War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (ebook reader for pc TXT) 📕

“On Tuesday between eight and nine. It will give me great pleasure.”

Borís promised to fulfill her wish and was about to begin a conversation with her, when Anna Pávlovna called him away on the pretext that her aunt wished to hear him.

“You know her husband, of course?” said Anna Pávlovna, closing her eyes and indicating Elèn with a sorrowful gesture. “Ah, she is such an unfortunate and charming woman! Don’t mention him before her⁠—please don’t! It is too painful for her!”

When Borís and Anna Pávlovna returned to the others Prince Ippolit had the ear of the company.

Bending forward in his armchair he said: “Le Roi de Prusse!” and having said this laughed. Everyone turned toward him.

“Le Roi de Prusse?” Ippolit said interrogatively, again laughing, and then calmly and seriously sat back in his chair. Anna Pávlovna waited for him to go on, but as he seemed quite decided to say no more she began to tell of how at Potsdam the impious Bonaparte had stolen the sword of Frederick the Great.

“It is the sword of Frederick the Great which I⁠ ⁠…” she began, but Ippolit interrupted her with the words: “Le Roi de Prusse⁠ ⁠…” and again, as soon as all turned toward him, excused himself and said no more.

Anna Pávlovna frowned. Mortemart, Ippolit’s friend, addressed him firmly.

“Come now, what about your Roi de Prusse?”

Ippolit laughed as if ashamed of laughing.

“Oh, it’s nothing. I only wished to say⁠ ⁠…” (he wanted to repeat a joke he had heard in Vienna and which he had been trying all that evening to get in) “I only wished to say that we are wrong to fight pour le Roi de Prusse!”

Borís smiled circumspectly, so that it might be taken as ironical or appreciative according to the way the joke was received. Everybody laughed.

“Your joke is too bad, it’s witty but unjust,” said Anna Pávlovna, shaking her little shriveled finger at him.

“We are not fighting pour le Roi de Prusse, but for right principles. Oh, that wicked Prince Hippolyte!” she said.

The conversation did not flag all evening and turned chiefly on the political news. It became particularly animated toward the end of the evening when the rewards bestowed by the Emperor were mentioned.

“You know N⁠⸺ N⁠⸺ received a snuffbox with the portrait last year?” said “the man of profound intellect.” “Why shouldn’t S⁠⸺ S⁠⸺ get the same distinction?”

“Pardon me! A snuffbox with the Emperor’s portrait is a reward but not a distinction,” said the diplomatist⁠—“a gift, rather.”

“There are precedents, I may mention Schwarzenberg.”

“It’s impossible,” replied another.

“Will you bet? The ribbon of the order is a different matter.⁠ ⁠…”

When everybody rose to go, Elèn who had spoken very little all the evening again turned to Borís, asking him in a tone of caressing significant command to come to her on Tuesday.

“It is of great importance to me,” she said, turning with a smile toward Anna Pávlovna, and Anna Pávlovna, with the same sad smile with which she spoke of her exalted patroness, supported Elèn’s wish.

It seemed as if from some words Borís had spoken that evening about the Prussian army, Elèn had suddenly found it necessary to see him. She seemed to promise to explain that necessity to him when he came on Tuesday.

But on Tuesday evening, having come to Elèn’s splendid salon, Borís received no clear explanation of why it had been necessary for him to come. There were other guests and the countess talked little to him, and only as he kissed her hand on taking leave said unexpectedly and in a whisper, with a strangely unsmiling face: “Come to dinner tomorrow⁠ ⁠… in the evening. You must come.⁠ ⁠… Come!”

During that stay in Petersburg, Borís became an intimate in the countess’ house.

The war was flaming up and nearing the Russian frontier. Everywhere one heard curses on Bonaparte, “the enemy of mankind.” Militiamen and recruits were being enrolled in the villages, and from the seat of war came contradictory news, false as usual and therefore variously interpreted. The life of old Prince Bolkónski, Prince Andréy, and Princess Márya had greatly changed since 1805.

In 1806 the old prince was made one of the eight commanders in chief then appointed to supervise the enrollment decreed throughout Russia. Despite the weakness of age, which had become particularly noticeable since the time when he thought his son had been killed, he did not think it right to refuse a duty to which he had been appointed by the Emperor himself, and this fresh opportunity for action gave him new energy and strength. He was continually traveling through the three provinces entrusted to him, was pedantic in the fulfillment of his duties, severe to cruel with his subordinates, and went into everything down to the minutest details himself. Princess Márya had ceased taking lessons in mathematics from her father, and when the old prince was at home went to his study with the wet nurse and little Prince Nikoláy (as his grandfather called him). The baby Prince Nikoláy lived with his wet nurse and nurse Sávishna in the late princess’ rooms and Princess Márya spent most of the day in the nursery, taking a mother’s place to her little nephew as best she could. Mademoiselle Bourienne, too, seemed passionately fond of the boy, and Princess Márya often deprived herself to give her friend the pleasure of dandling the little angel⁠—as she called her nephew⁠—and playing with him.

Near the altar of the church at Bald Hills there was a chapel over the tomb of the little princess, and in this chapel was a marble monument brought from Italy, representing an angel with outspread wings ready to fly upwards. The angel’s upper lip was slightly raised as though about to smile, and once on coming out of the chapel Prince Andréy and Princess Márya admitted to one another that the angel’s face reminded them strangely of the little princess. But what was