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

Before they reached the room from which the sounds of the clavichord came, the pretty, fair-haired Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle Bourienne, rushed out apparently beside herself with delight.

“Ah! what joy for the princess!” exclaimed she: “At last! I must let her know.”

“No, no, please not⁠ ⁠… You are Mademoiselle Bourienne,” said the little princess, kissing her. “I know you already through my sister-in-law’s friendship for you. She was not expecting us?”

They went up to the door of the sitting room from which came the sound of the oft-repeated passage of the sonata. Prince Andréy stopped and made a grimace, as if expecting something unpleasant.

The little princess entered the room. The passage broke off in the middle, a cry was heard, then Princess Márya’s heavy tread and the sound of kissing. When Prince Andréy went in the two princesses, who had only met once before for a short time at his wedding, were in each other’s arms warmly pressing their lips to whatever place they happened to touch. Mademoiselle Bourienne stood near them pressing her hand to her heart, with a beatific smile and obviously equally ready to cry or to laugh. Prince Andréy shrugged his shoulders and frowned, as lovers of music do when they hear a false note. The two women let go of one another, and then, as if afraid of being too late, seized each other’s hands, kissing them and pulling them away, and again began kissing each other on the face, and then to Prince Andréy’s surprise both began to cry and kissed again. Mademoiselle Bourienne also began to cry. Prince Andréy evidently felt ill at ease, but to the two women it seemed quite natural that they should cry, and apparently it never entered their heads that it could have been otherwise at this meeting.

“Ah! my dear!⁠ ⁠… Ah! Marie!⁠ ⁠…” they suddenly exclaimed, and then laughed. “I dreamed last night⁠ ⁠…”⁠—“You were not expecting us?⁠ ⁠…” “Ah! Marie, you have got thinner?⁠ ⁠…” “And you have grown stouter!⁠ ⁠…”

“I knew the princess at once,” put in Mademoiselle Bourienne.

“And I had no idea!⁠ ⁠…” exclaimed Princess Márya. “Ah, André, I did not see you.”

Prince Andréy and his sister, hand in hand, kissed one another, and he told her she was still the same crybaby as ever. Princess Márya had turned toward her brother, and through her tears the loving, warm, gentle look of her large luminous eyes, very beautiful at that moment, rested on Prince Andréy’s face.

The little princess talked incessantly, her short, downy upper lip continually and rapidly touching her rosy nether lip when necessary and drawing up again next moment when her face broke into a smile of glittering teeth and sparkling eyes. She told of an accident they had had on the Spásski Hill which might have been serious for her in her condition, and immediately after that informed them that she had left all her clothes in Petersburg and that heaven knew what she would have to dress in here; and that Andréy had quite changed, and that Kitty Odýntsova had married an old man, and that there was a suitor for Márya, a real one, but that they would talk of that later. Princess Márya was still looking silently at her brother and her beautiful eyes were full of love and sadness. It was plain that she was following a train of thought independent of her sister-in-law’s words. In the midst of a description of the last Petersburg fête she addressed her brother:

“So you are really going to the war, André?” she said sighing.

Liza sighed too.

“Yes, and even tomorrow,” replied her brother.

“He is leaving me here, God knows why, when he might have had promotion⁠ ⁠…”

Princess Márya did not listen to the end, but continuing her train of thought turned to her sister-in-law with a tender glance at her figure.

“Is it certain?” she said.

The face of the little princess changed. She sighed and said: “Yes, quite certain. Ah! it is very dreadful⁠ ⁠…”

Her lip descended. She brought her face close to her sister-in-law’s and unexpectedly again began to cry.

“She needs rest,” said Prince Andréy with a frown. “Don’t you, Liza? Take her to your room and I’ll go to Father. How is he? Just the same?”

“Yes, just the same. Though I don’t know what your opinion will be,” answered the princess joyfully.

“And are the hours the same? And the walks in the avenues? And the lathe?” asked Prince Andréy with a scarcely perceptible smile which showed that, in spite of all his love and respect for his father, he was aware of his weaknesses.

“The hours are the same, and the lathe, and also the mathematics and my geometry lessons,” said Princess Márya gleefully, as if her lessons in geometry were among the greatest delights of her life.

When the twenty minutes had elapsed and the time had come for the old prince to get up, Tíkhon came to call the young prince to his father. The old man made a departure from his usual routine in honor of his son’s arrival: he gave orders to admit him to his apartments while he dressed for dinner. The old prince always dressed in old-fashioned style, wearing an antique coat and powdered hair; and when Prince Andréy entered his father’s dressing room (not with the contemptuous look and manner he wore in drawing rooms, but with the animated face with which he talked to Pierre), the old man was sitting on a large leather-covered chair, wrapped in a powdering mantle, entrusting his head to Tíkhon.

“Ah! here’s the warrior! Wants to vanquish Bonaparte?” said the old man, shaking his powdered head as much as the tail, which Tíkhon was holding fast to plait, would allow.

“You at least must tackle him properly, or else if he goes on like this he’ll soon have us, too, for his subjects! How are you?” And he held out his cheek.

The old man was in a good temper after his nap before dinner. (He used to say that a nap