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…’
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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,
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and did not know which had behaved better during those
awful momentsthe father who so remembered everything
and everybody at last and 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.
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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 viceidleness and
superstition, and only two virtuesactivity 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
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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
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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 aroundall 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
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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,
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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
