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

Amuse yourself with women like my wife⁠—with them you are within your rights, for they know what you want of them. They are armed against you by the same experience of debauchery; but to promise a maid to marry her⁠ ⁠… to deceive, to kidnap.⁠ ⁠… Don’t you understand that it is as mean as beating an old man or a child?⁠ ⁠…”

Pierre paused and looked at Anatole no longer with an angry but with a questioning look.

“I don’t know about that, eh?” said Anatole, growing more confident as Pierre mastered his wrath. “I don’t know that and don’t want to,” he said, not looking at Pierre and with a slight tremor of his lower jaw, “but you have used such words to me⁠—‘mean’ and so on⁠—which as a man of honor I can’t allow anyone to use.”

Pierre glanced at him with amazement, unable to understand what he wanted.

“Though it was tête-à-tête,” Anatole continued, “still I can’t⁠ ⁠…”

“Is it satisfaction you want?” said Pierre ironically.

“You could at least take back your words. What? If you want me to do as you wish, eh?”

“I take them back, I take them back!” said Pierre, “and I ask you to forgive me.” Pierre involuntarily glanced at the loose button. “And if you require money for your journey⁠ ⁠…”

Anatole smiled. The expression of that base and cringing smile, which Pierre knew so well in his wife, revolted him.

“Oh, vile and heartless brood!” he exclaimed, and left the room.

Next day Anatole left for Petersburg.

XXI

Pierre drove to Márya Dmítrievna’s to tell her of the fulfillment of her wish that Kurágin should be banished from Moscow. The whole house was in a state of alarm and commotion. Natásha was very ill, having, as Márya Dmítrievna told him in secret, poisoned herself the night after she had been told that Anatole was married, with some arsenic she had stealthily procured. After swallowing a little she had been so frightened that she woke Sónya and told her what she had done. The necessary antidotes had been administered in time and she was now out of danger, though still so weak that it was out of the question to move her to the country, and so the countess had been sent for. Pierre saw the distracted count, and Sónya, who had a tear-stained face, but he could not see Natásha.

Pierre dined at the club that day and heard on all sides gossip about the attempted abduction of Rostóva. He resolutely denied these rumors, assuring everyone that nothing had happened except that his brother-in-law had proposed to her and been refused. It seemed to Pierre that it was his duty to conceal the whole affair and reestablish Natásha’s reputation.

He was awaiting Prince Andréy’s return with dread and went every day to the old prince’s for news of him.

Old Prince Bolkónski heard all the rumors current in the town from Mademoiselle Bourienne and had read the note to Princess Márya in which Natásha had broken off her engagement. He seemed in better spirits than usual and awaited his son with great impatience.

Some days after Anatole’s departure Pierre received a note from Prince Andréy, informing him of his arrival and asking him to come to see him.

As soon as he reached Moscow, Prince Andréy had received from his father Natásha’s note to Princess Márya breaking off her engagement (Mademoiselle Bourienne had purloined it from Princess Márya and given it to the old prince), and he heard from him the story of Natásha’s elopement, with additions.

Prince Andréy had arrived in the evening and Pierre came to see him next morning. Pierre expected to find Prince Andréy in almost the same state as Natásha and was therefore surprised on entering the drawing room to hear him in the study talking in a loud animated voice about some intrigue going on in Petersburg. The old prince’s voice and another now and then interrupted him. Princess Márya came out to meet Pierre. She sighed, looking toward the door of the room where Prince Andréy was, evidently intending to express her sympathy with his sorrow, but Pierre saw by her face that she was glad both at what had happened and at the way her brother had taken the news of Natásha’s faithlessness.

“He says he expected it,” she remarked. “I know his pride will not let him express his feelings, but still he has taken it better, far better, than I expected. Evidently it had to be.⁠ ⁠…”

“But is it possible that all is really ended?” asked Pierre.

Princess Márya looked at him with astonishment. She did not understand how he could ask such a question. Pierre went into the study. Prince Andréy, greatly changed and plainly in better health, but with a fresh horizontal wrinkle between his brows, stood in civilian dress facing his father and Prince Meshchérski, warmly disputing and vigorously gesticulating. The conversation was about Speránski⁠—the news of whose sudden exile and alleged treachery had just reached Moscow.

“Now he is censured and accused by all who were enthusiastic about him a month ago,” Prince Andréy was saying, “and by those who were unable to understand his aims. To judge a man who is in disfavor and to throw on him all the blame of other men’s mistakes is very easy, but I maintain that if anything good has been accomplished in this reign it was done by him, by him alone.”

He paused at the sight of Pierre. His face quivered and immediately assumed a vindictive expression.

“Posterity will do him justice,” he concluded, and at once turned to Pierre.

“Well, how are you? Still getting stouter?” he said with animation, but the new wrinkle on his forehead deepened. “Yes, I am well,” he said in answer to Pierre’s question, and smiled.

To Pierre that smile said plainly: “I am well, but my health is now of no use to anyone.”

After a few words to Pierre about the awful roads from the Polish frontier, about people he had met in Switzerland who knew Pierre, and about M. Dessalles, whom he had brought