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.
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