Authors: Leo Tolstoy
“I have brought my work,” she said, displaying her reticule, and addressing the company generally. “Mind, Annette, don’t play me a nasty trick,” she turned to the lady of the house; “you wrote to me that it was quite a little gathering. See how I am got up.”
And she flung her arms open to show her elegant grey dress, trimmed with lace and girt a little below the bosom with a broad sash.
“Never mind, Lise, you will always be prettier than any one else,” answered Anna Pavlovna.
“You know my husband is deserting me,” she went on in just the same voice, addressing a general; “he is going to get himself killed. Tell me what this nasty war is for,” she said to Prince Vassily, and without waiting for an answer she turned to Prince Vassily’s daughter, the beautiful Ellen.
“How delightful this little princess is!” said Prince Vassily in an undertone to Anna Pavlovna.
Soon after the little princess, there walked in a massively built, stout young man in spectacles, with a cropped head, light breeches in the mode of the day, with a high lace ruffle and a ginger-coloured coat. This stout young man was the illegitimate son of a celebrated dandy of the days of Catherine, Count Bezuhov, who was now dying at Moscow. He had not yet entered any branch of the service; he had only just returned from abroad, where he had been educated, and this was his first appearance in society. Anna Pavlovna greeted him with a nod reserved for persons of the very lowest hierarchy in her drawing-room. But, in spite of this greeting, Anna Pavlovna’s countenance showed signs on seeing Pierre of uneasiness and alarm, such as is shown at the sight of something too big and out of place. Though Pierre certainly was somewhat bigger than any of the other men in the room, this expression could only have reference to the clever, though shy, observant and natural look that distinguished him from every one else in the drawing-room.
“It is very kind of you, M. Pierre, to have come to see a poor invalid,” Anna Pavlovna said to him, exchanging anxious glances with her aunt, to whom she was conducting him.
Pierre murmured something unintelligible, and continued searching
for something with his eyes. He smiled gleefully and delightedly, bowing to the little princess as though she were an intimate friend, and went up to the aunt. Anna Pavlovna’s alarm was not without grounds, for Pierre walked away from the aunt without waiting to the end of her remarks about her majesty’s health. Anna Pavlovna stopped him in dismay with the words: “You don’t know Abbé Morio? He’s a very interesting man,” she said.
“Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and it’s very interesting, but hardly possible …”
“You think so?” said Anna Pavlovna in order to say something and to get away again to her duties as hostess, but Pierre committed the opposite incivility. Just now he had walked off without listening to the lady who was addressing him; now he detained by his talk a lady who wanted to get away from him. With head bent and legs planted wide apart, he began explaining to Anna Pavlovna why he considered the abbé’s scheme chimerical.
“We will talk of it later,” said Anna Pavlovna, smiling.
And getting rid of this unmannerly young man she returned to her duties, keeping her eyes and ears open, ready to fly to the assistance at any point where the conversation was flagging. Just as the foreman of a spinning-mill settles the work-people in their places, walks up and down the works, and noting any stoppage or unusual creaking or too loud a whir in the spindles, goes up hurriedly, slackens the machinery and sets it going properly, so Anna Pavlovna, walking about her drawing-room, went up to any circle that was pausing or too loud in conversation and by a single word or change of position set the conversational machine going again in its regular, decorous way. But in the midst of these cares a special anxiety on Pierre’s account could still be discerned in her. She kept an anxious watch on him as he went up to listen to what was being said near Mortemart, and walked away to another group where the abbé was talking. Pierre had been educated abroad, and this party at Anna Pavlovna’s was the first at which he had been present in Russia. He knew all the intellectual lights of Petersburg gathered together here, and his eyes strayed about like a child’s in a toy-shop. He was afraid at every moment of missing some intellectual conversation which he might have heard. Gazing at the self-confident and refined expressions of the personages assembled here, he was continually expecting something exceptionally clever. At last he moved up to Abbé Morio. The conversation
seemed interesting, and he stood still waiting for an opportunity of expressing his own ideas, as young people are fond of doing.
Anna Pavlovna’s
soirée
was in full swing. The spindles kept up their regular hum on all sides without pause. Except the aunt, beside whom was sitting no one but an elderly lady with a thin, careworn face, who seemed rather out of her element in this brilliant society, the company was broken up into three groups. In one of these, the more masculine, the centre was the abbé; in the other, the group of young people, the chief attractions were the beautiful Princess Ellen, Prince Vassily’s daughter, and the little Princess Bolkonsky, with her rosy prettiness, too plump for her years. In the third group were Mortemart and Anna Pavlovna.
The vicomte was a pretty young gentleman with soft features and manners, who obviously regarded himself as a celebrity, but with good breeding modestly allowed the company the benefit of his society. Anna Pavlovna unmistakably regarded him as the chief entertainment she was giving her guests. As a clever
maître d’hôtel
serves as something superlatively good the piece of beef which no one would have cared to eat seeing it in the dirty kitchen, Anna Pavlovna that evening served up to her guests—first, the vicomte and then the abbé, as something superlatively subtle. In Mortemart’s group the talk turned at once on the execution of the duc d’Enghien. The vicomte said that the duc d’Enghien had been lost by his own magnanimity and that there were special reasons for Bonaparte’s bitterness against him.
“Ah, come! Tell us about that, vicomte,” said Anna Pavlovna gleefully, feeling that the phrase had a peculiarly Louis Quinze note about it: “
Contez-nous cela, vicomte
.”
The vicomte bowed and smiled courteously in token of his readiness to obey. Anna Pavlovna made a circle round the vicomte and invited every one to hear his story.
“The vicomte was personally acquainted with his highness,” Anna Pavlovna whispered to one. “The vicomte tells a story perfectly,” she said to another. “How one sees the man of quality,” she said to a third, and the vicomte was presented to the company in the most elegant and
advantageous light, like the roast-beef on the hot dish garnished with green parsley.
The vicomte was about to begin his narrative, and he smiled subtly.
“Come over here,
chère Hélène
,” said Anna Pavlovna to the young beauty who was sitting a little way off, the centre of another group.
Princess Ellen smiled. She got up with the same unchanging smile of the acknowledged beauty with which she had entered the drawing-room. Her white ball-dress adorned with ivy and moss rustled lightly; her white shoulders, glossy hair, and diamonds glittered, as she passed between the men who moved apart to make way for her. Not looking directly at any one, but smiling at every one, as it were courteously allowing to all the right to admire the beauty of her figure, her full shoulders, her bosom and back, which were extremely exposed in the mode of the day, she moved up to Anna Pavlovna, seeming to bring with her the brilliance of the ballroom. Ellen was so lovely that she was not merely free from the slightest shade of coquetry, she seemed on the contrary ashamed of the too evident, too violent and all-conquering influence of her beauty. She seemed to wish but to be unable to soften the effect of her beauty.
“What a beautiful woman!” every one said on seeing her. As though struck by something extraordinary, the vicomte shrugged his shoulders and dropped his eyes, when she seated herself near him and dazzled him too with the same unchanging smile.
“Madame, I doubt my abilities before such an audience,” he said, bowing with a smile.
The princess leaned her plump, bare arm on the table and did not find it necessary to say anything. She waited, smiling. During the vicomte’s story she sat upright, looking from time to time at her beautiful, plump arm, which lay with its line changed by pressure on the table, then at her still lovelier bosom, on which she set straight her diamond necklace. Several times she settled the folds of her gown and when the narrative made a sensation upon the audience, she glanced at Anna Pavlovna and at once assumed the expression she saw on the maid-of-honour’s face, then she relapsed again into her unvarying smile. After Ellen the little princess too moved away from the tea-table.
“Wait for me, I will take my work,” she said. “Come, what are you thinking of?” she said to Prince Ippolit. “Bring me my reticule.”
The little princess, smiling and talking to every one, at once effected
a change of position, and settling down again, gaily smoothed out her skirts.
“Now I’m comfortable,” she said, and begging the vicomte to begin, she took up her work. Prince Ippolit brought her reticule, moved to her side, and bending close over her chair, sat beside her.
Le charmant Hippolyte
struck every one as extraordinarily like this sister, and, still more, as being, in spite of the likeness, strikingly ugly. His features were like his sister’s, but in her, everything was radiant with joyous life, with the complacent, never-failing smile of youth and life and an extraordinary antique beauty of figure. The brother’s face on the contrary was clouded over by imbecility and invariably wore a look of aggressive fretfulness, while he was thin and feebly built. His eyes, his nose, his mouth—everything was, as it were, puckered up in one vacant, bored grimace, while his arms and legs always fell into the most grotesque attitudes.
“It is not a ghost story,” he said, sitting down by the princess and hurriedly fixing his eyeglass in his eye, as though without that instrument he could not begin to speak.
“Why, no, my dear fellow,” said the astonished vicomte, with a shrug.
“Because I detest ghost stories,” said Prince Ippolit in a tone which showed that he uttered the words before he was aware of their meaning.
From the self-confidence with which he spoke no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid. He was dressed in a dark-green frock coat, breeches of the colour of the
cuisse de nymphe effrayée
, as he called it, stockings and slippers. The vicomte very charmingly related the anecdote then current, that the duc d’Enghien had secretly visited Paris for the sake of an interview with the actress, Mlle. Georges, and that there he met Bonaparte, who also enjoyed the favours of the celebrated actress, and that, meeting the duc, Napoleon had fallen into one of the fits to which he was subject and had been completely in the duc’s power, how the duc had not taken advantage of it, and Bonaparte had in the sequel avenged his magnanimity by the duc’s death.
The story was very charming and interesting, especially at the point when the rivals suddenly recognise each other, and the ladies seemed to be greatly excited by it. “
Charmant!
” said Anna Pavlovna, looking inquiringly at the little princess. “Charming!” whispered the little princess, sticking her needle into her work as an indication that the interest and charm of the story prevented her working. The vicomte
appreciated this silent homage, and smiling gratefully, resumed his narrative. But meanwhile Anna Pavlovna, still keeping a watch on the dreadful young man, noticed that he was talking too loudly and too warmly with the abbé and hurried to the spot of danger. Pierre had in fact succeeded in getting into a political conversation with the abbé on the balance of power, and the abbé, evidently interested by the simple-hearted fervour of the young man, was unfolding to him his cherished idea. Both were listening and talking too eagerly and naturally, and Anna Pavlovna did not like it.
“The means?—the balance of power in Europe and the rights of the people,” said the abbé. “One powerful state like Russia—with the prestige of barbarism—need only take a disinterested stand at the head of the alliance that aims at securing the balance of power in Europe, and it would save the world!” “How are you going to get such a balance of power?” Pierre was beginning; but at that moment Anna Pavlovna came up, and glancing severely at Pierre, asked the Italian how he was supporting the climate. The Italian’s face changed instantly and assumed the look of offensive, affected sweetness, which was evidently its habitual expression in conversation with women. “I am so enchanted by the wit and culture of the society—especially of the ladies—in which I have had the happiness to be received, that I have not yet had time to think of the climate,” he said. Not letting the abbé and Pierre slip out of her grasp, Anna Pavlovna, for greater convenience in watching them, made them join the bigger group.
At that moment another guest walked into the drawing-room. This was the young Prince Andrey Bolkonsky, the husband of the little princess. Prince Bolkonsky was a very handsome young man, of medium height, with clear, clean-cut features. Everything in his appearance, from his weary, bored expression to his slow, measured step, formed the most striking contrast to his lively little wife. Obviously all the people in the drawing-room were familiar figures to him, and more than that, he was unmistakably so sick of them that even to look at them and to listen to them was a weariness to him. Of all the wearisome faces the face of his pretty wife seemed to bore him most. With a grimace that distorted his handsome face he turned away from her. He kissed Anna Pavlovna’s hand, and with half-closed eyelids scanned the whole company.
“You are enlisting for the war, prince?” said Anna Pavlovna.
“General Kutuzov has been kind enough to have me as an aide-de-camp,” said Bolkonsky.
“And Lise, your wife?—–”
“She is going into the country.”