Читать книгу War and Peace: Original Version - Лев Толстой, Leo Tolstoy, Liev N. Tolstói - Страница 23

Prince Vasily kept the promise that he had made to the elderly woman at Anna Pavlovna’s soirée who had petitioned him about her only son Boris. His Majesty was informed of him and, unlike other young men, he was transferred to the Semyonovsky Guards regiment as an ensign. But Boris was not appointed an adjutant or attached to Kutuzov, for all Anna Mikhailovna’s soliciting and scheming. Shortly after Anna Pavlovna’s soirée, Anna Mikhailovna went back to Moscow, straight to her rich relatives the Rostovs, with whom she stayed in Moscow and in whose house her adored little Borenka had been educated since he was a child and had lived for years. Now, though he had only just been taken into the army, he had immediately been made a Guards ensign. The Guards had already left St. Petersburg on the 10th of August and her son, who had remained in Moscow to be fitted for his uniform, was due to catch them up on the road to Radzivilov.

It was the name-day of two members of the Rostov family – the mother and her youngest daughter, both called Natalya. All morning, teams of horses had been constantly driving up and away, bringing well-wishers to Countess Rostova’s large house on Povarskaya Street, which was known to the whole of Moscow. The countess and her elder daughter sat in the drawing room with the guests, who endlessly came and went. The countess was a woman with a thin, oriental-looking face, about forty-five years old, clearly exhausted by her children, of whom she had had twelve. A slowness in her movements and speech, due to her frailty, lent her a grave air that inspired respect. As part of the household, Princess Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskaya sat beside her, helping with the business of receiving the guests and engaging them in conversation. The young people were in the back rooms, feeling no need to participate in the receiving of visits. The count was greeting and seeing off the guests and inviting them to dinner.

“I am very, very grateful, ma chère or mon cher” (he said ma chère or mon cher to everyone without exception, making not the slightest distinction between people of higher or lower standing than himself), “for myself and for my dear name-day girls. Be sure to come for dinner, now. I cordially invite you on behalf of the whole family, ma chère.”

He spoke these words to everyone without exception or variation, with an identical expression on his plump, jolly, clean-shaven face, and with an identically firm handshake and repeated short bows. After seeing off one guest, the count went back to another who was still in the drawing room: drawing up an armchair and with the air of a man who likes and knows how to enjoy life, rakishly planting his feet wide apart and setting his hands on his knees, he swayed impressively, ventured conjectures concerning the weather and consulted people about his health, sometimes in Russian, sometimes in very bad but self-assured French, then once again, with the air of a man who is tired but resolute in the fulfilment of his duty, went to see the guest off, arranging the sparse grey hairs on his bald patch, and once again invited the guest to dinner. Sometimes on his way back from the hallway he went via the conservatory and the footmen’s room to look into the large marble hall, where they were laying the table for eighty places and, looking at the footmen carrying the silver and porcelain, extending the tables and spreading out the damask tablecloths, he called over Dmitri Vasilievich, the nobleman’s son who managed all his affairs and said:

“Right, Mitenka, now you make sure everything is all right. Good, good,” he said, surveying with satisfaction the huge extended table. “And don’t forget the order of the wines; the whole thing is in the serving. See to it …” And he walked away, sighing complacently, back to the drawing room.

“Marya Lvovna Karagina and her daughter!” the countess’s huge footman announced in a deep bass as he stepped through the doors of the drawing room.

The countess thought for a moment and took a sniff from a gold snuffbox decorated with a portrait of her husband.

“These visits have quite worn me out,” she said. “Well then, she shall be the last I receive. She is very prim and proper. Show her in,” she said to her servant in a sad voice, as if she were saying: “Very well then, finish me off.”

A tall, plump lady with a proud face and her pretty little daughter entered the drawing room in a rustling of dresses.

“Dear countess, how long it has been … she has had to stay in bed, the poor child … at the ball at the Razumovskys … and Countess Apraksina … I was so glad.”

The sound of lively women’s voices interrupting each other mingled with the sound of dresses rustling and chairs being drawn up. There began one of those conversations which are initiated precisely in order that, at the first pause, one may rise, rustle one’s dress, and say: “I am so delighted! Mama and Countess Apraksina wish you good health …” – and, rustling one’s dress yet again, proceed to the hallway, put on one’s fur coat or cloak and depart.

The conversation turned to the most important news in town at the time, the illness of a famous, rich and handsome man of Empress Catherine’s day, the old Count Bezukhov, and his illegitimate son Pierre, who had behaved so improperly at Anna Pavlovna Scherer’s soirée.

“I feel awfully sorry for the poor count,” said the guest, “his health was bad enough already, and now comes this distress from his son. It will be the death of him!”

“What’s that?” asked the countess, as though she did not know what her guest was talking about, despite having already heard the reason for Count Bezukhov’s distress at least fifteen times.

“That’s modern-day education for you! While he was abroad,” the guest continued, “this young man was left to his own devices and now they’re saying in St. Petersburg that he has done such terrible things, he has been banished here with a police escort.”

“Well, I never!” said the countess.

“He chose his friends badly,” Princess Anna Mikhailovna interjected. “They say that he and Prince Vasily’s son, and a certain Dolokhov, got up to God only knows what. And they have both suffered for it. Dolokhov has been reduced to the ranks and Bezukhov’s son has been banished to Moscow. As for Anatole Kuragin – his father hushed things up somehow. He managed to stay in the Horse Guards regiment.”

“But what can they have done?” asked the countess.

“They are absolute bandits, especially Dolokhov,” said the guest. “He is the son of Marya Ivanovna Dolokhova, such a respectable lady, but what of it? Can you imagine, the three of them got hold of a bear from somewhere and took it off with them in a carriage to see some actresses? The police came running to calm them down, and they caught the local policeman, tied him back to back with the bear and threw the bear into the Moika river; the bear was swimming along with the policeman on top of it.”

“A fine figure of a policeman, ma chère,” the count exclaimed, splitting his sides laughing, with an air of approval which suggested that, in spite of his age, he would not have minded taking part in such fun and games.

“Oh, how terrible! What is there to laugh at, count?”

But the ladies laughed too, despite themselves.

“They barely managed to rescue the unfortunate man,” the guest continued. “And that is the clever way in which the son of Count Kirill Vladimirovich Bezukhov amuses himself!” she added. “And they said he was so well brought-up and intelligent. This is what all that foreign upbringing has led to. I hope no one here will receive him, despite his wealth. They wanted to introduce him to me. I positively refused: I have daughters.”

“But this is a quite excellent prank, ma chère. Good for them!” said the count, making no attempt to restrain his laughter.

The guest looked at him in prim annoyance.

“Ah, ma chère Marya Lvovna,” he said in his badly pronounced poor French, “youth must sow its wild oats. Really and truly!” he added. “Your husband and I were no saints either. We had our little peccadilloes too.”

He winked at her; the guest did not reply.

“Why do you say that this young man is so rich?” asked the countess, leaning away from the girls, who immediately pretended not to be listening. “Surely he only has illegitimate children. And I think … Pierre is also illegitimate.”

The guest gestured vaguely.

“He has twenty illegitimate children, I believe.”

Princess Anna Mikhailovna intervened in the conversation, clearly wishing to demonstrate her connections and her knowledge of all the affairs of high society.

“That is the point,” she said significantly, and also in a half-whisper. “Count Kirill Vladimirovich’s reputation is well known … He has lost count of his children, but this Pierre was his favourite.”

“What a fine man he was,” said the countess, “only last year! I never laid eyes on a more handsome man.”

“He is greatly changed now,” said Princess Anna Mikhailovna. “What I wanted to say,” she continued, “is that on his wife’s side, the direct heir to the entire estate is Prince Vasily, but Pierre was greatly loved by his father, who provided for his education and wrote to His Majesty … So no one knows, if he dies (and he is in such a bad way that it is expected any minute, and Lorrain has come from St. Petersburg), who will get this immense fortune, Pierre or Prince Vasily. Forty thousand souls and millions upon millions. I know this so well, because Prince Vasily told me himself. And Kirill Vladimirovich is a third cousin of mine on my mother’s side, and he was Borya’s godfather,” she added, as though she attached no importance whatever to that circumstance.

“Prince Vasily arrived in Moscow yesterday. He is going for some audit, I am told,” said the guest.

“Yes, but between you and me,” said the princess, “that is a mere pretext: he has actually come to see Count Kirill Vladimirovich after hearing that he is in such a bad way.”

“Nonetheless, ma chère, it was an excellent prank,” said the count and then, noticing that the senior guest was not listening to him, he turned to the young ladies. “That policeman cut a fine figure, I imagine.”

And demonstrating the policeman waving his arms, he began laughing again with that resonant bass laughter that shook his entire plump body, the way people laugh who always eat and, especially, drink well.