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
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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 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 areat the heart
of affairs and of the worldis the talk all of war, even here
amid fieldwork and the calm of naturewhich townsfolk consider characteristic of the countryrumors 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 injuriesand 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-pow168
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erful 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 selfsatisfied.
‘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.
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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 passagestwenty times repeatedof 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
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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
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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
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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 sis
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ter-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
