls with
all sorts of human weaknesses, and very ordinary girls: the other
class--she alone, having no weaknesses of any sort and higher than all
humanity.

"Stay, take some sauce," he said, holding back Levin's hand as it pushed
away the sauce.

Levin obediently helped himself to sauce, but would not let Stepan
Arkadyevitch go on with his dinner.

"No, stop a minute, stop a minute," he said. "You must understand that
it's a question of life and death for me. I have never spoken to any one
of this. And there's no one I could speak of it to, except you. You know
we're utterly unlike each other, different tastes and views and
everything; but I know you're fond of me and understand me, and that's
why I like you awfully. But for God's sake, be quite straightforward
with me."

"I tell you what I think," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling. "But I'll
say more: my wife is a wonderful woman..." Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed,
remembering his position with his wife, and, after a moment's silence,
resumed--"She has a gift of foreseeing things. She sees right through
people; but that's not all; she knows what will come to pass, especially
in the way of marriages. She foretold, for instance, that Princess
Shahovskaya would marry Brenteln. No one would believe it, but it came
to pass. And she's on your side."

"How do you mean?"

"It's not only that she likes you--she says that Kitty is certain to be
your wife."

At these words Levin's face suddenly lighted up with a smile, a smile
not far from tears of emotion.

"She says that!" cried Levin. "I always said she was exquisite, your
wife. There, that's enough, enough said about it," he said, getting up
from his seat.

"All right, but do sit down."

But Levin could not sit down. He walked with his firm tread twice up and
down the little cage of a room, blinked his eyelids that his tears might
not fall, and only then sat down to the table.

"You must understand," said he, "it's not love. I've been in love, but
it's not that. It's not my feeling, but a sort of force outside me has
taken possession of me. I went away, you see, because I made up my mind
that it could never be, you understand, as a happiness that does not
come on earth; but I've struggled with myself, I see there's no living
without it. And it must be settled."

"What did you go away for?"

"Ah, stop a minute! Ah, the thoughts that come crowding on one! The
questions one must ask oneself! Listen. You can't imagine what you've
done for me by what you said. I'm so happy that I've become positively
hateful; I've forgotten everything. I heard today that my brother
Nikolay ... you know, he's here ... I had even forgotten him. It seems
to me that he's happy too. It's a sort of madness. But one thing's
awful.... Here, you've been married, you know the feeling ... it's awful
that we--old--with a past ... not of love, but of sins ... are brought
all at once so near to a creature pure and innocent; it's loathsome, and
that's why one can't help feeling oneself unworthy."

"Oh, well, you've not many sins on your conscience."

"Alas! all the same," said Levin, "when with loathing I go over my life,
I shudder and curse and bitterly regret it.... Yes."

"What would you have? The world's made so," said Stepan Arkadyevitch.

"The one comfort is like that prayer, which I always liked: 'Forgive me
not according to my unworthiness, but according to Thy lovingkindness.'
That's the only way she can forgive me."



Chapter 11


Levin emptied his glass, and they were silent for a while.

"There's one other thing I ought to tell you. Do you know Vronsky?"
Stepan Arkadyevitch asked Levin.

"No, I don't. Why do you ask?"

"Give us another bottle," Stepan Arkadyevitch directed the Tatar, who
was filling up their glasses and fidgeting round them just when he was
not wanted.

"Why you ought to know Vronsky is that he's one of your rivals."

"Who's Vronsky?" said Levin, and his face was suddenly transformed from
the look of childlike ecstasy which Oblonsky had just been admiring to
an angry and unpleasant expression.

"Vronsky is one of the sons of Count Kirill Ivanovitch Vronsky, and one
of the finest specimens of the gilded youth of Petersburg. I made his
acquaintance in Tver when I was there on official business, and he came
there for the levy of recruits. Fearfully rich, handsome, great
connections, an aide-de-camp, and with all that a very nice,
good-natured fellow. But he's more than simply a good-natured fellow, as
I've found out here--he's a cultivated man, too, and very intelligent;
he's a man who'll make his mark."

Levin scowled and was dumb.

"Well, he turned up here soon after you'd gone, and as I can see, he's
over head and ears in love with Kitty, and you know that her mother..."

"Excuse me, but I know nothing," said Levin, frowning gloomily. And
immediately he recollected his brother Nikolay and how hateful he was to
have been able to forget him.

"You wait a bit, wait a bit," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling and
touching his hand. "I've told you what I know, and I repeat that in this
delicate and tender matter, as far as one can conjecture, I believe the
chances are in your favor."

Levin dropped back in his chair; his face was pale.

"But I would advise you to settle the thing as soon as may be," pursued
Oblonsky, filling up his glass.

"No, thanks, I can't drink any more," said Levin, pushing away his
glass. "I shall be drunk.... Come, tell me how are you getting on?" he
went on, obviously anxious to change the conversation.

"One word more: in any case I advise you to settle the question soon.
Tonight I don't advise you to speak," said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "Go
round tomorrow morning, make an offer in due form, and God bless you..."

"Oh, do you still think of coming to me for some shooting? Come next
spring, do," said Levin.

Now his whole soul was full of remorse that he had begun this
conversation with Stepan Arkadyevitch. A feeling such as his was
profaned by talk of the rivalry of some Petersburg officer, of the
suppositions and the counsels of Stepan Arkadyevitch.

Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled. He knew what was passing in Levin's soul.

"I'll come some day," he said. "But women, my boy, they're the pivot
everything turns upon. Things are in a bad way with me, very bad. And
it's all through women. Tell me frankly now," he pursued, picking up a
cigar and keeping one hand on his glass; "give me your advice."

"Why, what is it?"

"I'll tell you. Suppose you're married, you love your wife, but you're
fascinated by another woman..."

"Excuse me, but I'm absolutely unable to comprehend how ... just as I
can't comprehend how I could now, after my dinner, go straight to a
baker's shop and steal a roll."

Stepan Arkadyevitch's eyes sparkled more than usual.

"Why not? A roll will sometimes smell so good one can't resist it."

    "Himmlisch ist's, wenn ich bezwungen
    Meine irdische Begier;
    Aber doch wenn's nich gelungen
    Hatt' ich auch recht huebsch Plaisir!"

As he said this, Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled subtly. Levin, too, could
not help smiling.

"Yes, but joking apart," resumed Stepan Arkadyevitch, "you must
understand that the woman is a sweet, gentle loving creature, poor and
lonely, and has sacrificed everything. Now, when the thing's done, don't
you see, can one possibly cast her off? Even supposing one parts from
her, so as not to break up one's family life, still, can one help
feeling for her, setting her on her feet, softening her lot?"

"Well, you must excuse me there. You know to me all women are divided
into two classes ... at least no ... truer to say: there are women and
there are ... I've never seen exquisite fallen beings, and I never shall
see them, but such creatures as that painted Frenchwoman at the counter
with the ringlets are vermin to my mind, and all fallen women are the
same."

"But the Magdalen?"

"Ah, drop that! Christ would never have said those words if He had known
how they would be abused. Of all the Gospel those words are the only
ones remembered. However, I'm not saying so much what I think, as what I
feel. I have a loathing for fallen women. You're afraid of spiders, and
I of these vermin. Most likely you've not made a study of spiders and
don't know their character; and so it is with me."

"It's very well for you to talk like that; it's very much like that
gentleman in Dickens who used to fling all difficult questions over his
right shoulder. But to deny the facts is no answer. What's to be
done--you tell me that, what's to be done? Your wife gets older, while
you're full of life. Before you've time to look round, you feel that you
can't love your wife with love, however much you may esteem her. And
then all at once love turns up, and you're done for, done for," Stepan
Arkadyevitch said with weary despair.

Levin half smiled.

"Yes, you're done for," resumed Oblonsky. "But what's to be done?"

"Don't steal rolls."

Stepan Arkadyevitch laughed outright.

"Oh, moralist! But you must understand, there are two women; one insists
only on her rights, and those rights are your love, which you can't give
her; and the other sacrifices everything for you and asks for nothing.
What are you to do? How are you to act? There's a fearful tragedy in
it."

"If you care for my profession of faith as regards that, I'll tell you
that I don't believe there was any tragedy about it. And this is why. To
my mind, love ... both the sorts of love, which you remember Plato
defines in his Banquet, served as the test of men. Some men only
understand one sort, and some only the other. And those who only know
the non-platonic love have no need to talk of tragedy. In such love
there can be no sort of tragedy. 'I'm much obliged for the
gratification, my humble respects'--that's all the tragedy. And in
platonic love there can be no tragedy, because in that love all is clear
and pure, because..."

At that instant Levin recollected his own sins and the inner conflict he
had lived through. And he added unexpectedly:

"But perhaps you are right. Very likely ... I don't know, I don't know."

"It's this, don't you see," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, "you're very much
all of a piece. That's your strong point and your failing. You have a
character that's all of a piece, and you want the whole of life to be of
a piece too--but that's not how it is. You despise public official work
because you want the reality to be invariably corresponding all the
while with the aim--and that's not how it is. You want a man's work,
too, always to have a defined aim, and love and family life always to be
undivided--and that's not how it is. All the variety, all the charm, all
the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow."

Levin sighed and made no reply. He was thinking of his own affairs, and
did not hear Oblonsky.

And suddenly both of them felt that though they were friends, though
they had been dining and drinking together, which should have drawn them
closer, yet each was thinking only of his own affairs, and they had
nothing to do with one another. Oblonsky had more than once experienced
this extreme sense of aloofness, instead of intimacy, coming on after
dinner, and he knew what to do in such cases.

"Bill!" he called, and he went into the next room where he promptly came
across an aide-de-camp of his acquaintance and dropped into conversation
with him about an actress and her protector. And at once in the
conversation with the aide-de-camp Oblonsky had a sense of relaxation
and relief after the conversation with Levin, which always put him to
too great a mental and spiritual strain.

When the Tatar appeared with a bill for twenty-six roubles and odd
kopecks, besides a tip for himself, Levin, who would another time have
been horrified, like any one from the country, at his share of fourteen
roubles, did not notice it, paid, and set off homewards to dress and go
to the Shtcherbatskys' there to decide his fate.



Chapter 12


The young Princess Kitty Shtcherbatskaya was eighteen. It was the first
winter that she had been out in the world. Her success in society had
been greater than that of either of her elder sisters, and greater even
than her mother had anticipated. To say nothing of the young men who
danced at the Moscow balls being almost all in love with Kitty, two
serious suitors had already this first winter made their appearance:
Levin, and immediately after his departure, Count Vronsky.

Levin's appearance at the beginning of the winter, his frequent visits,
and evident love for Kitty, had led to the first serious conversations
between Kitty's parents as to her future, and to disputes between them.
The prince was on Levin's side; he said he wished for nothing better for
Kitty. The princess for her part, going round the question in the manner
peculiar to women, maintained that Kitty was too young, that Levin had
done nothing to prove that he had serious intentions, that Kitty felt no
great attraction to him, and other side issues; but she did not state
the principal point, which was that she looked for a better match for
her daughter, and that Levin was not to her liking, and she did not
understand him. When Levin had abruptly departed, the princess was
delighted, and said to her husband triumphantly: "You see I was right."
When Vronsky appeared on the scene, she was still more delighted,
confirmed in her opinion that Kitty was to make not simply a good, but a
brilliant match.

In the mother's eyes there could be no comparison between Vronsky and
Levin. She disliked in Levin his strange and uncompromising opinions and
his shyness in society, founded, as she supposed, on his pride and his
queer sort of life, as she considered it, absorbed in cattle and
peasants. She did not very much like it that he, who was in love with
her daughter, had kept coming to the house for six weeks, as though he
were waiting for something, inspecting, as though he were afraid he
might be doing them too great an honor by making an offer, and did not
realize that a man, who continually visits at a house where there is a
young unmarried girl, is bound to make his intentions clear. And
suddenly, without doing so, he disappeared. "It's as well he's not
attractive enough for Kitty to have fallen in love with him," thought
the mother.

Vronsky satisfied all the mother's desires. Very wealthy, clever, of
aristocratic family, on the highroad to a brilliant career in the army
and at court, and a fascinating man. Nothing better could be wished for.

Vronsky openly flirted with Kitty at balls, danced with her, and came
continually to the house, consequently there could be no doubt of the
seriousness of his intentions. But, in spite of that, the mother had
spent the whole of that winter in a state of terrible anxiety and
agitation.

Princess Shtcherbatskaya had herself been married thirty years ago, her
aunt arranging the match. Her husband, about whom everything was well
known before hand, had come, looked at his future bride, and been looked
at. The match-making aunt had ascertained and communicated their mutual
impression. That impression had been favorable. Afterwards, on a day
fixed beforehand, the expected offer was made to her parents, and
accepted. All had passed very simply and easily. So it seemed, at least,
to the princess. But over her own daughters she had felt how far from
simple and easy is the business, apparently so commonplace, of marrying
off one's daughters. The panics that had been lived through, the
thoughts that had been brooded over, the money that had been wasted, and
the disputes with her husband over marrying the two elder girls, Darya
and Natalia! Now, since the youngest had come out, she was going through
the same terrors, the same doubts, and still more violent quarrels with
her husband than she had over the elder girls. The old prince, like all
fathers indeed, was exceedingly punctilious on the score of the honor
and reputation of his daughters. He was irrationally jealous over his
daughters, especially over Kitty, who was his favorite. At every turn he
had scenes with the princess for compromising her daughter. The princess
had grown accustomed to this already with her other daughters, but now
she felt that there was more ground for the prince's touchiness. She saw
that of late years much was changed in the manners of society, that a
mother's duties had become still more difficult. She saw that girls of
Kitty's age formed some sort of clubs, went to some sort of lectures,
mixed freely in men's society; drove about the streets alone, many of
them did not curtsey, and, what was the most important thing, all the
girls were firmly convinced that to choose their husbands was their own
affair, and not their parents'. "Marriages aren't made nowadays as they
used to be," was thought and said by all these young girls, and even by
their elders. But how marriages were made now, the princess could not
learn from any one. The French fashion--of the parents arranging their
children's future--was not accepted; it was condemned. The English
fashion of the complete independence of girls was also not accepted, and
not possible in Russian society. The Russian fashion of match-making by
the offices of intermediate persons was for some reason considered
unseemly; it was ridiculed by every one, and by the princess herself.
But how girls were to be married, and how parents were to marry them, no
one knew. Everyone with whom the princess had chanced to discuss the
matter said the same thing: "Mercy on us, it's high time in our day to
cast off all that old-fashioned business. It's the young people have to
marry; and not their parents; and so we ought to leave the young people
to arrange it as they choose." It was very easy for anyone to say that
who had no daughters, but the princess realized that in the process of
getting to know each other, her daughter might fall in love, and fall in
love with someone who did not care to marry her or who was quite unfit
to be her husband. And, however much it was instilled into the princess
that in our times young people ought to arrange their lives for
themselves, she was unable to believe it, just as she would have been
unable to believe that, at any time whatever, the most suitable
playthings for children five years old ought to be loaded pistols. And
so the princess was more uneasy over Kitty than she had been over her
elder sisters.

Now she was afraid that Vronsky might confine himself to simply flirting
with her daughter. She saw that her daughter was in love with him, but
tried to comfort herself with the thought that he was an honorable man,
and would not do this. But at the same time she knew how easy it is,
with the freedom of manners of today, to turn a girl's head, and how
lightly men generally regard such a crime. The week before, Kitty had
told her mother of a conversation she had with Vronsky during a mazurka.
This conversation had partly reassured the princess; but perfectly at
ease she could not be. Vronsky had told Kitty that both he and his
brother were so used to obeying their mother that they never made up
their minds to any important undertaking without consulting her. "And
just now, I am impatiently awaiting my mother's arrival from Petersburg,
as peculiarly fortunate," he told her.

Kitty had repeated this without attaching any significance to the words.
But her mother saw them in a different light. She knew that the old lady
was expected from day to day, that she would be pleased at her son's
choice, and she felt it strange that he should not make his offer
through fear of vexing his mother. However, she was so anxious for the
marriage itself, and still more for relief from her fears, that she
believed it was so. Bitter as it was for the princess to see the
unhappiness of her eldest daughter, Dolly, on the point of leaving her
husband, her anxiety over the decision of her youngest daughter's fate
engrossed all her feelings. Today, with Levin's reappearance, a fresh
source of anxiety arose. She was afraid that her daughter, who had at
one time, as she fancied, a feeling for Levin, might, from extreme sense
of honor, refuse Vronsky, and that Levin's arrival might generally
complicate and delay the affair so near being concluded.

"Why, has he been here long?" the princess asked about Levin, as they
returned home.

"He came today, mamma."

"There's one thing I want to say..." began the princess, and from her
serious and alert face, Kitty guessed what it would be.

"Mamma," she said, flushing hotly and turning quickly to her, "please,
please don't say anything about that. I know, I know all about it."

She wished for what her mother wished for, but the motives of her
mother's wishes wounded her.

"I only want to say that to raise hopes..."

"Mamma, darling, for goodness' sake, don't talk about it. It's so
horrible to talk about it."

"I won't," said her mother, seeing the tears in her daughter's eyes;
"but one thing, my love; you promised me you would have no secrets from
me. You won't?"

"Never, mamma, none," answered Kitty, flushing a little, and looking her
mother straight in the face, "but there's no use in my telling you
anything, and I ... I ... if I wanted to, I don't know what to say or
how ... I don't know..."

"No, she could not tell an untruth with those eyes," thought the mother,
smiling at her agitation and happiness. The princess smiled that what
was taking place just now in her soul seemed to the poor child so
immense and so important.



Chapter 13


After dinner, and till the beginning of the evening, Kitty was feeling a
sensation akin to the sensation of a young man before a battle. Her
heart throbbed violently, and her thoughts would not rest on anything.

She felt that this evening, when they would both meet for the first
time, would be a turning point in her life. And she was continually
picturing them to herself, at one moment each separately, and then both
together. When she mused on the past, she dwelt with pleasure, with
tenderness, on the memories of her relations with Levin. The memories of
childhood and of Levin's friendship with her dead brother gave a special
poetic charm to her relations with him. His love for her, of which she
felt certain, was flattering and delightful to her; and it was pleasant
for her to think of Levin. In her memories of Vronsky there always
entered a certain element of awkwardness, though he was in the highest
degree well-bred and at ease, as though there were some false note--not
in Vronsky, he was very simple and nice, but in herself, while with
Levin she felt perfectly simple and clear. But, on the other hand,
directly she thought of the future with Vronsky, there arose before her
a perspective of brilliant happiness; with Levin the future seemed
misty.

When she went upstairs to dress, and looked into the looking-glass, she
noticed with joy that it was one of her good days, and that she was in
complete possession of all her forces,--she needed this so for what lay
before her: she was conscious of external composure and free grace in
her movements.

At half-past seven she had only just gone down into the drawing room,
when the footman announced, "Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin." The
princess was still in her room, and the prince had not come in. "So it
is to be," thought Kitty, and all the blood seemed to rush to her heart.
She was horrified at her paleness, as she glanced into the
looking-glass. At that moment she knew beyond doubt that he had come
early on purpose to find her alone and to make her an offer. And only
then for the first time the whole thing presented itself in a new,
different aspect; only then she realized that the question did not
affect her only--with whom she would be happy, and whom she loved--but
that she would have that moment to wound a man whom she liked. And to
wound him cruelly. What for? Because he, dear fellow, loved her, was in
love with her. But there was no help for it, so it must be, so it would
have to be.

"My God! shall I myself really have to say it to him?" she thought. "Can
I tell him I don't love him? That will be a lie. What am I to say to
him? That I love someone else? No, that's impossible. I'm going away,
I'm going away."

She had reached the door, when she heard his step. "No! it's not honest.
What have I to be afraid of? I have done nothing wrong. What is to be,
will be! I'll tell the truth. And with him one can't be ill at ease.
Here he is," she said to herself, seeing his powerful, shy figure, with
his shining eyes fixed on her. She looked straight into his face, as
though imploring him to spare her, and gave her hand.

"It's not time yet; I think I'm too early," he said glancing round the
empty drawing room. When he saw that his expectations were realized,
that there was nothing to prevent him from speaking, his face became
gloomy.

"Oh, no," said Kitty, and sat down at the table.

"But this was just what I wanted, to find you alone," he began, not
sitting down, and not looking at her, so as not to lose courage.

"Mamma will be down directly. She was very much tired.... Yesterday..."

She talked on, not knowing what her lips were uttering, and not taking
her supplicating and caressing eyes off him.

He glanced at her; she blushed, and ceased speaking.

"I told you I did not know whether I should be here long ... that it
depended on you..."

She dropped her head lower and lower, not knowing herself what answer
she should make to what was coming.

"That it depended on you," he repeated. "I meant to say ... I meant to
say ... I came for this ... to be my wife!" he brought out, not knowing
what he was saying; but feeling that the most terrible thing was said,
he stopped short and looked at her...

She was breathing heavily, not looking at him. She was feeling ecstasy.
Her soul was flooded with happiness. She had never anticipated that the
utterance of love would produce such a powerful effect on her. But it
lasted only an instant. She remembered Vronsky. She lifted her clear,
truthful eyes, and seeing his desperate face, she answered hastily:

"That cannot be ... forgive me."

A moment ago, and how close she had been to him, of what importance in
his life! And how aloof and remote from him she had become now!

"It was bound to be so," he said, not looking at her.

He bowed, and was meaning to retreat.



Chapter 14


But at that very moment the princess came in. There was a look of horror
on her face when she saw them alone, and their disturbed faces. Levin
bowed to her, and said nothing. Kitty did not speak nor lift her eyes.
"Thank God, she has refused him," thought the mother, and her face
lighted up with the habitual smile with which she greeted her guests on
Thursdays. She sat down and began questioning Levin about his life in
the country. He sat down again, waiting for other visitors to arrive, in
order to retreat unnoticed.

Five minutes later there came in a friend of Kitty's, married the
preceding winter, Countess Nordston.

She was a thin, sallow, sickly, and nervous woman, with brilliant black
eyes. She was fond of Kitty, and her affection for her showed itself, as
the affection of married women for girls always does, in the desire to
make a match for Kitty after her own ideal of married happiness; she
wanted her to marry Vronsky. Levin she had often met at the
Shtcherbatskys' early in the winter, and she had always disliked him.
Her invariable and favorite pursuit, when they met, consisted in making
fun of him.

"I do like it when he looks down at me from the height of his grandeur,
or breaks off his learned conversation with me because I'm a fool, or is
condescending to me. I like that so; to see him condescending! I am so
glad he can't bear me," she used to say of him.

She was right, for Levin actually could not bear her, and despised her
for what she was proud of and regarded as a fine characteristic--her
nervousness, her delicate contempt and indifference for everything
coarse and earthly.

The Countess Nordston and Levin got into that relation with one another
not seldom seen in society, when two persons, who remain externally on
friendly terms, despise each other to such a degree that they cannot
even take each other seriously, and cannot even be offended by each
other.

The Countess Nordston pounced upon Levin at once.

"Ah, Konstantin Dmitrievitch! So you've come back to our corrupt
Babylon," she said, giving him her tiny, yellow hand, and recalling what
he had chanced to say early in the winter, that Moscow was a Babylon.
"Come, is Babylon reformed, or have you degenerated?" she added,
glancing with a simper at Kitty.

"It's very flattering for me, countess, that you remember my words so
well," responded Levin, who had succeeded in recovering his composure,
and at once from habit dropped into his tone of joking hostility to the
Countess Nordston. "They must certainly make a great impression on you."

"Oh, I should think so! I always note them all down. Well, Kitty, have
you been skating again?..."

And she began talking to Kitty. Awkward as it was for Levin to withdraw
now, it would still have been easier for him to perpetrate this
awkwardness than to remain all the evening and see Kitty, who glanced at
him now and then and avoided his eyes. He was on the point of getting
up, when the princess, noticing that he was silent, addressed him.

"Shall you be long in Moscow? You're busy with the district council,
though, aren't you, and can't be away for long?"

"No, princess, I'm no longer a member of the council," he said. "I have
come up for a few days."

"There's something the matter with him," thought Countess Nordston,
glancing at his stern, serious face. "He isn't in his old argumentative
mood. But I'll draw him out. I do love making a fool of him before
Kitty, and I'll do it."

"Konstantin Dmitrievitch," she said to him, "do explain to me, please,
what's the meaning of it. You know all about such things. At home in our
village of Kaluga all the peasants and all the women have drunk up all
they possessed, and now they can't pay us any rent. What's the meaning
of that? You always praise the peasants so."

At that instant another lady came into the room, and Levin got up.

"Excuse me, countess, but I really know nothing about it, and can't tell
you anything," he said, and looked round at the officer who came in
behind the lady.

"That must be Vronsky," thought Levin, and, to be sure of it, glanced at
Kitty. She had already had time to look at Vronsky, and looked round at
Levin. And simply from the look in her eyes, that grew unconsciously
brighter, Levin knew that she loved that man, knew it as surely as if
she had told him so in words. But what sort of a man was he? Now,
whether for good or for ill, Levin could not choose but remain; he must
find out what the man was like whom she loved.

There are people who, on meeting a successful rival, no matter in what,
are at once disposed to turn their backs on everything good in him, and
to see only what is bad. There are people, on the other hand, who desire
above all to find in that lucky rival the qualities by which he has
outstripped them, and seek with a throbbing ache at heart only what is
good. Levin belonged to the second class. But he had no difficulty in
finding what was good and attractive in Vronsky. It was apparent at the
first glance. Vronsky was a squarely built, dark man, not very tall,
with a good-humored, handsome, and exceedingly calm and resolute face.
Everything about his face and figure, from his short-cropped black hair
and freshly shaven chin down to his loosely fitting, brand-new uniform,
was simple and at the same time elegant. Making way for the lady who had
come in, Vronsky went up to the princess and then to Kitty.

As he approached her, his beautiful eyes shone with a specially tender
light, and with a faint, happy, and modestly triumphant smile (so it
seemed to Levin), bowing carefully and respectfully over her, he held
out his small broad hand to her.

Greeting and saying a few words to everyone, he sat down without once
glancing at Levin, who had never taken his eyes off him.

"Let me introduce you," said the princess, indicating Levin. "Konstantin
Dmitrievitch Levin, Count Alexey Kirillovitch Vronsky."

Vronsky got up and, looking cordially at Levin, shook hands with him.

"I believe I was to have dined with you this winter," he said, smiling
his simple and open smile; "but you had unexpectedly left for the
country."

"Konstantin Dmitrievitch despises and hates town and us townspeople,"
said Countess Nordston.

"My words must make a deep impression on you, since you remember them so
well," said Levin, and, suddenly conscious that he had said just the
same thing before, he reddened.

Vronsky looked at Levin and Countess Nordston, and smiled.

"Are you always in the country?" he inquired. "I should think it must be
dull in the winter."

"It's not dull if one has work to do; besides, one's not dull by
oneself," Levin replied abruptly.

"I am fond of the country," said Vronsky, noticing, and affecting not to
notice, Levin's tone.

"But I hope, count, you would not consent to live in the country
always," said Countess Nordston.

"I don't know; I have never tried for long. I experienced a queer
feeling once," he went on. "I never longed so for the country, Russian
country, with bast shoes and peasants, as when I was spending a winter
with my mother in Nice. Nice itself is dull enough, you know. And
indeed, Naples and Sorrento are only pleasant for a short time. And it's
just there that Russia comes back to me most vividly, and especially the
country. It's as though..."

He talked on, addressing both Kitty and Levin, turning his serene,
friendly eyes from one to the other, and saying obviously just what came
into his head.

Noticing that Countess Nordston wanted to say something, he stopped
short without finishing what he had begun, and listened attentively to
her.

The conversation did not flag for an instant, so that the princess, who
always kept in reserve, in case a subject should be lacking, two heavy
guns--the relative advantages of classical and of modern education, and
universal military service--had not to move out either of them, while
Countess Nordston had not a chance of chaffing Levin.

Levin wanted to, and could not, take part in the general conversation;
saying to himself every instant, "Now go," he still did not go, as
though waiting for something.

The conversation fell upon table-turning and spirits, and Countess
Nordston, who believed in spiritualism, began to describe the marvels
she had seen.

"Ah, countess, you really must take me, for pity's sake do take me to
see them! I have never seen anything extraordinary, though I am always
on the lookout for it everywhere," said Vronsky, smiling.

"Very well, next Saturday," answered Countess Nordston. "But you,
Konstantin Dmitrievitch, do you believe in it?" she asked Levin.

"Why do you ask me? You know what I shall say."

"But I want to hear your opinion."

"My opinion," answered Levin, "is only that this table-turning simply
proves that educated society--so called--is no higher than the peasants.
They believe in the evil eye, and in witchcraft and omens, while we..."

"Oh, then you don't believe in it?"

"I can't believe in it, countess."

"But if I've seen it myself?"

"The peasant women too tell us they have seen goblins."

"Then you think I tell a lie?"

And she laughed a mirthless laugh.

"Oh, no, Masha, Konstantin Dmitrievitch said he could not believe in
it," said Kitty, blushing for Levin, and Levin saw this, and, still more
exasperated, would have answered, but Vronsky with his bright frank
smile rushed to the support of the conversation, which was threatening
to become disagreeable.

"You do not admit the conceivability at all?" he queried. "But why not?
We admit the existence of electricity, of which we know nothing. Why
should there not be some new force, still unknown to us, which..."

"When electricity was discovered," Levin interrupted hurriedly, "it was
only the phenomenon that was discovered, and it was unknown from what it
proceeded and what were its effects, and ages passed before its
applications were conceived. But the spiritualists have begun with
tables writing for them, and spirits appearing to them, and have only
later started saying that it is an unknown force."

Vronsky listened attentively to Levin, as he always did listen,
obviously interested in his words.

"Yes, but the spiritualists say we don't know at present what this force
is, but there is a force, and these are the conditions in which it acts.
Let the scientific men find out what the force consists in. No, I don't
see why there should not be a new force, if it..."

"Why, because with electricity," Levin interrupted again, "every time
you rub tar against wool, a recognized phenomenon is manifested, but in
this case it does not happen every time, and so it follows it is not a
natural phenomenon."

Feeling probably that the conversation was taking a tone too serious for
a drawing room, Vronsky made no rejoinder, but by way of trying to
change the conversation, he smiled brightly, and turned to the ladies.

"Do let us try at once, countess," he said; but Levin would finish
saying what he thought.

"I think," he went on, "that this attempt of the spiritualists to
explain their marvels as some sort of new natural force is most futile.
They boldly talk of spiritual force, and then try to subject it to
material experiment."

Every one was waiting for him to finish, and he felt it.

"And I think you would be a first-rate medium," said Countess Nordston;
"there's something enthusiastic in you."

Levin opened his mouth, was about to say something, reddened, and said
nothing.

"Do let us try table-turning at once, please," said Vronsky. "Princess,
will you allow it?"

And Vronsky stood up, looking for a little table.

Kitty got up to fetch a table, and as she passed, her eyes met Levin's.
She felt for him with her whole heart, the more because she was pitying
him for suffering of which she was herself the cause. "If you can
forgive me, forgive me," said her eyes, "I am so happy."

"I hate them all, and you, and myself," his eyes responded, and he took
up his hat. But he was not destined to escape. Just as they were
arranging themselves round the table, and Levin was on the point of
retiring, the old prince came in, and after greeting the ladies,
addressed Levin.

"Ah!" he began joyously. "Been here long, my boy? I didn't even know you
were in town. Very glad to see you." The old prince embraced Levin, and
talking to him did not observe Vronsky, who had risen, and was serenely
waiting till the prince should turn to him.

Kitty felt how distasteful her father's warmth was to Levin after what
had happened. She saw, too, how coldly her father responded at last to
Vronsky's bow, and how Vronsky looked with amiable perplexity at her
father, as though trying and failing to understand how and why anyone
could be hostilely disposed towards him, and she flushed.

"Prince, let us have Konstantin Dmitrievitch," said Countess Nordston;
"we want to try an experiment."

"What experiment? Table-turning? Well, you must excuse me, ladies and
gentlemen, but to my mind it is better fun to play the ring game," said
the old prince, looking at Vronsky, and guessing that it had been his
suggestion. "There's some sense in that, anyway."

Vronsky looked wonderingly at the prince with his resolute eyes, and,
with a faint smile, began immediately talking to Countess Nordston of
the great ball that was to come off next week.

"I hope you will be there?" he said to Kitty. As soon as the old prince
turned away from him, Levin went out unnoticed, and the last impression
he carried away with him of that evening was the smiling, happy face of
Kitty answering Vronsky's inquiry about the ball.



Chapter 15


At the end of the evening Kitty told her mother of her conversation with
Levin, and in spite of all the pity she felt for Levin, she was glad at
the thought that she had received an _offer_. She had no doubt that she
had acted rightly. But after she had gone to bed, for a long while she
could not sleep. One impression pursued her relentlessly. It was Levin's
face, with his scowling brows, and his kind eyes looking out in dark
dejection below them, as he stood listening to her father, and glancing
at her and at Vronsky. And she felt so sorry for him that tears came
into her eyes. But immediately she thought of the man for whom she had
given him up. She vividly recalled his manly, resolute face, his noble
self-possession, and the good nature conspicuous in everything towards
everyone. She remembered the love for her of the man she loved, and once
more all was gladness in her soul, and she lay on the pillow, smiling
with happiness. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry; but what could I do? It's not my
fault," she said to herself; but an inner voice told her something else.
Whether she felt remorse at having won Levin's love, or at having
refused him, she did not know. But her happiness was poisoned by doubts.
"Lord, have pity on us; Lord, have pity on us; Lord, have pity on us!"
she repeated to herself, till she fell asleep.

Meanwhile there took place below, in the prince's little library, one of
the scenes so often repeated between the parents on account of their
favorite daughter.

"What? I'll tell you what!" shouted the prince, waving his arms, and at
once wrapping his squirrel-lined dressing-gown round him again. "That
you've no pride, no dignity; that you're disgracing, ruining your
daughter by this vulgar, stupid match-making!"

"But, really, for mercy's sake, prince, what have I done?" said the
princess, almost crying.

She, pleased and happy after her conversation with her daughter, had
gone to the prince to say good-night as usual, and though she had no
intention of telling him of Levin's offer and Kitty's refusal, still she
hinted to her husband that she fancied things were practically settled
with Vronsky, and that he would declare himself so soon as his mother
arrived. And thereupon, at those words, the prince had all at once flown
into a passion, and began to use unseemly language.

"What have you done? I'll tell you what. First of all, you're trying to
catch an eligible gentleman, and all Moscow will be talking of it, and
with good reason. If you have evening parties, invite everyone, don't
pick out the possible suitors. Invite all the young bucks. Engage a
piano player, and let them dance, and not as you do things nowadays,
hunting up good matches. It makes me sick, sick to see it, and you've
gone on till you've turned the poor wench's head. Levin's a thousand
times the better man. As for this little Petersburg swell, they're
turned out by machinery, all on one pattern, and all precious rubbish.
But if he were a prince of the blood, my daughter need not run after
anyone."

"But what have I done?"

"Why, you've..." The prince was crying wrathfully.

"I know if one were to listen to you," interrupted the princess, "we
should never marry our daughter. If it's to be so, we'd better go into
the country."

"Well, and we had better."

"But do wait a minute. Do I try and catch them? I don't try to catch
them in the least. A young man, and a very nice one, has fallen in love
with her, and she, I fancy..."

"Oh, yes, you fancy! And how if she really is in love, and he's no more
thinking of marriage than I am!... Oh, that I should live to see it! Ah!
spiritualism! Ah! Nice! Ah! the ball!" And the prince, imagining that he
was mimicking his wife, made a mincing curtsey at each word. "And this
is how we're preparing wretchedness for Kitty; and she's really got the
notion into her head..."

"But what makes you suppose so?"

"I don't suppose; I know. We have eyes for such things, though
women-folk haven't. I see a man who has serious intentions, that's
Levin: and I see a peacock, like this feather-head, who's only amusing
himself."

"Oh, well, when once you get an idea into your head!..."

"Well, you'll remember my words, but too late, just as with Dolly."

"Well, well, we won't talk of it," the princess stopped him,
recollecting her unlucky Dolly.

"By all means, and good night!"

And signing each other with the cross, the husband and wife parted with
a kiss, feeling that they each remained of their own opinion.

The princess had at first been quite certain that that evening had
settled Kitty's future, and that there could be no doubt of Vronsky's
intentions, but her husband's words had disturbed her. And returning to
her own room, in terror before the unknown future, she, too, like Kitty,
repeated several times in her heart, "Lord, have pity; Lord, have pity;
Lord, have pity."



Chapter 16


Vronsky had never had a real home life. His mother had been in her youth
a brilliant society woman, who had had during her married life, and
still more afterwards, many love affairs notorious in the whole
fashionable world. His father he scarcely remembered, and he had been
educated in the Corps of Pages.

Leaving the school very young as a brilliant officer, he had at once got
into the circle of wealthy Petersburg army men. Although he did go more
or less into Petersburg society, his love affairs had always hitherto
been outside it.

In Moscow he had for the first time felt, after his luxurious and coarse
life at Petersburg, all the charm of intimacy with a sweet and innocent
girl of his own rank, who cared for him. It never even entered his head
that there could be any harm in his relations with Kitty. At balls he
danced principally with her. He was a constant visitor at their house.
He talked to her as people commonly do talk in society--all sorts of
nonsense, but nonsense to which he could not help attaching a special
meaning in her case. Although he said nothing to her that he could not
have said before everybody, he felt that she was becoming more and more
dependent upon him, and the more he felt this, the better he liked it,
and the tenderer was his feeling for her. He did not know that his mode
of behavior in relation to Kitty had a definite character, that it is
courting young girls with no intention of marriage, and that such
courting is one of the evil actions common among brilliant young men
such as he was. It seemed to him that he was the first who had
discovered this pleasure, and he was enjoying his discovery.

If he could have heard what her parents were saying that evening, if he
could have put himself at the point of view of the family and have heard
that Kitty would be unhappy if he did not marry her, he would have been
greatly astonished, and would not have believed it. He could not believe
that what gave such great and delicate pleasure to him, and above all to
her, could be wrong. Still less could he have believed that he ought to
marry.

Marriage had never presented itself to him as a possibility. He not only
disliked family life, but a family, and especially a husband was, in
accordance with the views general in the bachelor world in which he
lived, conceived as something alien, repellant, and, above all,
ridiculous.

But though Vronsky had not the least suspicion what the parents were
saying, he felt on coming away from the Shtcherbatskys' that the secret
spiritual bond which existed between him and Kitty had grown so much
stronger that evening that some step must be taken. But what step could
and ought to be taken he could not imagine.

"What is so exquisite," he thought, as he returned from the
Shtcherbatskys', carrying away with him, as he always did, a delicious
feeling of purity and freshness, arising partly from the fact that he
had not been smoking for a whole evening, and with it a new feeling of
tenderness at her love for him--"what is so exquisite is that not a word
has been said by me or by her, but we understand each other so well in
this unseen language of looks and tones, that this evening more clearly
than ever she told me she loves me. And how secretly, simply, and most
of all, how trustfully! I feel myself better, purer. I feel that I have
a heart, and that there is a great deal of good in me. Those sweet,
loving eyes! When she said: 'Indeed I do...'

"Well, what then? Oh, nothing. It's good for me, and good for her." And
he began wondering where to finish the evening.

He passed in review of the places he might go to. "Club? a game of
bezique, champagne with Ignatov? No, I'm not going. _Chateau des
Fleurs_; there I shall find Oblonsky, songs, the cancan. No, I'm sick of
it. That's why I like the Shtcherbatskys', that I'm growing better. I'll
go home." He went straight to his room at Dussot's Hotel, ordered
supper, and then undressed, and as soon as his head touched the pillow,
fell into a sound sleep.



Chapter 17


Next day at eleven o'clock in the morning Vronsky drove to the station
of the Petersburg railway to meet his mother, and the first person he
came across on the great flight of steps was Oblonsky, who was expecting
his sister by the same train.

"Ah! your excellency!" cried Oblonsky, "whom are you meeting?"

"My mother," Vronsky responded, smiling, as everyone did who met
Oblonsky. He shook hands with him, and together they ascended the steps.
"She is to be here from Petersburg today."

"I was looking out for you till two o'clock last night. Where did you go
after the Shtcherbatskys'?"

"Home," answered Vronsky. "I must own I felt so well content yesterday
after the Shtcherbatskys' that I didn't care to go anywhere."

    "I know a gallant steed by tokens sure,
    And by his eyes I know a youth in love,"

declaimed Stepan Arkadyevitch, just as he had done before to Levin.

Vronsky smiled with a look that seemed to say that he did not deny it,
but he promptly changed the subject.

"And whom are you meeting?" he asked.

"I? I've come to meet a pretty woman," said Oblonsky.

"You don't say so!"

"_Honi soit qui mal y pense!_ My sister Anna."

"Ah! that's Madame Karenina," said Vronsky.

"You know her, no doubt?"

"I think I do. Or perhaps not ... I really am not sure," Vronsky
answered heedlessly, with a vague recollection of something stiff and
tedious evoked by the name Karenina.

"But Alexey Alexandrovitch, my celebrated brother-in-law, you surely
must know. All the world knows him."

"I know him by reputation and by sight. I know that he's clever,
learned, religious somewhat.... But you know that's not ... _not in my
line,_" said Vronsky in English.

"Yes, he's a very remarkable man; rather a conservative, but a splendid
man," observed Stepan Arkadyevitch, "a splendid man."

"Oh, well, so much the better for him," said Vronsky smiling. "Oh,
you've come," he said, addressing a tall old footman of his mother's,
standing at the door; "come here."

Besides the charm Oblonsky had in general for everyone, Vronsky had felt
of late specially drawn to him by the fact that in his imagination he
was associated with Kitty.

"Well, what do you say? Shall we give a supper on Sunday for the
_diva?_" he said to him with a smile, taking his arm.

"Of course. I'm collecting subscriptions. Oh, did you make the
acquaintance of my friend Levin?" asked Stepan Arkadyevitch.

"Yes; but he left rather early."

"He's a capital fellow," pursued Oblonsky. "Isn't he?"

"I don't know why it is," responded Vronsky, "in all Moscow
people--present company of course excepted," he put in jestingly,
"there's something uncompromising. They are all on the defensive, lose
their tempers, as though they all want to make one feel something..."

"Yes, that's true, it is so," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laughing
good-humoredly.

"Will the train soon be in?" Vronsky asked a railway official.

"The train's signaled," answered the man.

The approach of the train was more and more evident by the preparatory
bustle in the station, the rush of porters, the movement of policemen
and attendants, and people meeting the train. Through the frosty vapor
could be seen workmen in short sheepskins and soft felt boots crossing
the rails of the curving line. The hiss of the boiler could be heard on
the distant rails, and the rumble of something heavy.

"No," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, who felt a great inclination to tell
Vronsky of Levin's intentions in regard to Kitty. "No, you've not got a
true impression of Levin. He's a very nervous man, and is sometimes out
of humor, it's true, but then he is often very nice. He's such a true,
honest nature, and a heart of gold. But yesterday there were special
reasons," pursued Stepan Arkadyevitch, with a meaning smile, totally
oblivious of the genuine sympathy he had felt the day before for his
friend, and feeling the same sympathy now, only for Vronsky. "Yes, there
were reasons why he could not help being either particularly happy or
particularly unhappy."

Vronsky stood still and asked directly: "How so? Do you mean he made
your _belle-soeur_ an offer yesterday?"

"Maybe," said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "I fancied something of the sort
yesterday. Yes, if he went away early, and was out of humor too, it must
mean it.... He's been so long in love, and I'm very sorry for him."

"So that's it! I should imagine, though, she might reckon on a better
match," said Vronsky, drawing himself up and walking about again,
"though I don't know him, of course," he added. "Yes, that is a hateful
position! That's why most fellows prefer to have to do with Klaras. If
you don't succeed with them it only proves that you've not enough cash,
but in this case one's dignity's at stake. But here's the train."

The engine had already whistled in the distance. A few instants later
the platform was quivering, and with puffs of steam hanging low in the
air from the frost, the engine rolled up, with the lever of the middle
wheel rhythmically moving up and down, and the stooping figure of the
engine-driver covered with frost. Behind the tender, setting the
platform more and more slowly swaying, came the luggage van with a dog
whining in it. At last the passenger carriages rolled in, oscillating
before coming to a standstill.

A smart guard jumped out, giving a whistle, and after him one by one the
impatient passengers began to get down: an officer of the guards,
holding himself erect, and looking severely about him; a nimble little
merchant with a satchel, smiling gaily; a peasant with a sack over his
shoulder.

Vronsky, standing beside Oblonsky, watched the carriages and the
passengers, totally oblivious of his mother. What he had just heard
about Kitty excited and delighted him. Unconsciously he arched his
chest, and his eyes flashed. He felt himself a conqueror.

"Countess Vronskaya is in that compartment," said the smart guard, going
up to Vronsky.

The guard's words roused him, and forced him to think of his mother and
his approaching meeting with her. He did not in his heart respect his
mother, and without acknowledging it to himself, he did not love her,
though in accordance with the ideas of the set in which he lived, and
with his own education, he could not have conceived of any behavior to
his mother not in the highest degree respectful and obedient, and the
more externally obedient and respectful his behavior, the less in his
heart he respected and loved her.



Chapter 18


Vronsky followed the guard to the carriage, and at the door of the
compartment he stopped short to make room for a lady who was getting
out.

With the insight of a man of the world, from one glance at this lady's
appearance Vronsky classified her as belonging to the best society. He
begged pardon, and was getting into the carriage, but felt he must
glance at her once more; not that she was very beautiful, not on account
of the elegance and modest grace which were apparent in her whole
figure, but because in the expression of her charming face, as she
passed close by him, there was something peculiarly caressing and soft.
As he looked round, she too turned her head. Her shining gray eyes, that
looked dark from the thick lashes, rested with friendly attention on his
face, as though she were recognizing him, and then promptly turned away
to the passing crowd, as though seeking someone. In that brief look
Vronsky had time to notice the suppressed eagerness which played over
her face, and flitted between the brilliant eyes and the faint smile
that curved her red lips. It was as though her nature were so brimming
over with something that against her will it showed itself now in the
flash of her eyes, and now in her smile. Deliberately she shrouded the
light in her eyes, but it shone against her will in the faintly
perceptible smile.

Vronsky stepped into the carriage. His mother, a dried-up old lady with
black eyes and ringlets, screwed up her eyes, scanning her son, and
smiled slightly with her thin lips. Getting up from the seat and handing
her maid a bag, she gave her little wrinkled hand to her son to kiss,
and lifting his head from her hand, kissed him on the cheek.

"You got my telegram? Quite well? Thank God."

"You had a good journey?" said her son, sitting down beside her, and
involuntarily listening to a woman's voice outside the door. He knew it
was the voice of the lady he had met at the door.

"All the same I don't agree with you," said the lady's voice.

"It's the Petersburg view, madame."

"Not Petersburg, but simply feminine," she responded.

"Well, well, allow me to kiss your hand."

"Good-bye, Ivan Petrovitch. And could you see if my brother is here, and
send him to me?" said the lady in the doorway, and stepped back again
into the compartment.

"Well, have you found your brother?" said Countess Vronskaya, addressing
the lady.

Vronsky understood now that this was Madame Karenina.

"Your brother is here," he said, standing up. "Excuse me, I did not know
you, and, indeed, our acquaintance was so slight," said Vronsky, bowing,
"that no doubt you do not remember me."

"Oh, no," said she, "I should have known you because your mother and I
have been talking, I think, of nothing but you all the way." As she
spoke she let the eagerness that would insist on coming out show itself
in her smile. "And still no sign of my brother."

"Do call him, Alexey," said the old countess. Vronsky stepped out onto
the platform and shouted:

"Oblonsky! Here!"

Madame Karenina, however, did not wait for her brother, but catching
sight of him she stepped out with her light, resolute step. And as soon
as her brother had reached her, with a gesture that struck Vronsky by
its decision and its grace, she flung her left arm around his neck, drew
him rapidly to her, and kissed him warmly. Vronsky gazed, never taking
his eyes from her, and smiled, he could not have said why. But
recollecting that his mother was waiting for him, he went back again
into the carriage.

"She's very sweet, isn't she?" said the countess of Madame Karenina.
"Her husband put her with me, and I was delighted to have her. We've
been talking all the way. And so you, I hear ... _vous filez le parfait
amour. Tant mieux, mon cher, tant mieux._"

"I don't know what you are referring to, maman," he answered coldly.
"Come, maman, let us go."

Madame Karenina entered the carriage again to say good-bye to the
countess.

"Well, countess, you have met your son, and I my brother," she said.
"And all my gossip is exhausted. I should have nothing more to tell
you."

"Oh, no," said the countess, taking her hand. "I could go all around the
world with you and never be dull. You are one of those delightful women
in whose company it's sweet to be silent as well as to talk. Now please
don't fret over your son; you can't expect never to be parted."

Madame Karenina stood quite still, holding herself very erect, and her
eyes were smiling.

"Anna Arkadyevna," the countess said in explanation to her son, "has a
little son eight years old, I believe, and she has never been parted
from him before, and she keeps fretting over leaving him."

"Yes, the countess and I have been talking all the time, I of my son and
she of hers," said Madame Karenina, and again a smile lighted up her
face, a caressing smile intended for him.

"I am afraid that you must have been dreadfully bored," he said,
promptly catching the ball of coquetry she had flung him. But apparently
she did not care to pursue the conversation in that strain, and she
turned to the old countess.

"Thank you so much. The time has passed so quickly. Good-bye, countess."

"Good-bye, my love," answered the countess. "Let me have a kiss of your
pretty face. I speak plainly, at my age, and I tell you simply that I've
lost my heart to you."

Stereotyped as the phrase was, Madame Karenina obviously believed it and
was delighted by it. She flushed, bent down slightly, and put her cheek
to the countess's lips, drew herself up again, and with the same smile
fluttering between her lips and her eyes, she gave her hand to Vronsky.
He pressed the little hand she gave him, and was delighted, as though at
something special, by the energetic squeeze with which she freely and
vigorously shook his hand. She went out with the rapid step which bore
her rather fully-developed figure with such strange lightness.

"Very charming," said the countess.

That was just what her son was thinking. His eyes followed her till her
graceful figure was out of sight, and then the smile remained on his
face. He saw out of the window how she went up to her brother, put her
arm in his, and began telling him something eagerly, obviously something
that had nothing to do with him, Vronsky, and at that he felt annoyed.

"Well, maman, are you perfectly well?" he repeated, turning to his
mother.

"Everything has been delightful. Alexander has been very good, and Marie
has grown very pretty. She's very interesting."

And she began telling him again of what interested her most--the
christening of her grandson, for which she had been staying in
Petersburg, and the special favor shown her elder son by the Tsar.

"Here's Lavrenty," said Vronsky, looking out of the window; "now we can
go, if you like."

The old butler who had traveled with the countess, came to the carriage
to announce that everything was ready, and the countess got up to go.

"Come; there's not such a crowd now," said Vronsky.

The maid took a handbag and the lap dog, the butler and a porter the
other baggage. Vronsky gave his mother his arm; but just as they were
getting out of the carriage several men ran suddenly by with
panic-stricken faces. The station-master, too, ran by in his
extraordinary colored cap. Obviously something unusual had happened. The
crowd who had left the train were running back again.

"What?... What?... Where?... Flung himself!... Crushed!..." was heard
among the crowd. Stepan Arkadyevitch, with his sister on his arm, turned
back. They too looked scared, and stopped at the carriage door to avoid
the crowd.

The ladies got in, while Vronsky and Stepan Arkadyevitch followed the
crowd to find out details of the disaster.

A guard, either drunk or too much muffled up in the bitter frost, had
not heard the train moving back, and had been crushed.

Before Vronsky and Oblonsky came back the ladies heard the facts from
the butler.

Oblonsky and Vronsky had both seen the mutilated corpse. Oblonsky was
evidently upset. He frowned and seemed ready to cry.

"Ah, how awful! Ah, Anna, if you had seen it! Ah, how awful!" he said.

Vronsky did not speak; his handsome face was serious, but perfectly
composed.

"Oh, if you had seen it, countess," said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "And his
wife was there.... It was awful to see her!.... She flung herself on the
body. They say he was the only support of an immense family. How awful!"

"Couldn't one do anything for her?" said Madame Karenina in an agitated
whisper.

Vronsky glanced at her, and immediately got out of the carriage.

"I'll be back directly, maman," he remarked, turning round in the
doorway.

When he came back a few minutes later, Stepan Arkadyevitch was already
in conversation with the countess about the new singer, while the
countess was impatiently looking towards the door, waiting for her son.

"Now let us be off," said Vronsky, coming in. They went out together.
Vronsky was in front with his mother. Behind walked Madame Karenina with
her brother. Just as they were going out of the station the
station-master overtook Vronsky.

"You gave my assistant two hundred roubles. Would you kindly explain for
whose benefit you intend them?"

"For the widow," said Vronsky, shrugging his shoulders. "I should have
thought there was no need to ask."

"You gave that?" cried Oblonsky, behind, and, pressing his sister's
hand, he added: "Very nice, very nice! Isn't he a splendid fellow?
Good-bye, countess."

And he and his sister stood still, looking for her maid.

When they went out the Vronsky's carriage had already driven away.
People coming in were still talking of what happened.

"What a horrible death!" said a gentleman, passing by. "They say he was
cut in two pieces."

"On the contrary, I think it's the easiest--instantaneous," observed
another.

"How is it they don't take proper precautions?" said a third.

Madame Karenina seated herself in the carriage, and Stepan Arkadyevitch
saw with surprise that her lips were quivering, and she was with
difficulty restraining her tears.

"What is it, Anna?" he asked, when they had driven a few hundred yards.

"It's an omen of evil," she said.

"What nonsense!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "You've come, that's the
chief thing. You can't conceive how I'm resting my hopes on you."

"Have you known Vronsky long?" she asked.

"Yes. You know we're hoping he will marry Kitty."

"Yes?" said Anna softly. "Come now, let us talk of you," she added,
tossing her head, as though she would physically shake off something
superfluous oppressing her. "Let us talk of your affairs. I got your
letter, and here I am."

"Yes, all my hopes are in you," said Stepan Arkadyevitch.

"Well, tell me all about it."

And Stepan Arkadyevitch began to tell his story.

On reaching home Oblonsky helped his sister out, sighed, pressed her
hand, and set off to his office.



Chapter 19


When Anna went into the room, Dolly was sitting in the little
drawing-room with a white-headed fat little boy, already like his
father, giving him a lesson in French reading. As the boy read, he kept
twisting and trying to tear off a button that was nearly off his jacket.
His mother had several times taken his hand from it, but the fat little
hand went back to the button again. His mother pulled the button off and
put it in her pocket.

"Keep your hands still, Grisha," she said, and she took up her work, a
coverlet she had long been making. She always set to work on it at
depressed moments, and now she knitted at it nervously, twitching her
fingers and counting the stitches. Though she had sent word the day
before to her husband that it was nothing to her whether his sister came
or not, she had made everything ready for her arrival, and was expecting
her sister-in-law with emotion.

Dolly was crushed by her sorrow, utterly swallowed up by it. Still she
did not forget that Anna, her sister-in-law, was the wife of one of the
most important personages in Petersburg, and was a Petersburg _grande
dame_. And, thanks to this circumstance, she did not carry out her
threat to her husband--that is to say, she remembered that her
sister-in-law was coming. "And, after all, Anna is in no wise to blame,"
thought Dolly. "I know nothing of her except the very best, and I have
seen nothing but kindness and affection from her towards myself." It was
true that as far as she could recall her impressions at Petersburg at
the Karenins', she did not like their household itself; there was
something artificial in the whole framework of their family life. "But
why should I not receive her? If only she doesn't take it into her head
to console me!" thought Dolly. "All consolation and counsel and
Christian forgiveness, all that I have thought over a thousand times,
and it's all no use."

All these days Dolly had been alone with her children. She did not want
to talk of her sorrow, but with that sorrow in her heart she could not
talk of outside matters. She knew that in one way or another she would
tell Anna everything, and she was alternately glad at the thought of
speaking freely, and angry at the necessity of speaking of her
humiliation with her, his sister, and of hearing her ready-made phrases
of good advice and comfort. She had been on the lookout for her,
glancing at her watch every minute, and, as so often happens, let slip
just that minute when her visitor arrived, so that she did not hear the
bell.

Catching a sound of skirts and light steps at the door, she looked
round, and her care-worn face unconsciously expressed not gladness, but
wonder. She got up and embraced her sister-in-law.

"What, here already!" she said as she kissed her.

"Dolly, how glad I am to see you!"

"I am glad, too," said Dolly, faintly smiling, and trying by the
expression of Anna's face to find out whether she knew. "Most likely she
knows," she thought, noticing the sympathy in Anna's face. "Well, come
along, I'll take you to your room," she went on, trying to defer as long
as possible the moment of confidences.

"Is this Grisha? Heavens, how he's grown!" said Anna; and kissing him,
never taking her eyes off Dolly, she stood still and flushed a little.
"No, please, let us stay here."

She took off her kerchief and her hat, and catching it in a lock of her
black hair, which was a mass of curls, she tossed her head and shook her
hair down.

"You are radiant with health and happiness!" said Dolly, almost with
envy.

"I?.... Yes," said Anna. "Merciful heavens, Tanya! You're the same age
as my Seryozha," she added, addressing the little girl as she ran in.
She took her in her arms and kissed her. "Delightful child, delightful!
Show me them all."

She mentioned them, not only remembering the names, but the years,
months, characters, illnesses of all the children, and Dolly could not
but appreciate that.

"Very well, we will go to them," she said. "It's a pity Vassya's
asleep."

After seeing the children, they sat down, alone now, in the drawing
room, to coffee. Anna took the tray, and then pushed it away from her.

"Dolly," she said, "he has told me."

Dolly looked coldly at Anna; she was waiting now for phrases of
conventional sympathy, but Anna said nothing of the sort.

"Dolly, dear," she said, "I don't want to speak for him to you, nor to
try to comfort you; that's impossible. But, darling, I'm simply sorry,
sorry from my heart for you!"

Under the thick lashes of her shining eyes tears suddenly glittered. She
moved nearer to her sister-in-law and took her hand in her vigorous
little hand. Dolly did not shrink away, but her face did not lose its
frigid expression. She said:

"To comfort me's impossible. Everything's lost after what has happened,
everything's over!"

And directly she had said this, her face suddenly softened. Anna lifted
the wasted, thin hand of Dolly, kissed it and said:

"But, Dolly, what's to be done, what's to be done? How is it best to act
in this awful position--that's what you must think of."

"All's over, and there's nothing more," said Dolly. "And the worst of
all is, you see, that I can't cast him off: there are the children, I am
tied. And I can't live with him! it's a torture to me to see him."

"Dolly, darling, he has spoken to me, but I want to hear it from you:
tell me about it."

Dolly looked at her inquiringly.

Sympathy and love unfeigned were visible on Anna's face.

"Very well," she said all at once. "But I will tell you it from the
beginning. You know how I was married. With the education mamma gave us
I was more than innocent, I was stupid. I knew nothing. I know they say
men tell their wives of their former lives, but Stiva"--she corrected
herself--"Stepan Arkadyevitch told me nothing. You'll hardly believe it,
but till now I imagined that I was the only woman he had known. So I
lived eight years. You must understand that I was so far from suspecting
infidelity, I regarded it as impossible, and then--try to imagine
it--with such ideas, to find out suddenly all the horror, all the
loathsomeness.... You must try and understand me. To be fully convinced
of one's happiness, and all at once..." continued Dolly, holding back
her sobs, "to get a letter ... his letter to his mistress, my governess.
No, it's too awful!" She hastily pulled out her handkerchief and hid her
face in it. "I can understand being carried away by feeling," she went
on after a brief silence, "but deliberately, slyly deceiving me ... and
with whom?... To go on being my husband together with her ... it's
awful! You can't understand..."

"Oh, yes, I understand! I understand! Dolly, dearest, I do understand,"
said Anna, pressing her hand.

"And do you imagine he realizes all the awfulness of my position?" Dolly
resumed. "Not the slightest! He's happy and contented."

"Oh, no!" Anna interposed quickly. "He's to be pitied, he's weighed down
by remorse..."

"Is he capable of remorse?" Dolly interrupted, gazing intently into her
sister-in-law's face.

"Yes. I know him. I could not look at him without feeling sorry for him.
We both know him. He's good-hearted, but he's proud, and now he's so
humiliated. What touched me most..." (and here Anna guessed what would
touch Dolly most) "he's tortured by two things: that he's ashamed for
the children's sake, and that, loving you--yes, yes, loving you beyond
everything on earth," she hurriedly interrupted Dolly, who would have
answered--"he has hurt you, pierced you to the heart. 'No, no, she
cannot forgive me,' he keeps saying."

Dolly looked dreamily away beyond her sister-in-law as she listened to
her words.

"Yes, I can see that his position is awful; it's worse for the guilty
than the innocent," she said, "if he feels that all the misery comes
from his fault. But how am I to forgive him, how am I to be his wife
again after her? For me to live with him now would be torture, just
because I love my past love for him..."

And sobs cut short her words. But as though of set design, each time she
was softened she began to speak again of what exasperated her.

"She's young, you see, she's pretty," she went on. "Do you know, Anna,
my youth and my beauty are gone, taken by whom? By him and his children.
I have worked for him, and all I had has gone in his service, and now of
course any fresh, vulgar creature has more charm for him. No doubt they
talked of me together, or, worse still, they were silent. Do you
understand?"

Again her eyes glowed with hatred.

"And after that he will tell me.... What! can I believe him? Never! No,
everything is over, everything that once made my comfort, the reward of
my work, and my sufferings.... Would you believe it, I was teaching
Grisha just now: once this was a joy to me, now it is a torture. What
have I to strive and toil for? Why are the children here? What's so
awful is that all at once my heart's turned, and instead of love and
tenderness, I have nothing but hatred for him; yes, hatred. I could kill
him."

"Darling Dolly, I understand, but don't torture yourself. You are so
distressed, so overwrought, that you look at many things mistakenly."

Dolly grew calmer, and for two minutes both were silent.

"What's to be done? Think for me, Anna, help me. I have thought over
everything, and I see nothing."

Anna could think of nothing, but her heart responded instantly to each
word, to each change of expression of her sister-in-law.

"One thing I would say," began Anna. "I am his sister, I know his
character, that faculty of forgetting everything, everything" (she waved
her hand before her forehead), "that faculty for being completely
carried away, but for completely repenting too. He cannot believe it, he
cannot comprehend now how he can have acted as he did."

"No; he understands, he understood!" Dolly broke in. "But I ... you are
forgetting me ... does it make it easier for me?"

"Wait a minute. When he told me, I will own I did not realize all the
awfulness of your position. I saw nothing but him, and that the family
was broken up. I felt sorry for him, but after talking to you, I see it,
as a woman, quite differently. I see your agony, and I can't tell you
how sorry I am for you! But, Dolly, darling, I fully realize your
sufferings, only there is one thing I don't know; I don't know ... I
don't know how much love there is still in your heart for him. That you
know--whether there is enough for you to be able to forgive him. If
there is, forgive him!"

"No," Dolly was beginning, but Anna cut her short, kissing her hand once
more.

"I know more of the world than you do," she said. "I know how men like
Stiva look at it. You speak of his talking of you with her. That never
happened. Such men are unfaithful, but their home and wife are sacred to
them. Somehow or other these women are still looked on with contempt by
them, and do not touch on their feeling for their family. They draw a
sort of line that can't be crossed between them and their families. I
don't understand it, but it is so."

"Yes, but he has kissed her..."

"Dolly, hush, darling. I saw Stiva when he was in love with you. I
remember the time when he came to me and cried, talking of you, and all
the poetry and loftiness of his feeling for you, and I know that the
longer he has lived with you the loftier you have been in his eyes. You
know we have sometimes laughed at him for putting in at every word:
'Dolly's a marvelous woman.' You have always been a divinity for him,
and you are that still, and this has not been an infidelity of the
heart..."

"But if it is repeated?"

"It cannot be, as I understand it..."

"Yes, but could you forgive it?"

"I don't know, I can't judge.... Yes, I can," said Anna, thinking a
moment; and grasping the position in her thought and weighing it in her
inner balance, she added: "Yes, I can, I can, I can. Yes, I could
forgive it. I could not be the same, no; but I could forgive it, and
forgive it as though it had never been, never been at all..."

"Oh, of course," Dolly interposed quickly, as though saying what she had
more than once thought, "else it would not be forgiveness. If one
forgives, it must be completely, completely. Come, let us go; I'll take
you to your room," she said, getting up, and on the way she embraced
Anna. "My dear, how glad I am you came. It has made things better, ever
so much better."



Chapter 20


The whole of that day Anna spent at home, that's to say at the
Oblonskys', and received no one, though some of her acquaintances had
already heard of her arrival, and came to call the same day. Anna spent
the whole morning with Dolly and the children. She merely sent a brief
note to her brother to tell him that he must not fail to dine at home.
"Come, God is merciful," she wrote.

Oblonsky did dine at home: the conversation was general, and his wife,
speaking to him, addressed him as "Stiva," as she had not done before.
In the relations of the husband and wife the same estrangement still
remained, but there was no talk now of separation, and Stepan
Arkadyevitch saw the possibility of explanation and reconciliation.

Immediately after dinner Kitty came in. She knew Anna Arkadyevna, but
only very slightly, and she came now to her sister's with some
trepidation, at the prospect of meeting this fashionable Petersburg
lady, whom everyone spoke so highly of. But she made a favorable
impression on Anna Arkadyevna--she saw that at once. Anna was
unmistakably admiring her loveliness and her youth: before Kitty knew
where she was she found herself not merely under Anna's sway, but in
love with her, as young girls do fall in love with older and married
women. Anna was not like a fashionable lady, nor the mother of a boy of
eight years old. In the elasticity of her movements, the freshness and
the unflagging eagerness which persisted in her face, and broke out in
her smile and her glance, she would rather have passed for a girl of
twenty, had it not been for a serious and at times mournful look in her
eyes, which struck and attracted Kitty. Kitty felt that Anna was
perfectly simple and was concealing nothing, but that she had another
higher world of interests inaccessible to her, complex and poetic.

After dinner, when Dolly went away to her own room, Anna rose quickly
and went up to her brother, who was just lighting a cigar.

"Stiva," she said to him, winking gaily, crossing him and glancing
towards the door, "go, and God help you."

He threw down the cigar, understanding her, and departed through the
doorway.

When Stepan Arkadyevitch had disappeared, she went back to the sofa
where she had been sitting, surrounded by the children. Either because
the children saw that their mother was fond of this aunt, or that they
felt a special charm in her themselves, the two elder ones, and the
younger following their lead, as children so often do, had clung about
their new aunt since before dinner, and would not leave her side. And it
had become a sort of game among them to sit a close as possible to their
aunt, to touch her, hold her little hand, kiss it, play with her ring,
or even touch the flounce of her skirt.

"Come, come, as we were sitting before," said Anna Arkadyevna, sitting
down in her place.

And again Grisha poked his little face under her arm, and nestled with
his head on her gown, beaming with pride and happiness.

"And when is your next ball?" she asked Kitty.

"Next week, and a splendid ball. One of those balls where one always
enjoys oneself."

"Why, are there balls where one always enjoys oneself?" Anna said, with
tender irony.

"It's strange, but there are. At the Bobrishtchevs' one always enjoys
oneself, and at the Nikitins' too, while at the Mezhkovs' it's always
dull. Haven't you noticed it?"

"No, my dear, for me there are no balls now where one enjoys oneself,"
said Anna, and Kitty detected in her eyes that mysterious world which
was not open to her. "For me there are some less dull and tiresome."

"How can _you_ be dull at a ball?"

"Why should not _I_ be dull at a ball?" inquired Anna.

Kitty perceived that Anna knew what answer would follow.

"Because you always look nicer than anyone."

Anna had the faculty of blushing. She blushed a little, and said:

"In the first place it's never so; and secondly, if it were, what
difference would it make to me?"

"Are you coming to this ball?" asked Kitty.

"I imagine it won't be possible to avoid going. Here, take it," she said
to Tanya, who was pulling the loosely-fitting ring off her white,
slender-tipped finger.

"I shall be so glad if you go. I should so like to see you at a ball."

"Anyway, if I do go, I shall comfort myself with the thought that it's a
pleasure to you ... Grisha, don't pull my hair. It's untidy enough
without that," she said, putting up a straying lock, which Grisha had
been playing with.

"I imagine you at the ball in lilac."

"And why in lilac precisely?" asked Anna, smiling. "Now, children, run
along, run along. Do you hear? Miss Hoole is calling you to tea," she
said, tearing the children from her, and sending them off to the dining
room.

"I know why you press me to come to the ball. You expect a great deal of
this ball, and you want everyone to be there to take part in it."

"How do you know? Yes."

"Oh! what a happy time you are at," pursued Anna. "I remember, and I
know that blue haze like the mist on the mountains in Switzerland. That
mist which covers everything in that blissful time when childhood is
just ending, and out of that vast circle, happy and gay, there is a path
growing narrower and narrower, and it is delightful and alarming to
enter the ballroom, bright and splendid as it is.... Who has not been
through it?"

Kitty smiled without speaking. "But how did she go through it? How I
should like to know all her love story!" thought Kitty, recalling the
unromantic appearance of Alexey Alexandrovitch, her husband.

"I know something. Stiva told me, and I congratulate you. I liked him so
much," Anna continued. "I met Vronsky at the railway station."

"Oh, was he there?" asked Kitty, blushing. "What was it Stiva told you?"

"Stiva gossiped about it all. And I should be so glad ... I traveled
yesterday with Vronsky's mother," she went on; "and his mother talked
without a pause of him, he's her favorite. I know mothers are partial,
but..."

"What did his mother tell you?"

"Oh, a great deal! And I know that he's her favorite; still one can see
how chivalrous he is.... Well, for instance, she told me that he had
wanted to give up all his property to his brother, that he had done
something extraordinary when he was quite a child, saved a woman out of
the water. He's a hero, in fact," said Anna, smiling and recollecting
the two hundred roubles he had given at the station.

But she did not tell Kitty about the two hundred roubles. For some
reason it was disagreeable to her to think of it. She felt that there
was something that had to do with her in it, and something that ought
not to have been.

"She pressed me very much to go and see her," Anna went on; "and I shall
be glad to go to see her tomorrow. Stiva is staying a long while in
Dolly's room, thank God," Anna added, changing the subject, and getting
up, Kitty fancied, displeased with something.

"No, I'm first! No, I!" screamed the children, who had finished tea,
running up to their Aunt Anna.

"All together," said Anna, and she ran laughing to meet them, and
embraced and swung round all the throng of swarming children, shrieking
with delight.



Chapter 21


Dolly came out of her room to the tea of the grown-up people. Stepan
Arkadyevitch did not come out. He must have left his wife's room by the
other door.

"I am afraid you'll be cold upstairs," observed Dolly, addressing Anna;
"I want to move you downstairs, and we shall be nearer."

"Oh, please, don't trouble about me," answered Anna, looking intently
into Dolly's face, trying to make out whether there had been a
reconciliation or not.

"It will be lighter for you here," answered her sister-in-law.

"I assure you that I sleep everywhere, and always like a marmot."

"What's the question?" inquired Stepan Arkadyevitch, coming out of his
room and addressing his wife.

From his tone both Kitty and Anna knew that a reconciliation had taken
place.

"I want to move Anna downstairs, but we must hang up blinds. No one
knows how to do it; I must see to it myself," answered Dolly addressing
him.

"God knows whether they are fully reconciled," thought Anna, hearing her
tone, cold and composed.

"Oh, nonsense, Dolly, always making difficulties," answered her husband.
"Come, I'll do it all, if you like..."

"Yes, they must be reconciled," thought Anna.

"I know how you do everything," answered Dolly. "You tell Matvey to do
what can't be done, and go away yourself, leaving him to make a muddle
of everything," and her habitual, mocking smile curved the corners of
Dolly's lips as she spoke.

"Full, full reconciliation, full," thought Anna; "thank God!" and
rejoicing that she was the cause of it, she went up to Dolly and kissed
her.

"Not at all. Why do you always look down on me and Matvey?" said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, smiling hardly perceptibly, and addressing his wife.

The whole evening Dolly was, as always, a little mocking in her tone to
her husband, while Stepan Arkadyevitch was happy and cheerful, but not
so as to seem as though, having been forgiven, he had forgotten his
offense.

At half-past nine o'clock a particularly joyful and pleasant family
conversation over the tea-table at the Oblonskys' was broken up by an
apparently simple incident. But this simple incident for some reason
struck everyone as strange. Talking about common acquaintances in
Petersburg, Anna got up quickly.

"She is in my album," she said; "and, by the way, I'll show you my
Seryozha," she added, with a mother's smile of pride.

Towards ten o'clock, when she usually said good-night to her son, and
often before going to a ball put him to bed herself, she felt depressed
at being so far from him; and whatever she was talking about, she kept
coming back in thought to her curly-headed Seryozha. She longed to look
at his photograph and talk of him. Seizing the first pretext, she got
up, and with her light, resolute step went for her album. The stairs up
to her room came out on the landing of the great warm main staircase.

Just as she was leaving the drawing room, a ring was heard in the hall.

"Who can that be?" said Dolly.

"It's early for me to be fetched, and for anyone else it's late,"
observed Kitty.

"Sure to be someone with papers for me," put in Stepan Arkadyevitch.
When Anna was passing the top of the staircase, a servant was running up
to announce the visitor, while the visitor himself was standing under a
lamp. Anna glancing down at once recognized Vronsky, and a strange
feeling of pleasure and at the same time of dread of something stirred
in her heart. He was standing still, not taking off his coat, pulling
something out of his pocket. At the instant when she was just facing the
stairs, he raised his eyes, caught sight of her, and into the expression
of his face there passed a shade of embarrassment and dismay. With a
slight inclination of her head she passed, hearing behind her Stepan
Arkadyevitch's loud voice calling him to come up, and the quiet, soft,
and composed voice of Vronsky refusing.

When Anna returned with the album, he was already gone, and Stepan
Arkadyevitch was telling them that he had called to inquire about the
dinner they were giving next day to a celebrity who had just arrived.
"And nothing would induce him to come up. What a queer fellow he is!"
added Stepan Arkadyevitch.

Kitty blushed. She thought that she was the only person who knew why he
had come, and why he would not come up. "He has been at home," she
thought, "and didn't find me, and thought I should be here, but he did
not come up because he thought it late, and Anna's here."

All of them looked at each other, saying nothing, and began to look at
Anna's album.

There was nothing either exceptional or strange in a man's calling at
half-past nine on a friend to inquire details of a proposed dinner party
and not coming in, but it seemed strange to all of them. Above all, it
seemed strange and not right to Anna.



Chapter 22


The ball was only just beginning as Kitty and her mother walked up the
great staircase, flooded with light, and lined with flowers and footmen
in powder and red coats. From the rooms came a constant, steady hum, as
from a hive, and the rustle of movement; and while on the landing
between trees they gave last touches to their hair and dresses before
the mirror, they heard from the ballroom the careful, distinct notes of
the fiddles of the orchestra beginning the first waltz. A little old man
in civilian dress, arranging his gray curls before another mirror, and
diffusing an odor of scent, stumbled against them on the stairs, and
stood aside, evidently admiring Kitty, whom he did not know. A beardless
youth, one of those society youths whom the old Prince Shtcherbatsky
called "young bucks," in an exceedingly open waistcoat, straightening
his white tie as he went, bowed to them, and after running by, came back
to ask Kitty for a quadrille. As the first quadrille had already been
given to Vronsky, she had to promise this youth the second. An officer,
buttoning his glove, stood aside in the doorway, and stroking his
mustache, admired rosy Kitty.

Although her dress, her coiffure, and all the preparations for the ball
had cost Kitty great trouble and consideration, at this moment she
walked into the ballroom in her elaborate tulle dress over a pink slip
as easily and simply as though all the rosettes and lace, all the minute
details of her attire, had not cost her or her family a moment's
attention, as though she had been born in that tulle and lace, with her
hair done up high on her head, and a rose and two leaves on the top of
it.

When, just before entering the ballroom, the princess, her mother, tried
to turn right side out of the ribbon of her sash, Kitty had drawn back a
little. She felt that everything must be right of itself, and graceful,
and nothing could need setting straight.

It was one of Kitty's best days. Her dress was not uncomfortable
anywhere; her lace berthe did not droop anywhere; her rosettes were not
crushed nor torn off; her pink slippers with high, hollowed-out heels
did not pinch, but gladdened her feet; and the thick rolls of fair
chignon kept up on her head as if they were her own hair. All the three
buttons buttoned up without tearing on the long glove that covered her
hand without concealing its lines. The black velvet of her locket
nestled with special softness round her neck. That velvet was delicious;
at home, looking at her neck in the looking glass, Kitty had felt that
that velvet was speaking. About all the rest there might be a doubt, but
the velvet was delicious. Kitty smiled here too, at the ball, when she
glanced at it in the glass. Her bare shoulders and arms gave Kitty a
sense of chill marble, a feeling she particularly liked. Her eyes
sparkled, and her rosy lips could not keep from smiling from the
consciousness of her own attractiveness. She had scarcely entered the
ballroom and reached the throng of ladies, all tulle, ribbons, lace, and
flowers, waiting to be asked to dance--Kitty was never one of that
throng--when she was asked for a waltz, and asked by the best partner,
the first star in the hierarchy of the ballroom, a renowned director of
dances, a married man, handsome and well-built, Yegorushka Korsunsky. He
had only just left the Countess Bonina, with whom he had danced the
first half of the waltz, and, scanning his kingdom--that is to say, a
few couples who had started dancing--he caught sight of Kitty, entering,
and flew up to her with that peculiar, easy amble which is confined to
directors of balls. Without even asking her if she cared to dance, he
put out his arm to encircle her slender waist. She looked round for
someone to give her fan to, and their hostess, smiling to her, took it.

"How nice you've come in good time," he said to her, embracing her
waist; "such a bad habit to be late." Bending her left hand, she laid it
on his shoulder, and her little feet in their pink slippers began
swiftly, lightly, and rhythmically moving over the slippery floor in
time to the music.

"It's a rest to waltz with you," he said to her, as they fell into the
first slow steps of the waltz. "It's exquisite--such lightness,
precision." He said to her the same thing he said to almost all his
partners whom he knew well.

She smiled at his praise, and continued to look about the room over his
shoulder. She was not like a girl at her first ball, for whom all faces
in the ballroom melt into one vision of fairyland. And she was not a
girl who had gone the stale round of balls till every face in the
ballroom was familiar and tiresome. But she was in the middle stage
between these two; she was excited, and at the same time she had
sufficient self-possession to be able to observe. In the left corner of
the ballroom she saw the cream of society gathered together.
There--incredibly naked--was the beauty Lidi, Korsunsky's wife; there
was the lady of the house; there shone the bald head of Krivin, always
to be found where the best people were. In that direction gazed the
young men, not venturing to approach. There, too, she descried Stiva,
and there she saw the exquisite figure and head of Anna in a black
velvet gown. And _he_ was there. Kitty had not seen him since the
evening she refused Levin. With her long-sighted eyes, she knew him at
once, and was even aware that he was looking at her.

"Another turn, eh? You're not tired?" said Korsunsky, a little out of
breath.

"No, thank you!"

"Where shall I take you?"

"Madame Karenina's here, I think ... take me to her."

"Wherever you command."

And Korsunsky began waltzing with measured steps straight towards the
group in the left corner, continually saying, "Pardon, mesdames, pardon,
pardon, mesdames"; and steering his course through the sea of lace,
tulle, and ribbon, and not disarranging a feather, he turned his partner
sharply round, so that her slim ankles, in light transparent stockings,
were exposed to view, and her train floated out in fan shape and covered
Krivin's knees. Korsunsky bowed, set straight his open shirt front, and
gave her his arm to conduct her to Anna Arkadyevna. Kitty, flushed, took
her train from Krivin's knees, and, a little giddy, looked round,
seeking Anna. Anna was not in lilac, as Kitty had so urgently wished,
but in a black, low-cut, velvet gown, showing her full throat and
shoulders, that looked as though carved in old ivory, and her rounded
arms, with tiny, slender wrists. The whole gown was trimmed with
Venetian guipure. On her head, among her black hair--her own, with no
false additions--was a little wreath of pansies, and a bouquet of the
same in the black ribbon of her sash among white lace. Her coiffure was
not striking. All that was noticeable was the little wilful tendrils of
her curly hair that would always break free about her neck and temples.
Round her well-cut, strong neck was a thread of pearls.

Kitty had been seeing Anna every day; she adored her, and had pictured
her invariably in lilac. But now seeing her in black, she felt that she
had not fully seen her charm. She saw her now as someone quite new and
surprising to her. Now she understood that Anna could not have been in
lilac, and that her charm was just that she always stood out against her
attire, that her dress could never be noticeable on her. And her black
dress, with its sumptuous lace, was not noticeable on her; it was only
the frame, and all that was seen was she--simple, natural, elegant, and
at the same time gay and eager.

She was standing holding herself, as always, very erect, and when Kitty
drew near the group she was speaking to the master of the house, her
head slightly turned towards him.

"No, I don't throw stones," she was saying, in answer to something,
"though I can't understand it," she went on, shrugging her shoulders,
and she turned at once with a soft smile of protection towards Kitty.
With a flying, feminine glance she scanned her attire, and made a
movement of her head, hardly perceptible, but understood by Kitty,
signifying approval of her dress and her looks. "You came into the room
dancing," she added.

"This is one of my most faithful supporters," said Korsunsky, bowing to
Anna Arkadyevna, whom he had not yet seen. "The princess helps to make
balls happy and successful. Anna Arkadyevna, a waltz?" he said, bending
down to her.

"Why, have you met?" inquired their host.

"Is there anyone we have not met? My wife and I are like white
wolves--everyone knows us," answered Korsunsky. "A waltz, Anna
Arkadyevna?"

"I don't dance when it's possible not to dance," she said.

"But tonight it's impossible," answered Korsunsky.

At that instant Vronsky came up.

"Well, since it's impossible tonight, let us start," she said, not
noticing Vronsky's bow, and she hastily put her hand on Korsunsky's
shoulder.

"What is she vexed with him about?" thought Kitty, discerning that Anna
had intentionally not responded to Vronsky's bow. Vronsky went up to
Kitty reminding her of the first quadrille, and expressing his regret
that he had not seen her all this time. Kitty gazed in admiration at
Anna waltzing, and listened to him. She expected him to ask her for a
waltz, but he did not, and she glanced wonderingly at him. He flushed
slightly, and hurriedly asked her to waltz, but he had only just put his
arm round her waist and taken the first step when the music suddenly
stopped. Kitty looked into his face, which was so close to her own, and
long afterwards--for several years after--that look, full of love, to
which he made no response, cut her to the heart with an agony of shame.

"_Pardon! pardon!_ Waltz! waltz!" shouted Korsunsky from the other side
of the room, and seizing the first young lady he came across he began
dancing himself.



Chapter 23


Vronsky and Kitty waltzed several times round the room. After the first
waltz Kitty went to her mother, and she had hardly time to say a few
words to Countess Nordston when Vronsky came up again for the first
quadrille. During the quadrille nothing of any significance was said:
there was disjointed talk between them of the Korsunskys, husband and
wife, whom he described very amusingly, as delightful children at forty,
and of the future town theater; and only once the conversation touched
her to the quick, when he asked her about Levin, whether he was here,
and added that he liked him so much. But Kitty did not expect much from
the quadrille. She looked forward with a thrill at her heart to the
mazurka. She fancied that in the mazurka everything must be decided. The
fact that he did not during the quadrille ask her for the mazurka did
not trouble her. She felt sure she would dance the mazurka with him as
she had done at former balls, and refused five young men, saying she was
engaged for the mazurka. The whole ball up to the last quadrille was for
Kitty an enchanted vision of delightful colors, sounds, and motions. She
only sat down when she felt too tired and begged for a rest. But as she
was dancing the last quadrille with one of the tiresome young men whom
she could not refuse, she chanced to be vis-a-vis with Vronsky and Anna.
She had not been near Anna again since the beginning of the evening, and
now again she saw her suddenly quite new and surprising. She saw in her
the signs of that excitement of success she knew so well in herself; she
saw that she was intoxicated with the delighted admiration she was
exciting. She knew that feeling and knew its signs, and saw them in
Anna; saw the quivering, flashing light in her eyes, and the smile of
happiness and excitement unconsciously playing on her lips, and the
deliberate grace, precision, and lightness of her movements.

"Who?" she asked herself. "All or one?" And not assisting the harassed
young man she was dancing with in the conversation, the thread of which
he had lost and could not pick up again, she obeyed with external
liveliness the peremptory shouts of Korsunsky starting them all into the
_grand rond_, and then into the _chaine_, and at the same time she kept
watch with a growing pang at her heart. "No, it's not the admiration of
the crowd has intoxicated her, but the adoration of one. And that one?
can it be he?" Every time he spoke to Anna the joyous light flashed into
her eyes, and the smile of happiness curved her red lips. she seemed to
make an effort to control herself, to try not to show these signs of
delight, but they came out on her face of themselves. "But what of him?"
Kitty looked at him and was filled with terror. What was pictured so
clearly to Kitty in the mirror of Anna's face she saw in him. What had
become of his always self-possessed resolute manner, and the carelessly
serene expression of his face? Now every time he turned to her, he bent
his head, as though he would have fallen at her feet, and in his eyes
there was nothing but humble submission and dread. "I would not offend
you," his eyes seemed every time to be saying, "but I want to save
myself, and I don't know how." On his face was a look such as Kitty had
never seen before.

They were speaking of common acquaintances, keeping up the most trivial
conversation, but to Kitty it seemed that every word they said was
determining their fate and hers. And strange it was that they were
actually talking of how absurd Ivan Ivanovitch was with his French, and
how the Eletsky girl might have made a better match, yet these words had
all the while consequence for them, and they were feeling just as Kitty
did. The whole ball, the whole world, everything seemed lost in fog in
Kitty's soul. Nothing but the stern discipline of her bringing-up
supported her and forced her to do what was expected of her, that is, to
dance, to answer questions, to talk, even to smile. But before the
mazurka, when they were beginning to rearrange the chairs and a few
couples moved out of the smaller rooms into the big room, a moment of
despair and horror came for Kitty. She had refused five partners, and
now she was not dancing the mazurka. She had not even a hope of being
asked for it, because she was so successful in society that the idea
would never occur to anyone that she had remained disengaged till now.
She would have to tell her mother she felt ill and go home, but she had
not the strength to do this. She felt crushed. She went to the furthest
end of the little drawing room and sank into a low chair. Her light,
transparent skirts rose like a cloud about her slender waist; one bare,
thin, soft, girlish arm, hanging listlessly, was lost in the folds of
her pink tunic; in the other she held her fan, and with rapid, short
strokes fanned her burning face. But while she looked like a butterfly,
clinging to a blade of grass, and just about to open its rainbow wings
for fresh flight, her heart ached with a horrible despair.

"But perhaps I am wrong, perhaps it was not so?" And again she recalled
all she had seen.

"Kitty, what is it?" said Countess Nordston, stepping noiselessly over
the carpet towards her. "I don't understand it."

Kitty's lower lip began to quiver; she got up quickly.

"Kitty, you're not dancing the mazurka?"

"No, no," said Kitty in a voice shaking with tears.

"He asked her for the mazurka before me," said Countess Nordston,
knowing Kitty would understand who were "he" and "her." "She said: 'Why,
aren't you going to dance it with Princess Shtcherbatskaya?'"

"Oh, I don't care!" answered Kitty.

No one but she herself understood her position; no one knew that she had
just refused the man whom perhaps she loved, and refused him because she
had put her faith in another.

Countess Nordston found Korsunsky, with whom she was to dance the
mazurka, and told him to ask Kitty.

Kitty danced in the first couple, and luckily for her she had not to
talk, because Korsunsky was all the time running about directing the
figure. Vronsky and Anna sat almost opposite her. She saw them with her
long-sighted eyes, and saw them, too, close by, when they met in the
figures, and the more she saw of them the more convinced was she that
her unhappiness was complete. She saw that they felt themselves alone in
that crowded room. And on Vronsky's face, always so firm and
independent, she saw that look that had struck her, of bewilderment and
humble submissiveness, like the expression of an intelligent dog when it
has done wrong.

Anna smiled, and her smile was reflected by him. She grew thoughtful,
and he became serious. Some supernatural force drew Kitty's eyes to
Anna's face. She was fascinating in her simple black dress, fascinating
were her round arms with their bracelets, fascinating was her firm neck
with its thread of pearls, fascinating the straying curls of her loose
hair, fascinating the graceful, light movements of her little feet and
hands, fascinating was that lovely face in its eagerness, but there was
something terrible and cruel in her fascination.

Kitty admired her more than ever, and more and more acute was her
suffering. Kitty felt overwhelmed, and her face showed it. When Vronsky
saw her, coming across her in the mazurka, he did not at once recognize
her, she was so changed.

"Delightful ball!" he said to her, for the sake of saying something.

"Yes," she answered.

In the middle of the mazurka, repeating a complicated figure, newly
invented by Korsunsky, Anna came forward into the center of the circle,
chose two gentlemen, and summoned a lady and Kitty. Kitty gazed at her
in dismay as she went up. Anna looked at her with drooping eyelids, and
smiled, pressing her hand. But, noticing that Kitty only responded to
her smile by a look of despair and amazement, she turned away from her,
and began gaily talking to the other lady.

"Yes, there is something uncanny, devilish and fascinating in her,"
Kitty said to herself.

Anna did not mean to stay to supper, but the master of the house began
to press her to do so.

"Nonsense, Anna Arkadyevna," said Korsunsky, drawing her bare arm under
the sleeve of his dress coat, "I've such an idea for a _cotillion! Un
bijou!_"

And he moved gradually on, trying to draw her along with him. Their host
smiled approvingly.

"No, I am not going to stay," answered Anna, smiling, but in spite of
her smile, both Korsunsky and the master of the house saw from her
resolute tone that she would not stay.

"No; why, as it is, I have danced more at your ball in Moscow than I
have all the winter in Petersburg," said Anna, looking round at Vronsky,
who stood near her. "I must rest a little before my journey."

"Are you certainly going tomorrow then?" asked Vronsky.

"Yes, I suppose so," answered Anna, as it were wondering at the boldness
of his question; but the irrepressible, quivering brilliance of her eyes
and her smile set him on fire as she said it.

Anna Arkadyevna did not stay to supper, but went home.



Chapter 24


"Yes, there is something in me hateful, repulsive," thought Levin, as he
came away from the Shtcherbatskys', and walked in the direction of his
brother's lodgings. "And I don't get on with other people. Pride, they
say. No, I have no pride. If I had any pride, I should not have put
myself in such a position." And he pictured to himself Vronsky, happy,
good-natured, clever, and self-possessed, certainly never placed in the
awful position in which he had been that evening. "Yes, she was bound to
choose him. So it had to be, and I cannot complain of anyone or
anything. I am myself to blame. What right had I to imagine she would
care to join her life to mine? Who am I and what am I? A nobody, not
wanted by any one, nor of use to anybody." And he recalled his brother
Nikolay, and dwelt with pleasure on the thought of him. "Isn't he right
that everything in the world is base and loathsome? And are we fair in
our judgment of brother Nikolay? Of course, from the point of view of
Prokofy, seeing him in a torn cloak and tipsy, he's a despicable person.
But I know him differently. I know his soul, and know that we are like
him. And I, instead of going to seek him out, went out to dinner, and
came here." Levin walked up to a lamppost, read his brother's address,
which was in his pocketbook, and called a sledge. All the long way to
his brother's, Levin vividly recalled all the facts familiar to him of
his brother Nikolay's life. He remembered how his brother, while at the
university, and for a year afterwards, had, in spite of the jeers of his
companions, lived like a monk, strictly observing all religious rites,
services, and fasts, and avoiding every sort of pleasure, especially
women. And afterwards, how he had all at once broken out: he had
associated with the most horrible people, and rushed into the most
senseless debauchery. He remembered later the scandal over a boy, whom
he had taken from the country to bring up, and, in a fit of rage, had so
violently beaten that proceedings were brought against him for
unlawfully wounding. Then he recalled the scandal with a sharper, to
whom he had lost money, and given a promissory note, and against whom he
had himself lodged a complaint, asserting that he had cheated him. (This
was the money Sergey Ivanovitch had paid.) Then he remembered how he had
spent a night in the lockup for disorderly conduct in the street. He
remembered the shameful proceedings he had tried to get up against his
brother Sergey Ivanovitch, accusing him of not having paid him his share
of his mother's fortune, and the last scandal, when he had gone to a
western province in an official capacity, and there had got into trouble
for assaulting a village elder.... It was all horribly disgusting, yet
to Levin it appeared not at all in the same disgusting light as it
inevitably would to those who did not know Nikolay, did not know all his
story, did not know his heart.

Levin remembered that when Nikolay had been in the devout stage, the
period of fasts and monks and church services, when he was seeking in
religion a support and a curb for his passionate temperament, everyone,
far from encouraging him, had jeered at him, and he, too, with the
others. They had teased him, called him Noah and Monk; and, when he had
broken out, no one had helped him, but everyone had turned away from him
with horror and disgust.

Levin felt that, in spite of all the ugliness of his life, his brother
Nikolay, in his soul, in the very depths of his soul, was no more in the
wrong than the people who despised him. He was not to blame for having
been born with his unbridled temperament and his somehow limited
intelligence. But he had always wanted to be good. "I will tell him
everything, without reserve, and I will make him speak without reserve,
too, and I'll show him that I love him, and so understand him," Levin
resolved to himself, as, towards eleven o'clock, he reached the hotel of
which he had the address.

"At the top, 12 and 13," the porter answered Levin's inquiry.

"At home?"

"Sure to be at home."

The door of No. 12 was half open, and there came out into the streak of
light thick fumes of cheap, poor tobacco, and the sound of a voice,
unknown to Levin; but he knew at once that his brother was there; he
heard his cough.

As he went in the door, the unknown voice was saying:

"It all depends with how much judgment and knowledge the thing's done."

Konstantin Levin looked in at the door, and saw that the speaker was a
young man with an immense shock of hair, wearing a Russian jerkin, and
that a pockmarked woman in a woolen gown, without collar or cuffs, was
sitting on the sofa. His brother was not to be seen. Konstantin felt a
sharp pang at his heart at the thought of the strange company in which
his brother spent his life. No one had heard him, and Konstantin, taking
off his galoshes, listened to what the gentleman in the jerkin was
saying. He was speaking of some enterprise.

"Well, the devil flay them, the privileged classes," his brother's voice
responded, with a cough. "Masha! get us some supper and some wine if
there's any left; or else go and get some."

The woman rose, came out from behind the screen, and saw Konstantin.

"There's some gentleman, Nikolay Dmitrievitch," she said.

"Whom do you want?" said the voice of Nikolay Levin, angrily.

"It's I," answered Konstantin Levin, coming forward into the light.

"Who's _I_?" Nikolay's voice said again, still more angrily. He could be
heard getting up hurriedly, stumbling against something, and Levin saw,
facing him in the doorway, the big, scared eyes, and the huge, thin,
stooping figure of his brother, so familiar, and yet astonishing in its
weirdness and sickliness.

He was even thinner than three years before, when Konstantin Levin had
seen him last. He was wearing a short coat, and his hands and big bones
seemed huger than ever. His hair had grown thinner, the same straight
mustaches hid his lips, the same eyes gazed strangely and naively at his
visitor.

"Ah, Kostya!" he exclaimed suddenly, recognizing his brother, and his
eyes lit up with joy. But the same second he looked round at the young
man, and gave the nervous jerk of his head and neck that Konstantin knew
so well, as if his neckband hurt him; and a quite different expression,
wild, suffering, and cruel, rested on his emaciated face.

"I wrote to you and Sergey Ivanovitch both that I don't know you and
don't want to know you. What is it you want?"

He was not at all the same as Konstantin had been fancying him. The
worst and most tiresome part of his character, what made all relations
with him so difficult, had been forgotten by Konstantin Levin when he
thought of him, and now, when he saw his face, and especially that
nervous twitching of his head, he remembered it all.

"I didn't want to see you for anything," he answered timidly. "I've
simply come to see you."

His brother's timidity obviously softened Nikolay. His lips twitched.

"Oh, so that's it?" he said. "Well, come in; sit down. Like some supper?
Masha, bring supper for three. No, stop a minute. Do you know who this
is?" he said, addressing his brother, and indicating the gentleman in
the jerkin: "This is Mr. Kritsky, my friend from Kiev, a very remarkable
man. He's persecuted by the police, of course, because he's not a
scoundrel."

And he looked round in the way he always did at everyone in the room.
Seeing that the woman standing in the doorway was moving to go, he
shouted to her, "Wait a minute, I said." And with the inability to
express himself, the incoherence that Konstantin knew so well, he began,
with another look round at everyone, to tell his brother Kritsky's
story: how he had been expelled from the university for starting a
benefit society for the poor students and Sunday schools; and how he had
afterwards been a teacher in a peasant school, and how he had been
driven out of that too, and had afterwards been condemned for something.

"You're of the Kiev university?" said Konstantin Levin to Kritsky, to
break the awkward silence that followed.

"Yes, I was of Kiev," Kritsky replied angrily, his face darkening.

"And this woman," Nikolay Levin interrupted him, pointing to her, "is
the partner of my life, Marya Nikolaevna. I took her out of a bad
house," and he jerked his neck saying this; "but I love her and respect
her, and any one who wants to know me," he added, raising his voice and
knitting his brows, "I beg to love her and respect her. She's just the
same as my wife, just the same. So now you know whom you've to do with.
And if you think you're lowering yourself, well, here's the floor,
there's the door."

And again his eyes traveled inquiringly over all of them.

"Why I should be lowering myself, I don't understand."

"Then, Masha, tell them to bring supper; three portions, spirits and
wine.... No, wait a minute.... No, it doesn't matter.... Go along."



Chapter 25


"So you see," pursued Nikolay Levin, painfully wrinkling his forehead
and twitching.

It was obviously difficult for him to think of what to say and do.

"Here, do you see?"... He pointed to some sort of iron bars, fastened
together with strings, lying in a corner of the room. "Do you see that?
That's the beginning of a new thing we're going into. It's a productive
association..."

Konstantin scarcely heard him. He looked into his sickly, consumptive
face, and he was more and more sorry for him, and he could not force
himself to listen to what his brother was telling him about the
association. He saw that this association was a mere anchor to save him
from self-contempt. Nikolay Levin went on talking:

"You know that capital oppresses the laborer. The laborers with us, the
peasants, bear all the burden of labor, and are so placed that however
much they work they can't escape from their position of beasts of
burden. All the profits of labor, on which they might improve their
position, and gain leisure for themselves, and after that education, all
the surplus values are taken from them by the capitalists. And society's
so constituted that the harder they work, the greater the profit of the
merchants and landowners, while they stay beasts of burden to the end.
And that state of things must be changed," he finished up, and he looked
questioningly at his brother.

"Yes, of course," said Konstantin, looking at the patch of red that had
come out on his brother's projecting cheek bones.

"And so we're founding a locksmiths' association, where all the
production and profit and the chief instruments of production will be in
common."

"Where is the association to be?" asked Konstantin Levin.

"In the village of Vozdrem, Kazan government."

"But why in a village? In the villages, I think, there is plenty of work
as it is. Why a locksmiths' association in a village?"

"Why? Because the peasants are just as much slaves as they ever were,
and that's why you and Sergey Ivanovitch don't like people to try and
get them out of their slavery," said Nikolay Levin, exasperated by the
objection.

Konstantin Levin sighed, looking meanwhile about the cheerless and dirty
room. This sigh seemed to exasperate Nikolay still more.

"I know your and Sergey Ivanovitch's aristocratic views. I know that he
applies all the power of his intellect to justify existing evils."

"No; and what do you talk of Sergey Ivanovitch for?" said Levin,
smiling.

"Sergey Ivanovitch? I'll tell you what for!" Nikolay Levin shrieked
suddenly at the name of Sergey Ivanovitch. "I'll tell you what for....
But what's the use of talking? There's only one thing.... What did you
come to me for? You look down on this, and you're welcome to,--and go
away, in God's name go away!" he shrieked, getting up from his chair.
"And go away, and go away!"

"I don't look down on it at all," said Konstantin Levin timidly. "I
don't even dispute it."

At that instant Marya Nikolaevna came back. Nikolay Levin looked round
angrily at her. She went quickly to him, and whispered something.

"I'm not well; I've grown irritable," said Nikolay Levin, getting calmer
and breathing painfully; "and then you talk to me of Sergey Ivanovitch
and his article. It's such rubbish, such lying, such self-deception.
What can a man write of justice who knows nothing of it? Have you read
his article?" he asked Kritsky, sitting down again at the table, and
moving back off half of it the scattered cigarettes, so as to clear a
space.

"I've not read it," Kritsky responded gloomily, obviously not desiring
to enter into the conversation.

"Why not?" said Nikolay Levin, now turning with exasperation upon
Kritsky.

"Because I didn't see the use of wasting my time over it."

"Oh, but excuse me, how did you know it would be wasting your time? That
article's too deep for many people--that's to say it's over their heads.
But with me, it's another thing; I see through his ideas, and I know
where its weakness lies."

Everyone was mute. Kritsky got up deliberately and reached his cap.

"Won't you have supper? All right, good-bye! Come round tomorrow with
the locksmith."

Kritsky had hardly gone out when Nikolay Levin smiled and winked.

"He's no good either," he said. "I see, of course..."

But at that instant Kritsky, at the door, called him...

"What do you want now?" he said, and went out to him in the passage.
Left alone with Marya Nikolaevna, Levin turned to her.

"Have you been long with my brother?" he said to her.

"Yes, more than a year. Nikolay Dmitrievitch's health has become very
poor. Nikolay Dmitrievitch drinks a great deal," she said.

"That is ... how does he drink?"

"Drinks vodka, and it's bad for him."

"And a great deal?" whispered Levin.

"Yes," she said, looking timidly towards the doorway, where Nikolay
Levin had reappeared.

"What were you talking about?" he said, knitting his brows, and turning
his scared eyes from one to the other. "What was it?"

"Oh, nothing," Konstantin answered in confusion.

"Oh, if you don't want to say, don't. Only it's no good your talking to
her. She's a wench, and you're a gentleman," he said with a jerk of the
neck. "You understand everything, I see, and have taken stock of
everything, and look with commiseration on my shortcomings," he began
again, raising his voice.

"Nikolay Dmitrievitch, Nikolay Dmitrievitch," whispered Marya
Nikolaevna, again going up to him.

"Oh, very well, very well!... But where's the supper? Ah, here it is,"
he said, seeing a waiter with a tray. "Here, set it here," he added
angrily, and promptly seizing the vodka, he poured out a glassful and
drank it greedily. "Like a drink?" he turned to his brother, and at once
became better humored.

"Well, enough of Sergey Ivanovitch. I'm glad to see you, anyway. After
all's said and done, we're not strangers. Come, have a drink. Tell me
what you're doing," he went on, greedily munching a piece of bread, and
pouring out another glassful. "How are you living?"

"I live alone in the country, as I used to. I'm busy looking after the
land," answered Konstantin, watching with horror the greediness with
which his brother ate and drank, and trying to conceal that he noticed
it.

"Why don't you get married?"

"It hasn't happened so," Konstantin answered, reddening a little.

"Why not? For me now ... everything's at an end! I've made a mess of my
life. But this I've said, and I say still, that if my share had been
given me when I needed it, my whole life would have been different."

Konstantin made haste to change the conversation.

"Do you know your little Vanya's with me, a clerk in the countinghouse
at Pokrovskoe."

Nikolay jerked his neck, and sank into thought.

"Yes, tell me what's going on at Pokrovskoe. Is the house standing
still, and the birch trees, and our schoolroom? And Philip the gardener,
is he living? How I remember the arbor and the seat! Now mind and don't
alter anything in the house, but make haste and get married, and make
everything as it used to be again. Then I'll come and see you, if your
wife is nice."

"But come to me now," said Levin. "How nicely we would arrange it!"

"I'd come and see you if I were sure I should not find Sergey
Ivanovitch."

"You wouldn't find him there. I live quite independently of him."

"Yes, but say what you like, you will have to choose between me and
him," he said, looking timidly into his brother's face.

This timidity touched Konstantin.

"If you want to hear my confession of faith on the subject, I tell you
that in your quarrel with Sergey Ivanovitch I take neither side. You're
both wrong. You're more wrong externally, and he inwardly."

"Ah, ah! You see that, you see that!" Nikolay shouted joyfully.

"But I personally value friendly relations with you more because..."

"Why, why?"

Konstantin could not say that he valued it more because Nikolay was
unhappy, and needed affection. But Nikolay knew that this was just what
he meant to say, and scowling he took up the vodka again.

"Enough, Nikolay Dmitrievitch!" said Marya Nikolaevna, stretching out
her plump, bare arm towards the decanter.

"Let it be! Don't insist! I'll beat you!" he shouted.

Marya Nikolaevna smiled a sweet and good-humored smile, which was at
once reflected on Nikolay's face, and she took the bottle.

"And do you suppose she understands nothing?" said Nikolay. "She
understands it all better than any of us. Isn't it true there's
something good and sweet in her?"

"Were you never before in Moscow?" Konstantin said to her, for the sake
of saying something.

"Only you mustn't be polite and stiff with her. It frightens her. No one
ever spoke to her so but the justices of the peace who tried her for
trying to get out of a house of ill-fame. Mercy on us, the senselessness
in the world!" he cried suddenly. "These new institutions, these
justices of the peace, rural councils, what hideousness it all is!"

And he began to enlarge on his encounters with the new institutions.

Konstantin Levin heard him, and the disbelief in the sense of all public
institutions, which he shared with him, and often expressed, was
distasteful to him now from his brother's lips.

"In another world we shall understand it all," he said lightly.

"In another world! Ah, I don't like that other world! I don't like it,"
he said, letting his scared eyes rest on his brother's eyes. "Here one
would think that to get out of all the baseness and the mess, one's own
and other people's, would be a good thing, and yet I'm afraid of death,
awfully afraid of death." He shuddered. "But do drink something. Would
you like some champagne? Or shall we go somewhere? Let's go to the
Gypsies! Do you know I have got so fond of the Gypsies and Russian
songs."

His speech had begun to falter, and he passed abruptly from one subject
to another. Konstantin with the help of Masha persuaded him not to go
out anywhere, and got him to bed hopelessly drunk.

Masha promised to write to Konstantin in case of need, and to persuade
Nikolay Levin to go and stay with his brother.



Chapter 26


In the morning Konstantin Levin left Moscow, and towards evening he
reached home. On the journey in the train he talked to his neighbors
about politics and the new railways, and, just as in Moscow, he was
overcome by a sense of confusion of ideas, dissatisfaction with himself,
shame of something or other. But when he got out at his own station,
when he saw his one-eyed coachman, Ignat, with the collar of his coat
turned up; when, in the dim light reflected by the station fires, he saw
his own sledge, his own horses with their tails tied up, in their
harness trimmed with rings and tassels; when the coachman Ignat, as he
put in his luggage, told him the village news, that the contractor had
arrived, and that Pava had calved,--he felt that little by little the
confusion was clearing up, and the shame and self-dissatisfaction were
passing away. He felt this at the mere sight of Ignat and the horses;
but when he had put on the sheepskin brought for him, had sat down
wrapped up in the sledge, and had driven off pondering on the work that
lay before him in the village, and staring at the side-horse, that had
been his saddle-horse, past his prime now, but a spirited beast from the
Don, he began to see what had happened to him in quite a different
light. He felt himself, and did not want to be any one else. All he
wanted now was to be better than before. In the first place he resolved
that from that day he would give up hoping for any extraordinary
happiness, such as marriage must have given him, and consequently he
would not so disdain what he really had. Secondly, he would never again
let himself give way to low passion, the memory of which had so tortured
him when he had been making up his mind to make an offer. Then
remembering his brother Nikolay, he resolved to himself that he would
never allow himself to forget him, that he would follow him up, and not
lose sight of him, so as to be ready to help when things should go ill
with him. And that would be soon, he felt. Then, too, his brother's talk
of communism, which he had treated so lightly at the time, now made him
think. He considered a revolution in economic conditions nonsense. But
he always felt the injustice of his own abundance in comparison with the
poverty of the peasants, and now he determined that so as to feel quite
in the right, though he had worked hard and lived by no means
luxuriously before, he would now work still harder, and would allow
himself even less luxury. And all this seemed to him so easy a conquest
over himself that he spent the whole drive in the pleasantest daydreams.
With a resolute feeling of hope in a new, better life, he reached home
before nine o'clock at night.

The snow of the little quadrangle before the house was lit up by a light
in the bedroom windows of his old nurse, Agafea Mihalovna, who performed
the duties of housekeeper in his house. She was not yet asleep. Kouzma,
waked up by her, came sidling sleepily out onto the steps. A setter
bitch, Laska, ran out too, almost upsetting Kouzma, and whining, turned
round about Levin's knees, jumping up and longing, but not daring, to
put her forepaws on his chest.

"You're soon back again, sir," said Agafea Mihalovna.

"I got tired of it, Agafea Mihalovna. With friends, one is well; but at
home, one is better," he answered, and went into his study.

The study was slowly lit up as the candle was brought in. The familiar
details came out: the stag's horns, the bookshelves, the looking-glass,
the stove with its ventilator, which had long wanted mending, his
father's sofa, a large table, on the table an open book, a broken ash
tray, a manuscript book with his handwriting. As he saw all this, there
came over him for an instant a doubt of the possibility of arranging the
new life, of which he had been dreaming on the road. All these traces of
his life seemed to clutch him, and to say to him: "No, you're not going
to get away from us, and you're not going to be different, but you're
going to be the same as you've always been; with doubts, everlasting
dissatisfaction with yourself, vain efforts to amend, and falls, and
everlasting expectation, of a happiness which you won't get, and which
isn't possible for you."

This the things said to him, but another voice in his heart was telling
him that he must not fall under the sway of the past, and that one can
do anything with oneself. And hearing that voice, he went into the
corner where stood his two heavy dumbbells, and began brandishing them
like a gymnast, trying to restore his confident temper. There was a
creak of steps at the door. He hastily put down the dumbbells.

The bailiff came in, and said everything, thank God, was doing well; but
informed him that the buckwheat in the new drying machine had been a
little scorched. This piece of news irritated Levin. The new drying
machine had been constructed and partly invented by Levin. The bailiff
had always been against the drying machine, and now it was with
suppressed triumph that he announced that the buckwheat had been
scorched. Levin was firmly convinced that if the buckwheat had been
scorched, it was only because the precautions had not been taken, for
which he had hundreds of times given orders. He was annoyed, and
reprimanded the bailiff. But there had been an important and joyful
event: Pava, his best cow, an expensive beast, bought at a show, had
calved.

"Kouzma, give me my sheepskin. And you tell them to take a lantern. I'll
come and look at her," he said to the bailiff.

The cowhouse for the more valuable cows was just behind the house.
Walking across the yard, passing a snowdrift by the lilac tree, he went
into the cowhouse. There was the warm, steamy smell of dung when the
frozen door was opened, and the cows, astonished at the unfamiliar light
of the lantern, stirred on the fresh straw. He caught a glimpse of the
broad, smooth, black and piebald back of Hollandka. Berkoot, the bull,
was lying down with his ring in his lip, and seemed about to get up, but
thought better of it, and only gave two snorts as they passed by him.
Pava, a perfect beauty, huge as a hippopotamus, with her back turned to
them, prevented their seeing the calf, as she sniffed her all over.

Levin went into the pen, looked Pava over, and lifted the red and
spotted calf onto her long, tottering legs. Pava, uneasy, began lowing,
but when Levin put the calf close to her she was soothed, and, sighing
heavily, began licking her with her rough tongue. The calf, fumbling,
poked her nose under her mother's udder, and stiffened her tail out
straight.

"Here, bring the light, Fyodor, this way," said Levin, examining the
calf. "Like the mother! though the color takes after the father; but
that's nothing. Very good. Long and broad in the haunch. Vassily
Fedorovitch, isn't she splendid?" he said to the bailiff, quite
forgiving him for the buckwheat under the influence of his delight in
the calf.

"How could she fail to be? Oh, Semyon the contractor came the day after
you left. You must settle with him, Konstantin Dmitrievitch," said the
bailiff. "I did inform you about the machine."

This question was enough to take Levin back to all the details of his
work on the estate, which was on a large scale, and complicated. He went
straight from the cowhouse to the counting house, and after a little
conversation with the bailiff and Semyon the contractor, he went back to
the house and straight upstairs to the drawing room.



Chapter 27


The house was big and old-fashioned, and Levin, though he lived alone,
had the whole house heated and used. He knew that this was stupid, he
knew that it was positively not right, and contrary to his present new
plans, but this house was a whole world to Levin. It was the world in
which his father and mother had lived and died. They had lived just the
life that to Levin seemed the ideal of perfection, and that he had
dreamed of beginning with his wife, his family.

Levin scarcely remembered his mother. His conception of her was for him
a sacred memory, and his future wife was bound to be in his imagination
a repetition of that exquisite, holy ideal of a woman that his mother
had been.

He was so far from conceiving of love for woman apart from marriage that
he positively pictured to himself first the family, and only secondarily
the woman who would give him a family. His ideas of marriage were,
consequently, quite unlike those of the great majority of his
acquaintances, for whom getting married was one of the numerous facts of
social life. For Levin it was the chief affair of life, on which its
whole happiness turned. And now he had to give up that.

When he had gone into the little drawing room, where he always had tea,
and had settled himself in his armchair with a book, and Agafea
Mihalovna had brought him tea, and with her usual, "Well, I'll stay a
while, sir," had taken a chair in the window, he felt that, however
strange it might be, he had not parted from his daydreams, and that he
could not live without them. Whether with her, or with another, still it
would be. He was reading a book, and thinking of what he was reading,
and stopping to listen to Agafea Mihalovna, who gossiped away without
flagging, and yet with all that, all sorts of pictures of family life
and work in the future rose disconnectedly before his imagination. He
felt that in the depth of his soul something had been put in its place,
settled down, and laid to rest.

He heard Agafea Mihalovna talking of how Prohor had forgotten his duty
to God, and with the money Levin had given him to buy a horse, had been
drinking without stopping, and had beaten his wife till he'd half killed
her. He listened, and read his book, and recalled the whole train of
ideas suggested by his reading. It was Tyndall's _Treatise on Heat_. He
recalled his own criticisms of Tyndall of his complacent satisfaction in
the cleverness of his experiments, and for his lack of philosophic
insight. And suddenly there floated into his mind the joyful thought:
"In two years' time I shall have two Dutch cows; Pava herself will
perhaps still be alive, a dozen young daughters of Berkoot and the three
others--how lovely!"

He took up his book again. "Very good, electricity and heat are the same
thing; but is it possible to substitute the one quantity for the other
in the equation for the solution of any problem? No. Well, then what of
it? The connection between all the forces of nature is felt
instinctively.... It's particulary nice if Pava's daughter should be a
red-spotted cow, and all the herd will take after her, and the other
three, too! Splendid! To go out with my wife and visitors to meet the
herd.... My wife says, 'Kostya and I looked after that calf like a
child.' 'How can it interest you so much?' says a visitor. 'Everything
that interests him, interests me.' But who will she be?" And he
remembered what had happened at Moscow.... "Well, there's nothing to be
done.... It's not my fault. But now everything shall go on in a new way.
It's nonsense to pretend that life won't let one, that the past won't
let one. One must struggle to live better, much better."... He raised
his head, and fell to dreaming. Old Laska, who had not yet fully
digested her delight at his return, and had run out into the yard to
bark, came back wagging her tail, and crept up to him, bringing in the
scent of fresh air, put her head under his hand, and whined plaintively,
asking to be stroked.

"There, who'd have thought it?" said Agafea Mihalovna. "The dog now ...
why, she understands that her master's come home, and that he's
low-spirited."

"Why low-spirited?"

"Do you suppose I don't see it, sir? It's high time I should know the
gentry. Why, I've grown up from a little thing with them. It's nothing,
sir, so long as there's health and a clear conscience."

Levin looked intently at her, surprised at how well she knew his
thought.

"Shall I fetch you another cup?" said she, and taking his cup she went
out.

Laska kept poking her head under his hand. He stroked her, and she
promptly curled up at his feet, laying her head on a hindpaw. And in
token of all now being well and satisfactory, she opened her mouth a
little, smacked her lips, and settling her sticky lips more comfortably
about her old teeth, she sank into blissful repose. Levin watched all
her movements attentively.

"That's what I'll do," he said to himself; "that's what I'll do!
Nothing's amiss.... All's well."



Chapter 28


After the ball, early next morning, Anna Arkadyevna sent her husband a
telegram that she was leaving Moscow the same day.

"No, I must go, I must go"; she explained to her sister-in-law the
change in her plans in a tone that suggested that she had to remember so
many things that there was no enumerating them: "no, it had really
better be today!"

Stepan Arkadyevitch was not dining at home, but he promised to come and
see his sister off at seven o'clock.

Kitty, too, did not come, sending a note that she had a headache. Dolly
and Anna dined alone with the children and the English governess.
Whether it was that the children were fickle, or that they had acute
senses, and felt that Anna was quite different that day from what she
had been when they had taken such a fancy to her, that she was not now
interested in them,--but they had abruptly dropped their play with their
aunt, and their love for her, and were quite indifferent that she was
going away. Anna was absorbed the whole morning in preparations for her
departure. She wrote notes to her Moscow acquaintances, put down her
accounts, and packed. Altogether Dolly fancied she was not in a placid
state of mind, but in that worried mood, which Dolly knew well with
herself, and which does not come without cause, and for the most part
covers dissatisfaction with self. After dinner, Anna went up to her room
to dress, and Dolly followed her.

"How queer you are today!" Dolly said to her.

"I? Do you think so? I'm not queer, but I'm nasty. I am like that
sometimes. I keep feeling as if I could cry. It's very stupid, but it'll
pass off," said Anna quickly, and she bent her flushed face over a tiny
bag in which she was packing a nightcap and some cambric handkerchiefs.
Her eyes were particularly bright, and were continually swimming with
tears. "In the same way I didn't want to leave Petersburg, and now I
don't want to go away from here."

"You came here and did a good deed," said Dolly, looking intently at
her.

Anna looked at her with eyes wet with tears.

"Don't say that, Dolly. I've done nothing, and could do nothing. I often
wonder why people are all in league to spoil me. What have I done, and
what could I do? In your heart there was found love enough to
forgive..."

"If it had not been for you, God knows what would have happened! How
happy you are, Anna!" said Dolly. "Everything is clear and good in your
heart."

"Every heart has its own _skeletons_, as the English say."

"You have no sort of _skeleton_, have you? Everything is so clear in
you."

"I have!" said Anna suddenly, and, unexpectedly after her tears, a sly,
ironical smile curved her lips.

"Come, he's amusing, anyway, your _skeleton_, and not depressing," said
Dolly, smiling.

"No, he's depressing. Do you know why I'm going today instead of
tomorrow? It's a confession that weighs on me; I want to make it to
you," said Anna, letting herself drop definitely into an armchair, and
looking straight into Dolly's face.

And to her surprise Dolly saw that Anna was blushing up to her ears, up
to the curly black ringlets on her neck.

"Yes," Anna went on. "Do you know why Kitty didn't come to dinner? She's
jealous of me. I have spoiled ... I've been the cause of that ball being
a torture to her instead of a pleasure. But truly, truly, it's not my
fault, or only my fault a little bit," she said, daintily drawling the
words "a little bit."

"Oh, how like Stiva you said that!" said Dolly, laughing.

Anna was hurt.

"Oh no, oh no! I'm not Stiva," she said, knitting her brows. "That's why
I'm telling you, just because I could never let myself doubt myself for
an instant," said Anna.

But at the very moment she was uttering the words, she felt that they
were not true. She was not merely doubting herself, she felt emotion at
the thought of Vronsky, and was going away sooner than she had meant,
simply to avoid meeting him.

"Yes, Stiva told me you danced the mazurka with him, and that he..."

"You can't imagine how absurdly it all came about. I only meant to be
matchmaking, and all at once it turned out quite differently. Possibly
against my own will..."

She crimsoned and stopped.

"Oh, they feel it directly?" said Dolly.

"But I should be in despair if there were anything serious in it on his
side," Anna interrupted her. "And I am certain it will all be forgotten,
and Kitty will leave off hating me."

"All the same, Anna, to tell you the truth, I'm not very anxious for
this marriage for Kitty. And it's better it should come to nothing, if
he, Vronsky, is capable of falling in love with you in a single day."

"Oh, heavens, that would be too silly!" said Anna, and again a deep
flush of pleasure came out on her face, when she heard the idea, that
absorbed her, put into words. "And so here I am going away, having made
an enemy of Kitty, whom I liked so much! Ah, how sweet she is! But
you'll make it right, Dolly? Eh?"

Dolly could scarcely suppress a smile. She loved Anna, but she enjoyed
seeing that she too had her weaknesses.

"An enemy? That can't be."

"I did so want you all to care for me, as I do for you, and now I care
for you more than ever," said Anna, with tears in her eyes. "Ah, how
silly I am today!"

She passed her handkerchief over her face and began dressing.

At the very moment of starting Stepan Arkadyevitch arrived, late, rosy
and good-humored, smelling of wine and cigars.

Anna's emotionalism infected Dolly, and when she embraced her
sister-in-law for the last time, she whispered: "Remember, Anna, what
you've done for me--I shall never forget. And remember that I love you,
and shall always love you as my dearest friend!"

"I don't know why," said Anna, kissing her and hiding her tears.

"You understood me, and you understand. Good-bye, my darling!"



Chapter 29


"Come, it's all over, and thank God!" was the first thought that came to
Anna Arkadyevna, when she had said good-bye for the last time to her
brother, who had stood blocking up the entrance to the carriage till the
third bell rang. She sat down on her lounge beside Annushka, and looked
about her in the twilight of the sleeping-carriage. "Thank God! tomorrow
I shall see Seryozha and Alexey Alexandrovitch, and my life will go on
in the old way, all nice and as usual."

Still in the same anxious frame of mind, as she had been all that day,
Anna took pleasure in arranging herself for the journey with great care.
With her little deft hands she opened and shut her little red bag, took
out a cushion, laid it on her knees, and carefully wrapping up her feet,
settled herself comfortably. An invalid lady had already lain down to
sleep. Two other ladies began talking to Anna, and a stout elderly lady
tucked up her feet, and made observations about the heating of the
train. Anna answered a few words, but not foreseeing any entertainment
from the conversation, she asked Annushka to get a lamp, hooked it onto
the arm of her seat, and took from her bag a paper knife and an English
novel. At first her reading made no progress. The fuss and bustle were
disturbing; then when the train had started, she could not help
listening to the noises; then the snow beating on the left window and
sticking to the pane, and the sight of the muffled guard passing by,
covered with snow on one side, and the conversations about the terrible
snowstorm raging outside, distracted her attention. Farther on, it was
continually the same again and again: the same shaking and rattling, the
same snow on the window, the same rapid transitions from steaming heat
to cold, and back again to heat, the same passing glimpses of the same
figures in the twilight, and the same voices, and Anna began to read and
to understand what she read. Annushka was already dozing, the red bag on
her lap, clutched by her broad hands, in gloves, of which one was torn.
Anna Arkadyevna read and understood, but it was distasteful to her to
read, that is, to follow the reflection of other people's lives. She had
too great a desire to live herself. If she read that the heroine of the
novel was nursing a sick man, she longed to move with noiseless steps
about the room of a sick man; if she read of a member of Parliament
making a speech, she longed to be delivering the speech; if she read of
how Lady Mary had ridden after the hounds, and had provoked her
sister-in-law, and had surprised everyone by her boldness, she too
wished to be doing the same. But there was no chance of doing anything;
and twisting the smooth paper knife in her little hands, she forced
herself to read.

The hero of the novel was already almost reaching his English happiness,
a baronetcy and an estate, and Anna was feeling a desire to go with him
to the estate, when she suddenly felt that _he_ ought to feel ashamed,
and that she was ashamed of the same thing. But what had he to be
ashamed of? "What have I to be ashamed of?" she asked herself in injured
surprise. She laid down the book and sank against the back of the chair,
tightly gripping the paper cutter in both hands. There was nothing. She
went over all her Moscow recollections. All were good, pleasant. She
remembered the ball, remembered Vronsky and his face of slavish
adoration, remembered all her conduct with him: there was nothing
shameful. And for all that, at the same point in her memories, the
feeling of shame was intensified, as though some inner voice, just at
the point when she thought of Vronsky, were saying to her, "Warm, very
warm, hot." "Well, what is it?" she said to herself resolutely, shifting
her seat in the lounge. "What does it mean? Am I afraid to look it
straight in the face? Why, what is it? Can it be that between me and
this officer boy there exist, or can exist, any other relations than
such as are common with every acquaintance?" She laughed contemptuously
and took up her book again; but now she was definitely unable to follow
what she read. She passed the paper knife over the window pane, then
laid its smooth, cool surface to her cheek, and almost laughed aloud at
the feeling of delight that all at once without cause came over her. She
felt as though her nerves were strings being strained tighter and
tighter on some sort of screwing peg. She felt her eyes opening wider
and wider, her fingers and toes twitching nervously, something within
oppressing her breathing, while all shapes and sounds seemed in the
uncertain half-light to strike her with unaccustomed vividness. Moments
of doubt were continually coming upon her, when she was uncertain
whether the train were going forwards or backwards, or were standing
still altogether; whether it were Annushka at her side or a stranger.
"What's that on the arm of the chair, a fur cloak or some beast? And
what am I myself? Myself or some other woman?" She was afraid of giving
way to this delirium. But something drew her towards it, and she could
yield to it or resist it at will. She got up to rouse herself, and
slipped off her plaid and the cape of her warm dress. For a moment she
regained her self-possession, and realized that the thin peasant who had
come in wearing a long overcoat, with buttons missing from it, was the
stoveheater, that he was looking at the thermometer, that it was the
wind and snow bursting in after him at the door; but then everything
grew blurred again.... That peasant with the long waist seemed to be
gnawing something on the wall, the old lady began stretching her legs
the whole length of the carriage, and filling it with a black cloud;
then there was a fearful shrieking and banging, as though someone were
being torn to pieces; then there was a blinding dazzle of red fire
before her eyes and a wall seemed to rise up and hide everything. Anna
felt as though she were sinking down. But it was not terrible, but
delightful. The voice of a man muffled up and covered with snow shouted
something in her ear. She got up and pulled herself together; she
realized that they had reached a station and that this was the guard.
She asked Annushka to hand her the cape she had taken off and her shawl,
put them on and moved towards the door.

"Do you wish to get out?" asked Annushka.

"Yes, I want a little air. It's very hot in here." And she opened the
door. The driving snow and the wind rushed to meet her and struggled
with her over the door. But she enjoyed the struggle.

She opened the door and went out. The wind seemed as though lying in
wait for her; with gleeful whistle it tried to snatch her up and bear
her off, but she clung to the cold door post, and holding her skirt got
down onto the platform and under the shelter of the carriages. The wind
had been powerful on the steps, but on the platform, under the lee of
the carriages, there was a lull. With enjoyment she drew deep breaths of
the frozen, snowy air, and standing near the carriage looked about the
platform and the lighted station.



Chapter 30


The raging tempest rushed whistling between the wheels of the carriages,
about the scaffolding, and round the corner of the station. The
carriages, posts, people, everything that was to be seen was covered
with snow on one side, and was getting more and more thickly covered.
For a moment there would come a lull in the storm, but then it would
swoop down again with such onslaughts that it seemed impossible to stand
against it. Meanwhile men ran to and fro, talking merrily together,
their steps crackling on the platform as they continually opened and
closed the big doors. The bent shadow of a man glided by at her feet,
and she heard sounds of a hammer upon iron. "Hand over that telegram!"
came an angry voice out of the stormy darkness on the other side. "This
way! No. 28!" several different voices shouted again, and muffled
figures ran by covered with snow. Two gentlemen with lighted cigarettes
passed by her. She drew one more deep breath of the fresh air, and had
just put her hand out of her muff to take hold of the door post and get
back into the carriage, when another man in a military overcoat, quite
close beside her, stepped between her and the flickering light of the
lamp post. She looked round, and the same instant recognized Vronsky's
face. Putting his hand to the peak of his cap, he bowed to her and
asked, Was there anything she wanted? Could he be of any service to her?
She gazed rather a long while at him without answering, and, in spite of
the shadow in which he was standing, she saw, or fancied she saw, both
the expression of his face and his eyes. It was again that expression of
reverential ecstasy which had so worked upon her the day before. More
than once she had told herself during the past few days, and again only
a few moments before, that Vronsky was for her only one of the hundreds
of young men, forever exactly the same, that are met everywhere, that
she would never allow herself to bestow a thought upon him. But now at
the first instant of meeting him, she was seized by a feeling of joyful
pride. She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as
if he had told her that he was here to be where she was.

"I didn't know you were going. What are you coming for?" she said,
letting fall the hand with which she had grasped the door post. And
irrepressible delight and eagerness shone in her face.

"What am I coming for?" he repeated, looking straight into her eyes.
"You know that I have come to be where you are," he said; "I can't help
it."

At that moment the wind, as it were, surmounting all obstacles, sent the
snow flying from the carriage roofs, and clanked some sheet of iron it
had torn off, while the hoarse whistle of the engine roared in front,
plaintively and gloomily. All the awfulness of the storm seemed to her
more splendid now. He had said what her soul longed to hear, though she
feared it with her reason. She made no answer, and in her face he saw
conflict.

"Forgive me, if you dislike what I said," he said humbly.

He had spoken courteously, deferentially, yet so firmly, so stubbornly,
that for a long while she could make no answer.

"It's wrong, what you say, and I beg you, if you're a good man, to
forget what you've said, as I forget it," she said at last.

"Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever
forget..."

"Enough, enough!" she cried trying assiduously to give a stern
expression to her face, into which he was gazing greedily. And clutching
at the cold door post, she clambered up the steps and got rapidly into
the corridor of the carriage. But in the little corridor she paused,
going over in her imagination what had happened. Though she could not
recall her own words or his, she realized instinctively that the
momentary conversation had brought them fearfully closer; and she was
panic-stricken and blissful at it. After standing still a few seconds,
she went into the carriage and sat down in her place. The overstrained
condition which had tormented her before did not only come back, but was
intensified, and reached such a pitch that she was afraid every minute
that something would snap within her from the excessive tension. She did
not sleep all night. But in that nervous tension, and in the visions
that filled her imagination, there was nothing disagreeable or gloomy:
on the contrary there was something blissful, glowing, and exhilarating.
Towards morning Anna sank into a doze, sitting in her place, and when
she waked it was daylight and the train was near Petersburg. At once
thoughts of home, of husband and of son, and the details of that day and
the following came upon her.

At Petersburg, as soon as the train stopped and she got out, the first
person that attracted her attention was her husband. "Oh, mercy! why do
his ears look like that?" she thought, looking at his frigid and
imposing figure, and especially the ears that struck her at the moment
as propping up the brim of his round hat. Catching sight of her, he came
to meet her, his lips falling into their habitual sarcastic smile, and
his big, tired eyes looking straight at her. An unpleasant sensation
gripped at her heart when she met his obstinate and weary glance, as
though she had expected to see him different. She was especially struck
by the feeling of dissatisfaction with herself that she experienced on
meeting him. That feeling was an intimate, familiar feeling, like a
consciousness of hypocrisy, which she experienced in her relations with
her husband. But hitherto she had not taken note of the feeling, now she
was clearly and painfully aware of it.

"Yes, as you see, your tender spouse, as devoted as the first year after
marriage, burned with impatience to see you," he said in his deliberate,
high-pitched voice, and in that tone which he almost always took with
her, a tone of jeering at anyone who should say in earnest what he said.

"Is Seryozha quite well?" she asked.

"And is this all the reward," said he, "for my ardor? He's quite
well..."



Chapter 31


Vronsky had not even tried to sleep all that night. He sat in his
armchair, looking straight before him or scanning the people who got in
and out. If he had indeed on previous occasions struck and impressed
people who did not know him by his air of unhesitating composure, he
seemed now more haughty and self-possessed than ever. He looked at
people as if they were things. A nervous young man, a clerk in a law
court, sitting opposite him, hated him for that look. The young man
asked him for a light, and entered into conversation with him, and even
pushed against him, to make him feel that he was not a thing, but a
person. But Vronsky gazed at him exactly as he did at the lamp, and the
young man made a wry face, feeling that he was losing his
self-possession under the oppression of this refusal to recognize him as
a person.

Vronsky saw nothing and no one. He felt himself a king, not because he
believed that he had made an impression on Anna--he did not yet believe
that,--but because the impression she had made on him gave him happiness
and pride.

What would come of it all he did not know, he did not even think. He
felt that all his forces, hitherto dissipated, wasted, were centered on
one thing, and bent with fearful energy on one blissful goal. And he was
happy at it. He knew only that he had told her the truth, that he had
come where she was, that all the happiness of his life, the only meaning
in life for him, now lay in seeing and hearing her. And when he got out
of the carriage at Bologova to get some seltzer water, and caught sight
of Anna, involuntarily his first word had told her just what he thought.
And he was glad he had told her it, that she knew it now and was
thinking of it. He did not sleep all night. When he was back in the
carriage, he kept unceasingly going over every position in which he had
seen her, every word she had uttered, and before his fancy, making his
heart faint with emotion, floated pictures of a possible future.

When he got out of the train at Petersburg, he felt after his sleepless
night as keen and fresh as after a cold bath. He paused near his
compartment, waiting for her to get out. "Once more," he said to
himself, smiling unconsciously, "once more I shall see her walk, her
face; she will say something, turn her head, glance, smile, maybe." But
before he caught sight of her, he saw her husband, whom the
station-master was deferentially escorting through the crowd. "Ah, yes!
The husband." Only now for the first time did Vronsky realize clearly
the fact that there was a person attached to her, a husband. He knew
that she had a husband, but had hardly believed in his existence, and
only now fully believed in him, with his head and shoulders, and his
legs clad in black trousers; especially when he saw this husband calmly
take her arm with a sense of property.

Seeing Alexey Alexandrovitch with his Petersburg face and severely
self-confident figure, in his round hat, with his rather prominent
spine, he believed in him, and was aware of a disagreeable sensation,
such as a man might feel tortured by thirst, who, on reaching a spring,
should find a dog, a sheep, or a pig, who has drunk of it and muddied
the water. Alexey Alexandrovitch's manner of walking, with a swing of
the hips and flat feet, particularly annoyed Vronsky. He could recognize
in no one but himself an indubitable right to love her. But she was
still the same, and the sight of her affected him the same way,
physically reviving him, stirring him, and filling his soul with
rapture. He told his German valet, who ran up to him from the second
class, to take his things and go on, and he himself went up to her. He
saw the first meeting between the husband and wife, and noted with a
lover's insight the signs of slight reserve with which she spoke to her
husband. "No, she does not love him and cannot love him," he decided to
himself.

At the moment when he was approaching Anna Arkadyevna he noticed too
with joy that she was conscious of his being near, and looked round, and
seeing him, turned again to her husband.

"Have you passed a good night?" he asked, bowing to her and her husband
together, and leaving it up to Alexey Alexandrovitch to accept the bow
on his own account, and to recognize it or not, as he might see fit.

"Thank you, very good," she answered.

Her face looked weary, and there was not that play of eagerness in it,
peeping out in her smile and her eyes; but for a single instant, as she
glanced at him, there was a flash of something in her eyes, and although
the flash died away at once, he was happy for that moment. She glanced
at her husband to find out whether he knew Vronsky. Alexey
Alexandrovitch looked at Vronsky with displeasure, vaguely recalling who
this was. Vronsky's composure and self-confidence here struck, like a
scythe against a stone, upon the cold self-confidence of Alexey
Alexandrovitch.

"Count Vronsky," said Anna.

"Ah! We are acquainted, I believe," said Alexey Alexandrovitch
indifferently, giving his hand.

"You set off with the mother and you return with the son," he said,
articulating each syllable, as though each were a separate favor he was
bestowing.

"You're back from leave, I suppose?" he said, and without waiting for a
reply, he turned to his wife in his jesting tone: "Well, were a great
many tears shed at Moscow at parting?"

By addressing his wife like this he gave Vronsky to understand that he
wished to be left alone, and, turning slightly towards him, he touched
his hat; but Vronsky turned to Anna Arkadyevna.

"I hope I may have the honor of calling on you," he said.

Alexey Alexandrovitch glanced with his weary eyes at Vronsky.

"Delighted," he said coldly. "On Mondays we're at home. Most fortunate,"
he said to his wife, dismissing Vronsky altogether, "that I should just
have half an hour to meet you, so that I can prove my devotion," he went
on in the same jesting tone.

"You lay too much stress on your devotion for me to value it much," she
responded in the same jesting tone, involuntarily listening to the sound
of Vronsky's steps behind them. "But what has it to do with me?" she
said to herself, and she began asking her husband how Seryozha had got
on without her.

"Oh, capitally! Mariette says he has been very good, And ... I must
disappoint you ... but he has not missed you as your husband has. But
once more _merci,_ my dear, for giving me a day. Our dear _Samovar_ will
be delighted." (He used to call the Countess Lidia Ivanovna, well known
in society, a samovar, because she was always bubbling over with
excitement.) "She has been continually asking after you. And, do you
know, if I may venture to advise you, you should go and see her today.
You know how she takes everything to heart. Just now, with all her own
cares, she's anxious about the Oblonskys being brought together."

The Countess Lidia Ivanovna was a friend of her husband's, and the
center of that one of the coteries of the Petersburg world with which
Anna was, through her husband, in the closest relations.

"But you know I wrote to her?"

"Still she'll want to hear details. Go and see her, if you're not too
tired, my dear. Well, Kondraty will take you in the carriage, while I go
to my committee. I shall not be alone at dinner again," Alexey
Alexandrovitch went on, no longer in a sarcastic tone. "You wouldn't
believe how I've missed..." And with a long pressure of her hand and a
meaning smile, he put her in her carriage.



Chapter 32


The first person to meet Anna at home was her son. He dashed down the
stairs to her, in spite of the governess's call, and with desperate joy
shrieked: "Mother! mother!" Running up to her, he hung on her neck.

"I told you it was mother!" he shouted to the governess. "I knew!"

And her son, like her husband, aroused in Anna a feeling akin to
disappointment. She had imagined him better than he was in reality. She
had to let herself drop down to the reality to enjoy him as he really
was. But even as he was, he was charming, with his fair curls, his blue
eyes, and his plump, graceful little legs in tightly pulled-up
stockings. Anna experienced almost physical pleasure in the sensation of
his nearness, and his caresses, and moral soothing, when she met his
simple, confiding, and loving glance, and heard his naive questions.
Anna took out the presents Dolly's children had sent him, and told her
son what sort of little girl was Tanya at Moscow, and how Tanya could
read, and even taught the other children.

"Why, am I not so nice as she?" asked Seryozha.

"To me you're nicer than anyone in the world."

"I know that," said Seryozha, smiling.

Anna had not had time to drink her coffee when the Countess Lidia
Ivanovna was announced. The Countess Lidia Ivanovna was a tall, stout
woman, with an unhealthily sallow face and splendid, pensive black eyes.
Anna liked her, but today she seemed to be seeing her for the first time
with all her defects.

"Well, my dear, so you took the olive branch?" inquired Countess Lidia
Ivanovna, as soon as she came into the room.

"Yes, it's all over, but it was all much less serious than we had
supposed," answered Anna. "My _belle-soeur_ is in general too hasty."

But Countess Lidia Ivanovna, though she was interested in everything
that did not concern her, had a habit of never listening to what
interested her; she interrupted Anna:

"Yes, there's plenty of sorrow and evil in the world. I am so worried
today."

"Oh, why?" asked Anna, trying to suppress a smile.

"I'm beginning to be weary of fruitlessly championing the truth, and
sometimes I'm quite unhinged by it. The Society of the Little Sisters"
(this was a religiously-patriotic, philanthropic institution) "was going
splendidly, but with these gentlemen it's impossible to do anything,"
added Countess Lidia Ivanovna in a tone of ironical submission to
destiny. "They pounce on the idea, and distort it, and then work it out
so pettily and unworthily. Two or three people, your husband among them,
understand all the importance of the thing, but the others simply drag
it down. Yesterday Pravdin wrote to me..."

Pravdin was a well-known Panslavist abroad, and Countess Lidia Ivanovna
described the purport of his letter.

Then the countess told her of more disagreements and intrigues against
the work of the unification of the churches, and departed in haste, as
she had that day to be at the meeting of some society and also at the
Slavonic committee.

"It was all the same before, of course; but why was it I didn't notice
it before?" Anna asked herself. "Or has she been very much irritated
today? It's really ludicrous; her object is doing good; she a Christian,
yet she's always angry; and she always has enemies, and always enemies
in the name of Christianity and doing good."

After Countess Lidia Ivanovna another friend came, the wife of a chief
secretary, who told her all the news of the town. At three o'clock she
too went away, promising to come to dinner. Alexey Alexandrovitch was at
the ministry. Anna, left alone, spent the time till dinner in assisting
at her son's dinner (he dined apart from his parents) and in putting her
things in order, and in reading and answering the notes and letters
which had accumulated on her table.

The feeling of causeless shame, which she had felt on the journey, and
her excitement, too, had completely vanished. In the habitual conditions
of her life she felt again resolute and irreproachable.

She recalled with wonder her state of mind on the previous day. "What
was it? Nothing. Vronsky said something silly, which it was easy to put
a stop to, and I answered as I ought to have done. To speak of it to my
husband would be unnecessary and out of the question. To speak of it
would be to attach importance to what has no importance." She remembered
how she had told her husband of what was almost a declaration made her
at Petersburg by a young man, one of her husband's subordinates, and how
Alexey Alexandrovitch had answered that every woman living in the world
was exposed to such incidents, but that he had the fullest confidence in
her tact, and could never lower her and himself by jealousy. "So then
there's no reason to speak of it? And indeed, thank God, there's nothing
to speak of," she told herself.



Chapter 33


Alexey Alexandrovitch came back from the meeting of the ministers at
four o'clock, but as often happened, he had not time to come in to her.
He went into his study to see the people waiting for him with petitions,
and to sign some papers brought him by his chief secretary. At dinner
time (there were always a few people dining with the Karenins) there
arrived an old lady, a cousin of Alexey Alexandrovitch, the chief
secretary of the department and his wife, and a young man who had been
recommended to Alexey Alexandrovitch for the service. Anna went into the
drawing room to receive these guests. Precisely at five o'clock, before
the bronze Peter the First clock had struck the fifth stroke, Alexey
Alexandrovitch came in, wearing a white tie and evening coat with two
stars, as he had to go out directly after dinner. Every minute of Alexey
Alexandrovitch's life was portioned out and occupied. And to make time
to get through all that lay before him every day, he adhered to the
strictest punctuality. "Unhasting and unresting," was his motto. He came
into the dining hall, greeted everyone, and hurriedly sat down, smiling
to his wife.

"Yes, my solitude is over. You wouldn't believe how uncomfortable" (he
laid stress on the word _uncomfortable_) "it is to dine alone."

At dinner he talked a little to his wife about Moscow matters, and, with
a sarcastic smile, asked her after Stepan Arkadyevitch; but the
conversation was for the most part general, dealing with Petersburg
official and public news. After dinner he spent half an hour with his
guests, and again, with a smile, pressed his wife's hand, withdrew, and
drove off to the council. Anna did not go out that evening either to the
Princess Betsy Tverskaya, who, hearing of her return, had invited her,
nor to the theater, where she had a box for that evening. She did not go
out principally because the dress she had reckoned upon was not ready.
Altogether, Anna, on turning, after the departure of her guests, to the
consideration of her attire, was very much annoyed. She was generally a
mistress of the art of dressing well without great expense, and before
leaving Moscow she had given her dressmaker three dresses to transform.
The dresses had to be altered so that they could not be recognized, and
they ought to have been ready three days before. It appeared that two
dresses had not been done at all, while the other one had not been
altered as Anna had intended. The dressmaker came to explain, declaring
that it would be better as she had done it, and Anna was so furious that
she felt ashamed when she thought of it afterwards. To regain her
serenity completely she went into the nursery, and spent the whole
evening with her son, put him to bed herself, signed him with the cross,
and tucked him up. She was glad she had not gone out anywhere, and had
spent the evening so well. She felt so light-hearted and serene, she saw
so clearly that all that had seemed to her so important on her railway
journey was only one of the common trivial incidents of fashionable
life, and that she had no reason to feel ashamed before anyone else or
before herself. Anna sat down at the hearth with an English novel and
waited for her husband. Exactly at half-past nine she heard his ring,
and he came into the room.

"Here you are at last!" she observed, holding out her hand to him.

He kissed her hand and sat down beside her.

"Altogether then, I see your visit was a success," he said to her.

"Oh, yes," she said, and she began telling him about everything from the
beginning: her journey with Countess Vronskaya, her arrival, the
accident at the station. Then she described the pity she had felt, first
for her brother, and afterwards for Dolly.

"I imagine one cannot exonerate such a man from blame, though he is your
brother," said Alexey Alexandrovitch severely.

Anna smiled. She knew that he said that simply to show that family
considerations could not prevent him from expressing his genuine
opinion. She knew that characteristic in her husband, and liked it.

"I am glad it has all ended so satisfactorily, and that you are back
again," he went on. "Come, what do they say about the new act I have got
passed in the council?"

Anna had heard nothing of this act, and she felt conscience-stricken at
having been able so readily to forget what was to him of such
importance.

"Here, on the other hand, it has made a great sensation," he said, with
a complacent smile.

She saw that Alexey Alexandrovitch wanted to tell her something pleasant
to him about it, and she brought him by questions to telling it. With
the same complacent smile he told her of the ovations he had received in
consequence of the act he had passed.

"I was very, very glad. It shows that at last a reasonable and steady
view of the matter is becoming prevalent among us."

Having drunk his second cup of tea with cream, and bread, Alexey
Alexandrovitch got up, and was going towards his study.

"And you've not been anywhere this evening? You've been dull, I expect?"
he said.

"Oh, no!" she answered, getting up after him and accompanying him across
the room to his study. "What are you reading now?" she asked.

"Just now I'm reading Duc de Lille, _Poesie des Enfers,_" he answered.
"A very remarkable book."

Anna smiled, as people smile at the weaknesses of those they love, and,
putting her hand under his, she escorted him to the door of the study.
She knew his habit, that had grown into a necessity, of reading in the
evening. She knew, too, that in spite of his official duties, which
swallowed up almost the whole of his time, he considered it his duty to
keep up with everything of note that appeared in the intellectual world.
She knew, too, that he was really interested in books dealing with
politics, philosophy, and theology, that art was utterly foreign to his
nature; but, in spite of this, or rather, in consequence of it, Alexey
Alexandrovitch never passed over anything in the world of art, but made
it his duty to read everything. She knew that in politics, in
philosophy, in theology, Alexey Alexandrovitch often had doubts, and
made investigations; but on questions of art and poetry, and, above all,
of music, of which he was totally devoid of understanding, he had the
most distinct and decided opinions. He was fond of talking about
Shakespeare, Raphael, Beethoven, of the significance of new schools of
poetry and music, all of which were classified by him with very
conspicuous consistency.

"Well, God be with you," she said at the door of the study, where a
shaded candle and a decanter of water were already put by his armchair.
"And I'll write to Moscow."

He pressed her hand, and again kissed it.

"All the same he's a good man; truthful, good-hearted, and remarkable in
his own line," Anna said to herself going back to her room, as though
she were defending him to someone who had attacked him and said that one
could not love him. "But why is it his ears stick out so strangely? Or
has he had his hair cut?"

Precisely at twelve o'clock, when Anna was still sitting at her writing
table, finishing a letter to Dolly, she heard the sound of measured
steps in slippers, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, freshly washed and combed,
with a book under his arm, came in to her.

"It's time, it's time," said he, with a meaning smile, and he went into
their bedroom.

"And what right had he to look at him like that?" thought Anna,
recalling Vronsky's glance at Alexey Alexandrovitch.

Undressing, she went into the bedroom; but her face had none of the
eagerness which, during her stay in Moscow, had fairly flashed from her
eyes and her smile; on the contrary, now the fire seemed quenched in
her, hidden somewhere far away.



Chapter 34


When Vronsky went to Moscow from Petersburg, he had left his large set
of rooms in Morskaia to his friend and favorite comrade Petritsky.

Petritsky was a young lieutenant, not particularly well-connected, and
not merely not wealthy, but always hopelessly in debt. Towards evening
he was always drunk, and he had often been locked up after all sorts of
ludicrous and disgraceful scandals, but he was a favorite both of his
comrades and his superior officers. On arriving at twelve o'clock from
the station at his flat, Vronsky saw, at the outer door, a hired
carriage familiar to him. While still outside his own door, as he rang,
he heard masculine laughter, the lisp of a feminine voice, and
Petritsky's voice. "If that's one of the villains, don't let him in!"
Vronsky told the servant not to announce him, and slipped quietly into
the first room. Baroness Shilton, a friend of Petritsky's, with a rosy
little face and flaxen hair, resplendent in a lilac satin gown, and
filling the whole room, like a canary, with her Parisian chatter, sat at
the round table making coffee. Petritsky, in his overcoat, and the
cavalry captain Kamerovsky, in full uniform, probably just come from
duty, were sitting each side of her.

"Bravo! Vronsky!" shouted Petritsky, jumping up, scraping his chair.
"Our host himself! Baroness, some coffee for him out of the new coffee
pot. Why, we didn't expect you! Hope you're satisfied with the ornament
of your study," he said, indicating the baroness. "You know each other,
of course?"

"I should think so," said Vronsky, with a bright smile, pressing the
baroness's little hand. "What next! I'm an old friend."

"You're home after a journey," said the baroness, "so I'm flying. Oh,
I'll be off this minute, if I'm in the way."

"You're home, wherever you are, baroness," said Vronsky. "How do you do,
Kamerovsky?" he added, coldly shaking hands with Kamerovsky.

"There, you never know how to say such pretty things," said the
baroness, turning to Petritsky.

"No; what's that for? After dinner I say things quite as good."

"After dinner there's no credit in them? Well, then, I'll make you some
coffee, so go and wash and get ready," said the baroness, sitting down
again, and anxiously turning the screw in the new coffee pot. "Pierre,
give me the coffee," she said, addressing Petritsky, whom she called
Pierre as a contraction of his surname, making no secret of her
relations with him. "I'll put it in."

"You'll spoil it!"

"No, I won't spoil it! Well, and your wife?" said the baroness suddenly,
interrupting Vronsky's conversation with his comrade. "We've been
marrying you here. Have you brought your wife?"

"No, baroness. I was born a Bohemian, and a Bohemian I shall die."

"So much the better, so much the better. Shake hands on it."

And the baroness, detaining Vronsky, began telling him, with many jokes,
about her last new plans of life, asking his advice.

"He persists in refusing to give me a divorce! Well, what am I to do?"
(_He_ was her husband.) "Now I want to begin a suit against him. What do
you advise? Kamerovsky, look after the coffee; it's boiling over. You
see, I'm engrossed with business! I want a lawsuit, because I must have
my property. Do you understand the folly of it, that on the pretext of
my being unfaithful to him," she said contemptuously, "he wants to get
the benefit of my fortune."

Vronsky heard with pleasure this light-hearted prattle of a pretty
woman, agreed with her, gave her half-joking counsel, and altogether
dropped at once into the tone habitual to him in talking to such women.
In his Petersburg world all people were divided into utterly opposed
classes. One, the lower class, vulgar, stupid, and, above all,
ridiculous people, who believe that one husband ought to live with the
one wife whom he has lawfully married; that a girl should be innocent, a
woman modest, and a man manly, self-controlled, and strong; that one
ought to bring up one's children, earn one's bread, and pay one's debts;
and various similar absurdities. This was the class of old-fashioned and
ridiculous people. But there was another class of people, the real
people. To this class they all belonged, and in it the great thing was
to be elegant, generous, plucky, gay, to abandon oneself without a blush
to every passion, and to laugh at everything else.

For the first moment only, Vronsky was startled after the impression of
a quite different world that he had brought with him from Moscow. But
immediately as though slipping his feet into old slippers, he dropped
back into the light-hearted, pleasant world he had always lived in.

The coffee was never really made, but spluttered over every one, and
boiled away, doing just what was required of it--that is, providing much
cause for much noise and laughter, and spoiling a costly rug and the
baroness's gown.

"Well now, good-bye, or you'll never get washed, and I shall have on my
conscience the worst sin a gentleman can commit. So you would advise a
knife to his throat?"

"To be sure, and manage that your hand may not be far from his lips.
He'll kiss your hand, and all will end satisfactorily," answered
Vronsky.

"So at the Francais!" and, with a rustle of her skirts, she vanished.

Kamerovsky got up too, and Vronsky, not waiting for him to go, shook
hands and went off to his dressing room.

While he was washing, Petritsky described to him in brief outlines his
position, as far as it had changed since Vronsky had left Petersburg. No
money at all. His father said he wouldn't give him any and pay his
debts. His tailor was trying to get him locked up, and another fellow,
too, was threatening to get him locked up. The colonel of the regiment
had announced that if these scandals did not cease he would have to
leave. As for the baroness, he was sick to death of her, especially
since she'd taken to offering continually to lend him money. But he had
found a girl--he'd show her to Vronsky--a marvel, exquisite, in the
strict Oriental style, "genre of the slave Rebecca, don't you know."
He'd had a row, too, with Berkoshov, and was going to send seconds to
him, but of course it would come to nothing. Altogether everything was
supremely amusing and jolly. And, not letting his comrade enter into
further details of his position, Petritsky proceeded to tell him all the
interesting news. As he listened to Petritsky's familiar stories in the
familiar setting of the rooms he had spent the last three years in,
Vronsky felt a delightful sense of coming back to the careless
Petersburg life that he was used to.

"Impossible!" he cried, letting down the pedal of the washing basin in
which he had been sousing his healthy red neck. "Impossible!" he cried,
at the news that Laura had flung over Fertinghof and had made up to
Mileev. "And is he as stupid and pleased as ever? Well, and how's
Buzulukov?"

"Oh, there is a tale about Buzulukov--simply lovely!" cried Petritsky.
"You know his weakness for balls, and he never misses a single court
ball. He went to a big ball in a new helmet. Have you seen the new
helmets? Very nice, lighter. Well, so he's standing.... No, I say, do
listen."

"I am listening," answered Vronsky, rubbing himself with a rough towel.

"Up comes the Grand Duchess with some ambassador or other, and, as
ill-luck would have it, she begins talking to him about the new helmets.
The Grand Duchess positively wanted to show the new helmet to the
ambassador. They see our friend standing there." (Petritsky mimicked how
he was standing with the helmet.) "The Grand Duchess asked him to give
her the helmet; he doesn't give it to her. What do you think of that?
Well, every one's winking at him, nodding, frowning--give it to her, do!
He doesn't give it to her. He's mute as a fish. Only picture it!...
Well, the ... what's his name, whatever he was ... tries to take the
helmet from him ... he won't give it up!... He pulls it from him, and
hands it to the Grand Duchess. 'Here, your Highness,' says he, 'is the
new helmet.' She turned the helmet the other side up, And--just picture
it!--plop went a pear and sweetmeats out of it, two pounds of
sweetmeats!... He'd been storing them up, the darling!"

Vronsky burst into roars of laughter. And long afterwards, when he was
talking of other things, he broke out into his healthy laugh, showing
his strong, close rows of teeth, when he thought of the helmet.

Having heard all the news, Vronsky, with the assistance of his valet,
got into his uniform, and went off to report himself. He intended, when
he had done that, to drive to his brother's and to Betsy's and to pay
several visits with a view to beginning to go into that society where he
might meet Madame Karenina. As he always did in Petersburg, he left home
not meaning to return till late at night.




PART TWO



Chapter 1


At the end of the winter, in the Shtcherbatskys' house, a consultation
was being held, which was to pronounce on the state of Kitty's health
and the measures to be taken to restore her failing strength. She had
been ill, and as spring came on she grew worse. The family doctor gave
her cod liver oil, then iron, then nitrate of silver, but as the first
and the second and the third were alike in doing no good, and as his
advice when spring came was to go abroad, a celebrated physician was
called in. The celebrated physician, a very handsome man, still
youngish, asked to examine the patient. He maintained, with peculiar
satisfaction, it seemed, that maiden modesty is a mere relic of
barbarism, and that nothing could be more natural than for a man still
youngish to handle a young girl naked. He thought it natural because he
did it every day, and felt and thought, as it seemed to him, no harm as
he did it and consequently he considered modesty in the girl not merely
as a relic of barbarism, but also as an insult to himself.

There was nothing for it but to submit, since, although all the doctors
had studied in the same school, had read the same books, and learned the
same science, and though some people said this celebrated doctor was a
bad doctor, in the princess's household and circle it was for some
reason accepted that this celebrated doctor alone had some special
knowledge, and that he alone could save Kitty. After a careful
examination and sounding of the bewildered patient, dazed with shame,
the celebrated doctor, having scrupulously washed his hands, was
standing in the drawing room talking to the prince. The prince frowned
and coughed, listening to the doctor. As a man who had seen something of
life, and neither a fool nor an invalid, he had no faith in medicine,
and in his heart was furious at the whole farce, specially as he was
perhaps the only one who fully comprehended the cause of Kitty's
illness. "Conceited blockhead!" he thought, as he listened to the
celebrated doctor's chatter about his daughter's symptoms. The doctor
was meantime with difficulty restraining the expression of his contempt
for this old gentleman, and with difficulty condescending to the level
of his intelligence. He perceived that it was no good talking to the old
man, and that the principal person in the house was the mother. Before
her he decided to scatter his pearls. At that instant the princess came
into the drawing room with the family doctor. The prince withdrew,
trying not to show how ridiculous he thought the whole performance. The
princess was distracted, and did not know what to do. She felt she had
sinned against Kitty.

"Well, doctor, decide our fate," said the princess. "Tell me
everything."

"Is there hope?" she meant to say, but her lips quivered, and she could
not utter the question. "Well, doctor?"

"Immediately, princess. I will talk it over with my colleague, and then
I will have the honor of laying my opinion before you."

"So we had better leave you?"

"As you please."

The princess went out with a sigh.

When the doctors were left alone, the family doctor began timidly
explaining his opinion, that there was a commencement of tuberculous
trouble, but ... and so on. The celebrated doctor listened to him, and
in the middle of his sentence looked at his big gold watch.

"Yes," said he. "But..."

The family doctor respectfully ceased in the middle of his observations.

"The commencement of the tuberculous process we are not, as you are
aware, able to define; till there are cavities, there is nothing
definite. But we may suspect it. And there are indications;
malnutrition, nervous excitability, and so on. The question stands thus:
in presence of indications of tuberculous process, what is to be done to
maintain nutrition?"

"But, you know, there are always moral, spiritual causes at the back in
these cases," the family doctor permitted himself to interpolate with a
subtle smile.

"Yes, that's an understood thing," responded the celebrated physician,
again glancing at his watch. "Beg pardon, is the Yausky bridge done yet,
or shall I have to drive around?" he asked. "Ah! it is. Oh, well, then I
can do it in twenty minutes. So we were saying the problem may be put
thus: to maintain nutrition and to give tone to the nerves. The one is
in close connection with the other, one must attack both sides at once."

"And how about a tour abroad?" asked the family doctor.

"I've no liking for foreign tours. And take note: if there is an early
stage of tuberculous process, of which we cannot be certain, a foreign
tour will be of no use. What is wanted is means of improving nutrition,
and not for lowering it." And the celebrated doctor expounded his plan
of treatment with Soden waters, a remedy obviously prescribed primarily
on the ground that they could do no harm.

The family doctor listened attentively and respectfully.

"But in favor of foreign travel I would urge the change of habits, the
removal from conditions calling up reminiscences. And then the mother
wishes it," he added.

"Ah! Well, in that case, to be sure, let them go. Only, those German
quacks are mischievous.... They ought to be persuaded.... Well, let them
go then."

He glanced once more at his watch.

"Oh! time's up already," And he went to the door. The celebrated doctor
announced to the princess (a feeling of what was due from him dictated
his doing so) that he ought to see the patient once more.

"What! another examination!" cried the mother, with horror.

"Oh, no, only a few details, princess."

"Come this way."

And the mother, accompanied by the doctor, went into the drawing room to
Kitty. Wasted and flushed, with a peculiar glitter in her eyes, left
there by the agony of shame she had been put through, Kitty stood in the
middle of the room. When the doctor came in she flushed crimson, and her
eyes filled with tears. All her illness and treatment struck her as a
thing so stupid, ludicrous even! Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd
as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken.
Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders? But she could not
grieve her mother, especially as her mother considered herself to blame.

"May I trouble you to sit down, princess?" the celebrated doctor said to
her.

He sat down with a smile, facing her, felt her pulse, and again began
asking her tiresome questions. She answered him, and all at once got up,
furious.

"Excuse me, doctor, but there is really no object in this. This is the
third time you've asked me the same thing."

The celebrated doctor did not take offense.

"Nervous irritability," he said to the princess, when Kitty had left the
room. "However, I had finished..."

And the doctor began scientifically explaining to the princess, as an
exceptionally intelligent woman, the condition of the young princess,
and concluded by insisting on the drinking of the waters, which were
certainly harmless. At the question: Should they go abroad? the doctor
plunged into deep meditation, as though resolving a weighty problem.
Finally his decision was pronounced: they were to go abroad, but to put
no faith in foreign quacks, and to apply to him in any need.

It seemed as though some piece of good fortune had come to pass after
the doctor had gone. The mother was much more cheerful when she went
back to her daughter, and Kitty pretended to be more cheerful. She had
often, almost always, to be pretending now.

"Really, I'm quite well, mamma. But if you want to go abroad, let's go!"
she said, and trying to appear interested in the proposed tour, she
began talking of the preparations for the journey.



Chapter 2


Soon after the doctor, Dolly had arrived. She knew that there was to be
a consultation that day, and though she was only just up after her
confinement (she had another baby, a little girl, born at the end of the
winter), though she had trouble and anxiety enough of her own, she had
left her tiny baby and a sick child, to come and hear Kitty's fate,
which was to be decided that day.

"Well, well?" she said, coming into the drawing room, without taking off
her hat. "You're all in good spirits. Good news, then?"

They tried to tell her what the doctor had said, but it appeared that
though the doctor had talked distinctly enough and at great length, it
was utterly impossible to report what he had said. The only point of
interest was that it was settled they should go abroad.

Dolly could not help sighing. Her dearest friend, her sister, was going
away. And her life was not a cheerful one. Her relations with Stepan
Arkadyevitch after their reconciliation had become humiliating. The
union Anna had cemented turned out to be of no solid character, and
family harmony was breaking down again at the same point. There had been
nothing definite, but Stepan Arkadyevitch was hardly ever at home;
money, too, was hardly ever forthcoming, and Dolly was continually
tortured by suspicions of infidelity, which she tried to dismiss,
dreading the agonies of jealousy she had been through already. The first
onslaught of jealousy, once lived through, could never come back again,
and even the discovery of infidelities could never now affect her as it
had the first time. Such a discovery now would only mean breaking up
family habits, and she let herself be deceived, despising him and still
more herself, for the weakness. Besides this, the care of her large
family was a constant worry to her: first, the nursing of her young baby
did not go well, then the nurse had gone away, now one of the children
had fallen ill.

"Well, how are all of you?" asked her mother.

"Ah, mamma, we have plenty of troubles of our own. Lili is ill, and I'm
afraid it's scarlatina. I have come here now to hear about Kitty, and
then I shall shut myself up entirely, if--God forbid--it should be
scarlatina."

The old prince too had come in from his study after the doctor's
departure, and after presenting his cheek to Dolly, and saying a few
words to her, he turned to his wife:

"How have you settled it? you're going? Well, and what do you mean to do
with me?"

"I suppose you had better stay here, Alexander," said his wife.

"That's as you like."

"Mamma, why shouldn't father come with us?" said Kitty. "It would be
nicer for him and for us too."

The old prince got up and stroked Kitty's hair. She lifted her head and
looked at him with a forced smile. It always seemed to her that he
understood her better than anyone in the family, though he did not say
much about her. Being the youngest, she was her father's favorite, and
she fancied that his love gave him insight. When now her glance met his
blue kindly eyes looking intently at her, it seemed to her that he saw
right through her, and understood all that was not good that was passing
within her. Reddening, she stretched out towards him expecting a kiss,
but he only patted her hair and said:

"These stupid chignons! There's no getting at the real daughter. One
simply strokes the bristles of dead women. Well, Dolinka," he turned to
his elder daughter, "what's your young buck about, hey?"

"Nothing, father," answered Dolly, understanding that her husband was
meant. "He's always out; I scarcely ever see him," she could not resist
adding with a sarcastic smile.

"Why, hasn't he gone into the country yet--to see about selling that
forest?"

"No, he's still getting ready for the journey."

"Oh, that's it!" said the prince. "And so am I to be getting ready for a
journey too? At your service," he said to his wife, sitting down. "And I
tell you what, Katia," he went on to his younger daughter, "you must
wake up one fine day and say to yourself: Why, I'm quite well, and
merry, and going out again with father for an early morning walk in the
frost. Hey?"

What her father said seemed simple enough, yet at these words Kitty
became confused and overcome like a detected criminal. "Yes, he sees it
all, he understands it all, and in these words he's telling me that
though I'm ashamed, I must get over my shame." She could not pluck up
spirit to make any answer. She tried to begin, and all at once burst
into tears, and rushed out of the room.

"See what comes of your jokes!" the princess pounced down on her
husband. "You're always..." she began a string of reproaches.

The prince listened to the princess's scolding rather a long while
without speaking, but his face was more and more frowning.

"She's so much to be pitied, poor child, so much to be pitied, and you
don't feel how it hurts her to hear the slightest reference to the cause
of it. Ah! to be so mistaken in people!" said the princess, and by the
change in her tone both Dolly and the prince knew she was speaking of
Vronsky. "I don't know why there aren't laws against such base,
dishonorable people."

"Ah, I can't bear to hear you!" said the prince gloomily, getting up
from his low chair, and seeming anxious to get away, yet stopping in the
doorway. "There are laws, madam, and since you've challenged me to it,
I'll tell you who's to blame for it all: you and you, you and nobody
else. Laws against such young gallants there have always been, and there
still are! Yes, if there has been nothing that ought not to have been,
old as I am, I'd have called him out to the barrier, the young dandy.
Yes, and now you physic her and call in these quacks."

The prince apparently had plenty more to say, but as soon as the
princess heard his tone she subsided at once, and became penitent, as
she always did on serious occasions.

"Alexander, Alexander," she whispered, moving to him and beginning to
weep.

As soon as she began to cry the prince too calmed down. He went up to
her.

"There, that's enough, that's enough! You're wretched too, I know. It
can't be helped. There's no great harm done. God is merciful ...
thanks..." he said, not knowing what he was saying, as he responded to
the tearful kiss of the princess that he felt on his hand. And the
prince went out of the room.

Before this, as soon as Kitty went out of the room in tears, Dolly, with
her motherly, family instincts, had promptly perceived that here a
woman's work lay before her, and she prepared to do it. She took off her
hat, and, morally speaking, tucked up her sleeves and prepared for
action. While her mother was attacking her father, she tried to restrain
her mother, so far as filial reverence would allow. During the prince's
outburst she was silent; she felt ashamed for her mother, and tender
towards her father for so quickly being kind again. But when her father
left them she made ready for what was the chief thing needful--to go to
Kitty and console her.

"I'd been meaning to tell you something for a long while, mamma: did you
know that Levin meant to make Kitty an offer when he was here the last
time? He told Stiva so."

"Well, what then? I don't understand..."

"So did Kitty perhaps refuse him?... She didn't tell you so?"

"No, she has said nothing to me either of one or the other; she's too
proud. But I know it's all on account of the other."

"Yes, but suppose she has refused Levin, and she wouldn't have refused
him if it hadn't been for the other, I know. And then, he has deceived
her so horribly."

It was too terrible for the princess to think how she had sinned against
her daughter, and she broke out angrily.

"Oh, I really don't understand! Nowadays they will all go their own way,
and mothers haven't a word to say in anything, and then..."

"Mamma, I'll go up to her."

"Well, do. Did I tell you not to?" said her mother.



Chapter 3


When she went into Kitty's little room, a pretty, pink little room, full
of knick-knacks in _vieux saxe,_ as fresh, and pink, and white, and gay
as Kitty herself had been two months ago, Dolly remembered how they had
decorated the room the year before together, with what love and gaiety.
Her heart turned cold when she saw Kitty sitting on a low chair near the
door, her eyes fixed immovably on a corner of the rug. Kitty glanced at
her sister, and the cold, rather ill-tempered expression of her face did
not change.

"I'm just going now, and I shall have to keep in and you won't be able
to come to see me," said Dolly, sitting down beside her. "I want to talk
to you."

"What about?" Kitty asked swiftly, lifting her head in dismay.

"What should it be, but your trouble?"

"I have no trouble."

"Nonsense, Kitty. Do you suppose I could help knowing? I know all about
it. And believe me, it's of so little consequence.... We've all been
through it."

Kitty did not speak, and her face had a stern expression.

"He's not worth your grieving over him," pursued Darya Alexandrovna,
coming straight to the point.

"No, because he has treated me with contempt," said Kitty, in a breaking
voice. "Don't talk of it! Please, don't talk of it!"

"But who can have told you so? No one has said that. I'm certain he was
in love with you, and would still be in love with you, if it hadn't...

"Oh, the most awful thing of all for me is this sympathizing!" shrieked
Kitty, suddenly flying into a passion. She turned round on her chair,
flushed crimson, and rapidly moving her fingers, pinched the clasp of
her belt first with one hand and then with the other. Dolly knew this
trick her sister had of clenching her hands when she was much excited;
she knew, too, that in moments of excitement Kitty was capable of
forgetting herself and saying a great deal too much, and Dolly would
have soothed her, but it was too late.

"What, what is it you want to make me feel, eh?" said Kitty quickly.
"That I've been in love with a man who didn't care a straw for me, and
that I'm dying of love for him? And this is said to me by my own sister,
who imagines that ... that ... that she's sympathizing with me!... I
don't want these condolences and humbug!"

"Kitty, you're unjust."

"Why are you tormenting me?"

"But I ... quite the contrary ... I see you're unhappy..."

But Kitty in her fury did not hear her.

"I've nothing to grieve over and be comforted about. I am too proud ever
to allow myself to care for a man who does not love me."

"Yes, I don't say so either.... Only one thing. Tell me the truth," said
Darya Alexandrovna, taking her by the hand: "tell me, did Levin speak to
you?..."

The mention of Levin's name seemed to deprive Kitty of the last vestige
of self-control. She leaped up from her chair, and flinging her clasp on
the ground, she gesticulated rapidly with her hands and said:

"Why bring Levin in too? I can't understand what you want to torment me
for. I've told you, and I say it again, that I have some pride, and
never, _never_ would I do as you're doing--go back to a man who's
deceived you, who has cared for another woman. I can't understand it!
You may, but I can't!"

And saying these words she glanced at her sister, and seeing that Dolly
sat silent, her head mournfully bowed, Kitty, instead of running out of
the room as she had meant to do, sat down near the door, and hid her
face in her handkerchief.

The silence lasted for two minutes: Dolly was thinking of herself. That
humiliation of which she was always conscious came back to her with a
peculiar bitterness when her sister reminded her of it. She had not
looked for such cruelty in her sister, and she was angry with her. But
suddenly she heard the rustle of a skirt, and with it the sound of
heart-rending, smothered sobbing, and felt arms about her neck. Kitty
was on her knees before her.

"Dolinka, I am so, so wretched!" she whispered penitently. And the sweet
face covered with tears hid itself in Darya Alexandrovna's skirt.

As though tears were the indispensable oil, without which the machinery
of mutual confidence could not run smoothly between the two sisters, the
sisters after their tears talked, not of what was uppermost in their
minds, but, though they talked of outside matters, they understood each
other. Kitty knew that the words she had uttered in anger about her
husband's infidelity and her humiliating position had cut her poor
sister to the heart, but that she had forgiven her. Dolly for her part
knew all she had wanted to find out. She felt certain that her surmises
were correct; that Kitty's misery, her inconsolable misery, was due
precisely to the fact that Levin had made her an offer and she had
refused him, and Vronsky had deceived her, and that she was fully
prepared to love Levin and to detest Vronsky. Kitty said not a word of
that; she talked of nothing but her spiritual condition.

"I have nothing to make me miserable," she said, getting calmer; "but
can you understand that everything has become hateful, loathsome, coarse
to me, and I myself most of all? You can't imagine what loathsome
thoughts I have about everything."

"Why, whatever loathsome thoughts can you have?" asked Dolly, smiling.

"The most utterly loathsome and coarse: I can't tell you. It's not
unhappiness, or low spirits, but much worse. As though everything that
was good in me was all hidden away, and nothing was left but the most
loathsome. Come, how am I to tell you?" she went on, seeing the puzzled
look in her sister's eyes. "Father began saying something to me just
now.... It seems to me he thinks all I want is to be married. Mother
takes me to a ball: it seems to me she only takes me to get me married
off as soon as may be, and be rid of me. I know it's not the truth, but
I can't drive away such thoughts. Eligible suitors, as they call them--I
can't bear to see them. It seems to me they're taking stock of me and
summing me up. In old days to go anywhere in a ball dress was a simple
joy to me, I admired myself; now I feel ashamed and awkward. And then!
The doctor.... Then..." Kitty hesitated; she wanted to say further that
ever since this change had taken place in her, Stepan Arkadyevitch had
become insufferably repulsive to her, and that she could not see him
without the grossest and most hideous conceptions rising before her
imagination.

"Oh, well, everything presents itself to me, in the coarsest, most
loathsome light," she went on. "That's my illness. Perhaps it will pass
off."

"But you mustn't think about it."

"I can't help it. I'm never happy except with the children at your
house."

"What a pity you can't be with me!"

"Oh, yes, I'm coming. I've had scarlatina, and I'll persuade mamma to
let me."

Kitty insisted on having her way, and went to stay at her sister's and
nursed the children all through the scarlatina, for scarlatina it turned
out to be. The two sisters brought all the six children successfully
through it, but Kitty was no better in health, and in Lent the
Shtcherbatskys went abroad.



Chapter 4


The highest Petersburg society is essentially one: in it everyone knows
everyone else, everyone even visits everyone else. But this great set
has its subdivisions. Anna Arkadyevna Karenina had friends and close
ties in three different circles of this highest society. One circle was
her husband's government official set, consisting of his colleagues and
subordinates, brought together in the most various and capricious
manner, and belonging to different social strata. Anna found it
difficult now to recall the feeling of almost awe-stricken reverence
which she had at first entertained for these persons. Now she knew all
of them as people know one another in a country town; she knew their
habits and weaknesses, and where the shoe pinched each one of them. She
knew their relations with one another and with the head authorities,
knew who was for whom, and how each one maintained his position, and
where they agreed and disagreed. But the circle of political, masculine
interests had never interested her, in spite of countess Lidia
Ivanovna's influence, and she avoided it.

Another little set with which Anna was in close relations was the one by
means of which Alexey Alexandrovitch had made his career. The center of
this circle was the Countess Lidia Ivanovna. It was a set made up of
elderly, ugly, benevolent, and godly women, and clever, learned, and
ambitious men. One of the clever people belonging to the set had called
it "the conscience of Petersburg society." Alexey Alexandrovitch had the
highest esteem for this circle, and Anna with her special gift for
getting on with everyone, had in the early days of her life in
Petersburg made friends in this circle also. Now, since her return from
Moscow, she had come to feel this set insufferable. It seemed to her
that both she and all of them were insincere, and she felt so bored and
ill at ease in that world that she went to see the Countess Lidia
Ivanovna as little as possible.

The third circle with which Anna had ties was preeminently the
fashionable world--the world of balls, of dinners, of sumptuous dresses,
the world that hung on to the court with one hand, so as to avoid
sinking to the level of the demi-monde. For the demi-monde the members
of that fashionable world believed that they despised, though their
tastes were not merely similar, but in fact identical. Her connection
with this circle was kept up through Princess Betsy Tverskaya, her
cousin's wife, who had an income of a hundred and twenty thousand
roubles, and who had taken a great fancy to Anna ever since she first
came out, showed her much attention, and drew her into her set, making
fun of Countess Lidia Ivanovna's coterie.

"When I'm old and ugly I'll be the same," Betsy used to say; "but for a
pretty young woman like you it's early days for that house of charity."

Anna had at first avoided as far as she could Princess Tverskaya's
world, because it necessitated an expenditure beyond her means, and
besides in her heart she preferred the first circle. But since her visit
to Moscow she had done quite the contrary. She avoided her
serious-minded friends, and went out into the fashionable world. There
she met Vronsky, and experienced an agitating joy at those meetings. She
met Vronsky specially often at Betsy's for Betsy was a Vronsky by birth
and his cousin. Vronsky was everywhere where he had any chance of
meeting Anna, and speaking to her, when he could, of his love. She gave
him no encouragement, but every time she met him there surged up in her
heart that same feeling of quickened life that had come upon her that
day in the railway carriage when she saw him for the first time. She was
conscious herself that her delight sparkled in her eyes and curved her
lips into a smile, and she could not quench the expression of this
delight.

At first Anna sincerely believed that she was displeased with him for
daring to pursue her. Soon after her return from Moscow, on arriving at
a _soiree_ where she had expected to meet him, and not finding him
there, she realized distinctly from the rush of disappointment that she
had been deceiving herself, and that this pursuit was not merely not
distasteful to her, but that it made the whole interest of her life.

A celebrated singer was singing for the second time, and all the
fashionable world was in the theater. Vronsky, seeing his cousin from
his stall in the front row, did not wait till the entr'acte, but went to
her box.

"Why didn't you come to dinner?" she said to him. "I marvel at the
second sight of lovers," she added with a smile, so that no one but he
could hear; "_she wasn't there_. But come after the opera."

Vronsky looked inquiringly at her. She nodded. He thanked her by a
smile, and sat down beside her.

"But how I remember your jeers!" continued Princess Betsy, who took a
peculiar pleasure in following up this passion to a successful issue.
"What's become of all that? You're caught, my dear boy."

"That's my one desire, to be caught," answered Vronsky, with his serene,
good-humored smile. "If I complain of anything it's only that I'm not
caught enough, to tell the truth. I begin to lose hope."

"Why, whatever hope can you have?" said Betsy, offended on behalf of her
friend. "_Entendons nous...._" But in her eyes there were gleams of
light that betrayed that she understood perfectly and precisely as he
did what hope he might have.

"None whatever," said Vronsky, laughing and showing his even rows of
teeth. "Excuse me," he added, taking an opera glass out of her hand, and
proceeding to scrutinize, over her bare shoulder, the row of boxes
facing them. "I'm afraid I'm becoming ridiculous."

He was very well aware that he ran no risk of being ridiculous in the
eyes of Betsy or any other fashionable people. He was very well aware
that in their eyes the position of an unsuccessful lover of a girl, or
of any woman free to marry, might be ridiculous. But the position of a
man pursuing a married woman, and, regardless of everything, staking his
life on drawing her into adultery, has something fine and grand about
it, and can never be ridiculous; and so it was with a proud and gay
smile under his mustaches that he lowered the opera glass and looked at
his cousin.

"But why was it you didn't come to dinner?" she said, admiring him.

"I must tell you about that. I was busily employed, and doing what, do
you suppose? I'll give you a hundred guesses, a thousand ... you'd never
guess. I've been reconciling a husband with a man who'd insulted his
wife. Yes, really!"

"Well, did you succeed?"

"Almost."

"You really must tell me about it," she said, getting up. "Come to me in
the next _entr'acte._"

"I can't; I'm going to the French theater."

"From Nilsson?" Betsy queried in horror, though she could not herself
have distinguished Nilsson's voice from any chorus girl's.

"Can't help it. I've an appointment there, all to do with my mission of
peace."

"'Blessed are the peacemakers; theirs is the kingdom of heaven,'" said
Betsy, vaguely recollecting she had heard some similar saying from
someone. "Very well, then, sit down, and tell me what it's all about."

And she sat down again.



Chapter 5


"This is rather indiscreet, but it's so good it's an awful temptation to
tell the story," said Vronsky, looking at her with his laughing eyes.
"I'm not going to mention any names."

"But I shall guess, so much the better."

"Well, listen: two festive young men were driving--"

"Officers of your regiment, of course?"

"I didn't say they were officers,--two young men who had been lunching."

"In other words, drinking."

"Possibly. They were driving on their way to dinner with a friend in the
most festive state of mind. And they beheld a pretty woman in a hired
sledge; she overtakes them, looks round at them, and, so they fancy
anyway, nods to them and laughs. They, of course, follow her. They
gallop at full speed. To their amazement, the fair one alights at the
entrance of the very house to which they were going. The fair one darts
upstairs to the top story. They get a glimpse of red lips under a short
veil, and exquisite little feet."

"You describe it with such feeling that I fancy you must be one of the
two."

"And after what you said, just now! Well, the young men go in to their
comrade's; he was giving a farewell dinner. There they certainly did
drink a little too much, as one always does at farewell dinners. And at
dinner they inquire who lives at the top in that house. No one knows;
only their host's valet, in answer to their inquiry whether any 'young
ladies' are living on the top floor, answered that there were a great
many of them about there. After dinner the two young men go into their
host's study, and write a letter to the unknown fair one. They compose
an ardent epistle, a declaration in fact, and they carry the letter
upstairs themselves, so as to elucidate whatever might appear not
perfectly intelligible in the letter."

"Why are you telling me these horrible stories? Well?"

"They ring. A maid-servant opens the door, they hand her the letter, and
assure the maid that they're both so in love that they'll die on the
spot at the door. The maid, stupefied, carries in their messages. All at
once a gentleman appears with whiskers like sausages, as red as a
lobster, announces that there is no one living in the flat except his
wife, and sends them both about their business."

"How do you know he had whiskers like sausages, as you say?"

"Ah, you shall hear. I've just been to make peace between them."

"Well, and what then?"

"That's the most interesting part of the story. It appears that it's a
happy couple, a government clerk and his lady. The government clerk
lodges a complaint, and I became a mediator, and such a mediator!... I
assure you Talleyrand couldn't hold a candle to me."

"Why, where was the difficulty?"

"Ah, you shall hear.... We apologize in due form: we are in despair, we
entreat forgiveness for the unfortunate misunderstanding. The government
clerk with the sausages begins to melt, but he, too, desires to express
his sentiments, and as soon as ever he begins to express them, he begins
to get hot and say nasty things, and again I'm obliged to trot out all
my diplomatic talents. I allowed that their conduct was bad, but I urged
him to take into consideration their heedlessness, their youth; then,
too, the young men had only just been lunching together. 'You
understand. They regret it deeply, and beg you to overlook their
misbehavior.' The government clerk was softened once more. 'I consent,
count, and am ready to overlook it; but you perceive that my wife--my
wife's a respectable woman--has been exposed to the persecution, and
insults, and effrontery of young upstarts, scoundrels....' And you must
understand, the young upstarts are present all the while, and I have to
keep the peace between them. Again I call out all my diplomacy, and
again as soon as the thing was about at an end, our friend the
government clerk gets hot and red, and his sausages stand on end with
wrath, and once more I launch out into diplomatic wiles."

"Ah, he must tell you this story!" said Betsy, laughing, to a lady who
came into her box. "He has been making me laugh so."

"Well, _bonne chance_!" she added, giving Vronsky one finger of the hand
in which she held her fan, and with a shrug of her shoulders she
twitched down the bodice of her gown that had worked up, so as to be
duly naked as she moved forward towards the footlights into the light of
the gas, and the sight of all eyes.

Vronsky drove to the French theater, where he really had to see the
colonel of his regiment, who never missed a single performance there. He
wanted to see him, to report on the result of his mediation, which had
occupied and amused him for the last three days. Petritsky, whom he
liked, was implicated in the affair, and the other culprit was a capital
fellow and first-rate comrade, who had lately joined the regiment, the
young Prince Kedrov. And what was most important, the interests of the
regiment were involved in it too.

Both the young men were in Vronsky's company. The colonel of the
regiment was waited upon by the government clerk, Venden, with a
complaint against his officers, who had insulted his wife. His young
wife, so Venden told the story--he had been married half a year--was at
church with her mother, and suddenly overcome by indisposition, arising
from her interesting condition, she could not remain standing, she drove
home in the first sledge, a smart-looking one, she came across. On the
spot the officers set off in pursuit of her; she was alarmed, and
feeling still more unwell, ran up the staircase home. Venden himself, on
returning from his office, heard a ring at their bell and voices, went
out, and seeing the intoxicated officers with a letter, he had turned
them out. He asked for exemplary punishment.

"Yes, it's all very well," said the colonel to Vronsky, whom he had
invited to come and see him. "Petritsky's becoming impossible. Not a
week goes by without some scandal. This government clerk won't let it
drop, he'll go on with the thing."

Vronsky saw all the thanklessness of the business, and that there could
be no question of a duel in it, that everything must be done to soften
the government clerk, and hush the matter up. The colonel had called in
Vronsky just because he knew him to be an honorable and intelligent man,
and, more than all, a man who cared for the honor of the regiment. They
talked it over, and decided that Petritsky and Kedrov must go with
Vronsky to Venden's to apologize. The colonel and Vronsky were both
fully aware that Vronsky's name and rank would be sure to contribute
greatly to the softening of the injured husband's feelings.

And these two influences were not in fact without effect; though the
result remained, as Vronsky had described, uncertain.

On reaching the French theater, Vronsky retired to the foyer with the
colonel, and reported to him his success, or non-success. The colonel,
thinking it all over, made up his mind not to pursue the matter further,
but then for his own satisfaction proceeded to cross-examine Vronsky
about his interview; and it was a long while before he could restrain
his laughter, as Vronsky described how the government clerk, after
subsiding for a while, would suddenly flare up again, as he recalled the
details, and how Vronsky, at the last half word of conciliation,
skillfully maneuvered a retreat, shoving Petritsky out before him.

"It's a disgraceful story, but killing. Kedrov really can't fight the
gentleman! Was he so awfully hot?" he commented, laughing. "But what do
you say to Claire today? She's marvelous," he went on, speaking of a new
French actress. "However often you see her, every day she's different.
It's only the French who can do that."



Chapter 6


Princess Betsy drove home from the theater, without waiting for the end
of the last act. She had only just time to go into her dressing room,
sprinkle her long, pale face with powder, rub it, set her dress to
rights, and order tea in the big drawing room, when one after another
carriages drove up to her huge house in Bolshaia Morskaia. Her guests
stepped out at the wide entrance, and the stout porter, who used to read
the newspapers in the mornings behind the glass door, to the edification
of the passers-by, noiselessly opened the immense door, letting the
visitors pass by him into the house.

Almost at the same instant the hostess, with freshly arranged coiffure
and freshened face, walked in at one door and her guests at the other
door of the drawing room, a large room with dark walls, downy rugs, and
a brightly lighted table, gleaming with the light of candles, white
cloth, silver samovar, and transparent china tea things.

The hostess sat down at the table and took off her gloves. Chairs were
set with the aid of footmen, moving almost imperceptibly about the room;
the party settled itself, divided into two groups: one round the samovar
near the hostess, the other at the opposite end of the drawing room,
round the handsome wife of an ambassador, in black velvet, with sharply
defined black eyebrows. In both groups conversation wavered, as it
always does, for the first few minutes, broken up by meetings,
greetings, offers of tea, and as it were, feeling about for something to
rest upon.

"She's exceptionally good as an actress; one can see she's studied
Kaulbach," said a diplomatic attache in the group round the ambassador's
wife. "Did you notice how she fell down?..."

"Oh, please, don't let us talk about Nilsson! No one can possibly say
anything new about her," said a fat, red-faced, flaxen-headed lady,
without eyebrows and chignon, wearing an old silk dress. This was
Princess Myakaya, noted for her simplicity and the roughness of her
manners, and nicknamed _enfant terrible_. Princess Myakaya, sitting in
the middle between the two groups, and listening to both, took part in
the conversation first of one and then of the other. "Three people have
used that very phrase about Kaulbach to me today already, just as though
they had made a compact about it. And I can't see why they liked that
remark so."

The conversation was cut short by this observation, and a new subject
had to be thought of again.

"Do tell me something amusing but not spiteful," said the ambassador's
wife, a great proficient in the art of that elegant conversation called
by the English, _small talk_. She addressed the attache, who was at a
loss now what to begin upon.

"They say that that's a difficult task, that nothing's amusing that
isn't spiteful," he began with a smile. "But I'll try. Get me a subject.
It all lies in the subject. If a subject's given me, it's easy to spin
something round it. I often think that the celebrated talkers of the
last century would have found it difficult to talk cleverly now.
Everything clever is so stale..."

"That has been said long ago," the ambassador's wife interrupted him,
laughing.

The conversation began amiably, but just because it was too amiable, it
came to a stop again. They had to have recourse to the sure,
never-failing topic--gossip.

"Don't you think there's something Louis Quinze about Tushkevitch?" he
said, glancing towards a handsome, fair-haired young man, standing at
the table.

"Oh, yes! He's in the same style as the drawing room and that's why it
is he's so often here."

This conversation was maintained, since it rested on allusions to what
could not be talked of in that room--that is to say, of the relations of
Tushkevitch with their hostess.

Round the samovar and the hostess the conversation had been meanwhile
vacillating in just the same way between three inevitable topics: the
latest piece of public news, the theater, and scandal. It, too, came
finally to rest on the last topic, that is, ill-natured gossip.

"Have you heard the Maltishtcheva woman--the mother, not the
daughter--has ordered a costume in _diable rose_ color?"

"Nonsense! No, that's too lovely!"

"I wonder that with her sense--for she's not a fool, you know--that she
doesn't see how funny she is."

Everyone had something to say in censure or ridicule of the luckless
Madame Maltishtcheva, and the conversation crackled merrily, like a
burning faggot-stack.

The husband of Princess Betsy, a good-natured fat man, an ardent
collector of engravings, hearing that his wife had visitors, came into
the drawing room before going to his club. Stepping noiselessly over the
thick rugs, he went up to Princess Myakaya.

"How did you like Nilsson?" he asked.

"Oh, how can you steal upon anyone like that! How you startled me!" she
responded. "Please don't talk to me about the opera; you know nothing
about music. I'd better meet you on your own ground, and talk about your
majolica and engravings. Come now, what treasure have you been buying
lately at the old curiosity shops?"

"Would you like me to show you? But you don't understand such things."

"Oh, do show me! I've been learning about them at those--what's their
names?... the bankers ... they've some splendid engravings. They showed
them to us."

"Why, have you been at the Schuetzburgs?" asked the hostess from the
samovar.

"Yes, _ma chere_. They asked my husband and me to dinner, and told us
the sauce at that dinner cost a hundred pounds," Princess Myakaya said,
speaking loudly, and conscious everyone was listening; "and very nasty
sauce it was, some green mess. We had to ask them, and I made them sauce
for eighteen pence, and everybody was very much pleased with it. I can't
run to hundred-pound sauces."

"She's unique!" said the lady of the house.

"Marvelous!" said someone.

The sensation produced by Princess Myakaya's speeches was always unique,
and the secret of the sensation she produced lay in the fact that though
she spoke not always appropriately, as now, she said simple things with
some sense in them. In the society in which she lived such plain
statements produced the effect of the wittiest epigram. Princess Myakaya
could never see why it had that effect, but she knew it had, and took
advantage of it.

As everyone had been listening while Princess Myakaya spoke, and so the
conversation around the ambassador's wife had dropped, Princess Betsy
tried to bring the whole party together, and turned to the ambassador's
wife.

"Will you really not have tea? You should come over here by us."

"No, we're very happy here," the ambassador's wife responded with a
smile, and she went on with the conversation that had been begun.

It was a very agreeable conversation. They were criticizing the
Karenins, husband and wife.

"Anna is quite changed since her stay in Moscow. There's something
strange about her," said her friend.

"The great change is that she brought back with her the shadow of Alexey
Vronsky," said the ambassador's wife.

"Well, what of it? There's a fable of Grimm's about a man without a
shadow, a man who's lost his shadow. And that's his punishment for
something. I never could understand how it was a punishment. But a woman
must dislike being without a shadow."

"Yes, but women with a shadow usually come to a bad end," said Anna's
friend.

"Bad luck to your tongue!" said Princess Myakaya suddenly. "Madame
Karenina's a splendid woman. I don't like her husband, but I like her
very much."

"Why don't you like her husband? He's such a remarkable man," said the
ambassador's wife. "My husband says there are few statesmen like him in
Europe."

"And my husband tells me just the same, but I don't believe it," said
Princess Myakaya. "If our husbands didn't talk to us, we should see the
facts as they are. Alexey Alexandrovitch, to my thinking, is simply a
fool. I say it in a whisper ... but doesn't it really make everything
clear? Before, when I was told to consider him clever, I kept looking
for his ability, and thought myself a fool for not seeing it; but
directly I said, _he's a fool,_ though only in a whisper, everything's
explained, isn't it?"

"How spiteful you are today!"

"Not a bit. I'd no other way out of it. One of the two had to be a fool.
And, well, you know one can't say that of oneself."

"'No one is satisfied with his fortune, and everyone is satisfied with
his wit.'" The attache repeated the French saying.

"That's just it, just it," Princess Myakaya turned to him. "But the
point is that I won't abandon Anna to your mercies. She's so nice, so
charming. How can she help it if they're all in love with her, and
follow her about like shadows?"

"Oh, I had no idea of blaming her for it," Anna's friend said in
self-defense.

"If no one follows us about like a shadow, that's no proof that we've
any right to blame her."

And having duly disposed of Anna's friend, the Princess Myakaya got up,
and together with the ambassador's wife, joined the group at the table,
where the conversation was dealing with the king of Prussia.

"What wicked gossip were you talking over there?" asked Betsy.

"About the Karenins. The princess gave us a sketch of Alexey
Alexandrovitch," said the ambassador's wife with a smile, as she sat
down at the table.

"Pity we didn't hear it!" said Princess Betsy, glancing towards the
door. "Ah, here you are at last!" she said, turning with a smile to
Vronsky, as he came in.

Vronsky was not merely acquainted with all the persons whom he was
meeting here; he saw them all every day; and so he came in with the
quiet manner with which one enters a room full of people from whom one
has only just parted.

"Where do I come from?" he said, in answer to a question from the
ambassador's wife. "Well, there's no help for it, I must confess. From
the _opera bouffe_. I do believe I've seen it a hundred times, and
always with fresh enjoyment. It's exquisite! I know it's disgraceful,
but I go to sleep at the opera, and I sit out the _opera bouffe_ to the
last minute, and enjoy it. This evening..."

He mentioned a French actress, and was going to tell something about
her; but the ambassador's wife, with playful horror, cut him short.

"Please don't tell us about that horror."

"All right, I won't especially as everyone knows those horrors."

"And we should all go to see them if it were accepted as the correct
thing, like the opera," chimed in Princess Myakaya.



Chapter 7


Steps were heard at the door, and Princess Betsy, knowing it was Madame
Karenina, glanced at Vronsky. He was looking towards the door, and his
face wore a strange new expression. Joyfully, intently, and at the same
time timidly, he gazed at the approaching figure, and slowly he rose to
his feet. Anna walked into the drawing room. Holding herself extremely
erect, as always, looking straight before her, and moving with her
swift, resolute, and light step, that distinguished her from all other
society women, she crossed the short space to her hostess, shook hands
with her, smiled, and with the same smile looked around at Vronsky.
Vronsky bowed low and pushed a chair up for her.

She acknowledged this only by a slight nod, flushed a little, and
frowned. But immediately, while rapidly greeting her acquaintances, and
shaking the hands proffered to her, she addressed Princess Betsy:

"I have been at Countess Lidia's, and meant to have come here earlier,
but I stayed on. Sir John was there. He's very interesting."

"Oh, that's this missionary?"

"Yes; he told us about the life in India, most interesting things."

The conversation, interrupted by her coming in, flickered up again like
the light of a lamp being blown out.

"Sir John! Yes, Sir John; I've seen him. He speaks well. The Vlassieva
girl's quite in love with him."

"And is it true the younger Vlassieva girl's to marry Topov?"

"Yes, they say it's quite a settled thing."

"I wonder at the parents! They say it's a marriage for love."

"For love? What antediluvian notions you have! Can one talk of love in
these days?" said the ambassador's wife.

"What's to be done? It's a foolish old fashion that's kept up still,"
said Vronsky.

"So much the worse for those who keep up the fashion. The only happy
marriages I know are marriages of prudence."

"Yes, but then how often the happiness of these prudent marriages flies
away like dust just because that passion turns up that they have refused
to recognize," said Vronsky.

"But by marriages of prudence we mean those in which both parties have
sown their wild oats already. That's like scarlatina--one has to go
through it and get it over."

"Then they ought to find out how to vaccinate for love, like smallpox."

"I was in love in my young days with a deacon," said the Princess
Myakaya. "I don't know that it did me any good."

"No; I imagine, joking apart, that to know love, one must make mistakes
and then correct them," said Princess Betsy.

"Even after marriage?" said the ambassador's wife playfully.

"'It's never too late to mend.'" The attache repeated the English
proverb.

"Just so," Betsy agreed; "one must make mistakes and correct them. What
do you think about it?" she turned to Anna, who, with a faintly
perceptible resolute smile on her lips, was listening in silence to the
conversation.

"I think," said Anna, playing with the glove she had taken off, "I think
... of so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many
kinds of love."

Vronsky was gazing at Anna, and with a fainting heart waiting for what
she would say. He sighed as after a danger escaped when she uttered
these words.

Anna suddenly turned to him.

"Oh, I have had a letter from Moscow. They write me that Kitty
Shtcherbatskaya's very ill."

"Really?" said Vronsky, knitting his brows.

Anna looked sternly at him.

"That doesn't interest you?"

"On the contrary, it does, very much. What was it exactly they told you,
if I may know?" he questioned.

Anna got up and went to Betsy.

"Give me a cup of tea," she said, standing at her table.

While Betsy was pouring out the tea, Vronsky went up to Anna.

"What is it they write to you?" he repeated.

"I often think men have no understanding of what's not honorable though
they're always talking of it," said Anna, without answering him. "I've
wanted to tell you so a long while," she added, and moving a few steps
away, she sat down at a table in a corner covered with albums.

"I don't quite understand the meaning of your words," he said, handing
her the cup.

She glanced towards the sofa beside her, and he instantly sat down.

"Yes, I have been wanting to tell you," she said, not looking at him.
"You behaved wrongly, very wrongly."

"Do you suppose I don't know that I've acted wrongly? But who was the
cause of my doing so?"

"What do you say that to me for?" she said, glancing severely at him.

"You know what for," he answered boldly and joyfully, meeting her glance
and not dropping his eyes.

Not he, but she, was confused.

"That only shows you have no heart," she said. But her eyes said that
she knew he had a heart, and that was why she was afraid of him.

"What you spoke of just now was a mistake, and not love."

"Remember that I have forbidden you to utter that word, that hateful
word," said Anna, with a shudder. But at once she felt that by that very
word "forbidden" she had shown that she acknowledged certain rights over
him, and by that very fact was encouraging him to speak of love. "I have
long meant to tell you this," she went on, looking resolutely into his
eyes, and hot all over from the burning flush on her cheeks. "I've come
on purpose this evening, knowing I should meet you. I have come to tell
you that this must end. I have never blushed before anyone, and you
force me to feel to blame for something."

He looked at her and was struck by a new spiritual beauty in her face.

"What do you wish of me?" he said simply and seriously.

"I want you to go to Moscow and ask for Kitty's forgiveness," she said.

"You don't wish that?" he said.

He saw she was saying what she forced herself to say, not what she
wanted to say.

"If you love me, as you say," she whispered, "do so that I may be at
peace."

His face grew radiant.

"Don't you know that you're all my life to me? But I know no peace, and
I can't give it to you; all myself--and love ... yes. I can't think of
you and myself apart. You and I are one to me. And I see no chance
before us of peace for me or for you. I see a chance of despair, of
wretchedness ... or I see a chance of bliss, what bliss!... Can it be
there's no chance of it?" he murmured with his lips; but she heard.

She strained every effort of her mind to say what ought to be said. But
instead of that she let her eyes rest on him, full of love, and made no
answer.

"It's come!" he thought in ecstasy. "When I was beginning to despair,
and it seemed there would be no end--it's come! She loves me! She owns
it!"

"Then do this for me: never say such things to me, and let us be
friends," she said in words; but her eyes spoke quite differently.

"Friends we shall never be, you know that yourself. Whether we shall be
the happiest or the wretchedest of people--that's in your hands."

She would have said something, but he interrupted her.

"I ask one thing only: I ask for the right to hope, to suffer as I do.
But if even that cannot be, command me to disappear, and I disappear.
You shall not see me if my presence is distasteful to you."

"I don't want to drive you away."

"Only don't change anything, leave everything as it is," he said in a
shaky voice. "Here's your husband."

At that instant Alexey Alexandrovitch did in fact walk into the room
with his calm, awkward gait.

Glancing at his wife and Vronsky, he went up to the lady of the house,
and sitting down for a cup of tea, began talking in his deliberate,
always audible voice, in his habitual tone of banter, ridiculing
someone.

"Your Rambouillet is in full conclave," he said, looking round at all
the party; "the graces and the muses."

But Princess Betsy could not endure that tone of his--"sneering," as she
called it, using the English word, and like a skillful hostess she at
once brought him into a serious conversation on the subject of universal
conscription. Alexey Alexandrovitch was immediately interested in the
subject, and began seriously defending the new imperial decree against
Princess Betsy, who had attacked it.

Vronsky and Anna still sat at the little table.

"This is getting indecorous," whispered one lady, with an expressive
glance at Madame Karenina, Vronsky, and her husband.

"What did I tell you?" said Anna's friend.

But not only those ladies, almost everyone in the room, even the
Princess Myakaya and Betsy herself, looked several times in the
direction of the two who had withdrawn from the general circle, as
though that were a disturbing fact. Alexey Alexandrovitch was the only
person who did not once look in that direction, and was not diverted
from the interesting discussion he had entered upon.

Noticing the disagreeable impression that was being made on everyone,
Princess Betsy slipped someone else into her place to listen to Alexey
Alexandrovitch, and went up to Anna.

"I'm always amazed at the clearness and precision of your husband's
language," she said. "The most transcendental ideas seem to be within my
grasp when he's speaking."

"Oh, yes!" said Anna, radiant with a smile of happiness, and not
understanding a word of what Betsy had said. She crossed over to the big
table and took part in the general conversation.

Alexey Alexandrovitch, after staying half an hour, went up to his wife
and suggested that they should go home together. But she answered, not
looking at him, that she was staying to supper. Alexey Alexandrovitch
made his bows and withdrew.

The fat old Tatar, Madame Karenina's coachman, was with difficulty
holding one of her pair of grays, chilled with the cold and rearing at
the entrance. A footman stood opening the carriage door. The hall porter
stood holding open the great door of the house. Anna Arkadyevna, with
her quick little hand, was unfastening the lace of her sleeve, caught in
the hook of her fur cloak, and with bent head listening to the words
Vronsky murmured as he escorted her down.

"You've said nothing, of course, and I ask nothing," he was saying; "but
you know that friendship's not what I want: that there's only one
happiness in life for me, that word that you dislike so ... yes,
love!..."

"Love," she repeated slowly, in an inner voice, and suddenly, at the
very instant she unhooked the lace, she added, "Why I don't like the
word is that it means too much to me, far more than you can understand,"
and she glanced into his face. "_Au revoir!_"

She gave him her hand, and with her rapid, springy step she passed by
the porter and vanished into the carriage.

Her glance, the touch of her hand, set him aflame. He kissed the palm of
his hand where she had touched it, and went home, happy in the sense
that he had got nearer to the attainment of his aims that evening than
during the last two months.



Chapter 8


Alexey Alexandrovitch had seen nothing striking or improper in the fact
that his wife was sitting with Vronsky at a table apart, in eager
conversation with him about something. But he noticed that to the rest
of the party this appeared something striking and improper, and for that
reason it seemed to him too to be improper. He made up his mind that he
must speak of it to his wife.

On reaching home Alexey Alexandrovitch went to his study, as he usually
did, seated himself in his low chair, opened a book on the Papacy at the
place where he had laid the paper-knife in it, and read till one
o'clock, just as he usually did. But from time to time he rubbed his
high forehead and shook his head, as though to drive away something. At
his usual time he got up and made his toilet for the night. Anna
Arkadyevna had not yet come in. With a book under his arm he went
upstairs. But this evening, instead of his usual thoughts and
meditations upon official details, his thoughts were absorbed by his
wife and something disagreeable connected with her. Contrary to his
usual habit, he did not get into bed, but fell to walking up and down
the rooms with his hands clasped behind his back. He could not go to
bed, feeling that it was absolutely needful for him first to think
thoroughly over the position that had just arisen.

When Alexey Alexandrovitch had made up his mind that he must talk to his
wife about it, it had seemed a very easy and simple matter. But now,
when he began to think over the question that had just presented itself,
it seemed to him very complicated and difficult.

Alexey Alexandrovitch was not jealous. Jealousy according to his notions
was an insult to one's wife, and one ought to have confidence in one's
wife. Why one ought to have confidence--that is to say, complete
conviction that his young wife would always love him--he did not ask
himself. But he had no experience of lack of confidence, because he had
confidence in her, and told himself that he ought to have it. Now,
though his conviction that jealousy was a shameful feeling and that one
ought to feel confidence, had not broken down, he felt that he was
standing face to face with something illogical and irrational, and did
not know what was to be done. Alexey Alexandrovitch was standing face to
face with life, with the possibility of his wife's loving someone other
than himself, and this seemed to him very irrational and
incomprehensible because it was life itself. All his life Alexey
Alexandrovitch had lived and worked in official spheres, having to do
with the reflection of life. And every time he had stumbled against life
itself he had shrunk away from it. Now he experienced a feeling akin to
that of a man who, while calmly crossing a precipice by a bridge, should
suddenly discover that the bridge is broken, and that there is a chasm
below. That chasm was life itself, the bridge that artificial life in
which Alexey Alexandrovitch had lived. For the first time the question
presented itself to him of the possibility of his wife's loving someone
else, and he was horrified at it.

He did not undress, but walked up and down with his regular tread over
the resounding parquet of the dining room, where one lamp was burning,
over the carpet of the dark drawing room, in which the light was
reflected on the big new portrait of himself hanging over the sofa, and
across her boudoir, where two candles burned, lighting up the portraits
of her parents and woman friends, and the pretty knick-knacks of her
writing table, that he knew so well. He walked across her boudoir to the
bedroom door, and turned back again. At each turn in his walk,
especially at the parquet of the lighted dining room, he halted and said
to himself, "Yes, this I must decide and put a stop to; I must express
my view of it and my decision." And he turned back again. "But express
what--what decision?" he said to himself in the drawing room, and he
found no reply. "But after all," he asked himself before turning into
the boudoir, "what has occurred? Nothing. She was talking a long while
with him. But what of that? Surely women in society can talk to whom
they please. And then, jealousy means lowering both myself and her," he
told himself as he went into her boudoir; but this dictum, which had
always had such weight with him before, had now no weight and no meaning
at all. And from the bedroom door he turned back again; but as he
entered the dark drawing room some inner voice told him that it was not
so, and that if others noticed it that showed that there was something.
And he said to himself again in the dining room, "Yes, I must decide and
put a stop to it, and express my view of it..." And again at the turn in
the drawing room he asked himself, "Decide how?" And again he asked
himself, "What had occurred?" and answered, "Nothing," and recollected
that jealousy was a feeling insulting to his wife; but again in the
drawing room he was convinced that something had happened. His thoughts,
like his body, went round a complete circle, without coming upon
anything new. He noticed this, rubbed his forehead, and sat down in her
boudoir.

There, looking at her table, with the malachite blotting case lying at
the top and an unfinished letter, his thoughts suddenly changed. He
began to think of her, of what she was thinking and feeling. For the
first time he pictured vividly to himself her personal life, her ideas,
her desires, and the idea that she could and should have a separate life
of her own seemed to him so alarming that he made haste to dispel it. It
was the chasm which he was afraid to peep into. To put himself in
thought and feeling in another person's place was a spiritual exercise
not natural to Alexey Alexandrovitch. He looked on this spiritual
exercise as a harmful and dangerous abuse of the fancy.

"And the worst of it all," thought he, "is that just now, at the very
moment when my great work is approaching completion" (he was thinking of
the project he was bringing forward at the time), "when I stand in need
of all my mental peace and all my energies, just now this stupid worry
should fall foul of me. But what's to be done? I'm not one of those men
who submit to uneasiness and worry without having the force of character
to face them.

"I must think it over, come to a decision, and put it out of my mind,"
he said aloud.

"The question of her feelings, of what has passed and may be passing in
her soul, that's not my affair; that's the affair of her conscience, and
falls under the head of religion," he said to himself, feeling
consolation in the sense that he had found to which division of
regulating principles this new circumstance could be properly referred.

"And so," Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself, "questions as to her
feelings, and so on, are questions for her conscience, with which I can
have nothing to do. My duty is clearly defined. As the head of the
family, I am a person bound in duty to guide her, and consequently, in
part the person responsible; I am bound to point out the danger I
perceive, to warn her, even to use my authority. I ought to speak
plainly to her." And everything that he would say tonight to his wife
took clear shape in Alexey Alexandrovitch's head. Thinking over what he
would say, he somewhat regretted that he should have to use his time and
mental powers for domestic consumption, with so little to show for it,
but, in spite of that, the form and contents of the speech before him
shaped itself as clearly and distinctly in his head as a ministerial
report.

"I must say and express fully the following points: first, exposition of
the value to be attached to public opinion and to decorum; secondly,
exposition of religious significance of marriage; thirdly, if need be,
reference to the calamity possibly ensuing to our son; fourthly,
reference to the unhappiness likely to result to herself." And,
interlacing his fingers, Alexey Alexandrovitch stretched them, and the
joints of the fingers cracked. This trick, a bad habit, the cracking of
his fingers, always soothed him, and gave precision to his thoughts, so
needful to him at this juncture.

There was the sound of a carriage driving up to the front door. Alexey
Alexandrovitch halted in the middle of the room.

A woman's step was heard mounting the stairs. Alexey Alexandrovitch,
ready for his speech, stood compressing his crossed fingers, waiting to
see if the crack would not come again. One joint cracked.

Already, from the sound of light steps on the stairs, he was aware that
she was close, and though he was satisfied with his speech, he felt
frightened of the explanation confronting him...



Chapter 9


Anna came in with hanging head, playing with the tassels of her hood.
Her face was brilliant and glowing; but this glow was not one of
brightness; it suggested the fearful glow of a conflagration in the
midst of a dark night. On seeing her husband, Anna raised her head and
smiled, as though she had just waked up.

"You're not in bed? What a wonder!" she said, letting fall her hood, and
without stopping, she went on into the dressing room. "It's late, Alexey
Alexandrovitch," she said, when she had gone through the doorway.

"Anna, it's necessary for me to have a talk with you."

"With me?" she said, wonderingly. She came out from behind the door of
the dressing room, and looked at him. "Why, what is it? What about?" she
asked, sitting down. "Well, let's talk, if it's so necessary. But it
would be better to get to sleep."

Anna said what came to her lips, and marveled, hearing herself, at her
own capacity for lying. How simple and natural were her words, and how
likely that she was simply sleepy! She felt herself clad in an
impenetrable armor of falsehood. She felt that some unseen force had
come to her aid and was supporting her.

"Anna, I must warn you," he began.

"Warn me?" she said. "Of what?"

She looked at him so simply, so brightly, that anyone who did not know
her as her husband knew her could not have noticed anything unnatural,
either in the sound or the sense of her words. But to him, knowing her,
knowing that whenever he went to bed five minutes later than usual, she
noticed it, and asked him the reason; to him, knowing that every joy,
every pleasure and pain that she felt she communicated to him at once;
to him, now to see that she did not care to notice his state of mind,
that she did not care to say a word about herself, meant a great deal.
He saw that the inmost recesses of her soul, that had always hitherto
lain open before him, were closed against him. More than that, he saw
from her tone that she was not even perturbed at that, but as it were
said straight out to him: "Yes, it's shut up, and so it must be, and
will be in future." Now he experienced a feeling such as a man might
have, returning home and finding his own house locked up. "But perhaps
the key may yet be found," thought Alexey Alexandrovitch.

"I want to warn you," he said in a low voice, "that through
thoughtlessness and lack of caution you may cause yourself to be talked
about in society. Your too animated conversation this evening with Count
Vronsky" (he enunciated the name firmly and with deliberate emphasis)
"attracted attention."

He talked and looked at her laughing eyes, which frightened him now with
their impenetrable look, and, as he talked, he felt all the uselessness
and idleness of his words.

"You're always like that," she answered, as though completely
misapprehending him, and of all he had said only taking in the last
phrase. "One time you don't like my being dull, and another time you
don't like my being lively. I wasn't dull. Does that offend you?"

Alexey Alexandrovitch shivered, and bent his hands to make the joints
crack.

"Oh, please, don't do that, I do so dislike it," she said.

"Anna, is this you?" said Alexey Alexandrovitch, quietly making an
effort over himself, and restraining the motion of his fingers.

"But what is it all about?" she said, with such genuine and droll
wonder. "What do you want of me?"

Alexey Alexandrovitch paused, and rubbed his forehead and his eyes. He
saw that instead of doing as he had intended--that is to say, warning
his wife against a mistake in the eyes of the world--he had
unconsciously become agitated over what was the affair of her
conscience, and was struggling against the barrier he fancied between
them.

"This is what I meant to say to you," he went on coldly and composedly,
"and I beg you to listen to it. I consider jealousy, as you know, a
humiliating and degrading feeling, and I shall never allow myself to be
influenced by it; but there are certain rules of decorum which cannot be
disregarded with impunity. This evening it was not I observed it, but
judging by the impression made on the company, everyone observed that
your conduct and deportment were not altogether what could be desired."

"I positively don't understand," said Anna, shrugging her shoulders--"He
doesn't care," she thought. "But other people noticed it, and that's
what upsets him."--"You're not well, Alexey Alexandrovitch," she added,
and she got up, and would have gone towards the door; but he moved
forward as though he would stop her.

His face was ugly and forbidding, as Anna had never seen him. She
stopped, and bending her head back and on one side, began with her rapid
hand taking out her hairpins.

"Well, I'm listening to what's to come," she said, calmly and
ironically; "and indeed I listen with interest, for I should like to
understand what's the matter."

She spoke, and marveled at the confident, calm, and natural tone in
which she was speaking, and the choice of the words she used.

"To enter into all the details of your feelings I have no right, and
besides, I regard that as useless and even harmful," began Alexey
Alexandrovitch. "Ferreting in one's soul, one often ferrets out
something that might have lain there unnoticed. Your feelings are an
affair of your own conscience; but I am in duty bound to you, to myself,
and to God, to point out to you your duties. Our life has been joined,
not by man, but by God. That union can only be severed by a crime, and a
crime of that nature brings its own chastisement."

"I don't understand a word. And, oh dear! how sleepy I am, unluckily,"
she said, rapidly passing her hand through her hair, feeling for the
remaining hairpins.

"Anna, for God's sake don't speak like that!" he said gently. "Perhaps I
am mistaken, but believe me, what I say, I say as much for myself as for
you. I am your husband, and I love you."

For an instant her face fell, and the mocking gleam in her eyes died
away; but the word _love_ threw her into revolt again. She thought:
"Love? Can he love? If he hadn't heard there was such a thing as love,
he would never have used the word. He doesn't even know what love is."

"Alexey Alexandrovitch, really I don't understand," she said. "Define
what it is you find..."

"Pardon, let me say all I have to say. I love you. But I am not speaking
of myself; the most important persons in this matter are our son and
yourself. It may very well be, I repeat, that my words seem to you
utterly unnecessary and out of place; it may be that they are called
forth by my mistaken impression. In that case, I beg you to forgive me.
But if you are conscious yourself of even the smallest foundation for
them, then I beg you to think a little, and if your heart prompts you,
to speak out to me..."

Alexey Alexandrovitch was unconsciously saying something utterly unlike
what he had prepared.

"I have nothing to say. And besides," she said hurriedly, with
difficulty repressing a smile, "it's really time to be in bed."

Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed, and, without saying more, went into the
bedroom.

When she came into the bedroom, he was already in bed. His lips were
sternly compressed, and his eyes looked away from her. Anna got into her
bed, and lay expecting every minute that he would begin to speak to her
again. She both feared his speaking and wished for it. But he was
silent. She waited for a long while without moving, and had forgotten
about him. She thought of that other; she pictured him, and felt how her
heart was flooded with emotion and guilty delight at the thought of him.
Suddenly she heard an even, tranquil snore. For the first instant Alexey
Alexandrovitch seemed, as it were, appalled at his own snoring, and
ceased; but after an interval of two breathings the snore sounded again,
with a new tranquil rhythm.

"It's late, it's late," she whispered with a smile. A long while she
lay, not moving, with open eyes, whose brilliance she almost fancied she
could herself see in the darkness.



Chapter 10


From that time a new life began for Alexey Alexandrovitch and for his
wife. Nothing special happened. Anna went out into society, as she had
always done, was particularly often at Princess Betsy's, and met Vronsky
everywhere. Alexey Alexandrovitch saw this, but could do nothing. All
his efforts to draw her into open discussion she confronted with a
barrier which he could not penetrate, made up of a sort of amused
perplexity. Outwardly everything was the same, but their inner relations
were completely changed. Alexey Alexandrovitch, a man of great power in
the world of politics, felt himself helpless in this. Like an ox with
head bent, submissively he awaited the blow which he felt was lifted
over him. Every time he began to think about it, he felt that he must
try once more, that by kindness, tenderness, and persuasion there was
still hope of saving her, of bringing her back to herself, and every day
he made ready to talk to her. But every time he began talking to her, he
felt that the spirit of evil and deceit, which had taken possession of
her, had possession of him too, and he talked to her in a tone quite
unlike that in which he had meant to talk. Involuntarily he talked to
her in his habitual tone of jeering at anyone who should say what he was
saying. And in that tone it was impossible to say what needed to be said
to her.



Chapter 11


That which for Vronsky had been almost a whole year the one absorbing
desire of his life, replacing all his old desires; that which for Anna
had been an impossible, terrible, and even for that reason more
entrancing dream of bliss, that desire had been fulfilled. He stood
before her, pale, his lower jaw quivering, and besought her to be calm,
not knowing how or why.

"Anna! Anna!" he said with a choking voice, "Anna, for pity's sake!..."

But the louder he spoke, the lower she dropped her once proud and gay,
now shame-stricken head, and she bowed down and sank from the sofa where
she was sitting, down on the floor, at his feet; she would have fallen
on the carpet if he had not held her.

"My God! Forgive me!" she said, sobbing, pressing his hands to her
bosom.

She felt so sinful, so guilty, that nothing was left her but to
humiliate herself and beg forgiveness; and as now there was no one in
her life but him, to him she addressed her prayer for forgiveness.
Looking at him, she had a physical sense of her humiliation, and she
could say nothing more. He felt what a murderer must feel, when he sees
the body he has robbed of life. That body, robbed by him of life, was
their love, the first stage of their love. There was something awful and
revolting in the memory of what had been bought at this fearful price of
shame. Shame at their spiritual nakedness crushed her and infected him.
But in spite of all the murderer's horror before the body of his victim,
he must hack it to pieces, hide the body, must use what he has gained by
his murder.

And with fury, as it were with passion, the murderer falls on the body,
and drags it and hacks at it; so he covered her face and shoulders with
kisses. She held his hand, and did not stir. "Yes, these kisses--that is
what has been bought by this shame. Yes, and one hand, which will always
be mine--the hand of my accomplice." She lifted up that hand and kissed
it. He sank on his knees and tried to see her face; but she hid it, and
said nothing. At last, as though making an effort over herself, she got
up and pushed him away. Her face was still as beautiful, but it was only
the more pitiful for that.

"All is over," she said; "I have nothing but you. Remember that."

"I can never forget what is my whole life. For one instant of this
happiness..."

"Happiness!" she said with horror and loathing and her horror
unconsciously infected him. "For pity's sake, not a word, not a word
more."

She rose quickly and moved away from him.

"Not a word more," she repeated, and with a look of chill despair,
incomprehensible to him, she parted from him. She felt that at that
moment she could not put into words the sense of shame, of rapture, and
of horror at this stepping into a new life, and she did not want to
speak of it, to vulgarize this feeling by inappropriate words. But later
too, and the next day and the third day, she still found no words in
which she could express the complexity of her feelings; indeed, she
could not even find thoughts in which she could clearly think out all
that was in her soul.

She said to herself: "No, just now I can't think of it, later on, when I
am calmer." But this calm for thought never came; every time the thought
rose of what she had done and what would happen to her, and what she
ought to do, a horror came over her and she drove those thoughts away.

"Later, later," she said--"when I am calmer."

But in dreams, when she had no control over her thoughts, her position
presented itself to her in all its hideous nakedness. One dream haunted
her almost every night. She dreamed that both were her husbands at once,
that both were lavishing caresses on her. Alexey Alexandrovitch was
weeping, kissing her hands, and saying, "How happy we are now!" And
Alexey Vronsky was there too, and he too was her husband. And she was
marveling that it had once seemed impossible to her, was explaining to
them, laughing, that this was ever so much simpler, and that now both of
them were happy and contented. But this dream weighed on her like a
nightmare, and she awoke from it in terror.



Chapter 12


In the early days after his return from Moscow, whenever Levin shuddered
and grew red, remembering the disgrace of his rejection, he said to
himself: "This was just how I used to shudder and blush, thinking myself
utterly lost, when I was plucked in physics and did not get my remove;
and how I thought myself utterly ruined after I had mismanaged that
affair of my sister's that was entrusted to me. And yet, now that years
have passed, I recall it and wonder that it could distress me so much.
It will be the same thing too with this trouble. Time will go by and I
shall not mind about this either."

But three months had passed and he had not left off minding about it;
and it was as painful for him to think of it as it had been those first
days. He could not be at peace because after dreaming so long of family
life, and feeling himself so ripe for it, he was still not married, and
was further than ever from marriage. He was painfully conscious himself,
as were all about him, that at his years it is not well for man to be
alone. He remembered how before starting for Moscow he had once said to
his cowman Nikolay, a simple-hearted peasant, whom he liked talking to:
"Well, Nikolay! I mean to get married," and how Nikolay had promptly
answered, as of a matter on which there could be no possible doubt: "And
high time too, Konstantin Demitrievitch." But marriage had now become
further off than ever. The place was taken, and whenever he tried to
imagine any of the girls he knew in that place, he felt that it was
utterly impossible. Moreover, the recollection of the rejection and the
part he had played in the affair tortured him with shame. However often
he told himself that he was in no wise to blame in it, that
recollection, like other humiliating reminiscences of a similar kind,
made him twinge and blush. There had been in his past, as in every
man's, actions, recognized by him as bad, for which his conscience ought
to have tormented him; but the memory of these evil actions was far from
causing him so much suffering as those trivial but humiliating
reminiscences. These wounds never healed. And with these memories was
now ranged his rejection and the pitiful position in which he must have
appeared to others that evening. But time and work did their part.
Bitter memories were more and more covered up by the incidents--paltry
in his eyes, but really important--of his country life. Every week he
thought less often of Kitty. He was impatiently looking forward to the
news that she was married, or just going to be married, hoping that such
news would, like having a tooth out, completely cure him.

Meanwhile spring came on, beautiful and kindly, without the delays and
treacheries of spring,--one of those rare springs in which plants,
beasts, and man rejoice alike. This lovely spring roused Levin still
more, and strengthened him in his resolution of renouncing all his past
and building up his lonely life firmly and independently. Though many of
the plans with which he had returned to the country had not been carried
out, still his most important resolution--that of purity--had been kept
by him. He was free from that shame, which had usually harassed him
after a fall; and he could look everyone straight in the face. In
February he had received a letter from Marya Nikolaevna telling him that
his brother Nikolay's health was getting worse, but that he would not
take advice, and in consequence of this letter Levin went to Moscow to
his brother's and succeeded in persuading him to see a doctor and to go
to a watering-place abroad. He succeeded so well in persuading his
brother, and in lending him money for the journey without irritating
him, that he was satisfied with himself in that matter. In addition to
his farming, which called for special attention in spring, and in
addition to reading, Levin had begun that winter a work on agriculture,
the plan of which turned on taking into account the character of the
laborer on the land as one of the unalterable data of the question, like
the climate and the soil, and consequently deducing all the principles
of scientific culture, not simply from the data of soil and climate, but
from the data of soil, climate, and a certain unalterable character of
the laborer. Thus, in spite of his solitude, or in consequence of his
solitude, his life was exceedingly full. Only rarely he suffered from an
unsatisfied desire to communicate his stray ideas to someone besides
Agafea Mihalovna. With her indeed he not infrequently fell into
discussion upon physics, the theory of agriculture, and especially
philosophy; philosophy was Agafea Mihalovna's favorite subject.

Spring was slow in unfolding. For the last few weeks it had been
steadily fine frosty weather. In the daytime it thawed in the sun, but
at night there were even seven degrees of frost. There was such a frozen
surface on the snow that they drove the wagons anywhere off the roads.
Easter came in the snow. Then all of a sudden, on Easter Monday, a warm
wind sprang up, storm clouds swooped down, and for three days and three
nights the warm, driving rain fell in streams. On Thursday the wind
dropped, and a thick gray fog brooded over the land as though hiding the
mysteries of the transformations that were being wrought in nature.
Behind the fog there was the flowing of water, the cracking and floating
of ice, the swift rush of turbid, foaming torrents; and on the following
Monday, in the evening, the fog parted, the storm clouds split up into
little curling crests of cloud, the sky cleared, and the real spring had
come. In the morning the sun rose brilliant and quickly wore away the
thin layer of ice that covered the water, and all the warm air was
quivering with the steam that rose up from the quickened earth. The old
grass looked greener, and the young grass thrust up its tiny blades; the
buds of the guelder-rose and of the currant and the sticky birch-buds
were swollen with sap, and an exploring bee was humming about the golden
blossoms that studded the willow. Larks trilled unseen above the velvety
green fields and the ice-covered stubble-land; peewits wailed over the
low lands and marshes flooded by the pools; cranes and wild geese flew
high across the sky uttering their spring calls. The cattle, bald in
patches where the new hair had not grown yet, lowed in the pastures; the
bowlegged lambs frisked round their bleating mothers. Nimble children
ran about the drying paths, covered with the prints of bare feet. There
was a merry chatter of peasant women over their linen at the pond, and
the ring of axes in the yard, where the peasants were repairing ploughs
and harrows. The real spring had come.



Chapter 13


Levin put on his big boots, and, for the first time, a cloth jacket,
instead of his fur cloak, and went out to look after his farm, stepping
over streams of water that flashed in the sunshine and dazzled his eyes,
and treading one minute on ice and the next into sticky mud.

Spring is the time of plans and projects. And, as he came out into the
farmyard, Levin, like a tree in spring that knows not what form will be
taken by the young shoots and twigs imprisoned in its swelling buds,
hardly knew what undertakings he was going to begin upon now in the farm
work that was so dear to him. But he felt that he was full of the most
splendid plans and projects. First of all he went to the cattle. The
cows had been let out into their paddock, and their smooth sides were
already shining with their new, sleek, spring coats; they basked in the
sunshine and lowed to go to the meadow. Levin gazed admiringly at the
cows he knew so intimately to the minutest detail of their condition,
and gave orders for them to be driven out into the meadow, and the
calves to be let into the paddock. The herdsman ran gaily to get ready
for the meadow. The cowherd girls, picking up their petticoats, ran
splashing through the mud with bare legs, still white, not yet brown
from the sun, waving brush wood in their hands, chasing the calves that
frolicked in the mirth of spring.

After admiring the young ones of that year, who were particularly
fine--the early calves were the size of a peasant's cow, and Pava's
daughter, at three months old, was as big as a yearling--Levin gave
orders for a trough to be brought out and for them to be fed in the
paddock. But it appeared that as the paddock had not been used during
the winter, the hurdles made in the autumn for it were broken. He sent
for the carpenter, who, according to his orders, ought to have been at
work at the thrashing machine. But it appeared that the carpenter was
repairing the harrows, which ought to have been repaired before Lent.
This was very annoying to Levin. It was annoying to come upon that
everlasting slovenliness in the farm work against which he had been
striving with all his might for so many years. The hurdles, as he
ascertained, being not wanted in winter, had been carried to the
cart-horses' stable; and there broken, as they were of light
construction, only meant for feeding calves. Moreover, it was apparent
also that the harrows and all the agricultural implements, which he had
directed to be looked over and repaired in the winter, for which very
purpose he had hired three carpenters, had not been put into repair, and
the harrows were being repaired when they ought to have been harrowing
the field. Levin sent for his bailiff, but immediately went off himself
to look for him. The bailiff, beaming all over, like everyone that day,
in a sheepskin bordered with astrachan, came out of the barn, twisting a
bit of straw in his hands.

"Why isn't the carpenter at the thrashing machine?"

"Oh, I meant to tell you yesterday, the harrows want repairing. Here
it's time they got to work in the fields."

"But what were they doing in the winter, then?"

"But what did you want the carpenter for?"

"Where are the hurdles for the calves' paddock?"

"I ordered them to be got ready. What would you have with those
peasants!" said the bailiff, with a wave of his hand.

"It's not those peasants but this bailiff!" said Levin, getting angry.
"Why, what do I keep you for?" he cried. But, bethinking himself that
this would not help matters, he stopped short in the middle of a
sentence, and merely sighed. "Well, what do you say? Can sowing begin?"
he asked, after a pause.

"Behind Turkin tomorrow or the next day they might begin."

"And the clover?"

"I've sent Vassily and Mishka; they're sowing. Only I don't know if
they'll manage to get through; it's so slushy."

"How many acres?"

"About fifteen."

"Why not sow all?" cried Levin.

That they were only sowing the clover on fifteen acres, not on all the
forty-five, was still more annoying to him. Clover, as he knew, both
from books and from his own experience, never did well except when it
was sown as early as possible, almost in the snow. And yet Levin could
never get this done.

"There's no one to send. What would you have with such a set of
peasants? Three haven't turned up. And there's Semyon..."

"Well, you should have taken some men from the thatching."

"And so I have, as it is."

"Where are the peasants, then?"

"Five are making compote" (which meant compost), "four are shifting the
oats for fear of a touch of mildew, Konstantin Dmitrievitch."

Levin knew very well that "a touch of mildew" meant that his English
seed oats were already ruined. Again they had not done as he had
ordered.

"Why, but I told you during Lent to put in pipes," he cried.

"Don't put yourself out; we shall get it all done in time."

Levin waved his hand angrily, went into the granary to glance at the
oats, and then to the stable. The oats were not yet spoiled. But the
peasants were carrying the oats in spades when they might simply let
them slide down into the lower granary; and arranging for this to be
done, and taking two workmen from there for sowing clover, Levin got
over his vexation with the bailiff. Indeed, it was such a lovely day
that one could not be angry.

"Ignat!" he called to the coachman, who, with his sleeves tucked up, was
washing the carriage wheels, "saddle me..."

"Which, sir?"

"Well, let it be Kolpik."

"Yes, sir."

While they were saddling his horse, Levin again called up the bailiff,
who was hanging about in sight, to make it up with him, and began
talking to him about the spring operations before them, and his plans
for the farm.

The wagons were to begin carting manure earlier, so as to get all done
before the early mowing. And the ploughing of the further land to go on
without a break so as to let it ripen lying fallow. And the mowing to be
all done by hired labor, not on half-profits. The bailiff listened
attentively, and obviously made an effort to approve of his employer's
projects. But still he had that look Levin knew so well that always
irritated him, a look of hopelessness and despondency. That look said:
"That's all very well, but as God wills."

Nothing mortified Levin so much as that tone. But it was the tone common
to all the bailiffs he had ever had. They had all taken up that attitude
to his plans, and so now he was not angered by it, but mortified, and
felt all the more roused to struggle against this, as it seemed,
elemental force continually ranged against him, for which he could find
no other expression than "as God wills."

"If we can manage it, Konstantin Dmitrievitch," said the bailiff.

"Why ever shouldn't you manage it?"

"We positively must have another fifteen laborers. And they don't turn
up. There were some here today asking seventy roubles for the summer."

Levin was silent. Again he was brought face to face with that opposing
force. He knew that however much they tried, they could not hire more
than forty--thirty-seven perhaps or thirty-eight--laborers for a
reasonable sum. Some forty had been taken on, and there were no more.
But still he could not help struggling against it.

"Send to Sury, to Tchefirovka; if they don't come we must look for
them."

"Oh, I'll send, to be sure," said Vassily Fedorovitch despondently. "But
there are the horses, too, they're not good for much."

"We'll get some more. I know, of course," Levin added laughing, "you
always want to do with as little and as poor quality as possible; but
this year I'm not going to let you have things your own way. I'll see to
everything myself."

"Why, I don't think you take much rest as it is. It cheers us up to work
under the master's eye..."

"So they're sowing clover behind the Birch Dale? I'll go and have a look
at them," he said, getting on to the little bay cob, Kolpik, who was led
up by the coachman.

"You can't get across the streams, Konstantin Dmitrievitch," the
coachman shouted.

"All right, I'll go by the forest."

And Levin rode through the slush of the farmyard to the gate and out
into the open country, his good little horse, after his long inactivity,
stepping out gallantly, snorting over the pools, and asking, as it were,
for guidance. If Levin had felt happy before in the cattle pens and
farmyard, he felt happier yet in the open country. Swaying rhythmically
with the ambling paces of his good little cob, drinking in the warm yet
fresh scent of the snow and the air, as he rode through his forest over
the crumbling, wasted snow, still left in parts, and covered with
dissolving tracks, he rejoiced over every tree, with the moss reviving
on its bark and the buds swelling on its shoots. When he came out of the
forest, in the immense plain before him, his grass fields stretched in
an unbroken carpet of green, without one bare place or swamp, only
spotted here and there in the hollows with patches of melting snow. He
was not put out of temper even by the sight of the peasants' horses and
colts trampling down his young grass (he told a peasant he met to drive
them out), nor by the sarcastic and stupid reply of the peasant Ipat,
whom he met on the way, and asked, "Well, Ipat, shall we soon be
sowing?" "We must get the ploughing done first, Konstantin
Dmitrievitch," answered Ipat. The further he rode, the happier he
became, and plans for the land rose to his mind each better than the
last; to plant all his fields with hedges along the southern borders, so
that the snow should not lie under them; to divide them up into six
fields of arable and three of pasture and hay; to build a cattle yard at
the further end of the estate, and to dig a pond and to construct
movable pens for the cattle as a means of manuring the land. And then
eight hundred acres of wheat, three hundred of potatoes, and four
hundred of clover, and not one acre exhausted.

Absorbed in such dreams, carefully keeping his horse by the hedges, so
as not to trample his young crops, he rode up to the laborers who had
been sent to sow clover. A cart with the seed in it was standing, not at
the edge, but in the middle of the crop, and the winter corn had been
torn up by the wheels and trampled by the horse. Both the laborers were
sitting in the hedge, probably smoking a pipe together. The earth in the
cart, with which the seed was mixed, was not crushed to powder, but
crusted together or adhering in clods. Seeing the master, the laborer,
Vassily, went towards the cart, while Mishka set to work sowing. This
was not as it should be, but with the laborers Levin seldom lost his
temper. When Vassily came up, Levin told him to lead the horse to the
hedge.

"It's all right, sir, it'll spring up again," responded Vassily.

"Please don't argue," said Levin, "but do as you're told."

"Yes, sir," answered Vassily, and he took the horse's head. "What a
sowing, Konstantin Dmitrievitch," he said, hesitating; "first rate. Only
it's a work to get about! You drag a ton of earth on your shoes."

"Why is it you have earth that's not sifted?" said Levin.

"Well, we crumble it up," answered Vassily, taking up some seed and
rolling the earth in his palms.

Vassily was not to blame for their having filled up his cart with
unsifted earth, but still it was annoying.

Levin had more than once already tried a way he knew for stifling his
anger, and turning all that seemed dark right again, and he tried that
way now. He watched how Mishka strode along, swinging the huge clods of
earth that clung to each foot; and getting off his horse, he took the
sieve from Vassily and started sowing himself.

"Where did you stop?"

Vassily pointed to the mark with his foot, and Levin went forward as
best he could, scattering the seed on the land. Walking was as difficult
as on a bog, and by the time Levin had ended the row he was in a great
heat, and he stopped and gave up the sieve to Vassily.

"Well, master, when summer's here, mind you don't scold me for these
rows," said Vassily.

"Eh?" said Levin cheerily, already feeling the effect of his method.

"Why, you'll see in the summer time. It'll look different. Look you
where I sowed last spring. How I did work at it! I do my best,
Konstantin Dmitrievitch, d'ye see, as I would for my own father. I don't
like bad work myself, nor would I let another man do it. What's good for
the master's good for us too. To look out yonder now," said Vassily,
pointing, "it does one's heart good."

"It's a lovely spring, Vassily."

"Why, it's a spring such as the old men don't remember the like of. I
was up home; an old man up there has sown wheat too, about an acre of
it. He was saying you wouldn't know it from rye."

"Have you been sowing wheat long?"

"Why, sir, it was you taught us the year before last. You gave me two
measures. We sold about eight bushels and sowed a rood."

"Well, mind you crumble up the clods," said Levin, going towards his
horse, "and keep an eye on Mishka. And if there's a good crop you shall
have half a rouble for every acre."

"Humbly thankful. We are very well content, sir, as it is."

Levin got on his horse and rode towards the field where was last year's
clover, and the one which was ploughed ready for the spring corn.

The crop of clover coming up in the stubble was magnificent. It had
survived everything, and stood up vividly green through the broken
stalks of last year's wheat. The horse sank in up to the pasterns, and
he drew each hoof with a sucking sound out of the half-thawed ground.
Over the ploughland riding was utterly impossible; the horse could only
keep a foothold where there was ice, and in the thawing furrows he sank
deep in at each step. The ploughland was in splendid condition; in a
couple of days it would be fit for harrowing and sowing. Everything was
capital, everything was cheering. Levin rode back across the streams,
hoping the water would have gone down. And he did in fact get across,
and startled two ducks. "There must be snipe too," he thought, and just
as he reached the turning homewards he met the forest keeper, who
confirmed his theory about the snipe.

Levin went home at a trot, so as to have time to eat his dinner and get
his gun ready for the evening.



Chapter 14


As he rode up to the house in the happiest frame of mind, Levin heard
the bell ring at the side of the principal entrance of the house.

"Yes, that's someone from the railway station," he thought, "just the
time to be here from the Moscow train ... Who could it be? What if it's
brother Nikolay? He did say: 'Maybe I'll go to the waters, or maybe I'll
come down to you.'" He felt dismayed and vexed for the first minute,
that his brother Nikolay's presence should come to disturb his happy
mood of spring. But he felt ashamed of the feeling, and at once he
opened, as it were, the arms of his soul, and with a softened feeling of
joy and expectation, now he hoped with all his heart that it was his
brother. He pricked up his horse, and riding out from behind the acacias
he saw a hired three-horse sledge from the railway station, and a
gentleman in a fur coat. It was not his brother. "Oh, if it were only
some nice person one could talk to a little!" he thought.

"Ah," cried Levin joyfully, flinging up both his hands. "Here's a
delightful visitor! Ah, how glad I am to see you!" he shouted,
recognizing Stepan Arkadyevitch.

"I shall find out for certain whether she's married, or when she's going
to be married," he thought. And on that delicious spring day he felt
that the thought of her did not hurt him at all.

"Well, you didn't expect me, eh?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, getting out
of the sledge, splashed with mud on the bridge of his nose, on his
cheek, and on his eyebrows, but radiant with health and good spirits.
"I've come to see you in the first place," he said, embracing and
kissing him, "to have some stand-shooting second, and to sell the forest
at Ergushovo third."

"Delightful! What a spring we're having! How ever did you get along in a
sledge?"

"In a cart it would have been worse still, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,"
answered the driver, who knew him.

"Well, I'm very, very glad to see you," said Levin, with a genuine smile
of childlike delight.

Levin led his friend to the room set apart for visitors, where Stepan
Arkadyevitch's things were carried also--a bag, a gun in a case, a
satchel for cigars. Leaving him there to wash and change his clothes,
Levin went off to the counting house to speak about the ploughing and
clover. Agafea Mihalovna, always very anxious for the credit of the
house, met him in the hall with inquiries about dinner.

"Do just as you like, only let it be as soon as possible," he said, and
went to the bailiff.

When he came back, Stepan Arkadyevitch, washed and combed, came out of
his room with a beaming smile, and they went upstairs together.

"Well, I am glad I managed to get away to you! Now I shall understand
what the mysterious business is that you are always absorbed in here.
No, really, I envy you. What a house, how nice it all is! So bright, so
cheerful!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, forgetting that it was not always
spring and fine weather like that day. "And your nurse is simply
charming! A pretty maid in an apron might be even more agreeable,
perhaps; but for your severe monastic style it does very well."

Stepan Arkadyevitch told him many interesting pieces of news; especially
interesting to Levin was the news that his brother, Sergey Ivanovitch,
was intending to pay him a visit in the summer.

Not one word did Stepan Arkadyevitch say in reference to Kitty and the
Shtcherbatskys; he merely gave him greetings from his wife. Levin was
grateful to him for his delicacy and was very glad of his visitor. As
always happened with him during his solitude, a mass of ideas and
feelings had been accumulating within him, which he could not
communicate to those about him. And now he poured out upon Stepan
Arkadyevitch his poetic joy in the spring, and his failures and plans
for the land, and his thoughts and criticisms on the books he had been
reading, and the idea of his own book, the basis of which really was,
though he was unaware of it himself, a criticism of all the old books on
agriculture. Stepan Arkadyevitch, always charming, understanding
everything at the slightest reference, was particularly charming on this
visit, and Levin noticed in him a special tenderness, as it were, and a
new tone of respect that flattered him.

The efforts of Agafea Mihalovna and the cook, that the dinner should be
particularly good, only ended in the two famished friends attacking the
preliminary course, eating a great deal of bread and butter, salt goose
and salted mushrooms, and in Levin's finally ordering the soup to be
served without the accompaniment of little pies, with which the cook had
particularly meant to impress their visitor. But though Stepan
Arkadyevitch was accustomed to very different dinners, he thought
everything excellent: the herb brandy, and the bread, and the butter,
and above all the salt goose and the mushrooms, and the nettle soup, and
the chicken in white sauce, and the white Crimean wine--everything was
superb and delicious.

"Splendid, splendid!" he said, lighting a fat cigar after the roast. "I
feel as if, coming to you, I had landed on a peaceful shore after the
noise and jolting of a steamer. And so you maintain that the laborer
himself is an element to be studied and to regulate the choice of
methods in agriculture. Of course, I'm an ignorant outsider; but I
should fancy theory and its application will have its influence on the
laborer too."

"Yes, but wait a bit. I'm not talking of political economy, I'm talking
of the science of agriculture. It ought to be like the natural sciences,
and to observe given phenomena and the laborer in his economic,
ethnographical..."

At that instant Agafea Mihalovna came in with jam.

"Oh, Agafea Mihalovna," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, kissing the tips of
his plump fingers, "what salt goose, what herb brandy!... What do you
think, isn't it time to start, Kostya?" he added.

Levin looked out of the window at the sun sinking behind the bare
tree-tops of the forest.

"Yes, it's time," he said. "Kouzma, get ready the trap," and he ran
downstairs.

Stepan Arkadyevitch, going down, carefully took the canvas cover off his
varnished gun case with his own hands, and opening it, began to get
ready his expensive new-fashioned gun. Kouzma, who already scented a big
tip, never left Stepan Arkadyevitch's side, and put on him both his
stockings and boots, a task which Stepan Arkadyevitch readily left him.

"Kostya, give orders that if the merchant Ryabinin comes ... I told him
to come today, he's to be brought in and to wait for me..."

"Why, do you mean to say you're selling the forest to Ryabinin?"

"Yes. Do you know him?"

"To be sure I do. I have had to do business with him, 'positively and
conclusively.'"

Stepan Arkadyevitch laughed. "Positively and conclusively" were the
merchant's favorite words.

"Yes, it's wonderfully funny the way he talks. She knows where her
master's going!" he added, patting Laska, who hung about Levin, whining
and licking his hands, his boots, and his gun.

The trap was already at the steps when they went out.

"I told them to bring the trap round; or would you rather walk?"

"No, we'd better drive," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, getting into the
trap. He sat down, tucked the tiger-skin rug round him, and lighted a
cigar. "How is it you don't smoke? A cigar is a sort of thing, not
exactly a pleasure, but the crown and outward sign of pleasure. Come,
this is life! How splendid it is! This is how I should like to live!"

"Why, who prevents you?" said Levin, smiling.

"No, you're a lucky man! You've got everything you like. You like
horses--and you have them; dogs--you have them; shooting--you have it;
farming--you have it."

"Perhaps because I rejoice in what I have, and don't fret for what I
haven't," said Levin, thinking of Kitty.

Stepan Arkadyevitch comprehended, looked at him, but said nothing.

Levin was grateful to Oblonsky for noticing, with his never-failing
tact, that he dreaded conversation about the Shtcherbatskys, and so
saying nothing about them. But now Levin was longing to find out what
was tormenting him so, yet he had not the courage to begin.

"Come, tell me how things are going with you," said Levin, bethinking
himself that it was not nice of him to think only of himself.

Stepan Arkadyevitch's eyes sparkled merrily.

"You don't admit, I know, that one can be fond of new rolls when one has
had one's rations of bread--to your mind it's a crime; but I don't count
life as life without love," he said, taking Levin's question his own
way. "What am I to do? I'm made that way. And really, one does so little
harm to anyone, and gives oneself so much pleasure..."

"What! is there something new, then?" queried Levin.

"Yes, my boy, there is! There, do you see, you know the type of Ossian's
women.... Women, such as one sees in dreams.... Well, these women are
sometimes to be met in reality ... and these women are terrible. Woman,
don't you know, is such a subject that however much you study it, it's
always perfectly new."

"Well, then, it would be better not to study it."

"No. Some mathematician has said that enjoyment lies in the search for
truth, not in the finding it."

Levin listened in silence, and in spite of all the efforts he made, he
could not in the least enter into the feelings of his friend and
understand his sentiments and the charm of studying such women.



Chapter 15


The place fixed on for the stand-shooting was not far above a stream in
a little aspen copse. On reaching the copse, Levin got out of the trap
and led Oblonsky to a corner of a mossy, swampy glade, already quite
free from snow. He went back himself to a double birch tree on the other
side, and leaning his gun on the fork of a dead lower branch, he took
off his full overcoat, fastened his belt again, and worked his arms to
see if they were free.

Gray old Laska, who had followed them, sat down warily opposite him and
pricked up her ears. The sun was setting behind a thick forest, and in
the glow of sunset the birch trees, dotted about in the aspen copse,
stood out clearly with their hanging twigs, and their buds swollen
almost to bursting.

From the thickest parts of the copse, where the snow still remained,
came the faint sound of narrow winding threads of water running away.
Tiny birds twittered, and now and then fluttered from tree to tree.

In the pauses of complete stillness there came the rustle of last year's
leaves, stirred by the thawing of the earth and the growth of the grass.

"Imagine! One can hear and see the grass growing!" Levin said to
himself, noticing a wet, slate-colored aspen leaf moving beside a blade
of young grass. He stood, listened, and gazed sometimes down at the wet
mossy ground, sometimes at Laska listening all alert, sometimes at the
sea of bare tree tops that stretched on the slope below him, sometimes
at the darkening sky, covered with white streaks of cloud.

A hawk flew high over a forest far away with slow sweep of its wings;
another flew with exactly the same motion in the same direction and
vanished. The birds twittered more and more loudly and busily in the
thicket. An owl hooted not far off, and Laska, starting, stepped
cautiously a few steps forward, and putting her head on one side, began
to listen intently. Beyond the stream was heard the cuckoo. Twice she
uttered her usual cuckoo call, and then gave a hoarse, hurried call and
broke down.

"Imagine! the cuckoo already!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, coming out from
behind a bush.

"Yes, I hear it," answered Levin, reluctantly breaking the stillness
with his voice, which sounded disagreeable to himself. "Now it's
coming!"

Stepan Arkadyevitch's figure again went behind the bush, and Levin saw
nothing but the bright flash of a match, followed by the red glow and
blue smoke of a cigarette.

"Tchk! tchk!" came the snapping sound of Stepan Arkadyevitch cocking his
gun.

"What's that cry?" asked Oblonsky, drawing Levin's attention to a
prolonged cry, as though a colt were whinnying in a high voice, in play.

"Oh, don't you know it? That's the hare. But enough talking! Listen,
it's flying!" almost shrieked Levin, cocking his gun.

They heard a shrill whistle in the distance, and in the exact time, so
well known to the sportsman, two seconds later--another, a third, and
after the third whistle the hoarse, guttural cry could be heard.

Levin looked about him to right and to left, and there, just facing him
against the dusky blue sky above the confused mass of tender shoots of
the aspens, he saw the flying bird. It was flying straight towards him;
the guttural cry, like the even tearing of some strong stuff, sounded
close to his ear; the long beak and neck of the bird could be seen, and
at the very instant when Levin was taking aim, behind the bush where
Oblonsky stood, there was a flash of red lightning: the bird dropped
like an arrow, and darted upwards again. Again came the red flash and
the sound of a blow, and fluttering its wings as though trying to keep
up in the air, the bird halted, stopped still an instant, and fell with
a heavy splash on the slushy ground.

"Can I have missed it?" shouted Stepan Arkadyevitch, who could not see
for the smoke.

"Here it is!" said Levin, pointing to Laska, who with one ear raised,
wagging the end of her shaggy tail, came slowly back as though she would
prolong the pleasure, and as it were smiling, brought the dead bird to
her master. "Well, I'm glad you were successful," said Levin, who, at
the same time, had a sense of envy that he had not succeeded in shooting
the snipe.

"It was a bad shot from the right barrel," responded Stepan
Arkadyevitch, loading his gun. "Sh... it's flying!"

The shrill whistles rapidly following one another were heard again. Two
snipe, playing and chasing one another, and only whistling, not crying,
flew straight at the very heads of the sportsmen. There was the report
of four shots, and like swallows the snipe turned swift somersaults in
the air and vanished from sight.

The stand-shooting was capital. Stepan Arkadyevitch shot two more birds
and Levin two, of which one was not found. It began to get dark. Venus,
bright and silvery, shone with her soft light low down in the west
behind the birch trees, and high up in the east twinkled the red lights
of Arcturus. Over his head Levin made out the stars of the Great Bear
and lost them again. The snipe had ceased flying; but Levin resolved to
stay a little longer, till Venus, which he saw below a branch of birch,
should be above it, and the stars of the Great Bear should be perfectly
plain. Venus had risen above the branch, and the ear of the Great Bear
with its shaft was now all plainly visible against the dark blue sky,
yet still he waited.

"Isn't it time to go home?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch.

It was quite still now in the copse, and not a bird was stirring.

"Let's stay a little while," answered Levin.

"As you like."

They were standing now about fifteen paces from one another.

"Stiva!" said Levin unexpectedly; "how is it you don't tell me whether
your sister-in-law's married yet, or when she's going to be?"

Levin felt so resolute and serene that no answer, he fancied, could
affect him. But he had never dreamed of what Stepan Arkadyevitch
replied.

"She's never thought of being married, and isn't thinking of it; but
she's very ill, and the doctors have sent her abroad. They're positively
afraid she may not live."

"What!" cried Levin. "Very ill? What is wrong with her? How has she...?"

While they were saying this, Laska, with ears pricked up, was looking
upwards at the sky, and reproachfully at them.

"They have chosen a time to talk," she was thinking. "It's on the
wing.... Here it is, yes, it is. They'll miss it," thought Laska.

But at that very instant both suddenly heard a shrill whistle which, as
it were, smote on their ears, and both suddenly seized their guns and
two flashes gleamed, and two bangs sounded at the very same instant. The
snipe flying high above instantly folded its wings and fell into a
thicket, bending down the delicate shoots.

"Splendid! Together!" cried Levin, and he ran with Laska into the
thicket to look for the snipe.

"Oh, yes, what was it that was unpleasant?" he wondered. "Yes, Kitty's
ill.... Well, it can't be helped; I'm very sorry," he thought.

"She's found it! Isn't she a clever thing?" he said, taking the warm
bird from Laska's mouth and packing it into the almost full game bag.
"I've got it, Stiva!" he shouted.



Chapter 16


On the way home Levin asked all details of Kitty's illness and the
Shtcherbatskys' plans, and though he would have been ashamed to admit
it, he was pleased at what he heard. He was pleased that there was still
hope, and still more pleased that she should be suffering who had made
him suffer so much. But when Stepan Arkadyevitch began to speak of the
causes of Kitty's illness, and mentioned Vronsky's name, Levin cut him
short.

"I have no right whatever to know family matters, and, to tell the
truth, no interest in them either."

Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled hardly perceptibly, catching the
instantaneous change he knew so well in Levin's face, which had become
as gloomy as it had been bright a minute before.

"Have you quite settled about the forest with Ryabinin?" asked Levin.

"Yes, it's settled. The price is magnificent; thirty-eight thousand.
Eight straight away, and the rest in six years. I've been bothering
about it for ever so long. No one would give more."

"Then you've as good as given away your forest for nothing," said Levin
gloomily.

"How do you mean for nothing?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch with a
good-humored smile, knowing that nothing would be right in Levin's eyes
now.

"Because the forest is worth at least a hundred and fifty roubles the
acre," answered Levin.

"Oh, these farmers!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch playfully. "Your tone of
contempt for us poor townsfolk!... But when it comes to business, we do
it better than anyone. I assure you I have reckoned it all out," he
said, "and the forest is fetching a very good price--so much so that I'm
afraid of this fellow's crying off, in fact. You know it's not
'timber,'" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, hoping by this distinction to
convince Levin completely of the unfairness of his doubts. "And it won't
run to more than twenty-five yards of fagots per acre, and he's giving
me at the rate of seventy roubles the acre."

Levin smiled contemptuously. "I know," he thought, "that fashion not
only in him, but in all city people, who, after being twice in ten years
in the country, pick up two or three phrases and use them in season and
out of season, firmly persuaded that they know all about it. '_Timber,
run to so many yards the acre._' He says those words without
understanding them himself."

"I wouldn't attempt to teach you what you write about in your office,"
said he, "and if need arose, I should come to you to ask about it. But
you're so positive you know all the lore of the forest. It's difficult.
Have you counted the trees?"

"How count the trees?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laughing, still trying
to draw his friend out of his ill-temper. "Count the sands of the sea,
number the stars. Some higher power might do it."

"Oh, well, the higher power of Ryabinin can. Not a single merchant ever
buys a forest without counting the trees, unless they get it given them
for nothing, as you're doing now. I know your forest. I go there every
year shooting, and your forest's worth a hundred and fifty roubles an
acre paid down, while he's giving you sixty by installments. So that in
fact you're making him a present of thirty thousand."

"Come, don't let your imagination run away with you," said Stepan
Arkadyevitch piteously. "Why was it none would give it, then?"

"Why, because he has an understanding with the merchants; he's bought
them off. I've had to do with all of them; I know them. They're not
merchants, you know: they're speculators. He wouldn't look at a bargain
that gave him ten, fifteen per cent profit, but holds back to buy a
rouble's worth for twenty kopecks."

"Well, enough of it! You're out of temper."

"Not the least," said Levin gloomily, as they drove up to the house.

At the steps there stood a trap tightly covered with iron and leather,
with a sleek horse tightly harnessed with broad collar-straps. In the
trap sat the chubby, tightly belted clerk who served Ryabinin as
coachman. Ryabinin himself was already in the house, and met the friends
in the hall. Ryabinin was a tall, thinnish, middle-aged man, with
mustache and a projecting clean-shaven chin, and prominent muddy-looking
eyes. He was dressed in a long-skirted blue coat, with buttons below the
waist at the back, and wore high boots wrinkled over the ankles and
straight over the calf, with big galoshes drawn over them. He rubbed his
face with his handkerchief, and wrapping round him his coat, which sat
extremely well as it was, he greeted them with a smile, holding out his
hand to Stepan Arkadyevitch, as though he wanted to catch something.

"So here you are," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, giving him his hand.
"That's capital."

"I did not venture to disregard your excellency's commands, though the
road was extremely bad. I positively walked the whole way, but I am here
at my time. Konstantin Dmitrievitch, my respects"; he turned to Levin,
trying to seize his hand too. But Levin, scowling, made as though he did
not notice his hand, and took out the snipe. "Your honors have been
diverting yourselves with the chase? What kind of bird may it be, pray?"
added Ryabinin, looking contemptuously at the snipe: "a great delicacy,
I suppose." And he shook his head disapprovingly, as though he had grave
doubts whether this game were worth the candle.

"Would you like to go into my study?" Levin said in French to Stepan
Arkadyevitch, scowling morosely. "Go into my study; you can talk there."

"Quite so, where you please," said Ryabinin with contemptuous dignity,
as though wishing to make it felt that others might be in difficulties
as to how to behave, but that he could never be in any difficulty about
anything.

On entering the study Ryabinin looked about, as his habit was, as though
seeking the holy picture, but when he had found it, he did not cross
himself. He scanned the bookcases and bookshelves, and with the same
dubious air with which he had regarded the snipe, he smiled
contemptuously and shook his head disapprovingly, as though by no means
willing to allow that this game were worth the candle.

"Well, have you brought the money?" asked Oblonsky. "Sit down."

"Oh, don't trouble about the money. I've come to see you to talk it
over."

"What is there to talk over? But do sit down."

"I don't mind if I do," said Ryabinin, sitting down and leaning his
elbows on the back of his chair in a position of the intensest
discomfort to himself. "You must knock it down a bit, prince. It would
be too bad. The money is ready conclusively to the last farthing. As to
paying the money down, there'll be no hitch there."

Levin, who had meanwhile been putting his gun away in the cupboard, was
just going out of the door, but catching the merchant's words, he
stopped.

"Why, you've got the forest for nothing as it is," he said. "He came to
me too late, or I'd have fixed the price for him."

Ryabinin got up, and in silence, with a smile, he looked Levin down and
up.

"Very close about money is Konstantin Dmitrievitch," he said with a
smile, turning to Stepan Arkadyevitch; "there's positively no dealing
with him. I was bargaining for some wheat of him, and a pretty price I
offered too."

"Why should I give you my goods for nothing? I didn't pick it up on the
ground, nor steal it either."

"Mercy on us! nowadays there's no chance at all of stealing. With the
open courts and everything done in style, nowadays there's no question
of stealing. We are just talking things over like gentlemen. His
excellency's asking too much for the forest. I can't make both ends meet
over it. I must ask for a little concession."

"But is the thing settled between you or not? If it's settled, it's
useless haggling; but if it's not," said Levin, "I'll buy the forest."

The smile vanished at once from Ryabinin's face. A hawklike, greedy,
cruel expression was left upon it. With rapid, bony fingers he
unbuttoned his coat, revealing a shirt, bronze waistcoat buttons, and a
watch chain, and quickly pulled out a fat old pocketbook.

"Here you are, the forest is mine," he said, crossing himself quickly,
and holding out his hand. "Take the money; it's my forest. That's
Ryabinin's way of doing business; he doesn't haggle over every
half-penny," he added, scowling and waving the pocketbook.

"I wouldn't be in a hurry if I were you," said Levin.

"Come, really," said Oblonsky in surprise. "I've given my word, you
know."

Levin went out of the room, slamming the door. Ryabinin looked towards
the door and shook his head with a smile.

"It's all youthfulness--positively nothing but boyishness. Why, I'm
buying it, upon my honor, simply, believe me, for the glory of it, that
Ryabinin, and no one else, should have bought the copse of Oblonsky. And
as to the profits, why, I must make what God gives. In God's name. If
you would kindly sign the title-deed..."

Within an hour the merchant, stroking his big overcoat neatly down, and
hooking up his jacket, with the agreement in his pocket, seated himself
in his tightly covered trap, and drove homewards.

"Ugh, these gentlefolks!" he said to the clerk. "They--they're a nice
lot!"

"That's so," responded the clerk, handing him the reins and buttoning
the leather apron. "But I can congratulate you on the purchase, Mihail
Ignatitch?"

"Well, well..."



Chapter 17


Stepan Arkadyevitch went upstairs with his pocket bulging with notes,
which the merchant had paid him for three months in advance. The
business of the forest was over, the money in his pocket; their shooting
had been excellent, and Stepan Arkadyevitch was in the happiest frame of
mind, and so he felt specially anxious to dissipate the ill-humor that
had come upon Levin. He wanted to finish the day at supper as pleasantly
as it had been begun.

Levin certainly was out of humor, and in spite of all his desire to be
affectionate and cordial to his charming visitor, he could not control
his mood. The intoxication of the news that Kitty was not married had
gradually begun to work upon him.

Kitty was not married, but ill, and ill from love for a man who had
slighted her. This slight, as it were, rebounded upon him. Vronsky had
slighted her, and she had slighted him, Levin. Consequently Vronsky had
the right to despise Levin, and therefore he was his enemy. But all this
Levin did not think out. He vaguely felt that there was something in it
insulting to him, and he was not angry now at what had disturbed him,
but he fell foul of everything that presented itself. The stupid sale of
the forest, the fraud practiced upon Oblonsky and concluded in his
house, exasperated him.

"Well, finished?" he said, meeting Stepan Arkadyevitch upstairs. "Would
you like supper?"

"Well, I wouldn't say no to it. What an appetite I get in the country!
Wonderful! Why didn't you offer Ryabinin something?"

"Oh, damn him!"

"Still, how you do treat him!" said Oblonsky. "You didn't even shake
hands with him. Why not shake hands with him?"

"Because I don't shake hands with a waiter, and a waiter's a hundred
times better than he is."

"What a reactionist you are, really! What about the amalgamation of
classes?" said Oblonsky.

"Anyone who likes amalgamating is welcome to it, but it sickens me."

"You're a regular reactionist, I see."

"Really, I have never considered what I am. I am Konstantin Levin, and
nothing else."

"And Konstantin Levin very much out of temper," said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, smiling.

"Yes, I am out of temper, and do you know why? Because--excuse me--of
your stupid sale..."

Stepan Arkadyevitch frowned good-humoredly, like one who feels himself
teased and attacked for no fault of his own.

"Come, enough about it!" he said. "When did anybody ever sell anything
without being told immediately after the sale, 'It was worth much more'?
But when one wants to sell, no one will give anything.... No, I see
you've a grudge against that unlucky Ryabinin."

"Maybe I have. And do you know why? You'll say again that I'm a
reactionist, or some other terrible word; but all the same it does annoy
and anger me to see on all sides the impoverishing of the nobility to
which I belong, and, in spite of the amalgamation of classes, I'm glad
to belong. And their impoverishment is not due to extravagance--that
would be nothing; living in good style--that's the proper thing for
noblemen; it's only the nobles who know how to do it. Now the peasants
about us buy land, and I don't mind that. The gentleman does nothing,
while the peasant works and supplants the idle man. That's as it ought
to be. And I'm very glad for the peasant. But I do mind seeing the
process of impoverishment from a sort of--I don't know what to call
it--innocence. Here a Polish speculator bought for half its value a
magnificent estate from a young lady who lives in Nice. And there a
merchant will get three acres of land, worth ten roubles, as security
for the loan of one rouble. Here, for no kind of reason, you've made
that rascal a present of thirty thousand roubles."

"Well, what should I have done? Counted every tree?"

"Of course, they must be counted. You didn't count them, but Ryabinin
did. Ryabinin's children will have means of livelihood and education,
while yours maybe will not!"

"Well, you must excuse me, but there's something mean in this counting.
We have our business and they have theirs, and they must make their
profit. Anyway, the thing's done, and there's an end of it. And here
come some poached eggs, my favorite dish. And Agafea Mihalovna will give
us that marvelous herb-brandy..."

Stepan Arkadyevitch sat down at the table and began joking with Agafea
Mihalovna, assuring her that it was long since he had tasted such a
dinner and such a supper.

"Well, you do praise it, anyway," said Agafea Mihalovna, "but Konstantin
Dmitrievitch, give him what you will--a crust of bread--he'll eat it and
walk away."

Though Levin tried to control himself, he was gloomy and silent. He
wanted to put one question to Stepan Arkadyevitch, but he could not
bring himself to the point, and could not find the words or the moment
in which to put it. Stepan Arkadyevitch had gone down to his room,
undressed, again washed, and attired in a nightshirt with goffered
frills, he had got into bed, but Levin still lingered in his room,
talking of various trifling matters, and not daring to ask what he
wanted to know.

"How wonderfully they make this soap," he said gazing at a piece of soap
he was handling, which Agafea Mihalovna had put ready for the visitor
but Oblonsky had not used. "Only look; why, it's a work of art."

"Yes, everything's brought to such a pitch of perfection nowadays," said
Stepan Arkadyevitch, with a moist and blissful yawn. "The theater, for
instance, and the entertainments ... a--a--a!" he yawned. "The electric
light everywhere ... a--a--a!"

"Yes, the electric light," said Levin. "Yes. Oh, and where's Vronsky
now?" he asked suddenly, laying down the soap.

"Vronsky?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, checking his yawn; "he's in
Petersburg. He left soon after you did, and he's not once been in Moscow
since. And do you know, Kostya, I'll tell you the truth," he went on,
leaning his elbow on the table, and propping on his hand his handsome
ruddy face, in which his moist, good-natured, sleepy eyes shone like
stars. "It's your own fault. You took fright at the sight of your rival.
But, as I told you at the time, I couldn't say which had the better
chance. Why didn't you fight it out? I told you at the time that...." He
yawned inwardly, without opening his mouth.

"Does he know, or doesn't he, that I did make an offer?" Levin wondered,
gazing at him. "Yes, there's something humbugging, diplomatic in his
face," and feeling he was blushing, he looked Stepan Arkadyevitch
straight in the face without speaking.

"If there was anything on her side at the time, it was nothing but a
superficial attraction," pursued Oblonsky. "His being such a perfect
aristocrat, don't you know, and his future position in society, had an
influence not with her, but with her mother."

Levin scowled. The humiliation of his rejection stung him to the heart,
as though it were a fresh wound he had only just received. But he was at
home, and the walls of home are a support.

"Stay, stay," he began, interrupting Oblonsky. "You talk of his being an
aristocrat. But allow me to ask what it consists in, that aristocracy of
Vronsky or of anybody else, beside which I can be looked down upon? You
consider Vronsky an aristocrat, but I don't. A man whose father crawled
up from nothing at all by intrigue, and whose mother--God knows whom she
wasn't mixed up with.... No, excuse me, but I consider myself
aristocratic, and people like me, who can point back in the past to
three or four honorable generations of their family, of the highest
degree of breeding (talent and intellect, of course that's another
matter), and have never curried favor with anyone, never depended on
anyone for anything, like my father and my grandfather. And I know many
such. You think it mean of me to count the trees in my forest, while you
make Ryabinin a present of thirty thousand; but you get rents from your
lands and I don't know what, while I don't and so I prize what's come to
me from my ancestors or been won by hard work.... We are aristocrats,
and not those who can only exist by favor of the powerful of this world,
and who can be bought for twopence halfpenny."

"Well, but whom are you attacking? I agree with you," said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, sincerely and genially; though he was aware that in the
class of those who could be bought for twopence halfpenny Levin was
reckoning him too. Levin's warmth gave him genuine pleasure. "Whom are
you attacking? Though a good deal is not true that you say about
Vronsky, but I won't talk about that. I tell you straight out, if I were
you, I should go back with me to Moscow, and..."

"No; I don't know whether you know it or not, but I don't care. And I
tell you--I did make an offer and was rejected, and Katerina
Alexandrovna is nothing now to me but a painful and humiliating
reminiscence."

"What ever for? What nonsense!"

"But we won't talk about it. Please forgive me, if I've been nasty,"
said Levin. Now that he had opened his heart, he became as he had been
in the morning. "You're not angry with me, Stiva? Please don't be
angry," he said, and smiling, he took his hand.

"Of course not; not a bit, and no reason to be. I'm glad we've spoken
openly. And do you know, stand-shooting in the morning is unusually
good--why not go? I couldn't sleep the night anyway, but I might go
straight from shooting to the station."

"Capital."



Chapter 18


Although all Vronsky's inner life was absorbed in his passion, his
external life unalterably and inevitably followed along the old
accustomed lines of his social and regimental ties and interests. The
interests of his regiment took an important place in Vronsky's life,
both because he was fond of the regiment, and because the regiment was
fond of him. They were not only fond of Vronsky in his regiment, they
respected him too, and were proud of him; proud that this man, with his
immense wealth, his brilliant education and abilities, and the path open
before him to every kind of success, distinction, and ambition, had
disregarded all that, and of all the interests of life had the interests
of his regiment and his comrades nearest to his heart. Vronsky was aware
of his comrades' view of him, and in addition to his liking for the
life, he felt bound to keep up that reputation.

It need not be said that he did not speak of his love to any of his
comrades, nor did he betray his secret even in the wildest drinking
bouts (though indeed he was never so drunk as to lose all control of
himself). And he shut up any of his thoughtless comrades who attempted
to allude to his connection. But in spite of that, his love was known to
all the town; everyone guessed with more or less confidence at his
relations with Madame Karenina. The majority of the younger men envied
him for just what was the most irksome factor in his love--the exalted
position of Karenin, and the consequent publicity of their connection in
society.

The greater number of the young women, who envied Anna and had long been
weary of hearing her called _virtuous_, rejoiced at the fulfillment of
their predictions, and were only waiting for a decisive turn in public
opinion to fall upon her with all the weight of their scorn. They were
already making ready their handfuls of mud to fling at her when the
right moment arrived. The greater number of the middle-aged people and
certain great personages were displeased at the prospect of the
impending scandal in society.

Vronsky's mother, on hearing of his connection, was at first pleased at
it, because nothing to her mind gave such a finishing touch to a
brilliant young man as a _liaison_ in the highest society; she was
pleased, too, that Madame Karenina, who had so taken her fancy, and had
talked so much of her son, was, after all, just like all other pretty
and well-bred women,--at least according to the Countess Vronskaya's
ideas. But she had heard of late that her son had refused a position
offered him of great importance to his career, simply in order to remain
in the regiment, where he could be constantly seeing Madame Karenina.
She learned that great personages were displeased with him on this
account, and she changed her opinion. She was vexed, too, that from all
she could learn of this connection it was not that brilliant, graceful,
worldly _liaison_ which she would have welcomed, but a sort of
Wertherish, desperate passion, so she was told, which might well lead
him into imprudence. She had not seen him since his abrupt departure
from Moscow, and she sent her elder son to bid him come to see her.

This elder son, too, was displeased with his younger brother. He did not
distinguish what sort of love his might be, big or little, passionate or
passionless, lasting or passing (he kept a ballet girl himself, though
he was the father of a family, so he was lenient in these matters), but
he knew that this love affair was viewed with displeasure by those whom
it was necessary to please, and therefore he did not approve of his
brother's conduct.

Besides the service and society, Vronsky had another great
interest--horses; he was passionately fond of horses.

That year races and a steeplechase had been arranged for the officers.
Vronsky had put his name down, bought a thoroughbred English mare, and
in spite of his love affair, he was looking forward to the races with
intense, though reserved, excitement...

These two passions did not interfere with one another. On the contrary,
he needed occupation and distraction quite apart from his love, so as to
recruit and rest himself from the violent emotions that agitated him.



Chapter 19


On the day of the races at Krasnoe Selo, Vronsky had come earlier than
usual to eat beefsteak in the common messroom of the regiment. He had no
need to be strict with himself, as he had very quickly been brought down
to the required light weight; but still he had to avoid gaining flesh,
and so he eschewed farinaceous and sweet dishes. He sat with his coat
unbuttoned over a white waistcoat, resting both elbows on the table, and
while waiting for the steak he had ordered he looked at a French novel
that lay open on his plate. He was only looking at the book to avoid
conversation with the officers coming in and out; he was thinking.

He was thinking of Anna's promise to see him that day after the races.
But he had not seen her for three days, and as her husband had just
returned from abroad, he did not know whether she would be able to meet
him today or not, and he did not know how to find out. He had had his
last interview with her at his cousin Betsy's summer villa. He visited
the Karenins' summer villa as rarely as possible. Now he wanted to go
there, and he pondered the question how to do it.

"Of course I shall say Betsy has sent me to ask whether she's coming to
the races. Of course, I'll go," he decided, lifting his head from the
book. And as he vividly pictured the happiness of seeing her, his face
lighted up.

"Send to my house, and tell them to have out the carriage and three
horses as quick as they can," he said to the servant, who handed him the
steak on a hot silver dish, and moving the dish up he began eating.

From the billiard room next door came the sound of balls knocking, of
talk and laughter. Two officers appeared at the entrance-door: one, a
young fellow, with a feeble, delicate face, who had lately joined the
regiment from the Corps of Pages; the other, a plump, elderly officer,
with a bracelet on his wrist, and little eyes, lost in fat.

Vronsky glanced at them, frowned, and looking down at his book as though
he had not noticed them, he proceeded to eat and read at the same time.

"What? Fortifying yourself for your work?" said the plump officer,
sitting down beside him.

"As you see," responded Vronsky, knitting his brows, wiping his mouth,
and not looking at the officer.

"So you're not afraid of getting fat?" said the latter, turning a chair
round for the young officer.

"What?" said Vronsky angrily, making a wry face of disgust, and showing
his even teeth.

"You're not afraid of getting fat?"

"Waiter, sherry!" said Vronsky, without replying, and moving the book to
the other side of him, he went on reading.

The plump officer took up the list of wines and turned to the young
officer.

"You choose what we're to drink," he said, handing him the card, and
looking at him.

"Rhine wine, please," said the young officer, stealing a timid glance at
Vronsky, and trying to pull his scarcely visible mustache. Seeing that
Vronsky did not turn round, the young officer got up.

"Let's go into the billiard room," he said.

The plump officer rose submissively, and they moved towards the door.

At that moment there walked into the room the tall and well-built
Captain Yashvin. Nodding with an air of lofty contempt to the two
officers, he went up to Vronsky.

"Ah! here he is!" he cried, bringing his big hand down heavily on his
epaulet. Vronsky looked round angrily, but his face lighted up
immediately with his characteristic expression of genial and manly
serenity.

"That's it, Alexey," said the captain, in his loud baritone. "You must
just eat a mouthful, now, and drink only one tiny glass."

"Oh, I'm not hungry."

"There go the inseparables," Yashvin dropped, glancing sarcastically at
the two officers who were at that instant leaving the room. And he bent
his long legs, swathed in tight riding breeches, and sat down in the
chair, too low for him, so that his knees were cramped up in a sharp
angle.

"Why didn't you turn up at the Red Theater yesterday? Numerova wasn't at
all bad. Where were you?"

"I was late at the Tverskoys'," said Vronsky.

"Ah!" responded Yashvin.

Yashvin, a gambler and a rake, a man not merely without moral
principles, but of immoral principles, Yashvin was Vronsky's greatest
friend in the regiment. Vronsky liked him both for his exceptional
physical strength, which he showed for the most part by being able to
drink like a fish, and do without sleep without being in the slightest
degree affected by it; and for his great strength of character, which he
showed in his relations with his comrades and superior officers,
commanding both fear and respect, and also at cards, when he would play
for tens of thousands and however much he might have drunk, always with
such skill and decision that he was reckoned the best player in the
English Club. Vronsky respected and liked Yashvin particularly because
he felt Yashvin liked him, not for his name and his money, but for
himself. And of all men he was the only one with whom Vronsky would have
liked to speak of his love. He felt that Yashvin, in spite of his
apparent contempt for every sort of feeling, was the only man who could,
so he fancied, comprehend the intense passion which now filled his whole
life. Moreover, he felt certain that Yashvin, as it was, took no delight
in gossip and scandal, and interpreted his feeling rightly, that is to
say, knew and believed that this passion was not a jest, not a pastime,
but something more serious and important.

Vronsky had never spoken to him of his passion, but he was aware that he
knew all about it, and that he put the right interpretation on it, and
he was glad to see that in his eyes.

"Ah! yes," he said, to the announcement that Vronsky had been at the
Tverskoys'; and his black eyes shining, he plucked at his left mustache,
and began twisting it into his mouth, a bad habit he had.

"Well, and what did you do yesterday? Win anything?" asked Vronsky.

"Eight thousand. But three don't count; he won't pay up."

"Oh, then you can afford to lose over me," said Vronsky, laughing.
(Yashvin had bet heavily on Vronsky in the races.)

"No chance of my losing. Mahotin's the only one that's risky."

And the conversation passed to forecasts of the coming race, the only
thing Vronsky could think of just now.

"Come along, I've finished," said Vronsky, and getting up he went to the
door. Yashvin got up too, stretching his long legs and his long back.

"It's too early for me to dine, but I must have a drink. I'll come along
directly. Hi, wine!" he shouted, in his rich voice, that always rang out
so loudly at drill, and set the windows shaking now.

"No, all right," he shouted again immediately after. "You're going home,
so I'll go with you."

And he walked out with Vronsky.



Chapter 20


Vronsky was staying in a roomy, clean, Finnish hut, divided into two by
a partition. Petritsky lived with him in camp too. Petritsky was asleep
when Vronsky and Yashvin came into the hut.

"Get up, don't go on sleeping," said Yashvin, going behind the partition
and giving Petritsky, who was lying with ruffled hair and with his nose
in the pillow, a prod on the shoulder.

Petritsky jumped up suddenly onto his knees and looked round.

"Your brother's been here," he said to Vronsky. "He waked me up, damn
him, and said he'd look in again." And pulling up the rug he flung
himself back on the pillow. "Oh, do shut up, Yashvin!" he said, getting
furious with Yashvin, who was pulling the rug off him. "Shut up!" He
turned over and opened his eyes. "You'd better tell me what to drink;
such a nasty taste in my mouth, that..."

"Brandy's better than anything," boomed Yashvin. "Tereshtchenko! brandy
for your master and cucumbers," he shouted, obviously taking pleasure in
the sound of his own voice.

"Brandy, do you think? Eh?" queried Petritsky, blinking and rubbing his
eyes. "And you'll drink something? All right then, we'll have a drink
together! Vronsky, have a drink?" said Petritsky, getting up and
wrapping the tiger-skin rug round him. He went to the door of the
partition wall, raised his hands, and hummed in French, "There was a
king in Thule." "Vronsky, will you have a drink?"

"Go along," said Vronsky, putting on the coat his valet handed to him.

"Where are you off to?" asked Yashvin. "Oh, here are your three horses,"
he added, seeing the carriage drive up.

"To the stables, and I've got to see Bryansky, too, about the horses,"
said Vronsky.

Vronsky had as a fact promised to call at Bryansky's, some eight miles
from Peterhof, and to bring him some money owing for some horses; and he
hoped to have time to get that in too. But his comrades were at once
aware that he was not only going there.

Petritsky, still humming, winked and made a pout with his lips, as
though he would say: "Oh, yes, we know your Bryansky."

"Mind you're not late!" was Yashvin's only comment; and to change the
conversation: "How's my roan? is he doing all right?" he inquired,
looking out of the window at the middle one of the three horses, which
he had sold Vronsky.

"Stop!" cried Petritsky to Vronsky as he was just going out. "Your
brother left a letter and a note for you. Wait a bit; where are they?"

Vronsky stopped.

"Well, where are they?"

"Where are they? That's just the question!" said Petritsky solemnly,
moving his forefinger upwards from his nose.

"Come, tell me; this is silly!" said Vronsky smiling.

"I have not lighted the fire. Here somewhere about."

"Come, enough fooling! Where is the letter?"

"No, I've forgotten really. Or was it a dream? Wait a bit, wait a bit!
But what's the use of getting in a rage. If you'd drunk four bottles
yesterday as I did you'd forget where you were lying. Wait a bit, I'll
remember!"

Petritsky went behind the partition and lay down on his bed.

"Wait a bit! This was how I was lying, and this was how he was standing.
Yes--yes--yes.... Here it is!"--and Petritsky pulled a letter out from
under the mattress, where he had hidden it.

Vronsky took the letter and his brother's note. It was the letter he was
expecting--from his mother, reproaching him for not having been to see
her--and the note was from his brother to say that he must have a little
talk with him. Vronsky knew that it was all about the same thing. "What
business is it of theirs!" thought Vronsky, and crumpling up the letters
he thrust them between the buttons of his coat so as to read them
carefully on the road. In the porch of the hut he was met by two
officers; one of his regiment and one of another.

Vronsky's quarters were always a meeting place for all the officers.

"Where are you off to?"

"I must go to Peterhof."

"Has the mare come from Tsarskoe?"

"Yes, but I've not seen her yet."

"They say Mahotin's Gladiator's lame."

"Nonsense! But however are you going to race in this mud?" said the
other.

"Here are my saviors!" cried Petritsky, seeing them come in. Before him
stood the orderly with a tray of brandy and salted cucumbers. "Here's
Yashvin ordering me to drink a pick-me-up."

"Well, you did give it to us yesterday," said one of those who had come
in; "you didn't let us get a wink of sleep all night."

"Oh, didn't we make a pretty finish!" said Petritsky. "Volkov climbed
onto the roof and began telling us how sad he was. I said: 'Let's have
music, the funeral march!' He fairly dropped asleep on the roof over the
funeral march."

"Drink it up; you positively must drink the brandy, and then seltzer
water and a lot of lemon," said Yashvin, standing over Petritsky like a
mother making a child take medicine, "and then a little champagne--just
a small bottle."

"Come, there's some sense in that. Stop a bit, Vronsky. We'll all have a
drink."

"No; good-bye all of you. I'm not going to drink today."

"Why, are you gaining weight? All right, then we must have it alone.
Give us the seltzer water and lemon."

"Vronsky!" shouted someone when he was already outside.

"Well?"

"You'd better get your hair cut, it'll weigh you down, especially at the
top."

Vronsky was in fact beginning, prematurely, to get a little bald. He
laughed gaily, showing his even teeth, and pulling his cap over the thin
place, went out and got into his carriage.

"To the stables!" he said, and was just pulling out the letters to read
them through, but he thought better of it, and put off reading them so
as not to distract his attention before looking at the mare. "Later!"



Chapter 21


The temporary stable, a wooden shed, had been put up close to the race
course, and there his mare was to have been taken the previous day. He
had not yet seen her there.

During the last few days he had not ridden her out for exercise himself,
but had put her in the charge of the trainer, and so now he positively
did not know in what condition his mare had arrived yesterday and was
today. He had scarcely got out of his carriage when his groom, the
so-called "stable boy," recognizing the carriage some way off, called
the trainer. A dry-looking Englishman, in high boots and a short jacket,
clean-shaven, except for a tuft below his chin, came to meet him,
walking with the uncouth gait of jockey, turning his elbows out and
swaying from side to side.

"Well, how's Frou-Frou?" Vronsky asked in English.

"All right, sir," the Englishman's voice responded somewhere in the
inside of his throat. "Better not go in," he added, touching his hat.
"I've put a muzzle on her, and the mare's fidgety. Better not go in,
it'll excite the mare."

"No, I'm going in. I want to look at her."

"Come along, then," said the Englishman, frowning, and speaking with his
mouth shut, and, with swinging elbows, he went on in front with his
disjointed gait.

They went into the little yard in front of the shed. A stable boy,
spruce and smart in his holiday attire, met them with a broom in his
hand, and followed them. In the shed there were five horses in their
separate stalls, and Vronsky knew that his chief rival, Gladiator, a
very tall chestnut horse, had been brought there, and must be standing
among them. Even more than his mare, Vronsky longed to see Gladiator,
whom he had never seen. But he knew that by the etiquette of the race
course it was not merely impossible for him to see the horse, but
improper even to ask questions about him. Just as he was passing along
the passage, the boy opened the door into the second horse-box on the
left, and Vronsky caught a glimpse of a big chestnut horse with white
legs. He knew that this was Gladiator, but, with the feeling of a man
turning away from the sight of another man's open letter, he turned
round and went into Frou-Frou's stall.

"The horse is here belonging to Mak... Mak... I never can say the name,"
said the Englishman, over his shoulder, pointing his big finger and
dirty nail towards Gladiator's stall.

"Mahotin? Yes, he's my most serious rival," said Vronsky.

"If you were riding him," said the Englishman, "I'd bet on you."

"Frou-Frou's more nervous; he's stronger," said Vronsky, smiling at the
compliment to his riding.

"In a steeplechase it all depends on riding and on pluck," said the
Englishman.

Of pluck--that is, energy and courage--Vronsky did not merely feel that
he had enough; what was of far more importance, he was firmly convinced
that no one in the world could have more of this "pluck" than he had.

"Don't you think I want more thinning down?"

"Oh, no," answered the Englishman. "Please, don't speak loud. The mare's
fidgety," he added, nodding towards the horse-box, before which they
were standing, and from which came the sound of restless stamping in the
straw.

He opened the door, and Vronsky went into the horse-box, dimly lighted
by one little window. In the horse-box stood a dark bay mare, with a
muzzle on, picking at the fresh straw with her hoofs. Looking round him
in the twilight of the horse-box, Vronsky unconsciously took in once
more in a comprehensive glance all the points of his favorite mare.
Frou-Frou was a beast of medium size, not altogether free from reproach,
from a breeder's point of view. She was small-boned all over; though her
chest was extremely prominent in front, it was narrow. Her hind-quarters
were a little drooping, and in her fore-legs, and still more in her
hind-legs, there was a noticeable curvature. The muscles of both hind-
and fore-legs were not very thick; but across her shoulders the mare was
exceptionally broad, a peculiarity specially striking now that she was
lean from training. The bones of her legs below the knees looked no
thicker than a finger from in front, but were extraordinarily thick seen
from the side. She looked altogether, except across the shoulders, as it
were, pinched in at the sides and pressed out in depth. But she had in
the highest degree the quality that makes all defects forgotten: that
quality was _blood_, the blood _that tells_, as the English expression
has it. The muscles stood up sharply under the network of sinews,
covered with the delicate, mobile skin, soft as satin, and they were
hard as bone. Her clean-cut head, with prominent, bright, spirited eyes,
broadened out at the open nostrils, that showed the red blood in the
cartilage within. About all her figure, and especially her head, there
was a certain expression of energy, and, at the same time, of softness.
She was one of those creatures which seem only not to speak because the
mechanism of their mouth does not allow them to.

To Vronsky, at any rate, it seemed that she understood all he felt at
that moment, looking at her.

Directly Vronsky went towards her, she drew in a deep breath, and,
turning back her prominent eye till the white looked bloodshot, she
started at the approaching figures from the opposite side, shaking her
muzzle, and shifting lightly from one leg to the other.

"There, you see how fidgety she is," said the Englishman.

"There, darling! There!" said Vronsky, going up to the mare and speaking
soothingly to her.

But the nearer he came, the more excited she grew. Only when he stood by
her head, she was suddenly quieter, while the muscles quivered under her
soft, delicate coat. Vronsky patted her strong neck, straightened over
her sharp withers a stray lock of her mane that had fallen on the other
side, and moved his face near her dilated nostrils, transparent as a
bat's wing. She drew a loud breath and snorted out through her tense
nostrils, started, pricked up her sharp ear, and put out her strong,
black lip towards Vronsky, as though she would nip hold of his sleeve.
But remembering the muzzle, she shook it and again began restlessly
stamping one after the other her shapely legs.

"Quiet, darling, quiet!" he said, patting her again over her
hind-quarters; and with a glad sense that his mare was in the best
possible condition, he went out of the horse-box.

The mare's excitement had infected Vronsky. He felt that his heart was
throbbing, and that he, too, like the mare, longed to move, to bite; it
was both dreadful and delicious.

"Well, I rely on you, then," he said to the Englishman; "half-past six
on the ground."

"All right," said the Englishman. "Oh, where are you going, my lord?" he
asked suddenly, using the title "my lord," which he had scarcely ever
used before.

Vronsky in amazement raised his head, and stared, as he knew how to
stare, not into the Englishman's eyes, but at his forehead, astounded at
the impertinence of his question. But realizing that in asking this the
Englishman had been looking at him not as an employer, but as a jockey,
he answered:

"I've got to go to Bryansky's; I shall be home within an hour."

"How often I'm asked that question today!" he said to himself, and he
blushed, a thing which rarely happened to him. The Englishman looked
gravely at him; and, as though he, too, knew where Vronsky was going, he
added:

"The great thing's to keep quiet before a race," said he; "don't get out
of temper or upset about anything."

"All right," answered Vronsky, smiling; and jumping into his carriage,
he told the man to drive to Peterhof.

Before he had driven many paces away, the dark clouds that had been
threatening rain all day broke, and there was a heavy downpour of rain.

"What a pity!" thought Vronsky, putting up the roof of the carriage. "It
was muddy before, now it will be a perfect swamp." As he sat in solitude
in the closed carriage, he took out his mother's letter and his
brother's note, and read them through.

Yes, it was the same thing over and over again. Everyone, his mother,
his brother, everyone thought fit to interfere in the affairs of his
heart. This interference aroused in him a feeling of angry hatred--a
feeling he had rarely known before. "What business is it of theirs? Why
does everybody feel called upon to concern himself about me? And why do
they worry me so? Just because they see that this is something they
can't understand. If it were a common, vulgar, worldly intrigue, they
would have left me alone. They feel that this is something different,
that this is not a mere pastime, that this woman is dearer to me than
life. And this is incomprehensible, and that's why it annoys them.
Whatever our destiny is or may be, we have made it ourselves, and we do
not complain of it," he said, in the word _we_ linking himself with
Anna. "No, they must needs teach us how to live. They haven't an idea of
what happiness is; they don't know that without our love, for us there
is neither happiness nor unhappiness--no life at all," he thought.

He was angry with all of them for their interference just because he
felt in his soul that they, all these people, were right. He felt that
the love that bound him to Anna was not a momentary impulse, which would
pass, as worldly intrigues do pass, leaving no other traces in the life
of either but pleasant or unpleasant memories. He felt all the torture
of his own and her position, all the difficulty there was for them,
conspicuous as they were in the eye of all the world, in concealing
their love, in lying and deceiving; and in lying, deceiving, feigning,
and continually thinking of others, when the passion that united them
was so intense that they were both oblivious of everything else but
their love.

He vividly recalled all the constantly recurring instances of inevitable
necessity for lying and deceit, which were so against his natural bent.
He recalled particularly vividly the shame he had more than once
detected in her at this necessity for lying and deceit. And he
experienced the strange feeling that had sometimes come upon him since
his secret love for Anna. This was a feeling of loathing for
something--whether for Alexey Alexandrovitch, or for himself, or for the
whole world, he could not have said. But he always drove away this
strange feeling. Now, too, he shook it off and continued the thread of
his thoughts.

"Yes, she was unhappy before, but proud and at peace; and now she cannot
be at peace and feel secure in her dignity, though she does not show it.
Yes, we must put an end to it," he decided.

And for the first time the idea clearly presented itself that it was
essential to put an end to this false position, and the sooner the
better. "Throw up everything, she and I, and hide ourselves somewhere
alone with our love," he said to himself.



Chapter 22


The rain did not last long, and by the time Vronsky arrived, his
shaft-horse trotting at full speed and dragging the trace-horses
galloping through the mud, with their reins hanging loose, the sun had
peeped out again, the roofs of the summer villas and the old limetrees
in the gardens on both sides of the principal streets sparkled with wet
brilliance, and from the twigs came a pleasant drip and from the roofs
rushing streams of water. He thought no more of the shower spoiling the
race course, but was rejoicing now that--thanks to the rain--he would be
sure to find her at home and alone, as he knew that Alexey
Alexandrovitch, who had lately returned from a foreign watering place,
had not moved from Petersburg.

Hoping to find her alone, Vronsky alighted, as he always did, to avoid
attracting attention, before crossing the bridge, and walked to the
house. He did not go up the steps to the street door, but went into the
court.

"Has your master come?" he asked a gardener.

"No, sir. The mistress is at home. But will you please go to the front
door; there are servants there," the gardener answered. "They'll open
the door."

"No, I'll go in from the garden."

And feeling satisfied that she was alone, and wanting to take her by
surprise, since he had not promised to be there today, and she would
certainly not expect him to come before the races, he walked, holding
his sword and stepping cautiously over the sandy path, bordered with
flowers, to the terrace that looked out upon the garden. Vronsky forgot
now all that he had thought on the way of the hardships and difficulties
of their position. He thought of nothing but that he would see her
directly, not in imagination, but living, all of her, as she was in
reality. He was just going in, stepping on his whole foot so as not to
creak, up the worn steps of the terrace, when he suddenly remembered
what he always forgot, and what caused the most torturing side of his
relations with her, her son with his questioning--hostile, as he
fancied--eyes.

This boy was more often than anyone else a check upon their freedom.
When he was present, both Vronsky and Anna did not merely avoid speaking
of anything that they could not have repeated before everyone; they did
not even allow themselves to refer by hints to anything the boy did not
understand. They had made no agreement about this, it had settled
itself. They would have felt it wounding themselves to deceive the
child. In his presence they talked like acquaintances. But in spite of
this caution, Vronsky often saw the child's intent, bewildered glance
fixed upon him, and a strange shyness, uncertainty, at one time
friendliness, at another, coldness and reserve, in the boy's manner to
him; as though the child felt that between this man and his mother there
existed some important bond, the significance of which he could not
understand.

As a fact, the boy did feel that he could not understand this relation,
and he tried painfully, and was not able to make clear to himself what
feeling he ought to have for this man. With a child's keen instinct for
every manifestation of feeling, he saw distinctly that his father, his
governess, his nurse,--all did not merely dislike Vronsky, but looked on
him with horror and aversion, though they never said anything about him,
while his mother looked on him as her greatest friend.

"What does it mean? Who is he? How ought I to love him? If I don't know,
it's my fault; either I'm stupid or a naughty boy," thought the child.
And this was what caused his dubious, inquiring, sometimes hostile,
expression, and the shyness and uncertainty which Vronsky found so
irksome. This child's presence always and infallibly called up in
Vronsky that strange feeling of inexplicable loathing which he had
experienced of late. This child's presence called up both in Vronsky and
in Anna a feeling akin to the feeling of a sailor who sees by the
compass that the direction in which he is swiftly moving is far from the
right one, but that to arrest his motion is not in his power, that every
instant is carrying him further and further away, and that to admit to
himself his deviation from the right direction is the same as admitting
his certain ruin.

This child, with his innocent outlook upon life, was the compass that
showed them the point to which they had departed from what they knew,
but did not want to know.

This time Seryozha was not at home, and she was completely alone. She
was sitting on the terrace waiting for the return of her son, who had
gone out for his walk and been caught in the rain. She had sent a
manservant and a maid out to look for him. Dressed in a white gown,
deeply embroidered, she was sitting in a corner of the terrace behind
some flowers, and did not hear him. Bending her curly black head, she
pressed her forehead against a cool watering pot that stood on the
parapet, and both her lovely hands, with the rings he knew so well,
clasped the pot. The beauty of her whole figure, her head, her neck, her
hands, struck Vronsky every time as something new and unexpected. He
stood still, gazing at her in ecstasy. But, directly he would have made
a step to come nearer to her, she was aware of his presence, pushed away
the watering pot, and turned her flushed face towards him.

"What's the matter? You are ill?" he said to her in French, going up to
her. He would have run to her, but remembering that there might be
spectators, he looked round towards the balcony door, and reddened a
little, as he always reddened, feeling that he had to be afraid and be
on his guard.

"No, I'm quite well," she said, getting up and pressing his outstretched
hand tightly. "I did not expect ... thee."

"Mercy! what cold hands!" he said.

"You startled me," she said. "I'm alone, and expecting Seryozha; he's
out for a walk; they'll come in from this side."

But, in spite of her efforts to be calm, her lips were quivering.

"Forgive me for coming, but I couldn't pass the day without seeing you,"
he went on, speaking French, as he always did to avoid using the stiff
Russian plural form, so impossibly frigid between them, and the
dangerously intimate singular.

"Forgive you? I'm so glad!"

"But you're ill or worried," he went on, not letting go her hands and
bending over her. "What were you thinking of?"

"Always the same thing," she said, with a smile.

She spoke the truth. If ever at any moment she had been asked what she
was thinking of, she could have answered truly: of the same thing, of
her happiness and her unhappiness. She was thinking, just when he came
upon her, of this: why was it, she wondered, that to others, to Betsy
(she knew of her secret connection with Tushkevitch) it was all easy,
while to her it was such torture? Today this thought gained special
poignancy from certain other considerations. She asked him about the
races. He answered her questions, and, seeing that she was agitated,
trying to calm her, he began telling her in the simplest tone the
details of his preparations for the races.

"Tell him or not tell him?" she thought, looking into his quiet,
affectionate eyes. "He is so happy, so absorbed in his races that he
won't understand as he ought, he won't understand all the gravity of
this fact to us."

"But you haven't told me what you were thinking of when I came in," he
said, interrupting his narrative; "please tell me!"

She did not answer, and, bending her head a little, she looked
inquiringly at him from under her brows, her eyes shining under their
long lashes. Her hand shook as it played with a leaf she had picked. He
saw it, and his face expressed that utter subjection, that slavish
devotion, which had done so much to win her.

"I see something has happened. Do you suppose I can be at peace, knowing
you have a trouble I am not sharing? Tell me, for God's sake," he
repeated imploringly.

"Yes, I shan't be able to forgive him if he does not realize all the
gravity of it. Better not tell; why put him to the proof?" she thought,
still staring at him in the same way, and feeling the hand that held the
leaf was trembling more and more.

"For God's sake!" he repeated, taking her hand.

"Shall I tell you?"

"Yes, yes, yes . . ."

"I'm with child," she said, softly and deliberately. The leaf in her
hand shook more violently, but she did not take her eyes off him,
watching how he would take it. He turned white, would have said
something, but stopped; he dropped her hand, and his head sank on his
breast. "Yes, he realizes all the gravity of it," she thought, and
gratefully she pressed his hand.

But she was mistaken in thinking he realized the gravity of the fact as
she, a woman, realized it. On hearing it, he felt come upon him with
tenfold intensity that strange feeling of loathing of someone. But at
the same time, he felt that the turning-point he had been longing for
had come now; that it was impossible to go on concealing things from her
husband, and it was inevitable in one way or another that they should
soon put an end to their unnatural position. But, besides that, her
emotion physically affected him in the same way. He looked at her with a
look of submissive tenderness, kissed her hand, got up, and, in silence,
paced up and down the terrace.

"Yes," he said, going up to her resolutely. "Neither you nor I have
looked on our relations as a passing amusement, and now our fate is
sealed. It is absolutely necessary to put an end"--he looked round as he
spoke--"to the deception in which we are living."

"Put an end? How put an end, Alexey?" she said softly.

She was calmer now, and her face lighted up with a tender smile.

"Leave your husband and make our life one."

"It is one as it is," she answered, scarcely audibly.

"Yes, but altogether; altogether."

"But how, Alexey, tell me how?" she said in melancholy mockery at the
hopelessness of her own position. "Is there any way out of such a
position? Am I not the wife of my husband?"

"There is a way out of every position. We must take our line," he said.
"Anything's better than the position in which you're living. Of course,
I see how you torture yourself over everything--the world and your son
and your husband."

"Oh, not over my husband," she said, with a quiet smile. "I don't know
him, I don't think of him. He doesn't exist."

"You're not speaking sincerely. I know you. You worry about him too."

"Oh, he doesn't even know," she said, and suddenly a hot flush came over
her face; her cheeks, her brow, her neck crimsoned, and tears of shame
came into her eyes. "But we won't talk of him."



Chapter 23


Vronsky had several times already, though not so resolutely as now,
tried to bring her to consider their position, and every time he had
been confronted by the same superficiality and triviality with which she
met his appeal now. It was as though there were something in this which
she could not or would not face, as though directly she began to speak
of this, she, the real Anna, retreated somehow into herself, and another
strange and unaccountable woman came out, whom he did not love, and whom
he feared, and who was in opposition to him. But today he was resolved
to have it out.

"Whether he knows or not," said Vronsky, in his usual quiet and resolute
tone, "that's nothing to do with us. We cannot ... you cannot stay like
this, especially now."

"What's to be done, according to you?" she asked with the same frivolous
irony. She who had so feared he would take her condition too lightly was
now vexed with him for deducing from it the necessity of taking some
step.

"Tell him everything, and leave him."

"Very well, let us suppose I do that," she said. "Do you know what the
result of that would be? I can tell you it all beforehand," and a wicked
light gleamed in her eyes, that had been so soft a minute before. "'Eh,
you love another man, and have entered into criminal intrigues with
him?'" (Mimicking her husband, she threw an emphasis on the word
"criminal," as Alexey Alexandrovitch did.) "'I warned you of the results
in the religious, the civil, and the domestic relation. You have not
listened to me. Now I cannot let you disgrace my name,--'" "and my son,"
she had meant to say, but about her son she could not jest,--"'disgrace
my name, and'--and more in the same style," she added. "In general
terms, he'll say in his official manner, and with all distinctness and
precision, that he cannot let me go, but will take all measures in his
power to prevent scandal. And he will calmly and punctually act in
accordance with his words. That's what will happen. He's not a man, but
a machine, and a spiteful machine when he's angry," she added, recalling
Alexey Alexandrovitch as she spoke, with all the peculiarities of his
figure and manner of speaking, and reckoning against him every defect
she could find in him, softening nothing for the great wrong she herself
was doing him.

"But, Anna," said Vronsky, in a soft and persuasive voice, trying to
soothe her, "we absolutely must, anyway, tell him, and then be guided by
the line he takes."

"What, run away?"

"And why not run away? I don't see how we can keep on like this. And not
for my sake--I see that you suffer."

"Yes, run away, and become your mistress," she said angrily.

"Anna," he said, with reproachful tenderness.

"Yes," she went on, "become your mistress, and complete the ruin of..."

Again she would have said "my son," but she could not utter that word.

Vronsky could not understand how she, with her strong and truthful
nature, could endure this state of deceit, and not long to get out of
it. But he did not suspect that the chief cause of it was the
word--_son_, which she could not bring herself to pronounce. When she
thought of her son, and his future attitude to his mother, who had
abandoned his father, she felt such terror at what she had done, that
she could not face it; but, like a woman, could only try to comfort
herself with lying assurances that everything would remain as it always
had been, and that it was possible to forget the fearful question of how
it would be with her son.

"I beg you, I entreat you," she said suddenly, taking his hand, and
speaking in quite a different tone, sincere and tender, "never speak to
me of that!"

"But, Anna..."

"Never. Leave it to me. I know all the baseness, all the horror of my
position; but it's not so easy to arrange as you think. And leave it to
me, and do what I say. Never speak to me of it. Do you promise me?...
No, no, promise!..."

"I promise everything, but I can't be at peace, especially after what
you have told me. I can't be at peace, when you can't be at peace...."

"I?" she repeated. "Yes, I am worried sometimes; but that will pass, if
you will never talk about this. When you talk about it--it's only then
it worries me."

"I don't understand," he said.

"I know," she interrupted him, "how hard it is for your truthful nature
to lie, and I grieve for you. I often think that you have ruined your
whole life for me."

"I was just thinking the very same thing," he said; "how could you
sacrifice everything for my sake? I can't forgive myself that you're
unhappy!"

"I unhappy?" she said, coming closer to him, and looking at him with an
ecstatic smile of love. "I am like a hungry man who has been given food.
He may be cold, and dressed in rags, and ashamed, but he is not unhappy.
I unhappy? No, this is my unhappiness...."

She could hear the sound of her son's voice coming towards them, and
glancing swiftly round the terrace, she got up impulsively. Her eyes
glowed with the fire he knew so well; with a rapid movement she raised
her lovely hands, covered with rings, took his head, looked a long look
into his face, and, putting up her face with smiling, parted lips,
swiftly kissed his mouth and both eyes, and pushed him away. She would
have gone, but he held her back.

"When?" he murmured in a whisper, gazing in ecstasy at her.

"Tonight, at one o'clock," she whispered, and, with a heavy sigh, she
walked with her light, swift step to meet her son.

Seryozha had been caught by the rain in the big garden, and he and his
nurse had taken shelter in an arbor.

"Well, _au revoir_," she said to Vronsky. "I must soon be getting ready
for the races. Betsy promised to fetch me."

Vronsky, looking at his watch, went away hurriedly.



Chapter 24


When Vronsky looked at his watch on the Karenins' balcony, he was so
greatly agitated and lost in his thoughts that he saw the figures on the
watch's face, but could not take in what time it was. He came out on to
the high road and walked, picking his way carefully through the mud, to
his carriage. He was so completely absorbed in his feeling for Anna,
that he did not even think what o'clock it was, and whether he had time
to go to Bryansky's. He had left him, as often happens, only the
external faculty of memory, that points out each step one has to take,
one after the other. He went up to his coachman, who was dozing on the
box in the shadow, already lengthening, of a thick limetree; he admired
the shifting clouds of midges circling over the hot horses, and, waking
the coachman, he jumped into the carriage, and told him to drive to
Bryansky's. It was only after driving nearly five miles that he had
sufficiently recovered himself to look at his watch, and realize that it
was half-past five, and he was late.

There were several races fixed for that day: the Mounted Guards' race,
then the officers' mile-and-a-half race, then the three-mile race, and
then the race for which he was entered. He could still be in time for
his race, but if he went to Bryansky's he could only just be in time,
and he would arrive when the whole of the court would be in their
places. That would be a pity. But he had promised Bryansky to come, and
so he decided to drive on, telling the coachman not to spare the horses.

He reached Bryansky's, spent five minutes there, and galloped back. This
rapid drive calmed him. All that was painful in his relations with Anna,
all the feeling of indefiniteness left by their conversation, had
slipped out of his mind. He was thinking now with pleasure and
excitement of the race, of his being anyhow, in time, and now and then
the thought of the blissful interview awaiting him that night flashed
across his imagination like a flaming light.

The excitement of the approaching race gained upon him as he drove
further and further into the atmosphere of the races, overtaking
carriages driving up from the summer villas or out of Petersburg.

At his quarters no one was left at home; all were at the races, and his
valet was looking out for him at the gate. While he was changing his
clothes, his valet told him that the second race had begun already, that
a lot of gentlemen had been to ask for him, and a boy had twice run up
from the stables. Dressing without hurry (he never hurried himself, and
never lost his self-possession), Vronsky drove to the sheds. From the
sheds he could see a perfect sea of carriages, and people on foot,
soldiers surrounding the race course, and pavilions swarming with
people. The second race was apparently going on, for just as he went
into the sheds he heard a bell ringing. Going towards the stable, he met
the white-legged chestnut, Mahotin's Gladiator, being led to the
race-course in a blue forage horsecloth, with what looked like huge ears
edged with blue.

"Where's Cord?" he asked the stable-boy.

"In the stable, putting on the saddle."

In the open horse-box stood Frou-Frou, saddled ready. They were just
going to lead her out.

"I'm not too late?"

"All right! All right!" said the Englishman; "don't upset yourself!"

Vronsky once more took in in one glance the exquisite lines of his
favorite mare; who was quivering all over, and with an effort he tore
himself from the sight of her, and went out of the stable. He went
towards the pavilions at the most favorable moment for escaping
attention. The mile-and-a-half race was just finishing, and all eyes
were fixed on the horse-guard in front and the light hussar behind,
urging their horses on with a last effort close to the winning post.
From the center and outside of the ring all were crowding to the winning
post, and a group of soldiers and officers of the horse-guards were
shouting loudly their delight at the expected triumph of their officer
and comrade. Vronsky moved into the middle of the crowd unnoticed,
almost at the very moment when the bell rang at the finish of the race,
and the tall, mudspattered horse-guard who came in first, bending over
the saddle, let go the reins of his panting gray horse that looked dark
with sweat.

The horse, stiffening out its legs, with an effort stopped its rapid
course, and the officer of the horse-guards looked round him like a man
waking up from a heavy sleep, and just managed to smile. A crowd of
friends and outsiders pressed round him.

Vronsky intentionally avoided that select crowd of the upper world,
which was moving and talking with discreet freedom before the pavilions.
He knew that Madame Karenina was there, and Betsy, and his brother's
wife, and he purposely did not go near them for fear of something
distracting his attention. But he was continually met and stopped by
acquaintances, who told him about the previous races, and kept asking
him why he was so late.

At the time when the racers had to go to the pavilion to receive the
prizes, and all attention was directed to that point, Vronsky's elder
brother, Alexander, a colonel with heavy fringed epaulets, came up to
him. He was not tall, though as broadly built as Alexey, and handsomer
and rosier than he; he had a red nose, and an open, drunken-looking
face.

"Did you get my note?" he said. "There's never any finding you."

Alexander Vronsky, in spite of the dissolute life, and in especial the
drunken habits, for which he was notorious, was quite one of the court
circle.

Now, as he talked to his brother of a matter bound to be exceedingly
disagreeable to him, knowing that the eyes of many people might be fixed
upon him, he kept a smiling countenance, as though he were jesting with
his brother about something of little moment.

"I got it, and I really can't make out what _you_ are worrying yourself
about," said Alexey.

"I'm worrying myself because the remark has just been made to me that
you weren't here, and that you were seen in Peterhof on Monday."

"There are matters which only concern those directly interested in them,
and the matter you are so worried about is..."

"Yes, but if so, you may as well cut the service...."

"I beg you not to meddle, and that's all I have to say."

Alexey Vronsky's frowning face turned white, and his prominent lower jaw
quivered, which happened rarely with him. Being a man of very warm
heart, he was seldom angry; but when he was angry, and when his chin
quivered, then, as Alexander Vronsky knew, he was dangerous. Alexander
Vronsky smiled gaily.

"I only wanted to give you Mother's letter. Answer it, and don't worry
about anything just before the race. _Bonne chance,_" he added, smiling
and he moved away from him. But after him another friendly greeting
brought Vronsky to a standstill.

"So you won't recognize your friends! How are you, _mon cher?_" said
Stepan Arkadyevitch, as conspicuously brilliant in the midst of all the
Petersburg brilliance as he was in Moscow, his face rosy, and his
whiskers sleek and glossy. "I came up yesterday, and I'm delighted that
I shall see your triumph. When shall we meet?"

"Come tomorrow to the messroom," said Vronsky, and squeezing him by the
sleeve of his coat, with apologies, he moved away to the center of the
race course, where the horses were being led for the great steeplechase.

The horses who had run in the last race were being led home, steaming
and exhausted, by the stable-boys, and one after another the fresh
horses for the coming race made their appearance, for the most part
English racers, wearing horsecloths, and looking with their drawn-up
bellies like strange, huge birds. On the right was led in Frou-Frou,
lean and beautiful, lifting up her elastic, rather long pasterns, as
though moved by springs. Not far from her they were taking the rug off
the lop-eared Gladiator. The strong, exquisite, perfectly correct lines
of the stallion, with his superb hind-quarters and excessively short
pasterns almost over his hoofs, attracted Vronsky's attention in spite
of himself. He would have gone up to his mare, but he was again detained
by an acquaintance.

"Oh, there's Karenin!" said the acquaintance with whom he was chatting.
"He's looking for his wife, and she's in the middle of the pavilion.
Didn't you see her?"

"No," answered Vronsky, and without even glancing round towards the
pavilion where his friend was pointing out Madame Karenina, he went up
to his mare.

Vronsky had not had time to look at the saddle, about which he had to
give some direction, when the competitors were summoned to the pavilion
to receive their numbers and places in the row at starting. Seventeen
officers, looking serious and severe, many with pale faces, met together
in the pavilion and drew the numbers. Vronsky drew the number seven. The
cry was heard: "Mount!"

Feeling that with the others riding in the race, he was the center upon
which all eyes were fastened, Vronsky walked up to his mare in that
state of nervous tension in which he usually became deliberate and
composed in his movements. Cord, in honor of the races, had put on his
best clothes, a black coat buttoned up, a stiffly starched collar, which
propped up his cheeks, a round black hat, and top boots. He was calm and
dignified as ever, and was with his own hands holding Frou-Frou by both
reins, standing straight in front of her. Frou-Frou was still trembling
as though in a fever. Her eye, full of fire, glanced sideways at
Vronsky. Vronsky slipped his finger under the saddle-girth. The mare
glanced aslant at him, drew up her lip, and twitched her ear. The
Englishman puckered up his lips, intending to indicate a smile that
anyone should verify his saddling.

"Get up; you won't feel so excited."

Vronsky looked round for the last time at his rivals. He knew that he
would not see them during the race. Two were already riding forward to
the point from which they were to start. Galtsin, a friend of Vronsky's
and one of his more formidable rivals, was moving round a bay horse that
would not let him mount. A little light hussar in tight riding breeches
rode off at a gallop, crouched up like a cat on the saddle, in imitation
of English jockeys. Prince Kuzovlev sat with a white face on his
thoroughbred mare from the Grabovsky stud, while an English groom led
her by the bridle. Vronsky and all his comrades knew Kuzovlev and his
peculiarity of "weak nerves" and terrible vanity. They knew that he was
afraid of everything, afraid of riding a spirited horse. But now, just
because it was terrible, because people broke their necks, and there was
a doctor standing at each obstacle, and an ambulance with a cross on it,
and a sister of mercy, he had made up his mind to take part in the race.
Their eyes met, and Vronsky gave him a friendly and encouraging nod.
Only one he did not see, his chief rival, Mahotin on Gladiator.

"Don't be in a hurry," said Cord to Vronsky, "and remember one thing:
don't hold her in at the fences, and don't urge her on; let her go as
she likes."

"All right, all right," said Vronsky, taking the reins.

"If you can, lead the race; but don't lose heart till the last minute,
even if you're behind."

Before the mare had time to move, Vronsky stepped with an agile,
vigorous movement into the steel-toothed stirrup, and lightly and firmly
seated himself on the creaking leather of the saddle. Getting his right
foot in the stirrup, he smoothed the double reins, as he always did,
between his fingers, and Cord let go.

As though she did not know which foot to put first, Frou-Frou started,
dragging at the reins with her long neck, and as though she were on
springs, shaking her rider from side to side. Cord quickened his step,
following him. The excited mare, trying to shake off her rider first on
one side and then the other, pulled at the reins, and Vronsky tried in
vain with voice and hand to soothe her.

They were just reaching the dammed-up stream on their way to the
starting point. Several of the riders were in front and several behind,
when suddenly Vronsky heard the sound of a horse galloping in the mud
behind him, and he was overtaken by Mahotin on his white-legged,
lop-eared Gladiator. Mahotin smiled, showing his long teeth, but Vronsky
looked angrily at him. He did not like him, and regarded him now as his
most formidable rival. He was angry with him for galloping past and
exciting his mare. Frou-Frou started into a gallop, her left foot
forward, made two bounds, and fretting at the tightened reins, passed
into a jolting trot, bumping her rider up and down. Cord, too, scowled,
and followed Vronsky almost at a trot.



Chapter 25


There were seventeen officers in all riding in this race. The race
course was a large three-mile ring of the form of an ellipse in front of
the pavilion. On this course nine obstacles had been arranged: the
stream, a big and solid barrier five feet high, just before the
pavilion, a dry ditch, a ditch full of water, a precipitous slope, an
Irish barricade (one of the most difficult obstacles, consisting of a
mound fenced with brushwood, beyond which was a ditch out of sight for
the horses, so that the horse had to clear both obstacles or might be
killed); then two more ditches filled with water, and one dry one; and
the end of the race was just facing the pavilion. But the race began not
in the ring, but two hundred yards away from it, and in that part of the
course was the first obstacle, a dammed-up stream, seven feet in
breadth, which the racers could leap or wade through as they preferred.

Three times they were ranged ready to start, but each time some horse
thrust itself out of line, and they had to begin again. The umpire who
was starting them, Colonel Sestrin, was beginning to lose his temper,
when at last for the fourth time he shouted "Away!" and the racers
started.

Every eye, every opera glass, was turned on the brightly colored group
of riders at the moment they were in line to start.

"They're off! They're starting!" was heard on all sides after the hush
of expectation.

And little groups and solitary figures among the public began running
from place to place to get a better view. In the very first minute the
close group of horsemen drew out, and it could be seen that they were
approaching the stream in twos and threes and one behind another. To the
spectators it seemed as though they had all started simultaneously, but
to the racers there were seconds of difference that had great value to
them.

Frou-Frou, excited and over-nervous, had lost the first moment, and
several horses had started before her, but before reaching the stream,
Vronsky, who was holding in the mare with all his force as she tugged at
the bridle, easily overtook three, and there were left in front of him
Mahotin's chestnut Gladiator, whose hind-quarters were moving lightly
and rhythmically up and down exactly in front of Vronsky, and in front
of all, the dainty mare Diana bearing Kuzovlev more dead than alive.

For the first instant Vronsky was not master either of himself or his
mare. Up to the first obstacle, the stream, he could not guide the
motions of his mare.

Gladiator and Diana came up to it together and almost at the same
instant; simultaneously they rose above the stream and flew across to
the other side; Frou-Frou darted after them, as if flying; but at the
very moment when Vronsky felt himself in the air, he suddenly saw almost
under his mare's hoofs Kuzovlev, who was floundering with Diana on the
further side of the stream. (Kuzovlev had let go the reins as he took
the leap, and the mare had sent him flying over her head.) Those details
Vronsky learned later; at the moment all he saw was that just under him,
where Frou-Frou must alight, Diana's legs or head might be in the way.
But Frou-Frou drew up her legs and back in the very act of leaping, like
a falling cat, and, clearing the other mare, alighted beyond her.

"O the darling!" thought Vronsky.

After crossing the stream Vronsky had complete control of his mare, and
began holding her in, intending to cross the great barrier behind
Mahotin, and to try to overtake him in the clear ground of about five
hundred yards that followed it.

The great barrier stood just in front of the imperial pavilion. The Tsar
and the whole court and crowds of people were all gazing at them--at
him, and Mahotin a length ahead of him, as they drew near the "devil,"
as the solid barrier was called. Vronsky was aware of those eyes
fastened upon him from all sides, but he saw nothing except the ears and
neck of his own mare, the ground racing to meet him, and the back and
white legs of Gladiator beating time swiftly before him, and keeping
always the same distance ahead. Gladiator rose, with no sound of
knocking against anything. With a wave of his short tail he disappeared
from Vronsky's sight.

"Bravo!" cried a voice.

At the same instant, under Vronsky's eyes, right before him flashed the
palings of the barrier. Without the slightest change in her action his
mare flew over it; the palings vanished, and he heard only a crash
behind him. The mare, excited by Gladiator's keeping ahead, had risen
too soon before the barrier, and grazed it with her hind hoofs. But her
pace never changed, and Vronsky, feeling a spatter of mud in his face,
realized that he was once more the same distance from Gladiator. Once
more he perceived in front of him the same back and short tail, and
again the same swiftly moving white legs that got no further away.

At the very moment when Vronsky thought that now was the time to
overtake Mahotin, Frou-Frou herself, understanding his thoughts, without
any incitement on his part, gained ground considerably, and began
getting alongside of Mahotin on the most favorable side, close to the
inner cord. Mahotin would not let her pass that side. Vronsky had hardly
formed the thought that he could perhaps pass on the outer side, when
Frou-Frou shifted her pace and began overtaking him on the other side.
Frou-Frou's shoulder, beginning by now to be dark with sweat, was even
with Gladiator's back. For a few lengths they moved evenly. But before
the obstacle they were approaching, Vronsky began working at the reins,
anxious to avoid having to take the outer circle, and swiftly passed
Mahotin just upon the declivity. He caught a glimpse of his mud-stained
face as he flashed by. He even fancied that he smiled. Vronsky passed
Mahotin, but he was immediately aware of him close upon him, and he
never ceased hearing the even-thudding hoofs and the rapid and still
quite fresh breathing of Gladiator.

The next two obstacles, the water course and the barrier, were easily
crossed, but Vronsky began to hear the snorting and thud of Gladiator
closer upon him. He urged on his mare, and to his delight felt that she
easily quickened her pace, and the thud of Gladiator's hoofs was again
heard at the same distance away.

Vronsky was at the head of the race, just as he wanted to be and as Cord
had advised, and now he felt sure of being the winner. His excitement,
his delight, and his tenderness for Frou-Frou grew keener and keener. He
longed to look round again, but he did not dare do this, and tried to be
cool and not to urge on his mare so to keep the same reserve of force in
her as he felt that Gladiator still kept. There remained only one
obstacle, the most difficult; if he could cross it ahead of the others
he would come in first. He was flying towards the Irish barricade,
Frou-Frou and he both together saw the barricade in the distance, and
both the man and the mare had a moment's hesitation. He saw the
uncertainty in the mare's ears and lifted the whip, but at the same time
felt that his fears were groundless; the mare knew what was wanted. She
quickened her pace and rose smoothly, just as he had fancied she would,
and as she left the ground gave herself up to the force of her rush,
which carried her far beyond the ditch; and with the same rhythm,
without effort, with the same leg forward, Frou-Frou fell back into her
pace again.

"Bravo, Vronsky!" he heard shouts from a knot of men--he knew they were
his friends in the regiment--who were standing at the obstacle. He could
not fail to recognize Yashvin's voice though he did not see him.

"O my sweet!" he said inwardly to Frou-Frou, as he listened for what was
happening behind. "He's cleared it!" he thought, catching the thud of
Gladiator's hoofs behind him. There remained only the last ditch, filled
with water and five feet wide. Vronsky did not even look at it, but
anxious to get in a long way first began sawing away at the reins,
lifting the mare's head and letting it go in time with her paces. He
felt that the mare was at her very last reserve of strength; not her
neck and shoulders merely were wet, but the sweat was standing in drops
on her mane, her head, her sharp ears, and her breath came in short,
sharp gasps. But he knew that she had strength left more than enough for
the remaining five hundred yards. It was only from feeling himself
nearer the ground and from the peculiar smoothness of his motion that
Vronsky knew how greatly the mare had quickened her pace. She flew over
the ditch as though not noticing it. She flew over it like a bird; but
at the same instant Vronsky, to his horror, felt that he had failed to
keep up with the mare's pace, that he had, he did not know how, made a
fearful, unpardonable mistake, in recovering his seat in the saddle. All
at once his position had shifted and he knew that something awful had
happened. He could not yet make out what had happened, when the white
legs of a chestnut horse flashed by close to him, and Mahotin passed at
a swift gallop. Vronsky was touching the ground with one foot, and his
mare was sinking on that foot. He just had time to free his leg when she
fell on one side, gasping painfully, and, making vain efforts to rise
with her delicate, soaking neck, she fluttered on the ground at his feet
like a shot bird. The clumsy movement made by Vronsky had broken her
back. But that he only knew much later. At that moment he knew only that
Mahotin had flown swiftly by, while he stood staggering alone on the
muddy, motionless ground, and Frou-Frou lay gasping before him, bending
her head back and gazing at him with her exquisite eyes. Still unable to
realize what had happened, Vronsky tugged at his mare's reins. Again she
struggled all over like a fish, and her shoulders setting the saddle
heaving, she rose on her front legs but unable to lift her back, she
quivered all over and again fell on her side. With a face hideous with
passion, his lower jaw trembling, and his cheeks white, Vronsky kicked
her with his heel in the stomach and again fell to tugging at the rein.
She did not stir, but thrusting her nose into the ground, she simply
gazed at her master with her speaking eyes.

"A--a--a!" groaned Vronsky, clutching at his head. "Ah! what have I
done!" he cried. "The race lost! And my fault! shameful, unpardonable!
And the poor darling, ruined mare! Ah! what have I done!"

A crowd of men, a doctor and his assistant, the officers of his
regiment, ran up to him. To his misery he felt that he was whole and
unhurt. The mare had broken her back, and it was decided to shoot her.
Vronsky could not answer questions, could not speak to anyone. He
turned, and without picking up his cap that had fallen off, walked away
from the race course, not knowing where he was going. He felt utterly
wretched. For the first time in his life he knew the bitterest sort of
misfortune, misfortune beyond remedy, and caused by his own fault.

Yashvin overtook him with his cap, and led him home, and half an hour
later Vronsky had regained his self-possession. But the memory of that
race remained for long in his heart, the cruelest and bitterest memory
of his life.



Chapter 26


The external relations of Alexey Alexandrovitch and his wife had
remained unchanged. The sole difference lay in the fact that he was more
busily occupied than ever. As in former years, at the beginning of the
spring he had gone to a foreign watering-place for the sake of his
health, deranged by the winter's work that every year grew heavier. And
just as always he returned in July and at once fell to work as usual
with increased energy. As usual, too, his wife had moved for the summer
to a villa out of town, while he remained in Petersburg. From the date
of their conversation after the party at Princess Tverskaya's he had
never spoken again to Anna of his suspicions and his jealousies, and
that habitual tone of his bantering mimicry was the most convenient tone
possible for his present attitude to his wife. He was a little colder to
his wife. He simply seemed to be slightly displeased with her for that
first midnight conversation, which she had repelled. In his attitude to
her there was a shade of vexation, but nothing more. "You would not be
open with me," he seemed to say, mentally addressing her; "so much the
worse for you. Now you may beg as you please, but I won't be open with
you. So much the worse for you!" he said mentally, like a man who, after
vainly attempting to extinguish a fire, should fly in a rage with his
vain efforts and say, "Oh, very well then! you shall burn for this!"
This man, so subtle and astute in official life, did not realize all the
senselessness of such an attitude to his wife. He did not realize it,
because it was too terrible to him to realize his actual position, and
he shut down and locked and sealed up in his heart that secret place
where lay hid his feelings towards his family, that is, his wife and
son. He who had been such a careful father, had from the end of that
winter become peculiarly frigid to his son, and adopted to him just the
same bantering tone he used with his wife. "Aha, young man!" was the
greeting with which he met him.

Alexey Alexandrovitch asserted and believed that he had never in any
previous year had so much official business as that year. But he was not
aware that he sought work for himself that year, that this was one of
the means for keeping shut that secret place where lay hid his feelings
towards his wife and son and his thoughts about them, which became more
terrible the longer they lay there. If anyone had had the right to ask
Alexey Alexandrovitch what he thought of his wife's behavior, the mild
and peaceable Alexey Alexandrovitch would have made no answer, but he
would have been greatly angered with any man who should question him on
that subject. For this reason there positively came into Alexey
Alexandrovitch's face a look of haughtiness and severity whenever anyone
inquired after his wife's health. Alexey Alexandrovitch did not want to
think at all about his wife's behavior, and he actually succeeded in not
thinking about it at all.

Alexey Alexandrovitch's permanent summer villa was in Peterhof, and the
Countess Lidia Ivanovna used as a rule to spend the summer there, close
to Anna, and constantly seeing her. That year Countess Lidia Ivanovna
declined to settle in Peterhof, was not once at Anna Arkadyevna's, and
in conversation with Alexey Alexandrovitch hinted at the unsuitability
of Anna's close intimacy with Betsy and Vronsky. Alexey Alexandrovitch
sternly cut her short, roundly declaring his wife to be above suspicion,
and from that time began to avoid Countess Lidia Ivanovna. He did not
want to see, and did not see, that many people in society cast dubious
glances on his wife; he did not want to understand, and did not
understand, why his wife had so particularly insisted on staying at
Tsarskoe, where Betsy was staying, and not far from the camp of
Vronsky's regiment. He did not allow himself to think about it, and he
did not think about it; but all the same though he never admitted it to
himself, and had no proofs, not even suspicious evidence, in the bottom
of his heart he knew beyond all doubt that he was a deceived husband,
and he was profoundly miserable about it.

How often during those eight years of happy life with his wife Alexey
Alexandrovitch had looked at other men's faithless wives and other
deceived husbands and asked himself: "How can people descend to that?
how is it they don't put an end to such a hideous position?" But now,
when the misfortune had come upon himself, he was so far from thinking
of putting an end to the position that he would not recognize it at all,
would not recognize it just because it was too awful, too unnatural.

Since his return from abroad Alexey Alexandrovitch had twice been at
their country villa. Once he dined there, another time he spent the
evening there with a party of friends, but he had not once stayed the
night there, as it had been his habit to do in previous years.

The day of the races had been a very busy day for Alexey Alexandrovitch;
but when mentally sketching out the day in the morning, he made up his
mind to go to their country house to see his wife immediately after
dinner, and from there to the races, which all the Court were to
witness, and at which he was bound to be present. He was going to see
his wife, because he had determined to see her once a week to keep up
appearances. And besides, on that day, as it was the fifteenth, he had
to give his wife some money for her expenses, according to their usual
arrangement.

With his habitual control over his thoughts, though he thought all this
about his wife, he did not let his thoughts stray further in regard to
her.

That morning was a very full one for Alexey Alexandrovitch. The evening
before, Countess Lidia Ivanovna had sent him a pamphlet by a celebrated
traveler in China, who was staying in Petersburg, and with it she
enclosed a note begging him to see the traveler himself, as he was an
extremely interesting person from various points of view, and likely to
be useful. Alexey Alexandrovitch had not had time to read the pamphlet
through in the evening, and finished it in the morning. Then people
began arriving with petitions, and there came the reports, interviews,
appointments, dismissals, apportionment of rewards, pensions, grants,
notes, the workaday round, as Alexey Alexandrovitch called it, that
always took up so much time. Then there was private business of his own,
a visit from the doctor and the steward who managed his property. The
steward did not take up much time. He simply gave Alexey Alexandrovitch
the money he needed together with a brief statement of the position of
his affairs, which was not altogether satisfactory, as it had happened
that during that year, owing to increased expenses, more had been paid
out than usual, and there was a deficit. But the doctor, a celebrated
Petersburg doctor, who was an intimate acquaintance of Alexey
Alexandrovitch, took up a great deal of time. Alexey Alexandrovitch had
not expected him that day, and was surprised at his visit, and still
more so when the doctor questioned him very carefully about his health,
listened to his breathing, and tapped at his liver. Alexey
Alexandrovitch did not know that his friend Lidia Ivanovna, noticing
that he was not as well as usual that year, had begged the doctor to go
and examine him. "Do this for my sake," the Countess Lidia Ivanovna had
said to him.

"I will do it for the sake of Russia, countess," replied the doctor.

"A priceless man!" said the Countess Lidia Ivanovna.

The doctor was extremely dissatisfied with Alexey Alexandrovitch. He
found the liver considerably enlarged, and the digestive powers
weakened, while the course of mineral waters had been quite without
effect. He prescribed more physical exercise as far as possible, and as
far as possible less mental strain, and above all no worry--in other
words, just what was as much out of Alexey Alexandrovitch's power as
abstaining from breathing. Then he withdrew, leaving in Alexey
Alexandrovitch an unpleasant sense that something was wrong with him,
and that there was no chance of curing it.

As he was coming away, the doctor chanced to meet on the staircase an
acquaintance of his, Sludin, who was secretary of Alexey
Alexandrovitch's department. They had been comrades at the university,
and though they rarely met, they thought highly of each other and were
excellent friends, and so there was no one to whom the doctor would have
given his opinion of a patient so freely as to Sludin.

"How glad I am you've been seeing him!" said Sludin. "He's not well, and
I fancy.... Well, what do you think of him?"

"I'll tell you," said the doctor, beckoning over Sludin's head to his
coachman to bring the carriage round. "It's just this," said the doctor,
taking a finger of his kid glove in his white hands and pulling it, "if
you don't strain the strings, and then try to break them, you'll find it
a difficult job; but strain a string to its very utmost, and the mere
weight of one finger on the strained string will snap it. And with his
close assiduity, his conscientious devotion to his work, he's strained
to the utmost; and there's some outside burden weighing on him, and not
a light one," concluded the doctor, raising his eyebrows significantly.
"Will you be at the races?" he added, as he sank into his seat in the
carriage.

"Yes, yes, to be sure; it does waste a lot of time," the doctor
responded vaguely to some reply of Sludin's he had not caught.

Directly after the doctor, who had taken up so much time, came the
celebrated traveler, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, by means of the pamphlet
he had only just finished reading and his previous acquaintance with the
subject, impressed the traveler by the depth of his knowledge of the
subject and the breadth and enlightenment of his view of it.

At the same time as the traveler there was announced a provincial
marshal of nobility on a visit to Petersburg, with whom Alexey
Alexandrovitch had to have some conversation. After his departure, he
had to finish the daily routine of business with his secretary, and then
he still had to drive round to call on a certain great personage on a
matter of grave and serious import. Alexey Alexandrovitch only just
managed to be back by five o'clock, his dinner-hour, and after dining
with his secretary, he invited him to drive with him to his country
villa and to the races.

Though he did not acknowledge it to himself, Alexey Alexandrovitch
always tried nowadays to secure the presence of a third person in his
interviews with his wife.



Chapter 27


Anna was upstairs, standing before the looking glass, and, with
Annushka's assistance, pinning the last ribbon on her gown when she
heard carriage wheels crunching the gravel at the entrance.

"It's too early for Betsy," she thought, and glancing out of the window
she caught sight of the carriage and the black hat of Alexey
Alexandrovitch, and the ears that she knew so well sticking up each side
of it. "How unlucky! Can he be going to stay the night?" she wondered,
and the thought of all that might come of such a chance struck her as so
awful and terrible that, without dwelling on it for a moment, she went
down to meet him with a bright and radiant face; and conscious of the
presence of that spirit of falsehood and deceit in herself that she had
come to know of late, she abandoned herself to that spirit and began
talking, hardly knowing what she was saying.

"Ah, how nice of you!" she said, giving her husband her hand, and
greeting Sludin, who was like one of the family, with a smile. "You're
staying the night, I hope?" was the first word the spirit of falsehood
prompted her to utter; "and now we'll go together. Only it's a pity I've
promised Betsy. She's coming for me."

Alexey Alexandrovitch knit his brows at Betsy's name.

"Oh, I'm not going to separate the inseparables," he said in his usual
bantering tone. "I'm going with Mihail Vassilievitch. I'm ordered
exercise by the doctors too. I'll walk, and fancy myself at the springs
again."

"There's no hurry," said Anna. "Would you like tea?"

She rang.

"Bring in tea, and tell Seryozha that Alexey Alexandrovitch is here.
Well, tell me, how have you been? Mihail Vassilievitch, you've not been
to see me before. Look how lovely it is out on the terrace," she said,
turning first to one and then to the other.

She spoke very simply and naturally, but too much and too fast. She was
the more aware of this from noticing in the inquisitive look Mihail
Vassilievitch turned on her that he was, as it were, keeping watch on
her.

Mihail Vassilievitch promptly went out on the terrace.

She sat down beside her husband.

"You don't look quite well," she said.

"Yes," he said; "the doctor's been with me today and wasted an hour of
my time. I feel that some one of our friends must have sent him: my
health's so precious, it seems."

"No; what did he say?"

She questioned him about his health and what he had been doing, and
tried to persuade him to take a rest and come out to her.

All this she said brightly, rapidly, and with a peculiar brilliance in
her eyes. But Alexey Alexandrovitch did not now attach any special
significance to this tone of hers. He heard only her words and gave them
only the direct sense they bore. And he answered simply, though
jestingly. There was nothing remarkable in all this conversation, but
never after could Anna recall this brief scene without an agonizing pang
of shame.

Seryozha came in preceded by his governess. If Alexey Alexandrovitch had
allowed himself to observe he would have noticed the timid and
bewildered eyes with which Seryozha glanced first at his father and then
at his mother. But he would not see anything, and he did not see it.

"Ah, the young man! He's grown. Really, he's getting quite a man. How
are you, young man?"

And he gave his hand to the scared child. Seryozha had been shy of his
father before, and now, ever since Alexey Alexandrovitch had taken to
calling him young man, and since that insoluble question had occurred to
him whether Vronsky were a friend or a foe, he avoided his father. He
looked round towards his mother as though seeking shelter. It was only
with his mother that he was at ease. Meanwhile, Alexey Alexandrovitch
was holding his son by the shoulder while he was speaking to the
governess, and Seryozha was so miserably uncomfortable that Anna saw he
was on the point of tears.

Anna, who had flushed a little the instant her son came in, noticing
that Seryozha was uncomfortable, got up hurriedly, took Alexey
Alexandrovitch's hand from her son's shoulder, and kissing the boy, led
him out onto the terrace, and quickly came back.

"It's time to start, though," said she, glancing at her watch. "How is
it Betsy doesn't come?..."

"Yes," said Alexey Alexandrovitch, and getting up, he folded his hands
and cracked his fingers. "I've come to bring you some money, too, for
nightingales, we know, can't live on fairy tales," he said. "You want
it, I expect?"

"No, I don't ... yes, I do," she said, not looking at him, and
crimsoning to the roots of her hair. "But you'll come back here after
the races, I suppose?"

"Oh, yes!" answered Alexey Alexandrovitch. "And here's the glory of
Peterhof, Princess Tverskaya," he added, looking out of the window at
the elegant English carriage with the tiny seats placed extremely high.
"What elegance! Charming! Well, let us be starting too, then."

Princess Tverskaya did not get out of her carriage, but her groom, in
high boots, a cape, and black hat, darted out at the entrance.

"I'm going; good-bye!" said Anna, and kissing her son, she went up to
Alexey Alexandrovitch and held out her hand to him. "It was ever so nice
of you to come."

Alexey Alexandrovitch kissed her hand.

"Well, _au revoir_, then! You'll come back for some tea; that's
delightful!" she said, and went out, gay and radiant. But as soon as she
no longer saw him, she was aware of the spot on her hand that his lips
had touched, and she shuddered with repulsion.



Chapter 28


When Alexey Alexandrovitch reached the race-course, Anna was already
sitting in the pavilion beside Betsy, in that pavilion where all the
highest society had gathered. She caught sight of her husband in the
distance. Two men, her husband and her lover, were the two centers of
her existence, and unaided by her external senses she was aware of their
nearness. She was aware of her husband approaching a long way off, and
she could not help following him in the surging crowd in the midst of
which he was moving. She watched his progress towards the pavilion, saw
him now responding condescendingly to an ingratiating bow, now
exchanging friendly, nonchalant greetings with his equals, now
assiduously trying to catch the eye of some great one of this world, and
taking off his big round hat that squeezed the tips of his ears. All
these ways of his she knew, and all were hateful to her. "Nothing but
ambition, nothing but the desire to get on, that's all there is in his
soul," she thought; "as for these lofty ideals, love of culture,
religion, they are only so many tools for getting on."

From his glances towards the ladies' pavilion (he was staring straight
at her, but did not distinguish his wife in the sea of muslin, ribbons,
feathers, parasols and flowers) she saw that he was looking for her, but
she purposely avoided noticing him.

"Alexey Alexandrovitch!" Princess Betsy called to him; "I'm sure you
don't see your wife: here she is."

He smiled his chilly smile.

"There's so much splendor here that one's eyes are dazzled," he said,
and he went into the pavilion. He smiled to his wife as a man should
smile on meeting his wife after only just parting from her, and greeted
the princess and other acquaintances, giving to each what was due--that
is to say, jesting with the ladies and dealing out friendly greetings
among the men. Below, near the pavilion, was standing an
adjutant-general of whom Alexey Alexandrovitch had a high opinion, noted
for his intelligence and culture. Alexey Alexandrovitch entered into
conversation with him.

There was an interval between the races, and so nothing hindered
conversation. The adjutant-general expressed his disapproval of races.
Alexey Alexandrovitch replied defending them. Anna heard his high,
measured tones, not losing one word, and every word struck her as false,
and stabbed her ears with pain.

When the three-mile steeplechase was beginning, she bent forward and
gazed with fixed eyes at Vronsky as he went up to his horse and mounted,
and at the same time she heard that loathsome, never-ceasing voice of
her husband. She was in an agony of terror for Vronsky, but a still
greater agony was the never-ceasing, as it seemed to her, stream of her
husband's shrill voice with its familiar intonations.

"I'm a wicked woman, a lost woman," she thought; "but I don't like
lying, I can't endure falsehood, while as for _him_ (her husband) it's
the breath of his life--falsehood. He knows all about it, he sees it
all; what does he care if he can talk so calmly? If he were to kill me,
if he were to kill Vronsky, I might respect him. No, all he wants is
falsehood and propriety," Anna said to herself, not considering exactly
what it was she wanted of her husband, and how she would have liked to
see him behave. She did not understand either that Alexey
Alexandrovitch's peculiar loquacity that day, so exasperating to her,
was merely the expression of his inward distress and uneasiness. As a
child that has been hurt skips about, putting all his muscles into
movement to drown the pain, in the same way Alexey Alexandrovitch needed
mental exercise to drown the thoughts of his wife that in her presence
and in Vronsky's, and with the continual iteration of his name, would
force themselves on his attention. And it was as natural for him to talk
well and cleverly, as it is natural for a child to skip about. He was
saying:

"Danger in the races of officers, of cavalry men, is an essential
element in the race. If England can point to the most brilliant feats of
cavalry in military history, it is simply owing to the fact that she has
historically developed this force both in beasts and in men. Sport has,
in my opinion, a great value, and as is always the case, we see nothing
but what is most superficial."

"It's not superficial," said Princess Tverskaya. "One of the officers,
they say, has broken two ribs."

Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled his smile, which uncovered his teeth, but
revealed nothing more.

"We'll admit, princess, that that's not superficial," he said, "but
internal. But that's not the point," and he turned again to the general
with whom he was talking seriously; "we mustn't forget that those who
are taking part in the race are military men, who have chosen that
career, and one must allow that every calling has its disagreeable side.
It forms an integral part of the duties of an officer. Low sports, such
as prize-fighting or Spanish bull-fights, are a sign of barbarity. But
specialized trials of skill are a sign of development."

"No, I shan't come another time; it's too upsetting," said Princess
Betsy. "Isn't it, Anna?"

"It is upsetting, but one can't tear oneself away," said another lady.
"If I'd been a Roman woman I should never have missed a single circus."

Anna said nothing, and keeping her opera glass up, gazed always at the
same spot.

At that moment a tall general walked through the pavilion. Breaking off
what he was saying, Alexey Alexandrovitch got up hurriedly, though with
dignity, and bowed low to the general.

"You're not racing?" the officer asked, chaffing him.

"My race is a harder one," Alexey Alexandrovitch responded
deferentially.

And though the answer meant nothing, the general looked as though he had
heard a witty remark from a witty man, and fully relished _la pointe de
la sauce_.

"There are two aspects," Alexey Alexandrovitch resumed: "those who take
part and those who look on; and love for such spectacles is an
unmistakable proof of a low degree of development in the spectator, I
admit, but..."

"Princess, bets!" sounded Stepan Arkadyevitch's voice from below,
addressing Betsy. "Who's your favorite?"

"Anna and I are for Kuzovlev," replied Betsy.

"I'm for Vronsky. A pair of gloves?"

"Done!"

"But it is a pretty sight, isn't it?"

Alexey Alexandrovitch paused while there was talking about him, but he
began again directly.

"I admit that manly sports do not..." he was continuing.

But at that moment the racers started, and all conversation ceased.
Alexey Alexandrovitch too was silent, and everyone stood up and turned
towards the stream. Alexey Alexandrovitch took no interest in the race,
and so he did not watch the racers, but fell listlessly to scanning the
spectators with his weary eyes. His eyes rested upon Anna.

Her face was white and set. She was obviously seeing nothing and no one
but one man. Her hand had convulsively clutched her fan, and she held
her breath. He looked at her and hastily turned away, scrutinizing other
faces.

"But here's this lady too, and others very much moved as well; it's very
natural," Alexey Alexandrovitch told himself. He tried not to look at
her, but unconsciously his eyes were drawn to her. He examined that face
again, trying not to read what was so plainly written on it, and against
his own will, with horror read on it what he did not want to know.

The first fall--Kuzovlev's, at the stream--agitated everyone, but Alexey
Alexandrovitch saw distinctly on Anna's pale, triumphant face that the
man she was watching had not fallen. When, after Mahotin and Vronsky had
cleared the worst barrier, the next officer had been thrown straight on
his head at it and fatally injured, and a shudder of horror passed over
the whole public, Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that Anna did not even
notice it, and had some difficulty in realizing what they were talking
of about her. But more and more often, and with greater persistence, he
watched her. Anna, wholly engrossed as she was with the race, became
aware of her husband's cold eyes fixed upon her from one side.

She glanced round for an instant, looked inquiringly at him, and with a
slight frown turned away again.

"Ah, I don't care!" she seemed to say to him, and she did not once
glance at him again.

The race was an unlucky one, and of the seventeen officers who rode in
it more than half were thrown and hurt. Towards the end of the race
everyone was in a state of agitation, which was intensified by the fact
that the Tsar was displeased.



Chapter 29


Everyone was loudly expressing disapprobation, everyone was repeating a
phrase some one had uttered--"The lions and gladiators will be the next
thing," and everyone was feeling horrified; so that when Vronsky fell to
the ground, and Anna moaned aloud, there was nothing very out of the way
in it. But afterwards a change came over Anna's face which really was
beyond decorum. She utterly lost her head. She began fluttering like a
caged bird, at one moment would have got up and moved away, at the next
turned to Betsy.

"Let us go, let us go!" she said.

But Betsy did not hear her. She was bending down, talking to a general
who had come up to her.

Alexey Alexandrovitch went up to Anna and courteously offered her his
arm.

"Let us go, if you like," he said in French, but Anna was listening to
the general and did not notice her husband.

"He's broken his leg too, so they say," the general was saying. "This is
beyond everything."

Without answering her husband, Anna lifted her opera glass and gazed
towards the place where Vronsky had fallen; but it was so far off, and
there was such a crowd of people about it, that she could make out
nothing. She laid down the opera glass, and would have moved away, but
at that moment an officer galloped up and made some announcement to the
Tsar. Anna craned forward, listening.

"Stiva! Stiva!" she cried to her brother.

But her brother did not hear her. Again she would have moved away.

"Once more I offer you my arm if you want to be going," said Alexey
Alexandrovitch, reaching towards her hand.

She drew back from him with aversion, and without looking in his face
answered:

"No, no, let me be, I'll stay."

She saw now that from the place of Vronsky's accident an officer was
running across the course towards the pavilion. Betsy waved her
handkerchief to him. The officer brought the news that the rider was not
killed, but the horse had broken its back.

On hearing this Anna sat down hurriedly, and hid her face in her fan.
Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that she was weeping, and could not control
her tears, nor even the sobs that were shaking her bosom. Alexey
Alexandrovitch stood so as to screen her, giving her time to recover
herself.

"For the third time I offer you my arm," he said to her after a little
time, turning to her. Anna gazed at him and did not know what to say.
Princess Betsy came to her rescue.

"No, Alexey Alexandrovitch; I brought Anna and I promised to take her
home," put in Betsy.

"Excuse me, princess," he said, smiling courteously but looking her very
firmly in the face, "but I see that Anna's not very well, and I wish her
to come home with me."

Anna looked about her in a frightened way, got up submissively, and laid
her hand on her husband's arm.

"I'll send to him and find out, and let you know," Betsy whispered to
her.

As they left the pavilion, Alexey Alexandrovitch, as always, talked to
those he met, and Anna had, as always, to talk and answer; but she was
utterly beside herself, and moved hanging on her husband's arm as though
in a dream.

"Is he killed or not? Is it true? Will he come or not? Shall I see him
today?" she was thinking.

She took her seat in her husband's carriage in silence, and in silence
drove out of the crowd of carriages. In spite of all he had seen, Alexey
Alexandrovitch still did not allow himself to consider his wife's real
condition. He merely saw the outward symptoms. He saw that she was
behaving unbecomingly, and considered it his duty to tell her so. But it
was very difficult for him not to say more, to tell her nothing but
that. He opened his mouth to tell her she had behaved unbecomingly, but
he could not help saying something utterly different.

"What an inclination we all have, though, for these cruel spectacles,"
he said. "I observe..."

"Eh? I don't understand," said Anna contemptuously.

He was offended, and at once began to say what he had meant to say.

"I am obliged to tell you," he began.

"So now we are to have it out," she thought, and she felt frightened.

"I am obliged to tell you that your behavior has been unbecoming today,"
he said to her in French.

"In what way has my behavior been unbecoming?" she said aloud, turning
her head swiftly and looking him straight in the face, not with the
bright expression that seemed covering something, but with a look of
determination, under which she concealed with difficulty the dismay she
was feeling.

"Mind," he said, pointing to the open window opposite the coachman.

He got up and pulled up the window.

"What did you consider unbecoming?" she repeated.

"The despair you were unable to conceal at the accident to one of the
riders."

He waited for her to answer, but she was silent, looking straight before
her.

"I have already begged you so to conduct yourself in society that even
malicious tongues can find nothing to say against you. There was a time
when I spoke of your inward attitude, but I am not speaking of that now.
Now I speak only of your external attitude. You have behaved improperly,
and I would wish it not to occur again."

She did not hear half of what he was saying; she felt panic-stricken
before him, and was thinking whether it was true that Vronsky was not
killed. Was it of him they were speaking when they said the rider was
unhurt, but the horse had broken its back? She merely smiled with a
pretense of irony when he finished, and made no reply, because she had
not heard what he said. Alexey Alexandrovitch had begun to speak boldly,
but as he realized plainly what he was speaking of, the dismay she was
feeling infected him too. He saw the smile, and a strange
misapprehension came over him.

"She is smiling at my suspicions. Yes, she will tell me directly what
she told me before; that there is no foundation for my suspicions, that
it's absurd."

At that moment, when the revelation of everything was hanging over him,
there was nothing he expected so much as that she would answer mockingly
as before that his suspicions were absurd and utterly groundless. So
terrible to him was what he knew that now he was ready to believe
anything. But the expression of her face, scared and gloomy, did not now
promise even deception.

"Possibly I was mistaken," said he. "If so, I beg your pardon."

"No, you were not mistaken," she said deliberately, looking desperately
into his cold face. "You were not mistaken. I was, and I could not help
being in despair. I hear you, but I am thinking of him. I love him, I am
his mistress; I can't bear you; I'm afraid of you, and I hate you....
You can do what you like to me."

And dropping back into the corner of the carriage, she broke into sobs,
hiding her face in her hands. Alexey Alexandrovitch did not stir, and
kept looking straight before him. But his whole face suddenly bore the
solemn rigidity of the dead, and his expression did not change during
the whole time of the drive home. On reaching the house he turned his
head to her, still with the same expression.

"Very well! But I expect a strict observance of the external forms of
propriety till such time"--his voice shook--"as I may take measures to
secure my honor and communicate them to you."

He got out first and helped her to get out. Before the servants he
pressed her hand, took his seat in the carriage, and drove back to
Petersburg. Immediately afterwards a footman came from Princess Betsy
and brought Anna a note.

"I sent to Alexey to find out how he is, and he writes me he is quite
well and unhurt, but in despair."

"So _he_ will be here," she thought. "What a good thing I told him all!"

She glanced at her watch. She had still three hours to wait, and the
memories of their last meeting set her blood in flame.

"My God, how light it is! It's dreadful, but I do love to see his face,
and I do love this fantastic light.... My husband! Oh! yes.... Well,
thank God! everything's over with him."



Chapter 30


In the little German watering-place to which the Shtcherbatskys had
betaken themselves, as in all places indeed where people are gathered
together, the usual process, as it were, of the crystallization of
society went on, assigning to each member of that society a definite and
unalterable place. Just as the particle of water in frost, definitely
and unalterably, takes the special form of the crystal of snow, so each
new person that arrived at the springs was at once placed in his special
place.

_Fuerst_ Shtcherbatsky, _sammt Gemahlin und Tochter_, by the apartments
they took, and from their name and from the friends they made, were
immediately crystallized into a definite place marked out for them.

There was visiting the watering-place that year a real German Fuerstin,
in consequence of which the crystallizing process went on more
vigorously than ever. Princess Shtcherbatskaya wished, above everything,
to present her daughter to this German princess, and the day after their
arrival she duly performed this rite. Kitty made a low and graceful
curtsey in the _very simple_, that is to say, very elegant frock that
had been ordered her from Paris. The German princess said, "I hope the
roses will soon come back to this pretty little face," and for the
Shtcherbatskys certain definite lines of existence were at once laid
down from which there was no departing. The Shtcherbatskys made the
acquaintance too of the family of an English Lady Somebody, and of a
German countess and her son, wounded in the last war, and of a learned
Swede, and of M. Canut and his sister. But yet inevitably the
Shtcherbatskys were thrown most into the society of a Moscow lady, Marya
Yevgenyevna Rtishtcheva and her daughter, whom Kitty disliked, because
she had fallen ill, like herself, over a love affair, and a Moscow
colonel, whom Kitty had known from childhood, and always seen in uniform
and epaulets, and who now, with his little eyes and his open neck and
flowered cravat, was uncommonly ridiculous and tedious, because there
was no getting rid of him. When all this was so firmly established,
Kitty began to be very much bored, especially as the prince went away to
Carlsbad and she was left alone with her mother. She took no interest in
the people she knew, feeling that nothing fresh would come of them. Her
chief mental interest in the watering-place consisted in watching and
making theories about the people she did not know. It was characteristic
of Kitty that she always imagined everything in people in the most
favorable light possible, especially so in those she did not know. And
now as she made surmises as to who people were, what were their
relations to one another, and what they were like, Kitty endowed them
with the most marvelous and noble characters, and found confirmation of
her idea in her observations.

Of these people the one that attracted her most was a Russian girl who
had come to the watering-place with an invalid Russian lady, Madame
Stahl, as everyone called her. Madame Stahl belonged to the highest
society, but she was so ill that she could not walk, and only on
exceptionally fine days made her appearance at the springs in an invalid
carriage. But it was not so much from ill-health as from pride--so
Princess Shtcherbatskaya interpreted it--that Madame Stahl had not made
the acquaintance of anyone among the Russians there. The Russian girl
looked after Madame Stahl, and besides that, she was, as Kitty observed,
on friendly terms with all the invalids who were seriously ill, and
there were many of them at the springs, and looked after them in the
most natural way. This Russian girl was not, as Kitty gathered, related
to Madame Stahl, nor was she a paid attendant. Madame Stahl called her
Varenka, and other people called her "Mademoiselle Varenka." Apart from
the interest Kitty took in this girl's relations with Madame Stahl and
with other unknown persons, Kitty, as often happened, felt an
inexplicable attraction to Mademoiselle Varenka, and was aware when
their eyes met that she too liked her.

Of Mademoiselle Varenka one would not say that she had passed her first
youth, but she was, as it were, a creature without youth; she might have
been taken for nineteen or for thirty. If her features were criticized
separately, she was handsome rather than plain, in spite of the sickly
hue of her face. She would have been a good figure, too, if it had not
been for her extreme thinness and the size of her head, which was too
large for her medium height. But she was not likely to be attractive to
men. She was like a fine flower, already past its bloom and without
fragrance, though the petals were still unwithered. Moreover, she would
have been unattractive to men also from the lack of just what Kitty had
too much of--of the suppressed fire of vitality, and the consciousness
of her own attractiveness.

She always seemed absorbed in work about which there could be no doubt,
and so it seemed she could not take interest in anything outside it. It
was just this contrast with her own position that was for Kitty the
great attraction of Mademoiselle Varenka. Kitty felt that in her, in her
manner of life, she would find an example of what she was now so
painfully seeking: interest in life, a dignity in life--apart from the
worldly relations of girls with men, which so revolted Kitty, and
appeared to her now as a shameful hawking about of goods in search of a
purchaser. The more attentively Kitty watched her unknown friend, the
more convinced she was this girl was the perfect creature she fancied
her, and the more eagerly she wished to make her acquaintance.

The two girls used to meet several times a day, and every time they met,
Kitty's eyes said: "Who are you? What are you? Are you really the
exquisite creature I imagine you to be? But for goodness' sake don't
suppose," her eyes added, "that I would force my acquaintance on you, I
simply admire you and like you." "I like you too, and you're very, very
sweet. And I should like you better still, if I had time," answered the
eyes of the unknown girl. Kitty saw indeed, that she was always busy.
Either she was taking the children of a Russian family home from the
springs, or fetching a shawl for a sick lady, and wrapping her up in it,
or trying to interest an irritable invalid, or selecting and buying
cakes for tea for someone.

Soon after the arrival of the Shtcherbatskys there appeared in the
morning crowd at the springs two persons who attracted universal and
unfavorable attention. These were a tall man with a stooping figure, and
huge hands, in an old coat too short for him, with black, simple, and
yet terrible eyes, and a pockmarked, kind-looking woman, very badly and
tastelessly dressed. Recognizing these persons as Russians, Kitty had
already in her imagination begun constructing a delightful and touching
romance about them. But the princess, having ascertained from the
visitors' list that this was Nikolay Levin and Marya Nikolaevna,
explained to Kitty what a bad man this Levin was, and all her fancies
about these two people vanished. Not so much from what her mother told
her, as from the fact that it was Konstantin's brother, this pair
suddenly seemed to Kitty intensely unpleasant. This Levin, with his
continual twitching of his head, aroused in her now an irrepressible
feeling of disgust.

It seemed to her that his big, terrible eyes, which persistently pursued
her, expressed a feeling of hatred and contempt, and she tried to avoid
meeting him.



Chapter 31


It was a wet day; it had been raining all the morning, and the invalids,
with their parasols, had flocked into the arcades.

Kitty was walking there with her mother and the Moscow colonel, smart
and jaunty in his European coat, bought ready-made at Frankfort. They
were walking on one side of the arcade, trying to avoid Levin, who was
walking on the other side. Varenka, in her dark dress, in a black hat
with a turn-down brim, was walking up and down the whole length of the
arcade with a blind Frenchwoman, and, every time she met Kitty, they
exchanged friendly glances.

"Mamma, couldn't I speak to her?" said Kitty, watching her unknown
friend, and noticing that she was going up to the spring, and that they
might come there together.

"Oh, if you want to so much, I'll find out about her first and make her
acquaintance myself," answered her mother. "What do you see in her out
of the way? A companion, she must be. If you like, I'll make
acquaintance with Madame Stahl; I used to know her _belle-soeur_," added
the princess, lifting her head haughtily.

Kitty knew that the princess was offended that Madame Stahl had seemed
to avoid making her acquaintance. Kitty did not insist.

"How wonderfully sweet she is!" she said, gazing at Varenka just as she
handed a glass to the Frenchwoman. "Look how natural and sweet it all
is."

"It's so funny to see your _engouements_," said the princess. "No, we'd
better go back," she added, noticing Levin coming towards them with his
companion and a German doctor, to whom he was talking very noisily and
angrily.

They turned to go back, when suddenly they heard, not noisy talk, but
shouting. Levin, stopping short, was shouting at the doctor, and the
doctor, too, was excited. A crowd gathered about them. The princess and
Kitty beat a hasty retreat, while the colonel joined the crowd to find
out what was the matter.

A few minutes later the colonel overtook them.

"What was it?" inquired the princess.

"Scandalous and disgraceful!" answered the colonel. "The one thing to be
dreaded is meeting Russians abroad. That tall gentleman was abusing the
doctor, flinging all sorts of insults at him because he wasn't treating
him quite as he liked, and he began waving his stick at him. It's simply
a scandal!"

"Oh, how unpleasant!" said the princess. "Well, and how did it end?"

"Luckily at that point that ... the one in the mushroom hat ...
intervened. A Russian lady, I think she is," said the colonel.

"Mademoiselle Varenka?" asked Kitty.

"Yes, yes. She came to the rescue before anyone; she took the man by the
arm and led him away."

"There, mamma," said Kitty; "you wonder that I'm enthusiastic about
her."

The next day, as she watched her unknown friend, Kitty noticed that
Mademoiselle Varenka was already on the same terms with Levin and his
companion as with her other _proteges_. She went up to them, entered
into conversation with them, and served as interpreter for the woman,
who could not speak any foreign language.

Kitty began to entreat her mother still more urgently to let her make
friends with Varenka. And, disagreeable as it was to the princess to
seem to take the first step in wishing to make the acquaintance of
Madame Stahl, who thought fit to give herself airs, she made inquiries
about Varenka, and, having ascertained particulars about her tending to
prove that there could be no harm though little good in the
acquaintance, she herself approached Varenka and made acquaintance with
her.

Choosing a time when her daughter had gone to the spring, while Varenka
had stopped outside the baker's, the princess went up to her.

"Allow me to make your acquaintance," she said, with her dignified
smile. "My daughter has lost her heart to you," she said. "Possibly you
do not know me. I am..."

"That feeling is more than reciprocal, princess," Varenka answered
hurriedly.

"What a good deed you did yesterday to our poor compatriot!" said the
princess.

Varenka flushed a little. "I don't remember. I don't think I did
anything," she said.

"Why, you saved that Levin from disagreeable consequences."

"Yes, _sa compagne_ called me, and I tried to pacify him, he's very ill,
and was dissatisfied with the doctor. I'm used to looking after such
invalids."

"Yes, I've heard you live at Mentone with your aunt--I think--Madame
Stahl: I used to know her _belle-soeur_."

"No, she's not my aunt. I call her mamma, but I am not related to her; I
was brought up by her," answered Varenka, flushing a little again.

This was so simply said, and so sweet was the truthful and candid
expression of her face, that the princess saw why Kitty had taken such a
fancy to Varenka.

"Well, and what's this Levin going to do?" asked the princess.

"He's going away," answered Varenka.

At that instant Kitty came up from the spring beaming with delight that
her mother had become acquainted with her unknown friend.

"Well, see, Kitty, your intense desire to make friends with
Mademoiselle. . ."

"Varenka," Varenka put in smiling, "that's what everyone calls me."

Kitty blushed with pleasure, and slowly, without speaking, pressed her
new friend's hand, which did not respond to her pressure, but lay
motionless in her hand. The hand did not respond to her pressure, but
the face of Mademoiselle Varenka glowed with a soft, glad, though rather
mournful smile, that showed large but handsome teeth.

"I have long wished for this too," she said.

"But you are so busy."

"Oh, no, I'm not at all busy," answered Varenka, but at that moment she
had to leave her new friends because two little Russian girls, children
of an invalid, ran up to her.

"Varenka, mamma's calling!" they cried.

And Varenka went after them.



Chapter 32


The particulars which the princess had learned in regard to Varenka's
past and her relations with Madame Stahl were as follows:

Madame Stahl, of whom some people said that she had worried her husband
out of his life, while others said it was he who had made her wretched
by his immoral behavior, had always been a woman of weak health and
enthusiastic temperament. When, after her separation from her husband,
she gave birth to her only child, the child had died almost immediately,
and the family of Madame Stahl, knowing her sensibility, and fearing the
news would kill her, had substituted another child, a baby born the same
night and in the same house in Petersburg, the daughter of the chief
cook of the Imperial Household. This was Varenka. Madame Stahl learned
later on that Varenka was not her own child, but she went on bringing
her up, especially as very soon afterwards Varenka had not a relation of
her own living. Madame Stahl had now been living more than ten years
continuously abroad, in the south, never leaving her couch. And some
people said that Madame Stahl had made her social position as a
philanthropic, highly religious woman; other people said she really was
at heart the highly ethical being, living for nothing but the good of
her fellow creatures, which she represented herself to be. No one knew
what her faith was--Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox. But one fact was
indubitable--she was in amicable relations with the highest dignitaries
of all the churches and sects.

Varenka lived with her all the while abroad, and everyone who knew
Madame Stahl knew and liked Mademoiselle Varenka, as everyone called
her.

Having learned all these facts, the princess found nothing to object to
in her daughter's intimacy with Varenka, more especially as Varenka's
breeding and education were of the best--she spoke French and English
extremely well--and what was of the most weight, brought a message from
Madame Stahl expressing her regret that she was prevented by her ill
health from making the acquaintance of the princess.

After getting to know Varenka, Kitty became more and more fascinated by
her friend, and every day she discovered new virtues in her.

The princess, hearing that Varenka had a good voice, asked her to come
and sing to them in the evening.

"Kitty plays, and we have a piano; not a good one, it's true, but you
will give us so much pleasure," said the princess with her affected
smile, which Kitty disliked particularly just then, because she noticed
that Varenka had no inclination to sing. Varenka came, however, in the
evening and brought a roll of music with her. The princess had invited
Marya Yevgenyevna and her daughter and the colonel.

Varenka seemed quite unaffected by there being persons present she did
not know, and she went directly to the piano. She could not accompany
herself, but she could sing music at sight very well. Kitty, who played
well, accompanied her.

"You have an extraordinary talent," the princess said to her after
Varenka had sung the first song extremely well.

Marya Yevgenyevna and her daughter expressed their thanks and
admiration.

"Look," said the colonel, looking out of the window, "what an audience
has collected to listen to you." There actually was quite a considerable
crowd under the windows.

"I am very glad it gives you pleasure," Varenka answered simply.

Kitty looked with pride at her friend. She was enchanted by her talent,
and her voice, and her face, but most of all by her manner, by the way
Varenka obviously thought nothing of her singing and was quite unmoved
by their praises. She seemed only to be asking: "Am I to sing again, or
is that enough?"

"If it had been I," thought Kitty, "how proud I should have been! How
delighted I should have been to see that crowd under the windows! But
she's utterly unmoved by it. Her only motive is to avoid refusing and to
please mamma. What is there in her? What is it gives her the power to
look down on everything, to be calm independently of everything? How I
should like to know it and to learn it of her!" thought Kitty, gazing
into her serene face. The princess asked Varenka to sing again, and
Varenka sang another song, also smoothly, distinctly, and well, standing
erect at the piano and beating time on it with her thin, dark-skinned
hand.

The next song in the book was an Italian one. Kitty played the opening
bars, and looked round at Varenka.

"Let's skip that," said Varenka, flushing a little. Kitty let her eyes
rest on Varenka's face, with a look of dismay and inquiry.

"Very well, the next one," she said hurriedly, turning over the pages,
and at once feeling that there was something connected with the song.

"No," answered Varenka with a smile, laying her hand on the music, "no,
let's have that one." And she sang it just as quietly, as coolly, and as
well as the others.

When she had finished, they all thanked her again, and went off to tea.
Kitty and Varenka went out into the little garden that adjoined the
house.

"Am I right, that you have some reminiscences connected with that song?"
said Kitty. "Don't tell me," she added hastily, "only say if I'm right."

"No, why not? I'll tell you simply," said Varenka, and, without waiting
for a reply, she went on: "Yes, it brings up memories, once painful
ones. I cared for someone once, and I used to sing him that song."

Kitty with big, wide-open eyes gazed silently, sympathetically at
Varenka.

"I cared for him, and he cared for me; but his mother did not wish it,
and he married another girl. He's living now not far from us, and I see
him sometimes. You didn't think I had a love story too," she said, and
there was a faint gleam in her handsome face of that fire which Kitty
felt must once have glowed all over her.

"I didn't think so? Why, if I were a man, I could never care for anyone
else after knowing you. Only I can't understand how he could, to please
his mother, forget you and make you unhappy; he had no heart."

"Oh, no, he's a very good man, and I'm not unhappy; quite the contrary,
I'm very happy. Well, so we shan't be singing any more now," she added,
turning towards the house.

"How good you are! how good you are!" cried Kitty, and stopping her, she
kissed her. "If I could only be even a little like you!"

"Why should you be like anyone? You're nice as you are," said Varenka,
smiling her gentle, weary smile.

"No, I'm not nice at all. Come, tell me.... Stop a minute, let's sit
down," said Kitty, making her sit down again beside her. "Tell me, isn't
it humiliating to think that a man has disdained your love, that he
hasn't cared for it?..."

"But he didn't disdain it; I believe he cared for me, but he was a
dutiful son..."

"Yes, but if it hadn't been on account of his mother, if it had been his
own doing?..." said Kitty, feeling she was giving away her secret, and
that her face, burning with the flush of shame, had betrayed her
already.

"In that case he would have done wrong, and I should not have regretted
him," answered Varenka, evidently realizing that they were now talking
not of her, but of Kitty.

"But the humiliation," said Kitty, "the humiliation one can never
forget, can never forget," she said, remembering her look at the last
ball during the pause in the music.

"Where is the humiliation? Why, you did nothing wrong?"

"Worse than wrong--shameful."

Varenka shook her head and laid her hand on Kitty's hand.

"Why, what is there shameful?" she said. "You didn't tell a man, who
didn't care for you, that you loved him, did you?"

"Of course not; I never said a word, but he knew it. No, no, there are
looks, there are ways; I can't forget it, if I live a hundred years."

"Why so? I don't understand. The whole point is whether you love him now
or not," said Varenka, who called everything by its name.

"I hate him; I can't forgive myself."

"Why, what for?"

"The shame, the humiliation!"

"Oh! if everyone were as sensitive as you are!" said Varenka. "There
isn't a girl who hasn't been through the same. And it's all so
unimportant."

"Why, what is important?" said Kitty, looking into her face with
inquisitive wonder.

"Oh, there's so much that's important," said Varenka, smiling.

"Why, what?"

"Oh, so much that's more important," answered Varenka, not knowing what
to say. But at that instant they heard the princess's voice from the
window. "Kitty, it's cold! Either get a shawl, or come indoors."

"It really is time to go in!" said Varenka, getting up. "I have to go on
to Madame Berthe's; she asked me to."

Kitty held her by the hand, and with passionate curiosity and entreaty
her eyes asked her: "What is it, what is this of such importance that
gives you such tranquillity? You know, tell me!" But Varenka did not
even know what Kitty's eyes were asking her. She merely thought that she
had to go to see Madame Berthe too that evening, and to make haste home
in time for _maman's_ tea at twelve o'clock. She went indoors, collected
her music, and saying good-bye to everyone, was about to go.

"Allow me to see you home," said the colonel.

"Yes, how can you go alone at night like this?" chimed in the princess.
"Anyway, I'll send Parasha."

Kitty saw that Varenka could hardly restrain a smile at the idea that
she needed an escort.

"No, I always go about alone and nothing ever happens to me," she said,
taking her hat. And kissing Kitty once more, without saying what was
important, she stepped out courageously with the music under her arm and
vanished into the twilight of the summer night, bearing away with her
her secret of what was important and what gave her the calm and dignity
so much to be envied.



Chapter 33


Kitty made the acquaintance of Madame Stahl too, and this acquaintance,
together with her friendship with Varenka, did not merely exercise a
great influence on her, it also comforted her in her mental distress.
She found this comfort through a completely new world being opened to
her by means of this acquaintance, a world having nothing in common with
her past, an exalted, noble world, from the height of which she could
contemplate her past calmly. It was revealed to her that besides the
instinctive life to which Kitty had given herself up hitherto there was
a spiritual life. This life was disclosed in religion, but a religion
having nothing in common with that one which Kitty had known from
childhood, and which found expression in litanies and all-night services
at the Widow's Home, where one might meet one's friends, and in learning
by heart Slavonic texts with the priest. This was a lofty, mysterious
religion connected with a whole series of noble thoughts and feelings,
which one could do more than merely believe because one was told to,
which one could love.

Kitty found all this out not from words. Madame Stahl talked to Kitty as
to a charming child that one looks on with pleasure as on the memory of
one's youth, and only once she said in passing that in all human sorrows
nothing gives comfort but love and faith, and that in the sight of
Christ's compassion for us no sorrow is trifling--and immediately talked
of other things. But in every gesture of Madame Stahl, in every word, in
every heavenly--as Kitty called it--look, and above all in the whole
story of her life, which she heard from Varenka, Kitty recognized that
something "that was important," of which, till then, she had known
nothing.

Yet, elevated as Madame Stahl's character was, touching as was her
story, and exalted and moving as was her speech, Kitty could not help
detecting in her some traits which perplexed her. She noticed that when
questioning her about her family, Madame Stahl had smiled
contemptuously, which was not in accord with Christian meekness. She
noticed, too, that when she had found a Catholic priest with her, Madame
Stahl had studiously kept her face in the shadow of the lamp-shade and
had smiled in a peculiar way. Trivial as these two observations were,
they perplexed her, and she had her doubts as to Madame Stahl. But on
the other hand Varenka, alone in the world, without friends or
relations, with a melancholy disappointment in the past, desiring
nothing, regretting nothing, was just that perfection of which Kitty
dared hardly dream. In Varenka she realized that one has but to forget
oneself and love others, and one will be calm, happy, and noble. And
that was what Kitty longed to be. Seeing now clearly what was _the most
important_, Kitty was not satisfied with being enthusiastic over it; she
at once gave herself up with her whole soul to the new life that was
opening to her. From Varenka's accounts of the doings of Madame Stahl
and other people whom she mentioned, Kitty had already constructed the
plan of her own future life. She would, like Madame Stahl's niece,
Aline, of whom Varenka had talked to her a great deal, seek out those
who were in trouble, wherever she might be living, help them as far as
she could, give them the Gospel, read the Gospel to the sick, to
criminals, to the dying. The idea of reading the Gospel to criminals, as
Aline did, particularly fascinated Kitty. But all these were secret
dreams, of which Kitty did not talk either to her mother or to Varenka.

While awaiting the time for carrying out her plans on a large scale,
however, Kitty, even then at the springs, where there were so many
people ill and unhappy, readily found a chance for practicing her new
principles in imitation of Varenka.

At first the princess noticed nothing but that Kitty was much under the
influence of her _engouement_, as she called it, for Madame Stahl, and
still more for Varenka. She saw that Kitty did not merely imitate
Varenka in her conduct, but unconsciously imitated her in her manner of
walking, of talking, of blinking her eyes. But later on the princess
noticed that, apart from this adoration, some kind of serious spiritual
change was taking place in her daughter.

The princess saw that in the evenings Kitty read a French testament that
Madame Stahl had given her--a thing she had never done before; that she
avoided society acquaintances and associated with the sick people who
were under Varenka's protection, and especially one poor family, that of
a sick painter, Petrov. Kitty was unmistakably proud of playing the part
of a sister of mercy in that family. All this was well enough, and the
princess had nothing to say against it, especially as Petrov's wife was
a perfectly nice sort of woman, and that the German princess, noticing
Kitty's devotion, praised her, calling her an angel of consolation. All
this would have been very well, if there had been no exaggeration. But
the princess saw that her daughter was rushing into extremes, and so
indeed she told her.

"_Il ne faut jamais rien outrer_," she said to her.

Her daughter made her no reply, only in her heart she thought that one
could not talk about exaggeration where Christianity was concerned. What
exaggeration could there be in the practice of a doctrine wherein one
was bidden to turn the other cheek when one was smitten, and give one's
cloak if one's coat were taken? But the princess disliked this
exaggeration, and disliked even more the fact that she felt her daughter
did not care to show her all her heart. Kitty did in fact conceal her
new views and feelings from her mother. She concealed them not because
she did not respect or did not love her mother, but simply because she
was her mother. She would have revealed them to anyone sooner than to
her mother.

"How is it Anna Pavlovna's not been to see us for so long?" the princess
said one day of Madame Petrova. "I've asked her, but she seems put out
about something."

"No, I've not noticed it, maman," said Kitty, flushing hotly.

"Is it long since you went to see them?"

"We're meaning to make an expedition to the mountains tomorrow,"
answered Kitty.

"Well, you can go," answered the princess, gazing at her daughter's
embarrassed face and trying to guess the cause of her embarrassment.

That day Varenka came to dinner and told them that Anna Pavlovna had
changed her mind and given up the expedition for the morrow. And the
princess noticed again that Kitty reddened.

"Kitty, haven't you had some misunderstanding with the Petrovs?" said
the princess, when they were left alone. "Why has she given up sending
the children and coming to see us?"

Kitty answered that nothing had happened between them, and that she
could not tell why Anna Pavlovna seemed displeased with her. Kitty
answered perfectly truly. She did not know the reason Anna Pavlovna had
changed to her, but she guessed it. She guessed at something which she
could not tell her mother, which she did not put into words to herself.
It was one of those things which one knows but which one can never speak
of even to oneself, so terrible and shameful would it be to be mistaken.

Again and again she went over in her memory all her relations with the
family. She remembered the simple delight expressed on the round,
good-humored face of Anna Pavlovna at their meetings; she remembered
their secret confabulations about the invalid, their plots to draw him
away from the work which was forbidden him, and to get him out-of-doors;
the devotion of the youngest boy, who used to call her "my Kitty," and
would not go to bed without her. How nice it all was! Then she recalled
the thin, terribly thin figure of Petrov, with his long neck, in his
brown coat, his scant, curly hair, his questioning blue eyes that were
so terrible to Kitty at first, and his painful attempts to seem hearty
and lively in her presence. She recalled the efforts she had made at
first to overcome the repugnance she felt for him, as for all
consumptive people, and the pains it had cost her to think of things to
say to him. She recalled the timid, softened look with which he gazed at
her, and the strange feeling of compassion and awkwardness, and later of
a sense of her own goodness, which she had felt at it. How nice it all
was! But all that was at first. Now, a few days ago, everything was
suddenly spoiled. Anna Pavlovna had met Kitty with affected cordiality,
and had kept continual watch on her and on her husband.

Could that touching pleasure he showed when she came near be the cause
of Anna Pavlovna's coolness?

"Yes," she mused, "there was something unnatural about Anna Pavlovna,
and utterly unlike her good nature, when she said angrily the day before
yesterday: 'There, he will keep waiting for you; he wouldn't drink his
coffee without you, though he's grown so dreadfully weak.'"

"Yes, perhaps, too, she didn't like it when I gave him the rug. It was
all so simple, but he took it so awkwardly, and was so long thanking me,
that I felt awkward too. And then that portrait of me he did so well.
And most of all that look of confusion and tenderness! Yes, yes, that's
it!" Kitty repeated to herself with horror. "No, it can't be, it
oughtn't to be! He's so much to be pitied!" she said to herself directly
after.

This doubt poisoned the charm of her new life.



Chapter 34


Before the end of the course of drinking the waters, Prince
Shtcherbatsky, who had gone on from Carlsbad to Baden and Kissingen to
Russian friends--to get a breath of Russian air, as he said--came back
to his wife and daughter.

The views of the prince and of the princess on life abroad were
completely opposed. The princess thought everything delightful, and in
spite of her established position in Russian society, she tried abroad
to be like a European fashionable lady, which she was not--for the
simple reason that she was a typical Russian gentlewoman; and so she was
affected, which did not altogether suit her. The prince, on the
contrary, thought everything foreign detestable, got sick of European
life, kept to his Russian habits, and purposely tried to show himself
abroad less European than he was in reality.

The prince returned thinner, with the skin hanging in loose bags on his
cheeks, but in the most cheerful frame of mind. His good humor was even
greater when he saw Kitty completely recovered. The news of Kitty's
friendship with Madame Stahl and Varenka, and the reports the princess
gave him of some kind of change she had noticed in Kitty, troubled the
prince and aroused his habitual feeling of jealousy of everything that
drew his daughter away from him, and a dread that his daughter might
have got out of the reach of his influence into regions inaccessible to
him. But these unpleasant matters were all drowned in the sea of
kindliness and good humor which was always within him, and more so than
ever since his course of Carlsbad waters.

The day after his arrival the prince, in his long overcoat, with his
Russian wrinkles and baggy cheeks propped up by a starched collar, set
off with his daughter to the spring in the greatest good humor.

It was a lovely morning: the bright, cheerful houses with their little
gardens, the sight of the red-faced, red-armed, beer-drinking German
waitresses, working away merrily, did the heart good. But the nearer
they got to the springs the oftener they met sick people; and their
appearance seemed more pitiable than ever among the everyday conditions
of prosperous German life. Kitty was no longer struck by this contrast.
The bright sun, the brilliant green of the foliage, the strains of the
music were for her the natural setting of all these familiar faces, with
their changes to greater emaciation or to convalescence, for which she
watched. But to the prince the brightness and gaiety of the June
morning, and the sound of the orchestra playing a gay waltz then in
fashion, and above all, the appearance of the healthy attendants, seemed
something unseemly and monstrous, in conjunction with these slowly
moving, dying figures gathered together from all parts of Europe. In
spite of his feeling of pride and, as it were, of the return of youth,
with his favorite daughter on his arm, he felt awkward, and almost
ashamed of his vigorous step and his sturdy, stout limbs. He felt almost
like a man not dressed in a crowd.

"Present me to your new friends," he said to his daughter, squeezing her
hand with his elbow. "I like even your horrid Soden for making you so
well again. Only it's melancholy, very melancholy here. Who's that?"

Kitty mentioned the names of all the people they met, with some of whom
she was acquainted and some not. At the entrance of the garden they met
the blind lady, Madame Berthe, with her guide, and the prince was
delighted to see the old Frenchwoman's face light up when she heard
Kitty's voice. She at once began talking to him with French exaggerated
politeness, applauding him for having such a delightful daughter,
extolling Kitty to the skies before her face, and calling her a
treasure, a pearl, and a consoling angel.

"Well, she's the second angel, then," said the prince, smiling. "she
calls Mademoiselle Varenka angel number one."

"Oh! Mademoiselle Varenka, she's a real angel, allez," Madame Berthe
assented.

In the arcade they met Varenka herself. She was walking rapidly towards
them carrying an elegant red bag.

"Here is papa come," Kitty said to her.

Varenka made--simply and naturally as she did everything--a movement
between a bow and a curtsey, and immediately began talking to the
prince, without shyness, naturally, as she talked to everyone.

"Of course I know you; I know you very well," the prince said to her
with a smile, in which Kitty detected with joy that her father liked her
friend. "Where are you off to in such haste?"

"Maman's here," she said, turning to Kitty. "She has not slept all
night, and the doctor advised her to go out. I'm taking her her work."

"So that's angel number one?" said the prince when Varenka had gone on.

Kitty saw that her father had meant to make fun of Varenka, but that he
could not do it because he liked her.

"Come, so we shall see all your friends," he went on, "even Madame
Stahl, if she deigns to recognize me."

"Why, did you know her, papa?" Kitty asked apprehensively, catching the
gleam of irony that kindled in the prince's eyes at the mention of
Madame Stahl.

"I used to know her husband, and her too a little, before she'd joined
the Pietists."

"What is a Pietist, papa?" asked Kitty, dismayed to find that what she
prized so highly in Madame Stahl had a name.

"I don't quite know myself. I only know that she thanks God for
everything, for every misfortune, and thanks God too that her husband
died. And that's rather droll, as they didn't get on together."

"Who's that? What a piteous face!" he asked, noticing a sick man of
medium height sitting on a bench, wearing a brown overcoat and white
trousers that fell in strange folds about his long, fleshless legs. This
man lifted his straw hat, showed his scanty curly hair and high
forehead, painfully reddened by the pressure of the hat.

"That's Petrov, an artist," answered Kitty, blushing. "And that's his
wife," she added, indicating Anna Pavlovna, who, as though on purpose,
at the very instant they approached walked away after a child that had
run off along a path.

"Poor fellow! and what a nice face he has!" said the prince. "Why don't
you go up to him? He wanted to speak to you."

"Well, let us go, then," said Kitty, turning round resolutely. "How are
you feeling today?" she asked Petrov.

Petrov got up, leaning on his stick, and looked shyly at the prince.

"This is my daughter," said the prince. "Let me introduce myself."

The painter bowed and smiled, showing his strangely dazzling white
teeth.

"We expected you yesterday, princess," he said to Kitty. He staggered as
he said this, and then repeated the motion, trying to make it seem as if
it had been intentional.

"I meant to come, but Varenka said that Anna Pavlovna sent word you were
not going."

"Not going!" said Petrov, blushing, and immediately beginning to cough,
and his eyes sought his wife. "Anita! Anita!" he said loudly, and the
swollen veins stood out like cords on his thin white neck.

Anna Pavlovna came up.

"So you sent word to the princess that we weren't going!" he whispered
to her angrily, losing his voice.

"Good morning, princess," said Anna Pavlovna, with an assumed smile
utterly unlike her former manner. "Very glad to make your acquaintance,"
she said to the prince. "You've long been expected, prince."

"What did you send word to the princess that we weren't going for?" the
artist whispered hoarsely once more, still more angrily, obviously
exasperated that his voice failed him so that he could not give his
words the expression he would have liked to.

"Oh, mercy on us! I thought we weren't going," his wife answered
crossly.

"What, when...." He coughed and waved his hand. The prince took off his
hat and moved away with his daughter.

"Ah! ah!" he sighed deeply. "Oh, poor things!"

"Yes, papa," answered Kitty. "And you must know they've three children,
no servant, and scarcely any means. He gets something from the Academy,"
she went on briskly, trying to drown the distress that the queer change
in Anna Pavlovna's manner to her had aroused in her.

"Oh, here's Madame Stahl," said Kitty, indicating an invalid carriage,
where, propped on pillows, something in gray and blue was lying under a
sunshade. This was Madame Stahl. Behind her stood the gloomy,
healthy-looking German workman who pushed the carriage. Close by was
standing a flaxen-headed Swedish count, whom Kitty knew by name. Several
invalids were lingering near the low carriage, staring at the lady as
though she were some curiosity.

The prince went up to her, and Kitty detected that disconcerting gleam
of irony in his eyes. He went up to Madame Stahl, and addressed her with
extreme courtesy and affability in that excellent French that so few
speak nowadays.

"I don't know if you remember me, but I must recall myself to thank you
for your kindness to my daughter," he said, taking off his hat and not
putting it on again.

"Prince Alexander Shtcherbatsky," said Madame Stahl, lifting upon him
her heavenly eyes, in which Kitty discerned a look of annoyance.
"Delighted! I have taken a great fancy to your daughter."

"You are still in weak health?"

"Yes; I'm used to it," said Madame Stahl, and she introduced the prince
to the Swedish count.

"You are scarcely changed at all," the prince said to her. "It's ten or
eleven years since I had the honor of seeing you."

"Yes; God sends the cross and sends the strength to bear it. Often one
wonders what is the goal of this life?... The other side!" she said
angrily to Varenka, who had rearranged the rug over her feet not to her
satisfaction.

"To do good, probably," said the prince with a twinkle in his eye.

"That is not for us to judge," said Madame Stahl, perceiving the shade
of expression on the prince's face. "So you will send me that book, dear
count? I'm very grateful to you," she said to the young Swede.

"Ah!" cried the prince, catching sight of the Moscow colonel standing
near, and with a bow to Madame Stahl he walked away with his daughter
and the Moscow colonel, who joined them.

"That's our aristocracy, prince!" the Moscow colonel said with ironical
intention. He cherished a grudge against Madame Stahl for not making his
acquaintance.

"She's just the same," replied the prince.

"Did you know her before her illness, prince--that's to say before she
took to her bed?"

"Yes. She took to her bed before my eyes," said the prince.

"They say it's ten years since she has stood on her feet."

"She doesn't stand up because her legs are too short. She's a very bad
figure."

"Papa, it's not possible!" cried Kitty.

"That's what wicked tongues say, my darling. And your Varenka catches it
too," he added. "Oh, these invalid ladies!"

"Oh, no, papa!" Kitty objected warmly. "Varenka worships her. And then
she does so much good! Ask anyone! Everyone knows her and Aline Stahl."

"Perhaps so," said the prince, squeezing her hand with his elbow; "but
it's better when one does good so that you may ask everyone and no one
knows."

Kitty did not answer, not because she had nothing to say, but because
she did not care to reveal her secret thoughts even to her father. But,
strange to say, although she had so made up her mind not to be
influenced by her father's views, not to let him into her inmost
sanctuary, she felt that the heavenly image of Madame Stahl, which she
had carried for a whole month in her heart, had vanished, never to
return, just as the fantastic figure made up of some clothes thrown down
at random vanishes when one sees that it is only some garment lying
there. All that was left was a woman with short legs, who lay down
because she had a bad figure, and worried patient Varenka for not
arranging her rug to her liking. And by no effort of the imagination
could Kitty bring back the former Madame Stahl.



Chapter 35


The prince communicated his good humor to his own family and his
friends, and even to the German landlord in whose rooms the
Shtcherbatskys were staying.

On coming back with Kitty from the springs, the prince, who had asked
the colonel, and Marya Yevgenyevna, and Varenka all to come and have
coffee with them, gave orders for a table and chairs to be taken into
the garden under the chestnut tree, and lunch to be laid there. The
landlord and the servants, too, grew brisker under the influence of his
good spirits. They knew his open-handedness; and half an hour later the
invalid doctor from Hamburg, who lived on the top floor, looked
enviously out of the window at the merry party of healthy Russians
assembled under the chestnut tree. In the trembling circles of shadow
cast by the leaves, at a table, covered with a white cloth, and set with
coffeepot, bread-and-butter, cheese, and cold game, sat the princess in
a high cap with lilac ribbons, distributing cups and bread-and-butter.
At the other end sat the prince, eating heartily, and talking loudly and
merrily. The prince had spread out near him his purchases, carved boxes,
and knick-knacks, paper-knives of all sorts, of which he bought a heap
at every watering-place, and bestowed them upon everyone, including
Lieschen, the servant girl, and the landlord, with whom he jested in his
comically bad German, assuring him that it was not the water had cured
Kitty, but his splendid cookery, especially his plum soup. The princess
laughed at her husband for his Russian ways, but she was more lively and
good-humored than she had been all the while she had been at the waters.
The colonel smiled, as he always did, at the prince's jokes, but as far
as regards Europe, of which he believed himself to be making a careful
study, he took the princess's side. The simple-hearted Marya Yevgenyevna
simply roared with laughter at everything absurd the prince said, and
his jokes made Varenka helpless with feeble but infectious laughter,
which was something Kitty had never seen before.

Kitty was glad of all this, but she could not be light-hearted. She
could not solve the problem her father had unconsciously set her by his
goodhumored view of her friends, and of the life that had so attracted
her. To this doubt there was joined the change in her relations with the
Petrovs, which had been so conspicuously and unpleasantly marked that
morning. Everyone was good humored, but Kitty could not feel good
humored, and this increased her distress. She felt a feeling such as she
had known in childhood, when she had been shut in her room as a
punishment, and had heard her sisters' merry laughter outside.

"Well, but what did you buy this mass of things for?" said the princess,
smiling, and handing her husband a cup of coffee.

"One goes for a walk, one looks in a shop, and they ask you to buy.
'_Erlaucht, Durchlaucht?_' Directly they say '_Durchlaucht_,' I can't
hold out. I lose ten thalers."

"It's simply from boredom," said the princess.

"Of course it is. Such boredom, my dear, that one doesn't know what to
do with oneself."

"How can you be bored, prince? There's so much that's interesting now in
Germany," said Marya Yevgenyevna.

"But I know everything that's interesting: the plum soup I know, and the
pea sausages I know. I know everything."

"No, you may say what you like, prince, there's the interest of their
institutions," said the colonel.

"But what is there interesting about it? They're all as pleased as brass
halfpence. They've conquered everybody, and why am I to be pleased at
that? I haven't conquered anyone; and I'm obliged to take off my own
boots, yes, and put them away too; in the morning, get up and dress at
once, and go to the dining room to drink bad tea! How different it is at
home! You get up in no haste, you get cross, grumble a little, and come
round again. You've time to think things over, and no hurry."

"But time's money, you forget that," said the colonel.

"Time, indeed, that depends! Why, there's time one would give a month of
for sixpence, and time you wouldn't give half an hour of for any money.
Isn't that so, Katinka? What is it? why are you so depressed?"

"I'm not depressed."

"Where are you off to? Stay a little longer," he said to Varenka.

"I must be going home," said Varenka, getting up, and again she went off
into a giggle. When she had recovered, she said good-bye, and went into
the house to get her hat.

Kitty followed her. Even Varenka struck her as different. She was not
worse, but different from what she had fancied her before.

"Oh, dear! it's a long while since I've laughed so much!" said Varenka,
gathering up her parasol and her bag. "How nice he is, your father!"

Kitty did not speak.

"When shall I see you again?" asked Varenka.

"Mamma meant to go and see the Petrovs. Won't you be there?" said Kitty,
to try Varenka.

"Yes," answered Varenka. "They're getting ready to go away, so I
promised to help them pack."

"Well, I'll come too, then."

"No, why should you?"

"Why not? why not? why not?" said Kitty, opening her eyes wide, and
clutching at Varenka's parasol, so as not to let her go. "No, wait a
minute; why not?"

"Oh, nothing; your father has come, and besides, they will feel awkward
at your helping."

"No, tell me why you don't want me to be often at the Petrovs'. You
don't want me to--why not?"

"I didn't say that," said Varenka quietly.

"No, please tell me!"

"Tell you everything?" asked Varenka.

"Everything, everything!" Kitty assented.

"Well, there's really nothing of any consequence; only that Mihail
Alexeyevitch" (that was the artist's name) "had meant to leave earlier,
and now he doesn't want to go away," said Varenka, smiling.

"Well, well!" Kitty urged impatiently, looking darkly at Varenka.

"Well, and for some reason Anna Pavlovna told him that he didn't want to
go because you are here. Of course, that was nonsense; but there was a
dispute over it--over you. You know how irritable these sick people
are."

Kitty, scowling more than ever, kept silent, and Varenka went on
speaking alone, trying to soften or soothe her, and seeing a storm
coming--she did not know whether of tears or of words.

"So you'd better not go.... You understand; you won't be offended?..."

"And it serves me right! And it serves me right!" Kitty cried quickly,
snatching the parasol out of Varenka's hand, and looking past her
friend's face.

Varenka felt inclined to smile, looking at her childish fury, but she
was afraid of wounding her.

"How does it serve you right? I don't understand," she said.

"It serves me right, because it was all sham; because it was all done on
purpose, and not from the heart. What business had I to interfere with
outsiders? And so it's come about that I'm a cause of quarrel, and that
I've done what nobody asked me to do. Because it was all a sham! a sham!
a sham!..."

"A sham! with what object?" said Varenka gently.

"Oh, it's so idiotic! so hateful! There was no need whatever for me....
Nothing but sham!" she said, opening and shutting the parasol.

"But with what object?"

"To seem better to people, to myself, to God; to deceive everyone. No!
now I won't descend to that. I'll be bad; but anyway not a liar, a
cheat."

"But who is a cheat?" said Varenka reproachfully. "You speak as if..."

But Kitty was in one of her gusts of fury, and she would not let her
finish.

"I don't talk about you, not about you at all. You're perfection. Yes,
yes, I know you're all perfection; but what am I to do if I'm bad? This
would never have been if I weren't bad. So let me be what I am. I won't
be a sham. What have I to do with Anna Pavlovna? Let them go their way,
and me go mine. I can't be different.... And yet it's not that, it's not
that."

"What is not that?" asked Varenka in bewilderment.

"Everything. I can't act except from the heart, and you act from
principle. I liked you simply, but you most likely only wanted to save
me, to improve me."

"You are unjust," said Varenka.

"But I'm not speaking of other people, I'm speaking of myself."

"Kitty," they heard her mother's voice, "come here, show papa your
necklace."

Kitty, with a haughty air, without making peace with her friend, took
the necklace in a little box from the table and went to her mother.

"What's the matter? Why are you so red?" her mother and father said to
her with one voice.

"Nothing," she answered. "I'll be back directly," and she ran back.

"She's still here," she thought. "What am I to say to her? Oh, dear!
what have I done, what have I said? Why was I rude to her? What am I to
do? What am I to say to her?" thought Kitty, and she stopped in the
doorway.

Varenka in her hat and with the parasol in her hands was sitting at the
table examining the spring which Kitty had broken. She lifted her head.

"Varenka, forgive me, do forgive me," whispered Kitty, going up to her.
"I don't remember what I said. I..."

"I really didn't mean to hurt you," said Varenka, smiling.

Peace was made. But with her father's coming all the world in which she
had been living was transformed for Kitty. She did not give up
everything she had learned, but she became aware that she had deceived
herself in supposing she could be what she wanted to be. Her eyes were,
it seemed, opened; she felt all the difficulty of maintaining herself
without hypocrisy and self-conceit on the pinnacle to which she had
wished to mount. Moreover, she became aware of all the dreariness of the
world of sorrow, of sick and dying people, in which she had been living.
The efforts she had made to like it seemed to her intolerable, and she
felt a longing to get back quickly into the fresh air, to Russia, to
Ergushovo, where, as she knew from letters, her sister Dolly had already
gone with her children.

But her affection for Varenka did not wane. As she said good-bye, Kitty
begged her to come to them in Russia.

"I'll come when you get married," said Varenka.

"I shall never marry."

"Well, then, I shall never come."

"Well, then, I shall be married simply for that. Mind now, remember your
promise," said Kitty.

The doctor's prediction was fulfilled. Kitty returned home to Russia
cured. She was not so gay and thoughtless as before, but she was serene.
Her Moscow troubles had become a memory to her.




PART THREE



Chapter 1


Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev wanted a rest from mental work, and instead
of going abroad as he usually did, he came towards the end of May to
stay in the country with his brother. In his judgment the best sort of
life was a country life. He had come now to enjoy such a life at his
brother's. Konstantin Levin was very glad to have him, especially as he
did not expect his brother Nikolay that summer. But in spite of his
affection and respect for Sergey Ivanovitch, Konstantin Levin was
uncomfortable with his brother in the country. It made him
uncomfortable, and it positively annoyed him to see his brother's
attitude to the country. To Konstantin Levin the country was the
background of life, that is of pleasures, endeavors, labor. To Sergey
Ivanovitch the country meant on one hand rest from work, on the other a
valuable antidote to the corrupt influences of town, which he took with
satisfaction and a sense of its utility. To Konstantin Levin the country
was good first because it afforded a field for labor, of the usefulness
of which there could be no doubt. To Sergey Ivanovitch the country was
particularly good, because there it was possible and fitting to do
nothing. Moreover, Sergey Ivanovitch's attitude to the peasants rather
piqued Konstantin. Sergey Ivanovitch used to say that he knew and liked
the peasantry, and he often talked to the peasants, which he knew how to
do without affectation or condescension, and from every such
conversation he would deduce general conclusions in favor of the
peasantry and in confirmation of his knowing them. Konstantin Levin did
not like such an attitude to the peasants. To Konstantin the peasant was
simply the chief partner in their common labor, and in spite of all the
respect and the love, almost like that of kinship, he had for the
peasant--sucked in probably, as he said himself, with the milk of his
peasant nurse--still as a fellow-worker with him, while sometimes
enthusiastic over the vigor, gentleness, and justice of these men, he
was very often, when their common labors called for other qualities,
exasperated with the peasant for his carelessness, lack of method,
drunkenness, and lying. If he had been asked whether he liked or didn't
like the peasants, Konstantin Levin would have been absolutely at a loss
what to reply. He liked and did not like the peasants, just as he liked
and did not like men in general. Of course, being a good-hearted man, he
liked men rather than he disliked them, and so too with the peasants.
But like or dislike "the people" as something apart he could not, not
only because he lived with "the people," and all his interests were
bound up with theirs, but also because he regarded himself as a part of
"the people," did not see any special qualities or failings
distinguishing himself and "the people," and could not contrast himself
with them. Moreover, although he had lived so long in the closest
relations with the peasants, as farmer and arbitrator, and what was
more, as adviser (the peasants trusted him, and for thirty miles round
they would come to ask his advice), he had no definite views of "the
people," and would have been as much at a loss to answer the question
whether he knew "the people" as the question whether he liked them. For
him to say he knew the peasantry would have been the same as to say he
knew men. He was continually watching and getting to know people of all
sorts, and among them peasants, whom he regarded as good and interesting
people, and he was continually observing new points in them, altering
his former views of them and forming new ones. With Sergey Ivanovitch it
was quite the contrary. Just as he liked and praised a country life in
comparison with the life he did not like, so too he liked the peasantry
in contradistinction to the class of men he did not like, and so too he
knew the peasantry as something distinct from and opposed to men
generally. In his methodical brain there were distinctly formulated
certain aspects of peasant life, deduced partly from that life itself,
but chiefly from contrast with other modes of life. He never changed his
opinion of the peasantry and his sympathetic attitude towards them.

In the discussions that arose between the brothers on their views of the
peasantry, Sergey Ivanovitch always got the better of his brother,
precisely because Sergey Ivanovitch had definite ideas about the
peasant--his character, his qualities, and his tastes. Konstantin Levin
had no definite and unalterable idea on the subject, and so in their
arguments Konstantin was readily convicted of contradicting himself.

In Sergey Ivanovitch's eyes his younger brother was a capital fellow,
_with his heart in the right place_ (as he expressed it in French), but
with a mind which, though fairly quick, was too much influenced by the
impressions of the moment, and consequently filled with contradictions.
With all the condescension of an elder brother he sometimes explained to
him the true import of things, but he derived little satisfaction from
arguing with him because he got the better of him too easily.

Konstantin Levin regarded his brother as a man of immense intellect and
culture, as generous in the highest sense of the word, and possessed of
a special faculty for working for the public good. But in the depths of
his heart, the older he became, and the more intimately he knew his
brother, the more and more frequently the thought struck him that this
faculty of working for the public good, of which he felt himself utterly
devoid, was possibly not so much a quality as a lack of something--not a
lack of good, honest, noble desires and tastes, but a lack of vital
force, of what is called heart, of that impulse which drives a man to
choose someone out of the innumerable paths of life, and to care only
for that one. The better he knew his brother, the more he noticed that
Sergey Ivanovitch, and many other people who worked for the public
welfare, were not led by an impulse of the heart to care for the public
good, but reasoned from intellectual considerations that it was a right
thing to take interest in public affairs, and consequently took interest
in them. Levin was confirmed in this generalization by observing that
his brother did not take questions affecting the public welfare or the
question of the immortality of the soul a bit more to heart than he did
chess problems, or the ingenious construction of a new machine.

Besides this, Konstantin Levin was not at his ease with his brother,
because in summer in the country Levin was continually busy with work on
the land, and the long summer day was not long enough for him to get
through all he had to do, while Sergey Ivanovitch was taking a holiday.
But though he was taking a holiday now, that is to say, he was doing no
writing, he was so used to intellectual activity that he liked to put
into concise and eloquent shape the ideas that occurred to him, and
liked to have someone to listen to him. His most usual and natural
listener was his brother. And so in spite of the friendliness and
directness of their relations, Konstantin felt an awkwardness in leaving
him alone. Sergey Ivanovitch liked to stretch himself on the grass in
the sun, and to lie so, basking and chatting lazily.

"You wouldn't believe," he would say to his brother, "what a pleasure
this rural laziness is to me. Not an idea in one's brain, as empty as a
drum!"

But Konstantin Levin found it dull sitting and listening to him,
especially when he knew that while he was away they would be carting
dung onto the fields not ploughed ready for it, and heaping it all up
anyhow; and would not screw the shares in the ploughs, but would let
them come off and then say that the new ploughs were a silly invention,
and there was nothing like the old Andreevna plough, and so on.

"Come, you've done enough trudging about in the heat," Sergey Ivanovitch
would say to him.

"No, I must just run round to the counting-house for a minute," Levin
would answer, and he would run off to the fields.



Chapter 2


Early in June it happened that Agafea Mihalovna, the old nurse and
housekeeper, in carrying to the cellar a jar of mushrooms she had just
pickled, slipped, fell, and sprained her wrist. The district doctor, a
talkative young medical student, who had just finished his studies, came
to see her. He examined the wrist, said it was not broken, was delighted
at a chance of talking to the celebrated Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev,
and to show his advanced views of things told him all the scandal of the
district, complaining of the poor state into which the district council
had fallen. Sergey Ivanovitch listened attentively, asked him questions,
and, roused by a new listener, he talked fluently, uttered a few keen
and weighty observations, respectfully appreciated by the young doctor,
and was soon in that eager frame of mind his brother knew so well, which
always, with him, followed a brilliant and eager conversation. After the
departure of the doctor, he wanted to go with a fishing rod to the
river. Sergey Ivanovitch was fond of angling, and was, it seemed, proud
of being able to care for such a stupid occupation.

Konstantin Levin, whose presence was needed in the plough land and
meadows, had come to take his brother in the trap.

It was that time of the year, the turning-point of summer, when the
crops of the present year are a certainty, when one begins to think of
the sowing for next year, and the mowing is at hand; when the rye is all
in ear, though its ears are still light, not yet full, and it waves in
gray-green billows in the wind; when the green oats, with tufts of
yellow grass scattered here and there among it, droop irregularly over
the late-sown fields; when the early buckwheat is already out and hiding
the ground; when the fallow lands, trodden hard as stone by the cattle,
are half ploughed over, with paths left untouched by the plough; when
from the dry dung-heaps carted onto the fields there comes at sunset a
smell of manure mixed with meadow-sweet, and on the low-lying lands the
riverside meadows are a thick sea of grass waiting for the mowing, with
blackened heaps of the stalks of sorrel among it.

It was the time when there comes a brief pause in the toil of the fields
before the beginning of the labors of harvest--every year recurring,
every year straining every nerve of the peasants. The crop was a
splendid one, and bright, hot summer days had set in with short, dewy
nights.

The brothers had to drive through the woods to reach the meadows. Sergey
Ivanovitch was all the while admiring the beauty of the woods, which
were a tangled mass of leaves, pointing out to his brother now an old
lime tree on the point of flowering, dark on the shady side, and
brightly spotted with yellow stipules, now the young shoots of this
year's saplings brilliant with emerald. Konstantin Levin did not like
talking and hearing about the beauty of nature. Words for him took away
the beauty of what he saw. He assented to what his brother said, but he
could not help beginning to think of other things. When they came out of
the woods, all his attention was engrossed by the view of the fallow
land on the upland, in parts yellow with grass, in parts trampled and
checkered with furrows, in parts dotted with ridges of dung, and in
parts even ploughed. A string of carts was moving across it. Levin
counted the carts, and was pleased that all that were wanted had been
brought, and at the sight of the meadows his thoughts passed to the
mowing. He always felt something special moving him to the quick at the
hay-making. On reaching the meadow Levin stopped the horse.

The morning dew was still lying on the thick undergrowth of the grass,
and that he might not get his feet wet, Sergey Ivanovitch asked his
brother to drive him in the trap up to the willow tree from which the
carp was caught. Sorry as Konstantin Levin was to crush down his mowing
grass, he drove him into the meadow. The high grass softly turned about
the wheels and the horse's legs, leaving its seeds clinging to the wet
axles and spokes of the wheels. His brother seated himself under a bush,
arranging his tackle, while Levin led the horse away, fastened him up,
and walked into the vast gray-green sea of grass unstirred by the wind.
The silky grass with its ripe seeds came almost to his waist in the
dampest spots.

Crossing the meadow, Konstantin Levin came out onto the road, and met an
old man with a swollen eye, carrying a skep on his shoulder.

"What? taken a stray swarm, Fomitch?" he asked.

"No, indeed, Konstantin Dmitrich! All we can do to keep our own! This is
the second swarm that has flown away.... Luckily the lads caught them.
They were ploughing your field. They unyoked the horses and galloped
after them."

"Well, what do you say, Fomitch--start mowing or wait a bit?"

"Eh, well. Our way's to wait till St. Peter's Day. But you always mow
sooner. Well, to be sure, please God, the hay's good. There'll be plenty
for the beasts."

"What do you think about the weather?"

"That's in God's hands. Maybe it will be fine."

Levin went up to his brother.

Sergey Ivanovitch had caught nothing, but he was not bored, and seemed
in the most cheerful frame of mind. Levin saw that, stimulated by his
conversation with the doctor, he wanted to talk. Levin, on the other
hand, would have liked to get home as soon as possible to give orders
about getting together the mowers for next day, and to set at rest his
doubts about the mowing, which greatly absorbed him.

"Well, let's be going," he said.

"Why be in such a hurry? Let's stay a little. But how wet you are! Even
though one catches nothing, it's nice. That's the best thing about every
part of sport, that one has to do with nature. How exquisite this steely
water is!" said Sergey Ivanovitch. "These riverside banks always remind
me of the riddle--do you know it? 'The grass says to the water: we
quiver and we quiver.'"

"I don't know the riddle," answered Levin wearily.



Chapter 3


"Do you know, I've been thinking about you," said Sergey Ivanovitch.
"It's beyond everything what's being done in the district, according to
what this doctor tells me. He's a very intelligent fellow. And as I've
told you before, I tell you again: it's not right for you not to go to
the meetings, and altogether to keep out of the district business. If
decent people won't go into it, of course it's bound to go all wrong. We
pay the money, and it all goes in salaries, and there are no schools,
nor district nurses, nor midwives, nor drugstores--nothing."

"Well, I did try, you know," Levin said slowly and unwillingly. "I
can't! and so there's no help for it."

"But why can't you? I must own I can't make it out. Indifference,
incapacity--I won't admit; surely it's not simply laziness?"

"None of those things. I've tried, and I see I can do nothing," said
Levin.

He had hardly grasped what his brother was saying. Looking towards the
plough land across the river, he made out something black, but he could
not distinguish whether it was a horse or the bailiff on horseback.

"Why is it you can do nothing? You made an attempt and didn't succeed,
as you think, and you give in. How can you have so little self-respect?"

"Self-respect!" said Levin, stung to the quick by his brother's words;
"I don't understand. If they'd told me at college that other people
understood the integral calculus, and I didn't, then pride would have
come in. But in this case one wants first to be convinced that one has
certain qualifications for this sort of business, and especially that
all this business is of great importance."

"What! do you mean to say it's not of importance?" said Sergey
Ivanovitch, stung to the quick too at his brother's considering anything
of no importance that interested him, and still more at his obviously
paying little attention to what he was saying.

"I don't think it important; it does not take hold of me, I can't help
it," answered Levin, making out that what he saw was the bailiff, and
that the bailiff seemed to be letting the peasants go off the ploughed
land. They were turning the plough over. "Can they have finished
ploughing?" he wondered.

"Come, really though," said the elder brother, with a frown on his
handsome, clever face, "there's a limit to everything. It's very well to
be original and genuine, and to dislike everything conventional--I know
all about that; but really, what you're saying either has no meaning, or
it has a very wrong meaning. How can you think it a matter of no
importance whether the peasant, whom you love as you assert..."

"I never did assert it," thought Konstantin Levin.

"... dies without help? The ignorant peasant-women starve the children,
and the people stagnate in darkness, and are helpless in the hands of
every village clerk, while you have at your disposal a means of helping
them, and don't help them because to your mind it's of no importance."

And Sergey Ivanovitch put before him the alternative: either you are so
undeveloped that you can't see all that you can do, or you won't
sacrifice your ease, your vanity, or whatever it is, to do it.

Konstantin Levin felt that there was no course open to him but to
submit, or to confess to a lack of zeal for the public good. And this
mortified him and hurt his feelings.

"It's both," he said resolutely: "I don't see that it was possible..."

"What! was it impossible, if the money were properly laid out, to
provide medical aid?"

"Impossible, as it seems to me.... For the three thousand square miles
of our district, what with our thaws, and the storms, and the work in
the fields, I don't see how it is possible to provide medical aid all
over. And besides, I don't believe in medicine."

"Oh, well, that's unfair ... I can quote to you thousands of
instances.... But the schools, anyway."

"Why have schools?"

"What do you mean? Can there be two opinions of the advantage of
education? If it's a good thing for you, it's a good thing for
everyone."

Konstantin Levin felt himself morally pinned against a wall, and so he
got hot, and unconsciously blurted out the chief cause of his
indifference to public business.

"Perhaps it may all be very good; but why should I worry myself about
establishing dispensaries which I shall never make use of, and schools
to which I shall never send my children, to which even the peasants
don't want to send their children, and to which I've no very firm faith
that they ought to send them?" said he.

Sergey Ivanovitch was for a minute surprised at this unexpected view of
the subject; but he promptly made a new plan of attack. He was silent
for a little, drew out a hook, threw it in again, and turned to his
brother smiling.

"Come, now.... In the first place, the dispensary is needed. We
ourselves sent for the district doctor for Agafea Mihalovna."

"Oh, well, but I fancy her wrist will never be straight again."

"That remains to be proved.... Next, the peasant who can read and write
is as a workman of more use and value to you."

"No, you can ask anyone you like," Konstantin Levin answered with
decision, "the man that can read and write is much inferior as a
workman. And mending the highroads is an impossibility; and as soon as
they put up bridges they're stolen."

"Still, that's not the point," said Sergey Ivanovitch, frowning. He
disliked contradiction, and still more, arguments that were continually
skipping from one thing to another, introducing new and disconnected
points, so that there was no knowing to which to reply. "Do you admit
that education is a benefit for the people?"

"Yes, I admit it," said Levin without thinking, and he was conscious
immediately that he had said what he did not think. He felt that if he
admitted that, it would be proved that he had been talking meaningless
rubbish. How it would be proved he could not tell, but he knew that this
would inevitably be logically proved to him, and he awaited the proofs.

The argument turned out to be far simpler than he had expected.

"If you admit that it is a benefit," said Sergey Ivanovitch, "then, as
an honest man, you cannot help caring about it and sympathizing with the
movement, and so wishing to work for it."

"But I still do not admit this movement to be just," said Konstantin
Levin, reddening a little.

"What! But you said just now..."

"That's to say, I don't admit it's being either good or possible."

"That you can't tell without making the trial."

"Well, supposing that's so," said Levin, though he did not suppose so at
all, "supposing that is so, still I don't see, all the same, what I'm to
worry myself about it for."

"How so?"

"No; since we are talking, explain it to me from the philosophical point
of view," said Levin.

"I can't see where philosophy comes in," said Sergey Ivanovitch, in a
tone, Levin fancied, as though he did not admit his brother's right to
talk about philosophy. And that irritated Levin.

"I'll tell you, then," he said with heat, "I imagine the mainspring of
all our actions is, after all, self-interest. Now in the local
institutions I, as a nobleman, see nothing that could conduce to my
prosperity, and the roads are not better and could not be better; my
horses carry me well enough over bad ones. Doctors and dispensaries are
no use to me. An arbitrator of disputes is no use to me. I never appeal
to him, and never shall appeal to him. The schools are no good to me,
but positively harmful, as I told you. For me the district institutions
simply mean the liability to pay fourpence halfpenny for every three
acres, to drive into the town, sleep with bugs, and listen to all sorts
of idiocy and loathsomeness, and self-interest offers me no inducement."

"Excuse me," Sergey Ivanovitch interposed with a smile, "self-interest
did not induce us to work for the emancipation of the serfs, but we did
work for it."

"No!" Konstantin Levin broke in with still greater heat; "the
emancipation of the serfs was a different matter. There self-interest
did come in. One longed to throw off that yoke that crushed us, all
decent people among us. But to be a town councilor and discuss how many
dustmen are needed, and how chimneys shall be constructed in the town in
which I don't live--to serve on a jury and try a peasant who's stolen a
flitch of bacon, and listen for six hours at a stretch to all sorts of
jabber from the counsel for the defense and the prosecution, and the
president cross-examining my old half-witted Alioshka, 'Do you admit,
prisoner in the dock, the fact of the removal of the bacon?' 'Eh?'"

Konstantin Levin had warmed to his subject, and began mimicking the
president and the half-witted Alioshka: it seemed to him that it was all
to the point.

But Sergey Ivanovitch shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, what do you mean to say, then?"

"I simply mean to say that those rights that touch me ... my interest, I
shall always defend to the best of my ability; that when they made raids
on us students, and the police read our letters, I was ready to defend
those rights to the utmost, to defend my rights to education and
freedom. I can understand compulsory military service, which affects my
children, my brothers, and myself, I am ready to deliberate on what
concerns me; but deliberating on how to spend forty thousand roubles of
district council money, or judging the half-witted Alioshka--I don't
understand, and I can't do it."

Konstantin Levin spoke as though the floodgates of his speech had burst
open. Sergey Ivanovitch smiled.

"But tomorrow it'll be your turn to be tried; would it have suited your
tastes better to be tried in the old criminal tribunal?"

"I'm not going to be tried. I shan't murder anybody, and I've no need of
it. Well, I tell you what," he went on, flying off again to a subject
quite beside the point, "our district self-government and all the rest
of it--it's just like the birch branches we stick in the ground on
Trinity Day, for instance, to look like a copse which has grown up of
itself in Europe, and I can't gush over these birch branches and believe
in them."

Sergey Ivanovitch merely shrugged his shoulders, as though to express
his wonder how the birch branches had come into their argument at that
point, though he did really understand at once what his brother meant.

"Excuse me, but you know one really can't argue in that way," he
observed.

But Konstantin Levin wanted to justify himself for the failing, of which
he was conscious, of lack of zeal for the public welfare, and he went
on.

"I imagine," he said, "that no sort of activity is likely to be lasting
if it is not founded on self-interest, that's a universal principle, a
philosophical principle," he said, repeating the word "philosophical"
with determination, as though wishing to show that he had as much right
as any one else to talk of philosophy.

Sergey Ivanovitch smiled. "He too has a philosophy of his own at the
service of his natural tendencies," he thought.

"Come, you'd better let philosophy alone," he said. "The chief problem
of the philosophy of all ages consists just in finding the indispensable
connection which exists between individual and social interests. But
that's not to the point; what is to the point is a correction I must
make in your comparison. The birches are not simply stuck in, but some
are sown and some are planted, and one must deal carefully with them.
It's only those peoples that have an intuitive sense of what's of
importance and significance in their institutions, and know how to value
them, that have a future before them--it's only those peoples that one
can truly call historical."

And Sergey Ivanovitch carried the subject into the regions of
philosophical history where Konstantin Levin could not follow him, and
showed him all the incorrectness of his view.

"As for your dislike of it, excuse my saying so, that's simply our
Russian sloth and old serf-owner's ways, and I'm convinced that in you
it's a temporary error and will pass."

Konstantin was silent. He felt himself vanquished on all sides, but he
felt at the same time that what he wanted to say was unintelligible to
his brother. Only he could not make up his mind whether it was
unintelligible because he was not capable of expressing his meaning
clearly, or because his brother would not or could not understand him.
But he did not pursue the speculation, and without replying, he fell to
musing on a quite different and personal matter.

Sergey Ivanovitch wound up the last line, untied the horse, and they
drove off.



Chapter 4


The personal matter that absorbed Levin during his conversation with his
brother was this. Once in a previous year he had gone to look at the
mowing, and being made very angry by the bailiff he had recourse to his
favorite means for regaining his temper,--he took a scythe from a
peasant and began mowing.

He liked the work so much that he had several times tried his hand at
mowing since. He had cut the whole of the meadow in front of his house,
and this year ever since the early spring he had cherished a plan for
mowing for whole days together with the peasants. Ever since his
brother's arrival, he had been in doubt whether to mow or not. He was
loath to leave his brother alone all day long, and he was afraid his
brother would laugh at him about it. But as he drove into the meadow,
and recalled the sensations of mowing, he came near deciding that he
would go mowing. After the irritating discussion with his brother, he
pondered over this intention again.

"I must have physical exercise, or my temper'll certainly be ruined," he
thought, and he determined he would go mowing, however awkward he might
feel about it with his brother or the peasants.

Towards evening Konstantin Levin went to his counting house, gave
directions as to the work to be done, and sent about the village to
summon the mowers for the morrow, to cut the hay in Kalinov meadow, the
largest and best of his grass lands.

"And send my scythe, please, to Tit, for him to set it, and bring it
round tomorrow. I shall maybe do some mowing myself too," he said,
trying not to be embarrassed.

The bailiff smiled and said: "Yes, sir."

At tea the same evening Levin said to his brother:

"I fancy the fine weather will last. Tomorrow I shall start mowing."

"I'm so fond of that form of field labor," said Sergey Ivanovitch.

"I'm awfully fond of it. I sometimes mow myself with the peasants, and
tomorrow I want to try mowing the whole day."

Sergey Ivanovitch lifted his head, and looked with interest at his
brother.

"How do you mean? Just like one of the peasants, all day long?"

"Yes, it's very pleasant," said Levin.

"It's splendid as exercise, only you'll hardly be able to stand it,"
said Sergey Ivanovitch, without a shade of irony.

"I've tried it. It's hard work at first, but you get into it. I dare say
I shall manage to keep it up..."

"Really! what an idea! But tell me, how do the peasants look at it? I
suppose they laugh in their sleeves at their master's being such a queer
fish?"

"No, I don't think so; but it's so delightful, and at the same time such
hard work, that one has no time to think about it."

"But how will you do about dining with them? To send you a bottle of
Lafitte and roast turkey out there would be a little awkward."

"No, I'll simply come home at the time of their noonday rest."

Next morning Konstantin Levin got up earlier than usual, but he was
detained giving directions on the farm, and when he reached the mowing
grass the mowers were already at their second row.

From the uplands he could get a view of the shaded cut part of the
meadow below, with its grayish ridges of cut grass, and the black heaps
of coats, taken off by the mowers at the place from which they had
started cutting.

Gradually, as he rode towards the meadow, the peasants came into sight,
some in coats, some in their shirts mowing, one behind another in a long
string, swinging their scythes differently. He counted forty-two of
them.

They were mowing slowly over the uneven, low-lying parts of the meadow,
where there had been an old dam. Levin recognized some of his own men.
Here was old Yermil in a very long white smock, bending forward to swing
a scythe; there was a young fellow, Vaska, who had been a coachman of
Levin's, taking every row with a wide sweep. Here, too, was Tit, Levin's
preceptor in the art of mowing, a thin little peasant. He was in front
of all, and cut his wide row without bending, as though playing with the
scythe.

Levin got off his mare, and fastening her up by the roadside went to
meet Tit, who took a second scythe out of a bush and gave it to him.

"It's ready, sir; it's like a razor, cuts of itself," said Tit, taking
off his cap with a smile and giving him the scythe.

Levin took the scythe, and began trying it. As they finished their rows,
the mowers, hot and good-humored, came out into the road one after
another, and, laughing a little, greeted the master. They all stared at
him, but no one made any remark, till a tall old man, with a wrinkled,
beardless face, wearing a short sheepskin jacket, came out into the road
and accosted him.

"Look'ee now, master, once take hold of the rope there's no letting it
go!" he said, and Levin heard smothered laughter among the mowers.

"I'll try not to let it go," he said, taking his stand behind Tit, and
waiting for the time to begin.

"Mind'ee," repeated the old man.

Tit made room, and Levin started behind him. The grass was short close
to the road, and Levin, who had not done any mowing for a long while,
and was disconcerted by the eyes fastened upon him, cut badly for the
first moments, though he swung his scythe vigorously. Behind him he
heard voices:

"It's not set right; handle's too high; see how he has to stoop to it,"
said one.

"Press more on the heel," said another.

"Never mind, he'll get on all right," the old man resumed.

"He's made a start.... You swing it too wide, you'll tire yourself
out.... The master, sure, does his best for himself! But see the grass
missed out! For such work us fellows would catch it!"

The grass became softer, and Levin, listening without answering,
followed Tit, trying to do the best he could. They moved a hundred
paces. Tit kept moving on, without stopping, not showing the slightest
weariness, but Levin was already beginning to be afraid he would not be
able to keep it up: he was so tired.

He felt as he swung his scythe that he was at the very end of his
strength, and was making up his mind to ask Tit to stop. But at that
very moment Tit stopped of his own accord, and stooping down picked up
some grass, rubbed his scythe, and began whetting it. Levin straightened
himself, and drawing a deep breath looked round. Behind him came a
peasant, and he too was evidently tired, for he stopped at once without
waiting to mow up to Levin, and began whetting his scythe. Tit sharpened
his scythe and Levin's, and they went on. The next time it was just the
same. Tit moved on with sweep after sweep of his scythe, not stopping
nor showing signs of weariness. Levin followed him, trying not to get
left behind, and he found it harder and harder: the moment came when he
felt he had no strength left, but at that very moment Tit stopped and
whetted the scythes.

So they mowed the first row. And this long row seemed particularly hard
work to Levin; but when the end was reached and Tit, shouldering his
scythe, began with deliberate stride returning on the tracks left by his
heels in the cut grass, and Levin walked back in the same way over the
space he had cut, in spite of the sweat that ran in streams over his
face and fell in drops down his nose, and drenched his back as though he
had been soaked in water, he felt very happy. What delighted him
particularly was that now he knew he would be able to hold out.

His pleasure was only disturbed by his row not being well cut. "I will
swing less with my arm and more with my whole body," he thought,
comparing Tit's row, which looked as if it had been cut with a line,
with his own unevenly and irregularly lying grass.

The first row, as Levin noticed, Tit had mowed specially quickly,
probably wishing to put his master to the test, and the row happened to
be a long one. The next rows were easier, but still Levin had to strain
every nerve not to drop behind the peasants.

He thought of nothing, wished for nothing, but not to be left behind the
peasants, and to do his work as well as possible. He heard nothing but
the swish of scythes, and saw before him Tit's upright figure mowing
away, the crescent-shaped curve of the cut grass, the grass and flower
heads slowly and rhythmically falling before the blade of his scythe,
and ahead of him the end of the row, where would come the rest.

Suddenly, in the midst of his toil, without understanding what it was or
whence it came, he felt a pleasant sensation of chill on his hot, moist
shoulders. He glanced at the sky in the interval for whetting the
scythes. A heavy, lowering storm cloud had blown up, and big raindrops
were falling. Some of the peasants went to their coats and put them on;
others--just like Levin himself--merely shrugged their shoulders,
enjoying the pleasant coolness of it.

Another row, and yet another row, followed--long rows and short rows,
with good grass and with poor grass. Levin lost all sense of time, and
could not have told whether it was late or early now. A change began to
come over his work, which gave him immense satisfaction. In the midst of
his toil there were moments during which he forgot what he was doing,
and it came all easy to him, and at those same moments his row was
almost as smooth and well cut as Tit's. But so soon as he recollected
what he was doing, and began trying to do better, he was at once
conscious of all the difficulty of his task, and the row was badly mown.

On finishing yet another row he would have gone back to the top of the
meadow again to begin the next, but Tit stopped, and going up to the old
man said something in a low voice to him. They both looked at the sun.
"What are they talking about, and why doesn't he go back?" thought
Levin, not guessing that the peasants had been mowing no less than four
hours without stopping, and it was time for their lunch.

"Lunch, sir," said the old man.

"Is it really time? That's right; lunch, then."

Levin gave his scythe to Tit, and together with the peasants, who were
crossing the long stretch of mown grass, slightly sprinkled with rain,
to get their bread from the heap of coats, he went towards his house.
Only then he suddenly awoke to the fact that he had been wrong about the
weather and the rain was drenching his hay.

"The hay will be spoiled," he said.

"Not a bit of it, sir; mow in the rain, and you'll rake in fine
weather!" said the old man.

Levin untied his horse and rode home to his coffee. Sergey Ivanovitch
was only just getting up. When he had drunk his coffee, Levin rode back
again to the mowing before Sergey Ivanovitch had had time to dress and
come down to the dining room.



Chapter 5


After lunch Levin was not in the same place in the string of mowers as
before, but stood between the old man who had accosted him jocosely, and
now invited him to be his neighbor, and a young peasant, who had only
been married in the autumn, and who was mowing this summer for the first
time.

The old man, holding himself erect, moved in front, with his feet turned
out, taking long, regular strides, and with a precise and regular action
which seemed to cost him no more effort than swinging one's arms in
walking, as though it were in play, he laid down the high, even row of
grass. It was as though it were not he but the sharp scythe of itself
swishing through the juicy grass.

Behind Levin came the lad Mishka. His pretty, boyish face, with a twist
of fresh grass bound round his hair, was all working with effort; but
whenever anyone looked at him he smiled. He would clearly have died
sooner than own it was hard work for him.

Levin kept between them. In the very heat of the day the mowing did not
seem such hard work to him. The perspiration with which he was drenched
cooled him, while the sun, that burned his back, his head, and his arms,
bare to the elbow, gave a vigor and dogged energy to his labor; and more
and more often now came those moments of unconsciousness, when it was
possible not to think what one was doing. The scythe cut of itself.
These were happy moments. Still more delightful were the moments when
they reached the stream where the rows ended, and the old man rubbed his
scythe with the wet, thick grass, rinsed its blade in the fresh water of
the stream, ladled out a little in a tin dipper, and offered Levin a
drink.

"What do you say to my home-brew, eh? Good, eh?" said he, winking.

And truly Levin had never drunk any liquor so good as this warm water
with green bits floating in it, and a taste of rust from the tin dipper.
And immediately after this came the delicious, slow saunter, with his
hand on the scythe, during which he could wipe away the streaming sweat,
take deep breaths of air, and look about at the long string of mowers
and at what was happening around in the forest and the country.

The longer Levin mowed, the oftener he felt the moments of
unconsciousness in which it seemed not his hands that swung the scythe,
but the scythe mowing of itself, a body full of life and consciousness
of its own, and as though by magic, without thinking of it, the work
turned out regular and well-finished of itself. These were the most
blissful moments.

It was only hard work when he had to break off the motion, which had
become unconscious, and to think; when he had to mow round a hillock or
a tuft of sorrel. The old man did this easily. When a hillock came he
changed his action, and at one time with the heel, and at another with
the tip of his scythe, clipped the hillock round both sides with short
strokes. And while he did this he kept looking about and watching what
came into his view: at one moment he picked a wild berry and ate it or
offered it to Levin, then he flung away a twig with the blade of the
scythe, then he looked at a quail's nest, from which the bird flew just
under the scythe, or caught a snake that crossed his path, and lifting
it on the scythe as though on a fork showed it to Levin and threw it
away.

For both Levin and the young peasant behind him, such changes of
position were difficult. Both of them, repeating over and over again the
same strained movement, were in a perfect frenzy of toil, and were
incapable of shifting their position and at the same time watching what
was before them.

Levin did not notice how time was passing. If he had been asked how long
he had been working he would have said half an hour--and it was getting
on for dinner time. As they were walking back over the cut grass, the
old man called Levin's attention to the little girls and boys who were
coming from different directions, hardly visible through the long grass,
and along the road towards the mowers, carrying sacks of bread dragging
at their little hands and pitchers of the sour rye-beer, with cloths
wrapped round them.

"Look'ee, the little emmets crawling!" he said, pointing to them, and he
shaded his eyes with his hand to look at the sun. They mowed two more
rows; the old man stopped.

"Come, master, dinner time!" he said briskly. And on reaching the stream
the mowers moved off across the lines of cut grass towards their pile of
coats, where the children who had brought their dinners were sitting
waiting for them. The peasants gathered into groups--those further away
under a cart, those nearer under a willow bush.

Levin sat down by them; he felt disinclined to go away.

All constraint with the master had disappeared long ago. The peasants
got ready for dinner. Some washed, the young lads bathed in the stream,
others made a place comfortable for a rest, untied their sacks of bread,
and uncovered the pitchers of rye-beer. The old man crumbled up some
bread in a cup, stirred it with the handle of a spoon, poured water on
it from the dipper, broke up some more bread, and having seasoned it
with salt, he turned to the east to say his prayer.

"Come, master, taste my sop," said he, kneeling down before the cup.

The sop was so good that Levin gave up the idea of going home. He dined
with the old man, and talked to him about his family affairs, taking the
keenest interest in them, and told him about his own affairs and all the
circumstances that could be of interest to the old man. He felt much
nearer to him than to his brother, and could not help smiling at the
affection he felt for this man. When the old man got up again, said his
prayer, and lay down under a bush, putting some grass under his head for
a pillow, Levin did the same, and in spite of the clinging flies that
were so persistent in the sunshine, and the midges that tickled his hot
face and body, he fell asleep at once and only waked when the sun had
passed to the other side of the bush and reached him. The old man had
been awake a long while, and was sitting up whetting the scythes of the
younger lads.

Levin looked about him and hardly recognized the place, everything was
so changed. The immense stretch of meadow had been mown and was
sparkling with a peculiar fresh brilliance, with its lines of already
sweet-smelling grass in the slanting rays of the evening sun. And the
bushes about the river had been cut down, and the river itself, not
visible before, now gleaming like steel in its bends, and the moving,
ascending, peasants, and the sharp wall of grass of the unmown part of
the meadow, and the hawks hovering over the stripped meadow--all was
perfectly new. Raising himself, Levin began considering how much had
been cut and how much more could still be done that day.

The work done was exceptionally much for forty-two men. They had cut the
whole of the big meadow, which had, in the years of serf labor, taken
thirty scythes two days to mow. Only the corners remained to do, where
the rows were short. But Levin felt a longing to get as much mowing done
that day as possible, and was vexed with the sun sinking so quickly in
the sky. He felt no weariness; all he wanted was to get his work done
more and more quickly and as much done as possible.

"Could you cut Mashkin Upland too?--what do you think?" he said to the
old man.

"As God wills, the sun's not high. A little vodka for the lads?"

At the afternoon rest, when they were sitting down again, and those who
smoked had lighted their pipes, the old man told the men that "Mashkin
Upland's to be cut--there'll be some vodka."

"Why not cut it? Come on, Tit! We'll look sharp! We can eat at night.
Come on!" cried voices, and eating up their bread, the mowers went back
to work.

"Come, lads, keep it up!" said Tit, and ran on ahead almost at a trot.

"Get along, get along!" said the old man, hurrying after him and easily
overtaking him, "I'll mow you down, look out!"

And young and old mowed away, as though they were racing with one
another. But however fast they worked, they did not spoil the grass, and
the rows were laid just as neatly and exactly. The little piece left
uncut in the corner was mown in five minutes. The last of the mowers
were just ending their rows while the foremost snatched up their coats
onto their shoulders, and crossed the road towards Mashkin Upland.

The sun was already sinking into the trees when they went with their
jingling dippers into the wooded ravine of Mashkin Upland. The grass was
up to their waists in the middle of the hollow, soft, tender, and
feathery, spotted here and there among the trees with wild heart's-ease.

After a brief consultation--whether to take the rows lengthwise or
diagonally--Prohor Yermilin, also a renowned mower, a huge, black-haired
peasant, went on ahead. He went up to the top, turned back again and
started mowing, and they all proceeded to form in line behind him, going
downhill through the hollow and uphill right up to the edge of the
forest. The sun sank behind the forest. The dew was falling by now; the
mowers were in the sun only on the hillside, but below, where a mist was
rising, and on the opposite side, they mowed into the fresh, dewy shade.
The work went rapidly. The grass cut with a juicy sound, and was at once
laid in high, fragrant rows. The mowers from all sides, brought closer
together in the short row, kept urging one another on to the sound of
jingling dippers and clanging scythes, and the hiss of the whetstones
sharpening them, and good-humored shouts.

Levin still kept between the young peasant and the old man. The old man,
who had put on his short sheepskin jacket, was just as good-humored,
jocose, and free in his movements. Among the trees they were continually
cutting with their scythes the so-called "birch mushrooms," swollen fat
in the succulent grass. But the old man bent down every time he came
across a mushroom, picked it up and put it in his bosom. "Another
present for my old woman," he said as he did so.

Easy as it was to mow the wet, soft grass, it was hard work going up and
down the steep sides of the ravine. But this did not trouble the old
man. Swinging his scythe just as ever, and moving his feet in their big,
plaited shoes with firm, little steps, he climbed slowly up the steep
place, and though his breeches hanging out below his smock, and his
whole frame trembled with effort, he did not miss one blade of grass or
one mushroom on his way, and kept making jokes with the peasants and
Levin. Levin walked after him and often thought he must fall, as he
climbed with a scythe up a steep cliff where it would have been hard
work to clamber without anything. But he climbed up and did what he had
to do. He felt as though some external force were moving him.



Chapter 6


Mashkin Upland was mown, the last row finished, the peasants had put on
their coats and were gaily trudging home. Levin got on his horse and,
parting regretfully from the peasants, rode homewards. On the hillside
he looked back; he could not see them in the mist that had risen from
the valley; he could only hear rough, good-humored voices, laughter, and
the sound of clanking scythes.

Sergey Ivanovitch had long ago finished dinner, and was drinking iced
lemon and water in his own room, looking through the reviews and papers
which he had only just received by post, when Levin rushed into the
room, talking merrily, with his wet and matted hair sticking to his
forehead, and his back and chest grimed and moist.

"We mowed the whole meadow! Oh, it is nice, delicious! And how have you
been getting on?" said Levin, completely forgetting the disagreeable
conversation of the previous day.

"Mercy! what do you look like!" said Sergey Ivanovitch, for the first
moment looking round with some dissatisfaction. "And the door, do shut
the door!" he cried. "You must have let in a dozen at least."

Sergey Ivanovitch could not endure flies, and in his own room he never
opened the window except at night, and carefully kept the door shut.

"Not one, on my honor. But if I have, I'll catch them. You wouldn't
believe what a pleasure it is! How have you spent the day?"

"Very well. But have you really been mowing the whole day? I expect
you're as hungry as a wolf. Kouzma has got everything ready for you."

"No, I don't feel hungry even. I had something to eat there. But I'll go
and wash."

"Yes, go along, go along, and I'll come to you directly," said Sergey
Ivanovitch, shaking his head as he looked at his brother. "Go along,
make haste," he added smiling, and gathering up his books, he prepared
to go too. He, too, felt suddenly good-humored and disinclined to leave
his brother's side. "But what did you do while it was raining?"

"Rain? Why, there was scarcely a drop. I'll come directly. So you had a
nice day too? That's first-rate." And Levin went off to change his
clothes.

Five minutes later the brothers met in the dining room. Although it
seemed to Levin that he was not hungry, and he sat down to dinner simply
so as not to hurt Kouzma's feelings, yet when he began to eat the dinner
struck him as extraordinarily good. Sergey Ivanovitch watched him with a
smile.

"Oh, by the way, there's a letter for you," said he. "Kouzma, bring it
down, please. And mind you shut the doors."

The letter was from Oblonsky. Levin read it aloud. Oblonsky wrote to him
from Petersburg: "I have had a letter from Dolly; she's at Ergushovo,
and everything seems going wrong there. Do ride over and see her,
please; help her with advice; you know all about it. She will be so glad
to see you. She's quite alone, poor thing. My mother-in-law and all of
them are still abroad."

"That's capital! I will certainly ride over to her," said Levin. "Or
we'll go together. She's such a splendid woman, isn't she?"

"They're not far from here, then?"

"Twenty-five miles. Or perhaps it is thirty. But a capital road.
Capital, we'll drive over."

"I shall be delighted," said Sergey Ivanovitch, still smiling. The sight
of his younger brother's appearance had immediately put him in a good
humor.

"Well, you have an appetite!" he said, looking at his dark-red, sunburnt
face and neck bent over the plate.

"Splendid! You can't imagine what an effectual remedy it is for every
sort of foolishness. I want to enrich medicine with a new word:
_Arbeitskur_."

"Well, but you don't need it, I should fancy."

"No, but for all sorts of nervous invalids."

"Yes, it ought to be tried. I had meant to come to the mowing to look at
you, but it was so unbearably hot that I got no further than the forest.
I sat there a little, and went on by the forest to the village, met your
old nurse, and sounded her as to the peasants' view of you. As far as I
can make out, they don't approve of this. She said: 'It's not a
gentleman's work.' Altogether, I fancy that in the people's ideas there
are very clear and definite notions of certain, as they call it,
'gentlemanly' lines of action. And they don't sanction the gentry's
moving outside bounds clearly laid down in their ideas."

"Maybe so; but anyway it's a pleasure such as I have never known in my
life. And there's no harm in it, you know. Is there?" answered Levin. "I
can't help it if they don't like it. Though I do believe it's all right.
Eh?"

"Altogether," pursued Sergey Ivanovitch, "you're satisfied with your
day?"

"Quite satisfied. We cut the whole meadow. And such a splendid old man I
made friends with there! You can't fancy how delightful he was!"

"Well, so you're content with your day. And so am I. First, I solved two
chess problems, and one a very pretty one--a pawn opening. I'll show it
you. And then--I thought over our conversation yesterday."

"Eh! our conversation yesterday?" said Levin, blissfully dropping his
eyelids and drawing deep breaths after finishing his dinner, and
absolutely incapable of recalling what their conversation yesterday was
about.

"I think you are partly right. Our difference of opinion amounts to
this, that you make the mainspring self-interest, while I suppose that
interest in the common weal is bound to exist in every man of a certain
degree of advancement. Possibly you are right too, that action founded
on material interest would be more desirable. You are altogether, as the
French say, too _primesautiere_ a nature; you must have intense,
energetic action, or nothing."

Levin listened to his brother and did not understand a single word, and
did not want to understand. He was only afraid his brother might ask him
some question which would make it evident he had not heard.

"So that's what I think it is, my dear boy," said Sergey Ivanovitch,
touching him on the shoulder.

"Yes, of course. But, do you know? I won't stand up for my view,"
answered Levin, with a guilty, childlike smile. "Whatever was it I was
disputing about?" he wondered. "Of course, I'm right, and he's right,
and it's all first-rate. Only I must go round to the counting house and
see to things." He got up, stretching and smiling. Sergey Ivanovitch
smiled too.

"If you want to go out, let's go together," he said, disinclined to be
parted from his brother, who seemed positively breathing out freshness
and energy. "Come, we'll go to the counting house, if you have to go
there."

"Oh, heavens!" shouted Levin, so loudly that Sergey Ivanovitch was quite
frightened.

"What, what is the matter?"

"How's Agafea Mihalovna's hand?" said Levin, slapping himself on the
head. "I'd positively forgotten her even."

"It's much better."

"Well, anyway I'll run down to her. Before you've time to get your hat
on, I'll be back."

And he ran downstairs, clattering with his heels like a spring-rattle.



Chapter 7


Stephan Arkadyevitch had gone to Petersburg to perform the most natural
and essential official duty--so familiar to everyone in the government
service, though incomprehensible to outsiders--that duty, but for which
one could hardly be in government service, of reminding the ministry of
his existence--and having, for the due performance of this rite, taken
all the available cash from home, was gaily and agreeably spending his
days at the races and in the summer villas. Meanwhile Dolly and the
children had moved into the country, to cut down expenses as much as
possible. She had gone to Ergushovo, the estate that had been her dowry,
and the one where in spring the forest had been sold. It was nearly
forty miles from Levin's Pokrovskoe. The big, old house at Ergushovo had
been pulled down long ago, and the old prince had had the lodge done up
and built on to. Twenty years before, when Dolly was a child, the lodge
had been roomy and comfortable, though, like all lodges, it stood
sideways to the entrance avenue, and faced the south. But by now this
lodge was old and dilapidated. When Stepan Arkadyevitch had gone down in
the spring to sell the forest, Dolly had begged him to look over the
house and order what repairs might be needed. Stepan Arkadyevitch, like
all unfaithful husbands indeed, was very solicitous for his wife's
comfort, and he had himself looked over the house, and given
instructions about everything that he considered necessary. What he
considered necessary was to cover all the furniture with cretonne, to
put up curtains, to weed the garden, to make a little bridge on the
pond, and to plant flowers. But he forgot many other essential matters,
the want of which greatly distressed Darya Alexandrovna later on.

In spite of Stepan Arkadyevitch's efforts to be an attentive father and
husband, he never could keep in his mind that he had a wife and
children. He had bachelor tastes, and it was in accordance with them
that he shaped his life. On his return to Moscow he informed his wife
with pride that everything was ready, that the house would be a little
paradise, and that he advised her most certainly to go. His wife's
staying away in the country was very agreeable to Stepan Arkadyevitch
from every point of view: it did the children good, it decreased
expenses, and it left him more at liberty. Darya Alexandrovna regarded
staying in the country for the summer as essential for the children,
especially for the little girl, who had not succeeded in regaining her
strength after the scarlatina, and also as a means of escaping the petty
humiliations, the little bills owing to the wood-merchant, the
fishmonger, the shoemaker, which made her miserable. Besides this, she
was pleased to go away to the country because she was dreaming of
getting her sister Kitty to stay with her there. Kitty was to be back
from abroad in the middle of the summer, and bathing had been prescribed
for her. Kitty wrote that no prospect was so alluring as to spend the
summer with Dolly at Ergushovo, full of childish associations for both
of them.

The first days of her existence in the country were very hard for Dolly.
She used to stay in the country as a child, and the impression she had
retained of it was that the country was a refuge from all the
unpleasantness of the town, that life there, though not luxurious--Dolly
could easily make up her mind to that--was cheap and comfortable; that
there was plenty of everything, everything was cheap, everything could
be got, and children were happy. But now coming to the country as the
head of a family, she perceived that it was all utterly unlike what she
had fancied.

The day after their arrival there was a heavy fall of rain, and in the
night the water came through in the corridor and in the nursery, so that
the beds had to be carried into the drawing room. There was no kitchen
maid to be found; of the nine cows, it appeared from the words of the
cowherd-woman that some were about to calve, others had just calved,
others were old, and others again hard-uddered; there was not butter nor
milk enough even for the children. There were no eggs. They could get no
fowls; old, purplish, stringy cocks were all they had for roasting and
boiling. Impossible to get women to scrub the floors--all were
potato-hoeing. Driving was out of the question, because one of the
horses was restive, and bolted in the shafts. There was no place where
they could bathe; the whole of the river-bank was trampled by the cattle
and open to the road; even walks were impossible, for the cattle strayed
into the garden through a gap in the hedge, and there was one terrible
bull, who bellowed, and therefore might be expected to gore somebody.
There were no proper cupboards for their clothes; what cupboards there
were either would not close at all, or burst open whenever anyone passed
by them. There were no pots and pans; there was no copper in the
washhouse, nor even an ironing-board in the maids' room.

Finding instead of peace and rest all these, from her point of view,
fearful calamities, Darya Alexandrovna was at first in despair. She
exerted herself to the utmost, felt the hopelessness of the position,
and was every instant suppressing the tears that started into her eyes.
The bailiff, a retired quartermaster, whom Stepan Arkadyevitch had taken
a fancy to and had appointed bailiff on account of his handsome and
respectful appearance as a hall-porter, showed no sympathy for Darya
Alexandrovna's woes. He said respectfully, "nothing can be done, the
peasants are such a wretched lot," and did nothing to help her.

The position seemed hopeless. But in the Oblonskys' household, as in all
families indeed, there was one inconspicuous but most valuable and
useful person, Marya Philimonovna. She soothed her mistress, assured her
that everything would _come round_ (it was her expression, and Matvey
had borrowed it from her), and without fuss or hurry proceeded to set to
work herself. She had immediately made friends with the bailiff's wife,
and on the very first day she drank tea with her and the bailiff under
the acacias, and reviewed all the circumstances of the position. Very
soon Marya Philimonovna had established her club, so to say, under the
acacias, and there it was, in this club, consisting of the bailiff's
wife, the village elder, and the counting house clerk, that the
difficulties of existence were gradually smoothed away, and in a week's
time everything actually had come round. The roof was mended, a kitchen
maid was found--a crony of the village elder's--hens were bought, the
cows began giving milk, the garden hedge was stopped up with stakes, the
carpenter made a mangle, hooks were put in the cupboards, and they
ceased to burst open spontaneously, and an ironing-board covered with
army cloth was placed across from the arm of a chair to the chest of
drawers, and there was a smell of flatirons in the maids' room.

"Just see, now, and you were quite in despair," said Marya Philimonovna,
pointing to the ironing-board. They even rigged up a bathing-shed of
straw hurdles. Lily began to bathe, and Darya Alexandrovna began to
realize, if only in part, her expectations, if not of a peaceful, at
least of a comfortable, life in the country. Peaceful with six children
Darya Alexandrovna could not be. One would fall ill, another might
easily become so, a third would be without something necessary, a fourth
would show symptoms of a bad disposition, and so on. Rare indeed were
the brief periods of peace. But these cares and anxieties were for Darya
Alexandrovna the sole happiness possible. Had it not been for them, she
would have been left alone to brood over her husband who did not love
her. And besides, hard though it was for the mother to bear the dread of
illness, the illnesses themselves, and the grief of seeing signs of evil
propensities in her children--the children themselves were even now
repaying her in small joys for her sufferings. Those joys were so small
that they passed unnoticed, like gold in sand, and at bad moments she
could see nothing but the pain, nothing but sand; but there were good
moments too when she saw nothing but the joy, nothing but gold.

Now in the solitude of the country, she began to be more and more
frequently aware of those joys. Often, looking at them, she would make
every possible effort to persuade herself that she was mistaken, that
she as a mother was partial to her children. All the same, she could not
help saying to herself that she had charming children, all six of them
in different ways, but a set of children such as is not often to be met
with, and she was happy in them, and proud of them.



Chapter 8


Towards the end of May, when everything had been more or less
satisfactorily arranged, she received her husband's answer to her
complaints of the disorganized state of things in the country. He wrote
begging her forgiveness for not having thought of everything before, and
promised to come down at the first chance. This chance did not present
itself, and till the beginning of June Darya Alexandrovna stayed alone
in the country.

On the Sunday in St. Peter's week Darya Alexandrovna drove to mass for
all her children to take the sacrament. Darya Alexandrovna in her
intimate, philosophical talks with her sister, her mother, and her
friends very often astonished them by the freedom of her views in regard
to religion. She had a strange religion of transmigration of souls all
her own, in which she had firm faith, troubling herself little about the
dogmas of the Church. But in her family she was strict in carrying out
all that was required by the Church--and not merely in order to set an
example, but with all her heart in it. The fact that the children had
not been at the sacrament for nearly a year worried her extremely, and
with the full approval and sympathy of Marya Philimonovna she decided
that this should take place now in the summer.

For several days before, Darya Alexandrovna was busily deliberating on
how to dress all the children. Frocks were made or altered and washed,
seams and flounces were let out, buttons were sewn on, and ribbons got
ready. One dress, Tanya's, which the English governess had undertaken,
cost Darya Alexandrovna much loss of temper. The English governess in
altering it had made the seams in the wrong place, had taken up the
sleeves too much, and altogether spoilt the dress. It was so narrow on
Tanya's shoulders that it was quite painful to look at her. But Marya
Philimonovna had the happy thought of putting in gussets, and adding a
little shoulder-cape. The dress was set right, but there was nearly a
quarrel with the English governess. On the morning, however, all was
happily arranged, and towards ten o'clock--the time at which they had
asked the priest to wait for them for the mass--the children in their
new dresses, with beaming faces, stood on the step before the carriage
waiting for their mother.

To the carriage, instead of the restive Raven, they had harnessed,
thanks to the representations of Marya Philimonovna, the bailiff's
horse, Brownie, and Darya Alexandrovna, delayed by anxiety over her own
attire, came out and got in, dressed in a white muslin gown.

Darya Alexandrovna had done her hair, and dressed with care and
excitement. In the old days she had dressed for her own sake to look
pretty and be admired. Later on, as she got older, dress became more and
more distasteful to her. She saw that she was losing her good looks. But
now she began to feel pleasure and interest in dress again. Now she did
not dress for her own sake, not for the sake of her own beauty, but
simply that as the mother of those exquisite creatures she might not
spoil the general effect. And looking at herself for the last time in
the looking-glass she was satisfied with herself. She looked nice. Not
nice as she would have wished to look nice in old days at a ball, but
nice for the object which she now had in view.

In the church there was no one but the peasants, the servants and their
women-folk. But Darya Alexandrovna saw, or fancied she saw, the
sensation produced by her children and her. The children were not only
beautiful to look at in their smart little dresses, but they were
charming in the way they behaved. Aliosha, it is true, did not stand
quite correctly; he kept turning round, trying to look at his little
jacket from behind; but all the same he was wonderfully sweet. Tanya
behaved like a grownup person, and looked after the little ones. And the
smallest, Lily, was bewitching in her naive astonishment at everything,
and it was difficult not to smile when, after taking the sacrament, she
said in English, "Please, some more."

On the way home the children felt that something solemn had happened,
and were very sedate.

Everything went happily at home too; but at lunch Grisha began
whistling, and, what was worse, was disobedient to the English
governess, and was forbidden to have any tart. Darya Alexandrovna would
not have let things go so far on such a day had she been present; but
she had to support the English governess's authority, and she upheld her
decision that Grisha should have no tart. This rather spoiled the
general good humor. Grisha cried, declaring that Nikolinka had whistled
too, and he was not punished, and that he wasn't crying for the tart--he
didn't care--but at being unjustly treated. This was really too tragic,
and Darya Alexandrovna made up her mind to persuade the English
governess to forgive Grisha, and she went to speak to her. But on the
way, as she passed the drawing room, she beheld a scene, filling her
heart with such pleasure that the tears came into her eyes, and she
forgave the delinquent herself.

The culprit was sitting at the window in the corner of the drawing room;
beside him was standing Tanya with a plate. On the pretext of wanting to
give some dinner to her dolls, she had asked the governess's permission
to take her share of tart to the nursery, and had taken it instead to
her brother. While still weeping over the injustice of his punishment,
he was eating the tart, and kept saying through his sobs, "Eat yourself;
let's eat it together ... together."

Tanya had at first been under the influence of her pity for Grisha, then
of a sense of her noble action, and tears were standing in her eyes too;
but she did not refuse, and ate her share.

On catching sight of their mother they were dismayed, but, looking into
her face, they saw they were not doing wrong. They burst out laughing,
and, with their mouths full of tart, they began wiping their smiling
lips with their hands, and smearing their radiant faces all over with
tears and jam.

"Mercy! Your new white frock! Tanya! Grisha!" said their mother, trying
to save the frock, but with tears in her eyes, smiling a blissful,
rapturous smile.

The new frocks were taken off, and orders were given for the little
girls to have their blouses put on, and the boys their old jackets, and
the wagonette to be harnessed; with Brownie, to the bailiff's annoyance,
again in the shafts, to drive out for mushroom picking and bathing. A
roar of delighted shrieks arose in the nursery, and never ceased till
they had set off for the bathing-place.

They gathered a whole basketful of mushrooms; even Lily found a birch
mushroom. It had always happened before that Miss Hoole found them and
pointed them out to her; but this time she found a big one quite of
herself, and there was a general scream of delight, "Lily has found a
mushroom!"

Then they reached the river, put the horses under the birch trees, and
went to the bathing-place. The coachman, Terenty, fastened the horses,
who kept whisking away the flies, to a tree, and, treading down the
grass, lay down in the shade of a birch and smoked his shag, while the
never-ceasing shrieks of delight of the children floated across to him
from the bathing-place.

Though it was hard work to look after all the children and restrain
their wild pranks, though it was difficult too to keep in one's head and
not mix up all the stockings, little breeches, and shoes for the
different legs, and to undo and to do up again all the tapes and
buttons, Darya Alexandrovna, who had always liked bathing herself, and
believed it to be very good for the children, enjoyed nothing so much as
bathing with all the children. To go over all those fat little legs,
pulling on their stockings, to take in her arms and dip those little
naked bodies, and to hear their screams of delight and alarm, to see the
breathless faces with wide-open, scared, and happy eyes of all her
splashing cherubs, was a great pleasure to her.

When half the children had been dressed, some peasant women in holiday
dress, out picking herbs, came up to the bathing-shed and stopped shyly.
Marya Philimonovna called one of them and handed her a sheet and a shirt
that had dropped into the water for her to dry them, and Darya
Alexandrovna began to talk to the women. At first they laughed behind
their hands and did not understand her questions, but soon they grew
bolder and began to talk, winning Darya Alexandrovna's heart at once by
the genuine admiration of the children that they showed.

"My, what a beauty! as white as sugar," said one, admiring Tanitchka,
and shaking her head; "but thin..."

"Yes, she has been ill."

"And so they've been bathing you too," said another to the baby.

"No; he's only three months old," answered Darya Alexandrovna with
pride.

"You don't say so!"

"And have you any children?"

"I've had four; I've two living--a boy and a girl. I weaned her last
carnival."

"How old is she?"

"Why, two years old."

"Why did you nurse her so long?"

"It's our custom; for three fasts..."

And the conversation became most interesting to Darya Alexandrovna. What
sort of time did she have? What was the matter with the boy? Where was
her husband? Did it often happen?

Darya Alexandrovna felt disinclined to leave the peasant women, so
interesting to her was their conversation, so completely identical were
all their interests. What pleased her most of all was that she saw
clearly what all the women admired more than anything was her having so
many children, and such fine ones. The peasant women even made Darya
Alexandrovna laugh, and offended the English governess, because she was
the cause of the laughter she did not understand. One of the younger
women kept staring at the Englishwoman, who was dressing after all the
rest, and when she put on her third petticoat she could not refrain from
the remark, "My, she keeps putting on and putting on, and she'll never
have done!" she said, and they all went off into roars.



Chapter 9


On the drive home, as Darya Alexandrovna, with all her children round
her, their heads still wet from their bath, and a kerchief tied over her
own head, was getting near the house, the coachman said, "There's some
gentleman coming: the master of Pokrovskoe, I do believe."

Darya Alexandrovna peeped out in front, and was delighted when she
recognized in the gray hat and gray coat the familiar figure of Levin
walking to meet them. She was glad to see him at any time, but at this
moment she was specially glad he should see her in all her glory. No one
was better able to appreciate her grandeur than Levin.

Seeing her, he found himself face to face with one of the pictures of
his daydream of family life.

"You're like a hen with your chickens, Darya Alexandrovna."

"Ah, how glad I am to see you!" she said, holding out her hand to him.

"Glad to see me, but you didn't let me know. My brother's staying with
me. I got a note from Stiva that you were here."

"From Stiva?" Darya Alexandrovna asked with surprise.

"Yes; he writes that you are here, and that he thinks you might allow me
to be of use to you," said Levin, and as he said it he became suddenly
embarrassed, and, stopping abruptly, he walked on in silence by the
wagonette, snapping off the buds of the lime trees and nibbling them. He
was embarrassed through a sense that Darya Alexandrovna would be annoyed
by receiving from an outsider help that should by rights have come from
her own husband. Darya Alexandrovna certainly did not like this little
way of Stepan Arkadyevitch's of foisting his domestic duties on others.
And she was at once aware that Levin was aware of this. It was just for
this fineness of perception, for this delicacy, that Darya Alexandrovna
liked Levin.

"I know, of course," said Levin, "that that simply means that you would
like to see me, and I'm exceedingly glad. Though I can fancy that, used
to town housekeeping as you are, you must feel in the wilds here, and if
there's anything wanted, I'm altogether at your disposal."

"Oh, no!" said Dolly. "At first things were rather uncomfortable, but
now we've settled everything capitally--thanks to my old nurse," she
said, indicating Marya Philimonovna, who, seeing that they were speaking
of her, smiled brightly and cordially to Levin. She knew him, and knew
that he would be a good match for her young lady, and was very keen to
see the matter settled.

"Won't you get in, sir, we'll make room this side!" she said to him.

"No, I'll walk. Children, who'd like to race the horses with me?" The
children knew Levin very little, and could not remember when they had
seen him, but they experienced in regard to him none of that strange
feeling of shyness and hostility which children so often experience
towards hypocritical, grown-up people, and for which they are so often
and miserably punished. Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the
cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children
recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be
disguised. Whatever faults Levin had, there was not a trace of hypocrisy
in him, and so the children showed him the same friendliness that they
saw in their mother's face. On his invitation, the two elder ones at
once jumped out to him and ran with him as simply as they would have
done with their nurse or Miss Hoole or their mother. Lily, too, began
begging to go to him, and her mother handed her to him; he sat her on
his shoulder and ran along with her.

"Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, Darya Alexandrovna!" he said, smiling
good-humoredly to the mother; "there's no chance of my hurting or
dropping her."

And, looking at his strong, agile, assiduously careful and needlessly
wary movements, the mother felt her mind at rest, and smiled gaily and
approvingly as she watched him.

Here, in the country, with children, and with Darya Alexandrovna, with
whom he was in sympathy, Levin was in a mood not infrequent with him, of
childlike light-heartedness that she particularly liked in him. As he
ran with the children, he taught them gymnastic feats, set Miss Hoole
laughing with his queer English accent, and talked to Darya Alexandrovna
of his pursuits in the country.

After dinner, Darya Alexandrovna, sitting alone with him on the balcony,
began to speak of Kitty.

"You know, Kitty's coming here, and is going to spend the summer with
me."

"Really," he said, flushing, and at once, to change the conversation, he
said: "Then I'll send you two cows, shall I? If you insist on a bill you
shall pay me five roubles a month; but it's really too bad of you."

"No, thank you. We can manage very well now."

"Oh, well, then, I'll have a look at your cows, and if you'll allow me,
I'll give directions about their food. Everything depends on their
food."

And Levin, to turn the conversation, explained to Darya Alexandrovna the
theory of cow-keeping, based on the principle that the cow is simply a
machine for the transformation of food into milk, and so on.

He talked of this, and passionately longed to hear more of Kitty, and,
at the same time, was afraid of hearing it. He dreaded the breaking up
of the inward peace he had gained with such effort.

"Yes, but still all this has to be looked after, and who is there to
look after it?" Darya Alexandrovna responded, without interest.

She had by now got her household matters so satisfactorily arranged,
thanks to Marya Philimonovna, that she was disinclined to make any
change in them; besides, she had no faith in Levin's knowledge of
farming. General principles, as to the cow being a machine for the
production of milk, she looked on with suspicion. It seemed to her that
such principles could only be a hindrance in farm management. It all
seemed to her a far simpler matter: all that was needed, as Marya
Philimonovna had explained, was to give Brindle and Whitebreast more
food and drink, and not to let the cook carry all the kitchen slops to
the laundry maid's cow. That was clear. But general propositions as to
feeding on meal and on grass were doubtful and obscure. And, what was
most important, she wanted to talk about Kitty.



Chapter 10


"Kitty writes to me that there's nothing she longs for so much as quiet
and solitude," Dolly said after the silence that had followed.

"And how is she--better?" Levin asked in agitation.

"Thank God, she's quite well again. I never believed her lungs were
affected."

"Oh, I'm very glad!" said Levin, and Dolly fancied she saw something
touching, helpless, in his face as he said this and looked silently into
her face.

"Let me ask you, Konstantin Dmitrievitch," said Darya Alexandrovna,
smiling her kindly and rather mocking smile, "why is it you are angry
with Kitty?"

"I? I'm not angry with her," said Levin.

"Yes, you are angry. Why was it you did not come to see us nor them when
you were in Moscow?"

"Darya Alexandrovna," he said, blushing up to the roots of his hair, "I
wonder really that with your kind heart you don't feel this. How it is
you feel no pity for me, if nothing else, when you know..."

"What do I know?"

"You know I made an offer and that I was refused," said Levin, and all
the tenderness he had been feeling for Kitty a minute before was
replaced by a feeling of anger for the slight he had suffered.

"What makes you suppose I know?"

"Because everybody knows it..."

"That's just where you are mistaken; I did not know it, though I had
guessed it was so."

"Well, now you know it."

"All I knew was that something had happened that made her dreadfully
miserable, and that she begged me never to speak of it. And if she would
not tell me, she would certainly not speak of it to anyone else. But
what did pass between you? Tell me."

"I have told you."

"When was it?"

"When I was at their house the last time."

"Do you know that," said Darya Alexandrovna, "I am awfully, awfully
sorry for her. You suffer only from pride...."

"Perhaps so," said Levin, "but..."

She interrupted him.

"But she, poor girl ... I am awfully, awfully sorry for her. Now I see
it all."

"Well, Darya Alexandrovna, you must excuse me," he said, getting up.
"Good-bye, Darya Alexandrovna, till we meet again."

"No, wait a minute," she said, clutching him by the sleeve. "Wait a
minute, sit down."

"Please, please, don't let us talk of this," he said, sitting down, and
at the same time feeling rise up and stir within his heart a hope he had
believed to be buried.

"If I did not like you," she said, and tears came into her eyes; "if I
did not know you, as I do know you . . ."

The feeling that had seemed dead revived more and more, rose up and took
possession of Levin's heart.

"Yes, I understand it all now," said Darya Alexandrovna. "You can't
understand it; for you men, who are free and make your own choice, it's
always clear whom you love. But a girl's in a position of suspense, with
all a woman's or maiden's modesty, a girl who sees you men from afar,
who takes everything on trust,--a girl may have, and often has, such a
feeling that she cannot tell what to say."

"Yes, if the heart does not speak..."

"No, the heart does speak; but just consider: you men have views about a
girl, you come to the house, you make friends, you criticize, you wait
to see if you have found what you love, and then, when you are sure you
love her, you make an offer...."

"Well, that's not quite it."

"Anyway you make an offer, when your love is ripe or when the balance
has completely turned between the two you are choosing from. But a girl
is not asked. She is expected to make her choice, and yet she cannot
choose, she can only answer 'yes' or 'no.'"

"Yes, to choose between me and Vronsky," thought Levin, and the dead
thing that had come to life within him died again, and only weighed on
his heart and set it aching.

"Darya Alexandrovna," he said, "that's how one chooses a new dress or
some purchase or other, not love. The choice has been made, and so much
the better.... And there can be no repeating it."

"Ah, pride, pride!" said Darya Alexandrovna, as though despising him for
the baseness of this feeling in comparison with that other feeling which
only women know. "At the time when you made Kitty an offer she was just
in a position in which she could not answer. She was in doubt. Doubt
between you and Vronsky. Him she was seeing every day, and you she had
not seen for a long while. Supposing she had been older ... I, for
instance, in her place could have felt no doubt. I always disliked him,
and so it has turned out."

Levin recalled Kitty's answer. She had said: "_No, that cannot be_..."

"Darya Alexandrovna," he said dryly, "I appreciate your confidence in
me; I believe you are making a mistake. But whether I am right or wrong,
that pride you so despise makes any thought of Katerina Alexandrovna out
of the question for me,--you understand, utterly out of the question."

"I will only say one thing more: you know that I am speaking of my
sister, whom I love as I love my own children. I don't say she cared for
you, all I meant to say is that her refusal at that moment proves
nothing."

"I don't know!" said Levin, jumping up. "If you only knew how you are
hurting me. It's just as if a child of yours were dead, and they were to
say to you: He would have been like this and like that, and he might
have lived, and how happy you would have been in him. But he's dead,
dead, dead!..."

"How absurd you are!" said Darya Alexandrovna, looking with mournful
tenderness at Levin's excitement. "Yes, I see it all more and more
clearly," she went on musingly. "So you won't come to see us, then, when
Kitty's here?"

"No, I shan't come. Of course I won't avoid meeting Katerina
Alexandrovna, but as far as I can, I will try to save her the annoyance
of my presence."

"You are very, very absurd," repeated Darya Alexandrovna, looking with
tenderness into his face. "Very well then, let it be as though we had
not spoken of this. What have you come for, Tanya?" she said in French
to the little girl who had come in.

"Where's my spade, mamma?"

"I speak French, and you must too."

The little girl tried to say it in French, but could not remember the
French for spade; the mother prompted her, and then told her in French
where to look for the spade. And this made a disagreeable impression on
Levin.

Everything in Darya Alexandrovna's house and children struck him now as
by no means so charming as a little while before. "And what does she
talk French with the children for?" he thought; "how unnatural and false
it is! And the children feel it so: Learning French and unlearning
sincerity," he thought to himself, unaware that Darya Alexandrovna had
thought all that over twenty times already, and yet, even at the cost of
some loss of sincerity, believed it necessary to teach her children
French in that way.

"But why are you going? Do stay a little."

Levin stayed to tea; but his good-humor had vanished, and he felt ill at
ease.

After tea he went out into the hall to order his horses to be put in,
and, when he came back, he found Darya Alexandrovna greatly disturbed,
with a troubled face, and tears in her eyes. While Levin had been
outside, an incident had occurred which had utterly shattered all the
happiness she had been feeling that day, and her pride in her children.
Grisha and Tanya had been fighting over a ball. Darya Alexandrovna,
hearing a scream in the nursery, ran in and saw a terrible sight. Tanya
was pulling Grisha's hair, while he, with a face hideous with rage, was
beating her with his fists wherever he could get at her. Something
snapped in Darya Alexandrovna's heart when she saw this. It was as if
darkness had swooped down upon her life; she felt that these children of
hers, that she was so proud of, were not merely most ordinary, but
positively bad, ill-bred children, with coarse, brutal
propensities--wicked children.

She could not talk or think of anything else, and she could not speak to
Levin of her misery.

Levin saw she was unhappy and tried to comfort her, saying that it
showed nothing bad, that all children fight; but, even as he said it, he
was thinking in his heart: "No, I won't be artificial and talk French
with my children; but my children won't be like that. All one has to do
is not spoil children, not to distort their nature, and they'll be
delightful. No, my children won't be like that."

He said good-bye and drove away, and she did not try to keep him.



Chapter 11


In the middle of July the elder of the village on Levin's sister's
estate, about fifteen miles from Pokrovskoe, came to Levin to report on
how things were going there and on the hay. The chief source of income
on his sister's estate was from the riverside meadows. In former years
the hay had been bought by the peasants for twenty roubles the three
acres. When Levin took over the management of the estate, he thought on
examining the grasslands that they were worth more, and he fixed the
price at twenty-five roubles the three acres. The peasants would not
give that price, and, as Levin suspected, kept off other purchasers.
Then Levin had driven over himself, and arranged to have the grass cut,
partly by hired labor, partly at a payment of a certain proportion of
the crop. His own peasants put every hindrance they could in the way of
this new arrangement, but it was carried out, and the first year the
meadows had yielded a profit almost double. The previous year--which was
the third year--the peasants had maintained the same opposition to the
arrangement, and the hay had been cut on the same system. This year the
peasants were doing all the mowing for a third of the hay crop, and the
village elder had come now to announce that the hay had been cut, and
that, fearing rain, they had invited the counting-house clerk over, had
divided the crop in his presence, and had raked together eleven stacks
as the owner's share. From the vague answers to his question how much
hay had been cut on the principal meadow, from the hurry of the village
elder who had made the division, not asking leave, from the whole tone
of the peasant, Levin perceived that there was something wrong in the
division of the hay, and made up his mind to drive over himself to look
into the matter.

Arriving for dinner at the village, and leaving his horse at the cottage
of an old friend of his, the husband of his brother's wet-nurse, Levin
went to see the old man in his bee-house, wanting to find out from him
the truth about the hay. Parmenitch, a talkative, comely old man, gave
Levin a very warm welcome, showed him all he was doing, told him
everything about his bees and the swarms of that year; but gave vague
and unwilling answers to Levin's inquiries about the mowing. This
confirmed Levin still more in his suspicions. He went to the hay fields
and examined the stacks. The haystacks could not possibly contain fifty
wagon-loads each, and to convict the peasants Levin ordered the wagons
that had carried the hay to be brought up directly, to lift one stack,
and carry it into the barn. There turned out to be only thirty-two loads
in the stack. In spite of the village elder's assertions about the
compressibility of hay, and its having settled down in the stacks, and
his swearing that everything had been done in the fear of God, Levin
stuck to his point that the hay had been divided without his orders, and
that, therefore, he would not accept that hay as fifty loads to a stack.
After a prolonged dispute the matter was decided by the peasants taking
these eleven stacks, reckoning them as fifty loads each. The arguments
and the division of the haycocks lasted the whole afternoon. When the
last of the hay had been divided, Levin, intrusting the superintendence
of the rest to the counting-house clerk, sat down on a haycock marked
off by a stake of willow, and looked admiringly at the meadow swarming
with peasants.

In front of him, in the bend of the river beyond the marsh, moved a
bright-colored line of peasant women, and the scattered hay was being
rapidly formed into gray winding rows over the pale green stubble. After
the women came the men with pitchforks, and from the gray rows there
were growing up broad, high, soft haycocks. To the left, carts were
rumbling over the meadow that had been already cleared, and one after
another the haycocks vanished, flung up in huge forkfuls, and in their
place there were rising heavy cartloads of fragrant hay hanging over the
horses' hind-quarters.

"What weather for haying! What hay it'll be!" said an old man, squatting
down beside Levin. "It's tea, not hay! It's like scattering grain to the
ducks, the way they pick it up!" he added, pointing to the growing
haycocks. "Since dinnertime they've carried a good half of it."

"The last load, eh?" he shouted to a young peasant, who drove by,
standing in the front of an empty cart, shaking the cord reins.

"The last, dad!" the lad shouted back, pulling in the horse, and,
smiling, he looked round at a bright, rosy-checked peasant girl who sat
in the cart smiling too, and drove on.

"Who's that? Your son?" asked Levin.

"My baby," said the old man with a tender smile.

"What a fine fellow!"

"The lad's all right."

"Married already?"

"Yes, it's two years last St. Philip's day."

"Any children?"

"Children indeed! Why, for over a year he was innocent as a babe
himself, and bashful too," answered the old man. "Well, the hay! It's as
fragrant as tea!" he repeated, wishing to change the subject.

Levin looked more attentively at Ivan Parmenov and his wife. They were
loading a haycock onto the cart not far from him. Ivan Parmenov was
standing on the cart, taking, laying in place, and stamping down the
huge bundles of hay, which his pretty young wife deftly handed up to
him, at first in armfuls, and then on the pitchfork. The young wife
worked easily, merrily, and dexterously. The close-packed hay did not
once break away off her fork. First she gathered it together, stuck the
fork into it, then with a rapid, supple movement leaned the whole weight
of her body on it, and at once with a bend of her back under the red
belt she drew herself up, and arching her full bosom under the white
smock, with a smart turn swung the fork in her arms, and flung the
bundle of hay high onto the cart. Ivan, obviously doing his best to save
her every minute of unnecessary labor, made haste, opening his arms to
clutch the bundle and lay it in the cart. As she raked together what was
left of the hay, the young wife shook off the bits of hay that had
fallen on her neck, and straightening the red kerchief that had dropped
forward over her white brow, not browned like her face by the sun, she
crept under the cart to tie up the load. Ivan directed her how to fasten
the cord to the cross-piece, and at something she said he laughed aloud.
In the expressions of both faces was to be seen vigorous, young, freshly
awakened love.



Chapter 12


The load was tied on. Ivan jumped down and took the quiet, sleek horse
by the bridle. The young wife flung the rake up on the load, and with a
bold step, swinging her arms, she went to join the women, who were
forming a ring for the haymakers' dance. Ivan drove off to the road and
fell into line with the other loaded carts. The peasant women, with
their rakes on their shoulders, gay with bright flowers, and chattering
with ringing, merry voices, walked behind the hay cart. One wild
untrained female voice broke into a song, and sang it alone through a
verse, and then the same verse was taken up and repeated by half a
hundred strong healthy voices, of all sorts, coarse and fine, singing in
unison.

The women, all singing, began to come close to Levin, and he felt as
though a storm were swooping down upon him with a thunder of merriment.
The storm swooped down, enveloped him and the haycock on which he was
lying, and the other haycocks, and the wagon-loads, and the whole meadow
and distant fields all seemed to be shaking and singing to the measures
of this wild merry song with its shouts and whistles and clapping. Levin
felt envious of this health and mirthfulness; he longed to take part in
the expression of this joy of life. But he could do nothing, and had to
lie and look on and listen. When the peasants, with their singing, had
vanished out of sight and hearing, a weary feeling of despondency at his
own isolation, his physical inactivity, his alienation from this world,
came over Levin.

Some of the very peasants who had been most active in wrangling with him
over the hay, some whom he had treated with contumely, and who had tried
to cheat him, those very peasants had greeted him goodhumoredly, and
evidently had not, were incapable of having any feeling of rancor
against him, any regret, any recollection even of having tried to
deceive him. All that was drowned in a sea of merry common labor. God
gave the day, God gave the strength. And the day and the strength were
consecrated to labor, and that labor was its own reward. For whom the
labor? What would be its fruits? These were idle considerations--beside
the point.

Often Levin had admired this life, often he had a sense of envy of the
men who led this life; but today for the first time, especially under
the influence of what he had seen in the attitude of Ivan Parmenov to
his young wife, the idea presented itself definitely to his mind that it
was in his power to exchange the dreary, artificial, idle, and
individualistic life he was leading for this laborious, pure, and
socially delightful life.

The old man who had been sitting beside him had long ago gone home; the
people had all separated. Those who lived near had gone home, while
those who came from far were gathered into a group for supper, and to
spend the night in the meadow. Levin, unobserved by the peasants, still
lay on the haycock, and still looked on and listened and mused. The
peasants who remained for the night in the meadow scarcely slept all the
short summer night. At first there was the sound of merry talk and
laughing all together over the supper, then singing again and laughter.

All the long day of toil had left no trace in them but lightness of
heart. Before the early dawn all was hushed. Nothing was to be heard but
the night sounds of the frogs that never ceased in the marsh, and the
horses snorting in the mist that rose over the meadow before the
morning. Rousing himself, Levin got up from the haycock, and looking at
the stars, he saw that the night was over.

"Well, what am I going to do? How am I to set about it?" he said to
himself, trying to express to himself all the thoughts and feelings he
had passed through in that brief night. All the thoughts and feelings he
had passed through fell into three separate trains of thought. One was
the renunciation of his old life, of his utterly useless education. This
renunciation gave him satisfaction, and was easy and simple. Another
series of thoughts and mental images related to the life he longed to
live now. The simplicity, the purity, the sanity of this life he felt
clearly, and he was convinced he would find in it the content, the
peace, and the dignity, of the lack of which he was so miserably
conscious. But a third series of ideas turned upon the question how to
effect this transition from the old life to the new. And there nothing
took clear shape for him. "Have a wife? Have work and the necessity of
work? Leave Pokrovskoe? Buy land? Become a member of a peasant
community? Marry a peasant girl? How am I to set about it?" he asked
himself again, and could not find an answer. "I haven't slept all night,
though, and I can't think it out clearly," he said to himself. "I'll
work it out later. One thing's certain, this night has decided my fate.
All my old dreams of home life were absurd, not the real thing," he told
himself. "It's all ever so much simpler and better..."

"How beautiful!" he thought, looking at the strange, as it were,
mother-of-pearl shell of white fleecy cloudlets resting right over his
head in the middle of the sky. "How exquisite it all is in this
exquisite night! And when was there time for that cloud-shell to form?
Just now I looked at the sky, and there was nothing in it--only two
white streaks. Yes, and so imperceptibly too my views of life changed!"

He went out of the meadow and walked along the highroad towards the
village. A slight wind arose, and the sky looked gray and sullen. The
gloomy moment had come that usually precedes the dawn, the full triumph
of light over darkness.

Shrinking from the cold, Levin walked rapidly, looking at the ground.
"What's that? Someone coming," he thought, catching the tinkle of bells,
and lifting his head. Forty paces from him a carriage with four horses
harnessed abreast was driving towards him along the grassy road on which
he was walking. The shaft-horses were tilted against the shafts by the
ruts, but the dexterous driver sitting on the box held the shaft over
the ruts, so that the wheels ran on the smooth part of the road.

This was all Levin noticed, and without wondering who it could be, he
gazed absently at the coach.

In the coach was an old lady dozing in one corner, and at the window,
evidently only just awake, sat a young girl holding in both hands the
ribbons of a white cap. With a face full of light and thought, full of a
subtle, complex inner life, that was remote from Levin, she was gazing
beyond him at the glow of the sunrise.

At the very instant when this apparition was vanishing, the truthful
eyes glanced at him. She recognized him, and her face lighted up with
wondering delight.

He could not be mistaken. There were no other eyes like those in the
world. There was only one creature in the world that could concentrate
for him all the brightness and meaning of life. It was she. It was
Kitty. He understood that she was driving to Ergushovo from the railway
station. And everything that had been stirring Levin during that
sleepless night, all the resolutions he had made, all vanished at once.
He recalled with horror his dreams of marrying a peasant girl. There
only, in the carriage that had crossed over to the other side of the
road, and was rapidly disappearing, there only could he find the
solution of the riddle of his life, which had weighed so agonizingly
upon him of late.

She did not look out again. The sound of the carriage-springs was no
longer audible, the bells could scarcely be heard. The barking of dogs
showed the carriage had reached the village, and all that was left was
the empty fields all round, the village in front, and he himself
isolated and apart from it all, wandering lonely along the deserted
highroad.

He glanced at the sky, expecting to find there the cloud shell he had
been admiring and taking as the symbol of the ideas and feelings of that
night. There was nothing in the sky in the least like a shell. There, in
the remote heights above, a mysterious change had been accomplished.
There was no trace of shell, and there was stretched over fully half the
sky an even cover of tiny and ever tinier cloudlets. The sky had grown
blue and bright; and with the same softness, but with the same
remoteness, it met his questioning gaze.

"No," he said to himself, "however good that life of simplicity and toil
may be, I cannot go back to it. I love _her_."



Chapter 13


None but those who were most intimate with Alexey Alexandrovitch knew
that, while on the surface the coldest and most reasonable of men, he
had one weakness quite opposed to the general trend of his character.
Alexey Alexandrovitch could not hear or see a child or woman crying
without being moved. The sight of tears threw him into a state of
nervous agitation, and he utterly lost all power of reflection. The
chief secretary of his department and his private secretary were aware
of this, and used to warn women who came with petitions on no account to
give way to tears, if they did not want to ruin their chances. "He will
get angry, and will not listen to you," they used to say. And as a fact,
in such cases the emotional disturbance set up in Alexey Alexandrovitch
by the sight of tears found expression in hasty anger. "I can do
nothing. Kindly leave the room!" he would commonly cry in such cases.

When returning from the races Anna had informed him of her relations
with Vronsky, and immediately afterwards had burst into tears, hiding
her face in her hands, Alexey Alexandrovitch, for all the fury aroused
in him against her, was aware at the same time of a rush of that
emotional disturbance always produced in him by tears. Conscious of it,
and conscious that any expression of his feelings at that minute would
be out of keeping with the position, he tried to suppress every
manifestation of life in himself, and so neither stirred nor looked at
her. This was what had caused that strange expression of deathlike
rigidity in his face which had so impressed Anna.

When they reached the house he helped her to get out of the carriage,
and making an effort to master himself, took leave of her with his usual
urbanity, and uttered that phrase that bound him to nothing; he said
that tomorrow he would let her know his decision.

His wife's words, confirming his worst suspicions, had sent a cruel pang
to the heart of Alexey Alexandrovitch. That pang was intensified by the
strange feeling of physical pity for her set up by her tears. But when
he was all alone in the carriage Alexey Alexandrovitch, to his surprise
and delight, felt complete relief both from this pity and from the
doubts and agonies of jealousy.

He experienced the sensations of a man who has had a tooth out after
suffering long from toothache. After a fearful agony and a sense of
something huge, bigger than the head itself, being torn out of his jaw,
the sufferer, hardly able to believe in his own good luck, feels all at
once that what has so long poisoned his existence and enchained his
attention, exists no longer, and that he can live and think again, and
take interest in other things besides his tooth. This feeling Alexey
Alexandrovitch was experiencing. The agony had been strange and
terrible, but now it was over; he felt that he could live again and
think of something other than his wife.

"No honor, no heart, no religion; a corrupt woman. I always knew it and
always saw it, though I tried to deceive myself to spare her," he said
to himself. And it actually seemed to him that he always had seen it: he
recalled incidents of their past life, in which he had never seen
anything wrong before--now these incidents proved clearly that she had
always been a corrupt woman. "I made a mistake in linking my life to
hers; but there was nothing wrong in my mistake, and so I cannot be
unhappy. It's not I that am to blame," he told himself, "but she. But I
have nothing to do with her. She does not exist for me..."

Everything relating to her and her son, towards whom his sentiments were
as much changed as towards her, ceased to interest him. The only thing
that interested him now was the question of in what way he could best,
with most propriety and comfort for himself, and thus with most justice,
extricate himself from the mud with which she had spattered him in her
fall, and then proceed along his path of active, honorable, and useful
existence.

"I cannot be made unhappy by the fact that a contemptible woman has
committed a crime. I have only to find the best way out of the difficult
position in which she has placed me. And I shall find it," he said to
himself, frowning more and more. "I'm not the first nor the last." And
to say nothing of historical instances dating from the "Fair Helen" of
Menelaus, recently revived in the memory of all, a whole list of
contemporary examples of husbands with unfaithful wives in the highest
society rose before Alexey Alexandrovitch's imagination. "Daryalov,
Poltavsky, Prince Karibanov, Count Paskudin, Dram.... Yes, even Dram,
such an honest, capable fellow ... Semyonov, Tchagin, Sigonin," Alexey
Alexandrovitch remembered. "Admitting that a certain quite irrational
_ridicule_ falls to the lot of these men, yet I never saw anything but a
misfortune in it, and always felt sympathy for it," Alexey
Alexandrovitch said to himself, though indeed this was not the fact, and
he had never felt sympathy for misfortunes of that kind, but the more
frequently he had heard of instances of unfaithful wives betraying their
husbands, the more highly he had thought of himself. "It is a misfortune
which may befall anyone. And this misfortune has befallen me. The only
thing to be done is to make the best of the position."

And he began passing in review the methods of proceeding of men who had
been in the same position that he was in.

"Daryalov fought a duel...."

The duel had particularly fascinated the thoughts of Alexey
Alexandrovitch in his youth, just because he was physically a coward,
and was himself well aware of the fact. Alexey Alexandrovitch could not
without horror contemplate the idea of a pistol aimed at himself, and
had never made use of any weapon in his life. This horror had in his
youth set him pondering on dueling, and picturing himself in a position
in which he would have to expose his life to danger. Having attained
success and an established position in the world, he had long ago
forgotten this feeling; but the habitual bent of feeling reasserted
itself, and dread of his own cowardice proved even now so strong that
Alexey Alexandrovitch spent a long while thinking over the question of
dueling in all its aspects, and hugging the idea of a duel, though he
was fully aware beforehand that he would never under any circumstances
fight one.

"There's no doubt our society is still so barbarous (it's not the same
in England) that very many"--and among these were those whose opinion
Alexey Alexandrovitch particularly valued--"look favorably on the duel;
but what result is attained by it? Suppose I call him out," Alexey
Alexandrovitch went on to himself, and vividly picturing the night he
would spend after the challenge, and the pistol aimed at him, he
shuddered, and knew that he never would do it--"suppose I call him out.
Suppose I am taught," he went on musing, "to shoot; I press the
trigger," he said to himself, closing his eyes, "and it turns out I have
killed him," Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself, and he shook his
head as though to dispel such silly ideas. "What sense is there in
murdering a man in order to define one's relation to a guilty wife and
son? I should still just as much have to decide what I ought to do with
her. But what is more probable and what would doubtless occur--I should
be killed or wounded. I, the innocent person, should be the
victim--killed or wounded. It's even more senseless. But apart from
that, a challenge to fight would be an act hardly honest on my side.
Don't I know perfectly well that my friends would never allow me to
fight a duel--would never allow the life of a statesman, needed by
Russia, to be exposed to danger? Knowing perfectly well beforehand that
the matter would never come to real danger, it would amount to my simply
trying to gain a certain sham reputation by such a challenge. That would
be dishonest, that would be false, that would be deceiving myself and
others. A duel is quite irrational, and no one expects it of me. My aim
is simply to safeguard my reputation, which is essential for the
uninterrupted pursuit of my public duties." Official duties, which had
always been of great consequence in Alexey Alexandrovitch's eyes, seemed
of special importance to his mind at this moment. Considering and
rejecting the duel, Alexey Alexandrovitch turned to divorce--another
solution selected by several of the husbands he remembered. Passing in
mental review all the instances he knew of divorces (there were plenty
of them in the very highest society with which he was very familiar),
Alexey Alexandrovitch could not find a single example in which the
object of divorce was that which he had in view. In all these instances
the husband had practically ceded or sold his unfaithful wife, and the
very party which, being in fault, had not the right to contract a fresh
marriage, had formed counterfeit, pseudo-matrimonial ties with a
self-styled husband. In his own case, Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that a
legal divorce, that is to say, one in which only the guilty wife would
be repudiated, was impossible of attainment. He saw that the complex
conditions of the life they led made the coarse proofs of his wife's
guilt, required by the law, out of the question; he saw that a certain
refinement in that life would not admit of such proofs being brought
forward, even if he had them, and that to bring forward such proofs
would damage him in the public estimation more than it would her.

An attempt at divorce could lead to nothing but a public scandal, which
would be a perfect godsend to his enemies for calumny and attacks on his
high position in society. His chief object, to define the position with
the least amount of disturbance possible, would not be attained by
divorce either. Moreover, in the event of divorce, or even of an attempt
to obtain a divorce, it was obvious that the wife broke off all
relations with the husband and threw in her lot with the lover. And in
spite of the complete, as he supposed, contempt and indifference he now
felt for his wife, at the bottom of his heart Alexey Alexandrovitch
still had one feeling left in regard to her--a disinclination to see her
free to throw in her lot with Vronsky, so that her crime would be to her
advantage. The mere notion of this so exasperated Alexey Alexandrovitch,
that directly it rose to his mind he groaned with inward agony, and got
up and changed his place in the carriage, and for a long while after, he
sat with scowling brows, wrapping his numbed and bony legs in the fleecy
rug.

"Apart from formal divorce, One might still do like Karibanov, Paskudin,
and that good fellow Dram--that is, separate from one's wife," he went
on thinking, when he had regained his composure. But this step too
presented the same drawback of public scandal as a divorce, and what was
more, a separation, quite as much as a regular divorce, flung his wife
into the arms of Vronsky. "No, it's out of the question, out of the
question!" he said again, twisting his rug about him again. "I cannot be
unhappy, but neither she nor he ought to be happy."

The feeling of jealousy, which had tortured him during the period of
uncertainty, had passed away at the instant when the tooth had been with
agony extracted by his wife's words. But that feeling had been replaced
by another, the desire, not merely that she should not be triumphant,
but that she should get due punishment for her crime. He did not
acknowledge this feeling, but at the bottom of his heart he longed for
her to suffer for having destroyed his peace of mind--his honor. And
going once again over the conditions inseparable from a duel, a divorce,
a separation, and once again rejecting them, Alexey Alexandrovitch felt
convinced that there was only one solution,--to keep her with him,
concealing what had happened from the world, and using every measure in
his power to break off the intrigue, and still more--though this he did
not admit to himself--to punish her. "I must inform her of my
conclusion, that thinking over the terrible position in which she has
placed her family, all other solutions will be worse for both sides than
an external _status quo_, and that such I agree to retain, on the strict
condition of obedience on her part to my wishes, that is to say,
cessation of all intercourse with her lover." When this decision had
been finally adopted, another weighty consideration occurred to Alexey
Alexandrovitch in support of it. "By such a course only shall I be
acting in accordance with the dictates of religion," he told himself.
"In adopting this course, I am not casting off a guilty wife, but giving
her a chance of amendment; and, indeed, difficult as the task will be to
me, I shall devote part of my energies to her reformation and
salvation."

Though Alexey Alexandrovitch was perfectly aware that he could not exert
any moral influence over his wife, that such an attempt at reformation
could lead to nothing but falsity; though in passing through these
difficult moments he had not once thought of seeking guidance in
religion, yet now, when his conclusion corresponded, as it seemed to
him, with the requirements of religion, this religious sanction to his
decision gave him complete satisfaction, and to some extent restored his
peace of mind. He was pleased to think that, even in such an important
crisis in life, no one would be able to say that he had not acted in
accordance with the principles of that religion whose banner he had
always held aloft amid the general coolness and indifference. As he
pondered over subsequent developments, Alexey Alexandrovitch did not
see, indeed, why his relations with his wife should not remain
practically the same as before. No doubt, she could never regain his
esteem, but there was not, and there could not be, any sort of reason
that his existence should be troubled, and that he should suffer because
she was a bad and faithless wife. "Yes, time will pass; time, which
arranges all things, and the old relations will be reestablished,"
Alexey Alexandrovitch told himself; "so far reestablished, that is, that
I shall not be sensible of a break in the continuity of my life. She is
bound to be unhappy, but I am not to blame, and so I cannot be unhappy."



Chapter 14


As he neared Petersburg, Alexey Alexandrovitch not only adhered entirely
to his decision, but was even composing in his head the letter he would
write to his wife. Going into the porter's room, Alexey Alexandrovitch
glanced at the letters and papers brought from his office, and directed
that they should be brought to him in his study.

"The horses can be taken out and I will see no one," he said in answer
to the porter, with a certain pleasure, indicative of his agreeable
frame of mind, emphasizing the words, "see no one."

In his study Alexey Alexandrovitch walked up and down twice, and stopped
at an immense writing-table, on which six candles had already been
lighted by the valet who had preceded him. He cracked his knuckles and
sat down, sorting out his writing appurtenances. Putting his elbows on
the table, he bent his head on one side, thought a minute, and began to
write, without pausing for a second. He wrote without using any form of
address to her, and wrote in French, making use of the plural "_vous_,"
which has not the same note of coldness as the corresponding Russian
form.

    "At our last conversation, I notified you of my intention to
    communicate to you my decision in regard to the subject of that
    conversation. Having carefully considered everything, I am
    writing now with the object of fulfilling that promise. My
    decision is as follows. Whatever your conduct may have been, I
    do not consider myself justified in breaking the ties in which
    we are bound by a Higher Power. The family cannot be broken up
    by a whim, a caprice, or even by the sin of one of the partners
    in the marriage, and our life must go on as it has done in the
    past. This is essential for me, for you, and for our son. I am
    fully persuaded that you have repented and do repent of what has
    called forth the present letter, and that you will cooperate
    with me in eradicating the cause of our estrangement, and
    forgetting the past. In the contrary event, you can conjecture
    what awaits you and your son. All this I hope to discuss more in
    detail in a personal interview. As the season is drawing to a
    close, I would beg you to return to Petersburg as quickly as
    possible, not later than Tuesday. All necessary preparations
    shall be made for your arrival here. I beg you to note that I
    attach particular significance to compliance with this request.

                                                          A. Karenin

    "P.S.--I enclose the money which may be needed for your
    expenses."

He read the letter through and felt pleased with it, and especially that
he had remembered to enclose money: there was not a harsh word, not a
reproach in it, nor was there undue indulgence. Most of all, it was a
golden bridge for return. Folding the letter and smoothing it with a
massive ivory knife, and putting it in an envelope with the money, he
rang the bell with the gratification it always afforded him to use the
well arranged appointments of his writing-table.

"Give this to the courier to be delivered to Anna Arkadyevna tomorrow at
the summer villa," he said, getting up.

"Certainly, your excellency; tea to be served in the study?"

Alexey Alexandrovitch ordered tea to be brought to the study, and
playing with the massive paper-knife, he moved to his easy chair, near
which there had been placed ready for him a lamp and the French work on
Egyptian hieroglyphics that he had begun. Over the easy chair there hung
in a gold frame an oval portrait of Anna, a fine painting by a
celebrated artist. Alexey Alexandrovitch glanced at it. The unfathomable
eyes gazed ironically and insolently at him. Insufferably insolent and
challenging was the effect in Alexey Alexandrovitch's eyes of the black
lace about the head, admirably touched in by the painter, the black hair
and handsome white hand with one finger lifted, covered with rings.
After looking at the portrait for a minute, Alexey Alexandrovitch
shuddered so that his lips quivered and he uttered the sound "brrr," and
turned away. He made haste to sit down in his easy chair and opened the
book. He tried to read, but he could not revive the very vivid interest
he had felt before in Egyptian hieroglyphics. He looked at the book and
thought of something else. He thought not of his wife, but of a
complication that had arisen in his official life, which at the time
constituted the chief interest of it. He felt that he had penetrated
more deeply than ever before into this intricate affair, and that he had
originated a leading idea--he could say it without
self-flattery--calculated to clear up the whole business, to strengthen
him in his official career, to discomfit his enemies, and thereby to be
of the greatest benefit to the government. Directly the servant had set
the tea and left the room, Alexey Alexandrovitch got up and went to the
writing-table. Moving into the middle of the table a portfolio of
papers, with a scarcely perceptible smile of self-satisfaction, he took
a pencil from a rack and plunged into the perusal of a complex report
relating to the present complication. The complication was of this
nature: Alexey Alexandrovitch's characteristic quality as a politician,
that special individual qualification that every rising functionary
possesses, the qualification that with his unflagging ambition, his
reserve, his honesty, and with his self-confidence had made his career,
was his contempt for red tape, his cutting down of correspondence, his
direct contact, wherever possible, with the living fact, and his
economy. It happened that the famous Commission of the 2nd of June had
set on foot an inquiry into the irrigation of lands in the Zaraisky
province, which fell under Alexey Alexandrovitch's department, and was a
glaring example of fruitless expenditure and paper reforms. Alexey
Alexandrovitch was aware of the truth of this. The irrigation of these
lands in the Zaraisky province had been initiated by the predecessor of
Alexey Alexandrovitch's predecessor. And vast sums of money had actually
been spent and were still being spent on this business, and utterly
unproductively, and the whole business could obviously lead to nothing
whatever. Alexey Alexandrovitch had perceived this at once on entering
office, and would have liked to lay hands on the Board of Irrigation.
But at first, when he did not yet feel secure in his position, he knew
it would affect too many interests, and would be injudicious. Later on
he had been engrossed in other questions, and had simply forgotten the
Board of Irrigation. It went of itself, like all such boards, by the
mere force of inertia. (Many people gained their livelihood by the Board
of Irrigation, especially one highly conscientious and musical family:
all the daughters played on stringed instruments, and Alexey
Alexandrovitch knew the family and had stood godfather to one of the
elder daughters.) The raising of this question by a hostile department
was in Alexey Alexandrovitch's opinion a dishonorable proceeding, seeing
that in every department there were things similar and worse, which no
one inquired into, for well-known reasons of official etiquette.
However, now that the glove had been thrown down to him, he had boldly
picked it up and demanded the appointment of a special commission to
investigate and verify the working of the Board of Irrigation of the
lands in the Zaraisky province. But in compensation he gave no quarter
to the enemy either. He demanded the appointment of another special
commission to inquire into the question of the Native Tribes
Organization Committee. The question of the Native Tribes had been
brought up incidentally in the Commission of the 2nd of June, and had
been pressed forward actively by Alexey Alexandrovitch as one admitting
of no delay on account of the deplorable condition of the native tribes.
In the commission this question had been a ground of contention between
several departments. The department hostile to Alexey Alexandrovitch
proved that the condition of the native tribes was exceedingly
flourishing, that the proposed reconstruction might be the ruin of their
prosperity, and that if there were anything wrong, it arose mainly from
the failure on the part of Alexey Alexandrovitch's department to carry
out the measures prescribed by law. Now Alexey Alexandrovitch intended
to demand: First, that a new commission should be formed which should be
empowered to investigate the condition of the native tribes on the spot;
secondly, if it should appear that the condition of the native tribes
actually was such as it appeared to be from the official documents in
the hands of the committee, that another new scientific commission
should be appointed to investigate the deplorable condition of the
native tribes from the--(1) political, (2) administrative, (3) economic,
(4) ethnographical, (5) material, and (6) religious points of view;
thirdly, that evidence should be required from the rival department of
the measures that had been taken during the last ten years by that
department for averting the disastrous conditions in which the native
tribes were now placed; and fourthly and finally, that that department
explain why it had, as appeared from the evidence before the committee,
from No. 17,015 and 18,038, from December 5, 1863, and June 7, 1864,
acted in direct contravention of the intent of the law T... Act 18, and
the note to Act 36. A flash of eagerness suffused the face of Alexey
Alexandrovitch as he rapidly wrote out a synopsis of these ideas for his
own benefit. Having filled a sheet of paper, he got up, rang, and sent a
note to the chief secretary of his department to look up certain
necessary facts for him. Getting up and walking about the room, he
glanced again at the portrait, frowned, and smiled contemptuously. After
reading a little more of the book on Egyptian hieroglyphics, and
renewing his interest in it, Alexey Alexandrovitch went to bed at eleven
o'clock, and recollecting as he lay in bed the incident with his wife,
he saw it now in by no means such a gloomy light.



Chapter 15


Though Anna had obstinately and with exasperation contradicted Vronsky
when he told her their position was impossible, at the bottom of her
heart she regarded her own position as false and dishonorable, and she
longed with her whole soul to change it. On the way home from the races
she had told her husband the truth in a moment of excitement, and in
spite of the agony she had suffered in doing so, she was glad of it.
After her husband had left her, she told herself that she was glad, that
now everything was made clear, and at least there would be no more lying
and deception. It seemed to her beyond doubt that her position was now
made clear forever. It might be bad, this new position, but it would be
clear; there would be no indefiniteness or falsehood about it. The pain
she had caused herself and her husband in uttering those words would be
rewarded now by everything being made clear, she thought. That evening
she saw Vronsky, but she did not tell him of what had passed between her
and her husband, though, to make the position definite, it was necessary
to tell him.

When she woke up next morning the first thing that rose to her mind was
what she had said to her husband, and those words seemed to her so awful
that she could not conceive now how she could have brought herself to
utter those strange, coarse words, and could not imagine what would come
of it. But the words were spoken, and Alexey Alexandrovitch had gone
away without saying anything. "I saw Vronsky and did not tell him. At
the very instant he was going away I would have turned him back and told
him, but I changed my mind, because it was strange that I had not told
him the first minute. Why was it I wanted to tell him and did not tell
him?" And in answer to this question a burning blush of shame spread
over her face. She knew what had kept her from it, she knew that she had
been ashamed. Her position, which had seemed to her simplified the night
before, suddenly struck her now as not only not simple, but as
absolutely hopeless. She felt terrified at the disgrace, of which she
had not ever thought before. Directly she thought of what her husband
would do, the most terrible ideas came to her mind. She had a vision of
being turned out of the house, of her shame being proclaimed to all the
world. She asked herself where she should go when she was turned out of
the house, and she could not find an answer.

When she thought of Vronsky, it seemed to her that he did not love her,
that he was already beginning to be tired of her, that she could not
offer herself to him, and she felt bitter against him for it. It seemed
to her that the words that she had spoken to her husband, and had
continually repeated in her imagination, she had said to everyone, and
everyone had heard them. She could not bring herself to look those of
her own household in the face. She could not bring herself to call her
maid, and still less go downstairs and see her son and his governess.

The maid, who had been listening at her door for a long while, came into
her room of her own accord. Anna glanced inquiringly into her face, and
blushed with a scared look. The maid begged her pardon for coming in,
saying that she had fancied the bell rang. She brought her clothes and a
note. The note was from Betsy. Betsy reminded her that Liza Merkalova
and Baroness Shtoltz were coming to play croquet with her that morning
with their adorers, Kaluzhsky and old Stremov. "Come, if only as a study
in morals. I shall expect you," she finished.

Anna read the note and heaved a deep sigh.

"Nothing, I need nothing," she said to Annushka, who was rearranging the
bottles and brushes on the dressing table. "You can go. I'll dress at
once and come down. I need nothing."

Annushka went out, but Anna did not begin dressing, and sat in the same
position, her head and hands hanging listlessly, and every now and then
she shivered all over, seemed as though she would make some gesture,
utter some word, and sank back into lifelessness again. She repeated
continually, "My God! my God!" But neither "God" nor "my" had any
meaning to her. The idea of seeking help in her difficulty in religion
was as remote from her as seeking help from Alexey Alexandrovitch
himself, although she had never had doubts of the faith in which she had
been brought up. She knew that the support of religion was possible only
upon condition of renouncing what made up for her the whole meaning of
life. She was not simply miserable, she began to feel alarm at the new
spiritual condition, never experienced before, in which she found
herself. She felt as though everything were beginning to be double in
her soul, just as objects sometimes appear double to over-tired eyes.
She hardly knew at times what it was she feared, and what she hoped for.
Whether she feared or desired what had happened, or what was going to
happen, and exactly what she longed for, she could not have said.

"Ah, what am I doing!" she said to herself, feeling a sudden thrill of
pain in both sides of her head. When she came to herself, she saw that
she was holding her hair in both hands, each side of her temples, and
pulling it. She jumped up, and began walking about.

"The coffee is ready, and mademoiselle and Seryozha are waiting," said
Annushka, coming back again and finding Anna in the same position.

"Seryozha? What about Seryozha?" Anna asked, with sudden eagerness,
recollecting her son's existence for the first time that morning.

"He's been naughty, I think," answered Annushka with a smile.

"In what way?"

"Some peaches were lying on the table in the corner room. I think he
slipped in and ate one of them on the sly."

The recollection of her son suddenly roused Anna from the helpless
condition in which she found herself. She recalled the partly sincere,
though greatly exaggerated, role of the mother living for her child,
which she had taken up of late years, and she felt with joy that in the
plight in which she found herself she had a support, quite apart from
her relation to her husband or to Vronsky. This support was her son. In
whatever position she might be placed, she could not lose her son. Her
husband might put her to shame and turn her out, Vronsky might grow cold
to her and go on living his own life apart (she thought of him again
with bitterness and reproach); she could not leave her son. She had an
aim in life. And she must act; act to secure this relation to her son,
so that he might not be taken from her. Quickly indeed, as quickly as
possible, she must take action before he was taken from her. She must
take her son and go away. Here was the one thing she had to do now. She
needed consolation. She must be calm, and get out of this insufferable
position. The thought of immediate action binding her to her son, of
going away somewhere with him, gave her this consolation.

She dressed quickly, went downstairs, and with resolute steps walked
into the drawing room, where she found, as usual, waiting for her, the
coffee, Seryozha, and his governess. Seryozha, all in white, with his
back and head bent, was standing at a table under a looking-glass, and
with an expression of intense concentration which she knew well, and in
which he resembled his father, he was doing something to the flowers he
carried.

The governess had a particularly severe expression. Seryozha screamed
shrilly, as he often did, "Ah, mamma!" and stopped, hesitating whether
to go to greet his mother and put down the flowers, or to finish making
the wreath and go with the flowers.

The governess, after saying good-morning, began a long and detailed
account of Seryozha's naughtiness, but Anna did not hear her; she was
considering whether she would take her with her or not. "No, I won't
take her," she decided. "I'll go alone with my child."

"Yes, it's very wrong," said Anna, and taking her son by the shoulder
she looked at him, not severely, but with a timid glance that bewildered
and delighted the boy, and she kissed him. "Leave him to me," she said
to the astonished governess, and not letting go of her son, she sat down
at the table, where coffee was set ready for her.

"Mamma! I ... I ... didn't..." he said, trying to make out from her
expression what was in store for him in regard to the peaches.

"Seryozha," she said, as soon as the governess had left the room, "that
was wrong, but you'll never do it again, will you?... You love me?"

She felt that the tears were coming into her eyes. "Can I help loving
him?" she said to herself, looking deeply into his scared and at the
same time delighted eyes. "And can he ever join his father in punishing
me? Is it possible he will not feel for me?" Tears were already flowing
down her face, and to hide them she got up abruptly and almost ran out
on to the terrace.

After the thunder showers of the last few days, cold, bright weather had
set in. The air was cold in the bright sun that filtered through the
freshly washed leaves.

She shivered, both from the cold and from the inward horror which had
clutched her with fresh force in the open air.

"Run along, run along to Mariette," she said to Seryozha, who had
followed her out, and she began walking up and down on the straw matting
of the terrace. "Can it be that they won't forgive me, won't understand
how it all couldn't be helped?" she said to herself.

Standing still, and looking at the tops of the aspen trees waving in the
wind, with their freshly washed, brightly shining leaves in the cold
sunshine, she knew that they would not forgive her, that everyone and
everything would be merciless to her now as was that sky, that green.
And again she felt that everything was split in two in her soul. "I
mustn't, mustn't think," she said to herself. "I must get ready. To go
where? When? Whom to take with me? Yes, to Moscow by the evening train.
Annushka and Seryozha, and only the most necessary things. But first I
must write to them both." She went quickly indoors into her boudoir, sat
down at the table, and wrote to her husband:--"After what has happened,
I cannot remain any longer in your house. I am going away, and taking my
son with me. I don't know the law, and so I don't know with which of the
parents the son should remain; but I take him with me because I cannot
live without him. Be generous, leave him to me."

Up to this point she wrote rapidly and naturally, but the appeal to his
generosity, a quality she did not recognize in him, and the necessity of
winding up the letter with something touching, pulled her up. "Of my
fault and my remorse I cannot speak, because..."

She stopped again, finding no connection in her ideas. "No," she said to
herself, "there's no need of anything," and tearing up the letter, she
wrote it again, leaving out the allusion to generosity, and sealed it
up.

Another letter had to be written to Vronsky. "I have told my husband,"
she wrote, and she sat a long while unable to write more. It was so
coarse, so unfeminine. "And what more am I to write to him?" she said to
herself. Again a flush of shame spread over her face; she recalled his
composure, and a feeling of anger against him impelled her to tear the
sheet with the phrase she had written into tiny bits. "No need of
anything," she said to herself, and closing her blotting-case she went
upstairs, told the governess and the servants that she was going that
day to Moscow, and at once set to work to pack up her things.



Chapter 16


All the rooms of the summer villa were full of porters, gardeners, and
footmen going to and fro carrying out things. Cupboards and chests were
open; twice they had sent to the shop for cord; pieces of newspaper were
tossing about on the floor. Two trunks, some bags and strapped-up rugs,
had been carried down into the hall. The carriage and two hired cabs
were waiting at the steps. Anna, forgetting her inward agitation in the
work of packing, was standing at a table in her boudoir, packing her
traveling bag, when Annushka called her attention to the rattle of some
carriage driving up. Anna looked out of the window and saw Alexey
Alexandrovitch's courier on the steps, ringing at the front door bell.

"Run and find out what it is," she said, and with a calm sense of being
prepared for anything, she sat down in a low chair, folding her hands on
her knees. A footman brought in a thick packet directed in Alexey
Alexandrovitch's hand.

"The courier has orders to wait for an answer," he said.

"Very well," she said, and as soon as he had left the room she tore open
the letter with trembling fingers. A roll of unfolded notes done up in a
wrapper fell out of it. She disengaged the letter and began reading it
at the end. "Preparations shall be made for your arrival here ... I
attach particular significance to compliance..." she read. She ran on,
then back, read it all through, and once more read the letter all
through again from the beginning. When she had finished, she felt that
she was cold all over, and that a fearful calamity, such as she had not
expected, had burst upon her.

In the morning she had regretted that she had spoken to her husband, and
wished for nothing so much as that those words could be unspoken. And
here this letter regarded them as unspoken, and gave her what she had
wanted. But now this letter seemed to her more awful than anything she
had been able to conceive.

"He's right!" she said; "of course, he's always right; he's a Christian,
he's generous! Yes, vile, base creature! And no one understands it
except me, and no one ever will; and I can't explain it. They say he's
so religious, so high-principled, so upright, so clever; but they don't
see what I've seen. They don't know how he has crushed my life for eight
years, crushed everything that was living in me--he has not once even
thought that I'm a live woman who must have love. They don't know how at
every step he's humiliated me, and been just as pleased with himself.
Haven't I striven, striven with all my strength, to find something to
give meaning to my life? Haven't I struggled to love him, to love my son
when I could not love my husband? But the time came when I knew that I
couldn't cheat myself any longer, that I was alive, that I was not to
blame, that God has made me so that I must love and live. And now what
does he do? If he'd killed me, if he'd killed him, I could have borne
anything, I could have forgiven anything; but, no, he.... How was it I
didn't guess what he would do? He's doing just what's characteristic of
his mean character. He'll keep himself in the right, while me, in my
ruin, he'll drive still lower to worse ruin yet...."

She recalled the words from the letter. "You can conjecture what awaits
you and your son...." "That's a threat to take away my child, and most
likely by their stupid law he can. But I know very well why he says it.
He doesn't believe even in my love for my child, or he despises it (just
as he always used to ridicule it). He despises that feeling in me, but
he knows that I won't abandon my child, that I can't abandon my child,
that there could be no life for me without my child, even with him whom
I love; but that if I abandoned my child and ran away from him, I should
be acting like the most infamous, basest of women. He knows that, and
knows that I am incapable of doing that."

She recalled another sentence in the letter. "Our life must go on as it
has done in the past...." "That life was miserable enough in the old
days; it has been awful of late. What will it be now? And he knows all
that; he knows that I can't repent that I breathe, that I love; he knows
that it can lead to nothing but lying and deceit; but he wants to go on
torturing me. I know him; I know that he's at home and is happy in
deceit, like a fish swimming in the water. No, I won't give him that
happiness. I'll break through the spiderweb of lies in which he wants to
catch me, come what may. Anything's better than lying and deceit.

"But how? My God! my God! Was ever a woman so miserable as I am?..."

"No; I will break through it, I will break through it!" she cried,
jumping up and keeping back her tears. And she went to the writing table
to write him another letter. But at the bottom of her heart she felt
that she was not strong enough to break through anything, that she was
not strong enough to get out of her old position, however false and
dishonorable it might be.

She sat down at the writing table, but instead of writing she clasped
her hands on the table, and, laying her head on them, burst into tears,
with sobs and heaving breast like a child crying. She was weeping that
her dream of her position being made clear and definite had been
annihilated forever. She knew beforehand that everything would go on in
the old way, and far worse, indeed, than in the old way. She felt that
the position in the world that she enjoyed, and that had seemed to her
of so little consequence in the morning, that this position was precious
to her, that she would not have the strength to exchange it for the
shameful position of a woman who has abandoned husband and child to join
her lover; that however much she might struggle, she could not be
stronger than herself. She would never know freedom in love, but would
remain forever a guilty wife, with the menace of detection hanging over
her at every instant; deceiving her husband for the sake of a shameful
connection with a man living apart and away from her, whose life she
could never share. She knew that this was how it would be, and at the
same time it was so awful that she could not even conceive what it would
end in. And she cried without restraint, as children cry when they are
punished.

The sound of the footman's steps forced her to rouse herself, and,
hiding her face from him, she pretended to be writing.

"The courier asks if there's an answer," the footman announced.

"An answer? Yes," said Anna. "Let him wait. I'll ring."

"What can I write?" she thought. "What can I decide upon alone? What do
I know? What do I want? What is there I care for?" Again she felt that
her soul was beginning to be split in two. She was terrified again at
this feeling, and clutched at the first pretext for doing something
which might divert her thoughts from herself. "I ought to see Alexey"
(so she called Vronsky in her thoughts); "no one but he can tell me what
I ought to do. I'll go to Betsy's, perhaps I shall see him there," she
said to herself, completely forgetting that when she had told him the
day before that she was not going to Princess Tverskaya's, he had said
that in that case he should not go either. She went up to the table,
wrote to her husband, "I have received your letter.--A."; and, ringing
the bell, gave it to the footman.

"We are not going," she said to Annushka, as she came in.

"Not going at all?"

"No; don't unpack till tomorrow, and let the carriage wait. I'm going to
the princess's."

"Which dress am I to get ready?"



Chapter 17


The croquet party to which the Princess Tverskaya had invited Anna was
to consist of two ladies and their adorers. These two ladies were the
chief representatives of a select new Petersburg circle, nicknamed, in
imitation of some imitation, _les sept merveilles du monde_. These
ladies belonged to a circle which, though of the highest society, was
utterly hostile to that in which Anna moved. Moreover, Stremov, one of
the most influential people in Petersburg, and the elderly admirer of
Liza Merkalova, was Alexey Alexandrovitch's enemy in the political
world. From all these considerations Anna had not meant to go, and the
hints in Princess Tverskaya's note referred to her refusal. But now Anna
was eager to go, in the hope of seeing Vronsky.

Anna arrived at Princess Tverskaya's earlier than the other guests.

At the same moment as she entered, Vronsky's footman, with side-whiskers
combed out like a _Kammerjunker_, went in too. He stopped at the door,
and, taking off his cap, let her pass. Anna recognized him, and only
then recalled that Vronsky had told her the day before that he would not
come. Most likely he was sending a note to say so.

As she took off her outer garment in the hall, she heard the footman,
pronouncing his "r's" even like a _Kammerjunker_, say, "From the count
for the princess," and hand the note.

She longed to question him as to where his master was. She longed to
turn back and send him a letter to come and see her, or to go herself to
see him. But neither the first nor the second nor the third course was
possible. Already she heard bells ringing to announce her arrival ahead
of her, and Princess Tverskaya's footman was standing at the open door
waiting for her to go forward into the inner rooms.

"The princess is in the garden; they will inform her immediately. Would
you be pleased to walk into the garden?" announced another footman in
another room.

The position of uncertainty, of indecision, was still the same as at
home--worse, in fact, since it was impossible to take any step,
impossible to see Vronsky, and she had to remain here among outsiders,
in company so uncongenial to her present mood. But she was wearing a
dress that she knew suited her. She was not alone; all around was that
luxurious setting of idleness that she was used to, and she felt less
wretched than at home. She was not forced to think what she was to do.
Everything would be done of itself. On meeting Betsy coming towards her
in a white gown that struck her by its elegance, Anna smiled at her just
as she always did. Princess Tverskaya was walking with Tushkevitch and a
young lady, a relation, who, to the great joy of her parents in the
provinces, was spending the summer with the fashionable princess.

There was probably something unusual about Anna, for Betsy noticed it at
once.

"I slept badly," answered Anna, looking intently at the footman who came
to meet them, and, as she supposed, brought Vronsky's note.

"How glad I am you've come!" said Betsy. "I'm tired, and was just
longing to have some tea before they come. You might go"--she turned to
Tushkevitch--"with Masha, and try the croquet ground over there where
they've been cutting it. We shall have time to talk a little over tea;
we'll have a cozy chat, eh?" she said in English to Anna, with a smile,
pressing the hand with which she held a parasol.

"Yes, especially as I can't stay very long with you. I'm forced to go on
to old Madame Vrede. I've been promising to go for a century," said
Anna, to whom lying, alien as it was to her nature, had become not
merely simple and natural in society, but a positive source of
satisfaction. Why she said this, which she had not thought of a second
before, she could not have explained. She had said it simply from the
reflection that as Vronsky would not be here, she had better secure her
own freedom, and try to see him somehow. But why she had spoken of old
Madame Vrede, whom she had to go and see, as she had to see many other
people, she could not have explained; and yet, as it afterwards turned
out, had she contrived the most cunning devices to meet Vronsky, she
could have thought of nothing better.

"No. I'm not going to let you go for anything," answered Betsy, looking
intently into Anna's face. "Really, if I were not fond of you, I should
feel offended. One would think you were afraid my society would
compromise you. Tea in the little dining room, please," she said, half
closing her eyes, as she always did when addressing the footman.

Taking the note from him, she read it.

"Alexey's playing us false," she said in French; "he writes that he
can't come," she added in a tone as simple and natural as though it
could never enter her head that Vronsky could mean anything more to Anna
than a game of croquet. Anna knew that Betsy knew everything, but,
hearing how she spoke of Vronsky before her, she almost felt persuaded
for a minute that she knew nothing.

"Ah!" said Anna indifferently, as though not greatly interested in the
matter, and she went on smiling: "How can you or your friends compromise
anyone?"

This playing with words, this hiding of a secret, had a great
fascination for Anna, as, indeed, it has for all women. And it was not
the necessity of concealment, not the aim with which the concealment was
contrived, but the process of concealment itself which attracted her.

"I can't be more Catholic than the Pope," she said. "Stremov and Liza
Merkalova, why, they're the cream of the cream of society. Besides,
they're received everywhere, and _I_"--she laid special stress on the
I--"have never been strict and intolerant. It's simply that I haven't
the time."

"No; you don't care, perhaps, to meet Stremov? Let him and Alexey
Alexandrovitch tilt at each other in the committee--that's no affair of
ours. But in the world, he's the most amiable man I know, and a devoted
croquet player. You shall see. And, in spite of his absurd position as
Liza's lovesick swain at his age, you ought to see how he carries off
the absurd position. He's very nice. Sappho Shtoltz you don't know? Oh,
that's a new type, quite new."

Betsy said all this, and, at the same time, from her good-humored,
shrewd glance, Anna felt that she partly guessed her plight, and was
hatching something for her benefit. They were in the little boudoir.

"I must write to Alexey though," and Betsy sat down to the table,
scribbled a few lines, and put the note in an envelope.

"I'm telling him to come to dinner. I've one lady extra to dinner with
me, and no man to take her in. Look what I've said, will that persuade
him? Excuse me, I must leave you for a minute. Would you seal it up,
please, and send it off?" she said from the door; "I have to give some
directions."

Without a moment's thought, Anna sat down to the table with Betsy's
letter, and, without reading it, wrote below: "It's essential for me to
see you. Come to the Vrede garden. I shall be there at six o'clock." She
sealed it up, and, Betsy coming back, in her presence handed the note to
be taken.

At tea, which was brought them on a little tea-table in the cool little
drawing room, the cozy chat promised by Princess Tverskaya before the
arrival of her visitors really did come off between the two women. They
criticized the people they were expecting, and the conversation fell
upon Liza Merkalova.

"She's very sweet, and I always liked her," said Anna.

"You ought to like her. She raves about you. Yesterday she came up to me
after the races and was in despair at not finding you. She says you're a
real heroine of romance, and that if she were a man she would do all
sorts of mad things for your sake. Stremov says she does that as it is."

"But do tell me, please, I never could make it out," said Anna, after
being silent for some time, speaking in a tone that showed she was not
asking an idle question, but that what she was asking was of more
importance to her than it should have been; "do tell me, please, what
are her relations with Prince Kaluzhsky, Mishka, as he's called? I've
met them so little. What does it mean?"

Betsy smiled with her eyes, and looked intently at Anna.

"It's a new manner," she said. "They've all adopted that manner. They've
flung their caps over the windmills. But there are ways and ways of
flinging them."

"Yes, but what are her relations precisely with Kaluzhsky?"

Betsy broke into unexpectedly mirthful and irrepressible laughter, a
thing which rarely happened with her.

"You're encroaching on Princess Myakaya's special domain now. That's the
question of an _enfant terrible_," and Betsy obviously tried to restrain
herself, but could not, and went off into peals of that infectious
laughter that people laugh who do not laugh often. "You'd better ask
them," she brought out, between tears of laughter.

"No; you laugh," said Anna, laughing too in spite of herself, "but I
never could understand it. I can't understand the husband's role in it."

"The husband? Liza Merkalova's husband carries her shawl, and is always
ready to be of use. But anything more than that in reality, no one cares
to inquire. You know in decent society one doesn't talk or think even of
certain details of the toilet. That's how it is with this."

"Will you be at Madame Rolandak's fete?" asked Anna, to change the
conversation.

"I don't think so," answered Betsy, and, without looking at her friend,
she began filling the little transparent cups with fragrant tea. Putting
a cup before Anna, she took out a cigarette, and, fitting it into a
silver holder, she lighted it.

"It's like this, you see: I'm in a fortunate position," she began, quite
serious now, as she took up her cup. "I understand you, and I understand
Liza. Liza now is one of those naive natures that, like children, don't
know what's good and what's bad. Anyway, she didn't comprehend it when
she was very young. And now she's aware that the lack of comprehension
suits her. Now, perhaps, she doesn't know on purpose," said Betsy, with
a subtle smile. "But, anyway, it suits her. The very same thing, don't
you see, may be looked at tragically, and turned into a misery, or it
may be looked at simply and even humorously. Possibly you are inclined
to look at things too tragically."

"How I should like to know other people just as I know myself!" said
Anna, seriously and dreamily. "Am I worse than other people, or better?
I think I'm worse."

"_Enfant terrible, enfant terrible!_" repeated Betsy. "But here they
are."



Chapter 18


They heard the sound of steps and a man's voice, then a woman's voice
and laughter, and immediately thereafter there walked in the expected
guests: Sappho Shtoltz, and a young man beaming with excess of health,
the so-called Vaska. It was evident that ample supplies of beefsteak,
truffles, and Burgundy never failed to reach him at the fitting hour.
Vaska bowed to the two ladies, and glanced at them, but only for one
second. He walked after Sappho into the drawing-room, and followed her
about as though he were chained to her, keeping his sparkling eyes fixed
on her as though he wanted to eat her. Sappho Shtoltz was a blonde
beauty with black eyes. She walked with smart little steps in
high-heeled shoes, and shook hands with the ladies vigorously like a
man.

Anna had never met this new star of fashion, and was struck by her
beauty, the exaggerated extreme to which her dress was carried, and the
boldness of her manners. On her head there was such a superstructure of
soft, golden hair--her own and false mixed--that her head was equal in
size to the elegantly rounded bust, of which so much was exposed in
front. The impulsive abruptness of her movements was such that at every
step the lines of her knees and the upper part of her legs were
distinctly marked under her dress, and the question involuntarily rose
to the mind where in the undulating, piled-up mountain of material at
the back the real body of the woman, so small and slender, so naked in
front, and so hidden behind and below, really came to an end.

Betsy made haste to introduce her to Anna.

"Only fancy, we all but ran over two soldiers," she began telling them
at once, using her eyes, smiling and twitching away her tail, which she
flung back at one stroke all on one side. "I drove here with Vaska....
Ah, to be sure, you don't know each other." And mentioning his surname
she introduced the young man, and reddening a little, broke into a
ringing laugh at her mistake--that is, at her having called him Vaska to
a stranger. Vaska bowed once more to Anna, but he said nothing to her.
He addressed Sappho: "You've lost your bet. We got here first. Pay up,"
said he, smiling.

Sappho laughed still more festively.

"Not just now," said she.

"Oh, all right, I'll have it later."

"Very well, very well. Oh, yes." She turned suddenly to Princess Betsy:
"I am a nice person ... I positively forgot it ... I've brought you a
visitor. And here he comes." The unexpected young visitor, whom Sappho
had invited, and whom she had forgotten, was, however, a personage of
such consequence that, in spite of his youth, both the ladies rose on
his entrance.

He was a new admirer of Sappho's. He now dogged her footsteps, like
Vaska.

Soon after Prince Kaluzhsky arrived, and Liza Merkalova with Stremov.
Liza Merkalova was a thin brunette, with an Oriental, languid type of
face, and--as everyone used to say--exquisite enigmatic eyes. The tone
of her dark dress (Anna immediately observed and appreciated the fact)
was in perfect harmony with her style of beauty. Liza was as soft and
enervated as Sappho was smart and abrupt.

But to Anna's taste Liza was far more attractive. Betsy had said to Anna
that she had adopted the pose of an innocent child, but when Anna saw
her, she felt that this was not the truth. She really was both innocent
and corrupt, but a sweet and passive woman. It is true that her tone was
the same as Sappho's; that like Sappho, she had two men, one young and
one old, tacked onto her, and devouring her with their eyes. But there
was something in her higher than what surrounded her. There was in her
the glow of the real diamond among glass imitations. This glow shone out
in her exquisite, truly enigmatic eyes. The weary, and at the same time
passionate, glance of those eyes, encircled by dark rings, impressed one
by its perfect sincerity. Everyone looking into those eyes fancied he
knew her wholly, and knowing her, could not but love her. At the sight
of Anna, her whole face lighted up at once with a smile of delight.

"Ah, how glad I am to see you!" she said, going up to her. "Yesterday at
the races all I wanted was to get to you, but you'd gone away. I did so
want to see you, yesterday especially. Wasn't it awful?" she said,
looking at Anna with eyes that seemed to lay bare all her soul.

"Yes; I had no idea it would be so thrilling," said Anna, blushing.

The company got up at this moment to go into the garden.

"I'm not going," said Liza, smiling and settling herself close to Anna.
"You won't go either, will you? Who wants to play croquet?"

"Oh, I like it," said Anna.

"There, how do you manage never to be bored by things? It's delightful
to look at you. You're alive, but I'm bored."

"How can you be bored? Why, you live in the liveliest set in
Petersburg," said Anna.

"Possibly the people who are not of our set are even more bored; but
we--I certainly--are not happy, but awfully, awfully bored."

Sappho smoking a cigarette went off into the garden with the two young
men. Betsy and Stremov remained at the tea-table.

"What, bored!" said Betsy. "Sappho says they did enjoy themselves
tremendously at your house last night."

"Ah, how dreary it all was!" said Liza Merkalova. "We all drove back to
my place after the races. And always the same people, always the same.
Always the same thing. We lounged about on sofas all the evening. What
is there to enjoy in that? No; do tell me how you manage never to be
bored?" she said, addressing Anna again. "One has but to look at you and
one sees, here's a woman who may be happy or unhappy, but isn't bored.
Tell me how you do it?"

"I do nothing," answered Anna, blushing at these searching questions.

"That's the best way," Stremov put in. Stremov was a man of fifty,
partly gray, but still vigorous-looking, very ugly, but with a
characteristic and intelligent face. Liza Merkalova was his wife's
niece, and he spent all his leisure hours with her. On meeting Anna
Karenina, as he was Alexey Alexandrovitch's enemy in the government, he
tried, like a shrewd man and a man of the world, to be particularly
cordial with her, the wife of his enemy.

"'Nothing,'" he put in with a subtle smile, "that's the very best way. I
told you long ago," he said, turning to Liza Merkalova, "that if you
don't want to be bored, you mustn't think you're going to be bored. It's
just as you mustn't be afraid of not being able to fall asleep, if
you're afraid of sleeplessness. That's just what Anna Arkadyevna has
just said."

"I should be very glad if I had said it, for it's not only clever but
true," said Anna, smiling.

"No, do tell me why it is one can't go to sleep, and one can't help
being bored?"

"To sleep well one ought to work, and to enjoy oneself one ought to work
too."

"What am I to work for when my work is no use to anybody? And I can't
and won't knowingly make a pretense about it."

"You're incorrigible," said Stremov, not looking at her, and he spoke
again to Anna. As he rarely met Anna, he could say nothing but
commonplaces to her, but he said those commonplaces as to when she was
returning to Petersburg, and how fond Countess Lidia Ivanovna was of
her, with an expression which suggested that he longed with his whole
soul to please her and show his regard for her and even more than that.

Tushkevitch came in, announcing that the party were awaiting the other
players to begin croquet.

"No, don't go away, please don't," pleaded Liza Merkalova, hearing that
Anna was going. Stremov joined in her entreaties.

"It's too violent a transition," he said, "to go from such company to
old Madame Vrede. And besides, you will only give her a chance for
talking scandal, while here you arouse none but such different feelings
of the highest and most opposite kind," he said to her.

Anna pondered for an instant in uncertainty. This shrewd man's
flattering words, the naive, childlike affection shown her by Liza
Merkalova, and all the social atmosphere she was used to,--it was all so
easy, and what was in store for her was so difficult, that she was for a
minute in uncertainty whether to remain, whether to put off a little
longer the painful moment of explanation. But remembering what was in
store for her alone at home, if she did not come to some decision,
remembering that gesture--terrible even in memory--when she had clutched
her hair in both hands--she said good-bye and went away.



Chapter 19


In spite of Vronsky's apparently frivolous life in society, he was a man
who hated irregularity. In early youth in the Corps of Pages, he had
experienced the humiliation of a refusal, when he had tried, being in
difficulties, to borrow money, and since then he had never once put
himself in the same position again.

In order to keep his affairs in some sort of order, he used about five
times a year (more or less frequently, according to circumstances) to
shut himself up alone and put all his affairs into definite shape. This
he used to call his day of reckoning or _faire la lessive_.

On waking up the day after the races, Vronsky put on a white linen coat,
and without shaving or taking his bath, he distributed about the table
moneys, bills, and letters, and set to work. Petritsky, who knew he was
ill-tempered on such occasions, on waking up and seeing his comrade at
the writing-table, quietly dressed and went out without getting in his
way.

Every man who knows to the minutest details all the complexity of the
conditions surrounding him, cannot help imagining that the complexity of
these conditions, and the difficulty of making them clear, is something
exceptional and personal, peculiar to himself, and never supposes that
others are surrounded by just as complicated an array of personal
affairs as he is. So indeed it seemed to Vronsky. And not without inward
pride, and not without reason, he thought that any other man would long
ago have been in difficulties, would have been forced to some
dishonorable course, if he had found himself in such a difficult
position. But Vronsky felt that now especially it was essential for him
to clear up and define his position if he were to avoid getting into
difficulties.

What Vronsky attacked first as being the easiest was his pecuniary
position. Writing out on note paper in his minute hand all that he owed,
he added up the amount and found that his debts amounted to seventeen
thousand and some odd hundreds, which he left out for the sake of
clearness. Reckoning up his money and his bank book, he found that he
had left one thousand eight hundred roubles, and nothing coming in
before the New Year. Reckoning over again his list of debts, Vronsky
copied it, dividing it into three classes. In the first class he put the
debts which he would have to pay at once, or for which he must in any
case have the money ready so that on demand for payment there could not
be a moment's delay in paying. Such debts amounted to about four
thousand: one thousand five hundred for a horse, and two thousand five
hundred as surety for a young comrade, Venovsky, who had lost that sum
to a cardsharper in Vronsky's presence. Vronsky had wanted to pay the
money at the time (he had that amount then), but Venovsky and Yashvin
had insisted that they would pay and not Vronsky, who had not played.
That was so far well, but Vronsky knew that in this dirty business,
though his only share in it was undertaking by word of mouth to be
surety for Venovsky, it was absolutely necessary for him to have the two
thousand five hundred roubles so as to be able to fling it at the
swindler, and have no more words with him. And so for this first and
most important division he must have four thousand roubles. The second
class--eight thousand roubles--consisted of less important debts. These
were principally accounts owing in connection with his race horses, to
the purveyor of oats and hay, the English saddler, and so on. He would
have to pay some two thousand roubles on these debts too, in order to be
quite free from anxiety. The last class of debts--to shops, to hotels,
to his tailor--were such as need not be considered. So that he needed at
least six thousand roubles for current expenses, and he only had one
thousand eight hundred. For a man with one hundred thousand roubles of
revenue, which was what everyone fixed as Vronsky's income, such debts,
one would suppose, could hardly be embarrassing; but the fact was that
he was far from having one hundred thousand. His father's immense
property, which alone yielded a yearly income of two hundred thousand,
was left undivided between the brothers. At the time when the elder
brother, with a mass of debts, married Princess Varya Tchirkova, the
daughter of a Decembrist without any fortune whatever, Alexey had given
up to his elder brother almost the whole income from his father's
estate, reserving for himself only twenty-five thousand a year from it.
Alexey had said at the time to his brother that that sum would be
sufficient for him until he married, which he probably never would do.
And his brother, who was in command of one of the most expensive
regiments, and was only just married, could not decline the gift. His
mother, who had her own separate property, had allowed Alexey every year
twenty thousand in addition to the twenty-five thousand he had reserved,
and Alexey had spent it all. Of late his mother, incensed with him on
account of his love affair and his leaving Moscow, had given up sending
him the money. And in consequence of this, Vronsky, who had been in the
habit of living on the scale of forty-five thousand a year, having only
received twenty thousand that year, found himself now in difficulties.
To get out of these difficulties, he could not apply to his mother for
money. Her last letter, which he had received the day before, had
particularly exasperated him by the hints in it that she was quite ready
to help him to succeed in the world and in the army, but not to lead a
life which was a scandal to all good society. His mother's attempt to
buy him stung him to the quick and made him feel colder than ever to
her. But he could not draw back from the generous word when it was once
uttered, even though he felt now, vaguely foreseeing certain
eventualities in his intrigue with Madame Karenina, that this generous
word had been spoken thoughtlessly, and that even though he were not
married he might need all the hundred thousand of income. But it was
impossible to draw back. He had only to recall his brother's wife, to
remember how that sweet, delightful Varya sought, at every convenient
opportunity, to remind him that she remembered his generosity and
appreciated it, to grasp the impossibility of taking back his gift. It
was as impossible as beating a woman, stealing, or lying. One thing only
could and ought to be done, and Vronsky determined upon it without an
instant's hesitation: to borrow money from a money-lender, ten thousand
roubles, a proceeding which presented no difficulty, to cut down his
expenses generally, and to sell his race horses. Resolving on this, he
promptly wrote a note to Rolandak, who had more than once sent to him
with offers to buy horses from him. Then he sent for the Englishman and
the money-lender, and divided what money he had according to the
accounts he intended to pay. Having finished this business, he wrote a
cold and cutting answer to his mother. Then he took out of his notebook
three notes of Anna's, read them again, burned them, and remembering
their conversation on the previous day, he sank into meditation.



Chapter 20


Vronsky's life was particularly happy in that he had a code of
principles, which defined with unfailing certitude what he ought and
what he ought not to do. This code of principles covered only a very
small circle of contingencies, but then the principles were never
doubtful, and Vronsky, as he never went outside that circle, had never
had a moment's hesitation about doing what he ought to do. These
principles laid down as invariable rules: that one must pay a
cardsharper, but need not pay a tailor; that one must never tell a lie
to a man, but one may to a woman; that one must never cheat anyone, but
one may a husband; that one must never pardon an insult, but one may
give one and so on. These principles were possibly not reasonable and
not good, but they were of unfailing certainty, and so long as he
adhered to them, Vronsky felt that his heart was at peace and he could
hold his head up. Only quite lately in regard to his relations with
Anna, Vronsky had begun to feel that his code of principles did not
fully cover all possible contingencies, and to foresee in the future
difficulties and perplexities for which he could find no guiding clue.

His present relation to Anna and to her husband was to his mind clear
and simple. It was clearly and precisely defined in the code of
principles by which he was guided.

She was an honorable woman who had bestowed her love upon him, and he
loved her, and therefore she was in his eyes a woman who had a right to
the same, or even more, respect than a lawful wife. He would have had
his hand chopped off before he would have allowed himself by a word, by
a hint, to humiliate her, or even to fall short of the fullest respect a
woman could look for.

His attitude to society, too, was clear. Everyone might know, might
suspect it, but no one might dare to speak of it. If any did so, he was
ready to force all who might speak to be silent and to respect the
non-existent honor of the woman he loved.

His attitude to the husband was the clearest of all. From the moment
that Anna loved Vronsky, he had regarded his own right over her as the
one thing unassailable. Her husband was simply a superfluous and
tiresome person. No doubt he was in a pitiable position, but how could
that be helped? The one thing the husband had a right to was to demand
satisfaction with a weapon in his hand, and Vronsky was prepared for
this at any minute.

But of late new inner relations had arisen between him and her, which
frightened Vronsky by their indefiniteness. Only the day before she had
told him that she was with child. And he felt that this fact and what
she expected of him called for something not fully defined in that code
of principles by which he had hitherto steered his course in life. And
he had been indeed caught unawares, and at the first moment when she
spoke to him of her position, his heart had prompted him to beg her to
leave her husband. He had said that, but now thinking things over he saw
clearly that it would be better to manage to avoid that; and at the same
time, as he told himself so, he was afraid whether it was not wrong.

"If I told her to leave her husband, that must mean uniting her life
with mine; am I prepared for that? How can I take her away now, when I
have no money? Supposing I could arrange.... But how can I take her away
while I'm in the service? If I say that--I ought to be prepared to do
it, that is, I ought to have the money and to retire from the army."

And he grew thoughtful. The question whether to retire from the service
or not brought him to the other and perhaps the chief though hidden
interest of his life, of which none knew but he.

Ambition was the old dream of his youth and childhood, a dream which he
did not confess even to himself, though it was so strong that now this
passion was even doing battle with his love. His first steps in the
world and in the service had been successful, but two years before he
had made a great mistake. Anxious to show his independence and to
advance, he had refused a post that had been offered him, hoping that
this refusal would heighten his value; but it turned out that he had
been too bold, and he was passed over. And having, whether he liked or
not, taken up for himself the position of an independent man, he carried
it off with great tact and good sense, behaving as though he bore no
grudge against anyone, did not regard himself as injured in any way, and
cared for nothing but to be left alone since he was enjoying himself. In
reality he had ceased to enjoy himself as long ago as the year before,
when he went away to Moscow. He felt that this independent attitude of a
man who might have done anything, but cared to do nothing, was already
beginning to pall, that many people were beginning to fancy that he was
not really capable of anything but being a straightforward, good-natured
fellow. His connection with Madame Karenina, by creating so much
sensation and attracting general attention, had given him a fresh
distinction which soothed his gnawing worm of ambition for a while, but
a week before that worm had been roused up again with fresh force. The
friend of his childhood, a man of the same set, of the same coterie, his
comrade in the Corps of Pages, Serpuhovskoy, who had left school with
him and had been his rival in class, in gymnastics, in their scrapes and
their dreams of glory, had come back a few days before from Central
Asia, where he had gained two steps up in rank, and an order rarely
bestowed upon generals so young.

As soon as he arrived in Petersburg, people began to talk about him as a
newly risen star of the first magnitude. A schoolfellow of Vronsky's and
of the same age, he was a general and was expecting a command, which
might have influence on the course of political events; while Vronsky,
independent and brilliant and beloved by a charming woman though he was,
was simply a cavalry captain who was readily allowed to be as
independent as ever he liked. "Of course I don't envy Serpuhovskoy and
never could envy him; but his advancement shows me that one has only to
watch one's opportunity, and the career of a man like me may be very
rapidly made. Three years ago he was in just the same position as I am.
If I retire, I burn my ships. If I remain in the army, I lose nothing.
She said herself she did not wish to change her position. And with her
love I cannot feel envious of Serpuhovskoy." And slowly twirling his
mustaches, he got up from the table and walked about the room. His eyes
shone particularly brightly, and he felt in that confident, calm, and
happy frame of mind which always came after he had thoroughly faced his
position. Everything was straight and clear, just as after former days
of reckoning. He shaved, took a cold bath, dressed and went out.



Chapter 21


"We've come to fetch you. Your _lessive_ lasted a good time today," said
Petritsky. "Well, is it over?"

"It is over," answered Vronsky, smiling with his eyes only, and twirling
the tips of his mustaches as circumspectly as though after the perfect
order into which his affairs had been brought any over-bold or rapid
movement might disturb it.

"You're always just as if you'd come out of a bath after it," said
Petritsky. "I've come from Gritsky's" (that was what they called the
colonel); "they're expecting you."

Vronsky, without answering, looked at his comrade, thinking of something
else.

"Yes; is that music at his place?" he said, listening to the familiar
sounds of polkas and waltzes floating across to him. "What's the fete?"

"Serpuhovskoy's come."

"Aha!" said Vronsky, "why, I didn't know."

The smile in his eyes gleamed more brightly than ever.

Having once made up his mind that he was happy in his love, that he
sacrificed his ambition to it--having anyway taken up this position,
Vronsky was incapable of feeling either envious of Serpuhovskoy or hurt
with him for not coming first to him when he came to the regiment.
Serpuhovskoy was a good friend, and he was delighted he had come.

"Ah, I'm very glad!"

The colonel, Demin, had taken a large country house. The whole party
were in the wide lower balcony. In the courtyard the first objects that
met Vronsky's eyes were a band of singers in white linen coats, standing
near a barrel of vodka, and the robust, good-humored figure of the
colonel surrounded by officers. He had gone out as far as the first step
of the balcony and was loudly shouting across the band that played
Offenbach's quadrille, waving his arms and giving some orders to a few
soldiers standing on one side. A group of soldiers, a quartermaster, and
several subalterns came up to the balcony with Vronsky. The colonel
returned to the table, went out again onto the steps with a tumbler in
his hand, and proposed the toast, "To the health of our former comrade,
the gallant general, Prince Serpuhovskoy. Hurrah!"

The colonel was followed by Serpuhovskoy, who came out onto the steps
smiling, with a glass in his hand.

"You always get younger, Bondarenko," he said to the rosy-checked,
smart-looking quartermaster standing just before him, still youngish
looking though doing his second term of service.

It was three years since Vronsky had seen Serpuhovskoy. He looked more
robust, had let his whiskers grow, but was still the same graceful
creature, whose face and figure were even more striking from their
softness and nobility than their beauty. The only change Vronsky
detected in him was that subdued, continual radiance of beaming content
which settles on the faces of men who are successful and are sure of the
recognition of their success by everyone. Vronsky knew that radiant air,
and immediately observed it in Serpuhovskoy.

As Serpuhovskoy came down the steps he saw Vronsky. A smile of pleasure
lighted up his face. He tossed his head upwards and waved the glass in
his hand, greeting Vronsky, and showing him by the gesture that he could
not come to him before the quartermaster, who stood craning forward his
lips ready to be kissed.

"Here he is!" shouted the colonel. "Yashvin told me you were in one of
your gloomy tempers."

Serpuhovskoy kissed the moist, fresh lips of the gallant-looking
quartermaster, and wiping his mouth with his handkerchief, went up to
Vronsky.

"How glad I am!" he said, squeezing his hand and drawing him on one
side.

"You look after him," the colonel shouted to Yashvin, pointing to
Vronsky; and he went down below to the soldiers.

"Why weren't you at the races yesterday? I expected to see you there,"
said Vronsky, scrutinizing Serpuhovskoy.

"I did go, but late. I beg your pardon," he added, and he turned to the
adjutant: "Please have this divided from me, each man as much as it runs
to." And he hurriedly took notes for three hundred roubles from his
pocketbook, blushing a little.

"Vronsky! Have anything to eat or drink?" asked Yashvin. "Hi, something
for the count to eat! Ah, here it is: have a glass!"

The fete at the colonel's lasted a long while. There was a great deal of
drinking. They tossed Serpuhovskoy in the air and caught him again
several times. Then they did the same to the colonel. Then, to the
accompaniment of the band, the colonel himself danced with Petritsky.
Then the colonel, who began to show signs of feebleness, sat down on a
bench in the courtyard and began demonstrating to Yashvin the
superiority of Russia over Poland, especially in cavalry attack, and
there was a lull in the revelry for a moment. Serpuhovskoy went into the
house to the bathroom to wash his hands and found Vronsky there; Vronsky
was drenching his head with water. He had taken off his coat and put his
sunburnt, hairy neck under the tap, and was rubbing it and his head with
his hands. When he had finished, Vronsky sat down by Serpuhovskoy. They
both sat down in the bathroom on a lounge, and a conversation began
which was very interesting to both of them.

"I've always been hearing about you through my wife," said Serpuhovskoy.
"I'm glad you've been seeing her pretty often."

"She's friendly with Varya, and they're the only women in Petersburg I
care about seeing," answered Vronsky, smiling. He smiled because he
foresaw the topic the conversation would turn on, and he was glad of it.

"The only ones?" Serpuhovskoy queried, smiling.

"Yes; and I heard news of you, but not only through your wife," said
Vronsky, checking his hint by a stern expression of face. "I was greatly
delighted to hear of your success, but not a bit surprised. I expected
even more."

Serpuhovskoy smiled. Such an opinion of him was obviously agreeable to
him, and he did not think it necessary to conceal it.

"Well, I on the contrary expected less--I'll own frankly. But I'm glad,
very glad. I'm ambitious; that's my weakness, and I confess to it."

"Perhaps you wouldn't confess to it if you hadn't been successful," said
Vronsky.

"I don't suppose so," said Serpuhovskoy, smiling again. "I won't say
life wouldn't be worth living without it, but it would be dull. Of
course I may be mistaken, but I fancy I have a certain capacity for the
line I've chosen, and that power of any sort in my hands, if it is to
be, will be better than in the hands of a good many people I know," said
Serpuhovskoy, with beaming consciousness of success; "and so the nearer
I get to it, the better pleased I am."

"Perhaps that is true for you, but not for everyone. I used to think so
too, but here I live and think life worth living not only for that."

"There it's out! here it comes!" said Serpuhovskoy, laughing. "Ever
since I heard about you, about your refusal, I began.... Of course, I
approved of what you did. But there are ways of doing everything. And I
think your action was good in itself, but you didn't do it quite in the
way you ought to have done."

"What's done can't be undone, and you know I never go back on what I've
done. And besides, I'm very well off."

"Very well off--for the time. But you're not satisfied with that. I
wouldn't say this to your brother. He's a nice child, like our host
here. There he goes!" he added, listening to the roar of "hurrah!"--"and
he's happy, but that does not satisfy you."

"I didn't say it did satisfy me."

"Yes, but that's not the only thing. Such men as you are wanted."

"By whom?"

"By whom? By society, by Russia. Russia needs men; she needs a party, or
else everything goes and will go to the dogs."

"How do you mean? Bertenev's party against the Russian communists?"

"No," said Serpuhovskoy, frowning with vexation at being suspected of
such an absurdity. "_Tout ca est une blague_. That's always been and
always will be. There are no communists. But intriguing people have to
invent a noxious, dangerous party. It's an old trick. No, what's wanted
is a powerful party of independent men like you and me."

"But why so?" Vronsky mentioned a few men who were in power. "Why aren't
they independent men?"

"Simply because they have not, or have not had from birth, an
independent fortune; they've not had a name, they've not been close to
the sun and center as we have. They can be bought either by money or by
favor. And they have to find a support for themselves in inventing a
policy. And they bring forward some notion, some policy that they don't
believe in, that does harm; and the whole policy is really only a means
to a government house and so much income. _Cela n'est pas plus fin que
ca_, when you get a peep at their cards. I may be inferior to them,
stupider perhaps, though I don't see why I should be inferior to them.
But you and I have one important advantage over them for certain, in
being more difficult to buy. And such men are more needed than ever."

Vronsky listened attentively, but he was not so much interested by the
meaning of the words as by the attitude of Serpuhovskoy who was already
contemplating a struggle with the existing powers, and already had his
likes and dislikes in that higher world, while his own interest in the
governing world did not go beyond the interests of his regiment. Vronsky
felt, too, how powerful Serpuhovskoy might become through his
unmistakable faculty for thinking things out and for taking things in,
through his intelligence and gift of words, so rarely met with in the
world in which he moved. And, ashamed as he was of the feeling, he felt
envious.

"Still I haven't the one thing of most importance for that," he
answered; "I haven't the desire for power. I had it once, but it's
gone."

"Excuse me, that's not true," said Serpuhovskoy, smiling.

"Yes, it is true, it is true ... now!" Vronsky added, to be truthful.

"Yes, it's true now, that's another thing; but that _now_ won't last
forever."

"Perhaps," answered Vronsky.

"You say _perhaps_," Serpuhovskoy went on, as though guessing his
thoughts, "but I say _for certain_. And that's what I wanted to see you
for. Your action was just what it should have been. I see that, but you
ought not to keep it up. I only ask you to give me carte blanche. I'm
not going to offer you my protection ... though, indeed, why shouldn't I
protect you?--you've protected me often enough! I should hope our
friendship rises above all that sort of thing. Yes," he said, smiling to
him as tenderly as a woman, "give me _carte blanche_, retire from the
regiment, and I'll draw you upwards imperceptibly."

"But you must understand that I want nothing," said Vronsky, "except
that all should be as it is."

Serpuhovskoy got up and stood facing him.

"You say that all should be as it is. I understand what that means. But
listen: we're the same age, you've known a greater number of women
perhaps than I have." Serpohovskoy's smile and gestures told Vronsky
that he mustn't be afraid, that he would be tender and careful in
touching the sore place. "But I'm married, and believe me, in getting to
know thoroughly one's wife, if one loves her, as someone has said, one
gets to know all women better than if one knew thousands of them."

"We're coming directly!" Vronsky shouted to an officer, who looked into
the room and called them to the colonel.

Vronsky was longing now to hear to the end and know what Serpuhovskey
would say to him.

"And here's my opinion for you. Women are the chief stumbling block in a
man's career. It's hard to love a woman and do anything. There's only
one way of having love conveniently without its being a
hindrance--that's marriage. How, how am I to tell you what I mean?" said
Serpuhovskoy, who liked similes. "Wait a minute, wait a minute! Yes,
just as you can only carry a _fardeau_ and do something with your hands,
when the fardeau is tied on your back, and that's marriage. And that's
what I felt when I was married. My hands were suddenly set free. But to
drag that _fardeau_ about with you without marriage, your hands will
always be so full that you can do nothing. Look at Mazankov, at Krupov.
They've ruined their careers for the sake of women."

"What women!" said Vronsky, recalling the Frenchwoman and the actress
with whom the two men he had mentioned were connected.

"The firmer the woman's footing in society, the worse it is. That's much
the same as--not merely carrying the _fardeau_ in your arms--but tearing
it away from someone else."

"You have never loved," Vronsky said softly, looking straight before him
and thinking of Anna.

"Perhaps. But you remember what I've said to you. And another thing,
women are all more materialistic than men. We make something immense out
of love, but they are always _terre-a-terre_."

"Directly, directly!" he cried to a footman who came in. But the footman
had not come to call them again, as he supposed. The footman brought
Vronsky a note.

"A man brought it from Princess Tverskaya."

Vronsky opened the letter, and flushed crimson.

"My head's begun to ache; I'm going home," he said to Serpuhovskoy.

"Oh, good-bye then. You give me _carte blanche!_"

"We'll talk about it later on; I'll look you up in Petersburg."



Chapter 22


It was six o'clock already, and so, in order to be there quickly, and at
the same time not to drive with his own horses, known to everyone,
Vronsky got into Yashvin's hired fly, and told the driver to drive as
quickly as possible. It was a roomy, old-fashioned fly, with seats for
four. He sat in one corner, stretched his legs out on the front seat,
and sank into meditation.

A vague sense of the order into which his affairs had been brought, a
vague recollection of the friendliness and flattery of Serpuhovskoy, who
had considered him a man that was needed, and most of all, the
anticipation of the interview before him--all blended into a general,
joyous sense of life. This feeling was so strong that he could not help
smiling. He dropped his legs, crossed one leg over the other knee, and
taking it in his hand, felt the springy muscle of the calf, where it had
been grazed the day before by his fall, and leaning back he drew several
deep breaths.

"I'm happy, very happy!" he said to himself. He had often before had
this sense of physical joy in his own body, but he had never felt so
fond of himself, of his own body, as at that moment. He enjoyed the
slight ache in his strong leg, he enjoyed the muscular sensation of
movement in his chest as he breathed. The bright, cold August day, which
had made Anna feel so hopeless, seemed to him keenly stimulating, and
refreshed his face and neck that still tingled from the cold water. The
scent of brilliantine on his whiskers struck him as particularly
pleasant in the fresh air. Everything he saw from the carriage window,
everything in that cold pure air, in the pale light of the sunset, was
as fresh, and gay, and strong as he was himself: the roofs of the houses
shining in the rays of the setting sun, the sharp outlines of fences and
angles of buildings, the figures of passers-by, the carriages that met
him now and then, the motionless green of the trees and grass, the
fields with evenly drawn furrows of potatoes, and the slanting shadows
that fell from the houses, and trees, and bushes, and even from the rows
of potatoes--everything was bright like a pretty landscape just finished
and freshly varnished.

"Get on, get on!" he said to the driver, putting his head out of the
window, and pulling a three-rouble note out of his pocket he handed it
to the man as he looked round. The driver's hand fumbled with something
at the lamp, the whip cracked, and the carriage rolled rapidly along the
smooth highroad.

"I want nothing, nothing but this happiness," he thought, staring at the
bone button of the bell in the space between the windows, and picturing
to himself Anna just as he had seen her last time. "And as I go on, I
love her more and more. Here's the garden of the Vrede Villa.
Whereabouts will she be? Where? How? Why did she fix on this place to
meet me, and why does she write in Betsy's letter?" he thought,
wondering now for the first time at it. But there was now no time for
wonder. He called to the driver to stop before reaching the avenue, and
opening the door, jumped out of the carriage as it was moving, and went
into the avenue that led up to the house. There was no one in the
avenue; but looking round to the right he caught sight of her. Her face
was hidden by a veil, but he drank in with glad eyes the special
movement in walking, peculiar to her alone, the slope of the shoulders,
and the setting of the head, and at once a sort of electric shock ran
all over him. With fresh force, he felt conscious of himself from the
springy motions of his legs to the movements of his lungs as he
breathed, and something set his lips twitching.

Joining him, she pressed his hand tightly.

"You're not angry that I sent for you? I absolutely had to see you," she
said; and the serious and set line of her lips, which he saw under the
veil, transformed his mood at once.

"I angry! But how have you come, where from?"

"Never mind," she said, laying her hand on his, "come along, I must talk
to you."

He saw that something had happened, and that the interview would not be
a joyous one. In her presence he had no will of his own: without knowing
the grounds of her distress, he already felt the same distress
unconsciously passing over him.

"What is it? what?" he asked her, squeezing her hand with his elbow, and
trying to read her thoughts in her face.

She walked on a few steps in silence, gathering up her courage; then
suddenly she stopped.

"I did not tell you yesterday," she began, breathing quickly and
painfully, "that coming home with Alexey Alexandrovitch I told him
everything ... told him I could not be his wife, that ... and told him
everything."

He heard her, unconsciously bending his whole figure down to her as
though hoping in this way to soften the hardness of her position for
her. But directly she had said this he suddenly drew himself up, and a
proud and hard expression came over his face.

"Yes, yes, that's better, a thousand times better! I know how painful it
was," he said. But she was not listening to his words, she was reading
his thoughts from the expression of his face. She could not guess that
that expression arose from the first idea that presented itself to
Vronsky--that a duel was now inevitable. The idea of a duel had never
crossed her mind, and so she put a different interpretation on this
passing expression of hardness.

When she got her husband's letter, she knew then at the bottom of her
heart that everything would go on in the old way, that she would not
have the strength of will to forego her position, to abandon her son,
and to join her lover. The morning spent at Princess Tverskaya's had
confirmed her still more in this. But this interview was still of the
utmost gravity for her. She hoped that this interview would transform
her position, and save her. If on hearing this news he were to say to
her resolutely, passionately, without an instant's wavering: "Throw up
everything and come with me!" she would give up her son and go away with
him. But this news had not produced what she had expected in him; he
simply seemed as though he were resenting some affront.

"It was not in the least painful to me. It happened of itself," she said
irritably; "and see..." she pulled her husband's letter out of her
glove.

"I understand, I understand," he interrupted her, taking the letter, but
not reading it, and trying to soothe her. "The one thing I longed for,
the one thing I prayed for, was to cut short this position, so as to
devote my life to your happiness."

"Why do you tell me that?" she said. "Do you suppose I can doubt it? If
I doubted..."

"Who's that coming?" said Vronsky suddenly, pointing to two ladies
walking towards them. "Perhaps they know us!" and he hurriedly turned
off, drawing her after him into a side path.

"Oh, I don't care!" she said. Her lips were quivering. And he fancied
that her eyes looked with strange fury at him from under the veil. "I
tell you that's not the point--I can't doubt that; but see what he
writes to me. Read it." She stood still again.

Again, just as at the first moment of hearing of her rupture with her
husband, Vronsky, on reading the letter, was unconsciously carried away
by the natural sensation aroused in him by his own relation to the
betrayed husband. Now while he held his letter in his hands, he could
not help picturing the challenge, which he would most likely find at
home today or tomorrow, and the duel itself, in which, with the same
cold and haughty expression that his face was assuming at this moment he
would await the injured husband's shot, after having himself fired into
the air. And at that instant there flashed across his mind the thought
of what Serpuhovskoy had just said to him, and what he had himself been
thinking in the morning--that it was better not to bind himself--and he
knew that this thought he could not tell her.

Having read the letter, he raised his eyes to her, and there was no
determination in them. She saw at once that he had been thinking about
it before by himself. She knew that whatever he might say to her, he
would not say all he thought. And she knew that her last hope had failed
her. This was not what she had been reckoning on.

"You see the sort of man he is," she said, with a shaking voice; "he..."

"Forgive me, but I rejoice at it," Vronsky interrupted. "For God's sake,
let me finish!" he added, his eyes imploring her to give him time to
explain his words. "I rejoice, because things cannot, cannot possibly
remain as he supposes."

"Why can't they?" Anna said, restraining her tears, and obviously
attaching no sort of consequence to what he said. She felt that her fate
was sealed.

Vronsky meant that after the duel--inevitable, he thought--things could
not go on as before, but he said something different.

"It can't go on. I hope that now you will leave him. I hope"--he was
confused, and reddened--"that you will let me arrange and plan our life.
Tomorrow..." he was beginning.

She did not let him go on.

"But my child!" she shrieked. "You see what he writes! I should have to
leave him, and I can't and won't do that."

"But, for God's sake, which is better?--leave your child, or keep up
this degrading position?"

"To whom is it degrading?"

"To all, and most of all to you."

"You say degrading ... don't say that. Those words have no meaning for
me," she said in a shaking voice. She did not want him now to say what
was untrue. She had nothing left her but his love, and she wanted to
love him. "Don't you understand that from the day I loved you everything
has changed for me? For me there is one thing, and one thing only--your
love. If that's mine, I feel so exalted, so strong, that nothing can be
humiliating to me. I am proud of my position, because ... proud of being
... proud...." She could not say what she was proud of. Tears of shame
and despair choked her utterance. She stood still and sobbed.

He felt, too, something swelling in his throat and twitching in his
nose, and for the first time in his life he felt on the point of
weeping. He could not have said exactly what it was touched him so. He
felt sorry for her, and he felt he could not help her, and with that he
knew that he was to blame for her wretchedness, and that he had done
something wrong.

"Is not a divorce possible?" he said feebly. She shook her head, not
answering. "Couldn't you take your son, and still leave him?"

"Yes; but it all depends on him. Now I must go to him," she said
shortly. Her presentiment that all would again go on in the old way had
not deceived her.

"On Tuesday I shall be in Petersburg, and everything can be settled."

"Yes," she said. "But don't let us talk any more of it."

Anna's carriage, which she had sent away, and ordered to come back to
the little gate of the Vrede garden, drove up. Anna said good-bye to
Vronsky, and drove home.



Chapter 23


On Monday there was the usual sitting of the Commission of the 2nd of
June. Alexey Alexandrovitch walked into the hall where the sitting was
held, greeted the members and the president, as usual, and sat down in
his place, putting his hand on the papers laid ready before him. Among
these papers lay the necessary evidence and a rough outline of the
speech he intended to make. But he did not really need these documents.
He remembered every point, and did not think it necessary to go over in
his memory what he would say. He knew that when the time came, and when
he saw his enemy facing him, and studiously endeavoring to assume an
expression of indifference, his speech would flow of itself better than
he could prepare it now. He felt that the import of his speech was of
such magnitude that every word of it would have weight. Meantime, as he
listened to the usual report, he had the most innocent and inoffensive
air. No one, looking at his white hands, with their swollen veins and
long fingers, so softly stroking the edges of the white paper that lay
before him, and at the air of weariness with which his head drooped on
one side, would have suspected that in a few minutes a torrent of words
would flow from his lips that would arouse a fearful storm, set the
members shouting and attacking one another, and force the president to
call for order. When the report was over, Alexey Alexandrovitch
announced in his subdued, delicate voice that he had several points to
bring before the meeting in regard to the Commission for the
Reorganization of the Native Tribes. All attention was turned upon him.
Alexey Alexandrovitch cleared his throat, and not looking at his
opponent, but selecting, as he always did while he was delivering his
speeches, the first person sitting opposite him, an inoffensive little
old man, who never had an opinion of any sort in the Commission, began
to expound his views. When he reached the point about the fundamental
and radical law, his opponent jumped up and began to protest. Stremov,
who was also a member of the Commission, and also stung to the quick,
began defending himself, and altogether a stormy sitting followed; but
Alexey Alexandrovitch triumphed, and his motion was carried, three new
commissions were appointed, and the next day in a certain Petersburg
circle nothing else was talked of but this sitting. Alexey
Alexandrovitch's success had been even greater than he had anticipated.

Next morning, Tuesday, Alexey Alexandrovitch, on waking up, recollected
with pleasure his triumph of the previous day, and he could not help
smiling, though he tried to appear indifferent, when the chief secretary
of his department, anxious to flatter him, informed him of the rumors
that had reached him concerning what had happened in the Commission.

Absorbed in business with the chief secretary, Alexey Alexandrovitch had
completely forgotten that it was Tuesday, the day fixed by him for the
return of Anna Arkadyevna, and he was surprised and received a shock of
annoyance when a servant came in to inform him of her arrival.

Anna had arrived in Petersburg early in the morning; the carriage had
been sent to meet her in accordance with her telegram, and so Alexey
Alexandrovitch might have known of her arrival. But when she arrived, he
did not meet her. She was told that he had not yet gone out, but was
busy with his secretary. She sent word to her husband that she had come,
went to her own room, and occupied herself in sorting out her things,
expecting he would come to her. But an hour passed; he did not come. She
went into the dining room on the pretext of giving some directions, and
spoke loudly on purpose, expecting him to come out there; but he did not
come, though she heard him go to the door of his study as he parted from
the chief secretary. She knew that he usually went out quickly to his
office, and she wanted to see him before that, so that their attitude to
one another might be defined.

She walked across the drawing room and went resolutely to him. When she
went into his study he was in official uniform, obviously ready to go
out, sitting at a little table on which he rested his elbows, looking
dejectedly before him. She saw him before he saw her, and she saw that
he was thinking of her.

On seeing her, he would have risen, but changed his mind, then his face
flushed hotly--a thing Anna had never seen before, and he got up quickly
and went to meet her, looking not at her eyes, but above them at her
forehead and hair. He went up to her, took her by the hand, and asked
her to sit down.

"I am very glad you have come," he said, sitting down beside her, and
obviously wishing to say something, he stuttered. Several times he tried
to begin to speak, but stopped. In spite of the fact that, preparing
herself for meeting him, she had schooled herself to despise and
reproach him, she did not know what to say to him, and she felt sorry
for him. And so the silence lasted for some time. "Is Seryozha quite
well?" he said, and not waiting for an answer, he added: "I shan't be
dining at home today, and I have got to go out directly."

"I had thought of going to Moscow," she said.

"No, you did quite, quite right to come," he said, and was silent again.

Seeing that he was powerless to begin the conversation, she began
herself.

"Alexey Alexandrovitch," she said, looking at him and not dropping her
eyes under his persistent gaze at her hair, "I'm a guilty woman, I'm a
bad woman, but I am the same as I was, as I told you then, and I have
come to tell you that I can change nothing."

"I have asked you no question about that," he said, all at once,
resolutely and with hatred looking her straight in the face; "that was
as I had supposed." Under the influence of anger he apparently regained
complete possession of all his faculties. "But as I told you then, and
have written to you," he said in a thin, shrill voice, "I repeat now,
that I am not bound to know this. I ignore it. Not all wives are so kind
as you, to be in such a hurry to communicate such agreeable news to
their husbands." He laid special emphasis on the word "agreeable." "I
shall ignore it so long as the world knows nothing of it, so long as my
name is not disgraced. And so I simply inform you that our relations
must be just as they have always been, and that only in the event of
your compromising me I shall be obliged to take steps to secure my
honor."

"But our relations cannot be the same as always," Anna began in a timid
voice, looking at him with dismay.

When she saw once more those composed gestures, heard that shrill,
childish, and sarcastic voice, her aversion for him extinguished her
pity for him, and she felt only afraid, but at all costs she wanted to
make clear her position.

"I cannot be your wife while I...." she began.

He laughed a cold and malignant laugh.

"The manner of life you have chosen is reflected, I suppose, in your
ideas. I have too much respect or contempt, or both ... I respect your
past and despise your present ... that I was far from the interpretation
you put on my words."

Anna sighed and bowed her head.

"Though indeed I fail to comprehend how, with the independence you
show," he went on, getting hot, "--announcing your infidelity to your
husband and seeing nothing reprehensible in it, apparently--you can see
anything reprehensible in performing a wife's duties in relation to your
husband."

"Alexey Alexandrovitch! What is it you want of me?"

"I want you not to meet that man here, and to conduct yourself so that
neither the world nor the servants can reproach you ... not to see him.
That's not much, I think. And in return you will enjoy all the
privileges of a faithful wife without fulfilling her duties. That's all
I have to say to you. Now it's time for me to go. I'm not dining at
home." He got up and moved towards the door.

Anna got up too. Bowing in silence, he let her pass before him.



Chapter 24


The night spent by Levin on the haycock did not pass without result for
him. The way in which he had been managing his land revolted him and had
lost all attraction for him. In spite of the magnificent harvest, never
had there been, or, at least, never it seemed to him, had there been so
many hindrances and so many quarrels between him and the peasants as
that year, and the origin of these failures and this hostility was now
perfectly comprehensible to him. The delight he had experienced in the
work itself, and the consequent greater intimacy with the peasants, the
envy he felt of them, of their life, the desire to adopt that life,
which had been to him that night not a dream but an intention, the
execution of which he had thought out in detail--all this had so
transformed his view of the farming of the land as he had managed it,
that he could not take his former interest in it, and could not help
seeing that unpleasant relation between him and the workpeople which was
the foundation of it all. The herd of improved cows such as Pava, the
whole land ploughed over and enriched, the nine level fields surrounded
with hedges, the two hundred and forty acres heavily manured, the seed
sown in drills, and all the rest of it--it was all splendid if only the
work had been done for themselves, or for themselves and
comrades--people in sympathy with them. But he saw clearly now (his work
on a book of agriculture, in which the chief element in husbandry was to
have been the laborer, greatly assisted him in this) that the sort of
farming he was carrying on was nothing but a cruel and stubborn struggle
between him and the laborers, in which there was on one side--his
side--a continual intense effort to change everything to a pattern he
considered better; on the other side, the natural order of things. And
in this struggle he saw that with immense expenditure of force on his
side, and with no effort or even intention on the other side, all that
was attained was that the work did not go to the liking of either side,
and that splendid tools, splendid cattle and land were spoiled with no
good to anyone. Worst of all, the energy expended on this work was not
simply wasted. He could not help feeling now, since the meaning of this
system had become clear to him, that the aim of his energy was a most
unworthy one. In reality, what was the struggle about? He was struggling
for every farthing of his share (and he could not help it, for he had
only to relax his efforts, and he would not have had the money to pay
his laborers' wages), while they were only struggling to be able to do
their work easily and agreeably, that is to say, as they were used to
doing it. It was for his interests that every laborer should work as
hard as possible, and that while doing so he should keep his wits about
him, so as to try not to break the winnowing machines, the horse rakes,
the thrashing machines, that he should attend to what he was doing. What
the laborer wanted was to work as pleasantly as possible, with rests,
and above all, carelessly and heedlessly, without thinking. That summer
Levin saw this at every step. He sent the men to mow some clover for
hay, picking out the worst patches where the clover was overgrown with
grass and weeds and of no use for seed; again and again they mowed the
best acres of clover, justifying themselves by the pretense that the
bailiff had told them to, and trying to pacify him with the assurance
that it would be splendid hay; but he knew that it was owing to those
acres being so much easier to mow. He sent out a hay machine for
pitching the hay--it was broken at the first row because it was dull
work for a peasant to sit on the seat in front with the great wings
waving above him. And he was told, "Don't trouble, your honor, sure, the
womenfolks will pitch it quick enough." The ploughs were practically
useless, because it never occurred to the laborer to raise the share
when he turned the plough, and forcing it round, he strained the horses
and tore up the ground, and Levin was begged not to mind about it. The
horses were allowed to stray into the wheat because not a single laborer
would consent to be night-watchman, and in spite of orders to the
contrary, the laborers insisted on taking turns for night duty, and
Ivan, after working all day long, fell asleep, and was very penitent for
his fault, saying, "Do what you will to me, your honor."

They killed three of the best calves by letting them into the clover
aftermath without care as to their drinking, and nothing would make the
men believe that they had been blown out by the clover, but they told
him, by way of consolation, that one of his neighbors had lost a hundred
and twelve head of cattle in three days. All this happened, not because
anyone felt ill-will to Levin or his farm; on the contrary, he knew that
they liked him, thought him a simple gentleman (their highest praise);
but it happened simply because all they wanted was to work merrily and
carelessly, and his interests were not only remote and incomprehensible
to them, but fatally opposed to their most just claims. Long before,
Levin had felt dissatisfaction with his own position in regard to the
land. He saw where his boat leaked, but he did not look for the leak,
perhaps purposely deceiving himself. (Nothing would be left him if he
lost faith in it.) But now he could deceive himself no longer. The
farming of the land, as he was managing it, had become not merely
unattractive but revolting to him, and he could take no further interest
in it.

To this now was joined the presence, only twenty-five miles off, of
Kitty Shtcherbatskaya, whom he longed to see and could not see. Darya
Alexandrovna Oblonskaya had invited him, when he was over there, to
come; to come with the object of renewing his offer to her sister, who
would, so she gave him to understand, accept him now. Levin himself had
felt on seeing Kitty Shtcherbatskaya that he had never ceased to love
her; but he could not go over to the Oblonskys', knowing she was there.
The fact that he had made her an offer, and she had refused him, had
placed an insuperable barrier between her and him. "I can't ask her to
be my wife merely because she can't be the wife of the man she wanted to
marry," he said to himself. The thought of this made him cold and
hostile to her. "I should not be able to speak to her without a feeling
of reproach; I could not look at her without resentment; and she will
only hate me all the more, as she's bound to. And besides, how can I
now, after what Darya Alexandrovna told me, go to see them? Can I help
showing that I know what she told me? And me to go magnanimously to
forgive her, and have pity on her! Me go through a performance before
her of forgiving, and deigning to bestow my love on her!... What induced
Darya Alexandrovna to tell me that? By chance I might have seen her,
then everything would have happened of itself; but, as it is, it's out
of the question, out of the question!"

Darya Alexandrovna sent him a letter, asking him for a side-saddle for
Kitty's use. "I'm told you have a side-saddle," she wrote to him; "I
hope you will bring it over yourself."

This was more than he could stand. How could a woman of any
intelligence, of any delicacy, put her sister in such a humiliating
position! He wrote ten notes, and tore them all up, and sent the saddle
without any reply. To write that he would go was impossible, because he
could not go; to write that he could not come because something
prevented him, or that he would be away, that was still worse. He sent
the saddle without an answer, and with a sense of having done something
shameful; he handed over all the now revolting business of the estate to
the bailiff, and set off next day to a remote district to see his friend
Sviazhsky, who had splendid marshes for grouse in his neighborhood, and
had lately written to ask him to keep a long-standing promise to stay
with him. The grouse-marsh, in the Surovsky district, had long tempted
Levin, but he had continually put off this visit on account of his work
on the estate. Now he was glad to get away from the neighborhood of the
Shtcherbatskys, and still more from his farm work, especially on a
shooting expedition, which always in trouble served as the best
consolation.



Chapter 25


In the Surovsky district there was no railway nor service of post
horses, and Levin drove there with his own horses in his big,
old-fashioned carriage.

He stopped halfway at a well-to-do peasant's to feed his horses. A bald,
well-preserved old man, with a broad, red beard, gray on his cheeks,
opened the gate, squeezing against the gatepost to let the three horses
pass. Directing the coachman to a place under the shed in the big,
clean, tidy yard, with charred, old-fashioned ploughs in it, the old man
asked Levin to come into the parlor. A cleanly dressed young woman, with
clogs on her bare feet, was scrubbing the floor in the new outer room.
She was frightened of the dog, that ran in after Levin, and uttered a
shriek, but began laughing at her own fright at once when she was told
the dog would not hurt her. Pointing Levin with her bare arm to the door
into the parlor, she bent down again, hiding her handsome face, and went
on scrubbing.

"Would you like the samovar?" she asked.

"Yes, please."

The parlor was a big room, with a Dutch stove, and a screen dividing it
into two. Under the holy pictures stood a table painted in patterns, a
bench, and two chairs. Near the entrance was a dresser full of crockery.
The shutters were closed, there were few flies, and it was so clean that
Levin was anxious that Laska, who had been running along the road and
bathing in puddles, should not muddy the floor, and ordered her to a
place in the corner by the door. After looking round the parlor, Levin
went out in the back yard. The good-looking young woman in clogs,
swinging the empty pails on the yoke, ran on before him to the well for
water.

"Look sharp, my girl!" the old man shouted after her, good-humoredly,
and he went up to Levin. "Well, sir, are you going to Nikolay Ivanovitch
Sviazhsky? His honor comes to us too," he began, chatting, leaning his
elbows on the railing of the steps. In the middle of the old man's
account of his acquaintance with Sviazhsky, the gates creaked again, and
laborers came into the yard from the fields, with wooden ploughs and
harrows. The horses harnessed to the ploughs and harrows were sleek and
fat. The laborers were obviously of the household: two were young men in
cotton shirts and caps, the two others were hired laborers in homespun
shirts, one an old man, the other a young fellow. Moving off from the
steps, the old man went up to the horses and began unharnessing them.

"What have they been ploughing?" asked Levin.

"Ploughing up the potatoes. We rent a bit of land too. Fedot, don't let
out the gelding, but take it to the trough, and we'll put the other in
harness."

"Oh, father, the ploughshares I ordered, has he brought them along?"
asked the big, healthy-looking fellow, obviously the old man's son.

"There ... in the outer room," answered the old man, bundling together
the harness he had taken off, and flinging it on the ground. "You can
put them on, while they have dinner."

The good-looking young woman came into the outer room with the full
pails dragging at her shoulders. More women came on the scene from
somewhere, young and handsome, middle-aged, old and ugly, with children
and without children.

The samovar was beginning to sing; the laborers and the family, having
disposed of the horses, came in to dinner. Levin, getting his provisions
out of his carriage, invited the old man to take tea with him.

"Well, I have had some today already," said the old man, obviously
accepting the invitation with pleasure. "But just a glass for company."

Over their tea Levin heard all about the old man's farming. Ten years
before, the old man had rented three hundred acres from the lady who
owned them, and a year ago he had bought them and rented another three
hundred from a neighboring landowner. A small part of the land--the
worst part--he let out for rent, while a hundred acres of arable land he
cultivated himself with his family and two hired laborers. The old man
complained that things were doing badly. But Levin saw that he simply
did so from a feeling of propriety, and that his farm was in a
flourishing condition. If it had been unsuccessful he would not have
bought land at thirty-five roubles the acre, he would not have married
his three sons and a nephew, he would not have rebuilt twice after
fires, and each time on a larger scale. In spite of the old man's
complaints, it was evident that he was proud, and justly proud, of his
prosperity, proud of his sons, his nephew, his sons' wives, his horses
and his cows, and especially of the fact that he was keeping all this
farming going. From his conversation with the old man, Levin thought he
was not averse to new methods either. He had planted a great many
potatoes, and his potatoes, as Levin had seen driving past, were already
past flowering and beginning to die down, while Levin's were only just
coming into flower. He earthed up his potatoes with a modern plough
borrowed from a neighboring landowner. He sowed wheat. The trifling fact
that, thinning out his rye, the old man used the rye he thinned out for
his horses, specially struck Levin. How many times had Levin seen this
splendid fodder wasted, and tried to get it saved; but always it had
turned out to be impossible. The peasant got this done, and he could not
say enough in praise of it as food for the beasts.

"What have the wenches to do? They carry it out in bundles to the
roadside, and the cart brings it away."

"Well, we landowners can't manage well with our laborers," said Levin,
handing him a glass of tea.

"Thank you," said the old man, and he took the glass, but refused sugar,
pointing to a lump he had left. "They're simple destruction," said he.
"Look at Sviazhsky's, for instance. We know what the land's
like--first-rate, yet there's not much of a crop to boast of. It's not
looked after enough--that's all it is!"

"But you work your land with hired laborers?"

"We're all peasants together. We go into everything ourselves. If a
man's no use, he can go, and we can manage by ourselves."

"Father, Finogen wants some tar," said the young woman in the clogs,
coming in.

"Yes, yes, that's how it is, sir!" said the old man, getting up, and
crossing himself deliberately, he thanked Levin and went out.

When Levin went into the kitchen to call his coachman he saw the whole
family at dinner. The women were standing up waiting on them. The young,
sturdy-looking son was telling something funny with his mouth full of
pudding, and they were all laughing, the woman in the clogs, who was
pouring cabbage soup into a bowl, laughing most merrily of all.

Very probably the good-looking face of the young woman in the clogs had
a good deal to do with the impression of well-being this peasant
household made upon Levin, but the impression was so strong that Levin
could never get rid of it. And all the way from the old peasant's to
Sviazhsky's he kept recalling this peasant farm as though there were
something in this impression that demanded his special attention.



Chapter 26


Sviazhsky was the marshal of his district. He was five years older than
Levin, and had long been married. His sister-in-law, a young girl Levin
liked very much, lived in his house; and Levin knew that Sviazhsky and
his wife would have greatly liked to marry the girl to him. He knew this
with certainty, as so-called eligible young men always know it, though
he could never have brought himself to speak of it to anyone; and he
knew too that, although he wanted to get married, and although by every
token this very attractive girl would make an excellent wife, he could
no more have married her, even if he had not been in love with Kitty
Shtcherbatskaya, than he could have flown up to the sky. And this
knowledge poisoned the pleasure he had hoped to find in the visit to
Sviazhsky.

On getting Sviazhsky's letter with the invitation for shooting, Levin
had immediately thought of this; but in spite of it he had made up his
mind that Sviazhsky's having such views for him was simply his own
groundless supposition, and so he would go, all the same. Besides, at
the bottom of his heart he had a desire to try himself, put himself to
the test in regard to this girl. The Sviazhskys' home-life was
exceedingly pleasant, and Sviazhsky himself, the best type of man taking
part in local affairs that Levin knew, was very interesting to him.

Sviazhsky was one of those people, always a source of wonder to Levin,
whose convictions, very logical though never original, go one way by
themselves, while their life, exceedingly definite and firm in its
direction, goes its way quite apart and almost always in direct
contradiction to their convictions. Sviazhsky was an extremely advanced
man. He despised the nobility, and believed the mass of the nobility to
be secretly in favor of serfdom, and only concealing their views from
cowardice. He regarded Russia as a ruined country, rather after the
style of Turkey, and the government of Russia as so bad that he never
permitted himself to criticize its doings seriously, and yet he was a
functionary of that government and a model marshal of nobility, and when
he drove about he always wore the cockade of office and the cap with the
red band. He considered human life only tolerable abroad, and went
abroad to stay at every opportunity, and at the same time he carried on
a complex and improved system of agriculture in Russia, and with extreme
interest followed everything and knew everything that was being done in
Russia. He considered the Russian peasant as occupying a stage of
development intermediate between the ape and the man, and at the same
time in the local assemblies no one was readier to shake hands with the
peasants and listen to their opinion. He believed neither in God nor the
devil, but was much concerned about the question of the improvement of
the clergy and the maintenance of their revenues, and took special
trouble to keep up the church in his village.

On the woman question he was on the side of the extreme advocates of
complete liberty for women, and especially their right to labor. But he
lived with his wife on such terms that their affectionate childless home
life was the admiration of everyone, and arranged his wife's life so
that she did nothing and could do nothing but share her husband's
efforts that her time should pass as happily and as agreeably as
possible.

If it had not been a characteristic of Levin's to put the most favorable
interpretation on people, Sviazhsky's character would have presented no
doubt or difficulty to him: he would have said to himself, "a fool or a
knave," and everything would have seemed clear. But he could not say "a
fool," because Sviazhsky was unmistakably clever, and moreover, a highly
cultivated man, who was exceptionally modest over his culture. There was
not a subject he knew nothing of. But he did not display his knowledge
except when he was compelled to do so. Still less could Levin say that
he was a knave, as Sviazhsky was unmistakably an honest, good-hearted,
sensible man, who worked good-humoredly, keenly, and perseveringly at
his work; he was held in high honor by everyone about him, and certainly
he had never consciously done, and was indeed incapable of doing,
anything base.

Levin tried to understand him, and could not understand him, and looked
at him and his life as at a living enigma.

Levin and he were very friendly, and so Levin used to venture to sound
Sviazhsky, to try to get at the very foundation of his view of life; but
it was always in vain. Every time Levin tried to penetrate beyond the
outer chambers of Sviazhsky's mind, which were hospitably open to all,
he noticed that Sviazhsky was slightly disconcerted; faint signs of
alarm were visible in his eyes, as though he were afraid Levin would
understand him, and he would give him a kindly, good-humored repulse.

Just now, since his disenchantment with farming, Levin was particularly
glad to stay with Sviazhsky. Apart from the fact that the sight of this
happy and affectionate couple, so pleased with themselves and everyone
else, and their well-ordered home had always a cheering effect on Levin,
he felt a longing, now that he was so dissatisfied with his own life, to
get at that secret in Sviazhsky that gave him such clearness,
definiteness, and good courage in life. Moreover, Levin knew that at
Sviazhsky's he should meet the landowners of the neighborhood, and it
was particularly interesting for him just now to hear and take part in
those rural conversations concerning crops, laborers' wages, and so on,
which, he was aware, are conventionally regarded as something very low,
but which seemed to him just now to constitute the one subject of
importance. "It was not, perhaps, of importance in the days of serfdom,
and it may not be of importance in England. In both cases the conditions
of agriculture are firmly established; but among us now, when everything
has been turned upside down and is only just taking shape, the question
what form these conditions will take is the one question of importance
in Russia," thought Levin.

The shooting turned out to be worse than Levin had expected. The marsh
was dry and there were no grouse at all. He walked about the whole day
and only brought back three birds, but to make up for that--he brought
back, as he always did from shooting, an excellent appetite, excellent
spirits, and that keen, intellectual mood which with him always
accompanied violent physical exertion. And while out shooting, when he
seemed to be thinking of nothing at all, suddenly the old man and his
family kept coming back to his mind, and the impression of them seemed
to claim not merely his attention, but the solution of some question
connected with them.

In the evening at tea, two landowners who had come about some business
connected with a wardship were of the party, and the interesting
conversation Levin had been looking forward to sprang up.

Levin was sitting beside his hostess at the tea table, and was obliged
to keep up a conversation with her and her sister, who was sitting
opposite him. Madame Sviazhskaya was a round-faced, fair-haired, rather
short woman, all smiles and dimples. Levin tried through her to get a
solution of the weighty enigma her husband presented to his mind; but he
had not complete freedom of ideas, because he was in an agony of
embarrassment. This agony of embarrassment was due to the fact that the
sister-in-law was sitting opposite to him, in a dress, specially put on,
as he fancied, for his benefit, cut particularly open, in the shape of a
trapeze, on her white bosom. This quadrangular opening, in spite of the
bosom's being very white, or just because it was very white, deprived
Levin of the full use of his faculties. He imagined, probably
mistakenly, that this low-necked bodice had been made on his account,
and felt that he had no right to look at it, and tried not to look at
it; but he felt that he was to blame for the very fact of the low-necked
bodice having been made. It seemed to Levin that he had deceived
someone, that he ought to explain something, but that to explain it was
impossible, and for that reason he was continually blushing, was ill at
ease and awkward. His awkwardness infected the pretty sister-in-law too.
But their hostess appeared not to observe this, and kept purposely
drawing her into the conversation.

"You say," she said, pursuing the subject that had been started, "that
my husband cannot be interested in what's Russian. It's quite the
contrary; he is always in cheerful spirits abroad, but not as he is
here. Here, he feels in his proper place. He has so much to do, and he
has the faculty of interesting himself in everything. Oh, you've not
been to see our school, have you?"

"I've seen it.... The little house covered with ivy, isn't it?"

"Yes; that's Nastia's work," she said, indicating her sister.

"You teach in it yourself?" asked Levin, trying to look above the open
neck, but feeling that wherever he looked in that direction he should
see it.

"Yes; I used to teach in it myself, and do teach still, but we have a
first-rate schoolmistress now. And we've started gymnastic exercises."

"No, thank you, I won't have any more tea," said Levin, and conscious of
doing a rude thing, but incapable of continuing the conversation, he got
up, blushing. "I hear a very interesting conversation," he added, and
walked to the other end of the table, where Sviazhsky was sitting with
the two gentlemen of the neighborhood. Sviazhsky was sitting sideways,
with one elbow on the table, and a cup in one hand, while with the other
hand he gathered up his beard, held it to his nose and let it drop
again, as though he were smelling it. His brilliant black eyes were
looking straight at the excited country gentleman with gray whiskers,
and apparently he derived amusement from his remarks. The gentleman was
complaining of the peasants. It was evident to Levin that Sviazhsky knew
an answer to this gentleman's complaints, which would at once demolish
his whole contention, but that in his position he could not give
utterance to this answer, and listened, not without pleasure, to the
landowner's comic speeches.

The gentleman with the gray whiskers was obviously an inveterate
adherent of serfdom and a devoted agriculturist, who had lived all his
life in the country. Levin saw proofs of this in his dress, in the
old-fashioned threadbare coat, obviously not his everyday attire, in his
shrewd, deep-set eyes, in his idiomatic, fluent Russian, in the
imperious tone that had become habitual from long use, and in the
resolute gestures of his large, red, sunburnt hands, with an old
betrothal ring on the little finger.



Chapter 27


"If I'd only the heart to throw up what's been set going ... such a lot
of trouble wasted ... I'd turn my back on the whole business, sell up,
go off like Nikolay Ivanovitch ... to hear _La Belle Helene_," said the
landowner, a pleasant smile lighting up his shrewd old face.

"But you see you don't throw it up," said Nikolay Ivanovitch Sviazhsky;
"so there must be something gained."

"The only gain is that I live in my own house, neither bought nor hired.
Besides, one keeps hoping the people will learn sense. Though, instead
of that, you'd never believe it--the drunkenness, the immorality! They
keep chopping and changing their bits of land. Not a sight of a horse or
a cow. The peasant's dying of hunger, but just go and take him on as a
laborer, he'll do his best to do you a mischief, and then bring you up
before the justice of the peace."

"But then you make complaints to the justice too," said Sviazhsky.

"I lodge complaints? Not for anything in the world! Such a talking, and
such a to-do, that one would have cause to regret it. At the works, for
instance, they pocketed the advance-money and made off. What did the
justice do? Why, acquitted them. Nothing keeps them in order but their
own communal court and their village elder. He'll flog them in the good
old style! But for that there'd be nothing for it but to give it all up
and run away."

Obviously the landowner was chaffing Sviazhsky, who, far from resenting
it, was apparently amused by it.

"But you see we manage our land without such extreme measures," said he,
smiling: "Levin and I and this gentleman."

He indicated the other landowner.

"Yes, the thing's done at Mihail Petrovitch's, but ask him how it's
done. Do you call that a rational system?" said the landowner, obviously
rather proud of the word "rational."

"My system's very simple," said Mihail Petrovitch, "thank God. All my
management rests on getting the money ready for the autumn taxes, and
the peasants come to me, 'Father, master, help us!' Well, the peasants
are all one's neighbors; one feels for them. So one advances them a
third, but one says: 'Remember, lads, I have helped you, and you must
help me when I need it--whether it's the sowing of the oats, or the
haycutting, or the harvest'; and well, one agrees, so much for each
taxpayer--though there are dishonest ones among them too, it's true."

Levin, who had long been familiar with these patriarchal methods,
exchanged glances with Sviazhsky and interrupted Mihail Petrovitch,
turning again to the gentleman with the gray whiskers.

"Then what do you think?" he asked; "what system is one to adopt
nowadays?"

"Why, manage like Mihail Petrovitch, or let the land for half the crop
or for rent to the peasants; that one can do--only that's just how the
general prosperity of the country is being ruined. Where the land with
serf-labor and good management gave a yield of nine to one, on the
half-crop system it yields three to one. Russia has been ruined by the
emancipation!"

Sviazhsky looked with smiling eyes at Levin, and even made a faint
gesture of irony to him; but Levin did not think the landowner's words
absurd, he understood them better than he did Sviazhsky. A great deal
more of what the gentleman with the gray whiskers said to show in what
way Russia was ruined by the emancipation struck him indeed as very
true, new to him, and quite incontestable. The landowner unmistakably
spoke his own individual thought--a thing that very rarely happens--and
a thought to which he had been brought not by a desire of finding some
exercise for an idle brain, but a thought which had grown up out of the
conditions of his life, which he had brooded over in the solitude of his
village, and had considered in every aspect.

"The point is, don't you see, that progress of every sort is only made
by the use of authority," he said, evidently wishing to show he was not
without culture. "Take the reforms of Peter, of Catherine, of Alexander.
Take European history. And progress in agriculture more than anything
else--the potato, for instance, that was introduced among us by force.
The wooden plough too wasn't always used. It was introduced maybe in the
days before the Empire, but it was probably brought in by force. Now, in
our own day, we landowners in the serf times used various improvements
in our husbandry: drying machines and thrashing machines, and carting
manure and all the modern implements--all that we brought into use by
our authority, and the peasants opposed it at first, and ended by
imitating us. Now, by the abolition of serfdom we have been deprived of
our authority; and so our husbandry, where it had been raised to a high
level, is bound to sink to the most savage primitive condition. That's
how I see it."

"But why so? If it's rational, you'll be able to keep up the same system
with hired labor," said Sviazhsky.

"We've no power over them. With whom am I going to work the system,
allow me to ask?"

"There it is--the labor force--the chief element in agriculture,"
thought Levin.

"With laborers."

"The laborers won't work well, and won't work with good implements. Our
laborer can do nothing but get drunk like a pig, and when he's drunk he
ruins everything you give him. He makes the horses ill with too much
water, cuts good harness, barters the tires of the wheels for drink,
drops bits of iron into the thrashing machine, so as to break it. He
loathes the sight of anything that's not after his fashion. And that's
how it is the whole level of husbandry has fallen. Lands gone out of
cultivation, overgrown with weeds, or divided among the peasants, and
where millions of bushels were raised you get a hundred thousand; the
wealth of the country has decreased. If the same thing had been done,
but with care that..."

And he proceeded to unfold his own scheme of emancipation by means of
which these drawbacks might have been avoided.

This did not interest Levin, but when he had finished, Levin went back
to his first position, and, addressing Sviazhsky, and trying to draw him
into expressing his serious opinion:-`

"That the standard of culture is falling, and that with our present
relations to the peasants there is no possibility of farming on a
rational system to yield a profit--that's perfectly true," said he.

"I don't believe it," Sviazhsky replied quite seriously; "all I see is
that we don't know how to cultivate the land, and that our system of
agriculture in the serf days was by no means too high, but too low. We
have no machines, no good stock, no efficient supervision; we don't even
know how to keep accounts. Ask any landowner; he won't be able to tell
you what crop's profitable, and what's not."

"Italian bookkeeping," said the gentleman of the gray whiskers
ironically. "You may keep your books as you like, but if they spoil
everything for you, there won't be any profit."

"Why do they spoil things? A poor thrashing machine, or your Russian
presser, they will break, but my steam press they don't break. A
wretched Russian nag they'll ruin, but keep good dray-horses--they won't
ruin them. And so it is all round. We must raise our farming to a higher
level."

"Oh, if one only had the means to do it, Nikolay Ivanovitch! It's all
very well for you; but for me, with a son to keep at the university,
lads to be educated at the high school--how am I going to buy these
dray-horses?"

"Well, that's what the land banks are for."

"To get what's left me sold by auction? No, thank you."

"I don't agree that it's necessary or possible to raise the level of
agriculture still higher," said Levin. "I devote myself to it, and I
have means, but I can do nothing. As to the banks, I don't know to whom
they're any good. For my part, anyway, whatever I've spent money on in
the way of husbandry, it has been a loss: stock--a loss, machinery--a
loss."

"That's true enough," the gentleman with the gray whiskers chimed in,
positively laughing with satisfaction.

"And I'm not the only one," pursued Levin. "I mix with all the
neighboring landowners, who are cultivating their land on a rational
system; they all, with rare exceptions, are doing so at a loss. Come,
tell us how does your land do--does it pay?" said Levin, and at once in
Sviazhsky's eyes he detected that fleeting expression of alarm which he
had noticed whenever he had tried to penetrate beyond the outer chambers
of Sviazhsky's mind.

Moreover, this question on Levin's part was not quite in good faith.
Madame Sviazhskaya had just told him at tea that they had that summer
invited a German expert in bookkeeping from Moscow, who for a
consideration of five hundred roubles had investigated the management of
their property, and found that it was costing them a loss of three
thousand odd roubles. She did not remember the precise sum, but it
appeared that the German had worked it out to the fraction of a
farthing.

The gray-whiskered landowner smiled at the mention of the profits of
Sviazhsky's famling, obviously aware how much gain his neighbor and
marshal was likely to be making.

"Possibly it does not pay," answered Sviazhsky. "That merely proves
either that I'm a bad manager, or that I've sunk my capital for the
increase of my rents."

"Oh, rent!" Levin cried with horror. "Rent there may be in Europe, where
land has been improved by the labor put into it, but with us all the
land is deteriorating from the labor put into it--in other words they're
working it out; so there's no question of rent."

"How no rent? It's a law."

"Then we're outside the law; rent explains nothing for us, but simply
muddles us. No, tell me how there can be a theory of rent?..."

"Will you have some junket? Masha, pass us some junket or raspberries."
He turned to his wife. "Extraordinarily late the raspberries are lasting
this year."

And in the happiest frame of mind Sviazhsky got up and walked off,
apparently supposing the conversation to have ended at the very point
when to Levin it seemed that it was only just beginning.

Having lost his antagonist, Levin continued the conversation with the
gray-whiskered landowner, trying to prove to him that all the difficulty
arises from the fact that we don't find out the peculiarities and habits
of our laborer; but the landowner, like all men who think independently
and in isolation, was slow in taking in any other person's idea, and
particularly partial to his own. He stuck to it that the Russian peasant
is a swine and likes swinishness, and that to get him out of his
swinishness one must have authority, and there is none; one must have
the stick, and we have become so liberal that we have all of a sudden
replaced the stick that served us for a thousand years by lawyers and
model prisons, where the worthless, stinking peasant is fed on good soup
and has a fixed allowance of cubic feet of air.

"What makes you think," said Levin, trying to get back to the question,
"that it's impossible to find some relation to the laborer in which the
labor would become productive?"

"That never could be so with the Russian peasantry; we've no power over
them," answered the landowner.

"How can new conditions be found?" said Sviazhsky. Having eaten some
junket and lighted a cigarette, he came back to the discussion. "All
possible relations to the labor force have been defined and studied," he
said. "The relic of barbarism, the primitive commune with each guarantee
for all, will disappear of itself; serfdom has been abolished--there
remains nothing but free labor, and its forms are fixed and ready made,
and must be adopted. Permanent hands, day-laborers, rammers--you can't
get out of those forms."

"But Europe is dissatisfied with these forms."

"Dissatisfied, and seeking new ones. And will find them, in all
probability."

"That's just what I was meaning," answered Levin. "Why shouldn't we seek
them for ourselves?"

"Because it would be just like inventing afresh the means for
constructing railways. They are ready, invented."

"But if they don't do for us, if they're stupid?" said Levin.

And again he detected the expression of alarm in the eyes of Sviazhsky.

"Oh, yes; we'll bury the world under our caps! We've found the secret
Europe was seeking for! I've heard all that; but, excuse me, do you know
all that's been done in Europe on the question of the organization of
labor?"

"No, very little."

"That question is now absorbing the best minds in Europe. The
Schulze-Delitsch movement.... And then all this enormous literature of
the labor question, the most liberal Lassalle movement ... the Mulhausen
experiment? That's a fact by now, as you're probably aware."

"I have some idea of it, but very vague."

"No, you only say that; no doubt you know all about it as well as I do.
I'm not a professor of sociology, of course, but it interested me, and
really, if it interests you, you ought to study it."

"But what conclusion have they come to?"

"Excuse me..."

The two neighbors had risen, and Sviazhsky, once more checking Levin in
his inconvenient habit of peeping into what was beyond the outer
chambers of his mind, went to see his guests out.



Chapter 28


Levin was insufferably bored that evening with the ladies; he was
stirred as he had never been before by the idea that the dissatisfaction
he was feeling with his system of managing his land was not an
exceptional case, but the general condition of things in Russia; that
the organization of some relation of the laborers to the soil in which
they would work, as with the peasant he had met half-way to the
Sviazhskys', was not a dream, but a problem which must be solved. And it
seemed to him that the problem could be solved, and that he ought to try
and solve it.

After saying good-night to the ladies, and promising to stay the whole
of the next day, so as to make an expedition on horseback with them to
see an interesting ruin in the crown forest, Levin went, before going to
bed, into his host's study to get the books on the labor question that
Sviazhsky had offered him. Sviazhsky's study was a huge room, surrounded
by bookcases and with two tables in it--one a massive writing table,
standing in the middle of the room, and the other a round table, covered
with recent numbers of reviews and journals in different languages,
ranged like the rays of a star round the lamp. On the writing table was
a stand of drawers marked with gold lettering, and full of papers of
various sorts.

Sviazhsky took out the books, and sat down in a rocking-chair.

"What are you looking at there?" he said to Levin, who was standing at
the round table looking through the reviews.

"Oh, yes, there's a very interesting article here," said Sviazhsky of
the review Levin was holding in his hand. "It appears," he went on, with
eager interest, "that Friedrich was not, after all, the person chiefly
responsible for the partition of Poland. It is proved..."

And with his characteristic clearness, he summed up those new, very
important, and interesting revelations. Although Levin was engrossed at
the moment by his ideas about the problem of the land, he wondered, as
he heard Sviazhsky: "What is there inside of him? And why, why is he
interested in the partition of Poland?" When Sviazhsky had finished,
Levin could not help asking: "Well, and what then?" But there was
nothing to follow. It was simply interesting that it had been proved to
be so and so. But Sviazhsky did not explain, and saw no need to explain
why it was interesting to him.

"Yes, but I was very much interested by your irritable neighbor," said
Levin, sighing. "He's a clever fellow, and said a lot that was true."

"Oh, get along with you! An inveterate supporter of serfdom at heart,
like all of them!" said Sviazhsky.

"Whose marshal you are."

"Yes, only I marshal them in the other direction," said Sviazhsky,
laughing.

"I'll tell you what interests me very much," said Levin. "He's right
that our system, that's to say of rational farming, doesn't answer, that
the only thing that answers is the money-lender system, like that
meek-looking gentleman's, or else the very simplest.... Whose fault is
it?"

"Our own, of course. Besides, it's not true that it doesn't answer. It
answers with Vassiltchikov."

"A factory..."

"But I really don't know what it is you are surprised at. The people are
at such a low stage of rational and moral development, that it's obvious
they're bound to oppose everything that's strange to them. In Europe, a
rational system answers because the people are educated; it follows that
we must educate the people--that's all."

"But how are we to educate the people?"

"To educate the people three things are needed: schools, and schools,
and schools.

"But you said yourself the people are at such a low stage of material
development: what help are schools for that?"

"Do you know, you remind me of the story of the advice given to the sick
man--You should try purgative medicine. Taken: worse. Try leeches. Tried
them: worse. Well, then, there's nothing left but to pray to God. Tried
it: worse. That's just how it is with us. I say political economy; you
say--worse. I say socialism: worse. Education: worse."

"But how do schools help matters?"

"They give the peasant fresh wants."

"Well, that's a thing I've never understood," Levin replied with heat.
"In what way are schools going to help the people to improve their
material position? You say schools, education, will give them fresh
wants. So much the worse, since they won't be capable of satisfying
them. And in what way a knowledge of addition and subtraction and the
catechism is going to improve their material condition, I never could
make out. The day before yesterday, I met a peasant woman in the evening
with a little baby, and asked her where she was going. She said she was
going to the wise woman; her boy had screaming fits, so she was taking
him to be doctored. I asked, 'Why, how does the wise woman cure
screaming fits?' 'She puts the child on the hen-roost and repeats some
charm....'"

"Well, you're saying it yourself! What's wanted to prevent her taking
her child to the hen-roost to cure it of screaming fits is just..."
Sviazhsky said, smiling good-humoredly.

"Oh, no!" said Levin with annoyance; "that method of doctoring I merely
meant as a simile for doctoring the people with schools. The people are
poor and ignorant--that we see as surely as the peasant woman sees the
baby is ill because it screams. But in what way this trouble of poverty
and ignorance is to be cured by schools is as incomprehensible as how
the hen-roost affects the screaming. What has to be cured is what makes
him poor."

"Well, in that, at least, you're in agreement with Spencer, whom you
dislike so much. He says, too, that education may be the consequence of
greater prosperity and comfort, of more frequent washing, as he says,
but not of being able to read and write..."

"Well, then, I'm very glad--or the contrary, very sorry, that I'm in
agreement with Spencer; only I've known it a long while. Schools can do
no good; what will do good is an economic organization in which the
people will become richer, will have more leisure--and then there will
be schools."

"Still, all over Europe now schools are obligatory."

"And how far do you agree with Spencer yourself about it?" asked Levin.

But there was a gleam of alarm in Sviazhsky's eyes, and he said smiling:

"No; that screaming story is positively capital! Did you really hear it
yourself?"

Levin saw that he was not to discover the connection between this man's
life and his thoughts. Obviously he did not care in the least what his
reasoning led him to; all he wanted was the process of reasoning. And he
did not like it when the process of reasoning brought him into a blind
alley. That was the only thing he disliked, and avoided by changing the
conversation to something agreeable and amusing.

All the impressions of the day, beginning with the impression made by
the old peasant, which served, as it were, as the fundamental basis of
all the conceptions and ideas of the day, threw Levin into violent
excitement. This dear good Sviazhsky, keeping a stock of ideas simply
for social purposes, and obviously having some other principles hidden
from Levin, while with the crowd, whose name is legion, he guided public
opinion by ideas he did not share; that irascible country gentleman,
perfectly correct in the conclusions that he had been worried into by
life, but wrong in his exasperation against a whole class, and that the
best class in Russia; his own dissatisfaction with the work he had been
doing, and the vague hope of finding a remedy for all this--all was
blended in a sense of inward turmoil, and anticipation of some solution
near at hand.

Left alone in the room assigned him, lying on a spring mattress that
yielded unexpectedly at every movement of his arm or his leg, Levin did
not fall asleep for a long while. Not one conversation with Sviazhsky,
though he had said a great deal that was clever, had interested Levin;
but the conclusions of the irascible landowner required consideration.
Levin could not help recalling every word he had said, and in
imagination amending his own replies.

"Yes, I ought to have said to him: You say that our husbandry does not
answer because the peasant hates improvements, and that they must be
forced on him by authority. If no system of husbandry answered at all
without these improvements, you would be quite right. But the only
system that does answer is where laborer is working in accordance with
his habits, just as on the old peasant's land half-way here. Your and
our general dissatisfaction with the system shows that either we are to
blame or the laborers. We have gone our way--the European way--a long
while, without asking ourselves about the qualities of our labor force.
Let us try to look upon the labor force not as an abstract force, but as
the _Russian peasant_ with his instincts, and we shall arrange our
system of culture in accordance with that. Imagine, I ought to have said
to him, that you have the same system as the old peasant has, that you
have found means of making your laborers take an interest in the success
of the work, and have found the happy mean in the way of improvements
which they will admit, and you will, without exhausting the soil, get
twice or three times the yield you got before. Divide it in halves, give
half as the share of labor, the surplus left you will be greater, and
the share of labor will be greater too. And to do this one must lower
the standard of husbandry and interest the laborers in its success. How
to do this?--that's a matter of detail; but undoubtedly it can be done."

This idea threw Levin into a great excitement. He did not sleep half the
night, thinking over in detail the putting of his idea into practice. He
had not intended to go away next day, but he now determined to go home
early in the morning. Besides, the sister-in-law with her low-necked
bodice aroused in him a feeling akin to shame and remorse for some
utterly base action. Most important of all--he must get back without
delay: he would have to make haste to put his new project to the
peasants before the sowing of the winter wheat, so that the sowing might
be undertaken on a new basis. He had made up his mind to revolutionize
his whole system.



Chapter 29


The carrying out of Levin's plan presented many difficulties; but he
struggled on, doing his utmost, and attained a result which, though not
what he desired, was enough to enable him, without self-deception, to
believe that the attempt was worth the trouble. One of the chief
difficulties was that the process of cultivating the land was in full
swing, that it was impossible to stop everything and begin it all again
from the beginning, and the machine had to be mended while in motion.

When on the evening that he arrived home he informed the bailiff of his
plans, the latter with visible pleasure agreed with what he said so long
as he was pointing out that all that had been done up to that time was
stupid and useless. The bailiff said that he had said so a long while
ago, but no heed had been paid him. But as for the proposal made by
Levin--to take a part as shareholder with his laborers in each
agricultural undertaking--at this the bailiff simply expressed a
profound despondency, and offered no definite opinion, but began
immediately talking of the urgent necessity of carrying the remaining
sheaves of rye the next day, and of sending the men out for the second
ploughing, so that Levin felt that this was not the time for discussing
it.

On beginning to talk to the peasants about it, and making a proposition
to cede them the land on new terms, he came into collision with the same
great difficulty that they were so much absorbed by the current work of
the day, that they had not time to consider the advantages and
disadvantages of the proposed scheme.

The simple-hearted Ivan, the cowherd, seemed completely to grasp Levin's
proposal--that he should with his family take a share of the profits of
the cattle-yard--and he was in complete sympathy with the plan. But when
Levin hinted at the future advantages, Ivan's face expressed alarm and
regret that he could not hear all he had to say, and he made haste to
find himself some task that would admit of no delay: he either snatched
up the fork to pitch the hay out of the pens, or ran to get water or to
clear out the dung.

Another difficulty lay in the invincible disbelief of the peasant that a
landowner's object could be anything else than a desire to squeeze all
he could out of them. They were firmly convinced that his real aim
(whatever he might say to them) would always be in what he did not say
to them. And they themselves, in giving their opinion, said a great deal
but never said what was their real object. Moreover (Levin felt that the
irascible landowner had been right) the peasants made their first and
unalterable condition of any agreement whatever that they should not be
forced to any new methods of tillage of any kind, nor to use new
implements. They agreed that the modern plough ploughed better, that the
scarifier did the work more quickly, but they found thousands of reasons
that made it out of the question for them to use either of them; and
though he had accepted the conviction that he would have to lower the
standard of cultivation, he felt sorry to give up improved methods, the
advantages of which were so obvious. But in spite of all these
difficulties he got his way, and by autumn the system was working, or at
least so it seemed to him.

At first Levin had thought of giving up the whole farming of the land
just as it was to the peasants, the laborers, and the bailiff on new
conditions of partnership; but he was very soon convinced that this was
impossible, and determined to divide it up. The cattle-yard, the garden,
hay fields, and arable land, divided into several parts, had to be made
into separate lots. The simple-hearted cowherd, Ivan, who, Levin
fancied, understood the matter better than any of them, collecting
together a gang of workers to help him, principally of his own family,
became a partner in the cattle-yard. A distant part of the estate, a
tract of waste land that had lain fallow for eight years, was with the
help of the clever carpenter, Fyodor Ryezunov, taken by six families of
peasants on new conditions of partnership, and the peasant Shuraev took
the management of all the vegetable gardens on the same terms. The
remainder of the land was still worked on the old system, but these
three associated partnerships were the first step to a new organization
of the whole, and they completely took up Levin's time.

It is true that in the cattle-yard things went no better than before,
and Ivan strenuously opposed warm housing for the cows and butter made
of fresh cream, affirming that cows require less food if kept cold, and
that butter is more profitable made from sour cream, and he asked for
wages just as under the old system, and took not the slightest interest
in the fact that the money he received was not wages but an advance out
of his future share in the profits.

It is true that Fyodor Ryezunov's company did not plough over the ground
twice before sowing, as had been agreed, justifying themselves on the
plea that the time was too short. It is true that the peasants of the
same company, though they had agreed to work the land on new conditions,
always spoke of the land, not as held in partnership, but as rented for
half the crop, and more than once the peasants and Ryezunov himself said
to Levin, "If you would take a rent for the land, it would save you
trouble, and we should be more free." Moreover the same peasants kept
putting off, on various excuses, the building of a cattleyard and barn
on the land as agreed upon, and delayed doing it till the winter.

It is true that Shuraev would have liked to let out the kitchen gardens
he had undertaken in small lots to the peasants. He evidently quite
misunderstood, and apparently intentionally misunderstood, the
conditions upon which the land had been given to him.

Often, too, talking to the peasants and explaining to them all the
advantages of the plan, Levin felt that the peasants heard nothing but
the sound of his voice, and were firmly resolved, whatever he might say,
not to let themselves be taken in. He felt this especially when he
talked to the cleverest of the peasants, Ryezunov, and detected the
gleam in Ryezunov's eyes which showed so plainly both ironical amusement
at Levin, and the firm conviction that, if any one were to be taken in,
it would not be he, Ryezunov. But in spite of all this Levin thought the
system worked, and that by keeping accounts strictly and insisting on
his own way, he would prove to them in the future the advantages of the
arrangement, and then the system would go of itself.

These matters, together with the management of the land still left on
his hands, and the indoor work over his book, so engrossed Levin the
whole summer that he scarcely ever went out shooting. At the end of
August he heard that the Oblonskys had gone away to Moscow, from their
servant who brought back the side-saddle. He felt that in not answering
Darya Alexandrovna's letter he had by his rudeness, of which he could
not think without a flush of shame, burned his ships, and that he would
never go and see them again. He had been just as rude with the
Sviazhskys, leaving them without saying good-bye. But he would never go
to see them again either. He did not care about that now. The business
of reorganizing the farming of his land absorbed him as completely as
though there would never be anything else in his life. He read the books
lent him by Sviazhsky, and copying out what he had not got, he read both
the economic and socialistic books on the subject, but, as he had
anticipated, found nothing bearing on the scheme he had undertaken. In
the books on political economy--in Mill, for instance, whom he studied
first with great ardor, hoping every minute to find an answer to the
questions that were engrossing him--he found laws deduced from the
condition of land culture in Europe; but he did not see why these laws,
which did not apply in Russia, must be general. He saw just the same
thing in the socialistic books: either they were the beautiful but
impracticable fantasies which had fascinated him when he was a student,
or they were attempts at improving, rectifying the economic position in
which Europe was placed, with which the system of land tenure in Russia
had nothing in common. Political economy told him that the laws by which
the wealth of Europe had been developed, and was developing, were
universal and unvarying. Socialism told him that development along these
lines leads to ruin. And neither of them gave an answer, or even a hint,
in reply to the question what he, Levin, and all the Russian peasants
and landowners, were to do with their millions of hands and millions of
acres, to make them as productive as possible for the common weal.

Having once taken the subject up, he read conscientiously everything
bearing on it, and intended in the autumn to go abroad to study land
systems on the spot, in order that he might not on this question be
confronted with what so often met him on various subjects. Often, just
as he was beginning to understand the idea in the mind of anyone he was
talking to, and was beginning to explain his own, he would suddenly be
told: "But Kauffmann, but Jones, but Dubois, but Michelli? You haven't
read them: they've thrashed that question out thoroughly."

He saw now distinctly that Kauffmann and Michelli had nothing to tell
him. He knew what he wanted. He saw that Russia has splendid land,
splendid laborers, and that in certain cases, as at the peasant's on the
way to Sviazhsky's, the produce raised by the laborers and the land is
great--in the majority of cases when capital is applied in the European
way the produce is small, and that this simply arises from the fact that
the laborers want to work and work well only in their own peculiar way,
and that this antagonism is not incidental but invariable, and has its
roots in the national spirit. He thought that the Russian people whose
task it was to colonize and cultivate vast tracts of unoccupied land,
consciously adhered, till all their land was occupied, to the methods
suitable to their purpose, and that their methods were by no means so
bad as was generally supposed. And he wanted to prove this theoretically
in his book and practically on his land.



Chapter 30


At the end of September the timber had been carted for building the
cattleyard on the land that had been allotted to the association of
peasants, and the butter from the cows was sold and the profits divided.
In practice the system worked capitally, or, at least, so it seemed to
Levin. In order to work out the whole subject theoretically and to
complete his book, which, in Levin's daydreams, was not merely to effect
a revolution in political economy, but to annihilate that science
entirely and to lay the foundation of a new science of the relation of
the people to the soil, all that was left to do was to make a tour
abroad, and to study on the spot all that had been done in the same
direction, and to collect conclusive evidence that all that had been
done there was not what was wanted. Levin was only waiting for the
delivery of his wheat to receive the money for it and go abroad. But the
rains began, preventing the harvesting of the corn and potatoes left in
the fields, and putting a stop to all work, even to the delivery of the
wheat.

The mud was impassable along the roads; two mills were carried away, and
the weather got worse and worse.

On the 30th of September the sun came out in the morning, and hoping for
fine weather, Levin began making final preparations for his journey. He
gave orders for the wheat to be delivered, sent the bailiff to the
merchant to get the money owing him, and went out himself to give some
final directions on the estate before setting off.

Having finished all his business, soaked through with the streams of
water which kept running down the leather behind his neck and his
gaiters, but in the keenest and most confident temper, Levin returned
homewards in the evening. The weather had become worse than ever towards
evening; the hail lashed the drenched mare so cruelly that she went
along sideways, shaking her head and ears; but Levin was all right under
his hood, and he looked cheerfully about him at the muddy streams
running under the wheels, at the drops hanging on every bare twig, at
the whiteness of the patch of unmelted hailstones on the planks of the
bridge, at the thick layer of still juicy, fleshy leaves that lay heaped
up about the stripped elm-tree. In spite of the gloominess of nature
around him, he felt peculiarly eager. The talks he had been having with
the peasants in the further village had shown that they were beginning
to get used to their new position. The old servant to whose hut he had
gone to get dry evidently approved of Levin's plan, and of his own
accord proposed to enter the partnership by the purchase of cattle.

"I have only to go stubbornly on towards my aim, and I shall attain my
end," thought Levin; "and it's something to work and take trouble for.
This is not a matter of myself individually; the question of the public
welfare comes into it. The whole system of culture, the chief element in
the condition of the people, must be completely transformed. Instead of
poverty, general prosperity and content; instead of hostility, harmony
and unity of interests. In short, a bloodless revolution, but a
revolution of the greatest magnitude, beginning in the little circle of
our district, then the province, then Russia, the whole world. Because a
just idea cannot but be fruitful. Yes, it's an aim worth working for.
And its being me, Kostya Levin, who went to a ball in a black tie, and
was refused by the Shtcherbatskaya girl, and who was intrinsically such
a pitiful, worthless creature--that proves nothing; I feel sure Franklin
felt just as worthless, and he too had no faith in himself, thinking of
himself as a whole. That means nothing. And he too, most likely, had an
Agafea Mihalovna to whom he confided his secrets."

Musing on such thoughts Levin reached home in the darkness.

The bailiff, who had been to the merchant, had come back and brought
part of the money for the wheat. An agreement had been made with the old
servant, and on the road the bailiff had learned that everywhere the
corn was still standing in the fields, so that his one hundred and sixty
shocks that had not been carried were nothing in comparison with the
losses of others.

After dinner Levin was sitting, as he usually did, in an easy chair with
a book, and as he read he went on thinking of the journey before him in
connection with his book. Today all the significance of his book rose
before him with special distinctness, and whole periods ranged
themselves in his mind in illustration of his theories. "I must write
that down," he thought. "That ought to form a brief introduction, which
I thought unnecessary before." He got up to go to his writing table, and
Laska, lying at his feet, got up too, stretching and looking at him as
though to inquire where to go. But he had not time to write it down, for
the head peasants had come round, and Levin went out into the hall to
them.

After his levee, that is to say, giving directions about the labors of
the next day, and seeing all the peasants who had business with him,
Levin went back to his study and sat down to work.

Laska lay under the table; Agafea Mihalovna settled herself in her place
with her stocking.

After writing for a little while, Levin suddenly thought with
exceptional vividness of Kitty, her refusal, and their last meeting. He
got up and began walking about the room.

"What's the use of being dreary?" said Agafea Mihalovna. "Come, why do
you stay on at home? You ought to go to some warm springs, especially
now you're ready for the journey."

"Well, I am going away the day after tomorrow, Agafea Mihalovna; I must
finish my work."

"There, there, your work, you say! As if you hadn't done enough for the
peasants! Why, as 'tis, they're saying, 'Your master will be getting
some honor from the Tsar for it.' Indeed and it is a strange thing; why
need you worry about the peasants?"

"I'm not worrying about them; I'm doing it for my own good."

Agafea Mihalovna knew every detail of Levin's plans for his land. Levin
often put his views before her in all their complexity, and not
uncommonly he argued with her and did not agree with her comments. But
on this occasion she entirely misinterpreted what he had said.

"Of one's soul's salvation we all know and must think before all else,"
she said with a sigh. "Parfen Denisitch now, for all he was no scholar,
he died a death that God grant every one of us the like," she said,
referring to a servant who had died recently. "Took the sacrament and
all."

"That's not what I mean," said he. "I mean that I'm acting for my own
advantage. It's all the better for me if the peasants do their work
better."

"Well, whatever you do, if he's a lazy good-for-nought, everything'll be
at sixes and sevens. If he has a conscience, he'll work, and if not,
there's no doing anything."

"Oh, come, you say yourself Ivan has begun looking after the cattle
better."

"All I say is," answered Agafea Mihalovna, evidently not speaking at
random, but in strict sequence of idea, "that you ought to get married,
that's what I say."

Agafea Mihalovna's allusion to the very subject he had only just been
thinking about, hurt and stung him. Levin scowled, and without answering
her, he sat down again to his work, repeating to himself all that he had
been thinking of the real significance of that work. Only at intervals
he listened in the stillness to the click of Agafea Mihalovna's needles,
and recollecting what he did not want to remember, he frowned again.

At nine o'clock they heard the bell and the faint vibration of a
carriage over the mud.

"Well, here's visitors come to us, and you won't be dull," said Agafea
Mihalovna, getting up and going to the door. But Levin overtook her. His
work was not going well now, and he was glad of a visitor, whoever it
might be.



Chapter 31


Running halfway down the staircase, Levin caught a sound he knew, a
familiar cough in the hall. But he heard it indistinctly through the
sound of his own footsteps, and hoped he was mistaken. Then he caught
sight of a long, bony, familiar figure, and now it seemed there was no
possibility of mistake; and yet he still went on hoping that this tall
man taking off his fur cloak and coughing was not his brother Nikolay.

Levin loved his brother, but being with him was always a torture. Just
now, when Levin, under the influence of the thoughts that had come to
him, and Agafea Mihalovna's hint, was in a troubled and uncertain humor,
the meeting with his brother that he had to face seemed particularly
difficult. Instead of a lively, healthy visitor, some outsider who
would, he hoped, cheer him up in his uncertain humor, he had to see his
brother, who knew him through and through, who would call forth all the
thoughts nearest his heart, would force him to show himself fully. And
that he was not disposed to do.

Angry with himself for so base a feeling, Levin ran into the hall; as
soon as he had seen his brother close, this feeling of selfish
disappointment vanished instantly and was replaced by pity. Terrible as
his brother Nikolay had been before in his emaciation and sickliness,
now he looked still more emaciated, still more wasted. He was a skeleton
covered with skin.

He stood in the hall, jerking his long thin neck, and pulling the scarf
off it, and smiled a strange and pitiful smile. When he saw that smile,
submissive and humble, Levin felt something clutching at his throat.

"You see, I've come to you," said Nikolay in a thick voice, never for
one second taking his eyes off his brother's face. "I've been meaning to
a long while, but I've been unwell all the time. Now I'm ever so much
better," he said, rubbing his beard with his big thin hands.

"Yes, yes!" answered Levin. And he felt still more frightened when,
kissing him, he felt with his lips the dryness of his brother's skin and
saw close to him his big eyes, full of a strange light.

A few weeks before, Konstantin Levin had written to his brother that
through the sale of the small part of the property, that had remained
undivided, there was a sum of about two thousand roubles to come to him
as his share.

Nikolay said that he had come now to take this money and, what was more
important, to stay a while in the old nest, to get in touch with the
earth, so as to renew his strength like the heroes of old for the work
that lay before him. In spite of his exaggerated stoop, and the
emaciation that was so striking from his height, his movements were as
rapid and abrupt as ever. Levin led him into his study.

His brother dressed with particular care--a thing he never used to
do--combed his scanty, lank hair, and, smiling, went upstairs.

He was in the most affectionate and good-humored mood, just as Levin
often remembered him in childhood. He even referred to Sergey Ivanovitch
without rancor. When he saw Agafea Mihalovna, he made jokes with her and
asked after the old servants. The news of the death of Parfen Denisitch
made a painful impression on him. A look of fear crossed his face, but
he regained his serenity immediately.

"Of course he was quite old," he said, and changed the subject. "Well,
I'll spend a month or two with you, and then I'm off to Moscow. Do you
know, Myakov has promised me a place there, and I'm going into the
service. Now I'm going to arrange my life quite differently," he went
on. "You know I got rid of that woman."

"Marya Nikolaevna? Why, what for?"

"Oh, she was a horrid woman! She caused me all sorts of worries." But he
did not say what the annoyances were. He could not say that he had cast
off Marya Nikolaevna because the tea was weak, and, above all, because
she would look after him, as though he were an invalid.

"Besides, I want to turn over a new leaf completely now. I've done silly
things, of course, like everyone else, but money's the last
consideration; I don't regret it. So long as there's health, and my
health, thank God, is quite restored."

Levin listened and racked his brains, but could think of nothing to say.
Nikolay probably felt the same; he began questioning his brother about
his affairs; and Levin was glad to talk about himself, because then he
could speak without hypocrisy. He told his brother of his plans and his
doings.

His brother listened, but evidently he was not interested by it.

These two men were so akin, so near each other, that the slightest
gesture, the tone of voice, told both more than could be said in words.

Both of them now had only one thought--the illness of Nikolay and the
nearness of his death--which stifled all else. But neither of them dared
to speak of it, and so whatever they said--not uttering the one thought
that filled their minds--was all falsehood. Never had Levin been so glad
when the evening was over and it was time to go to bed. Never with any
outside person, never on any official visit had he been so unnatural and
false as he was that evening. And the consciousness of this
unnaturalness, and the remorse he felt at it, made him even more
unnatural. He wanted to weep over his dying, dearly loved brother, and
he had to listen and keep on talking of how he meant to live.

As the house was damp, and only one bedroom had been kept heated, Levin
put his brother to sleep in his own bedroom behind a screen.

His brother got into bed, and whether he slept or did not sleep, tossed
about like a sick man, coughed, and when he could not get his throat
clear, mumbled something. Sometimes when his breathing was painful, he
said, "Oh, my God!" Sometimes when he was choking he muttered angrily,
"Ah, the devil!" Levin could not sleep for a long while, hearing him.
His thoughts were of the most various, but the end of all his thoughts
was the same--death. Death, the inevitable end of all, for the first
time presented itself to him with irresistible force. And death, which
was here in this loved brother, groaning half asleep and from habit
calling without distinction on God and the devil, was not so remote as
it had hitherto seemed to him. It was in himself too, he felt that. If
not today, tomorrow, if not tomorrow, in thirty years, wasn't it all the
same! And what was this inevitable death--he did not know, had never
thought about it, and what was more, had not the power, had not the
courage to think about it.

"I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all end; I
had forgotten--death."

He sat on his bed in the darkness, crouched up, hugging his knees, and
holding his breath from the strain of thought, he pondered. But the more
intensely he thought, the clearer it became to him that it was
indubitably so, that in reality, looking upon life, he had forgotten one
little fact--that death will come, and all ends; that nothing was even
worth beginning, and that there was no helping it anyway. Yes, it was
awful, but it was so.

"But I am alive still. Now what's to be done? what's to be done?" he
said in despair. He lighted a candle, got up cautiously and went to the
looking-glass, and began looking at his face and hair. Yes, there were
gray hairs about his temples. He opened his mouth. His back teeth were
beginning to decay. He bared his muscular arms. Yes, there was strength
in them. But Nikolay, who lay there breathing with what was left of
lungs, had had a strong, healthy body too. And suddenly he recalled how
they used to go to bed together as children, and how they only waited
till Fyodor Bogdanitch was out of the room to fling pillows at each
other and laugh, laugh irrepressibly, so that even their awe of Fyodor
Bogdanitch could not check the effervescing, overbrimming sense of life
and happiness. "And now that bent, hollow chest ... and I, not knowing
what will become of me, or wherefore..."

"K...ha! K...ha! Damnation! Why do you keep fidgeting, why don't you go
to sleep?" his brother's voice called to him.

"Oh, I don't know, I'm not sleepy."

"I have had a good sleep, I'm not in a sweat now. Just see, feel my
shirt; it's not wet, is it?"

Levin felt, withdrew behind the screen, and put out the candle, but for
a long while he could not sleep. The question how to live had hardly
begun to grow a little clearer to him, when a new, insoluble question
presented itself--death.

"Why, he's dying--yes, he'll die in the spring, and how help him? What
can I say to him? What do I know about it? I'd even forgotten that it
was at all."



Chapter 32


Levin had long before made the observation that when one is
uncomfortable with people from their being excessively amenable and
meek, one is apt very soon after to find things intolerable from their
touchiness and irritability. He felt that this was how it would be with
his brother. And his brother Nikolay's gentleness did in fact not last
out for long. The very next morning he began to be irritable, and seemed
doing his best to find fault with his brother, attacking him on his
tenderest points.

Levin felt himself to blame, and could not set things right. He felt
that if they had both not kept up appearances, but had spoken, as it is
called, from the heart--that is to say, had said only just what they
were thinking and feeling--they would simply have looked into each
other's faces, and Konstantin could only have said, "You're dying,
you're dying!" and Nikolay could only have answered, "I know I'm dying,
but I'm afraid, I'm afraid, I'm afraid!" And they could have said
nothing more, if they had said only what was in their hearts. But life
like that was impossible, and so Konstantin tried to do what he had been
trying to do all his life, and never could learn to do, though, as far
as he could observe, many people knew so well how to do it, and without
it there was no living at all. He tried to say what he was not thinking,
but he felt continually that it had a ring of falsehood, that his
brother detected him in it, and was exasperated at it.

The third day Nikolay induced his brother to explain his plan to him
again, and began not merely attacking it, but intentionally confounding
it with communism.

"You've simply borrowed an idea that's not your own, but you've
distorted it, and are trying to apply it where it's not applicable."

"But I tell you it's nothing to do with it. They deny the justice of
property, of capital, of inheritance, while I do not deny this chief
stimulus." (Levin felt disgusted himself at using such expressions, but
ever since he had been engrossed by his work, he had unconsciously come
more and more frequently to use words not Russian.) "All I want is to
regulate labor."

"Which means, you've borrowed an idea, stripped it of all that gave it
its force, and want to make believe that it's something new," said
Nikolay, angrily tugging at his necktie.

"But my idea has nothing in common..."

"That, anyway," said Nikolay Levin, with an ironical smile, his eyes
flashing malignantly, "has the charm of--what's one to call
it?--geometrical symmetry, of clearness, of definiteness. It may be a
Utopia. But if once one allows the possibility of making of all the past
a _tabula rasa_--no property, no family--then labor would organize
itself. But you gain nothing..."

"Why do you mix things up? I've never been a communist."

"But I have, and I consider it's premature, but rational, and it has a
future, just like Christianity in its first ages."

"All that I maintain is that the labor force ought to be investigated
from the point of view of natural science; that is to say, it ought to
be studied, its qualities ascertained..."

"But that's utter waste of time. That force finds a certain form of
activity of itself, according to the stage of its development. There
have been slaves first everywhere, then metayers; and we have the
half-crop system, rent, and day laborers. What are you trying to find?"

Levin suddenly lost his temper at these words, because at the bottom of
his heart he was afraid that it was true--true that he was trying to
hold the balance even between communism and the familiar forms, and that
this was hardly possible.

"I am trying to find means of working productively for myself and for
the laborers. I want to organize..." he answered hotly.

"You don't want to organize anything; it's simply just as you've been
all your life, that you want to be original to pose as not exploiting
the peasants simply, but with some idea in view."

"Oh, all right, that's what you think--and let me alone!" answered
Levin, feeling the muscles of his left cheek twitching uncontrollably.

"You've never had, and never have, convictions; all you want is to
please your vanity."

"Oh, very well; then let me alone!"

"And I will let you alone! and it's high time I did, and go to the devil
with you! and I'm very sorry I ever came!"

In spite of all Levin's efforts to soothe his brother afterwards,
Nikolay would listen to nothing he said, declaring that it was better to
part, and Konstantin saw that it simply was that life was unbearable to
him.

Nikolay was just getting ready to go, when Konstantin went in to him
again and begged him, rather unnaturally, to forgive him if he had hurt
his feelings in any way.

"Ah, generosity!" said Nikolay, and he smiled. "If you want to be right,
I can give you that satisfaction. You're in the right; but I'm going all
the same."

It was only just at parting that Nikolay kissed him, and said, looking
with sudden strangeness and seriousness at his brother:

"Anyway, don't remember evil against me, Kostya!" and his voice
quivered. These were the only words that had been spoken sincerely
between them. Levin knew that those words meant, "You see, and you know,
that I'm in a bad way, and maybe we shall not see each other again."
Levin knew this, and the tears gushed from his eyes. He kissed his
brother once more, but he could not speak, and knew not what to say.

Three days after his brother's departure, Levin too set off for his
foreign tour. Happening to meet Shtcherbatsky, Kitty's cousin, in the
railway train, Levin greatly astonished him by his depression.

"What's the matter with you?" Shtcherbatsky asked him.

"Oh, nothing; there's not much happiness in life."

"Not much? You come with me to Paris instead of to Mulhausen. You shall
see how to be happy."

"No, I've done with it all. It's time I was dead."

"Well, that's a good one!" said Shtcherbatsky, laughing; "why, I'm only
just getting ready to begin."

"Yes, I thought the same not long ago, but now I know I shall soon be
dead."

Levin said what he had genuinely been thinking of late. He saw nothing
but death or the advance towards death in everything. But his cherished
scheme only engrossed him the more. Life had to be got through somehow
till death did come. Darkness had fallen upon everything for him; but
just because of this darkness he felt that the one guiding clue in the
darkness was his work, and he clutched it and clung to it with all his
strength.




PART FOUR



Chapter 1


The Karenins, husband and wife, continued living in the same house, met
every day, but were complete strangers to one another. Alexey
Alexandrovitch made it a rule to see his wife every day, so that the
servants might have no grounds for suppositions, but avoided dining at
home. Vronsky was never at Alexey Alexandrovitch's house, but Anna saw
him away from home, and her husband was aware of it.

The position was one of misery for all three; and not one of them would
have been equal to enduring this position for a single day, if it had
not been for the expectation that it would change, that it was merely a
temporary painful ordeal which would pass over. Alexey Alexandrovitch
hoped that this passion would pass, as everything does pass, that
everyone would forget about it, and his name would remain unsullied.
Anna, on whom the position depended, and for whom it was more miserable
than for anyone, endured it because she not merely hoped, but firmly
believed, that it would all very soon be settled and come right. She had
not the least idea what would settle the position, but she firmly
believed that something would very soon turn up now. Vronsky, against
his own will or wishes, followed her lead, hoped too that something,
apart from his own action, would be sure to solve all difficulties.

In the middle of the winter Vronsky spent a very tiresome week. A
foreign prince, who had come on a visit to Petersburg, was put under his
charge, and he had to show him the sights worth seeing. Vronsky was of
distinguished appearance; he possessed, moreover, the art of behaving
with respectful dignity, and was used to having to do with such grand
personages--that was how he came to be put in charge of the prince. But
he felt his duties very irksome. The prince was anxious to miss nothing
of which he would be asked at home, had he seen that in Russia? And on
his own account he was anxious to enjoy to the utmost all Russian forms
of amusement. Vronsky was obliged to be his guide in satisfying both
these inclinations. The mornings they spent driving to look at places of
interest; the evenings they passed enjoying the national entertainments.
The prince rejoiced in health exceptional even among princes. By
gymnastics and careful attention to his health he had brought himself to
such a point that in spite of his excess in pleasure he looked as fresh
as a big glossy green Dutch cucumber. The prince had traveled a great
deal, and considered one of the chief advantages of modern facilities of
communication was the accessibility of the pleasures of all nations.

He had been in Spain, and there had indulged in serenades and had made
friends with a Spanish girl who played the mandolin. In Switzerland he
had killed chamois. In England he had galloped in a red coat over hedges
and killed two hundred pheasants for a bet. In Turkey he had got into a
harem; in India he had hunted on an elephant, and now in Russia he
wished to taste all the specially Russian forms of pleasure.

Vronsky, who was, as it were, chief master of the ceremonies to him, was
at great pains to arrange all the Russian amusements suggested by
various persons to the prince. They had race horses, and Russian
pancakes and bear hunts and three-horse sledges, and gypsies and
drinking feasts, with the Russian accompaniment of broken crockery. And
the prince with surprising ease fell in with the Russian spirit, smashed
trays full of crockery, sat with a gypsy girl on his knee, and seemed to
be asking--what more, and does the whole Russian spirit consist in just
this?

In reality, of all the Russian entertainments the prince liked best
French actresses and ballet dancers and white-seal champagne. Vronsky
was used to princes, but, either because he had himself changed of late,
or that he was in too close proximity to the prince, that week seemed
fearfully wearisome to him. The whole of that week he experienced a
sensation such as a man might have set in charge of a dangerous madman,
afraid of the madman, and at the same time, from being with him, fearing
for his own reason. Vronsky was continually conscious of the necessity
of never for a second relaxing the tone of stern official
respectfulness, that he might not himself be insulted. The prince's
manner of treating the very people who, to Vronsky's surprise, were
ready to descend to any depths to provide him with Russian amusements,
was contemptuous. His criticisms of Russian women, whom he wished to
study, more than once made Vronsky crimson with indignation. The chief
reason why the prince was so particularly disagreeable to Vronsky was
that he could not help seeing himself in him. And what he saw in this
mirror did not gratify his self-esteem. He was a very stupid and very
self-satisfied and very healthy and very well-washed man, and nothing
else. He was a gentleman--that was true, and Vronsky could not deny it.
He was equable and not cringing with his superiors, was free and
ingratiating in his behavior with his equals, and was contemptuously
indulgent with his inferiors. Vronsky was himself the same, and regarded
it as a great merit to be so. But for this prince he was an inferior,
and his contemptuous and indulgent attitude to him revolted him.

"Brainless beef! can I be like that?" he thought.

Be that as it might, when, on the seventh day, he parted from the
prince, who was starting for Moscow, and received his thanks, he was
happy to be rid of his uncomfortable position and the unpleasant
reflection of himself. He said good-bye to him at the station on their
return from a bear hunt, at which they had had a display of Russian
prowess kept up all night.



Chapter 2


When he got home, Vronsky found there a note from Anna. She wrote, "I am
ill and unhappy. I cannot come out, but I cannot go on longer without
seeing you. Come in this evening. Alexey Alexandrovitch goes to the
council at seven and will be there till ten." Thinking for an instant of
the strangeness of her bidding him come straight to her, in spite of her
husband's insisting on her not receiving him, he decided to go.

Vronsky had that winter got his promotion, was now a colonel, had left
the regimental quarters, and was living alone. After having some lunch,
he lay down on the sofa immediately, and in five minutes memories of the
hideous scenes he had witnessed during the last few days were confused
together and joined on to a mental image of Anna and of the peasant who
had played an important part in the bear hunt, and Vronsky fell asleep.
He waked up in the dark, trembling with horror, and made haste to light
a candle. "What was it? What? What was the dreadful thing I dreamed?
Yes, yes; I think a little dirty man with a disheveled beard was
stooping down doing something, and all of a sudden he began saying some
strange words in French. Yes, there was nothing else in the dream," he
said to himself. "But why was it so awful?" He vividly recalled the
peasant again and those incomprehensible French words the peasant had
uttered, and a chill of horror ran down his spine.

"What nonsense!" thought Vronsky, and glanced at his watch.

It was half-past eight already. He rang up his servant, dressed in
haste, and went out onto the steps, completely forgetting the dream and
only worried at being late. As he drove up to the Karenins' entrance he
looked at his watch and saw it was ten minutes to nine. A high, narrow
carriage with a pair of grays was standing at the entrance. He
recognized Anna's carriage. "She is coming to me," thought Vronsky, "and
better she should. I don't like going into that house. But no matter; I
can't hide myself," he thought, and with that manner peculiar to him
from childhood, as of a man who has nothing to be ashamed of, Vronsky
got out of his sledge and went to the door. The door opened, and the
hall porter with a rug on his arm called the carriage. Vronsky, though
he did not usually notice details, noticed at this moment the amazed
expression with which the porter glanced at him. In the very doorway
Vronsky almost ran up against Alexey Alexandrovitch. The gas jet threw
its full light on the bloodless, sunken face under the black hat and on
the white cravat, brilliant against the beaver of the coat. Karenin's
fixed, dull eyes were fastened upon Vronsky's face. Vronsky bowed, and
Alexey Alexandrovitch, chewing his lips, lifted his hand to his hat and
went on. Vronsky saw him without looking round get into the carriage,
pick up the rug and the opera-glass at the window and disappear. Vronsky
went into the hall. His brows were scowling, and his eyes gleamed with a
proud and angry light in them.

"What a position!" he thought. "If he would fight, would stand up for
his honor, I could act, could express my feelings; but this weakness or
baseness.... He puts me in the position of playing false, which I never
meant and never mean to do."

Vronsky's ideas had changed since the day of his conversation with Anna
in the Vrede garden. Unconsciously yielding to the weakness of Anna--who
had surrendered herself up to him utterly, and simply looked to him to
decide her fate, ready to submit to anything--he had long ceased to
think that their tie might end as he had thought then. His ambitious
plans had retreated into the background again, and feeling that he had
got out of that circle of activity in which everything was definite, he
had given himself entirely to his passion, and that passion was binding
him more and more closely to her.

He was still in the hall when he caught the sound of her retreating
footsteps. He knew she had been expecting him, had listened for him, and
was now going back to the drawing room.

"No," she cried, on seeing him, and at the first sound of her voice the
tears came into her eyes. "No; if things are to go on like this, the end
will come much, much too soon."

"What is it, dear one?"

"What? I've been waiting in agony for an hour, two hours ... No, I won't
... I can't quarrel with you. Of course you couldn't come. No, I won't."
She laid her two hands on his shoulders, and looked a long while at him
with a profound, passionate, and at the same time searching look. She
was studying his face to make up for the time she had not seen him. She
was, every time she saw him, making the picture of him in her
imagination (incomparably superior, impossible in reality) fit with him
as he really was.



Chapter 3


"You met him?" she asked, when they had sat down at the table in the
lamplight. "You're punished, you see, for being late."

"Yes; but how was it? Wasn't he to be at the council?"

"He had been and come back, and was going out somewhere again. But
that's no matter. Don't talk about it. Where have you been? With the
prince still?"

She knew every detail of his existence. He was going to say that he had
been up all night and had dropped asleep, but looking at her thrilled
and rapturous face, he was ashamed. And he said he had had to go to
report on the prince's departure.

"But it's over now? He is gone?"

"Thank God it's over! You wouldn't believe how insufferable it's been
for me."

"Why so? Isn't it the life all of you, all young men, always lead?" she
said, knitting her brows; and taking up the crochet work that was lying
on the table, she began drawing the hook out of it, without looking at
Vronsky.

"I gave that life up long ago," said he, wondering at the change in her
face, and trying to divine its meaning. "And I confess," he said, with a
smile, showing his thick, white teeth, "this week I've been, as it were,
looking at myself in a glass, seeing that life, and I didn't like it."

She held the work in her hands, but did not crochet, and looked at him
with strange, shining, and hostile eyes.

"This morning Liza came to see me--they're not afraid to call on me, in
spite of the Countess Lidia Ivanovna," she put in--"and she told me
about your Athenian evening. How loathsome!"

"I was just going to say..."

She interrupted him. "It was that Therese you used to know?"

"I was just saying..."

"How disgusting you are, you men! How is it you can't understand that a
woman can never forget that," she said, getting more and more angry, and
so letting him see the cause of her irritation, "especially a woman who
cannot know your life? What do I know? What have I ever known?" she
said, "what you tell me. And how do I know whether you tell me the
truth?..."

"Anna, you hurt me. Don't you trust me? Haven't I told you that I
haven't a thought I wouldn't lay bare to you?"

"Yes, yes," she said, evidently trying to suppress her jealous thoughts.
"But if only you knew how wretched I am! I believe you, I believe
you.... What were you saying?"

But he could not at once recall what he had been going to say. These
fits of jealousy, which of late had been more and more frequent with
her, horrified him, and however much he tried to disguise the fact, made
him feel cold to her, although he knew the cause of her jealousy was her
love for him. How often he had told himself that her love was happiness;
and now she loved him as a woman can love when love has outweighed for
her all the good things of life--and he was much further from happiness
than when he had followed her from Moscow. Then he had thought himself
unhappy, but happiness was before him; now he felt that the best
happiness was already left behind. She was utterly unlike what she had
been when he first saw her. Both morally and physically she had changed
for the worse. She had broadened out all over, and in her face at the
time when she was speaking of the actress there was an evil expression
of hatred that distorted it. He looked at her as a man looks at a faded
flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for
which he picked and ruined it. And in spite of this he felt that then,
when his love was stronger, he could, if he had greatly wished it, have
torn that love out of his heart; but now, when as at that moment it
seemed to him he felt no love for her, he knew that what bound him to
her could not be broken.

"Well, well, what was it you were going to say about the prince? I have
driven away the fiend," she added. The fiend was the name they had given
her jealousy. "What did you begin to tell me about the prince? Why did
you find it so tiresome?"

"Oh, it was intolerable!" he said, trying to pick up the thread of his
interrupted thought. "He does not improve on closer acquaintance. If you
want him defined, here he is: a prime, well-fed beast such as takes
medals at the cattle shows, and nothing more," he said, with a tone of
vexation that interested her.

"No; how so?" she replied. "He's seen a great deal, anyway; he's
cultured?"

"It's an utterly different culture--their culture. He's cultivated, one
sees, simply to be able to despise culture, as they despise everything
but animal pleasures."

"But don't you all care for these animal pleasures?" she said, and again
he noticed a dark look in her eyes that avoided him.

"How is it you're defending him?" he said, smiling.

"I'm not defending him, it's nothing to me; but I imagine, if you had
not cared for those pleasures yourself, you might have got out of them.
But if it affords you satisfaction to gaze at Therese in the attire of
Eve..."

"Again, the devil again," Vronsky said, taking the hand she had laid on
the table and kissing it.

"Yes; but I can't help it. You don't know what I have suffered waiting
for you. I believe I'm not jealous. I'm not jealous: I believe you when
you're here; but when you're away somewhere leading your life, so
incomprehensible to me..."

She turned away from him, pulled the hook at last out of the crochet
work, and rapidly, with the help of her forefinger, began working loop
after loop of the wool that was dazzling white in the lamplight, while
the slender wrist moved swiftly, nervously in the embroidered cuff.

"How was it, then? Where did you meet Alexey Alexandrovitch?" Her voice
sounded in an unnatural and jarring tone.

"We ran up against each other in the doorway."

"And he bowed to you like this?"

She drew a long face, and half-closing her eyes, quickly transformed her
expression, folded her hands, and Vronsky suddenly saw in her beautiful
face the very expression with which Alexey Alexandrovitch had bowed to
him. He smiled, while she laughed gaily, with that sweet, deep laugh,
which was one of her greatest charms.

"I don't understand him in the least," said Vronsky. "If after your
avowal to him at your country house he had broken with you, if he had
called me out--but this I can't understand. How can he put up with such
a position? He feels it, that's evident."

"He?" she said sneeringly. "He's perfectly satisfied."

"What are we all miserable for, when everything might be so happy?"

"Only not he. Don't I know him, the falsity in which he's utterly
steeped?... Could one, with any feeling, live as he is living with me?
He understands nothing, and feels nothing. Could a man of any feeling
live in the same house with his unfaithful wife? Could he talk to her,
call her 'my dear'?"

And again she could not help mimicking him: "'Anna, _ma chere_; Anna,
dear'!"

"He's not a man, not a human being--he's a doll! No one knows him; but I
know him. Oh, if I'd been in his place, I'd long ago have killed, have
torn to pieces a wife like me. I wouldn't have said, 'Anna, _ma chere_'!
He's not a man, he's an official machine. He doesn't understand that I'm
your wife, that he's outside, that he's superfluous.... Don't let's talk
of him!..."

"You're unfair, very unfair, dearest," said Vronsky, trying to soothe
her. "But never mind, don't let's talk of him. Tell me what you've been
doing? What is the matter? What has been wrong with you, and what did
the doctor say?"

She looked at him with mocking amusement. Evidently she had hit on other
absurd and grotesque aspects in her husband and was awaiting the moment
to give expression to them.

But he went on:

"I imagine that it's not illness, but your condition. When will it be?"

The ironical light died away in her eyes, but a different smile, a
consciousness of something, he did not know what, and of quiet
melancholy, came over her face.

"Soon, soon. You say that our position is miserable, that we must put an
end to it. If you knew how terrible it is to me, what I would give to be
able to love you freely and boldly! I should not torture myself and
torture you with my jealousy.... And it will come soon, but not as we
expect."

And at the thought of how it would come, she seemed so pitiable to
herself that tears came into her eyes, and she could not go on. She laid
her hand on his sleeve, dazzling and white with its rings in the
lamplight.

"It won't come as we suppose. I didn't mean to say this to you, but
you've made me. Soon, soon, all will be over, and we shall all, all be
at peace, and suffer no more."

"I don't understand," he said, understanding her.

"You asked when? Soon. And I shan't live through it. Don't interrupt
me!" and she made haste to speak. "I know it; I know for certain. I
shall die; and I'm very glad I shall die, and release myself and you."

Tears dropped from her eyes; he bent down over her hand and began
kissing it, trying to hide his emotion, which, he knew, had no sort of
grounds, though he could not control it.

"Yes, it's better so," she said, tightly gripping his hand. "That's the
only way, the only way left us."

He had recovered himself, and lifted his head.

"How absurd! What absurd nonsense you are talking!"

"No, it's the truth."

"What, what's the truth?"

"That I shall die. I have had a dream."

"A dream?" repeated Vronsky, and instantly he recalled the peasant of
his dream.

"Yes, a dream," she said. "It's a long while since I dreamed it. I
dreamed that I ran into my bedroom, that I had to get something there,
to find out something; you know how it is in dreams," she said, her eyes
wide with horror; "and in the bedroom, in the corner, stood something."

"Oh, what nonsense! How can you believe..."

But she would not let him interrupt her. What she was saying was too
important to her.

"And the something turned round, and I saw it was a peasant with a
disheveled beard, little, and dreadful looking. I wanted to run away,
but he bent down over a sack, and was fumbling there with his hands..."

She showed how he had moved his hands. There was terror in her face. And
Vronsky, remembering his dream, felt the same terror filling his soul.

"He was fumbling and kept talking quickly, quickly in French, you know:
_Il faut le battre, le fer, le brayer, le petrir_.... And in my horror I
tried to wake up, and woke up ... but woke up in the dream. And I began
asking myself what it meant. And Korney said to me: 'In childbirth
you'll die, ma'am, you'll die....' And I woke up."

"What nonsense, what nonsense!" said Vronsky; but he felt himself that
there was no conviction in his voice.

"But don't let's talk of it. Ring the bell, I'll have tea. And stay a
little now; it's not long I shall..."

But all at once she stopped. The expression of her face instantaneously
changed. Horror and excitement were suddenly replaced by a look of soft,
solemn, blissful attention. He could not comprehend the meaning of the
change. She was listening to the stirring of the new life within her.



Chapter 4


Alexey Alexandrovitch, after meeting Vronsky on his own steps, drove, as
he had intended, to the Italian opera. He sat through two acts there,
and saw everyone he had wanted to see. On returning home, he carefully
scrutinized the hat stand, and noticing that there was not a military
overcoat there, he went, as usual, to his own room. But, contrary to his
usual habit, he did not go to bed, he walked up and down his study till
three o'clock in the morning. The feeling of furious anger with his
wife, who would not observe the proprieties and keep to the one
stipulation he had laid on her, not to receive her lover in her own
home, gave him no peace. She had not complied with his request, and he
was bound to punish her and carry out his threat--obtain a divorce and
take away his son. He knew all the difficulties connected with this
course, but he had said he would do it, and now he must carry out his
threat. Countess Lidia Ivanovna had hinted that this was the best way
out of his position, and of late the obtaining of divorces had been
brought to such perfection that Alexey Alexandrovitch saw a possibility
of overcoming the formal difficulties. Misfortunes never come singly,
and the affairs of the reorganization of the native tribes, and of the
irrigation of the lands of the Zaraisky province, had brought such
official worries upon Alexey Alexandrovitch that he had been of late in
a continual condition of extreme irritability.

He did not sleep the whole night, and his fury, growing in a sort of
vast, arithmetical progression, reached its highest limits in the
morning. He dressed in haste, and as though carrying his cup full of
wrath, and fearing to spill any over, fearing to lose with his wrath the
energy necessary for the interview with his wife, he went into her room
directly he heard she was up.

Anna, who had thought she knew her husband so well, was amazed at his
appearance when he went in to her. His brow was lowering, and his eyes
stared darkly before him, avoiding her eyes; his mouth was tightly and
contemptuously shut. In his walk, in his gestures, in the sound of his
voice there was a determination and firmness such as his wife had never
seen in him. He went into her room, and without greeting her, walked
straight up to her writing-table, and taking her keys, opened a drawer.

"What do you want?" she cried.

"Your lover's letters," he said.

"They're not here," she said, shutting the drawer; but from that action
he saw he had guessed right, and roughly pushing away her hand, he
quickly snatched a portfolio in which he knew she used to put her most
important papers. She tried to pull the portfolio away, but he pushed
her back.

"Sit down! I have to speak to you," he said, putting the portfolio under
his arm, and squeezing it so tightly with his elbow that his shoulder
stood up. Amazed and intimidated, she gazed at him in silence.

"I told you that I would not allow you to receive your lover in this
house."

"I had to see him to..."

She stopped, not finding a reason.

"I do not enter into the details of why a woman wants to see her lover."

"I meant, I only..." she said, flushing hotly. This coarseness of his
angered her, and gave her courage. "Surely you must feel how easy it is
for you to insult me?" she said.

"An honest man and an honest woman may be insulted, but to tell a thief
he's a thief is simply _la constatation d'un fait_."

"This cruelty is something new I did not know in you."

"You call it cruelty for a husband to give his wife liberty, giving her
the honorable protection of his name, simply on the condition of
observing the proprieties: is that cruelty?"

"It's worse than cruel--it's base, if you want to know!" Anna cried, in
a rush of hatred, and getting up, she was going away.

"No!" he shrieked, in his shrill voice, which pitched a note higher than
usual even, and his big hands clutching her by the arm so violently that
red marks were left from the bracelet he was squeezing, he forcibly sat
her down in her place.

"Base! If you care to use that word, what is base is to forsake husband
and child for a lover, while you eat your husband's bread!"

She bowed her head. She did not say what she had said the evening before
to her lover, that _he_ was her husband, and her husband was
superfluous; she did not even think that. She felt all the justice of
his words, and only said softly:

"You cannot describe my position as worse than I feel it to be myself;
but what are you saying all this for?"

"What am I saying it for? what for?" he went on, as angrily. "That you
may know that since you have not carried out my wishes in regard to
observing outward decorum, I will take measures to put an end to this
state of things."

"Soon, very soon, it will end, anyway," she said; and again, at the
thought of death near at hand and now desired, tears came into her eyes.

"It will end sooner than you and your lover have planned! If you must
have the satisfaction of animal passion..."

"Alexey Alexandrovitch! I won't say it's not generous, but it's not like
a gentleman to strike anyone who's down."

"Yes, you only think of yourself! But the sufferings of a man who was
your husband have no interest for you. You don't care that his whole
life is ruined, that he is thuff ... thuff..."

Alexey Alexandrovitch was speaking so quickly that he stammered, and was
utterly unable to articulate the word "suffering." In the end he
pronounced it "thuffering." She wanted to laugh, and was immediately
ashamed that anything could amuse her at such a moment. And for the
first time, for an instant, she felt for him, put herself in his place,
and was sorry for him. But what could she say or do? Her head sank, and
she sat silent. He too was silent for some time, and then began speaking
in a frigid, less shrill voice, emphasizing random words that had no
special significance.

"I came to tell you..." he said.

She glanced at him. "No, it was my fancy," she thought, recalling the
expression of his face when he stumbled over the word "suffering." "No;
can a man with those dull eyes, with that self-satisfied complacency,
feel anything?"

"I cannot change anything," she whispered.

"I have come to tell you that I am going tomorrow to Moscow, and shall
not return again to this house, and you will receive notice of what I
decide through the lawyer into whose hands I shall intrust the task of
getting a divorce. My son is going to my sister's," said Alexey
Alexandrovitch, with an effort recalling what he had meant to say about
his son.

"You take Seryozha to hurt me," she said, looking at him from under her
brows. "You do not love him.... Leave me Seryozha!"

"Yes, I have lost even my affection for my son, because he is associated
with the repulsion I feel for you. But still I shall take him. Goodbye!"

And he was going away, but now she detained him.

"Alexey Alexandrovitch, leave me Seryozha!" she whispered once more. "I
have nothing else to say. Leave Seryozha till my ... I shall soon be
confined; leave him!"

Alexey Alexandrovitch flew into a rage, and, snatching his hand from
her, he went out of the room without a word.



Chapter 5


The waiting-room of the celebrated Petersburg lawyer was full when
Alexey Alexandrovitch entered it. Three ladies--an old lady, a young
lady, and a merchant's wife--and three gentlemen--one a German banker
with a ring on his finger, the second a merchant with a beard, and the
third a wrathful-looking government clerk in official uniform, with a
cross on his neck--had obviously been waiting a long while already. Two
clerks were writing at tables with scratching pens. The appurtenances of
the writing-tables, about which Alexey Alexandrovitch was himself very
fastidious, were exceptionally good. He could not help observing this.
One of the clerks, without getting up, turned wrathfully to Alexey
Alexandrovitch, half closing his eyes. "What are you wanting?"

He replied that he had to see the lawyer on some business.

"He is engaged," the clerk responded severely, and he pointed with his
pen at the persons waiting, and went on writing.

"Can't he spare time to see me?" said Alexey Alexandrovitch.

"He has no time free; he is always busy. Kindly wait your turn."

"Then I must trouble you to give him my card," Alexey Alexandrovitch
said with dignity, seeing the impossibility of preserving his incognito.

The clerk took the card and, obviously not approving of what he read on
it, went to the door.

Alexey Alexandrovitch was in principle in favor of the publicity of
legal proceedings, though for some higher official considerations he
disliked the application of the principle in Russia, and disapproved of
it, as far as he could disapprove of anything instituted by authority of
the Emperor. His whole life had been spent in administrative work, and
consequently, when he did not approve of anything, his disapproval was
softened by the recognition of the inevitability of mistakes and the
possibility of reform in every department. In the new public law courts
he disliked the restrictions laid on the lawyers conducting cases. But
till then he had had nothing to do with the law courts, and so had
disapproved of their publicity simply in theory; now his disapprobation
was strengthened by the unpleasant impression made on him in the
lawyer's waiting room.

"Coming immediately," said the clerk; and two minutes later there did
actually appear in the doorway the large figure of an old solicitor who
had been consulting with the lawyer himself.

The lawyer was a little, squat, bald man, with a dark, reddish beard,
light-colored long eyebrows, and an overhanging brow. He was attired as
though for a wedding, from his cravat to his double watch-chain and
varnished boots. His face was clever and manly, but his dress was
dandified and in bad taste.

"Pray walk in," said the lawyer, addressing Alexey Alexandrovitch; and,
gloomily ushering Karenin in before him, he closed the door.

"Won't you sit down?" He indicated an armchair at a writing table
covered with papers. He sat down himself, and, rubbing his little hands
with short fingers covered with white hairs, he bent his head on one
side. But as soon as he was settled in this position a moth flew over
the table. The lawyer, with a swiftness that could never have been
expected of him, opened his hands, caught the moth, and resumed his
former attitude.

"Before beginning to speak of my business," said Alexey Alexandrovitch,
following the lawyer's movements with wondering eyes, "I ought to
observe that the business about which I have to speak to you is to be
strictly private."

The lawyer's overhanging reddish mustaches were parted in a scarcely
perceptible smile.

"I should not be a lawyer if I could not keep the secrets confided to
me. But if you would like proof..."

Alexey Alexandrovitch glanced at his face, and saw that the shrewd, gray
eyes were laughing, and seemed to know all about it already.

"You know my name?" Alexey Alexandrovitch resumed.

"I know you and the good"--again he caught a moth--"work you are doing,
like every Russian," said the lawyer, bowing.

Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed, plucking up his courage. But having once
made up his mind he went on in his shrill voice, without timidity--or
hesitation, accentuating here and there a word.

"I have the misfortune," Alexey Alexandrovitch began, "to have been
deceived in my married life, and I desire to break off all relations
with my wife by legal means--that is, to be divorced, but to do this so
that my son may not remain with his mother."

The lawyer's gray eyes tried not to laugh, but they were dancing with
irrepressible glee, and Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that it was not simply
the delight of a man who has just got a profitable job: there was
triumph and joy, there was a gleam like the malignant gleam he saw in
his wife's eyes.

"You desire my assistance in securing a divorce?"

"Yes, precisely so; but I ought to warn you that I may be wasting your
time and attention. I have come simply to consult you as a preliminary
step. I want a divorce, but the form in which it is possible is of great
consequence to me. It is very possible that if that form does not
correspond with my requirements I may give up a legal divorce."

"Oh, that's always the case," said the lawyer, "and that's always for
you to decide."

He let his eyes rest on Alexey Alexandrovitch's feet, feeling that he
might offend his client by the sight of his irrepressible amusement. He
looked at a moth that flew before his nose, and moved his hands, but did
not catch it from regard for Alexey Alexandrovitch's position.

"Though in their general features our laws on this subject are known to
me," pursued Alexey Alexandrovitch, "I should be glad to have an idea of
the forms in which such things are done in practice."

"You would be glad," the lawyer, without lifting his eyes, responded,
adopting, with a certain satisfaction, the tone of his client's remarks,
"for me to lay before you all the methods by which you could secure what
you desire?"

And on receiving an assuring nod from Alexey Alexandrovitch, he went on,
stealing a glance now and then at Alexey Alexandrovitch's face, which
was growing red in patches.

"Divorce by our laws," he said, with a slight shade of disapprobation of
our laws, "is possible, as you are aware, in the following cases....
Wait a little!" he called to a clerk who put his head in at the door,
but he got up all the same, said a few words to him, and sat down again.
"... In the following cases: physical defect in the married parties,
desertion without communication for five years," he said, crooking a
short finger covered with hair, "adultery" (this word he pronounced with
obvious satisfaction), "subdivided as follows" (he continued to crook
his fat fingers, though the three cases and their subdivisions could
obviously not be classified together): "physical defect of the husband
or of the wife, adultery of the husband or of the wife." As by now all
his fingers were used up, he uncrooked all his fingers and went on:
"This is the theoretical view; but I imagine you have done me the honor
to apply to me in order to learn its application in practice. And
therefore, guided by precedents, I must inform you that in practice
cases of divorce may all be reduced to the following--there's no
physical defect, I may assume, nor desertion?..."

Alexey Alexandrovitch bowed his head in assent.

"--May be reduced to the following: adultery of one of the married
parties, and the detection in the fact of the guilty party by mutual
agreement, and failing such agreement, accidental detection. It must be
admitted that the latter case is rarely met with in practice," said the
lawyer, and stealing a glance at Alexey Alexandrovitch he paused, as a
man selling pistols, after enlarging on the advantages of each weapon,
might await his customer's choice. But Alexey Alexandrovitch said
nothing, and therefore the lawyer went on: "The most usual and simple,
the sensible course, I consider, is adultery by mutual consent. I should
not permit myself to express it so, speaking with a man of no
education," he said, "but I imagine that to you this is comprehensible."

Alexey Alexandrovitch was, however, so perturbed that he did not
immediately comprehend all the good sense of adultery by mutual consent,
and his eyes expressed this uncertainty; but the lawyer promptly came to
his assistance.

"People cannot go on living together--here you have a fact. And if both
are agreed about it, the details and formalities become a matter of no
importance. And at the same time this is the simplest and most certain
method."

Alexey Alexandrovitch fully understood now. But he had religious
scruples, which hindered the execution of such a plan.

"That is out of the question in the present case," he said. "Only one
alternative is possible: undesigned detection, supported by letters
which I have."

At the mention of letters the lawyer pursed up his lips, and gave
utterance to a thin little compassionate and contemptuous sound.

"Kindly consider," he began, "cases of that kind are, as you are aware,
under ecclesiastical jurisdiction; the reverend fathers are fond of
going into the minutest details in cases of that kind," he said with a
smile, which betrayed his sympathy with the reverend fathers' taste.
"Letters may, of course, be a partial confirmation; but detection in the
fact there must be of the most direct kind, that is, by eyewitnesses. In
fact, if you do me the honor to intrust your confidence to me, you will
do well to leave me the choice of the measures to be employed. If one
wants the result, one must admit the means."

"If it is so..." Alexey Alexandrovitch began, suddenly turning white;
but at that moment the lawyer rose and again went to the door to speak
to the intruding clerk.

"Tell her we don't haggle over fees!" he said, and returned to Alexey
Alexandrovitch.

On his way back he caught unobserved another moth. "Nice state my rep
curtains will be in by the summer!" he thought, frowning.

"And so you were saying?..." he said.

"I will communicate my decision to you by letter," said Alexey
Alexandrovitch, getting up, and he clutched at the table. After standing
a moment in silence, he said: "From your words I may consequently
conclude that a divorce may be obtained? I would ask you to let me know
what are your terms."

"It may be obtained if you give me complete liberty of action," said the
lawyer, not answering his question. "When can I reckon on receiving
information from you?" he asked, moving towards the door, his eyes and
his varnished boots shining.

"In a week's time. Your answer as to whether you will undertake to
conduct the case, and on what terms, you will be so good as to
communicate to me."

"Very good."

The lawyer bowed respectfully, let his client out of the door, and, left
alone, gave himself up to his sense of amusement. He felt so mirthful
that, contrary to his rules, he made a reduction in his terms to the
haggling lady, and gave up catching moths, finally deciding that next
winter he must have the furniture covered with velvet, like Sigonin's.



Chapter 6


Alexey Alexandrovitch had gained a brilliant victory at the sitting of
the Commission of the 17th of August, but in the sequel this victory cut
the ground from under his feet. The new commission for the inquiry into
the condition of the native tribes in all its branches had been formed
and despatched to its destination with an unusual speed and energy
inspired by Alexey Alexandrovitch. Within three months a report was
presented. The condition of the native tribes was investigated in its
political, administrative, economic, ethnographic, material, and
religious aspects. To all these questions there were answers admirably
stated, and answers admitting no shade of doubt, since they were not a
product of human thought, always liable to error, but were all the
product of official activity. The answers were all based on official
data furnished by governors and heads of churches, and founded on the
reports of district magistrates and ecclesiastical superintendents,
founded in their turn on the reports of parochial overseers and parish
priests; and so all of these answers were unhesitating and certain. All
such questions as, for instance, of the cause of failure of crops, of
the adherence of certain tribes to their ancient beliefs,
etc.--questions which, but for the convenient intervention of the
official machine, are not, and cannot be solved for ages--received full,
unhesitating solution. And this solution was in favor of Alexey
Alexandrovitch's contention. But Stremov, who had felt stung to the
quick at the last sitting, had, on the reception of the commission's
report, resorted to tactics which Alexey Alexandrovitch had not
anticipated. Stremov, carrying with him several members, went over to
Alexey Alexandrovitch's side, and not contenting himself with warmly
defending the measure proposed by Karenin, proposed other more extreme
measures in the same direction. These measures, still further
exaggerated in opposition to what was Alexey Alexandrovitch's
fundamental idea, were passed by the commission, and then the aim of
Stremov's tactics became apparent. Carried to an extreme, the measures
seemed at once to be so absurd that the highest authorities, and public
opinion, and intellectual ladies, and the newspapers, all at the same
time fell foul of them, expressing their indignation both with the
measures and their nominal father, Alexey Alexandrovitch. Stremov drew
back, affecting to have blindly followed Karenin, and to be astounded
and distressed at what had been done. This meant the defeat of Alexey
Alexandrovitch. But in spite of failing health, in spite of his domestic
griefs, he did not give in. There was a split in the commission. Some
members, with Stremov at their head, justified their mistake on the
ground that they had put faith in the commission of revision, instituted
by Alexey Alexandrovitch, and maintained that the report of the
commission was rubbish, and simply so much waste paper. Alexey
Alexandrovitch, with a following of those who saw the danger of so
revolutionary an attitude to official documents, persisted in upholding
the statements obtained by the revising commission. In consequence of
this, in the higher spheres, and even in society, all was chaos, and
although everyone was interested, no one could tell whether the native
tribes really were becoming impoverished and ruined, or whether they
were in a flourishing condition. The position of Alexey Alexandrovitch,
owing to this, and partly owing to the contempt lavished on him for his
wife's infidelity, became very precarious. And in this position he took
an important resolution. To the astonishment of the commission, he
announced that he should ask permission to go himself to investigate the
question on the spot. And having obtained permission, Alexey
Alexandrovitch prepared to set off to these remote provinces.

Alexey Alexandrovitch's departure made a great sensation, the more so as
just before he started he officially returned the posting-fares allowed
him for twelve horses, to drive to his destination.

"I think it very noble," Betsy said about this to the Princess Myakaya.
"Why take money for posting-horses when everyone knows that there are
railways everywhere now?"

But Princess Myakaya did not agree, and the Princess Tverskaya's opinion
annoyed her indeed.

"It's all very well for you to talk," said she, "when you have I don't
know how many millions; but I am very glad when my husband goes on a
revising tour in the summer. It's very good for him and pleasant
traveling about, and it's a settled arrangement for me to keep a
carriage and coachman on the money."

On his way to the remote provinces Alexey Alexandrovitch stopped for
three days at Moscow.

The day after his arrival he was driving back from calling on the
governor-general. At the crossroads by Gazetoy Place, where there are
always crowds of carriages and sledges, Alexey Alexandrovitch suddenly
heard his name called out in such a loud and cheerful voice that he
could not help looking round. At the corner of the pavement, in a short,
stylish overcoat and a low-crowned fashionable hat, jauntily askew, with
a smile that showed a gleam of white teeth and red lips, stood Stepan
Arkadyevitch, radiant, young, and beaming. He called him vigorously and
urgently, and insisted on his stopping. He had one arm on the window of
a carriage that was stopping at the corner, and out of the window were
thrust the heads of a lady in a velvet hat, and two children. Stepan
Arkadyevitch was smiling and beckoning to his brother-in-law. The lady
smiled a kindly smile too, and she too waved her hand to Alexey
Alexandrovitch. It was Dolly with her children.

Alexey Alexandrovitch did not want to see anyone in Moscow, and least of
all his wife's brother. He raised his hat and would have driven on, but
Stepan Arkadyevitch told his coachman to stop, and ran across the snow
to him.

"Well, what a shame not to have let us know! Been here long? I was at
Dussot's yesterday and saw 'Karenin' on the visitors' list, but it never
entered my head that it was you," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, sticking his
head in at the window of the carriage, "or I should have looked you up.
I am glad to see you!" he said, knocking one foot against the other to
shake the snow off. "What a shame of you not to let us know!" he
repeated.

"I had no time; I am very busy," Alexey Alexandrovitch responded dryly.

"Come to my wife, she does so want to see you."

Alexey Alexandrovitch unfolded the rug in which his frozen feet were
wrapped, and getting out of his carriage made his way over the snow to
Darya Alexandrovna.

"Why, Alexey Alexandrovitch, what are you cutting us like this for?"
said Dolly, smiling.

"I was very busy. Delighted to see you!" he said in a tone clearly
indicating that he was annoyed by it. "How are you?"

"Tell me, how is my darling Anna?"

Alexey Alexandrovitch mumbled something and would have gone on. But
Stepan Arkadyevitch stopped him.

"I tell you what we'll do tomorrow. Dolly, ask him to dinner. We'll ask
Koznishev and Pestsov, so as to entertain him with our Moscow
celebrities."

"Yes, please, do come," said Dolly; "we will expect you at five, or six
o'clock, if you like. How is my darling Anna? How long..."

"She is quite well," Alexey Alexandrovitch mumbled, frowning.
"Delighted!" and he moved away towards his carriage.

"You will come?" Dolly called after him.

Alexey Alexandrovitch said something which Dolly could not catch in the
noise of the moving carriages.

"I shall come round tomorrow!" Stepan Arkadyevitch shouted to him.

Alexey Alexandrovitch got into his carriage, and buried himself in it so
as neither to see nor be seen.

"Queer fish!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch to his wife, and glancing at his
watch, he made a motion of his hand before his face, indicating a caress
to his wife and children, and walked jauntily along the pavement.

"Stiva! Stiva!" Dolly called, reddening.

He turned round.

"I must get coats, you know, for Grisha and Tanya. Give me the money."

"Never mind; you tell them I'll pay the bill!" and he vanished, nodding
genially to an acquaintance who drove by.



Chapter 7


The next day was Sunday. Stepan Arkadyevitch went to the Grand Theater
to a rehearsal of the ballet, and gave Masha Tchibisova, a pretty
dancing-girl whom he had just taken under his protection, the coral
necklace he had promised her the evening before, and behind the scenes
in the dim daylight of the theater, managed to kiss her pretty little
face, radiant over her present. Besides the gift of the necklace he
wanted to arrange with her about meeting after the ballet. After
explaining that he could not come at the beginning of the ballet, he
promised he would come for the last act and take her to supper. From the
theater Stepan Arkadyevitch drove to Ohotny Row, selected himself the
fish and asparagus for dinner, and by twelve o'clock was at Dussot's,
where he had to see three people, luckily all staying at the same hotel:
Levin, who had recently come back from abroad and was staying there; the
new head of his department, who had just been promoted to that position,
and had come on a tour of revision to Moscow; and his brother-in-law,
Karenin, whom he must see, so as to be sure of bringing him to dinner.

Stepan Arkadyevitch liked dining, but still better he liked to give a
dinner, small, but very choice, both as regards the food and drink and
as regards the selection of guests. He particularly liked the program of
that day's dinner. There would be fresh perch, asparagus, and _la piece
de resistance_--first-rate, but quite plain, roast beef, and wines to
suit: so much for the eating and drinking. Kitty and Levin would be of
the party, and that this might not be obtrusively evident, there would
be a girl cousin too, and young Shtcherbatsky, and _la piece de
resistance_ among the guests--Sergey Koznishev and Alexey
Alexandrovitch. Sergey Ivanovitch was a Moscow man, and a philosopher;
Alexey Alexandrovitch a Petersburger, and a practical politician. He was
asking, too, the well-known eccentric enthusiast, Pestsov, a liberal, a
great talker, a musician, an historian, and the most delightfully
youthful person of fifty, who would be a sauce or garnish for Koznishev
and Karenin. He would provoke them and set them off.

The second installment for the forest had been received from the
merchant and was not yet exhausted; Dolly had been very amiable and
goodhumored of late, and the idea of the dinner pleased Stepan
Arkadyevitch from every point of view. He was in the most light-hearted
mood. There were two circumstances a little unpleasant, but these two
circumstances were drowned in the sea of good-humored gaiety which
flooded the soul of Stepan Arkadyevitch. These two circumstances were:
first, that on meeting Alexey Alexandrovitch the day before in the
street he had noticed that he was cold and reserved with him, and
putting the expression of Alexey Alexandrovitch's face and the fact that
he had not come to see them or let them know of his arrival with the
rumors he had heard about Anna and Vronsky, Stepan Arkadyevitch guessed
that something was wrong between the husband and wife.

That was one disagreeable thing. The other slightly disagreeable fact
was that the new head of his department, like all new heads, had the
reputation already of a terrible person, who got up at six o'clock in
the morning, worked like a horse, and insisted on his subordinates
working in the same way. Moreover, this new head had the further
reputation of being a bear in his manners, and was, according to all
reports, a man of a class in all respects the opposite of that to which
his predecessor had belonged, and to which Stepan Arkadyevitch had
hitherto belonged himself. On the previous day Stepan Arkadyevitch had
appeared at the office in a uniform, and the new chief had been very
affable and had talked to him as to an acquaintance. Consequently Stepan
Arkadyevitch deemed it his duty to call upon him in his non-official
dress. The thought that the new chief might not tender him a warm
reception was the other unpleasant thing. But Stepan Arkadyevitch
instinctively felt that everything would _come round_ all right.
"They're all people, all men, like us poor sinners; why be nasty and
quarrelsome?" he thought as he went into the hotel.

"Good-day, Vassily," he said, walking into the corridor with his hat
cocked on one side, and addressing a footman he knew; "why, you've let
your whiskers grow! Levin, number seven, eh? Take me up, please. And
find out whether Count Anitchkin" (this was the new head) "is
receiving."

"Yes, sir," Vassily responded, smiling. "You've not been to see us for a
long while."

"I was here yesterday, but at the other entrance. Is this number seven?"

Levin was standing with a peasant from Tver in the middle of the room,
measuring a fresh bearskin, when Stepan Arkadyevitch went in.

"What! you killed him?" cried Stepan Arkadyevitch. "Well done! A
she-bear? How are you, Arhip!"

He shook hands with the peasant and sat down on the edge of a chair,
without taking off his coat and hat.

"Come, take off your coat and stay a little," said Levin, taking his
hat.

"No, I haven't time; I've only looked in for a tiny second," answered
Stepan Arkadyevitch. He threw open his coat, but afterwards did take it
off, and sat on for a whole hour, talking to Levin about hunting and the
most intimate subjects.

"Come, tell me, please, what you did abroad? Where have you been?" said
Stepan Arkadyevitch, when the peasant had gone.

"Oh, I stayed in Germany, in Prussia, in France, and in England--not in
the capitals, but in the manufacturing towns, and saw a great deal that
was new to me. And I'm glad I went."

"Yes, I knew your idea of the solution of the labor question."

"Not a bit: in Russia there can be no labor question. In Russia the
question is that of the relation of the working people to the land;
though the question exists there too--but there it's a matter of
repairing what's been ruined, while with us..."

Stepan Arkadyevitch listened attentively to Levin.

"Yes, yes!" he said, "it's very possible you're right. But I'm glad
you're in good spirits, and are hunting bears, and working, and
interested. Shtcherbatsky told me another story--he met you--that you
were in such a depressed state, talking of nothing but death...."

"Well, what of it? I've not given up thinking of death," said Levin.
"It's true that it's high time I was dead; and that all this is
nonsense. It's the truth I'm telling you. I do value my idea and my work
awfully; but in reality only consider this: all this world of ours is
nothing but a speck of mildew, which has grown up on a tiny planet. And
for us to suppose we can have something great--ideas, work--it's all
dust and ashes."

"But all that's as old as the hills, my boy!"

"It is old; but do you know, when you grasp this fully, then somehow
everything becomes of no consequence. When you understand that you will
die tomorrow, if not today, and nothing will be left, then everything is
so unimportant! And I consider my idea very important, but it turns out
really to be as unimportant too, even if it were carried out, as doing
for that bear. So one goes on living, amusing oneself with hunting, with
work--anything so as not to think of death!"

Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled a subtle affectionate smile as he listened to
Levin.

"Well, of course! Here you've come round to my point. Do you remember
you attacked me for seeking enjoyment in life? Don't be so severe, O
moralist!"

"No; all the same, what's fine in life is..." Levin hesitated--"oh, I
don't know. All I know is that we shall soon be dead."

"Why so soon?"

"And do you know, there's less charm in life, when one thinks of death,
but there's more peace."

"On the contrary, the finish is always the best. But I must be going,"
said Stepan Arkadyevitch, getting up for the tenth time.

"Oh, no, stay a bit!" said Levin, keeping him. "Now, when shall we see
each other again? I'm going tomorrow."

"I'm a nice person! Why, that's just what I came for! You simply must
come to dinner with us today. Your brother's coming, and Karenin, my
brother-in-law."

"You don't mean to say he's here?" said Levin, and he wanted to inquire
about Kitty. He had heard at the beginning of the winter that she was at
Petersburg with her sister, the wife of the diplomat, and he did not
know whether she had come back or not; but he changed his mind and did
not ask. "Whether she's coming or not, I don't care," he said to
himself.

"So you'll come?"

"Of course."

"At five o'clock, then, and not evening dress."

And Stepan Arkadyevitch got up and went down below to the new head of
his department. Instinct had not misled Stepan Arkadyevitch. The
terrible new head turned out to be an extremely amenable person, and
Stepan Arkadyevitch lunched with him and stayed on, so that it was four
o'clock before he got to Alexey Alexandrovitch.



Chapter 8


Alexey Alexandrovitch, on coming back from church service, had spent the
whole morning indoors. He had two pieces of business before him that
morning; first, to receive and send on a deputation from the native
tribes which was on its way to Petersburg, and now at Moscow; secondly,
to write the promised letter to the lawyer. The deputation, though it
had been summoned at Alexey Alexandrovitch's instigation, was not
without its discomforting and even dangerous aspect, and he was glad he
had found it in Moscow. The members of this deputation had not the
slightest conception of their duty and the part they were to play. They
naively believed that it was their business to lay before the commission
their needs and the actual condition of things, and to ask assistance of
the government, and utterly failed to grasp that some of their
statements and requests supported the contention of the enemy's side,
and so spoiled the whole business. Alexey Alexandrovitch was busily
engaged with them for a long while, drew up a program for them from
which they were not to depart, and on dismissing them wrote a letter to
Petersburg for the guidance of the deputation. He had his chief support
in this affair in the Countess Lidia Ivanovna. She was a specialist in
the matter of deputations, and no one knew better than she how to manage
them, and put them in the way they should go. Having completed this
task, Alexey Alexandrovitch wrote the letter to the lawyer. Without the
slightest hesitation he gave him permission to act as he might judge
best. In the letter he enclosed three of Vronsky's notes to Anna, which
were in the portfolio he had taken away.

Since Alexey Alexandrovitch had left home with the intention of not
returning to his family again, and since he had been at the lawyer's and
had spoken, though only to one man, of his intention, since especially
he had translated the matter from the world of real life to the world of
ink and paper, he had grown more and more used to his own intention, and
by now distinctly perceived the feasibility of its execution.

He was sealing the envelope to the lawyer, when he heard the loud tones
of Stepan Arkadyevitch's voice. Stepan Arkadyevitch was disputing with
Alexey Alexandrovitch's servant, and insisting on being announced.

"No matter," thought Alexey Alexandrovitch, "so much the better. I will
inform him at once of my position in regard to his sister, and explain
why it is I can't dine with him."

"Come in!" he said aloud, collecting his papers, and putting them in the
blotting-paper.

"There, you see, you're talking nonsense, and he's at home!" responded
Stepan Arkadyevitch's voice, addressing the servant, who had refused to
let him in, and taking off his coat as he went, Oblonsky walked into the
room. "Well, I'm awfully glad I've found you! So I hope..." Stepan
Arkadyevitch began cheerfully.

"I cannot come," Alexey Alexandrovitch said coldly, standing and not
asking his visitor to sit down.

Alexey Alexandrovitch had thought to pass at once into those frigid
relations in which he ought to stand with the brother of a wife against
whom he was beginning a suit for divorce. But he had not taken into
account the ocean of kindliness brimming over in the heart of Stepan
Arkadyevitch.

Stepan Arkadyevitch opened wide his clear, shining eyes.

"Why can't you? What do you mean?" he asked in perplexity, speaking in
French. "Oh, but it's a promise. And we're all counting on you."

"I want to tell you that I can't dine at your house, because the terms
of relationship which have existed between us must cease."

"How? How do you mean? What for?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch with a smile.

"Because I am beginning an action for divorce against your sister, my
wife. I ought to have..."

But, before Alexey Alexandrovitch had time to finish his sentence,
Stepan Arkadyevitch was behaving not at all as he had expected. He
groaned and sank into an armchair.

"No, Alexey Alexandrovitch! What are you saying?" cried Oblonsky, and
his suffering was apparent in his face.

"It is so."

"Excuse me, I can't, I can't believe it!"

Alexey Alexandrovitch sat down, feeling that his words had not had the
effect he anticipated, and that it would be unavoidable for him to
explain his position, and that, whatever explanations he might make, his
relations with his brother-in-law would remain unchanged.

"Yes, I am brought to the painful necessity of seeking a divorce," he
said.

"I will say one thing, Alexey Alexandrovitch. I know you for an
excellent, upright man; I know Anna--excuse me, I can't change my
opinion of her--for a good, an excellent woman; and so, excuse me, I
cannot believe it. There is some misunderstanding," said he.

"Oh, if it were merely a misunderstanding!..."

"Pardon, I understand," interposed Stepan Arkadyevitch. "But of
course.... One thing: you must not act in haste. You must not, you must
not act in haste!"

"I am not acting in haste," Alexey Alexandrovitch said coldly, "but one
cannot ask advice of anyone in such a matter. I have quite made up my
mind."

"This is awful!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "I would do one thing, Alexey
Alexandrovitch. I beseech you, do it!" he said. "No action has yet been
taken, if I understand rightly. Before you take advice, see my wife,
talk to her. She loves Anna like a sister, she loves you, and she's a
wonderful woman. For God's sake, talk to her! Do me that favor, I
beseech you!"

Alexey Alexandrovitch pondered, and Stepan Arkadyevitch looked at him
sympathetically, without interrupting his silence.

"You will go to see her?"

"I don't know. That was just why I have not been to see you. I imagine
our relations must change."

"Why so? I don't see that. Allow me to believe that apart from our
connection you have for me, at least in part, the same friendly feeling
I have always had for you ... and sincere esteem," said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, pressing his hand. "Even if your worst suppositions were
correct, I don't--and never would--take on myself to judge either side,
and I see no reason why our relations should be affected. But now, do
this, come and see my wife."

"Well, we look at the matter differently," said Alexey Alexandrovitch
coldly. "However, we won't discuss it."

"No; why shouldn't you come today to dine, anyway? My wife's expecting
you. Please, do come. And, above all, talk it over with her. She's a
wonderful woman. For God's sake, on my knees, I implore you!"

"If you so much wish it, I will come," said Alexey Alexandrovitch,
sighing.

And, anxious to change the conversation, he inquired about what
interested them both--the new head of Stepan Arkadyevitch's department,
a man not yet old, who had suddenly been promoted to so high a position.

Alexey Alexandrovitch had previously felt no liking for Count Anitchkin,
and had always differed from him in his opinions. But now, from a
feeling readily comprehensible to officials--that hatred felt by one who
has suffered a defeat in the service for one who has received a
promotion, he could not endure him.

"Well, have you seen him?" said Alexey Alexandrovitch with a malignant
smile.

"Of course; he was at our sitting yesterday. He seems to know his work
capitally, and to be very energetic."

"Yes, but what is his energy directed to?" said Alexey Alexandrovitch.
"Is he aiming at doing anything, or simply undoing what's been done?
It's the great misfortune of our government--this paper administration,
of which he's a worthy representative."

"Really, I don't know what fault one could find with him. His policy I
don't know, but one thing--he's a very nice fellow," answered Stepan
Arkadyevitch. "I've just been seeing him, and he's really a capital
fellow. We lunched together, and I taught him how to make, you know that
drink, wine and oranges. It's so cooling. And it's a wonder he didn't
know it. He liked it awfully. No, really he's a capital fellow."

Stepan Arkadyevitch glanced at his watch.

"Why, good heavens, it's four already, and I've still to go to
Dolgovushin's! So please come round to dinner. You can't imagine how you
will grieve my wife and me."

The way in which Alexey Alexandrovitch saw his brother-in-law out was
very different from the manner in which he had met him.

"I've promised, and I'll come," he answered wearily.

"Believe me, I appreciate it, and I hope you won't regret it," answered
Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling.

And, putting on his coat as he went, he patted the footman on the head,
chuckled, and went out.

"At five o'clock, and not evening dress, please," he shouted once more,
turning at the door.



Chapter 9


It was past five, and several guests had already arrived, before the
host himself got home. He went in together with Sergey Ivanovitch
Koznishev and Pestsov, who had reached the street door at the same
moment. These were the two leading representatives of the Moscow
intellectuals, as Oblonsky had called them. Both were men respected for
their character and their intelligence. They respected each other, but
were in complete and hopeless disagreement upon almost every subject,
not because they belonged to opposite parties, but precisely because
they were of the same party (their enemies refused to see any
distinction between their views); but, in that party, each had his own
special shade of opinion. And since no difference is less easily
overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions,
they never agreed in any opinion, and had long, indeed, been accustomed
to jeer without anger, each at the other's incorrigible aberrations.

They were just going in at the door, talking of the weather, when Stepan
Arkadyevitch overtook them. In the drawing room there were already
sitting Prince Alexander Dmitrievitch Shtcherbatsky, young
Shtcherbatsky, Turovtsin, Kitty, and Karenin.

Stepan Arkadyevitch saw immediately that things were not going well in
the drawing-room without him. Darya Alexandrovna, in her best gray silk
gown, obviously worried about the children, who were to have their
dinner by themselves in the nursery, and by her husband's absence, was
not equal to the task of making the party mix without him. All were
sitting like so many priests' wives on a visit (so the old prince
expressed it), obviously wondering why they were there, and pumping up
remarks simply to avoid being silent. Turovtsin--good, simple man--felt
unmistakably a fish out of water, and the smile with which his thick
lips greeted Stepan Arkadyevitch said, as plainly as words: "Well, old
boy, you have popped me down in a learned set! A drinking party now, or
the _Chateau des Fleurs_, would be more in my line!" The old prince sat
in silence, his bright little eyes watching Karenin from one side, and
Stepan Arkadyevitch saw that he had already formed a phrase to sum up
that politician of whom guests were invited to partake as though he were
a sturgeon. Kitty was looking at the door, calling up all her energies
to keep her from blushing at the entrance of Konstantin Levin. Young
Shtcherbatsky, who had not been introduced to Karenin, was trying to
look as though he were not in the least conscious of it. Karenin himself
had followed the Petersburg fashion for a dinner with ladies and was
wearing evening dress and a white tie. Stepan Arkadyevitch saw by his
face that he had come simply to keep his promise, and was performing a
disagreeable duty in being present at this gathering. He was indeed the
person chiefly responsible for the chill benumbing all the guests before
Stepan Arkadyevitch came in.

On entering the drawing room Stepan Arkadyevitch apologized, explaining
that he had been detained by that prince, who was always the scapegoat
for all his absences and unpunctualities, and in one moment he had made
all the guests acquainted with each other, and, bringing together Alexey
Alexandrovitch and Sergey Koznishev, started them on a discussion of the
Russification of Poland, into which they immediately plunged with
Pestsov. Slapping Turovtsin on the shoulder, he whispered something
comic in his ear, and set him down by his wife and the old prince. Then
he told Kitty she was looking very pretty that evening, and presented
Shtcherbatsky to Karenin. In a moment he had so kneaded together the
social dough that the drawing room became very lively, and there was a
merry buzz of voices. Konstantin Levin was the only person who had not
arrived. But this was so much the better, as going into the dining room,
Stepan Arkadyevitch found to his horror that the port and sherry had
been procured from Depre, and not from Levy, and, directing that the
coachman should be sent off as speedily as possible to Levy's, he was
going back to the drawing room.

In the dining room he was met by Konstantin Levin.

"I'm not late?"

"You can never help being late!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, taking his
arm.

"Have you a lot of people? Who's here?" asked Levin, unable to help
blushing, as he knocked the snow off his cap with his glove.

"All our own set. Kitty's here. Come along, I'll introduce you to
Karenin."

Stepan Arkadyevitch, for all his liberal views, was well aware that to
meet Karenin was sure to be felt a flattering distinction, and so
treated his best friends to this honor. But at that instant Konstantin
Levin was not in a condition to feel all the gratification of making
such an acquaintance. He had not seen Kitty since that memorable evening
when he met Vronsky, not counting, that is, the moment when he had had a
glimpse of her on the highroad. He had known at the bottom of his heart
that he would see her here today. But to keep his thoughts free, he had
tried to persuade himself that he did not know it. Now when he heard
that she was here, he was suddenly conscious of such delight, and at the
same time of such dread, that his breath failed him and he could not
utter what he wanted to say.

"What is she like, what is she like? Like what she used to be, or like
what she was in the carriage? What if Darya Alexandrovna told the truth?
Why shouldn't it be the truth?" he thought.

"Oh, please, introduce me to Karenin," he brought out with an effort,
and with a desperately determined step he walked into the drawing room
and beheld her.

She was not the same as she used to be, nor was she as she had been in
the carriage; she was quite different.

She was scared, shy, shame-faced, and still more charming from it. She
saw him the very instant he walked into the room. She had been expecting
him. She was delighted, and so confused at her own delight that there
was a moment, the moment when he went up to her sister and glanced again
at her, when she, and he, and Dolly, who saw it all, thought she would
break down and would begin to cry. She crimsoned, turned white,
crimsoned again, and grew faint, waiting with quivering lips for him to
come to her. He went up to her, bowed, and held out his hand without
speaking. Except for the slight quiver of her lips and the moisture in
her eyes that made them brighter, her smile was almost calm as she said:

"How long it is since we've seen each other!" and with desperate
determination she pressed his hand with her cold hand.

"You've not seen me, but I've seen you," said Levin, with a radiant
smile of happiness. "I saw you when you were driving from the railway
station to Ergushovo."

"When?" she asked, wondering.

"You were driving to Ergushovo," said Levin, feeling as if he would sob
with the rapture that was flooding his heart. "And how dared I associate
a thought of anything not innocent with this touching creature? And,
yes, I do believe it's true what Darya Alexandrovna told me," he
thought.

Stepan Arkadyevitch took him by the arm and led him away to Karenin.

"Let me introduce you." He mentioned their names.

"Very glad to meet you again," said Alexey Alexandrovitch coldly,
shaking hands with Levin.

"You are acquainted?" Stepan Arkadyevitch asked in surprise.

"We spent three hours together in the train," said Levin smiling, "but
got out, just as in a masquerade, quite mystified--at least I was."

"Nonsense! Come along, please," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, pointing in
the direction of the dining room.

The men went into the dining-room and went up to a table, laid with six
sorts of spirits and as many kinds of cheese, some with little silver
spades and some without, caviar, herrings, preserves of various kinds,
and plates with slices of French bread.

The men stood round the strong-smelling spirits and salt delicacies, and
the discussion of the Russification of Poland between Koznishev,
Karenin, and Pestsov died down in anticipation of dinner.

Sergey Ivanovitch was unequaled in his skill in winding up the most
heated and serious argument by some unexpected pinch of Attic salt that
changed the disposition of his opponent. He did this now.

Alexey Alexandrovitch had been maintaining that the Russification of
Poland could only be accomplished as a result of larger measures which
ought to be introduced by the Russian government.

Pestsov insisted that one country can only absorb another when it is the
more densely populated.

Koznishev admitted both points, but with limitations. As they were going
out of the drawing room to conclude the argument, Koznishev said,
smiling:

"So, then, for the Russification of our foreign populations there is but
one method--to bring up as many children as one can. My brother and I
are terribly in fault, I see. You married men, especially you, Stepan
Arkadyevitch, are the real patriots: what number have you reached?" he
said, smiling genially at their host and holding out a tiny wine glass
to him.

Everyone laughed, and Stepan Arkadyevitch with particular good humor.

"Oh, yes, that's the best method!" he said, munching cheese and filling
the wine-glass with a special sort of spirit. The conversation dropped
at the jest.

"This cheese is not bad. Shall I give you some?" said the master of the
house. "Why, have you been going in for gymnastics again?" he asked
Levin, pinching his muscle with his left hand. Levin smiled, bent his
arm, and under Stepan Arkadyevitch's fingers the muscles swelled up like
a sound cheese, hard as a knob of iron, through the fine cloth of the
coat.

"What biceps! A perfect Samson!"

"I imagine great strength is needed for hunting bears," observed Alexey
Alexandrovitch, who had the mistiest notions about the chase. He cut off
and spread with cheese a wafer of bread fine as a spider-web.

Levin smiled.

"Not at all. Quite the contrary; a child can kill a bear," he said, with
a slight bow moving aside for the ladies, who were approaching the
table.

"You have killed a bear, I've been told!" said Kitty, trying assiduously
to catch with her fork a perverse mushroom that would slip away, and
setting the lace quivering over her white arm. "Are there bears on your
place?" she added, turning her charming little head to him and smiling.

There was apparently nothing extraordinary in what she said, but what
unutterable meaning there was for him in every sound, in every turn of
her lips, her eyes, her hand as she said it! There was entreaty for
forgiveness, and trust in him, and tenderness--soft, timid
tenderness--and promise and hope and love for him, which he could not
but believe in and which choked him with happiness.

"No, we've been hunting in the Tver province. It was coming back from
there that I met your _beaufrere_ in the train, or your _beaufrere's_
brother-in-law," he said with a smile. "It was an amusing meeting."

And he began telling with droll good-humor how, after not sleeping all
night, he had, wearing an old fur-lined, full-skirted coat, got into
Alexey Alexandrovitch's compartment.

"The conductor, forgetting the proverb, would have chucked me out on
account of my attire; but thereupon I began expressing my feelings in
elevated language, and ... you, too," he said, addressing Karenin and
forgetting his name, "at first would have ejected me on the ground of
the old coat, but afterwards you took my part, for which I am extremely
grateful."

"The rights of passengers generally to choose their seats are too
ill-defined," said Alexey Alexandrovitch, rubbing the tips of his
fingers on his handkerchief.

"I saw you were in uncertainty about me," said Levin, smiling
good-naturedly, "but I made haste to plunge into intellectual
conversation to smooth over the defects of my attire." Sergey
Ivanovitch, while he kept up a conversation with their hostess, had one
ear for his brother, and he glanced askance at him. "What is the matter
with him today? Why such a conquering hero?" he thought. He did not know
that Levin was feeling as though he had grown wings. Levin knew she was
listening to his words and that she was glad to listen to him. And this
was the only thing that interested him. Not in that room only, but in
the whole world, there existed for him only himself, with enormously
increased importance and dignity in his own eyes, and she. He felt
himself on a pinnacle that made him giddy, and far away down below were
all those nice excellent Karenins, Oblonskys, and all the world.

Quite without attracting notice, without glancing at them, as though
there were no other places left, Stepan Arkadyevitch put Levin and Kitty
side by side.

"Oh, you may as well sit there," he said to Levin.

The dinner was as choice as the china, in which Stepan Arkadyevitch was
a connoisseur. The _soupe Marie-Louise_ was a splendid success; the tiny
pies eaten with it melted in the mouth and were irreproachable. The two
footmen and Matvey, in white cravats, did their duty with the dishes and
wines unobtrusively, quietly, and swiftly. On the material side the
dinner was a success; it was no less so on the immaterial. The
conversation, at times general and at times between individuals, never
paused, and towards the end the company was so lively that the men rose
from the table, without stopping speaking, and even Alexey
Alexandrovitch thawed.



Chapter 10


Pestsov liked thrashing an argument out to the end, and was not
satisfied with Sergey Ivanovitch's words, especially as he felt the
injustice of his view.

"I did not mean," he said over the soup, addressing Alexey
Alexandrovitch, "mere density of population alone, but in conjunction
with fundamental ideas, and not by means of principles."

"It seems to me," Alexey Alexandrovitch said languidly, and with no
haste, "that that's the same thing. In my opinion, influence over
another people is only possible to the people which has the higher
development, which..."

"But that's just the question," Pestsov broke in in his bass.

He was always in a hurry to speak, and seemed always to put his whole
soul into what he was saying. "In what are we to make higher development
consist? The English, the French, the Germans, which is at the highest
stage of development? Which of them will nationalize the other? We see
the Rhine provinces have been turned French, but the Germans are not at
a lower stage!" he shouted. "There is another law at work there."

"I fancy that the greater influence is always on the side of true
civilization," said Alexey Alexandrovitch, slightly lifting his
eyebrows.

"But what are we to lay down as the outward signs of true civilization?"
said Pestsov.

"I imagine such signs are generally very well known," said Alexey
Alexandrovitch.

"But are they fully known?" Sergey Ivanovitch put in with a subtle
smile. "It is the accepted view now that real culture must be purely
classical; but we see most intense disputes on each side of the
question, and there is no denying that the opposite camp has strong
points in its favor."

"You are for classics, Sergey Ivanovitch. Will you take red wine?" said
Stepan Arkadyevitch.

"I am not expressing my own opinion of either form of culture," Sergey
Ivanovitch said, holding out his glass with a smile of condescension, as
to a child. "I only say that both sides have strong arguments to support
them," he went on, addressing Alexey Alexandrovitch. "My sympathies are
classical from education, but in this discussion I am personally unable
to arrive at a conclusion. I see no distinct grounds for classical
studies being given a preeminence over scientific studies."

"The natural sciences have just as great an educational value," put in
Pestsov. "Take astronomy, take botany, or zoology with its system of
general principles."

"I cannot quite agree with that," responded Alexey Alexandrovitch "It
seems to me that one must admit that the very process of studying the
forms of language has a peculiarly favorable influence on intellectual
development. Moreover, it cannot be denied that the influence of the
classical authors is in the highest degree moral, while, unfortunately,
with the study of the natural sciences are associated the false and
noxious doctrines which are the curse of our day."

Sergey Ivanovitch would have said something, but Pestsov interrupted him
in his rich bass. He began warmly contesting the justice of this view.
Sergey Ivanovitch waited serenely to speak, obviously with a convincing
reply ready.

"But," said Sergey Ivanovitch, smiling subtly, and addressing Karenin,
"One must allow that to weigh all the advantages and disadvantages of
classical and scientific studies is a difficult task, and the question
which form of education was to be preferred would not have been so
quickly and conclusively decided if there had not been in favor of
classical education, as you expressed it just now, its moral--disons le
mot--anti-nihilist influence."

"Undoubtedly."

"If it had not been for the distinctive property of anti-nihilistic
influence on the side of classical studies, we should have considered
the subject more, have weighed the arguments on both sides," said Sergey
Ivanovitch with a subtle smile, "we should have given elbow-room to both
tendencies. But now we know that these little pills of classical
learning possess the medicinal property of anti-nihilism, and we boldly
prescribe them to our patients.... But what if they had no such
medicinal property?" he wound up humorously.

At Sergey Ivanovitch's little pills, everyone laughed; Turovtsin in
especial roared loudly and jovially, glad at last to have found
something to laugh at, all he ever looked for in listening to
conversation.

Stepan Arkadyevitch had not made a mistake in inviting Pestsov. With
Pestsov intellectual conversation never flagged for an instant. Directly
Sergey Ivanovitch had concluded the conversation with his jest, Pestsov
promptly started a new one.

"I can't agree even," said he, "that the government had that aim. The
government obviously is guided by abstract considerations, and remains
indifferent to the influence its measures may exercise. The education of
women, for instance, would naturally be regarded as likely to be
harmful, but the government opens schools and universities for women."

And the conversation at once passed to the new subject of the education
of women.

Alexey Alexandrovitch expressed the idea that the education of women is
apt to be confounded with the emancipation of women, and that it is only
so that it can be considered dangerous.

"I consider, on the contrary, that the two questions are inseparably
connected together," said Pestsov; "it is a vicious circle. Woman is
deprived of rights from lack of education, and the lack of education
results from the absence of rights. We must not forget that the
subjection of women is so complete, and dates from such ages back that
we are often unwilling to recognize the gulf that separates them from
us," said he.

"You said rights," said Sergey Ivanovitch, waiting till Pestsov had
finished, "meaning the right of sitting on juries, of voting, of
presiding at official meetings, the right of entering the civil service,
of sitting in parliament..."

"Undoubtedly."

"But if women, as a rare exception, can occupy such positions, it seems
to me you are wrong in using the expression 'rights.' It would be more
correct to say duties. Every man will agree that in doing the duty of a
juryman, a witness, a telegraph clerk, we feel we are performing duties.
And therefore it would be correct to say that women are seeking duties,
and quite legitimately. And one can but sympathize with this desire to
assist in the general labor of man."

"Quite so," Alexey Alexandrovitch assented. "The question, I imagine, is
simply whether they are fitted for such duties."

"They will most likely be perfectly fitted," said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
"when education has become general among them. We see this..."

"How about the proverb?" said the prince, who had a long while been
intent on the conversation, his little comical eyes twinkling. "I can
say it before my daughter: her hair is long, because her wit is..."

"Just what they thought of the negroes before their emancipation!" said
Pestsov angrily.

"What seems strange to me is that women should seek fresh duties," said
Sergey Ivanovitch, "while we see, unhappily, that men usually try to
avoid them."

"Duties are bound up with rights--power, money, honor; those are what
women are seeking," said Pestsov.

"Just as though I should seek the right to be a wet-nurse and feel
injured because women are paid for the work, while no one will take me,"
said the old prince.

Turovtsin exploded in a loud roar of laughter and Sergey Ivanovitch
regretted that he had not made this comparison. Even Alexey
Alexandrovitch smiled.

"Yes, but a man can't nurse a baby," said Pestsov, "while a woman..."

"No, there was an Englishman who did suckle his baby on board ship,"
said the old prince, feeling this freedom in conversation permissible
before his own daughters.

"There are as many such Englishmen as there would be women officials,"
said Sergey Ivanovitch.

"Yes, but what is a girl to do who has no family?" put in Stepan
Arkadyevitch, thinking of Masha Tchibisova, whom he had had in his mind
all along, in sympathizing with Pestsov and supporting him.

"If the story of such a girl were thoroughly sifted, you would find she
had abandoned a family--her own or a sister's, where she might have
found a woman's duties," Darya Alexandrovna broke in unexpectedly in a
tone of exasperation, probably suspecting what sort of girl Stepan
Arkadyevitch was thinking of.

"But we take our stand on principle as the ideal," replied Pestsov in
his mellow bass. "Woman desires to have rights, to be independent,
educated. She is oppressed, humiliated by the consciousness of her
disabilities."

"And I'm oppressed and humiliated that they won't engage me at the
Foundling," the old prince said again, to the huge delight of Turovtsin,
who in his mirth dropped his asparagus with the thick end in the sauce.



Chapter 11


Everyone took part in the conversation except Kitty and Levin. At first,
when they were talking of the influence that one people has on another,
there rose to Levin's mind what he had to say on the subject. But these
ideas, once of such importance in his eyes, seemed to come into his
brain as in a dream, and had now not the slightest interest for him. It
even struck him as strange that they should be so eager to talk of what
was of no use to anyone. Kitty, too, should, one would have supposed,
have been interested in what they were saying of the rights and
education of women. How often she had mused on the subject, thinking of
her friend abroad, Varenka, of her painful state of dependence, how
often she had wondered about herself what would become of her if she did
not marry, and how often she had argued with her sister about it! But it
did not interest her at all. She and Levin had a conversation of their
own, yet not a conversation, but some sort of mysterious communication,
which brought them every moment nearer, and stirred in both a sense of
glad terror before the unknown into which they were entering.

At first Levin, in answer to Kitty's question how he could have seen her
last year in the carriage, told her how he had been coming home from the
mowing along the highroad and had met her.

"It was very, very early in the morning. You were probably only just
awake. Your mother was asleep in the corner. It was an exquisite
morning. I was walking along wondering who it could be in a
four-in-hand? It was a splendid set of four horses with bells, and in a
second you flashed by, and I saw you at the window--you were sitting
like this, holding the strings of your cap in both hands, and thinking
awfully deeply about something," he said, smiling. "How I should like to
know what you were thinking about then! Something important?"

"Wasn't I dreadfully untidy?" she wondered, but seeing the smile of
ecstasy these reminiscences called up, she felt that the impression she
had made had been very good. She blushed and laughed with delight;
"Really I don't remember."

"How nicely Turovtsin laughs!" said Levin, admiring his moist eyes and
shaking chest.

"Have you known him long?" asked Kitty.

"Oh, everyone knows him!"

"And I see you think he's a horrid man?"

"Not horrid, but nothing in him."

"Oh, you're wrong! And you must give up thinking so directly!" said
Kitty. "I used to have a very poor opinion of him too, but he, he's an
awfully nice and wonderfully good-hearted man. He has a heart of gold."

"How could you find out what sort of heart he has?"

"We are great friends. I know him very well. Last winter, soon after ...
you came to see us," she said, with a guilty and at the same time
confiding smile, "all Dolly's children had scarlet fever, and he
happened to come and see her. And only fancy," she said in a whisper,
"he felt so sorry for her that he stayed and began to help her look
after the children. Yes, and for three weeks he stopped with them, and
looked after the children like a nurse."

"I am telling Konstantin Dmitrievitch about Turovtsin in the scarlet
fever," she said, bending over to her sister.

"Yes, it was wonderful, noble!" said Dolly, glancing towards Turovtsin,
who had become aware they were talking of him, and smiling gently to
him. Levin glanced once more at Turovtsin, and wondered how it was he
had not realized all this man's goodness before.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, and I'll never think ill of people again!" he
said gaily, genuinely expressing what he felt at the moment.



Chapter 12


Connected with the conversation that had sprung up on the rights of
women there were certain questions as to the inequality of rights in
marriage improper to discuss before the ladies. Pestsov had several
times during dinner touched upon these questions, but Sergey Ivanovitch
and Stepan Arkadyevitch carefully drew him off them.

When they rose from the table and the ladies had gone out, Pestsov did
not follow them, but addressing Alexey Alexandrovitch, began to expound
the chief ground of inequality. The inequality in marriage, in his
opinion, lay in the fact that the infidelity of the wife and the
infidelity of the husband are punished unequally, both by the law and by
public opinion. Stepan Arkadyevitch went hurriedly up to Alexey
Alexandrovitch and offered him a cigar.

"No, I don't smoke," Alexey Alexandrovitch answered calmly, and as
though purposely wishing to show that he was not afraid of the subject,
he turned to Pestsov with a chilly smile.

"I imagine that such a view has a foundation in the very nature of
things," he said, and would have gone on to the drawing room. But at
this point Turovtsin broke suddenly and unexpectedly into the
conversation, addressing Alexey Alexandrovitch.

"You heard, perhaps, about Pryatchnikov?" said Turovtsin, warmed up by
the champagne he had drunk, and long waiting for an opportunity to break
the silence that had weighed on him. "Vasya Pryatchnikov," he said, with
a good-natured smile on his damp, red lips, addressing himself
principally to the most important guest, Alexey Alexandrovitch, "they
told me today he fought a duel with Kvitsky at Tver, and has killed
him."

Just as it always seems that one bruises oneself on a sore place, so
Stepan Arkadyevitch felt now that the conversation would by ill luck
fall every moment on Alexey Alexandrovitch's sore spot. He would again
have got his brother-in-law away, but Alexey Alexandrovitch himself
inquired, with curiosity:

"What did Pryatchnikov fight about?"

"His wife. Acted like a man, he did! Called him out and shot him!"

"Ah!" said Alexey Alexandrovitch indifferently, and lifting his
eyebrows, he went into the drawing room.

"How glad I am you have come," Dolly said with a frightened smile,
meeting him in the outer drawing room. "I must talk to you. Let's sit
here."

Alexey Alexandrovitch, with the same expression of indifference, given
him by his lifted eyebrows, sat down beside Darya Alexandrovna, and
smiled affectedly.

"It's fortunate," said he, "especially as I was meaning to ask you to
excuse me, and to be taking leave. I have to start tomorrow."

Darya Alexandrovna was firmly convinced of Anna's innocence, and she
felt herself growing pale and her lips quivering with anger at this
frigid, unfeeling man, who was so calmly intending to ruin her innocent
friend.

"Alexey Alexandrovitch," she said, with desperate resolution looking him
in the face, "I asked you about Anna, you made me no answer. How is
she?"

"She is, I believe, quite well, Darya Alexandrovna," replied Alexey
Alexandrovitch, not looking at her.

"Alexey Alexandrovitch, forgive me, I have no right ... but I love Anna
as a sister, and esteem her; I beg, I beseech you to tell me what is
wrong between you? what fault do you find with her?"

Alexey Alexandrovitch frowned, and almost closing his eyes, dropped his
head.

"I presume that your husband has told you the grounds on which I
consider it necessary to change my attitude to Anna Arkadyevna?" he
said, not looking her in the face, but eyeing with displeasure
Shtcherbatsky, who was walking across the drawing room.

"I don't believe it, I don't believe it, I can't believe it!" Dolly
said, clasping her bony hands before her with a vigorous gesture. She
rose quickly, and laid her hand on Alexey Alexandrovitch's sleeve. "We
shall be disturbed here. Come this way, please."

Dolly's agitation had an effect on Alexey Alexandrovitch. He got up and
submissively followed her to the schoolroom. They sat down to a table
covered with an oilcloth cut in slits by penknives.

"I don't, I don't believe it!" Dolly said, trying to catch his glance
that avoided her.

"One cannot disbelieve facts, Darya Alexandrovna," said he, with an
emphasis on the word "facts."

"But what has she done?" said Darya Alexandrovna. "What precisely has
she done?"

"She has forsaken her duty, and deceived her husband. That's what she
has done," said he.

"No, no, it can't be! No, for God's sake, you are mistaken," said Dolly,
putting her hands to her temples and closing her eyes.

Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled coldly, with his lips alone, meaning to
signify to her and to himself the firmness of his conviction; but this
warm defense, though it could not shake him, reopened his wound. He
began to speak with greater heat.

"It is extremely difficult to be mistaken when a wife herself informs
her husband of the fact--informs him that eight years of her life, and a
son, all that's a mistake, and that she wants to begin life again," he
said angrily, with a snort.

"Anna and sin--I cannot connect them, I cannot believe it!"

"Darya Alexandrovna," he said, now looking straight into Dolly's kindly,
troubled face, and feeling that his tongue was being loosened in spite
of himself, "I would give a great deal for doubt to be still possible.
When I doubted, I was miserable, but it was better than now. When I
doubted, I had hope; but now there is no hope, and still I doubt of
everything. I am in such doubt of everything that I even hate my son,
and sometimes do not believe he is my son. I am very unhappy."

He had no need to say that. Darya Alexandrovna had seen that as soon as
he glanced into her face; and she felt sorry for him, and her faith in
the innocence of her friend began to totter.

"Oh, this is awful, awful! But can it be true that you are resolved on a
divorce?"

"I am resolved on extreme measures. There is nothing else for me to do."

"Nothing else to do, nothing else to do..." she replied, with tears in
her eyes. "Oh no, don't say nothing else to do!" she said.

"What is horrible in a trouble of this kind is that one cannot, as in
any other--in loss, in death--bear one's trouble in peace, but that one
must act," said he, as though guessing her thought. "One must get out of
the humiliating position in which one is placed; one can't live _a
trois_."

"I understand, I quite understand that," said Dolly, and her head sank.
She was silent for a little, thinking of herself, of her own grief in
her family, and all at once, with an impulsive movement, she raised her
head and clasped her hands with an imploring gesture. "But wait a
little! You are a Christian. Think of her! What will become of her, if
you cast her off?"

"I have thought, Darya Alexandrovna, I have thought a great deal," said
Alexey Alexandrovitch. His face turned red in patches, and his dim eyes
looked straight before him. Darya Alexandrovna at that moment pitied him
with all her heart. "That was what I did indeed when she herself made
known to me my humiliation; I left everything as of old. I gave her a
chance to reform, I tried to save her. And with what result? She would
not regard the slightest request--that she should observe decorum," he
said, getting heated. "One may save anyone who does not want to be
ruined; but if the whole nature is so corrupt, so depraved, that ruin
itself seems to be her salvation, what's to be done?"

"Anything, only not divorce!" answered Darya Alexandrovna

"But what is anything?"

"No, it is awful! She will be no one's wife, she will be lost!"

"What can I do?" said Alexey Alexandrovitch, raising his shoulders and
his eyebrows. The recollection of his wife's last act had so incensed
him that he had become frigid, as at the beginning of the conversation.
"I am very grateful for your sympathy, but I must be going," he said,
getting up.

"No, wait a minute. You must not ruin her. Wait a little; I will tell
you about myself. I was married, and my husband deceived me; in anger
and jealousy, I would have thrown up everything, I would myself.... But
I came to myself again; and who did it? Anna saved me. And here I am
living on. The children are growing up, my husband has come back to his
family, and feels his fault, is growing purer, better, and I live on....
I have forgiven it, and you ought to forgive!"

Alexey Alexandrovitch heard her, but her words had no effect on him now.
All the hatred of that day when he had resolved on a divorce had sprung
up again in his soul. He shook himself, and said in a shrill, loud
voice:--

"Forgive I cannot, and do not wish to, and I regard it as wrong. I have
done everything for this woman, and she has trodden it all in the mud to
which she is akin. I am not a spiteful man, I have never hated anyone,
but I hate her with my whole soul, and I cannot even forgive her,
because I hate her too much for all the wrong she has done me!" he said,
with tones of hatred in his voice.

"Love those that hate you...." Darya Alexandrovna whispered timorously.

Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled contemptuously. That he knew long ago, but
it could not be applied to his case.

"Love those that hate you, but to love those one hates is impossible.
Forgive me for having troubled you. Everyone has enough to bear in his
own grief!" And regaining his self-possession, Alexey Alexandrovitch
quietly took leave and went away.



Chapter 13


When they rose from table, Levin would have liked to follow Kitty into
the drawing room; but he was afraid she might dislike this, as too
obviously paying her attention. He remained in the little ring of men,
taking part in the general conversation, and without looking at Kitty,
he was aware of her movements, her looks, and the place where she was in
the drawing room.

He did at once, and without the smallest effort, keep the promise he had
made her--always to think well of all men, and to like everyone always.
The conversation fell on the village commune, in which Pestsov saw a
sort of special principle, called by him the choral principle. Levin did
not agree with Pestsov, nor with his brother, who had a special attitude
of his own, both admitting and not admitting the significance of the
Russian commune. But he talked to them, simply trying to reconcile and
soften their differences. He was not in the least interested in what he
said himself, and even less so in what they said; all he wanted was that
they and everyone should be happy and contented. He knew now the one
thing of importance; and that one thing was at first there, in the
drawing room, and then began moving across and came to a standstill at
the door. Without turning round he felt the eyes fixed on him, and the
smile, and he could not help turning round. She was standing in the
doorway with Shtcherbatsky, looking at him.

"I thought you were going towards the piano," said he, going up to her.
"That's something I miss in the country--music."

"No; we only came to fetch you and thank you," she said, rewarding him
with a smile that was like a gift, "for coming. What do they want to
argue for? No one ever convinces anyone, you know."

"Yes; that's true," said Levin; "it generally happens that one argues
warmly simply because one can't make out what one's opponent wants to
prove."

Levin had often noticed in discussions between the most intelligent
people that after enormous efforts, and an enormous expenditure of
logical subtleties and words, the disputants finally arrived at being
aware that what they had so long been struggling to prove to one another
had long ago, from the beginning of the argument, been known to both,
but that they liked different things, and would not define what they
liked for fear of its being attacked. He had often had the experience of
suddenly in a discussion grasping what it was his opponent liked and at
once liking it too, and immediately he found himself agreeing, and then
all arguments fell away as useless. Sometimes, too, he had experienced
the opposite, expressing at last what he liked himself, which he was
devising arguments to defend, and, chancing to express it well and
genuinely, he had found his opponent at once agreeing and ceasing to
dispute his position. He tried to say this.

She knitted her brow, trying to understand. But directly he began to
illustrate his meaning, she understood at once.

"I know: one must find out what he is arguing for, what is precious to
him, then one can..."

She had completely guessed and expressed his badly expressed idea. Levin
smiled joyfully; he was struck by this transition from the confused,
verbose discussion with Pestsov and his brother to this laconic, clear,
almost wordless communication of the most complex ideas.

Shtcherbatsky moved away from them, and Kitty, going up to a card table,
sat down, and, taking up the chalk, began drawing diverging circles over
the new green cloth.

They began again on the subject that had been started at dinner--the
liberty and occupations of women. Levin was of the opinion of Darya
Alexandrovna that a girl who did not marry should find a woman's duties
in a family. He supported this view by the fact that no family can get
on without women to help; that in every family, poor or rich, there are
and must be nurses, either relations or hired.

"No," said Kitty, blushing, but looking at him all the more boldly with
her truthful eyes; "a girl may be so circumstanced that she cannot live
in the family without humiliation, while she herself..."

At the hint he understood her.

"Oh, yes," he said. "Yes, yes, yes--you're right; you're right!"

And he saw all that Pestsov had been maintaining at dinner of the
liberty of woman, simply from getting a glimpse of the terror of an old
maid's existence and its humiliation in Kitty's heart; and loving her,
he felt that terror and humiliation, and at once gave up his arguments.

A silence followed. She was still drawing with the chalk on the table.
Her eyes were shining with a soft light. Under the influence of her mood
he felt in all his being a continually growing tension of happiness.

"Ah! I've scribbled all over the table!" she said, and, laying down the
chalk, she made a movement as though to get up.

"What! shall I be left alone--without her?" he thought with horror, and
he took the chalk. "Wait a minute," he said, sitting down to the table.
"I've long wanted to ask you one thing."

He looked straight into her caressing, though frightened eyes.

"Please, ask it."

"Here," he said; and he wrote the initial letters, _w, y, t, m, i, c, n,
b, d, t, m, n, o, t_. These letters meant, "When you told me it could
never be, did that mean never, or then?" There seemed no likelihood that
she could make out this complicated sentence; but he looked at her as
though his life depended on her understanding the words. She glanced at
him seriously, then leaned her puckered brow on her hands and began to
read. Once or twice she stole a look at him, as though asking him, "Is
it what I think?"

"I understand," she said, flushing a little.

"What is this word?" he said, pointing to the n that stood for _never_.

"It means _never_," she said; "but that's not true!"

He quickly rubbed out what he had written, gave her the chalk, and stood
up. She wrote, _t, i, c, n, a, d_.

Dolly was completely comforted in the depression caused by her
conversation with Alexey Alexandrovitch when she caught sight of the two
figures: Kitty with the chalk in her hand, with a shy and happy smile
looking upwards at Levin, and his handsome figure bending over the table
with glowing eyes fastened one minute on the table and the next on her.
He was suddenly radiant: he had understood. It meant, "Then I could not
answer differently."

He glanced at her questioningly, timidly.

"Only then?"

"Yes," her smile answered.

"And n... and now?" he asked.

"Well, read this. I'll tell you what I should like--should like so
much!" she wrote the initial letters, i, y, c, f, a, f, w, h. This
meant, "If you could forget and forgive what happened."

He snatched the chalk with nervous, trembling fingers, and breaking it,
wrote the initial letters of the following phrase, "I have nothing to
forget and to forgive; I have never ceased to love you."

She glanced at him with a smile that did not waver.

"I understand," she said in a whisper.

He sat down and wrote a long phrase. She understood it all, and without
asking him, "Is it this?" took the chalk and at once answered.

For a long while he could not understand what she had written, and often
looked into her eyes. He was stupefied with happiness. He could not
supply the word she had meant; but in her charming eyes, beaming with
happiness, he saw all he needed to know. And he wrote three letters. But
he had hardly finished writing when she read them over her arm, and
herself finished and wrote the answer, "Yes."

"You're playing _secretaire_?" said the old prince. "But we must really
be getting along if you want to be in time at the theater."

Levin got up and escorted Kitty to the door.

In their conversation everything had been said; it had been said that
she loved him, and that she would tell her father and mother that he
would come tomorrow morning.



Chapter 14


When Kitty had gone and Levin was left alone, he felt such uneasiness
without her, and such an impatient longing to get as quickly, as quickly
as possible, to tomorrow morning, when he would see her again and be
plighted to her forever, that he felt afraid, as though of death, of
those fourteen hours that he had to get through without her. It was
essential for him to be with someone to talk to, so as not to be left
alone, to kill time. Stepan Arkadyevitch would have been the companion
most congenial to him, but he was going out, he said, to a _soiree_, in
reality to the ballet. Levin only had time to tell him he was happy, and
that he loved him, and would never, never forget what he had done for
him. The eyes and the smile of Stepan Arkadyevitch showed Levin that he
comprehended that feeling fittingly.

"Oh, so it's not time to die yet?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, pressing
Levin's hand with emotion.

"N-n-no!" said Levin.

Darya Alexandrovna too, as she said good-bye to him, gave him a sort of
congratulation, saying, "How glad I am you have met Kitty again! One
must value old friends." Levin did not like these words of Darya
Alexandrovna's. She could not understand how lofty and beyond her it all
was, and she ought not to have dared to allude to it. Levin said
good-bye to them, but, not to be left alone, he attached himself to his
brother.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to a meeting."

"Well, I'll come with you. May I?"

"What for? Yes, come along," said Sergey Ivanovitch, smiling. "What is
the matter with you today?"

"With me? Happiness is the matter with me!" said Levin, letting down the
window of the carriage they were driving in. "You don't mind?--it's so
stifling. It's happiness is the matter with me! Why is it you have never
married?"

Sergey Ivanovitch smiled.

"I am very glad, she seems a nice gi..." Sergey Ivanovitch was
beginning.

"Don't say it! don't say it!" shouted Levin, clutching at the collar of
his fur coat with both hands, and muffling him up in it. "She's a nice
girl" were such simple, humble words, so out of harmony with his
feeling.

Sergey Ivanovitch laughed outright a merry laugh, which was rare with
him. "Well, anyway, I may say that I'm very glad of it."

"That you may do tomorrow, tomorrow and nothing more! Nothing, nothing,
silence," said Levin, and muffling him once more in his fur coat, he
added: "I do like you so! Well, is it possible for me to be present at
the meeting?"

"Of course it is."

"What is your discussion about today?" asked Levin, never ceasing
smiling.

They arrived at the meeting. Levin heard the secretary hesitatingly read
the minutes which he obviously did not himself understand; but Levin saw
from this secretary's face what a good, nice, kind-hearted person he
was. This was evident from his confusion and embarrassment in reading
the minutes. Then the discussion began. They were disputing about the
misappropriation of certain sums and the laying of certain pipes, and
Sergey Ivanovitch was very cutting to two members, and said something at
great length with an air of triumph; and another member, scribbling
something on a bit of paper, began timidly at first, but afterwards
answered him very viciously and delightfully. And then Sviazhsky (he was
there too) said something too, very handsomely and nobly. Levin listened
to them, and saw clearly that these missing sums and these pipes were
not anything real, and that they were not at all angry, but were all the
nicest, kindest people, and everything was as happy and charming as
possible among them. They did no harm to anyone, and were all enjoying
it. What struck Levin was that he could see through them all today, and
from little, almost imperceptible signs knew the soul of each, and saw
distinctly that they were all good at heart. And Levin himself in
particular they were all extremely fond of that day. That was evident
from the way they spoke to him, from the friendly, affectionate way even
those he did not know looked at him.

"Well, did you like it?" Sergey Ivanovitch asked him.

"Very much. I never supposed it was so interesting! Capital! Splendid!"

Sviazhsky went up to Levin and invited him to come round to tea with
him. Levin was utterly at a loss to comprehend or recall what it was he
had disliked in Sviazhsky, what he had failed to find in him. He was a
clever and wonderfully good-hearted man.

"Most delighted," he said, and asked after his wife and sister-in-law.
And from a queer association of ideas, because in his imagination the
idea of Sviazhsky's sister-in-law was connected with marriage, it
occurred to him that there was no one to whom he could more suitably
speak of his happiness, and he was very glad to go and see them.

Sviazhsky questioned him about his improvements on his estate,
presupposing, as he always did, that there was no possibility of doing
anything not done already in Europe, and now this did not in the least
annoy Levin. On the contrary, he felt that Sviazhsky was right, that the
whole business was of little value, and he saw the wonderful softness
and consideration with which Sviazhsky avoided fully expressing his
correct view. The ladies of the Sviazhsky household were particularly
delightful. It seemed to Levin that they knew all about it already and
sympathized with him, saying nothing merely from delicacy. He stayed
with them one hour, two, three, talking of all sorts of subjects but the
one thing that filled his heart, and did not observe that he was boring
them dreadfully, and that it was long past their bedtime.

Sviazhsky went with him into the hall, yawning and wondering at the
strange humor his friend was in. It was past one o'clock. Levin went
back to his hotel, and was dismayed at the thought that all alone now
with his impatience he had ten hours still left to get through. The
servant, whose turn it was to be up all night, lighted his candles, and
would have gone away, but Levin stopped him. This servant, Yegor, whom
Levin had noticed before, struck him as a very intelligent, excellent,
and, above all, good-hearted man.

"Well, Yegor, it's hard work not sleeping, isn't it?"

"One's got to put up with it! It's part of our work, you see. In a
gentleman's house it's easier; but then here one makes more."

It appeared that Yegor had a family, three boys and a daughter, a
sempstress, whom he wanted to marry to a cashier in a saddler's shop.

Levin, on hearing this, informed Yegor that, in his opinion, in marriage
the great thing was love, and that with love one would always be happy,
for happiness rests only on oneself. Yegor listened attentively, and
obviously quite took in Levin's idea, but by way of assent to it he
enunciated, greatly to Levin's surprise, the observation that when he
had lived with good masters he had always been satisfied with his
masters, and now was perfectly satisfied with his employer, though he
was a Frenchman.

"Wonderfully good-hearted fellow!" thought Levin.

"Well, but you yourself, Yegor, when you got married, did you love your
wife?"

"Ay! and why not?" responded Yegor.

And Levin saw that Yegor too was in an excited state and intending to
express all his most heartfelt emotions.

"My life, too, has been a wonderful one. From a child up..." he was
beginning with flashing eyes, apparently catching Levin's enthusiasm,
just as people catch yawning.

But at that moment a ring was heard. Yegor departed, and Levin was left
alone. He had eaten scarcely anything at dinner, had refused tea and
supper at Sviazhsky's, but he was incapable of thinking of supper. He
had not slept the previous night, but was incapable of thinking of sleep
either. His room was cold, but he was oppressed by heat. He opened both
the movable panes in his window and sat down to the table opposite the
open panes. Over the snow-covered roofs could be seen a decorated cross
with chains, and above it the rising triangle of Charles's Wain with the
yellowish light of Capella. He gazed at the cross, then at the stars,
drank in the fresh freezing air that flowed evenly into the room, and
followed as though in a dream the images and memories that rose in his
imagination. At four o'clock he heard steps in the passage and peeped
out at the door. It was the gambler Myaskin, whom he knew, coming from
the club. He walked gloomily, frowning and coughing. "Poor, unlucky
fellow!" thought Levin, and tears came into his eyes from love and pity
for this man. He would have talked with him, and tried to comfort him,
but remembering that he had nothing but his shirt on, he changed his
mind and sat down again at the open pane to bathe in the cold air and
gaze at the exquisite lines of the cross, silent, but full of meaning
for him, and the mounting lurid yellow star. At seven o'clock there was
a noise of people polishing the floors, and bells ringing in some
servants' department, and Levin felt that he was beginning to get
frozen. He closed the pane, washed, dressed, and went out into the
street.



Chapter 15


The streets were still empty. Levin went to the house of the
Shtcherbatskys. The visitors' doors were closed and everything was
asleep. He walked back, went into his room again, and asked for coffee.
The day servant, not Yegor this time, brought it to him. Levin would
have entered into conversation with him, but a bell rang for the
servant, and he went out. Levin tried to drink coffee and put some roll
in his mouth, but his mouth was quite at a loss what to do with the
roll. Levin, rejecting the roll, put on his coat and went out again for
a walk. It was nine o'clock when he reached the Shtcherbatskys' steps
the second time. In the house they were only just up, and the cook came
out to go marketing. He had to get through at least two hours more.

All that night and morning Levin lived perfectly unconsciously, and felt
perfectly lifted out of the conditions of material life. He had eaten
nothing for a whole day, he had not slept for two nights, had spent
several hours undressed in the frozen air, and felt not simply fresher
and stronger than ever, but felt utterly independent of his body; he
moved without muscular effort, and felt as if he could do anything. He
was convinced he could fly upwards or lift the corner of the house, if
need be. He spent the remainder of the time in the street, incessantly
looking at his watch and gazing about him.

And what he saw then, he never saw again after. The children especially
going to school, the bluish doves flying down from the roofs to the
pavement, and the little loaves covered with flour, thrust out by an
unseen hand, touched him. Those loaves, those doves, and those two boys
were not earthly creatures. It all happened at the same time: a boy ran
towards a dove and glanced smiling at Levin; the dove, with a whir of
her wings, darted away, flashing in the sun, amid grains of snow that
quivered in the air, while from a little window there came a smell of
fresh-baked bread, and the loaves were put out. All of this together was
so extraordinarily nice that Levin laughed and cried with delight. Going
a long way round by Gazetny Place and Kislovka, he went back again to
the hotel, and putting his watch before him, he sat down to wait for
twelve o'clock. In the next room they were talking about some sort of
machines, and swindling, and coughing their morning coughs. They did not
realize that the hand was near twelve. The hand reached it. Levin went
out onto the steps. The sledge-drivers clearly knew all about it. They
crowded round Levin with happy faces, quarreling among themselves, and
offering their services. Trying not to offend the other sledge drivers,
and promising to drive with them too, Levin took one and told him to
drive to the Shtcherbatskys'. The sledge-driver was splendid in a white
shirt-collar sticking out over his overcoat and into his strong,
full-blooded red neck. The sledge was high and comfortable, and
altogether such a one as Levin never drove in after, and the horse was a
good one, and tried to gallop but didn't seem to move. The driver knew
the Shtcherbatskys' house, and drew up at the entrance with a curve of
his arm and a "Wo!" especially indicative of respect for his fare. The
Shtcherbatskys' hall-porter certainly knew all about it. This was
evident from the smile in his eyes and the way he said:

"Well, it's a long while since you've been to see us, Konstantin
Demitrievitch!"

Not only he knew all about it, but he was unmistakably delighted and
making efforts to conceal his joy. Looking into his kindly old eyes,
Levin realized even something new in his happiness.

"Are they up?"

"Pray walk in! Leave it here," said he, smiling, as Levin would have
come back to take his hat. That meant something.

"To whom shall I announce your honor?" asked the footman.

The footman, though a young man, and one of the new school of footmen, a
dandy, was a very kind-hearted, good fellow, and he too knew all about
it.

"The princess ... the prince ... the young princess..." said Levin.

The first person he saw was Mademoiselle Linon. She walked across the
room, and her ringlets and her face were beaming. He had only just
spoken to her, when suddenly he heard the rustle of a skirt at the door,
and Mademoiselle Linon vanished from Levin's eyes, and a joyful terror
came over him at the nearness of his happiness. Mademoiselle Linon was
in great haste, and leaving him, went out at the other door. Directly
she had gone out, swift, swift light steps sounded on the parquet, and
his bliss, his life, himself--what was best in himself, what he had so
long sought and longed for--was quickly, so quickly approaching him. She
did not walk, but seemed, by some unseen force, to float to him. He saw
nothing but her clear, truthful eyes, frightened by the same bliss of
love that flooded his heart. Those eyes were shining nearer and nearer,
blinding him with their light of love. She stopped still close to him,
touching him. Her hands rose and dropped onto his shoulders.

She had done all she could--she had run up to him and given herself up
entirely, shy and happy. He put his arms round her and pressed his lips
to her mouth that sought his kiss.

She too had not slept all night, and had been expecting him all the
morning.

Her mother and father had consented without demur, and were happy in her
happiness. She had been waiting for him. She wanted to be the first to
tell him her happiness and his. She had got ready to see him alone, and
had been delighted at the idea, and had been shy and ashamed, and did
not know herself what she was doing. She had heard his steps and voice,
and had waited at the door for Mademoiselle Linon to go. Mademoiselle
Linon had gone away. Without thinking, without asking herself how and
what, she had gone up to him, and did as she was doing.

"Let us go to mamma!" she said, taking him by the hand. For a long while
he could say nothing, not so much because he was afraid of desecrating
the loftiness of his emotion by a word, as that every time he tried to
say something, instead of words he felt that tears of happiness were
welling up. He took her hand and kissed it.

"Can it be true?" he said at last in a choked voice. "I can't believe
you love me, dear!"

She smiled at that "dear," and at the timidity with which he glanced at
her.

"Yes!" she said significantly, deliberately. "I am so happy!"

Not letting go his hands, she went into the drawing room. The princess,
seeing them, breathed quickly, and immediately began to cry and then
immediately began to laugh, and with a vigorous step Levin had not
expected, ran up to him, and hugging his head, kissed him, wetting his
cheeks with her tears.

"So it is all settled! I am glad. Love her. I am glad.... Kitty!"

"You've not been long settling things," said the old prince, trying to
seem unmoved; but Levin noticed that his eyes were wet when he turned to
him.

"I've long, always wished for this!" said the prince, taking Levin by
the arm and drawing him towards himself. "Even when this little
feather-head fancied..."

"Papa!" shrieked Kitty, and shut his mouth with her hands.

"Well, I won't!" he said. "I'm very, very ... plea... Oh, what a fool I
am..."

He embraced Kitty, kissed her face, her hand, her face again, and made
the sign of the cross over her.

And there came over Levin a new feeling of love for this man, till then
so little known to him, when he saw how slowly and tenderly Kitty kissed
his muscular hand.



Chapter 16


The princess sat in her armchair, silent and smiling; the prince sat
down beside her. Kitty stood by her father's chair, still holding his
hand. All were silent.

The princess was the first to put everything into words, and to
translate all thoughts and feelings into practical questions. And all
equally felt this strange and painful for the first minute.

"When is it to be? We must have the benediction and announcement. And
when's the wedding to be? What do you think, Alexander?"

"Here he is," said the old prince, pointing to Levin--"he's the
principal person in the matter."

"When?" said Levin blushing. "Tomorrow; If you ask me, I should say, the
benediction today and the wedding tomorrow."

"Come, _mon cher_, that's nonsense!"

"Well, in a week."

"He's quite mad."

"No, why so?"

"Well, upon my word!" said the mother, smiling, delighted at this haste.
"How about the trousseau?"

"Will there really be a trousseau and all that?" Levin thought with
horror. "But can the trousseau and the benediction and all that--can it
spoil my happiness? Nothing can spoil it!" He glanced at Kitty, and
noticed that she was not in the least, not in the very least, disturbed
by the idea of the trousseau. "Then it must be all right," he thought.

"Oh, I know nothing about it; I only said what I should like," he said
apologetically.

"We'll talk it over, then. The benediction and announcement can take
place now. That's very well."

The princess went up to her husband, kissed him, and would have gone
away, but he kept her, embraced her, and, tenderly as a young lover,
kissed her several times, smiling. The old people were obviously muddled
for a moment, and did not quite know whether it was they who were in
love again or their daughter. When the prince and the princess had gone,
Levin went up to his betrothed and took her hand. He was self-possessed
now and could speak, and he had a great deal he wanted to tell her. But
he said not at all what he had to say.

"How I knew it would be so! I never hoped for it; and yet in my heart I
was always sure," he said. "I believe that it was ordained."

"And I!" she said. "Even when...." She stopped and went on again,
looking at him resolutely with her truthful eyes, "Even when I thrust
from me my happiness. I always loved you alone, but I was carried away.
I ought to tell you.... Can you forgive that?"

"Perhaps it was for the best. You will have to forgive me so much. I
ought to tell you..."

This was one of the things he had meant to speak about. He had resolved
from the first to tell her two things--that he was not chaste as she
was, and that he was not a believer. It was agonizing, but he considered
he ought to tell her both these facts.

"No, not now, later!" he said.

"Very well, later, but you must certainly tell me. I'm not afraid of
anything. I want to know everything. Now it is settled."

He added: "Settled that you'll take me whatever I may be--you won't give
me up? Yes?"

"Yes, yes."

Their conversation was interrupted by Mademoiselle Linon, who with an
affected but tender smile came to congratulate her favorite pupil.
Before she had gone, the servants came in with their congratulations.
Then relations arrived, and there began that state of blissful absurdity
from which Levin did not emerge till the day after his wedding. Levin
was in a continual state of awkwardness and discomfort, but the
intensity of his happiness went on all the while increasing. He felt
continually that a great deal was being expected of him--what, he did
not know; and he did everything he was told, and it all gave him
happiness. He had thought his engagement would have nothing about it
like others, that the ordinary conditions of engaged couples would spoil
his special happiness; but it ended in his doing exactly as other people
did, and his happiness being only increased thereby and becoming more
and more special, more and more unlike anything that had ever happened.

"Now we shall have sweetmeats to eat," said Mademoiselle Linon--and
Levin drove off to buy sweetmeats.

"Well, I'm very glad," said Sviazhsky. "I advise you to get the bouquets
from Fomin's."

"Oh, are they wanted?" And he drove to Fomin's.

His brother offered to lend him money, as he would have so many
expenses, presents to give....

"Oh, are presents wanted?" And he galloped to Foulde's.

And at the confectioner's, and at Fomin's, and at Foulde's he saw that
he was expected; that they were pleased to see him, and prided
themselves on his happiness, just as every one whom he had to do with
during those days. What was extraordinary was that everyone not only
liked him, but even people previously unsympathetic, cold, and callous,
were enthusiastic over him, gave way to him in everything, treated his
feeling with tenderness and delicacy, and shared his conviction that he
was the happiest man in the world because his betrothed was beyond
perfection. Kitty too felt the same thing. When Countess Nordston
ventured to hint that she had hoped for something better, Kitty was so
angry and proved so conclusively that nothing in the world could be
better than Levin, that Countess Nordston had to admit it, and in
Kitty's presence never met Levin without a smile of ecstatic admiration.

The confession he had promised was the one painful incident of this
time. He consulted the old prince, and with his sanction gave Kitty his
diary, in which there was written the confession that tortured him. He
had written this diary at the time with a view to his future wife. Two
things caused him anguish: his lack of purity and his lack of faith. His
confession of unbelief passed unnoticed. She was religious, had never
doubted the truths of religion, but his external unbelief did not affect
her in the least. Through love she knew all his soul, and in his soul
she saw what she wanted, and that such a state of soul should be called
unbelieving was to her a matter of no account. The other confession set
her weeping bitterly.

Levin, not without an inner struggle, handed her his diary. He knew that
between him and her there could not be, and should not be, secrets, and
so he had decided that so it must be. But he had not realized what an
effect it would have on her, he had not put himself in her place. It was
only when the same evening he came to their house before the theater,
went into her room and saw her tear-stained, pitiful, sweet face,
miserable with suffering he had caused and nothing could undo, he felt
the abyss that separated his shameful past from her dovelike purity, and
was appalled at what he had done.

"Take them, take these dreadful books!" she said, pushing away the
notebooks lying before her on the table. "Why did you give them me? No,
it was better anyway," she added, touched by his despairing face. "But
it's awful, awful!"

His head sank, and he was silent. He could say nothing.

"You can't forgive me," he whispered.

"Yes, I forgive you; but it's terrible!"

But his happiness was so immense that this confession did not shatter
it, it only added another shade to it. She forgave him; but from that
time more than ever he considered himself unworthy of her, morally bowed
down lower than ever before her, and prized more highly than ever his
undeserved happiness.



Chapter 17


Unconsciously going over in his memory the conversations that had taken
place during and after dinner, Alexey Alexandrovitch returned to his
solitary room. Darya Alexandrovna's words about forgiveness had aroused
in him nothing but annoyance. The applicability or non-applicability of
the Christian precept to his own case was too difficult a question to be
discussed lightly, and this question had long ago been answered by
Alexey Alexandrovitch in the negative. Of all that had been said, what
stuck most in his memory was the phrase of stupid, good-natured
Turovtsin--"_Acted like a man, he did! Called him out and shot him!_"
Everyone had apparently shared this feeling, though from politeness they
had not expressed it.

"But the matter is settled, it's useless thinking about it," Alexey
Alexandrovitch told himself. And thinking of nothing but the journey
before him, and the revision work he had to do, he went into his room
and asked the porter who escorted him where his man was. The porter said
that the man had only just gone out. Alexey Alexandrovitch ordered tea
to be sent him, sat down to the table, and taking the guidebook, began
considering the route of his journey.

"Two telegrams," said his manservant, coming into the room. "I beg your
pardon, your excellency; I'd only just that minute gone out."

Alexey Alexandrovitch took the telegrams and opened them. The first
telegram was the announcement of Stremov's appointment to the very post
Karenin had coveted. Alexey Alexandrovitch flung the telegram down, and
flushing a little, got up and began to pace up and down the room. "_Quos
vult perdere dementat_," he said, meaning by _quos_ the persons
responsible for this appointment. He was not so much annoyed that he had
not received the post, that he had been conspicuously passed over; but
it was incomprehensible, amazing to him that they did not see that the
wordy phrase-monger Stremov was the last man fit for it. How could they
fail to see how they were ruining themselves, lowering their _prestige_
by this appointment?

"Something else in the same line," he said to himself bitterly, opening
the second telegram. The telegram was from his wife. Her name, written
in blue pencil, "Anna," was the first thing that caught his eye. "I am
dying; I beg, I implore you to come. I shall die easier with your
forgiveness," he read. He smiled contemptuously, and flung down the
telegram. That this was a trick and a fraud, of that, he thought for the
first minute, there could be no doubt.

"There is no deceit she would stick at. She was near her confinement.
Perhaps it is the confinement. But what can be their aim? To legitimize
the child, to compromise me, and prevent a divorce," he thought. "But
something was said in it: I am dying...." He read the telegram again,
and suddenly the plain meaning of what was said in it struck him.

"And if it is true?" he said to himself. "If it is true that in the
moment of agony and nearness to death she is genuinely penitent, and I,
taking it for a trick, refuse to go? That would not only be cruel, and
everyone would blame me, but it would be stupid on my part."

"Piotr, call a coach; I am going to Petersburg," he said to his servant.

Alexey Alexandrovitch decided that he would go to Petersburg and see his
wife. If her illness was a trick, he would say nothing and go away
again. If she was really in danger, and wished to see him before her
death, he would forgive her if he found her alive, and pay her the last
duties if he came too late.

All the way he thought no more of what he ought to do.

With a sense of weariness and uncleanness from the night spent in the
train, in the early fog of Petersburg Alexey Alexandrovitch drove
through the deserted Nevsky and stared straight before him, not thinking
of what was awaiting him. He could not think about it, because in
picturing what would happen, he could not drive away the reflection that
her death would at once remove all the difficulty of his position.
Bakers, closed shops, night-cabmen, porters sweeping the pavements
flashed past his eyes, and he watched it all, trying to smother the
thought of what was awaiting him, and what he dared not hope for, and
yet was hoping for. He drove up to the steps. A sledge and a carriage
with the coachman asleep stood at the entrance. As he went into the
entry, Alexey Alexandrovitch, as it were, got out his resolution from
the remotest corner of his brain, and mastered it thoroughly. Its
meaning ran: "If it's a trick, then calm contempt and departure. If
truth, do what is proper."

The porter opened the door before Alexey Alexandrovitch rang. The
porter, Kapitonitch, looked queer in an old coat, without a tie, and in
slippers.

"How is your mistress?"

"A successful confinement yesterday."

Alexey Alexandrovitch stopped short and turned white. He felt distinctly
now how intensely he had longed for her death.

"And how is she?"

Korney in his morning apron ran downstairs.

"Very ill," he answered. "There was a consultation yesterday, and the
doctor's here now."

"Take my things," said Alexey Alexandrovitch, and feeling some relief at
the news that there was still hope of her death, he went into the hall.

On the hatstand there was a military overcoat. Alexey Alexandrovitch
noticed it and asked:

"Who is here?"

"The doctor, the midwife, and Count Vronsky."

Alexey Alexandrovitch went into the inner rooms.

In the drawing room there was no one; at the sound of his steps there
came out of her boudoir the midwife in a cap with lilac ribbons.

She went up to Alexey Alexandrovitch, and with the familiarity given by
the approach of death took him by the arm and drew him towards the
bedroom.

"Thank God you've come! She keeps on about you and nothing but you," she
said.

"Make haste with the ice!" the doctor's peremptory voice said from the
bedroom.

Alexey Alexandrovitch went into her boudoir.

At the table, sitting sideways in a low chair, was Vronsky, his face
hidden in his hands, weeping. He jumped up at the doctor's voice, took
his hands from his face, and saw Alexey Alexandrovitch. Seeing the
husband, he was so overwhelmed that he sat down again, drawing his head
down to his shoulders, as if he wanted to disappear; but he made an
effort over himself, got up and said:

"She is dying. The doctors say there is no hope. I am entirely in your
power, only let me be here ... though I am at your disposal. I..."

Alexey Alexandrovitch, seeing Vronsky's tears, felt a rush of that
nervous emotion always produced in him by the sight of other people's
suffering, and turning away his face, he moved hurriedly to the door,
without hearing the rest of his words. From the bedroom came the sound
of Anna's voice saying something. Her voice was lively, eager, with
exceedingly distinct intonations. Alexey Alexandrovitch went into the
bedroom, and went up to the bed. She was lying turned with her face
towards him. Her cheeks were flushed crimson, her eyes glittered, her
little white hands thrust out from the sleeves of her dressing gown were
playing with the quilt, twisting it about. It seemed as though she were
not only well and blooming, but in the happiest frame of mind. She was
talking rapidly, musically, and with exceptionally correct articulation
and expressive intonation.

"For Alexey--I am speaking of Alexey Alexandrovitch (what a strange and
awful thing that both are Alexey, isn't it?)--Alexey would not refuse
me. I should forget, he would forgive.... But why doesn't he come? He's
so good he doesn't know himself how good he is. Ah, my God, what agony!
Give me some water, quick! Oh, that will be bad for her, my little girl!
Oh, very well then, give her to a nurse. Yes, I agree, it's better in
fact. He'll be coming; it will hurt him to see her. Give her to the
nurse."

"Anna Arkadyevna, he has come. Here he is!" said the midwife, trying to
attract her attention to Alexey Alexandrovitch.

"Oh, what nonsense!" Anna went on, not seeing her husband. "No, give her
to me; give me my little one! He has not come yet. You say he won't
forgive me, because you don't know him. No one knows him. I'm the only
one, and it was hard for me even. His eyes I ought to know--Seryozha has
just the same eyes--and I can't bear to see them because of it. Has
Seryozha had his dinner? I know everyone will forget him. He would not
forget. Seryozha must be moved into the corner room, and Mariette must
be asked to sleep with him."

All of a sudden she shrank back, was silent; and in terror, as though
expecting a blow, as though to defend herself, she raised her hands to
her face. She had seen her husband.

"No, no!" she began. "I am not afraid of him; I am afraid of death.
Alexey, come here. I am in a hurry, because I've no time, I've not long
left to live; the fever will begin directly and I shall understand
nothing more. Now I understand, I understand it all, I see it all!"

Alexey Alexandrovitch's wrinkled face wore an expression of agony; he
took her by the hand and tried to say something, but he could not utter
it; his lower lip quivered, but he still went on struggling with his
emotion, and only now and then glanced at her. And each time he glanced
at her, he saw her eyes gazing at him with such passionate and
triumphant tenderness as he had never seen in them.

"Wait a minute, you don't know ... stay a little, stay!..." She stopped,
as though collecting her ideas. "Yes," she began; "yes, yes, yes. This
is what I wanted to say. Don't be surprised at me. I'm still the
same.... But there is another woman in me, I'm afraid of her: she loved
that man, and I tried to hate you, and could not forget about her that
used to be. I'm not that woman. Now I'm my real self, all myself. I'm
dying now, I know I shall die, ask him. Even now I feel--see here, the
weights on my feet, on my hands, on my fingers. My fingers--see how huge
they are! But this will soon all be over.... Only one thing I want:
forgive me, forgive me quite. I'm terrible, but my nurse used to tell
me; the holy martyr--what was her name? She was worse. And I'll go to
Rome; there's a wilderness, and there I shall be no trouble to any one,
only I'll take Seryozha and the little one.... No, you can't forgive me!
I know, it can't be forgiven! No, no, go away, you're too good!" She
held his hand in one burning hand, while she pushed him away with the
other.

The nervous agitation of Alexey Alexandrovitch kept increasing, and had
by now reached such a point that he ceased to struggle with it. He
suddenly felt that what he had regarded as nervous agitation was on the
contrary a blissful spiritual condition that gave him all at once a new
happiness he had never known. He did not think that the Christian law
that he had been all his life trying to follow, enjoined on him to
forgive and love his enemies; but a glad feeling of love and forgiveness
for his enemies filled his heart. He knelt down, and laying his head in
the curve of her arm, which burned him as with fire through the sleeve,
he sobbed like a little child. She put her arm around his head, moved
towards him, and with defiant pride lifted up her eyes.

"That is he. I knew him! Now, forgive me, everyone, forgive me!...
They've come again; why don't they go away?... Oh, take these cloaks off
me!"

The doctor unloosed her hands, carefully laying her on the pillow, and
covered her up to the shoulders. She lay back submissively, and looked
before her with beaming eyes.

"Remember one thing, that I needed nothing but forgiveness, and I want
nothing more.... Why doesn't _he_ come?" she said, turning to the door
towards Vronsky. "Do come, do come! Give him your hand."

Vronsky came to the side of the bed, and seeing Anna, again hid his face
in his hands.

"Uncover your face--look at him! He's a saint," she said. "Oh! uncover
your face, do uncover it!" she said angrily. "Alexey Alexandrovitch, do
uncover his face! I want to see him."

Alexey Alexandrovitch took Vronsky's hands and drew them away from his
face, which was awful with the expression of agony and shame upon it.

"Give him your hand. Forgive him."

Alexey Alexandrovitch gave him his hand, not attempting to restrain the
tears that streamed from his eyes.

"Thank God, thank God!" she said, "now everything is ready. Only to
stretch my legs a little. There, that's capital. How badly these flowers
are done--not a bit like a violet," she said, pointing to the hangings.
"My God, my God! when will it end? Give me some morphine. Doctor, give
me some morphine! Oh, my God, my God!"

And she tossed about on the bed.

The doctors said that it was puerperal fever, and that it was
ninety-nine chances in a hundred it would end in death. The whole day
long there was fever, delirium, and unconsciousness. At midnight the
patient lay without consciousness, and almost without pulse.

The end was expected every minute.

Vronsky had gone home, but in the morning he came to inquire, and Alexey
Alexandrovitch meeting him in the hall, said: "Better stay, she might
ask for you," and himself led him to his wife's boudoir. Towards
morning, there was a return again of excitement, rapid thought and talk,
and again it ended in unconsciousness. On the third day it was the same
thing, and the doctors said there was hope. That day Alexey
Alexandrovitch went into the boudoir where Vronsky was sitting, and
closing the door sat down opposite him.

"Alexey Alexandrovitch," said Vronsky, feeling that a statement of the
position was coming, "I can't speak, I can't understand. Spare me!
However hard it is for you, believe me, it is more terrible for me."

He would have risen; but Alexey Alexandrovitch took him by the hand and
said:

"I beg you to hear me out; it is necessary. I must explain my feelings,
the feelings that have guided me and will guide me, so that you may not
be in error regarding me. You know I had resolved on a divorce, and had
even begun to take proceedings. I won't conceal from you that in
beginning this I was in uncertainty, I was in misery; I will confess
that I was pursued by a desire to revenge myself on you and on her. When
I got the telegram, I came here with the same feelings; I will say more,
I longed for her death. But...." He paused, pondering whether to
disclose or not to disclose his feeling to him. "But I saw her and
forgave her. And the happiness of forgiveness has revealed to me my
duty. I forgive completely. I would offer the other cheek, I would give
my cloak if my coat be taken. I pray to God only not to take from me the
bliss of forgiveness!"

Tears stood in his eyes, and the luminous, serene look in them impressed
Vronsky.

"This is my position: you can trample me in the mud, make me the
laughing-stock of the world, I will not abandon her, and I will never
utter a word of reproach to you," Alexey Alexandrovitch went on. "My
duty is clearly marked for me; I ought to be with her, and I will be. If
she wishes to see you, I will let you know, but now I suppose it would
be better for you to go away."

He got up, and sobs cut short his words. Vronsky too was getting up, and
in a stooping, not yet erect posture, looked up at him from under his
brows. He did not understand Alexey Alexandrovitch's feeling, but he
felt that it was something higher and even unattainable for him with his
view of life.



Chapter 18


After the conversation with Alexey Alexandrovitch, Vronsky went out onto
the steps of the Karenins' house and stood still, with difficulty
remembering where he was, and where he ought to walk or drive. He felt
disgraced, humiliated, guilty, and deprived of all possibility of
washing away his humiliation. He felt thrust out of the beaten track
along which he had so proudly and lightly walked till then. All the
habits and rules of his life that had seemed so firm, had turned out
suddenly false and inapplicable. The betrayed husband, who had figured
till that time as a pitiful creature, an incidental and somewhat
ludicrous obstacle to his happiness, had suddenly been summoned by her
herself, elevated to an awe-inspiring pinnacle, and on the pinnacle that
husband had shown himself, not malignant, not false, not ludicrous, but
kind and straightforward and large. Vronsky could not but feel this, and
the parts were suddenly reversed. Vronsky felt his elevation and his own
abasement, his truth and his own falsehood. He felt that the husband was
magnanimous even in his sorrow, while he had been base and petty in his
deceit. But this sense of his own humiliation before the man he had
unjustly despised made up only a small part of his misery. He felt
unutterably wretched now, for his passion for Anna, which had seemed to
him of late to be growing cooler, now that he knew he had lost her
forever, was stronger than ever it had been. He had seen all of her in
her illness, had come to know her very soul, and it seemed to him that
he had never loved her till then. And now when he had learned to know
her, to love her as she should be loved, he had been humiliated before
her, and had lost her forever, leaving with her nothing of himself but a
shameful memory. Most terrible of all had been his ludicrous, shameful
position when Alexey Alexandrovitch had pulled his hands away from his
humiliated face. He stood on the steps of the Karenins' house like one
distraught, and did not know what to do.

"A sledge, sir?" asked the porter.

"Yes, a sledge."

On getting home, after three sleepless nights, Vronsky, without
undressing, lay down flat on the sofa, clasping his hands and laying his
head on them. His head was heavy. Images, memories, and ideas of the
strangest description followed one another with extraordinary rapidity
and vividness. First it was the medicine he had poured out for the
patient and spilt over the spoon, then the midwife's white hands, then
the queer posture of Alexey Alexandrovitch on the floor beside the bed.

"To sleep! To forget!" he said to himself with the serene confidence of
a healthy man that if he is tired and sleepy, he will go to sleep at
once. And the same instant his head did begin to feel drowsy and he
began to drop off into forgetfulness. The waves of the sea of
unconsciousness had begun to meet over his head, when all at once--it
was as though a violent shock of electricity had passed over him. He
started so that he leaped up on the springs of the sofa, and leaning on
his arms got in a panic onto his knees. His eyes were wide open as
though he had never been asleep. The heaviness in his head and the
weariness in his limbs that he had felt a minute before had suddenly
gone.

"You may trample me in the mud," he heard Alexey Alexandrovitch's words
and saw him standing before him, and saw Anna's face with its burning
flush and glittering eyes, gazing with love and tenderness not at him
but at Alexey Alexandrovitch; he saw his own, as he fancied, foolish and
ludicrous figure when Alexey Alexandrovitch took his hands away from his
face. He stretched out his legs again and flung himself on the sofa in
the same position and shut his eyes.

"To sleep! To forget!" he repeated to himself. But with his eyes shut he
saw more distinctly than ever Anna's face as it had been on the
memorable evening before the races.

"That is not and will not be, and she wants to wipe it out of her
memory. But I cannot live without it. How can we be reconciled? how can
we be reconciled?" he said aloud, and unconsciously began to repeat
these words. This repetition checked the rising up of fresh images and
memories, which he felt were thronging in his brain. But repeating words
did not check his imagination for long. Again in extraordinarily rapid
succession his best moments rose before his mind, and then his recent
humiliation. "Take away his hands," Anna's voice says. He takes away his
hands and feels the shamestruck and idiotic expression of his face.

He still lay down, trying to sleep, though he felt there was not the
smallest hope of it, and kept repeating stray words from some chain of
thought, trying by this to check the rising flood of fresh images. He
listened, and heard in a strange, mad whisper words repeated: "I did not
appreciate it, did not make enough of it. I did not appreciate it, did
not make enough of it."

"What's this? Am I going out of my mind?" he said to himself. "Perhaps.
What makes men go out of their minds; what makes men shoot themselves?"
he answered himself, and opening his eyes, he saw with wonder an
embroidered cushion beside him, worked by Varya, his brother's wife. He
touched the tassel of the cushion, and tried to think of Varya, of when
he had seen her last. But to think of anything extraneous was an
agonizing effort. "No, I must sleep!" He moved the cushion up, and
pressed his head into it, but he had to make an effort to keep his eyes
shut. He jumped up and sat down. "That's all over for me," he said to
himself. "I must think what to do. What is left?" His mind rapidly ran
through his life apart from his love of Anna.

"Ambition? Serpuhovskoy? Society? The court?" He could not come to a
pause anywhere. All of it had had meaning before, but now there was no
reality in it. He got up from the sofa, took off his coat, undid his
belt, and uncovering his hairy chest to breathe more freely, walked up
and down the room. "This is how people go mad," he repeated, "and how
they shoot themselves ... to escape humiliation," he added slowly.

He went to the door and closed it, then with fixed eyes and clenched
teeth he went up to the table, took a revolver, looked round him, turned
it to a loaded barrel, and sank into thought. For two minutes, his head
bent forward with an expression of an intense effort of thought, he
stood with the revolver in his hand, motionless, thinking.

"Of course," he said to himself, as though a logical, continuous, and
clear chain of reasoning had brought him to an indubitable conclusion.
In reality this "of course," that seemed convincing to him, was simply
the result of exactly the same circle of memories and images through
which he had passed ten times already during the last hour--memories of
happiness lost forever. There was the same conception of the
senselessness of everything to come in life, the same consciousness of
humiliation. Even the sequence of these images and emotions was the
same.

"Of course," he repeated, when for the third time his thought passed
again round the same spellbound circle of memories and images, and
pulling the revolver to the left side of his chest, and clutching it
vigorously with his whole hand, as it were, squeezing it in his fist, he
pulled the trigger. He did not hear the sound of the shot, but a violent
blow on his chest sent him reeling. He tried to clutch at the edge of
the table, dropped the revolver, staggered, and sat down on the ground,
looking about him in astonishment. He did not recognize his room,
looking up from the ground, at the bent legs of the table, at the
wastepaper basket, and the tiger-skin rug. The hurried, creaking steps
of his servant coming through the drawing room brought him to his
senses. He made an effort at thought, and was aware that he was on the
floor; and seeing blood on the tiger-skin rug and on his arm, he knew he
had shot himself.

"Idiotic! Missed!" he said, fumbling after the revolver. The revolver
was close beside him--he sought further off. Still feeling for it, he
stretched out to the other side, and not being strong enough to keep his
balance, fell over, streaming with blood.

The elegant, whiskered manservant, who used to be continually
complaining to his acquaintances of the delicacy of his nerves, was so
panic-stricken on seeing his master lying on the floor, that he left him
losing blood while he ran for assistance. An hour later Varya, his
brother's wife, had arrived, and with the assistance of three doctors,
whom she had sent for in all directions, and who all appeared at the
same moment, she got the wounded man to bed, and remained to nurse him.



Chapter 19


The mistake made by Alexey Alexandrovitch in that, when preparing for
seeing his wife, he had overlooked the possibility that her repentance
might be sincere, and he might forgive her, and she might not die--this
mistake was two months after his return from Moscow brought home to him
in all its significance. But the mistake made by him had arisen not
simply from his having overlooked that contingency, but also from the
fact that until that day of his interview with his dying wife, he had
not known his own heart. At his sick wife's bedside he had for the first
time in his life given way to that feeling of sympathetic suffering
always roused in him by the sufferings of others, and hitherto looked on
by him with shame as a harmful weakness. And pity for her, and remorse
for having desired her death, and most of all, the joy of forgiveness,
made him at once conscious, not simply of the relief of his own
sufferings, but of a spiritual peace he had never experienced before. He
suddenly felt that the very thing that was the source of his sufferings
had become the source of his spiritual joy; that what had seemed
insoluble while he was judging, blaming, and hating, had become clear
and simple when he forgave and loved.

He forgave his wife and pitied her for her sufferings and her remorse.
He forgave Vronsky, and pitied him, especially after reports reached him
of his despairing action. He felt more for his son than before. And he
blamed himself now for having taken too little interest in him. But for
the little newborn baby he felt a quite peculiar sentiment, not of pity,
only, but of tenderness. At first, from a feeling of compassion alone,
he had been interested in the delicate little creature, who was not his
child, and who was cast on one side during her mother's illness, and
would certainly have died if he had not troubled about her, and he did
not himself observe how fond he became of her. He would go into the
nursery several times a day, and sit there for a long while, so that the
nurses, who were at first afraid of him, got quite used to his presence.
Sometimes for half an hour at a stretch he would sit silently gazing at
the saffron-red, downy, wrinkled face of the sleeping baby, watching the
movements of the frowning brows, and the fat little hands, with clenched
fingers, that rubbed the little eyes and nose. At such moments
particularly, Alexey Alexandrovitch had a sense of perfect peace and
inward harmony, and saw nothing extraordinary in his position, nothing
that ought to be changed.

But as time went on, he saw more and more distinctly that however
natural the position now seemed to him, he would not long be allowed to
remain in it. He felt that besides the blessed spiritual force
controlling his soul, there was another, a brutal force, as powerful, or
more powerful, which controlled his life, and that this force would not
allow him that humble peace he longed for. He felt that everyone was
looking at him with inquiring wonder, that he was not understood, and
that something was expected of him. Above all, he felt the instability
and unnaturalness of his relations with his wife.

When the softening effect of the near approach of death had passed away,
Alexey Alexandrovitch began to notice that Anna was afraid of him, ill
at ease with him, and could not look him straight in the face. She
seemed to be wanting, and not daring, to tell him something; and as
though foreseeing their present relations could not continue, she seemed
to be expecting something from him.

Towards the end of February it happened that Anna's baby daughter, who
had been named Anna too, fell ill. Alexey Alexandrovitch was in the
nursery in the morning, and leaving orders for the doctor to be sent
for, he went to his office. On finishing his work, he returned home at
four. Going into the hall he saw a handsome groom, in a braided livery
and a bear fur cape, holding a white fur cloak.

"Who is here?" asked Alexey Alexandrovitch.

"Princess Elizaveta Federovna Tverskaya," the groom answered, and it
seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch that he grinned.

During all this difficult time Alexey Alexandrovitch had noticed that
his worldly acquaintances, especially women, took a peculiar interest in
him and his wife. All these acquaintances he observed with difficulty
concealing their mirth at something; the same mirth that he had
perceived in the lawyer's eyes, and just now in the eyes of this groom.
Everyone seemed, somehow, hugely delighted, as though they had just been
at a wedding. When they met him, with ill-disguised enjoyment they
inquired after his wife's health. The presence of Princess Tverskaya was
unpleasant to Alexey Alexandrovitch from the memories associated with
her, and also because he disliked her, and he went straight to the
nursery. In the day nursery Seryozha, leaning on the table with his legs
on a chair, was drawing and chatting away merrily. The English
governess, who had during Anna's illness replaced the French one, was
sitting near the boy knitting a shawl. She hurriedly got up, curtseyed,
and pulled Seryozha.

Alexey Alexandrovitch stroked his son's hair, answered the governess's
inquiries about his wife, and asked what the doctor had said of the
baby.

"The doctor said it was nothing serious, and he ordered a bath, sir."

"But she is still in pain," said Alexey Alexandrovitch, listening to the
baby's screaming in the next room.

"I think it's the wet-nurse, sir," the Englishwoman said firmly.

"What makes you think so?" he asked, stopping short.

"It's just as it was at Countess Paul's, sir. They gave the baby
medicine, and it turned out that the baby was simply hungry: the nurse
had no milk, sir."

Alexey Alexandrovitch pondered, and after standing still a few seconds
he went in at the other door. The baby was lying with its head thrown
back, stiffening itself in the nurse's arms, and would not take the
plump breast offered it; and it never ceased screaming in spite of the
double hushing of the wet-nurse and the other nurse, who was bending
over her.

"Still no better?" said Alexey Alexandrovitch.

"She's very restless," answered the nurse in a whisper.

"Miss Edwarde says that perhaps the wet-nurse has no milk," he said.

"I think so too, Alexey Alexandrovitch."

"Then why didn't you say so?"

"Who's one to say it to? Anna Arkadyevna still ill..." said the nurse
discontentedly.

The nurse was an old servant of the family. And in her simple words
there seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch an allusion to his position.

The baby screamed louder than ever, struggling and sobbing. The nurse,
with a gesture of despair, went to it, took it from the wet-nurse's
arms, and began walking up and down, rocking it.

"You must ask the doctor to examine the wet-nurse," said Alexey
Alexandrovitch. The smartly dressed and healthy-looking nurse,
frightened at the idea of losing her place, muttered something to
herself, and covering her bosom, smiled contemptuously at the idea of
doubts being cast on her abundance of milk. In that smile, too, Alexey
Alexandrovitch saw a sneer at his position.

"Luckless child!" said the nurse, hushing the baby, and still walking up
and down with it.

Alexey Alexandrovitch sat down, and with a despondent and suffering face
watched the nurse walking to and fro.

When the child at last was still, and had been put in a deep bed, and
the nurse, after smoothing the little pillow, had left her, Alexey
Alexandrovitch got up, and walking awkwardly on tiptoe, approached the
baby. For a minute he was still, and with the same despondent face gazed
at the baby; but all at once a smile, that moved his hair and the skin
of his forehead, came out on his face, and he went as softly out of the
room.

In the dining room he rang the bell, and told the servant who came in to
send again for the doctor. He felt vexed with his wife for not being
anxious about this exquisite baby, and in this vexed humor he had no
wish to go to her; he had no wish, either, to see Princess Betsy. But
his wife might wonder why he did not go to her as usual; and so,
overcoming his disinclination, he went towards the bedroom. As he walked
over the soft rug towards the door, he could not help overhearing a
conversation he did not want to hear.

"If he hadn't been going away, I could have understood your answer and
his too. But your husband ought to be above that," Betsy was saying.

"It's not for my husband; for myself I don't wish it. Don't say that!"
answered Anna's excited voice.

"Yes, but you must care to say good-bye to a man who has shot himself on
your account...."

"That's just why I don't want to."

With a dismayed and guilty expression, Alexey Alexandrovitch stopped and
would have gone back unobserved. But reflecting that this would be
undignified, he turned back again, and clearing his throat, he went up
to the bedroom. The voices were silent, and he went in.

Anna, in a gray dressing gown, with a crop of short clustering black
curls on her round head, was sitting on a settee. The eagerness died out
of her face, as it always did, at the sight of her husband; she dropped
her head and looked round uneasily at Betsy. Betsy, dressed in the
height of the latest fashion, in a hat that towered somewhere over her
head like a shade on a lamp, in a blue dress with violet crossway
stripes slanting one way on the bodice and the other way on the skirt,
was sitting beside Anna, her tall flat figure held erect. Bowing her
head, she greeted Alexey Alexandrovitch with an ironical smile.

"Ah!" she said, as though surprised. "I'm very glad you're at home. You
never put in an appearance anywhere, and I haven't seen you ever since
Anna has been ill. I have heard all about it--your anxiety. Yes, you're
a wonderful husband!" she said, with a meaning and affable air, as
though she were bestowing an order of magnanimity on him for his conduct
to his wife.

Alexey Alexandrovitch bowed frigidly, and kissing his wife's hand, asked
how she was.

"Better, I think," she said, avoiding his eyes.

"But you've rather a feverish-looking color," he said, laying stress on
the word "feverish."

"We've been talking too much," said Betsy. "I feel it's selfishness on
my part, and I am going away."

She got up, but Anna, suddenly flushing, quickly caught at her hand.

"No, wait a minute, please. I must tell you ... no, you." she turned to
Alexey Alexandrovitch, and her neck and brow were suffused with crimson.
"I won't and can't keep anything secret from you," she said.

Alexey Alexandrovitch cracked his fingers and bowed his head.

"Betsy's been telling me that Count Vronsky wants to come here to say
good-bye before his departure for Tashkend." She did not look at her
husband, and was evidently in haste to have everything out, however hard
it might be for her. "I told her I could not receive him."

"You said, my dear, that it would depend on Alexey Alexandrovitch,"
Betsy corrected her.

"Oh, no, I can't receive him; and what object would there...." She
stopped suddenly, and glanced inquiringly at her husband (he did not
look at her). "In short, I don't wish it...."

Alexey Alexandrovitch advanced and would have taken her hand.

Her first impulse was to jerk back her hand from the damp hand with big
swollen veins that sought hers, but with an obvious effort to control
herself she pressed his hand.

"I am very grateful to you for your confidence, but..." he said, feeling
with confusion and annoyance that what he could decide easily and
clearly by himself, he could not discuss before Princess Tverskaya, who
to him stood for the incarnation of that brute force which would
inevitably control him in the life he led in the eyes of the world, and
hinder him from giving way to his feeling of love and forgiveness. He
stopped short, looking at Princess Tverskaya.

"Well, good-bye, my darling," said Betsy, getting up. She kissed Anna,
and went out. Alexey Alexandrovitch escorted her out.

"Alexey Alexandrovitch! I know you are a truly magnanimous man," said
Betsy, stopping in the little drawing-room, and with special warmth
shaking hands with him once more. "I am an outsider, but I so love her
and respect you that I venture to advise. Receive him. Alexey Vronsky is
the soul of honor, and he is going away to Tashkend."

"Thank you, princess, for your sympathy and advice. But the question of
whether my wife can or cannot see anyone she must decide herself."

He said this from habit, lifting his brows with dignity, and reflected
immediately that whatever his words might be, there could be no dignity
in his position. And he saw this by the suppressed, malicious, and
ironical smile with which Betsy glanced at him after this phrase.



Chapter 20


Alexey Alexandrovitch took leave of Betsy in the drawing room, and went
to his wife. She was lying down, but hearing his steps she sat up
hastily in her former attitude, and looked in a scared way at him. He
saw she had been crying.

"I am very grateful for your confidence in me." He repeated gently in
Russian the phrase he had said in Betsy's presence in French, and sat
down beside her. When he spoke to her in Russian, using the Russian
"thou" of intimacy and affection, it was insufferably irritating to
Anna. "And I am very grateful for your decision. I, too, imagine that
since he is going away, there is no sort of necessity for Count Vronsky
to come here. However, if..."

"But I've said so already, so why repeat it?" Anna suddenly interrupted
him with an irritation she could not succeed in repressing. "No sort of
necessity," she thought, "for a man to come and say good-bye to the
woman he loves, for whom he was ready to ruin himself, and has ruined
himself, and who cannot live without him. No sort of necessity!" she
compressed her lips, and dropped her burning eyes to his hands with
their swollen veins. They were rubbing each other.

"Let us never speak of it," she added more calmly.

"I have left this question to you to decide, and I am very glad to
see..." Alexey Alexandrovitch was beginning.

"That my wish coincides with your own," she finished quickly,
exasperated at his talking so slowly while she knew beforehand all he
would say.

"Yes," he assented; "and Princess Tverskaya's interference in the most
difficult private affairs is utterly uncalled for. She especially..."

"I don't believe a word of what's said about her," said Anna quickly. "I
know she really cares for me."

Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed and said nothing. She played nervously with
the tassel of her dressing-gown, glancing at him with that torturing
sensation of physical repulsion for which she blamed herself, though she
could not control it. Her only desire now was to be rid of his
oppressive presence.

"I have just sent for the doctor," said Alexey Alexandrovitch.

"I am very well; what do I want the doctor for?"

"No, the little one cries, and they say the nurse hasn't enough milk."

"Why didn't you let me nurse her, when I begged to? Anyway" (Alexey
Alexandrovitch knew what was meant by that "anyway"), "she's a baby, and
they're killing her." She rang the bell and ordered the baby to be
brought her. "I begged to nurse her, I wasn't allowed to, and now I'm
blamed for it."

"I don't blame..."

"Yes, you do blame me! My God! why didn't I die!" And she broke into
sobs. "Forgive me, I'm nervous, I'm unjust," she said, controlling
herself, "but do go away..."

"No, it can't go on like this," Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself
decidedly as he left his wife's room.

Never had the impossibility of his position in the world's eyes, and his
wife's hatred of him, and altogether the might of that mysterious brutal
force that guided his life against his spiritual inclinations, and
exacted conformity with its decrees and change in his attitude to his
wife, been presented to him with such distinctness as that day. He saw
clearly that all the world and his wife expected of him something, but
what exactly, he could not make out. He felt that this was rousing in
his soul a feeling of anger destructive of his peace of mind and of all
the good of his achievement. He believed that for Anna herself it would
be better to break off all relations with Vronsky; but if they all
thought this out of the question, he was even ready to allow these
relations to be renewed, so long as the children were not disgraced, and
he was not deprived of them nor forced to change his position. Bad as
this might be, it was anyway better than a rupture, which would put her
in a hopeless and shameful position, and deprive him of everything he
cared for. But he felt helpless; he knew beforehand that every one was
against him, and that he would not be allowed to do what seemed to him
now so natural and right, but would be forced to do what was wrong,
though it seemed the proper thing to them.



Chapter 21


Before Betsy had time to walk out of the drawing-room, she was met in
the doorway by Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had just come from Yeliseev's,
where a consignment of fresh oysters had been received.

"Ah! princess! what a delightful meeting!" he began. "I've been to see
you."

"A meeting for one minute, for I'm going," said Betsy, smiling and
putting on her glove.

"Don't put on your glove yet, princess; let me kiss your hand. There's
nothing I'm so thankful to the revival of the old fashions for as the
kissing the hand." He kissed Betsy's hand. "When shall we see each
other?"

"You don't deserve it," answered Betsy, smiling.

"Oh, yes, I deserve a great deal, for I've become a most serious person.
I don't only manage my own affairs, but other people's too," he said,
with a significant expression.

"Oh, I'm so glad!" answered Betsy, at once understanding that he was
speaking of Anna. And going back into the drawing room, they stood in a
corner. "He's killing her," said Betsy in a whisper full of meaning.
"It's impossible, impossible..."

"I'm so glad you think so," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, shaking his head
with a serious and sympathetically distressed expression, "that's what
I've come to Petersburg for."

"The whole town's talking of it," she said. "It's an impossible
position. She pines and pines away. He doesn't understand that she's one
of those women who can't trifle with their feelings. One of two things:
either let him take her away, act with energy, or give her a divorce.
This is stifling her."

"Yes, yes ... just so..." Oblonsky said, sighing. "That's what I've come
for. At least not solely for that ... I've been made a _Kammerherr_; of
course, one has to say thank you. But the chief thing was having to
settle this."

"Well, God help you!" said Betsy.

After accompanying Betsy to the outside hall, once more kissing her hand
above the glove, at the point where the pulse beats, and murmuring to
her such unseemly nonsense that she did not know whether to laugh or be
angry, Stepan Arkadyevitch went to his sister. He found her in tears.

Although he happened to be bubbling over with good spirits, Stepan
Arkadyevitch immediately and quite naturally fell into the sympathetic,
poetically emotional tone which harmonized with her mood. He asked her
how she was, and how she had spent the morning.

"Very, very miserably. Today and this morning and all past days and days
to come," she said.

"I think you're giving way to pessimism. You must rouse yourself, you
must look life in the face. I know it's hard, but..."

"I have heard it said that women love men even for their vices," Anna
began suddenly, "but I hate him for his virtues. I can't live with him.
Do you understand? the sight of him has a physical effect on me, it
makes me beside myself. I can't, I can't live with him. What am I to do?
I have been unhappy, and used to think one couldn't be more unhappy, but
the awful state of things I am going through now, I could never have
conceived. Would you believe it, that knowing he's a good man, a
splendid man, that I'm not worth his little finger, still I hate him. I
hate him for his generosity. And there's nothing left for me but..."

She would have said death, but Stepan Arkadyevitch would not let her
finish.

"You are ill and overwrought," he said; "believe me, you're exaggerating
dreadfully. There's nothing so terrible in it."

And Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled. No one else in Stepan Arkadyevitch's
place, having to do with such despair, would have ventured to smile (the
smile would have seemed brutal); but in his smile there was so much of
sweetness and almost feminine tenderness that his smile did not wound,
but softened and soothed. His gentle, soothing words and smiles were as
soothing and softening as almond oil. And Anna soon felt this.

"No, Stiva," she said, "I'm lost, lost! worse than lost! I can't say yet
that all is over; on the contrary, I feel that it's not over. I'm an
overstrained string that must snap. But it's not ended yet ... and it
will have a fearful end."

"No matter, we must let the string be loosened, little by little.
There's no position from which there is no way of escape."

"I have thought, and thought. Only one..."

Again he knew from her terrified eyes that this one way of escape in her
thought was death, and he would not let her say it.

"Not at all," he said. "Listen to me. You can't see your own position as
I can. Let me tell you candidly my opinion." Again he smiled discreetly
his almond-oil smile. "I'll begin from the beginning. You married a man
twenty years older than yourself. You married him without love and not
knowing what love was. It was a mistake, let's admit."

"A fearful mistake!" said Anna.

"But I repeat, it's an accomplished fact. Then you had, let us say, the
misfortune to love a man not your husband. That was a misfortune; but
that, too, is an accomplished fact. And your husband knew it and forgave
it." He stopped at each sentence, waiting for her to object, but she
made no answer. "That's so. Now the question is: can you go on living
with your husband? Do you wish it? Does he wish it?"

"I know nothing, nothing."

"But you said yourself that you can't endure him."

"No, I didn't say so. I deny it. I can't tell, I don't know anything
about it."

"Yes, but let..."

"You can't understand. I feel I'm lying head downwards in a sort of pit,
but I ought not to save myself. And I can't . . ."

"Never mind, we'll slip something under and pull you out. I understand
you: I understand that you can't take it on yourself to express your
wishes, your feelings."

"There's nothing, nothing I wish ... except for it to be all over."

"But he sees this and knows it. And do you suppose it weighs on him any
less than on you? You're wretched, he's wretched, and what good can come
of it? while divorce would solve the difficulty completely." With some
effort Stepan Arkadyevitch brought out his central idea, and looked
significantly at her.

She said nothing, and shook her cropped head in dissent. But from the
look in her face, that suddenly brightened into its old beauty, he saw
that if she did not desire this, it was simply because it seemed to her
unattainable happiness.

"I'm awfully sorry for you! And how happy I should be if I could arrange
things!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling more boldly. "Don't speak,
don't say a word! God grant only that I may speak as I feel. I'm going
to him."

Anna looked at him with dreamy, shining eyes, and said nothing.



Chapter 22


Stepan Arkadyevitch, with the same somewhat solemn expression with which
he used to take his presidential chair at his board, walked into Alexey
Alexandrovitch's room. Alexey Alexandrovitch was walking about his room
with his hands behind his back, thinking of just what Stepan
Arkadyevitch had been discussing with his wife.

"I'm not interrupting you?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, on the sight of
his brother-in-law becoming suddenly aware of a sense of embarrassment
unusual with him. To conceal this embarrassment he took out a cigarette
case he had just bought that opened in a new way, and sniffing the
leather, took a cigarette out of it.

"No. Do you want anything?" Alexey Alexandrovitch asked without
eagerness.

"Yes, I wished ... I wanted ... yes, I wanted to talk to you," said
Stepan Arkadyevitch, with surprise aware of an unaccustomed timidity.

This feeling was so unexpected and so strange that he did not believe it
was the voice of conscience telling him that what he was meaning to do
was wrong.

Stepan Arkadyevitch made an effort and struggled with the timidity that
had come over him.

"I hope you believe in my love for my sister and my sincere affection
and respect for you," he said, reddening.

Alexey Alexandrovitch stood still and said nothing, but his face struck
Stepan Arkadyevitch by its expression of an unresisting sacrifice.

"I intended ... I wanted to have a little talk with you about my sister
and your mutual position," he said, still struggling with an
unaccustomed constraint.

Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled mournfully, looked at his brother-in-law,
and without answering went up to the table, took from it an unfinished
letter, and handed it to his brother-in-law.

"I think unceasingly of the same thing. And here is what I had begun
writing, thinking I could say it better by letter, and that my presence
irritates her," he said, as he gave him the letter.

Stepan Arkadyevitch took the letter, looked with incredulous surprise at
the lusterless eyes fixed so immovably on him, and began to read.

"I see that my presence is irksome to you. Painful as it is to me to
believe it, I see that it is so, and cannot be otherwise. I don't blame
you, and God is my witness that on seeing you at the time of your
illness I resolved with my whole heart to forget all that had passed
between us and to begin a new life. I do not regret, and shall never
regret, what I have done; but I have desired one thing--your good, the
good of your soul--and now I see I have not attained that. Tell me
yourself what will give you true happiness and peace to your soul. I put
myself entirely in your hands, and trust to your feeling of what's
right."

Stepan Arkadyevitch handed back the letter, and with the same surprise
continued looking at his brother-in-law, not knowing what to say. This
silence was so awkward for both of them that Stepan Arkadyevitch's lips
began twitching nervously, while he still gazed without speaking at
Karenin's face.

"That's what I wanted to say to her," said Alexey Alexandrovitch,
turning away.

"Yes, yes..." said Stepan Arkadyevitch, not able to answer for the tears
that were choking him.

"Yes, yes, I understand you," he brought out at last.

"I want to know what she would like," said Alexey Alexandrovitch.

"I am afraid she does not understand her own position. She is not a
judge," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, recovering himself. "She is crushed,
simply crushed by your generosity. If she were to read this letter, she
would be incapable of saying anything, she would only hang her head
lower than ever."

"Yes, but what's to be done in that case? how explain, how find out her
wishes?"

"If you will allow me to give my opinion, I think that it lies with you
to point out directly the steps you consider necessary to end the
position."

"So you consider it must be ended?" Alexey Alexandrovitch interrupted
him. "But how?" he added, with a gesture of his hands before his eyes
not usual with him. "I see no possible way out of it."

"There is some way of getting out of every position," said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, standing up and becoming more cheerful. "There was a time
when you thought of breaking off.... If you are convinced now that you
cannot make each other happy..."

"Happiness may be variously understood. But suppose that I agree to
everything, that I want nothing: what way is there of getting out of our
position?"

"If you care to know my opinion," said Stepan Arkadyevitch with the same
smile of softening, almond-oil tenderness with which he had been talking
to Anna. His kindly smile was so winning that Alexey Alexandrovitch,
feeling his own weakness and unconsciously swayed by it, was ready to
believe what Stepan Arkadyevitch was saying.

"She will never speak out about it. But one thing is possible, one thing
she might desire," he went on, "that is the cessation of your relations
and all memories associated with them. To my thinking, in your position
what's essential is the formation of a new attitude to one another. And
that can only rest on a basis of freedom on both sides."

"Divorce," Alexey Alexandrovitch interrupted, in a tone of aversion.

"Yes, I imagine that divorce--yes, divorce," Stepan Arkadyevitch
repeated, reddening. "That is from every point of view the most rational
course for married people who find themselves in the position you are
in. What can be done if married people find that life is impossible for
them together? That may always happen."

Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed heavily and closed his eyes.

"There's only one point to be considered: is either of the parties
desirous of forming new ties? If not, it is very simple," said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, feeling more and more free from constraint.

Alexey Alexandrovitch, scowling with emotion, muttered something to
himself, and made no answer. All that seemed so simple to Stepan
Arkadyevitch, Alexey Alexandrovitch had thought over thousands of times.
And, so far from being simple, it all seemed to him utterly impossible.
Divorce, the details of which he knew by this time, seemed to him now
out of the question, because the sense of his own dignity and respect
for religion forbade his taking upon himself a fictitious charge of
adultery, and still more suffering his wife, pardoned and beloved by
him, to be caught in the fact and put to public shame. Divorce appeared
to him impossible also on other still more weighty grounds.

What would become of his son in case of a divorce? To leave him with his
mother was out of the question. The divorced mother would have her own
illegitimate family, in which his position as a stepson and his
education would not be good. Keep him with him? He knew that would be an
act of vengeance on his part, and that he did not want. But apart from
this, what more than all made divorce seem impossible to Alexey
Alexandrovitch was, that by consenting to a divorce he would be
completely ruining Anna. The saying of Darya Alexandrovna at Moscow,
that in deciding on a divorce he was thinking of himself, and not
considering that by this he would be ruining her irrevocably, had sunk
into his heart. And connecting this saying with his forgiveness of her,
with his devotion to the children, he understood it now in his own way.
To consent to a divorce, to give her her freedom, meant in his thoughts
to take from himself the last tie that bound him to life--the children
whom he loved; and to take from her the last prop that stayed her on the
path of right, to thrust her down to her ruin. If she were divorced, he
knew she would join her life to Vronsky's, and their tie would be an
illegitimate and criminal one, since a wife, by the interpretation of
the ecclesiastical law, could not marry while her husband was living.
"She will join him, and in a year or two he will throw her over, or she
will form a new tie," thought Alexey Alexandrovitch. "And I, by agreeing
to an unlawful divorce, shall be to blame for her ruin." He had thought
it all over hundreds of times, and was convinced that a divorce was not
at all simple, as Stepan Arkadyevitch had said, but was utterly
impossible. He did not believe a single word Stepan Arkadyevitch said to
him; to every word he had a thousand objections to make, but he listened
to him, feeling that his words were the expression of that mighty brutal
force which controlled his life and to which he would have to submit.

"The only question is on what terms you agree to give her a divorce. She
does not want anything, does not dare ask you for anything, she leaves
it all to your generosity."

"My God, my God! what for?" thought Alexey Alexandrovitch, remembering
the details of divorce proceedings in which the husband took the blame
on himself, and with just the same gesture with which Vronsky had done
the same, he hid his face for shame in his hands.

"You are distressed, I understand that. But if you think it over..."

"Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other
also; and if any man take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also,"
thought Alexey Alexandrovitch.

"Yes, yes!" he cried in a shrill voice. "I will take the disgrace on
myself, I will give up even my son, but ... but wouldn't it be better to
let it alone? Still you may do as you like..."

And turning away so that his brother-in-law could not see him, he sat
down on a chair at the window. There was bitterness, there was shame in
his heart, but with bitterness and shame he felt joy and emotion at the
height of his own meekness.

Stepan Arkadyevitch was touched. He was silent for a space.

"Alexey Alexandrovitch, believe me, she appreciates your generosity," he
said. "But it seems it was the will of God," he added, and as he said it
felt how foolish a remark it was, and with difficulty repressed a smile
at his own foolishness.

Alexey Alexandrovitch would have made some reply, but tears stopped him.

"This is an unhappy fatality, and one must accept it as such. I accept
the calamity as an accomplished fact, and am doing my best to help both
her and you," said Stepan Arkadyevitch.

When he went out of his brother-in-law's room he was touched, but that
did not prevent him from being glad he had successfully brought the
matter to a conclusion, for he felt certain Alexey Alexandrovitch would
not go back on his words. To this satisfaction was added the fact that
an idea had just struck him for a riddle turning on his successful
achievement, that when the affair was over he would ask his wife and
most intimate friends. He put this riddle into two or three different
ways. "But I'll work it out better than that," he said to himself with a
smile.



Chapter 23


Vronsky's wound had been a dangerous one, though it did not touch the
heart, and for several days he had lain between life and death. The
first time he was able to speak, Varya, his brother's wife, was alone in
the room.

"Varya," he said, looking sternly at her, "I shot myself by accident.
And please never speak of it, and tell everyone so. Or else it's too
ridiculous."

Without answering his words, Varya bent over him, and with a delighted
smile gazed into his face. His eyes were clear, not feverish; but their
expression was stern.

"Thank God!" she said. "You're not in pain?"

"A little here." He pointed to his breast.

"Then let me change your bandages."

In silence, stiffening his broad jaws, he looked at her while she
bandaged him up. When she had finished he said:

"I'm not delirious. Please manage that there may be no talk of my having
shot myself on purpose."

"No one does say so. Only I hope you won't shoot yourself by accident
any more," she said, with a questioning smile.

"Of course I won't, but it would have been better..."

And he smiled gloomily.

In spite of these words and this smile, which so frightened Varya, when
the inflammation was over and he began to recover, he felt that he was
completely free from one part of his misery. By his action he had, as it
were, washed away the shame and humiliation he had felt before. He could
now think calmly of Alexey Alexandrovitch. He recognized all his
magnanimity, but he did not now feel himself humiliated by it. Besides,
he got back again into the beaten track of his life. He saw the
possibility of looking men in the face again without shame, and he could
live in accordance with his own habits. One thing he could not pluck out
of his heart, though he never ceased struggling with it, was the regret,
amounting to despair, that he had lost her forever. That now, having
expiated his sin against the husband, he was bound to renounce her, and
never in future to stand between her with her repentance and her
husband, he had firmly decided in his heart; but he could not tear out
of his heart his regret at the loss of her love, he could not erase from
his memory those moments of happiness that he had so little prized at
the time, and that haunted him in all their charm.

Serpuhovskoy had planned his appointment at Tashkend, and Vronsky agreed
to the proposition without the slightest hesitation. But the nearer the
time of departure came, the bitterer was the sacrifice he was making to
what he thought his duty.

His wound had healed, and he was driving about making preparations for
his departure for Tashkend.

"To see her once and then to bury myself, to die," he thought, and as he
was paying farewell visits, he uttered this thought to Betsy. Charged
with this commission, Betsy had gone to Anna, and brought him back a
negative reply.

"So much the better," thought Vronsky, when he received the news. "It
was a weakness, which would have shattered what strength I have left."

Next day Betsy herself came to him in the morning, and announced that
she had heard through Oblonsky as a positive fact that Alexey
Alexandrovitch had agreed to a divorce, and that therefore Vronsky could
see Anna.

Without even troubling himself to see Betsy out of his flat, forgetting
all his resolutions, without asking when he could see her, where her
husband was, Vronsky drove straight to the Karenins'. He ran up the
stairs seeing no one and nothing, and with a rapid step, almost breaking
into a run, he went into her room. And without considering, without
noticing whether there was anyone in the room or not, he flung his arms
round her, and began to cover her face, her hands, her neck with kisses.

Anna had been preparing herself for this meeting, had thought what she
would say to him, but she did not succeed in saying anything of it; his
passion mastered her. She tried to calm him, to calm herself, but it was
too late. His feeling infected her. Her lips trembled so that for a long
while she could say nothing.

"Yes, you have conquered me, and I am yours," she said at last, pressing
his hands to her bosom.

"So it had to be," he said. "So long as we live, it must be so. I know
it now."

"That's true," she said, getting whiter and whiter, and embracing his
head. "Still there is something terrible in it after all that has
happened."

"It will all pass, it will all pass; we shall be so happy. Our love, if
it could be stronger, will be strengthened by there being something
terrible in it," he said, lifting his head and parting his strong teeth
in a smile.

And she could not but respond with a smile--not to his words, but to the
love in his eyes. She took his hand and stroked her chilled cheeks and
cropped head with it.

"I don't know you with this short hair. You've grown so pretty. A boy.
But how pale you are!"

"Yes, I'm very weak," she said, smiling. And her lips began trembling
again.

"We'll go to Italy; you will get strong," he said.

"Can it be possible we could be like husband and wife, alone, your
family with you?" she said, looking close into his eyes.

"It only seems strange to me that it can ever have been otherwise."

"Stiva says that _he_ has agreed to everything, but I can't accept _his_
generosity," she said, looking dreamily past Vronsky's face. "I don't
want a divorce; it's all the same to me now. Only I don't know what he
will decide about Seryozha."

He could not conceive how at this moment of their meeting she could
remember and think of her son, of divorce. What did it all matter?

"Don't speak of that, don't think of it," he said, turning her hand in
his, and trying to draw her attention to him; but still she did not look
at him.

"Oh, why didn't I die! it would have been better," she said, and silent
tears flowed down both her cheeks; but she tried to smile, so as not to
wound him.

To decline the flattering and dangerous appointment at Tashkend would
have been, Vronsky had till then considered, disgraceful and impossible.
But now, without an instant's consideration, he declined it, and
observing dissatisfaction in the most exalted quarters at this step, he
immediately retired from the army.

A month later Alexey Alexandrovitch was left alone with his son in his
house at Petersburg, while Anna and Vronsky had gone abroad, not having
obtained a divorce, but having absolutely declined all idea of one.




PART FIVE



Chapter 1


Princess Shtcherbatskaya considered that it was out of the question for
the wedding to take place before Lent, just five weeks off, since not
half the trousseau could possibly be ready by that time. But she could
not but agree with Levin that to fix it for after Lent would be putting
it off too late, as an old aunt of Prince Shtcherbatsky's was seriously
ill and might die, and then the mourning would delay the wedding still
longer. And therefore, deciding to divide the trousseau into two
parts--a larger and smaller trousseau--the princess consented to have
the wedding before Lent. She determined that she would get the smaller
part of the trousseau all ready now, and the larger part should be made
later, and she was much vexed with Levin because he was incapable of
giving her a serious answer to the question whether he agreed to this
arrangement or not. The arrangement was the more suitable as,
immediately after the wedding, the young people were to go to the
country, where the more important part of the trousseau would not be
wanted.

Levin still continued in the same delirious condition in which it seemed
to him that he and his happiness constituted the chief and sole aim of
all existence, and that he need not now think or care about anything,
that everything was being done and would be done for him by others. He
had not even plans and aims for the future, he left its arrangement to
others, knowing that everything would be delightful. His brother Sergey
Ivanovitch, Stepan Arkadyevitch, and the princess guided him in doing
what he had to do. All he did was to agree entirely with everything
suggested to him. His brother raised money for him, the princess advised
him to leave Moscow after the wedding. Stepan Arkadyevitch advised him
to go abroad. He agreed to everything. "Do what you choose, if it amuses
you. I'm happy, and my happiness can be no greater and no less for
anything you do," he thought. When he told Kitty of Stepan
Arkadyevitch's advice that they should go abroad, he was much surprised
that she did not agree to this, and had some definite requirements of
her own in regard to their future. She knew Levin had work he loved in
the country. She did not, as he saw, understand this work, she did not
even care to understand it. But that did not prevent her from regarding
it as a matter of great importance. And then she knew their home would
be in the country, and she wanted to go, not abroad where she was not
going to live, but to the place where their home would be. This
definitely expressed purpose astonished Levin. But since he did not care
either way, he immediately asked Stepan Arkadyevitch, as though it were
his duty, to go down to the country and to arrange everything there to
the best of his ability with the taste of which he had so much.

"But I say," Stepan Arkadyevitch said to him one day after he had come
back from the country, where he had got everything ready for the young
people's arrival, "have you a certificate of having been at confession?"

"No. But what of it?"

"You can't be married without it."

"_Aie, aie, aie!_" cried Levin. "Why, I believe it's nine years since
I've taken the sacrament! I never thought of it."

"You're a pretty fellow!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch laughing, "and you
call me a Nihilist! But this won't do, you know. You must take the
sacrament."

"When? There are four days left now."

Stepan Arkadyevitch arranged this also, and Levin had to go to
confession. To Levin, as to any unbeliever who respects the beliefs of
others, it was exceedingly disagreeable to be present at and take part
in church ceremonies. At this moment, in his present softened state of
feeling, sensitive to everything, this inevitable act of hypocrisy was
not merely painful to Levin, it seemed to him utterly impossible. Now,
in the heyday of his highest glory, his fullest flower, he would have to
be a liar or a scoffer. He felt incapable of being either. But though he
repeatedly plied Stepan Arkadyevitch with questions as to the
possibility of obtaining a certificate without actually communicating,
Stepan Arkadyevitch maintained that it was out of the question.

"Besides, what is it to you--two days? And he's an awfully nice clever
old fellow. He'll pull the tooth out for you so gently, you won't notice
it."

Standing at the first litany, Levin attempted to revive in himself his
youthful recollections of the intense religious emotion he had passed
through between the ages of sixteen and seventeen.

But he was at once convinced that it was utterly impossible to him. He
attempted to look at it all as an empty custom, having no sort of
meaning, like the custom of paying calls. But he felt that he could not
do that either. Levin found himself, like the majority of his
contemporaries, in the vaguest position in regard to religion. Believe
he could not, and at the same time he had no firm conviction that it was
all wrong. And consequently, not being able to believe in the
significance of what he was doing nor to regard it with indifference as
an empty formality, during the whole period of preparing for the
sacrament he was conscious of a feeling of discomfort and shame at doing
what he did not himself understand, and what, as an inner voice told
him, was therefore false and wrong.

During the service he would first listen to the prayers, trying to
attach some meaning to them not discordant with his own views; then
feeling that he could not understand and must condemn them, he tried not
to listen to them, but to attend to the thoughts, observations, and
memories which floated through his brain with extreme vividness during
this idle time of standing in church.

He had stood through the litany, the evening service and the midnight
service, and the next day he got up earlier than usual, and without
having tea went at eight o'clock in the morning to the church for the
morning service and the confession.

There was no one in the church but a beggar soldier, two old women, and
the church officials. A young deacon, whose long back showed in two
distinct halves through his thin undercassock, met him, and at once
going to a little table at the wall read the exhortation. During the
reading, especially at the frequent and rapid repetition of the same
words, "Lord, have mercy on us!" which resounded with an echo, Levin
felt that thought was shut and sealed up, and that it must not be
touched or stirred now or confusion would be the result; and so standing
behind the deacon he went on thinking of his own affairs, neither
listening nor examining what was said. "It's wonderful what expression
there is in her hand," he thought, remembering how they had been sitting
the day before at a corner table. They had nothing to talk about, as was
almost always the case at this time, and laying her hand on the table
she kept opening and shutting it, and laughed herself as she watched her
action. He remembered how he had kissed it and then had examined the
lines on the pink palm. "Have mercy on us again!" thought Levin,
crossing himself, bowing, and looking at the supple spring of the
deacon's back bowing before him. "She took my hand then and examined the
lines 'You've got a splendid hand,' she said." And he looked at his own
hand and the short hand of the deacon. "Yes, now it will soon be over,"
he thought. "No, it seems to be beginning again," he thought, listening
to the prayers. "No, it's just ending: there he is bowing down to the
ground. That's always at the end."

The deacon's hand in a plush cuff accepted a three-rouble note
unobtrusively, and the deacon said he would put it down in the register,
and his new boots creaking jauntily over the flagstones of the empty
church, he went to the altar. A moment later he peeped out thence and
beckoned to Levin. Thought, till then locked up, began to stir in
Levin's head, but he made haste to drive it away. "It will come right
somehow," he thought, and went towards the altar-rails. He went up the
steps, and turning to the right saw the priest. The priest, a little old
man with a scanty grizzled beard and weary, good-natured eyes, was
standing at the altar-rails, turning over the pages of a missal. With a
slight bow to Levin he began immediately reading prayers in the official
voice. When he had finished them he bowed down to the ground and turned,
facing Levin.

"Christ is present here unseen, receiving your confession," he said,
pointing to the crucifix. "Do you believe in all the doctrines of the
Holy Apostolic Church?" the priest went on, turning his eyes away from
Levin's face and folding his hands under his stole.

"I have doubted, I doubt everything," said Levin in a voice that jarred
on himself, and he ceased speaking.

The priest waited a few seconds to see if he would not say more, and
closing his eyes he said quickly, with a broad, Vladimirsky accent:

"Doubt is natural to the weakness of mankind, but we must pray that God
in His mercy will strengthen us. What are your special sins?" he added,
without the slightest interval, as though anxious not to waste time.

"My chief sin is doubt. I have doubts of everything, and for the most
part I am in doubt."

"Doubt is natural to the weakness of mankind," the priest repeated the
same words. "What do you doubt about principally?"

"I doubt of everything. I sometimes even have doubts of the existence of
God," Levin could not help saying, and he was horrified at the
impropriety of what he was saying. But Levin's words did not, it seemed,
make much impression on the priest.

"What sort of doubt can there be of the existence of God?" he said
hurriedly, with a just perceptible smile.

Levin did not speak.

"What doubt can you have of the Creator when you behold His creation?"
the priest went on in the rapid customary jargon. "Who has decked the
heavenly firmament with its lights? Who has clothed the earth in its
beauty? How explain it without the Creator?" he said, looking
inquiringly at Levin.

Levin felt that it would be improper to enter upon a metaphysical
discussion with the priest, and so he said in reply merely what was a
direct answer to the question.

"I don't know," he said.

"You don't know! Then how can you doubt that God created all?" the
priest said, with good-humored perplexity.

"I don't understand it at all," said Levin, blushing, and feeling that
his words were stupid, and that they could not be anything but stupid in
such a position.

"Pray to God and beseech Him. Even the holy fathers had doubts, and
prayed to God to strengthen their faith. The devil has great power, and
we must resist him. Pray to God, beseech Him. Pray to God," he repeated
hurriedly.

The priest paused for some time, as though meditating.

"You're about, I hear, to marry the daughter of my parishioner and son
in the spirit, Prince Shtcherbatsky?" he resumed, with a smile. "An
excellent young lady."

"Yes," answered Levin, blushing for the priest. "What does he want to
ask me about this at confession for?" he thought.

And, as though answering his thought, the priest said to him:

"You are about to enter into holy matrimony, and God may bless you with
offspring. Well, what sort of bringing-up can you give your babes if you
do not overcome the temptation of the devil, enticing you to
infidelity?" he said, with gentle reproachfulness. "If you love your
child as a good father, you will not desire only wealth, luxury, honor
for your infant; you will be anxious for his salvation, his spiritual
enlightenment with the light of truth. Eh? What answer will you make him
when the innocent babe asks you: 'Papa! who made all that enchants me in
this world--the earth, the waters, the sun, the flowers, the grass?' Can
you say to him: 'I don't know'? You cannot but know, since the Lord God
in His infinite mercy has revealed it to us. Or your child will ask you:
'What awaits me in the life beyond the tomb?' What will you say to him
when you know nothing? How will you answer him? Will you leave him to
the allurements of the world and the devil? That's not right," he said,
and he stopped, putting his head on one side and looking at Levin with
his kindly, gentle eyes.

Levin made no answer this time, not because he did not want to enter
upon a discussion with the priest, but because, so far, no one had ever
asked him such questions, and when his babes did ask him those
questions, it would be time enough to think about answering them.

"You are entering upon a time of life," pursued the priest, "when you
must choose your path and keep to it. Pray to God that He may in His
mercy aid you and have mercy on you!" he concluded. "Our Lord and God,
Jesus Christ, in the abundance and riches of His lovingkindness,
forgives this child..." and, finishing the prayer of absolution, the
priest blessed him and dismissed him.

On getting home that day, Levin had a delightful sense of relief at the
awkward position being over and having been got through without his
having to tell a lie. Apart from this, there remained a vague memory
that what the kind, nice old fellow had said had not been at all so
stupid as he had fancied at first, and that there was something in it
that must be cleared up.

"Of course, not now," thought Levin, "but some day later on." Levin felt
more than ever now that there was something not clear and not clean in
his soul, and that, in regard to religion, he was in the same position
which he perceived so clearly and disliked in others, and for which he
blamed his friend Sviazhsky.

Levin spent that evening with his betrothed at Dolly's, and was in very
high spirits. To explain to Stepan Arkadyevitch the state of excitement
in which he found himself, he said that he was happy like a dog being
trained to jump through a hoop, who, having at last caught the idea, and
done what was required of him, whines and wags its tail, and jumps up to
the table and the windows in its delight.



Chapter 2


On the day of the wedding, according to the Russian custom (the princess
and Darya Alexandrovna insisted on strictly keeping all the customs),
Levin did not see his betrothed, and dined at his hotel with three
bachelor friends, casually brought together at his rooms. These were
Sergey Ivanovitch, Katavasov, a university friend, now professor of
natural science, whom Levin had met in the street and insisted on taking
home with him, and Tchirikov, his best man, a Moscow conciliation-board
judge, Levin's companion in his bear-hunts. The dinner was a very merry
one: Sergey Ivanovitch was in his happiest mood, and was much amused by
Katavasov's originality. Katavasov, feeling his originality was
appreciated and understood, made the most of it. Tchirikov always gave a
lively and good-humored support to conversation of any sort.

"See, now," said Katavasov, drawling his words from a habit acquired in
the lecture-room, "what a capable fellow was our friend Konstantin
Dmitrievitch. I'm not speaking of present company, for he's absent. At
the time he left the university he was fond of science, took an interest
in humanity; now one-half of his abilities is devoted to deceiving
himself, and the other to justifying the deceit."

"A more determined enemy of matrimony than you I never saw," said Sergey
Ivanovitch.

"Oh, no, I'm not an enemy of matrimony. I'm in favor of division of
labor. People who can do nothing else ought to rear people while the
rest work for their happiness and enlightenment. That's how I look at
it. To muddle up two trades is the error of the amateur; I'm not one of
their number."

"How happy I shall be when I hear that you're in love!" said Levin.
"Please invite me to the wedding."

"I'm in love now."

"Yes, with a cuttlefish! You know," Levin turned to his brother, "Mihail
Semyonovitch is writing a work on the digestive organs of the..."

"Now, make a muddle of it! It doesn't matter what about. And the fact
is, I certainly do love cuttlefish."

"But that's no hindrance to your loving your wife."

"The cuttlefish is no hindrance. The wife is the hindrance."

"Why so?"

"Oh, you'll see! You care about farming, hunting,--well, you'd better
look out!"

"Arhip was here today; he said there were a lot of elks in Prudno, and
two bears," said Tchirikov.

"Well, you must go and get them without me."

"Ah, that's the truth," said Sergey Ivanovitch. "And you may say
good-bye to bear-hunting for the future--your wife won't allow it!"

Levin smiled. The picture of his wife not letting him go was so pleasant
that he was ready to renounce the delights of looking upon bears
forever.

"Still, it's a pity they should get those two bears without you. Do you
remember last time at Hapilovo? That was a delightful hunt!" said
Tchirikov.

Levin had not the heart to disillusion him of the notion that there
could be something delightful apart from her, and so said nothing.

"There's some sense in this custom of saying good-bye to bachelor life,"
said Sergey Ivanovitch. "However happy you may be, you must regret your
freedom."

"And confess there is a feeling that you want to jump out of the window,
like Gogol's bridegroom?"

"Of course there is, but it isn't confessed," said Katavasov, and he
broke into loud laughter.

"Oh, well, the window's open. Let's start off this instant to Tver!
There's a big she-bear; one can go right up to the lair. Seriously,
let's go by the five o'clock! And here let them do what they like," said
Tchirikov, smiling.

"Well, now, on my honor," said Levin, smiling, "I can't find in my heart
that feeling of regret for my freedom."

"Yes, there's such a chaos in your heart just now that you can't find
anything there," said Katavasov. "Wait a bit, when you set it to rights
a little, you'll find it!"

"No; if so, I should have felt a little, apart from my feeling" (he
could not say love before them) "and happiness, a certain regret at
losing my freedom.... On the contrary, I am glad at the very loss of my
freedom."

"Awful! It's a hopeless case!" said Katavasov. "Well, let's drink to his
recovery, or wish that a hundredth part of his dreams may be
realized--and that would be happiness such as never has been seen on
earth!"

Soon after dinner the guests went away to be in time to be dressed for
the wedding.

When he was left alone, and recalled the conversation of these bachelor
friends, Levin asked himself: had he in his heart that regret for his
freedom of which they had spoken? He smiled at the question. "Freedom!
What is freedom for? Happiness is only in loving and wishing her wishes,
thinking her thoughts, that is to say, not freedom at all--that's
happiness!"

"But do I know her ideas, her wishes, her feelings?" some voice suddenly
whispered to him. The smile died away from his face, and he grew
thoughtful. And suddenly a strange feeling came upon him. There came
over him a dread and doubt--doubt of everything.

"What if she does not love me? What if she's marrying me simply to be
married? What if she doesn't see herself what she's doing?" he asked
himself. "She may come to her senses, and only when she is being married
realize that she does not and cannot love me." And strange, most evil
thoughts of her began to come to him. He was jealous of Vronsky, as he
had been a year ago, as though the evening he had seen her with Vronsky
had been yesterday. He suspected she had not told him everything.

He jumped up quickly. "No, this can't go on!" he said to himself in
despair. "I'll go to her; I'll ask her; I'll say for the last time: we
are free, and hadn't we better stay so? Anything's better than endless
misery, disgrace, unfaithfulness!" With despair in his heart and bitter
anger against all men, against himself, against her, he went out of the
hotel and drove to her house.

He found her in one of the back rooms. She was sitting on a chest and
making some arrangements with her maid, sorting over heaps of dresses of
different colors, spread on the backs of chairs and on the floor.

"Ah!" she cried, seeing him, and beaming with delight. "Kostya!
Konstantin Dmitrievitch!" (These latter days she used these names almost
alternately.) "I didn't expect you! I'm going through my wardrobe to see
what's for whom..."

"Oh! that's very nice!" he said gloomily, looking at the maid.

"You can go, Dunyasha, I'll call you presently," said Kitty. "Kostya,
what's the matter?" she asked, definitely adopting this familiar name as
soon as the maid had gone out. She noticed his strange face, agitated
and gloomy, and a panic came over her.

"Kitty! I'm in torture. I can't suffer alone," he said with despair in
his voice, standing before her and looking imploringly into her eyes. He
saw already from her loving, truthful face, that nothing could come of
what he had meant to say, but yet he wanted her to reassure him herself.
"I've come to say that there's still time. This can all be stopped and
set right."

"What? I don't understand. What is the matter?"

"What I have said a thousand times over, and can't help thinking ...
that I'm not worthy of you. You couldn't consent to marry me. Think a
little. You've made a mistake. Think it over thoroughly. You can't love
me.... If ... better say so," he said, not looking at her. "I shall be
wretched. Let people say what they like; anything's better than
misery.... Far better now while there's still time...."

"I don't understand," she answered, panic-stricken; "you mean you want
to give it up ... don't want it?"

"Yes, if you don't love me."

"You're out of your mind!" she cried, turning crimson with vexation. But
his face was so piteous, that she restrained her vexation, and flinging
some clothes off an arm-chair, she sat down beside him. "What are you
thinking? tell me all."

"I am thinking you can't love me. What can you love me for?"

"My God! what can I do?..." she said, and burst into tears.

"Oh! what have I done?" he cried, and kneeling before her, he fell to
kissing her hands.

When the princess came into the room five minutes later, she found them
completely reconciled. Kitty had not simply assured him that she loved
him, but had gone so far--in answer to his question, what she loved him
for--as to explain what for. She told him that she loved him because she
understood him completely, because she knew what he would like, and
because everything he liked was good. And this seemed to him perfectly
clear. When the princess came to them, they were sitting side by side on
the chest, sorting the dresses and disputing over Kitty's wanting to
give Dunyasha the brown dress she had been wearing when Levin proposed
to her, while he insisted that that dress must never be given away, but
Dunyasha must have the blue one.

"How is it you don't see? She's a brunette, and it won't suit her....
I've worked it all out."

Hearing why he had come, the princess was half humorously, half
seriously angry with him, and sent him home to dress and not to hinder
Kitty's hair-dressing, as Charles the hair-dresser was just coming.

"As it is, she's been eating nothing lately and is losing her looks, and
then you must come and upset her with your nonsense," she said to him.
"Get along with you, my dear!"

Levin, guilty and shamefaced, but pacified, went back to his hotel. His
brother, Darya Alexandrovna, and Stepan Arkadyevitch, all in full dress,
were waiting for him to bless him with the holy picture. There was no
time to lose. Darya Alexandrovna had to drive home again to fetch her
curled and pomaded son, who was to carry the holy pictures after the
bride. Then a carriage had to be sent for the best man, and another that
would take Sergey Ivanovitch away would have to be sent back....
Altogether there were a great many most complicated matters to be
considered and arranged. One thing was unmistakable, that there must be
no delay, as it was already half-past six.

Nothing special happened at the ceremony of benediction with the holy
picture. Stepan Arkadyevitch stood in a comically solemn pose beside his
wife, took the holy picture, and telling Levin to bow down to the
ground, he blessed him with his kindly, ironical smile, and kissed him
three times; Darya Alexandrovna did the same, and immediately was in a
hurry to get off, and again plunged into the intricate question of the
destinations of the various carriages.

"Come, I'll tell you how we'll manage: you drive in our carriage to
fetch him, and Sergey Ivanovitch, if he'll be so good, will drive there
and then send his carriage."

"Of course; I shall be delighted."

"We'll come on directly with him. Are your things sent off?" said Stepan
Arkadyevitch.

"Yes," answered Levin, and he told Kouzma to put out his clothes for him
to dress.



Chapter 3


A crowd of people, principally women, was thronging round the church
lighted up for the wedding. Those who had not succeeded in getting into
the main entrance were crowding about the windows, pushing, wrangling,
and peeping through the gratings.

More than twenty carriages had already been drawn up in ranks along the
street by the police. A police officer, regardless of the frost, stood
at the entrance, gorgeous in his uniform. More carriages were
continually driving up, and ladies wearing flowers and carrying their
trains, and men taking off their helmets or black hats kept walking into
the church. Inside the church both lusters were already lighted, and all
the candles before the holy pictures. The gilt on the red ground of the
holy picture-stand, and the gilt relief on the pictures, and the silver
of the lusters and candlesticks, and the stones of the floor, and the
rugs, and the banners above in the choir, and the steps of the altar,
and the old blackened books, and the cassocks and surplices--all were
flooded with light. On the right side of the warm church, in the crowd
of frock coats and white ties, uniforms and broadcloth, velvet, satin,
hair and flowers, bare shoulders and arms and long gloves, there was
discreet but lively conversation that echoed strangely in the high
cupola. Every time there was heard the creak of the opened door the
conversation in the crowd died away, and everybody looked round
expecting to see the bride and bridegroom come in. But the door had
opened more than ten times, and each time it was either a belated guest
or guests, who joined the circle of the invited on the right, or a
spectator, who had eluded or softened the police officer, and went to
join the crowd of outsiders on the left. Both the guests and the outside
public had by now passed through all the phases of anticipation.

At first they imagined that the bride and bridegroom would arrive
immediately, and attached no importance at all to their being late. Then
they began to look more and more often towards the door, and to talk of
whether anything could have happened. Then the long delay began to be
positively discomforting, and relations and guests tried to look as if
they were not thinking of the bridegroom but were engrossed in
conversation.

The head deacon, as though to remind them of the value of his time,
coughed impatiently, making the window-panes quiver in their frames. In
the choir the bored choristers could be heard trying their voices and
blowing their noses. The priest was continually sending first the beadle
and then the deacon to find out whether the bridegroom had not come,
more and more often he went himself, in a lilac vestment and an
embroidered sash, to the side door, expecting to see the bridegroom. At
last one of the ladies, glancing at her watch, said, "It really is
strange, though!" and all the guests became uneasy and began loudly
expressing their wonder and dissatisfaction. One of the bridegroom's
best men went to find out what had happened. Kitty meanwhile had long
ago been quite ready, and in her white dress and long veil and wreath of
orange blossoms she was standing in the drawing-room of the
Shtcherbatskys' house with her sister, Madame Lvova, who was her
bridal-mother. She was looking out of the window, and had been for over
half an hour anxiously expecting to hear from the best man that her
bridegroom was at the church.

Levin meanwhile, in his trousers, but without his coat and waistcoat,
was walking to and fro in his room at the hotel, continually putting his
head out of the door and looking up and down the corridor. But in the
corridor there was no sign of the person he was looking for and he came
back in despair, and frantically waving his hands addressed Stepan
Arkadyevitch, who was smoking serenely.

"Was ever a man in such a fearful fool's position?" he said.

"Yes, it is stupid," Stepan Arkadyevitch assented, smiling soothingly.
"But don't worry, it'll be brought directly."

"No, what is to be done!" said Levin, with smothered fury. "And these
fools of open waistcoats! Out of the question!" he said, looking at the
crumpled front of his shirt. "And what if the things have been taken on
to the railway station!" he roared in desperation.

"Then you must put on mine."

"I ought to have done so long ago, if at all."

"It's not nice to look ridiculous.... Wait a bit! it will _come round_."

The point was that when Levin asked for his evening suit, Kouzma, his
old servant, had brought him the coat, waistcoat, and everything that
was wanted.

"But the shirt!" cried Levin.

"You've got a shirt on," Kouzma answered, with a placid smile.

Kouzma had not thought of leaving out a clean shirt, and on receiving
instructions to pack up everything and send it round to the
Shtcherbatskys' house, from which the young people were to set out the
same evening, he had done so, packing everything but the dress suit. The
shirt worn since the morning was crumpled and out of the question with
the fashionable open waistcoat. It was a long way to send to the
Shtcherbatskys'. They sent out to buy a shirt. The servant came back;
everything was shut up--it was Sunday. They sent to Stepan
Arkadyevitch's and brought a shirt--it was impossibly wide and short.
They sent finally to the Shtcherbatskys' to unpack the things. The
bridegroom was expected at the church while he was pacing up and down
his room like a wild beast in a cage, peeping out into the corridor, and
with horror and despair recalling what absurd things he had said to
Kitty and what she might be thinking now.

At last the guilty Kouzma flew panting into the room with the shirt.

"Only just in time. They were just lifting it into the van," said
Kouzma.

Three minutes later Levin ran full speed into the corridor, not looking
at his watch for fear of aggravating his sufferings.

"You won't help matters like this," said Stepan Arkadyevitch with a
smile, hurrying with more deliberation after him. "It will come round,
it will come round ... I tell you."



Chapter 4


"They've come!" "Here he is!" "Which one?" "Rather young, eh?" "Why, my
dear soul, she looks more dead than alive!" were the comments in the
crowd, when Levin, meeting his bride in the entrance, walked with her
into the church.

Stepan Arkadyevitch told his wife the cause of the delay, and the guests
were whispering it with smiles to one another. Levin saw nothing and no
one; he did not take his eyes off his bride.

Everyone said she had lost her looks dreadfully of late, and was not
nearly so pretty on her wedding day as usual; but Levin did not think
so. He looked at her hair done up high, with the long white veil and
white flowers and the high, stand-up, scalloped collar, that in such a
maidenly fashion hid her long neck at the sides and only showed it in
front, her strikingly slender figure, and it seemed to him that she
looked better than ever--not because these flowers, this veil, this gown
from Paris added anything to her beauty; but because, in spite of the
elaborate sumptuousness of her attire, the expression of her sweet face,
of her eyes, of her lips was still her own characteristic expression of
guileless truthfulness.

"I was beginning to think you meant to run away," she said, and smiled
to him.

"It's so stupid, what happened to me, I'm ashamed to speak of it!" he
said, reddening, and he was obliged to turn to Sergey Ivanovitch, who
came up to him.

"This is a pretty story of yours about the shirt!" said Sergey
Ivanovitch, shaking his head and smiling.

"Yes, yes!" answered Levin, without an idea of what they were talking
about.

"Now, Kostya, you have to decide," said Stepan Arkadyevitch with an air
of mock dismay, "a weighty question. You are at this moment just in the
humor to appreciate all its gravity. They ask me, are they to light the
candles that have been lighted before or candles that have never been
lighted? It's a matter of ten roubles," he added, relaxing his lips into
a smile. "I have decided, but I was afraid you might not agree."

Levin saw it was a joke, but he could not smile.

"Well, how's it to be then?--unlighted or lighted candles? that's the
question."

"Yes, yes, unlighted."

"Oh, I'm very glad. The question's decided!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
smiling. "How silly men are, though, in this position," he said to
Tchirikov, when Levin, after looking absently at him, had moved back to
his bride.

"Kitty, mind you're the first to step on the carpet," said Countess
Nordston, coming up. "You're a nice person!" she said to Levin.

"Aren't you frightened, eh?" said Marya Dmitrievna, an old aunt.

"Are you cold? You're pale. Stop a minute, stoop down," said Kitty's
sister, Madame Lvova, and with her plump, handsome arms she smilingly
set straight the flowers on her head.

Dolly came up, tried to say something, but could not speak, cried, and
then laughed unnaturally.

Kitty looked at all of them with the same absent eyes as Levin.

Meanwhile the officiating clergy had got into their vestments, and the
priest and deacon came out to the lectern, which stood in the forepart
of the church. The priest turned to Levin saying something. Levin did
not hear what the priest said.

"Take the bride's hand and lead her up," the best man said to Levin.

It was a long while before Levin could make out what was expected of
him. For a long time they tried to set him right and made him begin
again--because he kept taking Kitty by the wrong arm or with the wrong
arm--till he understood at last that what he had to do was, without
changing his position, to take her right hand in his right hand. When at
last he had taken the bride's hand in the correct way, the priest walked
a few paces in front of them and stopped at the lectern. The crowd of
friends and relations moved after them, with a buzz of talk and a rustle
of skirts. Someone stooped down and pulled out the bride's train. The
church became so still that the drops of wax could be heard falling from
the candles.

The little old priest in his ecclesiastical cap, with his long
silvery-gray locks of hair parted behind his ears, was fumbling with
something at the lectern, putting out his little old hands from under
the heavy silver vestment with the gold cross on the back of it.

Stepan Arkadyevitch approached him cautiously, whispered something, and
making a sign to Levin, walked back again.

The priest lighted two candles, wreathed with flowers, and holding them
sideways so that the wax dropped slowly from them he turned, facing the
bridal pair. The priest was the same old man that had confessed Levin.
He looked with weary and melancholy eyes at the bride and bridegroom,
sighed, and putting his right hand out from his vestment, blessed the
bridegroom with it, and also with a shade of solicitous tenderness laid
the crossed fingers on the bowed head of Kitty. Then he gave them the
candles, and taking the censer, moved slowly away from them.

"Can it be true?" thought Levin, and he looked round at his bride.
Looking down at her he saw her face in profile, and from the scarcely
perceptible quiver of her lips and eyelashes he knew she was aware of
his eyes upon her. She did not look round, but the high scalloped
collar, that reached her little pink ear, trembled faintly. He saw that
a sigh was held back in her throat, and the little hand in the long
glove shook as it held the candle.

All the fuss of the shirt, of being late, all the talk of friends and
relations, their annoyance, his ludicrous position--all suddenly passed
away and he was filled with joy and dread.

The handsome, stately head-deacon wearing a silver robe and his curly
locks standing out at each side of his head, stepped smartly forward,
and lifting his stole on two fingers, stood opposite the priest.

"Blessed be the name of the Lord," the solemn syllables rang out slowly
one after another, setting the air quivering with waves of sound.

"Blessed is the name of our God, from the beginning, is now, and ever
shall be," the little old priest answered in a submissive, piping voice,
still fingering something at the lectern. And the full chorus of the
unseen choir rose up, filling the whole church, from the windows to the
vaulted roof, with broad waves of melody. It grew stronger, rested for
an instant, and slowly died away.

They prayed, as they always do, for peace from on high and for
salvation, for the Holy Synod, and for the Tsar; they prayed, too, for
the servants of God, Konstantin and Ekaterina, now plighting their
troth.

"Vouchsafe to them love made perfect, peace and help, O Lord, we beseech
Thee," the whole church seemed to breathe with the voice of the head
deacon.

Levin heard the words, and they impressed him. "How did they guess that
it is help, just help that one wants?" he thought, recalling all his
fears and doubts of late. "What do I know? what can I do in this fearful
business," he thought, "without help? Yes, it is help I want now."

When the deacon had finished the prayer for the Imperial family, the
priest turned to the bridal pair with a book: "Eternal God, that joinest
together in love them that were separate," he read in a gentle, piping
voice: "who hast ordained the union of holy wedlock that cannot be set
asunder, Thou who didst bless Isaac and Rebecca and their descendants,
according to Thy Holy Covenant; bless Thy servants, Konstantin and
Ekaterina, leading them in the path of all good works. For gracious and
merciful art Thou, our Lord, and glory be to Thee, the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Ghost, now and ever shall be."

"Amen!" the unseen choir sent rolling again upon the air.

"'Joinest together in love them that were separate.' What deep meaning
in those words, and how they correspond with what one feels at this
moment," thought Levin. "Is she feeling the same as I?"

And looking round, he met her eyes, and from their expression he
concluded that she was understanding it just as he was. But this was a
mistake; she almost completely missed the meaning of the words of the
service; she had not heard them, in fact. She could not listen to them
and take them in, so strong was the one feeling that filled her breast
and grew stronger and stronger. That feeling was joy at the completion
of the process that for the last month and a half had been going on in
her soul, and had during those six weeks been a joy and a torture to
her. On the day when in the drawing room of the house in Arbaty Street
she had gone up to him in her brown dress, and given herself to him
without a word--on that day, at that hour, there took place in her heart
a complete severance from all her old life, and a quite different, new,
utterly strange life had begun for her, while the old life was actually
going on as before. Those six weeks had for her been a time of the
utmost bliss and the utmost misery. All her life, all her desires and
hopes were concentrated on this one man, still uncomprehended by her, to
whom she was bound by a feeling of alternate attraction and repulsion,
even less comprehended than the man himself, and all the while she was
going on living in the outward conditions of her old life. Living the
old life, she was horrified at herself, at her utter insurmountable
callousness to all her own past, to things, to habits, to the people she
had loved, who loved her--to her mother, who was wounded by her
indifference, to her kind, tender father, till then dearer than all the
world. At one moment she was horrified at this indifference, at another
she rejoiced at what had brought her to this indifference. She could not
frame a thought, not a wish apart from life with this man; but this new
life was not yet, and she could not even picture it clearly to herself.
There was only anticipation, the dread and joy of the new and the
unknown. And now behold--anticipation and uncertainty and remorse at the
abandonment of the old life--all was ending, and the new was beginning.
This new life could not but have terrors for her inexperience; but,
terrible or not, the change had been wrought six weeks before in her
soul, and this was merely the final sanction of what had long been
completed in her heart.

Turning again to the lectern, the priest with some difficulty took
Kitty's little ring, and asking Levin for his hand, put it on the first
joint of his finger. "The servant of God, Konstantin, plights his troth
to the servant of God, Ekaterina." And putting his big ring on Kitty's
touchingly weak, pink little finger, the priest said the same thing.

And the bridal pair tried several times to understand what they had to
do, and each time made some mistake and were corrected by the priest in
a whisper. At last, having duly performed the ceremony, having signed
the rings with the cross, the priest handed Kitty the big ring, and
Levin the little one. Again they were puzzled, and passed the rings from
hand to hand, still without doing what was expected.

Dolly, Tchirikov, and Stepan Arkadyevitch stepped forward to set them
right. There was an interval of hesitation, whispering, and smiles; but
the expression of solemn emotion on the faces of the betrothed pair did
not change: on the contrary, in their perplexity over their hands they
looked more grave and deeply moved than before, and the smile with which
Stepan Arkadyevitch whispered to them that now they would each put on
their own ring died away on his lips. He had a feeling that any smile
would jar on them.

"Thou who didst from the beginning create male and female," the priest
read after the exchange of rings, "from Thee woman was given to man to
be a helpmeet to him, and for the procreation of children. O Lord, our
God, who hast poured down the blessings of Thy Truth according to Thy
Holy Covenant upon Thy chosen servants, our fathers, from generation to
generation, bless Thy servants Konstantin and Ekaterina, and make their
troth fast in faith, and union of hearts, and truth, and love...."

Levin felt more and more that all his ideas of marriage, all his dreams
of how he would order his life, were mere childishness, and that it was
something he had not understood hitherto, and now understood less than
ever, though it was being performed upon him. The lump in his throat
rose higher and higher, tears that would not be checked came into his
eyes.



Chapter 5


In the church there was all Moscow, all the friends and relations; and
during the ceremony of plighting troth, in the brilliantly lighted
church, there was an incessant flow of discreetly subdued talk in the
circle of gaily dressed women and girls, and men in white ties,
frockcoats, and uniforms. The talk was principally kept up by the men,
while the women were absorbed in watching every detail of the ceremony,
which always means so much to them.

In the little group nearest to the bride were her two sisters: Dolly,
and the other one, the self-possessed beauty, Madame Lvova, who had just
arrived from abroad.

"Why is it Marie's in lilac, as bad as black, at a wedding?" said Madame
Korsunskaya.

"With her complexion, it's the one salvation," responded Madame
Trubetskaya. "I wonder why they had the wedding in the evening? It's
like shop-people..."

"So much prettier. I was married in the evening too..." answered Madame
Korsunskaya, and she sighed, remembering how charming she had been that
day, and how absurdly in love her husband was, and how different it all
was now.

"They say if anyone's best man more than ten times, he'll never be
married. I wanted to be for the tenth time, but the post was taken,"
said Count Siniavin to the pretty Princess Tcharskaya, who had designs
on him.

Princess Tcharskaya only answered with a smile. She looked at Kitty,
thinking how and when she would stand with Count Siniavin in Kitty's
place, and how she would remind him then of his joke today.

Shtcherbatsky told the old maid of honor, Madame Nikolaeva, that he
meant to put the crown on Kitty's chignon for luck.

"She ought not to have worn a chignon," answered Madame Nikolaeva, who
had long ago made up her mind that if the elderly widower she was
angling for married her, the wedding should be of the simplest. "I don't
like such grandeur."

Sergey Ivanovitch was talking to Darya Dmitrievna, jestingly assuring
her that the custom of going away after the wedding was becoming common
because newly married people always felt a little ashamed of themselves.

"Your brother may feel proud of himself. She's a marvel of sweetness. I
believe you're envious."

"Oh, I've got over that, Darya Dmitrievna," he answered, and a
melancholy and serious expression suddenly came over his face.

Stepan Arkadyevitch was telling his sister-in-law his joke about
divorce.

"The wreath wants setting straight," she answered, not hearing him.

"What a pity she's lost her looks so," Countess Nordston said to Madame
Lvova. "Still he's not worth her little finger, is he?"

"Oh, I like him so--not because he's my future _beau-frere_," answered
Madame Lvova. "And how well he's behaving! It's so difficult, too, to
look well in such a position, not to be ridiculous. And he's not
ridiculous, and not affected; one can see he's moved."

"You expected it, I suppose?"

"Almost. She always cared for him."

"Well, we shall see which of them will step on the rug first. I warned
Kitty."

"It will make no difference," said Madame Lvova; "we're all obedient
wives; it's in our family."

"Oh, I stepped on the rug before Vassily on purpose. And you, Dolly?"

Dolly stood beside them; she heard them, but she did not answer. She was
deeply moved. The tears stood in her eyes, and she could not have spoken
without crying. She was rejoicing over Kitty and Levin; going back in
thought to her own wedding, she glanced at the radiant figure of Stepan
Arkadyevitch, forgot all the present, and remembered only her own
innocent love. She recalled not herself only, but all her women-friends
and acquaintances. She thought of them on the one day of their triumph,
when they had stood like Kitty under the wedding crown, with love and
hope and dread in their hearts, renouncing the past, and stepping
forward into the mysterious future. Among the brides that came back to
her memory, she thought too of her darling Anna, of whose proposed
divorce she had just been hearing. And she had stood just as innocent in
orange flowers and bridal veil. And now? "It's terribly strange," she
said to herself. It was not merely the sisters, the women-friends and
female relations of the bride who were following every detail of the
ceremony. Women who were quite strangers, mere spectators, were watching
it excitedly, holding their breath, in fear of losing a single movement
or expression of the bride and bridegroom, and angrily not answering,
often not hearing, the remarks of the callous men, who kept making
joking or irrelevant observations.

"Why has she been crying? Is she being married against her will?"

"Against her will to a fine fellow like that? A prince, isn't he?"

"Is that her sister in the white satin? Just listen how the deacon booms
out, 'And fearing her husband.'"

"Are the choristers from Tchudovo?"

"No, from the Synod."

"I asked the footman. He says he's going to take her home to his country
place at once. Awfully rich, they say. That's why she's being married to
him."

"No, they're a well-matched pair."

"I say, Marya Vassilievna, you were making out those fly-away crinolines
were not being worn. Just look at her in the puce dress--an ambassador's
wife they say she is--how her skirt bounces out from side to side!"

"What a pretty dear the bride is--like a lamb decked with flowers! Well,
say what you will, we women feel for our sister."

Such were the comments in the crowd of gazing women who had succeeded in
slipping in at the church doors.



Chapter 6


When the ceremony of plighting troth was over, the beadle spread before
the lectern in the middle of the church a piece of pink silken stuff,
the choir sang a complicated and elaborate psalm, in which the bass and
tenor sang responses to one another, and the priest turning round
pointed the bridal pair to the pink silk rug. Though both had often
heard a great deal about the saying that the one who steps first on the
rug will be the head of the house, neither Levin nor Kitty were capable
of recollecting it, as they took the few steps towards it. They did not
hear the loud remarks and disputes that followed, some maintaining he
had stepped on first, and others that both had stepped on together.

After the customary questions, whether they desired to enter upon
matrimony, and whether they were pledged to anyone else, and their
answers, which sounded strange to themselves, a new ceremony began.
Kitty listened to the words of the prayer, trying to make out their
meaning, but she could not. The feeling of triumph and radiant happiness
flooded her soul more and more as the ceremony went on, and deprived her
of all power of attention.

They prayed: "Endow them with continence and fruitfulness, and vouchsafe
that their hearts may rejoice looking upon their sons and daughters."
They alluded to God's creation of a wife from Adam's rib "and for this
cause a man shall leave father and mother, and cleave unto his wife, and
they two shall be one flesh," and that "this is a great mystery"; they
prayed that God would make them fruitful and bless them, like Isaac and
Rebecca, Joseph, Moses and Zipporah, and that they might look upon their
children's children. "That's all splendid," thought Kitty, catching the
words, "all that's just as it should be," and a smile of happiness,
unconsciously reflected in everyone who looked at her, beamed on her
radiant face.

"Put it on quite," voices were heard urging when the priest had put on
the wedding crowns and Shtcherbatsky, his hand shaking in its
three-button glove, held the crown high above her head.

"Put it on!" she whispered, smiling.

Levin looked round at her, and was struck by the joyful radiance on her
face, and unconsciously her feeling infected him. He too, like her felt
glad and happy.

They enjoyed hearing the epistle read, and the roll of the head deacon's
voice at the last verse, awaited with such impatience by the outside
public. They enjoyed drinking out of the shallow cup of warm red wine
and water, and they were still more pleased when the priest, flinging
back his stole and taking both their hands in his, led them round the
lectern to the accompaniment of bass voices chanting "Glory to God."

Shtcherbatsky and Tchirikov, supporting the crowns and stumbling over
the bride's train, smiling too and seeming delighted at something, were
at one moment left behind, at the next treading on the bridal pair as
the priest came to a halt. The spark of joy kindled in Kitty seemed to
have infected everyone in the church. It seemed to Levin that the priest
and the deacon too wanted to smile just as he did.

Taking the crowns off their heads the priest read the last prayer and
congratulated the young people. Levin looked at Kitty, and he had never
before seen her look as she did. She was charming with the new radiance
of happiness in her face. Levin longed to say something to her, but he
did not know whether it was all over. The priest got him out of his
difficulty. He smiled his kindly smile and said gently, "Kiss your wife,
and you kiss your husband," and took the candles out of their hands.

Levin kissed her smiling lips with timid care, gave her his arm, and
with a new strange sense of closeness, walked out of the church. He did
not believe, he could not believe, that it was true. It was only when
their wondering and timid eyes met that he believed in it, because he
felt that they were one.

After supper, the same night, the young people left for the country.



Chapter 7


Vronsky and Anna had been traveling for three months together in Europe.
They had visited Venice, Rome, and Naples, and had just arrived at a
small Italian town where they meant to stay some time. A handsome head
waiter, with thick pomaded hair parted from the neck upwards, an evening
coat, a broad white cambric shirt front, and a bunch of trinkets hanging
above his rounded stomach, stood with his hands in the full curve of his
pockets, looking contemptuously from under his eyelids while he gave
some frigid reply to a gentleman who had stopped him. Catching the sound
of footsteps coming from the other side of the entry towards the
staircase, the head waiter turned round, and seeing the Russian count,
who had taken their best rooms, he took his hands out of his pockets
deferentially, and with a bow informed him that a courier had been, and
that the business about the palazzo had been arranged. The steward was
prepared to sign the agreement.

"Ah! I'm glad to hear it," said Vronsky. "Is madame at home or not?"

"Madame has been out for a walk but has returned now," answered the
waiter.

Vronsky took off his soft, wide-brimmed hat and passed his handkerchief
over his heated brow and hair, which had grown half over his ears, and
was brushed back covering the bald patch on his head. And glancing
casually at the gentleman, who still stood there gazing intently at him,
he would have gone on.

"This gentleman is a Russian, and was inquiring after you," said the
head waiter.

With mingled feelings of annoyance at never being able to get away from
acquaintances anywhere, and longing to find some sort of diversion from
the monotony of his life, Vronsky looked once more at the gentleman, who
had retreated and stood still again, and at the same moment a light came
into the eyes of both.

"Golenishtchev!"

"Vronsky!"

It really was Golenishtchev, a comrade of Vronsky's in the Corps of
Pages. In the corps Golenishtchev had belonged to the liberal party; he
left the corps without entering the army, and had never taken office
under the government. Vronsky and he had gone completely different ways
on leaving the corps, and had only met once since.

At that meeting Vronsky perceived that Golenishtchev had taken up a sort
of lofty, intellectually liberal line, and was consequently disposed to
look down upon Vronsky's interests and calling in life. Hence Vronsky
had met him with the chilling and haughty manner he so well knew how to
assume, the meaning of which was: "You may like or dislike my way of
life, that's a matter of the most perfect indifference to me; you will
have to treat me with respect if you want to know me." Golenishtchev had
been contemptuously indifferent to the tone taken by Vronsky. This
second meeting might have been expected, one would have supposed, to
estrange them still more. But now they beamed and exclaimed with delight
on recognizing one another. Vronsky would never have expected to be so
pleased to see Golenishtchev, but probably he was not himself aware how
bored he was. He forgot the disagreeable impression of their last
meeting, and with a face of frank delight held out his hand to his old
comrade. The same expression of delight replaced the look of uneasiness
on Golenishtchev's face.

"How glad I am to meet you!" said Vronsky, showing his strong white
teeth in a friendly smile.

"I heard the name Vronsky, but I didn't know which one. I'm very, very
glad!"

"Let's go in. Come, tell me what you're doing."

"I've been living here for two years. I'm working."

"Ah!" said Vronsky, with sympathy; "let's go in." And with the habit
common with Russians, instead of saying in Russian what he wanted to
keep from the servants, he began to speak in French.

"Do you know Madame Karenina? We are traveling together. I am going to
see her now," he said in French, carefully scrutinizing Golenishtchev's
face.

"Ah! I did not know" (though he did know), Golenishtchev answered
carelessly. "Have you been here long?" he added.

"Four days," Vronsky answered, once more scrutinizing his friend's face
intently.

"Yes, he's a decent fellow, and will look at the thing properly,"
Vronsky said to himself, catching the significance of Golenishtchev's
face and the change of subject. "I can introduce him to Anna, he looks
at it properly."

During those three months that Vronsky had spent abroad with Anna, he
had always on meeting new people asked himself how the new person would
look at his relations with Anna, and for the most part, in men, he had
met with the "proper" way of looking at it. But if he had been asked,
and those who looked at it "properly" had been asked, exactly how they
did look at it, both he and they would have been greatly puzzled to
answer.

In reality, those who in Vronsky's opinion had the "proper" view had no
sort of view at all, but behaved in general as well-bred persons do
behave in regard to all the complex and insoluble problems with which
life is encompassed on all sides; they behaved with propriety, avoiding
allusions and unpleasant questions. They assumed an air of fully
comprehending the import and force of the situation, of accepting and
even approving of it, but of considering it superfluous and uncalled for
to put all this into words.

Vronsky at once divined that Golenishtchev was of this class, and
therefore was doubly pleased to see him. And in fact, Golenishtchev's
manner to Madame Karenina, when he was taken to call on her, was all
that Vronsky could have desired. Obviously without the slightest effort
he steered clear of all subjects which might lead to embarrassment.

He had never met Anna before, and was struck by her beauty, and still
more by the frankness with which she accepted her position. She blushed
when Vronsky brought in Golenishtchev, and he was extremely charmed by
this childish blush overspreading her candid and handsome face. But what
he liked particularly was the way in which at once, as though on purpose
that there might be no misunderstanding with an outsider, she called
Vronsky simply Alexey, and said they were moving into a house they had
just taken, what was here called a palazzo. Golenishtchev liked this
direct and simple attitude to her own position. Looking at Anna's manner
of simple-hearted, spirited gaiety, and knowing Alexey Alexandrovitch
and Vronsky, Golenishtchev fancied that he understood her perfectly. He
fancied that he understood what she was utterly unable to understand:
how it was that, having made her husband wretched, having abandoned him
and her son and lost her good name, she yet felt full of spirits,
gaiety, and happiness.

"It's in the guide-book," said Golenishtchev, referring to the palazzo
Vronsky had taken. "There's a first-rate Tintoretto there. One of his
latest period."

"I tell you what: it's a lovely day, let's go and have another look at
it," said Vronsky, addressing Anna.

"I shall be very glad to; I'll go and put on my hat. Would you say it's
hot?" she said, stopping short in the doorway and looking inquiringly at
Vronsky. And again a vivid flush overspread her face.

Vronsky saw from her eyes that she did not know on what terms he cared
to be with Golenishtchev, and so was afraid of not behaving as he would
wish.

He looked a long, tender look at her.

"No, not very," he said.

And it seemed to her that she understood everything, most of all, that
he was pleased with her; and smiling to him, she walked with her rapid
step out at the door.

The friends glanced at one another, and a look of hesitation came into
both faces, as though Golenishtchev, unmistakably admiring her, would
have liked to say something about her, and could not find the right
thing to say, while Vronsky desired and dreaded his doing so.

"Well then," Vronsky began to start a conversation of some sort; "so
you're settled here? You're still at the same work, then?" he went on,
recalling that he had been told Golenishtchev was writing something.

"Yes, I'm writing the second part of the _Two Elements_," said
Golenishtchev, coloring with pleasure at the question--"that is, to be
exact, I am not writing it yet; I am preparing, collecting materials. It
will be of far wider scope, and will touch on almost all questions. We
in Russia refuse to see that we are the heirs of Byzantium," and he
launched into a long and heated explanation of his views.

Vronsky at the first moment felt embarrassed at not even knowing of the
first part of the _Two Elements_, of which the author spoke as something
well known. But as Golenishtchev began to lay down his opinions and
Vronsky was able to follow them even without knowing the _Two Elements_,
he listened to him with some interest, for Golenishtchev spoke well. But
Vronsky was startled and annoyed by the nervous irascibility with which
Golenishtchev talked of the subject that engrossed him. As he went on
talking, his eyes glittered more and more angrily; he was more and more
hurried in his replies to imaginary opponents, and his face grew more
and more excited and worried. Remembering Golenishtchev, a thin, lively,
good-natured and well-bred boy, always at the head of the class, Vronsky
could not make out the reason of his irritability, and he did not like
it. What he particularly disliked was that Golenishtchev, a man
belonging to a good set, should put himself on a level with some
scribbling fellows, with whom he was irritated and angry. Was it worth
it? Vronsky disliked it, yet he felt that Golenishtchev was unhappy, and
was sorry for him. Unhappiness, almost mental derangement, was visible
on his mobile, rather handsome face, while without even noticing Anna's
coming in, he went on hurriedly and hotly expressing his views.

When Anna came in in her hat and cape, and her lovely hand rapidly
swinging her parasol, and stood beside him, it was with a feeling of
relief that Vronsky broke away from the plaintive eyes of Golenishtchev
which fastened persistently upon him, and with a fresh rush of love
looked at his charming companion, full of life and happiness.
Golenishtchev recovered himself with an effort, and at first was
dejected and gloomy, but Anna, disposed to feel friendly with everyone
as she was at that time, soon revived his spirits by her direct and
lively manner. After trying various subjects of conversation, she got
him upon painting, of which he talked very well, and she listened to him
attentively. They walked to the house they had taken, and looked over
it.

"I am very glad of one thing," said Anna to Golenishtchev when they were
on their way back, "Alexey will have a capital _atelier_. You must
certainly take that room," she said to Vronsky in Russian, using the
affectionately familiar form as though she saw that Golenishtchev would
become intimate with them in their isolation, and that there was no need
of reserve before him.

"Do you paint?" said Golenishtchev, turning round quickly to Vronsky.

"Yes, I used to study long ago, and now I have begun to do a little,"
said Vronsky, reddening.

"He has great talent," said Anna with a delighted smile. "I'm no judge,
of course. But good judges have said the same."



Chapter 8


Anna, in that first period of her emancipation and rapid return to
health, felt herself unpardonably happy and full of the joy of life. The
thought of her husband's unhappiness did not poison her happiness. On
one side that memory was too awful to be thought of. On the other side
her husband's unhappiness had given her too much happiness to be
regretted. The memory of all that had happened after her illness: her
reconciliation with her husband, its breakdown, the news of Vronsky's
wound, his visit, the preparations for divorce, the departure from her
husband's house, the parting from her son--all that seemed to her like a
delirious dream, from which she had waked up alone with Vronsky abroad.
The thought of the harm caused to her husband aroused in her a feeling
like repulsion, and akin to what a drowning man might feel who has
shaken off another man clinging to him. That man did drown. It was an
evil action, of course, but it was the sole means of escape, and better
not to brood over these fearful facts.

One consolatory reflection upon her conduct had occurred to her at the
first moment of the final rupture, and when now she recalled all the
past, she remembered that one reflection. "I have inevitably made that
man wretched," she thought; "but I don't want to profit by his misery. I
too am suffering, and shall suffer; I am losing what I prized above
everything--I am losing my good name and my son. I have done wrong, and
so I don't want happiness, I don't want a divorce, and shall suffer from
my shame and the separation from my child." But, however sincerely Anna
had meant to suffer, she was not suffering. Shame there was not. With
the tact of which both had such a large share, they had succeeded in
avoiding Russian ladies abroad, and so had never placed themselves in a
false position, and everywhere they had met people who pretended that
they perfectly understood their position, far better indeed than they
did themselves. Separation from the son she loved--even that did not
cause her anguish in these early days. The baby girl--_his_ child--was
so sweet, and had so won Anna's heart, since she was all that was left
her, that Anna rarely thought of her son.

The desire for life, waxing stronger with recovered health, was so
intense, and the conditions of life were so new and pleasant, that Anna
felt unpardonably happy. The more she got to know Vronsky, the more she
loved him. She loved him for himself, and for his love for her. Her
complete ownership of him was a continual joy to her. His presence was
always sweet to her. All the traits of his character, which she learned
to know better and better, were unutterably dear to her. His appearance,
changed by his civilian dress, was as fascinating to her as though she
were some young girl in love. In everything he said, thought, and did,
she saw something particularly noble and elevated. Her adoration of him
alarmed her indeed; she sought and could not find in him anything not
fine. She dared not show him her sense of her own insignificance beside
him. It seemed to her that, knowing this, he might sooner cease to love
her; and she dreaded nothing now so much as losing his love, though she
had no grounds for fearing it. But she could not help being grateful to
him for his attitude to her, and showing that she appreciated it. He,
who had in her opinion such a marked aptitude for a political career, in
which he would have been certain to play a leading part--he had
sacrificed his ambition for her sake, and never betrayed the slightest
regret. He was more lovingly respectful to her than ever, and the
constant care that she should not feel the awkwardness of her position
never deserted him for a single instant. He, so manly a man, never
opposed her, had indeed, with her, no will of his own, and was anxious,
it seemed, for nothing but to anticipate her wishes. And she could not
but appreciate this, even though the very intensity of his solicitude
for her, the atmosphere of care with which he surrounded her, sometimes
weighed upon her.

Vronsky, meanwhile, in spite of the complete realization of what he had
so long desired, was not perfectly happy. He soon felt that the
realization of his desires gave him no more than a grain of sand out of
the mountain of happiness he had expected. It showed him the mistake men
make in picturing to themselves happiness as the realization of their
desires. For a time after joining his life to hers, and putting on
civilian dress, he had felt all the delight of freedom in general of
which he had known nothing before, and of freedom in his love,--and he
was content, but not for long. He was soon aware that there was
springing up in his heart a desire for desires--_ennui_. Without
conscious intention he began to clutch at every passing caprice, taking
it for a desire and an object. Sixteen hours of the day must be occupied
in some way, since they were living abroad in complete freedom, outside
the conditions of social life which filled up time in Petersburg. As for
the amusements of bachelor existence, which had provided Vronsky with
entertainment on previous tours abroad, they could not be thought of,
since the sole attempt of the sort had led to a sudden attack of
depression in Anna, quite out of proportion with the cause--a late
supper with bachelor friends. Relations with the society of the
place--foreign and Russian--were equally out of the question owing to
the irregularity of their position. The inspection of objects of
interest, apart from the fact that everything had been seen already, had
not for Vronsky, a Russian and a sensible man, the immense significance
Englishmen are able to attach to that pursuit.

And just as the hungry stomach eagerly accepts every object it can get,
hoping to find nourishment in it, Vronsky quite unconsciously clutched
first at politics, then at new books, and then at pictures.

As he had from a child a taste for painting, and as, not knowing what to
spend his money on, he had begun collecting engravings, he came to a
stop at painting, began to take interest in it, and concentrated upon it
the unoccupied mass of desires which demanded satisfaction.

He had a ready appreciation of art, and probably, with a taste for
imitating art, he supposed himself to have the real thing essential for
an artist, and after hesitating for some time which style of painting to
select--religious, historical, realistic, or genre painting--he set to
work to paint. He appreciated all kinds, and could have felt inspired by
any one of them; but he had no conception of the possibility of knowing
nothing at all of any school of painting, and of being inspired directly
by what is within the soul, without caring whether what is painted will
belong to any recognized school. Since he knew nothing of this, and drew
his inspiration, not directly from life, but indirectly from life
embodied in art, his inspiration came very quickly and easily, and as
quickly and easily came his success in painting something very similar
to the sort of painting he was trying to imitate.

More than any other style he liked the French--graceful and
effective--and in that style he began to paint Anna's portrait in
Italian costume, and the portrait seemed to him, and to everyone who saw
it, extremely successful.



Chapter 9


The old neglected palazzo, with its lofty carved ceilings and frescoes
on the walls, with its floors of mosaic, with its heavy yellow stuff
curtains on the windows, with its vases on pedestals, and its open
fireplaces, its carved doors and gloomy reception rooms, hung with
pictures--this palazzo did much, by its very appearance after they had
moved into it, to confirm in Vronsky the agreeable illusion that he was
not so much a Russian country gentleman, a retired army officer, as an
enlightened amateur and patron of the arts, himself a modest artist who
had renounced the world, his connections, and his ambition for the sake
of the woman he loved.

The pose chosen by Vronsky with their removal into the palazzo was
completely successful, and having, through Golenishtchev, made
acquaintance with a few interesting people, for a time he was satisfied.
He painted studies from nature under the guidance of an Italian
professor of painting, and studied mediaeval Italian life. Mediaeval
Italian life so fascinated Vronsky that he even wore a hat and flung a
cloak over his shoulder in the mediaeval style, which, indeed, was
extremely becoming to him.

"Here we live, and know nothing of what's going on," Vronsky said to
Golenishtchev as he came to see him one morning. "Have you seen
Mihailov's picture?" he said, handing him a Russian gazette he had
received that morning, and pointing to an article on a Russian artist,
living in the very same town, and just finishing a picture which had
long been talked about, and had been bought beforehand. The article
reproached the government and the academy for letting so remarkable an
artist be left without encouragement and support.

"I've seen it," answered Golenishtchev. "Of course, he's not without
talent, but it's all in a wrong direction. It's all the
Ivanov-Strauss-Renan attitude to Christ and to religious painting."

"What is the subject of the picture?" asked Anna.

"Christ before Pilate. Christ is represented as a Jew with all the
realism of the new school."

And the question of the subject of the picture having brought him to one
of his favorite theories, Golenishtchev launched forth into a
disquisition on it.

"I can't understand how they can fall into such a gross mistake. Christ
always has His definite embodiment in the art of the great masters. And
therefore, if they want to depict, not God, but a revolutionist or a
sage, let them take from history a Socrates, a Franklin, a Charlotte
Corday, but not Christ. They take the very figure which cannot be taken
for their art, and then..."

"And is it true that this Mihailov is in such poverty?" asked Vronsky,
thinking that, as a Russian Maecenas, it was his duty to assist the
artist regardless of whether the picture were good or bad.

"I should say not. He's a remarkable portrait-painter. Have you ever
seen his portrait of Madame Vassiltchikova? But I believe he doesn't
care about painting any more portraits, and so very likely he is in
want. I maintain that..."

"Couldn't we ask him to paint a portrait of Anna Arkadyevna?" said
Vronsky.

"Why mine?" said Anna. "After yours I don't want another portrait.
Better have one of Annie" (so she called her baby girl). "Here she is,"
she added, looking out of the window at the handsome Italian nurse, who
was carrying the child out into the garden, and immediately glancing
unnoticed at Vronsky. The handsome nurse, from whom Vronsky was painting
a head for his picture, was the one hidden grief in Anna's life. He
painted with her as his model, admired her beauty and mediaevalism, and
Anna dared not confess to herself that she was afraid of becoming
jealous of this nurse, and was for that reason particularly gracious and
condescending both to her and her little son. Vronsky, too, glanced out
of the window and into Anna's eyes, and, turning at once to
Golenishtchev, he said:

"Do you know this Mihailov?"

"I have met him. But he's a queer fish, and quite without breeding. You
know, one of those uncouth new people one's so often coming across
nowadays, one of those free-thinkers you know, who are reared _d'emblee_
in theories of atheism, scepticism, and materialism. In former days,"
said Golenishtchev, not observing, or not willing to observe, that both
Anna and Vronsky wanted to speak, "in former days the free-thinker was a
man who had been brought up in ideas of religion, law, and morality, and
only through conflict and struggle came to free-thought; but now there
has sprung up a new type of born free-thinkers who grow up without even
having heard of principles of morality or of religion, of the existence
of authorities, who grow up directly in ideas of negation in everything,
that is to say, savages. Well, he's of that class. He's the son, it
appears, of some Moscow butler, and has never had any sort of
bringing-up. When he got into the academy and made his reputation he
tried, as he's no fool, to educate himself. And he turned to what seemed
to him the very source of culture--the magazines. In old times, you see,
a man who wanted to educate himself--a Frenchman, for instance--would
have set to work to study all the classics and theologians and
tragedians and historiaris and philosophers, and, you know, all the
intellectual work that came in his way. But in our day he goes straight
for the literature of negation, very quickly assimilates all the
extracts of the science of negation, and he's ready. And that's not
all--twenty years ago he would have found in that literature traces of
conflict with authorities, with the creeds of the ages; he would have
perceived from this conflict that there was something else; but now he
comes at once upon a literature in which the old creeds do not even
furnish matter for discussion, but it is stated baldly that there is
nothing else--evolution, natural selection, struggle for existence--and
that's all. In my article I've..."

"I tell you what," said Anna, who had for a long while been exchanging
wary glances with Vronsky, and knew that he was not in the least
interested in the education of this artist, but was simply absorbed by
the idea of assisting him, and ordering a portrait of him; "I tell you
what," she said, resolutely interrupting Golenishtchev, who was still
talking away, "let's go and see him!"

Golenishtchev recovered his self-possession and readily agreed. But as
the artist lived in a remote suburb, it was decided to take the
carriage.

An hour later Anna, with Golenishtchev by her side and Vronsky on the
front seat of the carriage, facing them, drove up to a new ugly house in
the remote suburb. On learning from the porter's wife, who came out to
them, that Mihailov saw visitors at his studio, but that at that moment
he was in his lodging only a couple of steps off, they sent her to him
with their cards, asking permission to see his picture.



Chapter 10


The artist Mihailov was, as always, at work when the cards of Count
Vronsky and Golenishtchev were brought to him. In the morning he had
been working in his studio at his big picture. On getting home he flew
into a rage with his wife for not having managed to put off the
landlady, who had been asking for money.

"I've said it to you twenty times, don't enter into details. You're fool
enough at all times, and when you start explaining things in Italian
you're a fool three times as foolish," he said after a long dispute.

"Don't let it run so long; it's not my fault. If I had the money..."

"Leave me in peace, for God's sake!" Mihailov shrieked, with tears in
his voice, and, stopping his ears, he went off into his working room,
the other side of a partition wall, and closed the door after him.
"Idiotic woman!" he said to himself, sat down to the table, and, opening
a portfolio, he set to work at once with peculiar fervor at a sketch he
had begun.

Never did he work with such fervor and success as when things went ill
with him, and especially when he quarreled with his wife. "Oh! damn them
all!" he thought as he went on working. He was making a sketch for the
figure of a man in a violent rage. A sketch had been made before, but he
was dissatisfied with it. "No, that one was better ... where is it?" He
went back to his wife, and scowling, and not looking at her, asked his
eldest little girl, where was that piece of paper he had given them? The
paper with the discarded sketch on it was found, but it was dirty, and
spotted with candle-grease. Still, he took the sketch, laid it on his
table, and, moving a little away, screwing up his eyes, he fell to
gazing at it. All at once he smiled and gesticulated gleefully.

"That's it! that's it!" he said, and, at once picking up the pencil, he
began rapidly drawing. The spot of tallow had given the man a new pose.

He had sketched this new pose, when all at once he recalled the face of
a shopkeeper of whom he had bought cigars, a vigorous face with a
prominent chin, and he sketched this very face, this chin on to the
figure of the man. He laughed aloud with delight. The figure from a
lifeless imagined thing had become living, and such that it could never
be changed. That figure lived, and was clearly and unmistakably defined.
The sketch might be corrected in accordance with the requirements of the
figure, the legs, indeed, could and must be put differently, and the
position of the left hand must be quite altered; the hair too might be
thrown back. But in making these corrections he was not altering the
figure but simply getting rid of what concealed the figure. He was, as
it were, stripping off the wrappings which hindered it from being
distinctly seen. Each new feature only brought out the whole figure in
all its force and vigor, as it had suddenly come to him from the spot of
tallow. He was carefully finishing the figure when the cards were
brought him.

"Coming, coming!"

He went in to his wife.

"Come, Sasha, don't be cross!" he said, smiling timidly and
affectionately at her. "You were to blame. I was to blame. I'll make it
all right." And having made peace with his wife he put on an olive-green
overcoat with a velvet collar and a hat, and went towards his studio.
The successful figure he had already forgotten. Now he was delighted and
excited at the visit of these people of consequence, Russians, who had
come in their carriage.

Of his picture, the one that stood now on his easel, he had at the
bottom of his heart one conviction--that no one had ever painted a
picture like it. He did not believe that his picture was better than all
the pictures of Raphael, but he knew that what he tried to convey in
that picture, no one ever had conveyed. This he knew positively, and had
known a long while, ever since he had begun to paint it. But other
people's criticisms, whatever they might be, had yet immense consequence
in his eyes, and they agitated him to the depths of his soul. Any
remark, the most insignificant, that showed that the critic saw even the
tiniest part of what he saw in the picture, agitated him to the depths
of his soul. He always attributed to his critics a more profound
comprehension than he had himself, and always expected from them
something he did not himself see in the picture. And often in their
criticisms he fancied that he had found this.

He walked rapidly to the door of his studio, and in spite of his
excitement he was struck by the soft light on Anna's figure as she stood
in the shade of the entrance listening to Golenishtchev, who was eagerly
telling her something, while she evidently wanted to look round at the
artist. He was himself unconscious how, as he approached them, he seized
on this impression and absorbed it, as he had the chin of the shopkeeper
who had sold him the cigars, and put it away somewhere to be brought out
when he wanted it. The visitors, not agreeably impressed beforehand by
Golenishtchev's account of the artist, were still less so by his
personal appearance. Thick-set and of middle height, with nimble
movements, with his brown hat, olive-green coat and narrow
trousers--though wide trousers had been a long while in fashion,--most
of all, with the ordinariness of his broad face, and the combined
expression of timidity and anxiety to keep up his dignity, Mihailov made
an unpleasant impression.

"Please step in," he said, trying to look indifferent, and going into
the passage he took a key out of his pocket and opened the door.



Chapter 11


On entering the studio, Mihailov once more scanned his visitors and
noted down in his imagination Vronsky's expression too, and especially
his jaws. Although his artistic sense was unceasingly at work collecting
materials, although he felt a continually increasing excitement as the
moment of criticizing his work drew nearer, he rapidly and subtly
formed, from imperceptible signs, a mental image of these three persons.

That fellow (Golenishtchev) was a Russian living here. Mihailov did not
remember his surname nor where he had met him, nor what he had said to
him. He only remembered his face as he remembered all the faces he had
ever seen; but he remembered, too, that it was one of the faces laid by
in his memory in the immense class of the falsely consequential and poor
in expression. The abundant hair and very open forehead gave an
appearance of consequence to the face, which had only one expression--a
petty, childish, peevish expression, concentrated just above the bridge
of the narrow nose. Vronsky and Madame Karenina must be, Mihailov
supposed, distinguished and wealthy Russians, knowing nothing about art,
like all those wealthy Russians, but posing as amateurs and
connoisseurs. "Most likely they've already looked at all the antiques,
and now they're making the round of the studios of the new people, the
German humbug, and the cracked Pre-Raphaelite English fellow, and have
only come to me to make the point of view complete," he thought. He was
well acquainted with the way dilettanti have (the cleverer they were the
worse he found them) of looking at the works of contemporary artists
with the sole object of being in a position to say that art is a thing
of the past, and that the more one sees of the new men the more one sees
how inimitable the works of the great old masters have remained. He
expected all this; he saw it all in their faces, he saw it in the
careless indifference with which they talked among themselves, stared at
the lay figures and busts, and walked about in leisurely fashion,
waiting for him to uncover his picture. But in spite of this, while he
was turning over his studies, pulling up the blinds and taking off the
sheet, he was in intense excitement, especially as, in spite of his
conviction that all distinguished and wealthy Russians were certain to
be beasts and fools, he liked Vronsky, and still more Anna.

"Here, if you please," he said, moving on one side with his nimble gait
and pointing to his picture, "it's the exhortation to Pilate. Matthew,
chapter xxvii," he said, feeling his lips were beginning to tremble with
emotion. He moved away and stood behind them.

For the few seconds during which the visitors were gazing at the picture
in silence Mihailov too gazed at it with the indifferent eye of an
outsider. For those few seconds he was sure in anticipation that a
higher, juster criticism would be uttered by them, by those very
visitors whom he had been so despising a moment before. He forgot all he
had thought about his picture before during the three years he had been
painting it; he forgot all its qualities which had been absolutely
certain to him--he saw the picture with their indifferent, new, outside
eyes, and saw nothing good in it. He saw in the foreground Pilate's
irritated face and the serene face of Christ, and in the background the
figures of Pilate's retinue and the face of John watching what was
happening. Every face that, with such agony, such blunders and
corrections had grown up within him with its special character, every
face that had given him such torments and such raptures, and all these
faces so many times transposed for the sake of the harmony of the whole,
all the shades of color and tones that he had attained with such
labor--all of this together seemed to him now, looking at it with their
eyes, the merest vulgarity, something that had been done a thousand
times over. The face dearest to him, the face of Christ, the center of
the picture, which had given him such ecstasy as it unfolded itself to
him, was utterly lost to him when he glanced at the picture with their
eyes. He saw a well-painted (no, not even that--he distinctly saw now a
mass of defects) repetition of those endless Christs of Titian, Raphael,
Rubens, and the same soldiers and Pilate. It was all common, poor, and
stale, and positively badly painted--weak and unequal. They would be
justified in repeating hypocritically civil speeches in the presence of
the painter, and pitying him and laughing at him when they were alone
again.

The silence (though it lasted no more than a minute) became too
intolerable to him. To break it, and to show he was not agitated, he
made an effort and addressed Golenishtchev.

"I think I've had the pleasure of meeting you," he said, looking
uneasily first at Anna, then at Vronsky, in fear of losing any shade of
their expression.

"To be sure! We met at Rossi's, do you remember, at that _soiree_ when
that Italian lady recited--the new Rachel?" Golenishtchev answered
easily, removing his eyes without the slightest regret from the picture
and turning to the artist.

Noticing, however, that Mihailov was expecting a criticism of the
picture, he said:

"Your picture has got on a great deal since I saw it last time; and what
strikes me particularly now, as it did then, is the figure of Pilate.
One so knows the man: a good-natured, capital fellow, but an official
through and through, who does not know what it is he's doing. But I
fancy..."

All Mihailov's mobile face beamed at once; his eyes sparkled. He tried
to say something, but he could not speak for excitement, and pretended
to be coughing. Low as was his opinion of Golenishtchev's capacity for
understanding art, trifling as was the true remark upon the fidelity of
the expression of Pilate as an official, and offensive as might have
seemed the utterance of so unimportant an observation while nothing was
said of more serious points, Mihailov was in an ecstasy of delight at
this observation. He had himself thought about Pilate's figure just what
Golenishtchev said. The fact that this reflection was but one of
millions of reflections, which as Mihailov knew for certain would be
true, did not diminish for him the significance of Golenishtchev's
remark. His heart warmed to Golenishtchev for this remark, and from a
state of depression he suddenly passed to ecstasy. At once the whole of
his picture lived before him in all the indescribable complexity of
everything living. Mihailov again tried to say that that was how he
understood Pilate, but his lips quivered intractably, and he could not
pronounce the words. Vronsky and Anna too said something in that subdued
voice in which, partly to avoid hurting the artist's feelings and partly
to avoid saying out loud something silly--so easily said when talking of
art--people usually speak at exhibitions of pictures. Mihailov fancied
that the picture had made an impression on them too. He went up to them.

"How marvelous Christ's expression is!" said Anna. Of all she saw she
liked that expression most of all, and she felt that it was the center
of the picture, and so praise of it would be pleasant to the artist.
"One can see that He is pitying Pilate."

This again was one of the million true reflections that could be found
in his picture and in the figure of Christ. She said that He was pitying
Pilate. In Christ's expression there ought to be indeed an expression of
pity, since there is an expression of love, of heavenly peace, of
readiness for death, and a sense of the vanity of words. Of course there
is the expression of an official in Pilate and of pity in Christ, seeing
that one is the incarnation of the fleshly and the other of the
spiritual life. All this and much more flashed into Mihailov's thoughts.

"Yes, and how that figure is done--what atmosphere! One can walk round
it," said Golenishtchev, unmistakably betraying by this remark that he
did not approve of the meaning and idea of the figure.

"Yes, there's a wonderful mastery!" said Vronsky. "How those figures in
the background stand out! There you have technique," he said, addressing
Golenishtchev, alluding to a conversation between them about Vronsky's
despair of attaining this technique.

"Yes, yes, marvelous!" Golenishtchev and Anna assented. In spite of the
excited condition in which he was, the sentence about technique had sent
a pang to Mihailov's heart, and looking angrily at Vronsky he suddenly
scowled. He had often heard this word technique, and was utterly unable
to understand what was understood by it. He knew that by this term was
understood a mechanical facility for painting or drawing, entirely apart
from its subject. He had noticed often that even in actual praise
technique was opposed to essential quality, as though one could paint
well something that was bad. He knew that a great deal of attention and
care was necessary in taking off the coverings, to avoid injuring the
creation itself, and to take off all the coverings; but there was no art
of painting--no technique of any sort--about it. If to a little child or
to his cook were revealed what he saw, it or she would have been able to
peel the wrappings off what was seen. And the most experienced and
adroit painter could not by mere mechanical facility paint anything if
the lines of the subject were not revealed to him first. Besides, he saw
that if it came to talking about technique, it was impossible to praise
him for it. In all he had painted and repainted he saw faults that hurt
his eyes, coming from want of care in taking off the wrappings--faults
he could not correct now without spoiling the whole. And in almost all
the figures and faces he saw, too, remnants of the wrappings not
perfectly removed that spoiled the picture.

"One thing might be said, if you will allow me to make the remark..."
observed Golenishtchev.

"Oh, I shall be delighted, I beg you," said Mihailov with a forced
smile.

"That is, that you make Him the man-god, and not the God-man. But I know
that was what you meant to do."

"I cannot paint a Christ that is not in my heart," said Mihailov
gloomily.

"Yes; but in that case, if you will allow me to say what I think....
Your picture is so fine that my observation cannot detract from it, and,
besides, it is only my personal opinion. With you it is different. Your
very motive is different. But let us take Ivanov. I imagine that if
Christ is brought down to the level of an historical character, it would
have been better for Ivanov to select some other historical subject,
fresh, untouched."

"But if this is the greatest subject presented to art?"

"If one looked one would find others. But the point is that art cannot
suffer doubt and discussion. And before the picture of Ivanov the
question arises for the believer and the unbeliever alike, 'Is it God,
or is it not God?' and the unity of the impression is destroyed."

"Why so? I think that for educated people," said Mihailov, "the question
cannot exist."

Golenishtchev did not agree with this, and confounded Mihailov by his
support of his first idea of the unity of the impression being essential
to art.

Mihailov was greatly perturbed, but he could say nothing in defense of
his own idea.



Chapter 12


Anna and Vronsky had long been exchanging glances, regretting their
friend's flow of cleverness. At last Vronsky, without waiting for the
artist, walked away to another small picture.

"Oh, how exquisite! What a lovely thing! A gem! How exquisite!" they
cried with one voice.

"What is it they're so pleased with?" thought Mihailov. He had
positively forgotten that picture he had painted three years ago. He had
forgotten all the agonies and the ecstasies he had lived through with
that picture when for several months it had been the one thought
haunting him day and night. He had forgotten, as he always forgot, the
pictures he had finished. He did not even like to look at it, and had
only brought it out because he was expecting an Englishman who wanted to
buy it.

"Oh, that's only an old study," he said.

"How fine!" said Golenishtchev, he too, with unmistakable sincerity,
falling under the spell of the picture.

Two boys were angling in the shade of a willow-tree. The elder had just
dropped in the hook, and was carefully pulling the float from behind a
bush, entirely absorbed in what he was doing. The other, a little
younger, was lying in the grass leaning on his elbows, with his tangled,
flaxen head in his hands, staring at the water with his dreamy blue
eyes. What was he thinking of?

The enthusiasm over this picture stirred some of the old feeling for it
in Mihailov, but he feared and disliked this waste of feeling for things
past, and so, even though this praise was grateful to him, he tried to
draw his visitors away to a third picture.

But Vronsky asked whether the picture was for sale. To Mihailov at that
moment, excited by visitors, it was extremely distasteful to speak of
money matters.

"It is put up there to be sold," he answered, scowling gloomily.

When the visitors had gone, Mihailov sat down opposite the picture of
Pilate and Christ, and in his mind went over what had been said, and
what, though not said, had been implied by those visitors. And, strange
to say, what had had such weight with him, while they were there and
while he mentally put himself at their point of view, suddenly lost all
importance for him. He began to look at his picture with all his own
full artist vision, and was soon in that mood of conviction of the
perfectibility, and so of the significance, of his picture--a conviction
essential to the most intense fervor, excluding all other interests--in
which alone he could work.

Christ's foreshortened leg was not right, though. He took his palette
and began to work. As he corrected the leg he looked continually at the
figure of John in the background, which his visitors had not even
noticed, but which he knew was beyond perfection. When he had finished
the leg he wanted to touch that figure, but he felt too much excited for
it. He was equally unable to work when he was cold and when he was too
much affected and saw everything too much. There was only one stage in
the transition from coldness to inspiration, at which work was possible.
Today he was too much agitated. He would have covered the picture, but
he stopped, holding the cloth in his hand, and, smiling blissfully,
gazed a long while at the figure of John. At last, as it were
regretfully tearing himself away, he dropped the cloth, and, exhausted
but happy, went home.

Vronsky, Anna, and Golenishtchev, on their way home, were particularly
lively and cheerful. They talked of Mihailov and his pictures. The word
_talent_, by which they meant an inborn, almost physical, aptitude apart
from brain and heart, and in which they tried to find an expression for
all the artist had gained from life, recurred particularly often in
their talk, as though it were necessary for them to sum up what they had
no conception of, though they wanted to talk of it. They said that there
was no denying his talent, but that his talent could not develop for
want of education--the common defect of our Russian artists. But the
picture of the boys had imprinted itself on their memories, and they
were continually coming back to it. "What an exquisite thing! How he has
succeeded in it, and how simply! He doesn't even comprehend how good it
is. Yes, I mustn't let it slip; I must buy it," said Vronsky.



Chapter 13


Mihailov sold Vronsky his picture, and agreed to paint a portrait of
Anna. On the day fixed he came and began the work.

From the fifth sitting the portrait impressed everyone, especially
Vronsky, not only by its resemblance, but by its characteristic beauty.
It was strange how Mihailov could have discovered just her
characteristic beauty. "One needs to know and love her as I have loved
her to discover the very sweetest expression of her soul," Vronsky
thought, though it was only from this portrait that he had himself
learned this sweetest expression of her soul. But the expression was so
true that he, and others too, fancied they had long known it.

"I have been struggling on for ever so long without doing anything," he
said of his own portrait of her, "and he just looked and painted it.
That's where technique comes in."

"That will come," was the consoling reassurance given him by
Golenishtchev, in whose view Vronsky had both talent, and what was most
important, culture, giving him a wider outlook on art. Golenishtchev's
faith in Vronsky's talent was propped up by his own need of Vronsky's
sympathy and approval for his own articles and ideas, and he felt that
the praise and support must be mutual.

In another man's house, and especially in Vronsky's palazzo, Mihailov
was quite a different man from what he was in his studio. He behaved
with hostile courtesy, as though he were afraid of coming closer to
people he did not respect. He called Vronsky "your excellency," and
notwithstanding Anna's and Vronsky's invitations, he would never stay to
dinner, nor come except for the sittings. Anna was even more friendly to
him than to other people, and was very grateful for her portrait.
Vronsky was more than cordial with him, and was obviously interested to
know the artist's opinion of his picture. Golenishtchev never let slip
an opportunity of instilling sound ideas about art into Mihailov. But
Mihailov remained equally chilly to all of them. Anna was aware from his
eyes that he liked looking at her, but he avoided conversation with her.
Vronsky's talk about his painting he met with stubborn silence, and he
was as stubbornly silent when he was shown Vronsky's picture. He was
unmistakably bored by Golenishtchev's conversation, and he did not
attempt to oppose him.

Altogether Mihailov, with his reserved and disagreeable, as it were,
hostile attitude, was quite disliked by them as they got to know him
better; and they were glad when the sittings were over, and they were
left with a magnificent portrait in their possession, and he gave up
coming. Golenishtchev was the first to give expression to an idea that
had occurred to all of them, which was that Mihailov was simply jealous
of Vronsky.

"Not envious, let us say, since he has _talent_; but it annoys him that
a wealthy man of the highest society, and a count, too (you know they
all detest a title), can, without any particular trouble, do as well, if
not better, than he who has devoted all his life to it. And more than
all, it's a question of culture, which he is without."

Vronsky defended Mihailov, but at the bottom of his heart he believed
it, because in his view a man of a different, lower world would be sure
to be envious.

Anna's portrait--the same subject painted from nature both by him and by
Mihailov--ought to have shown Vronsky the difference between him and
Mihailov; but he did not see it. Only after Mihailov's portrait was
painted he left off painting his portrait of Anna, deciding that it was
now not needed. His picture of mediaeval life he went on with. And he
himself, and Golenishtchev, and still more Anna, thought it very good,
because it was far more like the celebrated pictures they knew than
Mihailov's picture.

Mihailov meanwhile, although Anna's portrait greatly fascinated him, was
even more glad than they were when the sittings were over, and he had no
longer to listen to Golenishtchev's disquisitions upon art, and could
forget about Vronsky's painting. He knew that Vronsky could not be
prevented from amusing himself with painting; he knew that he and all
dilettanti had a perfect right to paint what they liked, but it was
distasteful to him. A man could not be prevented from making himself a
big wax doll, and kissing it. But if the man were to come with the doll
and sit before a man in love, and begin caressing his doll as the lover
caressed the woman he loved, it would be distasteful to the lover. Just
such a distasteful sensation was what Mihailov felt at the sight of
Vronsky's painting: he felt it both ludicrous and irritating, both
pitiable and offensive.

Vronsky's interest in painting and the Middle Ages did not last long. He
had enough taste for painting to be unable to finish his picture. The
picture came to a standstill. He was vaguely aware that its defects,
inconspicuous at first, would be glaring if he were to go on with it.
The same experience befell him as Golenishtchev, who felt that he had
nothing to say, and continually deceived himself with the theory that
his idea was not yet mature, that he was working it out and collecting
materials. This exasperated and tortured Golenishtchev, but Vronsky was
incapable of deceiving and torturing himself, and even more incapable of
exasperation. With his characteristic decision, without explanation or
apology, he simply ceased working at painting.

But without this occupation, the life of Vronsky and of Anna, who
wondered at his loss of interest in it, struck them as intolerably
tedious in an Italian town. The palazzo suddenly seemed so obtrusively
old and dirty, the spots on the curtains, the cracks in the floors, the
broken plaster on the cornices became so disagreeably obvious, and the
everlasting sameness of Golenishtchev, and the Italian professor and the
German traveler became so wearisome, that they had to make some change.
They resolved to go to Russia, to the country. In Petersburg Vronsky
intended to arrange a partition of the land with his brother, while Anna
meant to see her son. The summer they intended to spend on Vronsky's
great family estate.



Chapter 14


Levin had been married three months. He was happy, but not at all in the
way he had expected to be. At every step he found his former dreams
disappointed, and new, unexpected surprises of happiness. He was happy;
but on entering upon family life he saw at every step that it was
utterly different from what he had imagined. At every step he
experienced what a man would experience who, after admiring the smooth,
happy course of a little boat on a lake, should get himself into that
little boat. He saw that it was not all sitting still, floating
smoothly; that one had to think too, not for an instant to forget where
one was floating; and that there was water under one, and that one must
row; and that his unaccustomed hands would be sore; and that it was only
to look at it that was easy; but that doing it, though very delightful,
was very difficult.

As a bachelor, when he had watched other people's married life, seen the
petty cares, the squabbles, the jealousy, he had only smiled
contemptuously in his heart. In his future married life there could be,
he was convinced, nothing of that sort; even the external forms, indeed,
he fancied, must be utterly unlike the life of others in everything. And
all of a sudden, instead of his life with his wife being made on an
individual pattern, it was, on the contrary, entirely made up of the
pettiest details, which he had so despised before, but which now, by no
will of his own, had gained an extraordinary importance that it was
useless to contend against. And Levin saw that the organization of all
these details was by no means so easy as he had fancied before. Although
Levin believed himself to have the most exact conceptions of domestic
life, unconsciously, like all men, he pictured domestic life as the
happiest enjoyment of love, with nothing to hinder and no petty cares to
distract. He ought, as he conceived the position, to do his work, and to
find repose from it in the happiness of love. She ought to be beloved,
and nothing more. But, like all men, he forgot that she too would want
work. And he was surprised that she, his poetic, exquisite Kitty, could,
not merely in the first weeks, but even in the first days of their
married life, think, remember, and busy herself about tablecloths, and
furniture, about mattresses for visitors, about a tray, about the cook,
and the dinner, and so on. While they were still engaged, he had been
struck by the definiteness with which she had declined the tour abroad
and decided to go into the country, as though she knew of something she
wanted, and could still think of something outside her love. This had
jarred upon him then, and now her trivial cares and anxieties jarred
upon him several times. But he saw that this was essential for her. And,
loving her as he did, though he did not understand the reason of them,
and jeered at these domestic pursuits, he could not help admiring them.
He jeered at the way in which she arranged the furniture they had
brought from Moscow; rearranged their room; hung up curtains; prepared
rooms for visitors; a room for Dolly; saw after an abode for her new
maid; ordered dinner of the old cook; came into collision with Agafea
Mihalovna, taking from her the charge of the stores. He saw how the old
cook smiled, admiring her, and listening to her inexperienced,
impossible orders, how mournfully and tenderly Agafea Mihalovna shook
her head over the young mistress's new arrangements. He saw that Kitty
was extraordinarily sweet when, laughing and crying, she came to tell
him that her maid, Masha, was used to looking upon her as her young
lady, and so no one obeyed her. It seemed to him sweet, but strange, and
he thought it would have been better without this.

He did not know how great a sense of change she was experiencing; she,
who at home had sometimes wanted some favorite dish, or sweets, without
the possibility of getting either, now could order what she liked, buy
pounds of sweets, spend as much money as she liked, and order any
puddings she pleased.

She was dreaming with delight now of Dolly's coming to them with her
children, especially because she would order for the children their
favorite puddings and Dolly would appreciate all her new housekeeping.
She did not know herself why and wherefore, but the arranging of her
house had an irresistible attraction for her. Instinctively feeling the
approach of spring, and knowing that there would be days of rough
weather too, she built her nest as best she could, and was in haste at
the same time to build it and to learn how to do it.

This care for domestic details in Kitty, so opposed to Levin's ideal of
exalted happiness, was at first one of the disappointments; and this
sweet care of her household, the aim of which he did not understand, but
could not help loving, was one of the new happy surprises.

Another disappointment and happy surprise came in their quarrels. Levin
could never have conceived that between him and his wife any relations
could arise other than tender, respectful and loving, and all at once in
the very early days they quarreled, so that she said he did not care for
her, that he cared for no one but himself, burst into tears, and wrung
her arms.

This first quarrel arose from Levin's having gone out to a new farmhouse
and having been away half an hour too long, because he had tried to get
home by a short cut and had lost his way. He drove home thinking of
nothing but her, of her love, of his own happiness, and the nearer he
drew to home, the warmer was his tenderness for her. He ran into the
room with the same feeling, with an even stronger feeling than he had
had when he reached the Shtcherbatskys' house to make his offer. And
suddenly he was met by a lowering expression he had never seen in her.
He would have kissed her; she pushed him away.

"What is it?"

"You've been enjoying yourself," she began, trying to be calm and
spiteful. But as soon as she opened her mouth, a stream of reproach, of
senseless jealousy, of all that had been torturing her during that half
hour which she had spent sitting motionless at the window, burst from
her. It was only then, for the first time, that he clearly understood
what he had not understood when he led her out of the church after the
wedding. He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he
did not know where he ended and she began. He felt this from the
agonizing sensation of division that he experienced at that instant. He
was offended for the first instant, but the very same second he felt
that he could not be offended by her, that she was himself. He felt for
the first moment as a man feels when, having suddenly received a violent
blow from behind, he turns round, angry and eager to avenge himself, to
look for his antagonist, and finds that it is he himself who has
accidentally struck himself, that there is no one to be angry with, and
that he must put up with and try to soothe the pain.

Never afterwards did he feel it with such intensity, but this first time
he could not for a long while get over it. His natural feeling urged him
to defend himself, to prove to her she was wrong; but to prove her wrong
would mean irritating her still more and making the rupture greater that
was the cause of all his suffering. One habitual feeling impelled him to
get rid of the blame and to pass it on to her. Another feeling, even
stronger, impelled him as quickly as possible to smooth over the rupture
without letting it grow greater. To remain under such undeserved
reproach was wretched, but to make her suffer by justifying himself was
worse still. Like a man half-awake in an agony of pain, he wanted to
tear out, to fling away the aching place, and coming to his senses, he
felt that the aching place was himself. He could do nothing but try to
help the aching place to bear it, and this he tried to do.

They made peace. She, recognizing that she was wrong, though she did not
say so, became tenderer to him, and they experienced new, redoubled
happiness in their love. But that did not prevent such quarrels from
happening again, and exceedingly often too, on the most unexpected and
trivial grounds. These quarrels frequently arose from the fact that they
did not yet know what was of importance to each other and that all this
early period they were both often in a bad temper. When one was in a
good temper, and the other in a bad temper, the peace was not broken;
but when both happened to be in an ill-humor, quarrels sprang up from
such incomprehensibly trifling causes, that they could never remember
afterwards what they had quarreled about. It is true that when they were
both in a good temper their enjoyment of life was redoubled. But still
this first period of their married life was a difficult time for them.

During all this early time they had a peculiarly vivid sense of tension,
as it were, a tugging in opposite directions of the chain by which they
were bound. Altogether their honeymoon--that is to say, the month after
their wedding--from which from tradition Levin expected so much, was not
merely not a time of sweetness, but remained in the memories of both as
the bitterest and most humiliating period in their lives. They both
alike tried in later life to blot out from their memories all the
monstrous, shameful incidents of that morbid period, when both were
rarely in a normal frame of mind, both were rarely quite themselves.

It was only in the third month of their married life, after their return
from Moscow, where they had been staying for a month, that their life
began to go more smoothly.



Chapter 15


They had just come back from Moscow, and were glad to be alone. He was
sitting at the writing table in his study, writing. She, wearing the
dark lilac dress she had worn during the first days of their married
life, and put on again today, a dress particularly remembered and loved
by him, was sitting on the sofa, the same old-fashioned leather sofa
which had always stood in the study in Levin's father's and
grandfather's days. She was sewing at _broderie anglaise_. He thought
and wrote, never losing the happy consciousness of her presence. His
work, both on the land and on the book, in which the principles of the
new land system were to be laid down, had not been abandoned; but just
as formerly these pursuits and ideas had seemed to him petty and trivial
in comparison with the darkness that overspread all life, now they
seemed as unimportant and petty in comparison with the life that lay
before him suffused with the brilliant light of happiness. He went on
with his work, but he felt now that the center of gravity of his
attention had passed to something else, and that consequently he looked
at his work quite differently and more clearly. Formerly this work had
been for him an escape from life. Formerly he had felt that without this
work his life would be too gloomy. Now these pursuits were necessary for
him that life might not be too uniformly bright. Taking up his
manuscript, reading through what he had written, he found with pleasure
that the work was worth his working at. Many of his old ideas seemed to
him superfluous and extreme, but many blanks became distinct to him when
he reviewed the whole thing in his memory. He was writing now a new
chapter on the causes of the present disastrous condition of agriculture
in Russia. He maintained that the poverty of Russia arises not merely
from the anomalous distribution of landed property and misdirected
reforms, but that what had contributed of late years to this result was
the civilization from without abnormally grafted upon Russia, especially
facilities of communication, as railways, leading to centralization in
towns, the development of luxury, and the consequent development of
manufactures, credit and its accompaniment of speculation--all to the
detriment of agriculture. It seemed to him that in a normal development
of wealth in a state all these phenomena would arise only when a
considerable amount of labor had been put into agriculture, when it had
come under regular, or at least definite, conditions; that the wealth of
a country ought to increase proportionally, and especially in such a way
that other sources of wealth should not outstrip agriculture; that in
harmony with a certain stage of agriculture there should be means of
communication corresponding to it, and that in our unsettled condition
of the land, railways, called into being by political and not by
economic needs, were premature, and instead of promoting agriculture, as
was expected of them, they were competing with agriculture and promoting
the development of manufactures and credit, and so arresting its
progress; and that just as the one-sided and premature development of
one organ in an animal would hinder its general development, so in the
general development of wealth in Russia, credit, facilities of
communication, manufacturing activity, indubitably necessary in Europe,
where they had arisen in their proper time, had with us only done harm,
by throwing into the background the chief question calling for
settlement--the question of the organization of agriculture.

While he was writing his ideas she was thinking how unnaturally cordial
her husband had been to young Prince Tcharsky, who had, with great want
of tact, flirted with her the day before they left Moscow. "He's
jealous," she thought. "Goodness! how sweet and silly he is! He's
jealous of me! If he knew that I think no more of them than of Piotr the
cook," she thought, looking at his head and red neck with a feeling of
possession strange to herself. "Though it's a pity to take him from his
work (but he has plenty of time!), I must look at his face; will he feel
I'm looking at him? I wish he'd turn round ... I'll _will_ him to!" and
she opened her eyes wide, as though to intensify the influence of her
gaze.

"Yes, they draw away all the sap and give a false appearance of
prosperity," he muttered, stopping to write, and, feeling that she was
looking at him and smiling, he looked round.

"Well?" he queried, smiling, and getting up.

"He looked round," she thought.

"It's nothing; I wanted you to look round," she said, watching him, and
trying to guess whether he was vexed at being interrupted or not.

"How happy we are alone together!--I am, that is," he said, going up to
her with a radiant smile of happiness.

"I'm just as happy. I'll never go anywhere, especially not to Moscow."

"And what were you thinking about?"

"I? I was thinking.... No, no, go along, go on writing; don't break
off," she said, pursing up her lips, "and I must cut out these little
holes now, do you see?"

She took up her scissors and began cutting them out.

"No; tell me, what was it?" he said, sitting down beside her and
watching the tiny scissors moving round.

"Oh! what was I thinking about? I was thinking about Moscow, about the
back of your head."

"Why should I, of all people, have such happiness! It's unnatural, too
good," he said, kissing her hand.

"I feel quite the opposite; the better things are, the more natural it
seems to me."

"And you've got a little curl loose," he said, carefully turning her
head round.

"A little curl, oh yes. No, no, we are busy at our work!"

Work did not progress further, and they darted apart from one another
like culprits when Kouzma came in to announce that tea was ready.

"Have they come from the town?" Levin asked Kouzma.

"They've just come; they're unpacking the things."

"Come quickly," she said to him as she went out of the study, "or else I
shall read your letters without you."

Left alone, after putting his manuscripts together in the new portfolio
bought by her, he washed his hands at the new washstand with the elegant
fittings, that had all made their appearance with her. Levin smiled at
his own thoughts, and shook his head disapprovingly at those thoughts; a
feeling akin to remorse fretted him. There was something shameful,
effeminate, Capuan, as he called it to himself, in his present mode of
life. "It's not right to go on like this," he thought. "It'll soon be
three months, and I'm doing next to nothing. Today, almost for the first
time, I set to work seriously, and what happened? I did nothing but
begin and throw it aside. Even my ordinary pursuits I have almost given
up. On the land I scarcely walk or drive about at all to look after
things. Either I am loath to leave her, or I see she's dull alone. And I
used to think that, before marriage, life was nothing much, somehow
didn't count, but that after marriage, life began in earnest. And here
almost three months have passed, and I have spent my time so idly and
unprofitably. No, this won't do; I must begin. Of course, it's not her
fault. She's not to blame in any way. I ought myself to be firmer, to
maintain my masculine independence of action; or else I shall get into
such ways, and she'll get used to them too.... Of course she's not to
blame," he told himself.

But it is hard for anyone who is dissatisfied not to blame someone else,
and especially the person nearest of all to him, for the ground of his
dissatisfaction. And it vaguely came into Levin's mind that she herself
was not to blame (she could not be to blame for anything), but what was
to blame was her education, too superficial and frivolous. ("That fool
Tcharsky: she wanted, I know, to stop him, but didn't know how to.")
"Yes, apart from her interest in the house (that she has), apart from
dress and _broderie anglaise_, she has no serious interests. No interest
in her work, in the estate, in the peasants, nor in music, though she's
rather good at it, nor in reading. She does nothing, and is perfectly
satisfied." Levin, in his heart, censured this, and did not as yet
understand that she was preparing for that period of activity which was
to come for her when she would at once be the wife of her husband and
mistress of the house, and would bear, and nurse, and bring up children.
He knew not that she was instinctively aware of this, and preparing
herself for this time of terrible toil, did not reproach herself for the
moments of carelessness and happiness in her love that she enjoyed now
while gaily building her nest for the future.



Chapter 16


When Levin went upstairs, his wife was sitting near the new silver
samovar behind the new tea service, and, having settled old Agafea
Mihalovna at a little table with a full cup of tea, was reading a letter
from Dolly, with whom they were in continual and frequent
correspondence.

"You see, your good lady's settled me here, told me to sit a bit with
her," said Agafea Mihalovna, smiling affectionately at Kitty.

In these words of Agafea Mihalovna, Levin read the final act of the
drama which had been enacted of late between her and Kitty. He saw that,
in spite of Agafea Mihalovna's feelings being hurt by a new mistress
taking the reins of government out of her hands, Kitty had yet conquered
her and made her love her.

"Here, I opened your letter too," said Kitty, handing him an illiterate
letter. "It's from that woman, I think, your brother's..." she said. "I
did not read it through. This is from my people and from Dolly. Fancy!
Dolly took Tanya and Grisha to a children's ball at the Sarmatskys':
Tanya was a French marquise."

But Levin did not hear her. Flushing, he took the letter from Marya
Nikolaevna, his brother's former mistress, and began to read it. This
was the second letter he had received from Marya Nikolaevna. In the
first letter, Marya Nikolaevna wrote that his brother had sent her away
for no fault of hers, and, with touching simplicity, added that though
she was in want again, she asked for nothing, and wished for nothing,
but was only tormented by the thought that Nikolay Dmitrievitch would
come to grief without her, owing to the weak state of his health, and
begged his brother to look after him. Now she wrote quite differently.
She had found Nikolay Dmitrievitch, had again made it up with him in
Moscow, and had moved with him to a provincial town, where he had
received a post in the government service. But that he had quarreled
with the head official, and was on his way back to Moscow, only he had
been taken so ill on the road that it was doubtful if he would ever
leave his bed again, she wrote. "It's always of you he has talked, and,
besides, he has no more money left."

"Read this; Dolly writes about you," Kitty was beginning, with a smile;
but she stopped suddenly, noticing the changed expression on her
husband's face.

"What is it? What's the matter?"

"She writes to me that Nikolay, my brother, is at death's door. I shall
go to him."

Kitty's face changed at once. Thoughts of Tanya as a marquise, of Dolly,
all had vanished.

"When are you going?" she said.

"Tomorrow."

"And I will go with you, can I?" she said.

"Kitty! What are you thinking of?" he said reproachfully.

"How do you mean?" offended that he should seem to take her suggestion
unwillingly and with vexation. "Why shouldn't I go? I shan't be in your
way. I..."

"I'm going because my brother is dying," said Levin. "Why should you..."

"Why? For the same reason as you."

"And, at a moment of such gravity for me, she only thinks of her being
dull by herself," thought Levin. And this lack of candor in a matter of
such gravity infuriated him.

"It's out of the question," he said sternly.

Agafea Mihalovna, seeing that it was coming to a quarrel, gently put
down her cup and withdrew. Kitty did not even notice her. The tone in
which her husband had said the last words wounded her, especially
because he evidently did not believe what she had said.

"I tell you, that if you go, I shall come with you; I shall certainly
come," she said hastily and wrathfully. "Why out of the question? Why do
you say it's out of the question?"

"Because it'll be going God knows where, by all sorts of roads and to
all sorts of hotels. You would be a hindrance to me," said Levin, trying
to be cool.

"Not at all. I don't want anything. Where you can go, I can...."

"Well, for one thing then, because this woman's there whom you can't
meet."

"I don't know and don't care to know who's there and what. I know that
my husband's brother is dying and my husband is going to him, and I go
with my husband too...."

"Kitty! Don't get angry. But just think a little: this is a matter of
such importance that I can't bear to think that you should bring in a
feeling of weakness, of dislike to being left alone. Come, you'll be
dull alone, so go and stay at Moscow a little."

"There, you always ascribe base, vile motives to me," she said with
tears of wounded pride and fury. "I didn't mean, it wasn't weakness, it
wasn't ... I feel that it's my duty to be with my husband when he's in
trouble, but you try on purpose to hurt me, you try on purpose not to
understand...."

"No; this is awful! To be such a slave!" cried Levin, getting up, and
unable to restrain his anger any longer. But at the same second he felt
that he was beating himself.

"Then why did you marry? You could have been free. Why did you, if you
regret it?" she said, getting up and running away into the drawing room.

When he went to her, she was sobbing.

He began to speak, trying to find words not to dissuade but simply to
soothe her. But she did not heed him, and would not agree to anything.
He bent down to her and took her hand, which resisted him. He kissed her
hand, kissed her hair, kissed her hand again--still she was silent. But
when he took her face in both his hands and said "Kitty!" she suddenly
recovered herself, and began to cry, and they were reconciled.

It was decided that they should go together the next day. Levin told his
wife that he believed she wanted to go simply in order to be of use,
agreed that Marya Nikolaevna's being with his brother did not make her
going improper, but he set off at the bottom of his heart dissatisfied
both with her and with himself. He was dissatisfied with her for being
unable to make up her mind to let him go when it was necessary (and how
strange it was for him to think that he, so lately hardly daring to
believe in such happiness as that she could love him--now was unhappy
because she loved him too much!), and he was dissatisfied with himself
for not showing more strength of will. Even greater was the feeling of
disagreement at the bottom of his heart as to her not needing to
consider the woman who was with his brother, and he thought with horror
of all the contingencies they might meet with. The mere idea of his
wife, his Kitty, being in the same room with a common wench, set him
shuddering with horror and loathing.



Chapter 17


The hotel of the provincial town where Nikolay Levin was lying ill was
one of those provincial hotels which are constructed on the newest model
of modern improvements, with the best intentions of cleanliness,
comfort, and even elegance, but owing to the public that patronizes
them, are with astounding rapidity transformed into filthy taverns with
a pretension of modern improvement that only makes them worse than the
old-fashioned, honestly filthy hotels. This hotel had already reached
that stage, and the soldier in a filthy uniform smoking in the entry,
supposed to stand for a hall-porter, and the cast-iron, slippery, dark,
and disagreeable staircase, and the free and easy waiter in a filthy
frock coat, and the common dining room with a dusty bouquet of wax
flowers adorning the table, and filth, dust, and disorder everywhere,
and at the same time the sort of modern up-to-date self-complacent
railway uneasiness of this hotel, aroused a most painful feeling in
Levin after their fresh young life, especially because the impression of
falsity made by the hotel was so out of keeping with what awaited them.

As is invariably the case, after they had been asked at what price they
wanted rooms, it appeared that there was not one decent room for them;
one decent room had been taken by the inspector of railroads, another by
a lawyer from Moscow, a third by Princess Astafieva from the country.
There remained only one filthy room, next to which they promised that
another should be empty by the evening. Feeling angry with his wife
because what he had expected had come to pass, which was that at the
moment of arrival, when his heart throbbed with emotion and anxiety to
know how his brother was getting on, he should have to be seeing after
her, instead of rushing straight to his brother, Levin conducted her to
the room assigned them.

"Go, do go!" she said, looking at him with timid and guilty eyes.

He went out of the door without a word, and at once stumbled over Marya
Nikolaevna, who had heard of his arrival and had not dared to go in to
see him. She was just the same as when he saw her in Moscow; the same
woolen gown, and bare arms and neck, and the same good-naturedly stupid,
pockmarked face, only a little plumper.

"Well, how is he? how is he?"

"Very bad. He can't get up. He has kept expecting you. He.... Are you
... with your wife?"

Levin did not for the first moment understand what it was confused her,
but she immediately enlightened him.

"I'll go away. I'll go down to the kitchen," she brought out. "Nikolay
Dmitrievitch will be delighted. He heard about it, and knows your lady,
and remembers her abroad."

Levin realized that she meant his wife, and did not know what answer to
make.

"Come along, come along to him!" he said.

But as soon as he moved, the door of his room opened and Kitty peeped
out. Levin crimsoned both from shame and anger with his wife, who had
put herself and him in such a difficult position; but Marya Nikolaevna
crimsoned still more. She positively shrank together and flushed to the
point of tears, and clutching the ends of her apron in both hands,
twisted them in her red fingers without knowing what to say and what to
do.

For the first instant Levin saw an expression of eager curiosity in the
eyes with which Kitty looked at this awful woman, so incomprehensible to
her; but it lasted only a single instant.

"Well! how is he?" she turned to her husband and then to her.

"But one can't go on talking in the passage like this!" Levin said,
looking angrily at a gentleman who walked jauntily at that instant
across the corridor, as though about his affairs.

"Well then, come in," said Kitty, turning to Marya Nikolaevna, who had
recovered herself, but noticing her husband's face of dismay, "or go on;
go, and then come for me," she said, and went back into the room.

Levin went to his brother's room. He had not in the least expected what
he saw and felt in his brother's room. He had expected to find him in
the same state of self-deception which he had heard was so frequent with
the consumptive, and which had struck him so much during his brother's
visit in the autumn. He had expected to find the physical signs of the
approach of death more marked--greater weakness, greater emaciation, but
still almost the same condition of things. He had expected himself to
feel the same distress at the loss of the brother he loved and the same
horror in face of death as he had felt then, only in a greater degree.
And he had prepared himself for this; but he found something utterly
different.

In a little dirty room with the painted panels of its walls filthy with
spittle, and conversation audible through the thin partition from the
next room, in a stifling atmosphere saturated with impurities, on a
bedstead moved away from the wall, there lay covered with a quilt, a
body. One arm of this body was above the quilt, and the wrist, huge as a
rake-handle, was attached, inconceivably it seemed, to the thin, long
bone of the arm smooth from the beginning to the middle. The head lay
sideways on the pillow. Levin could see the scanty locks wet with sweat
on the temples and tense, transparent-looking forehead.

"It cannot be that that fearful body was my brother Nikolay?" thought
Levin. But he went closer, saw the face, and doubt became impossible. In
spite of the terrible change in the face, Levin had only to glance at
those eager eyes raised at his approach, only to catch the faint
movement of the mouth under the sticky mustache, to realize the terrible
truth that this death-like body was his living brother.

The glittering eyes looked sternly and reproachfully at his brother as
he drew near. And immediately this glance established a living
relationship between living men. Levin immediately felt the reproach in
the eyes fixed on him, and felt remorse at his own happiness.

When Konstantin took him by the hand, Nikolay smiled. The smile was
faint, scarcely perceptible, and in spite of the smile the stern
expression of the eyes was unchanged.

"You did not expect to find me like this," he articulated with effort.

"Yes ... no," said Levin, hesitating over his words. "How was it you
didn't let me know before, that is, at the time of my wedding? I made
inquiries in all directions."

He had to talk so as not to be silent, and he did not know what to say,
especially as his brother made no reply, and simply stared without
dropping his eyes, and evidently penetrated to the inner meaning of each
word. Levin told his brother that his wife had come with him. Nikolay
expressed pleasure, but said he was afraid of frightening her by his
condition. A silence followed. Suddenly Nikolay stirred, and began to
say something. Levin expected something of peculiar gravity and
importance from the expression of his face, but Nikolay began speaking
of his health. He found fault with the doctor, regretting he had not a
celebrated Moscow doctor. Levin saw that he still hoped.

Seizing the first moment of silence, Levin got up, anxious to escape, if
only for an instant, from his agonizing emotion, and said that he would
go and fetch his wife.

"Very well, and I'll tell her to tidy up here. It's dirty and stinking
here, I expect. Marya! clear up the room," the sick man said with
effort. "Oh, and when you've cleared up, go away yourself," he added,
looking inquiringly at his brother.

Levin made no answer. Going out into the corridor, he stopped short. He
had said he would fetch his wife, but now, taking stock of the emotion
he was feeling, he decided that he would try on the contrary to persuade
her not to go in to the sick man. "Why should she suffer as I am
suffering?" he thought.

"Well, how is he?" Kitty asked with a frightened face.

"Oh, it's awful, it's awful! What did you come for?" said Levin.

Kitty was silent for a few seconds, looking timidly and ruefully at her
husband; then she went up and took him by the elbow with both hands.

"Kostya! take me to him; it will be easier for us to bear it together.
You only take me, take me to him, please, and go away," she said. "You
must understand that for me to see you, and not to see him, is far more
painful. There I might be a help to you and to him. Please, let me!" she
besought her husband, as though the happiness of her life depended on
it.

Levin was obliged to agree, and regaining his composure, and completely
forgetting about Marya Nikolaevna by now, he went again in to his
brother with Kitty.

Stepping lightly, and continually glancing at her husband, showing him a
valorous and sympathetic face, Kitty went into the sick-room, and,
turning without haste, noiselessly closed the door. With inaudible steps
she went quickly to the sick man's bedside, and going up so that he had
not to turn his head, she immediately clasped in her fresh young hand
the skeleton of his huge hand, pressed it, and began speaking with that
soft eagerness, sympathetic and not jarring, which is peculiar to women.

"We have met, though we were not acquainted, at Soden," she said. "You
never thought I was to be your sister?"

"You would not have recognized me?" he said, with a radiant smile at her
entrance.

"Yes, I should. What a good thing you let us know! Not a day has passed
that Kostya has not mentioned you, and been anxious."

But the sick man's interest did not last long.

Before she had finished speaking, there had come back into his face the
stern, reproachful expression of the dying man's envy of the living.

"I am afraid you are not quite comfortable here," she said, turning away
from his fixed stare, and looking about the room. "We must ask about
another room," she said to her husband, "so that we might be nearer."



Chapter 18


Levin could not look calmly at his brother; he could not himself be
natural and calm in his presence. When he went in to the sick man, his
eyes and his attention were unconsciously dimmed, and he did not see and
did not distinguish the details of his brother's position. He smelt the
awful odor, saw the dirt, disorder, and miserable condition, and heard
the groans, and felt that nothing could be done to help. It never
entered his head to analyze the details of the sick man's situation, to
consider how that body was lying under the quilt, how those emaciated
legs and thighs and spine were lying huddled up, and whether they could
not be made more comfortable, whether anything could not be done to make
things, if not better, at least less bad. It made his blood run cold
when he began to think of all these details. He was absolutely convinced
that nothing could be done to prolong his brother's life or to relieve
his suffering. But a sense of his regarding all aid as out of the
question was felt by the sick man, and exasperated him. And this made it
still more painful for Levin. To be in the sick-room was agony to him,
not to be there still worse. And he was continually, on various
pretexts, going out of the room, and coming in again, because he was
unable to remain alone.

But Kitty thought, and felt, and acted quite differently. On seeing the
sick man, she pitied him. And pity in her womanly heart did not arouse
at all that feeling of horror and loathing that it aroused in her
husband, but a desire to act, to find out all the details of his state,
and to remedy them. And since she had not the slightest doubt that it
was her duty to help him, she had no doubt either that it was possible,
and immediately set to work. The very details, the mere thought of which
reduced her husband to terror, immediately engaged her attention. She
sent for the doctor, sent to the chemist's, set the maid who had come
with her and Marya Nikolaevna to sweep and dust and scrub; she herself
washed up something, washed out something else, laid something under the
quilt. Something was by her directions brought into the sick-room,
something else was carried out. She herself went several times to her
room, regardless of the men she met in the corridor, got out and brought
in sheets, pillow cases, towels, and shirts.

The waiter, who was busy with a party of engineers dining in the dining
hall, came several times with an irate countenance in answer to her
summons, and could not avoid carrying out her orders, as she gave them
with such gracious insistence that there was no evading her. Levin did
not approve of all this; he did not believe it would be of any good to
the patient. Above all, he feared the patient would be angry at it. But
the sick man, though he seemed and was indifferent about it, was not
angry, but only abashed, and on the whole as it were interested in what
she was doing with him. Coming back from the doctor to whom Kitty had
sent him, Levin, on opening the door, came upon the sick man at the
instant when, by Kitty's directions, they were changing his linen. The
long white ridge of his spine, with the huge, prominent shoulder blades
and jutting ribs and vertebrae, was bare, and Marya Nikolaevna and the
waiter were struggling with the sleeve of the night shirt, and could not
get the long, limp arm into it. Kitty, hurriedly closing the door after
Levin, was not looking that way; but the sick man groaned, and she moved
rapidly towards him.

"Make haste," she said.

"Oh, don't you come," said the sick man angrily. "I'll do it my
myself...."

"What say?" queried Marya Nikolaevna. But Kitty heard and saw he was
ashamed and uncomfortable at being naked before her.

"I'm not looking, I'm not looking!" she said, putting the arm in. "Marya
Nikolaevna, you come this side, you do it," she added.

"Please go for me, there's a little bottle in my small bag," she said,
turning to her husband, "you know, in the side pocket; bring it, please,
and meanwhile they'll finish clearing up here."

Returning with the bottle, Levin found the sick man settled comfortably
and everything about him completely changed. The heavy smell was
replaced by the smell of aromatic vinegar, which Kitty with pouting lips
and puffed-out, rosy cheeks was squirting through a little pipe. There
was no dust visible anywhere, a rug was laid by the bedside. On the
table stood medicine bottles and decanters tidily arranged, and the
linen needed was folded up there, and Kitty's _broderie anglaise_. On
the other table by the patient's bed there were candles and drink and
powders. The sick man himself, washed and combed, lay in clean sheets on
high raised pillows, in a clean night-shirt with a white collar about
his astoundingly thin neck, and with a new expression of hope looked
fixedly at Kitty.

The doctor brought by Levin, and found by him at the club, was not the
one who had been attending Nikolay Levin, as the patient was
dissatisfied with him. The new doctor took up a stethoscope and sounded
the patient, shook his head, prescribed medicine, and with extreme
minuteness explained first how to take the medicine and then what diet
was to be kept to. He advised eggs, raw or hardly cooked, and seltzer
water, with warm milk at a certain temperature. When the doctor had gone
away the sick man said something to his brother, of which Levin could
distinguish only the last words: "Your Katya." By the expression with
which he gazed at her, Levin saw that he was praising her. He called
indeed to Katya, as he called her.

"I'm much better already," he said. "Why, with you I should have got
well long ago. How nice it is!" he took her hand and drew it towards his
lips, but as though afraid she would dislike it he changed his mind, let
it go, and only stroked it. Kitty took his hand in both hers and pressed
it.

"Now turn me over on the left side and go to bed," he said.

No one could make out what he said but Kitty; she alone understood. She
understood because she was all the while mentally keeping watch on what
he needed.

"On the other side," she said to her husband, "he always sleeps on that
side. Turn him over, it's so disagreeable calling the servants. I'm not
strong enough. Can you?" she said to Marya Nikolaevna.

"I'm afraid not," answered Marya Nikolaevna.

Terrible as it was to Levin to put his arms round that terrible body, to
take hold of that under the quilt, of which he preferred to know
nothing, under his wife's influence he made his resolute face that she
knew so well, and putting his arms into the bed took hold of the body,
but in spite of his own strength he was struck by the strange heaviness
of those powerless limbs. While he was turning him over, conscious of
the huge emaciated arm about his neck, Kitty swiftly and noiselessly
turned the pillow, beat it up and settled in it the sick man's head,
smoothing back his hair, which was sticking again to his moist brow.

The sick man kept his brother's hand in his own. Levin felt that he
meant to do something with his hand and was pulling it somewhere. Levin
yielded with a sinking heart: yes, he drew it to his mouth and kissed
it. Levin, shaking with sobs and unable to articulate a word, went out
of the room.



Chapter 19


"Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed
them unto babes." So Levin thought about his wife as he talked to her
that evening.

Levin thought of the text, not because he considered himself "wise and
prudent." He did not so consider himself, but he could not help knowing
that he had more intellect than his wife and Agafea Mihalovna, and he
could not help knowing that when he thought of death, he thought with
all the force of his intellect. He knew too that the brains of many
great men, whose thoughts he had read, had brooded over death and yet
knew not a hundredth part of what his wife and Agafea Mihalovna knew
about it. Different as those two women were, Agafea Mihalovna and Katya,
as his brother Nikolay had called her, and as Levin particularly liked
to call her now, they were quite alike in this. Both knew, without a
shade of doubt, what sort of thing life was and what was death, and
though neither of them could have answered, and would even not have
understood the questions that presented themselves to Levin, both had no
doubt of the significance of this event, and were precisely alike in
their way of looking at it, which they shared with millions of people.
The proof that they knew for a certainty the nature of death lay in the
fact that they knew without a second of hesitation how to deal with the
dying, and were not frightened of them. Levin and other men like him,
though they could have said a great deal about death, obviously did not
know this since they were afraid of death, and were absolutely at a loss
what to do when people were dying. If Levin had been alone now with his
brother Nikolay, he would have looked at him with terror, and with still
greater terror waited, and would not have known what else to do.

More than that, he did not know what to say, how to look, how to move.
To talk of outside things seemed to him shocking, impossible, to talk of
death and depressing subjects--also impossible. To be silent, also
impossible. "If I look at him he will think I am studying him, I am
afraid; if I don't look at him, he'll think I'm thinking of other
things. If I walk on tiptoe, he will be vexed; to tread firmly, I'm
ashamed." Kitty evidently did not think of herself, and had no time to
think about herself: she was thinking about him because she knew
something, and all went well. She told him about herself even and about
her wedding, and smiled and sympathized with him and petted him, and
talked of cases of recovery and all went well; so then she must know.
The proof that her behavior and Agafea Mihalovna's was not instinctive,
animal, irrational, was that apart from the physical treatment, the
relief of suffering, both Agafea Mihalovna and Kitty required for the
dying man something else more important than the physical treatment, and
something which had nothing in common with physical conditions. Agafea
Mihalovna, speaking of the man just dead, had said: "Well, thank God, he
took the sacrament and received absolution; God grant each one of us
such a death." Katya in just the same way, besides all her care about
linen, bedsores, drink, found time the very first day to persuade the
sick man of the necessity of taking the sacrament and receiving
absolution.

On getting back from the sick-room to their own two rooms for the night,
Levin sat with hanging head not knowing what to do. Not to speak of
supper, of preparing for bed, of considering what they were going to do,
he could not even talk to his wife; he was ashamed to. Kitty, on the
contrary, was more active than usual. She was even livelier than usual.
She ordered supper to be brought, herself unpacked their things, and
herself helped to make the beds, and did not even forget to sprinkle
them with Persian powder. She showed that alertness, that swiftness of
reflection comes out in men before a battle, in conflict, in the
dangerous and decisive moments of life--those moments when a man shows
once and for all his value, and that all his past has not been wasted
but has been a preparation for these moments.

Everything went rapidly in her hands, and before it was twelve o'clock
all their things were arranged cleanly and tidily in her rooms, in such
a way that the hotel rooms seemed like home: the beds were made,
brushes, combs, looking-glasses were put out, table napkins were spread.

Levin felt that it was unpardonable to eat, to sleep, to talk even now,
and it seemed to him that every movement he made was unseemly. She
arranged the brushes, but she did it all so that there was nothing
shocking in it.

They could neither of them eat, however, and for a long while they could
not sleep, and did not even go to bed.

"I am very glad I persuaded him to receive extreme unction tomorrow,"
she said, sitting in her dressing jacket before her folding looking
glass, combing her soft, fragrant hair with a fine comb. "I have never
seen it, but I know, mamma has told me, there are prayers said for
recovery."

"Do you suppose he can possibly recover?" said Levin, watching a slender
tress at the back of her round little head that was continually hidden
when she passed the comb through the front.

"I asked the doctor; he said he couldn't live more than three days. But
can they be sure? I'm very glad, anyway, that I persuaded him," she
said, looking askance at her husband through her hair. "Anything is
possible," she added with that peculiar, rather sly expression that was
always in her face when she spoke of religion.

Since their conversation about religion when they were engaged neither
of them had ever started a discussion of the subject, but she performed
all the ceremonies of going to church, saying her prayers, and so on,
always with the unvarying conviction that this ought to be so. In spite
of his assertion to the contrary, she was firmly persuaded that he was
as much a Christian as she, and indeed a far better one; and all that he
said about it was simply one of his absurd masculine freaks, just as he
would say about her _broderie anglaise_ that good people patch holes,
but that she cut them on purpose, and so on.

"Yes, you see this woman, Marya Nikolaevna, did not know how to manage
all this," said Levin. "And ... I must own I'm very, very glad you came.
You are such purity that...." He took her hand and did not kiss it (to
kiss her hand in such closeness to death seemed to him improper); he
merely squeezed it with a penitent air, looking at her brightening eyes.

"It would have been miserable for you to be alone," she said, and
lifting her hands which hid her cheeks flushing with pleasure, twisted
her coil of hair on the nape of her neck and pinned it there. "No," she
went on, "she did not know how.... Luckily, I learned a lot at Soden."

"Surely there are not people there so ill?"

"Worse."

"What's so awful to me is that I can't see him as he was when he was
young. You would not believe how charming he was as a youth, but I did
not understand him then."

"I can quite, quite believe it. How I feel that we might have been
friends!" she said; and, distressed at what she had said, she looked
round at her husband, and tears came into her eyes.

"Yes, _might have been_," he said mournfully. "He's just one of those
people of whom they say they're not for this world."

"But we have many days before us; we must go to bed," said Kitty,
glancing at her tiny watch.



Chapter 20


The next day the sick man received the sacrament and extreme unction.
During the ceremony Nikolay Levin prayed fervently. His great eyes,
fastened on the holy image that was set out on a card table covered with
a colored napkin, expressed such passionate prayer and hope that it was
awful to Levin to see it. Levin knew that this passionate prayer and
hope would only make him feel more bitterly parting from the life he so
loved. Levin knew his brother and the workings of his intellect: he knew
that his unbelief came not from life being easier for him without faith,
but had grown up because step by step the contemporary scientific
interpretation of natural phenomena crushed out the possibility of
faith; and so he knew that his present return was not a legitimate one,
brought about by way of the same working of his intellect, but simply a
temporary, interested return to faith in a desperate hope of recovery.
Levin knew too that Kitty had strengthened his hope by accounts of the
marvelous recoveries she had heard of. Levin knew all this; and it was
agonizingly painful to him to behold the supplicating, hopeful eyes and
the emaciated wrist, lifted with difficulty, making the sign of the
cross on the tense brow, and the prominent shoulders and hollow, gasping
chest, which one could not feel consistent with the life the sick man
was praying for. During the sacrament Levin did what he, an unbeliever,
had done a thousand times. He said, addressing God, "If Thou dost exist,
make this man to recover" (of course this same thing has been repeated
many times), "and Thou wilt save him and me."

After extreme unction the sick man became suddenly much better. He did
not cough once in the course of an hour, smiled, kissed Kitty's hand,
thanking her with tears, and said he was comfortable, free from pain,
and that he felt strong and had an appetite. He even raised himself when
his soup was brought, and asked for a cutlet as well. Hopelessly ill as
he was, obvious as it was at the first glance that he could not recover,
Levin and Kitty were for that hour both in the same state of excitement,
happy, though fearful of being mistaken.

"Is he better?"

"Yes, much."

"It's wonderful."

"There's nothing wonderful in it."

"Anyway, he's better," they said in a whisper, smiling to one another.

This self-deception was not of long duration. The sick man fell into a
quiet sleep, but he was waked up half an hour later by his cough. And
all at once every hope vanished in those about him and in himself. The
reality of his suffering crushed all hopes in Levin and Kitty and in the
sick man himself, leaving no doubt, no memory even of past hopes.

Without referring to what he had believed in half an hour before, as
though ashamed even to recall it, he asked for iodine to inhale in a
bottle covered with perforated paper. Levin gave him the bottle, and the
same look of passionate hope with which he had taken the sacrament was
now fastened on his brother, demanding from him the confirmation of the
doctor's words that inhaling iodine worked wonders.

"Is Katya not here?" he gasped, looking round while Levin reluctantly
assented to the doctor's words. "No; so I can say it.... It was for her
sake I went through that farce. She's so sweet; but you and I can't
deceive ourselves. This is what I believe in," he said, and, squeezing
the bottle in his bony hand, he began breathing over it.

At eight o'clock in the evening Levin and his wife were drinking tea in
their room when Marya Nikolaevna ran in to them breathlessly. She was
pale, and her lips were quivering. "He is dying!" she whispered. "I'm
afraid will die this minute."

Both of them ran to him. He was sitting raised up with one elbow on the
bed, his long back bent, and his head hanging low.

"How do you feel?" Levin asked in a whisper, after a silence.

"I feel I'm setting off," Nikolay said with difficulty, but with extreme
distinctness, screwing the words out of himself. He did not raise his
head, but simply turned his eyes upwards, without their reaching his
brother's face. "Katya, go away!" he added.

Levin jumped up, and with a peremptory whisper made her go out.

"I'm setting off," he said again.

"Why do you think so?" said Levin, so as to say something.

"Because I'm setting off," he repeated, as though he had a liking for
the phrase. "It's the end."

Marya Nikolaevna went up to him.

"You had better lie down; you'd be easier," she said.

"I shall lie down soon enough," he pronounced slowly, "when I'm dead,"
he said sarcastically, wrathfully. "Well, you can lay me down if you
like."

Levin laid his brother on his back, sat down beside him, and gazed at
his face, holding his breath. The dying man lay with closed eyes, but
the muscles twitched from time to time on his forehead, as with one
thinking deeply and intensely. Levin involuntarily thought with him of
what it was that was happening to him now, but in spite of all his
mental efforts to go along with him he saw by the expression of that
calm, stern face that for the dying man all was growing clearer and
clearer that was still as dark as ever for Levin.

"Yes, yes, so," the dying man articulated slowly at intervals. "Wait a
little." He was silent. "Right!" he pronounced all at once reassuringly,
as though all were solved for him. "O Lord!" he murmured, and sighed
deeply.

Marya Nikolaevna felt his feet. "They're getting cold," she whispered.

For a long while, a very long while it seemed to Levin, the sick man lay
motionless. But he was still alive, and from time to time he sighed.
Levin by now was exhausted from mental strain. He felt that, with no
mental effort, could he understand what it was that was _right_. He
could not even think of the problem of death itself, but with no will of
his own thoughts kept coming to him of what he had to do next; closing
the dead man's eyes, dressing him, ordering the coffin. And, strange to
say, he felt utterly cold, and was not conscious of sorrow nor of loss,
less still of pity for his brother. If he had any feeling for his
brother at that moment, it was envy for the knowledge the dying man had
now that he could not have.

A long time more he sat over him so, continually expecting the end. But
the end did not come. The door opened and Kitty appeared. Levin got up
to stop her. But at the moment he was getting up, he caught the sound of
the dying man stirring.

"Don't go away," said Nikolay and held out his hand. Levin gave him his,
and angrily waved to his wife to go away.

With the dying man's hand in his hand, he sat for half an hour, an hour,
another hour. He did not think of death at all now. He wondered what
Kitty was doing; who lived in the next room; whether the doctor lived in
a house of his own. He longed for food and for sleep. He cautiously drew
away his hand and felt the feet. The feet were cold, but the sick man
was still breathing. Levin tried again to move away on tiptoe, but the
sick man stirred again and said: "Don't go."

                                  ----

The dawn came; the sick man's condition was unchanged. Levin stealthily
withdrew his hand, and without looking at the dying man, went off to his
own room and went to sleep. When he woke up, instead of news of his
brother's death which he expected, he learned that the sick man had
returned to his earlier condition. He had begun sitting up again,
coughing, had begun eating again, talking again, and again had ceased to
talk of death, again had begun to express hope of his recovery, and had
become more irritable and more gloomy than ever. No one, neither his
brother nor Kitty, could soothe him. He was angry with everyone, and
said nasty things to everyone, reproached everyone for his sufferings,
and insisted that they should get him a celebrated doctor from Moscow.
To all inquiries made him as to how he felt, he made the same answer
with an expression of vindictive reproachfulness, "I'm suffering
horribly, intolerably!"

The sick man was suffering more and more, especially from bedsores,
which it was impossible now to remedy, and grew more and more angry with
everyone about him, blaming them for everything, and especially for not
having brought him a doctor from Moscow. Kitty tried in every possible
way to relieve him, to soothe him; but it was all in vain, and Levin saw
that she herself was exhausted both physically and morally, though she
would not admit it. The sense of death, which had been evoked in all by
his taking leave of life on the night when he had sent for his brother,
was broken up. Everyone knew that he must inevitably die soon, that he
was half dead already. Everyone wished for nothing but that he should
die as soon as possible, and everyone, concealing this, gave him
medicines, tried to find remedies and doctors, and deceived him and
themselves and each other. All this was falsehood, disgusting,
irreverent deceit. And owing to the bent of his character, and because
he loved the dying man more than anyone else did, Levin was most
painfully conscious of this deceit.

Levin, who had long been possessed by the idea of reconciling his
brothers, at least in face of death, had written to his brother, Sergey
Ivanovitch, and having received an answer from him, he read this letter
to the sick man. Sergey Ivanovitch wrote that he could not come himself,
and in touching terms he begged his brother's forgiveness.

The sick man said nothing.

"What am I to write to him?" said Levin. "I hope you are not angry with
him?"

"No, not the least!" Nikolay answered, vexed at the question. "Tell him
to send me a doctor."

Three more days of agony followed; the sick man was still in the same
condition. The sense of longing for his death was felt by everyone now
at the mere sight of him, by the waiters and the hotel-keeper and all
the people staying in the hotel, and the doctor and Marya Nikolaevna and
Levin and Kitty. The sick man alone did not express this feeling, but on
the contrary was furious at their not getting him doctors, and went on
taking medicine and talking of life. Only at rare moments, when the
opium gave him an instant's relief from the never-ceasing pain, he would
sometimes, half asleep, utter what was ever more intense in his heart
than in all the others: "Oh, if it were only the end!" or: "When will it
be over?"

His sufferings, steadily growing more intense, did their work and
prepared him for death. There was no position in which he was not in
pain, there was not a minute in which he was unconscious of it, not a
limb, not a part of his body that did not ache and cause him agony. Even
the memories, the impressions, the thoughts of this body awakened in him
now the same aversion as the body itself. The sight of other people,
their remarks, his own reminiscences, everything was for him a source of
agony. Those about him felt this, and instinctively did not allow
themselves to move freely, to talk, to express their wishes before him.
All his life was merged in the one feeling of suffering and desire to be
rid of it.

There was evidently coming over him that revulsion that would make him
look upon death as the goal of his desires, as happiness. Hitherto each
individual desire, aroused by suffering or privation, such as hunger,
fatigue, thirst, had been satisfied by some bodily function giving
pleasure. But now no physical craving or suffering received relief, and
the effort to relieve them only caused fresh suffering. And so all
desires were merged in one--the desire to be rid of all his sufferings
and their source, the body. But he had no words to express this desire
of deliverance, and so he did not speak of it, and from habit asked for
the satisfaction of desires which could not now be satisfied. "Turn me
over on the other side," he would say, and immediately after he would
ask to be turned back again as before. "Give me some broth. Take away
the broth. Talk of something: why are you silent?" And directly they
began to talk he would close his eyes, and would show weariness,
indifference, and loathing.

On the tenth day from their arrival at the town, Kitty was unwell. She
suffered from headache and sickness, and she could not get up all the
morning.

The doctor opined that the indisposition arose from fatigue and
excitement, and prescribed rest.

After dinner, however, Kitty got up and went as usual with her work to
the sick man. He looked at her sternly when she came in, and smiled
contemptuously when she said she had been unwell. That day he was
continually blowing his nose, and groaning piteously.

"How do you feel?" she asked him.

"Worse," he articulated with difficulty. "In pain!"

"In pain, where?"

"Everywhere."

"It will be over today, you will see," said Marya Nikolaevna. Though it
was said in a whisper, the sick man, whose hearing Levin had noticed was
very keen, must have heard. Levin said hush to her, and looked round at
the sick man. Nikolay had heard; but these words produced no effect on
him. His eyes had still the same intense, reproachful look.

"Why do you think so?" Levin asked her, when she had followed him into
the corridor.

"He has begun picking at himself," said Marya Nikolaevna.

"How do you mean?"

"Like this," she said, tugging at the folds of her woolen skirt. Levin
noticed, indeed, that all that day the patient pulled at himself, as it
were, trying to snatch something away.

Marya Nikolaevna's prediction came true. Towards night the sick man was
not able to lift his hands, and could only gaze before him with the same
intensely concentrated expression in his eyes. Even when his brother or
Kitty bent over him, so that he could see them, he looked just the same.
Kitty sent for the priest to read the prayer for the dying.

While the priest was reading it, the dying man did not show any sign of
life; his eyes were closed. Levin, Kitty, and Marya Nikolaevna stood at
the bedside. The priest had not quite finished reading the prayer when
the dying man stretched, sighed, and opened his eyes. The priest, on
finishing the prayer, put the cross to the cold forehead, then slowly
returned it to the stand, and after standing for two minutes more in
silence, he touched the huge, bloodless hand that was turning cold.

"He is gone," said the priest, and would have moved away; but suddenly
there was a faint stir in the mustaches of the dead man that seemed
glued together, and quite distinctly in the hush they heard from the
bottom of the chest the sharply defined sounds:

"Not quite ... soon."

And a minute later the face brightened, a smile came out under the
mustaches, and the women who had gathered round began carefully laying
out the corpse.

The sight of his brother, and the nearness of death, revived in Levin
that sense of horror in face of the insoluble enigma, together with the
nearness and inevitability of death, that had come upon him that autumn
evening when his brother had come to him. This feeling was now even
stronger than before; even less than before did he feel capable of
apprehending the meaning of death, and its inevitability rose up before
him more terrible than ever. But now, thanks to his wife's presence,
that feeling did not reduce him to despair. In spite of death, he felt
the need of life and love. He felt that love saved him from despair, and
that this love, under the menace of despair, had become still stronger
and purer. The one mystery of death, still unsolved, had scarcely passed
before his eyes, when another mystery had arisen, as insoluble, urging
him to love and to life.

The doctor confirmed his suppositions in regard to Kitty. Her
indisposition was a symptom that she was with child.



Chapter 21


From the moment when Alexey Alexandrovitch understood from his
interviews with Betsy and with Stepan Arkadyevitch that all that was
expected of him was to leave his wife in peace, without burdening her
with his presence, and that his wife herself desired this, he felt so
distraught that he could come to no decision of himself; he did not know
himself what he wanted now, and putting himself in the hands of those
who were so pleased to interest themselves in his affairs, he met
everything with unqualified assent. It was only when Anna had left his
house, and the English governess sent to ask him whether she should dine
with him or separately, that for the first time he clearly comprehended
his position, and was appalled by it. Most difficult of all in this
position was the fact that he could not in any way connect and reconcile
his past with what was now. It was not the past when he had lived
happily with his wife that troubled him. The transition from that past
to a knowledge of his wife's unfaithfulness he had lived through
miserably already; that state was painful, but he could understand it.
If his wife had then, on declaring to him her unfaithfulness, left him,
he would have been wounded, unhappy, but he would not have been in the
hopeless position--incomprehensible to himself--in which he felt himself
now. He could not now reconcile his immediate past, his tenderness, his
love for his sick wife, and for the other man's child with what was now
the case, that is with the fact that, as it were, in return for all this
he now found himself alone, put to shame, a laughing-stock, needed by no
one, and despised by everyone.

For the first two days after his wife's departure Alexey Alexandrovitch
received applicants for assistance and his chief secretary, drove to the
committee, and went down to dinner in the dining room as usual. Without
giving himself a reason for what he was doing, he strained every nerve
of his being for those two days, simply to preserve an appearance of
composure, and even of indifference. Answering inquiries about the
disposition of Anna Arkadyevna's rooms and belongings, he had exercised
immense self-control to appear like a man in whose eyes what had
occurred was not unforeseen nor out of the ordinary course of events,
and he attained his aim: no one could have detected in him signs of
despair. But on the second day after her departure, when Korney gave him
a bill from a fashionable draper's shop, which Anna had forgotten to
pay, and announced that the clerk from the shop was waiting, Alexey
Alexandrovitch told him to show the clerk up.

"Excuse me, your excellency, for venturing to trouble you. But if you
direct us to apply to her excellency, would you graciously oblige us
with her address?"

Alexey Alexandrovitch pondered, as it seemed to the clerk, and all at
once, turning round, he sat down at the table. Letting his head sink
into his hands, he sat for a long while in that position, several times
attempted to speak and stopped short. Korney, perceiving his master's
emotion, asked the clerk to call another time. Left alone, Alexey
Alexandrovitch recognized that he had not the strength to keep up the
line of firmness and composure any longer. He gave orders for the
carriage that was awaiting him to be taken back, and for no one to be
admitted, and he did not go down to dinner.

He felt that he could not endure the weight of universal contempt and
exasperation, which he had distinctly seen in the face of the clerk and
of Korney, and of everyone, without exception, whom he had met during
those two days. He felt that he could not turn aside from himself the
hatred of men, because that hatred did not come from his being bad (in
that case he could have tried to be better), but from his being
shamefully and repulsively unhappy. He knew that for this, for the very
fact that his heart was torn with grief, they would be merciless to him.
He felt that men would crush him as dogs strangle a torn dog yelping
with pain. He knew that his sole means of security against people was to
hide his wounds from them, and instinctively he tried to do this for two
days, but now he felt incapable of keeping up the unequal struggle.

His despair was even intensified by the consciousness that he was
utterly alone in his sorrow. In all Petersburg there was not a human
being to whom he could express what he was feeling, who would feel for
him, not as a high official, not as a member of society, but simply as a
suffering man; indeed he had not such a one in the whole world.

Alexey Alexandrovitch grew up an orphan. There were two brothers. They
did not remember their father, and their mother died when Alexey
Alexandrovitch was ten years old. The property was a small one. Their
uncle, Karenin, a government official of high standing, at one time a
favorite of the late Tsar, had brought them up.

On completing his high school and university courses with medals, Alexey
Alexandrovitch had, with his uncle's aid, immediately started in a
prominent position in the service, and from that time forward he had
devoted himself exclusively to political ambition. In the high school
and the university, and afterwards in the service, Alexey Alexandrovitch
had never formed a close friendship with anyone. His brother had been
the person nearest to his heart, but he had a post in the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, and was always abroad, where he had died shortly after
Alexey Alexandrovitch's marriage.

While he was governor of a province, Anna's aunt, a wealthy provincial
lady, had thrown him--middle-aged as he was, though young for a
governor--with her niece, and had succeeded in putting him in such a
position that he had either to declare himself or to leave the town.
Alexey Alexandrovitch was not long in hesitation. There were at the time
as many reasons for the step as against it, and there was no
overbalancing consideration to outweigh his invariable rule of
abstaining when in doubt. But Anna's aunt had through a common
acquaintance insinuated that he had already compromised the girl, and
that he was in honor bound to make her an offer. He made the offer, and
concentrated on his betrothed and his wife all the feeling of which he
was capable.

The attachment he felt to Anna precluded in his heart every need of
intimate relations with others. And now among all his acquaintances he
had not one friend. He had plenty of so-called connections, but no
friendships. Alexey Alexandrovitch had plenty of people whom he could
invite to dinner, to whose sympathy he could appeal in any public affair
he was concerned about, whose interest he could reckon upon for anyone
he wished to help, with whom he could candidly discuss other people's
business and affairs of state. But his relations with these people were
confined to one clearly defined channel, and had a certain routine from
which it was impossible to depart. There was one man, a comrade of his
at the university, with whom he had made friends later, and with whom he
could have spoken of a personal sorrow; but this friend had a post in
the Department of Education in a remote part of Russia. Of the people in
Petersburg the most intimate and most possible were his chief secretary
and his doctor.

Mihail Vassilievitch Sludin, the chief secretary, was a straightforward,
intelligent, good-hearted, and conscientious man, and Alexey
Alexandrovitch was aware of his personal goodwill. But their five years
of official work together seemed to have put a barrier between them that
cut off warmer relations.

After signing the papers brought him, Alexey Alexandrovitch had sat for
a long while in silence, glancing at Mihail Vassilievitch, and several
times he attempted to speak, but could not. He had already prepared the
phrase: "You have heard of my trouble?" But he ended by saying, as
usual: "So you'll get this ready for me?" and with that dismissed him.

The other person was the doctor, who had also a kindly feeling for him;
but there had long existed a taciturn understanding between them that
both were weighed down by work, and always in a hurry.

Of his women friends, foremost amongst them Countess Lidia Ivanovna,
Alexey Alexandrovitch never thought. All women, simply as women, were
terrible and distasteful to him.



Chapter 22


Alexey Alexandrovitch had forgotten the Countess Lidia Ivanovna, but she
had not forgotten him. At the bitterest moment of his lonely despair she
came to him, and without waiting to be announced, walked straight into
his study. She found him as he was sitting with his head in both hands.

"_J'ai force la consigne_," she said, walking in with rapid steps and
breathing hard with excitement and rapid exercise. "I have heard all!
Alexey Alexandrovitch! Dear friend!" she went on, warmly squeezing his
hand in both of hers and gazing with her fine pensive eyes into his.

Alexey Alexandrovitch, frowning, got up, and disengaging his hand, moved
her a chair.

"Won't you sit down, countess? I'm seeing no one because I'm unwell,
countess," he said, and his lips twitched.

"Dear friend!" repeated Countess Lidia Ivanovna, never taking her eyes
off his, and suddenly her eyebrows rose at the inner corners, describing
a triangle on her forehead, her ugly yellow face became still uglier,
but Alexey Alexandrovitch felt that she was sorry for him and was
preparing to cry. And he too was softened; he snatched her plump hand
and proceeded to kiss it.

"Dear friend!" she said in a voice breaking with emotion. "You ought not
to give way to grief. Your sorrow is a great one, but you ought to find
consolation."

"I am crushed, I am annihilated, I am no longer a man!" said Alexey
Alexandrovitch, letting go her hand, but still gazing into her brimming
eyes. "My position is so awful because I can find nowhere, I cannot find
within me strength to support me."

"You will find support; seek it--not in me, though I beseech you to
believe in my friendship," she said, with a sigh. "Our support is love,
that love that He has vouchsafed us. His burden is light," she said,
with the look of ecstasy Alexey Alexandrovitch knew so well. "He will be
your support and your succor."

Although there was in these words a flavor of that sentimental emotion
at her own lofty feelings, and that new mystical fervor which had lately
gained ground in Petersburg, and which seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch
disproportionate, still it was pleasant to him to hear this now.

"I am weak. I am crushed. I foresaw nothing, and now I understand
nothing."

"Dear friend," repeated Lidia Ivanovna.

"It's not the loss of what I have not now, it's not that!" pursued
Alexey Alexandrovitch. "I do not grieve for that. But I cannot help
feeling humiliated before other people for the position I am placed in.
It is wrong, but I can't help it, I can't help it."

"Not you it was performed that noble act of forgiveness, at which I was
moved to ecstasy, and everyone else too, but He, working within your
heart," said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, raising her eyes rapturously, "and
so you cannot be ashamed of your act."

Alexey Alexandrovitch knitted his brows, and crooking his hands, he
cracked his fingers.

"One must know all the facts," he said in his thin voice. "A man's
strength has its limits, countess, and I have reached my limits. The
whole day I have had to be making arrangements, arrangements about
household matters arising" (he emphasized the word _arising_) "from my
new, solitary position. The servants, the governess, the accounts....
These pinpricks have stabbed me to the heart, and I have not the
strength to bear it. At dinner ... yesterday, I was almost getting up
from the dinner table. I could not bear the way my son looked at me. He
did not ask me the meaning of it all, but he wanted to ask, and I could
not bear the look in his eyes. He was afraid to look at me, but that is
not all...." Alexey Alexandrovitch would have referred to the bill that
had been brought him, but his voice shook, and he stopped. That bill on
blue paper, for a hat and ribbons, he could not recall without a rush of
self-pity.

"I understand, dear friend," said Lidia Ivanovna. "I understand it all.
Succor and comfort you will find not in me, though I have come only to
aid you if I can. If I could take from off you all these petty,
humiliating cares ... I understand that a woman's word, a woman's
superintendence is needed. You will intrust it to me?"

Silently and gratefully Alexey Alexandrovitch pressed her hand.

"Together we will take care of Seryozha. Practical affairs are not my
strong point. But I will set to work. I will be your housekeeper. Don't
thank me. I do it not from myself..."

"I cannot help thanking you."

"But, dear friend, do not give way to the feeling of which you
spoke--being ashamed of what is the Christian's highest glory: _he who
humbles himself shall be exalted_. And you cannot thank me. You must
thank Him, and pray to Him for succor. In Him alone we find peace,
consolation, salvation, and love," she said, and turning her eyes
heavenwards, she began praying, as Alexey Alexandrovitch gathered from
her silence.

Alexey Alexandrovitch listened to her now, and those expressions which
had seemed to him, if not distasteful, at least exaggerated, now seemed
to him natural and consolatory. Alexey Alexandrovitch had disliked this
new enthusiastic fervor. He was a believer, who was interested in
religion primarily in its political aspect, and the new doctrine which
ventured upon several new interpretations, just because it paved the way
to discussion and analysis, was in principle disagreeable to him. He had
hitherto taken up a cold and even antagonistic attitude to this new
doctrine, and with Countess Lidia Ivanovna, who had been carried away by
it, he had never argued, but by silence had assiduously parried her
attempts to provoke him into argument. Now for the first time he heard
her words with pleasure, and did not inwardly oppose them.

"I am very, very grateful to you, both for your deeds and for your
words," he said, when she had finished praying.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna once more pressed both her friend's hands.

"Now I will enter upon my duties," she said with a smile after a pause,
as she wiped away the traces of tears. "I am going to Seryozha. Only in
the last extremity shall I apply to you." And she got up and went out.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna went into Seryozha's part of the house, and
dropping tears on the scared child's cheeks, she told him that his
father was a saint and his mother was dead.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna kept her promise. She did actually take upon
herself the care of the organization and management of Alexey
Alexandrovitch's household. But she had not overstated the case when
saying that practical affairs were not her strong point. All her
arrangements had to be modified because they could not be carried out,
and they were modified by Korney, Alexey Alexandrovitch's valet, who,
though no one was aware of the fact, now managed Karenin's household,
and quietly and discreetly reported to his master while he was dressing
all it was necessary for him to know. But Lidia Ivanovna's help was none
the less real; she gave Alexey Alexandrovitch moral support in the
consciousness of her love and respect for him, and still more, as it was
soothing to her to believe, in that she almost turned him to
Christianity--that is, from an indifferent and apathetic believer she
turned him into an ardent and steadfast adherent of the new
interpretation of Christian doctrine, which had been gaining ground of
late in Petersburg. It was easy for Alexey Alexandrovitch to believe in
this teaching. Alexey Alexandrovitch, like Lidia Ivanovna indeed, and
others who shared their views, was completely devoid of vividness of
imagination, that spiritual faculty in virtue of which the conceptions
evoked by the imagination become so vivid that they must needs be in
harmony with other conceptions, and with actual fact. He saw nothing
impossible and inconceivable in the idea that death, though existing for
unbelievers, did not exist for him, and that, as he was possessed of the
most perfect faith, of the measure of which he was himself the judge,
therefore there was no sin in his soul, and he was experiencing complete
salvation here on earth.

It is true that the erroneousness and shallowness of this conception of
his faith was dimly perceptible to Alexey Alexandrovitch, and he knew
that when, without the slightest idea that his forgiveness was the
action of a higher power, he had surrendered directly to the feeling of
forgiveness, he had felt more happiness than now when he was thinking
every instant that Christ was in his heart, and that in signing official
papers he was doing His will. But for Alexey Alexandrovitch it was a
necessity to think in that way; it was such a necessity for him in his
humiliation to have some elevated standpoint, however imaginary, from
which, looked down upon by all, he could look down on others, that he
clung, as to his one salvation, to his delusion of salvation.



Chapter 23


The Countess Lidia Ivanovna had, as a very young and sentimental girl,
been married to a wealthy man of high rank, an extremely good-natured,
jovial, and extremely dissipated rake. Two months after marriage her
husband abandoned her, and her impassioned protestations of affection he
met with a sarcasm and even hostility that people knowing the count's
good heart, and seeing no defects in the sentimental Lidia, were at a
loss to explain. Though they were divorced and lived apart, yet whenever
the husband met the wife, he invariably behaved to her with the same
malignant irony, the cause of which was incomprehensible.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna had long given up being in love with her
husband, but from that time she had never given up being in love with
someone. She was in love with several people at once, both men and
women; she had been in love with almost everyone who had been
particularly distinguished in any way. She was in love with all the new
princes and princesses who married into the imperial family; she had
been in love with a high dignitary of the Church, a vicar, and a parish
priest; she had been in love with a journalist, three Slavophiles, with
Komissarov, with a minister, a doctor, an English missionary and
Karenin. All these passions constantly waning or growing more ardent,
did not prevent her from keeping up the most extended and complicated
relations with the court and fashionable society. But from the time that
after Karenin's trouble she took him under her special protection, from
the time that she set to work in Karenin's household looking after his
welfare, she felt that all her other attachments were not the real
thing, and that she was now genuinely in love, and with no one but
Karenin. The feeling she now experienced for him seemed to her stronger
than any of her former feelings. Analyzing her feeling, and comparing it
with former passions, she distinctly perceived that she would not have
been in love with Komissarov if he had not saved the life of the Tsar,
that she would not have been in love with Ristitch-Kudzhitsky if there
had been no Slavonic question, but that she loved Karenin for himself,
for his lofty, uncomprehended soul, for the sweet--to her--high notes of
his voice, for his drawling intonation, his weary eyes, his character,
and his soft white hands with their swollen veins. She was not simply
overjoyed at meeting him, but she sought in his face signs of the
impression she was making on him. She tried to please him, not by her
words only, but in her whole person. For his sake it was that she now
lavished more care on her dress than before. She caught herself in
reveries on what might have been, if she had not been married and he had
been free. She blushed with emotion when he came into the room, she
could not repress a smile of rapture when he said anything amiable to
her.

For several days now Countess Lidia Ivanovna had been in a state of
intense excitement. She had learned that Anna and Vronsky were in
Petersburg. Alexey Alexandrovitch must be saved from seeing her, he must
be saved even from the torturing knowledge that that awful woman was in
the same town with him, and that he might meet her any minute.

Lidia Ivanovna made inquiries through her friends as to what those
_infamous people_, as she called Anna and Vronsky, intended doing, and
she endeavored so to guide every movement of her friend during those
days that he could not come across them. The young adjutant, an
acquaintance of Vronsky, through whom she obtained her information, and
who hoped through Countess Lidia Ivanovna to obtain a concession, told
her that they had finished their business and were going away next day.
Lidia Ivanovna had already begun to calm down, when the next morning a
note was brought her, the handwriting of which she recognized with
horror. It was the handwriting of Anna Karenina. The envelope was of
paper as thick as bark; on the oblong yellow paper there was a huge
monogram, and the letter smelt of agreeable scent.

"Who brought it?"

"A commissionaire from the hotel."

It was some time before Countess Lidia Ivanovna could sit down to read
the letter. Her excitement brought on an attack of asthma, to which she
was subject. When she had recovered her composure, she read the
following letter in French:

    "Madame la Comtesse,

    "The Christian feelings with which your heart is filled give me
    the, I feel, unpardonable boldness to write to you. I am
    miserable at being separated from my son. I entreat permission
    to see him once before my departure. Forgive me for recalling
    myself to your memory. I apply to you and not to Alexey
    Alexandrovitch, simply because I do not wish to cause that
    generous man to suffer in remembering me. Knowing your
    friendship for him, I know you will understand me. Could you
    send Seryozha to me, or should I come to the house at some fixed
    hour, or will you let me know when and where I could see him
    away from home? I do not anticipate a refusal, knowing the
    magnanimity of him with whom it rests. You cannot conceive the
    craving I have to see him, and so cannot conceive the gratitude
    your help will arouse in me.

                                                               Anna"

Everything in this letter exasperated Countess Lidia Ivanovna: its
contents and the allusion to magnanimity, and especially its free and
easy--as she considered--tone.

"Say that there is no answer," said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, and
immediately opening her blotting-book, she wrote to Alexey
Alexandrovitch that she hoped to see him at one o'clock at the levee.

"I must talk with you of a grave and painful subject. There we will
arrange where to meet. Best of all at my house, where I will order tea
_as you like it_. Urgent. He lays the cross, but He gives the strength
to bear it," she added, so as to give him some slight preparation.
Countess Lidia Ivanovna usually wrote some two or three letters a day to
Alexey Alexandrovitch. She enjoyed that form of communication, which
gave opportunity for a refinement and air of mystery not afforded by
their personal interviews.



Chapter 24


The levee was drawing to a close. People met as they were going away,
and gossiped of the latest news, of the newly bestowed honors and the
changes in the positions of the higher functionaries.

"If only Countess Marya Borissovna were Minister of War, and Princess
Vatkovskaya were Commander-in-Chief," said a gray-headed, little old man
in a gold-embroidered uniform, addressing a tall, handsome maid of honor
who had questioned him about the new appointments.

"And me among the adjutants," said the maid of honor, smiling.

"You have an appointment already. You're over the ecclesiastical
department. And your assistant's Karenin."

"Good-day, prince!" said the little old man to a man who came up to him.

"What were you saying of Karenin?" said the prince.

"He and Putyatov have received the Alexander Nevsky."

"I thought he had it already."

"No. Just look at him," said the little old man, pointing with his
embroidered hat to Karenin in a court uniform with the new red ribbon
across his shoulders, standing in the doorway of the hall with an
influential member of the Imperial Council. "Pleased and happy as a
brass farthing," he added, stopping to shake hands with a handsome
gentleman of the bedchamber of colossal proportions.

"No; he's looking older," said the gentleman of the bedchamber.

"From overwork. He's always drawing up projects nowadays. He won't let a
poor devil go nowadays till he's explained it all to him under heads."

"Looking older, did you say? _Il fait des passions_. I believe Countess
Lidia Ivanovna's jealous now of his wife."

"Oh, come now, please don't say any harm of Countess Lidia Ivanovna."

"Why, is there any harm in her being in love with Karenin?"

"But is it true Madame Karenina's here?"

"Well, not here in the palace, but in Petersburg. I met her yesterday
with Alexey Vronsky, _bras dessous, bras dessous_, in the Morsky."

"C'est un homme qui n'a pas..." the gentleman of the bedchamber was
beginning, but he stopped to make room, bowing, for a member of the
Imperial family to pass.

Thus people talked incessantly of Alexey Alexandrovitch, finding fault
with him and laughing at him, while he, blocking up the way of the
member of the Imperial Council he had captured, was explaining to him
point by point his new financial project, never interrupting his
discourse for an instant for fear he should escape.

Almost at the same time that his wife left Alexey Alexandrovitch there
had come to him that bitterest moment in the life of an official--the
moment when his upward career comes to a full stop. This full stop had
arrived and everyone perceived it, but Alexey Alexandrovitch himself was
not yet aware that his career was over. Whether it was due to his feud
with Stremov, or his misfortune with his wife, or simply that Alexey
Alexandrovitch had reached his destined limits, it had become evident to
everyone in the course of that year that his career was at an end. He
still filled a position of consequence, he sat on many commissions and
committees, but he was a man whose day was over, and from whom nothing
was expected. Whatever he said, whatever he proposed, was heard as
though it were something long familiar, and the very thing that was not
needed. But Alexey Alexandrovitch was not aware of this, and, on the
contrary, being cut off from direct participation in governmental
activity, he saw more clearly than ever the errors and defects in the
action of others, and thought it his duty to point out means for their
correction. Shortly after his separation from his wife, he began writing
his first note on the new judicial procedure, the first of the endless
series of notes he was destined to write in the future.

Alexey Alexandrovitch did not merely fail to observe his hopeless
position in the official world, he was not merely free from anxiety on
this head, he was positively more satisfied than ever with his own
activity.

"He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how
he may please the Lord: But he that is married careth for the things
that are of the world, how he may please his wife," says the Apostle
Paul, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, who was now guided in every action by
Scripture, often recalled this text. It seemed to him that ever since he
had been left without a wife, he had in these very projects of reform
been serving the Lord more zealously than before.

The unmistakable impatience of the member of the Council trying to get
away from him did not trouble Alexey Alexandrovitch; he gave up his
exposition only when the member of the Council, seizing his chance when
one of the Imperial family was passing, slipped away from him.

Left alone, Alexey Alexandrovitch looked down, collecting his thoughts,
then looked casually about him and walked towards the door, where he
hoped to meet Countess Lidia Ivanovna.

"And how strong they all are, how sound physically," thought Alexey
Alexandrovitch, looking at the powerfully built gentleman of the
bedchamber with his well-combed, perfumed whiskers, and at the red neck
of the prince, pinched by his tight uniform. He had to pass them on his
way. "Truly is it said that all the world is evil," he thought, with
another sidelong glance at the calves of the gentleman of the
bedchamber.

Moving forward deliberately, Alexey Alexandrovitch bowed with his
customary air of weariness and dignity to the gentleman who had been
talking about him, and looking towards the door, his eyes sought
Countess Lidia Ivanovna.

"Ah! Alexey Alexandrovitch!" said the little old man, with a malicious
light in his eyes, at the moment when Karenin was on a level with them,
and was nodding with a frigid gesture, "I haven't congratulated you
yet," said the old man, pointing to his newly received ribbon.

"Thank you," answered Alexey Alexandrovitch. "What an _exquisite_ day
today," he added, laying emphasis in his peculiar way on the word
_exquisite_.

That they laughed at him he was well aware, but he did not expect
anything but hostility from them; he was used to that by now.

Catching sight of the yellow shoulders of Lidia Ivanovna jutting out
above her corset, and her fine pensive eyes bidding him to her, Alexey
Alexandrovitch smiled, revealing untarnished white teeth, and went
towards her.

Lidia Ivanovna's dress had cost her great pains, as indeed all her
dresses had done of late. Her aim in dress was now quite the reverse of
that she had pursued thirty years before. Then her desire had been to
adorn herself with something, and the more adorned the better. Now, on
the contrary, she was perforce decked out in a way so inconsistent with
her age and her figure, that her one anxiety was to contrive that the
contrast between these adornments and her own exterior should not be too
appalling. And as far as Alexey Alexandrovitch was concerned she
succeeded, and was in his eyes attractive. For him she was the one
island not only of goodwill to him, but of love in the midst of the sea
of hostility and jeering that surrounded him.

Passing through rows of ironical eyes, he was drawn as naturally to her
loving glance as a plant to the sun.

"I congratulate you," she said to him, her eyes on his ribbon.

Suppressing a smile of pleasure, he shrugged his shoulders, closing his
eyes, as though to say that that could not be a source of joy to him.
Countess Lidia Ivanovna was very well aware that it was one of his chief
sources of satisfaction, though he never admitted it.

"How is our angel?" said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, meaning Seryozha.

"I can't say I was quite pleased with him," said Alexey Alexandrovitch,
raising his eyebrows and opening his eyes. "And Sitnikov is not
satisfied with him." (Sitnikov was the tutor to whom Seryozha's secular
education had been intrusted.) "As I have mentioned to you, there's a
sort of coldness in him towards the most important questions which ought
to touch the heart of every man and every child...." Alexey
Alexandrovitch began expounding his views on the sole question that
interested him besides the service--the education of his son.

When Alexey Alexandrovitch with Lidia Ivanovna's help had been brought
back anew to life and activity, he felt it his duty to undertake the
education of the son left on his hands. Having never before taken any
interest in educational questions, Alexey Alexandrovitch devoted some
time to the theoretical study of the subject. After reading several
books on anthropology, education, and didactics, Alexey Alexandrovitch
drew up a plan of education, and engaging the best tutor in Petersburg
to superintend it, he set to work, and the subject continually absorbed
him.

"Yes, but the heart. I see in him his father's heart, and with such a
heart a child cannot go far wrong," said Lidia Ivanovna with enthusiasm.

"Yes, perhaps.... As for me, I do my duty. It's all I can do."

"You're coming to me," said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, after a pause; "we
have to speak of a subject painful for you. I would give anything to
have spared you certain memories, but others are not of the same mind. I
have received a letter from _her_. _She_ is here in Petersburg."

Alexey Alexandrovitch shuddered at the allusion to his wife, but
immediately his face assumed the deathlike rigidity which expressed
utter helplessness in the matter.

"I was expecting it," he said.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna looked at him ecstatically, and tears of rapture
at the greatness of his soul came into her eyes.



Chapter 25


When Alexey Alexandrovitch came into the Countess Lidia Ivanovna's snug
little boudoir, decorated with old china and hung with portraits, the
lady herself had not yet made her appearance.

She was changing her dress.

A cloth was laid on a round table, and on it stood a china tea service
and a silver spirit-lamp and tea kettle. Alexey Alexandrovitch looked
idly about at the endless familiar portraits which adorned the room, and
sitting down to the table, he opened a New Testament lying upon it. The
rustle of the countess's silk skirt drew his attention off.

"Well now, we can sit quietly," said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, slipping
hurriedly with an agitated smile between the table and the sofa, "and
talk over our tea."

After some words of preparation, Countess Lidia Ivanovna, breathing hard
and flushing crimson, gave into Alexey Alexandrovitch's hands the letter
she had received.

After reading the letter, he sat a long while in silence.

"I don't think I have the right to refuse her," he said, timidly lifting
his eyes.

"Dear friend, you never see evil in anyone!"

"On the contrary, I see that all is evil. But whether it is just..."

His face showed irresolution, and a seeking for counsel, support, and
guidance in a matter he did not understand.

"No," Countess Lidia Ivanovna interrupted him; "there are limits to
everything. I can understand immorality," she said, not quite
truthfully, since she never could understand that which leads women to
immorality; "but I don't understand cruelty: to whom? to you! How can
she stay in the town where you are? No, the longer one lives the more
one learns. And I'm learning to understand your loftiness and her
baseness."

"Who is to throw a stone?" said Alexey Alexandrovitch, unmistakably
pleased with the part he had to play. "I have forgiven all, and so I
cannot deprive her of what is exacted by love in her--by her love for
her son...."

"But is that love, my friend? Is it sincere? Admitting that you have
forgiven--that you forgive--have we the right to work on the feelings of
that angel? He looks on her as dead. He prays for her, and beseeches God
to have mercy on her sins. And it is better so. But now what will he
think?"

"I had not thought of that," said Alexey Alexandrovitch, evidently
agreeing.

Countess Lidia Ivanovna hid her face in her hands and was silent. She
was praying.

"If you ask my advice," she said, having finished her prayer and
uncovered her face, "I do not advise you to do this. Do you suppose I
don't see how you are suffering, how this has torn open your wounds? But
supposing that, as always, you don't think of yourself, what can it lead
to?--to fresh suffering for you, to torture for the child. If there were
a trace of humanity left in her, she ought not to wish for it herself.
No, I have no hesitation in saying I advise not, and if you will intrust
it to me, I will write to her."

And Alexey Alexandrovitch consented, and Countess Lidia Ivanovna sent
the following letter in French:

    "Dear Madame,

    "To be reminded of you might have results for your son in
    leading to questions on his part which could not be answered
    without implanting in the child's soul a spirit of censure
    towards what should be for him sacred, and therefore I beg you
    to interpret your husband's refusal in the spirit of Christian
    love. I pray to Almighty God to have mercy on you.

                                                     Countess Lidia"

This letter attained the secret object which Countess Lidia Ivanovna had
concealed from herself. It wounded Anna to the quick.

For his part, Alexey Alexandrovitch, on returning home from Lidia
Ivanovna's, could not all that day concentrate himself on his usual
pursuits, and find that spiritual peace of one saved and believing which
he had felt of late.

The thought of his wife, who had so greatly sinned against him, and
towards whom he had been so saintly, as Countess Lidia Ivanovna had so
justly told him, ought not to have troubled him; but he was not easy; he
could not understand the book he was reading; he could not drive away
harassing recollections of his relations with her, of the mistake which,
as it now seemed, he had made in regard to her. The memory of how he had
received her confession of infidelity on their way home from the races
(especially that he had insisted only on the observance of external
decorum, and had not sent a challenge) tortured him like a remorse. He
was tortured too by the thought of the letter he had written her; and
most of all, his forgiveness, which nobody wanted, and his care of the
other man's child made his heart burn with shame and remorse.

And just the same feeling of shame and regret he felt now, as he
reviewed all his past with her, recalling the awkward words in which,
after long wavering, he had made her an offer.

"But how have I been to blame?" he said to himself. And this question
always excited another question in him--whether they felt differently,
did their loving and marrying differently, these Vronskys and Oblonskys
... these gentlemen of the bedchamber, with their fine calves. And there
passed before his mind a whole series of these mettlesome, vigorous,
self-confident men, who always and everywhere drew his inquisitive
attention in spite of himself. He tried to dispel these thoughts, he
tried to persuade himself that he was not living for this transient
life, but for the life of eternity, and that there was peace and love in
his heart.

But the fact that he had in this transient, trivial life made, as it
seemed to him, a few trivial mistakes tortured him as though the eternal
salvation in which he believed had no existence. But this temptation did
not last long, and soon there was reestablished once more in Alexey
Alexandrovitch's soul the peace and the elevation by virtue of which he
could forget what he did not want to remember.



Chapter 26


"Well, Kapitonitch?" said Seryozha, coming back rosy and good-humored
from his walk the day before his birthday, and giving his overcoat to
the tall old hall porter, who smiled down at the little person from the
height of his long figure. "Well, has the bandaged clerk been here
today? Did papa see him?"

"He saw him. The minute the chief secretary came out, I announced him,"
said the hall porter with a good-humored wink. "Here, I'll take it off."

"Seryozha!" said the tutor, stopping in the doorway leading to the inner
rooms. "Take it off yourself." But Seryozha, though he heard his tutor's
feeble voice, did not pay attention to it. He stood keeping hold of the
hall porter's belt, and gazing into his face.

"Well, and did papa do what he wanted for him?"

The hall porter nodded his head affirmatively. The clerk with his face
tied up, who had already been seven times to ask some favor of Alexey
Alexandrovitch, interested both Seryozha and the hall porter. Seryozha
had come upon him in the hall, and had heard him plaintively beg the
hall porter to announce him, saying that he and his children had death
staring them in the face.

Since then Seryozha, having met him a second time in the hall, took
great interest in him.

"Well, was he very glad?" he asked.

"Glad? I should think so! Almost dancing as he walked away."

"And has anything been left?" asked Seryozha, after a pause.

"Come, sir," said the hall-porter; then with a shake of his head he
whispered, "Something from the countess."

Seryozha understood at once that what the hall porter was speaking of
was a present from Countess Lidia Ivanovna for his birthday.

"What do you say? Where?"

"Korney took it to your papa. A fine plaything it must be too!"

"How big? Like this?"

"Rather small, but a fine thing."

"A book."

"No, a thing. Run along, run along, Vassily Lukitch is calling you,"
said the porter, hearing the tutor's steps approaching, and carefully
taking away from his belt the little hand in the glove half pulled off,
he signed with his head towards the tutor.

"Vassily Lukitch, in a tiny minute!" answered Seryozha with that gay and
loving smile which always won over the conscientious Vassily Lukitch.

Seryozha was too happy, everything was too delightful for him to be able
to help sharing with his friend the porter the family good fortune of
which he had heard during his walk in the public gardens from Lidia
Ivanovna's niece. This piece of good news seemed to him particularly
important from its coming at the same time with the gladness of the
bandaged clerk and his own gladness at toys having come for him. It
seemed to Seryozha that this was a day on which everyone ought to be
glad and happy.

"You know papa's received the Alexander Nevsky today?"

"To be sure I do! People have been already to congratulate him."

"And is he glad?"

"Glad at the Tsar's gracious favor! I should think so! It's a proof he's
deserved it," said the porter severely and seriously.

Seryozha fell to dreaming, gazing up at the face of the porter, which he
had thoroughly studied in every detail, especially the chin that hung
down between the gray whiskers, never seen by anyone but Seryozha, who
saw him only from below.

"Well, and has your daughter been to see you lately?"

The porter's daughter was a ballet dancer.

"When is she to come on week-days? They've their lessons to learn too.
And you've your lesson, sir; run along."

On coming into the room, Seryozha, instead of sitting down to his
lessons, told his tutor of his supposition that what had been brought
him must be a machine. "What do you think?" he inquired.

But Vassily Lukitch was thinking of nothing but the necessity of
learning the grammar lesson for the teacher, who was coming at two.

"No, do just tell me, Vassily Lukitch," he asked suddenly, when he was
seated at their work table with the book in his hands, "what is greater
than the Alexander Nevsky? You know papa's received the Alexander
Nevsky?"

Vassily Lukitch replied that the Vladimir was greater than the Alexander
Nevsky.

"And higher still?"

"Well, highest of all is the Andrey Pervozvanny."

"And higher than the Andrey?"

"I don't know."

"What, you don't know?" and Seryozha, leaning on his elbows, sank into
deep meditation.

His meditations were of the most complex and diverse character. He
imagined his father's having suddenly been presented with both the
Vladimir and the Andrey today, and in consequence being much better
tempered at his lesson, and dreamed how, when he was grown up, he would
himself receive all the orders, and what they might invent higher than
the Andrey. Directly any higher order were invented, he would win it.
They would make a higher one still, and he would immediately win that
too.

The time passed in such meditations, and when the teacher came, the
lesson about the adverbs of place and time and manner of action was not
ready, and the teacher was not only displeased, but hurt. This touched
Seryozha. He felt he was not to blame for not having learned the lesson;
however much he tried, he was utterly unable to do that. As long as the
teacher was explaining to him, he believed him and seemed to comprehend,
but as soon as he was left alone, he was positively unable to recollect
and to understand that the short and familiar word "suddenly" is an
adverb of manner of action. Still he was sorry that he had disappointed
the teacher.

He chose a moment when the teacher was looking in silence at the book.

"Mihail Ivanitch, when is your birthday?" he asked all, of a sudden.

"You'd much better be thinking about your work. Birthdays are of no
importance to a rational being. It's a day like any other on which one
has to do one's work."

Seryozha looked intently at the teacher, at his scanty beard, at his
spectacles, which had slipped down below the ridge on his nose, and fell
into so deep a reverie that he heard nothing of what the teacher was
explaining to him. He knew that the teacher did not think what he said;
he felt it from the tone in which it was said. "But why have they all
agreed to speak just in the same manner always the dreariest and most
useless stuff? Why does he keep me off; why doesn't he love me?" he
asked himself mournfully, and could not think of an answer.



Chapter 27


After the lesson with the grammar teacher came his father's lesson.
While waiting for his father, Seryozha sat at the table playing with a
penknife, and fell to dreaming. Among Seryozha's favorite occupations
was searching for his mother during his walks. He did not believe in
death generally, and in her death in particular, in spite of what Lidia
Ivanovna had told him and his father had confirmed, and it was just
because of that, and after he had been told she was dead, that he had
begun looking for her when out for a walk. Every woman of full, graceful
figure with dark hair was his mother. At the sight of such a woman such
a feeling of tenderness was stirred within him that his breath failed
him, and tears came into his eyes. And he was on the tiptoe of
expectation that she would come up to him, would lift her veil. All her
face would be visible, she would smile, she would hug him, he would
sniff her fragrance, feel the softness of her arms, and cry with
happiness, just as he had one evening lain on her lap while she tickled
him, and he laughed and bit her white, ring-covered fingers. Later, when
he accidentally learned from his old nurse that his mother was not dead,
and his father and Lidia Ivanovna had explained to him that she was dead
to him because she was wicked (which he could not possibly believe,
because he loved her), he went on seeking her and expecting her in the
same way. That day in the public gardens there had been a lady in a
lilac veil, whom he had watched with a throbbing heart, believing it to
be she as she came towards them along the path. The lady had not come up
to them, but had disappeared somewhere. That day, more intensely than
ever, Seryozha felt a rush of love for her, and now, waiting for his
father, he forgot everything, and cut all round the edge of the table
with his penknife, staring straight before him with sparkling eyes and
dreaming of her.

"Here is your papa!" said Vassily Lukitch, rousing him.

Seryozha jumped up and went up to his father, and kissing his hand,
looked at him intently, trying to discover signs of his joy at receiving
the Alexander Nevsky.

"Did you have a nice walk?" said Alexey Alexandrovitch, sitting down in
his easy chair, pulling the volume of the Old Testament to him and
opening it. Although Alexey Alexandrovitch had more than once told
Seryozha that every Christian ought to know Scripture history
thoroughly, he often referred to the Bible himself during the lesson,
and Seryozha observed this.

"Yes, it was very nice indeed, papa," said Seryozha, sitting sideways on
his chair and rocking it, which was forbidden. "I saw Nadinka" (Nadinka
was a niece of Lidia Ivanovna's who was being brought up in her house).
"She told me you'd been given a new star. Are you glad, papa?"

"First of all, don't rock your chair, please," said Alexey
Alexandrovitch. "And secondly, it's not the reward that's precious, but
the work itself. And I could have wished you understood that. If you now
are going to work, to study in order to win a reward, then the work will
seem hard to you; but when you work" (Alexey Alexandrovitch, as he
spoke, thought of how he had been sustained by a sense of duty through
the wearisome labor of the morning, consisting of signing one hundred
and eighty papers), "loving your work, you will find your reward in it."

Seryozha's eyes, that had been shining with gaiety and tenderness, grew
dull and dropped before his father's gaze. This was the same
long-familiar tone his father always took with him, and Seryozha had
learned by now to fall in with it. His father always talked to him--so
Seryozha felt--as though he were addressing some boy of his own
imagination, one of those boys that exist in books, utterly unlike
himself. And Seryozha always tried with his father to act being the
story-book boy.

"You understand that, I hope?" said his father.

"Yes, papa," answered Seryozha, acting the part of the imaginary boy.

The lesson consisted of learning by heart several verses out of the
Gospel and the repetition of the beginning of the Old Testament. The
verses from the Gospel Seryozha knew fairly well, but at the moment when
he was saying them he became so absorbed in watching the sharply
protruding, bony knobbiness of his father's forehead, that he lost the
thread, and he transposed the end of one verse and the beginning of
another. So it was evident to Alexey Alexandrovitch that he did not
understand what he was saying, and that irritated him.

He frowned, and began explaining what Seryozha had heard many times
before and never could remember, because he understood it too well, just
as that "suddenly" is an adverb of manner of action. Seryozha looked
with scared eyes at his father, and could think of nothing but whether
his father would make him repeat what he had said, as he sometimes did.
And this thought so alarmed Seryozha that he now understood nothing. But
his father did not make him repeat it, and passed on to the lesson out
of the Old Testament. Seryozha recounted the events themselves well
enough, but when he had to answer questions as to what certain events
prefigured, he knew nothing, though he had already been punished over
this lesson. The passage at which he was utterly unable to say anything,
and began fidgeting and cutting the table and swinging his chair, was
where he had to repeat the patriarchs before the Flood. He did not know
one of them, except Enoch, who had been taken up alive to heaven. Last
time he had remembered their names, but now he had forgotten them
utterly, chiefly because Enoch was the personage he liked best in the
whole of the Old Testament, and Enoch's translation to heaven was
connected in his mind with a whole long train of thought, in which he
became absorbed now while he gazed with fascinated eyes at his father's
watch-chain and a half-unbuttoned button on his waistcoat.

In death, of which they talked to him so often, Seryozha disbelieved
entirely. He did not believe that those he loved could die, above all
that he himself would die. That was to him something utterly
inconceivable and impossible. But he had been told that all men die; he
had asked people, indeed, whom he trusted, and they too, had confirmed
it; his old nurse, too, said the same, though reluctantly. But Enoch had
not died, and so it followed that everyone did not die. "And why cannot
anyone else so serve God and be taken alive to heaven?" thought
Seryozha. Bad people, that is those Seryozha did not like, they might
die, but the good might all be like Enoch.

"Well, what are the names of the patriarchs?"

"Enoch, Enos--"

"But you have said that already. This is bad, Seryozha, very bad. If you
don't try to learn what is more necessary than anything for a
Christian," said his father, getting up, "whatever can interest you? I
am displeased with you, and Piotr Ignatitch" (this was the most
important of his teachers) "is displeased with you.... I shall have to
punish you."

His father and his teacher were both displeased with Seryozha, and he
certainly did learn his lessons very badly. But still it could not be
said he was a stupid boy. On the contrary, he was far cleverer than the
boys his teacher held up as examples to Seryozha. In his father's
opinion, he did not want to learn what he was taught. In reality he
could not learn that. He could not, because the claims of his own soul
were more binding on him than those claims his father and his teacher
made upon him. Those claims were in opposition, and he was in direct
conflict with his education. He was nine years old; he was a child; but
he knew his own soul, it was precious to him, he guarded it as the
eyelid guards the eye, and without the key of love he let no one into
his soul. His teachers complained that he would not learn, while his
soul was brimming over with thirst for knowledge. And he learned from
Kapitonitch, from his nurse, from Nadinka, from Vassily Lukitch, but not
from his teachers. The spring his father and his teachers reckoned upon
to turn their mill-wheels had long dried up at the source, but its
waters did their work in another channel.

His father punished Seryozha by not letting him go to see Nadinka, Lidia
Ivanovna's niece; but this punishment turned out happily for Seryozha.
Vassily Lukitch was in a good humor, and showed him how to make
windmills. The whole evening passed over this work and in dreaming how
to make a windmill on which he could turn himself--clutching at the
sails or tying himself on and whirling round. Of his mother Seryozha did
not think all the evening, but when he had gone to bed, he suddenly
remembered her, and prayed in his own words that his mother tomorrow for
his birthday might leave off hiding herself and come to him.

"Vassily Lukitch, do you know what I prayed for tonight extra besides
the regular things?"

"That you might learn your lessons better?"

"No."

"Toys?"

"No. You'll never guess. A splendid thing; but it's a secret! When it
comes to pass I'll tell you. Can't you guess!"

"No, I can't guess. You tell me," said Vassily Lukitch with a smile,
which was rare with him. "Come, lie down, I'm putting out the candle."

"Without the candle I can see better what I see and what I prayed for.
There! I was almost telling the secret!" said Seryozha, laughing gaily.

When the candle was taken away, Seryozha heard and felt his mother. She
stood over him, and with loving eyes caressed him. But then came
windmills, a knife, everything began to be mixed up, and he fell asleep.



Chapter 28


On arriving in Petersburg, Vronsky and Anna stayed at one of the best
hotels; Vronsky apart in a lower story, Anna above with her child, its
nurse, and her maid, in a large suite of four rooms.

On the day of his arrival Vronsky went to his brother's. There he found
his mother, who had come from Moscow on business. His mother and
sister-in-law greeted him as usual: they asked him about his stay
abroad, and talked of their common acquaintances, but did not let drop a
single word in allusion to his connection with Anna. His brother came
the next morning to see Vronsky, and of his own accord asked him about
her, and Alexey Vronsky told him directly that he looked upon his
connection with Madame Karenina as marriage; that he hoped to arrange a
divorce, and then to marry her, and until then he considered her as much
a wife as any other wife, and he begged him to tell their mother and his
wife so.

"If the world disapproves, I don't care," said Vronsky; "but if my
relations want to be on terms of relationship with me, they will have to
be on the same terms with my wife."

The elder brother, who had always a respect for his younger brother's
judgment, could not well tell whether he was right or not till the world
had decided the question; for his part he had nothing against it, and
with Alexey he went up to see Anna.

Before his brother, as before everyone, Vronsky addressed Anna with a
certain formality, treating her as he might a very intimate friend, but
it was understood that his brother knew their real relations, and they
talked about Anna's going to Vronsky's estate.

In spite of all his social experience Vronsky was, in consequence of the
new position in which he was placed, laboring under a strange
misapprehension. One would have thought he must have understood that
society was closed for him and Anna; but now some vague ideas had sprung
up in his brain that this was only the case in old-fashioned days, and
that now with the rapidity of modern progress (he had unconsciously
become by now a partisan of every sort of progress) the views of society
had changed, and that the question whether they would be received in
society was not a foregone conclusion. "Of course," he thought, "she
would not be received at court, but intimate friends can and must look
at it in the proper light." One may sit for several hours at a stretch
with one's legs crossed in the same position, if one knows that there's
nothing to prevent one's changing one's position; but if a man knows
that he must remain sitting so with crossed legs, then cramps come on,
the legs begin to twitch and to strain towards the spot to which one
would like to draw them. This was what Vronsky was experiencing in
regard to the world. Though at the bottom of his heart he knew that the
world was shut on them, he put it to the test whether the world had not
changed by now and would not receive them. But he very quickly perceived
that though the world was open for him personally, it was closed for
Anna. Just as in the game of cat and mouse, the hands raised for him
were dropped to bar the way for Anna.

One of the first ladies of Petersburg society whom Vronsky saw was his
cousin Betsy.

"At last!" she greeted him joyfully. "And Anna? How glad I am! Where are
you stopping? I can fancy after your delightful travels you must find
our poor Petersburg horrid. I can fancy your honeymoon in Rome. How
about the divorce? Is that all over?"

Vronsky noticed that Betsy's enthusiasm waned when she learned that no
divorce had as yet taken place.

"People will throw stones at me, I know," she said, "but I shall come
and see Anna; yes, I shall certainly come. You won't be here long, I
suppose?"

And she did certainly come to see Anna the same day, but her tone was
not at all the same as in former days. She unmistakably prided herself
on her courage, and wished Anna to appreciate the fidelity of her
friendship. She only stayed ten minutes, talking of society gossip, and
on leaving she said:

"You've never told me when the divorce is to be? Supposing I'm ready to
fling my cap over the mill, other starchy people will give you the cold
shoulder until you're married. And that's so simple nowadays. _Ca se
fait_. So you're going on Friday? Sorry we shan't see each other again."

From Betsy's tone Vronsky might have grasped what he had to expect from
the world; but he made another effort in his own family. His mother he
did not reckon upon. He knew that his mother, who had been so
enthusiastic over Anna at their first acquaintance, would have no mercy
on her now for having ruined her son's career. But he had more hope of
Varya, his brother's wife. He fancied she would not throw stones, and
would go simply and directly to see Anna, and would receive her in her
own house.

The day after his arrival Vronsky went to her, and finding her alone,
expressed his wishes directly.

"You know, Alexey," she said after hearing him, "how fond I am of you,
and how ready I am to do anything for you; but I have not spoken,
because I knew I could be of no use to you and to Anna Arkadyevna," she
said, articulating the name "Anna Arkadyevna" with particular care.
"Don't suppose, please, that I judge her. Never; perhaps in her place I
should have done the same. I don't and can't enter into that," she said,
glancing timidly at his gloomy face. "But one must call things by their
names. You want me to go and see her, to ask her here, and to
rehabilitate her in society; but do understand that I _cannot_ do so. I
have daughters growing up, and I must live in the world for my husband's
sake. Well, I'm ready to come and see Anna Arkadyevna: she will
understand that I can't ask her here, or I should have to do so in such
a way that she would not meet people who look at things differently;
that would offend her. I can't raise her..."

"Oh, I don't regard her as fallen more than hundreds of women you do
receive!" Vronsky interrupted her still more gloomily, and he got up in
silence, understanding that his sister-in-law's decision was not to be
shaken.

"Alexey! don't be angry with me. Please understand that I'm not to
blame," began Varya, looking at him with a timid smile.

"I'm not angry with you," he said still as gloomily; "but I'm sorry in
two ways. I'm sorry, too, that this means breaking up our friendship--if
not breaking up, at least weakening it. You will understand that for me,
too, it cannot be otherwise."

And with that he left her.

Vronsky knew that further efforts were useless, and that he had to spend
these few days in Petersburg as though in a strange town, avoiding every
sort of relation with his own old circle in order not to be exposed to
the annoyances and humiliations which were so intolerable to him. One of
the most unpleasant features of his position in Petersburg was that
Alexey Alexandrovitch and his name seemed to meet him everywhere. He
could not begin to talk of anything without the conversation turning on
Alexey Alexandrovitch; he could not go anywhere without risk of meeting
him. So at least it seemed to Vronsky, just as it seems to a man with a
sore finger that he is continually, as though on purpose, grazing his
sore finger on everything.

Their stay in Petersburg was the more painful to Vronsky that he
perceived all the time a sort of new mood that he could not understand
in Anna. At one time she would seem in love with him, and then she would
become cold, irritable, and impenetrable. She was worrying over
something, and keeping something back from him, and did not seem to
notice the humiliations which poisoned his existence, and for her, with
her delicate intuition, must have been still more unbearable.



Chapter 29


One of Anna's objects in coming back to Russia had been to see her son.
From the day she left Italy the thought of it had never ceased to
agitate her. And as she got nearer to Petersburg, the delight and
importance of this meeting grew ever greater in her imagination. She did
not even put to herself the question how to arrange it. It seemed to her
natural and simple to see her son when she should be in the same town
with him. But on her arrival in Petersburg she was suddenly made
distinctly aware of her present position in society, and she grasped the
fact that to arrange this meeting was no easy matter.

She had now been two days in Petersburg. The thought of her son never
left her for a single instant, but she had not yet seen him. To go
straight to the house, where she might meet Alexey Alexandrovitch, that
she felt she had no right to do. She might be refused admittance and
insulted. To write and so enter into relations with her husband--that it
made her miserable to think of doing; she could only be at peace when
she did not think of her husband. To get a glimpse of her son out
walking, finding out where and when he went out, was not enough for her;
she had so looked forward to this meeting, she had so much she must say
to him, she so longed to embrace him, to kiss him. Seryozha's old nurse
might be a help to her and show her what to do. But the nurse was not
now living in Alexey Alexandrovitch's house. In this uncertainty, and in
efforts to find the nurse, two days had slipped by.

Hearing of the close intimacy between Alexey Alexandrovitch and Countess
Lidia Ivanovna, Anna decided on the third day to write to her a letter,
which cost her great pains, and in which she intentionally said that
permission to see her son must depend on her husband's generosity. She
knew that if the letter were shown to her husband, he would keep up his
character of magnanimity, and would not refuse her request.

The commissionaire who took the letter had brought her back the most
cruel and unexpected answer, that there was no answer. She had never
felt so humiliated as at the moment when, sending for the
commissionaire, she heard from him the exact account of how he had
waited, and how afterwards he had been told there was no answer. Anna
felt humiliated, insulted, but she saw that from her point of view
Countess Lidia Ivanovna was right. Her suffering was the more poignant
that she had to bear it in solitude. She could not and would not share
it with Vronsky. She knew that to him, although he was the primary cause
of her distress, the question of her seeing her son would seem a matter
of very little consequence. She knew that he would never be capable of
understanding all the depth of her suffering, that for his cool tone at
any allusion to it she would begin to hate him. And she dreaded that
more than anything in the world, and so she hid from him everything that
related to her son. Spending the whole day at home she considered ways
of seeing her son, and had reached a decision to write to her husband.
She was just composing this letter when she was handed the letter from
Lidia Ivanovna. The countess's silence had subdued and depressed her,
but the letter, all that she read between the lines in it, so
exasperated her, this malice was so revolting beside her passionate,
legitimate tenderness for her son, that she turned against other people
and left off blaming herself.

"This coldness--this pretense of feeling!" she said to herself. "They
must needs insult me and torture the child, and I am to submit to it!
Not on any consideration! She is worse than I am. I don't lie, anyway."
And she decided on the spot that next day, Seryozha's birthday, she
would go straight to her husband's house, bribe or deceive the servants,
but at any cost see her son and overturn the hideous deception with
which they were encompassing the unhappy child.

She went to a toy shop, bought toys and thought over a plan of action.
She would go early in the morning at eight o'clock, when Alexey
Alexandrovitch would be certain not to be up. She would have money in
her hand to give the hall porter and the footman, so that they should
let her in, and not raising her veil, she would say that she had come
from Seryozha's godfather to congratulate him, and that she had been
charged to leave the toys at his bedside. She had prepared everything
but the words she should say to her son. Often as she had dreamed of it,
she could never think of anything.

The next day, at eight o'clock in the morning, Anna got out of a hired
sledge and rang at the front entrance of her former home.

"Run and see what's wanted. Some lady," said Kapitonitch, who, not yet
dressed, in his overcoat and galoshes, had peeped out of the window and
seen a lady in a veil standing close up to the door. His assistant, a
lad Anna did not know, had no sooner opened the door to her than she
came in, and pulling a three-rouble note out of her muff put it
hurriedly into his hand.

"Seryozha--Sergey Alexeitch," she said, and was going on. Scrutinizing
the note, the porter's assistant stopped her at the second glass door.

"Whom do you want?" he asked.

She did not hear his words and made no answer.

Noticing the embarrassment of the unknown lady, Kapitonitch went out to
her, opened the second door for her, and asked her what she was pleased
to want.

"From Prince Skorodumov for Sergey Alexeitch," she said.

"His honor's not up yet," said the porter, looking at her attentively.

Anna had not anticipated that the absolutely unchanged hall of the house
where she had lived for nine years would so greatly affect her. Memories
sweet and painful rose one after another in her heart, and for a moment
she forgot what she was here for.

"Would you kindly wait?" said Kapitonitch, taking off her fur cloak.

As he took off the cloak, Kapitonitch glanced at her face, recognized
her, and made her a low bow in silence.

"Please walk in, your excellency," he said to her.

She tried to say something, but her voice refused to utter any sound;
with a guilty and imploring glance at the old man she went with light,
swift steps up the stairs. Bent double, and his galoshes catching in the
steps, Kapitonitch ran after her, trying to overtake her.

"The tutor's there; maybe he's not dressed. I'll let him know."

Anna still mounted the familiar staircase, not understanding what the
old man was saying.

"This way, to the left, if you please. Excuse its not being tidy. His
honor's in the old parlor now," the hall porter said, panting. "Excuse
me, wait a little, your excellency; I'll just see," he said, and
overtaking her, he opened the high door and disappeared behind it. Anna
stood still waiting. "He's only just awake," said the hall porter,
coming out. And at the very instant the porter said this, Anna caught
the sound of a childish yawn. From the sound of this yawn alone she knew
her son and seemed to see him living before her eyes.

"Let me in; go away!" she said, and went in through the high doorway. On
the right of the door stood a bed, and sitting up in the bed was the
boy. His little body bent forward with his nightshirt unbuttoned, he was
stretching and still yawning. The instant his lips came together they
curved into a blissfully sleepy smile, and with that smile he slowly and
deliciously rolled back again.

"Seryozha!" she whispered, going noiselessly up to him.

When she was parted from him, and all this latter time when she had been
feeling a fresh rush of love for him, she had pictured him as he was at
four years old, when she had loved him most of all. Now he was not even
the same as when she had left him; he was still further from the
four-year-old baby, more grown and thinner. How thin his face was, how
short his hair was! What long hands! How he had changed since she left
him! But it was he with his head, his lips, his soft neck and broad
little shoulders.

"Seryozha!" she repeated just in the child's ear.

He raised himself again on his elbow, turned his tangled head from side
to side as though looking for something, and opened his eyes. Slowly and
inquiringly he looked for several seconds at his mother standing
motionless before him, then all at once he smiled a blissful smile, and
shutting his eyes, rolled not backwards but towards her into her arms.

"Seryozha! my darling boy!" she said, breathing hard and putting her
arms round his plump little body. "Mother!" he said, wriggling about in
her arms so as to touch her hands with different parts of him.

Smiling sleepily still with closed eyes, he flung fat little arms round
her shoulders, rolled towards her, with the delicious sleepy warmth and
fragrance that is only found in children, and began rubbing his face
against her neck and shoulders.

"I know," he said, opening his eyes; "it's my birthday today. I knew
you'd come. I'll get up directly."

And saying that he dropped asleep.

Anna looked at him hungrily; she saw how he had grown and changed in her
absence. She knew, and did not know, the bare legs so long now, that
were thrust out below the quilt, those short-cropped curls on his neck
in which she had so often kissed him. She touched all this and could say
nothing; tears choked her.

"What are you crying for, mother?" he said, waking completely up.
"Mother, what are you crying for?" he cried in a tearful voice.

"I won't cry ... I'm crying for joy. It's so long since I've seen you. I
won't, I won't," she said, gulping down her tears and turning away.
"Come, it's time for you to dress now," she added, after a pause, and,
never letting go his hands, she sat down by his bedside on the chair,
where his clothes were put ready for him.

"How do you dress without me? How..." she tried to begin talking simply
and cheerfully, but she could not, and again she turned away.

"I don't have a cold bath, papa didn't order it. And you've not seen
Vassily Lukitch? He'll come in soon. Why, you're sitting on my clothes!"

And Seryozha went off into a peal of laughter. She looked at him and
smiled.

"Mother, darling, sweet one!" he shouted, flinging himself on her again
and hugging her. It was as though only now, on seeing her smile, he
fully grasped what had happened.

"I don't want that on," he said, taking off her hat. And as it were,
seeing her afresh without her hat, he fell to kissing her again.

"But what did you think about me? You didn't think I was dead?"

"I never believed it."

"You didn't believe it, my sweet?"

"I knew, I knew!" he repeated his favorite phrase, and snatching the
hand that was stroking his hair, he pressed the open palm to his mouth
and kissed it.



Chapter 30


Meanwhile Vassily Lukitch had not at first understood who this lady was,
and had learned from their conversation that it was no other person than
the mother who had left her husband, and whom he had not seen, as he had
entered the house after her departure. He was in doubt whether to go in
or not, or whether to communicate with Alexey Alexandrovitch. Reflecting
finally that his duty was to get Seryozha up at the hour fixed, and that
it was therefore not his business to consider who was there, the mother
or anyone else, but simply to do his duty, he finished dressing, went to
the door and opened it.

But the embraces of the mother and child, the sound of their voices, and
what they were saying, made him change his mind.

He shook his head, and with a sigh he closed the door. "I'll wait
another ten minutes," he said to himself, clearing his throat and wiping
away tears.

Among the servants of the household there was intense excitement all
this time. All had heard that their mistress had come, and that
Kapitonitch had let her in, and that she was even now in the nursery,
and that their master always went in person to the nursery at nine
o'clock, and every one fully comprehended that it was impossible for the
husband and wife to meet, and that they must prevent it. Korney, the
valet, going down to the hall porter's room, asked who had let her in,
and how it was he had done so, and ascertaining that Kapitonitch had
admitted her and shown her up, he gave the old man a talking-to. The
hall porter was doggedly silent, but when Korney told him he ought to be
sent away, Kapitonitch darted up to him, and waving his hands in
Korney's face, began:

"Oh yes, to be sure you'd not have let her in! After ten years' service,
and never a word but of kindness, and there you'd up and say, 'Be off,
go along, get away with you!' Oh yes, you're a shrewd one at politics, I
dare say! You don't need to be taught how to swindle the master, and to
filch fur coats!"

"Soldier!" said Korney contemptuously, and he turned to the nurse who
was coming in. "Here, what do you think, Marya Efimovna: he let her in
without a word to anyone," Korney said addressing her. "Alexey
Alexandrovitch will be down immediately--and go into the nursery!"

"A pretty business, a pretty business!" said the nurse. "You, Korney
Vassilievitch, you'd best keep him some way or other, the master, while
I'll run and get her away somehow. A pretty business!"

When the nurse went into the nursery, Seryozha was telling his mother
how he and Nadinka had had a fall in sledging downhill, and had turned
over three times. She was listening to the sound of his voice, watching
his face and the play of expression on it, touching his hand, but she
did not follow what he was saying. She must go, she must leave
him,--this was the only thing she was thinking and feeling. She heard
the steps of Vassily Lukitch coming up to the door and coughing; she
heard, too, the steps of the nurse as she came near; but she sat like
one turned to stone, incapable of beginning to speak or to get up.

"Mistress, darling!" began the nurse, going up to Anna and kissing her
hands and shoulders. "God has brought joy indeed to our boy on his
birthday. You aren't changed one bit."

"Oh, nurse dear, I didn't know you were in the house," said Anna,
rousing herself for a moment.

"I'm not living here, I'm living with my daughter. I came for the
birthday, Anna Arkadyevna, darling!"

The nurse suddenly burst into tears, and began kissing her hand again.

Seryozha, with radiant eyes and smiles, holding his mother by one hand
and his nurse by the other, pattered on the rug with his fat little bare
feet. The tenderness shown by his beloved nurse to his mother threw him
into an ecstasy.

"Mother! She often comes to see me, and when she comes..." he was
beginning, but he stopped, noticing that the nurse was saying something
in a whisper to his mother, and that in his mother's face there was a
look of dread and something like shame, which was so strangely
unbecoming to her.

She went up to him.

"My sweet!" she said.

She could not say _good-bye_, but the expression on her face said it,
and he understood. "Darling, darling Kootik!" she used the name by which
she had called him when he was little, "you won't forget me? You..." but
she could not say more.

How often afterwards she thought of words she might have said. But now
she did not know how to say it, and could say nothing. But Seryozha knew
all she wanted to say to him. He understood that she was unhappy and
loved him. He understood even what the nurse had whispered. He had
caught the words "always at nine o'clock," and he knew that this was
said of his father, and that his father and mother could not meet. That
he understood, but one thing he could not understand--why there should
be a look of dread and shame in her face?... She was not in fault, but
she was afraid of him and ashamed of something. He would have liked to
put a question that would have set at rest this doubt, but he did not
dare; he saw that she was miserable, and he felt for her. Silently he
pressed close to her and whispered, "Don't go yet. He won't come just
yet."

The mother held him away from her to see what he was thinking, what to
say to him, and in his frightened face she read not only that he was
speaking of his father, but, as it were, asking her what he ought to
think about his father.

"Seryozha, my darling," she said, "love him; he's better and kinder than
I am, and I have done him wrong. When you grow up you will judge."

"There's no one better than you!..." he cried in despair through his
tears, and, clutching her by the shoulders, he began squeezing her with
all his force to him, his arms trembling with the strain.

"My sweet, my little one!" said Anna, and she cried as weakly and
childishly as he.

At that moment the door opened. Vassily Lukitch came in.

At the other door there was the sound of steps, and the nurse in a
scared whisper said, "He's coming," and gave Anna her hat.

Seryozha sank onto the bed and sobbed, hiding his face in his hands.
Anna removed his hands, once more kissed his wet face, and with rapid
steps went to the door. Alexey Alexandrovitch walked in, meeting her.
Seeing her, he stopped short and bowed his head.

Although she had just said he was better and kinder than she, in the
rapid glance she flung at him, taking in his whole figure in all its
details, feelings of repulsion and hatred for him and jealousy over her
son took possession of her. With a swift gesture she put down her veil,
and, quickening her pace, almost ran out of the room.

She had not time to undo, and so carried back with her, the parcel of
toys she had chosen the day before in a toy shop with such love and
sorrow.



Chapter 31


As intensely as Anna had longed to see her son, and long as she had been
thinking of it and preparing herself for it, she had not in the least
expected that seeing him would affect her so deeply. On getting back to
her lonely rooms in the hotel she could not for a long while understand
why she was there. "Yes, it's all over, and I am again alone," she said
to herself, and without taking off her hat she sat down in a low chair
by the hearth. Fixing her eyes on a bronze clock standing on a table
between the windows, she tried to think.

The French maid brought from abroad came in to suggest she should dress.
She gazed at her wonderingly and said, "Presently." A footman offered
her coffee. "Later on," she said.

The Italian nurse, after having taken the baby out in her best, came in
with her, and brought her to Anna. The plump, well-fed little baby, on
seeing her mother, as she always did, held out her fat little hands, and
with a smile on her toothless mouth, began, like a fish with a float,
bobbing her fingers up and down the starched folds of her embroidered
skirt, making them rustle. It was impossible not to smile, not to kiss
the baby, impossible not to hold out a finger for her to clutch, crowing
and prancing all over; impossible not to offer her a lip which she
sucked into her little mouth by way of a kiss. And all this Anna did,
and took her in her arms and made her dance, and kissed her fresh little
cheek and bare little elbows; but at the sight of this child it was
plainer than ever to her that the feeling she had for her could not be
called love in comparison with what she felt for Seryozha. Everything in
this baby was charming, but for some reason all this did not go deep to
her heart. On her first child, though the child of an unloved father,
had been concentrated all the love that had never found satisfaction.
Her baby girl had been born in the most painful circumstances and had
not had a hundredth part of the care and thought which had been
concentrated on her first child. Besides, in the little girl everything
was still in the future, while Seryozha was by now almost a personality,
and a personality dearly loved. In him there was a conflict of thought
and feeling; he understood her, he loved her, he judged her, she
thought, recalling his words and his eyes. And she was forever--not
physically only but spiritually--divided from him, and it was impossible
to set this right.

She gave the baby back to the nurse, let her go, and opened the locket
in which there was Seryozha's portrait when he was almost of the same
age as the girl. She got up, and, taking off her hat, took up from a
little table an album in which there were photographs of her son at
different ages. She wanted to compare them, and began taking them out of
the album. She took them all out except one, the latest and best
photograph. In it he was in a white smock, sitting astride a chair, with
frowning eyes and smiling lips. It was his best, most characteristic
expression. With her little supple hands, her white, delicate fingers,
that moved with a peculiar intensity today, she pulled at a corner of
the photograph, but the photograph had caught somewhere, and she could
not get it out. There was no paper knife on the table, and so, pulling
out the photograph that was next to her son's (it was a photograph of
Vronsky taken at Rome in a round hat and with long hair), she used it to
push out her son's photograph. "Oh, here is he!" she said, glancing at
the portrait of Vronsky, and she suddenly recalled that he was the cause
of her present misery. She had not once thought of him all the morning.
But now, coming all at once upon that manly, noble face, so familiar and
so dear to her, she felt a sudden rush of love for him.

"But where is he? How is it he leaves me alone in my misery?" she
thought all at once with a feeling of reproach, forgetting she had
herself kept from him everything concerning her son. She sent to ask him
to come to her immediately; with a throbbing heart she awaited him,
rehearsing to herself the words in which she would tell him all, and the
expressions of love with which he would console her. The messenger
returned with the answer that he had a visitor with him, but that he
would come immediately, and that he asked whether she would let him
bring with him Prince Yashvin, who had just arrived in Petersburg. "He's
not coming alone, and since dinner yesterday he has not seen me," she
thought; "he's not coming so that I could tell him everything, but
coming with Yashvin." And all at once a strange idea came to her: what
if he had ceased to love her?

And going over the events of the last few days, it seemed to her that
she saw in everything a confirmation of this terrible idea. The fact
that he had not dined at home yesterday, and the fact that he had
insisted on their taking separate sets of rooms in Petersburg, and that
even now he was not coming to her alone, as though he were trying to
avoid meeting her face to face.

"But he ought to tell me so. I must know that it is so. If I knew it,
then I know what I should do," she said to herself, utterly unable to
picture to herself the position she would be in if she were convinced of
his not caring for her. She thought he had ceased to love her, she felt
close upon despair, and consequently she felt exceptionally alert. She
rang for her maid and went to her dressing room. As she dressed, she
took more care over her appearance than she had done all those days, as
though he might, if he had grown cold to her, fall in love with her
again because she had dressed and arranged her hair in the way most
becoming to her.

She heard the bell ring before she was ready. When she went into the
drawing room it was not he, but Yashvin, who met her eyes. Vronsky was
looking through the photographs of her son, which she had forgotten on
the table, and he made no haste to look round at her.

"We have met already," she said, putting her little hand into the huge
hand of Yashvin, whose bashfulness was so queerly out of keeping with
his immense frame and coarse face. "We met last year at the races. Give
them to me," she said, with a rapid movement snatching from Vronsky the
photographs of her son, and glancing significantly at him with flashing
eyes. "Were the races good this year? Instead of them I saw the races in
the Corso in Rome. But you don't care for life abroad," she said with a
cordial smile. "I know you and all your tastes, though I have seen so
little of you."

"I'm awfully sorry for that, for my tastes are mostly bad," said
Yashvin, gnawing at his left mustache.

Having talked a little while, and noticing that Vronsky glanced at the
clock, Yashvin asked her whether she would be staying much longer in
Petersburg, and unbending his huge figure reached after his cap.

"Not long, I think," she said hesitatingly, glancing at Vronsky.

"So then we shan't meet again?"

"Come and dine with me," said Anna resolutely, angry it seemed with
herself for her embarrassment, but flushing as she always did when she
defined her position before a fresh person. "The dinner here is not
good, but at least you will see him. There is no one of his old friends
in the regiment Alexey cares for as he does for you."

"Delighted," said Yashvin with a smile, from which Vronsky could see
that he liked Anna very much.

Yashvin said good-bye and went away; Vronsky stayed behind.

"Are you going too?" she said to him.

"I'm late already," he answered. "Run along! I'll catch you up in a
moment," he called to Yashvin.

She took him by the hand, and without taking her eyes off him, gazed at
him while she ransacked her mind for the words to say that would keep
him.

"Wait a minute, there's something I want to say to you," and taking his
broad hand she pressed it on her neck. "Oh, was it right my asking him
to dinner?"

"You did quite right," he said with a serene smile that showed his even
teeth, and he kissed her hand.

"Alexey, you have not changed to me?" she said, pressing his hand in
both of hers. "Alexey, I am miserable here. When are we going away?"

"Soon, soon. You wouldn't believe how disagreeable our way of living
here is to me too," he said, and he drew away his hand.

"Well, go, go!" she said in a tone of offense, and she walked quickly
away from him.



Chapter 32


When Vronsky returned home, Anna was not yet home. Soon after he had
left, some lady, so they told him, had come to see her, and she had gone
out with her. That she had gone out without leaving word where she was
going, that she had not yet come back, and that all the morning she had
been going about somewhere without a word to him--all this, together
with the strange look of excitement in her face in the morning, and the
recollection of the hostile tone with which she had before Yashvin
almost snatched her son's photographs out of his hands, made him
serious. He decided he absolutely must speak openly with her. And he
waited for her in her drawing room. But Anna did not return alone, but
brought with her her old unmarried aunt, Princess Oblonskaya. This was
the lady who had come in the morning, and with whom Anna had gone out
shopping. Anna appeared not to notice Vronsky's worried and inquiring
expression, and began a lively account of her morning's shopping. He saw
that there was something working within her; in her flashing eyes, when
they rested for a moment on him, there was an intense concentration, and
in her words and movements there was that nervous rapidity and grace
which, during the early period of their intimacy, had so fascinated him,
but which now so disturbed and alarmed him.

The dinner was laid for four. All were gathered together and about to go
into the little dining room when Tushkevitch made his appearance with a
message from Princess Betsy. Princess Betsy begged her to excuse her not
having come to say good-bye; she had been indisposed, but begged Anna to
come to her between half-past six and nine o'clock. Vronsky glanced at
Anna at the precise limit of time, so suggestive of steps having been
taken that she should meet no one; but Anna appeared not to notice it.

"Very sorry that I can't come just between half-past six and nine," she
said with a faint smile.

"The princess will be very sorry."

"And so am I."

"You're going, no doubt, to hear Patti?" said Tushkevitch.

"Patti? You suggest the idea to me. I would go if it were possible to
get a box."

"I can get one," Tushkevitch offered his services.

"I should be very, very grateful to you," said Anna. "But won't you dine
with us?"

Vronsky gave a hardly perceptible shrug. He was at a complete loss to
understand what Anna was about. What had she brought the old Princess
Oblonskaya home for, what had she made Tushkevitch stay to dinner for,
and, most amazing of all, why was she sending him for a box? Could she
possibly think in her position of going to Patti's benefit, where all
the circle of her acquaintances would be? He looked at her with serious
eyes, but she responded with that defiant, half-mirthful, half-desperate
look, the meaning of which he could not comprehend. At dinner Anna was
in aggressively high spirits--she almost flirted both with Tushkevitch
and with Yashvin. When they got up from dinner and Tushkevitch had gone
to get a box at the opera, Yashvin went to smoke, and Vronsky went down
with him to his own rooms. After sitting there for some time he ran
upstairs. Anna was already dressed in a low-necked gown of light silk
and velvet that she had had made in Paris, and with costly white lace on
her head, framing her face, and particularly becoming, showing up her
dazzling beauty.

"Are you really going to the theater?" he said, trying not to look at
her.

"Why do you ask with such alarm?" she said, wounded again at his not
looking at her. "Why shouldn't I go?"

She appeared not to understand the motive of his words.

"Oh, of course, there's no reason whatever," he said, frowning.

"That's just what I say," she said, willfully refusing to see the irony
of his tone, and quietly turning back her long, perfumed glove.

"Anna, for God's sake! what is the matter with you?" he said, appealing
to her exactly as once her husband had done.

"I don't understand what you are asking."

"You know that it's out of the question to go."

"Why so? I'm not going alone. Princess Varvara has gone to dress, she is
going with me."

He shrugged his shoulders with an air of perplexity and despair.

"But do you mean to say you don't know?..." he began.

"But I don't care to know!" she almost shrieked. "I don't care to. Do I
regret what I have done? No, no, no! If it were all to do again from the
beginning, it would be the same. For us, for you and for me, there is
only one thing that matters, whether we love each other. Other people we
need not consider. Why are we living here apart and not seeing each
other? Why can't I go? I love you, and I don't care for anything," she
said in Russian, glancing at him with a peculiar gleam in her eyes that
he could not understand. "If you have not changed to me, why don't you
look at me?"

He looked at her. He saw all the beauty of her face and full dress,
always so becoming to her. But now her beauty and elegance were just
what irritated him.

"My feeling cannot change, you know, but I beg you, I entreat you," he
said again in French, with a note of tender supplication in his voice,
but with coldness in his eyes.

She did not hear his words, but she saw the coldness of his eyes, and
answered with irritation:

"And I beg you to explain why I should not go."

"Because it might cause you..." he hesitated.

"I don't understand. Yashvin _n'est pas compromettant_, and Princess
Varvara is no worse than others. Oh, here she is!"



Chapter 33


Vronsky for the first time experienced a feeling of anger against Anna,
almost a hatred for her willfully refusing to understand her own
position. This feeling was aggravated by his being unable to tell her
plainly the cause of his anger. If he had told her directly what he was
thinking, he would have said:

"In that dress, with a princess only too well known to everyone, to show
yourself at the theater is equivalent not merely to acknowledging your
position as a fallen woman, but is flinging down a challenge to society,
that is to say, cutting yourself off from it forever."

He could not say that to her. "But how can she fail to see it, and what
is going on in her?" he said to himself. He felt at the same time that
his respect for her was diminished while his sense of her beauty was
intensified.

He went back scowling to his rooms, and sitting down beside Yashvin,
who, with his long legs stretched out on a chair, was drinking brandy
and seltzer water, he ordered a glass of the same for himself.

"You were talking of Lankovsky's Powerful. That's a fine horse, and I
would advise you to buy him," said Yashvin, glancing at his comrade's
gloomy face. "His hind-quarters aren't quite first-rate, but the legs
and head--one couldn't wish for anything better."

"I think I will take him," answered Vronsky.

Their conversation about horses interested him, but he did not for an
instant forget Anna, and could not help listening to the sound of steps
in the corridor and looking at the clock on the chimney piece.

"Anna Arkadyevna gave orders to announce that she has gone to the
theater."

Yashvin, tipping another glass of brandy into the bubbling water, drank
it and got up, buttoning his coat.

"Well, let's go," he said, faintly smiling under his mustache, and
showing by this smile that he knew the cause of Vronsky's gloominess,
and did not attach any significance to it.

"I'm not going," Vronsky answered gloomily.

"Well, I must, I promised to. Good-bye, then. If you do, come to the
stalls; you can take Kruzin's stall," added Yashvin as he went out.

"No, I'm busy."

"A wife is a care, but it's worse when she's not a wife," thought
Yashvin, as he walked out of the hotel.

Vronsky, left alone, got up from his chair and began pacing up and down
the room.

"And what's today? The fourth night.... Yegor and his wife are there,
and my mother, most likely. Of course all Petersburg's there. Now she's
gone in, taken off her cloak and come into the light. Tushkevitch,
Yashvin, Princess Varvara," he pictured them to himself.... "What about
me? Either that I'm frightened or have given up to Tushkevitch the right
to protect her? From every point of view--stupid, stupid!... And why is
she putting me in such a position?" he said with a gesture of despair.

With that gesture he knocked against the table, on which there was
standing the seltzer water and the decanter of brandy, and almost upset
it. He tried to catch it, let it slip, and angrily kicked the table over
and rang.

"If you care to be in my service," he said to the valet who came in,
"you had better remember your duties. This shouldn't be here. You ought
to have cleared away."

The valet, conscious of his own innocence, would have defended himself,
but glancing at his master, he saw from his face that the only thing to
do was to be silent, and hurriedly threading his way in and out, dropped
down on the carpet and began gathering up the whole and broken glasses
and bottles.

"That's not your duty; send the waiter to clear away, and get my dress
coat out."

Vronsky went into the theater at half-past eight. The performance was in
full swing. The little old box-keeper, recognizing Vronsky as he helped
him off with his fur coat, called him "Your Excellency," and suggested
he should not take a number but should simply call Fyodor. In the
brightly lighted corridor there was no one but the box-opener and two
attendants with fur cloaks on their arms listening at the doors. Through
the closed doors came the sounds of the discreet _staccato_
accompaniment of the orchestra, and a single female voice rendering
distinctly a musical phrase. The door opened to let the box-opener slip
through, and the phrase drawing to the end reached Vronsky's hearing
clearly. But the doors were closed again at once, and Vronsky did not
hear the end of the phrase and the cadence of the accompaniment, though
he knew from the thunder of applause that it was over. When he entered
the hall, brilliantly lighted with chandeliers and gas jets, the noise
was still going on. On the stage the singer, bowing and smiling, with
bare shoulders flashing with diamonds, was, with the help of the tenor
who had given her his arm, gathering up the bouquets that were flying
awkwardly over the footlights. Then she went up to a gentleman with
glossy pomaded hair parted down the center, who was stretching across
the footlights holding out something to her, and all the public in the
stalls as well as in the boxes was in excitement, craning forward,
shouting and clapping. The conductor in his high chair assisted in
passing the offering, and straightened his white tie. Vronsky walked
into the middle of the stalls, and, standing still, began looking about
him. That day less than ever was his attention turned upon the familiar,
habitual surroundings, the stage, the noise, all the familiar,
uninteresting, particolored herd of spectators in the packed theater.

There were, as always, the same ladies of some sort with officers of
some sort in the back of the boxes; the same gaily dressed women--God
knows who--and uniforms and black coats; the same dirty crowd in the
upper gallery; and among the crowd, in the boxes and in the front rows,
were some forty of the _real_ people. And to those oases Vronsky at once
directed his attention, and with them he entered at once into relation.

The act was over when he went in, and so he did not go straight to his
brother's box, but going up to the first row of stalls stopped at the
footlights with Serpuhovskoy, who, standing with one knee raised and his
heel on the footlights, caught sight of him in the distance and beckoned
to him, smiling.

Vronsky had not yet seen Anna. He purposely avoided looking in her
direction. But he knew by the direction of people's eyes where she was.
He looked round discreetly, but he was not seeking her; expecting the
worst, his eyes sought for Alexey Alexandrovitch. To his relief Alexey
Alexandrovitch was not in the theater that evening.

"How little of the military man there is left in you!" Serpuhovskoy was
saying to him. "A diplomat, an artist, something of that sort, one would
say."

"Yes, it was like going back home when I put on a black coat," answered
Vronsky, smiling and slowly taking out his opera glass.

"Well, I'll own I envy you there. When I come back from abroad and put
on this," he touched his epaulets, "I regret my freedom."

Serpuhovskoy had long given up all hope of Vronsky's career, but he
liked him as before, and was now particularly cordial to him.

"What a pity you were not in time for the first act!"

Vronsky, listening with one ear, moved his opera glass from the stalls
and scanned the boxes. Near a lady in a turban and a bald old man, who
seemed to wave angrily in the moving opera glass, Vronsky suddenly
caught sight of Anna's head, proud, strikingly beautiful, and smiling in
the frame of lace. She was in the fifth box, twenty paces from him. She
was sitting in front, and slightly turning, was saying something to
Yashvin. The setting of her head on her handsome, broad shoulders, and
the restrained excitement and brilliance of her eyes and her whole face
reminded him of her just as he had seen her at the ball in Moscow. But
he felt utterly different towards her beauty now. In his feeling for her
now there was no element of mystery, and so her beauty, though it
attracted him even more intensely than before, gave him now a sense of
injury. She was not looking in his direction, but Vronsky felt that she
had seen him already.

When Vronsky turned the opera glass again in that direction, he noticed
that Princess Varvara was particularly red, and kept laughing
unnaturally and looking round at the next box. Anna, folding her fan and
tapping it on the red velvet, was gazing away and did not see, and
obviously did not wish to see, what was taking place in the next box.
Yashvin's face wore the expression which was common when he was losing
at cards. Scowling, he sucked the left end of his mustache further and
further into his mouth, and cast sidelong glances at the next box.

In that box on the left were the Kartasovs. Vronsky knew them, and knew
that Anna was acquainted with them. Madame Kartasova, a thin little
woman, was standing up in her box, and, her back turned upon Anna, she
was putting on a mantle that her husband was holding for her. Her face
was pale and angry, and she was talking excitedly. Kartasov, a fat, bald
man, was continually looking round at Anna, while he attempted to soothe
his wife. When the wife had gone out, the husband lingered a long while,
and tried to catch Anna's eye, obviously anxious to bow to her. But
Anna, with unmistakable intention, avoided noticing him, and talked to
Yashvin, whose cropped head was bent down to her. Kartasov went out
without making his salutation, and the box was left empty.

Vronsky could not understand exactly what had passed between the
Kartasovs and Anna, but he saw that something humiliating for Anna had
happened. He knew this both from what he had seen, and most of all from
the face of Anna, who, he could see, was taxing every nerve to carry
through the part she had taken up. And in maintaining this attitude of
external composure she was completely successful. Anyone who did not
know her and her circle, who had not heard all the utterances of the
women expressive of commiseration, indignation, and amazement, that she
should show herself in society, and show herself so conspicuously with
her lace and her beauty, would have admired the serenity and loveliness
of this woman without a suspicion that she was undergoing the sensations
of a man in the stocks.

Knowing that something had happened, but not knowing precisely what,
Vronsky felt a thrill of agonizing anxiety, and hoping to find out
something, he went towards his brother's box. Purposely choosing the way
round furthest from Anna's box, he jostled as he came out against the
colonel of his old regiment talking to two acquaintances. Vronsky heard
the name of Madame Karenina, and noticed how the colonel hastened to
address Vronsky loudly by name, with a meaning glance at his companions.

"Ah, Vronsky! When are you coming to the regiment? We can't let you off
without a supper. You're one of the old set," said the colonel of his
regiment.

"I can't stop, awfully sorry, another time," said Vronsky, and he ran
upstairs towards his brother's box.

The old countess, Vronsky's mother, with her steel-gray curls, was in
his brother's box. Varya with the young Princess Sorokina met him in the
corridor.

Leaving the Princess Sorokina with her mother, Varya held out her hand
to her brother-in-law, and began immediately to speak of what interested
him. She was more excited than he had ever seen her.

"I think it's mean and hateful, and Madame Kartasova had no right to do
it. Madame Karenina..." she began.

"But what is it? I don't know."

"What? you've not heard?"

"You know I should be the last person to hear of it."

"There isn't a more spiteful creature than that Madame Kartasova!"

"But what did she do?"

"My husband told me.... She has insulted Madame Karenina. Her husband
began talking to her across the box, and Madame Kartasova made a scene.
She said something aloud, he says, something insulting, and went away."

"Count, your maman is asking for you," said the young Princess Sorokina,
peeping out of the door of the box.

"I've been expecting you all the while," said his mother, smiling
sarcastically. "You were nowhere to be seen."

Her son saw that she could not suppress a smile of delight.

"Good evening, maman. I have come to you," he said coldly.

"Why aren't you going to _faire la cour a Madame Karenina?_" she went
on, when Princess Sorokina had moved away. "_Elle fait sensation. On
oublie la Patti pour elle_."

"Maman, I have asked you not to say anything to me of that," he
answered, scowling.

"I'm only saying what everyone's saying."

Vronsky made no reply, and saying a few words to Princess Sorokina, he
went away. At the door he met his brother.

"Ah, Alexey!" said his brother. "How disgusting! Idiot of a woman,
nothing else.... I wanted to go straight to her. Let's go together."

Vronsky did not hear him. With rapid steps he went downstairs; he felt
that he must do something, but he did not know what. Anger with her for
having put herself and him in such a false position, together with pity
for her suffering, filled his heart. He went down, and made straight for
Anna's box. At her box stood Stremov, talking to her.

"There are no more tenors. _Le moule en est brise!_"

Vronsky bowed to her and stopped to greet Stremov.

"You came in late, I think, and have missed the best song," Anna said to
Vronsky, glancing ironically, he thought, at him.

"I am a poor judge of music," he said, looking sternly at her.

"Like Prince Yashvin," she said smiling, "who considers that Patti sings
too loud."

"Thank you," she said, her little hand in its long glove taking the
playbill Vronsky picked up, and suddenly at that instant her lovely face
quivered. She got up and went into the interior of the box.

Noticing in the next act that her box was empty, Vronsky, rousing
indignant "hushes" in the silent audience, went out in the middle of a
solo and drove home.

Anna was already at home. When Vronsky went up to her, she was in the
same dress as she had worn at the theater. She was sitting in the first
armchair against the wall, looking straight before her. She looked at
him, and at once resumed her former position.

"Anna," he said.

"You, you are to blame for everything!" she cried, with tears of despair
and hatred in her voice, getting up.

"I begged, I implored you not to go, I knew it would be unpleasant...."

"Unpleasant!" she cried--"hideous! As long as I live I shall never
forget it. She said it was a disgrace to sit beside me."

"A silly woman's chatter," he said: "but why risk it, why provoke?..."

"I hate your calm. You ought not to have brought me to this. If you had
loved me..."

"Anna! How does the question of my love come in?"

"Oh, if you loved me, as I love, if you were tortured as I am!..." she
said, looking at him with an expression of terror.

He was sorry for her, and angry notwithstanding. He assured her of his
love because he saw that this was the only means of soothing her, and he
did not reproach her in words, but in his heart he reproached her.

And the asseverations of his love, which seemed to him so vulgar that he
was ashamed to utter them, she drank in eagerly, and gradually became
calmer. The next day, completely reconciled, they left for the country.




PART SIX



Chapter 1


Darya Alexandrovna spent the summer with her children at Pokrovskoe, at
her sister Kitty Levin's. The house on her own estate was quite in
ruins, and Levin and his wife had persuaded her to spend the summer with
them. Stepan Arkadyevitch greatly approved of the arrangement. He said
he was very sorry his official duties prevented him from spending the
summer in the country with his family, which would have been the
greatest happiness for him; and remaining in Moscow, he came down to the
country from time to time for a day or two. Besides the Oblonskys, with
all their children and their governess, the old princess too came to
stay that summer with the Levins, as she considered it her duty to watch
over her inexperienced daughter in her _interesting condition_.
Moreover, Varenka, Kitty's friend abroad, kept her promise to come to
Kitty when she was married, and stayed with her friend. All of these
were friends or relations of Levin's wife. And though he liked them all,
he rather regretted his own Levin world and ways, which was smothered by
this influx of the "Shtcherbatsky element," as he called it to himself.
Of his own relations there stayed with him only Sergey Ivanovitch, but
he too was a man of the Koznishev and not the Levin stamp, so that the
Levin spirit was utterly obliterated.

In the Levins' house, so long deserted, there were now so many people
that almost all the rooms were occupied, and almost every day it
happened that the old princess, sitting down to table, counted them all
over, and put the thirteenth grandson or granddaughter at a separate
table. And Kitty, with her careful housekeeping, had no little trouble
to get all the chickens, turkeys, and geese, of which so many were
needed to satisfy the summer appetites of the visitors and children.

The whole family were sitting at dinner. Dolly's children, with their
governess and Varenka, were making plans for going to look for
mushrooms. Sergey Ivanovitch, who was looked up to by all the party for
his intellect and learning, with a respect that almost amounted to awe,
surprised everyone by joining in the conversation about mushrooms.

"Take me with you. I am very fond of picking mushrooms," he said,
looking at Varenka; "I think it's a very nice occupation."

"Oh, we shall be delighted," answered Varenka, coloring a little. Kitty
exchanged meaningful glances with Dolly. The proposal of the learned and
intellectual Sergey Ivanovitch to go looking for mushrooms with Varenka
confirmed certain theories of Kitty's with which her mind had been very
busy of late. She made haste to address some remark to her mother, so
that her look should not be noticed. After dinner Sergey Ivanovitch sat
with his cup of coffee at the drawing-room window, and while he took
part in a conversation he had begun with his brother, he watched the
door through which the children would start on the mushroom-picking
expedition. Levin was sitting in the window near his brother.

Kitty stood beside her husband, evidently awaiting the end of a
conversation that had no interest for her, in order to tell him
something.

"You have changed in many respects since your marriage, and for the
better," said Sergey Ivanovitch, smiling to Kitty, and obviously little
interested in the conversation, "but you have remained true to your
passion for defending the most paradoxical theories."

"Katya, it's not good for you to stand," her husband said to her,
putting a chair for her and looking significantly at her.

"Oh, and there's no time either," added Sergey Ivanovitch, seeing the
children running out.

At the head of them all Tanya galloped sideways, in her tightly-drawn
stockings, and waving a basket and Sergey Ivanovitch's hat, she ran
straight up to him.

Boldly running up to Sergey Ivanovitch with shining eyes, so like her
father's fine eyes, she handed him his hat and made as though she would
put it on for him, softening her freedom by a shy and friendly smile.

"Varenka's waiting," she said, carefully putting his hat on, seeing from
Sergey Ivanovitch's smile that she might do so.

Varenka was standing at the door, dressed in a yellow print gown, with a
white kerchief on her head.

"I'm coming, I'm coming, Varvara Andreevna," said Sergey Ivanovitch,
finishing his cup of coffee, and putting into their separate pockets his
handkerchief and cigar-case.

"And how sweet my Varenka is! eh?" said Kitty to her husband, as soon as
Sergey Ivanovitch rose. She spoke so that Sergey Ivanovitch could hear,
and it was clear that she meant him to do so. "And how good-looking she
is--such a refined beauty! Varenka!" Kitty shouted. "Shall you be in the
mill copse? We'll come out to you."

"You certainly forget your condition, Kitty," said the old princess,
hurriedly coming out at the door. "You mustn't shout like that."

Varenka, hearing Kitty's voice and her mother's reprimand, went with
light, rapid steps up to Kitty. The rapidity of her movement, her
flushed and eager face, everything betrayed that something out of the
common was going on in her. Kitty knew what this was, and had been
watching her intently. She called Varenka at that moment merely in order
mentally to give her a blessing for the important event which, as Kitty
fancied, was bound to come to pass that day after dinner in the wood.

"Varenka, I should be very happy if a certain something were to happen,"
she whispered as she kissed her.

"And are you coming with us?" Varenka said to Levin in confusion,
pretending not to have heard what had been said.

"I am coming, but only as far as the threshing-floor, and there I shall
stop."

"Why, what do you want there?" said Kitty.

"I must go to have a look at the new wagons, and to check the invoice,"
said Levin; "and where will you be?"

"On the terrace."



Chapter 2


On the terrace were assembled all the ladies of the party. They always
liked sitting there after dinner, and that day they had work to do there
too. Besides the sewing and knitting of baby clothes, with which all of
them were busy, that afternoon jam was being made on the terrace by a
method new to Agafea Mihalovna, without the addition of water. Kitty had
introduced this new method, which had been in use in her home. Agafea
Mihalovna, to whom the task of jam-making had always been intrusted,
considering that what had been done in the Levin household could not be
amiss, had nevertheless put water with the strawberries, maintaining
that the jam could not be made without it. She had been caught in the
act, and was now making jam before everyone, and it was to be proved to
her conclusively that jam could be very well made without water.

Agafea Mihalovna, her face heated and angry, her hair untidy, and her
thin arms bare to the elbows, was turning the preserving-pan over the
charcoal stove, looking darkly at the raspberries and devoutly hoping
they would stick and not cook properly. The princess, conscious that
Agafea Mihalovna's wrath must be chiefly directed against her, as the
person responsible for the raspberry jam-making, tried to appear to be
absorbed in other things and not interested in the jam, talked of other
matters, but cast stealthy glances in the direction of the stove.

"I always buy my maids' dresses myself, of some cheap material," the
princess said, continuing the previous conversation. "Isn't it time to
skim it, my dear?" she added, addressing Agafea Mihalovna. "There's not
the slightest need for you to do it, and it's hot for you," she said,
stopping Kitty.

"I'll do it," said Dolly, and getting up, she carefully passed the spoon
over the frothing sugar, and from time to time shook off the clinging
jam from the spoon by knocking it on a plate that was covered with
yellow-red scum and blood-colored syrup. "How they'll enjoy this at
tea-time!" she thought of her children, remembering how she herself as a
child had wondered how it was the grown-up people did not eat what was
best of all--the scum of the jam.

"Stiva says it's much better to give money." Dolly took up meanwhile the
weighty subject under discussion, what presents should be made to
servants. "But..."

"Money's out of the question!" the princess and Kitty exclaimed with one
voice. "They appreciate a present..."

"Well, last year, for instance, I bought our Matrona Semyenovna, not a
poplin, but something of that sort," said the princess.

"I remember she was wearing it on your nameday."

"A charming pattern--so simple and refined,--I should have liked it
myself, if she hadn't had it. Something like Varenka's. So pretty and
inexpensive."

"Well, now I think it's done," said Dolly, dropping the syrup from the
spoon.

"When it sets as it drops, it's ready. Cook it a little longer, Agafea
Mihalovna."

"The flies!" said Agafea Mihalovna angrily. "It'll be just the same,"
she added.

"Ah! how sweet it is! don't frighten it!" Kitty said suddenly, looking
at a sparrow that had settled on the step and was pecking at the center
of a raspberry.

"Yes, but you keep a little further from the stove," said her mother.

"_A propos de Varenka_," said Kitty, speaking in French, as they had
been doing all the while, so that Agafea Mihalovna should not understand
them, "you know, mamma, I somehow expect things to be settled today. You
know what I mean. How splendid it would be!"

"But what a famous matchmaker she is!" said Dolly. "How carefully and
cleverly she throws them together!..."

"No; tell me, mamma, what do you think?"

"Why, what is one to think? He" (_he_ meant Sergey Ivanovitch) "might at
any time have been a match for anyone in Russia; now, of course, he's
not quite a young man, still I know ever so many girls would be glad to
marry him even now.... She's a very nice girl, but he might..."

"Oh, no, mamma, do understand why, for him and for her too, nothing
better could be imagined. In the first place, she's charming!" said
Kitty, crooking one of her fingers.

"He thinks her very attractive, that's certain," assented Dolly.

"Then he occupies such a position in society that he has no need to look
for either fortune or position in his wife. All he needs is a good,
sweet wife--a restful one."

"Well, with her he would certainly be restful," Dolly assented.

"Thirdly, that she should love him. And so it is ... that is, it would
be so splendid!... I look forward to seeing them coming out of the
forest--and everything settled. I shall see at once by their eyes. I
should be so delighted! What do you think, Dolly?"

"But don't excite yourself. It's not at all the thing for you to be
excited," said her mother.

"Oh, I'm not excited, mamma. I fancy he will make her an offer today."

"Ah, that's so strange, how and when a man makes an offer!... There is a
sort of barrier, and all at once it's broken down," said Dolly, smiling
pensively and recalling her past with Stepan Arkadyevitch.

"Mamma, how did papa make you an offer?" Kitty asked suddenly.

"There was nothing out of the way, it was very simple," answered the
princess, but her face beamed all over at the recollection.

"Oh, but how was it? You loved him, anyway, before you were allowed to
speak?"

Kitty felt a peculiar pleasure in being able now to talk to her mother
on equal terms about those questions of such paramount interest in a
woman's life.

"Of course I did; he had come to stay with us in the country."

"But how was it settled between you, mamma?"

"You imagine, I dare say, that you invented something quite new? It's
always just the same: it was settled by the eyes, by smiles..."

"How nicely you said that, mamma! It's just by the eyes, by smiles that
it's done," Dolly assented.

"But what words did he say?"

"What did Kostya say to you?"

"He wrote it in chalk. It was wonderful.... How long ago it seems!" she
said.

And the three women all fell to musing on the same thing. Kitty was the
first to break the silence. She remembered all that last winter before
her marriage, and her passion for Vronsky.

"There's one thing ... that old love affair of Varenka's," she said, a
natural chain of ideas bringing her to this point. "I should have liked
to say something to Sergey Ivanovitch, to prepare him. They're all--all
men, I mean," she added, "awfully jealous over our past."

"Not all," said Dolly. "You judge by your own husband. It makes him
miserable even now to remember Vronsky. Eh? that's true, isn't it?"

"Yes," Kitty answered, a pensive smile in her eyes.

"But I really don't know," the mother put in in defense of her motherly
care of her daughter, "what there was in your past that could worry him?
That Vronsky paid you attentions--that happens to every girl."

"Oh, yes, but we didn't mean that," Kitty said, flushing a little.

"No, let me speak," her mother went on, "why, you yourself would not let
me have a talk to Vronsky. Don't you remember?"

"Oh, mamma!" said Kitty, with an expression of suffering.

"There's no keeping you young people in check nowadays.... Your
friendship could not have gone beyond what was suitable. I should myself
have called upon him to explain himself. But, my darling, it's not right
for you to be agitated. Please remember that, and calm yourself."

"I'm perfectly calm, maman."

"How happy it was for Kitty that Anna came then," said Dolly, "and how
unhappy for her. It turned out quite the opposite," she said, struck by
her own ideas. "Then Anna was so happy, and Kitty thought herself
unhappy. Now it is just the opposite. I often think of her."

"A nice person to think about! Horrid, repulsive woman--no heart," said
her mother, who could not forget that Kitty had married not Vronsky, but
Levin.

"What do you want to talk of it for?" Kitty said with annoyance. "I
never think about it, and I don't want to think of it.... And I don't
want to think of it," she said, catching the sound of her husband's
well-known step on the steps of the terrace.

"What's that you don't want to think about?" inquired Levin, coming onto
the terrace.

But no one answered him, and he did not repeat the question.

"I'm sorry I've broken in on your feminine parliament," he said, looking
round on every one discontentedly, and perceiving that they had been
talking of something which they would not talk about before him.

For a second he felt that he was sharing the feeling of Agafea
Mihalovna, vexation at their making jam without water, and altogether at
the outside Shtcherbatsky element. He smiled, however, and went up to
Kitty.

"Well, how are you?" he asked her, looking at her with the expression
with which everyone looked at her now.

"Oh, very well," said Kitty, smiling, "and how have things gone with
you?"

"The wagons held three times as much as the old carts did. Well, are we
going for the children? I've ordered the horses to be put in."

"What! you want to take Kitty in the wagonette?" her mother said
reproachfully.

"Yes, at a walking pace, princess."

Levin never called the princess "maman" as men often do call their
mothers-in-law, and the princess disliked his not doing so. But though
he liked and respected the princess, Levin could not call her so without
a sense of profaning his feeling for his dead mother.

"Come with us, maman," said Kitty.

"I don't like to see such imprudence."

"Well, I'll walk then, I'm so well." Kitty got up and went to her
husband and took his hand.

"You may be well, but everything in moderation," said the princess.

"Well, Agafea Mihalovna, is the jam done?" said Levin, smiling to Agafea
Mihalovna, and trying to cheer her up. "Is it all right in the new way?"

"I suppose it's all right. For our notions it's boiled too long."

"It'll be all the better, Agafea Mihalovna, it won't mildew, even though
our ice has begun to thaw already, so that we've no cool cellar to store
it," said Kitty, at once divining her husband's motive, and addressing
the old housekeeper with the same feeling; "but your pickle's so good,
that mamma says she never tasted any like it," she added, smiling, and
putting her kerchief straight.

Agafea Mihalovna looked angrily at Kitty.

"You needn't try to console me, mistress. I need only to look at you
with him, and I feel happy," she said, and something in the rough
familiarity of that _with him_ touched Kitty.

"Come along with us to look for mushrooms, you will show us the best
places." Agafea Mihalovna smiled and shook her head, as though to say:
"I should like to be angry with you too, but I can't."

"Do it, please, by my receipt," said the princess; "put some paper over
the jam, and moisten it with a little rum, and without even ice, it will
never go mildewy."



Chapter 3


Kitty was particularly glad of a chance of being alone with her husband,
for she had noticed the shade of mortification that had passed over his
face--always so quick to reflect every feeling--at the moment when he
had come onto the terrace and asked what they were talking of, and had
got no answer.

When they had set off on foot ahead of the others, and had come out of
sight of the house onto the beaten dusty road, marked with rusty wheels
and sprinkled with grains of corn, she clung faster to his arm and
pressed it closer to her. He had quite forgotten the momentary
unpleasant impression, and alone with her he felt, now that the thought
of her approaching motherhood was never for a moment absent from his
mind, a new and delicious bliss, quite pure from all alloy of sense, in
the being near to the woman he loved. There was no need of speech, yet
he longed to hear the sound of her voice, which like her eyes had
changed since she had been with child. In her voice, as in her eyes,
there was that softness and gravity which is found in people continually
concentrated on some cherished pursuit.

"So you're not tired? Lean more on me," said he.

"No, I'm so glad of a chance of being alone with you, and I must own,
though I'm happy with them, I do regret our winter evenings alone."

"That was good, but this is even better. Both are better," he said,
squeezing her hand.

"Do you know what we were talking about when you came in?"

"About jam?"

"Oh, yes, about jam too; but afterwards, about how men make offers."

"Ah!" said Levin, listening more to the sound of her voice than to the
words she was saying, and all the while paying attention to the road,
which passed now through the forest, and avoiding places where she might
make a false step.

"And about Sergey Ivanovitch and Varenka. You've noticed?... I'm very
anxious for it," she went on. "What do you think about it?" And she
peeped into his face.

"I don't know what to think," Levin answered, smiling. "Sergey seems
very strange to me in that way. I told you, you know..."

"Yes, that he was in love with that girl who died...."

"That was when I was a child; I know about it from hearsay and
tradition. I remember him then. He was wonderfully sweet. But I've
watched him since with women; he is friendly, some of them he likes, but
one feels that to him they're simply people, not women."

"Yes, but now with Varenka ... I fancy there's something..."

"Perhaps there is.... But one has to know him.... He's a peculiar,
wonderful person. He lives a spiritual life only. He's too pure, too
exalted a nature."

"Why? Would this lower him, then?"

"No, but he's so used to a spiritual life that he can't reconcile
himself with actual fact, and Varenka is after all fact."

Levin had grown used by now to uttering his thought boldly, without
taking the trouble of clothing it in exact language. He knew that his
wife, in such moments of loving tenderness as now, would understand what
he meant to say from a hint, and she did understand him.

"Yes, but there's not so much of that actual fact about her as about me.
I can see that he would never have cared for me. She is altogether
spiritual."

"Oh, no, he is so fond of you, and I am always so glad when my people
like you...."

"Yes, he's very nice to me; but..."

"It's not as it was with poor Nikolay ... you really cared for each
other," Levin finished. "Why not speak of him?" he added. "I sometimes
blame myself for not; it ends in one's forgetting. Ah, how terrible and
dear he was!... Yes, what were we talking about?" Levin said, after a
pause.

"You think he can't fall in love," said Kitty, translating into her own
language.

"It's not so much that he can't fall in love," Levin said, smiling, "but
he has not the weakness necessary.... I've always envied him, and even
now, when I'm so happy, I still envy him."

"You envy him for not being able to fall in love?"

"I envy him for being better than I," said Levin. "He does not live for
himself. His whole life is subordinated to his duty. And that's why he
can be calm and contented."

"And you?" Kitty asked, with an ironical and loving smile.

She could never have explained the chain of thought that made her smile;
but the last link in it was that her husband, in exalting his brother
and abasing himself, was not quite sincere. Kitty knew that this
insincerity came from his love for his brother, from his sense of shame
at being too happy, and above all from his unflagging craving to be
better--she loved it in him, and so she smiled.

"And you? What are you dissatisfied with?" she asked, with the same
smile.

Her disbelief in his self-dissatisfaction delighted him, and
unconsciously he tried to draw her into giving utterance to the grounds
of her disbelief.

"I am happy, but dissatisfied with myself..." he said.

"Why, how can you be dissatisfied with yourself if you are happy?"

"Well, how shall I say?... In my heart I really care for nothing
whatever but that you should not stumble--see? Oh, but really you
mustn't skip about like that!" he cried, breaking off to scold her for
too agile a movement in stepping over a branch that lay in the path.
"But when I think about myself, and compare myself with others,
especially with my brother, I feel I'm a poor creature."

"But in what way?" Kitty pursued with the same smile. "Don't you too
work for others? What about your co-operative settlement, and your work
on the estate, and your book?..."

"Oh, but I feel, and particularly just now--it's your fault," he said,
pressing her hand--"that all that doesn't count. I do it in a way
halfheartedly. If I could care for all that as I care for you!...
Instead of that, I do it in these days like a task that is set me."

"Well, what would you say about papa?" asked Kitty. "Is he a poor
creature then, as he does nothing for the public good?"

"He?--no! But then one must have the simplicity, the
straightforwardness, the goodness of your father: and I haven't got
that. I do nothing, and I fret about it. It's all your doing. Before
there was you--and _this_ too," he added with a glance towards her waist
that she understood--"I put all my energies into work; now I can't, and
I'm ashamed; I do it just as though it were a task set me, I'm
pretending...."

"Well, but would you like to change this minute with Sergey Ivanovitch?"
said Kitty. "Would you like to do this work for the general good, and to
love the task set you, as he does, and nothing else?"

"Of course not," said Levin. "But I'm so happy that I don't understand
anything. So you think he'll make her an offer today?" he added after a
brief silence.

"I think so, and I don't think so. Only, I'm awfully anxious for it.
Here, wait a minute." She stooped down and picked a wild camomile at the
edge of the path. "Come, count: he does propose, he doesn't," she said,
giving him the flower.

"He does, he doesn't," said Levin, tearing off the white petals.

"No, no!" Kitty, snatching at his hand, stopped him. She had been
watching his fingers with interest. "You picked off two."

"Oh, but see, this little one shan't count to make up," said Levin,
tearing off a little half-grown petal. "Here's the wagonette overtaking
us."

"Aren't you tired, Kitty?" called the princess.

"Not in the least."

"If you are you can get in, as the horses are quiet and walking."

But it was not worth while to get in, they were quite near the place,
and all walked on together.



Chapter 4


Varenka, with her white kerchief on her black hair, surrounded by the
children, gaily and good-humoredly looking after them, and at the same
time visibly excited at the possibility of receiving a declaration from
the man she cared for, was very attractive. Sergey Ivanovitch walked
beside her, and never left off admiring her. Looking at her, he recalled
all the delightful things he had heard from her lips, all the good he
knew about her, and became more and more conscious that the feeling he
had for her was something special that he had felt long, long ago, and
only once, in his early youth. The feeling of happiness in being near
her continually grew, and at last reached such a point that, as he put a
huge, slender-stalked agaric fungus in her basket, he looked straight
into her face, and noticing the flush of glad and alarmed excitement
that overspread her face, he was confused himself, and smiled to her in
silence a smile that said too much.

"If so," he said to himself, "I ought to think it over and make up my
mind, and not give way like a boy to the impulse of a moment."

"I'm going to pick by myself apart from all the rest, or else my efforts
will make no show," he said, and he left the edge of the forest where
they were walking on low silky grass between old birch trees standing
far apart, and went more into the heart of the wood, where between the
white birch trunks there were gray trunks of aspen and dark bushes of
hazel. Walking some forty paces away, Sergey Ivanovitch, knowing he was
out of sight, stood still behind a bushy spindle-tree in full flower
with its rosy red catkins. It was perfectly still all round him. Only
overhead in the birches under which he stood, the flies, like a swarm of
bees, buzzed unceasingly, and from time to time the children's voices
were floated across to him. All at once he heard, not far from the edge
of the wood, the sound of Varenka's contralto voice, calling Grisha, and
a smile of delight passed over Sergey Ivanovitch's face. Conscious of
this smile, he shook his head disapprovingly at his own condition, and
taking out a cigar, he began lighting it. For a long while he could not
get a match to light against the trunk of a birch tree. The soft scales
of the white bark rubbed off the phosphorus, and the light went out. At
last one of the matches burned, and the fragrant cigar smoke, hovering
uncertainly in flat, wide coils, stretched away forwards and upwards
over a bush under the overhanging branches of a birch tree. Watching the
streak of smoke, Sergey Ivanovitch walked gently on, deliberating on his
position.

"Why not?" he thought. "If it were only a passing fancy or a passion, if
it were only this attraction--this mutual attraction (I can call it a
_mutual_ attraction), but if I felt that it was in contradiction with
the whole bent of my life--if I felt that in giving way to this
attraction I should be false to my vocation and my duty ... but it's not
so. The only thing I can say against it is that, when I lost Marie, I
said to myself that I would remain faithful to her memory. That's the
only thing I can say against my feeling.... That's a great thing,"
Sergey Ivanovitch said to himself, feeling at the same time that this
consideration had not the slightest importance for him personally, but
would only perhaps detract from his romantic character in the eyes of
others. "But apart from that, however much I searched, I should never
find anything to say against my feeling. If I were choosing by
considerations of suitability alone, I could not have found anything
better."

However many women and girls he thought of whom he knew, he could not
think of a girl who united to such a degree all, positively all, the
qualities he would wish to see in his wife. She had all the charm and
freshness of youth, but she was not a child; and if she loved him, she
loved him consciously as a woman ought to love; that was one thing.
Another point: she was not only far from being worldly, but had an
unmistakable distaste for worldly society, and at the same time she knew
the world, and had all the ways of a woman of the best society, which
were absolutely essential to Sergey Ivanovitch's conception of the woman
who was to share his life. Thirdly: she was religious, and not like a
child, unconsciously religious and good, as Kitty, for example, was, but
her life was founded on religious principles. Even in trifling matters,
Sergey Ivanovitch found in her all that he wanted in his wife: she was
poor and alone in the world, so she would not bring with her a mass of
relations and their influence into her husband's house, as he saw now in
Kitty's case. She would owe everything to her husband, which was what he
had always desired too for his future family life. And this girl, who
united all these qualities, loved him. He was a modest man, but he could
not help seeing it. And he loved her. There was one consideration
against it--his age. But he came of a long-lived family, he had not a
single gray hair, no one would have taken him for forty, and he
remembered Varenka's saying that it was only in Russia that men of fifty
thought themselves old, and that in France a man of fifty considers
himself _dans la force de l'age_, while a man of forty is _un jeune
homme_. But what did the mere reckoning of years matter when he felt as
young in heart as he had been twenty years ago? Was it not youth to feel
as he felt now, when coming from the other side to the edge of the wood
he saw in the glowing light of the slanting sunbeams the gracious figure
of Varenka in her yellow gown with her basket, walking lightly by the
trunk of an old birch tree, and when this impression of the sight of
Varenka blended so harmoniously with the beauty of the view, of the
yellow oatfield lying bathed in the slanting sunshine, and beyond it the
distant ancient forest flecked with yellow and melting into the blue of
the distance? His heart throbbed joyously. A softened feeling came over
him. He felt that he had made up his mind. Varenka, who had just
crouched down to pick a mushroom, rose with a supple movement and looked
round. Flinging away the cigar, Sergey Ivanovitch advanced with resolute
steps towards her.



Chapter 5


"Varvara Andreevna, when I was very young, I set before myself the ideal
of the woman I loved and should be happy to call my wife. I have lived
through a long life, and now for the first time I have met what I
sought--in you. I love you, and offer you my hand."

Sergey Ivanovitch was saying this to himself while he was ten paces from
Varvara. Kneeling down, with her hands over the mushrooms to guard them
from Grisha, she was calling little Masha.

"Come here, little ones! There are so many!" she was saying in her
sweet, deep voice.

Seeing Sergey Ivanovitch approaching, she did not get up and did not
change her position, but everything told him that she felt his presence
and was glad of it.

"Well, did you find some?" she asked from under the white kerchief,
turning her handsome, gently smiling face to him.

"Not one," said Sergey Ivanovitch. "Did you?"

She did not answer, busy with the children who thronged about her.

"That one too, near the twig," she pointed out to little Masha a little
fungus, split in half across its rosy cap by the dry grass from under
which it thrust itself. Varenka got up while Masha picked the fungus,
breaking it into two white halves. "This brings back my childhood," she
added, moving apart from the children beside Sergey Ivanovitch.

They walked on for some steps in silence. Varenka saw that he wanted to
speak; she guessed of what, and felt faint with joy and panic. They had
walked so far away that no one could hear them now, but still he did not
begin to speak. It would have been better for Varenka to be silent.
After a silence it would have been easier for them to say what they
wanted to say than after talking about mushrooms. But against her own
will, as it were accidentally, Varenka said:

"So you found nothing? In the middle of the wood there are always fewer,
though." Sergey Ivanovitch sighed and made no answer. He was annoyed
that she had spoken about the mushrooms. He wanted to bring her back to
the first words she had uttered about her childhood; but after a pause
of some length, as though against his own will, he made an observation
in response to her last words.

"I have heard that the white edible funguses are found principally at
the edge of the wood, though I can't tell them apart."

Some minutes more passed, they moved still further away from the
children, and were quite alone. Varenka's heart throbbed so that she
heard it beating, and felt that she was turning red and pale and red
again.

To be the wife of a man like Koznishev, after her position with Madame
Stahl, was to her imagination the height of happiness. Besides, she was
almost certain that she was in love with him. And this moment it would
have to be decided. She felt frightened. She dreaded both his speaking
and his not speaking.

Now or never it must be said--that Sergey Ivanovitch felt too.
Everything in the expression, the flushed cheeks and the downcast eyes
of Varenka betrayed a painful suspense. Sergey Ivanovitch saw it and
felt sorry for her. He felt even that to say nothing now would be a
slight to her. Rapidly in his own mind he ran over all the arguments in
support of his decision. He even said over to himself the words in which
he meant to put his offer, but instead of those words, some utterly
unexpected reflection that occurred to him made him ask:

"What is the difference between the 'birch' mushroom and the 'white'
mushroom?"

Varenka's lips quivered with emotion as she answered:

"In the top part there is scarcely any difference, it's in the stalk."

And as soon as these words were uttered, both he and she felt that it
was over, that what was to have been said would not be said; and their
emotion, which had up to then been continually growing more intense,
began to subside.

"The birch mushroom's stalk suggests a dark man's chin after two days
without shaving," said Sergey Ivanovitch, speaking quite calmly now.

"Yes, that's true," answered Varenka smiling, and unconsciously the
direction of their walk changed. They began to turn towards the
children. Varenka felt both sore and ashamed; at the same time she had a
sense of relief.

When he had got home again and went over the whole subject, Sergey
Ivanovitch thought his previous decision had been a mistaken one. He
could not be false to the memory of Marie.

"Gently, children, gently!" Levin shouted quite angrily to the children,
standing before his wife to protect her when the crowd of children flew
with shrieks of delight to meet them.

Behind the children Sergey Ivanovitch and Varenka walked out of the
wood. Kitty had no need to ask Varenka; she saw from the calm and
somewhat crestfallen faces of both that her plans had not come off.

"Well?" her husband questioned her as they were going home again.

"It doesn't bite," said Kitty, her smile and manner of speaking
recalling her father, a likeness Levin often noticed with pleasure.

"How doesn't bite?"

"I'll show you," she said, taking her husband's hand, lifting it to her
mouth, and just faintly brushing it with closed lips. "Like a kiss on a
priest's hand."

"Which didn't it bite with?" he said, laughing.

"Both. But it should have been like this..."

"There are some peasants coming..."

"Oh, they didn't see."



Chapter 6


During the time of the children's tea the grown-up people sat in the
balcony and talked as though nothing had happened, though they all,
especially Sergey Ivanovitch and Varenka, were very well aware that
there had happened an event which, though negative, was of very great
importance. They both had the same feeling, rather like that of a
schoolboy after an examination, which has left him in the same class or
shut him out of the school forever. Everyone present, feeling too that
something had happened, talked eagerly about extraneous subjects. Levin
and Kitty were particularly happy and conscious of their love that
evening. And their happiness in their love seemed to imply a
disagreeable slur on those who would have liked to feel the same and
could not--and they felt a prick of conscience.

"Mark my words, Alexander will not come," said the old princess.

That evening they were expecting Stepan Arkadyevitch to come down by
train, and the old prince had written that possibly he might come too.

"And I know why," the princess went on; "he says that young people ought
to be left alone for a while at first."

"But papa has left us alone. We've never seen him," said Kitty.
"Besides, we're not young people!--we're old, married people by now."

"Only if he doesn't come, I shall say good-bye to you children," said
the princess, sighing mournfully.

"What nonsense, mamma!" both the daughters fell upon her at once.

"How do you suppose he is feeling? Why, now..."

And suddenly there was an unexpected quiver in the princess's voice. Her
daughters were silent, and looked at one another. "Maman always finds
something to be miserable about," they said in that glance. They did not
know that happy as the princess was in her daughter's house, and useful
as she felt herself to be there, she had been extremely miserable, both
on her own account and her husband's, ever since they had married their
last and favorite daughter, and the old home had been left empty.

"What is it, Agafea Mihalovna?" Kitty asked suddenly of Agafea
Mihalovna, who was standing with a mysterious air, and a face full of
meaning.

"About supper."

"Well, that's right," said Dolly; "you go and arrange about it, and I'll
go and hear Grisha repeat his lesson, or else he will have nothing done
all day."

"That's my lesson! No, Dolly, I'm going," said Levin, jumping up.

Grisha, who was by now at a high school, had to go over the lessons of
the term in the summer holidays. Darya Alexandrovna, who had been
studying Latin with her son in Moscow before, had made it a rule on
coming to the Levins' to go over with him, at least once a day, the most
difficult lessons of Latin and arithmetic. Levin had offered to take her
place, but the mother, having once overheard Levin's lesson, and
noticing that it was not given exactly as the teacher in Moscow had
given it, said resolutely, though with much embarrassment and anxiety
not to mortify Levin, that they must keep strictly to the book as the
teacher had done, and that she had better undertake it again herself.
Levin was amazed both at Stepan Arkadyevitch, who, by neglecting his
duty, threw upon the mother the supervision of studies of which she had
no comprehension, and at the teachers for teaching the children so
badly. But he promised his sister-in-law to give the lessons exactly as
she wished. And he went on teaching Grisha, not in his own way, but by
the book, and so took little interest in it, and often forgot the hour
of the lesson. So it had been today.

"No, I'm going, Dolly, you sit still," he said. "We'll do it all
properly, like the book. Only when Stiva comes, and we go out shooting,
then we shall have to miss it."

And Levin went to Grisha.

Varenka was saying the same thing to Kitty. Even in the happy,
well-ordered household of the Levins Varenka had succeeded in making
herself useful.

"I'll see to the supper, you sit still," she said, and got up to go to
Agafea Mihalovna.

"Yes, yes, most likely they've not been able to get chickens. If so,
ours..."

"Agafea Mihalovna and I will see about it," and Varenka vanished with
her.

"What a nice girl!" said the princess.

"Not nice, maman; she's an exquisite girl; there's no one else like
her."

"So you are expecting Stepan Arkadyevitch today?" said Sergey
Ivanovitch, evidently not disposed to pursue the conversation about
Varenka. "It would be difficult to find two sons-in-law more unlike than
yours," he said with a subtle smile. "One all movement, only living in
society, like a fish in water; the other our Kostya, lively, alert,
quick in everything, but as soon as he is in society, he either sinks
into apathy, or struggles helplessly like a fish on land."

"Yes, he's very heedless," said the princess, addressing Sergey
Ivanovitch. "I've been meaning, indeed, to ask you to tell him that it's
out of the question for her" (she indicated Kitty) "to stay here; that
she positively must come to Moscow. He talks of getting a doctor
down..."

"Maman, he'll do everything; he has agreed to everything," Kitty said,
angry with her mother for appealing to Sergey Ivanovitch to judge in
such a matter.

In the middle of their conversation they heard the snorting of horses
and the sound of wheels on the gravel. Dolly had not time to get up to
go and meet her husband, when from the window of the room below, where
Grisha was having his lesson, Levin leaped out and helped Grisha out
after him.

"It's Stiva!" Levin shouted from under the balcony. "We've finished,
Dolly, don't be afraid!" he added, and started running like a boy to
meet the carriage.

"_Is ea id, ejus, ejus, ejus!_" shouted Grisha, skipping along the
avenue.

"And some one else too! Papa, of course!" cried Levin, stopping at the
entrance of the avenue. "Kitty, don't come down the steep staircase, go
round."

But Levin had been mistaken in taking the person sitting in the carriage
for the old prince. As he got nearer to the carriage he saw beside
Stepan Arkadyevitch not the prince but a handsome, stout young man in a
Scotch cap, with long ends of ribbon behind. This was Vassenka
Veslovsky, a distant cousin of the Shtcherbatskys, a brilliant young
gentleman in Petersburg and Moscow society. "A capital fellow, and a
keen sportsman," as Stepan Arkadyevitch said, introducing him.

Not a whit abashed by the disappointment caused by his having come in
place of the old prince, Veslovsky greeted Levin gaily, claiming
acquaintance with him in the past, and snatching up Grisha into the
carriage, lifted him over the pointer that Stepan Arkadyevitch had
brought with him.

Levin did not get into the carriage, but walked behind. He was rather
vexed at the non-arrival of the old prince, whom he liked more and more
the more he saw of him, and also at the arrival of this Vassenka
Veslovsky, a quite uncongenial and superfluous person. He seemed to him
still more uncongenial and superfluous when, on approaching the steps
where the whole party, children and grown-up, were gathered together in
much excitement, Levin saw Vassenka Veslovsky, with a particularly warm
and gallant air, kissing Kitty's hand.

"Your wife and I are cousins and very old friends," said Vassenka
Veslovsky, once more shaking Levin's hand with great warmth.

"Well, are there plenty of birds?" Stepan Arkadyevitch said to Levin,
hardly leaving time for everyone to utter their greetings. "We've come
with the most savage intentions. Why, maman, they've not been in Moscow
since! Look, Tanya, here's something for you! Get it, please, it's in
the carriage, behind!" he talked in all directions. "How pretty you've
grown, Dolly," he said to his wife, once more kissing her hand, holding
it in one of his, and patting it with the other.

Levin, who a minute before had been in the happiest frame of mind, now
looked darkly at everyone, and everything displeased him.

"Who was it he kissed yesterday with those lips?" he thought, looking at
Stepan Arkadyevitch's tender demonstrations to his wife. He looked at
Dolly, and he did not like her either.

"She doesn't believe in his love. So what is she so pleased about?
Revolting!" thought Levin.

He looked at the princess, who had been so dear to him a minute before,
and he did not like the manner in which she welcomed this Vassenka, with
his ribbons, just as though she were in her own house.

Even Sergey Ivanovitch, who had come out too onto the steps, seemed to
him unpleasant with the show of cordiality with which he met Stepan
Arkadyevitch, though Levin knew that his brother neither liked nor
respected Oblonsky.

And Varenka, even she seemed hateful, with her air _sainte nitouche_
making the acquaintance of this gentleman, while all the while she was
thinking of nothing but getting married.

And more hateful than anyone was Kitty for falling in with the tone of
gaiety with which this gentleman regarded his visit in the country, as
though it were a holiday for himself and everyone else. And, above all,
unpleasant was that particular smile with which she responded to his
smile.

Noisily talking, they all went into the house; but as soon as they were
all seated, Levin turned and went out.

Kitty saw something was wrong with her husband. She tried to seize a
moment to speak to him alone, but he made haste to get away from her,
saying he was wanted at the counting-house. It was long since his own
work on the estate had seemed to him so important as at that moment.
"It's all holiday for them," he thought; "but these are no holiday
matters, they won't wait, and there's no living without them."



Chapter 7


Levin came back to the house only when they sent to summon him to
supper. On the stairs were standing Kitty and Agafea Mihalovna,
consulting about wines for supper.

"But why are you making all this fuss? Have what we usually do."

"No, Stiva doesn't drink ... Kostya, stop, what's the matter?" Kitty
began, hurrying after him, but he strode ruthlessly away to the dining
room without waiting for her, and at once joined in the lively general
conversation which was being maintained there by Vassenka Veslovsky and
Stepan Arkadyevitch.

"Well, what do you say, are we going shooting tomorrow?" said Stepan
Arkadyevitch.

"Please, do let's go," said Veslovsky, moving to another chair, where he
sat down sideways, with one fat leg crossed under him.

"I shall be delighted, we will go. And have you had any shooting yet
this year?" said Levin to Veslovsky, looking intently at his leg, but
speaking with that forced amiability that Kitty knew so well in him, and
that was so out of keeping with him. "I can't answer for our finding
grouse, but there are plenty of snipe. Only we ought to start early.
You're not tired? Aren't you tired, Stiva?"

"Me tired? I've never been tired yet. Suppose we stay up all night.
Let's go for a walk!"

"Yes, really, let's not go to bed at all! Capital!" Veslovsky chimed in.

"Oh, we all know you can do without sleep, and keep other people up
too," Dolly said to her husband, with that faint note of irony in her
voice which she almost always had now with her husband. "But to my
thinking, it's time for bed now.... I'm going, I don't want supper."

"No, do stay a little, Dolly," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, going round to
her side behind the table where they were having supper. "I've so much
still to tell you."

"Nothing really, I suppose."

"Do you know Veslovsky has been at Anna's, and he's going to them again?
You know they're hardly fifty miles from you, and I too must certainly
go over there. Veslovsky, come here!"

Vassenka crossed over to the ladies, and sat down beside Kitty.

"Ah, do tell me, please; you have stayed with her? How was she?" Darya
Alexandrovna appealed to him.

Levin was left at the other end of the table, and though never pausing
in his conversation with the princess and Varenka, he saw that there was
an eager and mysterious conversation going on between Stepan
Arkadyevitch, Dolly, Kitty, and Veslovsky. And that was not all. He saw
on his wife's face an expression of real feeling as she gazed with fixed
eyes on the handsome face of Vassenka, who was telling them something
with great animation.

"It's exceedingly nice at their place," Veslovsky was telling them about
Vronsky and Anna. "I can't, of course, take it upon myself to judge, but
in their house you feel the real feeling of home."

"What do they intend doing?"

"I believe they think of going to Moscow."

"How jolly it would be for us all to go over to them together! When are
you going there?" Stepan Arkadyevitch asked Vassenka.

"I'm spending July there."

"Will you go?" Stepan Arkadyevitch said to his wife.

"I've been wanting to a long while; I shall certainly go," said Dolly.
"I am sorry for her, and I know her. She's a splendid woman. I will go
alone, when you go back, and then I shall be in no one's way. And it
will be better indeed without you."

"To be sure," said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "And you, Kitty?"

"I? Why should I go?" Kitty said, flushing all over, and she glanced
round at her husband.

"Do you know Anna Arkadyevna, then?" Veslovsky asked her. "She's a very
fascinating woman."

"Yes," she answered Veslovsky, crimsoning still more. She got up and
walked across to her husband.

"Are you going shooting, then, tomorrow?" she said.

His jealousy had in these few moments, especially at the flush that had
overspread her cheeks while she was talking to Veslovsky, gone far
indeed. Now as he heard her words, he construed them in his own fashion.
Strange as it was to him afterwards to recall it, it seemed to him at
the moment clear that in asking whether he was going shooting, all she
cared to know was whether he would give that pleasure to Vassenka
Veslovsky, with whom, as he fancied, she was in love.

"Yes, I'm going," he answered her in an unnatural voice, disagreeable to
himself.

"No, better spend the day here tomorrow, or Dolly won't see anything of
her husband, and set off the day after," said Kitty.

The motive of Kitty's words was interpreted by Levin thus: "Don't
separate me from _him_. I don't care about _your_ going, but do let me
enjoy the society of this delightful young man."

"Oh, if you wish, we'll stay here tomorrow," Levin answered, with
peculiar amiability.

Vassenka meanwhile, utterly unsuspecting the misery his presence had
occasioned, got up from the table after Kitty, and watching her with
smiling and admiring eyes, he followed her.

Levin saw that look. He turned white, and for a minute he could hardly
breathe. "How dare he look at my wife like that!" was the feeling that
boiled within him.

"Tomorrow, then? Do, please, let us go," said Vassenka, sitting down on
a chair, and again crossing his leg as his habit was.

Levin's jealousy went further still. Already he saw himself a deceived
husband, looked upon by his wife and her lover as simply necessary to
provide them with the conveniences and pleasures of life.... But in
spite of that he made polite and hospitable inquiries of Vassenka about
his shooting, his gun, and his boots, and agreed to go shooting next
day.

Happily for Levin, the old princess cut short his agonies by getting up
herself and advising Kitty to go to bed. But even at this point Levin
could not escape another agony. As he said good-night to his hostess,
Vassenka would again have kissed her hand, but Kitty, reddening, drew
back her hand and said with a naive bluntness, for which the old
princess scolded her afterwards:

"We don't like that fashion."

In Levin's eyes she was to blame for having allowed such relations to
arise, and still more to blame for showing so awkwardly that she did not
like them.

"Why, how can one want to go to bed!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, who,
after drinking several glasses of wine at supper, was now in his most
charming and sentimental humor. "Look, Kitty," he said, pointing to the
moon, which had just risen behind the lime trees--"how exquisite!
Veslovsky, this is the time for a serenade. You know, he has a splendid
voice; we practiced songs together along the road. He has brought some
lovely songs with him, two new ones. Varvara Andreevna and he must sing
some duets."

When the party had broken up, Stepan Arkadyevitch walked a long while
about the avenue with Veslovsky; their voices could be heard singing one
of the new songs.

Levin hearing these voices sat scowling in an easy-chair in his wife's
bedroom, and maintained an obstinate silence when she asked him what was
wrong. But when at last with a timid glance she hazarded the question:
"Was there perhaps something you disliked about Veslovsky?"--it all
burst out, and he told her all. He was humiliated himself at what he was
saying, and that exasperated him all the more.

He stood facing her with his eyes glittering menacingly under his
scowling brows, and he squeezed his strong arms across his chest, as
though he were straining every nerve to hold himself in. The expression
of his face would have been grim, and even cruel, if it had not at the
same time had a look of suffering which touched her. His jaws were
twitching, and his voice kept breaking.

"You must understand that I'm not jealous, that's a nasty word. I can't
be jealous, and believe that.... I can't say what I feel, but this is
awful.... I'm not jealous, but I'm wounded, humiliated that anybody dare
think, that anybody dare look at you with eyes like that."

"Eyes like what?" said Kitty, trying as conscientiously as possible to
recall every word and gesture of that evening and every shade implied in
them.

At the very bottom of her heart she did think there had been something
precisely at the moment when he had crossed over after her to the other
end of the table; but she dared not own it even to herself, and would
have been even more unable to bring herself to say so to him, and so
increase his suffering.

"And what can there possibly be attractive about me as I am now?..."

"Ah!" he cried, clutching at his head, "you shouldn't say that!... If
you had been attractive then..."

"Oh, no, Kostya, oh, wait a minute, oh, do listen!" she said, looking at
him with an expression of pained commiseration. "Why, what can you be
thinking about! When for me there's no one in the world, no one, no
one!... Would you like me never to see anyone?"

For the first minute she had been offended at his jealousy; she was
angry that the slightest amusement, even the most innocent, should be
forbidden her; but now she would readily have sacrificed, not merely
such trifles, but everything, for his peace of mind, to save him from
the agony he was suffering.

"You must understand the horror and comedy of my position," he went on
in a desperate whisper; "that he's in my house, that he's done nothing
improper positively except his free and easy airs and the way he sits on
his legs. He thinks it's the best possible form, and so I'm obliged to
be civil to him."

"But, Kostya, you're exaggerating," said Kitty, at the bottom of her
heart rejoicing at the depth of his love for her, shown now in his
jealousy.

"The most awful part of it all is that you're just as you always are,
and especially now when to me you're something sacred, and we're so
happy, so particularly happy--and all of a sudden a little wretch....
He's not a little wretch; why should I abuse him? I have nothing to do
with him. But why should my, and your, happiness..."

"Do you know, I understand now what it's all come from," Kitty was
beginning.

"Well, what? what?"

"I saw how you looked while we were talking at supper."

"Well, well!" Levin said in dismay.

She told him what they had been talking about. And as she told him, she
was breathless with emotion. Levin was silent for a space, then he
scanned her pale and distressed face, and suddenly he clutched at his
head.

"Katya, I've been worrying you! Darling, forgive me! It's madness!
Katya, I'm a criminal. And how could you be so distressed at such
idiocy?"

"Oh, I was sorry for you."

"For me? for me? How mad I am!... But why make you miserable? It's awful
to think that any outsider can shatter our happiness."

"It's humiliating too, of course."

"Oh, then I'll keep him here all the summer, and will overwhelm him with
civility," said Levin, kissing her hands. "You shall see. Tomorrow....
Oh, yes, we are going tomorrow."



Chapter 8


Next day, before the ladies were up, the wagonette and a trap for the
shooting party were at the door, and Laska, aware since early morning
that they were going shooting, after much whining and darting to and
fro, had sat herself down in the wagonette beside the coachman, and,
disapproving of the delay, was excitedly watching the door from which
the sportsmen still did not come out. The first to come out was Vassenka
Veslovsky, in new high boots that reached half-way up his thick thighs,
in a green blouse, with a new Russian leather cartridge-belt, and in his
Scotch cap with ribbons, with a brand-new English gun without a sling.
Laska flew up to him, welcomed him, and jumping up, asked him in her own
way whether the others were coming soon, but getting no answer from him,
she returned to her post of observation and sank into repose again, her
head on one side, and one ear pricked up to listen. At last the door
opened with a creak, and Stepan Arkadyevitch's spot-and-tan pointer Krak
flew out, running round and round and turning over in the air. Stepan
Arkadyevitch himself followed with a gun in his hand and a cigar in his
mouth.

"Good dog, good dog, Krak!" he cried encouragingly to the dog, who put
his paws up on his chest, catching at his game bag. Stepan Arkadyevitch
was dressed in rough leggings and spats, in torn trousers and a short
coat. On his head there was a wreck of a hat of indefinite form, but his
gun of a new patent was a perfect gem, and his game bag and cartridge
belt, though worn, were of the very best quality.

Vassenka Veslovsky had had no notion before that it was truly _chic_ for
a sportsman to be in tatters, but to have his shooting outfit of the
best quality. He saw it now as he looked at Stepan Arkadyevitch, radiant
in his rags, graceful, well-fed, and joyous, a typical Russian nobleman.
And he made up his mind that next time he went shooting he would
certainly adopt the same get-up.

"Well, and what about our host?" he asked.

"A young wife," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling.

"Yes, and such a charming one!"

"He came down dressed. No doubt he's run up to her again."

Stepan Arkadyevitch guessed right. Levin had run up again to his wife to
ask her once more if she forgave him for his idiocy yesterday, and,
moreover, to beg her for Christ's sake to be more careful. The great
thing was for her to keep away from the children--they might any minute
push against her. Then he had once more to hear her declare that she was
not angry with him for going away for two days, and to beg her to be
sure to send him a note next morning by a servant on horseback, to write
him, if it were but two words only, to let him know that all was well
with her.

Kitty was distressed, as she always was, at parting for a couple of days
from her husband, but when she saw his eager figure, looking big and
strong in his shooting-boots and his white blouse, and a sort of
sportsman elation and excitement incomprehensible to her, she forgot her
own chagrin for the sake of his pleasure, and said good-bye to him
cheerfully.

"Pardon, gentlemen!" he said, running out onto the steps. "Have you put
the lunch in? Why is the chestnut on the right? Well, it doesn't matter.
Laska, down; go and lie down!"

"Put it with the herd of oxen," he said to the herdsman, who was waiting
for him at the steps with some question. "Excuse me, here comes another
villain."

Levin jumped out of the wagonette, in which he had already taken his
seat, to meet the carpenter, who came towards the steps with a rule in
his hand.

"You didn't come to the counting house yesterday, and now you're
detaining me. Well, what is it?"

"Would your honor let me make another turning? It's only three steps to
add. And we make it just fit at the same time. It will be much more
convenient."

"You should have listened to me," Levin answered with annoyance. "I
said: Put the lines and then fit in the steps. Now there's no setting it
right. Do as I told you, and make a new staircase."

The point was that in the lodge that was being built the carpenter had
spoiled the staircase, fitting it together without calculating the space
it was to fill, so that the steps were all sloping when it was put in
place. Now the carpenter wanted, keeping the same staircase, to add
three steps.

"It will be much better."

"But where's your staircase coming out with its three steps?"

"Why, upon my word, sir," the carpenter said with a contemptuous smile.
"It comes out right at the very spot. It starts, so to speak," he said,
with a persuasive gesture; "it comes down, and comes down, and comes
out."

"But three steps will add to the length too ... where is it to come
out?"

"Why, to be sure, it'll start from the bottom and go up and go up, and
come out so," the carpenter said obstinately and convincingly.

"It'll reach the ceiling and the wall."

"Upon my word! Why, it'll go up, and up, and come out like this."

Levin took out a ramrod and began sketching him the staircase in the
dust.

"There, do you see?"

"As your honor likes," said the carpenter, with a sudden gleam in his
eyes, obviously understanding the thing at last. "It seems it'll be best
to make a new one."

"Well, then, do it as you're told," Levin shouted, seating himself in
the wagonette. "Down! Hold the dogs, Philip!"

Levin felt now at leaving behind all his family and household cares such
an eager sense of joy in life and expectation that he was not disposed
to talk. Besides that, he had that feeling of concentrated excitement
that every sportsman experiences as he approaches the scene of action.
If he had anything on his mind at that moment, it was only the doubt
whether they would start anything in the Kolpensky marsh, whether Laska
would show to advantage in comparison with Krak, and whether he would
shoot well that day himself. Not to disgrace himself before a new
spectator--not to be outdone by Oblonsky--that too was a thought that
crossed his brain.

Oblonsky was feeling the same, and he too was not talkative. Vassenka
Veslovsky kept up alone a ceaseless flow of cheerful chatter. As he
listened to him now, Levin felt ashamed to think how unfair he had been
to him the day before. Vassenka was really a nice fellow, simple,
good-hearted, and very good-humored. If Levin had met him before he was
married, he would have made friends with him. Levin rather disliked his
holiday attitude to life and a sort of free and easy assumption of
elegance. It was as though he assumed a high degree of importance in
himself that could not be disputed, because he had long nails and a
stylish cap, and everything else to correspond; but this could be
forgiven for the sake of his good nature and good breeding. Levin liked
him for his good education, for speaking French and English with such an
excellent accent, and for being a man of his world.

Vassenka was extremely delighted with the left horse, a horse of the Don
Steppes. He kept praising him enthusiastically. "How fine it must be
galloping over the steppes on a steppe horse! Eh? isn't it?" he said. He
had imagined riding on a steppe horse as something wild and romantic,
and it turned out nothing of the sort. But his simplicity, particularly
in conjunction with his good looks, his amiable smile, and the grace of
his movements, was very attractive. Either because his nature was
sympathetic to Levin, or because Levin was trying to atone for his sins
of the previous evening by seeing nothing but what was good in him,
anyway he liked his society.

After they had driven over two miles from home, Veslovsky all at once
felt for a cigar and his pocketbook, and did not know whether he had
lost them or left them on the table. In the pocketbook there were
thirty-seven pounds, and so the matter could not be left in uncertainty.

"Do you know what, Levin, I'll gallop home on that left trace-horse.
That will be splendid. Eh?" he said, preparing to get out.

"No, why should you?" answered Levin, calculating that Vassenka could
hardly weigh less than seventeen stone. "I'll send the coachman."

The coachman rode back on the trace-horse, and Levin himself drove the
remaining pair.



Chapter 9


"Well, now what's our plan of campaign? Tell us all about it," said
Stepan Arkadyevitch.

"Our plan is this. Now we're driving to Gvozdyov. In Gvozdyov there's a
grouse marsh on this side, and beyond Gvozdyov come some magnificent
snipe marshes where there are grouse too. It's hot now, and we'll get
there--it's fifteen miles or so--towards evening and have some evening
shooting; we'll spend the night there and go on tomorrow to the bigger
moors."

"And is there nothing on the way?"

"Yes; but we'll reserve ourselves; besides it's hot. There are two nice
little places, but I doubt there being anything to shoot."

Levin would himself have liked to go into these little places, but they
were near home; he could shoot them over any time, and they were only
little places--there would hardly be room for three to shoot. And so,
with some insincerity, he said that he doubted there being anything to
shoot. When they reached a little marsh Levin would have driven by, but
Stepan Arkadyevitch, with the experienced eye of a sportsman, at once
detected reeds visible from the road.

"Shan't we try that?" he said, pointing to the little marsh.

"Levin, do, please! how delightful!" Vassenka Veslovsky began begging,
and Levin could but consent.

Before they had time to stop, the dogs had flown one before the other
into the marsh.

"Krak! Laska!..."

The dogs came back.

"There won't be room for three. I'll stay here," said Levin, hoping they
would find nothing but peewits, who had been startled by the dogs, and
turning over in their flight, were plaintively wailing over the marsh.

"No! Come along, Levin, let's go together!" Veslovsky called.

"Really, there's not room. Laska, back, Laska! You won't want another
dog, will you?"

Levin remained with the wagonette, and looked enviously at the
sportsmen. They walked right across the marsh. Except little birds and
peewits, of which Vassenka killed one, there was nothing in the marsh.

"Come, you see now that it was not that I grudged the marsh," said
Levin, "only it's wasting time."

"Oh, no, it was jolly all the same. Did you see us?" said Vassenka
Veslovsky, clambering awkwardly into the wagonette with his gun and his
peewit in his hands. "How splendidly I shot this bird! Didn't I? Well,
shall we soon be getting to the real place?"

The horses started off suddenly, Levin knocked his head against the
stock of someone's gun, and there was the report of a shot. The gun did
actually go off first, but that was how it seemed to Levin. It appeared
that Vassenka Veslovsky had pulled only one trigger, and had left the
other hammer still cocked. The charge flew into the ground without doing
harm to anyone. Stepan Arkadyevitch shook his head and laughed
reprovingly at Veslovsky. But Levin had not the heart to reprove him. In
the first place, any reproach would have seemed to be called forth by
the danger he had incurred and the bump that had come up on Levin's
forehead. And besides, Veslovsky was at first so naively distressed, and
then laughed so good-humoredly and infectiously at their general dismay,
that one could not but laugh with him.

When they reached the second marsh, which was fairly large, and would
inevitably take some time to shoot over, Levin tried to persuade them to
pass it by. But Veslovsky again overpersuaded him. Again, as the marsh
was narrow, Levin, like a good host, remained with the carriage.

Krak made straight for some clumps of sedge. Vassenka Veslovsky was the
first to run after the dog. Before Stepan Arkadyevitch had time to come
up, a grouse flew out. Veslovsky missed it and it flew into an unmown
meadow. This grouse was left for Veslovsky to follow up. Krak found it
again and pointed, and Veslovsky shot it and went back to the carriage.
"Now you go and I'll stay with the horses," he said.

Levin had begun to feel the pangs of a sportsman's envy. He handed the
reins to Veslovsky and walked into the marsh.

Laska, who had been plaintively whining and fretting against the
injustice of her treatment, flew straight ahead to a hopeful place that
Levin knew well, and that Krak had not yet come upon.

"Why don't you stop her?" shouted Stepan Arkadyevitch.

"She won't scare them," answered Levin, sympathizing with his bitch's
pleasure and hurrying after her.

As she came nearer and nearer to the familiar breeding places there was
more and more earnestness in Laska's exploration. A little marsh bird
did not divert her attention for more than an instant. She made one
circuit round the clump of reeds, was beginning a second, and suddenly
quivered with excitement and became motionless.

"Come, come, Stiva!" shouted Levin, feeling his heart beginning to beat
more violently; and all of a sudden, as though some sort of shutter had
been drawn back from his straining ears, all sounds, confused but loud,
began to beat on his hearing, losing all sense of distance. He heard the
steps of Stepan Arkadyevitch, mistaking them for the tramp of the horses
in the distance; he heard the brittle sound of the twigs on which he had
trodden, taking this sound for the flying of a grouse. He heard too, not
far behind him, a splashing in the water, which he could not explain to
himself.

Picking his steps, he moved up to the dog.

"Fetch it!"

Not a grouse but a snipe flew up from beside the dog. Levin had lifted
his gun, but at the very instant when he was taking aim, the sound of
splashing grew louder, came closer, and was joined with the sound of
Veslovsky's voice, shouting something with strange loudness. Levin saw
he had his gun pointed behind the snipe, but still he fired.

When he had made sure he had missed, Levin looked round and saw the
horses and the wagonette not on the road but in the marsh.

Veslovsky, eager to see the shooting, had driven into the marsh, and got
the horses stuck in the mud.

"Damn the fellow!" Levin said to himself, as he went back to the
carriage that had sunk in the mire. "What did you drive in for?" he said
to him dryly, and calling the coachman, he began pulling the horses out.

Levin was vexed both at being hindered from shooting and at his horses
getting stuck in the mud, and still more at the fact that neither Stepan
Arkadyevitch nor Veslovsky helped him and the coachman to unharness the
horses and get them out, since neither of them had the slightest notion
of harnessing. Without vouchsafing a syllable in reply to Vassenka's
protestations that it had been quite dry there, Levin worked in silence
with the coachman at extricating the horses. But then, as he got warm at
the work and saw how assiduously Veslovsky was tugging at the wagonette
by one of the mud-guards, so that he broke it indeed, Levin blamed
himself for having under the influence of yesterday's feelings been too
cold to Veslovsky, and tried to be particularly genial so as to smooth
over his chilliness. When everything had been put right, and the
carriage had been brought back to the road, Levin had the lunch served.

"_Bon appetit--bonne conscience! Ce poulet va tomber jusqu'au fond de
mes bottes_," Vassenka, who had recovered his spirits, quoted the French
saying as he finished his second chicken. "Well, now our troubles are
over, now everything's going to go well. Only, to atone for my sins, I'm
bound to sit on the box. That's so? eh? No, no! I'll be your Automedon.
You shall see how I'll get you along," he answered, not letting go the
rein, when Levin begged him to let the coachman drive. "No, I must atone
for my sins, and I'm very comfortable on the box." And he drove.

Levin was a little afraid he would exhaust the horses, especially the
chestnut, whom he did not know how to hold in; but unconsciously he fell
under the influence of his gaiety and listened to the songs he sang all
the way on the box, or the descriptions and representations he gave of
driving in the English fashion, four-in-hand; and it was in the very
best of spirits that after lunch they drove to the Gvozdyov marsh.



Chapter 10


Vassenka drove the horses so smartly that they reached the marsh too
early, while it was still hot.

As they drew near this more important marsh, the chief aim of their
expedition, Levin could not help considering how he could get rid of
Vassenka and be free in his movements. Stepan Arkadyevitch evidently had
the same desire, and on his face Levin saw the look of anxiety always
present in a true sportsman when beginning shooting, together with a
certain good-humored slyness peculiar to him.

"How shall we go? It's a splendid marsh, I see, and there are hawks,"
said Stepan Arkadyevitch, pointing to two great birds hovering over the
reeds. "Where there are hawks, there is sure to be game."

"Now, gentlemen," said Levin, pulling up his boots and examining the
lock of his gun with rather a gloomy expression, "do you see those
reeds?" He pointed to an oasis of blackish green in the huge half-mown
wet meadow that stretched along the right bank of the river. "The marsh
begins here, straight in front of us, do you see--where it is greener?
From here it runs to the right where the horses are; there are breeding
places there, and grouse, and all round those reeds as far as that
alder, and right up to the mill. Over there, do you see, where the pools
are? That's the best place. There I once shot seventeen snipe. We'll
separate with the dogs and go in different directions, and then meet
over there at the mill."

"Well, which shall go to left and which to right?" asked Stepan
Arkadyevitch. "It's wider to the right; you two go that way and I'll
take the left," he said with apparent carelessness.

"Capital! we'll make the bigger bag! Yes, come along, come along!"
Vassenka exclaimed.

Levin could do nothing but agree, and they divided.

As soon as they entered the marsh, the two dogs began hunting about
together and made towards the green, slime-covered pool. Levin knew
Laska's method, wary and indefinite; he knew the place too and expected
a whole covey of snipe.

"Veslovsky, beside me, walk beside me!" he said in a faint voice to his
companion splashing in the water behind him. Levin could not help
feeling an interest in the direction his gun was pointed, after that
casual shot near the Kolpensky marsh.

"Oh, I won't get in your way, don't trouble about me."

But Levin could not help troubling, and recalled Kitty's words at
parting: "Mind you don't shoot one another." The dogs came nearer and
nearer, passed each other, each pursuing its own scent. The expectation
of snipe was so intense that to Levin the squelching sound of his own
heel, as he drew it up out of the mire, seemed to be the call of a
snipe, and he clutched and pressed the lock of his gun.

"Bang! bang!" sounded almost in his ear. Vassenka had fired at a flock
of ducks which was hovering over the marsh and flying at that moment
towards the sportsmen, far out of range. Before Levin had time to look
round, there was the whir of one snipe, another, a third, and some eight
more rose one after another.

Stepan Arkadyevitch hit one at the very moment when it was beginning its
zigzag movements, and the snipe fell in a heap into the mud. Oblonsky
aimed deliberately at another, still flying low in the reeds, and
together with the report of the shot, that snipe too fell, and it could
be seen fluttering out where the sedge had been cut, its unhurt wing
showing white beneath.

Levin was not so lucky: he aimed at his first bird too low, and missed;
he aimed at it again, just as it was rising, but at that instant another
snipe flew up at his very feet, distracting him so that he missed again.

While they were loading their guns, another snipe rose, and Veslovsky,
who had had time to load again, sent two charges of small-shot into the
water. Stepan Arkadyevitch picked up his snipe, and with sparkling eyes
looked at Levin.

"Well, now let us separate," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, and limping on
his left foot, holding his gun in readiness and whistling to his dog, he
walked off in one direction. Levin and Veslovsky walked in the other.

It always happened with Levin that when his first shots were a failure
he got hot and out of temper, and shot badly the whole day. So it was
that day. The snipe showed themselves in numbers. They kept flying up
from just under the dogs, from under the sportsmen's legs, and Levin
might have retrieved his ill luck. But the more he shot, the more he
felt disgraced in the eyes of Veslovsky, who kept popping away merrily
and indiscriminately, killing nothing, and not in the slightest abashed
by his ill success. Levin, in feverish haste, could not restrain
himself, got more and more out of temper, and ended by shooting almost
without a hope of hitting. Laska, indeed, seemed to understand this. She
began looking more languidly, and gazed back at the sportsmen, as it
were, with perplexity or reproach in her eyes. Shots followed shots in
rapid succession. The smoke of the powder hung about the sportsmen,
while in the great roomy net of the game bag there were only three light
little snipe. And of these one had been killed by Veslovsky alone, and
one by both of them together. Meanwhile from the other side of the marsh
came the sound of Stepan Arkadyevitch's shots, not frequent, but, as
Levin fancied, well-directed, for almost after each they heard "Krak,
Krak, _apporte_!"

This excited Levin still more. The snipe were floating continually in
the air over the reeds. Their whirring wings close to the earth, and
their harsh cries high in the air, could be heard on all sides; the
snipe that had risen first and flown up into the air, settled again
before the sportsmen. Instead of two hawks there were now dozens of them
hovering with shrill cries over the marsh.

After walking through the larger half of the marsh, Levin and Veslovsky
reached the place where the peasants' mowing-grass was divided into long
strips reaching to the reeds, marked off in one place by the trampled
grass, in another by a path mown through it. Half of these strips had
already been mown.

Though there was not so much hope of finding birds in the uncut part as
the cut part, Levin had promised Stepan Arkadyevitch to meet him, and so
he walked on with his companion through the cut and uncut patches.

"Hi, sportsmen!" shouted one of a group of peasants, sitting on an
unharnessed cart; "come and have some lunch with us! Have a drop of
wine!"

Levin looked round.

"Come along, it's all right!" shouted a good-humored-looking bearded
peasant with a red face, showing his white teeth in a grin, and holding
up a greenish bottle that flashed in the sunlight.

"_Qu'est-ce qu'ils disent_?" asked Veslovsky.

"They invite you to have some vodka. Most likely they've been dividing
the meadow into lots. I should have some," said Levin, not without some
guile, hoping Veslovsky would be tempted by the vodka, and would go away
to them.

"Why do they offer it?"

"Oh, they're merry-making. Really, you should join them. You would be
interested."

"_Allons, c'est curieux_."

"You go, you go, you'll find the way to the mill!" cried Levin, and
looking round he perceived with satisfaction that Veslovsky, bent and
stumbling with weariness, holding his gun out at arm's length, was
making his way out of the marsh towards the peasants.

"You come too!" the peasants shouted to Levin. "Never fear! You taste
our cake!"

Levin felt a strong inclination to drink a little vodka and to eat some
bread. He was exhausted, and felt it a great effort to drag his
staggering legs out of the mire, and for a minute he hesitated. But
Laska was setting. And immediately all his weariness vanished, and he
walked lightly through the swamp towards the dog. A snipe flew up at his
feet; he fired and killed it. Laska still pointed.--"Fetch it!" Another
bird flew up close to the dog. Levin fired. But it was an unlucky day
for him; he missed it, and when he went to look for the one he had shot,
he could not find that either. He wandered all about the reeds, but
Laska did not believe he had shot it, and when he sent her to find it,
she pretended to hunt for it, but did not really. And in the absence of
Vassenka, on whom Levin threw the blame of his failure, things went no
better. There were plenty of snipe still, but Levin made one miss after
another.

The slanting rays of the sun were still hot; his clothes, soaked through
with perspiration, stuck to his body; his left boot full of water
weighed heavily on his leg and squeaked at every step; the sweat ran in
drops down his powder-grimed face, his mouth was full of the bitter
taste, his nose of the smell of powder and stagnant water, his ears were
ringing with the incessant whir of the snipe; he could not touch the
stock of his gun, it was so hot; his heart beat with short, rapid
throbs; his hands shook with excitement, and his weary legs stumbled and
staggered over the hillocks and in the swamp, but still he walked on and
still he shot. At last, after a disgraceful miss, he flung his gun and
his hat on the ground.

"No, I must control myself," he said to himself. Picking up his gun and
his hat, he called Laska, and went out of the swamp. When he got on to
dry ground he sat down, pulled off his boot and emptied it, then walked
to the marsh, drank some stagnant-tasting water, moistened his burning
hot gun, and washed his face and hands. Feeling refreshed, he went back
to the spot where a snipe had settled, firmly resolved to keep cool.

He tried to be calm, but it was the same again. His finger pressed the
cock before he had taken a good aim at the bird. It got worse and worse.

He had only five birds in his game-bag when he walked out of the marsh
towards the alders where he was to rejoin Stepan Arkadyevitch.

Before he caught sight of Stepan Arkadyevitch he saw his dog. Krak
darted out from behind the twisted root of an alder, black all over with
the stinking mire of the marsh, and with the air of a conqueror sniffed
at Laska. Behind Krak there came into view in the shade of the alder
tree the shapely figure of Stepan Arkadyevitch. He came to meet him, red
and perspiring, with unbuttoned neckband, still limping in the same way.

"Well? You have been popping away!" he said, smiling good-humoredly.

"How have you got on?" queried Levin. But there was no need to ask, for
he had already seen the full game bag.

"Oh, pretty fair."

He had fourteen birds.

"A splendid marsh! I've no doubt Veslovsky got in your way. It's awkward
too, shooting with one dog," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, to soften his
triumph.



Chapter 11


When Levin and Stepan Arkadyevitch reached the peasant's hut where Levin
always used to stay, Veslovsky was already there. He was sitting in the
middle of the hut, clinging with both hands to the bench from which he
was being pulled by a soldier, the brother of the peasant's wife, who
was helping him off with his miry boots. Veslovsky was laughing his
infectious, good-humored laugh.

"I've only just come. _Ils ont ete charmants_. Just fancy, they gave me
drink, fed me! Such bread, it was exquisite! _Delicieux!_ And the vodka,
I never tasted any better. And they would not take a penny for anything.
And they kept saying: 'Excuse our homely ways.'"

"What should they take anything for? They were entertaining you, to be
sure. Do you suppose they keep vodka for sale?" said the soldier,
succeeding at last in pulling the soaked boot off the blackened
stocking.

In spite of the dirtiness of the hut, which was all muddied by their
boots and the filthy dogs licking themselves clean, and the smell of
marsh mud and powder that filled the room, and the absence of knives and
forks, the party drank their tea and ate their supper with a relish only
known to sportsmen. Washed and clean, they went into a hay-barn swept
ready for them, where the coachman had been making up beds for the
gentlemen.

Though it was dusk, not one of them wanted to go to sleep.

After wavering among reminiscences and anecdotes of guns, of dogs, and
of former shooting parties, the conversation rested on a topic that
interested all of them. After Vassenka had several times over expressed
his appreciation of this delightful sleeping place among the fragrant
hay, this delightful broken cart (he supposed it to be broken because
the shafts had been taken out), of the good nature of the peasants that
had treated him to vodka, of the dogs who lay at the feet of their
respective masters, Oblonsky began telling them of a delightful shooting
party at Malthus's, where he had stayed the previous summer.

Malthus was a well-known capitalist, who had made his money by
speculation in railway shares. Stepan Arkadyevitch described what grouse
moors this Malthus had bought in the Tver province, and how they were
preserved, and of the carriages and dogcarts in which the shooting party
had been driven, and the luncheon pavilion that had been rigged up at
the marsh.

"I don't understand you," said Levin, sitting up in the hay; "how is it
such people don't disgust you? I can understand a lunch with Lafitte is
all very pleasant, but don't you dislike just that very sumptuousness?
All these people, just like our spirit monopolists in old days, get
their money in a way that gains them the contempt of everyone. They
don't care for their contempt, and then they use their dishonest gains
to buy off the contempt they have deserved."

"Perfectly true!" chimed in Vassenka Veslovsky. "Perfectly! Oblonsky, of
course, goes out of _bonhomie_, but other people say: 'Well, Oblonsky
stays with them.'..."

"Not a bit of it." Levin could hear that Oblonsky was smiling as he
spoke. "I simply don't consider him more dishonest than any other
wealthy merchant or nobleman. They've all made their money alike--by
their work and their intelligence."

"Oh, by what work? Do you call it work to get hold of concessions and
speculate with them?"

"Of course it's work. Work in this sense, that if it were not for him
and others like him, there would have been no railways."

"But that's not work, like the work of a peasant or a learned
profession."

"Granted, but it's work in the sense that his activity produces a
result--the railways. But of course you think the railways useless."

"No, that's another question; I am prepared to admit that they're
useful. But all profit that is out of proportion to the labor expended
is dishonest."

"But who is to define what is proportionate?"

"Making profit by dishonest means, by trickery," said Levin, conscious
that he could not draw a distinct line between honesty and dishonesty.
"Such as banking, for instance," he went on. "It's an evil--the amassing
of huge fortunes without labor, just the same thing as with the spirit
monopolies, it's only the form that's changed. _Le roi est mort, vive le
roi_. No sooner were the spirit monopolies abolished than the railways
came up, and banking companies; that, too, is profit without work."

"Yes, that may all be very true and clever.... Lie down, Krak!" Stepan
Arkadyevitch called to his dog, who was scratching and turning over all
the hay. He was obviously convinced of the correctness of his position,
and so talked serenely and without haste. "But you have not drawn the
line between honest and dishonest work. That I receive a bigger salary
than my chief clerk, though he knows more about the work than I
do--that's dishonest, I suppose?"

"I can't say."

"Well, but I can tell you: your receiving some five thousand, let's say,
for your work on the land, while our host, the peasant here, however
hard he works, can never get more than fifty roubles, is just as
dishonest as my earning more than my chief clerk, and Malthus getting
more than a station-master. No, quite the contrary; I see that society
takes up a sort of antagonistic attitude to these people, which is
utterly baseless, and I fancy there's envy at the bottom of it...."

"No, that's unfair," said Veslovsky; "how could envy come in? There is
something not nice about that sort of business."

"You say," Levin went on, "that it's unjust for me to receive five
thousand, while the peasant has fifty; that's true. It is unfair, and I
feel it, but..."

"It really is. Why is it we spend our time riding, drinking, shooting,
doing nothing, while they are forever at work?" said Vassenka Veslovsky,
obviously for the first time in his life reflecting on the question, and
consequently considering it with perfect sincerity.

"Yes, you feel it, but you don't give him your property," said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, intentionally, as it seemed, provoking Levin.

There had arisen of late something like a secret antagonism between the
two brothers-in-law; as though, since they had married sisters, a kind
of rivalry had sprung up between them as to which was ordering his life
best, and now this hostility showed itself in the conversation, as it
began to take a personal note.

"I don't give it away, because no one demands that from me, and if I
wanted to, I could not give it away," answered Levin, "and have no one
to give it to."

"Give it to this peasant, he would not refuse it."

"Yes, but how am I to give it up? Am I to go to him and make a deed of
conveyance?"

"I don't know; but if you are convinced that you have no right..."

"I'm not at all convinced. On the contrary, I feel I have no right to
give it up, that I have duties both to the land and to my family."

"No, excuse me, but if you consider this inequality is unjust, why is it
you don't act accordingly?..."

"Well, I do act negatively on that idea, so far as not trying to
increase the difference of position existing between him and me."

"No, excuse me, that's a paradox."

"Yes, there's something of a sophistry about that," Veslovsky agreed.
"Ah! our host; so you're not asleep yet?" he said to the peasant who
came into the barn, opening the creaking door. "How is it you're not
asleep?"

"No, how's one to sleep! I thought our gentlemen would be asleep, but I
heard them chattering. I want to get a hook from here. She won't bite?"
he added, stepping cautiously with his bare feet.

"And where are you going to sleep?"

"We are going out for the night with the beasts."

"Ah, what a night!" said Veslovsky, looking out at the edge of the hut
and the unharnessed wagonette that could be seen in the faint light of
the evening glow in the great frame of the open doors. "But listen,
there are women's voices singing, and, on my word, not badly too. Who's
that singing, my friend?"

"That's the maids from hard by here."

"Let's go, let's have a walk! We shan't go to sleep, you know. Oblonsky,
come along!"

"If one could only do both, lie here and go," answered Oblonsky,
stretching. "It's capital lying here."

"Well, I shall go by myself," said Veslovsky, getting up eagerly, and
putting on his shoes and stockings. "Good-bye, gentlemen. If it's fun,
I'll fetch you. You've treated me to some good sport, and I won't forget
you."

"He really is a capital fellow, isn't he?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
when Veslovsky had gone out and the peasant had closed the door after
him.

"Yes, capital," answered Levin, still thinking of the subject of their
conversation just before. It seemed to him that he had clearly expressed
his thoughts and feelings to the best of his capacity, and yet both of
them, straightforward men and not fools, had said with one voice that he
was comforting himself with sophistries. This disconcerted him.

"It's just this, my dear boy. One must do one of two things: either
admit that the existing order of society is just, and then stick up for
one's rights in it; or acknowledge that you are enjoying unjust
privileges, as I do, and then enjoy them and be satisfied."

"No, if it were unjust, you could not enjoy these advantages and be
satisfied--at least I could not. The great thing for me is to feel that
I'm not to blame."

"What do you say, why not go after all?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
evidently weary of the strain of thought. "We shan't go to sleep, you
know. Come, let's go!"

Levin did not answer. What they had said in the conversation, that he
acted justly only in a negative sense, absorbed his thoughts. "Can it be
that it's only possible to be just negatively?" he was asking himself.

"How strong the smell of the fresh hay is, though," said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, getting up. "There's not a chance of sleeping. Vassenka
has been getting up some fun there. Do you hear the laughing and his
voice? Hadn't we better go? Come along!"

"No, I'm not coming," answered Levin.

"Surely that's not a matter of principle too," said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
smiling, as he felt about in the dark for his cap.

"It's not a matter of principle, but why should I go?"

"But do you know you are preparing trouble for yourself," said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, finding his cap and getting up.

"How so?"

"Do you suppose I don't see the line you've taken up with your wife? I
heard how it's a question of the greatest consequence, whether or not
you're to be away for a couple of days' shooting. That's all very well
as an idyllic episode, but for your whole life that won't answer. A man
must be independent; he has his masculine interests. A man has to be
manly," said Oblonsky, opening the door.

"In what way? To go running after servant girls?" said Levin.

"Why not, if it amuses him? _Ca ne tire pas a consequence_. It won't do
my wife any harm, and it'll amuse me. The great thing is to respect the
sanctity of the home. There should be nothing in the home. But don't tie
your own hands."

"Perhaps so," said Levin dryly, and he turned on his side. "Tomorrow,
early, I want to go shooting, and I won't wake anyone, and shall set off
at daybreak."

"_Messieurs, venez vite!_" they heard the voice of Veslovsky coming
back. "_Charmante!_ I've made such a discovery. _Charmante!_ a perfect
Gretchen, and I've already made friends with her. Really, exceedingly
pretty," he declared in a tone of approval, as though she had been made
pretty entirely on his account, and he was expressing his satisfaction
with the entertainment that had been provided for him.

Levin pretended to be asleep, while Oblonsky, putting on his slippers,
and lighting a cigar, walked out of the barn, and soon their voices were
lost.

For a long while Levin could not get to sleep. He heard the horses
munching hay, then he heard the peasant and his elder boy getting ready
for the night, and going off for the night watch with the beasts, then
he heard the soldier arranging his bed on the other side of the barn,
with his nephew, the younger son of their peasant host. He heard the boy
in his shrill little voice telling his uncle what he thought about the
dogs, who seemed to him huge and terrible creatures, and asking what the
dogs were going to hunt next day, and the soldier in a husky, sleepy
voice, telling him the sportsmen were going in the morning to the marsh,
and would shoot with their guns; and then, to check the boy's questions,
he said, "Go to sleep, Vaska; go to sleep, or you'll catch it," and soon
after he began snoring himself, and everything was still. He could only
hear the snort of the horses, and the guttural cry of a snipe.

"Is it really only negative?" he repeated to himself. "Well, what of it?
It's not my fault." And he began thinking about the next day.

"Tomorrow I'll go out early, and I'll make a point of keeping cool.
There are lots of snipe; and there are grouse too. When I come back
there'll be the note from Kitty. Yes, Stiva may be right, I'm not manly
with her, I'm tied to her apron-strings.... Well, it can't be helped!
Negative again...."

Half asleep, he heard the laughter and mirthful talk of Veslovsky and
Stepan Arkadyevitch. For an instant he opened his eyes: the moon was up,
and in the open doorway, brightly lighted up by the moonlight, they were
standing talking. Stepan Arkadyevitch was saying something of the
freshness of one girl, comparing her to a freshly peeled nut, and
Veslovsky with his infectious laugh was repeating some words, probably
said to him by a peasant: "Ah, you do your best to get round her!"
Levin, half asleep, said:

"Gentlemen, tomorrow before daylight!" and fell asleep.



Chapter 12


Waking up at earliest dawn, Levin tried to wake his companions.
Vassenka, lying on his stomach, with one leg in a stocking thrust out,
was sleeping so soundly that he could elicit no response. Oblonsky, half
asleep, declined to get up so early. Even Laska, who was asleep, curled
up in the hay, got up unwillingly, and lazily stretched out and
straightened her hind legs one after the other. Getting on his boots and
stockings, taking his gun, and carefully opening the creaking door of
the barn, Levin went out into the road. The coachmen were sleeping in
their carriages, the horses were dozing. Only one was lazily eating
oats, dipping its nose into the manger. It was still gray out-of-doors.

"Why are you up so early, my dear?" the old woman, their hostess, said,
coming out of the hut and addressing him affectionately as an old
friend.

"Going shooting, granny. Do I go this way to the marsh?"

"Straight out at the back; by our threshing floor, my dear, and hemp
patches; there's a little footpath." Stepping carefully with her
sunburnt, bare feet, the old woman conducted Levin, and moved back the
fence for him by the threshing floor.

"Straight on and you'll come to the marsh. Our lads drove the cattle
there yesterday evening."

Laska ran eagerly forward along the little path. Levin followed her with
a light, rapid step, continually looking at the sky. He hoped the sun
would not be up before he reached the marsh. But the sun did not delay.
The moon, which had been bright when he went out, by now shone only like
a crescent of quicksilver. The pink flush of dawn, which one could not
help seeing before, now had to be sought to be discerned at all. What
were before undefined, vague blurs in the distant countryside could now
be distinctly seen. They were sheaves of rye. The dew, not visible till
the sun was up, wetted Levin's legs and his blouse above his belt in the
high growing, fragrant hemp patch, from which the pollen had already
fallen out. In the transparent stillness of morning the smallest sounds
were audible. A bee flew by Levin's ear with the whizzing sound of a
bullet. He looked carefully, and saw a second and a third. They were all
flying from the beehives behind the hedge, and they disappeared over the
hemp patch in the direction of the marsh. The path led straight to the
marsh. The marsh could be recognized by the mist which rose from it,
thicker in one place and thinner in another, so that the reeds and
willow bushes swayed like islands in this mist. At the edge of the marsh
and the road, peasant boys and men, who had been herding for the night,
were lying, and in the dawn all were asleep under their coats. Not far
from them were three hobbled horses. One of them clanked a chain. Laska
walked beside her master, pressing a little forward and looking round.
Passing the sleeping peasants and reaching the first reeds, Levin
examined his pistols and let his dog off. One of the horses, a sleek,
dark-brown three-year-old, seeing the dog, started away, switched its
tail and snorted. The other horses too were frightened, and splashing
through the water with their hobbled legs, and drawing their hoofs out
of the thick mud with a squelching sound, they bounded out of the marsh.
Laska stopped, looking ironically at the horses and inquiringly at
Levin. Levin patted Laska, and whistled as a sign that she might begin.

Laska ran joyfully and anxiously through the slush that swayed under
her.

Running into the marsh among the familiar scents of roots, marsh plants,
and slime, and the extraneous smell of horse dung, Laska detected at
once a smell that pervaded the whole marsh, the scent of that
strong-smelling bird that always excited her more than any other. Here
and there among the moss and marsh plants this scent was very strong,
but it was impossible to determine in which direction it grew stronger
or fainter. To find the direction, she had to go farther away from the
wind. Not feeling the motion of her legs, Laska bounded with a stiff
gallop, so that at each bound she could stop short, to the right, away
from the wind that blew from the east before sunrise, and turned facing
the wind. Sniffing in the air with dilated nostrils, she felt at once
that not their tracks only but they themselves were here before her, and
not one, but many. Laska slackened her speed. They were here, but where
precisely she could not yet determine. To find the very spot, she began
to make a circle, when suddenly her master's voice drew her off. "Laska!
here?" he asked, pointing her to a different direction. She stopped,
asking him if she had better not go on doing as she had begun. But he
repeated his command in an angry voice, pointing to a spot covered with
water, where there could not be anything. She obeyed him, pretending she
was looking, so as to please him, went round it, and went back to her
former position, and was at once aware of the scent again. Now when he
was not hindering her, she knew what to do, and without looking at what
was under her feet, and to her vexation stumbling over a high stump into
the water, but righting herself with her strong, supple legs, she began
making the circle which was to make all clear to her. The scent of them
reached her, stronger and stronger, and more and more defined, and all
at once it became perfectly clear to her that one of them was here,
behind this tuft of reeds, five paces in front of her; she stopped, and
her whole body was still and rigid. On her short legs she could see
nothing in front of her, but by the scent she knew it was sitting not
more than five paces off. She stood still, feeling more and more
conscious of it, and enjoying it in anticipation. Her tail was stretched
straight and tense, and only wagging at the extreme end. Her mouth was
slightly open, her ears raised. One ear had been turned wrong side out
as she ran up, and she breathed heavily but warily, and still more
warily looked round, but more with her eyes than her head, to her
master. He was coming along with the face she knew so well, though the
eyes were always terrible to her. He stumbled over the stump as he came,
and moved, as she thought, extraordinarily slowly. She thought he came
slowly, but he was running.

Noticing Laska's special attitude as she crouched on the ground, as it
were, scratching big prints with her hind paws, and with her mouth
slightly open, Levin knew she was pointing at grouse, and with an inward
prayer for luck, especially with the first bird, he ran up to her.
Coming quite close up to her, he could from his height look beyond her,
and he saw with his eyes what she was seeing with her nose. In a space
between two little thickets, at a couple of yards' distance, he could
see a grouse. Turning its head, it was listening. Then lightly preening
and folding its wings, it disappeared round a corner with a clumsy wag
of its tail.

"Fetch it, fetch it!" shouted Levin, giving Laska a shove from behind.

"But I can't go," thought Laska. "Where am I to go? From here I feel
them, but if I move forward I shall know nothing of where they are or
who they are." But then he shoved her with his knee, and in an excited
whisper said, "Fetch it, Laska."

"Well, if that's what he wishes, I'll do it, but I can't answer for
myself now," she thought, and darted forward as fast as her legs would
carry her between the thick bushes. She scented nothing now; she could
only see and hear, without understanding anything.

Ten paces from her former place a grouse rose with a guttural cry and
the peculiar round sound of its wings. And immediately after the shot it
splashed heavily with its white breast on the wet mire. Another bird did
not linger, but rose behind Levin without the dog. When Levin turned
towards it, it was already some way off. But his shot caught it. Flying
twenty paces further, the second grouse rose upwards, and whirling round
like a ball, dropped heavily on a dry place.

"Come, this is going to be some good!" thought Levin, packing the warm
and fat grouse into his game bag. "Eh, Laska, will it be good?"

When Levin, after loading his gun, moved on, the sun had fully risen,
though unseen behind the storm-clouds. The moon had lost all of its
luster, and was like a white cloud in the sky. Not a single star could
be seen. The sedge, silvery with dew before, now shone like gold. The
stagnant pools were all like amber. The blue of the grass had changed to
yellow-green. The marsh birds twittered and swarmed about the brook and
upon the bushes that glittered with dew and cast long shadows. A hawk
woke up and settled on a haycock, turning its head from side to side and
looking discontentedly at the marsh. Crows were flying about the field,
and a bare-legged boy was driving the horses to an old man, who had got
up from under his long coat and was combing his hair. The smoke from the
gun was white as milk over the green of the grass.

One of the boys ran up to Levin.

"Uncle, there were ducks here yesterday!" he shouted to him, and he
walked a little way off behind him.

And Levin was doubly pleased, in sight of the boy, who expressed his
approval, at killing three snipe, one after another, straight off.



Chapter 13


The sportsman's saying, that if the first beast or the first bird is not
missed, the day will be lucky, turned out correct.

At ten o'clock Levin, weary, hungry, and happy after a tramp of twenty
miles, returned to his night's lodging with nineteen head of fine game
and one duck, which he tied to his belt, as it would not go into the
game bag. His companions had long been awake, and had had time to get
hungry and have breakfast.

"Wait a bit, wait a bit, I know there are nineteen," said Levin,
counting a second time over the grouse and snipe, that looked so much
less important now, bent and dry and bloodstained, with heads crooked
aside, than they did when they were flying.

The number was verified, and Stepan Arkadyevitch's envy pleased Levin.
He was pleased too on returning to find the man sent by Kitty with a
note was already there.

"I am perfectly well and happy. If you were uneasy about me, you can
feel easier than ever. I've a new bodyguard, Marya Vlasyevna,"--this was
the midwife, a new and important personage in Levin's domestic life.
"She has come to have a look at me. She found me perfectly well, and we
have kept her till you are back. All are happy and well, and please,
don't be in a hurry to come back, but, if the sport is good, stay
another day."

These two pleasures, his lucky shooting and the letter from his wife,
were so great that two slightly disagreeable incidents passed lightly
over Levin. One was that the chestnut trace horse, who had been
unmistakably overworked on the previous day, was off his feed and out of
sorts. The coachman said he was "Overdriven yesterday, Konstantin
Dmitrievitch. Yes, indeed! driven ten miles with no sense!"

The other unpleasant incident, which for the first minute destroyed his
good humor, though later he laughed at it a great deal, was to find that
of all the provisions Kitty had provided in such abundance that one
would have thought there was enough for a week, nothing was left. On his
way back, tired and hungry from shooting, Levin had so distinct a vision
of meat-pies that as he approached the hut he seemed to smell and taste
them, as Laska had smelt the game, and he immediately told Philip to
give him some. It appeared that there were no pies left, nor even any
chicken.

"Well, this fellow's appetite!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laughing and
pointing at Vassenka Veslovsky. "I never suffer from loss of appetite,
but he's really marvelous!..."

"Well, it can't be helped," said Levin, looking gloomily at Veslovsky.
"Well, Philip, give me some beef, then."

"The beef's been eaten, and the bones given to the dogs," answered
Philip.

Levin was so hurt that he said, in a tone of vexation, "You might have
left me something!" and he felt ready to cry.

"Then put away the game," he said in a shaking voice to Philip, trying
not to look at Vassenka, "and cover them with some nettles. And you
might at least ask for some milk for me."

But when he had drunk some milk, he felt ashamed immediately at having
shown his annoyance to a stranger, and he began to laugh at his hungry
mortification.

In the evening they went shooting again, and Veslovsky had several
successful shots, and in the night they drove home.

Their homeward journey was as lively as their drive out had been.
Veslovsky sang songs and related with enjoyment his adventures with the
peasants, who had regaled him with vodka, and said to him, "Excuse our
homely ways," and his night's adventures with kiss-in-the-ring and the
servant-girl and the peasant, who had asked him was he married, and on
learning that he was not, said to him, "Well, mind you don't run after
other men's wives--you'd better get one of your own." These words had
particularly amused Veslovsky.

"Altogether, I've enjoyed our outing awfully. And you, Levin?"

"I have, very much," Levin said quite sincerely. It was particularly
delightful to him to have got rid of the hostility he had been feeling
towards Vassenka Veslovsky at home, and to feel instead the most
friendly disposition to him.



Chapter 14


Next day at ten o'clock Levin, who had already gone his rounds, knocked
at the room where Vassenka had been put for the night.

"_Entrez!_" Veslovsky called to him. "Excuse me, I've only just finished
my ablutions," he said, smiling, standing before him in his underclothes
only.

"Don't mind me, please." Levin sat down in the window. "Have you slept
well?"

"Like the dead. What sort of day is it for shooting?"

"What will you take, tea or coffee?"

"Neither. I'll wait till lunch. I'm really ashamed. I suppose the ladies
are down? A walk now would be capital. You show me your horses."

After walking about the garden, visiting the stable, and even doing some
gymnastic exercises together on the parallel bars, Levin returned to the
house with his guest, and went with him into the drawing room.

"We had splendid shooting, and so many delightful experiences!" said
Veslovsky, going up to Kitty, who was sitting at the samovar. "What a
pity ladies are cut off from these delights!"

"Well, I suppose he must say something to the lady of the house," Levin
said to himself. Again he fancied something in the smile, in the
all-conquering air with which their guest addressed Kitty....

The princess, sitting on the other side of the table with Marya
Vlasyevna and Stepan Arkadyevitch, called Levin to her side, and began
to talk to him about moving to Moscow for Kitty's confinement, and
getting ready rooms for them. Just as Levin had disliked all the trivial
preparations for his wedding, as derogatory to the grandeur of the
event, now he felt still more offensive the preparations for the
approaching birth, the date of which they reckoned, it seemed, on their
fingers. He tried to turn a deaf ear to these discussions of the best
patterns of long clothes for the coming baby; tried to turn away and
avoid seeing the mysterious, endless strips of knitting, the triangles
of linen, and so on, to which Dolly attached special importance. The
birth of a son (he was certain it would be a son) which was promised
him, but which he still could not believe in--so marvelous it
seemed--presented itself to his mind, on one hand, as a happiness so
immense, and therefore so incredible; on the other, as an event so
mysterious, that this assumption of a definite knowledge of what would
be, and consequent preparation for it, as for something ordinary that
did happen to people, jarred on him as confusing and humiliating.

But the princess did not understand his feelings, and put down his
reluctance to think and talk about it to carelessness and indifference,
and so she gave him no peace. She had commissioned Stepan Arkadyevitch
to look at a flat, and now she called Levin up.

"I know nothing about it, princess. Do as you think fit," he said.

"You must decide when you will move."

"I really don't know. I know millions of children are born away from
Moscow, and doctors ... why..."

"But if so..."

"Oh, no, as Kitty wishes."

"We can't talk to Kitty about it! Do you want me to frighten her? Why,
this spring Natalia Golitzina died from having an ignorant doctor."

"I will do just what you say," he said gloomily.

The princess began talking to him, but he did not hear her. Though the
conversation with the princess had indeed jarred upon him, he was
gloomy, not on account of that conversation, but from what he saw at the
samovar.

"No, it's impossible," he thought, glancing now and then at Vassenka
bending over Kitty, telling her something with his charming smile, and
at her, flushed and disturbed.

There was something not nice in Vassenka's attitude, in his eyes, in his
smile. Levin even saw something not nice in Kitty's attitude and look.
And again the light died away in his eyes. Again, as before, all of a
sudden, without the slightest transition, he felt cast down from a
pinnacle of happiness, peace, and dignity, into an abyss of despair,
rage, and humiliation. Again everything and everyone had become hateful
to him.

"You do just as you think best, princess," he said again, looking round.

"Heavy is the cap of Monomach," Stepan Arkadyevitch said playfully,
hinting, evidently, not simply at the princess's conversation, but at
the cause of Levin's agitation, which he had noticed.

"How late you are today, Dolly!"

Everyone got up to greet Darya Alexandrovna. Vassenka only rose for an
instant, and with the lack of courtesy to ladies characteristic of the
modern young man, he scarcely bowed, and resumed his conversation again,
laughing at something.

"I've been worried about Masha. She did not sleep well, and is
dreadfully tiresome today," said Dolly.

The conversation Vassenka had started with Kitty was running on the same
lines as on the previous evening, discussing Anna, and whether love is
to be put higher than worldly considerations. Kitty disliked the
conversation, and she was disturbed both by the subject and the tone in
which it was conducted, and also by the knowledge of the effect it would
have on her husband. But she was too simple and innocent to know how to
cut short this conversation, or even to conceal the superficial pleasure
afforded her by the young man's very obvious admiration. She wanted to
stop it, but she did not know what to do. Whatever she did she knew
would be observed by her husband, and the worst interpretation put on
it. And, in fact, when she asked Dolly what was wrong with Masha, and
Vassenka, waiting till this uninteresting conversation was over, began
to gaze indifferently at Dolly, the question struck Levin as an
unnatural and disgusting piece of hypocrisy.

"What do you say, shall we go and look for mushrooms today?" said Dolly.

"By all means, please, and I shall come too," said Kitty, and she
blushed. She wanted from politeness to ask Vassenka whether he would
come, and she did not ask him. "Where are you going, Kostya?" she asked
her husband with a guilty face, as he passed by her with a resolute
step. This guilty air confirmed all his suspicions.

"The mechanician came when I was away; I haven't seen him yet," he said,
not looking at her.

He went downstairs, but before he had time to leave his study he heard
his wife's familiar footsteps running with reckless speed to him.

"What do you want?" he said to her shortly. "We are busy."

"I beg your pardon," she said to the German mechanician; "I want a few
words with my husband."

The German would have left the room, but Levin said to him:

"Don't disturb yourself."

"The train is at three?" queried the German. "I mustn't be late."

Levin did not answer him, but walked out himself with his wife.

"Well, what have you to say to me?" he said to her in French.

He did not look her in the face, and did not care to see that she in her
condition was trembling all over, and had a piteous, crushed look.

"I ... I want to say that we can't go on like this; that this is
misery..." she said.

"The servants are here at the sideboard," he said angrily; "don't make a
scene."

"Well, let's go in here!"

They were standing in the passage. Kitty would have gone into the next
room, but there the English governess was giving Tanya a lesson.

"Well, come into the garden."

In the garden they came upon a peasant weeding the path. And no longer
considering that the peasant could see her tear-stained and his agitated
face, that they looked like people fleeing from some disaster, they went
on with rapid steps, feeling that they must speak out and clear up
misunderstandings, must be alone together, and so get rid of the misery
they were both feeling.

"We can't go on like this! It's misery! I am wretched; you are wretched.
What for?" she said, when they had at last reached a solitary garden
seat at a turn in the lime tree avenue.

"But tell me one thing: was there in his tone anything unseemly, not
nice, humiliatingly horrible?" he said, standing before her again in the
same position with his clenched fists on his chest, as he had stood
before her that night.

"Yes," she said in a shaking voice; "but, Kostya, surely you see I'm not
to blame? All the morning I've been trying to take a tone ... but such
people.... Why did he come? How happy we were!" she said, breathless
with the sobs that shook her.

Although nothing had been pursuing them, and there was nothing to run
away from, and they could not possibly have found anything very
delightful on that garden seat, the gardener saw with astonishment that
they passed him on their way home with comforted and radiant faces.



Chapter 15


After escorting his wife upstairs, Levin went to Dolly's part of the
house. Darya Alexandrovna, for her part, was in great distress too that
day. She was walking about the room, talking angrily to a little girl,
who stood in the corner roaring.

"And you shall stand all day in the corner, and have your dinner all
alone, and not see one of your dolls, and I won't make you a new frock,"
she said, not knowing how to punish her.

"Oh, she is a disgusting child!" she turned to Levin. "Where does she
get such wicked propensities?"

"Why, what has she done?" Levin said without much interest, for he had
wanted to ask her advice, and so was annoyed that he had come at an
unlucky moment.

"Grisha and she went into the raspberries, and there ... I can't tell
you really what she did. It's a thousand pities Miss Elliot's not with
us. This one sees to nothing--she's a machine.... _Figurez-vous que la
petite_?..."

And Darya Alexandrovna described Masha's crime.

"That proves nothing; it's not a question of evil propensities at all,
it's simply mischief," Levin assured her.

"But you are upset about something? What have you come for?" asked
Dolly. "What's going on there?"

And in the tone of her question Levin heard that it would be easy for
him to say what he had meant to say.

"I've not been in there, I've been alone in the garden with Kitty. We've
had a quarrel for the second time since ... Stiva came."

Dolly looked at him with her shrewd, comprehending eyes.

"Come, tell me, honor bright, has there been ... not in Kitty, but in
that gentleman's behavior, a tone which might be unpleasant--not
unpleasant, but horrible, offensive to a husband?"

"You mean, how shall I say.... Stay, stay in the corner!" she said to
Masha, who, detecting a faint smile in her mother's face, had been
turning round. "The opinion of the world would be that he is behaving as
young men do behave. _Il fait la cour a une jeune et jolie femme_, and a
husband who's a man of the world should only be flattered by it."

"Yes, yes," said Levin gloomily; "but you noticed it?"

"Not only I, but Stiva noticed it. Just after breakfast he said to me in
so many words, _Je crois que Veslovsky fait un petit brin de cour a
Kitty_."

"Well, that's all right then; now I'm satisfied. I'll send him away,"
said Levin.

"What do you mean! Are you crazy?" Dolly cried in horror; "nonsense,
Kostya, only think!" she said, laughing. "You can go now to Fanny," she
said to Masha. "No, if you wish it, I'll speak to Stiva. He'll take him
away. He can say you're expecting visitors. Altogether he doesn't fit
into the house."

"No, no, I'll do it myself."

"But you'll quarrel with him?"

"Not a bit. I shall so enjoy it," Levin said, his eyes flashing with
real enjoyment. "Come, forgive her, Dolly, she won't do it again," he
said of the little sinner, who had not gone to Fanny, but was standing
irresolutely before her mother, waiting and looking up from under her
brows to catch her mother's eye.

The mother glanced at her. The child broke into sobs, hid her face on
her mother's lap, and Dolly laid her thin, tender hand on her head.

"And what is there in common between us and him?" thought Levin, and he
went off to look for Veslovsky.

As he passed through the passage he gave orders for the carriage to be
got ready to drive to the station.

"The spring was broken yesterday," said the footman.

"Well, the covered trap, then, and make haste. Where's the visitor?"

"The gentleman's gone to his room."

Levin came upon Veslovsky at the moment when the latter, having unpacked
his things from his trunk, and laid out some new songs, was putting on
his gaiters to go out riding.

Whether there was something exceptional in Levin's face, or that
Vassenka was himself conscious that _ce petit brin de cour_ he was
making was out of place in this family, but he was somewhat (as much as
a young man in society can be) disconcerted at Levin's entrance.

"You ride in gaiters?"

"Yes, it's much cleaner," said Vassenka, putting his fat leg on a chair,
fastening the bottom hook, and smiling with simple-hearted good humor.

He was undoubtedly a good-natured fellow, and Levin felt sorry for him
and ashamed of himself, as his host, when he saw the shy look on
Vassenka's face.

On the table lay a piece of stick which they had broken together that
morning, trying their strength. Levin took the fragment in his hands and
began smashing it up, breaking bits off the stick, not knowing how to
begin.

"I wanted...." He paused, but suddenly, remembering Kitty and everything
that had happened, he said, looking him resolutely in the face: "I have
ordered the horses to be put-to for you."

"How so?" Vassenka began in surprise. "To drive where?"

"For you to drive to the station," Levin said gloomily.

"Are you going away, or has something happened?"

"It happens that I expect visitors," said Levin, his strong fingers more
and more rapidly breaking off the ends of the split stick. "And I'm not
expecting visitors, and nothing has happened, but I beg you to go away.
You can explain my rudeness as you like."

Vassenka drew himself up.

"I beg you to explain..." he said with dignity, understanding at last.

"I can't explain," Levin said softly and deliberately, trying to control
the trembling of his jaw; "and you'd better not ask."

And as the split ends were all broken off, Levin clutched the thick ends
in his finger, broke the stick in two, and carefully caught the end as
it fell.

Probably the sight of those nervous fingers, of the muscles he had
proved that morning at gymnastics, of the glittering eyes, the soft
voice, and quivering jaws, convinced Vassenka better than any words. He
bowed, shrugging his shoulders, and smiling contemptuously.

"Can I not see Oblonsky?"

The shrug and the smile did not irritate Levin.

"What else was there for him to do?" he thought.

"I'll send him to you at once."

"What madness is this?" Stepan Arkadyevitch said when, after hearing
from his friend that he was being turned out of the house, he found
Levin in the garden, where he was walking about waiting for his guest's
departure. "_Mais c'est ridicule!_ What fly has stung you? _Mais c'est
du dernier ridicule!_ What did you think, if a young man..."

But the place where Levin had been stung was evidently still sore, for
he turned pale again, when Stepan Arkadyevitch would have enlarged on
the reason, and he himself cut him short.

"Please don't go into it! I can't help it. I feel ashamed of how I'm
treating you and him. But it won't be, I imagine, a great grief to him
to go, and his presence was distasteful to me and to my wife."

"But it's insulting to him! _Et puis c'est ridicule_."

"And to me it's both insulting and distressing! And I'm not at fault in
any way, and there's no need for me to suffer."

"Well, this I didn't expect of you! _On peut etre jaloux, mais a ce
point, c'est du dernier ridicule!_"

Levin turned quickly, and walked away from him into the depths of the
avenue, and he went on walking up and down alone. Soon he heard the
rumble of the trap, and saw from behind the trees how Vassenka, sitting
in the hay (unluckily there was no seat in the trap) in his Scotch cap,
was driven along the avenue, jolting up and down over the ruts.

"What's this?" Levin thought, when a footman ran out of the house and
stopped the trap. It was the mechanician, whom Levin had totally
forgotten. The mechanician, bowing low, said something to Veslovsky,
then clambered into the trap, and they drove off together.

Stepan Arkadyevitch and the princess were much upset by Levin's action.
And he himself felt not only in the highest degree _ridicule_, but also
utterly guilty and disgraced. But remembering what sufferings he and his
wife had been through, when he asked himself how he should act another
time, he answered that he should do just the same again.

In spite of all this, towards the end of that day, everyone except the
princess, who could not pardon Levin's action, became extraordinarily
lively and good humored, like children after a punishment or grown-up
people after a dreary, ceremonious reception, so that by the evening
Vassenka's dismissal was spoken of, in the absence of the princess, as
though it were some remote event. And Dolly, who had inherited her
father's gift of humorous storytelling, made Varenka helpless with
laughter as she related for the third and fourth time, always with fresh
humorous additions, how she had only just put on her new shoes for the
benefit of the visitor, and on going into the drawing room, heard
suddenly the rumble of the trap. And who should be in the trap but
Vassenka himself, with his Scotch cap, and his songs and his gaiters,
and all, sitting in the hay.

"If only you'd ordered out the carriage! But no! and then I hear:
'Stop!' Oh, I thought they've relented. I look out, and behold a fat
German being sat down by him and driving away.... And my new shoes all
for nothing!..."



Chapter 16


Darya Alexandrovna carried out her intention and went to see Anna. She
was sorry to annoy her sister and to do anything Levin disliked. She
quite understood how right the Levins were in not wishing to have
anything to do with Vronsky. But she felt she must go and see Anna, and
show her that her feelings could not be changed, in spite of the change
in her position. That she might be independent of the Levins in this
expedition, Darya Alexandrovna sent to the village to hire horses for
the drive; but Levin learning of it went to her to protest.

"What makes you suppose that I dislike your going? But, even if I did
dislike it, I should still more dislike your not taking my horses," he
said. "You never told me that you were going for certain. Hiring horses
in the village is disagreeable to me, and, what's of more importance,
they'll undertake the job and never get you there. I have horses. And if
you don't want to wound me, you'll take mine."

Darya Alexandrovna had to consent, and on the day fixed Levin had ready
for his sister-in-law a set of four horses and relays, getting them
together from the farm- and saddle-horses--not at all a smart-looking
set, but capable of taking Darya Alexandrovna the whole distance in a
single day. At that moment, when horses were wanted for the princess,
who was going, and for the midwife, it was a difficult matter for Levin
to make up the number, but the duties of hospitality would not let him
allow Darya Alexandrovna to hire horses when staying in his house.
Moreover, he was well aware that the twenty roubles that would be asked
for the journey were a serious matter for her; Darya Alexandrovna's
pecuniary affairs, which were in a very unsatisfactory state, were taken
to heart by the Levins as if they were their own.

Darya Alexandrovna, by Levin's advice, started before daybreak. The road
was good, the carriage comfortable, the horses trotted along merrily,
and on the box, besides the coachman, sat the counting-house clerk, whom
Levin was sending instead of a groom for greater security. Darya
Alexandrovna dozed and waked up only on reaching the inn where the
horses were to be changed.

After drinking tea at the same well-to-do peasant's with whom Levin had
stayed on the way to Sviazhsky's, and chatting with the women about
their children, and with the old man about Count Vronsky, whom the
latter praised very highly, Darya Alexandrovna, at ten o'clock, went on
again. At home, looking after her children, she had no time to think. So
now, after this journey of four hours, all the thoughts she had
suppressed before rushed swarming into her brain, and she thought over
all her life as she never had before, and from the most different points
of view. Her thoughts seemed strange even to herself. At first she
thought about the children, about whom she was uneasy, although the
princess and Kitty (she reckoned more upon her) had promised to look
after them. "If only Masha does not begin her naughty tricks, if Grisha
isn't kicked by a horse, and Lily's stomach isn't upset again!" she
thought. But these questions of the present were succeeded by questions
of the immediate future. She began thinking how she had to get a new
flat in Moscow for the coming winter, to renew the drawing room
furniture, and to make her elder girl a cloak. Then questions of the
more remote future occurred to her: how she was to place her children in
the world. "The girls are all right," she thought; "but the boys?"

"It's very well that I'm teaching Grisha, but of course that's only
because I am free myself now, I'm not with child. Stiva, of course,
there's no counting on. And with the help of good-natured friends I can
bring them up; but if there's another baby coming?..." And the thought
struck her how untruly it was said that the curse laid on woman was that
in sorrow she should bring forth children.

"The birth itself, that's nothing; but the months of carrying the
child--that's what's so intolerable," she thought, picturing to herself
her last pregnancy, and the death of the last baby. And she recalled the
conversation she had just had with the young woman at the inn. On being
asked whether she had any children, the handsome young woman had
answered cheerfully:

"I had a girl baby, but God set me free; I buried her last Lent."

"Well, did you grieve very much for her?" asked Darya Alexandrovna.

"Why grieve? The old man has grandchildren enough as it is. It was only
a trouble. No working, nor nothing. Only a tie."

This answer had struck Darya Alexandrovna as revolting in spite of the
good-natured and pleasing face of the young woman; but now she could not
help recalling these words. In those cynical words there was indeed a
grain of truth.

"Yes, altogether," thought Darya Alexandrovna, looking back over her
whole existence during those fifteen years of her married life,
"pregnancy, sickness, mental incapacity, indifference to everything, and
most of all--hideousness. Kitty, young and pretty as she is, even Kitty
has lost her looks; and I when I'm with child become hideous, I know it.
The birth, the agony, the hideous agonies, that last moment ... then the
nursing, the sleepless nights, the fearful pains...."

Darya Alexandrovna shuddered at the mere recollection of the pain from
sore breasts which she had suffered with almost every child. "Then the
children's illnesses, that everlasting apprehension; then bringing them
up; evil propensities" (she thought of little Masha's crime among the
raspberries), "education, Latin--it's all so incomprehensible and
difficult. And on the top of it all, the death of these children." And
there rose again before her imagination the cruel memory, that always
tore her mother's heart, of the death of her last little baby, who had
died of croup; his funeral, the callous indifference of all at the
little pink coffin, and her own torn heart, and her lonely anguish at
the sight of the pale little brow with its projecting temples, and the
open, wondering little mouth seen in the coffin at the moment when it
was being covered with the little pink lid with a cross braided on it.

"And all this, what's it for? What is to come of it all? That I'm
wasting my life, never having a moment's peace, either with child, or
nursing a child, forever irritable, peevish, wretched myself and
worrying others, repulsive to my husband, while the children are growing
up unhappy, badly educated, and penniless. Even now, if it weren't for
spending the summer at the Levins', I don't know how we should be
managing to live. Of course Kostya and Kitty have so much tact that we
don't feel it; but it can't go on. They'll have children, they won't be
able to keep us; it's a drag on them as it is. How is papa, who has
hardly anything left for himself, to help us? So that I can't even bring
the children up by myself, and may find it hard with the help of other
people, at the cost of humiliation. Why, even if we suppose the greatest
good luck, that the children don't die, and I bring them up somehow. At
the very best they'll simply be decent people. That's all I can hope
for. And to gain simply that--what agonies, what toil!... One's whole
life ruined!" Again she recalled what the young peasant woman had said,
and again she was revolted at the thought; but she could not help
admitting that there was a grain of brutal truth in the words.

"Is it far now, Mihail?" Darya Alexandrovna asked the counting house
clerk, to turn her mind from thoughts that were frightening her.

"From this village, they say, it's five miles." The carriage drove along
the village street and onto a bridge. On the bridge was a crowd of
peasant women with coils of ties for the sheaves on their shoulders,
gaily and noisily chattering. They stood still on the bridge, staring
inquisitively at the carriage. All the faces turned to Darya
Alexandrovna looked to her healthy and happy, making her envious of
their enjoyment of life. "They're all living, they're all enjoying
life," Darya Alexandrovna still mused when she had passed the peasant
women and was driving uphill again at a trot, seated comfortably on the
soft springs of the old carriage, "while I, let out, as it were from
prison, from the world of worries that fret me to death, am only looking
about me now for an instant. They all live; those peasant women and my
sister Natalia and Varenka and Anna, whom I am going to see--all, but
not I.

"And they attack Anna. What for? am I any better? I have, anyway, a
husband I love--not as I should like to love him, still I do love him,
while Anna never loved hers. How is she to blame? She wants to live. God
has put that in our hearts. Very likely I should have done the same.
Even to this day I don't feel sure I did right in listening to her at
that terrible time when she came to me in Moscow. I ought then to have
cast off my husband and have begun my life fresh. I might have loved and
have been loved in reality. And is it any better as it is? I don't
respect him. He's necessary to me," she thought about her husband, "and
I put up with him. Is that any better? At that time I could still have
been admired, I had beauty left me still," Darya Alexandrovna pursued
her thoughts, and she would have liked to look at herself in the looking
glass. She had a traveling looking glass in her handbag, and she wanted
to take it out; but looking at the backs of the coachman and the swaying
counting house clerk, she felt that she would be ashamed if either of
them were to look round, and she did not take out the glass.

But without looking in the glass, she thought that even now it was not
too late; and she thought of Sergey Ivanovitch, who was always
particularly attentive to her, of Stiva's good-hearted friend,
Turovtsin, who had helped her nurse her children through the scarlatina,
and was in love with her. And there was someone else, a quite young man,
who--her husband had told her it as a joke--thought her more beautiful
than either of her sisters. And the most passionate and impossible
romances rose before Darya Alexandrovna's imagination. "Anna did quite
right, and certainly I shall never reproach her for it. She is happy,
she makes another person happy, and she's not broken down as I am, but
most likely just as she always was, bright, clever, open to every
impression," thought Darya Alexandrovna,--and a sly smile curved her
lips, for, as she pondered on Anna's love affair, Darya Alexandrovna
constructed on parallel lines an almost identical love affair for
herself, with an imaginary composite figure, the ideal man who was in
love with her. She, like Anna, confessed the whole affair to her
husband. And the amazement and perplexity of Stepan Arkadyevitch at this
avowal made her smile.

In such daydreams she reached the turning of the highroad that led to
Vozdvizhenskoe.



Chapter 17


The coachman pulled up his four horses and looked round to the right, to
a field of rye, where some peasants were sitting on a cart. The counting
house clerk was just going to jump down, but on second thoughts he
shouted peremptorily to the peasants instead, and beckoned to them to
come up. The wind, that seemed to blow as they drove, dropped when the
carriage stood still; gadflies settled on the steaming horses that
angrily shook them off. The metallic clank of a whetstone against a
scythe, that came to them from the cart, ceased. One of the peasants got
up and came towards the carriage.

"Well, you are slow!" the counting house clerk shouted angrily to the
peasant who was stepping slowly with his bare feet over the ruts of the
rough dry road. "Come along, do!"

A curly-headed old man with a bit of bast tied round his hair, and his
bent back dark with perspiration, came towards the carriage, quickening
his steps, and took hold of the mud-guard with his sunburnt hand.

"Vozdvizhenskoe, the manor house? the count's?" he repeated; "go on to
the end of this track. Then turn to the left. Straight along the avenue
and you'll come right upon it. But whom do you want? The count himself?"

"Well, are they at home, my good man?" Darya Alexandrovna said vaguely,
not knowing how to ask about Anna, even of this peasant.

"At home for sure," said the peasant, shifting from one bare foot to the
other, and leaving a distinct print of five toes and a heel in the dust.
"Sure to be at home," he repeated, evidently eager to talk. "Only
yesterday visitors arrived. There's a sight of visitors come. What do
you want?" He turned round and called to a lad, who was shouting
something to him from the cart. "Oh! They all rode by here not long
since, to look at a reaping machine. They'll be home by now. And who
will you be belonging to?..."

"We've come a long way," said the coachman, climbing onto the box. "So
it's not far?"

"I tell you, it's just here. As soon as you get out..." he said, keeping
hold all the while of the carriage.

A healthy-looking, broad-shouldered young fellow came up too.

"What, is it laborers they want for the harvest?" he asked.

"I don't know, my boy."

"So you keep to the left, and you'll come right on it," said the
peasant, unmistakably loth to let the travelers go, and eager to
converse.

The coachman started the horses, but they were only just turning off
when the peasant shouted: "Stop! Hi, friend! Stop!" called the two
voices. The coachman stopped.

"They're coming! They're yonder!" shouted the peasant. "See what a
turn-out!" he said, pointing to four persons on horseback, and two in a
_char-a-banc_, coming along the road.

They were Vronsky with a jockey, Veslovsky and Anna on horseback, and
Princess Varvara and Sviazhsky in the _char-a-banc_. They had gone out
to look at the working of a new reaping machine.

When the carriage stopped, the party on horseback were coming at a
walking pace. Anna was in front beside Veslovsky. Anna, quietly walking
her horse, a sturdy English cob with cropped mane and short tail, her
beautiful head with her black hair straying loose under her high hat,
her full shoulders, her slender waist in her black riding habit, and all
the ease and grace of her deportment, impressed Dolly.

For the first minute it seemed to her unsuitable for Anna to be on
horseback. The conception of riding on horseback for a lady was, in
Darya Alexandrovna's mind, associated with ideas of youthful flirtation
and frivolity, which, in her opinion, was unbecoming in Anna's position.
But when she had scrutinized her, seeing her closer, she was at once
reconciled to her riding. In spite of her elegance, everything was so
simple, quiet, and dignified in the attitude, the dress and the
movements of Anna, that nothing could have been more natural.

Beside Anna, on a hot-looking gray cavalry horse, was Vassenka Veslovsky
in his Scotch cap with floating ribbons, his stout legs stretched out in
front, obviously pleased with his own appearance. Darya Alexandrovna
could not suppress a good-humored smile as she recognized him. Behind
rode Vronsky on a dark bay mare, obviously heated from galloping. He was
holding her in, pulling at the reins.

After him rode a little man in the dress of a jockey. Sviazhsky and
Princess Varvara in a new _char-a-banc_ with a big, raven-black trotting
horse, overtook the party on horseback.

Anna's face suddenly beamed with a joyful smile at the instant when, in
the little figure huddled in a corner of the old carriage, she
recognized Dolly. She uttered a cry, started in the saddle, and set her
horse into a gallop. On reaching the carriage she jumped off without
assistance, and holding up her riding habit, she ran up to greet Dolly.

"I thought it was you and dared not think it. How delightful! You can't
fancy how glad I am!" she said, at one moment pressing her face against
Dolly and kissing her, and at the next holding her off and examining her
with a smile.

"Here's a delightful surprise, Alexey!" she said, looking round at
Vronsky, who had dismounted, and was walking towards them.

Vronsky, taking off his tall gray hat, went up to Dolly.

"You wouldn't believe how glad we are to see you," he said, giving
peculiar significance to the words, and showing his strong white teeth
in a smile.

Vassenka Veslovsky, without getting off his horse, took off his cap and
greeted the visitor by gleefully waving the ribbons over his head.

"That's Princess Varvara," Anna said in reply to a glance of inquiry
from Dolly as the _char-a-banc_ drove up.

"Ah!" said Darya Alexandrovna, and unconsciously her face betrayed her
dissatisfaction.

Princess Varvara was her husband's aunt, and she had long known her, and
did not respect her. She knew that Princess Varvara had passed her whole
life toadying on her rich relations, but that she should now be sponging
on Vronsky, a man who was nothing to her, mortified Dolly on account of
her kinship with her husband. Anna noticed Dolly's expression, and was
disconcerted by it. She blushed, dropped her riding habit, and stumbled
over it.

Darya Alexandrovna went up to the _char-a-banc_ and coldly greeted
Princess Varvara. Sviazhsky too she knew. He inquired how his queer
friend with the young wife was, and running his eyes over the
ill-matched horses and the carriage with its patched mud-guards,
proposed to the ladies that they should get into the _char-a-banc_.

"And I'll get into this vehicle," he said. "The horse is quiet, and the
princess drives capitally."

"No, stay as you were," said Anna, coming up, "and we'll go in the
carriage," and taking Dolly's arm, she drew her away.

Darya Alexandrovna's eyes were fairly dazzled by the elegant carriage of
a pattern she had never seen before, the splendid horses, and the
elegant and gorgeous people surrounding her. But what struck her most of
all was the change that had taken place in Anna, whom she knew so well
and loved. Any other woman, a less close observer, not knowing Anna
before, or not having thought as Darya Alexandrovna had been thinking on
the road, would not have noticed anything special in Anna. But now Dolly
was struck by that temporary beauty, which is only found in women during
the moments of love, and which she saw now in Anna's face. Everything in
her face, the clearly marked dimples in her cheeks and chin, the line of
her lips, the smile which, as it were, fluttered about her face, the
brilliance of her eyes, the grace and rapidity of her movements, the
fulness of the notes of her voice, even the manner in which, with a sort
of angry friendliness, she answered Veslovsky when he asked permission
to get on her cob, so as to teach it to gallop with the right leg
foremost--it was all peculiarly fascinating, and it seemed as if she
were herself aware of it, and rejoicing in it.

When both the women were seated in the carriage, a sudden embarrassment
came over both of them. Anna was disconcerted by the intent look of
inquiry Dolly fixed upon her. Dolly was embarrassed because after
Sviazhsky's phrase about "this vehicle," she could not help feeling
ashamed of the dirty old carriage in which Anna was sitting with her.
The coachman Philip and the counting house clerk were experiencing the
same sensation. The counting house clerk, to conceal his confusion,
busied himself settling the ladies, but Philip the coachman became
sullen, and was bracing himself not to be overawed in future by this
external superiority. He smiled ironically, looking at the raven horse,
and was already deciding in his own mind that this smart trotter in the
_char-a-banc_ was only good for _promenade_, and wouldn't do thirty
miles straight off in the heat.

The peasants had all got up from the cart and were inquisitively and
mirthfully staring at the meeting of the friends, making their comments
on it.

"They're pleased, too; haven't seen each other for a long while," said
the curly-headed old man with the bast round his hair.

"I say, Uncle Gerasim, if we could take that raven horse now, to cart
the corn, that 'ud be quick work!"

"Look-ee! Is that a woman in breeches?" said one of them, pointing to
Vassenka Veslovsky sitting in a side saddle.

"Nay, a man! See how smartly he's going it!"

"Eh, lads! seems we're not going to sleep, then?"

"What chance of sleep today!" said the old man, with a sidelong look at
the sun. "Midday's past, look-ee! Get your hooks, and come along!"



Chapter 18


Anna looked at Dolly's thin, care-worn face, with its wrinkles filled
with dust from the road, and she was on the point of saying what she was
thinking, that is, that Dolly had got thinner. But, conscious that she
herself had grown handsomer, and that Dolly's eyes were telling her so,
she sighed and began to speak about herself.

"You are looking at me," she said, "and wondering how I can be happy in
my position? Well! it's shameful to confess, but I ... I'm inexcusably
happy. Something magical has happened to me, like a dream, when you're
frightened, panic-stricken, and all of a sudden you wake up and all the
horrors are no more. I have waked up. I have lived through the misery,
the dread, and now for a long while past, especially since we've been
here, I've been so happy!..." she said, with a timid smile of inquiry
looking at Dolly.

"How glad I am!" said Dolly smiling, involuntarily speaking more coldly
than she wanted to. "I'm very glad for you. Why haven't you written to
me?"

"Why?... Because I hadn't the courage.... You forget my position..."

"To me? Hadn't the courage? If you knew how I ... I look at..."

Darya Alexandrovna wanted to express her thoughts of the morning, but
for some reason it seemed to her now out of place to do so.

"But of that we'll talk later. What's this, what are all these
buildings?" she asked, wanting to change the conversation and pointing
to the red and green roofs that came into view behind the green hedges
of acacia and lilac. "Quite a little town."

But Anna did not answer.

"No, no! How do you look at my position, what do you think of it?" she
asked.

"I consider..." Darya Alexandrovna was beginning, but at that instant
Vassenka Veslovsky, having brought the cob to gallop with the right leg
foremost, galloped past them, bumping heavily up and down in his short
jacket on the chamois leather of the side saddle. "He's doing it, Anna
Arkadyevna!" he shouted.

Anna did not even glance at him; but again it seemed to Darya
Alexandrovna out of place to enter upon such a long conversation in the
carriage, and so she cut short her thought.

"I don't think anything," she said, "but I always loved you, and if one
loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as
one would like them to be...."

Anna, taking her eyes off her friend's face and dropping her eyelids
(this was a new habit Dolly had not seen in her before), pondered,
trying to penetrate the full significance of the words. And obviously
interpreting them as she would have wished, she glanced at Dolly.

"If you had any sins," she said, "they would all be forgiven you for
your coming to see me and these words."

And Dolly saw that tears stood in her eyes. She pressed Anna's hand in
silence.

"Well, what are these buildings? How many there are of them!" After a
moment's silence she repeated her question.

"These are the servants' houses, barns, and stables," answered Anna.
"And there the park begins. It had all gone to ruin, but Alexey had
everything renewed. He is very fond of this place, and, what I never
expected, he has become intensely interested in looking after it. But
his is such a rich nature! Whatever he takes up, he does splendidly. So
far from being bored by it, he works with passionate interest. He--with
his temperament as I know it--he has become careful and businesslike, a
first-rate manager, he positively reckons every penny in his management
of the land. But only in that. When it's a question of tens of
thousands, he doesn't think of money." She spoke with that gleefully sly
smile with which women often talk of the secret characteristics only
known to them--of those they love. "Do you see that big building? that's
the new hospital. I believe it will cost over a hundred thousand; that's
his hobby just now. And do you know how it all came about? The peasants
asked him for some meadowland, I think it was, at a cheaper rate, and he
refused, and I accused him of being miserly. Of course it was not really
because of that, but everything together, he began this hospital to
prove, do you see, that he was not miserly about money. _C'est une
petitesse_, if you like, but I love him all the more for it. And now
you'll see the house in a moment. It was his grandfather's house, and he
has had nothing changed outside."

"How beautiful!" said Dolly, looking with involuntary admiration at the
handsome house with columns, standing out among the different-colored
greens of the old trees in the garden.

"Isn't it fine? And from the house, from the top, the view is
wonderful."

They drove into a courtyard strewn with gravel and bright with flowers,
in which two laborers were at work putting an edging of stones round the
light mould of a flower bed, and drew up in a covered entry.

"Ah, they're here already!" said Anna, looking at the saddle horses,
which were just being led away from the steps. "It is a nice horse,
isn't it? It's my cob; my favorite. Lead him here and bring me some
sugar. Where is the count?" she inquired of two smart footmen who darted
out. "Ah, there he is!" she said, seeing Vronsky coming to meet her with
Veslovsky.

"Where are you going to put the princess?" said Vronsky in French,
addressing Anna, and without waiting for a reply, he once more greeted
Darya Alexandrovna, and this time he kissed her hand. "I think the big
balcony room."

"Oh, no, that's too far off! Better in the corner room, we shall see
each other more. Come, let's go up," said Anna, as she gave her favorite
horse the sugar the footman had brought her.

"_Et vous oubliez votre devoir_," she said to Veslovsky, who came out
too on the steps.

"_Pardon, j'en ai tout plein les poches_," he answered, smiling, putting
his fingers in his waistcoat pocket.

"_Mais vous venez trop tard_," she said, rubbing her handkerchief on her
hand, which the horse had made wet in taking the sugar.

Anna turned to Dolly. "You can stay some time? For one day only? That's
impossible!"

"I promised to be back, and the children..." said Dolly, feeling
embarrassed both because she had to get her bag out of the carriage, and
because she knew her face must be covered with dust.

"No, Dolly, darling!... Well, we'll see. Come along, come along!" and
Anna led Dolly to her room.

That room was not the smart guest chamber Vronsky had suggested, but the
one of which Anna had said that Dolly would excuse it. And this room,
for which excuse was needed, was more full of luxury than any in which
Dolly had ever stayed, a luxury that reminded her of the best hotels
abroad.

"Well, darling, how happy I am!" Anna said, sitting down in her riding
habit for a moment beside Dolly. "Tell me about all of you. Stiva I had
only a glimpse of, and he cannot tell one about the children. How is my
favorite, Tanya? Quite a big girl, I expect?"

"Yes, she's very tall," Darya Alexandrovna answered shortly, surprised
herself that she should respond so coolly about her children. "We are
having a delightful stay at the Levins'," she added.

"Oh, if I had known," said Anna, "that you do not despise me!... You
might have all come to us. Stiva's an old friend and a great friend of
Alexey's, you know," she added, and suddenly she blushed.

"Yes, but we are all..." Dolly answered in confusion.

"But in my delight I'm talking nonsense. The one thing, darling, is that
I am so glad to have you!" said Anna, kissing her again. "You haven't
told me yet how and what you think about me, and I keep wanting to know.
But I'm glad you will see me as I am. The chief thing I shouldn't like
would be for people to imagine I want to prove anything. I don't want to
prove anything; I merely want to live, to do no one harm but myself. I
have the right to do that, haven't I? But it is a big subject, and we'll
talk over everything properly later. Now I'll go and dress and send a
maid to you."



Chapter 19


Left alone, Darya Alexandrovna, with a good housewife's eye, scanned her
room. All she had seen in entering the house and walking through it, and
all she saw now in her room, gave her an impression of wealth and
sumptuousness and of that modern European luxury of which she had only
read in English novels, but had never seen in Russia and in the country.
Everything was new from the new French hangings on the walls to the
carpet which covered the whole floor. The bed had a spring mattress, and
a special sort of bolster and silk pillowcases on the little pillows.
The marble washstand, the dressing table, the little sofa, the tables,
the bronze clock on the chimney piece, the window curtains, and the
_portieres_ were all new and expensive.

The smart maid, who came in to offer her services, with her hair done up
high, and a gown more fashionable than Dolly's, was as new and expensive
as the whole room. Darya Alexandrovna liked her neatness, her
deferential and obliging manners, but she felt ill at ease with her. She
felt ashamed of her seeing the patched dressing jacket that had
unluckily been packed by mistake for her. She was ashamed of the very
patches and darned places of which she had been so proud at home. At
home it had been so clear that for six dressing jackets there would be
needed twenty-four yards of nainsook at sixteen pence the yard, which
was a matter of thirty shillings besides the cutting-out and making, and
these thirty shillings had been saved. But before the maid she felt, if
not exactly ashamed, at least uncomfortable.

Darya Alexandrovna had a great sense of relief when Annushka, whom she
had known for years, walked in. The smart maid was sent for to go to her
mistress, and Annushka remained with Darya Alexandrovna.

Annushka was obviously much pleased at that lady's arrival, and began to
chatter away without a pause. Dolly observed that she was longing to
express her opinion in regard to her mistress's position, especially as
to the love and devotion of the count to Anna Arkadyevna, but Dolly
carefully interrupted her whenever she began to speak about this.

"I grew up with Anna Arkadyevna; my lady's dearer to me than anything.
Well, it's not for us to judge. And, to be sure, there seems so much
love..."

"Kindly pour out the water for me to wash now, please," Darya
Alexandrovna cut her short.

"Certainly. We've two women kept specially for washing small things, but
most of the linen's done by machinery. The count goes into everything
himself. Ah, what a husband!..."

Dolly was glad when Anna came in, and by her entrance put a stop to
Annushka's gossip.

Anna had put on a very simple batiste gown. Dolly scrutinized that
simple gown attentively. She knew what it meant, and the price at which
such simplicity was obtained.

"An old friend," said Anna of Annushka.

Anna was not embarrassed now. She was perfectly composed and at ease.
Dolly saw that she had now completely recovered from the impression her
arrival had made on her, and had assumed that superficial, careless tone
which, as it were, closed the door on that compartment in which her
deeper feelings and ideas were kept.

"Well, Anna, and how is your little girl?" asked Dolly.

"Annie?" (This was what she called her little daughter Anna.) "Very
well. She has got on wonderfully. Would you like to see her? Come, I'll
show her to you. We had a terrible bother," she began telling her, "over
nurses. We had an Italian wet-nurse. A good creature, but so stupid! We
wanted to get rid of her, but the baby is so used to her that we've gone
on keeping her still."

"But how have you managed?..." Dolly was beginning a question as to what
name the little girl would have; but noticing a sudden frown on Anna's
face, she changed the drift of her question.

"How did you manage? have you weaned her yet?"

But Anna had understood.

"You didn't mean to ask that? You meant to ask about her surname. Yes?
That worries Alexey. She has no name--that is, she's a Karenina," said
Anna, dropping her eyelids till nothing could be seen but the eyelashes
meeting. "But we'll talk about all that later," her face suddenly
brightening. "Come, I'll show you her. _Elle est tres gentille_. She
crawls now."

In the nursery the luxury which had impressed Dolly in the whole house
struck her still more. There were little go-carts ordered from England,
and appliances for learning to walk, and a sofa after the fashion of a
billiard table, purposely constructed for crawling, and swings and
baths, all of special pattern, and modern. They were all English, solid,
and of good make, and obviously very expensive. The room was large, and
very light and lofty.

When they went in, the baby, with nothing on but her little smock, was
sitting in a little elbow chair at the table, having her dinner of
broth, which she was spilling all over her little chest. The baby was
being fed, and the Russian nursery maid was evidently sharing her meal.
Neither the wet-nurse nor the head nurse were there; they were in the
next room, from which came the sound of their conversation in the queer
French which was their only means of communication.

Hearing Anna's voice, a smart, tall, English nurse with a disagreeable
face and a dissolute expression walked in at the door, hurriedly shaking
her fair curls, and immediately began to defend herself though Anna had
not found fault with her. At every word Anna said, the English nurse
said hurriedly several times, "Yes, my lady."

The rosy baby with her black eyebrows and hair, her sturdy red little
body with tight goose-flesh skin, delighted Darya Alexandrovna in spite
of the cross expression with which she stared at the stranger. She
positively envied the baby's healthy appearance. She was delighted, too,
at the baby's crawling. Not one of her own children had crawled like
that. When the baby was put on the carpet and its little dress tucked up
behind, it was wonderfully charming. Looking round like some little wild
animal at the grown-up big people with her bright black eyes, she
smiled, unmistakably pleased at their admiring her, and holding her legs
sideways, she pressed vigorously on her arms, and rapidly drew her whole
back up after, and then made another step forward with her little arms.

But the whole atmosphere of the nursery, and especially the English
nurse, Darya Alexandrovna did not like at all. It was only on the
supposition that no good nurse would have entered so irregular a
household as Anna's that Darya Alexandrovna could explain to herself how
Anna with her insight into people could take such an unprepossessing,
disreputable-looking woman as nurse to her child.

Besides, from a few words that were dropped, Darya Alexandrovna saw at
once that Anna, the two nurses, and the child had no common existence,
and that the mother's visit was something exceptional. Anna wanted to
get the baby her plaything, and could not find it.

Most amazing of all was the fact that on being asked how many teeth the
baby had, Anna answered wrong, and knew nothing about the two last
teeth.

"I sometimes feel sorry I'm so superfluous here," said Anna, going out
of the nursery and holding up her skirt so as to escape the plaything
standing in the doorway. "It was very different with my first child."

"I expected it to be the other way," said Darya Alexandrovna shyly.

"Oh, no! By the way, do you know I saw Seryozha?" said Anna, screwing up
her eyes, as though looking at something far away. "But we'll talk about
that later. You wouldn't believe it, I'm like a hungry beggar woman when
a full dinner is set before her, and she does not know what to begin on
first. The dinner is you, and the talks I have before me with you, which
I could never have with anyone else; and I don't know which subject to
begin upon first. _Mais je ne vous ferai grace de rien_. I must have
everything out with you."

"Oh, I ought to give you a sketch of the company you will meet with us,"
she went on. "I'll begin with the ladies. Princess Varvara--you know
her, and I know your opinion and Stiva's about her. Stiva says the whole
aim of her existence is to prove her superiority over Auntie Katerina
Pavlovna: that's all true; but she's a good-natured woman, and I am so
grateful to her. In Petersburg there was a moment when a chaperon was
absolutely essential for me. Then she turned up. But really she is
good-natured. She did a great deal to alleviate my position. I see you
don't understand all the difficulty of my position ... there in
Petersburg," she added. "Here I'm perfectly at ease and happy. Well, of
that later on, though. Then Sviazhsky--he's the marshal of the district,
and he's a very good sort of a man, but he wants to get something out of
Alexey. You understand, with his property, now that we are settled in
the country, Alexey can exercise great influence. Then there's
Tushkevitch--you have seen him, you know--Betsy's admirer. Now he's been
thrown over and he's come to see us. As Alexey says, he's one of those
people who are very pleasant if one accepts them for what they try to
appear to be, _et puis il est comme il faut_, as Princess Varvara says.
Then Veslovsky ... you know him. A very nice boy," she said, and a sly
smile curved her lips. "What's this wild story about him and the Levins?
Veslovsky told Alexey about it, and we don't believe it. _Il est tres
gentil et naif_," she said again with the same smile. "Men need
occupation, and Alexey needs a circle, so I value all these people. We
have to have the house lively and gay, so that Alexey may not long for
any novelty. Then you'll see the steward--a German, a very good fellow,
and he understands his work. Alexey has a very high opinion of him. Then
the doctor, a young man, not quite a Nihilist perhaps, but you know,
eats with his knife ... but a very good doctor. Then the architect....
_Une petite cour!_"



Chapter 20


"Here's Dolly for you, princess, you were so anxious to see her," said
Anna, coming out with Darya Alexandrovna onto the stone terrace where
Princess Varvara was sitting in the shade at an embroidery frame,
working at a cover for Count Alexey Kirillovitch's easy chair. "She says
she doesn't want anything before dinner, but please order some lunch for
her, and I'll go and look for Alexey and bring them all in."

Princess Varvara gave Dolly a cordial and rather patronizing reception,
and began at once explaining to her that she was living with Anna
because she had always cared more for her than her sister Katerina
Pavlovna, the aunt that had brought Anna up, and that now, when every
one had abandoned Anna, she thought it her duty to help her in this most
difficult period of transition.

"Her husband will give her a divorce, and then I shall go back to my
solitude; but now I can be of use, and I am doing my duty, however
difficult it may be for me--not like some other people. And how sweet it
is of you, how right of you to have come! They live like the best of
married couples; it's for God to judge them, not for us. And didn't
Biryuzovsky and Madame Avenieva ... and Sam Nikandrov, and Vassiliev and
Madame Mamonova, and Liza Neptunova... Did no one say anything about
them? And it has ended by their being received by everyone. And then,
_c'est un interieur si joli, si comme il faut. Tout-a-fait a l'anglaise.
On se reunit le matin au breakfast, et puis on se separe._ Everyone does
as he pleases till dinnertime. Dinner at seven o'clock. Stiva did very
rightly to send you. He needs their support. You know that through his
mother and brother he can do anything. And then they do so much good. He
didn't tell you about his hospital? _Ce sera admirable_--everything from
Paris."

Their conversation was interrupted by Anna, who had found the men of the
party in the billiard room, and returned with them to the terrace. There
was still a long time before the dinner-hour, it was exquisite weather,
and so several different methods of spending the next two hours were
proposed. There were very many methods of passing the time at
Vozdvizhenskoe, and these were all unlike those in use at Pokrovskoe.

"_Une partie de lawn-tennis,_" Veslovsky proposed, with his handsome
smile. "We'll be partners again, Anna Arkadyevna."

"No, it's too hot; better stroll about the garden and have a row in the
boat, show Darya Alexandrovna the river banks." Vronsky proposed.

"I agree to anything," said Sviazhsky.

"I imagine that what Dolly would like best would be a stroll--wouldn't
you? And then the boat, perhaps," said Anna.

So it was decided. Veslovsky and Tushkevitch went off to the bathing
place, promising to get the boat ready and to wait there for them.

They walked along the path in two couples, Anna with Sviazhsky, and
Dolly with Vronsky. Dolly was a little embarrassed and anxious in the
new surroundings in which she found herself. Abstractly, theoretically,
she did not merely justify, she positively approved of Anna's conduct.
As is indeed not unfrequent with women of unimpeachable virtue, weary of
the monotony of respectable existence, at a distance she not only
excused illicit love, she positively envied it. Besides, she loved Anna
with all her heart. But seeing Anna in actual life among these
strangers, with this fashionable tone that was so new to Darya
Alexandrovna, she felt ill at ease. What she disliked particularly was
seeing Princess Varvara ready to overlook everything for the sake of the
comforts she enjoyed.

As a general principle, abstractly, Dolly approved of Anna's action; but
to see the man for whose sake her action had been taken was disagreeable
to her. Moreover, she had never liked Vronsky. She thought him very
proud, and saw nothing in him of which he could be proud except his
wealth. But against her own will, here in his own house, he overawed her
more than ever, and she could not be at ease with him. She felt with him
the same feeling she had had with the maid about her dressing jacket.
Just as with the maid she had felt not exactly ashamed, but embarrassed
at her darns, so she felt with him not exactly ashamed, but embarrassed
at herself.

Dolly was ill at ease, and tried to find a subject of conversation. Even
though she supposed that, through his pride, praise of his house and
garden would be sure to be disagreeable to him, she did all the same
tell him how much she liked his house.

"Yes, it's a very fine building, and in the good old-fashioned style,"
he said.

"I like so much the court in front of the steps. Was that always so?"

"Oh, no!" he said, and his face beamed with pleasure. "If you could only
have seen that court last spring!"

And he began, at first rather diffidently, but more and more carried
away by the subject as he went on, to draw her attention to the various
details of the decoration of his house and garden. It was evident that,
having devoted a great deal of trouble to improve and beautify his home,
Vronsky felt a need to show off the improvements to a new person, and
was genuinely delighted at Darya Alexandrovna's praise.

"If you would care to look at the hospital, and are not tired, indeed,
it's not far. Shall we go?" he said, glancing into her face to convince
himself that she was not bored. "Are you coming, Anna?" he turned to
her.

"We will come, won't we?" she said, addressing Sviazhsky. "_Mais il ne
faut pas laisser le pauvre Veslovsky et Tushkevitch se morfondre la dans
le bateau._ We must send and tell them."

"Yes, this is a monument he is setting up here," said Anna, turning to
Dolly with that sly smile of comprehension with which she had previously
talked about the hospital.

"Oh, it's a work of real importance!" said Sviazhsky. But to show he was
not trying to ingratiate himself with Vronsky, he promptly added some
slightly critical remarks.

"I wonder, though, count," he said, "that while you do so much for the
health of the peasants, you take so little interest in the schools."

"_C'est devenu tellement commun les ecoles,_" said Vronsky. "You
understand it's not on that account, but it just happens so, my interest
has been diverted elsewhere. This way then to the hospital," he said to
Darya Alexandrovna, pointing to a turning out of the avenue.

The ladies put up their parasols and turned into the side path. After
going down several turnings, and going through a little gate, Darya
Alexandrovna saw standing on rising ground before her a large
pretentious-looking red building, almost finished. The iron roof, which
was not yet painted, shone with dazzling brightness in the sunshine.
Beside the finished building another had been begun, surrounded by
scaffolding. Workmen in aprons, standing on scaffolds, were laying
bricks, pouring mortar out of vats, and smoothing it with trowels.

"How quickly work gets done with you!" said Sviazhsky. "When I was here
last time the roof was not on."

"By the autumn it will all be ready. Inside almost everything is done,"
said Anna.

"And what's this new building?"

"That's the house for the doctor and the dispensary," answered Vronsky,
seeing the architect in a short jacket coming towards him; and excusing
himself to the ladies, he went to meet him.

Going round a hole where the workmen were slaking lime, he stood still
with the architect and began talking rather warmly.

"The front is still too low," he said to Anna, who had asked what was
the matter.

"I said the foundation ought to be raised," said Anna.

"Yes, of course it would have been much better, Anna Arkadyevna," said
the architect, "but now it's too late."

"Yes, I take a great interest in it," Anna answered Sviazhsky, who was
expressing his surprise at her knowledge of architecture. "This new
building ought to have been in harmony with the hospital. It was an
afterthought, and was begun without a plan."

Vronsky, having finished his talk with the architect, joined the ladies,
and led them inside the hospital.

Although they were still at work on the cornices outside and were
painting on the ground floor, upstairs almost all the rooms were
finished. Going up the broad cast-iron staircase to the landing, they
walked into the first large room. The walls were stuccoed to look like
marble, the huge plate-glass windows were already in, only the parquet
floor was not yet finished, and the carpenters, who were planing a block
of it, left their work, taking off the bands that fastened their hair,
to greet the gentry.

"This is the reception room," said Vronsky. "Here there will be a desk,
tables, and benches, and nothing more."

"This way; let us go in here. Don't go near the window," said Anna,
trying the paint to see if it were dry. "Alexey, the paint's dry
already," she added.

From the reception room they went into the corridor. Here Vronsky showed
them the mechanism for ventilation on a novel system. Then he showed
them marble baths, and beds with extraordinary springs. Then he showed
them the wards one after another, the storeroom, the linen room, then
the heating stove of a new pattern, then the trolleys, which would make
no noise as they carried everything needed along the corridors, and many
other things. Sviazhsky, as a connoisseur in the latest mechanical
improvements, appreciated everything fully. Dolly simply wondered at all
she had not seen before, and, anxious to understand it all, made minute
inquiries about everything, which gave Vronsky great satisfaction.

"Yes, I imagine that this will be the solitary example of a properly
fitted hospital in Russia," said Sviazhsky.

"And won't you have a lying-in ward?" asked Dolly. "That's so much
needed in the country. I have often..."

In spite of his usual courtesy, Vronsky interrupted her.

"This is not a lying-in home, but a hospital for the sick, and is
intended for all diseases, except infectious complaints," he said. "Ah!
look at this," and he rolled up to Darya Alexandrovna an invalid chair
that had just been ordered for the convalescents. "Look." He sat down in
the chair and began moving it. "The patient can't walk--still too weak,
perhaps, or something wrong with his legs, but he must have air, and he
moves, rolls himself along...."

Darya Alexandrovna was interested by everything. She liked everything
very much, but most of all she liked Vronsky himself with his natural,
simple-hearted eagerness. "Yes, he's a very nice, good man," she thought
several times, not hearing what he said, but looking at him and
penetrating into his expression, while she mentally put herself in
Anna's place. She liked him so much just now with his eager interest
that she saw how Anna could be in love with him.



Chapter 21


"No, I think the princess is tired, and horses don't interest her,"
Vronsky said to Anna, who wanted to go on to the stables, where
Sviazhsky wished to see the new stallion. "You go on, while I escort the
princess home, and we'll have a little talk," he said, "if you would
like that?" he added, turning to her.

"I know nothing about horses, and I shall be delighted," answered Darya
Alexandrovna, rather astonished.

She saw by Vronsky's face that he wanted something from her. She was not
mistaken. As soon as they had passed through the little gate back into
the garden, he looked in the direction Anna had taken, and having made
sure that she could neither hear nor see them, he began:

"You guess that I have something I want to say to you," he said, looking
at her with laughing eyes. "I am not wrong in believing you to be a
friend of Anna's." He took off his hat, and taking out his handkerchief,
wiped his head, which was growing bald.

Darya Alexandrovna made no answer, and merely stared at him with dismay.
When she was left alone with him, she suddenly felt afraid; his laughing
eyes and stern expression scared her.

The most diverse suppositions as to what he was about to speak of to her
flashed into her brain. "He is going to beg me to come to stay with them
with the children, and I shall have to refuse; or to create a set that
will receive Anna in Moscow.... Or isn't it Vassenka Veslovsky and his
relations with Anna? Or perhaps about Kitty, that he feels he was to
blame?" All her conjectures were unpleasant, but she did not guess what
he really wanted to talk about to her.

"You have so much influence with Anna, she is so fond of you," he said;
"do help me."

Darya Alexandrovna looked with timid inquiry into his energetic face,
which under the lime-trees was continually being lighted up in patches
by the sunshine, and then passing into complete shadow again. She waited
for him to say more, but he walked in silence beside her, scratching
with his cane in the gravel.

"You have come to see us, you, the only woman of Anna's former
friends--I don't count Princess Varvara--but I know that you have done
this not because you regard our position as normal, but because,
understanding all the difficulty of the position, you still love her and
want to be a help to her. Have I understood you rightly?" he asked,
looking round at her.

"Oh, yes," answered Darya Alexandrovna, putting down her sunshade,
"but..."

"No," he broke in, and unconsciously, oblivious of the awkward position
into which he was putting his companion, he stopped abruptly, so that
she had to stop short too. "No one feels more deeply and intensely than
I do all the difficulty of Anna's position; and that you may well
understand, if you do me the honor of supposing I have any heart. I am
to blame for that position, and that is why I feel it."

"I understand," said Darya Alexandrovna, involuntarily admiring the
sincerity and firmness with which he said this. "But just because you
feel yourself responsible, you exaggerate it, I am afraid," she said.
"Her position in the world is difficult, I can well understand."

"In the world it is hell!" he brought out quickly, frowning darkly. "You
can't imagine moral sufferings greater than what she went through in
Petersburg in that fortnight ... and I beg you to believe it."

"Yes, but here, so long as neither Anna ... nor you miss society..."

"Society!" he said contemptuously, "how could I miss society?"

"So far--and it may be so always--you are happy and at peace. I see in
Anna that she is happy, perfectly happy, she has had time to tell me so
much already," said Darya Alexandrovna, smiling; and involuntarily, as
she said this, at the same moment a doubt entered her mind whether Anna
really were happy.

But Vronsky, it appeared, had no doubts on that score.

"Yes, yes," he said, "I know that she has revived after all her
sufferings; she is happy. She is happy in the present. But I?... I am
afraid of what is before us ... I beg your pardon, you would like to
walk on?"

"No, I don't mind."

"Well, then, let us sit here."

Darya Alexandrovna sat down on a garden seat in a corner of the avenue.
He stood up facing her.

"I see that she is happy," he repeated, and the doubt whether she were
happy sank more deeply into Darya Alexandrovna's mind. "But can it last?
Whether we have acted rightly or wrongly is another question, but the
die is cast," he said, passing from Russian to French, "and we are bound
together for life. We are united by all the ties of love that we hold
most sacred. We have a child, we may have other children. But the law
and all the conditions of our position are such that thousands of
complications arise which she does not see and does not want to see. And
that one can well understand. But I can't help seeing them. My daughter
is by law not my daughter, but Karenin's. I cannot bear this falsity!"
he said, with a vigorous gesture of refusal, and he looked with gloomy
inquiry towards Darya Alexandrovna.

She made no answer, but simply gazed at him. He went on:

"One day a son may be born, my son, and he will be legally a Karenin; he
will not be the heir of my name nor of my property, and however happy we
may be in our home life and however many children we may have, there
will be no real tie between us. They will be Karenins. You can
understand the bitterness and horror of this position! I have tried to
speak of this to Anna. It irritates her. She does not understand, and to
her I cannot speak plainly of all this. Now look at another side. I am
happy, happy in her love, but I must have occupation. I have found
occupation, and am proud of what I am doing and consider it nobler than
the pursuits of my former companions at court and in the army. And most
certainly I would not change the work I am doing for theirs. I am
working here, settled in my own place, and I am happy and contented, and
we need nothing more to make us happy. I love my work here. _Ce n'est
pas un pis-aller,_ on the contrary..."

Darya Alexandrovna noticed that at this point in his explanation he grew
confused, and she did not quite understand this digression, but she felt
that having once begun to speak of matters near his heart, of which he
could not speak to Anna, he was now making a clean breast of everything,
and that the question of his pursuits in the country fell into the same
category of matters near his heart, as the question of his relations
with Anna.

"Well, I will go on," he said, collecting himself. "The great thing is
that as I work I want to have a conviction that what I am doing will not
die with me, that I shall have heirs to come after me,--and this I have
not. Conceive the position of a man who knows that his children, the
children of the woman he loves, will not be his, but will belong to
someone who hates them and cares nothing about them! It is awful!"

He paused, evidently much moved.

"Yes, indeed, I see that. But what can Anna do?" queried Darya
Alexandrovna.

"Yes, that brings me to the object of my conversation," he said, calming
himself with an effort. "Anna can, it depends on her.... Even to
petition the Tsar for legitimization, a divorce is essential. And that
depends on Anna. Her husband agreed to a divorce--at that time your
husband had arranged it completely. And now, I know, he would not refuse
it. It is only a matter of writing to him. He said plainly at that time
that if she expressed the desire, he would not refuse. Of course," he
said gloomily, "it is one of those Pharisaical cruelties of which only
such heartless men are capable. He knows what agony any recollection of
him must give her, and knowing her, he must have a letter from her. I
can understand that it is agony to her. But the matter is of such
importance, that one must _passer pardessus toutes ces finesses de
sentiment. Il y va du bonheur et de l'existence d'Anne et de ses
enfants._ I won't speak of myself, though it's hard for me, very hard,"
he said, with an expression as though he were threatening someone for
its being hard for him. "And so it is, princess, that I am shamelessly
clutching at you as an anchor of salvation. Help me to persuade her to
write to him and ask for a divorce."

"Yes, of course," Darya Alexandrovna said dreamily, as she vividly
recalled her last interview with Alexey Alexandrovitch. "Yes, of
course," she repeated with decision, thinking of Anna.

"Use your influence with her, make her write. I don't like--I'm almost
unable to speak about this to her."

"Very well, I will talk to her. But how is it she does not think of it
herself?" said Darya Alexandrovna, and for some reason she suddenly at
that point recalled Anna's strange new habit of half-closing her eyes.
And she remembered that Anna drooped her eyelids just when the deeper
questions of life were touched upon. "Just as though she half-shut her
eyes to her own life, so as not to see everything," thought Dolly. "Yes,
indeed, for my own sake and for hers I will talk to her," Dolly said in
reply to his look of gratitude.

They got up and walked to the house.



Chapter 22


When Anna found Dolly at home before her, she looked intently in her
eyes, as though questioning her about the talk she had had with Vronsky,
but she made no inquiry in words.

"I believe it's dinner time," she said. "We've not seen each other at
all yet. I am reckoning on the evening. Now I want to go and dress. I
expect you do too; we all got splashed at the buildings."

Dolly went to her room and she felt amused. To change her dress was
impossible, for she had already put on her best dress. But in order to
signify in some way her preparation for dinner, she asked the maid to
brush her dress, changed her cuffs and tie, and put some lace on her
head.

"This is all I can do," she said with a smile to Anna, who came in to
her in a third dress, again of extreme simplicity.

"Yes, we are too formal here," she said, as it were apologizing for her
magnificence. "Alexey is delighted at your visit, as he rarely is at
anything. He has completely lost his heart to you," she added. "You're
not tired?"

There was no time for talking about anything before dinner. Going into
the drawing room they found Princess Varvara already there, and the
gentlemen of the party in black frock-coats. The architect wore a
swallow-tail coat. Vronsky presented the doctor and the steward to his
guest. The architect he had already introduced to her at the hospital.

A stout butler, resplendent with a smoothly shaven round chin and a
starched white cravat, announced that dinner was ready, and the ladies
got up. Vronsky asked Sviazhsky to take in Anna Arkadyevna, and himself
offered his arm to Dolly. Veslovsky was before Tushkevitch in offering
his arm to Princess Varvara, so that Tushkevitch with the steward and
the doctor walked in alone.

The dinner, the dining room, the service, the waiting at table, the
wine, and the food, were not simply in keeping with the general tone of
modern luxury throughout all the house, but seemed even more sumptuous
and modern. Darya Alexandrovna watched this luxury which was novel to
her, and as a good housekeeper used to managing a household--although
she never dreamed of adapting anything she saw to her own household, as
it was all in a style of luxury far above her own manner of living--she
could not help scrutinizing every detail, and wondering how and by whom
it was all done. Vassenka Veslovsky, her husband, and even Sviazhsky,
and many other people she knew, would never have considered this
question, and would have readily believed what every well-bred host
tries to make his guests feel, that is, that all that is well-ordered in
his house has cost him, the host, no trouble whatever, but comes of
itself. Darya Alexandrovna was well aware that even porridge for the
children's breakfast does not come of itself, and that therefore, where
so complicated and magnificent a style of luxury was maintained, someone
must give earnest attention to its organization. And from the glance
with which Alexey Kirillovitch scanned the table, from the way he nodded
to the butler, and offered Darya Alexandrovna her choice between cold
soup and hot soup, she saw that it was all organized and maintained by
the care of the master of the house himself. It was evident that it all
rested no more upon Anna than upon Veslovsky. She, Sviazhsky, the
princess, and Veslovsky, were equally guests, with light hearts enjoying
what had been arranged for them.

Anna was the hostess only in conducting the conversation. The
conversation was a difficult one for the lady of the house at a small
table with persons present, like the steward and the architect,
belonging to a completely different world, struggling not to be overawed
by an elegance to which they were unaccustomed, and unable to sustain a
large share in the general conversation. But this difficult conversation
Anna directed with her usual tact and naturalness, and indeed she did so
with actual enjoyment, as Darya Alexandrovna observed. The conversation
began about the row Tushkevitch and Veslovsky had taken alone together
in the boat, and Tushkevitch began describing the last boat races in
Petersburg at the Yacht Club. But Anna, seizing the first pause, at once
turned to the architect to draw him out of his silence.

"Nikolay Ivanitch was struck," she said, meaning Sviazhsky, "at the
progress the new building had made since he was here last; but I am
there every day, and every day I wonder at the rate at which it grows."

"It's first-rate working with his excellency," said the architect with a
smile (he was respectful and composed, though with a sense of his own
dignity). "It's a very different matter to have to do with the district
authorities. Where one would have to write out sheaves of papers, here I
call upon the count, and in three words we settle the business."

"The American way of doing business," said Sviazhsky, with a smile.

"Yes, there they build in a rational fashion..."

The conversation passed to the misuse of political power in the United
States, but Anna quickly brought it round to another topic, so as to
draw the steward into talk.

"Have you ever seen a reaping machine?" she said, addressing Darya
Alexandrovna. "We had just ridden over to look at one when we met. It's
the first time I ever saw one."

"How do they work?" asked Dolly.

"Exactly like little scissors. A plank and a lot of little scissors.
Like this."

Anna took a knife and fork in her beautiful white hands covered with
rings, and began showing how the machine worked. It was clear that she
saw nothing would be understood from her explanation; but aware that her
talk was pleasant and her hands beautiful she went on explaining.

"More like little penknives," Veslovsky said playfully, never taking his
eyes off her.

Anna gave a just perceptible smile, but made no answer. "Isn't it true,
Karl Fedoritch, that it's just like little scissors?" she said to the
steward.

"_Oh, ja,_" answered the German. _"Es ist ein ganz einfaches Ding,"_ and
he began to explain the construction of the machine.

"It's a pity it doesn't bind too. I saw one at the Vienna exhibition,
which binds with a wire," said Sviazhsky. "They would be more profitable
in use."

_"Es kommt drauf an.... Der Preis vom Draht muss ausgerechnet werden."_
And the German, roused from his taciturnity, turned to Vronsky. _"Das
laesst sich ausrechnen, Erlaucht."_ The German was just feeling in the
pocket where were his pencil and the notebook he always wrote in, but
recollecting that he was at a dinner, and observing Vronsky's chilly
glance, he checked himself. _"Zu compliziert, macht zu viel Klopot,"_ he
concluded.

_"Wuenscht man Dochots, so hat man auch Klopots,"_ said Vassenka
Veslovsky, mimicking the German. _"J'adore l'allemand,"_ he addressed
Anna again with the same smile.

_"Cessez,"_ she said with playful severity.

"We expected to find you in the fields, Vassily Semyonitch," she said to
the doctor, a sickly-looking man; "have you been there?"

"I went there, but I had taken flight," the doctor answered with gloomy
jocoseness.

"Then you've taken a good constitutional?"

"Splendid!"

"Well, and how was the old woman? I hope it's not typhus?"

"Typhus it is not, but it's taking a bad turn."

"What a pity!" said Anna, and having thus paid the dues of civility to
her domestic circle, she turned to her own friends.

"It would be a hard task, though, to construct a machine from your
description, Anna Arkadyevna," Sviazhsky said jestingly.

"Oh, no, why so?" said Anna with a smile that betrayed that she knew
there was something charming in her disquisitions upon the machine that
had been noticed by Sviazhsky. This new trait of girlish coquettishness
made an unpleasant impression on Dolly.

"But Anna Arkadyevna's knowledge of architecture is marvelous," said
Tushkevitch.

"To be sure, I heard Anna Arkadyevna talking yesterday about plinths and
damp-courses," said Veslovsky. "Have I got it right?"

"There's nothing marvelous about it, when one sees and hears so much of
it," said Anna. "But, I dare say, you don't even know what houses are
made of?"

Darya Alexandrovna saw that Anna disliked the tone of raillery that
existed between her and Veslovsky, but fell in with it against her will.

Vronsky acted in this matter quite differently from Levin. He obviously
attached no significance to Veslovsky's chattering; on the contrary, he
encouraged his jests.

"Come now, tell us, Veslovsky, how are the stones held together?"

"By cement, of course."

"Bravo! And what is cement?"

"Oh, some sort of paste ... no, putty," said Veslovsky, raising a
general laugh.

The company at dinner, with the exception of the doctor, the architect,
and the steward, who remained plunged in gloomy silence, kept up a
conversation that never paused, glancing off one subject, fastening on
another, and at times stinging one or the other to the quick. Once Darya
Alexandrovna felt wounded to the quick, and got so hot that she
positively flushed and wondered afterwards whether she had said anything
extreme or unpleasant. Sviazhsky began talking of Levin, describing his
strange view that machinery is simply pernicious in its effects on
Russian agriculture.

"I have not the pleasure of knowing this M. Levin," Vronsky said,
smiling, "but most likely he has never seen the machines he condemns; or
if he has seen and tried any, it must have been after a queer fashion,
some Russian imitation, not a machine from abroad. What sort of views
can anyone have on such a subject?"

"Turkish views, in general," Veslovsky said, turning to Anna with a
smile.

"I can't defend his opinions," Darya Alexandrovna said, firing up; "but
I can say that he's a highly cultivated man, and if he were here he
would know very well how to answer you, though I am not capable of doing
so."

"I like him extremely, and we are great friends," Sviazhsky said,
smiling good-naturedly. "_Mais pardon, il est un petit peu toque;_ he
maintains, for instance, that district councils and arbitration boards
are all of no use, and he is unwilling to take part in anything."

"It's our Russian apathy," said Vronsky, pouring water from an iced
decanter into a delicate glass on a high stem; "we've no sense of the
duties our privileges impose upon us, and so we refuse to recognize
these duties."

"I know no man more strict in the performance of his duties," said Darya
Alexandrovna, irritated by Vronsky's tone of superiority.

"For my part," pursued Vronsky, who was evidently for some reason or
other keenly affected by this conversation, "such as I am, I am, on the
contrary, extremely grateful for the honor they have done me, thanks to
Nikolay Ivanitch" (he indicated Sviazhsky), "in electing me a justice of
the peace. I consider that for me the duty of being present at the
session, of judging some peasants' quarrel about a horse, is as
important as anything I can do. And I shall regard it as an honor if
they elect me for the district council. It's only in that way I can pay
for the advantages I enjoy as a landowner. Unluckily they don't
understand the weight that the big landowners ought to have in the
state."

It was strange to Darya Alexandrovna to hear how serenely confident he
was of being right at his own table. She thought how Levin, who believed
the opposite, was just as positive in his opinions at his own table. But
she loved Levin, and so she was on his side.

"So we can reckon upon you, count, for the coming elections?" said
Sviazhsky. "But you must come a little beforehand, so as to be on the
spot by the eighth. If you would do me the honor to stop with me."

"I rather agree with your beau-frere," said Anna, "though not quite on
the same ground as he," she added with a smile. "I'm afraid that we have
too many of these public duties in these latter days. Just as in old
days there were so many government functionaries that one had to call in
a functionary for every single thing, so now everyone's doing some sort
of public duty. Alexey has been here now six months, and he's a member,
I do believe, of five or six different public bodies. _Du train que cela
va,_ the whole time will be wasted on it. And I'm afraid that with such
a multiplicity of these bodies, they'll end in being a mere form. How
many are you a member of, Nikolay Ivanitch?" she turned to
Sviazhsky--"over twenty, I fancy."

Anna spoke lightly, but irritation could be discerned in her tone. Darya
Alexandrovna, watching Anna and Vronsky attentively, detected it
instantly. She noticed, too, that as she spoke Vronsky's face had
immediately taken a serious and obstinate expression. Noticing this, and
that Princess Varvara at once made haste to change the conversation by
talking of Petersburg acquaintances, and remembering what Vronsky had
without apparent connection said in the garden of his work in the
country, Dolly surmised that this question of public activity was
connected with some deep private disagreement between Anna and Vronsky.

The dinner, the wine, the decoration of the table were all very good;
but it was all like what Darya Alexandrovna had seen at formal dinners
and balls which of late years had become quite unfamiliar to her; it all
had the same impersonal and constrained character, and so on an ordinary
day and in a little circle of friends it made a disagreeable impression
on her.

After dinner they sat on the terrace, then they proceeded to play lawn
tennis. The players, divided into two parties, stood on opposite sides
of a tightly drawn net with gilt poles on the carefully leveled and
rolled croquet-ground. Darya Alexandrovna made an attempt to play, but
it was a long time before she could understand the game, and by the time
she did understand it, she was so tired that she sat down with Princess
Varvara and simply looked on at the players. Her partner, Tushkevitch,
gave up playing too, but the others kept the game up for a long time.
Sviazhsky and Vronsky both played very well and seriously. They kept a
sharp lookout on the balls served to them, and without haste or getting
in each other's way, they ran adroitly up to them, waited for the
rebound, and neatly and accurately returned them over the net. Veslovsky
played worse than the others. He was too eager, but he kept the players
lively with his high spirits. His laughter and outcries never paused.
Like the other men of the party, with the ladies' permission, he took
off his coat, and his solid, comely figure in his white shirt-sleeves,
with his red perspiring face and his impulsive movements, made a picture
that imprinted itself vividly on the memory.

When Darya Alexandrovna lay in bed that night, as soon as she closed her
eyes, she saw Vassenka Veslovsky flying about the croquet ground.

During the game Darya Alexandrovna was not enjoying herself. She did not
like the light tone of raillery that was kept up all the time between
Vassenka Veslovsky and Anna, and the unnaturalness altogether of
grown-up people, all alone without children, playing at a child's game.
But to avoid breaking up the party and to get through the time somehow,
after a rest she joined the game again, and pretended to be enjoying it.
All that day it seemed to her as though she were acting in a theater
with actors cleverer than she, and that her bad acting was spoiling the
whole performance. She had come with the intention of staying two days,
if all went well. But in the evening, during the game, she made up her
mind that she would go home next day. The maternal cares and worries,
which she had so hated on the way, now, after a day spent without them,
struck her in quite another light, and tempted her back to them.

When, after evening tea and a row by night in the boat, Darya
Alexandrovna went alone to her room, took off her dress, and began
arranging her thin hair for the night, she had a great sense of relief.

It was positively disagreeable to her to think that Anna was coming to
see her immediately. She longed to be alone with her own thoughts.



Chapter 23


Dolly was wanting to go to bed when Anna came in to see her, attired for
the night. In the course of the day Anna had several times begun to
speak of matters near her heart, and every time after a few words she
had stopped: "Afterwards, by ourselves, we'll talk about everything.
I've got so much I want to tell you," she said.

Now they were by themselves, and Anna did not know what to talk about.
She sat in the window looking at Dolly, and going over in her own mind
all the stores of intimate talk which had seemed so inexhaustible
beforehand, and she found nothing. At that moment it seemed to her that
everything had been said already.

"Well, what of Kitty?" she said with a heavy sigh, looking penitently at
Dolly. "Tell me the truth, Dolly: isn't she angry with me?"

"Angry? Oh, no!" said Darya Alexandrovna, smiling.

"But she hates me, despises me?"

"Oh, no! But you know that sort of thing isn't forgiven."

"Yes, yes," said Anna, turning away and looking out of the open window.
"But I was not to blame. And who is to blame? What's the meaning of
being to blame? Could it have been otherwise? What do you think? Could
it possibly have happened that you didn't become the wife of Stiva?"

"Really, I don't know. But this is what I want you to tell me..."

"Yes, yes, but we've not finished about Kitty. Is she happy? He's a very
nice man, they say."

"He's much more than very nice. I don't know a better man."

"Ah, how glad I am! I'm so glad! Much more than very nice," she
repeated.

Dolly smiled.

"But tell me about yourself. We've a great deal to talk about. And I've
had a talk with..." Dolly did not know what to call him. She felt it
awkward to call him either the count or Alexey Kirillovitch.

"With Alexey," said Anna, "I know what you talked about. But I wanted to
ask you directly what you think of me, of my life?"

"How am I to say like that straight off? I really don't know."

"No, tell me all the same.... You see my life. But you mustn't forget
that you're seeing us in the summer, when you have come to us and we are
not alone.... But we came here early in the spring, lived quite alone,
and shall be alone again, and I desire nothing better. But imagine me
living alone without him, alone, and that will be ... I see by
everything that it will often be repeated, that he will be half the time
away from home," she said, getting up and sitting down close by Dolly.

"Of course," she interrupted Dolly, who would have answered, "of course
I won't try to keep him by force. I don't keep him indeed. The races are
just coming, his horses are running, he will go. I'm very glad. But
think of me, fancy my position.... But what's the use of talking about
it?" She smiled. "Well, what did he talk about with you?"

"He spoke of what I want to speak about of myself, and it's easy for me
to be his advocate; of whether there is not a possibility ... whether
you could not..." (Darya Alexandrovna hesitated) "correct, improve your
position.... You know how I look at it.... But all the same, if
possible, you should get married...."

"Divorce, you mean?" said Anna. "Do you know, the only woman who came to
see me in Petersburg was Betsy Tverskaya? You know her, of course? _Au
fond, c'est la femme la plus depravee qui existe._ She had an intrigue
with Tushkevitch, deceiving her husband in the basest way. And she told
me that she did not care to know me so long as my position was
irregular. Don't imagine I would compare ... I know you, darling. But I
could not help remembering.... Well, so what did he say to you?" she
repeated.

"He said that he was unhappy on your account and his own. Perhaps you
will say that it's egoism, but what a legitimate and noble egoism. He
wants first of all to legitimize his daughter, and to be your husband,
to have a legal right to you."

"What wife, what slave can be so utterly a slave as I, in my position?"
she put in gloomily.

"The chief thing he desires ... he desires that you should not suffer."

"That's impossible. Well?"

"Well, and the most legitimate desire--he wishes that your children
should have a name."

"What children?" Anna said, not looking at Dolly, and half closing her
eyes.

"Annie and those to come..."

"He need not trouble on that score; I shall have no more children."

"How can you tell that you won't?"

"I shall not, because I don't wish it." And, in spite of all her
emotion, Anna smiled, as she caught the naive expression of curiosity,
wonder, and horror on Dolly's face.

"The doctor told me after my illness..."

"Impossible!" said Dolly, opening her eyes wide.

For her this was one of those discoveries the consequences and
deductions from which are so immense that all that one feels for the
first instant is that it is impossible to take it all in, and that one
will have to reflect a great, great deal upon it.

This discovery, suddenly throwing light on all those families of one or
two children, which had hitherto been so incomprehensible to her,
aroused so many ideas, reflections, and contradictory emotions, that she
had nothing to say, and simply gazed with wide-open eyes of wonder at
Anna. This was the very thing she had been dreaming of, but now learning
that it was possible, she was horrified. She felt that it was too simple
a solution of too complicated a problem.

_"N'est-ce pas immoral?"_ was all she said, after a brief pause.

"Why so? Think, I have a choice between two alternatives: either to be
with child, that is an invalid, or to be the friend and companion of my
husband--practically my husband," Anna said in a tone intentionally
superficial and frivolous.

"Yes, yes," said Darya Alexandrovna, hearing the very arguments she had
used to herself, and not finding the same force in them as before.

"For you, for other people," said Anna, as though divining her thoughts,
"there may be reason to hesitate; but for me.... You must consider, I am
not his wife; he loves me as long as he loves me. And how am I to keep
his love? Not like this!"

She moved her white hands in a curve before her waist with extraordinary
rapidity, as happens during moments of excitement; ideas and memories
rushed into Darya Alexandrovna's head. "I," she thought, "did not keep
my attraction for Stiva; he left me for others, and the first woman for
whom he betrayed me did not keep him by being always pretty and lively.
He deserted her and took another. And can Anna attract and keep Count
Vronsky in that way? If that is what he looks for, he will find dresses
and manners still more attractive and charming. And however white and
beautiful her bare arms are, however beautiful her full figure and her
eager face under her black curls, he will find something better still,
just as my disgusting, pitiful, and charming husband does."

Dolly made no answer, she merely sighed. Anna noticed this sigh,
indicating dissent, and she went on. In her armory she had other
arguments so strong that no answer could be made to them.

"Do you say that it's not right? But you must consider," she went on;
"you forget my position. How can I desire children? I'm not speaking of
the suffering, I'm not afraid of that. Think only, what are my children
to be? Ill-fated children, who will have to bear a stranger's name. For
the very fact of their birth they will be forced to be ashamed of their
mother, their father, their birth."

"But that is just why a divorce is necessary." But Anna did not hear
her. She longed to give utterance to all the arguments with which she
had so many times convinced herself.

"What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing
unhappy beings into the world!" She looked at Dolly, but without waiting
for a reply she went on:

"I should always feel I had wronged these unhappy children," she said.
"If they are not, at any rate they are not unhappy; while if they are
unhappy, I alone should be to blame for it."

These were the very arguments Darya Alexandrovna had used in her own
reflections; but she heard them without understanding them. "How can one
wrong creatures that don't exist?" she thought. And all at once the idea
struck her: could it possibly, under any circumstances, have been better
for her favorite Grisha if he had never existed? And this seemed to her
so wild, so strange, that she shook her head to drive away this tangle
of whirling, mad ideas.

"No, I don't know; it's not right," was all she said, with an expression
of disgust on her face.

"Yes, but you mustn't forget that you and I.... And besides that," added
Anna, in spite of the wealth of her arguments and the poverty of Dolly's
objections, seeming still to admit that it was not right, "don't forget
the chief point, that I am not now in the same position as you. For you
the question is: do you desire not to have any more children; while for
me it is: do I desire to have them? And that's a great difference. You
must see that I can't desire it in my position."

Darya Alexandrovna made no reply. She suddenly felt that she had got far
away from Anna; that there lay between them a barrier of questions on
which they could never agree, and about which it was better not to
speak.



Chapter 24


"Then there is all the more reason for you to legalize your position, if
possible," said Dolly.

"Yes, if possible," said Anna, speaking all at once in an utterly
different tone, subdued and mournful.

"Surely you don't mean a divorce is impossible? I was told your husband
had consented to it."

"Dolly, I don't want to talk about that."

"Oh, we won't then," Darya Alexandrovna hastened to say, noticing the
expression of suffering on Anna's face. "All I see is that you take too
gloomy a view of things."

"I? Not at all! I'm always bright and happy. You see, _je fais des
passions._ Veslovsky..."

"Yes, to tell the truth, I don't like Veslovsky's tone," said Darya
Alexandrovna, anxious to change the subject.

"Oh, that's nonsense! It amuses Alexey, and that's all; but he's a boy,
and quite under my control. You know, I turn him as I please. It's just
as it might be with your Grisha.... Dolly!"--she suddenly changed the
subject--"you say I take too gloomy a view of things. You can't
understand. It's too awful! I try not to take any view of it at all."

"But I think you ought to. You ought to do all you can."

"But what can I do? Nothing. You tell me to marry Alexey, and say I
don't think about it. I don't think about it!" she repeated, and a flush
rose into her face. She got up, straightening her chest, and sighed
heavily. With her light step she began pacing up and down the room,
stopping now and then. "I don't think of it? Not a day, not an hour
passes that I don't think of it, and blame myself for thinking of it ...
because thinking of that may drive me mad. Drive me mad!" she repeated.
"When I think of it, I can't sleep without morphine. But never mind. Let
us talk quietly. They tell me, divorce. In the first place, he won't
give me a divorce. He's under the influence of Countess Lidia Ivanovna
now."

Darya Alexandrovna, sitting erect on a chair, turned her head, following
Anna with a face of sympathetic suffering.

"You ought to make the attempt," she said softly.

"Suppose I make the attempt. What does it mean?" she said, evidently
giving utterance to a thought, a thousand times thought over and learned
by heart. "It means that I, hating him, but still recognizing that I
have wronged him--and I consider him magnanimous--that I humiliate
myself to write to him.... Well, suppose I make the effort; I do it.
Either I receive a humiliating refusal or consent.... Well, I have
received his consent, say..." Anna was at that moment at the furthest
end of the room, and she stopped there, doing something to the curtain
at the window. "I receive his consent, but my ... my son? They won't
give him up to me. He will grow up despising me, with his father, whom
I've abandoned. Do you see, I love ... equally, I think, but both more
than myself--two creatures, Seryozha and Alexey."

She came out into the middle of the room and stood facing Dolly, with
her arms pressed tightly across her chest. In her white dressing gown
her figure seemed more than usually grand and broad. She bent her head,
and with shining, wet eyes looked from under her brows at Dolly, a thin
little pitiful figure in her patched dressing jacket and nightcap,
shaking all over with emotion.

"It is only those two creatures that I love, and one excludes the other.
I can't have them together, and that's the only thing I want. And since
I can't have that, I don't care about the rest. I don't care about
anything, anything. And it will end one way or another, and so I can't,
I don't like to talk of it. So don't blame me, don't judge me for
anything. You can't with your pure heart understand all that I'm
suffering." She went up, sat down beside Dolly, and with a guilty look,
peeped into her face and took her hand.

"What are you thinking? What are you thinking about me? Don't despise
me. I don't deserve contempt. I'm simply unhappy. If anyone is unhappy,
I am," she articulated, and turning away, she burst into tears.

Left alone, Darya Alexandrovna said her prayers and went to bed. She had
felt for Anna with all her heart while she was speaking to her, but now
she could not force herself to think of her. The memories of home and of
her children rose up in her imagination with a peculiar charm quite new
to her, with a sort of new brilliance. That world of her own seemed to
her now so sweet and precious that she would not on any account spend an
extra day outside it, and she made up her mind that she would certainly
go back next day.

Anna meantime went back to her boudoir, took a wine glass and dropped
into it several drops of a medicine, of which the principal ingredient
was morphine. After drinking it off and sitting still a little while,
she went into her bedroom in a soothed and more cheerful frame of mind.

When she went into the bedroom, Vronsky looked intently at her. He was
looking for traces of the conversation which he knew that, staying so
long in Dolly's room, she must have had with her. But in her expression
of restrained excitement, and of a sort of reserve, he could find
nothing but the beauty that always bewitched him afresh though he was
used to it, the consciousness of it, and the desire that it should
affect him. He did not want to ask her what they had been talking of,
but he hoped that she would tell him something of her own accord. But
she only said:

"I am so glad you like Dolly. You do, don't you?"

"Oh, I've known her a long while, you know. She's very good-hearted, I
suppose, _mais excessivement terre-a-terre._ Still, I'm very glad to see
her."

He took Anna's hand and looked inquiringly into her eyes.

Misinterpreting the look, she smiled to him. Next morning, in spite of
the protests of her hosts, Darya Alexandrovna prepared for her homeward
journey. Levin's coachman, in his by no means new coat and shabby hat,
with his ill-matched horses and his coach with the patched mud-guards,
drove with gloomy determination into the covered gravel approach.

Darya Alexandrovna disliked taking leave of Princess Varvara and the
gentlemen of the party. After a day spent together, both she and her
hosts were distinctly aware that they did not get on together, and that
it was better for them not to meet. Only Anna was sad. She knew that
now, from Dolly's departure, no one again would stir up within her soul
the feelings that had been roused by their conversation. It hurt her to
stir up these feelings, but yet she knew that that was the best part of
her soul, and that that part of her soul would quickly be smothered in
the life she was leading.

As she drove out into the open country, Darya Alexandrovna had a
delightful sense of relief, and she felt tempted to ask the two men how
they had liked being at Vronsky's, when suddenly the coachman, Philip,
expressed himself unasked:

"Rolling in wealth they may be, but three pots of oats was all they gave
us. Everything cleared up till there wasn't a grain left by cockcrow.
What are three pots? A mere mouthful! And oats now down to forty-five
kopecks. At our place, no fear, all comers may have as much as they can
eat."

"The master's a screw," put in the counting house clerk.

"Well, did you like their horses?" asked Dolly.

"The horses!--there's no two opinions about them. And the food was good.
But it seemed to me sort of dreary there, Darya Alexandrovna. I don't
know what you thought," he said, turning his handsome, good-natured face
to her.

"I thought so too. Well, shall we get home by evening?"

"Eh, we must!"

On reaching home and finding everyone entirely satisfactory and
particularly charming, Darya Alexandrovna began with great liveliness
telling them how she had arrived, how warmly they had received her, of
the luxury and good taste in which the Vronskys lived, and of their
recreations, and she would not allow a word to be said against them.

"One has to know Anna and Vronsky--I have got to know him better now--to
see how nice they are, and how touching," she said, speaking now with
perfect sincerity, and forgetting the vague feeling of dissatisfaction
and awkwardness she had experienced there.



Chapter 25


Vronsky and Anna spent the whole summer and part of the winter in the
country, living in just the same condition, and still taking no steps to
obtain a divorce. It was an understood thing between them that they
should not go away anywhere; but both felt, the longer they lived alone,
especially in the autumn, without guests in the house, that they could
not stand this existence, and that they would have to alter it.

Their life was apparently such that nothing better could be desired.
They had the fullest abundance of everything; they had a child, and both
had occupation. Anna devoted just as much care to her appearance when
they had no visitors, and she did a great deal of reading, both of
novels and of what serious literature was in fashion. She ordered all
the books that were praised in the foreign papers and reviews she
received, and read them with that concentrated attention which is only
given to what is read in seclusion. Moreover, every subject that was of
interest to Vronsky, she studied in books and special journals, so that
he often went straight to her with questions relating to agriculture or
architecture, sometimes even with questions relating to horse-breeding
or sport. He was amazed at her knowledge, her memory, and at first was
disposed to doubt it, to ask for confirmation of her facts; and she
would find what he asked for in some book, and show it to him.

The building of the hospital, too, interested her. She did not merely
assist, but planned and suggested a great deal herself. But her chief
thought was still of herself--how far she was dear to Vronsky, how far
she could make up to him for all he had given up. Vronsky appreciated
this desire not only to please, but to serve him, which had become the
sole aim of her existence, but at the same time he wearied of the loving
snares in which she tried to hold him fast. As time went on, and he saw
himself more and more often held fast in these snares, he had an ever
growing desire, not so much to escape from them, as to try whether they
hindered his freedom. Had it not been for this growing desire to be
free, not to have scenes every time he wanted to go to the town to a
meeting or a race, Vronsky would have been perfectly satisfied with his
life. The role he had taken up, the role of a wealthy landowner, one of
that class which ought to be the very heart of the Russian aristocracy,
was entirely to his taste; and now, after spending six months in that
character, he derived even greater satisfaction from it. And his
management of his estate, which occupied and absorbed him more and more,
was most successful. In spite of the immense sums cost him by the
hospital, by machinery, by cows ordered from Switzerland, and many other
things, he was convinced that he was not wasting, but increasing his
substance. In all matters affecting income, the sales of timber, wheat,
and wool, the letting of lands, Vronsky was hard as a rock, and knew
well how to keep up prices. In all operations on a large scale on this
and his other estates, he kept to the simplest methods involving no
risk, and in trifling details he was careful and exacting to an extreme
degree. In spite of all the cunning and ingenuity of the German steward,
who would try to tempt him into purchases by making his original
estimate always far larger than really required, and then representing
to Vronsky that he might get the thing cheaper, and so make a profit,
Vronsky did not give in. He listened to his steward, cross-examined him,
and only agreed to his suggestions when the implement to be ordered or
constructed was the very newest, not yet known in Russia, and likely to
excite wonder. Apart from such exceptions, he resolved upon an increased
outlay only where there was a surplus, and in making such an outlay he
went into the minutest details, and insisted on getting the very best
for his money; so that by the method on which he managed his affairs, it
was clear that he was not wasting, but increasing his substance.

In October there were the provincial elections in the Kashinsky
province, where were the estates of Vronsky, Sviazhsky, Koznishev,
Oblonsky, and a small part of Levin's land.

These elections were attracting public attention from several
circumstances connected with them, and also from the people taking part
in them. There had been a great deal of talk about them, and great
preparations were being made for them. Persons who never attended the
elections were coming from Moscow, from Petersburg, and from abroad to
attend these. Vronsky had long before promised Sviazhsky to go to them.
Before the elections Sviazhsky, who often visited Vozdvizhenskoe, drove
over to fetch Vronsky. On the day before there had been almost a quarrel
between Vronsky and Anna over this proposed expedition. It was the very
dullest autumn weather, which is so dreary in the country, and so,
preparing himself for a struggle, Vronsky, with a hard and cold
expression, informed Anna of his departure as he had never spoken to her
before. But, to his surprise, Anna accepted the information with great
composure, and merely asked when he would be back. He looked intently at
her, at a loss to explain this composure. She smiled at his look. He
knew that way she had of withdrawing into herself, and knew that it only
happened when she had determined upon something without letting him know
her plans. He was afraid of this; but he was so anxious to avoid a scene
that he kept up appearances, and half sincerely believed in what he
longed to believe in--her reasonableness.

"I hope you won't be dull?"

"I hope not," said Anna. "I got a box of books yesterday from Gautier's.
No, I shan't be dull."

"She's trying to take that tone, and so much the better," he thought,
"or else it would be the same thing over and over again."

And he set off for the elections without appealing to her for a candid
explanation. It was the first time since the beginning of their intimacy
that he had parted from her without a full explanation. From one point
of view this troubled him, but on the other side he felt that it was
better so. "At first there will be, as this time, something undefined
kept back, and then she will get used to it. In any case I can give up
anything for her, but not my masculine independence," he thought.



Chapter 26


In September Levin moved to Moscow for Kitty's confinement. He had spent
a whole month in Moscow with nothing to do, when Sergey Ivanovitch, who
had property in the Kashinsky province, and took great interest in the
question of the approaching elections, made ready to set off to the
elections. He invited his brother, who had a vote in the Seleznevsky
district, to come with him. Levin had, moreover, to transact in Kashin
some extremely important business relating to the wardship of land and
to the receiving of certain redemption money for his sister, who was
abroad.

Levin still hesitated, but Kitty, who saw that he was bored in Moscow,
and urged him to go, on her own authority ordered him the proper
nobleman's uniform, costing seven pounds. And that seven pounds paid for
the uniform was the chief cause that finally decided Levin to go. He
went to Kashin....

Levin had been six days in Kashin, visiting the assembly each day, and
busily engaged about his sister's business, which still dragged on. The
district marshals of nobility were all occupied with the elections, and
it was impossible to get the simplest thing done that depended upon the
court of wardship. The other matter, the payment of the sums due, was
met too by difficulties. After long negotiations over the legal details,
the money was at last ready to be paid; but the notary, a most obliging
person, could not hand over the order, because it must have the
signature of the president, and the president, though he had not given
over his duties to a deputy, was at the elections. All these worrying
negotiations, this endless going from place to place, and talking with
pleasant and excellent people, who quite saw the unpleasantness of the
petitioner's position, but were powerless to assist him--all these
efforts that yielded no result, led to a feeling of misery in Levin akin
to the mortifying helplessness one experiences in dreams when one tries
to use physical force. He felt this frequently as he talked to his most
good-natured solicitor. This solicitor did, it seemed, everything
possible, and strained every nerve to get him out of his difficulties.
"I tell you what you might try," he said more than once; "go to
so-and-so and so-and-so," and the solicitor drew up a regular plan for
getting round the fatal point that hindered everything. But he would add
immediately, "It'll mean some delay, anyway, but you might try it." And
Levin did try, and did go. Everyone was kind and civil, but the point
evaded seemed to crop up again in the end, and again to bar the way.
What was particularly trying, was that Levin could not make out with
whom he was struggling, to whose interest it was that his business
should not be done. That no one seemed to know; the solicitor certainly
did not know. If Levin could have understood why, just as he saw why one
can only approach the booking office of a railway station in single
file, it would not have been so vexatious and tiresome to him. But with
the hindrances that confronted him in his business, no one could explain
why they existed.

But Levin had changed a good deal since his marriage; he was patient,
and if he could not see why it was all arranged like this, he told
himself that he could not judge without knowing all about it, and that
most likely it must be so, and he tried not to fret.

In attending the elections, too, and taking part in them, he tried now
not to judge, not to fall foul of them, but to comprehend as fully as he
could the question which was so earnestly and ardently absorbing honest
and excellent men whom he respected. Since his marriage there had been
revealed to Levin so many new and serious aspects of life that had
previously, through his frivolous attitude to them, seemed of no
importance, that in the question of the elections too he assumed and
tried to find some serious significance.

Sergey Ivanovitch explained to him the meaning and object of the
proposed revolution at the elections. The marshal of the province in
whose hands the law had placed the control of so many important public
functions--the guardianship of wards (the very department which was
giving Levin so much trouble just now), the disposal of large sums
subscribed by the nobility of the province, the high schools, female,
male, and military, and popular instruction on the new model, and
finally, the district council--the marshal of the province, Snetkov, was
a nobleman of the old school,--dissipating an immense fortune, a
good-hearted man, honest after his own fashion, but utterly without any
comprehension of the needs of modern days. He always took, in every
question, the side of the nobility; he was positively antagonistic to
the spread of popular education, and he succeeded in giving a purely
party character to the district council which ought by rights to be of
such an immense importance. What was needed was to put in his place a
fresh, capable, perfectly modern man, of contemporary ideas, and to
frame their policy so as from the rights conferred upon the nobles, not
as the nobility, but as an element of the district council, to extract
all the powers of self-government that could possibly be derived from
them. In the wealthy Kashinsky province, which always took the lead of
other provinces in everything, there was now such a preponderance of
forces that this policy, once carried through properly there, might
serve as a model for other provinces for all Russia. And hence the whole
question was of the greatest importance. It was proposed to elect as
marshal in place of Snetkov either Sviazhsky, or, better still,
Nevyedovsky, a former university professor, a man of remarkable
intelligence and a great friend of Sergey Ivanovitch.

The meeting was opened by the governor, who made a speech to the nobles,
urging them to elect the public functionaries, not from regard for
persons, but for the service and welfare of their fatherland, and hoping
that the honorable nobility of the Kashinsky province would, as at all
former elections, hold their duty as sacred, and vindicate the exalted
confidence of the monarch.

When he had finished with his speech, the governor walked out of the
hall, and the noblemen noisily and eagerly--some even
enthusiastically--followed him and thronged round him while he put on
his fur coat and conversed amicably with the marshal of the province.
Levin, anxious to see into everything and not to miss anything, stood
there too in the crowd, and heard the governor say: "Please tell Marya
Ivanovna my wife is very sorry she couldn't come to the Home." And
thereupon the nobles in high good-humor sorted out their fur coats and
all drove off to the cathedral.

In the cathedral Levin, lifting his hand like the rest and repeating the
words of the archdeacon, swore with most terrible oaths to do all the
governor had hoped they would do. Church services always affected Levin,
and as he uttered the words "I kiss the cross," and glanced round at the
crowd of young and old men repeating the same, he felt touched.

On the second and third days there was business relating to the finances
of the nobility and the female high school, of no importance whatever,
as Sergey Ivanovitch explained, and Levin, busy seeing after his own
affairs, did not attend the meetings. On the fourth day the auditing of
the marshal's accounts took place at the high table of the marshal of
the province. And then there occurred the first skirmish between the new
party and the old. The committee who had been deputed to verify the
accounts reported to the meeting that all was in order. The marshal of
the province got up, thanked the nobility for their confidence, and shed
tears. The nobles gave him a loud welcome, and shook hands with him. But
at that instant a nobleman of Sergey Ivanovitch's party said that he had
heard that the committee had not verified the accounts, considering such
a verification an insult to the marshal of the province. One of the
members of the committee incautiously admitted this. Then a small
gentleman, very young-looking but very malignant, began to say that it
would probably be agreeable to the marshal of the province to give an
account of his expenditures of the public moneys, and that the misplaced
delicacy of the members of the committee was depriving him of this moral
satisfaction. Then the members of the committee tried to withdraw their
admission, and Sergey Ivanovitch began to prove that they must logically
admit either that they had verified the accounts or that they had not,
and he developed this dilemma in detail. Sergey Ivanovitch was answered
by the spokesman of the opposite party. Then Sviazhsky spoke, and then
the malignant gentleman again. The discussion lasted a long time and
ended in nothing. Levin was surprised that they should dispute upon this
subject so long, especially as, when he asked Sergey Ivanovitch whether
he supposed that money had been misappropriated, Sergey Ivanovitch
answered:

"Oh, no! He's an honest man. But those old-fashioned methods of paternal
family arrangements in the management of provincial affairs must be
broken down."

On the fifth day came the elections of the district marshals. It was
rather a stormy day in several districts. In the Seleznevsky district
Sviazhsky was elected unanimously without a ballot, and he gave a dinner
that evening.



Chapter 27


The sixth day was fixed for the election of the marshal of the province.

The rooms, large and small, were full of noblemen in all sorts of
uniforms. Many had come only for that day. Men who had not seen each
other for years, some from the Crimea, some from Petersburg, some from
abroad, met in the rooms of the Hall of Nobility. There was much
discussion around the governor's table under the portrait of the Tsar.

The nobles, both in the larger and the smaller rooms, grouped themselves
in camps, and from their hostile and suspicious glances, from the
silence that fell upon them when outsiders approached a group, and from
the way that some, whispering together, retreated to the farther
corridor, it was evident that each side had secrets from the other. In
appearance the noblemen were sharply divided into two classes: the old
and the new. The old were for the most part either in old uniforms of
the nobility, buttoned up closely, with spurs and hats, or in their own
special naval, cavalry, infantry, or official uniforms. The uniforms of
the older men were embroidered in the old-fashioned way with epaulets on
their shoulders; they were unmistakably tight and short in the waist, as
though their wearers had grown out of them. The younger men wore the
uniform of the nobility with long waists and broad shoulders, unbuttoned
over white waistcoats, or uniforms with black collars and with the
embroidered badges of justices of the peace. To the younger men belonged
the court uniforms that here and there brightened up the crowd.

But the division into young and old did not correspond with the division
of parties. Some of the young men, as Levin observed, belonged to the
old party; and some of the very oldest noblemen, on the contrary, were
whispering with Sviazhsky, and were evidently ardent partisans of the
new party.

Levin stood in the smaller room, where they were smoking and taking
light refreshments, close to his own friends, and listening to what they
were saying, he conscientiously exerted all his intelligence trying to
understand what was said. Sergey Ivanovitch was the center round which
the others grouped themselves. He was listening at that moment to
Sviazhsky and Hliustov, the marshal of another district, who belonged to
their party. Hliustov would not agree to go with his district to ask
Snetkov to stand, while Sviazhsky was persuading him to do so, and
Sergey Ivanovitch was approving of the plan. Levin could not make out
why the opposition was to ask the marshal to stand whom they wanted to
supersede.

Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had just been drinking and taking some lunch,
came up to them in his uniform of a gentleman of the bedchamber, wiping
his lips with a perfumed handkerchief of bordered batiste.

"We are placing our forces," he said, pulling out his whiskers, "Sergey
Ivanovitch!"

And listening to the conversation, he supported Sviazhsky's contention.

"One district's enough, and Sviazhsky's obviously of the opposition," he
said, words evidently intelligible to all except Levin.

"Why, Kostya, you here too! I suppose you're converted, eh?" he added,
turning to Levin and drawing his arm through his. Levin would have been
glad indeed to be converted, but could not make out what the point was,
and retreating a few steps from the speakers, he explained to Stepan
Arkadyevitch his inability to understand why the marshal of the province
should be asked to stand.

_"O sancta simplicitas!"_ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, and briefly and
clearly he explained it to Levin. If, as at previous elections, all the
districts asked the marshal of the province to stand, then he would be
elected without a ballot. That must not be. Now eight districts had
agreed to call upon him: if two refused to do so, Snetkov might decline
to stand at all; and then the old party might choose another of their
party, which would throw them completely out in their reckoning. But if
only one district, Sviazhsky's, did not call upon him to stand, Snetkov
would let himself be balloted for. They were even, some of them, going
to vote for him, and purposely to let him get a good many votes, so that
the enemy might be thrown off the scent, and when a candidate of the
other side was put up, they too might give him some votes. Levin
understood to some extent, but not fully, and would have put a few more
questions, when suddenly everyone began talking and making a noise and
they moved towards the big room.

"What is it? eh? whom?" "No guarantee? whose? what?" "They won't pass
him?" "No guarantee?" "They won't let Flerov in?" "Eh, because of the
charge against him?" "Why, at this rate, they won't admit anyone. It's a
swindle!" "The law!" Levin heard exclamations on all sides, and he moved
into the big room together with the others, all hurrying somewhere and
afraid of missing something. Squeezed by the crowding noblemen, he drew
near the high table where the marshal of the province, Sviazhsky, and
the other leaders were hotly disputing about something.



Chapter 28


Levin was standing rather far off. A nobleman breathing heavily and
hoarsely at his side, and another whose thick boots were creaking,
prevented him from hearing distinctly. He could only hear the soft voice
of the marshal faintly, then the shrill voice of the malignant
gentleman, and then the voice of Sviazhsky. They were disputing, as far
as he could make out, as to the interpretation to be put on the act and
the exact meaning of the words: "liable to be called up for trial."

The crowd parted to make way for Sergey Ivanovitch approaching the
table. Sergey Ivanovitch, waiting till the malignant gentleman had
finished speaking, said that he thought the best solution would be to
refer to the act itself, and asked the secretary to find the act. The
act said that in case of difference of opinion, there must be a ballot.

Sergey Ivanovitch read the act and began to explain its meaning, but at
that point a tall, stout, round-shouldered landowner, with dyed
whiskers, in a tight uniform that cut the back of his neck, interrupted
him. He went up to the table, and striking it with his finger ring, he
shouted loudly: "A ballot! Put it to the vote! No need for more
talking!" Then several voices began to talk all at once, and the tall
nobleman with the ring, getting more and more exasperated, shouted more
and more loudly. But it was impossible to make out what he said.

He was shouting for the very course Sergey Ivanovitch had proposed; but
it was evident that he hated him and all his party, and this feeling of
hatred spread through the whole party and roused in opposition to it the
same vindictiveness, though in a more seemly form, on the other side.
Shouts were raised, and for a moment all was confusion, so that the
marshal of the province had to call for order.

"A ballot! A ballot! Every nobleman sees it! We shed our blood for our
country!... The confidence of the monarch.... No checking the accounts
of the marshal; he's not a cashier.... But that's not the point....
Votes, please! Beastly!..." shouted furious and violent voices on all
sides. Looks and faces were even more violent and furious than their
words. They expressed the most implacable hatred. Levin did not in the
least understand what was the matter, and he marveled at the passion
with which it was disputed whether or not the decision about Flerov
should be put to the vote. He forgot, as Sergey Ivanovitch explained to
him afterwards, this syllogism: that it was necessary for the public
good to get rid of the marshal of the province; that to get rid of the
marshal it was necessary to have a majority of votes; that to get a
majority of votes it was necessary to secure Flerov's right to vote;
that to secure the recognition of Flerov's right to vote they must
decide on the interpretation to be put on the act.

"And one vote may decide the whole question, and one must be serious and
consecutive, if one wants to be of use in public life," concluded Sergey
Ivanovitch. But Levin forgot all that, and it was painful to him to see
all these excellent persons, for whom he had a respect, in such an
unpleasant and vicious state of excitement. To escape from this painful
feeling he went away into the other room where there was nobody except
the waiters at the refreshment bar. Seeing the waiters busy over washing
up the crockery and setting in order their plates and wine glasses,
seeing their calm and cheerful faces, Levin felt an unexpected sense of
relief as though he had come out of a stuffy room into the fresh air. He
began walking up and down, looking with pleasure at the waiters. He
particularly liked the way one gray-whiskered waiter, who showed his
scorn for the other younger ones and was jeered at by them, was teaching
them how to fold up napkins properly. Levin was just about to enter into
conversation with the old waiter, when the secretary of the court of
wardship, a little old man whose specialty it was to know all the
noblemen of the province by name and patronymic, drew him away.

"Please come, Konstantin Dmitrievitch," he said, "your brother's looking
for you. They are voting on the legal point."

Levin walked into the room, received a white ball, and followed his
brother, Sergey Ivanovitch, to the table where Sviazhsky was standing
with a significant and ironical face, holding his beard in his fist and
sniffing at it. Sergey Ivanovitch put his hand into the box, put the
ball somewhere, and making room for Levin, stopped. Levin advanced, but
utterly forgetting what he was to do, and much embarrassed, he turned to
Sergey Ivanovitch with the question, "Where am I to put it?" He asked
this softly, at a moment when there was talking going on near, so that
he had hoped his question would not be overheard. But the persons
speaking paused, and his improper question was overheard. Sergey
Ivanovitch frowned.

"That is a matter for each man's own decision," he said severely.

Several people smiled. Levin crimsoned, hurriedly thrust his hand under
the cloth, and put the ball to the right as it was in his right hand.
Having put it in, he recollected that he ought to have thrust his left
hand too, and so he thrust it in though too late, and, still more
overcome with confusion, he beat a hasty retreat into the background.

"A hundred and twenty-six for admission! Ninety-eight against!" sang out
the voice of the secretary, who could not pronounce the letter _r_. Then
there was a laugh; a button and two nuts were found in the box. The
nobleman was allowed the right to vote, and the new party had conquered.

But the old party did not consider themselves conquered. Levin heard
that they were asking Snetkov to stand, and he saw that a crowd of
noblemen was surrounding the marshal, who was saying something. Levin
went nearer. In reply Snetkov spoke of the trust the noblemen of the
province had placed in him, the affection they had shown him, which he
did not deserve, as his only merit had been his attachment to the
nobility, to whom he had devoted twelve years of service. Several times
he repeated the words: "I have served to the best of my powers with
truth and good faith, I value your goodness and thank you," and suddenly
he stopped short from the tears that choked him, and went out of the
room. Whether these tears came from a sense of the injustice being done
him, from his love for the nobility, or from the strain of the position
he was placed in, feeling himself surrounded by enemies, his emotion
infected the assembly, the majority were touched, and Levin felt a
tenderness for Snetkov.

In the doorway the marshal of the province jostled against Levin.

"Beg pardon, excuse me, please," he said as to a stranger, but
recognizing Levin, he smiled timidly. It seemed to Levin that he would
have liked to say something, but could not speak for emotion. His face
and his whole figure in his uniform with the crosses, and white trousers
striped with braid, as he moved hurriedly along, reminded Levin of some
hunted beast who sees that he is in evil case. This expression in the
marshal's face was particularly touching to Levin, because, only the day
before, he had been at his house about his trustee business and had seen
him in all his grandeur, a kind-hearted, fatherly man. The big house
with the old family furniture; the rather dirty, far from stylish, but
respectful footmen, unmistakably old house serfs who had stuck to their
master; the stout, good-natured wife in a cap with lace and a Turkish
shawl, petting her pretty grandchild, her daughter's daughter; the young
son, a sixth form high school boy, coming home from school, and greeting
his father, kissing his big hand; the genuine, cordial words and
gestures of the old man--all this had the day before roused an
instinctive feeling of respect and sympathy in Levin. This old man was a
touching and pathetic figure to Levin now, and he longed to say
something pleasant to him.

"So you're sure to be our marshal again," he said.

"It's not likely," said the marshal, looking round with a scared
expression. "I'm worn out, I'm old. If there are men younger and more
deserving than I, let them serve."

And the marshal disappeared through a side door.

The most solemn moment was at hand. They were to proceed immediately to
the election. The leaders of both parties were reckoning white and black
on their fingers.

The discussion upon Flerov had given the new party not only Flerov's
vote, but had also gained time for them, so that they could send to
fetch three noblemen who had been rendered unable to take part in the
elections by the wiles of the other party. Two noble gentlemen, who had
a weakness for strong drink, had been made drunk by the partisans of
Snetkov, and a third had been robbed of his uniform.

On learning this, the new party had made haste, during the dispute about
Flerov, to send some of their men in a sledge to clothe the stripped
gentleman, and to bring along one of the intoxicated to the meeting.

"I've brought one, drenched him with water," said the landowner, who had
gone on this errand, to Sviazhsky. "He's all right? he'll do."

"Not too drunk, he won't fall down?" said Sviazhsky, shaking his head.

"No, he's first-rate. If only they don't give him any more here.... I've
told the waiter not to give him anything on any account."



Chapter 29


The narrow room, in which they were smoking and taking refreshments, was
full of noblemen. The excitement grew more intense, and every face
betrayed some uneasiness. The excitement was specially keen for the
leaders of each party, who knew every detail, and had reckoned up every
vote. They were the generals organizing the approaching battle. The
rest, like the rank and file before an engagement, though they were
getting ready for the fight, sought for other distractions in the
interval. Some were lunching, standing at the bar, or sitting at the
table; others were walking up and down the long room, smoking
cigarettes, and talking with friends whom they had not seen for a long
while.

Levin did not care to eat, and he was not smoking; he did not want to
join his own friends, that is Sergey Ivanovitch, Stepan Arkadyevitch,
Sviazhsky and the rest, because Vronsky in his equerry's uniform was
standing with them in eager conversation. Levin had seen him already at
the meeting on the previous day, and he had studiously avoided him, not
caring to greet him. He went to the window and sat down, scanning the
groups, and listening to what was being said around him. He felt
depressed, especially because everyone else was, as he saw, eager,
anxious, and interested, and he alone, with an old, toothless little man
with mumbling lips wearing a naval uniform, sitting beside him, had no
interest in it and nothing to do.

"He's such a blackguard! I have told him so, but it makes no difference.
Only think of it! He couldn't collect it in three years!" he heard
vigorously uttered by a round-shouldered, short, country gentleman, who
had pomaded hair hanging on his embroidered collar, and new boots
obviously put on for the occasion, with heels that tapped energetically
as he spoke. Casting a displeased glance at Levin, this gentleman
sharply turned his back.

"Yes, it's a dirty business, there's no denying," a small gentleman
assented in a high voice.

Next, a whole crowd of country gentlemen, surrounding a stout general,
hurriedly came near Levin. These persons were unmistakably seeking a
place where they could talk without being overheard.

"How dare he say I had his breeches stolen! Pawned them for drink, I
expect. Damn the fellow, prince indeed! He'd better not say it, the
beast!"

"But excuse me! They take their stand on the act," was being said in
another group; "the wife must be registered as noble."

"Oh, damn your acts! I speak from my heart. We're all gentlemen, aren't
we? Above suspicion."

"Shall we go on, your excellency, _fine champagne?_"

Another group was following a nobleman, who was shouting something in a
loud voice; it was one of the three intoxicated gentlemen.

"I always advised Marya Semyonovna to let for a fair rent, for she can
never save a profit," he heard a pleasant voice say. The speaker was a
country gentleman with gray whiskers, wearing the regimental uniform of
an old general staff-officer. It was the very landowner Levin had met at
Sviazhsky's. He knew him at once. The landowner too stared at Levin, and
they exchanged greetings.

"Very glad to see you! To be sure! I remember you very well. Last year
at our district marshal, Nikolay Ivanovitch's."

"Well, and how is your land doing?" asked Levin.

"Oh, still just the same, always at a loss," the landowner answered with
a resigned smile, but with an expression of serenity and conviction that
so it must be. "And how do you come to be in our province?" he asked.
"Come to take part in our _coup d'etat?_" he said, confidently
pronouncing the French words with a bad accent. "All Russia's
here--gentlemen of the bedchamber, and everything short of the
ministry." He pointed to the imposing figure of Stepan Arkadyevitch in
white trousers and his court uniform, walking by with a general.

"I ought to own that I don't very well understand the drift of the
provincial elections," said Levin.

The landowner looked at him.

"Why, what is there to understand? There's no meaning in it at all. It's
a decaying institution that goes on running only by the force of
inertia. Just look, the very uniforms tell you that it's an assembly of
justices of the peace, permanent members of the court, and so on, but
not of noblemen."

"Then why do you come?" asked Levin.

"From habit, nothing else. Then, too, one must keep up connections. It's
a moral obligation of a sort. And then, to tell the truth, there's one's
own interests. My son-in-law wants to stand as a permanent member;
they're not rich people, and he must be brought forward. These
gentlemen, now, what do they come for?" he said, pointing to the
malignant gentleman, who was talking at the high table.

"That's the new generation of nobility."

"New it may be, but nobility it isn't. They're proprietors of a sort,
but we're the landowners. As noblemen, they're cutting their own
throats."

"But you say it's an institution that's served its time."

"That it may be, but still it ought to be treated a little more
respectfully. Snetkov, now.... We may be of use, or we may not, but
we're the growth of a thousand years. If we're laying out a garden,
planning one before the house, you know, and there you've a tree that's
stood for centuries in the very spot.... Old and gnarled it may be, and
yet you don't cut down the old fellow to make room for the flowerbeds,
but lay out your beds so as to take advantage of the tree. You won't
grow him again in a year," he said cautiously, and he immediately
changed the conversation. "Well, and how is your land doing?"

"Oh, not very well. I make five per cent."

"Yes, but you don't reckon your own work. Aren't you worth something
too? I'll tell you my own case. Before I took to seeing after the land,
I had a salary of three hundred pounds from the service. Now I do more
work than I did in the service, and like you I get five per cent. on the
land, and thank God for that. But one's work is thrown in for nothing."

"Then why do you do it, if it's a clear loss?"

"Oh, well, one does it! What would you have? It's habit, and one knows
it's how it should be. And what's more," the landowner went on, leaning
his elbows on the window and chatting on, "my son, I must tell you, has
no taste for it. There's no doubt he'll be a scientific man. So there'll
be no one to keep it up. And yet one does it. Here this year I've
planted an orchard."

"Yes, yes," said Levin, "that's perfectly true. I always feel there's no
real balance of gain in my work on the land, and yet one does it....
It's a sort of duty one feels to the land."

"But I tell you what," the landowner pursued; "a neighbor of mine, a
merchant, was at my place. We walked about the fields and the garden.
'No,' said he, 'Stepan Vassilievitch, everything's well looked after,
but your garden's neglected.' But, as a fact, it's well kept up. 'To my
thinking, I'd cut down that lime-tree. Here you've thousands of limes,
and each would make two good bundles of bark. And nowadays that bark's
worth something. I'd cut down the lot.'"

"And with what he made he'd increase his stock, or buy some land for a
trifle, and let it out in lots to the peasants," Levin added, smiling.
He had evidently more than once come across those commercial
calculations. "And he'd make his fortune. But you and I must thank God
if we keep what we've got and leave it to our children."

"You're married, I've heard?" said the landowner.

"Yes," Levin answered, with proud satisfaction. "Yes, it's rather
strange," he went on. "So we live without making anything, as though we
were ancient vestals set to keep in a fire."

The landowner chuckled under his white mustaches.

"There are some among us, too, like our friend Nikolay Ivanovitch, or
Count Vronsky, that's settled here lately, who try to carry on their
husbandry as though it were a factory; but so far it leads to nothing
but making away with capital on it."

"But why is it we don't do like the merchants? Why don't we cut down our
parks for timber?" said Levin, returning to a thought that had struck
him.

"Why, as you said, to keep the fire in. Besides that's not work for a
nobleman. And our work as noblemen isn't done here at the elections, but
yonder, each in our corner. There's a class instinct, too, of what one
ought and oughtn't to do. There's the peasants, too, I wonder at them
sometimes; any good peasant tries to take all the land he can. However
bad the land is, he'll work it. Without a return too. At a simple loss."

"Just as we do," said Levin. "Very, very glad to have met you," he
added, seeing Sviazhsky approaching him.

"And here we've met for the first time since we met at your place," said
the landowner to Sviazhsky, "and we've had a good talk too."

"Well, have you been attacking the new order of things?" said Sviazhsky
with a smile.

"That we're bound to do."

"You've relieved your feelings?"



Chapter 30


Sviazhsky took Levin's arm, and went with him to his own friends. This
time there was no avoiding Vronsky. He was standing with Stepan
Arkadyevitch and Sergey Ivanovitch, and looking straight at Levin as he
drew near.

"Delighted! I believe I've had the pleasure of meeting you ... at
Princess Shtcherbatskaya's," he said, giving Levin his hand.

"Yes, I quite remember our meeting," said Levin, and blushing crimson,
he turned away immediately, and began talking to his brother.

With a slight smile Vronsky went on talking to Sviazhsky, obviously
without the slightest inclination to enter into conversation with Levin.
But Levin, as he talked to his brother, was continually looking round at
Vronsky, trying to think of something to say to him to gloss over his
rudeness.

"What are we waiting for now?" asked Levin, looking at Sviazhsky and
Vronsky.

"For Snetkov. He has to refuse or to consent to stand," answered
Sviazhsky.

"Well, and what has he done, consented or not?"

"That's the point, that he's done neither," said Vronsky.

"And if he refuses, who will stand then?" asked Levin, looking at
Vronsky.

"Whoever chooses to," said Sviazhsky.

"Shall you?" asked Levin.

"Certainly not I," said Sviazhsky, looking confused, and turning an
alarmed glance at the malignant gentleman, who was standing beside
Sergey Ivanovitch.

"Who then? Nevyedovsky?" said Levin, feeling he was putting his foot
into it.

But this was worse still. Nevyedovsky and Sviazhsky were the two
candidates.

"I certainly shall not, under any circumstances," answered the malignant
gentleman.

This was Nevyedovsky himself. Sviazhsky introduced him to Levin.

"Well, you find it exciting too?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, winking at
Vronsky. "It's something like a race. One might bet on it."

"Yes, it is keenly exciting," said Vronsky. "And once taking the thing
up, one's eager to see it through. It's a fight!" he said, scowling and
setting his powerful jaws.

"What a capable fellow Sviazhsky is! Sees it all so clearly."

"Oh, yes!" Vronsky assented indifferently.

A silence followed, during which Vronsky--since he had to look at
something--looked at Levin, at his feet, at his uniform, then at his
face, and noticing his gloomy eyes fixed upon him, he said, in order to
say something:

"How is it that you, living constantly in the country, are not a justice
of the peace? You are not in the uniform of one."

"It's because I consider that the justice of the peace is a silly
institution," Levin answered gloomily. He had been all the time looking
for an opportunity to enter into conversation with Vronsky, so as to
smooth over his rudeness at their first meeting.

"I don't think so, quite the contrary," Vronsky said, with quiet
surprise.

"It's a plaything," Levin cut him short. "We don't want justices of the
peace. I've never had a single thing to do with them during eight years.
And what I have had was decided wrongly by them. The justice of the
peace is over thirty miles from me. For some matter of two roubles I
should have to send a lawyer, who costs me fifteen."

And he related how a peasant had stolen some flour from the miller, and
when the miller told him of it, had lodged a complaint for slander. All
this was utterly uncalled for and stupid, and Levin felt it himself as
he said it.

"Oh, this is such an original fellow!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch with his
most soothing, almond-oil smile. "But come along; I think they're
voting...."

And they separated.

"I can't understand," said Sergey Ivanovitch, who had observed his
brother's clumsiness, "I can't understand how anyone can be so
absolutely devoid of political tact. That's where we Russians are so
deficient. The marshal of the province is our opponent, and with him
you're _ami cochon_, and you beg him to stand. Count Vronsky, now ...
I'm not making a friend of him; he's asked me to dinner, and I'm not
going; but he's one of our side--why make an enemy of him? Then you ask
Nevyedovsky if he's going to stand. That's not a thing to do."

"Oh, I don't understand it at all! And it's all such nonsense," Levin
answered gloomily.

"You say it's all such nonsense, but as soon as you have anything to do
with it, you make a muddle."

Levin did not answer, and they walked together into the big room.

The marshal of the province, though he was vaguely conscious in the air
of some trap being prepared for him, and though he had not been called
upon by all to stand, had still made up his mind to stand. All was
silence in the room. The secretary announced in a loud voice that the
captain of the guards, Mihail Stepanovitch Snetkov, would now be
balloted for as marshal of the province.

The district marshals walked carrying plates, on which were balls, from
their tables to the high table, and the election began.

"Put it in the right side," whispered Stepan Arkadyevitch, as with his
brother Levin followed the marshal of his district to the table. But
Levin had forgotten by now the calculations that had been explained to
him, and was afraid Stepan Arkadyevitch might be mistaken in saying "the
right side." Surely Snetkov was the enemy. As he went up, he held the
ball in his right hand, but thinking he was wrong, just at the box he
changed to the left hand, and undoubtedly put the ball to the left. An
adept in the business, standing at the box and seeing by the mere action
of the elbow where each put his ball, scowled with annoyance. It was no
good for him to use his insight.

Everything was still, and the counting of the balls was heard. Then a
single voice rose and proclaimed the numbers for and against. The
marshal had been voted for by a considerable majority. All was noise and
eager movement towards the doors. Snetkov came in, and the nobles
thronged round him, congratulating him.

"Well, now is it over?" Levin asked Sergey Ivanovitch.

"It's only just beginning," Sviazhsky said, replying for Sergey
Ivanovitch with a smile. "Some other candidate may receive more votes
than the marshal."

Levin had quite forgotten about that. Now he could only remember that
there was some sort of trickery in it, but he was too bored to think
what it was exactly. He felt depressed, and longed to get out of the
crowd.

As no one was paying any attention to him, and no one apparently needed
him, he quietly slipped away into the little room where the refreshments
were, and again had a great sense of comfort when he saw the waiters.
The little old waiter pressed him to have something, and Levin agreed.
After eating a cutlet with beans and talking to the waiters of their
former masters, Levin, not wishing to go back to the hall, where it was
all so distasteful to him, proceeded to walk through the galleries. The
galleries were full of fashionably dressed ladies, leaning over the
balustrade and trying not to lose a single word of what was being said
below. With the ladies were sitting and standing smart lawyers, high
school teachers in spectacles, and officers. Everywhere they were
talking of the election, and of how worried the marshal was, and how
splendid the discussions had been. In one group Levin heard his
brother's praises. One lady was telling a lawyer:

"How glad I am I heard Koznishev! It's worth losing one's dinner. He's
exquisite! So clear and distinct all of it! There's not one of you in
the law courts that speaks like that. The only one is Meidel, and he's
not so eloquent by a long way."

Finding a free place, Levin leaned over the balustrade and began looking
and listening.

All the noblemen were sitting railed off behind barriers according to
their districts. In the middle of the room stood a man in a uniform, who
shouted in a loud, high voice:

"As a candidate for the marshalship of the nobility of the province we
call upon staff-captain Yevgeney Ivanovitch Apuhtin!" A dead silence
followed, and then a weak old voice was heard: "Declined!"

"We call upon the privy councilor Pyotr Petrovitch Bol," the voice began
again.

"Declined!" a high boyish voice replied.

Again it began, and again "Declined." And so it went on for about an
hour. Levin, with his elbows on the balustrade, looked and listened. At
first he wondered and wanted to know what it meant; then feeling sure
that he could not make it out he began to be bored. Then recalling all
the excitement and vindictiveness he had seen on all the faces, he felt
sad; he made up his mind to go, and went downstairs. As he passed
through the entry to the galleries he met a dejected high school boy
walking up and down with tired-looking eyes. On the stairs he met a
couple--a lady running quickly on her high heels and the jaunty deputy
prosecutor.

"I told you you weren't late," the deputy prosecutor was saying at the
moment when Levin moved aside to let the lady pass.

Levin was on the stairs to the way out, and was just feeling in his
waistcoat pocket for the number of his overcoat, when the secretary
overtook him.

"This way, please, Konstantin Dmitrievitch; they are voting."

The candidate who was being voted on was Nevyedovsky, who had so stoutly
denied all idea of standing. Levin went up to the door of the room; it
was locked. The secretary knocked, the door opened, and Levin was met by
two red-faced gentlemen, who darted out.

"I can't stand any more of it," said one red-faced gentleman.

After them the face of the marshal of the province was poked out. His
face was dreadful-looking from exhaustion and dismay.

"I told you not to let any one out!" he cried to the doorkeeper.

"I let someone in, your excellency!"

"Mercy on us!" and with a heavy sigh the marshal of the province walked
with downcast head to the high table in the middle of the room, his legs
staggering in his white trousers.

Nevyedovsky had scored a higher majority, as they had planned, and he
was the new marshal of the province. Many people were amused, many were
pleased and happy, many were in ecstasies, many were disgusted and
unhappy. The former marshal of the province was in a state of despair,
which he could not conceal. When Nevyedovsky went out of the room, the
crowd thronged round him and followed him enthusiastically, just as they
had followed the governor who had opened the meetings, and just as they
had followed Snetkov when he was elected.



Chapter 31


The newly elected marshal and many of the successful party dined that
day with Vronsky.

Vronsky had come to the elections partly because he was bored in the
country and wanted to show Anna his right to independence, and also to
repay Sviazhsky by his support at the election for all the trouble he
had taken for Vronsky at the district council election, but chiefly in
order strictly to perform all those duties of a nobleman and landowner
which he had taken upon himself. But he had not in the least expected
that the election would so interest him, so keenly excite him, and that
he would be so good at this kind of thing. He was quite a new man in the
circle of the nobility of the province, but his success was
unmistakable, and he was not wrong in supposing that he had already
obtained a certain influence. This influence was due to his wealth and
reputation, the capital house in the town lent him by his old friend
Shirkov, who had a post in the department of finances and was director
of a flourishing bank in Kashin; the excellent cook Vronsky had brought
from the country, and his friendship with the governor, who was a
schoolfellow of Vronsky's--a schoolfellow he had patronized and
protected indeed. But what contributed more than all to his success was
his direct, equable manner with everyone, which very quickly made the
majority of the noblemen reverse the current opinion of his supposed
haughtiness. He was himself conscious that, except that whimsical
gentleman married to Kitty Shtcherbatskaya, who had _a propos de bottes_
poured out a stream of irrelevant absurdities with such spiteful fury,
every nobleman with whom he had made acquaintance had become his
adherent. He saw clearly, and other people recognized it, too, that he
had done a great deal to secure the success of Nevyedovsky. And now at
his own table, celebrating Nevyedovsky's election, he was experiencing
an agreeable sense of triumph over the success of his candidate. The
election itself had so fascinated him that, if he could succeed in
getting married during the next three years, he began to think of
standing himself--much as after winning a race ridden by a jockey, he
had longed to ride a race himself.

Today he was celebrating the success of his jockey. Vronsky sat at the
head of the table, on his right hand sat the young governor, a general
of high rank. To all the rest he was the chief man in the province, who
had solemnly opened the elections with his speech, and aroused a feeling
of respect and even of awe in many people, as Vronsky saw; to Vronsky he
was little Katka Maslov--that had been his nickname in the Pages'
Corps--whom he felt to be shy and tried to _mettre a son aise_. On the
left hand sat Nevyedovsky with his youthful, stubborn, and malignant
face. With him Vronsky was simple and deferential.

Sviazhsky took his failure very light-heartedly. It was indeed no
failure in his eyes, as he said himself, turning, glass in hand, to
Nevyedovsky; they could not have found a better representative of the
new movement, which the nobility ought to follow. And so every honest
person, as he said, was on the side of today's success and was rejoicing
over it.

Stepan Arkadyevitch was glad, too, that he was having a good time, and
that everyone was pleased. The episode of the elections served as a good
occasion for a capital dinner. Sviazhsky comically imitated the tearful
discourse of the marshal, and observed, addressing Nevyedovsky, that his
excellency would have to select another more complicated method of
auditing the accounts than tears. Another nobleman jocosely described
how footmen in stockings had been ordered for the marshal's ball, and
how now they would have to be sent back unless the new marshal would
give a ball with footmen in stockings.

Continually during dinner they said of Nevyedovsky: "our marshal," and
"your excellency."

This was said with the same pleasure with which a bride is called
"Madame" and her husband's name. Nevyedovsky affected to be not merely
indifferent but scornful of this appellation, but it was obvious that he
was highly delighted, and had to keep a curb on himself not to betray
the triumph which was unsuitable to their new liberal tone.

After dinner several telegrams were sent to people interested in the
result of the election. And Stepan Arkadyevitch, who was in high good
humor, sent Darya Alexandrovna a telegram: "Nevyedovsky elected by
twenty votes. Congratulations. Tell people." He dictated it aloud,
saying: "We must let them share our rejoicing." Darya Alexandrovna,
getting the message, simply sighed over the rouble wasted on it, and
understood that it was an after-dinner affair. She knew Stiva had a
weakness after dining for _faire jouer le telegraphe._

Everything, together with the excellent dinner and the wine, not from
Russian merchants, but imported direct from abroad, was extremely
dignified, simple, and enjoyable. The party--some twenty--had been
selected by Sviazhsky from among the more active new liberals, all of
the same way of thinking, who were at the same time clever and well
bred. They drank, also half in jest, to the health of the new marshal of
the province, of the governor, of the bank director, and of "our amiable
host."

Vronsky was satisfied. He had never expected to find so pleasant a tone
in the provinces.

Towards the end of dinner it was still more lively. The governor asked
Vronsky to come to a concert for the benefit of the Servians which his
wife, who was anxious to make his acquaintance, had been getting up.

"There'll be a ball, and you'll see the belle of the province. Worth
seeing, really."

"Not in my line," Vronsky answered. He liked that English phrase. But he
smiled, and promised to come.

Before they rose from the table, when all of them were smoking,
Vronsky's valet went up to him with a letter on a tray.

"From Vozdvizhenskoe by special messenger," he said with a significant
expression.

"Astonishing! how like he is to the deputy prosecutor Sventitsky," said
one of the guests in French of the valet, while Vronsky, frowning, read
the letter.

The letter was from Anna. Before he read the letter, he knew its
contents. Expecting the elections to be over in five days, he had
promised to be back on Friday. Today was Saturday, and he knew that the
letter contained reproaches for not being back at the time fixed. The
letter he had sent the previous evening had probably not reached her
yet.

The letter was what he had expected, but the form of it was unexpected,
and particularly disagreeable to him. "Annie is very ill, the doctor
says it may be inflammation. I am losing my head all alone. Princess
Varvara is no help, but a hindrance. I expected you the day before
yesterday, and yesterday, and now I am sending to find out where you are
and what you are doing. I wanted to come myself, but thought better of
it, knowing you would dislike it. Send some answer, that I may know what
to do."

The child ill, yet she had thought of coming herself. Their daughter
ill, and this hostile tone.

The innocent festivities over the election, and this gloomy, burdensome
love to which he had to return struck Vronsky by their contrast. But he
had to go, and by the first train that night he set off home.



Chapter 32


Before Vronsky's departure for the elections, Anna had reflected that
the scenes constantly repeated between them each time he left home,
might only make him cold to her instead of attaching him to her, and
resolved to do all she could to control herself so as to bear the
parting with composure. But the cold, severe glance with which he had
looked at her when he came to tell her he was going had wounded her, and
before he had started her peace of mind was destroyed.

In solitude afterwards, thinking over that glance which had expressed
his right to freedom, she came, as she always did, to the same
point--the sense of her own humiliation. "He has the right to go away
when and where he chooses. Not simply to go away, but to leave me. He
has every right, and I have none. But knowing that, he ought not to do
it. What has he done, though?... He looked at me with a cold, severe
expression. Of course that is something indefinable, impalpable, but it
has never been so before, and that glance means a great deal," she
thought. "That glance shows the beginning of indifference."

And though she felt sure that a coldness was beginning, there was
nothing she could do, she could not in any way alter her relations to
him. Just as before, only by love and by charm could she keep him. And
so, just as before, only by occupation in the day, by morphine at night,
could she stifle the fearful thought of what would be if he ceased to
love her. It is true there was still one means; not to keep him--for
that she wanted nothing more than his love--but to be nearer to him, to
be in such a position that he would not leave her. That means was
divorce and marriage. And she began to long for that, and made up her
mind to agree to it the first time he or Stiva approached her on the
subject.

Absorbed in such thoughts, she passed five days without him, the five
days that he was to be at the elections.

Walks, conversation with Princess Varvara, visits to the hospital, and,
most of all, reading--reading of one book after another--filled up her
time. But on the sixth day, when the coachman came back without him, she
felt that now she was utterly incapable of stifling the thought of him
and of what he was doing there, just at that time her little girl was
taken ill. Anna began to look after her, but even that did not distract
her mind, especially as the illness was not serious. However hard she
tried, she could not love this little child, and to feign love was
beyond her powers. Towards the evening of that day, still alone, Anna
was in such a panic about him that she decided to start for the town,
but on second thoughts wrote him the contradictory letter that Vronsky
received, and without reading it through, sent it off by a special
messenger. The next morning she received his letter and regretted her
own. She dreaded a repetition of the severe look he had flung at her at
parting, especially when he knew that the baby was not dangerously ill.
But still she was glad she had written to him. At this moment Anna was
positively admitting to herself that she was a burden to him, that he
would relinquish his freedom regretfully to return to her, and in spite
of that she was glad he was coming. Let him weary of her, but he would
be here with her, so that she would see him, would know of every action
he took.

She was sitting in the drawing room near a lamp, with a new volume of
Taine, and as she read, listening to the sound of the wind outside, and
every minute expecting the carriage to arrive. Several times she had
fancied she heard the sound of wheels, but she had been mistaken. At
last she heard not the sound of wheels, but the coachman's shout and the
dull rumble in the covered entry. Even Princess Varvara, playing
patience, confirmed this, and Anna, flushing hotly, got up; but instead
of going down, as she had done twice before, she stood still. She
suddenly felt ashamed of her duplicity, but even more she dreaded how he
might meet her. All feeling of wounded pride had passed now; she was
only afraid of the expression of his displeasure. She remembered that
her child had been perfectly well again for the last two days. She felt
positively vexed with her for getting better from the very moment her
letter was sent off. Then she thought of him, that he was here, all of
him, with his hands, his eyes. She heard his voice. And forgetting
everything, she ran joyfully to meet him.

"Well, how is Annie?" he said timidly from below, looking up to Anna as
she ran down to him.

He was sitting on a chair, and a footman was pulling off his warm
over-boot.

"Oh, she is better."

"And you?" he said, shaking himself.

She took his hand in both of hers, and drew it to her waist, never
taking her eyes off him.

"Well, I'm glad," he said, coldly scanning her, her hair, her dress,
which he knew she had put on for him. All was charming, but how many
times it had charmed him! And the stern, stony expression that she so
dreaded settled upon his face.

"Well, I'm glad. And are you well?" he said, wiping his damp beard with
his handkerchief and kissing her hand.

"Never mind," she thought, "only let him be here, and so long as he's
here he cannot, he dare not, cease to love me."

The evening was spent happily and gaily in the presence of Princess
Varvara, who complained to him that Anna had been taking morphine in his
absence.

"What am I to do? I couldn't sleep.... My thoughts prevented me. When
he's here I never take it--hardly ever."

He told her about the election, and Anna knew how by adroit questions to
bring him to what gave him most pleasure--his own success. She told him
of everything that interested him at home; and all that she told him was
of the most cheerful description.

But late in the evening, when they were alone, Anna, seeing that she had
regained complete possession of him, wanted to erase the painful
impression of the glance he had given her for her letter. She said:

"Tell me frankly, you were vexed at getting my letter, and you didn't
believe me?"

As soon as she had said it, she felt that however warm his feelings were
to her, he had not forgiven her for that.

"Yes," he said, "the letter was so strange. First, Annie ill, and then
you thought of coming yourself."

"It was all the truth."

"Oh, I don't doubt it."

"Yes, you do doubt it. You are vexed, I see."

"Not for one moment. I'm only vexed, that's true, that you seem somehow
unwilling to admit that there are duties..."

"The duty of going to a concert..."

"But we won't talk about it," he said.

"Why not talk about it?" she said.

"I only meant to say that matters of real importance may turn up. Now,
for instance, I shall have to go to Moscow to arrange about the
house.... Oh, Anna, why are you so irritable? Don't you know that I
can't live without you?"

"If so," said Anna, her voice suddenly changing, "it means that you are
sick of this life.... Yes, you will come for a day and go away, as men
do..."

"Anna, that's cruel. I am ready to give up my whole life."

But she did not hear him.

"If you go to Moscow, I will go too. I will not stay here. Either we
must separate or else live together."

"Why, you know, that's my one desire. But for that..."

"We must get a divorce. I will write to him. I see I cannot go on like
this.... But I will come with you to Moscow."

"You talk as if you were threatening me. But I desire nothing so much as
never to be parted from you," said Vronsky, smiling.

But as he said these words there gleamed in his eyes not merely a cold
look, but the vindictive look of a man persecuted and made cruel.

She saw the look and correctly divined its meaning.

"If so, it's a calamity!" that glance told her. It was a moment's
impression, but she never forgot it.

Anna wrote to her husband asking him about a divorce, and towards the
end of November, taking leave of Princess Varvara, who wanted to go to
Petersburg, she went with Vronsky to Moscow. Expecting every day an
answer from Alexey Alexandrovitch, and after that the divorce, they now
established themselves together like married people.




PART SEVEN



Chapter 1


The Levins had been three months in Moscow. The date had long passed on
which, according to the most trustworthy calculations of people learned
in such matters, Kitty should have been confined. But she was still
about, and there was nothing to show that her time was any nearer than
two months ago. The doctor, the monthly nurse, and Dolly and her mother,
and most of all Levin, who could not think of the approaching event
without terror, began to be impatient and uneasy. Kitty was the only
person who felt perfectly calm and happy.

She was distinctly conscious now of the birth of a new feeling of love
for the future child, for her to some extent actually existing already,
and she brooded blissfully over this feeling. He was not by now
altogether a part of herself, but sometimes lived his own life
independently of her. Often this separate being gave her pain, but at
the same time she wanted to laugh with a strange new joy.

All the people she loved were with her, and all were so good to her, so
attentively caring for her, so entirely pleasant was everything
presented to her, that if she had not known and felt that it must all
soon be over, she could not have wished for a better and pleasanter
life. The only thing that spoiled the charm of this manner of life was
that her husband was not here as she loved him to be, and as he was in
the country.

She liked his serene, friendly, and hospitable manner in the country. In
the town he seemed continually uneasy and on his guard, as though he
were afraid someone would be rude to him, and still more to her. At home
in the country, knowing himself distinctly to be in his right place, he
was never in haste to be off elsewhere. He was never unoccupied. Here in
town he was in a continual hurry, as though afraid of missing something,
and yet he had nothing to do. And she felt sorry for him. To others, she
knew, he did not appear an object of pity. On the contrary, when Kitty
looked at him in society, as one sometimes looks at those one loves,
trying to see him as if he were a stranger, so as to catch the
impression he must make on others, she saw with a panic even of jealous
fear that he was far indeed from being a pitiable figure, that he was
very attractive with his fine breeding, his rather old-fashioned,
reserved courtesy with women, his powerful figure, and striking, as she
thought, and expressive face. But she saw him not from without, but from
within; she saw that here he was not himself; that was the only way she
could define his condition to herself. Sometimes she inwardly reproached
him for his inability to live in the town; sometimes she recognized that
it was really hard for him to order his life here so that he could be
satisfied with it.

What had he to do, indeed? He did not care for cards; he did not go to a
club. Spending the time with jovial gentlemen of Oblonsky's type--she
knew now what that meant ... it meant drinking and going somewhere after
drinking. She could not think without horror of where men went on such
occasions. Was he to go into society? But she knew he could only find
satisfaction in that if he took pleasure in the society of young women,
and that she could not wish for. Should he stay at home with her, her
mother and her sisters? But much as she liked and enjoyed their
conversations forever on the same subjects--"Aline-Nadine," as the old
prince called the sisters' talks--she knew it must bore him. What was
there left for him to do? To go on writing at his book he had indeed
attempted, and at first he used to go to the library and make extracts
and look up references for his book. But, as he told her, the more he
did nothing, the less time he had to do anything. And besides, he
complained that he had talked too much about his book here, and that
consequently all his ideas about it were muddled and had lost their
interest for him.

One advantage in this town life was that quarrels hardly ever happened
between them here in town. Whether it was that their conditions were
different, or that they had both become more careful and sensible in
that respect, they had no quarrels in Moscow from jealousy, which they
had so dreaded when they moved from the country.

One event, an event of great importance to both from that point of view,
did indeed happen--that was Kitty's meeting with Vronsky.

The old Princess Marya Borissovna, Kitty's godmother, who had always
been very fond of her, had insisted on seeing her. Kitty, though she did
not go into society at all on account of her condition, went with her
father to see the venerable old lady, and there met Vronsky.

The only thing Kitty could reproach herself for at this meeting was that
at the instant when she recognized in his civilian dress the features
once so familiar to her, her breath failed her, the blood rushed to her
heart, and a vivid blush--she felt it--overspread her face. But this
lasted only a few seconds. Before her father, who purposely began
talking in a loud voice to Vronsky, had finished, she was perfectly
ready to look at Vronsky, to speak to him, if necessary, exactly as she
spoke to Princess Marya Borissovna, and more than that, to do so in such
a way that everything to the faintest intonation and smile would have
been approved by her husband, whose unseen presence she seemed to feel
about her at that instant.

She said a few words to him, even smiled serenely at his joke about the
elections, which he called "our parliament." (She had to smile to show
she saw the joke.) But she turned away immediately to Princess Marya
Borissovna, and did not once glance at him till he got up to go; then
she looked at him, but evidently only because it would be uncivil not to
look at a man when he is saying good-bye.

She was grateful to her father for saying nothing to her about their
meeting Vronsky, but she saw by his special warmth to her after the
visit during their usual walk that he was pleased with her. She was
pleased with herself. She had not expected she would have had the power,
while keeping somewhere in the bottom of her heart all the memories of
her old feeling for Vronsky, not only to seem but to be perfectly
indifferent and composed with him.

Levin flushed a great deal more than she when she told him she had met
Vronsky at Princess Marya Borissovna's. It was very hard for her to tell
him this, but still harder to go on speaking of the details of the
meeting, as he did not question her, but simply gazed at her with a
frown.

"I am very sorry you weren't there," she said. "Not that you weren't in
the room ... I couldn't have been so natural in your presence ... I am
blushing now much more, much, much more," she said, blushing till the
tears came into her eyes. "But that you couldn't see through a crack."

The truthful eyes told Levin that she was satisfied with herself, and in
spite of her blushing he was quickly reassured and began questioning
her, which was all she wanted. When he had heard everything, even to the
detail that for the first second she could not help flushing, but that
afterwards she was just as direct and as much at her ease as with any
chance acquaintance, Levin was quite happy again and said he was glad of
it, and would not now behave as stupidly as he had done at the election,
but would try the first time he met Vronsky to be as friendly as
possible.

"It's so wretched to feel that there's a man almost an enemy whom it's
painful to meet," said Levin. "I'm very, very glad."



Chapter 2


"Go, please, go then and call on the Bols," Kitty said to her husband,
when he came in to see her at eleven o'clock before going out. "I know
you are dining at the club; papa put down your name. But what are you
going to do in the morning?"

"I am only going to Katavasov," answered Levin.

"Why so early?"

"He promised to introduce me to Metrov. I wanted to talk to him about my
work. He's a distinguished scientific man from Petersburg," said Levin.

"Yes; wasn't it his article you were praising so? Well, and after that?"
said Kitty.

"I shall go to the court, perhaps, about my sister's business."

"And the concert?" she queried.

"I shan't go there all alone."

"No? do go; there are going to be some new things.... That interested
you so. I should certainly go."

"Well, anyway, I shall come home before dinner," he said, looking at his
watch.

"Put on your frock coat, so that you can go straight to call on Countess
Bola."

"But is it absolutely necessary?"

"Oh, absolutely! He has been to see us. Come, what is it? You go in, sit
down, talk for five minutes of the weather, get up and go away."

"Oh, you wouldn't believe it! I've got so out of the way of all this
that it makes me feel positively ashamed. It's such a horrible thing to
do! A complete outsider walks in, sits down, stays on with nothing to
do, wastes their time and worries himself, and walks away!"

Kitty laughed.

"Why, I suppose you used to pay calls before you were married, didn't
you?"

"Yes, I did, but I always felt ashamed, and now I'm so out of the way of
it that, by Jove! I'd sooner go two days running without my dinner than
pay this call! One's so ashamed! I feel all the while that they're
annoyed, that they're saying, 'What has he come for?'"

"No, they won't. I'll answer for that," said Kitty, looking into his
face with a laugh. She took his hand. "Well, good-bye.... Do go,
please."

He was just going out after kissing his wife's hand, when she stopped
him.

"Kostya, do you know I've only fifty roubles left?"

"Oh, all right, I'll go to the bank and get some. How much?" he said,
with the expression of dissatisfaction she knew so well.

"No, wait a minute." She held his hand. "Let's talk about it, it worries
me. I seem to spend nothing unnecessary, but money seems to fly away
simply. We don't manage well, somehow."

"Oh, it's all right," he said with a little cough, looking at her from
under his brows.

That cough she knew well. It was a sign of intense dissatisfaction, not
with her, but with himself. He certainly was displeased not at so much
money being spent, but at being reminded of what he, knowing something
was unsatisfactory, wanted to forget.

"I have told Sokolov to sell the wheat, and to borrow an advance on the
mill. We shall have money enough in any case."

"Yes, but I'm afraid that altogether..."

"Oh, it's all right, all right," he repeated. "Well, good-bye, darling."

"No, I'm really sorry sometimes that I listened to mamma. How nice it
would have been in the country! As it is, I'm worrying you all, and
we're wasting our money."

"Not at all, not at all. Not once since I've been married have I said
that things could have been better than they are...."

"Truly?" she said, looking into his eyes.

He had said it without thinking, simply to console her. But when he
glanced at her and saw those sweet truthful eyes fastened questioningly
on him, he repeated it with his whole heart. "I was positively
forgetting her," he thought. And he remembered what was before them, so
soon to come.

"Will it be soon? How do you feel?" he whispered, taking her two hands.

"I have so often thought so, that now I don't think about it or know
anything about it."

"And you're not frightened?"

She smiled contemptuously.

"Not the least little bit," she said.

"Well, if anything happens, I shall be at Katavasov's."

"No, nothing will happen, and don't think about it. I'm going for a walk
on the boulevard with papa. We're going to see Dolly. I shall expect you
before dinner. Oh, yes! Do you know that Dolly's position is becoming
utterly impossible? She's in debt all round; she hasn't a penny. We were
talking yesterday with mamma and Arseny" (this was her sister's husband
Lvov), "and we determined to send you with him to talk to Stiva. It's
really unbearable. One can't speak to papa about it.... But if you and
he..."

"Why, what can we do?" said Levin.

"You'll be at Arseny's, anyway; talk to him, he will tell what we
decided."

"Oh, I agree to everything Arseny thinks beforehand. I'll go and see
him. By the way, if I do go to the concert, I'll go with Natalia. Well,
good-bye."

On the steps Levin was stopped by his old servant Kouzma, who had been
with him before his marriage, and now looked after their household in
town.

"Beauty" (that was the left shaft-horse brought up from the country)
"has been badly shod and is quite lame," he said. "What does your honor
wish to be done?"

During the first part of their stay in Moscow, Levin had used his own
horses brought up from the country. He had tried to arrange this part of
their expenses in the best and cheapest way possible; but it appeared
that their own horses came dearer than hired horses, and they still
hired too.

"Send for the veterinary, there may be a bruise."

"And for Katerina Alexandrovna?" asked Kouzma.

Levin was not by now struck as he had been at first by the fact that to
get from one end of Moscow to the other he had to have two powerful
horses put into a heavy carriage, to take the carriage three miles
through the snowy slush and to keep it standing there four hours, paying
five roubles every time.

Now it seemed quite natural.

"Hire a pair for our carriage from the jobmaster," said he.

"Yes, sir."

And so, simply and easily, thanks to the facilities of town life, Levin
settled a question which, in the country, would have called for so much
personal trouble and exertion, and going out onto the steps, he called a
sledge, sat down, and drove to Nikitsky. On the way he thought no more
of money, but mused on the introduction that awaited him to the
Petersburg savant, a writer on sociology, and what he would say to him
about his book.

Only during the first days of his stay in Moscow Levin had been struck
by the expenditure, strange to one living in the country, unproductive
but inevitable, that was expected of him on every side. But by now he
had grown used to it. That had happened to him in this matter which is
said to happen to drunkards--the first glass sticks in the throat, the
second flies down like a hawk, but after the third they're like tiny
little birds. When Levin had changed his first hundred-rouble note to
pay for liveries for his footmen and hall-porter he could not help
reflecting that these liveries were of no use to anyone--but they were
indubitably necessary, to judge by the amazement of the princess and
Kitty when he suggested that they might do without liveries,--that these
liveries would cost the wages of two laborers for the summer, that is,
would pay for about three hundred working days from Easter to Ash
Wednesday, and each a day of hard work from early morning to late
evening--and that hundred-rouble note did stick in his throat. But the
next note, changed to pay for providing a dinner for their relations,
that cost twenty-eight roubles, though it did excite in Levin the
reflection that twenty-eight roubles meant nine measures of oats, which
men would with groans and sweat have reaped and bound and thrashed and
winnowed and sifted and sown,--this next one he parted with more easily.
And now the notes he changed no longer aroused such reflections, and
they flew off like little birds. Whether the labor devoted to obtaining
the money corresponded to the pleasure given by what was bought with it,
was a consideration he had long ago dismissed. His business calculation
that there was a certain price below which he could not sell certain
grain was forgotten too. The rye, for the price of which he had so long
held out, had been sold for fifty kopecks a measure cheaper than it had
been fetching a month ago. Even the consideration that with such an
expenditure he could not go on living for a year without debt, that even
had no force. Only one thing was essential: to have money in the bank,
without inquiring where it came from, so as to know that one had the
wherewithal to buy meat for tomorrow. And this condition had hitherto
been fulfilled; he had always had the money in the bank. But now the
money in the bank had gone, and he could not quite tell where to get the
next installment. And this it was which, at the moment when Kitty had
mentioned money, had disturbed him; but he had no time to think about
it. He drove off, thinking of Katavasov and the meeting with Metrov that
was before him.



Chapter 3


Levin had on this visit to town seen a great deal of his old friend at
the university, Professor Katavasov, whom he had not seen since his
marriage. He liked in Katavasov the clearness and simplicity of his
conception of life. Levin thought that the clearness of Katavasov's
conception of life was due to the poverty of his nature; Katavasov
thought that the disconnectedness of Levin's ideas was due to his lack
of intellectual discipline; but Levin enjoyed Katavasov's clearness, and
Katavasov enjoyed the abundance of Levin's untrained ideas, and they
liked to meet and to discuss.

Levin had read Katavasov some parts of his book, and he had liked them.
On the previous day Katavasov had met Levin at a public lecture and told
him that the celebrated Metrov, whose article Levin had so much liked,
was in Moscow, that he had been much interested by what Katavasov had
told him about Levin's work, and that he was coming to see him tomorrow
at eleven, and would be very glad to make Levin's acquaintance.

"You're positively a reformed character, I'm glad to see," said
Katavasov, meeting Levin in the little drawing room. "I heard the bell
and thought: Impossible that it can be he at the exact time!... Well,
what do you say to the Montenegrins now? They're a race of warriors."

"Why, what's happened?" asked Levin.

Katavasov in a few words told him the last piece of news from the war,
and going into his study, introduced Levin to a short, thick-set man of
pleasant appearance. This was Metrov. The conversation touched for a
brief space on politics and on how recent events were looked at in the
higher spheres in Petersburg. Metrov repeated a saying that had reached
him through a most trustworthy source, reported as having been uttered
on this subject by the Tsar and one of the ministers. Katavasov had
heard also on excellent authority that the Tsar had said something quite
different. Levin tried to imagine circumstances in which both sayings
might have been uttered, and the conversation on that topic dropped.

"Yes, here he's written almost a book on the natural conditions of the
laborer in relation to the land," said Katavasov; "I'm not a specialist,
but I, as a natural science man, was pleased at his not taking mankind
as something outside biological laws; but, on the contrary, seeing his
dependence on his surroundings, and in that dependence seeking the laws
of his development."

"That's very interesting," said Metrov.

"What I began precisely was to write a book on agriculture; but studying
the chief instrument of agriculture, the laborer," said Levin,
reddening, "I could not help coming to quite unexpected results."

And Levin began carefully, as it were, feeling his ground, to expound
his views. He knew Metrov had written an article against the generally
accepted theory of political economy, but to what extent he could reckon
on his sympathy with his own new views he did not know and could not
guess from the clever and serene face of the learned man.

"But in what do you see the special characteristics of the Russian
laborer?" said Metrov; "in his biological characteristics, so to speak,
or in the condition in which he is placed?"

Levin saw that there was an idea underlying this question with which he
did not agree. But he went on explaining his own idea that the Russian
laborer has a quite special view of the land, different from that of
other people; and to support this proposition he made haste to add that
in his opinion this attitude of the Russian peasant was due to the
consciousness of his vocation to people vast unoccupied expanses in the
East.

"One may easily be led into error in basing any conclusion on the
general vocation of a people," said Metrov, interrupting Levin. "The
condition of the laborer will always depend on his relation to the land
and to capital."

And without letting Levin finish explaining his idea, Metrov began
expounding to him the special point of his own theory.

In what the point of his theory lay, Levin did not understand, because
he did not take the trouble to understand. He saw that Metrov, like
other people, in spite of his own article, in which he had attacked the
current theory of political economy, looked at the position of the
Russian peasant simply from the point of view of capital, wages, and
rent. He would indeed have been obliged to admit that in the
eastern--much the larger--part of Russia rent was as yet nil, that for
nine-tenths of the eighty millions of the Russian peasants wages took
the form simply of food provided for themselves, and that capital does
not so far exist except in the form of the most primitive tools. Yet it
was only from that point of view that he considered every laborer,
though in many points he differed from the economists and had his own
theory of the wage-fund, which he expounded to Levin.

Levin listened reluctantly, and at first made objections. He would have
liked to interrupt Metrov, to explain his own thought, which in his
opinion would have rendered further exposition of Metrov's theories
superfluous. But later on, feeling convinced that they looked at the
matter so differently, that they could never understand one another, he
did not even oppose his statements, but simply listened. Although what
Metrov was saying was by now utterly devoid of interest for him, he yet
experienced a certain satisfaction in listening to him. It flattered his
vanity that such a learned man should explain his ideas to him so
eagerly, with such intensity and confidence in Levin's understanding of
the subject, sometimes with a mere hint referring him to a whole aspect
of the subject. He put this down to his own credit, unaware that Metrov,
who had already discussed his theory over and over again with all his
intimate friends, talked of it with special eagerness to every new
person, and in general was eager to talk to anyone of any subject that
interested him, even if still obscure to himself.

"We are late though," said Katavasov, looking at his watch directly
Metrov had finished his discourse.

"Yes, there's a meeting of the Society of Amateurs today in
commemoration of the jubilee of Svintitch," said Katavasov in answer to
Levin's inquiry. "Pyotr Ivanovitch and I were going. I've promised to
deliver an address on his labors in zoology. Come along with us, it's
very interesting."

"Yes, and indeed it's time to start," said Metrov. "Come with us, and
from there, if you care to, come to my place. I should very much like to
hear your work."

"Oh, no! It's no good yet, it's unfinished. But I shall be very glad to
go to the meeting."

"I say, friends, have you heard? He has handed in the separate report,"
Katavasov called from the other room, where he was putting on his frock
coat.

And a conversation sprang up upon the university question, which was a
very important event that winter in Moscow. Three old professors in the
council had not accepted the opinion of the younger professors. The
young ones had registered a separate resolution. This, in the judgment
of some people, was monstrous, in the judgment of others it was the
simplest and most just thing to do, and the professors were split up
into two parties.

One party, to which Katavasov belonged, saw in the opposite party a
scoundrelly betrayal and treachery, while the opposite party saw in them
childishness and lack of respect for the authorities. Levin, though he
did not belong to the university, had several times already during his
stay in Moscow heard and talked about this matter, and had his own
opinion on the subject. He took part in the conversation that was
continued in the street, as they all three walked to the buildings of
the old university.

The meeting had already begun. Round the cloth-covered table, at which
Katavasov and Metrov seated themselves, there were some half-dozen
persons, and one of these was bending close over a manuscript, reading
something aloud. Levin sat down in one of the empty chairs that were
standing round the table, and in a whisper asked a student sitting near
what was being read. The student, eyeing Levin with displeasure, said:

"Biography."

Though Levin was not interested in the biography, he could not help
listening, and learned some new and interesting facts about the life of
the distinguished man of science.

When the reader had finished, the chairman thanked him and read some
verses of the poet Ment sent him on the jubilee, and said a few words by
way of thanks to the poet. Then Katavasov in his loud, ringing voice
read his address on the scientific labors of the man whose jubilee was
being kept.

When Katavasov had finished, Levin looked at his watch, saw it was past
one, and thought that there would not be time before the concert to read
Metrov his book, and indeed, he did not now care to do so. During the
reading he had thought over their conversation. He saw distinctly now
that though Metrov's ideas might perhaps have value, his own ideas had a
value too, and their ideas could only be made clear and lead to
something if each worked separately in his chosen path, and that nothing
would be gained by putting their ideas together. And having made up his
mind to refuse Metrov's invitation, Levin went up to him at the end of
the meeting. Metrov introduced Levin to the chairman, with whom he was
talking of the political news. Metrov told the chairman what he had
already told Levin, and Levin made the same remarks on his news that he
had already made that morning, but for the sake of variety he expressed
also a new opinion which had only just struck him. After that the
conversation turned again on the university question. As Levin had
already heard it all, he made haste to tell Metrov that he was sorry he
could not take advantage of his invitation, took leave, and drove to
Lvov's.



Chapter 4


Lvov, the husband of Natalia, Kitty's sister, had spent all his life in
foreign capitals, where he had been educated, and had been in the
diplomatic service.

During the previous year he had left the diplomatic service, not owing
to any "unpleasantness" (he never had any "unpleasantness" with anyone),
and was transferred to the department of the court of the palace in
Moscow, in order to give his two boys the best education possible.

In spite of the striking contrast in their habits and views and the fact
that Lvov was older than Levin, they had seen a great deal of one
another that winter, and had taken a great liking to each other.

Lvov was at home, and Levin went in to him unannounced.

Lvov, in a house coat with a belt and in chamois leather shoes, was
sitting in an armchair, and with a pince-nez with blue glasses he was
reading a book that stood on a reading desk, while in his beautiful hand
he held a half-burned cigarette daintily away from him.

His handsome, delicate, and still youthful-looking face, to which his
curly, glistening silvery hair gave a still more aristocratic air,
lighted up with a smile when he saw Levin.

"Capital! I was meaning to send to you. How's Kitty? Sit here, it's more
comfortable." He got up and pushed up a rocking chair. "Have you read
the last circular in the _Journal de St. Petersbourg?_ I think it's
excellent," he said, with a slight French accent.

Levin told him what he had heard from Katavasov was being said in
Petersburg, and after talking a little about politics, he told him of
his interview with Metrov, and the learned society's meeting. To Lvov it
was very interesting.

"That's what I envy you, that you are able to mix in these interesting
scientific circles," he said. And as he talked, he passed as usual into
French, which was easier to him. "It's true I haven't the time for it.
My official work and the children leave me no time; and then I'm not
ashamed to own that my education has been too defective."

"That I don't believe," said Levin with a smile, feeling, as he always
did, touched at Lvov's low opinion of himself, which was not in the
least put on from a desire to seem or to be modest, but was absolutely
sincere.

"Oh, yes, indeed! I feel now how badly educated I am. To educate my
children I positively have to look up a great deal, and in fact simply
to study myself. For it's not enough to have teachers, there must be
someone to look after them, just as on your land you want laborers and
an overseer. See what I'm reading"--he pointed to Buslaev's _Grammar_ on
the desk--"it's expected of Misha, and it's so difficult.... Come,
explain to me.... Here he says..."

Levin tried to explain to him that it couldn't be understood, but that
it had to be taught; but Lvov would not agree with him.

"Oh, you're laughing at it!"

"On the contrary, you can't imagine how, when I look at you, I'm always
learning the task that lies before me, that is the education of one's
children."

"Well, there's nothing for you to learn," said Lvov.

"All I know," said Levin, "is that I have never seen better brought-up
children than yours, and I wouldn't wish for children better than
yours."

Lvov visibly tried to restrain the expression of his delight, but he was
positively radiant with smiles.

"If only they're better than I! That's all I desire. You don't know yet
all the work," he said, "with boys who've been left like mine to run
wild abroad."

"You'll catch all that up. They're such clever children. The great thing
is the education of character. That's what I learn when I look at your
children."

"You talk of the education of character. You can't imagine how difficult
that is! You have hardly succeeded in combating one tendency when others
crop up, and the struggle begins again. If one had not a support in
religion--you remember we talked about that--no father could bring
children up relying on his own strength alone without that help."

This subject, which always interested Levin, was cut short by the
entrance of the beauty Natalia Alexandrovna, dressed to go out.

"I didn't know you were here," she said, unmistakably feeling no regret,
but a positive pleasure, in interrupting this conversation on a topic
she had heard so much of that she was by now weary of it. "Well, how is
Kitty? I am dining with you today. I tell you what, Arseny," she turned
to her husband, "you take the carriage."

And the husband and wife began to discuss their arrangements for the
day. As the husband had to drive to meet someone on official business,
while the wife had to go to the concert and some public meeting of a
committee on the Eastern Question, there was a great deal to consider
and settle. Levin had to take part in their plans as one of themselves.
It was settled that Levin should go with Natalia to the concert and the
meeting, and that from there they should send the carriage to the office
for Arseny, and he should call for her and take her to Kitty's; or that,
if he had not finished his work, he should send the carriage back and
Levin would go with her.

"He's spoiling me," Lvov said to his wife; "he assures me that our
children are splendid, when I know how much that's bad there is in
them."

"Arseny goes to extremes, I always say," said his wife. "If you look for
perfection, you will never be satisfied. And it's true, as papa
says,--that when we were brought up there was one extreme--we were kept
in the basement, while our parents lived in the best rooms; now it's
just the other way--the parents are in the wash house, while the
children are in the best rooms. Parents now are not expected to live at
all, but to exist altogether for their children."

"Well, what if they like it better?" Lvov said, with his beautiful
smile, touching her hand. "Anyone who didn't know you would think you
were a stepmother, not a true mother."

"No, extremes are not good in anything," Natalia said serenely, putting
his paper knife straight in its proper place on the table.

"Well, come here, you perfect children," Lvov said to the two handsome
boys who came in, and after bowing to Levin, went up to their father,
obviously wishing to ask him about something.

Levin would have liked to talk to them, to hear what they would say to
their father, but Natalia began talking to him, and then Lvov's
colleague in the service, Mahotin, walked in, wearing his court uniform,
to go with him to meet someone, and a conversation was kept up without a
break upon Herzegovina, Princess Korzinskaya, the town council, and the
sudden death of Madame Apraksina.

Levin even forgot the commission intrusted to him. He recollected it as
he was going into the hall.

"Oh, Kitty told me to talk to you about Oblonsky," he said, as Lvov was
standing on the stairs, seeing his wife and Levin off.

"Yes, yes, maman wants us, _les beaux-freres,_ to attack him," he said,
blushing. "But why should I?"

"Well, then, I will attack him," said Madame Lvova, with a smile,
standing in her white sheepskin cape, waiting till they had finished
speaking. "Come, let us go."



Chapter 5


At the concert in the afternoon two very interesting things were
performed. One was a fantasia, _King Lear;_ the other was a quartette
dedicated to the memory of Bach. Both were new and in the new style, and
Levin was eager to form an opinion of them. After escorting his
sister-in-law to her stall, he stood against a column and tried to
listen as attentively and conscientiously as possible. He tried not to
let his attention be distracted, and not to spoil his impression by
looking at the conductor in a white tie, waving his arms, which always
disturbed his enjoyment of music so much, or the ladies in bonnets, with
strings carefully tied over their ears, and all these people either
thinking of nothing at all or thinking of all sorts of things except the
music. He tried to avoid meeting musical connoisseurs or talkative
acquaintances, and stood looking at the floor straight before him,
listening.

But the more he listened to the fantasia of King Lear the further he
felt from forming any definite opinion of it. There was, as it were, a
continual beginning, a preparation of the musical expression of some
feeling, but it fell to pieces again directly, breaking into new musical
motives, or simply nothing but the whims of the composer, exceedingly
complex but disconnected sounds. And these fragmentary musical
expressions, though sometimes beautiful, were disagreeable, because they
were utterly unexpected and not led up to by anything. Gaiety and grief
and despair and tenderness and triumph followed one another without any
connection, like the emotions of a madman. And those emotions, like a
madman's, sprang up quite unexpectedly.

During the whole of the performance Levin felt like a deaf man watching
people dancing, and was in a state of complete bewilderment when the
fantasia was over, and felt a great weariness from the fruitless strain
on his attention. Loud applause resounded on all sides. Everyone got up,
moved about, and began talking. Anxious to throw some light on his own
perplexity from the impressions of others, Levin began to walk about,
looking for connoisseurs, and was glad to see a well-known musical
amateur in conversation with Pestsov, whom he knew.

"Marvelous!" Pestsov was saying in his mellow bass. "How are you,
Konstantin Dmitrievitch? Particularly sculpturesque and plastic, so to
say, and richly colored is that passage where you feel Cordelia's
approach, where woman, _das ewig Weibliche,_ enters into conflict with
fate. Isn't it?"

"You mean ... what has Cordelia to do with it?" Levin asked timidly,
forgetting that the fantasia was supposed to represent King Lear.

"Cordelia comes in ... see here!" said Pestsov, tapping his finger on
the satiny surface of the program he held in his hand and passing it to
Levin.

Only then Levin recollected the title of the fantasia, and made haste to
read in the Russian translation the lines from Shakespeare that were
printed on the back of the program.

"You can't follow it without that," said Pestsov, addressing Levin, as
the person he had been speaking to had gone away, and he had no one to
talk to.

In the _entr'acte_ Levin and Pestsov fell into an argument upon the
merits and defects of music of the Wagner school. Levin maintained that
the mistake of Wagner and all his followers lay in their trying to take
music into the sphere of another art, just as poetry goes wrong when it
tries to paint a face as the art of painting ought to do, and as an
instance of this mistake he cited the sculptor who carved in marble
certain poetic phantasms flitting round the figure of the poet on the
pedestal. "These phantoms were so far from being phantoms that they were
positively clinging on the ladder," said Levin. The comparison pleased
him, but he could not remember whether he had not used the same phrase
before, and to Pestsov, too, and as he said it he felt confused.

Pestsov maintained that art is one, and that it can attain its highest
manifestations only by conjunction with all kinds of art.

The second piece that was performed Levin could not hear. Pestsov, who
was standing beside him, was talking to him almost all the time,
condemning the music for its excessive affected assumption of
simplicity, and comparing it with the simplicity of the Pre-Raphaelites
in painting. As he went out Levin met many more acquaintances, with whom
he talked of politics, of music, and of common acquaintances. Among
others he met Count Bol, whom he had utterly forgotten to call upon.

"Well, go at once then," Madame Lvova said, when he told her; "perhaps
they'll not be at home, and then you can come to the meeting to fetch
me. You'll find me still there."



Chapter 6


"Perhaps they're not at home?" said Levin, as he went into the hall of
Countess Bola's house.

"At home; please walk in," said the porter, resolutely removing his
overcoat.

"How annoying!" thought Levin with a sigh, taking off one glove and
stroking his hat. "What did I come for? What have I to say to them?"

As he passed through the first drawing room Levin met in the doorway
Countess Bola, giving some order to a servant with a care-worn and
severe face. On seeing Levin she smiled, and asked him to come into the
little drawing room, where he heard voices. In this room there were
sitting in armchairs the two daughters of the countess, and a Moscow
colonel, whom Levin knew. Levin went up, greeted them, and sat down
beside the sofa with his hat on his knees.

"How is your wife? Have you been at the concert? We couldn't go. Mamma
had to be at the funeral service."

"Yes, I heard.... What a sudden death!" said Levin.

The countess came in, sat down on the sofa, and she too asked after his
wife and inquired about the concert.

Levin answered, and repeated an inquiry about Madame Apraksina's sudden
death.

"But she was always in weak health."

"Were you at the opera yesterday?"

"Yes, I was."

"Lucca was very good."

"Yes, very good," he said, and as it was utterly of no consequence to
him what they thought of him, he began repeating what they had heard a
hundred times about the characteristics of the singer's talent. Countess
Bola pretended to be listening. Then, when he had said enough and
paused, the colonel, who had been silent till then, began to talk. The
colonel too talked of the opera, and about culture. At last, after
speaking of the proposed _folle journee_ at Turin's, the colonel
laughed, got up noisily, and went away. Levin too rose, but he saw by
the face of the countess that it was not yet time for him to go. He must
stay two minutes longer. He sat down.

But as he was thinking all the while how stupid it was, he could not
find a subject for conversation, and sat silent.

"You are not going to the public meeting? They say it will be very
interesting," began the countess.

"No, I promised my _belle-soeur_ to fetch her from it," said Levin.

A silence followed. The mother once more exchanged glances with a
daughter.

"Well, now I think the time has come," thought Levin, and he got up. The
ladies shook hands with him, and begged him to say _mille choses_ to his
wife for them.

The porter asked him, as he gave him his coat, "Where is your honor
staying?" and immediately wrote down his address in a big handsomely
bound book.

"Of course I don't care, but still I feel ashamed and awfully stupid,"
thought Levin, consoling himself with the reflection that everyone does
it. He drove to the public meeting, where he was to find his
sister-in-law, so as to drive home with her.

At the public meeting of the committee there were a great many people,
and almost all the highest society. Levin was in time for the report
which, as everyone said, was very interesting. When the reading of the
report was over, people moved about, and Levin met Sviazhsky, who
invited him very pressingly to come that evening to a meeting of the
Society of Agriculture, where a celebrated lecture was to be delivered,
and Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had only just come from the races, and many
other acquaintances; and Levin heard and uttered various criticisms on
the meeting, on the new fantasia, and on a public trial. But, probably
from the mental fatigue he was beginning to feel, he made a blunder in
speaking of the trial, and this blunder he recalled several times with
vexation. Speaking of the sentence upon a foreigner who had been
condemned in Russia, and of how unfair it would be to punish him by
exile abroad, Levin repeated what he had heard the day before in
conversation from an acquaintance.

"I think sending him abroad is much the same as punishing a carp by
putting it into the water," said Levin. Then he recollected that this
idea, which he had heard from an acquaintance and uttered as his own,
came from a fable of Krilov's, and that the acquaintance had picked it
up from a newspaper article.

After driving home with his sister-in-law, and finding Kitty in good
spirits and quite well, Levin drove to the club.



Chapter 7


Levin reached the club just at the right time. Members and visitors were
driving up as he arrived. Levin had not been at the club for a very long
while--not since he lived in Moscow, when he was leaving the university
and going into society. He remembered the club, the external details of
its arrangement, but he had completely forgotten the impression it had
made on him in old days. But as soon as, driving into the wide
semicircular court and getting out of the sledge, he mounted the steps,
and the hall porter, adorned with a crossway scarf, noiselessly opened
the door to him with a bow; as soon as he saw in the porter's room the
cloaks and galoshes of members who thought it less trouble to take them
off downstairs; as soon as he heard the mysterious ringing bell that
preceded him as he ascended the easy, carpeted staircase, and saw the
statue on the landing, and the third porter at the top doors, a familiar
figure grown older, in the club livery, opening the door without haste
or delay, and scanning the visitors as they passed in--Levin felt the
old impression of the club come back in a rush, an impression of repose,
comfort, and propriety.

"Your hat, please," the porter said to Levin, who forgot the club rule
to leave his hat in the porter's room. "Long time since you've been. The
prince put your name down yesterday. Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch is not
here yet."

The porter did not only know Levin, but also all his ties and
relationships, and so immediately mentioned his intimate friends.

Passing through the outer hall, divided up by screens, and the room
partitioned on the right, where a man sits at the fruit buffet, Levin
overtook an old man walking slowly in, and entered the dining room full
of noise and people.

He walked along the tables, almost all full, and looked at the visitors.
He saw people of all sorts, old and young; some he knew a little, some
intimate friends. There was not a single cross or worried-looking face.
All seemed to have left their cares and anxieties in the porter's room
with their hats, and were all deliberately getting ready to enjoy the
material blessings of life. Sviazhsky was here and Shtcherbatsky,
Nevyedovsky and the old prince, and Vronsky and Sergey Ivanovitch.

"Ah! why are you late?" the prince said smiling, and giving him his hand
over his own shoulder. "How's Kitty?" he added, smoothing out the napkin
he had tucked in at his waistcoat buttons.

"All right; they are dining at home, all the three of them."

"Ah, 'Aline-Nadine,' to be sure! There's no room with us. Go to that
table, and make haste and take a seat," said the prince, and turning
away he carefully took a plate of eel soup.

"Levin, this way!" a good-natured voice shouted a little farther on. It
was Turovtsin. He was sitting with a young officer, and beside them were
two chairs turned upside down. Levin gladly went up to them. He had
always liked the good-hearted rake, Turovtsin--he was associated in his
mind with memories of his courtship--and at that moment, after the
strain of intellectual conversation, the sight of Turovtsin's
good-natured face was particularly welcome.

"For you and Oblonsky. He'll be here directly."

The young man, holding himself very erect, with eyes forever twinkling
with enjoyment, was an officer from Petersburg, Gagin. Turovtsin
introduced them.

"Oblonsky's always late."

"Ah, here he is!"

"Have you only just come?" said Oblonsky, coming quickly towards them.
"Good day. Had some vodka? Well, come along then."

Levin got up and went with him to the big table spread with spirits and
appetizers of the most various kinds. One would have thought that out of
two dozen delicacies one might find something to one's taste, but Stepan
Arkadyevitch asked for something special, and one of the liveried
waiters standing by immediately brought what was required. They drank a
wine glassful and returned to their table.

At once, while they were still at the soup, Gagin was served with
champagne, and told the waiter to fill four glasses. Levin did not
refuse the wine, and asked for a second bottle. He was very hungry, and
ate and drank with great enjoyment, and with still greater enjoyment
took part in the lively and simple conversation of his companions.
Gagin, dropping his voice, told the last good story from Petersburg, and
the story, though improper and stupid, was so ludicrous that Levin broke
into roars of laughter so loud that those near looked round.

"That's in the same style as, 'that's a thing I can't endure!' You know
the story?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "Ah, that's exquisite! Another
bottle," he said to the waiter, and he began to relate his good story.

"Pyotr Illyitch Vinovsky invites you to drink with him," a little old
waiter interrupted Stepan Arkadyevitch, bringing two delicate glasses of
sparkling champagne, and addressing Stepan Arkadyevitch and Levin.
Stepan Arkadyevitch took the glass, and looking towards a bald man with
red mustaches at the other end of the table, he nodded to him, smiling.

"Who's that?" asked Levin.

"You met him once at my place, don't you remember? A good-natured
fellow."

Levin did the same as Stepan Arkadyevitch and took the glass.

Stepan Arkadyevitch's anecdote too was very amusing. Levin told his
story, and that too was successful. Then they talked of horses, of the
races, of what they had been doing that day, and of how smartly
Vronsky's Atlas had won the first prize. Levin did not notice how the
time passed at dinner.

"Ah! and here they are!" Stepan Arkadyevitch said towards the end of
dinner, leaning over the back of his chair and holding out his hand to
Vronsky, who came up with a tall officer of the Guards. Vronsky's face
too beamed with the look of good-humored enjoyment that was general in
the club. He propped his elbow playfully on Stepan Arkadyevitch's
shoulder, whispering something to him, and he held out his hand to Levin
with the same good-humored smile.

"Very glad to meet you," he said. "I looked out for you at the election,
but I was told you had gone away."

"Yes, I left the same day. We've just been talking of your horse. I
congratulate you," said Levin. "It was very rapidly run."

"Yes; you've race horses too, haven't you?"

"No, my father had; but I remember and know something about it."

"Where have you dined?" asked Stepan Arkadyevitch.

"We were at the second table, behind the columns."

"We've been celebrating his success," said the tall colonel. "It's his
second Imperial prize. I wish I might have the luck at cards he has with
horses. Well, why waste the precious time? I'm going to the 'infernal
regions,'" added the colonel, and he walked away.

"That's Yashvin," Vronsky said in answer to Turovtsin, and he sat down
in the vacated seat beside them. He drank the glass offered him, and
ordered a bottle of wine. Under the influence of the club atmosphere or
the wine he had drunk, Levin chatted away to Vronsky of the best breeds
of cattle, and was very glad not to feel the slightest hostility to this
man. He even told him, among other things, that he had heard from his
wife that she had met him at Princess Marya Borissovna's.

"Ah, Princess Marya Borissovna, she's exquisite!" said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, and he told an anecdote about her which set them all
laughing. Vronsky particularly laughed with such simplehearted amusement
that Levin felt quite reconciled to him.

"Well, have we finished?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, getting up with a
smile. "Let us go."



Chapter 8


Getting up from the table, Levin walked with Gagin through the lofty
room to the billiard room, feeling his arms swing as he walked with a
peculiar lightness and ease. As he crossed the big room, he came upon
his father-in-law.

"Well, how do you like our Temple of Indolence?" said the prince, taking
his arm. "Come along, come along!"

"Yes, I wanted to walk about and look at everything. It's interesting."

"Yes, it's interesting for you. But its interest for me is quite
different. You look at those little old men now," he said, pointing to a
club member with bent back and projecting lip, shuffling towards them in
his soft boots, "and imagine that they were _shlupiks_ like that from
their birth up."

"How _shlupiks_?"

"I see you don't know that name. That's our club designation. You know
the game of rolling eggs: when one's rolled a long while it becomes a
_shlupik_. So it is with us; one goes on coming and coming to the club,
and ends by becoming a _shlupik_. Ah, you laugh! but we look out, for
fear of dropping into it ourselves. You know Prince Tchetchensky?"
inquired the prince; and Levin saw by his face that he was just going to
relate something funny.

"No, I don't know him."

"You don't say so! Well, Prince Tchetchensky is a well-known figure. No
matter, though. He's always playing billiards here. Only three years ago
he was not a _shlupik_ and kept up his spirits and even used to call
other people _shlupiks_. But one day he turns up, and our porter ... you
know Vassily? Why, that fat one; he's famous for his _bon mots_. And so
Prince Tchetchensky asks him, 'Come, Vassily, who's here? Any _shlupiks_
here yet?' And he says, 'You're the third.' Yes, my dear boy, that he
did!"

Talking and greeting the friends they met, Levin and the prince walked
through all the rooms: the great room where tables had already been set,
and the usual partners were playing for small stakes; the divan room,
where they were playing chess, and Sergey Ivanovitch was sitting talking
to somebody; the billiard room, where, about a sofa in a recess, there
was a lively party drinking champagne--Gagin was one of them. They
peeped into the "infernal regions," where a good many men were crowding
round one table, at which Yashvin was sitting. Trying not to make a
noise, they walked into the dark reading room, where under the shaded
lamps there sat a young man with a wrathful countenance, turning over
one journal after another, and a bald general buried in a book. They
went, too, into what the prince called the intellectual room, where
three gentlemen were engaged in a heated discussion of the latest
political news.

"Prince, please come, we're ready," said one of his card party, who had
come to look for him, and the prince went off. Levin sat down and
listened, but recalling all the conversation of the morning he felt all
of a sudden fearfully bored. He got up hurriedly, and went to look for
Oblonsky and Turovtsin, with whom it had been so pleasant.

Turovtsin was one of the circle drinking in the billiard room, and
Stepan Arkadyevitch was talking with Vronsky near the door at the
farther corner of the room.

"It's not that she's dull; but this undefined, this unsettled position,"
Levin caught, and he was hurrying away, but Stepan Arkadyevitch called
to him.

"Levin," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, and Levin noticed that his eyes were
not full of tears exactly, but moist, which always happened when he had
been drinking, or when he was touched. Just now it was due to both
causes. "Levin, don't go," he said, and he warmly squeezed his arm above
the elbow, obviously not at all wishing to let him go.

"This is a true friend of mine--almost my greatest friend," he said to
Vronsky. "You have become even closer and dearer to me. And I want you,
and I know you ought, to be friends, and great friends, because you're
both splendid fellows."

"Well, there's nothing for us now but to kiss and be friends," Vronsky
said, with good-natured playfulness, holding out his hand.

Levin quickly took the offered hand, and pressed it warmly.

"I'm very, very glad," said Levin.

"Waiter, a bottle of champagne," said Stepan Arkadyevitch.

"And I'm very glad," said Vronsky.

But in spite of Stepan Arkadyevitch's desire, and their own desire, they
had nothing to talk about, and both felt it.

"Do you know, he has never met Anna?" Stepan Arkadyevitch said to
Vronsky. "And I want above everything to take him to see her. Let us go,
Levin!"

"Really?" said Vronsky. "She will be very glad to see you. I should be
going home at once," he added, "but I'm worried about Yashvin, and I
want to stay on till he finishes."

"Why, is he losing?"

"He keeps losing, and I'm the only friend that can restrain him."

"Well, what do you say to pyramids? Levin, will you play? Capital!" said
Stepan Arkadyevitch. "Get the table ready," he said to the marker.

"It has been ready a long while," answered the marker, who had already
set the balls in a triangle, and was knocking the red one about for his
own diversion.

"Well, let us begin."

After the game Vronsky and Levin sat down at Gagin's table, and at
Stepan Arkadyevitch's suggestion Levin took a hand in the game.

Vronsky sat down at the table, surrounded by friends, who were
incessantly coming up to him. Every now and then he went to the
"infernal" to keep an eye on Yashvin. Levin was enjoying a delightful
sense of repose after the mental fatigue of the morning. He was glad
that all hostility was at an end with Vronsky, and the sense of peace,
decorum, and comfort never left him.

When the game was over, Stepan Arkadyevitch took Levin's arm.

"Well, let us go to Anna's, then. At once? Eh? She is at home. I
promised her long ago to bring you. Where were you meaning to spend the
evening?"

"Oh, nowhere specially. I promised Sviazhsky to go to the Society of
Agriculture. By all means, let us go," said Levin.

"Very good; come along. Find out if my carriage is here," Stepan
Arkadyevitch said to the waiter.

Levin went up to the table, paid the forty roubles he had lost; paid his
bill, the amount of which was in some mysterious way ascertained by the
little old waiter who stood at the counter, and swinging his arms he
walked through all the rooms to the way out.



Chapter 9


"Oblonsky's carriage!" the porter shouted in an angry bass. The carriage
drove up and both got in. It was only for the first few moments, while
the carriage was driving out of the clubhouse gates, that Levin was
still under the influence of the club atmosphere of repose, comfort, and
unimpeachable good form. But as soon as the carriage drove out into the
street, and he felt it jolting over the uneven road, heard the angry
shout of a sledge driver coming towards them, saw in the uncertain light
the red blind of a tavern and the shops, this impression was dissipated,
and he began to think over his actions, and to wonder whether he was
doing right in going to see Anna. What would Kitty say? But Stepan
Arkadyevitch gave him no time for reflection, and, as though divining
his doubts, he scattered them.

"How glad I am," he said, "that you should know her! You know Dolly has
long wished for it. And Lvov's been to see her, and often goes. Though
she is my sister," Stepan Arkadyevitch pursued, "I don't hesitate to say
that she's a remarkable woman. But you will see. Her position is very
painful, especially now."

"Why especially now?"

"We are carrying on negotiations with her husband about a divorce. And
he's agreed; but there are difficulties in regard to the son, and the
business, which ought to have been arranged long ago, has been dragging
on for three months past. As soon as the divorce is over, she will marry
Vronsky. How stupid these old ceremonies are, that no one believes in,
and which only prevent people being comfortable!" Stepan Arkadyevitch
put in. "Well, then their position will be as regular as mine, as
yours."

"What is the difficulty?" said Levin.

"Oh, it's a long and tedious story! The whole business is in such an
anomalous position with us. But the point is she has been for three
months in Moscow, where everyone knows her, waiting for the divorce; she
goes out nowhere, sees no woman except Dolly, because, do you
understand, she doesn't care to have people come as a favor. That fool
Princess Varvara, even she has left her, considering this a breach of
propriety. Well, you see, in such a position any other woman would not
have found resources in herself. But you'll see how she has arranged her
life--how calm, how dignified she is. To the left, in the crescent
opposite the church!" shouted Stepan Arkadyevitch, leaning out of the
window. "Phew! how hot it is!" he said, in spite of twelve degrees of
frost, flinging his open overcoat still wider open.

"But she has a daughter: no doubt she's busy looking after her?" said
Levin.

"I believe you picture every woman simply as a female, _une couveuse,_"
said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "If she's occupied, it must be with her
children. No, she brings her up capitally, I believe, but one doesn't
hear about her. She's busy, in the first place, with what she writes. I
see you're smiling ironically, but you're wrong. She's writing a
children's book, and doesn't talk about it to anyone, but she read it to
me and I gave the manuscript to Vorkuev ... you know the publisher ...
and he's an author himself too, I fancy. He understands those things,
and he says it's a remarkable piece of work. But are you fancying she's
an authoress?--not a bit of it. She's a woman with a heart, before
everything, but you'll see. Now she has a little English girl with her,
and a whole family she's looking after."

"Oh, something in a philanthropic way?"

"Why, you will look at everything in the worst light. It's not from
philanthropy, it's from the heart. They--that is, Vronsky--had a
trainer, an Englishman, first-rate in his own line, but a drunkard. He's
completely given up to drink--delirium tremens--and the family were cast
on the world. She saw them, helped them, got more and more interested in
them, and now the whole family is on her hands. But not by way of
patronage, you know, helping with money; she's herself preparing the
boys in Russian for the high school, and she's taken the little girl to
live with her. But you'll see her for yourself."

The carriage drove into the courtyard, and Stepan Arkadyevitch rang
loudly at the entrance where sledges were standing.

And without asking the servant who opened the door whether the lady were
at home, Stepan Arkadyevitch walked into the hall. Levin followed him,
more and more doubtful whether he was doing right or wrong.

Looking at himself in the glass, Levin noticed that he was red in the
face, but he felt certain he was not drunk, and he followed Stepan
Arkadyevitch up the carpeted stairs. At the top Stepan Arkadyevitch
inquired of the footman, who bowed to him as to an intimate friend, who
was with Anna Arkadyevna, and received the answer that it was M.
Vorkuev.

"Where are they?"

"In the study."

Passing through the dining room, a room not very large, with dark,
paneled walls, Stepan Arkadyevitch and Levin walked over the soft carpet
to the half-dark study, lighted up by a single lamp with a big dark
shade. Another lamp with a reflector was hanging on the wall, lighting
up a big full-length portrait of a woman, which Levin could not help
looking at. It was the portrait of Anna, painted in Italy by Mihailov.
While Stepan Arkadyevitch went behind the _treillage_, and the man's
voice which had been speaking paused, Levin gazed at the portrait, which
stood out from the frame in the brilliant light thrown on it, and he
could not tear himself away from it. He positively forgot where he was,
and not even hearing what was said, he could not take his eyes off the
marvelous portrait. It was not a picture, but a living, charming woman,
with black curling hair, with bare arms and shoulders, with a pensive
smile on the lips, covered with soft down; triumphantly and softly she
looked at him with eyes that baffled him. She was not living only
because she was more beautiful than a living woman can be.

"I am delighted!" He heard suddenly near him a voice, unmistakably
addressing him, the voice of the very woman he had been admiring in the
portrait. Anna had come from behind the treillage to meet him, and Levin
saw in the dim light of the study the very woman of the portrait, in a
dark blue shot gown, not in the same position nor with the same
expression, but with the same perfection of beauty which the artist had
caught in the portrait. She was less dazzling in reality, but, on the
other hand, there was something fresh and seductive in the living woman
which was not in the portrait.



Chapter 10


She had risen to meet him, not concealing her pleasure at seeing him;
and in the quiet ease with which she held out her little vigorous hand,
introduced him to Vorkuev and indicated a red-haired, pretty little girl
who was sitting at work, calling her her pupil, Levin recognized and
liked the manners of a woman of the great world, always self-possessed
and natural.

"I am delighted, delighted," she repeated, and on her lips these simple
words took for Levin's ears a special significance. "I have known you
and liked you for a long while, both from your friendship with Stiva and
for your wife's sake.... I knew her for a very short time, but she left
on me the impression of an exquisite flower, simply a flower. And to
think she will soon be a mother!"

She spoke easily and without haste, looking now and then from Levin to
her brother, and Levin felt that the impression he was making was good,
and he felt immediately at home, simple and happy with her, as though he
had known her from childhood.

"Ivan Petrovitch and I settled in Alexey's study," she said in answer to
Stepan Arkadyevitch's question whether he might smoke, "just so as to be
able to smoke"--and glancing at Levin, instead of asking whether he
would smoke, she pulled closer a tortoise-shell cigar-case and took a
cigarette.

"How are you feeling today?" her brother asked her.

"Oh, nothing. Nerves, as usual."

"Yes, isn't it extraordinarily fine?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, noticing
that Levin was scrutinizing the picture.

"I have never seen a better portrait."

"And extraordinarily like, isn't it?" said Vorkuev.

Levin looked from the portrait to the original. A peculiar brilliance
lighted up Anna's face when she felt his eyes on her. Levin flushed, and
to cover his confusion would have asked whether she had seen Darya
Alexandrovna lately; but at that moment Anna spoke. "We were just
talking, Ivan Petrovitch and I, of Vashtchenkov's last pictures. Have
you seen them?"

"Yes, I have seen them," answered Levin.

"But, I beg your pardon, I interrupted you ... you were saying?..."

Levin asked if she had seen Dolly lately.

"She was here yesterday. She was very indignant with the high school
people on Grisha's account. The Latin teacher, it seems, had been unfair
to him."

"Yes, I have seen his pictures. I didn't care for them very much," Levin
went back to the subject she had started.

Levin talked now not at all with that purely businesslike attitude to
the subject with which he had been talking all the morning. Every word
in his conversation with her had a special significance. And talking to
her was pleasant; still pleasanter it was to listen to her.

Anna talked not merely naturally and cleverly, but cleverly and
carelessly, attaching no value to her own ideas and giving great weight
to the ideas of the person she was talking to.

The conversation turned on the new movement in art, on the new
illustrations of the Bible by a French artist. Vorkuev attacked the
artist for a realism carried to the point of coarseness.

Levin said that the French had carried conventionality further than
anyone, and that consequently they see a great merit in the return to
realism. In the fact of not lying they see poetry.

Never had anything clever said by Levin given him so much pleasure as
this remark. Anna's face lighted up at once, as at once she appreciated
the thought. She laughed.

"I laugh," she said, "as one laughs when one sees a very true portrait.
What you said so perfectly hits off French art now, painting and
literature too, indeed--Zola, Daudet. But perhaps it is always so, that
men form their conceptions from fictitious, conventional types, and
then--all the _combinaisons_ made--they are tired of the fictitious
figures and begin to invent more natural, true figures."

"That's perfectly true," said Vorknev.

"So you've been at the club?" she said to her brother.

"Yes, yes, this is a woman!" Levin thought, forgetting himself and
staring persistently at her lovely, mobile face, which at that moment
was all at once completely transformed. Levin did not hear what she was
talking of as she leaned over to her brother, but he was struck by the
change of her expression. Her face--so handsome a moment before in its
repose--suddenly wore a look of strange curiosity, anger, and pride. But
this lasted only an instant. She dropped her eyelids, as though
recollecting something.

"Oh, well, but that's of no interest to anyone," she said, and she
turned to the English girl.

"Please order the tea in the drawing room," she said in English.

The girl got up and went out.

"Well, how did she get through her examination?" asked Stepan
Arkadyevitch.

"Splendidly! She's a very gifted child and a sweet character."

"It will end in your loving her more than your own."

"There a man speaks. In love there's no more nor less. I love my
daughter with one love, and her with another."

"I was just telling Anna Arkadyevna," said Vorkuev, "that if she were to
put a hundredth part of the energy she devotes to this English girl to
the public question of the education of Russian children, she would be
doing a great and useful work."

"Yes, but I can't help it; I couldn't do it. Count Alexey Kirillovitch
urged me very much" (as she uttered the words _Count Alexey
Kirillovitch_ she glanced with appealing timidity at Levin, and he
unconsciously responded with a respectful and reassuring look); "he
urged me to take up the school in the village. I visited it several
times. The children were very nice, but I could not feel drawn to the
work. You speak of energy. Energy rests upon love; and come as it will,
there's no forcing it. I took to this child--I could not myself say
why."

And she glanced again at Levin. And her smile and her glance--all told
him that it was to him only she was addressing her words, valuing his
good opinion, and at the same time sure beforehand that they understood
each other.

"I quite understand that," Levin answered. "It's impossible to give
one's heart to a school or such institutions in general, and I believe
that's just why philanthropic institutions always give such poor
results."

She was silent for a while, then she smiled.

"Yes, yes," she agreed; "I never could. _Je n'ai pas le coeur assez_
large to love a whole asylum of horrid little girls. _Cela ne m'a jamais
reussi._ There are so many women who have made themselves _une position
sociale_ in that way. And now more than ever," she said with a mournful,
confiding expression, ostensibly addressing her brother, but
unmistakably intending her words only for Levin, "now when I have such
need of some occupation, I cannot." And suddenly frowning (Levin saw
that she was frowning at herself for talking about herself) she changed
the subject. "I know about you," she said to Levin; "that you're not a
public-spirited citizen, and I have defended you to the best of my
ability."

"How have you defended me?"

"Oh, according to the attacks made on you. But won't you have some tea?"
She rose and took up a book bound in morocco.

"Give it to me, Anna Arkadyevna," said Vorkuev, indicating the book.
"It's well worth taking up."

"Oh, no, it's all so sketchy."

"I told him about it," Stepan Arkadyevitch said to his sister, nodding
at Levin.

"You shouldn't have. My writing is something after the fashion of those
little baskets and carving which Liza Mertsalova used to sell me from
the prisons. She had the direction of the prison department in that
society," she turned to Levin; "and they were miracles of patience, the
work of those poor wretches."

And Levin saw a new trait in this woman, who attracted him so
extraordinarily. Besides wit, grace, and beauty, she had truth. She had
no wish to hide from him all the bitterness of her position. As she said
that she sighed, and her face suddenly taking a hard expression, looked
as it were turned to stone. With that expression on her face she was
more beautiful than ever; but the expression was new; it was utterly
unlike that expression, radiant with happiness and creating happiness,
which had been caught by the painter in her portrait. Levin looked more
than once at the portrait and at her figure, as taking her brother's arm
she walked with him to the high doors and he felt for her a tenderness
and pity at which he wondered himself.

She asked Levin and Vorkuev to go into the drawing room, while she
stayed behind to say a few words to her brother. "About her divorce,
about Vronsky, and what he's doing at the club, about me?" wondered
Levin. And he was so keenly interested by the question of what she was
saying to Stepan Arkadyevitch, that he scarcely heard what Vorkuev was
telling him of the qualities of the story for children Anna Arkadyevna
had written.

At tea the same pleasant sort of talk, full of interesting matter,
continued. There was not a single instant when a subject for
conversation was to seek; on the contrary, it was felt that one had
hardly time to say what one had to say, and eagerly held back to hear
what the others were saying. And all that was said, not only by her, but
by Vorkuev and Stepan Arkadyevitch--all, so it seemed to Levin, gained
peculiar significance from her appreciation and her criticism. While he
followed this interesting conversation, Levin was all the time admiring
her--her beauty, her intelligence, her culture, and at the same time her
directness and genuine depth of feeling. He listened and talked, and all
the while he was thinking of her inner life, trying to divine her
feelings. And though he had judged her so severely hitherto, now by some
strange chain of reasoning he was justifying her and was also sorry for
her, and afraid that Vronsky did not fully understand her. At eleven
o'clock, when Stepan Arkadyevitch got up to go (Vorkuev had left
earlier), it seemed to Levin that he had only just come. Regretfully
Levin too rose.

"Good-bye," she said, holding his hand and glancing into his face with a
winning look. "I am very glad _que la glace est rompue._"

She dropped his hand, and half closed her eyes.

"Tell your wife that I love her as before, and that if she cannot pardon
me my position, then my wish for her is that she may never pardon it. To
pardon it, one must go through what I have gone through, and may God
spare her that."

"Certainly, yes, I will tell her..." Levin said, blushing.



Chapter 11


"What a marvelous, sweet and unhappy woman!" he was thinking, as he
stepped out into the frosty air with Stepan Arkadyevitch.

"Well, didn't I tell you?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, seeing that Levin
had been completely won over.

"Yes," said Levin dreamily, "an extraordinary woman! It's not her
cleverness, but she has such wonderful depth of feeling. I'm awfully
sorry for her!"

"Now, please God, everything will soon be settled. Well, well, don't be
hard on people in future," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, opening the
carriage door. "Good-bye; we don't go the same way."

Still thinking of Anna, of everything, even the simplest phrase in their
conversation with her, and recalling the minutest changes in her
expression, entering more and more into her position, and feeling
sympathy for her, Levin reached home.

At home Kouzma told Levin that Katerina Alexandrovna was quite well, and
that her sisters had not long been gone, and he handed him two letters.
Levin read them at once in the hall, that he might not over look them
later. One was from Sokolov, his bailiff. Sokolov wrote that the corn
could not be sold, that it was fetching only five and a half roubles,
and that more than that could not be got for it. The other letter was
from his sister. She scolded him for her business being still unsettled.

"Well, we must sell it at five and a half if we can't get more," Levin
decided the first question, which had always before seemed such a
weighty one, with extraordinary facility on the spot. "It's
extraordinary how all one's time is taken up here," he thought,
considering the second letter. He felt himself to blame for not having
got done what his sister had asked him to do for her. "Today, again,
I've not been to the court, but today I've certainly not had time." And
resolving that he would not fail to do it next day, he went up to his
wife. As he went in, Levin rapidly ran through mentally the day he had
spent. All the events of the day were conversations, conversations he
had heard and taken part in. All the conversations were upon subjects
which, if he had been alone at home, he would never have taken up, but
here they were very interesting. And all these conversations were right
enough, only in two places there was something not quite right. One was
what he had said about the carp, the other was something not "quite the
thing" in the tender sympathy he was feeling for Anna.

Levin found his wife low-spirited and dull. The dinner of the three
sisters had gone off very well, but then they had waited and waited for
him, all of them had felt dull, the sisters had departed, and she had
been left alone.

"Well, and what have you been doing?" she asked him, looking straight
into his eyes, which shone with rather a suspicious brightness. But that
she might not prevent his telling her everything, she concealed her
close scrutiny of him, and with an approving smile listened to his
account of how he had spent the evening.

"Well, I'm very glad I met Vronsky. I felt quite at ease and natural
with him. You understand, I shall try not to see him, but I'm glad that
this awkwardness is all over," he said, and remembering that by way of
trying not to see him, he had immediately gone to call on Anna, he
blushed. "We talk about the peasants drinking; I don't know which drinks
most, the peasantry or our own class; the peasants do on holidays,
but..."

But Kitty took not the slightest interest in discussing the drinking
habits of the peasants. She saw that he blushed, and she wanted to know
why.

"Well, and then where did you go?"

"Stiva urged me awfully to go and see Anna Arkadyevna."

And as he said this, Levin blushed even more, and his doubts as to
whether he had done right in going to see Anna were settled once for
all. He knew now that he ought not to have done so.

Kitty's eyes opened in a curious way and gleamed at Anna's name, but
controlling herself with an effort, she concealed her emotion and
deceived him.

"Oh!" was all she said.

"I'm sure you won't be angry at my going. Stiva begged me to, and Dolly
wished it," Levin went on.

"Oh, no!" she said, but he saw in her eyes a constraint that boded him
no good.

"She is a very sweet, very, very unhappy, good woman," he said, telling
her about Anna, her occupations, and what she had told him to say to
her.

"Yes, of course, she is very much to be pitied," said Kitty, when he had
finished. "Whom was your letter from?"

He told her, and believing in her calm tone, he went to change his coat.

Coming back, he found Kitty in the same easy chair. When he went up to
her, she glanced at him and broke into sobs.

"What? what is it?" he asked, knowing beforehand what.

"You're in love with that hateful woman; she has bewitched you! I saw it
in your eyes. Yes, yes! What can it all lead to? You were drinking at
the club, drinking and gambling, and then you went ... to her of all
people! No, we must go away.... I shall go away tomorrow."

It was a long while before Levin could soothe his wife. At last he
succeeded in calming her, only by confessing that a feeling of pity, in
conjunction with the wine he had drunk, had been too much for him, that
he had succumbed to Anna's artful influence, and that he would avoid
her. One thing he did with more sincerity confess to was that living so
long in Moscow, a life of nothing but conversation, eating and drinking,
he was degenerating. They talked till three o'clock in the morning. Only
at three o'clock were they sufficiently reconciled to be able to go to
sleep.



Chapter 12


After taking leave of her guests, Anna did not sit down, but began
walking up and down the room. She had unconsciously the whole evening
done her utmost to arouse in Levin a feeling of love--as of late she had
fallen into doing with all young men--and she knew she had attained her
aim, as far as was possible in one evening, with a married and
conscientious man. She liked him indeed extremely, and, in spite of the
striking difference, from the masculine point of view, between Vronsky
and Levin, as a woman she saw something they had in common, which had
made Kitty able to love both. Yet as soon as he was out of the room, she
ceased to think of him.

One thought, and one only, pursued her in different forms, and refused
to be shaken off. "If I have so much effect on others, on this man, who
loves his home and his wife, why is it _he_ is so cold to me?... not
cold exactly, he loves me, I know that! But something new is drawing us
apart now. Why wasn't he here all the evening? He told Stiva to say he
could not leave Yashvin, and must watch over his play. Is Yashvin a
child? But supposing it's true. He never tells a lie. But there's
something else in it if it's true. He is glad of an opportunity of
showing me that he has other duties; I know that, I submit to that. But
why prove that to me? He wants to show me that his love for me is not to
interfere with his freedom. But I need no proofs, I need love. He ought
to understand all the bitterness of this life for me here in Moscow. Is
this life? I am not living, but waiting for an event, which is
continually put off and put off. No answer again! And Stiva says he
cannot go to Alexey Alexandrovitch. And I can't write again. I can do
nothing, can begin nothing, can alter nothing; I hold myself in, I wait,
inventing amusements for myself--the English family, writing,
reading--but it's all nothing but a sham, it's all the same as morphine.
He ought to feel for me," she said, feeling tears of self-pity coming
into her eyes.

She heard Vronsky's abrupt ring and hurriedly dried her tears--not only
dried her tears, but sat down by a lamp and opened a book, affecting
composure. She wanted to show him that she was displeased that he had
not come home as he had promised--displeased only, and not on any
account to let him see her distress, and least of all, her self-pity.
She might pity herself, but he must not pity her. She did not want
strife, she blamed him for wanting to quarrel, but unconsciously put
herself into an attitude of antagonism.

"Well, you've not been dull?" he said, eagerly and good-humoredly, going
up to her. "What a terrible passion it is--gambling!"

"No, I've not been dull; I've learned long ago not to be dull. Stiva has
been here and Levin."

"Yes, they meant to come and see you. Well, how did you like Levin?" he
said, sitting down beside her.

"Very much. They have not long been gone. What was Yashvin doing?"

"He was winning--seventeen thousand. I got him away. He had really
started home, but he went back again, and now he's losing."

"Then what did you stay for?" she asked, suddenly lifting her eyes to
him. The expression of her face was cold and ungracious. "You told Stiva
you were staying on to get Yashvin away. And you have left him there."

The same expression of cold readiness for the conflict appeared on his
face too.

"In the first place, I did not ask him to give you any message; and
secondly, I never tell lies. But what's the chief point, I wanted to
stay, and I stayed," he said, frowning. "Anna, what is it for, why will
you?" he said after a moment's silence, bending over towards her, and he
opened his hand, hoping she would lay hers in it.

She was glad of this appeal for tenderness. But some strange force of
evil would not let her give herself up to her feelings, as though the
rules of warfare would not permit her to surrender.

"Of course you wanted to stay, and you stayed. You do everything you
want to. But what do you tell me that for? With what object?" she said,
getting more and more excited. "Does anyone contest your rights? But you
want to be right, and you're welcome to be right."

His hand closed, he turned away, and his face wore a still more
obstinate expression.

"For you it's a matter of obstinacy," she said, watching him intently
and suddenly finding the right word for that expression that irritated
her, "simply obstinacy. For you it's a question of whether you keep the
upper hand of me, while for me...." Again she felt sorry for herself,
and she almost burst into tears. "If you knew what it is for me! When I
feel as I do now that you are hostile, yes, hostile to me, if you knew
what this means for me! If you knew how I feel on the brink of calamity
at this instant, how afraid I am of myself!" And she turned away, hiding
her sobs.

"But what are you talking about?" he said, horrified at her expression
of despair, and again bending over her, he took her hand and kissed it.
"What is it for? Do I seek amusements outside our home? Don't I avoid
the society of women?"

"Well, yes! If that were all!" she said.

"Come, tell me what I ought to do to give you peace of mind? I am ready
to do anything to make you happy," he said, touched by her expression of
despair; "what wouldn't I do to save you from distress of any sort, as
now, Anna!" he said.

"It's nothing, nothing!" she said. "I don't know myself whether it's the
solitary life, my nerves.... Come, don't let us talk of it. What about
the race? You haven't told me!" she inquired, trying to conceal her
triumph at the victory, which had anyway been on her side.

He asked for supper, and began telling her about the races; but in his
tone, in his eyes, which became more and more cold, she saw that he did
not forgive her for her victory, that the feeling of obstinacy with
which she had been struggling had asserted itself again in him. He was
colder to her than before, as though he were regretting his surrender.
And she, remembering the words that had given her the victory, "how I
feel on the brink of calamity, how afraid I am of myself," saw that this
weapon was a dangerous one, and that it could not be used a second time.
And she felt that beside the love that bound them together there had
grown up between them some evil spirit of strife, which she could not
exorcise from his, and still less from her own heart.



Chapter 13


There are no conditions to which a man cannot become used, especially if
he sees that all around him are living in the same way. Levin could not
have believed three months before that he could have gone quietly to
sleep in the condition in which he was that day, that leading an
aimless, irrational life, living too beyond his means, after drinking to
excess (he could not call what happened at the club anything else),
forming inappropriately friendly relations with a man with whom his wife
had once been in love, and a still more inappropriate call upon a woman
who could only be called a lost woman, after being fascinated by that
woman and causing his wife distress--he could still go quietly to sleep.
But under the influence of fatigue, a sleepless night, and the wine he
had drunk, his sleep was sound and untroubled.

At five o'clock the creak of a door opening waked him. He jumped up and
looked round. Kitty was not in bed beside him. But there was a light
moving behind the screen, and he heard her steps.

"What is it?... what is it?" he said, half-asleep. "Kitty! What is it?"

"Nothing," she said, coming from behind the screen with a candle in her
hand. "I felt unwell," she said, smiling a particularly sweet and
meaning smile.

"What? has it begun?" he said in terror. "We ought to send..." and
hurriedly he reached after his clothes.

"No, no," she said, smiling and holding his hand. "It's sure to be
nothing. I was rather unwell, only a little. It's all over now."

And getting into bed, she blew out the candle, lay down and was still.
Though he thought her stillness suspicious, as though she were holding
her breath, and still more suspicious the expression of peculiar
tenderness and excitement with which, as she came from behind the
screen, she said "nothing," he was so sleepy that he fell asleep at
once. Only later he remembered the stillness of her breathing, and
understood all that must have been passing in her sweet, precious heart
while she lay beside him, not stirring, in anticipation of the greatest
event in a woman's life. At seven o'clock he was waked by the touch of
her hand on his shoulder, and a gentle whisper. She seemed struggling
between regret at waking him, and the desire to talk to him.

"Kostya, don't be frightened. It's all right. But I fancy.... We ought
to send for Lizaveta Petrovna."

The candle was lighted again. She was sitting up in bed, holding some
knitting, which she had been busy upon during the last few days.

"Please, don't be frightened, it's all right. I'm not a bit afraid," she
said, seeing his scared face, and she pressed his hand to her bosom and
then to her lips.

He hurriedly jumped up, hardly awake, and kept his eyes fixed on her, as
he put on his dressing gown; then he stopped, still looking at her. He
had to go, but he could not tear himself from her eyes. He thought he
loved her face, knew her expression, her eyes, but never had he seen it
like this. How hateful and horrible he seemed to himself, thinking of
the distress he had caused her yesterday. Her flushed face, fringed with
soft curling hair under her night cap, was radiant with joy and courage.

Though there was so little that was complex or artificial in Kitty's
character in general, Levin was struck by what was revealed now, when
suddenly all disguises were thrown off and the very kernel of her soul
shone in her eyes. And in this simplicity and nakedness of her soul,
she, the very woman he loved in her, was more manifest than ever. She
looked at him, smiling; but all at once her brows twitched, she threw up
her head, and going quickly up to him, clutched his hand and pressed
close up to him, breathing her hot breath upon him. She was in pain and
was, as it were, complaining to him of her suffering. And for the first
minute, from habit, it seemed to him that he was to blame. But in her
eyes there was a tenderness that told him that she was far from
reproaching him, that she loved him for her sufferings. "If not I, who
is to blame for it?" he thought unconsciously, seeking someone
responsible for this suffering for him to punish; but there was no one
responsible. She was suffering, complaining, and triumphing in her
sufferings, and rejoicing in them, and loving them. He saw that
something sublime was being accomplished in her soul, but what? He could
not make it out. It was beyond his understanding.

"I have sent to mamma. You go quickly to fetch Lizaveta Petrovna ...
Kostya!... Nothing, it's over."

She moved away from him and rang the bell.

"Well, go now; Pasha's coming. I am all right."

And Levin saw with astonishment that she had taken up the knitting she
had brought in in the night and begun working at it again.

As Levin was going out of one door, he heard the maid-servant come in at
the other. He stood at the door and heard Kitty giving exact directions
to the maid, and beginning to help her move the bedstead.

He dressed, and while they were putting in his horses, as a hired sledge
was not to be seen yet, he ran again up to the bedroom, not on tiptoe,
it seemed to him, but on wings. Two maid-servants were carefully moving
something in the bedroom.

Kitty was walking about knitting rapidly and giving directions.

"I'm going for the doctor. They have sent for Lizaveta Petrovna, but
I'll go on there too. Isn't there anything wanted? Yes, shall I go to
Dolly's?"

She looked at him, obviously not hearing what he was saying.

"Yes, yes. Do go," she said quickly, frowning and waving her hand to
him.

He had just gone into the drawing room, when suddenly a plaintive moan
sounded from the bedroom, smothered instantly. He stood still, and for a
long while he could not understand.

"Yes, that is she," he said to himself, and clutching at his head he ran
downstairs.

"Lord have mercy on us! pardon us! aid us!" he repeated the words that
for some reason came suddenly to his lips. And he, an unbeliever,
repeated these words not with his lips only. At that instant he knew
that all his doubts, even the impossibility of believing with his
reason, of which he was aware in himself, did not in the least hinder
his turning to God. All of that now floated out of his soul like dust.
To whom was he to turn if not to Him in whose hands he felt himself, his
soul, and his love?

The horse was not yet ready, but feeling a peculiar concentration of his
physical forces and his intellect on what he had to do, he started off
on foot without waiting for the horse, and told Kouzma to overtake him.

At the corner he met a night cabman driving hurriedly. In the little
sledge, wrapped in a velvet cloak, sat Lizaveta Petrovna with a kerchief
round her head. "Thank God! thank God!" he said, overjoyed to recognize
her little fair face which wore a peculiarly serious, even stern
expression. Telling the driver not to stop, he ran along beside her.

"For two hours, then? Not more?" she inquired. "You should let Pyotr
Dmitrievitch know, but don't hurry him. And get some opium at the
chemist's."

"So you think that it may go on well? Lord have mercy on us and help
us!" Levin said, seeing his own horse driving out of the gate. Jumping
into the sledge beside Kouzma, he told him to drive to the doctor's.



Chapter 14


The doctor was not yet up, and the footman said that "he had been up
late, and had given orders not to be waked, but would get up soon." The
footman was cleaning the lamp-chimneys, and seemed very busy about them.
This concentration of the footman upon his lamps, and his indifference
to what was passing in Levin, at first astounded him, but immediately on
considering the question he realized that no one knew or was bound to
know his feelings, and that it was all the more necessary to act calmly,
sensibly, and resolutely to get through this wall of indifference and
attain his aim.

"Don't be in a hurry or let anything slip," Levin said to himself,
feeling a greater and greater flow of physical energy and attention to
all that lay before him to do.

Having ascertained that the doctor was not getting up, Levin considered
various plans, and decided on the following one: that Kouzma should go
for another doctor, while he himself should go to the chemist's for
opium, and if when he came back the doctor had not yet begun to get up,
he would either by tipping the footman, or by force, wake the doctor at
all hazards.

At the chemist's the lank shopman sealed up a packet of powders for a
coachman who stood waiting, and refused him opium with the same
callousness with which the doctor's footman had cleaned his lamp
chimneys. Trying not to get flurried or out of temper, Levin mentioned
the names of the doctor and midwife, and explaining what the opium was
needed for, tried to persuade him. The assistant inquired in German
whether he should give it, and receiving an affirmative reply from
behind the partition, he took out a bottle and a funnel, deliberately
poured the opium from a bigger bottle into a little one, stuck on a
label, sealed it up, in spite of Levin's request that he would not do
so, and was about to wrap it up too. This was more than Levin could
stand; he took the bottle firmly out of his hands, and ran to the big
glass doors. The doctor was not even now getting up, and the footman,
busy now in putting down the rugs, refused to wake him. Levin
deliberately took out a ten rouble note, and, careful to speak slowly,
though losing no time over the business, he handed him the note, and
explained that Pyotr Dmitrievitch (what a great and important personage
he seemed to Levin now, this Pyotr Dmitrievitch, who had been of so
little consequence in his eyes before!) had promised to come at any
time; that he would certainly not be angry! and that he must therefore
wake him at once.

The footman agreed, and went upstairs, taking Levin into the waiting
room.

Levin could hear through the door the doctor coughing, moving about,
washing, and saying something. Three minutes passed; it seemed to Levin
that more than an hour had gone by. He could not wait any longer.

"Pyotr Dmitrievitch, Pyotr Dmitrievitch!" he said in an imploring voice
at the open door. "For God's sake, forgive me! See me as you are. It's
been going on more than two hours already."

"In a minute; in a minute!" answered a voice, and to his amazement Levin
heard that the doctor was smiling as he spoke.

"For one instant."

"In a minute."

Two minutes more passed while the doctor was putting on his boots, and
two minutes more while the doctor put on his coat and combed his hair.

"Pyotr Dmitrievitch!" Levin was beginning again in a plaintive voice,
just as the doctor came in dressed and ready. "These people have no
conscience," thought Levin. "Combing his hair, while we're dying!"

"Good morning!" the doctor said to him, shaking hands, and, as it were,
teasing him with his composure. "There's no hurry. Well now?"

Trying to be as accurate as possible, Levin began to tell him every
unnecessary detail of his wife's condition, interrupting his account
repeatedly with entreaties that the doctor would come with him at once.

"Oh, you needn't be in any hurry. You don't understand, you know. I'm
certain I'm not wanted, still I've promised, and if you like, I'll come.
But there's no hurry. Please sit down; won't you have some coffee?"

Levin stared at him with eyes that asked whether he was laughing at him;
but the doctor had no notion of making fun of him.

"I know, I know," the doctor said, smiling; "I'm a married man myself;
and at these moments we husbands are very much to be pitied. I've a
patient whose husband always takes refuge in the stables on such
occasions."

"But what do you think, Pyotr Dmitrievitch? Do you suppose it may go all
right?"

"Everything points to a favorable issue."

"So you'll come immediately?" said Levin, looking wrathfully at the
servant who was bringing in the coffee.

"In an hour's time."

"Oh, for mercy's sake!"

"Well, let me drink my coffee, anyway."

The doctor started upon his coffee. Both were silent.

"The Turks are really getting beaten, though. Did you read yesterday's
telegrams?" said the doctor, munching some roll.

"No, I can't stand it!" said Levin, jumping up. "So you'll be with us in
a quarter of an hour."

"In half an hour."

"On your honor?"

When Levin got home, he drove up at the same time as the princess, and
they went up to the bedroom door together. The princess had tears in her
eyes, and her hands were shaking. Seeing Levin, she embraced him, and
burst into tears.

"Well, my dear Lizaveta Petrovna?" she queried, clasping the hand of the
midwife, who came out to meet them with a beaming and anxious face.

"She's going on well," she said; "persuade her to lie down. She will be
easier so."

From the moment when he had waked up and understood what was going on,
Levin had prepared his mind to bear resolutely what was before him, and
without considering or anticipating anything, to avoid upsetting his
wife, and on the contrary to soothe her and keep up her courage. Without
allowing himself even to think of what was to come, of how it would end,
judging from his inquiries as to the usual duration of these ordeals,
Levin had in his imagination braced himself to bear up and to keep a
tight rein on his feelings for five hours, and it had seemed to him he
could do this. But when he came back from the doctor's and saw her
sufferings again, he fell to repeating more and more frequently: "Lord,
have mercy on us, and succor us!" He sighed, and flung his head up, and
began to feel afraid he could not bear it, that he would burst into
tears or run away. Such agony it was to him. And only one hour had
passed.

But after that hour there passed another hour, two hours, three, the
full five hours he had fixed as the furthest limit of his sufferings,
and the position was still unchanged; and he was still bearing it
because there was nothing to be done but bear it; every instant feeling
that he had reached the utmost limits of his endurance, and that his
heart would break with sympathy and pain.

But still the minutes passed by and the hours, and still hours more, and
his misery and horror grew and were more and more intense.

All the ordinary conditions of life, without which one can form no
conception of anything, had ceased to exist for Levin. He lost all sense
of time. Minutes--those minutes when she sent for him and he held her
moist hand, that would squeeze his hand with extraordinary violence and
then push it away--seemed to him hours, and hours seemed to him minutes.
He was surprised when Lizaveta Petrovna asked him to light a candle
behind a screen, and he found that it was five o'clock in the afternoon.
If he had been told it was only ten o'clock in the morning, he would not
have been more surprised. Where he was all this time, he knew as little
as the time of anything. He saw her swollen face, sometimes bewildered
and in agony, sometimes smiling and trying to reassure him. He saw the
old princess too, flushed and overwrought, with her gray curls in
disorder, forcing herself to gulp down her tears, biting her lips; he
saw Dolly too and the doctor, smoking fat cigarettes, and Lizaveta
Petrovna with a firm, resolute, reassuring face, and the old prince
walking up and down the hall with a frowning face. But why they came in
and went out, where they were, he did not know. The princess was with
the doctor in the bedroom, then in the study, where a table set for
dinner suddenly appeared; then she was not there, but Dolly was. Then
Levin remembered he had been sent somewhere. Once he had been sent to
move a table and sofa. He had done this eagerly, thinking it had to be
done for her sake, and only later on he found it was his own bed he had
been getting ready. Then he had been sent to the study to ask the doctor
something. The doctor had answered and then had said something about the
irregularities in the municipal council. Then he had been sent to the
bedroom to help the old princess to move the holy picture in its silver
and gold setting, and with the princess's old waiting maid he had
clambered on a shelf to reach it and had broken the little lamp, and the
old servant had tried to reassure him about the lamp and about his wife,
and he carried the holy picture and set it at Kitty's head, carefully
tucking it in behind the pillow. But where, when, and why all this had
happened, he could not tell. He did not understand why the old princess
took his hand, and looking compassionately at him, begged him not to
worry himself, and Dolly persuaded him to eat something and led him out
of the room, and even the doctor looked seriously and with commiseration
at him and offered him a drop of something.

All he knew and felt was that what was happening was what had happened
nearly a year before in the hotel of the country town at the deathbed of
his brother Nikolay. But that had been grief--this was joy. Yet that
grief and this joy were alike outside all the ordinary conditions of
life; they were loop-holes, as it were, in that ordinary life through
which there came glimpses of something sublime. And in the contemplation
of this sublime something the soul was exalted to inconceivable heights
of which it had before had no conception, while reason lagged behind,
unable to keep up with it.

"Lord, have mercy on us, and succor us!" he repeated to himself
incessantly, feeling, in spite of his long and, as it seemed, complete
alienation from religion, that he turned to God just as trustfully and
simply as he had in his childhood and first youth.

All this time he had two distinct spiritual conditions. One was away
from her, with the doctor, who kept smoking one fat cigarette after
another and extinguishing them on the edge of a full ash tray, with
Dolly, and with the old prince, where there was talk about dinner, about
politics, about Marya Petrovna's illness, and where Levin suddenly
forgot for a minute what was happening, and felt as though he had waked
up from sleep; the other was in her presence, at her pillow, where his
heart seemed breaking and still did not break from sympathetic
suffering, and he prayed to God without ceasing. And every time he was
brought back from a moment of oblivion by a scream reaching him from the
bedroom, he fell into the same strange terror that had come upon him the
first minute. Every time he heard a shriek, he jumped up, ran to justify
himself, remembered on the way that he was not to blame, and he longed
to defend her, to help her. But as he looked at her, he saw again that
help was impossible, and he was filled with terror and prayed: "Lord,
have mercy on us, and help us!" And as time went on, both these
conditions became more intense; the calmer he became away from her,
completely forgetting her, the more agonizing became both her sufferings
and his feeling of helplessness before them. He jumped up, would have
liked to run away, but ran to her.

Sometimes, when again and again she called upon him, he blamed her; but
seeing her patient, smiling face, and hearing the words, "I am worrying
you," he threw the blame on God; but thinking of God, at once he fell to
beseeching God to forgive him and have mercy.



Chapter 15


He did not know whether it was late or early. The candles had all burned
out. Dolly had just been in the study and had suggested to the doctor
that he should lie down. Levin sat listening to the doctor's stories of
a quack mesmerizer and looking at the ashes of his cigarette. There had
been a period of repose, and he had sunk into oblivion. He had
completely forgotten what was going on now. He heard the doctor's chat
and understood it. Suddenly there came an unearthly shriek. The shriek
was so awful that Levin did not even jump up, but holding his breath,
gazed in terrified inquiry at the doctor. The doctor put his head on one
side, listened, and smiled approvingly. Everything was so extraordinary
that nothing could strike Levin as strange. "I suppose it must be so,"
he thought, and still sat where he was. Whose scream was this? He jumped
up, ran on tiptoe to the bedroom, edged round Lizaveta Petrovna and the
princess, and took up his position at Kitty's pillow. The scream had
subsided, but there was some change now. What it was he did not see and
did not comprehend, and he had no wish to see or comprehend. But he saw
it by the face of Lizaveta Petrovna. Lizaveta Petrovna's face was stern
and pale, and still as resolute, though her jaws were twitching, and her
eyes were fixed intently on Kitty. Kitty's swollen and agonized face, a
tress of hair clinging to her moist brow, was turned to him and sought
his eyes. Her lifted hands asked for his hands. Clutching his chill
hands in her moist ones, she began squeezing them to her face.

"Don't go, don't go! I'm not afraid, I'm not afraid!" she said rapidly.
"Mamma, take my earrings. They bother me. You're not afraid? Quick,
quick, Lizaveta Petrovna..."

She spoke quickly, very quickly, and tried to smile. But suddenly her
face was drawn, she pushed him away.

"Oh, this is awful! I'm dying, I'm dying! Go away!" she shrieked, and
again he heard that unearthly scream.

Levin clutched at his head and ran out of the room.

"It's nothing, it's nothing, it's all right," Dolly called after him.

But they might say what they liked, he knew now that all was over. He
stood in the next room, his head leaning against the door post, and
heard shrieks, howls such as he had never heard before, and he knew that
what had been Kitty was uttering these shrieks. He had long ago ceased
to wish for the child. By now he loathed this child. He did not even
wish for her life now, all he longed for was the end of this awful
anguish.

"Doctor! What is it? What is it? By God!" he said, snatching at the
doctor's hand as he came up.

"It's the end," said the doctor. And the doctor's face was so grave as
he said it that Levin took _the end_ as meaning her death.

Beside himself, he ran into the bedroom. The first thing he saw was the
face of Lizaveta Petrovna. It was even more frowning and stern. Kitty's
face he did not know. In the place where it had been was something that
was fearful in its strained distortion and in the sounds that came from
it. He fell down with his head on the wooden framework of the bed,
feeling that his heart was bursting. The awful scream never paused, it
became still more awful, and as though it had reached the utmost limit
of terror, suddenly it ceased. Levin could not believe his ears, but
there could be no doubt; the scream had ceased and he heard a subdued
stir and bustle, and hurried breathing, and her voice, gasping, alive,
tender, and blissful, uttered softly, "It's over!"

He lifted his head. With her hands hanging exhausted on the quilt,
looking extraordinarily lovely and serene, she looked at him in silence
and tried to smile, and could not.

And suddenly, from the mysterious and awful far-away world in which he
had been living for the last twenty-two hours, Levin felt himself all in
an instant borne back to the old every-day world, glorified though now,
by such a radiance of happiness that he could not bear it. The strained
chords snapped, sobs and tears of joy which he had never foreseen rose
up with such violence that his whole body shook, that for long they
prevented him from speaking.

Falling on his knees before the bed, he held his wife's hand before his
lips and kissed it, and the hand, with a weak movement of the fingers,
responded to his kiss. And meanwhile, there at the foot of the bed, in
the deft hands of Lizaveta Petrovna, like a flickering light in a lamp,
lay the life of a human creature, which had never existed before, and
which would now with the same right, with the same importance to itself,
live and create in its own image.

"Alive! alive! And a boy too! Set your mind at rest!" Levin heard
Lizaveta Petrovna saying, as she slapped the baby's back with a shaking
hand.

"Mamma, is it true?" said Kitty's voice.

The princess's sobs were all the answers she could make. And in the
midst of the silence there came in unmistakable reply to the mother's
question, a voice quite unlike the subdued voices speaking in the room.
It was the bold, clamorous, self-assertive squall of the new human
being, who had so incomprehensibly appeared.

If Levin had been told before that Kitty was dead, and that he had died
with her, and that their children were angels, and that God was standing
before him, he would have been surprised at nothing. But now, coming
back to the world of reality, he had to make great mental efforts to
take in that she was alive and well, and that the creature squalling so
desperately was his son. Kitty was alive, her agony was over. And he was
unutterably happy. That he understood; he was completely happy in it.
But the baby? Whence, why, who was he?... He could not get used to the
idea. It seemed to him something extraneous, superfluous, to which he
could not accustom himself.



Chapter 16


At ten o'clock the old prince, Sergey Ivanovitch, and Stepan
Arkadyevitch were sitting at Levin's. Having inquired after Kitty, they
had dropped into conversation upon other subjects. Levin heard them, and
unconsciously, as they talked, going over the past, over what had been
up to that morning, he thought of himself as he had been yesterday till
that point. It was as though a hundred years had passed since then. He
felt himself exalted to unattainable heights, from which he studiously
lowered himself so as not to wound the people he was talking to. He
talked, and was all the time thinking of his wife, of her condition now,
of his son, in whose existence he tried to school himself into
believing. The whole world of woman, which had taken for him since his
marriage a new value he had never suspected before, was now so exalted
that he could not take it in in his imagination. He heard them talk of
yesterday's dinner at the club, and thought: "What is happening with her
now? Is she asleep? How is she? What is she thinking of? Is he crying,
my son Dmitri?" And in the middle of the conversation, in the middle of
a sentence, he jumped up and went out of the room.

"Send me word if I can see her," said the prince.

"Very well, in a minute," answered Levin, and without stopping, he went
to her room.

She was not asleep, she was talking gently with her mother, making plans
about the christening.

Carefully set to rights, with hair well-brushed, in a smart little cap
with some blue in it, her arms out on the quilt, she was lying on her
back. Meeting his eyes, her eyes drew him to her. Her face, bright
before, brightened still more as he drew near her. There was the same
change in it from earthly to unearthly that is seen in the face of the
dead. But then it means farewell, here it meant welcome. Again a rush of
emotion, such as he had felt at the moment of the child's birth, flooded
his heart. She took his hand and asked him if he had slept. He could not
answer, and turned away, struggling with his weakness.

"I have had a nap, Kostya!" she said to him; "and I am so comfortable
now."

She looked at him, but suddenly her expression changed.

"Give him to me," she said, hearing the baby's cry. "Give him to me,
Lizaveta Petrovna, and he shall look at him."

"To be sure, his papa shall look at him," said Lizaveta Petrovna,
getting up and bringing something red, and queer, and wriggling. "Wait a
minute, we'll make him tidy first," and Lizaveta Petrovna laid the red
wobbling thing on the bed, began untrussing and trussing up the baby,
lifting it up and turning it over with one finger and powdering it with
something.

Levin, looking at the tiny, pitiful creature, made strenuous efforts to
discover in his heart some traces of fatherly feeling for it. He felt
nothing towards it but disgust. But when it was undressed and he caught
a glimpse of wee, wee, little hands, little feet, saffron-colored, with
little toes, too, and positively with a little big toe different from
the rest, and when he saw Lizaveta Petrovna closing the wide-open little
hands, as though they were soft springs, and putting them into linen
garments, such pity for the little creature came upon him, and such
terror that she would hurt it, that he held her hand back.

Lizaveta Petrovna laughed.

"Don't be frightened, don't be frightened!"

When the baby had been put to rights and transformed into a firm doll,
Lizaveta Petrovna dandled it as though proud of her handiwork, and stood
a little away so that Levin might see his son in all his glory.

Kitty looked sideways in the same direction, never taking her eyes off
the baby. "Give him to me! give him to me!" she said, and even made as
though she would sit up.

"What are you thinking of, Katerina Alexandrovna, you mustn't move like
that! Wait a minute. I'll give him to you. Here we're showing papa what
a fine fellow we are!"

And Lizaveta Petrovna, with one hand supporting the wobbling head,
lifted up on the other arm the strange, limp, red creature, whose head
was lost in its swaddling clothes. But it had a nose, too, and slanting
eyes and smacking lips.

"A splendid baby!" said Lizaveta Petrovna.

Levin sighed with mortification. This splendid baby excited in him no
feeling but disgust and compassion. It was not at all the feeling he had
looked forward to.

He turned away while Lizaveta Petrovna put the baby to the unaccustomed
breast.

Suddenly laughter made him look round. The baby had taken the breast.

"Come, that's enough, that's enough!" said Lizaveta Petrovna, but Kitty
would not let the baby go. He fell asleep in her arms.

"Look, now," said Kitty, turning the baby so that he could see it. The
aged-looking little face suddenly puckered up still more and the baby
sneezed.

Smiling, hardly able to restrain his tears, Levin kissed his wife and
went out of the dark room. What he felt towards this little creature was
utterly unlike what he had expected. There was nothing cheerful and
joyous in the feeling; on the contrary, it was a new torture of
apprehension. It was the consciousness of a new sphere of liability to
pain. And this sense was so painful at first, the apprehension lest this
helpless creature should suffer was so intense, that it prevented him
from noticing the strange thrill of senseless joy and even pride that he
had felt when the baby sneezed.



Chapter 17


Stepan Arkadyevitch's affairs were in a very bad way.

The money for two-thirds of the forest had all been spent already, and
he had borrowed from the merchant in advance at ten per cent discount,
almost all the remaining third. The merchant would not give more,
especially as Darya Alexandrovna, for the first time that winter
insisting on her right to her own property, had refused to sign the
receipt for the payment of the last third of the forest. All his salary
went on household expenses and in payment of petty debts that could not
be put off. There was positively no money.

This was unpleasant and awkward, and in Stepan Arkadyevitch's opinion
things could not go on like this. The explanation of the position was,
in his view, to be found in the fact that his salary was too small. The
post he filled had been unmistakably very good five years ago, but it
was so no longer.

Petrov, the bank director, had twelve thousand; Sventitsky, a company
director, had seventeen thousand; Mitin, who had founded a bank,
received fifty thousand.

"Clearly I've been napping, and they've overlooked me," Stepan
Arkadyevitch thought about himself. And he began keeping his eyes and
ears open, and towards the end of the winter he had discovered a very
good berth and had formed a plan of attack upon it, at first from Moscow
through aunts, uncles, and friends, and then, when the matter was well
advanced, in the spring, he went himself to Petersburg. It was one of
those snug, lucrative berths of which there are so many more nowadays
than there used to be, with incomes ranging from one thousand to fifty
thousand roubles. It was the post of secretary of the committee of the
amalgamated agency of the southern railways, and of certain banking
companies. This position, like all such appointments, called for such
immense energy and such varied qualifications, that it was difficult for
them to be found united in any one man. And since a man combining all
the qualifications was not to be found, it was at least better that the
post be filled by an honest than by a dishonest man. And Stepan
Arkadyevitch was not merely an honest man--unemphatically--in the common
acceptation of the words, he was an honest man--emphatically--in that
special sense which the word has in Moscow, when they talk of an
"honest" politician, an "honest" writer, an "honest" newspaper, an
"honest" institution, an "honest" tendency, meaning not simply that the
man or the institution is not dishonest, but that they are capable on
occasion of taking a line of their own in opposition to the authorities.

Stepan Arkadyevitch moved in those circles in Moscow in which that
expression had come into use, was regarded there as an honest man, and
so had more right to this appointment than others.

The appointment yielded an income of from seven to ten thousand a year,
and Oblonsky could fill it without giving up his government position. It
was in the hands of two ministers, one lady, and two Jews, and all these
people, though the way had been paved already with them, Stepan
Arkadyevitch had to see in Petersburg. Besides this business, Stepan
Arkadyevitch had promised his sister Anna to obtain from Karenin a
definite answer on the question of divorce. And begging fifty roubles
from Dolly, he set off for Petersburg.

Stepan Arkadyevitch sat in Karenin's study listening to his report on
the causes of the unsatisfactory position of Russian finance, and only
waiting for the moment when he would finish to speak about his own
business or about Anna.

"Yes, that's very true," he said, when Alexey Alexandrovitch took off
the pince-nez, without which he could not read now, and looked
inquiringly at his former brother-in-law, "that's very true in
particular cases, but still the principle of our day is freedom."

"Yes, but I lay down another principle, embracing the principle of
freedom," said Alexey Alexandrovitch, with emphasis on the word
"embracing," and he put on his pince-nez again, so as to read the
passage in which this statement was made. And turning over the
beautifully written, wide-margined manuscript, Alexey Alexandrovitch
read aloud over again the conclusive passage.

"I don't advocate protection for the sake of private interests, but for
the public weal, and for the lower and upper classes equally," he said,
looking over his pince-nez at Oblonsky. "But _they_ cannot grasp that,
_they_ are taken up now with personal interests, and carried away by
phrases."

Stepan Arkadyevitch knew that when Karenin began to talk of what _they_
were doing and thinking, the persons who would not accept his report and
were the cause of everything wrong in Russia, that it was coming near
the end. And so now he eagerly abandoned the principle of free-trade,
and fully agreed. Alexey Alexandrovitch paused, thoughtfully turning
over the pages of his manuscript.

"Oh, by the way," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, "I wanted to ask you, some
time when you see Pomorsky, to drop him a hint that I should be very
glad to get that new appointment of secretary of the committee of the
amalgamated agency of the southern railways and banking companies."
Stepan Arkadyevitch was familiar by now with the title of the post he
coveted, and he brought it out rapidly without mistake.

Alexey Alexandrovitch questioned him as to the duties of this new
committee, and pondered. He was considering whether the new committee
would not be acting in some way contrary to the views he had been
advocating. But as the influence of the new committee was of a very
complex nature, and his views were of very wide application, he could
not decide this straight off, and taking off his pince-nez, he said:

"Of course, I can mention it to him; but what is your reason precisely
for wishing to obtain the appointment?"

"It's a good salary, rising to nine thousand, and my means..."

"Nine thousand!" repeated Alexey Alexandrovitch, and he frowned. The
high figure of the salary made him reflect that on that side Stepan
Arkadyevitch's proposed position ran counter to the main tendency of his
own projects of reform, which always leaned towards economy.

"I consider, and I have embodied my views in a note on the subject, that
in our day these immense salaries are evidence of the unsound economic
_assiette_ of our finances."

"But what's to be done?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "Suppose a bank
director gets ten thousand--well, he's worth it; or an engineer gets
twenty thousand--after all, it's a growing thing, you know!"

"I assume that a salary is the price paid for a commodity, and it ought
to conform with the law of supply and demand. If the salary is fixed
without any regard for that law, as, for instance, when I see two
engineers leaving college together, both equally well trained and
efficient, and one getting forty thousand while the other is satisfied
with two; or when I see lawyers and hussars, having no special
qualifications, appointed directors of banking companies with immense
salaries, I conclude that the salary is not fixed in accordance with the
law of supply and demand, but simply through personal interest. And this
is an abuse of great gravity in itself, and one that reacts injuriously
on the government service. I consider..."

Stepan Arkadyevitch made haste to interrupt his brother-in-law.

"Yes; but you must agree that it's a new institution of undoubted
utility that's being started. After all, you know, it's a growing thing!
What they lay particular stress on is the thing being carried on
honestly," said Stepan Arkadyevitch with emphasis.

But the Moscow significance of the word "honest" was lost on Alexey
Alexandrovitch.

"Honesty is only a negative qualification," he said.

"Well, you'll do me a great service, anyway," said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
"by putting in a word to Pomorsky--just in the way of conversation...."

"But I fancy it's more in Volgarinov's hands," said Alexey
Alexandrovitch.

"Volgarinov has fully assented, as far as he's concerned," said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, turning red. Stepan Arkadyevitch reddened at the mention
of that name, because he had been that morning at the Jew Volgarinov's,
and the visit had left an unpleasant recollection.

Stepan Arkadyevitch believed most positively that the committee in which
he was trying to get an appointment was a new, genuine, and honest
public body, but that morning when Volgarinov had--intentionally, beyond
a doubt--kept him two hours waiting with other petitioners in his
waiting room, he had suddenly felt uneasy.

Whether he was uncomfortable that he, a descendant of Rurik, Prince
Oblonsky, had been kept for two hours waiting to see a Jew, or that for
the first time in his life he was not following the example of his
ancestors in serving the government, but was turning off into a new
career, anyway he was very uncomfortable. During those two hours in
Volgarinov's waiting room Stepan Arkadyevitch, stepping jauntily about
the room, pulling his whiskers, entering into conversation with the
other petitioners, and inventing an epigram on his position, assiduously
concealed from others, and even from himself, the feeling he was
experiencing.

But all the time he was uncomfortable and angry, he could not have said
why--whether because he could not get his epigram just right, or from
some other reason. When at last Volgarinov had received him with
exaggerated politeness and unmistakable triumph at his humiliation, and
had all but refused the favor asked of him, Stepan Arkadyevitch had made
haste to forget it all as soon as possible. And now, at the mere
recollection, he blushed.



Chapter 18


"Now there is something I want to talk about, and you know what it is.
About Anna," Stepan Arkadyevitch said, pausing for a brief space, and
shaking off the unpleasant impression.

As soon as Oblonsky uttered Anna's name, the face of Alexey
Alexandrovitch was completely transformed; all the life was gone out of
it, and it looked weary and dead.

"What is it exactly that you want from me?" he said, moving in his chair
and snapping his pince-nez.

"A definite settlement, Alexey Alexandrovitch, some settlement of the
position. I'm appealing to you" ("not as an injured husband," Stepan
Arkadyevitch was going to say, but afraid of wrecking his negotiation by
this, he changed the words) "not as a statesman" (which did not sound _a
propos_), "but simply as a man, and a good-hearted man and a Christian.
You must have pity on her," he said.

"That is, in what way precisely?" Karenin said softly.

"Yes, pity on her. If you had seen her as I have!--I have been spending
all the winter with her--you would have pity on her. Her position is
awful, simply awful!"

"I had imagined," answered Alexey Alexandrovitch in a higher, almost
shrill voice, "that Anna Arkadyevna had everything she had desired for
herself."

"Oh, Alexey Alexandrovitch, for heaven's sake, don't let us indulge in
recriminations! What is past is past, and you know what she wants and is
waiting for--divorce."

"But I believe Anna Arkadyevna refuses a divorce, if I make it a
condition to leave me my son. I replied in that sense, and supposed that
the matter was ended. I consider it at an end," shrieked Alexey
Alexandrovitch.

"But, for heaven's sake, don't get hot!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
touching his brother-in-law's knee. "The matter is not ended. If you
will allow me to recapitulate, it was like this: when you parted, you
were as magnanimous as could possibly be; you were ready to give her
everything--freedom, divorce even. She appreciated that. No, don't think
that. She did appreciate it--to such a degree that at the first moment,
feeling how she had wronged you, she did not consider and could not
consider everything. She gave up everything. But experience, time, have
shown that her position is unbearable, impossible."

"The life of Anna Arkadyevna can have no interest for me," Alexey
Alexandrovitch put in, lifting his eyebrows.

"Allow me to disbelieve that," Stepan Arkadyevitch replied gently. "Her
position is intolerable for her, and of no benefit to anyone whatever.
She has deserved it, you will say. She knows that and asks you for
nothing; she says plainly that she dare not ask you. But I, all of us,
her relatives, all who love her, beg you, entreat you. Why should she
suffer? Who is any the better for it?"

"Excuse me, you seem to put me in the position of the guilty party,"
observed Alexey Alexandrovitch.

"Oh, no, oh, no, not at all! please understand me," said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, touching his hand again, as though feeling sure this
physical contact would soften his brother-in-law. "All I say is this:
her position is intolerable, and it might be alleviated by you, and you
will lose nothing by it. I will arrange it all for you, so that you'll
not notice it. You did promise it, you know."

"The promise was given before. And I had supposed that the question of
my son had settled the matter. Besides, I had hoped that Anna Arkadyevna
had enough generosity..." Alexey Alexandrovitch articulated with
difficulty, his lips twitching and his face white.

"She leaves it all to your generosity. She begs, she implores one thing
of you--to extricate her from the impossible position in which she is
placed. She does not ask for her son now. Alexey Alexandrovitch, you are
a good man. Put yourself in her position for a minute. The question of
divorce for her in her position is a question of life and death. If you
had not promised it once, she would have reconciled herself to her
position, she would have gone on living in the country. But you promised
it, and she wrote to you, and moved to Moscow. And here she's been for
six months in Moscow, where every chance meeting cuts her to the heart,
every day expecting an answer. Why, it's like keeping a condemned
criminal for six months with the rope round his neck, promising him
perhaps death, perhaps mercy. Have pity on her, and I will undertake to
arrange everything. _Vos scrupules_..."

"I am not talking about that, about that..." Alexey Alexandrovitch
interrupted with disgust. "But, perhaps, I promised what I had no right
to promise."

"So you go back from your promise?"

"I have never refused to do all that is possible, but I want time to
consider how much of what I promised is possible."

"No, Alexey Alexandrovitch!" cried Oblonsky, jumping up, "I won't
believe that! She's unhappy as only an unhappy woman can be, and you
cannot refuse in such..."

"As much of what I promised as is possible. _Vous professez d'etre libre
penseur._ But I as a believer cannot, in a matter of such gravity, act
in opposition to the Christian law."

"But in Christian societies and among us, as far as I'm aware, divorce
is allowed," said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "Divorce is sanctioned even by
our church. And we see..."

"It is allowed, but not in the sense..."

"Alexey Alexandrovitch, you are not like yourself," said Oblonsky, after
a brief pause. "Wasn't it you (and didn't we all appreciate it in you?)
who forgave everything, and moved simply by Christian feeling was ready
to make any sacrifice? You said yourself: if a man take thy coat, give
him thy cloak also, and now..."

"I beg," said Alexey Alexandrovitch shrilly, getting suddenly onto his
feet, his face white and his jaws twitching, "I beg you to drop this ...
to drop ... this subject!"

"Oh, no! Oh, forgive me, forgive me if I have wounded you," said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, holding out his hand with a smile of embarrassment; "but
like a messenger I have simply performed the commission given me."

Alexey Alexandrovitch gave him his hand, pondered a little, and said:

"I must think it over and seek for guidance. The day after tomorrow I
will give you a final answer," he said, after considering a moment.



Chapter 19


Stepan Arkadyevitch was about to go away when Korney came in to
announce:

"Sergey Alexyevitch!"

"Who's Sergey Alexyevitch?" Stepan Arkadyevitch was beginning, but he
remembered immediately.

"Ah, Seryozha!" he said aloud. "Sergey Alexyevitch! I thought it was the
director of a department. Anna asked me to see him too," he thought.

And he recalled the timid, piteous expression with which Anna had said
to him at parting: "Anyway, you will see him. Find out exactly where he
is, who is looking after him. And Stiva ... if it were possible! Could
it be possible?" Stepan Arkadyevitch knew what was meant by that "if it
were possible,"--if it were possible to arrange the divorce so as to let
her have her son.... Stepan Arkadyevitch saw now that it was no good to
dream of that, but still he was glad to see his nephew.

Alexey Alexandrovitch reminded his brother-in-law that they never spoke
to the boy of his mother, and he begged him not to mention a single word
about her.

"He was very ill after that interview with his mother, which we had not
foreseen," said Alexey Alexandrovitch. "Indeed, we feared for his life.
But with rational treatment, and sea-bathing in the summer, he regained
his strength, and now, by the doctor's advice, I have let him go to
school. And certainly the companionship of school has had a good effect
on him, and he is perfectly well, and making good progress."

"What a fine fellow he's grown! He's not Seryozha now, but quite
full-fledged Sergey Alexyevitch!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling, as
he looked at the handsome, broad-shouldered lad in blue coat and long
trousers, who walked in alertly and confidently. The boy looked healthy
and good-humored. He bowed to his uncle as to a stranger, but
recognizing him, he blushed and turned hurriedly away from him, as
though offended and irritated at something. The boy went up to his
father and handed him a note of the marks he had gained in school.

"Well, that's very fair," said his father, "you can go."

"He's thinner and taller, and has grown out of being a child into a boy;
I like that," said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "Do you remember me?"

The boy looked back quickly at his uncle.

"Yes, _mon oncle_," he answered, glancing at his father, and again he
looked downcast.

His uncle called him to him, and took his hand.

"Well, and how are you getting on?" he said, wanting to talk to him, and
not knowing what to say.

The boy, blushing and making no answer, cautiously drew his hand away.
As soon as Stepan Arkadyevitch let go his hand, he glanced doubtfully at
his father, and like a bird set free, he darted out of the room.

A year had passed since the last time Seryozha had seen his mother.
Since then he had heard nothing more of her. And in the course of that
year he had gone to school, and made friends among his schoolfellows.
The dreams and memories of his mother, which had made him ill after
seeing her, did not occupy his thoughts now. When they came back to him,
he studiously drove them away, regarding them as shameful and girlish,
below the dignity of a boy and a schoolboy. He knew that his father and
mother were separated by some quarrel, he knew that he had to remain
with his father, and he tried to get used to that idea.

He disliked seeing his uncle, so like his mother, for it called up those
memories of which he was ashamed. He disliked it all the more as from
some words he had caught as he waited at the study door, and still more
from the faces of his father and uncle, he guessed that they must have
been talking of his mother. And to avoid condemning the father with whom
he lived and on whom he was dependent, and, above all, to avoid giving
way to sentimentality, which he considered so degrading, Seryozha tried
not to look at his uncle who had come to disturb his peace of mind, and
not to think of what he recalled to him.

But when Stepan Arkadyevitch, going out after him, saw him on the
stairs, and calling to him, asked him how he spent his playtime at
school, Seryozha talked more freely to him away from his father's
presence.

"We have a railway now," he said in answer to his uncle's question.
"It's like this, do you see: two sit on a bench--they're the passengers;
and one stands up straight on the bench. And all are harnessed to it by
their arms or by their belts, and they run through all the rooms--the
doors are left open beforehand. Well, and it's pretty hard work being
the conductor!"

"That's the one that stands?" Stepan Arkadyevitch inquired, smiling.

"Yes, you want pluck for it, and cleverness too, especially when they
stop all of a sudden, or someone falls down."

"Yes, that must be a serious matter," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, watching
with mournful interest the eager eyes, like his mother's; not childish
now--no longer fully innocent. And though he had promised Alexey
Alexandrovitch not to speak of Anna, he could not restrain himself.

"Do you remember your mother?" he asked suddenly.

"No, I don't," Seryozha said quickly. He blushed crimson, and his face
clouded over. And his uncle could get nothing more out of him. His tutor
found his pupil on the staircase half an hour later, and for a long
while he could not make out whether he was ill-tempered or crying.

"What is it? I expect you hurt yourself when you fell down?" said the
tutor. "I told you it was a dangerous game. And we shall have to speak
to the director."

"If I had hurt myself, nobody should have found it out, that's certain."

"Well, what is it, then?"

"Leave me alone! If I remember, or if I don't remember?... what business
is it of his? Why should I remember? Leave me in peace!" he said,
addressing not his tutor, but the whole world.



Chapter 20


Stepan Arkadyevitch, as usual, did not waste his time in Petersburg. In
Petersburg, besides business, his sister's divorce, and his coveted
appointment, he wanted, as he always did, to freshen himself up, as he
said, after the mustiness of Moscow.

In spite of its _cafes chantants_ and its omnibuses, Moscow was yet a
stagnant bog. Stepan Arkadyevitch always felt it. After living for some
time in Moscow, especially in close relations with his family, he was
conscious of a depression of spirits. After being a long time in Moscow
without a change, he reached a point when he positively began to be
worrying himself over his wife's ill-humor and reproaches, over his
children's health and education, and the petty details of his official
work; even the fact of being in debt worried him. But he had only to go
and stay a little while in Petersburg, in the circle there in which he
moved, where people lived--really lived--instead of vegetating as in
Moscow, and all such ideas vanished and melted away at once, like wax
before the fire. His wife?... Only that day he had been talking to
Prince Tchetchensky. Prince Tchetchensky had a wife and family, grown-up
pages in the corps, ... and he had another illegitimate family of
children also. Though the first family was very nice too, Prince
Tchetchensky felt happier in his second family; and he used to take his
eldest son with him to his second family, and told Stepan Arkadyevitch
that he thought it good for his son, enlarging his ideas. What would
have been said to that in Moscow?

His children? In Petersburg children did not prevent their parents from
enjoying life. The children were brought up in schools, and there was no
trace of the wild idea that prevailed in Moscow, in Lvov's household,
for instance, that all the luxuries of life were for the children, while
the parents have nothing but work and anxiety. Here people understood
that a man is in duty bound to live for himself, as every man of culture
should live.

His official duties? Official work here was not the stiff, hopeless
drudgery that it was in Moscow. Here there was some interest in official
life. A chance meeting, a service rendered, a happy phrase, a knack of
facetious mimicry, and a man's career might be made in a trice. So it
had been with Bryantsev, whom Stepan Arkadyevitch had met the previous
day, and who was one of the highest functionaries in government now.
There was some interest in official work like that.

The Petersburg attitude on pecuniary matters had an especially soothing
effect on Stepan Arkadyevitch. Bartnyansky, who must spend at least
fifty thousand to judge by the style he lived in, had made an
interesting comment the day before on that subject.

As they were talking before dinner, Stepan Arkadyevitch said to
Bartnyansky:

"You're friendly, I fancy, with Mordvinsky; you might do me a favor: say
a word to him, please, for me. There's an appointment I should like to
get--secretary of the agency..."

"Oh, I shan't remember all that, if you tell it to me.... But what
possesses you to have to do with railways and Jews?... Take it as you
will, it's a low business."

Stepan Arkadyevitch did not say to Bartnyansky that it was a "growing
thing"--Bartnyansky would not have understood that.

"I want the money, I've nothing to live on."

"You're living, aren't you?"

"Yes, but in debt."

"Are you, though? Heavily?" said Bartnyansky sympathetically.

"Very heavily: twenty thousand."

Bartnyansky broke into good-humored laughter.

"Oh, lucky fellow!" said he. "My debts mount up to a million and a half,
and I've nothing, and still I can live, as you see!"

And Stepan Arkadyevitch saw the correctness of this view not in words
only but in actual fact. Zhivahov owed three hundred thousand, and
hadn't a farthing to bless himself with, and he lived, and in style too!
Count Krivtsov was considered a hopeless case by everyone, and yet he
kept two mistresses. Petrovsky had run through five millions, and still
lived in just the same style, and was even a manager in the financial
department with a salary of twenty thousand. But besides this,
Petersburg had physically an agreeable effect on Stepan Arkadyevitch. It
made him younger. In Moscow he sometimes found a gray hair in his head,
dropped asleep after dinner, stretched, walked slowly upstairs,
breathing heavily, was bored by the society of young women, and did not
dance at balls. In Petersburg he always felt ten years younger.

His experience in Petersburg was exactly what had been described to him
on the previous day by Prince Pyotr Oblonsky, a man of sixty, who had
just come back from abroad:

"We don't know the way to live here," said Pyotr Oblonsky. "I spent the
summer in Baden, and you wouldn't believe it, I felt quite a young man.
At a glimpse of a pretty woman, my thoughts.... One dines and drinks a
glass of wine, and feels strong and ready for anything. I came home to
Russia--had to see my wife, and, what's more, go to my country place;
and there, you'd hardly believe it, in a fortnight I'd got into a
dressing gown and given up dressing for dinner. Needn't say I had no
thoughts left for pretty women. I became quite an old gentleman. There
was nothing left for me but to think of my eternal salvation. I went off
to Paris--I was as right as could be at once."

Stepan Arkadyevitch felt exactly the difference that Pyotr Oblonsky
described. In Moscow he degenerated so much that if he had had to be
there for long together, he might in good earnest have come to
considering his salvation; in Petersburg he felt himself a man of the
world again.

Between Princess Betsy Tverskaya and Stepan Arkadyevitch there had long
existed rather curious relations. Stepan Arkadyevitch always flirted
with her in jest, and used to say to her, also in jest, the most
unseemly things, knowing that nothing delighted her so much. The day
after his conversation with Karenin, Stepan Arkadyevitch went to see
her, and felt so youthful that in this jesting flirtation and nonsense
he recklessly went so far that he did not know how to extricate himself,
as unluckily he was so far from being attracted by her that he thought
her positively disagreeable. What made it hard to change the
conversation was the fact that he was very attractive to her. So that he
was considerably relieved at the arrival of Princess Myakaya, which cut
short their _tete-a-tete_.

"Ah, so you're here!" said she when she saw him. "Well, and what news of
your poor sister? You needn't look at me like that," she added. "Ever
since they've all turned against her, all those who're a thousand times
worse than she, I've thought she did a very fine thing. I can't forgive
Vronsky for not letting me know when she was in Petersburg. I'd have
gone to see her and gone about with her everywhere. Please give her my
love. Come, tell me about her."

"Yes, her position is very difficult; she..." began Stepan Arkadyevitch,
in the simplicity of his heart accepting as sterling coin Princess
Myakaya's words "tell me about her." Princess Myakaya interrupted him
immediately, as she always did, and began talking herself.

"She's done what they all do, except me--only they hide it. But she
wouldn't be deceitful, and she did a fine thing. And she did better
still in throwing up that crazy brother-in-law of yours. You must excuse
me. Everybody used to say he was so clever, so very clever; I was the
only one that said he was a fool. Now that he's so thick with Lidia
Ivanovna and Landau, they all say he's crazy, and I should prefer not to
agree with everybody, but this time I can't help it."

"Oh, do please explain," said Stepan Arkadyevitch; "what does it mean?
Yesterday I was seeing him on my sister's behalf, and I asked him to
give me a final answer. He gave me no answer, and said he would think it
over. But this morning, instead of an answer, I received an invitation
from Countess Lidia Ivanovna for this evening."

"Ah, so that's it, that's it!" said Princess Myakaya gleefully, "they're
going to ask Landau what he's to say."

"Ask Landau? What for? Who or what's Landau?"

"What! you don't know Jules Landau, _le fameux Jules Landau, le
clairvoyant_? He's crazy too, but on him your sister's fate depends. See
what comes of living in the provinces--you know nothing about anything.
Landau, do you see, was a _commis_ in a shop in Paris, and he went to a
doctor's; and in the doctor's waiting room he fell asleep, and in his
sleep he began giving advice to all the patients. And wonderful advice
it was! Then the wife of Yury Meledinsky--you know, the invalid?--heard
of this Landau, and had him to see her husband. And he cured her
husband, though I can't say that I see he did him much good, for he's
just as feeble a creature as ever he was, but they believed in him, and
took him along with them and brought him to Russia. Here there's been a
general rush to him, and he's begun doctoring everyone. He cured
Countess Bezzubova, and she took such a fancy to him that she adopted
him."

"Adopted him?"

"Yes, as her son. He's not Landau any more now, but Count Bezzubov.
That's neither here nor there, though; but Lidia--I'm very fond of her,
but she has a screw loose somewhere--has lost her heart to this Landau
now, and nothing is settled now in her house or Alexey Alexandrovitch's
without him, and so your sister's fate is now in the hands of Landau,
_alias_ Count Bezzubov."



Chapter 21


After a capital dinner and a great deal of cognac drunk at
Bartnyansky's, Stepan Arkadyevitch, only a little later than the
appointed time, went in to Countess Lidia Ivanovna's.

"Who else is with the countess?--a Frenchman?" Stepan Arkadyevitch asked
the hall porter, as he glanced at the familiar overcoat of Alexey
Alexandrovitch and a queer, rather artless-looking overcoat with clasps.

"Alexey Alexandrovitch Karenin and Count Bezzubov," the porter answered
severely.

"Princess Myakaya guessed right," thought Stepan Arkadyevitch, as he
went upstairs. "Curious! It would be quite as well, though, to get on
friendly terms with her. She has immense influence. If she would say a
word to Pomorsky, the thing would be a certainty."

It was still quite light out-of-doors, but in Countess Lidia Ivanovna's
little drawing room the blinds were drawn and the lamps lighted. At a
round table under a lamp sat the countess and Alexey Alexandrovitch,
talking softly. A short, thinnish man, very pale and handsome, with
feminine hips and knock-kneed legs, with fine brilliant eyes and long
hair lying on the collar of his coat, was standing at the end of the
room gazing at the portraits on the wall. After greeting the lady of the
house and Alexey Alexandrovitch, Stepan Arkadyevitch could not resist
glancing once more at the unknown man.

"Monsieur Landau!" the countess addressed him with a softness and
caution that impressed Oblonsky. And she introduced them.

Landau looked round hurriedly, came up, and smiling, laid his moist,
lifeless hand in Stepan Arkadyevitch's outstretched hand and immediately
walked away and fell to gazing at the portraits again. The countess and
Alexey Alexandrovitch looked at each other significantly.

"I am very glad to see you, particularly today," said Countess Lidia
Ivanovna, pointing Stepan Arkadyevitch to a seat beside Karenin.

"I introduced you to him as Landau," she said in a soft voice, glancing
at the Frenchman and again immediately after at Alexey Alexandrovitch,
"but he is really Count Bezzubov, as you're probably aware. Only he does
not like the title."

"Yes, I heard so," answered Stepan Arkadyevitch; "they say he completely
cured Countess Bezzubova."

"She was here today, poor thing!" the countess said, turning to Alexey
Alexandrovitch. "This separation is awful for her. It's such a blow to
her!"

"And he positively is going?" queried Alexey Alexandrovitch.

"Yes, he's going to Paris. He heard a voice yesterday," said Countess
Lidia Ivanovna, looking at Stepan Arkadyevitch.

"Ah, a voice!" repeated Oblonsky, feeling that he must be as circumspect
as he possibly could in this society, where something peculiar was going
on, or was to go on, to which he had not the key.

A moment's silence followed, after which Countess Lidia Ivanovna, as
though approaching the main topic of conversation, said with a fine
smile to Oblonsky:

"I've known you for a long while, and am very glad to make a closer
acquaintance with you. _Les amis de nos amis sont nos amis._ But to be a
true friend, one must enter into the spiritual state of one's friend,
and I fear that you are not doing so in the case of Alexey
Alexandrovitch. You understand what I mean?" she said, lifting her fine
pensive eyes.

"In part, countess, I understand the position of Alexey
Alexandrovitch..." said Oblonsky. Having no clear idea what they were
talking about, he wanted to confine himself to generalities.

"The change is not in his external position," Countess Lidia Ivanovna
said sternly, following with eyes of love the figure of Alexey
Alexandrovitch as he got up and crossed over to Landau; "his heart is
changed, a new heart has been vouchsafed him, and I fear you don't fully
apprehend the change that has taken place in him."

"Oh, well, in general outlines I can conceive the change. We have always
been friendly, and now..." said Stepan Arkadyevitch, responding with a
sympathetic glance to the expression of the countess, and mentally
balancing the question with which of the two ministers she was most
intimate, so as to know about which to ask her to speak for him.

"The change that has taken place in him cannot lessen his love for his
neighbors; on the contrary, that change can only intensify love in his
heart. But I am afraid you do not understand me. Won't you have some
tea?" she said, with her eyes indicating the footman, who was handing
round tea on a tray.

"Not quite, countess. Of course, his misfortune..."

"Yes, a misfortune which has proved the highest happiness, when his
heart was made new, was filled full of it," she said, gazing with eyes
full of love at Stepan Arkadyevitch.

"I do believe I might ask her to speak to both of them," thought Stepan
Arkadyevitch.

"Oh, of course, countess," he said; "but I imagine such changes are a
matter so private that no one, even the most intimate friend, would care
to speak of them."

"On the contrary! We ought to speak freely and help one another."

"Yes, undoubtedly so, but there is such a difference of convictions, and
besides..." said Oblonsky with a soft smile.

"There can be no difference where it is a question of holy truth."

"Oh, no, of course; but..." and Stepan Arkadyevitch paused in confusion.
He understood at last that they were talking of religion.

"I fancy he will fall asleep immediately," said Alexey Alexandrovitch in
a whisper full of meaning, going up to Lidia Ivanovna.

Stepan Arkadyevitch looked round. Landau was sitting at the window,
leaning on his elbow and the back of his chair, his head drooping.
Noticing that all eyes were turned on him he raised his head and smiled
a smile of childlike artlessness.

"Don't take any notice," said Lidia Ivanovna, and she lightly moved a
chair up for Alexey Alexandrovitch. "I have observed..." she was
beginning, when a footman came into the room with a letter. Lidia
Ivanovna rapidly ran her eyes over the note, and excusing herself, wrote
an answer with extraordinary rapidity, handed it to the man, and came
back to the table. "I have observed," she went on, "that Moscow people,
especially the men, are more indifferent to religion than anyone."

"Oh, no, countess, I thought Moscow people had the reputation of being
the firmest in the faith," answered Stepan Arkadyevitch.

"But as far as I can make out, you are unfortunately one of the
indifferent ones," said Alexey Alexandrovitch, turning to him with a
weary smile.

"How anyone can be indifferent!" said Lidia Ivanovna.

"I am not so much indifferent on that subject as I am waiting in
suspense," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, with his most deprecating smile. "I
hardly think that the time for such questions has come yet for me."

Alexey Alexandrovitch and Lidia Ivanovna looked at each other.

"We can never tell whether the time has come for us or not," said Alexey
Alexandrovitch severely. "We ought not to think whether we are ready or
not ready. God's grace is not guided by human considerations: sometimes
it comes not to those that strive for it, and comes to those that are
unprepared, like Saul."

"No, I believe it won't be just yet," said Lidia Ivanovna, who had been
meanwhile watching the movements of the Frenchman. Landau got up and
came to them.

"Do you allow me to listen?" he asked.

"Oh, yes; I did not want to disturb you," said Lidia Ivanovna, gazing
tenderly at him; "sit here with us."

"One has only not to close one's eyes to shut out the light," Alexey
Alexandrovitch went on.

"Ah, if you knew the happiness we know, feeling His presence ever in our
hearts!" said Countess Lidia Ivanovna with a rapturous smile.

"But a man may feel himself unworthy sometimes to rise to that height,"
said Stepan Arkadyevitch, conscious of hypocrisy in admitting this
religious height, but at the same time unable to bring himself to
acknowledge his free-thinking views before a person who, by a single
word to Pomorsky, might procure him the coveted appointment.

"That is, you mean that sin keeps him back?" said Lidia Ivanovna. "But
that is a false idea. There is no sin for believers, their sin has been
atoned for. _Pardon,_" she added, looking at the footman, who came in
again with another letter. She read it and gave a verbal answer:
"Tomorrow at the Grand Duchess's, say." "For the believer sin is not,"
she went on.

"Yes, but faith without works is dead," said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
recalling the phrase from the catechism, and only by his smile clinging
to his independence.

"There you have it--from the epistle of St. James," said Alexey
Alexandrovitch, addressing Lidia Ivanovna, with a certain
reproachfulness in his tone. It was unmistakably a subject they had
discussed more than once before. "What harm has been done by the false
interpretation of that passage! Nothing holds men back from belief like
that misinterpretation. 'I have not works, so I cannot believe,' though
all the while that is not said. But the very opposite is said."

"Striving for God, saving the soul by fasting," said Countess Lidia
Ivanovna, with disgusted contempt, "those are the crude ideas of our
monks.... Yet that is nowhere said. It is far simpler and easier," she
added, looking at Oblonsky with the same encouraging smile with which at
court she encouraged youthful maids of honor, disconcerted by the new
surroundings of the court.

"We are saved by Christ who suffered for us. We are saved by faith,"
Alexey Alexandrovitch chimed in, with a glance of approval at her words.

_"Vous comprenez l'anglais?"_ asked Lidia Ivanovna, and receiving a
reply in the affirmative, she got up and began looking through a shelf
of books.

"I want to read him 'Safe and Happy,' or 'Under the Wing,'" she said,
looking inquiringly at Karenin. And finding the book, and sitting down
again in her place, she opened it. "It's very short. In it is described
the way by which faith can be reached, and the happiness, above all
earthly bliss, with which it fills the soul. The believer cannot be
unhappy because he is not alone. But you will see." She was just
settling herself to read when the footman came in again. "Madame
Borozdina? Tell her, tomorrow at two o'clock. Yes," she said, putting
her finger in the place in the book, and gazing before her with her fine
pensive eyes, "that is how true faith acts. You know Marie Sanina? You
know about her trouble? She lost her only child. She was in despair. And
what happened? She found this comforter, and she thanks God now for the
death of her child. Such is the happiness faith brings!"

"Oh, yes, that is most..." said Stepan Arkadyevitch, glad they were
going to read, and let him have a chance to collect his faculties. "No,
I see I'd better not ask her about anything today," he thought. "If only
I can get out of this without putting my foot in it!"

"It will be dull for you," said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, addressing
Landau; "you don't know English, but it's short."

"Oh, I shall understand," said Landau, with the same smile, and he
closed his eyes. Alexey Alexandrovitch and Lidia Ivanovna exchanged
meaningful glances, and the reading began.



Chapter 22


Stepan Arkadyevitch felt completely nonplussed by the strange talk which
he was hearing for the first time. The complexity of Petersburg, as a
rule, had a stimulating effect on him, rousing him out of his Moscow
stagnation. But he liked these complications, and understood them only
in the circles he knew and was at home in. In these unfamiliar
surroundings he was puzzled and disconcerted, and could not get his
bearings. As he listened to Countess Lidia Ivanovna, aware of the
beautiful, artless--or perhaps artful, he could not decide which--eyes
of Landau fixed upon him, Stepan Arkadyevitch began to be conscious of a
peculiar heaviness in his head.

The most incongruous ideas were in confusion in his head. "Marie Sanina
is glad her child's dead.... How good a smoke would be now!... To be
saved, one need only believe, and the monks don't know how the thing's
to be done, but Countess Lidia Ivanovna does know.... And why is my head
so heavy? Is it the cognac, or all this being so queer? Anyway, I fancy
I've done nothing unsuitable so far. But anyway, it won't do to ask her
now. They say they make one say one's prayers. I only hope they won't
make me! That'll be too imbecile. And what stuff it is she's reading!
but she has a good accent. Landau--Bezzubov--what's he Bezzubov for?"
All at once Stepan Arkadyevitch became aware that his lower jaw was
uncontrollably forming a yawn. He pulled his whiskers to cover the yawn,
and shook himself together. But soon after he became aware that he was
dropping asleep and on the very point of snoring. He recovered himself
at the very moment when the voice of Countess Lidia Ivanovna was saying
"he's asleep." Stepan Arkadyevitch started with dismay, feeling guilty
and caught. But he was reassured at once by seeing that the words "he's
asleep" referred not to him, but to Landau. The Frenchman was asleep as
well as Stepan Arkadyevitch. But Stepan Arkadyevitch's being asleep
would have offended them, as he thought (though even this, he thought,
might not be so, as everything seemed so queer), while Landau's being
asleep delighted them extremely, especially Countess Lidia Ivanovna.

_"Mon ami,"_ said Lidia Ivanovna, carefully holding the folds of her
silk gown so as not to rustle, and in her excitement calling Karenin not
Alexey Alexandrovitch, but _"mon ami," "donnez-lui la main. Vous voyez?
Sh!"_ she hissed at the footman as he came in again. "Not at home."

The Frenchman was asleep, or pretending to be asleep, with his head on
the back of his chair, and his moist hand, as it lay on his knee, made
faint movements, as though trying to catch something. Alexey
Alexandrovitch got up, tried to move carefully, but stumbled against the
table, went up and laid his hand in the Frenchman's hand. Stepan
Arkadyevitch got up too, and opening his eyes wide, trying to wake
himself up if he were asleep, he looked first at one and then at the
other. It was all real. Stepan Arkadyevitch felt that his head was
getting worse and worse.

"_Que la personne qui est arrivee la derniere, celle qui demande,
qu'elle sorte! Qu'elle sorte!_" articulated the Frenchman, without
opening his eyes.

"_Vous m'excuserez, mais vous voyez.... Revenez vers dix heures, encore
mieux demain._"

"_Qu'elle sorte!_" repeated the Frenchman impatiently.

"_C'est moi, n'est-ce pas?_" And receiving an answer in the affirmative,
Stepan Arkadyevitch, forgetting the favor he had meant to ask of Lidia
Ivanovna, and forgetting his sister's affairs, caring for nothing, but
filled with the sole desire to get away as soon as possible, went out on
tiptoe and ran out into the street as though from a plague-stricken
house. For a long while he chatted and joked with his cab-driver, trying
to recover his spirits.

At the French theater where he arrived for the last act, and afterwards
at the Tatar restaurant after his champagne, Stepan Arkadyevitch felt a
little refreshed in the atmosphere he was used to. But still he felt
quite unlike himself all that evening.

On getting home to Pyotr Oblonsky's, where he was staying, Stepan
Arkadyevitch found a note from Betsy. She wrote to him that she was very
anxious to finish their interrupted conversation, and begged him to come
next day. He had scarcely read this note, and frowned at its contents,
when he heard below the ponderous tramp of the servants, carrying
something heavy.

Stepan Arkadyevitch went out to look. It was the rejuvenated Pyotr
Oblonsky. He was so drunk that he could not walk upstairs; but he told
them to set him on his legs when he saw Stepan Arkadyevitch, and
clinging to him, walked with him into his room and there began telling
him how he had spent the evening, and fell asleep doing so.

Stepan Arkadyevitch was in very low spirits, which happened rarely with
him, and for a long while he could not go to sleep. Everything he could
recall to his mind, everything was disgusting; but most disgusting of
all, as if it were something shameful, was the memory of the evening he
had spent at Countess Lidia Ivanovna's.

Next day he received from Alexey Alexandrovitch a final answer, refusing
to grant Anna's divorce, and he understood that this decision was based
on what the Frenchman had said in his real or pretended trance.



Chapter 23


In order to carry through any undertaking in family life, there must
necessarily be either complete division between the husband and wife, or
loving agreement. When the relations of a couple are vacillating and
neither one thing nor the other, no sort of enterprise can be
undertaken.

Many families remain for years in the same place, though both husband
and wife are sick of it, simply because there is neither complete
division nor agreement between them.

Both Vronsky and Anna felt life in Moscow insupportable in the heat and
dust, when the spring sunshine was followed by the glare of summer, and
all the trees in the boulevards had long since been in full leaf, and
the leaves were covered with dust. But they did not go back to
Vozdvizhenskoe, as they had arranged to do long before; they went on
staying in Moscow, though they both loathed it, because of late there
had been no agreement between them.

The irritability that kept them apart had no external cause, and all
efforts to come to an understanding intensified it, instead of removing
it. It was an inner irritation, grounded in her mind on the conviction
that his love had grown less; in his, on regret that he had put himself
for her sake in a difficult position, which she, instead of lightening,
made still more difficult. Neither of them gave full utterance to their
sense of grievance, but they considered each other in the wrong, and
tried on every pretext to prove this to one another.

In her eyes the whole of him, with all his habits, ideas, desires, with
all his spiritual and physical temperament, was one thing--love for
women, and that love, she felt, ought to be entirely concentrated on her
alone. That love was less; consequently, as she reasoned, he must have
transferred part of his love to other women or to another woman--and she
was jealous. She was jealous not of any particular woman but of the
decrease of his love. Not having got an object for her jealousy, she was
on the lookout for it. At the slightest hint she transferred her
jealousy from one object to another. At one time she was jealous of
those low women with whom he might so easily renew his old bachelor
ties; then she was jealous of the society women he might meet; then she
was jealous of the imaginary girl whom he might want to marry, for whose
sake he would break with her. And this last form of jealousy tortured
her most of all, especially as he had unwarily told her, in a moment of
frankness, that his mother knew him so little that she had had the
audacity to try and persuade him to marry the young Princess Sorokina.

And being jealous of him, Anna was indignant against him and found
grounds for indignation in everything. For everything that was difficult
in her position she blamed him. The agonizing condition of suspense she
had passed in Moscow, the tardiness and indecision of Alexey
Alexandrovitch, her solitude--she put it all down to him. If he had
loved her he would have seen all the bitterness of her position, and
would have rescued her from it. For her being in Moscow and not in the
country, he was to blame too. He could not live buried in the country as
she would have liked to do. He must have society, and he had put her in
this awful position, the bitterness of which he would not see. And
again, it was his fault that she was forever separated from her son.

Even the rare moments of tenderness that came from time to time did not
soothe her; in his tenderness now she saw a shade of complacency, of
self-confidence, which had not been of old, and which exasperated her.

It was dusk. Anna was alone, and waiting for him to come back from a
bachelor dinner. She walked up and down in his study (the room where the
noise from the street was least heard), and thought over every detail of
their yesterday's quarrel. Going back from the well-remembered,
offensive words of the quarrel to what had been the ground of it, she
arrived at last at its origin. For a long while she could hardly believe
that their dissension had arisen from a conversation so inoffensive, of
so little moment to either. But so it actually had been. It all arose
from his laughing at the girls' high schools, declaring they were
useless, while she defended them. He had spoken slightingly of women's
education in general, and had said that Hannah, Anna's English protegee,
had not the slightest need to know anything of physics.

This irritated Anna. She saw in this a contemptuous reference to her
occupations. And she bethought her of a phrase to pay him back for the
pain he had given her. "I don't expect you to understand me, my
feelings, as anyone who loved me might, but simple delicacy I did
expect," she said.

And he had actually flushed with vexation, and had said something
unpleasant. She could not recall her answer, but at that point, with an
unmistakable desire to wound her too, he had said:

"I feel no interest in your infatuation over this girl, that's true,
because I see it's unnatural."

The cruelty with which he shattered the world she had built up for
herself so laboriously to enable her to endure her hard life, the
injustice with which he had accused her of affectation, of
artificiality, aroused her.

"I am very sorry that nothing but what's coarse and material is
comprehensible and natural to you," she said and walked out of the room.

When he had come in to her yesterday evening, they had not referred to
the quarrel, but both felt that the quarrel had been smoothed over, but
was not at an end.

Today he had not been at home all day, and she felt so lonely and
wretched in being on bad terms with him that she wanted to forget it
all, to forgive him, and be reconciled with him; she wanted to throw the
blame on herself and to justify him.

"I am myself to blame. I'm irritable, I'm insanely jealous. I will make
it up with him, and we'll go away to the country; there I shall be more
at peace."

"Unnatural!" She suddenly recalled the word that had stung her most of
all, not so much the word itself as the intent to wound her with which
it was said. "I know what he meant; he meant--unnatural, not loving my
own daughter, to love another person's child. What does he know of love
for children, of my love for Seryozha, whom I've sacrificed for him? But
that wish to wound me! No, he loves another woman, it must be so."

And perceiving that, while trying to regain her peace of mind, she had
gone round the same circle that she had been round so often before, and
had come back to her former state of exasperation, she was horrified at
herself. "Can it be impossible? Can it be beyond me to control myself?"
she said to herself, and began again from the beginning. "He's truthful,
he's honest, he loves me. I love him, and in a few days the divorce will
come. What more do I want? I want peace of mind and trust, and I will
take the blame on myself. Yes, now when he comes in, I will tell him I
was wrong, though I was not wrong, and we will go away tomorrow."

And to escape thinking any more, and being overcome by irritability, she
rang, and ordered the boxes to be brought up for packing their things
for the country.

At ten o'clock Vronsky came in.



Chapter 24


"Well, was it nice?" she asked, coming out to meet him with a penitent
and meek expression.

"Just as usual," he answered, seeing at a glance that she was in one of
her good moods. He was used by now to these transitions, and he was
particularly glad to see it today, as he was in a specially good humor
himself.

"What do I see? Come, that's good!" he said, pointing to the boxes in
the passage.

"Yes, we must go. I went out for a drive, and it was so fine I longed to
be in the country. There's nothing to keep you, is there?"

"It's the one thing I desire. I'll be back directly, and we'll talk it
over; I only want to change my coat. Order some tea."

And he went into his room.

There was something mortifying in the way he had said "Come, that's
good," as one says to a child when it leaves off being naughty, and
still more mortifying was the contrast between her penitent and his
self-confident tone; and for one instant she felt the lust of strife
rising up in her again, but making an effort she conquered it, and met
Vronsky as good-humoredly as before.

When he came in she told him, partly repeating phrases she had prepared
beforehand, how she had spent the day, and her plans for going away.

"You know it came to me almost like an inspiration," she said. "Why wait
here for the divorce? Won't it be just the same in the country? I can't
wait any longer! I don't want to go on hoping, I don't want to hear
anything about the divorce. I have made up my mind it shall not have any
more influence on my life. Do you agree?"

"Oh, yes!" he said, glancing uneasily at her excited face.

"What did you do? Who was there?" she said, after a pause.

Vronsky mentioned the names of the guests. "The dinner was first rate,
and the boat race, and it was all pleasant enough, but in Moscow they
can never do anything without something _ridicule_. A lady of a sort
appeared on the scene, teacher of swimming to the Queen of Sweden, and
gave us an exhibition of her skill."

"How? did she swim?" asked Anna, frowning.

"In an absurd red _costume de natation;_ she was old and hideous too. So
when shall we go?"

"What an absurd fancy! Why, did she swim in some special way, then?"
said Anna, not answering.

"There was absolutely nothing in it. That's just what I say, it was
awfully stupid. Well, then, when do you think of going?"

Anna shook her head as though trying to drive away some unpleasant idea.

"When? Why, the sooner the better! By tomorrow we shan't be ready. The
day after tomorrow."

"Yes ... oh, no, wait a minute! The day after tomorrow's Sunday, I have
to be at maman's," said Vronsky, embarrassed, because as soon as he
uttered his mother's name he was aware of her intent, suspicious eyes.
His embarrassment confirmed her suspicion. She flushed hotly and drew
away from him. It was now not the Queen of Sweden's swimming-mistress
who filled Anna's imagination, but the young Princess Sorokina. She was
staying in a village near Moscow with Countess Vronskaya.

"Can't you go tomorrow?" she said.

"Well, no! The deeds and the money for the business I'm going there for
I can't get by tomorrow," he answered.

"If so, we won't go at all."

"But why so?"

"I shall not go later. Monday or never!"

"What for?" said Vronsky, as though in amazement. "Why, there's no
meaning in it!"

"There's no meaning in it to you, because you care nothing for me. You
don't care to understand my life. The one thing that I cared for here
was Hannah. You say it's affectation. Why, you said yesterday that I
don't love my daughter, that I love this English girl, that it's
unnatural. I should like to know what life there is for me that could be
natural!"

For an instant she had a clear vision of what she was doing, and was
horrified at how she had fallen away from her resolution. But even
though she knew it was her own ruin, she could not restrain herself,
could not keep herself from proving to him that he was wrong, could not
give way to him.

"I never said that; I said I did not sympathize with this sudden
passion."

"How is it, though you boast of your straightforwardness, you don't tell
the truth?"

"I never boast, and I never tell lies," he said slowly, restraining his
rising anger. "It's a great pity if you can't respect..."

"Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be. And
if you don't love me any more, it would be better and more honest to say
so."

"No, this is becoming unbearable!" cried Vronsky, getting up from his
chair; and stopping short, facing her, he said, speaking deliberately:
"What do you try my patience for?" looking as though he might have said
much more, but was restraining himself. "It has limits."

"What do you mean by that?" she cried, looking with terror at the
undisguised hatred in his whole face, and especially in his cruel,
menacing eyes.

"I mean to say..." he was beginning, but he checked himself. "I must ask
what it is you want of me?"

"What can I want? All I can want is that you should not desert me, as
you think of doing," she said, understanding all he had not uttered.
"But that I don't want; that's secondary. I want love, and there is
none. So then all is over."

She turned towards the door.

"Stop! sto-op!" said Vronsky, with no change in the gloomy lines of his
brows, though he held her by the hand. "What is it all about? I said
that we must put off going for three days, and on that you told me I was
lying, that I was not an honorable man."

"Yes, and I repeat that the man who reproaches me with having sacrificed
everything for me," she said, recalling the words of a still earlier
quarrel, "that he's worse than a dishonorable man--he's a heartless
man."

"Oh, there are limits to endurance!" he cried, and hastily let go her
hand.

"He hates me, that's clear," she thought, and in silence, without
looking round, she walked with faltering steps out of the room. "He
loves another woman, that's even clearer," she said to herself as she
went into her own room. "I want love, and there is none. So, then, all
is over." She repeated the words she had said, "and it must be ended."

"But how?" she asked herself, and she sat down in a low chair before the
looking glass.

Thoughts of where she would go now, whether to the aunt who had brought
her up, to Dolly, or simply alone abroad, and of what _he_ was doing now
alone in his study; whether this was the final quarrel, or whether
reconciliation were still possible; and of what all her old friends at
Petersburg would say of her now; and of how Alexey Alexandrovitch would
look at it, and many other ideas of what would happen now after this
rupture, came into her head; but she did not give herself up to them
with all her heart. At the bottom of her heart was some obscure idea
that alone interested her, but she could not get clear sight of it.
Thinking once more of Alexey Alexandrovitch, she recalled the time of
her illness after her confinement, and the feeling which never left her
at that time. "Why didn't I die?" and the words and the feeling of that
time came back to her. And all at once she knew what was in her soul.
Yes, it was that idea which alone solved all. "Yes, to die!... And the
shame and disgrace of Alexey Alexandrovitch and of Seryozha, and my
awful shame, it will all be saved by death. To die! and he will feel
remorse; will be sorry; will love me; he will suffer on my account."
With the trace of a smile of commiseration for herself she sat down in
the armchair, taking off and putting on the rings on her left hand,
vividly picturing from different sides his feelings after her death.

Approaching footsteps--his steps--distracted her attention. As though
absorbed in the arrangement of her rings, she did not even turn to him.

He went up to her, and taking her by the hand, said softly:

"Anna, we'll go the day after tomorrow, if you like. I agree to
everything."

She did not speak.

"What is it?" he urged.

"You know," she said, and at the same instant, unable to restrain
herself any longer, she burst into sobs.

"Cast me off!" she articulated between her sobs. "I'll go away tomorrow
... I'll do more. What am I? An immoral woman! A stone round your neck.
I don't want to make you wretched, I don't want to! I'll set you free.
You don't love me; you love someone else!"

Vronsky besought her to be calm, and declared that there was no trace of
foundation for her jealousy; that he had never ceased, and never would
cease, to love her; that he loved her more than ever.

"Anna, why distress yourself and me so?" he said to her, kissing her
hands. There was tenderness now in his face, and she fancied she caught
the sound of tears in his voice, and she felt them wet on her hand. And
instantly Anna's despairing jealousy changed to a despairing passion of
tenderness. She put her arms round him, and covered with kisses his
head, his neck, his hands.



Chapter 25


Feeling that the reconciliation was complete, Anna set eagerly to work
in the morning preparing for their departure. Though it was not settled
whether they should go on Monday or Tuesday, as they had each given way
to the other, Anna packed busily, feeling absolutely indifferent whether
they went a day earlier or later. She was standing in her room over an
open box, taking things out of it, when he came in to see her earlier
than usual, dressed to go out.

"I'm going off at once to see maman; she can send me the money by
Yegorov. And I shall be ready to go tomorrow," he said.

Though she was in such a good mood, the thought of his visit to his
mother's gave her a pang.

"No, I shan't be ready by then myself," she said; and at once reflected,
"so then it was possible to arrange to do as I wished." "No, do as you
meant to do. Go into the dining room, I'm coming directly. It's only to
turn out those things that aren't wanted," she said, putting something
more on the heap of frippery that lay in Annushka's arms.

Vronsky was eating his beefsteak when she came into the dining-room.

"You wouldn't believe how distasteful these rooms have become to me,"
she said, sitting down beside him to her coffee. "There's nothing more
awful than these _chambres garnies_. There's no individuality in them,
no soul. These clocks, and curtains, and, worst of all, the
wallpapers--they're a nightmare. I think of Vozdvizhenskoe as the
promised land. You're not sending the horses off yet?"

"No, they will come after us. Where are you going to?"

"I wanted to go to Wilson's to take some dresses to her. So it's really
to be tomorrow?" she said in a cheerful voice; but suddenly her face
changed.

Vronsky's valet came in to ask him to sign a receipt for a telegram from
Petersburg. There was nothing out of the way in Vronsky's getting a
telegram, but he said, as though anxious to conceal something from her,
that the receipt was in his study, and he turned hurriedly to her.

"By tomorrow, without fail, I will finish it all."

"From whom is the telegram?" she asked, not hearing him.

"From Stiva," he answered reluctantly.

"Why didn't you show it to me? What secret can there be between Stiva
and me?"

Vronsky called the valet back, and told him to bring the telegram.

"I didn't want to show it to you, because Stiva has such a passion for
telegraphing: why telegraph when nothing is settled?"

"About the divorce?"

"Yes; but he says he has not been able to come at anything yet. He has
promised a decisive answer in a day or two. But here it is; read it."

With trembling hands Anna took the telegram, and read what Vronsky had
told her. At the end was added: "Little hope; but I will do everything
possible and impossible."

"I said yesterday that it's absolutely nothing to me when I get, or
whether I never get, a divorce," she said, flushing crimson. "There was
not the slightest necessity to hide it from me." "So he may hide and
does hide his correspondence with women from me," she thought.

"Yashvin meant to come this morning with Voytov," said Vronsky; "I
believe he's won from Pyevtsov all and more than he can pay, about sixty
thousand."

"No," she said, irritated by his so obviously showing by this change of
subject that he was irritated, "why did you suppose that this news would
affect me so, that you must even try to hide it? I said I don't want to
consider it, and I should have liked you to care as little about it as I
do."

"I care about it because I like definiteness," he said.

"Definiteness is not in the form but the love," she said, more and more
irritated, not by his words, but by the tone of cool composure in which
he spoke. "What do you want it for?"

"My God! love again," he thought, frowning.

"Oh, you know what for; for your sake and your children's in the
future."

"There won't be children in the future."

"That's a great pity," he said.

"You want it for the children's sake, but you don't think of me?" she
said, quite forgetting or not having heard that he had said, "_for your
sake_ and the children's."

The question of the possibility of having children had long been a
subject of dispute and irritation to her. His desire to have children
she interpreted as a proof he did not prize her beauty.

"Oh, I said: for your sake. Above all for your sake," he repeated,
frowning as though in pain, "because I am certain that the greater part
of your irritability comes from the indefiniteness of the position."

"Yes, now he has laid aside all pretense, and all his cold hatred for me
is apparent," she thought, not hearing his words, but watching with
terror the cold, cruel judge who looked mocking her out of his eyes.

"The cause is not that," she said, "and, indeed, I don't see how the
cause of my irritability, as you call it, can be that I am completely in
your power. What indefiniteness is there in the position? on the
contrary..."

"I am very sorry that you don't care to understand," he interrupted,
obstinately anxious to give utterance to his thought. "The
indefiniteness consists in your imagining that I am free."

"On that score you can set your mind quite at rest," she said, and
turning away from him, she began drinking her coffee.

She lifted her cup, with her little finger held apart, and put it to her
lips. After drinking a few sips she glanced at him, and by his
expression, she saw clearly that he was repelled by her hand, and her
gesture, and the sound made by her lips.

"I don't care in the least what your mother thinks, and what match she
wants to make for you," she said, putting the cup down with a shaking
hand.

"But we are not talking about that."

"Yes, that's just what we are talking about. And let me tell you that a
heartless woman, whether she's old or not old, your mother or anyone
else, is of no consequence to me, and I would not consent to know her."

"Anna, I beg you not to speak disrespectfully of my mother."

"A woman whose heart does not tell her where her son's happiness and
honor lie has no heart."

"I repeat my request that you will not speak disrespectfully of my
mother, whom I respect," he said, raising his voice and looking sternly
at her.

She did not answer. Looking intently at him, at his face, his hands, she
recalled all the details of their reconciliation the previous day, and
his passionate caresses. "There, just such caresses he has lavished, and
will lavish, and longs to lavish on other women!" she thought.

"You don't love your mother. That's all talk, and talk, and talk!" she
said, looking at him with hatred in her eyes.

"Even if so, you must..."

"Must decide, and I have decided," she said, and she would have gone
away, but at that moment Yashvin walked into the room. Anna greeted him
and remained.

Why, when there was a tempest in her soul, and she felt she was standing
at a turning point in her life, which might have fearful
consequences--why, at that minute, she had to keep up appearances before
an outsider, who sooner or later must know it all--she did not know. But
at once quelling the storm within her, she sat down and began talking to
their guest.

"Well, how are you getting on? Has your debt been paid you?" she asked
Yashvin.

"Oh, pretty fair; I fancy I shan't get it all, but I shall get a good
half. And when are you off?" said Yashvin, looking at Vronsky, and
unmistakably guessing at a quarrel.

"The day after tomorrow, I think," said Vronsky.

"You've been meaning to go so long, though."

"But now it's quite decided," said Anna, looking Vronsky straight in the
face with a look which told him not to dream of the possibility of
reconciliation.

"Don't you feel sorry for that unlucky Pyevtsov?" she went on, talking
to Yashvin.

"I've never asked myself the question, Anna Arkadyevna, whether I'm
sorry for him or not. You see, all my fortune's here"--he touched his
breast pocket--"and just now I'm a wealthy man. But today I'm going to
the club, and I may come out a beggar. You see, whoever sits down to
play with me--he wants to leave me without a shirt to my back, and so do
I him. And so we fight it out, and that's the pleasure of it."

"Well, but suppose you were married," said Anna, "how would it be for
your wife?"

Yashvin laughed.

"That's why I'm not married, and never mean to be."

"And Helsingfors?" said Vronsky, entering into the conversation and
glancing at Anna's smiling face. Meeting his eyes, Anna's face instantly
took a coldly severe expression as though she were saying to him: "It's
not forgotten. It's all the same."

"Were you really in love?" she said to Yashvin.

"Oh heavens! ever so many times! But you see, some men can play but only
so that they can always lay down their cards when the hour of a
_rendezvous_ comes, while I can take up love, but only so as not to be
late for my cards in the evening. That's how I manage things."

"No, I didn't mean that, but the real thing." She would have said
_Helsingfors_, but would not repeat the word used by Vronsky.

Voytov, who was buying the horse, came in. Anna got up and went out of
the room.

Before leaving the house, Vronsky went into her room. She would have
pretended to be looking for something on the table, but ashamed of
making a pretense, she looked straight in his face with cold eyes.

"What do you want?" she asked in French.

"To get the guarantee for Gambetta, I've sold him," he said, in a tone
which said more clearly than words, "I've no time for discussing things,
and it would lead to nothing."

"I'm not to blame in any way," he thought. "If she will punish herself,
_tant pis pour elle._" But as he was going he fancied that she said
something, and his heart suddenly ached with pity for her.

"Eh, Anna?" he queried.

"I said nothing," she answered just as coldly and calmly.

"Oh, nothing, _tant pis_ then," he thought, feeling cold again, and he
turned and went out. As he was going out he caught a glimpse in the
looking glass of her face, white, with quivering lips. He even wanted to
stop and to say some comforting word to her, but his legs carried him
out of the room before he could think what to say. The whole of that day
he spent away from home, and when he came in late in the evening the
maid told him that Anna Arkadyevna had a headache and begged him not to
go in to her.



Chapter 26


Never before had a day been passed in quarrel. Today was the first time.
And this was not a quarrel. It was the open acknowledgment of complete
coldness. Was it possible to glance at her as he had glanced when he
came into the room for the guarantee?--to look at her, see her heart was
breaking with despair, and go out without a word with that face of
callous composure? He was not merely cold to her, he hated her because
he loved another woman--that was clear.

And remembering all the cruel words he had said, Anna supplied, too, the
words that he had unmistakably wished to say and could have said to her,
and she grew more and more exasperated.

"I won't prevent you," he might say. "You can go where you like. You
were unwilling to be divorced from your husband, no doubt so that you
might go back to him. Go back to him. If you want money, I'll give it to
you. How many roubles do you want?"

All the most cruel words that a brutal man could say, he said to her in
her imagination, and she could not forgive him for them, as though he
had actually said them.

"But didn't he only yesterday swear he loved me, he, a truthful and
sincere man? Haven't I despaired for nothing many times already?" she
said to herself afterwards.

All that day, except for the visit to Wilson's, which occupied two
hours, Anna spent in doubts whether everything were over or whether
there were still hope of reconciliation, whether she should go away at
once or see him once more. She was expecting him the whole day, and in
the evening, as she went to her own room, leaving a message for him that
her head ached, she said to herself, "If he comes in spite of what the
maid says, it means that he loves me still. If not, it means that all is
over, and then I will decide what I'm to do!..."

In the evening she heard the rumbling of his carriage stop at the
entrance, his ring, his steps and his conversation with the servant; he
believed what was told him, did not care to find out more, and went to
his own room. So then everything was over.

And death rose clearly and vividly before her mind as the sole means of
bringing back love for her in his heart, of punishing him and of gaining
the victory in that strife which the evil spirit in possession of her
heart was waging with him.

Now nothing mattered: going or not going to Vozdvizhenskoe, getting or
not getting a divorce from her husband--all that did not matter. The one
thing that mattered was punishing him. When she poured herself out her
usual dose of opium, and thought that she had only to drink off the
whole bottle to die, it seemed to her so simple and easy, that she began
musing with enjoyment on how he would suffer, and repent and love her
memory when it would be too late. She lay in bed with open eyes, by the
light of a single burned-down candle, gazing at the carved cornice of
the ceiling and at the shadow of the screen that covered part of it,
while she vividly pictured to herself how he would feel when she would
be no more, when she would be only a memory to him. "How could I say
such cruel things to her?" he would say. "How could I go out of the room
without saying anything to her? But now she is no more. She has gone
away from us forever. She is...." Suddenly the shadow of the screen
wavered, pounced on the whole cornice, the whole ceiling; other shadows
from the other side swooped to meet it, for an instant the shadows
flitted back, but then with fresh swiftness they darted forward,
wavered, commingled, and all was darkness. "Death!" she thought. And
such horror came upon her that for a long while she could not realize
where she was, and for a long while her trembling hands could not find
the matches and light another candle, instead of the one that had burned
down and gone out. "No, anything--only to live! Why, I love him! Why, he
loves me! This has been before and will pass," she said, feeling that
tears of joy at the return to life were trickling down her cheeks. And
to escape from her panic she went hurriedly to his room.

He was asleep there, and sleeping soundly. She went up to him, and
holding the light above his face, she gazed a long while at him. Now
when he was asleep, she loved him so that at the sight of him she could
not keep back tears of tenderness. But she knew that if he waked up he
would look at her with cold eyes, convinced that he was right, and that
before telling him of her love, she would have to prove to him that he
had been wrong in his treatment of her. Without waking him, she went
back, and after a second dose of opium she fell towards morning into a
heavy, incomplete sleep, during which she never quite lost
consciousness.

In the morning she was waked by a horrible nightmare, which had recurred
several times in her dreams, even before her connection with Vronsky. A
little old man with unkempt beard was doing something bent down over
some iron, muttering meaningless French words, and she, as she always
did in this nightmare (it was what made the horror of it), felt that
this peasant was taking no notice of her, but was doing something
horrible with the iron--over her. And she waked up in a cold sweat.

When she got up, the previous day came back to her as though veiled in
mist.

"There was a quarrel. Just what has happened several times. I said I had
a headache, and he did not come in to see me. Tomorrow we're going away;
I must see him and get ready for the journey," she said to herself. And
learning that he was in his study, she went down to him. As she passed
through the drawing room she heard a carriage stop at the entrance, and
looking out of the window she saw the carriage, from which a young girl
in a lilac hat was leaning out giving some direction to the footman
ringing the bell. After a parley in the hall, someone came upstairs, and
Vronsky's steps could be heard passing the drawing room. He went rapidly
downstairs. Anna went again to the window. She saw him come out onto the
steps without his hat and go up to the carriage. The young girl in the
lilac hat handed him a parcel. Vronsky, smiling, said something to her.
The carriage drove away, he ran rapidly upstairs again.

The mists that had shrouded everything in her soul parted suddenly. The
feelings of yesterday pierced the sick heart with a fresh pang. She
could not understand now how she could have lowered herself by spending
a whole day with him in his house. She went into his room to announce
her determination.

"That was Madame Sorokina and her daughter. They came and brought me the
money and the deeds from maman. I couldn't get them yesterday. How is
your head, better?" he said quietly, not wishing to see and to
understand the gloomy and solemn expression of her face.

She looked silently, intently at him, standing in the middle of the
room. He glanced at her, frowned for a moment, and went on reading a
letter. She turned, and went deliberately out of the room. He still
might have turned her back, but she had reached the door, he was still
silent, and the only sound audible was the rustling of the note paper as
he turned it.

"Oh, by the way," he said at the very moment she was in the doorway,
"we're going tomorrow for certain, aren't we?"

"You, but not I," she said, turning round to him.

"Anna, we can't go on like this..."

"You, but not I," she repeated.

"This is getting unbearable!"

"You ... you will be sorry for this," she said, and went out.

Frightened by the desperate expression with which these words were
uttered, he jumped up and would have run after her, but on second
thoughts he sat down and scowled, setting his teeth. This vulgar--as he
thought it--threat of something vague exasperated him. "I've tried
everything," he thought; "the only thing left is not to pay attention,"
and he began to get ready to drive into town, and again to his mother's
to get her signature to the deeds.

She heard the sound of his steps about the study and the dining room. At
the drawing room he stood still. But he did not turn in to see her, he
merely gave an order that the horse should be given to Voytov if he came
while he was away. Then she heard the carriage brought round, the door
opened, and he came out again. But he went back into the porch again,
and someone was running upstairs. It was the valet running up for his
gloves that had been forgotten. She went to the window and saw him take
the gloves without looking, and touching the coachman on the back he
said something to him. Then without looking up at the window he settled
himself in his usual attitude in the carriage, with his legs crossed,
and drawing on his gloves he vanished round the corner.



Chapter 27


"He has gone! It is over!" Anna said to herself, standing at the window;
and in answer to this statement the impression of the darkness when the
candle had flickered out, and of her fearful dream mingling into one,
filled her heart with cold terror.

"No, that cannot be!" she cried, and crossing the room she rang the
bell. She was so afraid now of being alone, that without waiting for the
servant to come in, she went out to meet him.

"Inquire where the count has gone," she said. The servant answered that
the count had gone to the stable.

"His honor left word that if you cared to drive out, the carriage would
be back immediately."

"Very good. Wait a minute. I'll write a note at once. Send Mihail with
the note to the stables. Make haste."

She sat down and wrote:

"I was wrong. Come back home; I must explain. For God's sake come! I'm
afraid."

She sealed it up and gave it to the servant.

She was afraid of being left alone now; she followed the servant out of
the room, and went to the nursery.

"Why, this isn't it, this isn't he! Where are his blue eyes, his sweet,
shy smile?" was her first thought when she saw her chubby, rosy little
girl with her black, curly hair instead of Seryozha, whom in the tangle
of her ideas she had expected to see in the nursery. The little girl
sitting at the table was obstinately and violently battering on it with
a cork, and staring aimlessly at her mother with her pitch-black eyes.
Answering the English nurse that she was quite well, and that she was
going to the country tomorrow, Anna sat down by the little girl and
began spinning the cork to show her. But the child's loud, ringing
laugh, and the motion of her eyebrows, recalled Vronsky so vividly that
she got up hurriedly, restraining her sobs, and went away. "Can it be
all over? No, it cannot be!" she thought. "He will come back. But how
can he explain that smile, that excitement after he had been talking to
her? But even if he doesn't explain, I will believe. If I don't believe,
there's only one thing left for me, and I can't."

She looked at her watch. Twenty minutes had passed. "By now he has
received the note and is coming back. Not long, ten minutes more.... But
what if he doesn't come? No, that cannot be. He mustn't see me with
tear-stained eyes. I'll go and wash. Yes, yes; did I do my hair or not?"
she asked herself. And she could not remember. She felt her head with
her hand. "Yes, my hair has been done, but when I did it I can't in the
least remember." She could not believe the evidence of her hand, and
went up to the pier glass to see whether she really had done her hair.
She certainly had, but she could not think when she had done it. "Who's
that?" she thought, looking in the looking glass at the swollen face
with strangely glittering eyes, that looked in a scared way at her.
"Why, it's I!" she suddenly understood, and looking round, she seemed
all at once to feel his kisses on her, and twitched her shoulders,
shuddering. Then she lifted her hand to her lips and kissed it.

"What is it? Why, I'm going out of my mind!" and she went into her
bedroom, where Annushka was tidying the room.

"Annushka," she said, coming to a standstill before her, and she stared
at the maid, not knowing what to say to her.

"You meant to go and see Darya Alexandrovna," said the girl, as though
she understood.

"Darya Alexandrovna? Yes, I'll go."

"Fifteen minutes there, fifteen minutes back. He's coming, he'll be here
soon." She took out her watch and looked at it. "But how could he go
away, leaving me in such a state? How can he live, without making it up
with me?" She went to the window and began looking into the street.
Judging by the time, he might be back now. But her calculations might be
wrong, and she began once more to recall when he had started and to
count the minutes.

At the moment when she had moved away to the big clock to compare it
with her watch, someone drove up. Glancing out of the window, she saw
his carriage. But no one came upstairs, and voices could be heard below.
It was the messenger who had come back in the carriage. She went down to
him.

"We didn't catch the count. The count had driven off on the lower city
road."

"What do you say? What!..." she said to the rosy, good-humored Mihail,
as he handed her back her note.

"Why, then, he has never received it!" she thought.

"Go with this note to Countess Vronskaya's place, you know? and bring an
answer back immediately," she said to the messenger.

"And I, what am I going to do?" she thought. "Yes, I'm going to Dolly's,
that's true or else I shall go out of my mind. Yes, and I can telegraph,
too." And she wrote a telegram. "I absolutely must talk to you; come at
once." After sending off the telegram, she went to dress. When she was
dressed and in her hat, she glanced again into the eyes of the plump,
comfortable-looking Annushka. There was unmistakable sympathy in those
good-natured little gray eyes.

"Annushka, dear, what am I to do?" said Anna, sobbing and sinking
helplessly into a chair.

"Why fret yourself so, Anna Arkadyevna? Why, there's nothing out of the
way. You drive out a little, and it'll cheer you up," said the maid.

"Yes, I'm going," said Anna, rousing herself and getting up. "And if
there's a telegram while I'm away, send it on to Darya Alexandrovna's
... but no, I shall be back myself."

"Yes, I mustn't think, I must do something, drive somewhere, and most of
all, get out of this house," she said, feeling with terror the strange
turmoil going on in her own heart, and she made haste to go out and get
into the carriage.

"Where to?" asked Pyotr before getting onto the box.

"To Znamenka, the Oblonskys'."



Chapter 28


It was bright and sunny. A fine rain had been falling all the morning,
and now it had not long cleared up. The iron roofs, the flags of the
roads, the flints of the pavements, the wheels and leather, the brass
and the tinplate of the carriages--all glistened brightly in the May
sunshine. It was three o'clock, and the very liveliest time in the
streets.

As she sat in a corner of the comfortable carriage, that hardly swayed
on its supple springs, while the grays trotted swiftly, in the midst of
the unceasing rattle of wheels and the changing impressions in the pure
air, Anna ran over the events of the last days, and she saw her position
quite differently from how it had seemed at home. Now the thought of
death seemed no longer so terrible and so clear to her, and death itself
no longer seemed so inevitable. Now she blamed herself for the
humiliation to which she had lowered herself. "I entreat him to forgive
me. I have given in to him. I have owned myself in fault. What for?
Can't I live without him?" And leaving unanswered the question how she
was going to live without him, she fell to reading the signs on the
shops. "Office and warehouse. Dental surgeon. Yes, I'll tell Dolly all
about it. She doesn't like Vronsky. I shall be sick and ashamed, but
I'll tell her. She loves me, and I'll follow her advice. I won't give in
to him; I won't let him train me as he pleases. Filippov, bun shop. They
say they send their dough to Petersburg. The Moscow water is so good for
it. Ah, the springs at Mitishtchen, and the pancakes!"

And she remembered how, long, long ago, when she was a girl of
seventeen, she had gone with her aunt to Troitsa. "Riding, too. Was that
really me, with red hands? How much that seemed to me then splendid and
out of reach has become worthless, while what I had then has gone out of
my reach forever! Could I ever have believed then that I could come to
such humiliation? How conceited and self-satisfied he will be when he
gets my note! But I will show him.... How horrid that paint smells! Why
is it they're always painting and building? _Modes et robes,_" she read.
A man bowed to her. It was Annushka's husband. "Our parasites"; she
remembered how Vronsky had said that. "Our? Why our? What's so awful is
that one can't tear up the past by its roots. One can't tear it out, but
one can hide one's memory of it. And I'll hide it." And then she thought
of her past with Alexey Alexandrovitch, of how she had blotted the
memory of it out of her life. "Dolly will think I'm leaving my second
husband, and so I certainly must be in the wrong. As if I cared to be
right! I can't help it!" she said, and she wanted to cry. But at once
she fell to wondering what those two girls could be smiling about.
"Love, most likely. They don't know how dreary it is, how low.... The
boulevard and the children. Three boys running, playing at horses.
Seryozha! And I'm losing everything and not getting him back. Yes, I'm
losing everything, if he doesn't return. Perhaps he was late for the
train and has come back by now. Longing for humiliation again!" she said
to herself. "No, I'll go to Dolly, and say straight out to her, I'm
unhappy, I deserve this, I'm to blame, but still I'm unhappy, help me.
These horses, this carriage--how loathsome I am to myself in this
carriage--all his; but I won't see them again."

Thinking over the words in which she would tell Dolly, and mentally
working her heart up to great bitterness, Anna went upstairs.

"Is there anyone with her?" she asked in the hall.

"Katerina Alexandrovna Levin," answered the footman.

"Kitty! Kitty, whom Vronsky was in love with!" thought Anna, "the girl
he thinks of with love. He's sorry he didn't marry her. But me he thinks
of with hatred, and is sorry he had anything to do with me."

The sisters were having a consultation about nursing when Anna called.
Dolly went down alone to see the visitor who had interrupted their
conversation.

"Well, so you've not gone away yet? I meant to have come to you," she
said; "I had a letter from Stiva today."

"We had a telegram too," answered Anna, looking round for Kitty.

"He writes that he can't make out quite what Alexey Alexandrovitch
wants, but he won't go away without a decisive answer."

"I thought you had someone with you. Can I see the letter?"

"Yes; Kitty," said Dolly, embarrassed. "She stayed in the nursery. She
has been very ill."

"So I heard. May I see the letter?"

"I'll get it directly. But he doesn't refuse; on the contrary, Stiva has
hopes," said Dolly, stopping in the doorway.

"I haven't, and indeed I don't wish it," said Anna.

"What's this? Does Kitty consider it degrading to meet me?" thought Anna
when she was alone. "Perhaps she's right, too. But it's not for her, the
girl who was in love with Vronsky, it's not for her to show me that,
even if it is true. I know that in my position I can't be received by
any decent woman. I knew that from the first moment I sacrificed
everything to him. And this is my reward! Oh, how I hate him! And what
did I come here for? I'm worse here, more miserable." She heard from the
next room the sisters' voices in consultation. "And what am I going to
say to Dolly now? Amuse Kitty by the sight of my wretchedness, submit to
her patronizing? No; and besides, Dolly wouldn't understand. And it
would be no good my telling her. It would only be interesting to see
Kitty, to show her how I despise everyone and everything, how nothing
matters to me now."

Dolly came in with the letter. Anna read it and handed it back in
silence.

"I knew all that," she said, "and it doesn't interest me in the least."

"Oh, why so? On the contrary, I have hopes," said Dolly, looking
inquisitively at Anna. She had never seen her in such a strangely
irritable condition. "When are you going away?" she asked.

Anna, half-closing her eyes, looked straight before her and did not
answer.

"Why does Kitty shrink from me?" she said, looking at the door and
flushing red.

"Oh, what nonsense! She's nursing, and things aren't going right with
her, and I've been advising her.... She's delighted. She'll be here in a
minute," said Dolly awkwardly, not clever at lying. "Yes, here she is."

Hearing that Anna had called, Kitty had wanted not to appear, but Dolly
persuaded her. Rallying her forces, Kitty went in, walked up to her,
blushing, and shook hands.

"I am so glad to see you," she said with a trembling voice.

Kitty had been thrown into confusion by the inward conflict between her
antagonism to this bad woman and her desire to be nice to her. But as
soon as she saw Anna's lovely and attractive face, all feeling of
antagonism disappeared.

"I should not have been surprised if you had not cared to meet me. I'm
used to everything. You have been ill? Yes, you are changed," said Anna.

Kitty felt that Anna was looking at her with hostile eyes. She ascribed
this hostility to the awkward position in which Anna, who had once
patronized her, must feel with her now, and she felt sorry for her.

They talked of Kitty's illness, of the baby, of Stiva, but it was
obvious that nothing interested Anna.

"I came to say good-bye to you," she said, getting up.

"Oh, when are you going?"

But again not answering, Anna turned to Kitty.

"Yes, I am very glad to have seen you," she said with a smile. "I have
heard so much of you from everyone, even from your husband. He came to
see me, and I liked him exceedingly," she said, unmistakably with
malicious intent. "Where is he?"

"He has gone back to the country," said Kitty, blushing.

"Remember me to him, be sure you do."

"I'll be sure to!" Kitty said naively, looking compassionately into her
eyes.

"So good-bye, Dolly." And kissing Dolly and shaking hands with Kitty,
Anna went out hurriedly.

"She's just the same and just as charming! She's very lovely!" said
Kitty, when she was alone with her sister. "But there's something
piteous about her. Awfully piteous!"

"Yes, there's something unusual about her today," said Dolly. "When I
went with her into the hall, I fancied she was almost crying."



Chapter 29


Anna got into the carriage again in an even worse frame of mind than
when she set out from home. To her previous tortures was added now that
sense of mortification and of being an outcast which she had felt so
distinctly on meeting Kitty.

"Where to? Home?" asked Pyotr.

"Yes, home," she said, not even thinking now where she was going.

"How they looked at me as something dreadful, incomprehensible, and
curious! What can he be telling the other with such warmth?" she
thought, staring at two men who walked by. "Can one ever tell anyone
what one is feeling? I meant to tell Dolly, and it's a good thing I
didn't tell her. How pleased she would have been at my misery! She would
have concealed it, but her chief feeling would have been delight at my
being punished for the happiness she envied me for. Kitty, she would
have been even more pleased. How I can see through her! She knows I was
more than usually sweet to her husband. And she's jealous and hates me.
And she despises me. In her eyes I'm an immoral woman. If I were an
immoral woman I could have made her husband fall in love with me ... if
I'd cared to. And, indeed, I did care to. There's someone who's pleased
with himself," she thought, as she saw a fat, rubicund gentleman coming
towards her. He took her for an acquaintance, and lifted his glossy hat
above his bald, glossy head, and then perceived his mistake. "He thought
he knew me. Well, he knows me as well as anyone in the world knows me. I
don't know myself. I know my appetites, as the French say. They want
that dirty ice cream, that they do know for certain," she thought,
looking at two boys stopping an ice cream seller, who took a barrel off
his head and began wiping his perspiring face with a towel. "We all want
what is sweet and nice. If not sweetmeats, then a dirty ice. And Kitty's
the same--if not Vronsky, then Levin. And she envies me, and hates me.
And we all hate each other. I Kitty, Kitty me. Yes, that's the truth.
'_Tiutkin, coiffeur._' _Je me fais coiffer par Tiutkin...._ I'll tell
him that when he comes," she thought and smiled. But the same instant
she remembered that she had no one now to tell anything amusing to. "And
there's nothing amusing, nothing mirthful, really. It's all hateful.
They're singing for vespers, and how carefully that merchant crosses
himself! as if he were afraid of missing something. Why these churches
and this singing and this humbug? Simply to conceal that we all hate
each other like these cab drivers who are abusing each other so angrily.
Yashvin says, 'He wants to strip me of my shirt, and I him of his.' Yes,
that's the truth!"

She was plunged in these thoughts, which so engrossed her that she left
off thinking of her own position, when the carriage drew up at the steps
of her house. It was only when she saw the porter running out to meet
her that she remembered she had sent the note and the telegram.

"Is there an answer?" she inquired.

"I'll see this minute," answered the porter, and glancing into his room,
he took out and gave her the thin square envelope of a telegram. "I
can't come before ten o'clock.--Vronsky," she read.

"And hasn't the messenger come back?"

"No," answered the porter.

"Then, since it's so, I know what I must do," she said, and feeling a
vague fury and craving for revenge rising up within her, she ran
upstairs. "I'll go to him myself. Before going away forever, I'll tell
him all. Never have I hated anyone as I hate that man!" she thought.
Seeing his hat on the rack, she shuddered with aversion. She did not
consider that his telegram was an answer to her telegram and that he had
not yet received her note. She pictured him to herself as talking calmly
to his mother and Princess Sorokina and rejoicing at her sufferings.
"Yes, I must go quickly," she said, not knowing yet where she was going.
She longed to get away as quickly as possible from the feelings she had
gone through in that awful house. The servants, the walls, the things in
that house--all aroused repulsion and hatred in her and lay like a
weight upon her.

"Yes, I must go to the railway station, and if he's not there, then go
there and catch him." Anna looked at the railway timetable in the
newspapers. An evening train went at two minutes past eight. "Yes, I
shall be in time." She gave orders for the other horses to be put in the
carriage, and packed in a traveling-bag the things needed for a few
days. She knew she would never come back here again.

Among the plans that came into her head she vaguely determined that
after what would happen at the station or at the countess's house, she
would go as far as the first town on the Nizhni road and stop there.

Dinner was on the table; she went up, but the smell of the bread and
cheese was enough to make her feel that all food was disgusting. She
ordered the carriage and went out. The house threw a shadow now right
across the street, but it was a bright evening and still warm in the
sunshine. Annushka, who came down with her things, and Pyotr, who put
the things in the carriage, and the coachman, evidently out of humor,
were all hateful to her, and irritated her by their words and actions.

"I don't want you, Pyotr."

"But how about the ticket?"

"Well, as you like, it doesn't matter," she said crossly.

Pyotr jumped on the box, and putting his arms akimbo, told the coachman
to drive to the booking-office.



Chapter 30


"Here it is again! Again I understand it all!" Anna said to herself, as
soon as the carriage had started and swaying lightly, rumbled over the
tiny cobbles of the paved road, and again one impression followed
rapidly upon another.

"Yes; what was the last thing I thought of so clearly?" she tried to
recall it. "'_Tiutkin, coiffeur?_'--no, not that. Yes, of what Yashvin
says, the struggle for existence and hatred is the one thing that holds
men together. No, it's a useless journey you're making," she said,
mentally addressing a party in a coach and four, evidently going for an
excursion into the country. "And the dog you're taking with you will be
no help to you. You can't get away from yourselves." Turning her eyes in
the direction Pyotr had turned to look, she saw a factory hand almost
dead drunk, with hanging head, being led away by a policeman. "Come,
he's found a quicker way," she thought. "Count Vronsky and I did not
find that happiness either, though we expected so much from it." And now
for the first time Anna turned that glaring light in which she was
seeing everything on to her relations with him, which she had hitherto
avoided thinking about. "What was it he sought in me? Not love so much
as the satisfaction of vanity." She remembered his words, the expression
of his face, that recalled an abject setter-dog, in the early days of
their connection. And everything now confirmed this. "Yes, there was the
triumph of success in him. Of course there was love too, but the chief
element was the pride of success. He boasted of me. Now that's over.
There's nothing to be proud of. Not to be proud of, but to be ashamed
of. He has taken from me all he could, and now I am no use to him. He is
weary of me and is trying not to be dishonorable in his behavior to me.
He let that out yesterday--he wants divorce and marriage so as to burn
his ships. He loves me, but how? The zest is gone, as the English say.
That fellow wants everyone to admire him and is very much pleased with
himself," she thought, looking at a red-faced clerk, riding on a riding
school horse. "Yes, there's not the same flavor about me for him now. If
I go away from him, at the bottom of his heart he will be glad."

This was not mere supposition, she saw it distinctly in the piercing
light, which revealed to her now the meaning of life and human
relations.

"My love keeps growing more passionate and egoistic, while his is waning
and waning, and that's why we're drifting apart." She went on musing.
"And there's no help for it. He is everything for me, and I want him
more and more to give himself up to me entirely. And he wants more and
more to get away from me. We walked to meet each other up to the time of
our love, and then we have been irresistibly drifting in different
directions. And there's no altering that. He tells me I'm insanely
jealous, and I have told myself that I am insanely jealous; but it's not
true. I'm not jealous, but I'm unsatisfied. But..." she opened her lips,
and shifted her place in the carriage in the excitement, aroused by the
thought that suddenly struck her. "If I could be anything but a
mistress, passionately caring for nothing but his caresses; but I can't
and I don't care to be anything else. And by that desire I rouse
aversion in him, and he rouses fury in me, and it cannot be different.
Don't I know that he wouldn't deceive me, that he has no schemes about
Princess Sorokina, that he's not in love with Kitty, that he won't
desert me! I know all that, but it makes it no better for me. If without
loving me, from _duty_ he'll be good and kind to me, without what I
want, that's a thousand times worse than unkindness! That's--hell! And
that's just how it is. For a long while now he hasn't loved me. And
where love ends, hate begins. I don't know these streets at all. Hills
it seems, and still houses, and houses .... And in the houses always
people and people.... How many of them, no end, and all hating each
other! Come, let me try and think what I want, to make me happy. Well?
Suppose I am divorced, and Alexey Alexandrovitch lets me have Seryozha,
and I marry Vronsky." Thinking of Alexey Alexandrovitch, she at once
pictured him with extraordinary vividness as though he were alive before
her, with his mild, lifeless, dull eyes, the blue veins in his white
hands, his intonations and the cracking of his fingers, and remembering
the feeling which had existed between them, and which was also called
love, she shuddered with loathing. "Well, I'm divorced, and become
Vronsky's wife. Well, will Kitty cease looking at me as she looked at me
today? No. And will Seryozha leave off asking and wondering about my two
husbands? And is there any new feeling I can awaken between Vronsky and
me? Is there possible, if not happiness, some sort of ease from misery?
No, no!" she answered now without the slightest hesitation. "Impossible!
We are drawn apart by life, and I make his unhappiness, and he mine, and
there's no altering him or me. Every attempt has been made, the screw
has come unscrewed. Oh, a beggar woman with a baby. She thinks I'm sorry
for her. Aren't we all flung into the world only to hate each other, and
so to torture ourselves and each other? Schoolboys coming--laughing
Seryozha?" she thought. "I thought, too, that I loved him, and used to
be touched by my own tenderness. But I have lived without him, I gave
him up for another love, and did not regret the exchange till that love
was satisfied." And with loathing she thought of what she meant by that
love. And the clearness with which she saw life now, her own and all
men's, was a pleasure to her. "It's so with me and Pyotr, and the
coachman, Fyodor, and that merchant, and all the people living along the
Volga, where those placards invite one to go, and everywhere and
always," she thought when she had driven under the low-pitched roof of
the Nizhigorod station, and the porters ran to meet her.

"A ticket to Obiralovka?" said Pyotr.

She had utterly forgotten where and why she was going, and only by a
great effort she understood the question.

"Yes," she said, handing him her purse, and taking a little red bag in
her hand, she got out of the carriage.

Making her way through the crowd to the first-class waiting-room, she
gradually recollected all the details of her position, and the plans
between which she was hesitating. And again at the old sore places, hope
and then despair poisoned the wounds of her tortured, fearfully
throbbing heart. As she sat on the star-shaped sofa waiting for the
train, she gazed with aversion at the people coming and going (they were
all hateful to her), and thought how she would arrive at the station,
would write him a note, and what she would write to him, and how he was
at this moment complaining to his mother of his position, not
understanding her sufferings, and how she would go into the room, and
what she would say to him. Then she thought that life might still be
happy, and how miserably she loved and hated him, and how fearfully her
heart was beating.



Chapter 31


A bell rang, some young men, ugly and impudent, and at the same time
careful of the impression they were making, hurried by. Pyotr, too,
crossed the room in his livery and top-boots, with his dull, animal
face, and came up to her to take her to the train. Some noisy men were
quiet as she passed them on the platform, and one whispered something
about her to another--something vile, no doubt. She stepped up on the
high step, and sat down in a carriage by herself on a dirty seat that
had been white. Her bag lay beside her, shaken up and down by the
springiness of the seat. With a foolish smile Pyotr raised his hat, with
its colored band, at the window, in token of farewell; an impudent
conductor slammed the door and the latch. A grotesque-looking lady
wearing a bustle (Anna mentally undressed the woman, and was appalled at
her hideousness), and a little girl laughing affectedly ran down the
platform.

"Katerina Andreevna, she's got them all, _ma tante!_" cried the girl.

"Even the child's hideous and affected," thought Anna. To avoid seeing
anyone, she got up quickly and seated herself at the opposite window of
the empty carriage. A misshapen-looking peasant covered with dirt, in a
cap from which his tangled hair stuck out all round, passed by that
window, stooping down to the carriage wheels. "There's something
familiar about that hideous peasant," thought Anna. And remembering her
dream, she moved away to the opposite door, shaking with terror. The
conductor opened the door and let in a man and his wife.

"Do you wish to get out?"

Anna made no answer. The conductor and her two fellow-passengers did not
notice under her veil her panic-stricken face. She went back to her
corner and sat down. The couple seated themselves on the opposite side,
and intently but surreptitiously scrutinized her clothes. Both husband
and wife seemed repulsive to Anna. The husband asked, would she allow
him to smoke, obviously not with a view to smoking but to getting into
conversation with her. Receiving her assent, he said to his wife in
French something about caring less to smoke than to talk. They made
inane and affected remarks to one another, entirely for her benefit.
Anna saw clearly that they were sick of each other, and hated each
other. And no one could have helped hating such miserable monstrosities.

A second bell sounded, and was followed by moving of luggage, noise,
shouting and laughter. It was so clear to Anna that there was nothing
for anyone to be glad of, that this laughter irritated her agonizingly,
and she would have liked to stop up her ears not to hear it. At last the
third bell rang, there was a whistle and a hiss of steam, and a clank of
chains, and the man in her carriage crossed himself. "It would be
interesting to ask him what meaning he attaches to that," thought Anna,
looking angrily at him. She looked past the lady out of the window at
the people who seemed whirling by as they ran beside the train or stood
on the platform. The train, jerking at regular intervals at the
junctions of the rails, rolled by the platform, past a stone wall, a
signal-box, past other trains; the wheels, moving more smoothly and
evenly, resounded with a slight clang on the rails. The window was
lighted up by the bright evening sun, and a slight breeze fluttered the
curtain. Anna forgot her fellow passengers, and to the light swaying of
the train she fell to thinking again, as she breathed the fresh air.

"Yes, what did I stop at? That I couldn't conceive a position in which
life would not be a misery, that we are all created to be miserable, and
that we all know it, and all invent means of deceiving each other. And
when one sees the truth, what is one to do?"

"That's what reason is given man for, to escape from what worries him,"
said the lady in French, lisping affectedly, and obviously pleased with
her phrase.

The words seemed an answer to Anna's thoughts.

"To escape from what worries him," repeated Anna. And glancing at the
red-cheeked husband and the thin wife, she saw that the sickly wife
considered herself misunderstood, and the husband deceived her and
encouraged her in that idea of herself. Anna seemed to see all their
history and all the crannies of their souls, as it were turning a light
upon them. But there was nothing interesting in them, and she pursued
her thought.

"Yes, I'm very much worried, and that's what reason was given me for, to
escape; so then one must escape: why not put out the light when there's
nothing more to look at, when it's sickening to look at it all? But how?
Why did the conductor run along the footboard, why are they shrieking,
those young men in that train? why are they talking, why are they
laughing? It's all falsehood, all lying, all humbug, all cruelty!..."

When the train came into the station, Anna got out into the crowd of
passengers, and moving apart from them as if they were lepers, she stood
on the platform, trying to think what she had come here for, and what
she meant to do. Everything that had seemed to her possible before was
now so difficult to consider, especially in this noisy crowd of hideous
people who would not leave her alone. One moment porters ran up to her
proffering their services, then young men, clacking their heels on the
planks of the platform and talking loudly, stared at her; people meeting
her dodged past on the wrong side. Remembering that she had meant to go
on further if there were no answer, she stopped a porter and asked if
her coachman were not here with a note from Count Vronsky.

"Count Vronsky? They sent up here from the Vronskys just this minute, to
meet Princess Sorokina and her daughter. And what is the coachman like?"

Just as she was talking to the porter, the coachman Mihail, red and
cheerful in his smart blue coat and chain, evidently proud of having so
successfully performed his commission, came up to her and gave her a
letter. She broke it open, and her heart ached before she had read it.

"I am very sorry your note did not reach me. I will be home at ten,"
Vronsky had written carelessly....

"Yes, that's what I expected!" she said to herself with an evil smile.

"Very good, you can go home then," she said softly, addressing Mihail.
She spoke softly because the rapidity of her heart's beating hindered
her breathing. "No, I won't let you make me miserable," she thought
menacingly, addressing not him, not herself, but the power that made her
suffer, and she walked along the platform.

Two maid-servants walking along the platform turned their heads, staring
at her and making some remarks about her dress. "Real," they said of the
lace she was wearing. The young men would not leave her in peace. Again
they passed by, peering into her face, and with a laugh shouting
something in an unnatural voice. The station-master coming up asked her
whether she was going by train. A boy selling kvas never took his eyes
off her. "My God! where am I to go?" she thought, going farther and
farther along the platform. At the end she stopped. Some ladies and
children, who had come to meet a gentleman in spectacles, paused in
their loud laughter and talking, and stared at her as she reached them.
She quickened her pace and walked away from them to the edge of the
platform. A luggage train was coming in. The platform began to sway, and
she fancied she was in the train again.

And all at once she thought of the man crushed by the train the day she
had first met Vronsky, and she knew what she had to do. With a rapid,
light step she went down the steps that led from the tank to the rails
and stopped quite near the approaching train.

She looked at the lower part of the carriages, at the screws and chains
and the tall cast-iron wheel of the first carriage slowly moving up, and
trying to measure the middle between the front and back wheels, and the
very minute when that middle point would be opposite her.

"There," she said to herself, looking into the shadow of the carriage,
at the sand and coal dust which covered the sleepers--"there, in the
very middle, and I will punish him and escape from everyone and from
myself."

She tried to fling herself below the wheels of the first carriage as it
reached her; but the red bag which she tried to drop out of her hand
delayed her, and she was too late; she missed the moment. She had to
wait for the next carriage. A feeling such as she had known when about
to take the first plunge in bathing came upon her, and she crossed
herself. That familiar gesture brought back into her soul a whole series
of girlish and childish memories, and suddenly the darkness that had
covered everything for her was torn apart, and life rose up before her
for an instant with all its bright past joys. But she did not take her
eyes from the wheels of the second carriage. And exactly at the moment
when the space between the wheels came opposite her, she dropped the red
bag, and drawing her head back into her shoulders, fell on her hands
under the carriage, and lightly, as though she would rise again at once,
dropped on to her knees. And at the same instant she was terror-stricken
at what she was doing. "Where am I? What am I doing? What for?" She
tried to get up, to drop backwards; but something huge and merciless
struck her on the head and rolled her on her back. "Lord, forgive me
all!" she said, feeling it impossible to struggle. A peasant muttering
something was working at the iron above her. And the light by which she
had read the book filled with troubles, falsehoods, sorrow, and evil,
flared up more brightly than ever before, lighted up for her all that
had been in darkness, flickered, began to grow dim, and was quenched
forever.




PART EIGHT



Chapter 1


Almost two months had passed. The hot summer was half over, but Sergey
Ivanovitch was only just preparing to leave Moscow.

Sergey Ivanovitch's life had not been uneventful during this time. A
year ago he had finished his book, the fruit of six years' labor,
"Sketch of a Survey of the Principles and Forms of Government in Europe
and Russia." Several sections of this book and its introduction had
appeared in periodical publications, and other parts had been read by
Sergey Ivanovitch to persons of his circle, so that the leading ideas of
the work could not be completely novel to the public. But still Sergey
Ivanovitch had expected that on its appearance his book would be sure to
make a serious impression on society, and if it did not cause a
revolution in social science it would, at any rate, make a great stir in
the scientific world.

After the most conscientious revision the book had last year been
published, and had been distributed among the booksellers.

Though he asked no one about it, reluctantly and with feigned
indifference answered his friends' inquiries as to how the book was
going, and did not even inquire of the booksellers how the book was
selling, Sergey Ivanovitch was all on the alert, with strained
attention, watching for the first impression his book would make in the
world and in literature.

But a week passed, a second, a third, and in society no impression
whatever could be detected. His friends who were specialists and
savants, occasionally--unmistakably from politeness--alluded to it. The
rest of his acquaintances, not interested in a book on a learned
subject, did not talk of it at all. And society generally--just now
especially absorbed in other things--was absolutely indifferent. In the
press, too, for a whole month there was not a word about his book.

Sergey Ivanovitch had calculated to a nicety the time necessary for
writing a review, but a month passed, and a second, and still there was
silence.

Only in the _Northern Beetle_, in a comic article on the singer
Drabanti, who had lost his voice, there was a contemptuous allusion to
Koznishev's book, suggesting that the book had been long ago seen
through by everyone, and was a subject of general ridicule.

At last in the third month a critical article appeared in a serious
review. Sergey Ivanovitch knew the author of the article. He had met him
once at Golubtsov's.

The author of the article was a young man, an invalid, very bold as a
writer, but extremely deficient in breeding and shy in personal
relations.

In spite of his absolute contempt for the author, it was with complete
respect that Sergey Ivanovitch set about reading the article. The
article was awful.

The critic had undoubtedly put an interpretation upon the book which
could not possibly be put on it. But he had selected quotations so
adroitly that for people who had not read the book (and obviously
scarcely anyone had read it) it seemed absolutely clear that the whole
book was nothing but a medley of high-flown phrases, not even--as
suggested by marks of interrogation--used appropriately, and that the
author of the book was a person absolutely without knowledge of the
subject. And all this was so wittily done that Sergey Ivanovitch would
not have disowned such wit himself. But that was just what was so awful.

In spite of the scrupulous conscientiousness with which Sergey
Ivanovitch verified the correctness of the critic's arguments, he did
not for a minute stop to ponder over the faults and mistakes which were
ridiculed; but unconsciously he began immediately trying to recall every
detail of his meeting and conversation with the author of the article.

"Didn't I offend him in some way?" Sergey Ivanovitch wondered.

And remembering that when they met he had corrected the young man about
something he had said that betrayed ignorance, Sergey Ivanovitch found
the clue to explain the article.

This article was followed by a deadly silence about the book both in the
press and in conversation, and Sergey Ivanovitch saw that his six years'
task, toiled at with such love and labor, had gone, leaving no trace.

Sergey Ivanovitch's position was still more difficult from the fact
that, since he had finished his book, he had had no more literary work
to do, such as had hitherto occupied the greater part of his time.

Sergey Ivanovitch was clever, cultivated, healthy, and energetic, and he
did not know what use to make of his energy. Conversations in drawing
rooms, in meetings, assemblies, and committees--everywhere where talk
was possible--took up part of his time. But being used for years to town
life, he did not waste all his energies in talk, as his less experienced
younger brother did, when he was in Moscow. He had a great deal of
leisure and intellectual energy still to dispose of.

Fortunately for him, at this period so difficult for him from the
failure of his book, the various public questions of the dissenting
sects, of the American alliance, of the Samara famine, of exhibitions,
and of spiritualism, were definitely replaced in public interest by the
Slavonic question, which had hitherto rather languidly interested
society, and Sergey Ivanovitch, who had been one of the first to raise
this subject, threw himself into it heart and soul.

In the circle to which Sergey Ivanovitch belonged, nothing was talked of
or written about just now but the Servian War. Everything that the idle
crowd usually does to kill time was done now for the benefit of the
Slavonic States. Balls, concerts, dinners, matchboxes, ladies' dresses,
beer, restaurants--everything testified to sympathy with the Slavonic
peoples.

From much of what was spoken and written on the subject, Sergey
Ivanovitch differed on various points. He saw that the Slavonic question
had become one of those fashionable distractions which succeed one
another in providing society with an object and an occupation. He saw,
too, that a great many people were taking up the subject from motives of
self-interest and self-advertisement. He recognized that the newspapers
published a great deal that was superfluous and exaggerated, with the
sole aim of attracting attention and outbidding one another. He saw that
in this general movement those who thrust themselves most forward and
shouted the loudest were men who had failed and were smarting under a
sense of injury--generals without armies, ministers not in the ministry,
journalists not on any paper, party leaders without followers. He saw
that there was a great deal in it that was frivolous and absurd. But he
saw and recognized an unmistakable growing enthusiasm, uniting all
classes, with which it was impossible not to sympathize. The massacre of
men who were fellow Christians, and of the same Slavonic race, excited
sympathy for the sufferers and indignation against the oppressors. And
the heroism of the Servians and Montenegrins struggling for a great
cause begot in the whole people a longing to help their brothers not in
word but in deed.

But in this there was another aspect that rejoiced Sergey Ivanovitch.
That was the manifestation of public opinion. The public had definitely
expressed its desire. The soul of the people had, as Sergey Ivanovitch
said, found expression. And the more he worked in this cause, the more
incontestable it seemed to him that it was a cause destined to assume
vast dimensions, to create an epoch.

He threw himself heart and soul into the service of this great cause,
and forgot to think about his book. His whole time now was engrossed by
it, so that he could scarcely manage to answer all the letters and
appeals addressed to him. He worked the whole spring and part of the
summer, and it was only in July that he prepared to go away to his
brother's in the country.

He was going both to rest for a fortnight, and in the very heart of the
people, in the farthest wilds of the country, to enjoy the sight of that
uplifting of the spirit of the people, of which, like all residents in
the capital and big towns, he was fully persuaded. Katavasov had long
been meaning to carry out his promise to stay with Levin, and so he was
going with him.



Chapter 2


Sergey Ivanovitch and Katavasov had only just reached the station of the
Kursk line, which was particularly busy and full of people that day,
when, looking round for the groom who was following with their things,
they saw a party of volunteers driving up in four cabs. Ladies met them
with bouquets of flowers, and followed by the rushing crowd they went
into the station.

One of the ladies, who had met the volunteers, came out of the hall and
addressed Sergey Ivanovitch.

"You too come to see them off?" she asked in French.

"No, I'm going away myself, princess. To my brother's for a holiday. Do
you always see them off?" said Sergey Ivanovitch with a hardly
perceptible smile.

"Oh, that would be impossible!" answered the princess. "Is it true that
eight hundred have been sent from us already? Malvinsky wouldn't believe
me."

"More than eight hundred. If you reckon those who have been sent not
directly from Moscow, over a thousand," answered Sergey Ivanovitch.

"There! That's just what I said!" exclaimed the lady. "And it's true
too, I suppose, that more than a million has been subscribed?"

"Yes, princess."

"What do you say to today's telegram? Beaten the Turks again."

"Yes, so I saw," answered Sergey Ivanovitch. They were speaking of the
last telegram stating that the Turks had been for three days in
succession beaten at all points and put to flight, and that tomorrow a
decisive engagement was expected.

"Ah, by the way, a splendid young fellow has asked leave to go, and
they've made some difficulty, I don't know why. I meant to ask you; I
know him; please write a note about his case. He's being sent by
Countess Lidia Ivanovna."

Sergey Ivanovitch asked for all the details the princess knew about the
young man, and going into the first-class waiting-room, wrote a note to
the person on whom the granting of leave of absence depended, and handed
it to the princess.

"You know Count Vronsky, the notorious one ... is going by this train?"
said the princess with a smile full of triumph and meaning, when he
found her again and gave her the letter.

"I had heard he was going, but I did not know when. By this train?"

"I've seen him. He's here: there's only his mother seeing him off. It's
the best thing, anyway, that he could do."

"Oh, yes, of course."

While they were talking the crowd streamed by them into the dining room.
They went forward too, and heard a gentleman with a glass in his hand
delivering a loud discourse to the volunteers. "In the service of
religion, humanity, and our brothers," the gentleman said, his voice
growing louder and louder; "to this great cause mother Moscow dedicates
you with her blessing. _Jivio!_" he concluded, loudly and tearfully.

Everyone shouted _Jivio!_ and a fresh crowd dashed into the hall, almost
carrying the princess off her legs.

"Ah, princess! that was something like!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
suddenly appearing in the middle of the crowd and beaming upon them with
a delighted smile. "Capitally, warmly said, wasn't it? Bravo! And Sergey
Ivanovitch! Why, you ought to have said something--just a few words, you
know, to encourage them; you do that so well," he added with a soft,
respectful, and discreet smile, moving Sergey Ivanovitch forward a
little by the arm.

"No, I'm just off."

"Where to?"

"To the country, to my brother's," answered Sergey Ivanovitch.

"Then you'll see my wife. I've written to her, but you'll see her first.
Please tell her that they've seen me and that it's 'all right,' as the
English say. She'll understand. Oh, and be so good as to tell her I'm
appointed secretary of the committee.... But she'll understand! You
know, _les petites miseres de la vie humaine,_" he said, as it were
apologizing to the princess. "And Princess Myakaya--not Liza, but
Bibish--is sending a thousand guns and twelve nurses. Did I tell you?"

"Yes, I heard so," answered Koznishev indifferently.

"It's a pity you're going away," said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "Tomorrow
we're giving a dinner to two who're setting off--Dimer-Bartnyansky from
Petersburg and our Veslovsky, Grisha. They're both going. Veslovsky's
only lately married. There's a fine fellow for you! Eh, princess?" he
turned to the lady.

The princess looked at Koznishev without replying. But the fact that
Sergey Ivanovitch and the princess seemed anxious to get rid of him did
not in the least disconcert Stepan Arkadyevitch. Smiling, he stared at
the feather in the princess's hat, and then about him as though he were
going to pick something up. Seeing a lady approaching with a collecting
box, he beckoned her up and put in a five-rouble note.

"I can never see these collecting boxes unmoved while I've money in my
pocket," he said. "And how about today's telegram? Fine chaps those
Montenegrins!"

"You don't say so!" he cried, when the princess told him that Vronsky
was going by this train. For an instant Stepan Arkadyevitch's face
looked sad, but a minute later, when, stroking his mustaches and
swinging as he walked, he went into the hall where Vronsky was, he had
completely forgotten his own despairing sobs over his sister's corpse,
and he saw in Vronsky only a hero and an old friend.

"With all his faults one can't refuse to do him justice," said the
princess to Sergey Ivanovitch as soon as Stepan Arkadyevitch had left
them. "What a typically Russian, Slav nature! Only, I'm afraid it won't
be pleasant for Vronsky to see him. Say what you will, I'm touched by
that man's fate. Do talk to him a little on the way," said the princess.

"Yes, perhaps, if it happens so."

"I never liked him. But this atones for a great deal. He's not merely
going himself, he's taking a squadron at his own expense."

"Yes, so I heard."

A bell sounded. Everyone crowded to the doors. "Here he is!" said the
princess, indicating Vronsky, who with his mother on his arm walked by,
wearing a long overcoat and wide-brimmed black hat. Oblonsky was walking
beside him, talking eagerly of something.

Vronsky was frowning and looking straight before him, as though he did
not hear what Stepan Arkadyevitch was saying.

Probably on Oblonsky's pointing them out, he looked round in the
direction where the princess and Sergey Ivanovitch were standing, and
without speaking lifted his hat. His face, aged and worn by suffering,
looked stony.

Going onto the platform, Vronsky left his mother and disappeared into a
compartment.

On the platform there rang out "God save the Tsar," then shouts of
"hurrah!" and _"jivio!"_ One of the volunteers, a tall, very young man
with a hollow chest, was particularly conspicuous, bowing and waving his
felt hat and a nosegay over his head. Then two officers emerged, bowing
too, and a stout man with a big beard, wearing a greasy forage cap.



Chapter 3


Saying good-bye to the princess, Sergey Ivanovitch was joined by
Katavasov; together they got into a carriage full to overflowing, and
the train started.

At Tsaritsino station the train was met by a chorus of young men singing
"Hail to Thee!" Again the volunteers bowed and poked their heads out,
but Sergey Ivanovitch paid no attention to them. He had had so much to
do with the volunteers that the type was familiar to him and did not
interest him. Katavasov, whose scientific work had prevented his having
a chance of observing them hitherto, was very much interested in them
and questioned Sergey Ivanovitch.

Sergey Ivanovitch advised him to go into the second-class and talk to
them himself. At the next station Katavasov acted on this suggestion.

At the first stop he moved into the second-class and made the
acquaintance of the volunteers. They were sitting in a corner of the
carriage, talking loudly and obviously aware that the attention of the
passengers and Katavasov as he got in was concentrated upon them. More
loudly than all talked the tall, hollow-chested young man. He was
unmistakably tipsy, and was relating some story that had occurred at his
school. Facing him sat a middle-aged officer in the Austrian military
jacket of the Guards uniform. He was listening with a smile to the
hollow-chested youth, and occasionally pulling him up. The third, in an
artillery uniform, was sitting on a box beside them. A fourth was
asleep.

Entering into conversation with the youth, Katavasov learned that he was
a wealthy Moscow merchant who had run through a large fortune before he
was two-and-twenty. Katavasov did not like him, because he was unmanly
and effeminate and sickly. He was obviously convinced, especially now
after drinking, that he was performing a heroic action, and he bragged
of it in the most unpleasant way.

The second, the retired officer, made an unpleasant impression too upon
Katavasov. He was, it seemed, a man who had tried everything. He had
been on a railway, had been a land-steward, and had started factories,
and he talked, quite without necessity, of all he had done, and used
learned expressions quite inappropriately.

The third, the artilleryman, on the contrary, struck Katavasov very
favorably. He was a quiet, modest fellow, unmistakably impressed by the
knowledge of the officer and the heroic self-sacrifice of the merchant
and saying nothing about himself. When Katavasov asked him what had
impelled him to go to Servia, he answered modestly:

"Oh, well, everyone's going. The Servians want help, too. I'm sorry for
them."

"Yes, you artillerymen especially are scarce there," said Katavasov.

"Oh, I wasn't long in the artillery, maybe they'll put me into the
infantry or the cavalry."

"Into the infantry when they need artillery more than anything?" said
Katavasov, fancying from the artilleryman's apparent age that he must
have reached a fairly high grade.

"I wasn't long in the artillery; I'm a cadet retired," he said, and he
began to explain how he had failed in his examination.

All of this together made a disagreeable impression on Katavasov, and
when the volunteers got out at a station for a drink, Katavasov would
have liked to compare his unfavorable impression in conversation with
someone. There was an old man in the carriage, wearing a military
overcoat, who had been listening all the while to Katavasov's
conversation with the volunteers. When they were left alone, Katavasov
addressed him.

"What different positions they come from, all those fellows who are
going off there," Katavasov said vaguely, not wishing to express his own
opinion, and at the same time anxious to find out the old man's views.

The old man was an officer who had served on two campaigns. He knew what
makes a soldier, and judging by the appearance and the talk of those
persons, by the swagger with which they had recourse to the bottle on
the journey, he considered them poor soldiers. Moreover, he lived in a
district town, and he was longing to tell how one soldier had
volunteered from his town, a drunkard and a thief whom no one would
employ as a laborer. But knowing by experience that in the present
condition of the public temper it was dangerous to express an opinion
opposed to the general one, and especially to criticize the volunteers
unfavorably, he too watched Katavasov without committing himself.

"Well, men are wanted there," he said, laughing with his eyes. And they
fell to talking of the last war news, and each concealed from the other
his perplexity as to the engagement expected next day, since the Turks
had been beaten, according to the latest news, at all points. And so
they parted, neither giving expression to his opinion.

Katavasov went back to his own carriage, and with reluctant hypocrisy
reported to Sergey Ivanovitch his observations of the volunteers, from
which it would appear that they were capital fellows.

At a big station at a town the volunteers were again greeted with shouts
and singing, again men and women with collecting boxes appeared, and
provincial ladies brought bouquets to the volunteers and followed them
into the refreshment room; but all this was on a much smaller and
feebler scale than in Moscow.



Chapter 4


While the train was stopping at the provincial town, Sergey Ivanovitch
did not go to the refreshment room, but walked up and down the platform.

The first time he passed Vronsky's compartment he noticed that the
curtain was drawn over the window; but as he passed it the second time
he saw the old countess at the window. She beckoned to Koznishev.

"I'm going, you see, taking him as far as Kursk," she said.

"Yes, so I heard," said Sergey Ivanovitch, standing at her window and
peeping in. "What a noble act on his part!" he added, noticing that
Vronsky was not in the compartment.

"Yes, after his misfortune, what was there for him to do?"

"What a terrible thing it was!" said Sergey Ivanovitch.

"Ah, what I have been through! But do get in.... Ah, what I have been
through!" she repeated, when Sergey Ivanovitch had got in and sat down
beside her. "You can't conceive it! For six weeks he did not speak to
anyone, and would not touch food except when I implored him. And not for
one minute could we leave him alone. We took away everything he could
have used against himself. We lived on the ground floor, but there was
no reckoning on anything. You know, of course, that he had shot himself
once already on her account," she said, and the old lady's eyelashes
twitched at the recollection. "Yes, hers was the fitting end for such a
woman. Even the death she chose was low and vulgar."

"It's not for us to judge, countess," said Sergey Ivanovitch; "but I can
understand that it has been very hard for you."

"Ah, don't speak of it! I was staying on my estate, and he was with me.
A note was brought him. He wrote an answer and sent it off. We hadn't an
idea that she was close by at the station. In the evening I had only
just gone to my room, when my Mary told me a lady had thrown herself
under the train. Something seemed to strike me at once. I knew it was
she. The first thing I said was, he was not to be told. But they'd told
him already. His coachman was there and saw it all. When I ran into his
room, he was beside himself--it was fearful to see him. He didn't say a
word, but galloped off there. I don't know to this day what happened
there, but he was brought back at death's door. I shouldn't have known
him. _Prostration complete,_ the doctor said. And that was followed
almost by madness. Oh, why talk of it!" said the countess with a wave of
her hand. "It was an awful time! No, say what you will, she was a bad
woman. Why, what is the meaning of such desperate passions? It was all
to show herself something out of the way. Well, and that she did do. She
brought herself to ruin and two good men--her husband and my unhappy
son."

"And what did her husband do?" asked Sergey Ivanovitch.

"He has taken her daughter. Alexey was ready to agree to anything at
first. Now it worries him terribly that he should have given his own
child away to another man. But he can't take back his word. Karenin came
to the funeral. But we tried to prevent his meeting Alexey. For him, for
her husband, it was easier, anyway. She had set him free. But my poor
son was utterly given up to her. He had thrown up everything, his
career, me, and even then she had no mercy on him, but of set purpose
she made his ruin complete. No, say what you will, her very death was
the death of a vile woman, of no religious feeling. God forgive me, but
I can't help hating the memory of her, when I look at my son's misery!"

"But how is he now?"

"It was a blessing from Providence for us--this Servian war. I'm old,
and I don't understand the rights and wrongs of it, but it's come as a
providential blessing to him. Of course for me, as his mother, it's
terrible; and what's worse, they say, _ce n'est pas tres bien vu a
Petersbourg_. But it can't be helped! It was the one thing that could
rouse him. Yashvin--a friend of his--he had lost all he had at cards and
he was going to Servia. He came to see him and persuaded him to go. Now
it's an interest for him. Do please talk to him a little. I want to
distract his mind. He's so low-spirited. And as bad luck would have it,
he has toothache too. But he'll be delighted to see you. Please do talk
to him; he's walking up and down on that side."

Sergey Ivanovitch said he would be very glad to, and crossed over to the
other side of the station.



Chapter 5


In the slanting evening shadows cast by the baggage piled up on the
platform, Vronsky in his long overcoat and slouch hat, with his hands in
his pockets, strode up and down, like a wild beast in a cage, turning
sharply after twenty paces. Sergey Ivanovitch fancied, as he approached
him, that Vronsky saw him but was pretending not to see. This did not
affect Sergey Ivanovitch in the slightest. He was above all personal
considerations with Vronsky.

At that moment Sergey Ivanovitch looked upon Vronsky as a man taking an
important part in a great cause, and Koznishev thought it his duty to
encourage him and express his approval. He went up to him.

Vronsky stood still, looked intently at him, recognized him, and going a
few steps forward to meet him, shook hands with him very warmly.

"Possibly you didn't wish to see me," said Sergey Ivanovitch, "but
couldn't I be of use to you?"

"There's no one I should less dislike seeing than you," said Vronsky.
"Excuse me; and there's nothing in life for me to like."

"I quite understand, and I merely meant to offer you my services," said
Sergey Ivanovitch, scanning Vronsky's face, full of unmistakable
suffering. "Wouldn't it be of use to you to have a letter to
Ristitch--to Milan?"

"Oh, no!" Vronsky said, seeming to understand him with difficulty. "If
you don't mind, let's walk on. It's so stuffy among the carriages. A
letter? No, thank you; to meet death one needs no letters of
introduction. Nor for the Turks..." he said, with a smile that was
merely of the lips. His eyes still kept their look of angry suffering.

"Yes; but you might find it easier to get into relations, which are
after all essential, with anyone prepared to see you. But that's as you
like. I was very glad to hear of your intention. There have been so many
attacks made on the volunteers, and a man like you raises them in public
estimation."

"My use as a man," said Vronsky, "is that life's worth nothing to me.
And that I've enough bodily energy to cut my way into their ranks, and
to trample on them or fall--I know that. I'm glad there's something to
give my life for, for it's not simply useless but loathsome to me.
Anyone's welcome to it." And his jaw twitched impatiently from the
incessant gnawing toothache, that prevented him from even speaking with
a natural expression.

"You will become another man, I predict," said Sergey Ivanovitch,
feeling touched. "To deliver one's brother-men from bondage is an aim
worth death and life. God grant you success outwardly--and inwardly
peace," he added, and he held out his hand. Vronsky warmly pressed his
outstretched hand.

"Yes, as a weapon I may be of some use. But as a man, I'm a wreck," he
jerked out.

He could hardly speak for the throbbing ache in his strong teeth, that
were like rows of ivory in his mouth. He was silent, and his eyes rested
on the wheels of the tender, slowly and smoothly rolling along the
rails.

And all at once a different pain, not an ache, but an inner trouble,
that set his whole being in anguish, made him for an instant forget his
toothache. As he glanced at the tender and the rails, under the
influence of the conversation with a friend he had not met since his
misfortune, he suddenly recalled _her_--that is, what was left of her
when he had run like one distraught into the cloak room of the railway
station--on the table, shamelessly sprawling out among strangers, the
bloodstained body so lately full of life; the head unhurt dropping back
with its weight of hair, and the curling tresses about the temples, and
the exquisite face, with red, half-opened mouth, the strange, fixed
expression, piteous on the lips and awful in the still open eyes, that
seemed to utter that fearful phrase--that he would be sorry for it--that
she had said when they were quarreling.

And he tried to think of her as she was when he met her the first time,
at a railway station too, mysterious, exquisite, loving, seeking and
giving happiness, and not cruelly revengeful as he remembered her on
that last moment. He tried to recall his best moments with her, but
those moments were poisoned forever. He could only think of her as
triumphant, successful in her menace of a wholly useless remorse never
to be effaced. He lost all consciousness of toothache, and his face
worked with sobs.

Passing twice up and down beside the baggage in silence and regaining
his self-possession, he addressed Sergey Ivanovitch calmly:

"You have had no telegrams since yesterday's? Yes, driven back for a
third time, but a decisive engagement expected for tomorrow."

And after talking a little more of King Milan's proclamation, and the
immense effect it might have, they parted, going to their carriages on
hearing the second bell.



Chapter 6


Sergey Ivanovitch had not telegraphed to his brother to send to meet
him, as he did not know when he should be able to leave Moscow. Levin
was not at home when Katavasov and Sergey Ivanovitch in a fly hired at
the station drove up to the steps of the Pokrovskoe house, as black as
Moors from the dust of the road. Kitty, sitting on the balcony with her
father and sister, recognized her brother-in-law, and ran down to meet
him.

"What a shame not to have let us know," she said, giving her hand to
Sergey Ivanovitch, and putting her forehead up for him to kiss.

"We drove here capitally, and have not put you out," answered Sergey
Ivanovitch. "I'm so dirty. I'm afraid to touch you. I've been so busy, I
didn't know when I should be able to tear myself away. And so you're
still as ever enjoying your peaceful, quiet happiness," he said,
smiling, "out of the reach of the current in your peaceful backwater.
Here's our friend Fyodor Vassilievitch who has succeeded in getting here
at last."

"But I'm not a negro, I shall look like a human being when I wash," said
Katavasov in his jesting fashion, and he shook hands and smiled, his
teeth flashing white in his black face.

"Kostya will be delighted. He has gone to his settlement. It's time he
should be home."

"Busy as ever with his farming. It really is a peaceful backwater," said
Katavasov; "while we in town think of nothing but the Servian war. Well,
how does our friend look at it? He's sure not to think like other
people."

"Oh, I don't know, like everybody else," Kitty answered, a little
embarrassed, looking round at Sergey Ivanovitch. "I'll send to fetch
him. Papa's staying with us. He's only just come home from abroad."

And making arrangements to send for Levin and for the guests to wash,
one in his room and the other in what had been Dolly's, and giving
orders for their luncheon, Kitty ran out onto the balcony, enjoying the
freedom, and rapidity of movement, of which she had been deprived during
the months of her pregnancy.

"It's Sergey Ivanovitch and Katavasov, a professor," she said.

"Oh, that's a bore in this heat," said the prince.

"No, papa, he's very nice, and Kostya's very fond of him," Kitty said,
with a deprecating smile, noticing the irony on her father's face.

"Oh, I didn't say anything."

"You go to them, darling," said Kitty to her sister, "and entertain
them. They saw Stiva at the station; he was quite well. And I must run
to Mitya. As ill-luck would have it, I haven't fed him since tea. He's
awake now, and sure to be screaming." And feeling a rush of milk, she
hurried to the nursery.

This was not a mere guess; her connection with the child was still so
close, that she could gauge by the flow of her milk his need of food,
and knew for certain he was hungry.

She knew he was crying before she reached the nursery. And he was indeed
crying. She heard him and hastened. But the faster she went, the louder
he screamed. It was a fine healthy scream, hungry and impatient.

"Has he been screaming long, nurse, very long?" said Kitty hurriedly,
seating herself on a chair, and preparing to give the baby the breast.
"But give me him quickly. Oh, nurse, how tiresome you are! There, tie
the cap afterwards, do!"

The baby's greedy scream was passing into sobs.

"But you can't manage so, ma'am," said Agafea Mihalovna, who was almost
always to be found in the nursery. "He must be put straight. A-oo!
a-oo!" she chanted over him, paying no attention to the mother.

The nurse brought the baby to his mother. Agafea Mihalovna followed him
with a face dissolving with tenderness.

"He knows me, he knows me. In God's faith, Katerina Alexandrovna, ma'am,
he knew me!" Agafea Mihalovna cried above the baby's screams.

But Kitty did not hear her words. Her impatience kept growing, like the
baby's.

Their impatience hindered things for a while. The baby could not get
hold of the breast right, and was furious.

At last, after despairing, breathless screaming, and vain sucking,
things went right, and mother and child felt simultaneously soothed, and
both subsided into calm.

"But poor darling, he's all in perspiration!" said Kitty in a whisper,
touching the baby.

"What makes you think he knows you?" she added, with a sidelong glance
at the baby's eyes, that peered roguishly, as she fancied, from under
his cap, at his rhythmically puffing cheeks, and the little red-palmed
hand he was waving.

"Impossible! If he knew anyone, he would have known me," said Kitty, in
response to Agafea Mihalovna's statement, and she smiled.

She smiled because, though she said he could not know her, in her heart
she was sure that he knew not merely Agafea Mihalovna, but that he knew
and understood everything, and knew and understood a great deal too that
no one else knew, and that she, his mother, had learned and come to
understand only through him. To Agafea Mihalovna, to the nurse, to his
grandfather, to his father even, Mitya was a living being, requiring
only material care, but for his mother he had long been a mortal being,
with whom there had been a whole series of spiritual relations already.

"When he wakes up, please God, you shall see for yourself. Then when I
do like this, he simply beams on me, the darling! Simply beams like a
sunny day!" said Agafea Mihalovna.

"Well, well; then we shall see," whispered Kitty. "But now go away, he's
going to sleep."



Chapter 7


Agafea Mihalovna went out on tiptoe; the nurse let down the blind,
chased a fly out from under the muslin canopy of the crib, and a
bumblebee struggling on the window-frame, and sat down waving a faded
branch of birch over the mother and the baby.

"How hot it is! if God would send a drop of rain," she said.

"Yes, yes, sh--sh--sh--" was all Kitty answered, rocking a little, and
tenderly squeezing the plump little arm, with rolls of fat at the wrist,
which Mitya still waved feebly as he opened and shut his eyes. That hand
worried Kitty; she longed to kiss the little hand, but was afraid to for
fear of waking the baby. At last the little hand ceased waving, and the
eyes closed. Only from time to time, as he went on sucking, the baby
raised his long, curly eyelashes and peeped at his mother with wet eyes,
that looked black in the twilight. The nurse had left off fanning, and
was dozing. From above came the peals of the old prince's voice, and the
chuckle of Katavasov.

"They have got into talk without me," thought Kitty, "but still it's
vexing that Kostya's out. He's sure to have gone to the bee house again.
Though it's a pity he's there so often, still I'm glad. It distracts his
mind. He's become altogether happier and better now than in the spring.
He used to be so gloomy and worried that I felt frightened for him. And
how absurd he is!" she whispered, smiling.

She knew what worried her husband. It was his unbelief. Although, if she
had been asked whether she supposed that in the future life, if he did
not believe, he would be damned, she would have had to admit that he
would be damned, his unbelief did not cause her unhappiness. And she,
confessing that for an unbeliever there can be no salvation, and loving
her husband's soul more than anything in the world, thought with a smile
of his unbelief, and told herself that he was absurd.

"What does he keep reading philosophy of some sort for all this year?"
she wondered. "If it's all written in those books, he can understand
them. If it's all wrong, why does he read them? He says himself that he
would like to believe. Then why is it he doesn't believe? Surely from
his thinking so much? And he thinks so much from being solitary. He's
always alone, alone. He can't talk about it all to us. I fancy he'll be
glad of these visitors, especially Katavasov. He likes discussions with
them," she thought, and passed instantly to the consideration of where
it would be more convenient to put Katavasov, to sleep alone or to share
Sergey Ivanovitch's room. And then an idea suddenly struck her, which
made her shudder and even disturb Mitya, who glanced severely at her. "I
do believe the laundress hasn't sent the washing yet, and all the best
sheets are in use. If I don't see to it, Agafea Mihalovna will give
Sergey Ivanovitch the wrong sheets," and at the very idea of this the
blood rushed to Kitty's face.

"Yes, I will arrange it," she decided, and going back to her former
thoughts, she remembered that some spiritual question of importance had
been interrupted, and she began to recall what. "Yes, Kostya, an
unbeliever," she thought again with a smile.

"Well, an unbeliever then! Better let him always be one than like Madame
Stahl, or what I tried to be in those days abroad. No, he won't ever
sham anything."

And a recent instance of his goodness rose vividly to her mind. A
fortnight ago a penitent letter had come from Stepan Arkadyevitch to
Dolly. He besought her to save his honor, to sell her estate to pay his
debts. Dolly was in despair, she detested her husband, despised him,
pitied him, resolved on a separation, resolved to refuse, but ended by
agreeing to sell part of her property. After that, with an irrepressible
smile of tenderness, Kitty recalled her husband's shamefaced
embarrassment, his repeated awkward efforts to approach the subject, and
how at last, having thought of the one means of helping Dolly without
wounding her pride, he had suggested to Kitty--what had not occurred to
her before--that she should give up her share of the property.

"He an unbeliever indeed! With his heart, his dread of offending anyone,
even a child! Everything for others, nothing for himself. Sergey
Ivanovitch simply considers it as Kostya's duty to be his steward. And
it's the same with his sister. Now Dolly and her children are under his
guardianship; all these peasants who come to him every day, as though he
were bound to be at their service."

"Yes, only be like your father, only like him," she said, handing Mitya
over to the nurse, and putting her lips to his cheek.



Chapter 8


Ever since, by his beloved brother's deathbed, Levin had first glanced
into the questions of life and death in the light of these new
convictions, as he called them, which had during the period from his
twentieth to his thirty-fourth year imperceptibly replaced his childish
and youthful beliefs--he had been stricken with horror, not so much of
death, as of life, without any knowledge of whence, and why, and how,
and what it was. The physical organization, its decay, the
indestructibility of matter, the law of the conservation of energy,
evolution, were the words which usurped the place of his old belief.
These words and the ideas associated with them were very well for
intellectual purposes. But for life they yielded nothing, and Levin felt
suddenly like a man who has changed his warm fur cloak for a muslin
garment, and going for the first time into the frost is immediately
convinced, not by reason, but by his whole nature that he is as good as
naked, and that he must infallibly perish miserably.

From that moment, though he did not distinctly face it, and still went
on living as before, Levin had never lost this sense of terror at his
lack of knowledge.

He vaguely felt, too, that what he called his new convictions were not
merely lack of knowledge, but that they were part of a whole order of
ideas, in which no knowledge of what he needed was possible.

At first, marriage, with the new joys and duties bound up with it, had
completely crowded out these thoughts. But of late, while he was staying
in Moscow after his wife's confinement, with nothing to do, the question
that clamored for solution had more and more often, more and more
insistently, haunted Levin's mind.

The question was summed up for him thus: "If I do not accept the answers
Christianity gives to the problems of my life, what answers do I
accept?" And in the whole arsenal of his convictions, so far from
finding any satisfactory answers, he was utterly unable to find anything
at all like an answer.

He was in the position of a man seeking food in toy shops and tool
shops.

Instinctively, unconsciously, with every book, with every conversation,
with every man he met, he was on the lookout for light on these
questions and their solution.

What puzzled and distracted him above everything was that the majority
of men of his age and circle had, like him, exchanged their old beliefs
for the same new convictions, and yet saw nothing to lament in this, and
were perfectly satisfied and serene. So that, apart from the principal
question, Levin was tortured by other questions too. Were these people
sincere? he asked himself, or were they playing a part? or was it that
they understood the answers science gave to these problems in some
different, clearer sense than he did? And he assiduously studied both
these men's opinions and the books which treated of these scientific
explanations.

One fact he had found out since these questions had engrossed his mind,
was that he had been quite wrong in supposing from the recollections of
the circle of his young days at college, that religion had outlived its
day, and that it was now practically non-existent. All the people
nearest to him who were good in their lives were believers. The old
prince, and Lvov, whom he liked so much, and Sergey Ivanovitch, and all
the women believed, and his wife believed as simply as he had believed
in his earliest childhood, and ninety-nine hundredths of the Russian
people, all the working people for whose life he felt the deepest
respect, believed.

Another fact of which he became convinced, after reading many scientific
books, was that the men who shared his views had no other construction
to put on them, and that they gave no explanation of the questions which
he felt he could not live without answering, but simply ignored their
existence and attempted to explain other questions of no possible
interest to him, such as the evolution of organisms, the materialistic
theory of consciousness, and so forth.

Moreover, during his wife's confinement, something had happened that
seemed extraordinary to him. He, an unbeliever, had fallen into praying,
and at the moment he prayed, he believed. But that moment had passed,
and he could not make his state of mind at that moment fit into the rest
of his life.

He could not admit that at that moment he knew the truth, and that now
he was wrong; for as soon as he began thinking calmly about it, it all
fell to pieces. He could not admit that he was mistaken then, for his
spiritual condition then was precious to him, and to admit that it was a
proof of weakness would have been to desecrate those moments. He was
miserably divided against himself, and strained all his spiritual forces
to the utmost to escape from this condition.



Chapter 9


These doubts fretted and harassed him, growing weaker or stronger from
time to time, but never leaving him. He read and thought, and the more
he read and the more he thought, the further he felt from the aim he was
pursuing.

Of late in Moscow and in the country, since he had become convinced that
he would find no solution in the materialists, he had read and re-read
thoroughly Plato, Spinoza, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, the
philosophers who gave a non-materialistic explanation of life.

Their ideas seemed to him fruitful when he was reading or was himself
seeking arguments to refute other theories, especially those of the
materialists; but as soon as he began to read or sought for himself a
solution of problems, the same thing always happened. As long as he
followed the fixed definition of obscure words such as _spirit, will,
freedom, essence,_ purposely letting himself go into the snare of words
the philosophers set for him, he seemed to comprehend something. But he
had only to forget the artificial train of reasoning, and to turn from
life itself to what had satisfied him while thinking in accordance with
the fixed definitions, and all this artificial edifice fell to pieces at
once like a house of cards, and it became clear that the edifice had
been built up out of those transposed words, apart from anything in life
more important than reason.

At one time, reading Schopenhauer, he put in place of his will the word
_love_, and for a couple of days this new philosophy charmed him, till
he removed a little away from it. But then, when he turned from life
itself to glance at it again, it fell away too, and proved to be the
same muslin garment with no warmth in it.

His brother Sergey Ivanovitch advised him to read the theological works
of Homiakov. Levin read the second volume of Homiakov's works, and in
spite of the elegant, epigrammatic, argumentative style which at first
repelled him, he was impressed by the doctrine of the church he found in
them. He was struck at first by the idea that the apprehension of divine
truths had not been vouchsafed to man, but to a corporation of men bound
together by love--to the church. What delighted him was the thought how
much easier it was to believe in a still existing living church,
embracing all the beliefs of men, and having God at its head, and
therefore holy and infallible, and from it to accept the faith in God,
in the creation, the fall, the redemption, than to begin with God, a
mysterious, far-away God, the creation, etc. But afterwards, on reading
a Catholic writer's history of the church, and then a Greek orthodox
writer's history of the church, and seeing that the two churches, in
their very conception infallible, each deny the authority of the other,
Homiakov's doctrine of the church lost all its charm for him, and this
edifice crumbled into dust like the philosophers' edifices.

All that spring he was not himself, and went through fearful moments of
horror.

"Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life's impossible; and
that I can't know, and so I can't live," Levin said to himself.

"In infinite time, in infinite matter, in infinite space, is formed a
bubble-organism, and that bubble lasts a while and bursts, and that
bubble is Me."

It was an agonizing error, but it was the sole logical result of ages of
human thought in that direction.

This was the ultimate belief on which all the systems elaborated by
human thought in almost all their ramifications rested. It was the
prevalent conviction, and of all other explanations Levin had
unconsciously, not knowing when or how, chosen it, as anyway the
clearest, and made it his own.

But it was not merely a falsehood, it was the cruel jeer of some wicked
power, some evil, hateful power, to whom one could not submit.

He must escape from this power. And the means of escape every man had in
his own hands. He had but to cut short this dependence on evil. And
there was one means--death.

And Levin, a happy father and husband, in perfect health, was several
times so near suicide that he hid the cord that he might not be tempted
to hang himself, and was afraid to go out with his gun for fear of
shooting himself.

But Levin did not shoot himself, and did not hang himself; he went on
living.



Chapter 10


When Levin thought what he was and what he was living for, he could find
no answer to the questions and was reduced to despair, but he left off
questioning himself about it. It seemed as though he knew both what he
was and for what he was living, for he acted and lived resolutely and
without hesitation. Indeed, in these latter days he was far more decided
and unhesitating in life than he had ever been.

When he went back to the country at the beginning of June, he went back
also to his usual pursuits. The management of the estate, his relations
with the peasants and the neighbors, the care of his household, the
management of his sister's and brother's property, of which he had the
direction, his relations with his wife and kindred, the care of his
child, and the new bee-keeping hobby he had taken up that spring, filled
all his time.

These things occupied him now, not because he justified them to himself
by any sort of general principles, as he had done in former days; on the
contrary, disappointed by the failure of his former efforts for the
general welfare, and too much occupied with his own thought and the mass
of business with which he was burdened from all sides, he had completely
given up thinking of the general good, and he busied himself with all
this work simply because it seemed to him that he must do what he was
doing--that he could not do otherwise. In former days--almost from
childhood, and increasingly up to full manhood--when he had tried to do
anything that would be good for all, for humanity, for Russia, for the
whole village, he had noticed that the idea of it had been pleasant, but
the work itself had always been incoherent, that then he had never had a
full conviction of its absolute necessity, and that the work that had
begun by seeming so great, had grown less and less, till it vanished
into nothing. But now, since his marriage, when he had begun to confine
himself more and more to living for himself, though he experienced no
delight at all at the thought of the work he was doing, he felt a
complete conviction of its necessity, saw that it succeeded far better
than in old days, and that it kept on growing more and more.

Now, involuntarily it seemed, he cut more and more deeply into the soil
like a plough, so that he could not be drawn out without turning aside
the furrow.

To live the same family life as his father and forefathers--that is, in
the same condition of culture--and to bring up his children in the same,
was incontestably necessary. It was as necessary as dining when one was
hungry. And to do this, just as it was necessary to cook dinner, it was
necessary to keep the mechanism of agriculture at Pokrovskoe going so as
to yield an income. Just as incontestably as it was necessary to repay a
debt was it necessary to keep the property in such a condition that his
son, when he received it as a heritage, would say "thank you" to his
father as Levin had said "thank you" to his grandfather for all he built
and planted. And to do this it was necessary to look after the land
himself, not to let it, and to breed cattle, manure the fields, and
plant timber.

It was impossible not to look after the affairs of Sergey Ivanovitch, of
his sister, of the peasants who came to him for advice and were
accustomed to do so--as impossible as to fling down a child one is
carrying in one's arms. It was necessary to look after the comfort of
his sister-in-law and her children, and of his wife and baby, and it was
impossible not to spend with them at least a short time each day.

And all this, together with shooting and his new bee-keeping, filled up
the whole of Levin's life, which had no meaning at all for him, when he
began to think.

But besides knowing thoroughly what he had to do, Levin knew in just the
same way _how_ he had to do it all, and what was more important than the
rest.

He knew he must hire laborers as cheaply as possible; but to hire men
under bond, paying them in advance at less than the current rate of
wages, was what he must not do, even though it was very profitable.
Selling straw to the peasants in times of scarcity of provender was what
he might do, even though he felt sorry for them; but the tavern and the
pothouse must be put down, though they were a source of income. Felling
timber must be punished as severely as possible, but he could not exact
forfeits for cattle being driven onto his fields; and though it annoyed
the keeper and made the peasants not afraid to graze their cattle on his
land, he could not keep their cattle as a punishment.

To Pyotr, who was paying a money-lender 10 per cent. a month, he must
lend a sum of money to set him free. But he could not let off peasants
who did not pay their rent, nor let them fall into arrears. It was
impossible to overlook the bailiff's not having mown the meadows and
letting the hay spoil; and it was equally impossible to mow those acres
where a young copse had been planted. It was impossible to excuse a
laborer who had gone home in the busy season because his father was
dying, however sorry he might feel for him, and he must subtract from
his pay those costly months of idleness. But it was impossible not to
allow monthly rations to the old servants who were of no use for
anything.

Levin knew that when he got home he must first of all go to his wife,
who was unwell, and that the peasants who had been waiting for three
hours to see him could wait a little longer. He knew too that,
regardless of all the pleasure he felt in taking a swarm, he must forego
that pleasure, and leave the old man to see to the bees alone, while he
talked to the peasants who had come after him to the bee-house.

Whether he were acting rightly or wrongly he did not know, and far from
trying to prove that he was, nowadays he avoided all thought or talk
about it.

Reasoning had brought him to doubt, and prevented him from seeing what
he ought to do and what he ought not. When he did not think, but simply
lived, he was continually aware of the presence of an infallible judge
in his soul, determining which of two possible courses of action was the
better and which was the worse, and as soon as he did not act rightly,
he was at once aware of it.

So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any chance of knowing what he
was and what he was living for, and harassed at this lack of knowledge
to such a point that he was afraid of suicide, and yet firmly laying
down his own individual definite path in life.



Chapter 11


The day on which Sergey Ivanovitch came to Pokrovskoe was one of Levin's
most painful days. It was the very busiest working time, when all the
peasantry show an extraordinary intensity of self-sacrifice in labor,
such as is never shown in any other conditions of life, and would be
highly esteemed if the men who showed these qualities themselves thought
highly of them, and if it were not repeated every year, and if the
results of this intense labor were not so simple.

To reap and bind the rye and oats and to carry it, to mow the meadows,
turn over the fallows, thrash the seed and sow the winter corn--all this
seems so simple and ordinary; but to succeed in getting through it all
everyone in the village, from the old man to the young child, must toil
incessantly for three or four weeks, three times as hard as usual,
living on rye-beer, onions, and black bread, thrashing and carrying the
sheaves at night, and not giving more than two or three hours in the
twenty-four to sleep. And every year this is done all over Russia.

Having lived the greater part of his life in the country and in the
closest relations with the peasants, Levin always felt in this busy time
that he was infected by this general quickening of energy in the people.

In the early morning he rode over to the first sowing of the rye, and to
the oats, which were being carried to the stacks, and returning home at
the time his wife and sister-in-law were getting up, he drank coffee
with them and walked to the farm, where a new thrashing machine was to
be set working to get ready the seed-corn.

He was standing in the cool granary, still fragrant with the leaves of
the hazel branches interlaced on the freshly peeled aspen beams of the
new thatch roof. He gazed through the open door in which the dry bitter
dust of the thrashing whirled and played, at the grass of the thrashing
floor in the sunlight and the fresh straw that had been brought in from
the barn, then at the speckly-headed, white-breasted swallows that flew
chirping in under the roof and, fluttering their wings, settled in the
crevices of the doorway, then at the peasants bustling in the dark,
dusty barn, and he thought strange thoughts.

"Why is it all being done?" he thought. "Why am I standing here, making
them work? What are they all so busy for, trying to show their zeal
before me? What is that old Matrona, my old friend, toiling for? (I
doctored her, when the beam fell on her in the fire)" he thought,
looking at a thin old woman who was raking up the grain, moving
painfully with her bare, sun-blackened feet over the uneven, rough
floor. "Then she recovered, but today or tomorrow or in ten years she
won't; they'll bury her, and nothing will be left either of her or of
that smart girl in the red jacket, who with that skillful, soft action
shakes the ears out of their husks. They'll bury her and this piebald
horse, and very soon too," he thought, gazing at the heavily moving,
panting horse that kept walking up the wheel that turned under him. "And
they will bury her and Fyodor the thrasher with his curly beard full of
chaff and his shirt torn on his white shoulders--they will bury him.
He's untying the sheaves, and giving orders, and shouting to the women,
and quickly setting straight the strap on the moving wheel. And what's
more, it's not them alone--me they'll bury too, and nothing will be
left. What for?"

He thought this, and at the same time looked at his watch to reckon how
much they thrashed in an hour. He wanted to know this so as to judge by
it the task to set for the day.

"It'll soon be one, and they're only beginning the third sheaf," thought
Levin. He went up to the man that was feeding the machine, and shouting
over the roar of the machine he told him to put it in more slowly. "You
put in too much at a time, Fyodor. Do you see--it gets choked, that's
why it isn't getting on. Do it evenly."

Fyodor, black with the dust that clung to his moist face, shouted
something in response, but still went on doing it as Levin did not want
him to.

Levin, going up to the machine, moved Fyodor aside, and began feeding
the corn in himself. Working on till the peasants' dinner hour, which
was not long in coming, he went out of the barn with Fyodor and fell
into talk with him, stopping beside a neat yellow sheaf of rye laid on
the thrashing floor for seed.

Fyodor came from a village at some distance from the one in which Levin
had once allotted land to his cooperative association. Now it had been
let to a former house porter.

Levin talked to Fyodor about this land and asked whether Platon, a
well-to-do peasant of good character belonging to the same village,
would not take the land for the coming year.

"It's a high rent; it wouldn't pay Platon, Konstantin Dmitrievitch,"
answered the peasant, picking the ears off his sweat-drenched shirt.

"But how does Kirillov make it pay?"

"Mituh!" (so the peasant called the house porter, in a tone of
contempt), "you may be sure he'll make it pay, Konstantin Dmitrievitch!
He'll get his share, however he has to squeeze to get it! He's no mercy
on a Christian. But Uncle Fokanitch" (so he called the old peasant
Platon), "do you suppose he'd flay the skin off a man? Where there's
debt, he'll let anyone off. And he'll not wring the last penny out. He's
a man too."

"But why will he let anyone off?"

"Oh, well, of course, folks are different. One man lives for his own
wants and nothing else, like Mituh, he only thinks of filling his belly,
but Fokanitch is a righteous man. He lives for his soul. He does not
forget God."

"How thinks of God? How does he live for his soul?" Levin almost
shouted.

"Why, to be sure, in truth, in God's way. Folks are different. Take you
now, you wouldn't wrong a man...."

"Yes, yes, good-bye!" said Levin, breathless with excitement, and
turning round he took his stick and walked quickly away towards home. At
the peasant's words that Fokanitch lived for his soul, in truth, in
God's way, undefined but significant ideas seemed to burst out as though
they had been locked up, and all striving towards one goal, they
thronged whirling through his head, blinding him with their light.



Chapter 12


Levin strode along the highroad, absorbed not so much in his thoughts
(he could not yet disentangle them) as in his spiritual condition,
unlike anything he had experienced before.

The words uttered by the peasant had acted on his soul like an electric
shock, suddenly transforming and combining into a single whole the whole
swarm of disjointed, impotent, separate thoughts that incessantly
occupied his mind. These thoughts had unconsciously been in his mind
even when he was talking about the land.

He was aware of something new in his soul, and joyfully tested this new
thing, not yet knowing what it was.

"Not living for his own wants, but for God? For what God? And could one
say anything more senseless than what he said? He said that one must not
live for one's own wants, that is, that one must not live for what we
understand, what we are attracted by, what we desire, but must live for
something incomprehensible, for God, whom no one can understand nor even
define. What of it? Didn't I understand those senseless words of
Fyodor's? And understanding them, did I doubt of their truth? Did I
think them stupid, obscure, inexact? No, I understood him, and exactly
as he understands the words. I understood them more fully and clearly
than I understand anything in life, and never in my life have I doubted
nor can I doubt about it. And not only I, but everyone, the whole world
understands nothing fully but this, and about this only they have no
doubt and are always agreed.

"And I looked out for miracles, complained that I did not see a miracle
which would convince me. A material miracle would have persuaded me. And
here is a miracle, the sole miracle possible, continually existing,
surrounding me on all sides, and I never noticed it!

"Fyodor says that Kirillov lives for his belly. That's comprehensible
and rational. All of us as rational beings can't do anything else but
live for our belly. And all of a sudden the same Fyodor says that one
mustn't live for one's belly, but must live for truth, for God, and at a
hint I understand him! And I and millions of men, men who lived ages ago
and men living now--peasants, the poor in spirit and the learned, who
have thought and written about it, in their obscure words saying the
same thing--we are all agreed about this one thing: what we must live
for and what is good. I and all men have only one firm, incontestable,
clear knowledge, and that knowledge cannot be explained by the
reason--it is outside it, and has no causes and can have no effects.

"If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a
reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is outside the chain of
cause and effect.

"And yet I know it, and we all know it.

"What could be a greater miracle than that?

"Can I have found the solution of it all? can my sufferings be over?"
thought Levin, striding along the dusty road, not noticing the heat nor
his weariness, and experiencing a sense of relief from prolonged
suffering. This feeling was so delicious that it seemed to him
incredible. He was breathless with emotion and incapable of going
farther; he turned off the road into the forest and lay down in the
shade of an aspen on the uncut grass. He took his hat off his hot head
and lay propped on his elbow in the lush, feathery, woodland grass.

"Yes, I must make it clear to myself and understand," he thought,
looking intently at the untrampled grass before him, and following the
movements of a green beetle, advancing along a blade of couch-grass and
lifting up in its progress a leaf of goat-weed. "What have I
discovered?" he asked himself, bending aside the leaf of goat-weed out
of the beetle's way and twisting another blade of grass above for the
beetle to cross over onto it. "What is it makes me glad? What have I
discovered?

"I have discovered nothing. I have only found out what I knew. I
understand the force that in the past gave me life, and now too gives me
life. I have been set free from falsity, I have found the Master.

"Of old I used to say that in my body, that in the body of this grass
and of this beetle (there, she didn't care for the grass, she's opened
her wings and flown away), there was going on a transformation of matter
in accordance with physical, chemical, and physiological laws. And in
all of us, as well as in the aspens and the clouds and the misty
patches, there was a process of evolution. Evolution from what? into
what?--Eternal evolution and struggle.... As though there could be any
sort of tendency and struggle in the eternal! And I was astonished that
in spite of the utmost effort of thought along that road I could not
discover the meaning of life, the meaning of my impulses and yearnings.
Now I say that I know the meaning of my life: 'To live for God, for my
soul.' And this meaning, in spite of its clearness, is mysterious and
marvelous. Such, indeed, is the meaning of everything existing. Yes,
pride," he said to himself, turning over on his stomach and beginning to
tie a noose of blades of grass, trying not to break them.

"And not merely pride of intellect, but dulness of intellect. And most
of all, the deceitfulness; yes, the deceitfulness of intellect. The
cheating knavishness of intellect, that's it," he said to himself.

And he briefly went through, mentally, the whole course of his ideas
during the last two years, the beginning of which was the clear
confronting of death at the sight of his dear brother hopelessly ill.

Then, for the first time, grasping that for every man, and himself too,
there was nothing in store but suffering, death, and forgetfulness, he
had made up his mind that life was impossible like that, and that he
must either interpret life so that it would not present itself to him as
the evil jest of some devil, or shoot himself.

But he had not done either, but had gone on living, thinking, and
feeling, and had even at that very time married, and had had many joys
and had been happy, when he was not thinking of the meaning of his life.

What did this mean? It meant that he had been living rightly, but
thinking wrongly.

He had lived (without being aware of it) on those spiritual truths that
he had sucked in with his mother's milk, but he had thought, not merely
without recognition of these truths, but studiously ignoring them.

Now it was clear to him that he could only live by virtue of the beliefs
in which he had been brought up.

"What should I have been, and how should I have spent my life, if I had
not had these beliefs, if I had not known that I must live for God and
not for my own desires? I should have robbed and lied and killed.
Nothing of what makes the chief happiness of my life would have existed
for me." And with the utmost stretch of imagination he could not
conceive the brutal creature he would have been himself, if he had not
known what he was living for.

"I looked for an answer to my question. And thought could not give an
answer to my question--it is incommensurable with my question. The
answer has been given me by life itself, in my knowledge of what is
right and what is wrong. And that knowledge I did not arrive at in any
way, it was given to me as to all men, _given_, because I could not have
got it from anywhere.

"Where could I have got it? By reason could I have arrived at knowing
that I must love my neighbor and not oppress him? I was told that in my
childhood, and I believed it gladly, for they told me what was already
in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason. Reason discovered the
struggle for existence, and the law that requires us to oppress all who
hinder the satisfaction of our desires. That is the deduction of reason.
But loving one's neighbor reason could never discover, because it's
irrational."



Chapter 13


And Levin remembered a scene he had lately witnessed between Dolly and
her children. The children, left to themselves, had begun cooking
raspberries over the candles and squirting milk into each other's mouths
with a syringe. Their mother, catching them at these pranks, began
reminding them in Levin's presence of the trouble their mischief gave to
the grown-up people, and that this trouble was all for their sake, and
that if they smashed the cups they would have nothing to drink their tea
out of, and that if they wasted the milk, they would have nothing to
eat, and die of hunger.

And Levin had been struck by the passive, weary incredulity with which
the children heard what their mother said to them. They were simply
annoyed that their amusing play had been interrupted, and did not
believe a word of what their mother was saying. They could not believe
it indeed, for they could not take in the immensity of all they
habitually enjoyed, and so could not conceive that what they were
destroying was the very thing they lived by.

"That all comes of itself," they thought, "and there's nothing
interesting or important about it because it has always been so, and
always will be so. And it's all always the same. We've no need to think
about that, it's all ready. But we want to invent something of our own,
and new. So we thought of putting raspberries in a cup, and cooking them
over a candle, and squirting milk straight into each other's mouths.
That's fun, and something new, and not a bit worse than drinking out of
cups."

"Isn't it just the same that we do, that I did, searching by the aid of
reason for the significance of the forces of nature and the meaning of
the life of man?" he thought.

"And don't all the theories of philosophy do the same, trying by the
path of thought, which is strange and not natural to man, to bring him
to a knowledge of what he has known long ago, and knows so certainly
that he could not live at all without it? Isn't it distinctly to be seen
in the development of each philosopher's theory, that he knows what is
the chief significance of life beforehand, just as positively as the
peasant Fyodor, and not a bit more clearly than he, and is simply trying
by a dubious intellectual path to come back to what everyone knows?

"Now then, leave the children to themselves to get things alone and make
their crockery, get the milk from the cows, and so on. Would they be
naughty then? Why, they'd die of hunger! Well, then, leave us with our
passions and thoughts, without any idea of the one God, of the Creator,
or without any idea of what is right, without any idea of moral evil.

"Just try and build up anything without those ideas!

"We only try to destroy them, because we're spiritually provided for.
Exactly like the children!

"Whence have I that joyful knowledge, shared with the peasant, that
alone gives peace to my soul? Whence did I get it?

"Brought up with an idea of God, a Christian, my whole life filled with
the spiritual blessings Christianity has given me, full of them, and
living on those blessings, like the children I did not understand them,
and destroy, that is try to destroy, what I live by. And as soon as an
important moment of life comes, like the children when they are cold and
hungry, I turn to Him, and even less than the children when their mother
scolds them for their childish mischief, do I feel that my childish
efforts at wanton madness are reckoned against me.

"Yes, what I know, I know not by reason, but it has been given to me,
revealed to me, and I know it with my heart, by faith in the chief thing
taught by the church.

"The church! the church!" Levin repeated to himself. He turned over on
the other side, and leaning on his elbow, fell to gazing into the
distance at a herd of cattle crossing over to the river.

"But can I believe in all the church teaches?" he thought, trying
himself, and thinking of everything that could destroy his present peace
of mind. Intentionally he recalled all those doctrines of the church
which had always seemed most strange and had always been a stumbling
block to him.

"The Creation? But how did I explain existence? By existence? By
nothing? The devil and sin. But how do I explain evil?... The
atonement?...

"But I know nothing, nothing, and I can know nothing but what has been
told to me and all men."

And it seemed to him that there was not a single article of faith of the
church which could destroy the chief thing--faith in God, in goodness,
as the one goal of man's destiny.

Under every article of faith of the church could be put the faith in the
service of truth instead of one's desires. And each doctrine did not
simply leave that faith unshaken, each doctrine seemed essential to
complete that great miracle, continually manifest upon earth, that made
it possible for each man and millions of different sorts of men, wise
men and imbeciles, old men and children--all men, peasants, Lvov, Kitty,
beggars and kings to understand perfectly the same one thing, and to
build up thereby that life of the soul which alone is worth living, and
which alone is precious to us.

Lying on his back, he gazed up now into the high, cloudless sky. "Do I
not know that that is infinite space, and that it is not a round arch?
But, however I screw up my eyes and strain my sight, I cannot see it not
round and not bounded, and in spite of my knowing about infinite space,
I am incontestably right when I see a solid blue dome, and more right
than when I strain my eyes to see beyond it."

Levin ceased thinking, and only, as it were, listened to mysterious
voices that seemed talking joyfully and earnestly within him.

"Can this be faith?" he thought, afraid to believe in his happiness. "My
God, I thank Thee!" he said, gulping down his sobs, and with both hands
brushing away the tears that filled his eyes.



Chapter 14


Levin looked before him and saw a herd of cattle, then he caught sight
of his trap with Raven in the shafts, and the coachman, who, driving up
to the herd, said something to the herdsman. Then he heard the rattle of
the wheels and the snort of the sleek horse close by him. But he was so
buried in his thoughts that he did not even wonder why the coachman had
come for him.

He only thought of that when the coachman had driven quite up to him and
shouted to him. "The mistress sent me. Your brother has come, and some
gentleman with him."

Levin got into the trap and took the reins. As though just roused out of
sleep, for a long while Levin could not collect his faculties. He stared
at the sleek horse flecked with lather between his haunches and on his
neck, where the harness rubbed, stared at Ivan the coachman sitting
beside him, and remembered that he was expecting his brother, thought
that his wife was most likely uneasy at his long absence, and tried to
guess who was the visitor who had come with his brother. And his brother
and his wife and the unknown guest seemed to him now quite different
from before. He fancied that now his relations with all men would be
different.

"With my brother there will be none of that aloofness there always used
to be between us, there will be no disputes; with Kitty there shall
never be quarrels; with the visitor, whoever he may be, I will be
friendly and nice; with the servants, with Ivan, it will all be
different."

Pulling the stiff rein and holding in the good horse that snorted with
impatience and seemed begging to be let go, Levin looked round at Ivan
sitting beside him, not knowing what to do with his unoccupied hand,
continually pressing down his shirt as it puffed out, and he tried to
find something to start a conversation about with him. He would have
said that Ivan had pulled the saddle-girth up too high, but that was
like blame, and he longed for friendly, warm talk. Nothing else occurred
to him.

"Your honor must keep to the right and mind that stump," said the
coachman, pulling the rein Levin held.

"Please don't touch and don't teach me!" said Levin, angered by this
interference. Now, as always, interference made him angry, and he felt
sorrowfully at once how mistaken had been his supposition that his
spiritual condition could immediately change him in contact with
reality.

He was not a quarter of a mile from home when he saw Grisha and Tanya
running to meet him.

"Uncle Kostya! mamma's coming, and grandfather, and Sergey Ivanovitch,
and someone else," they said, clambering up into the trap.

"Who is he?"

"An awfully terrible person! And he does like this with his arms," said
Tanya, getting up in the trap and mimicking Katavasov.

"Old or young?" asked Levin, laughing, reminded of someone, he did not
know whom, by Tanya's performance.

"Oh, I hope it's not a tiresome person!" thought Levin.

As soon as he turned, at a bend in the road, and saw the party coming,
Levin recognized Katavasov in a straw hat, walking along swinging his
arms just as Tanya had shown him. Katavasov was very fond of discussing
metaphysics, having derived his notions from natural science writers who
had never studied metaphysics, and in Moscow Levin had had many
arguments with him of late.

And one of these arguments, in which Katavasov had obviously considered
that he came off victorious, was the first thing Levin thought of as he
recognized him.

"No, whatever I do, I won't argue and give utterance to my ideas
lightly," he thought.

Getting out of the trap and greeting his brother and Katavasov, Levin
asked about his wife.

"She has taken Mitya to Kolok" (a copse near the house). "She meant to
have him out there because it's so hot indoors," said Dolly. Levin had
always advised his wife not to take the baby to the wood, thinking it
unsafe, and he was not pleased to hear this.

"She rushes about from place to place with him," said the prince,
smiling. "I advised her to try putting him in the ice cellar."

"She meant to come to the bee house. She thought you would be there. We
are going there," said Dolly.

"Well, and what are you doing?" said Sergey Ivanovitch, falling back
from the rest and walking beside him.

"Oh, nothing special. Busy as usual with the land," answered Levin.
"Well, and what about you? Come for long? We have been expecting you for
such a long time."

"Only for a fortnight. I've a great deal to do in Moscow."

At these words the brothers' eyes met, and Levin, in spite of the desire
he always had, stronger than ever just now, to be on affectionate and
still more open terms with his brother, felt an awkwardness in looking
at him. He dropped his eyes and did not know what to say.

Casting over the subjects of conversation that would be pleasant to
Sergey Ivanovitch, and would keep him off the subject of the Servian war
and the Slavonic question, at which he had hinted by the allusion to
what he had to do in Moscow, Levin began to talk of Sergey Ivanovitch's
book.

"Well, have there been reviews of your book?" he asked.

Sergey Ivanovitch smiled at the intentional character of the question.

"No one is interested in that now, and I less than anyone," he said.
"Just look, Darya Alexandrovna, we shall have a shower," he added,
pointing with a sunshade at the white rain clouds that showed above the
aspen tree-tops.

And these words were enough to re-establish again between the brothers
that tone--hardly hostile, but chilly--which Levin had been so longing
to avoid.

Levin went up to Katavasov.

"It was jolly of you to make up your mind to come," he said to him.

"I've been meaning to a long while. Now we shall have some discussion,
we'll see to that. Have you been reading Spencer?"

"No, I've not finished reading him," said Levin. "But I don't need him
now."

"How's that? that's interesting. Why so?"

"I mean that I'm fully convinced that the solution of the problems that
interest me I shall never find in him and his like. Now..."

But Katavasov's serene and good-humored expression suddenly struck him,
and he felt such tenderness for his own happy mood, which he was
unmistakably disturbing by this conversation, that he remembered his
resolution and stopped short.

"But we'll talk later on," he added. "If we're going to the bee house,
it's this way, along this little path," he said, addressing them all.

Going along the narrow path to a little uncut meadow covered on one side
with thick clumps of brilliant heart's-ease among which stood up here
and there tall, dark green tufts of hellebore, Levin settled his guests
in the dense, cool shade of the young aspens on a bench and some stumps
purposely put there for visitors to the bee house who might be afraid of
the bees, and he went off himself to the hut to get bread, cucumbers,
and fresh honey, to regale them with.

Trying to make his movements as deliberate as possible, and listening to
the bees that buzzed more and more frequently past him, he walked along
the little path to the hut. In the very entry one bee hummed angrily,
caught in his beard, but he carefully extricated it. Going into the
shady outer room, he took down from the wall his veil, that hung on a
peg, and putting it on, and thrusting his hands into his pockets, he
went into the fenced-in bee-garden, where there stood in the midst of a
closely mown space in regular rows, fastened with bast on posts, all the
hives he knew so well, the old stocks, each with its own history, and
along the fences the younger swarms hived that year. In front of the
openings of the hives, it made his eyes giddy to watch the bees and
drones whirling round and round about the same spot, while among them
the working bees flew in and out with spoils or in search of them,
always in the same direction into the wood to the flowering lime trees
and back to the hives.

His ears were filled with the incessant hum in various notes, now the
busy hum of the working bee flying quickly off, then the blaring of the
lazy drone, and the excited buzz of the bees on guard protecting their
property from the enemy and preparing to sting. On the farther side of
the fence the old bee-keeper was shaving a hoop for a tub, and he did
not see Levin. Levin stood still in the midst of the beehives and did
not call him.

He was glad of a chance to be alone to recover from the influence of
ordinary actual life, which had already depressed his happy mood. He
thought that he had already had time to lose his temper with Ivan, to
show coolness to his brother, and to talk flippantly with Katavasov.

"Can it have been only a momentary mood, and will it pass and leave no
trace?" he thought. But the same instant, going back to his mood, he
felt with delight that something new and important had happened to him.
Real life had only for a time overcast the spiritual peace he had found,
but it was still untouched within him.

Just as the bees, whirling round him, now menacing him and distracting
his attention, prevented him from enjoying complete physical peace,
forced him to restrain his movements to avoid them, so had the petty
cares that had swarmed about him from the moment he got into the trap
restricted his spiritual freedom; but that lasted only so long as he was
among them. Just as his bodily strength was still unaffected, in spite
of the bees, so too was the spiritual strength that he had just become
aware of.



Chapter 15


"Do you know, Kostya, with whom Sergey Ivanovitch traveled on his way
here?" said Dolly, doling out cucumbers and honey to the children; "with
Vronsky! He's going to Servia."

"And not alone; he's taking a squadron out with him at his own expense,"
said Katavasov.

"That's the right thing for him," said Levin. "Are volunteers still
going out then?" he added, glancing at Sergey Ivanovitch.

Sergey Ivanovitch did not answer. He was carefully with a blunt knife
getting a live bee covered with sticky honey out of a cup full of white
honeycomb.

"I should think so! You should have seen what was going on at the
station yesterday!" said Katavasov, biting with a juicy sound into a
cucumber.

"Well, what is one to make of it? For mercy's sake, do explain to me,
Sergey Ivanovitch, where are all those volunteers going, whom are they
fighting with?" asked the old prince, unmistakably taking up a
conversation that had sprung up in Levin's absence.

"With the Turks," Sergey Ivanovitch answered, smiling serenely, as he
extricated the bee, dark with honey and helplessly kicking, and put it
with the knife on a stout aspen leaf.

"But who has declared war on the Turks?--Ivan Ivanovitch Ragozov and
Countess Lidia Ivanovna, assisted by Madame Stahl?"

"No one has declared war, but people sympathize with their neighbors'
sufferings and are eager to help them," said Sergey Ivanovitch.

"But the prince is not speaking of help," said Levin, coming to the
assistance of his father-in-law, "but of war. The prince says that
private persons cannot take part in war without the permission of the
government."

"Kostya, mind, that's a bee! Really, they'll sting us!" said Dolly,
waving away a wasp.

"But that's not a bee, it's a wasp," said Levin.

"Well now, well, what's your own theory?" Katavasov said to Levin with a
smile, distinctly challenging him to a discussion. "Why have not private
persons the right to do so?"

"Oh, my theory's this: war is on one side such a beastly, cruel, and
awful thing, that no one man, not to speak of a Christian, can
individually take upon himself the responsibility of beginning wars;
that can only be done by a government, which is called upon to do this,
and is driven inevitably into war. On the other hand, both political
science and common sense teach us that in matters of state, and
especially in the matter of war, private citizens must forego their
personal individual will."

Sergey Ivanovitch and Katavasov had their replies ready, and both began
speaking at the same time.

"But the point is, my dear fellow, that there may be cases when the
government does not carry out the will of the citizens and then the
public asserts its will," said Katavasov.

But evidently Sergey Ivanovitch did not approve of this answer. His
brows contracted at Katavasov's words and he said something else.

"You don't put the matter in its true light. There is no question here
of a declaration of war, but simply the expression of a human Christian
feeling. Our brothers, one with us in religion and in race, are being
massacred. Even supposing they were not our brothers nor
fellow-Christians, but simply children, women, old people, feeling is
aroused and Russians go eagerly to help in stopping these atrocities.
Fancy, if you were going along the street and saw drunken men beating a
woman or a child--I imagine you would not stop to inquire whether war
had been declared on the men, but would throw yourself on them, and
protect the victim."

"But I should not kill them," said Levin.

"Yes, you would kill them."

"I don't know. If I saw that, I might give way to my impulse of the
moment, but I can't say beforehand. And such a momentary impulse there
is not, and there cannot be, in the case of the oppression of the
Slavonic peoples."

"Possibly for you there is not; but for others there is," said Sergey
Ivanovitch, frowning with displeasure. "There are traditions still
extant among the people of Slavs of the true faith suffering under the
yoke of the 'unclean sons of Hagar.' The people have heard of the
sufferings of their brethren and have spoken."

"Perhaps so," said Levin evasively; "but I don't see it. I'm one of the
people myself, and I don't feel it."

"Here am I too," said the old prince. "I've been staying abroad and
reading the papers, and I must own, up to the time of the Bulgarian
atrocities, I couldn't make out why it was all the Russians were all of
a sudden so fond of their Slavonic brethren, while I didn't feel the
slightest affection for them. I was very much upset, thought I was a
monster, or that it was the influence of Carlsbad on me. But since I
have been here, my mind's been set at rest. I see that there are people
besides me who're only interested in Russia, and not in their Slavonic
brethren. Here's Konstantin too."

"Personal opinions mean nothing in such a case," said Sergey Ivanovitch;
"it's not a matter of personal opinions when all Russia--the whole
people--has expressed its will."

"But excuse me, I don't see that. The people don't know anything about
it, if you come to that," said the old prince.

"Oh, papa!... how can you say that? And last Sunday in church?" said
Dolly, listening to the conversation. "Please give me a cloth," she said
to the old man, who was looking at the children with a smile. "Why, it's
not possible that all..."

"But what was it in church on Sunday? The priest had been told to read
that. He read it. They didn't understand a word of it. Then they were
told that there was to be a collection for a pious object in church;
well, they pulled out their halfpence and gave them, but what for they
couldn't say."

"The people cannot help knowing; the sense of their own destinies is
always in the people, and at such moments as the present that sense
finds utterance," said Sergey Ivanovitch with conviction, glancing at
the old bee-keeper.

The handsome old man, with black grizzled beard and thick silvery hair,
stood motionless, holding a cup of honey, looking down from the height
of his tall figure with friendly serenity at the gentlefolk, obviously
understanding nothing of their conversation and not caring to understand
it.

"That's so, no doubt," he said, with a significant shake of his head at
Sergey Ivanovitch's words.

"Here, then, ask him. He knows nothing about it and thinks nothing,"
said Levin. "Have you heard about the war, Mihalitch?" he said, turning
to him. "What they read in the church? What do you think about it? Ought
we to fight for the Christians?"

"What should we think? Alexander Nikolaevitch our Emperor has thought
for us; he thinks for us indeed in all things. It's clearer for him to
see. Shall I bring a bit more bread? Give the little lad some more?" he
said addressing Darya Alexandrovna and pointing to Grisha, who had
finished his crust.

"I don't need to ask," said Sergey Ivanovitch, "we have seen and are
seeing hundreds and hundreds of people who give up everything to serve a
just cause, come from every part of Russia, and directly and clearly
express their thought and aim. They bring their halfpence or go
themselves and say directly what for. What does it mean?"

"It means, to my thinking," said Levin, who was beginning to get warm,
"that among eighty millions of people there can always be found not
hundreds, as now, but tens of thousands of people who have lost caste,
ne'er-do-wells, who are always ready to go anywhere--to Pogatchev's
bands, to Khiva, to Serbia..."

"I tell you that it's not a case of hundreds or of ne'er-do-wells, but
the best representatives of the people!" said Sergey Ivanovitch, with as
much irritation as if he were defending the last penny of his fortune.
"And what of the subscriptions? In this case it is a whole people
directly expressing their will."

"That word 'people' is so vague," said Levin. "Parish clerks, teachers,
and one in a thousand of the peasants, maybe, know what it's all about.
The rest of the eighty millions, like Mihalitch, far from expressing
their will, haven't the faintest idea what there is for them to express
their will about. What right have we to say that this is the people's
will?"



Chapter 16


Sergey Ivanovitch, being practiced in argument, did not reply, but at
once turned the conversation to another aspect of the subject.

"Oh, if you want to learn the spirit of the people by arithmetical
computation, of course it's very difficult to arrive at it. And voting
has not been introduced among us and cannot be introduced, for it does
not express the will of the people; but there are other ways of reaching
that. It is felt in the air, it is felt by the heart. I won't speak of
those deep currents which are astir in the still ocean of the people,
and which are evident to every unprejudiced man; let us look at society
in the narrow sense. All the most diverse sections of the educated
public, hostile before, are merged in one. Every division is at an end,
all the public organs say the same thing over and over again, all feel
the mighty torrent that has overtaken them and is carrying them in one
direction."

"Yes, all the newspapers do say the same thing," said the prince.
"That's true. But so it is the same thing that all the frogs croak
before a storm. One can hear nothing for them."

"Frogs or no frogs, I'm not the editor of a paper and I don't want to
defend them; but I am speaking of the unanimity in the intellectual
world," said Sergey Ivanovitch, addressing his brother. Levin would have
answered, but the old prince interrupted him.

"Well, about that unanimity, that's another thing, one may say," said
the prince. "There's my son-in-law, Stepan Arkadyevitch, you know him.
He's got a place now on the committee of a commission and something or
other, I don't remember. Only there's nothing to do in it--why, Dolly,
it's no secret!--and a salary of eight thousand. You try asking him
whether his post is of use, he'll prove to you that it's most necessary.
And he's a truthful man too, but there's no refusing to believe in the
utility of eight thousand roubles."

"Yes, he asked me to give a message to Darya Alexandrovna about the
post," said Sergey Ivanovitch reluctantly, feeling the prince's remark
to be ill-timed.

"So it is with the unanimity of the press. That's been explained to me:
as soon as there's war their incomes are doubled. How can they help
believing in the destinies of the people and the Slavonic races ... and
all that?"

"I don't care for many of the papers, but that's unjust," said Sergey
Ivanovitch.

"I would only make one condition," pursued the old prince. "Alphonse
Karr said a capital thing before the war with Prussia: 'You consider war
to be inevitable? Very good. Let everyone who advocates war be enrolled
in a special regiment of advance-guards, for the front of every storm,
of every attack, to lead them all!'"

"A nice lot the editors would make!" said Katavasov, with a loud roar,
as he pictured the editors he knew in this picked legion.

"But they'd run," said Dolly, "they'd only be in the way."

"Oh, if they ran away, then we'd have grape-shot or Cossacks with whips
behind them," said the prince.

"But that's a joke, and a poor one too, if you'll excuse my saying so,
prince," said Sergey Ivanovitch.

"I don't see that it was a joke, that..." Levin was beginning, but
Sergey Ivanovitch interrupted him.

"Every member of society is called upon to do his own special work,"
said he. "And men of thought are doing their work when they express
public opinion. And the single-hearted and full expression of public
opinion is the service of the press and a phenomenon to rejoice us at
the same time. Twenty years ago we should have been silent, but now we
have heard the voice of the Russian people, which is ready to rise as
one man and ready to sacrifice itself for its oppressed brethren; that
is a great step and a proof of strength."

"But it's not only making a sacrifice, but killing Turks," said Levin
timidly. "The people make sacrifices and are ready to make sacrifices
for their soul, but not for murder," he added, instinctively connecting
the conversation with the ideas that had been absorbing his mind.

"For their soul? That's a most puzzling expression for a natural science
man, do you understand? What sort of thing is the soul?" said Katavasov,
smiling.

"Oh, you know!"

"No, by God, I haven't the faintest idea!" said Katavasov with a loud
roar of laughter.

"'I bring not peace, but a sword,' says Christ," Sergey Ivanovitch
rejoined for his part, quoting as simply as though it were the easiest
thing to understand the very passage that had always puzzled Levin most.

"That's so, no doubt," the old man repeated again. He was standing near
them and responded to a chance glance turned in his direction.

"Ah, my dear fellow, you're defeated, utterly defeated!" cried Katavasov
good-humoredly.

Levin reddened with vexation, not at being defeated, but at having
failed to control himself and being drawn into argument.

"No, I can't argue with them," he thought; "they wear impenetrable
armor, while I'm naked."

He saw that it was impossible to convince his brother and Katavasov, and
he saw even less possibility of himself agreeing with them. What they
advocated was the very pride of intellect that had almost been his ruin.
He could not admit that some dozens of men, among them his brother, had
the right, on the ground of what they were told by some hundreds of glib
volunteers swarming to the capital, to say that they and the newspapers
were expressing the will and feeling of the people, and a feeling which
was expressed in vengeance and murder. He could not admit this, because
he neither saw the expression of such feelings in the people among whom
he was living, nor found them in himself (and he could not but consider
himself one of the persons making up the Russian people), and most of
all because he, like the people, did not know and could not know what is
for the general good, though he knew beyond a doubt that this general
good could be attained only by the strict observance of that law of
right and wrong which has been revealed to every man, and therefore he
could not wish for war or advocate war for any general objects whatever.
He said as Mihalitch did and the people, who had expressed their feeling
in the traditional invitations of the Varyagi: "Be princes and rule over
us. Gladly we promise complete submission. All the labor, all
humiliations, all sacrifices we take upon ourselves; but we will not
judge and decide." And now, according to Sergey Ivanovitch's account,
the people had foregone this privilege they had bought at such a costly
price.

He wanted to say too that if public opinion were an infallible guide,
then why were not revolutions and the commune as lawful as the movement
in favor of the Slavonic peoples? But these were merely thoughts that
could settle nothing. One thing could be seen beyond doubt--that was
that at the actual moment the discussion was irritating Sergey
Ivanovitch, and so it was wrong to continue it. And Levin ceased
speaking and then called the attention of his guests to the fact that
the storm clouds were gathering, and that they had better be going home
before it rained.



Chapter 17


The old prince and Sergey Ivanovitch got into the trap and drove off;
the rest of the party hastened homewards on foot.

But the storm-clouds, turning white and then black, moved down so
quickly that they had to quicken their pace to get home before the rain.
The foremost clouds, lowering and black as soot-laden smoke, rushed with
extraordinary swiftness over the sky. They were still two hundred paces
from home and a gust of wind had already blown up, and every second the
downpour might be looked for.

The children ran ahead with frightened and gleeful shrieks. Darya
Alexandrovna, struggling painfully with her skirts that clung round her
legs, was not walking, but running, her eyes fixed on the children. The
men of the party, holding their hats on, strode with long steps beside
her. They were just at the steps when a big drop fell splashing on the
edge of the iron guttering. The children and their elders after them ran
into the shelter of the house, talking merrily.

"Katerina Alexandrovna?" Levin asked of Agafea Mihalovna, who met them
with kerchiefs and rugs in the hall.

"We thought she was with you," she said.

"And Mitya?"

"In the copse, he must be, and the nurse with him."

Levin snatched up the rugs and ran towards the copse.

In that brief interval of time the storm clouds had moved on, covering
the sun so completely that it was dark as an eclipse. Stubbornly, as
though insisting on its rights, the wind stopped Levin, and tearing the
leaves and flowers off the lime trees and stripping the white birch
branches into strange unseemly nakedness, it twisted everything on one
side--acacias, flowers, burdocks, long grass, and tall tree-tops. The
peasant girls working in the garden ran shrieking into shelter in the
servants' quarters. The streaming rain had already flung its white veil
over all the distant forest and half the fields close by, and was
rapidly swooping down upon the copse. The wet of the rain spurting up in
tiny drops could be smelt in the air.

Holding his head bent down before him, and struggling with the wind that
strove to tear the wraps away from him, Levin was moving up to the copse
and had just caught sight of something white behind the oak tree, when
there was a sudden flash, the whole earth seemed on fire, and the vault
of heaven seemed crashing overhead. Opening his blinded eyes, Levin
gazed through the thick veil of rain that separated him now from the
copse, and to his horror the first thing he saw was the green crest of
the familiar oak-tree in the middle of the copse uncannily changing its
position. "Can it have been struck?" Levin hardly had time to think
when, moving more and more rapidly, the oak tree vanished behind the
other trees, and he heard the crash of the great tree falling upon the
others.

The flash of lightning, the crash of thunder, and the instantaneous
chill that ran through him were all merged for Levin in one sense of
terror.

"My God! my God! not on them!" he said.

And though he thought at once how senseless was his prayer that they
should not have been killed by the oak which had fallen now, he repeated
it, knowing that he could do nothing better than utter this senseless
prayer.

Running up to the place where they usually went, he did not find them
there.

They were at the other end of the copse under an old lime-tree; they
were calling him. Two figures in dark dresses (they had been light
summer dresses when they started out) were standing bending over
something. It was Kitty with the nurse. The rain was already ceasing,
and it was beginning to get light when Levin reached them. The nurse was
not wet on the lower part of her dress, but Kitty was drenched through,
and her soaked clothes clung to her. Though the rain was over, they
still stood in the same position in which they had been standing when
the storm broke. Both stood bending over a perambulator with a green
umbrella.

"Alive? Unhurt? Thank God!" he said, splashing with his soaked boots
through the standing water and running up to them.

Kitty's rosy wet face was turned towards him, and she smiled timidly
under her shapeless sopped hat.

"Aren't you ashamed of yourself? I can't think how you can be so
reckless!" he said angrily to his wife.

"It wasn't my fault, really. We were just meaning to go, when he made
such a to-do that we had to change him. We were just..." Kitty began
defending herself.

Mitya was unharmed, dry, and still fast asleep.

"Well, thank God! I don't know what I'm saying!"

They gathered up the baby's wet belongings; the nurse picked up the baby
and carried it. Levin walked beside his wife, and, penitent for having
been angry, he squeezed her hand when the nurse was not looking.



Chapter 18


During the whole of that day, in the extremely different conversations
in which he took part, only as it were with the top layer of his mind,
in spite of the disappointment of not finding the change he expected in
himself, Levin had been all the while joyfully conscious of the fulness
of his heart.

After the rain it was too wet to go for a walk; besides, the storm
clouds still hung about the horizon, and gathered here and there, black
and thundery, on the rim of the sky. The whole party spent the rest of
the day in the house.

No more discussions sprang up; on the contrary, after dinner every one
was in the most amiable frame of mind.

At first Katavasov amused the ladies by his original jokes, which always
pleased people on their first acquaintance with him. Then Sergey
Ivanovitch induced him to tell them about the very interesting
observations he had made on the habits and characteristics of common
houseflies, and their life. Sergey Ivanovitch, too, was in good spirits,
and at tea his brother drew him on to explain his views of the future of
the Eastern question, and he spoke so simply and so well, that everyone
listened eagerly.

Kitty was the only one who did not hear it all--she was summoned to give
Mitya his bath.

A few minutes after Kitty had left the room she sent for Levin to come
to the nursery.

Leaving his tea, and regretfully interrupting the interesting
conversation, and at the same time uneasily wondering why he had been
sent for, as this only happened on important occasions, Levin went to
the nursery.

Although he had been much interested by Sergey Ivanovitch's views of the
new epoch in history that would be created by the emancipation of forty
millions of men of Slavonic race acting with Russia, a conception quite
new to him, and although he was disturbed by uneasy wonder at being sent
for by Kitty, as soon as he came out of the drawing room and was alone,
his mind reverted at once to the thoughts of the morning. And all the
theories of the significance of the Slav element in the history of the
world seemed to him so trivial compared with what was passing in his own
soul, that he instantly forgot it all and dropped back into the same
frame of mind that he had been in that morning.

He did not, as he had done at other times, recall the whole train of
thought--that he did not need. He fell back at once into the feeling
which had guided him, which was connected with those thoughts, and he
found that feeling in his soul even stronger and more definite than
before. He did not, as he had had to do with previous attempts to find
comforting arguments, need to revive a whole chain of thought to find
the feeling. Now, on the contrary, the feeling of joy and peace was
keener than ever, and thought could not keep pace with feeling.

He walked across the terrace and looked at two stars that had come out
in the darkening sky, and suddenly he remembered. "Yes, looking at the
sky, I thought that the dome that I see is not a deception, and then I
thought something, I shirked facing something," he mused. "But whatever
it was, there can be no disproving it! I have but to think, and all will
come clear!"

Just as he was going into the nursery he remembered what it was he had
shirked facing. It was that if the chief proof of the Divinity was His
revelation of what is right, how is it this revelation is confined to
the Christian church alone? What relation to this revelation have the
beliefs of the Buddhists, Mohammedans, who preached and did good too?

It seemed to him that he had an answer to this question; but he had not
time to formulate it to himself before he went into the nursery.

Kitty was standing with her sleeves tucked up over the baby in the bath.
Hearing her husband's footstep, she turned towards him, summoning him to
her with her smile. With one hand she was supporting the fat baby that
lay floating and sprawling on its back, while with the other she
squeezed the sponge over him.

"Come, look, look!" she said, when her husband came up to her. "Agafea
Mihalovna's right. He knows us!"

Mitya had on that day given unmistakable, incontestable signs of
recognizing all his friends.

As soon as Levin approached the bath, the experiment was tried, and it
was completely successful. The cook, sent for with this object, bent
over the baby. He frowned and shook his head disapprovingly. Kitty bent
down to him, he gave her a beaming smile, propped his little hands on
the sponge and chirruped, making such a queer little contented sound
with his lips, that Kitty and the nurse were not alone in their
admiration. Levin, too, was surprised and delighted.

The baby was taken out of the bath, drenched with water, wrapped in
towels, dried, and after a piercing scream, handed to his mother.

"Well, I am glad you are beginning to love him," said Kitty to her
husband, when she had settled herself comfortably in her usual place,
with the baby at her breast. "I am so glad! It had begun to distress me.
You said you had no feeling for him."

"No; did I say that? I only said I was disappointed."

"What! disappointed in him?"

"Not disappointed in him, but in my own feeling; I had expected more. I
had expected a rush of new delightful emotion to come as a surprise. And
then instead of that--disgust, pity..."

She listened attentively, looking at him over the baby, while she put
back on her slender fingers the rings she had taken off while giving
Mitya his bath.

"And most of all, at there being far more apprehension and pity than
pleasure. Today, after that fright during the storm, I understand how I
love him."

Kitty's smile was radiant.

"Were you very much frightened?" she said. "So was I too, but I feel it
more now that it's over. I'm going to look at the oak. How nice
Katavasov is! And what a happy day we've had altogether. And you're so
nice with Sergey Ivanovitch, when you care to be.... Well, go back to
them. It's always so hot and steamy here after the bath."



Chapter 19


Going out of the nursery and being again alone, Levin went back at once
to the thought, in which there was something not clear.

Instead of going into the drawing room, where he heard voices, he
stopped on the terrace, and leaning his elbows on the parapet, he gazed
up at the sky.

It was quite dark now, and in the south, where he was looking, there
were no clouds. The storm had drifted on to the opposite side of the
sky, and there were flashes of lightning and distant thunder from that
quarter. Levin listened to the monotonous drip from the lime trees in
the garden, and looked at the triangle of stars he knew so well, and the
Milky Way with its branches that ran through its midst. At each flash of
lightning the Milky Way, and even the bright stars, vanished, but as
soon as the lightning died away, they reappeared in their places as
though some hand had flung them back with careful aim.

"Well, what is it perplexes me?" Levin said to himself, feeling
beforehand that the solution of his difficulties was ready in his soul,
though he did not know it yet. "Yes, the one unmistakable, incontestable
manifestation of the Divinity is the law of right and wrong, which has
come into the world by revelation, and which I feel in myself, and in
the recognition of which--I don't make myself, but whether I will or
not--I am made one with other men in one body of believers, which is
called the church. Well, but the Jews, the Mohammedans, the Confucians,
the Buddhists--what of them?" he put to himself the question he had
feared to face. "Can these hundreds of millions of men be deprived of
that highest blessing without which life has no meaning?" He pondered a
moment, but immediately corrected himself. "But what am I questioning?"
he said to himself. "I am questioning the relation to Divinity of all
the different religions of all mankind. I am questioning the universal
manifestation of God to all the world with all those misty blurs. What
am I about? To me individually, to my heart has been revealed a
knowledge beyond all doubt, and unattainable by reason, and here I am
obstinately trying to express that knowledge in reason and words.

"Don't I know that the stars don't move?" he asked himself, gazing at
the bright planet which had shifted its position up to the topmost twig
of the birch-tree. "But looking at the movements of the stars, I can't
picture to myself the rotation of the earth, and I'm right in saying
that the stars move.

"And could the astronomers have understood and calculated anything, if
they had taken into account all the complicated and varied motions of
the earth? All the marvelous conclusions they have reached about the
distances, weights, movements, and deflections of the heavenly bodies
are only founded on the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies about a
stationary earth, on that very motion I see before me now, which has
been so for millions of men during long ages, and was and will be always
alike, and can always be trusted. And just as the conclusions of the
astronomers would have been vain and uncertain if not founded on
observations of the seen heavens, in relation to a single meridian and a
single horizon, so would my conclusions be vain and uncertain if not
founded on that conception of right, which has been and will be always
alike for all men, which has been revealed to me as a Christian, and
which can always be trusted in my soul. The question of other religions
and their relations to Divinity I have no right to decide, and no
possibility of deciding."

"Oh, you haven't gone in then?" he heard Kitty's voice all at once, as
she came by the same way to the drawing-room.

"What is it? you're not worried about anything?" she said, looking
intently at his face in the starlight.

But she could not have seen his face if a flash of lightning had not
hidden the stars and revealed it. In that flash she saw his face
distinctly, and seeing him calm and happy, she smiled at him.

"She understands," he thought; "she knows what I'm thinking about. Shall
I tell her or not? Yes, I'll tell her." But at the moment he was about
to speak, she began speaking.

"Kostya! do something for me," she said; "go into the corner room and
see if they've made it all right for Sergey Ivanovitch. I can't very
well. See if they've put the new wash stand in it."

"Very well, I'll go directly," said Levin, standing up and kissing her.

"No, I'd better not speak of it," he thought, when she had gone in
before him. "It is a secret for me alone, of vital importance for me,
and not to be put into words.

"This new feeling has not changed me, has not made me happy and
enlightened all of a sudden, as I had dreamed, just like the feeling for
my child. There was no surprise in this either. Faith--or not faith--I
don't know what it is--but this feeling has come just as imperceptibly
through suffering, and has taken firm root in my soul.

"I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman,
falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; there
will be still the same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and
other people, even my wife; I shall still go on scolding her for my own
terror, and being remorseful for it; I shall still be as unable to
understand with my reason why I pray, and I shall still go on praying;
but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to
me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it
has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into
it."