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
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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 slaveslafe wigh 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.’
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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
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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 defectthe shortness of her upper lip and
her half-open mouthseemed 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
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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, lacetrimmed, 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
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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.
15
‘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.
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War and Peace
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
