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
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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 at 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.
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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 fatherwho were never favorably disposed toward himwould 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 readingthe 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
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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
readyit 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.
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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 Pierrewho 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 Londoncould 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 uncom
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fortable.
‘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,
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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
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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
