Ryazan estate and will keep it; you won’t require it. We’ll go
into the accounts later.’
By ‘what was due from the Ryazan estate’ Prince Vasi
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li meant several thousand rubles quitrent received from
Pierre’s peasants, which the prince had retained for himself.
In Petersburg, as in Moscow, Pierre found the same atmosphere of gentleness and affection. He could not refuse
the post, or rather the rank (for he did nothing), that Prince
Vasili had procured for him, and acquaintances, invitations, and social occupations were so numerous that, even
more than in Moscow, he felt a sense of bewilderment, bustle, and continual expectation of some good, always in front
of him but never attained.
Of his former bachelor acquaintances many were no
longer in Petersburg. The Guards had gone to the front;
Dolokhov had been reduced to the ranks; Anatole was
in the army somewhere in the provinces; Prince Andrew
was abroad; so Pierre had not the opportunity to spend
his nights as he used to like to spend them, or to open his
mind by intimate talks with a friend older than himself and
whom he respected. His whole time was taken up with dinners and balls and was spent chiefly at Prince Vasili’s house
in the company of the stout princess, his wife, and his beautiful daughter Helene.
Like the others, Anna Pavlovna Scherer showed Pierre
the change of attitude toward him that had taken place in
society.
Formerly in Anna Pavlovna’s presence, Pierre had always felt that what he was saying was out of place, tactless
and unsuitable, that remarks which seemed to him clever
while they formed in his mind became foolish as soon as
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he uttered them, while on the contrary Hippolyte’s stupidest remarks came out clever and apt. Now everything Pierre
said was charmant. Even if Anna Pavlovna did not say so,
he could see that she wished to and only refrained out of regard for his modesty.
In the beginning of the winter of 1805-6 Pierre received
one of Anna Pavlovna’s usual pink notes with an invitation to which was added: ‘You will find the beautiful Helene
here, whom it is always delightful to see.’
When he read that sentence, Pierre felt for the first time
that some link which other people recognized had grown
up between himself and Helene, and that thought both
alarmed him, as if some obligation were being imposed on
him which he could not fulfill, and pleased him as an entertaining supposition.
Anna Pavlovna’s ‘At Home’ was like the former one, only
the novelty she offered her guests this time was not Mortemart, but a diplomatist fresh from Berlin with the very
latest details of the Emperor Alexander’s visit to Potsdam,
and of how the two august friends had pledged themselves
in an indissoluble alliance to uphold the cause of justice
against the enemy of the human race. Anna Pavlovna received Pierre with a shade of melancholy, evidently relating
to the young man’s recent loss by the death of Count Bezukhov (everyone constantly considered it a duty to assure
Pierre that he was greatly afflicted by the death of the father
he had hardly known), and her melancholy was just like the
august melancholy she showed at the mention of her most
august Majesty the Empress Marya Fedorovna. Pierre felt
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flattered by this. Anna Pavlovna arranged the different
groups in her drawing room with her habitual skill. The
large group, in which were Prince Vasili and the generals,
had the benefit of the diplomat. Another group was at the
tea table. Pierre wished to join the former, but Anna Pavlovnawho was in the excited condition of a commander on a
battlefield to whom thousands of new and brilliant ideas occur which there is hardly time to put in actionseeing Pierre,
touched his sleeve with her finger, saying:
‘Wait a bit, I have something in view for you this evening.’ (She glanced at Helene and smiled at her.) ‘My dear
Helene, be charitable to my poor aunt who adores you. Go
and keep her company for ten minutes. And that it will not
be too dull, here is the dear count who will not refuse to accompany you.’
The beauty went to the aunt, but Anna Pavlovna detained
Pierre, looking as if she had to give some final necessary instructions.
‘Isn’t she exquisite?’ she said to Pierre, pointing to the
stately beauty as she glided away. ‘And how she carries herself! For so young a girl, such tact, such masterly perfection
of manner! It comes from her heart. Happy the man who
wins her! With her the least worldly of men would occupy
a most brilliant position in society. Don’t you think so? I
only wanted to know your opinion,’ and Anna Pavlovna let
Pierre go.
Pierre, in reply, sincerely agreed with her as to Helene’s
perfection of manner. If he ever thought of Helene, it was
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lently dignified in society.
The old aunt received the two young people in her corner, but seemed desirous of hiding her adoration for Helene
and inclined rather to show her fear of Anna Pavlovna.
She looked at her niece, as if inquiring what she was to do
with these people. On leaving them, Anna Pavlovna again
touched Pierre’s sleeve, saying: ‘I hope you won’t say that it
is dull in my house again,’ and she glanced at Helene.
Helene smiled, with a look implying that she did not
admit the possibility of anyone seeing her without being enchanted. The aunt coughed, swallowed, and said in French
that she was very pleased to see Helene, then she turned to
Pierre with the same words of welcome and the same look.
In the middle of a dull and halting conversation, Helene
turned to Pierre with the beautiful bright smile that she
gave to everyone. Pierre was so used to that smile, and it
had so little meaning for him, that he paid no attention to
it. The aunt was just speaking of a collection of snuffboxes
that had belonged to Pierre’s father, Count Bezukhov, and
showed them her own box. Princess Helene asked to see the
portrait of the aunt’s husband on the box lid.
‘That is probably the work of Vinesse,’ said Pierre, mentioning a celebrated miniaturist, and he leaned over the
table to take the snuffbox while trying to hear what was being said at the other table.
He half rose, meaning to go round, but the aunt handed
him the snuffbox, passing it across Helene’s back. Helene
stooped forward to make room, and looked round with a
smile. She was, as always at evening parties, wearing a dress
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such as was then fashionable, cut very low at front and back.
Her bust, which had always seemed like marble to Pierre,
was so close to him that his shortsighted eyes could not but
perceive the living charm of her neck and shoulders, so near
to his lips that he need only have bent his head a little to
have touched them. He was conscious of the warmth of her
body, the scent of perfume, and the creaking of her corset
as she moved. He did not see her marble beauty forming
a complete whole with her dress, but all the charm of her
body only covered by her garments. And having once seen
this he could not help being aware it, just as we cannot renew an illusion we have once seen through.
‘So you have never noticed before how beautiful I am?’
Helene seemed to say. ‘You had not noticed that I am a
woman? Yes, I am a woman who may belong to anyoneto you too,’ said her glance. And at that moment Pierre felt
that Helene not only could, but must, be his wife, and that it
could not be otherwise.
He knew this at that moment as surely as if he had been
standing at the altar with her. How and when this would be
he did not know, he did not even know if it would be a good
thing (he even felt, he knew not why, that it would be a bad
thing), but he knew it would happen.
Pierre dropped his eyes, lifted them again, and wished
once more to see her as a distant beauty far removed from
him, as he had seen her every day until then, but he could
no longer do it. He could not, any more than a man who
has been looking at a tuft of steppe grass through the mist
and taking it for a tree can again take it for a tree after he
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has once recognized it to be a tuft of grass. She was terribly
close to him. She already had power over him, and between
them there was no longer any barrier except the barrier of
his own will.
‘Well, I will leave you in your little corner,’ came Anna
Pavlovna’s voice, ‘I see you are all right there.’
And Pierre, anxiously trying to remember whether he
had done anything reprehensible, looked round with a
blush. It seemed to him that everyone knew what had happened to him as he knew it himself.
A little later when he went up to the large circle, Anna
Pavlovna said to him: ‘I hear you are refitting your Petersburg house?’
This was true. The architect had told him that it was necessary, and Pierre, without knowing why, was having his
enormous Petersburg house done up.
‘That’s a good thing, but don’t move from Prince Vasili’s.
It is good to have a friend like the prince,’ she said, smiling
at Prince Vasili. ‘I know something about that. Don’t I? And
you are still so young. You need advice. Don’t be angry with
me for exercising an old woman’s privilege.’
She paused, as women always do, expecting something
after they have mentioned their age. ‘If you marry it will be
a different thing,’ she continued, uniting them both in one
glance. Pierre did not look at Helene nor she at him. But she
was just as terribly close to him. He muttered something
and colored.
When he got home he could not sleep for a long time
for thinking of what had happened. What had happened?
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Nothing. He had merely understood that the woman he had
known as a child, of whom when her beauty was mentioned
he
