length of time without male society, on Anatole’s appearance all the three women of Prince Bolkonski’s household
felt that their life had not been real till then. Their powers
of reasoning, feeling, and observing immediately increased
tenfold, and their life, which seemed to have been passed in
darkness, was suddenly lit up by a new brightness, full of
significance.
Princess Mary grew quite unconscious of her face and
coiffure. The handsome open face of the man who might
perhaps be her husband absorbed all her attention. He
seemed to her kind, brave, determined, manly, and magnanimous. She felt convinced of that. Thousands of dreams
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of a future family life continually rose in her imagination.
She drove them away and tried to conceal them.
‘But am I not too cold with him?’ thought the princess. ‘I
try to be reserved because in the depth of my soul I feel too
near to him already, but then he cannot know what I think
of him and may imagine that I do not like him.’
And Princess Mary tried, but could not manage, to be
cordial to her new guest. ‘Poor girl, she’s devilish ugly!’
thought Anatole.
Mademoiselle Bourienne, also roused to great excitement
by Anatole’s arrival, thought in another way. Of course, she,
a handsome young woman without any definite position,
without relations or even a country, did not intend to devote her life to serving Prince Bolkonski, to reading aloud
to him and being friends with Princess Mary. Mademoiselle
Bourienne had long been waiting for a Russian prince who,
able to appreciate at a glance her superiority to the plain,
badly dressed, ungainly Russian princesses, would fall in
love with her and carry her off; and here at last was a Russian prince. Mademoiselle Bourienne knew a story, heard
from her aunt but finished in her own way, which she liked
to repeat to herself. It was the story of a girl who had been
seduced, and to whom her poor mother (sa pauvre mere)
appeared, and reproached her for yielding to a man without
being married. Mademoiselle Bourienne was often touched
to tears as in imagination she told this story to him, her seducer. And now he, a real Russian prince, had appeared. He
would carry her away and then sa pauvre mere would appear and he would marry her. So her future shaped itself
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in Mademoiselle Bourienne’s head at the very time she was
talking to Anatole about Paris. It was not calculation that
guided her (she did not even for a moment consider what
she should do), but all this had long been familiar to her,
and now that Anatole had appeared it just grouped itself
around him and she wished and tried to please him as much
as possible.
The little princess, like an old war horse that hears the
trumpet, unconsciously and quite forgetting her condition,
prepared for the familiar gallop of coquetry, without any
ulterior motive or any struggle, but with naive and lighthearted gaiety.
Although in female society Anatole usually assumed the
role of a man tired of being run after by women, his vanity
was flattered by the spectacle of his power over these three
women. Besides that, he was beginning to feel for the pretty
and provocative Mademoiselle Bourienne that passionate
animal feeling which was apt to master him with great suddenness and prompt him to the coarsest and most reckless
actions.
After tea, the company went into the sitting room and
Princess Mary was asked to play on the clavichord. Anatole, laughing and in high spirits, came and leaned on his
elbows, facing her and beside Mademoiselle Bourienne.
Princess Mary felt his look with a painfully joyous emotion.
Her favorite sonata bore her into a most intimately poetic
world and the look she felt upon her made that world still
more poetic. But Anatole’s expression, though his eyes were
fixed on her, referred not to her but to the movements of
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Mademoiselle Bourienne’s little foot, which he was then
touching with his own under the clavichord. Mademoiselle
Bourienne was also looking at Princess Mary, and in her
lovely eyes there was a look of fearful joy and hope that was
also new to the princess.
‘How she loves me!’ thought Princess Mary. ‘How happy
I am now, and how happy I may be with such a friend and
such a husband! Husband? Can it be possible?’ she thought,
not daring to look at his face, but still feeling his eyes gazing at her.
In the evening, after supper, when all were about to retire, Anatole kissed Princess Mary’s hand. She did not know
how she found the courage, but she looked straight into his
handsome face as it came near to her shortsighted eyes.
Turning from Princess Mary he went up and kissed Mademoiselle Bourienne’s hand. (This was not etiquette, but
then he did everything so simply and with such assurance!)
Mademoiselle Bourienne flushed, and gave the princess a
frightened look.
‘What delicacy! ‘ thought the princess. ‘Is it possible that
Amelie’ (Mademoiselle Bourienne) ‘thinks I could be jealous of her, and not value her pure affection and devotion
to me?’ She went up to her and kissed her warmly. Anatole
went up to kiss the little princess’ hand.
‘No! No! No! When your father writes to tell me that you
are behaving well I will give you my hand to kiss. Not till
then!’ she said. And smilingly raising a finger at him, she
left the room.
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Chapter V
They all separated, but, except Anatole who fell asleep
as soon as he got into bed, all kept awake a long time that
night.
‘Is he really to be my husband, this stranger who is so
kindyes, kind, that is the chief thing,’ thought Princess
Mary; and fear, which she had seldom experienced, came
upon her. She feared to look round, it seemed to her that
someone was there standing behind the screen in the dark
corner. And this someone was hethe deviland he was also
this man with the white forehead, black eyebrows, and red
lips.
She rang for her maid and asked her to sleep in her
room.
Mademoiselle Bourienne walked up and down the conservatory for a long time that evening, vainly expecting
someone, now smiling at someone, now working herself up
to tears with the imaginary words of her pauvre mere rebuking her for her fall.
The little princess grumbled to her maid that her bed was
badly made. She could not lie either on her face or on her
side. Every position was awkward and uncomfortable, and
her burden oppressed her now more than ever because Anatole’s presence had vividly recalled to her the time when she
was not like that and when everything was light and gay.
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She sat in an armchair in her dressing jacket and nightcap
and Katie, sleepy and disheveled, beat and turned the heavy
feather bed for the third time, muttering to herself.
‘I told you it was all lumps and holes!’ the little princess
repeated. ‘I should be glad enough to fall asleep, so it’s not
my fault!’ and her voice quivered like that of a child about
to cry.
The old prince did not sleep either. Tikhon, half asleep,
heard him pacing angrily about and snorting. The old prince
felt as though he had been insulted through his daughter.
The insult was the more pointed because it concerned not
himself but another, his daughter, whom he loved more
than himself. He kept telling himself that he would consider the whole matter and decide what was right and how
he should act, but instead of that he only excited himself
more and more.
‘The first man that turns upshe forgets her father and everything else, runs upstairs and does up her hair and wags
her tail and is unlike herself! Glad to throw her father over!
And she knew I should notice it. Fr… fr… fr! And don’t I see
that that idiot had eyes only for BourienneI shall have to get
rid of her. And how is it she has not pride enough to see it?
If she has no pride for herself she might at least have some
for my sake! She must be shown that the blockhead thinks
nothing of her and looks only at Bourienne. No, she has no
pride… but I’ll let her see…’
The old prince knew that if he told his daughter she was
making a mistake and that Anatole meant to flirt with Mademoiselle Bourienne, Princess Mary’s self-esteem would
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be wounded and his point (not to be parted from her) would
be gained, so pacifying himself with this thought, he called
Tikhon and began to undress.
‘What devil brought them here?’ thought he, while Tikhon was putting the nightshirt over his dried-up old body
and gray-haired chest. ‘I never invited them. They came to
disturb my lifeand there is not much of it left.’
‘Devil take ‘em!’ he muttered, while his head was still
covered by the shirt.
Tikhon knew his master’s habit of sometimes thinking
aloud, and therefore met with unaltered looks the angrily inquisitive expression of the face that emerged from the
shirt.
‘Gone to bed?’ asked the prince.
Tikhon, like all good valets, instinctively knew the direction of his master’s thoughts. He guessed that the question
referred to Prince Vasili and his son.
‘They have gone to bed and put out their lights, your excellency.’
‘No good… no good…’ said the prince rapidly, and thrusting his feet into his slippers and his arms into the sleeves of
his dressing gown, he went to the couch on which he slept.
Though no words had passed between Anatole and Mademoiselle Bourienne, they quite understood one another
as to the first part of their romance, up to the appearance
of the pauvre mere; they understood that they had much to
say to one another in private and so they had been seeking
an opportunity since morning to meet one another alone.
When Princess Mary went to her father’s room at the usual
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hour, Mademoiselle Bourienne and Anatole met in the conservatory.
Princess Mary went to the door of the study with special
trepidation. It seemed to her that not only did everybody
know that her fate would be decided that day, but that they
also knew what she thought about it. She read this in Tikhon’s face and in that of Prince Vasili’s valet, who made her
a low bow when
