War and Peace by graf Leo Tolstoy (latest ebook reader .TXT) 📕

“How do you do, cousin?” said Pierre. “You don’t recognize me?”

“I recognize you only too well, too well.”

“How is the count? Can I see him?” asked Pierre, awkwardly as usual, but unabashed.

“The count is suffering physically and mentally, and apparently you have done your best to increase his mental sufferings.”

“Can I see the count?” Pierre again asked.

“Hm.... If you wish to kill him, to kill him outright, you can see him... Olga, go and see whether Uncle’s beef tea is ready—it is almost time,” she added, giving Pierre to understand that they were busy, and busy making his father comfortable, while evidently he, Pierre, was only busy causing him annoyance.

Olga went out. Pierre stood looking at the sisters; then he bowed and said: “Then I will go to my rooms. You will let me know when I can see him.”

And he left the room, followed by the low but ringing laughter of the sister with the mole.

Next day Prince Vasíli had arrived and settled in the count’s house. He sent for Pierre and said to him: “My dear fellow, if you are going to behave here as you did in Petersburg, you will end very badly; that is all I have to say to you. The count is very, very ill, and you must not see him at all.”

Since then Pierre had not been disturbed and had spent the whole time in his rooms upstairs.

When Borís appeared at his door Pierre was pacing up and down his room, stopping occasionally at a corner to make menacing gestures at the wall, as if running a sword through an invisible foe, and glaring savagely over his spectacles, and then again resuming his walk, muttering indistinct words, shrugging his shoulders and gesticulating.

“England is done for,” said he, scowling and pointing his finger at someone unseen. “Mr. Pitt, as a traitor to the nation and to the rights of man, is sentenced to...” But before Pierre—who at that moment imagined himself to be Napoleon in person and to have just effected the dangerous crossing of the Straits of Dover and captured London—could pronounce Pitt’s sentence, he saw a well-built and handsome young officer entering his room. Pierre paused. He had left Moscow when Borís was a boy of fourteen, and had quite forgotten him, but in his usual impulsive and hearty way he took Borís by the hand with a friendly smile.

“Do you remember me?” asked Borís quietly with a pleasant smile. “I have come with my mother to see the count, but it seems he is not well.”

“Yes, it seems he is ill. People are always disturbing him,” answered Pierre, trying to remember who this young man was.

Borís felt that Pierre did not recognize him but did not consider it necessary to introduce himself, and without experiencing the least embarrassment looked Pierre straight in the face.

“Count Rostóv asks you to come to dinner today,” said he, after a considerable pause which made Pierre feel uncomfortable.

“Ah, Count Rostóv!” exclaimed Pierre joyfully. “Then you are his son, Ilyá? Only fancy, I didn’t know you at first. Do you remember how we went to the Sparrow Hills with Madame Jacquot?... It’s such an age...”

“You are mistaken,” said Borís deliberately, with a bold and slightly sarcastic smile. “I am Borís, son of Princess Anna Mikháylovna Drubetskáya. Rostóv, the father, is Ilyá, and his son is Nicholas. I never knew any Madame Jacquot.”

Pierre shook his head and arms as if attacked by mosquitoes or bees.

“Oh dear, what am I thinking about? I’ve mixed everything up. One has so many relatives in Moscow! So you are Borís? Of course. Well, now we know where we are. And what do you think of the Boulogne expedition? The English will come off badly, you know, if Napoleon gets across the Channel. I think the expedition is quite feasible. If only Villeneuve doesn’t make a mess of things!”

Borís knew nothing about the Boulogne expedition; he did not read the papers and it was the first time he had heard Villeneuve’s name.

“We here in Moscow are more occupied with dinner parties and scandal than with politics,” said he in his quiet ironical tone. “I know nothing about it and have not thought about it. Moscow is chiefly busy with gossip,” he continued. “Just now they are talking about you and your father.”

Pierre smiled in his good-natured way as if afraid for his companion’s sake that the latter might say something he would afterwards regret. But Borís spoke distinctly, clearly, and dryly, looking straight into Pierre’s eyes.

“Moscow has nothing else to do but gossip,” Borís went on. “Everybody is wondering to whom the count will leave his fortune, though he may perhaps outlive us all, as I sincerely hope he will...”

“Yes, it is all very horrid,” interrupted Pierre, “very horrid.”

Pierre was still afraid that this officer might inadvertently say something disconcerting to himself.

“And it must seem to you,” said Borís flushing slightly, but not changing his tone or attitude, “it must seem to you that everyone is trying to get something out of the rich man?”

“So it does,” thought Pierre.

“But I just wish to say, to avoid misunderstandings, that you are quite mistaken if you reckon me or my mother among such people. We are very poor, but for my own part at any rate, for the very reason that your father is rich, I don’t regard myself as a relation of his, and neither I nor my mother would ever ask or take anything from him.”

For a long time Pierre could not understand, but when he did, he jumped up from the sofa, seized Borís under the elbow in his quick, clumsy way, and, blushing far more than Borís, began to speak with a feeling of mingled shame and vexation.

“Well, this is strange! Do you suppose I... who could think?... I know very well...”

But Borís again interrupted him.

“I am glad I have spoken out fully. Perhaps you did not like it? You must excuse me,” said he, putting Pierre at ease instead of being put at ease by him, “but I hope I have not offended you. I always make it a rule to speak out... Well, what answer am I to take? Will you come to dinner at the Rostóvs’?”

And Borís, having apparently relieved himself of an onerous duty and extricated himself from an awkward situation and placed another in it, became quite pleasant again.

“No, but I say,” said Pierre, calming down, “you are a wonderful fellow! What you have just said is good, very good. Of course you don’t know me. We have not met for such a long time... not since we were children. You might think that I... I understand, quite understand. I could not have done it myself, I should not have had the courage, but it’s