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

agreeable young man.⁠ ⁠… Why do you ask me that?” said Princess Márya, still thinking of that morning’s conversation with her father.

“Because I have noticed that when a young man comes on leave from Petersburg to Moscow it is usually with the object of marrying an heiress.”

“You have observed that?” said Princess Márya.

“Yes,” returned Pierre with a smile, “and this young man now manages matters so that where there is a wealthy heiress there he is too. I can read him like a book. At present he is hesitating whom to lay siege to⁠—you or Mademoiselle Julie Karágina. He is very attentive to her.”

“He visits them?”

“Yes, very often. And do you know the new way of courting?” said Pierre with an amused smile, evidently in that cheerful mood of good humored raillery for which he so often reproached himself in his diary.

“No,” replied Princess Márya.

“To please Moscow girls nowadays one has to be melancholy. He is very melancholy with Mademoiselle Karágina,” said Pierre.

“Really?” asked Princess Márya, looking into Pierre’s kindly face and still thinking of her own sorrow. “It would be a relief,” thought she, “if I ventured to confide what I am feeling to someone. I should like to tell everything to Pierre. He is kind and generous. It would be a relief. He would give me advice.”

“Would you marry him?”

“Oh, my God, Count, there are moments when I would marry anybody!” she cried suddenly to her own surprise and with tears in her voice. “Ah, how bitter it is to love someone near to you and to feel that⁠ ⁠…” she went on in a trembling voice, “that you can do nothing for him but grieve him, and to know that you cannot alter this. Then there is only one thing left⁠—to go away, but where could I go?”

“What is wrong? What is it, Princess?”

But without finishing what she was saying, Princess Márya burst into tears.

“I don’t know what is the matter with me today. Don’t take any notice⁠—forget what I have said!”

Pierre’s gaiety vanished completely. He anxiously questioned the princess, asked her to speak out fully and confide her grief to him; but she only repeated that she begged him to forget what she had said, that she did not remember what she had said, and that she had no trouble except the one he knew of⁠—that Prince Andréy’s marriage threatened to cause a rupture between father and son.

“Have you any news of the Rostóvs?” she asked, to change the subject. “I was told they are coming soon. I am also expecting André any day. I should like them to meet here.”

“And how does he now regard the matter?” asked Pierre, referring to the old prince.

Princess Márya shook her head.

“What is to be done? In a few months the year will be up. The thing is impossible. I only wish I could spare my brother the first moments. I wish they would come sooner. I hope to be friends with her. You have known them a long time,” said Princess Márya. “Tell me honestly the whole truth: what sort of girl is she, and what do you think of her?⁠—The real truth, because you know Andréy is risking so much doing this against his father’s will that I should like to know.⁠ ⁠…”

An undefined instinct told Pierre that these explanations, and repeated requests to be told the whole truth, expressed ill-will on the princess’ part toward her future sister-in-law and a wish that he should disapprove of Andréy’s choice; but in reply he said what he felt rather than what he thought.

“I don’t know how to answer your question,” he said, blushing without knowing why. “I really don’t know what sort of girl she is; I can’t analyze her at all. She is enchanting, but what makes her so I don’t know. That is all one can say about her.”

Princess Márya sighed, and the expression on her face said: “Yes, that’s what I expected and feared.”

“Is she clever?” she asked.

Pierre considered.

“I think not,” he said, “and yet⁠—yes. She does not deign to be clever.⁠ ⁠… Oh no, she is simply enchanting, and that is all.”

Princess Márya again shook her head disapprovingly.

“Ah, I so long to like her! Tell her so if you see her before I do.”

“I hear they are expected very soon,” said Pierre.

Princess Márya told Pierre of her plan to become intimate with her future sister-in-law as soon as the Rostóvs arrived and to try to accustom the old prince to her.

V

Borís had not succeeded in making a wealthy match in Petersburg, so with the same object in view he came to Moscow. There he wavered between the two richest heiresses, Julie and Princess Márya. Though Princess Márya despite her plainness seemed to him more attractive than Julie, he, without knowing why, felt awkward about paying court to her. When they had last met on the old prince’s name day, she had answered at random all his attempts to talk sentimentally, evidently not listening to what he was saying.

Julie on the contrary accepted his attentions readily, though in a manner peculiar to herself.

She was twenty-seven. After the death of her brothers she had become very wealthy. She was by now decidedly plain, but thought herself not merely as good-looking as before but even far more attractive. She was confirmed in this delusion by the fact that she had become a very wealthy heiress and also by the fact that the older she grew the less dangerous she became to men, and the more freely they could associate with her and avail themselves of her suppers, soirees, and the animated company that assembled at her house, without incurring any obligation. A man who would have been afraid ten years before of going every day to the house when there was a girl of seventeen there, for fear of compromising her and committing himself, would now go boldly every day and treat her not as a marriageable girl but as a sexless acquaintance.

That winter the Karágins’ house