the door.
They entered the elegant, newly decorated, and luxurious dining room. Everything from the table napkins to the
silver, china, and glass bore that imprint of newness found
in the households of the newly married. Halfway through
supper Prince Andrew leaned his elbows on the table and,
with a look of nervous agitation such as Pierre had never before seen on his face, began to talkas one who has long had
something on his mind and suddenly determines to speak
out.
‘Never, never marry, my dear fellow! That’s my advice:
never marry till you can say to yourself that you have done
all you are capable of, and until you have ceased to love the
woman of your choice and have seen her plainly as she is, or
else you will make a cruel and irrevocable mistake. Marry
when you are old and good for nothingor all that is good
and noble in you will be lost. It will all be wasted on trifles.
Yes! Yes! Yes! Don’t look at me with such surprise. If you
marry expecting anything from yourself in the future, you
will feel at every step that for you all is ended, all is closed
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except the drawing room, where you will be ranged side
by side with a court lackey and an idiot!… But what’s the
good?…’ and he waved his arm.
Pierre took off his spectacles, which made his face seem
different and the good-natured expression still more apparent, and gazed at his friend in amazement.
‘My wife,’ continued Prince Andrew, ‘is an excellent
woman, one of those rare women with whom a man’s honor
is safe; but, O God, what would I not give now to be unmarried! You are the first and only one to whom I mention this,
because I like you.’
As he said this Prince Andrew was less than ever like
that Bolkonski who had lolled in Anna Pavlovna’s easy
chairs and with half-closed eyes had uttered French phrases
between his teeth. Every muscle of his thin face was now
quivering with nervous excitement; his eyes, in which the
fire of life had seemed extinguished, now flashed with brilliant light. It was evident that the more lifeless he seemed at
ordinary times, the more impassioned he became in these
moments of almost morbid irritation.
‘You don’t understand why I say this,’ he continued, ‘but
it is the whole story of life. You talk of Bonaparte and his career,’ said he (though Pierre had not mentioned Bonaparte),
‘but Bonaparte when he worked went step by step toward
his goal. He was free, he had nothing but his aim to consider, and he reached it. But tie yourself up with a woman and,
like a chained convict, you lose all freedom! And all you
have of hope and strength merely weighs you down and torments you with regret. Drawing rooms, gossip, balls, vanity,
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and trivialitythese are the enchanted circle I cannot escape
from. I am now going to the war, the greatest war there ever
was, and I know nothing and am fit for nothing. I am very
amiable and have a caustic wit,’ continued Prince Andrew,
‘and at Anna Pavlovna’s they listen to me. And that stupid
set without whom my wife cannot exist, and those women…
If you only knew what those society women are, and women
in general! My father is right. Selfish, vain, stupid, trivial
in everythingthat’s what women are when you see them in
their true colors! When you meet them in society it seems as
if there were something in them, but there’s nothing, nothing, nothing! No, don’t marry, my dear fellow; don’t marry!’
concluded Prince Andrew.
‘It seems funny to me,’ said Pierre, ‘that you, you should
consider yourself incapable and your life a spoiled life. You
have everything before you, everything. And you..’
He did not finish his sentence, but his tone showed how
highly he thought of his friend and how much he expected
of him in the future.
‘How can he talk like that?’ thought Pierre. He considered his friend a model of perfection because Prince Andrew
possessed in the highest degree just the very qualities Pierre
lacked, and which might be best described as strength of
will. Pierre was always astonished at Prince Andrew’s calm
manner of treating everybody, his extraordinary memory,
his extensive reading (he had read everything, knew everything, and had an opinion about everything), but above all
at his capacity for work and study. And if Pierre was often
struck by Andrew’s lack of capacity for philosophical medi50
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tation (to which he himself was particularly addicted), he
regarded even this not as a defect but as a sign of strength.
Even in the best, most friendly and simplest relations of
life, praise and commendation are essential, just as grease is
necessary to wheels that they may run smoothly.
‘My part is played out,’ said Prince Andrew. ‘What’s the
use of talking about me? Let us talk about you,’ he added after a silence, smiling at his reassuring thoughts.
That smile was immediately reflected on Pierre’s face.
‘But what is there to say about me?’ said Pierre, his face
relaxing into a careless, merry smile. ‘What am I? An illegitimate son!’ He suddenly blushed crimson, and it was
plain that he had made a great effort to say this. ‘Without
a name and without means… And it really…’ But he did not
say what ‘it really’ was. ‘For the present I am free and am all
right. Only I haven’t the least idea what I am to do; I wanted
to consult you seriously.’
Prince Andrew looked kindly at him, yet his glancefriendly and affectionate as it wasexpressed a sense of his
own superiority.
‘I am fond of you, especially as you are the one live man
among our whole set. Yes, you’re all right! Choose what you
will; it’s all the same. You’ll be all right anywhere. But look
here: give up visiting those Kuragins and leading that sort
of life. It suits you so badlyall this debauchery, dissipation,
and the rest of it!’
‘What would you have, my dear fellow?’ answered Pierre,
shrugging his shoulders. ‘Women, my dear fellow; women!’
‘I don’t understand it,’ replied Prince Andrew. ‘Wom
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en who are comme il faut, that’s a different matter; but the
Kuragins’ set of women, ‘women and wine’ I don’t understand!’
Pierre was staying at Prince Vasili Kuragin’s and sharing the dissipated life of his son Anatole, the son whom they
were planning to reform by marrying him to Prince Andrew’s sister.
‘Do you know?’ said Pierre, as if suddenly struck by a
happy thought, ‘seriously, I have long been thinking of it….
Leading such a life I can’t decide or think properly about
anything. One’s head aches, and one spends all one’s money. He asked me for tonight, but I won’t go.’
‘You give me your word of honor not to go?’
‘On my honor!’
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Chapter IX
It was past one o’clock when Pierre left his friend. It was a
cloudless, northern, summer night. Pierre took an open cab
intending to drive straight home. But the nearer he drew to
the house the more he felt the impossibility of going to sleep
on such a night. It was light enough to see a long way in the
deserted street and it seemed more like morning or evening
than night. On the way Pierre remembered that Anatole
Kuragin was expecting the usual set for cards that evening,
after which there was generally a drinking bout, finishing
with visits of a kind Pierre was very fond of.
‘I should like to go to Kuragin’s,’ thought he.
But he immediately recalled his promise to Prince Andrew not to go there. Then, as happens to people of weak
character, he desired so passionately once more to enjoy that
dissipation he was so accustomed to that he decided to go.
The thought immediately occurred to him that his promise
to Prince Andrew was of no account, because before he gave
it he had already promised Prince Anatole to come to his
gathering; ‘besides,’ thought he, ‘all such ‘words of honor’
are conventional things with no definite meaning, especially if one considers that by tomorrow one may be dead, or
something so extraordinary may happen to one that honor
and dishonor will be all the same!’ Pierre often indulged in
reflections of this sort, nullifying all his decisions and inten
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tions. He went to Kuragin’s.
Reaching the large house near the Horse Guards’ barracks, in which Anatole lived, Pierre entered the lighted
porch, ascended the stairs, and went in at the open door.
There was no one in the anteroom; empty bottles, cloaks,
and overshoes were lying about; there was a smell of alcohol,
and sounds of voices and shouting in the distance.
Cards and supper were over, but the visitors had not yet
dispersed. Pierre threw off his cloak and entered the first
room, in which were the remains of supper. A footman,
thinking no one saw him, was drinking on the sly what
was left in the glasses. From the third room came sounds
of laughter, the shouting of familiar voices, the growling of
a bear, and general commotion. Some eight or nine young
men were crowding anxiously round an open window. Three
others were romping with a young bear, one pulling him by
the chain and trying to set him at the others.
‘I bet a hundred on Stevens!’ shouted one.
‘Mind, no holding on!’ cried another.
‘I bet on Dolokhov!’ cried a third. ‘Kuragin, you part our
hands.’
‘There, leave Bruin alone; here’s a bet on.’
‘At one draught, or he loses!’ shouted a fourth.
‘Jacob, bring a bottle!’ shouted the host, a tall, handsome
fellow who stood in the midst of the group, without a coat,
and with his fine linen shirt unfastened in front. ‘Wait a bit,
you fellows…. Here is Petya! Good man!’ cried he, addressing Pierre.
Another voice, from a man of medium height with clear
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blue eyes, particularly striking among all these drunken
voices by its sober ring, cried from the window: ‘Come here;
part the bets!’ This was Dolokhov, an officer of the Semenov
regiment, a notorious gambler and duelist, who was living
with Anatole. Pierre smiled, looking about him merrily.
‘I don’t understand. What’s it all about?’
‘Wait a bit, he is not drunk yet! A bottle here,’ said Anatole, taking a
