Prince Hippolyte, under pretense of helping, was in everyone’s way.
‘Allow me, sir,’ said Prince Andrew in Russian in a cold,
disagreeable tone to Prince Hippolyte who was blocking his
path.
‘I am expecting you, Pierre,’ said the same voice, but gently and affectionately.
The postilion started, the carriage wheels rattled. Prince
Hippolyte laughed spasmodically as he stood in the porch
waiting for the vicomte whom he had promised to take
home.
‘Well, mon cher,’ said the vicomte, having seated himself
beside Hippolyte in the carriage, ‘your little princess is very
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nice, very nice indeed, quite French,’ and he kissed the tips
of his fingers. Hippolyte burst out laughing.
‘Do you know, you are a terrible chap for all your innocent airs,’ continued the vicomte. ‘I pity the poor husband,
that little officer who gives himself the airs of a monarch.’
Hippolyte spluttered again, and amid his laughter said,
‘And you were saying that the Russian ladies are not equal
to the French? One has to know how to deal with them.’
Pierre reaching the house first went into Prince Andrew’s
study like one quite at home, and from habit immediately
lay down on the sofa, took from the shelf the first book that
came to his hand (it was Caesar’s Commentaries), and resting on his elbow, began reading it in the middle.
‘What have you done to Mlle Scherer? She will be quite
ill now,’ said Prince Andrew, as he entered the study, rubbing his small white hands.
Pierre turned his whole body, making the sofa creak. He
lifted his eager face to Prince Andrew, smiled, and waved
his hand.
‘That abbe is very interesting but he does not see the
thing in the right light…. In my opinion perpetual peace is
possible butI do not know how to express it… not by a balance of political power…’
It was evident that Prince Andrew was not interested in
such abstract conversation.
‘One can’t everywhere say all one thinks, mon cher. Well,
have you at last decided on anything? Are you going to be a
guardsman or a diplomatist?’ asked Prince Andrew after a
momentary silence.
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War and Peace
Pierre sat up on the sofa, with his legs tucked under
him.
‘Really, I don’t yet know. I don’t like either the one or the
other.’
‘But you must decide on something! Your father expects
it.’
Pierre at the age of ten had been sent abroad with an abbe
as tutor, and had remained away till he was twenty. When
he returned to Moscow his father dismissed the abbe and
said to the young man, ‘Now go to Petersburg, look round,
and choose your profession. I will agree to anything. Here
is a letter to Prince Vasili, and here is money. Write to me
all about it, and I will help you in everything.’ Pierre had already been choosing a career for three months, and had not
decided on anything. It was about this choice that Prince
Andrew was speaking. Pierre rubbed his forehead.
‘But he must be a Freemason,’ said he, referring to the
abbe whom he had met that evening.
‘That is all nonsense.’ Prince Andrew again interrupted him, ‘let us talk business. Have you been to the Horse
Guards?’
‘No, I have not; but this is what I have been thinking and
wanted to tell you. There is a war now against Napoleon. If it
were a war for freedom I could understand it and should be
the first to enter the army; but to help England and Austria
against the greatest man in the world is not right.’
Prince Andrew only shrugged his shoulders at Pierre’s
childish words. He put on the air of one who finds it impossible to reply to such nonsense, but it would in fact have
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been difficult to give any other answer than the one Prince
Andrew gave to this naive question.
‘If no one fought except on his own conviction, there
would be no wars,’ he said.
‘And that would be splendid,’ said Pierre.
Prince Andrew smiled ironically.
‘Very likely it would be splendid, but it will never come
about..’
‘Well, why are you going to the war?’ asked Pierre.
‘What for? I don’t know. I must. Besides that I am going…’ He paused. ‘I am going because the life I am leading
here does not suit me!’
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War and Peace
Chapter VII
The rustle of a woman’s dress was heard in the next room.
Prince Andrew shook himself as if waking up, and his face
assumed the look it had had in Anna Pavlovna’s drawing
room. Pierre removed his feet from the sofa. The princess
came in. She had changed her gown for a house dress as
fresh and elegant as the other. Prince Andrew rose and politely placed a chair for her.
‘How is it,’ she began, as usual in French, settling down
briskly and fussily in the easy chair, ‘how is it Annette never
got married? How stupid you men all are not to have married her! Excuse me for saying so, but you have no sense
about women. What an argumentative fellow you are, Monsieur Pierre!’
‘And I am still arguing with your husband. I can’t understand why he wants to go to the war,’ replied Pierre,
addressing the princess with none of the embarrassment so
commonly shown by young men in their intercourse with
young women.
The princess started. Evidently Pierre’s words touched
her to the quick.
‘Ah, that is just what I tell him!’ said she. ‘I don’t understand it; I don’t in the least understand why men can’t live
without wars. How is it that we women don’t want anything
of the kind, don’t need it? Now you shall judge between us.
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I always tell him: Here he is Uncle’s aide-de-camp, a most
brilliant position. He is so well known, so much appreciated
by everyone. The other day at the Apraksins’ I heard a lady
asking, ‘Is that the famous Prince Andrew?’ I did indeed.’
She laughed. ‘He is so well received everywhere. He might
easily become aide-de-camp to the Emperor. You know the
Emperor spoke to him most graciously. Annette and I were
speaking of how to arrange it. What do you think?’
Pierre looked at his friend and, noticing that he did not
like the conversation, gave no reply.
‘When are you starting?’ he asked.
‘Oh, don’t speak of his going, don’t! I won’t hear it spoken of,’ said the princess in the same petulantly playful tone
in which she had spoken to Hippolyte in the drawing room
and which was so plainly ill-suited to the family circle of
which Pierre was almost a member. ‘Today when I remembered that all these delightful associations must be broken
off… and then you know, Andre…’ (she looked significantly
at her husband) ‘I’m afraid, I’m afraid!’ she whispered, and
a shudder ran down her back.
Her husband looked at her as if surprised to notice that
someone besides Pierre and himself was in the room, and
addressed her in a tone of frigid politeness.
‘What is it you are afraid of, Lise? I don’t understand,’
said he.
‘There, what egotists men all are: all, all egotists! Just for
a whim of his own, goodness only knows why, he leaves me
and locks me up alone in the country.’
‘With my father and sister, remember,’ said Prince An44
War and Peace
drew gently.
‘Alone all the same, without my friends…. And he expects me not to be afraid.’
Her tone was now querulous and her lip drawn up, giving
her not a joyful, but an animal, squirrel-like expression. She
paused as if she felt it indecorous to speak of her pregnancy
before Pierre, though the gist of the matter lay in that.
‘I still can’t understand what you are afraid of,’ said
Prince Andrew slowly, not taking his eyes off his wife.
The princess blushed, and raised her arms with a gesture
of despair.
‘No, Andrew, I must say you have changed. Oh, how you
have..’
‘Your doctor tells you to go to bed earlier,’ said Prince
Andrew. ‘You had better go.’
The princess said nothing, but suddenly her short downy
lip quivered. Prince Andrew rose, shrugged his shoulders,
and walked about the room.
Pierre looked over his spectacles with naive surprise,
now at him and now at her, moved as if about to rise too,
but changed his mind.
‘Why should I mind Monsieur Pierre being here?’ exclaimed the little princess suddenly, her pretty face all at
once distorted by a tearful grimace. ‘I have long wanted to
ask you, Andrew, why you have changed so to me? What
have I done to you? You are going to the war and have no
pity for me. Why is it?’
‘Lise!’ was all Prince Andrew said. But that one word expressed an entreaty, a threat, and above all conviction that
45
she would herself regret her words. But she went on hurriedly:
‘You treat me like an invalid or a child. I see it all! Did
you behave like that six months ago?’
‘Lise, I beg you to desist,’ said Prince Andrew still more
emphatically.
Pierre, who had been growing more and more agitated
as he listened to all this, rose and approached the princess.
He seemed unable to bear the sight of tears and was ready
to cry himself.
‘Calm yourself, Princess! It seems so to you because… I
assure you I myself have experienced… and so… because…
No, excuse me! An outsider is out of place here… No, don’t
distress yourself… Good-by!’
Prince Andrew caught him by the hand.
‘No, wait, Pierre! The princess is too kind to wish to deprive me of the pleasure of spending the evening with you.’
‘No, he thinks only of himself,’ muttered the princess
without restraining her angry tears.
‘Lise!’ said Prince Andrew dryly, raising his voice to the
pitch which indicates that patience is exhausted.
Suddenly the angry, squirrel-like expression of the princess’ pretty face changed into a winning and piteous look
of fear. Her beautiful eyes glanced askance at her husband’s
face, and her own assumed the timid, deprecating expression of a dog when it rapidly but feebly wags its drooping
tail.
‘Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!’ she muttered, and lifting her
dress with one hand she went up to her husband and kissed
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him on the forehead.
‘Good night, Lise,’ said he, rising and courteously kissing
her hand as he would have done to a stranger.
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Chapter VIII
The friends were silent. Neither cared to begin talking.
Pierre continually glanced at Prince Andrew; Prince Andrew rubbed his forehead with his small hand.
‘Let us go
