When Princess Mary came down, Prince
Vasili and his son were already in the drawing room,
talking to the little princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne.
When she entered with her heavy step, treading on her
heels, the gentlemen and Mademoiselle Bourienne rose
and the little princess, indicating her to the gentlemen,
said: “Voila Marie!” Princess Mary
saw them all and saw them in detail. She saw
Prince Vasili’s face, serious for an instant
at the sight of her, but immediately smiling again,
and the little princess curiously noting the impression
“Marie” produced on the visitors.
And she saw Mademoiselle Bourienne, with her ribbon
and pretty face, and her unusually animated look which
was fixed on him, but him she could not see, she only
saw something large, brilliant, and handsome moving
toward her as she entered the room. Prince Vasili
approached first, and she kissed the bold forehead
that bent over her hand and answered his question
by saying that, on the contrary, she remembered him
quite well. Then Anatole came up to her.
She still could not see him. She only felt a
soft hand taking hers firmly, and she touched with
her lips a white forehead, over which was beautiful
light-brown hair smelling of pomade. When she
looked up at him she was struck by his beauty.
Anatole stood with his right thumb under a button
of his uniform, his chest expanded and his back drawn
in, slightly swinging one foot, and, with his head
a little bent, looked with beaming face at the princess
without speaking and evidently not thinking about
her at all. Anatole was not quick-witted, nor
ready or eloquent in conversation, but he had the
faculty, so invaluable in society, of composure and
imperturbable self-possession. If a man lacking
in self-confidence remains dumb on a first introduction
and betrays a consciousness of the impropriety of
such silence and an anxiety to find something to say,
the effect is bad. But Anatole was dumb, swung
his foot, and smilingly examined the princess’
hair. It was evident that he could be silent
in this way for a very long time. “If anyone
finds this silence inconvenient, let him talk, but
I don’t want to,” he seemed to say.
Besides this, in his behavior to women Anatole had
a manner which particularly inspires in them curiosity,
awe, and even love a supercilious consciousness
of his own superiority. It was as if he said
to them: “I know you, I know you, but why
should I bother about you? You’d be only
too glad, of course.” Perhaps he did not
really think this when he met women even
probably he did not, for in general he thought very
little but his looks and manner gave that
impression. The princess felt this, and as if
wishing to show him that she did not even dare expect
to interest him, she turned to his father. The
conversation was general and animated, thanks to Princess
Lise’s voice and little downy lip that lifted
over her white teeth. She met Prince Vasili with
that playful manner often employed by lively chatty
people, and consisting in the assumption that between
the person they so address and themselves there are
some semi-private, long-established jokes and amusing
reminiscences, though no such reminiscences really
exist just as none existed in this case.
Prince Vasili readily adopted her tone and the little
princess also drew Anatole, whom she hardly knew, into
these amusing recollections of things that had never
occurred. Mademoiselle Bourienne also shared
them and even Princess Mary felt herself pleasantly
made to share in these merry reminiscences.
“Here at least we shall have
the benefit of your company all to ourselves, dear
prince,” said the little princess (of course,
in French) to Prince Vasili. “It’s
not as at Annette’s receptions where you always
ran away; you remember cette chère Annette!”
Anna Pavlovna.
“Ah, but you won’t talk politics to me
like Annette!”
“And our little tea table?”
“Oh, yes!”
“Why is it you were never at
Annette’s?” the little princess asked
Anatole. “Ah, I know, I know,” she
said with a sly glance, “your brother Hippolyte
told me about your goings on. Oh!” and she
shook her finger at him, “I have even heard
of your doings in Paris!”
“And didn’t Hippolyte
tell you?” asked Prince Vasili, turning to his
son and seizing the little princess’ arm as
if she would have run away and he had just managed
to catch her, “didn’t he tell you how he
himself was pining for the dear princess, and how
she showed him the door? Oh, she is a pearl among
women, Princess,” he added, turning to Princess
Mary.
When Paris was mentioned, Mademoiselle
Bourienne for her part seized the opportunity of joining
in the general current of recollections.
She took the liberty of inquiring
whether it was long since Anatole had left Paris and
how he had liked that city. Anatole answered the
Frenchwoman very readily and, looking at her with a
smile, talked to her about her native land. When
he saw the pretty little Bourienne, Anatole came to
the conclusion that he would not find Bald Hills dull
either. “Not at all bad!” he thought,
examining her, “not at all bad, that little
companion! I hope she will bring her along with
her when we’re married, la petite
est gentille.”
The little one is charming.
The old prince dressed leisurely in
his study, frowning and considering what he was to
do. The coming of these visitors annoyed him.
“What are Prince Vasili and that son of his
to me? Prince Vasili is a shallow braggart and
his son, no doubt, is a fine specimen,” he grumbled
to himself. What angered him was that the coming
of these visitors revived in his mind an unsettled
question he always tried to stifle, one about which
he always deceived himself. The question was whether
he could ever bring himself to part from his daughter
and give her to a husband. The prince never directly
asked himself that question, knowing beforehand that
he would have to answer it justly, and justice clashed
not only with his feelings but with the very possibility
of life. Life without Princess Mary, little as
he seemed to value her, was unthinkable to him.
“And why should she marry?” he thought.
“To be unhappy for certain. There’s
Lise, married to Andrew a better husband
one would think could hardly be found nowadays but
is she contented with her lot? And who would
marry Marie for love? Plain and awkward!
They’ll take her for her connections and wealth.
Are there no women living unmarried, and even the
happier for it?” So thought Prince Bolkonski
while dressing, and yet the question he was always
putting off demanded an immediate answer. Prince
Vasili had brought his son with the evident intention
of proposing, and today or tomorrow he would probably
ask for an answer. His birth and position in
society were not bad. “Well, I’ve
nothing against it,” the prince said to himself,
“but he must be worthy of her. And that
is what we shall see.”
“That is what we shall see!
That is what we shall see!” he added aloud.
He entered the drawing room with his
usual alert step, glancing rapidly round the company.
He noticed the change in the little princess’
dress, Mademoiselle Bourienne’s ribbon, Princess
Mary’s unbecoming coiffure, Mademoiselle Bourienne’s
and Anatole’s smiles, and the loneliness of his
daughter amid the general conversation. “Got
herself up like a fool!” he thought, looking
irritably at her. “She is shameless, and
he ignores her!”
He went straight up to Prince Vasili.
“Well! How d’ye do? How d’ye
do? Glad to see you!”
“Friendship laughs at distance,”
began Prince Vasili in his usual rapid, self-confident,
familiar tone. “Here is my second son; please
love and befriend him.”
Prince Bolkonski surveyed Anatole.
“Fine young fellow! Fine
young fellow!” he said. “Well, come
and kiss me,” and he offered his cheek.
Anatole kissed the old man, and looked
at him with curiosity and perfect composure, waiting
for a display of the eccentricities his father had
told him to expect.
Prince Bolkonski sat down in his usual
place in the corner of the sofa and, drawing up an
armchair for Prince Vasili, pointed to it and began
questioning him about political affairs and news.
He seemed to listen attentively to what Prince Vasili
said, but kept glancing at Princess Mary.
“And so they are writing from
Potsdam already?” he said, repeating Prince
Vasili’s last words. Then rising, he suddenly
went up to his daughter.
“Is it for visitors you’ve
got yourself up like that, eh?” said he.
“Fine, very fine! You have done up your
hair in this new way for the visitors, and before
the visitors I tell you that in future you are never
to dare to change your way of dress without my consent.”
“It was my fault, mon pere,”
interceded the little princess, with a blush.
“You must do as you please,”
said Prince Bolkonski, bowing to his daughter-in-law,
“but she need not make a fool of herself, she’s
plain enough as it is.”
And he sat down again, paying no more
attention to his daughter, who was reduced to tears.
“On the contrary, that coiffure
suits the princess very well,” said Prince Vasili.
“Now you, young prince, what’s
your name?” said Prince Bolkonski, turning to
Anatole, “come here, let us talk and get acquainted.”
“Now the fun begins,”
thought Anatole, sitting down with a smile beside
the old prince.
“Well, my dear boy, I hear you’ve
been educated abroad, not taught to read and write
by the deacon, like your father and me. Now tell
me, my dear boy, are you serving in the Horse Guards?”
asked the old man, scrutinizing Anatole closely and
intently.
“No, I have been transferred
to the line,” said Anatole, hardly able to restrain
his laughter.
“Ah! That’s a good
thing. So, my dear boy, you wish to serve the
Tsar and the country? It is wartime. Such
a fine fellow must serve. Well, are you off to
the front?”
“No, Prince, our regiment has
gone to the front, but I am attached... what is it
I am attached to, Papa?” said Anatole, turning
to his father with a laugh.
“A splendid soldier, splendid!
‘What am I attached to!’ Ha, ha, ha!”
laughed Prince Bolkonski, and Anatole laughed still
louder. Suddenly Prince Bolkonski frowned.
“You may go,” he said to Anatole.
Anatole returned smiling to the ladies.
“And so you’ve had him
educated abroad, Prince Vasili, haven’t you?”
said the old prince to Prince Vasili.
“I have done my best for him,
and I can assure you the education there is much better
than ours.”
“Yes, everything is different
nowadays, everything is changed. The lad’s
a fine fellow, a fine fellow! Well, come with
me now.” He took Prince Vasili’s
arm and led him to his study. As soon as they
were alone together, Prince Vasili announced his hopes
and wishes to the old prince.
“Well, do you think I shall
prevent her, that I can’t part from her?”
said the old prince angrily. “What an idea!
I’m ready for it tomorrow! Only let me
tell you, I want to know my son-in-law better.
You know my principles everything aboveboard?
I will ask her tomorrow in your presence; if she is
willing, then he can stay on. He can stay and
I’ll see.” The old prince snorted.
“Let her marry, it’s all the same to me!”
he screamed in the same piercing tone as when parting
from his son.
“I will tell you frankly,”
said Prince Vasili in the tone of a crafty man convinced
of the futility of being cunning with so keen-sighted
companion. “You know, you see right through
people. Anatole is no genius, but he is an honest,
goodhearted lad; an excellent son or kinsman.”
“All right, all right, we’ll see!”
As always happens when women lead
lonely lives for any length of time without male society,
on Anatole’s appearance all the three women of
Prince Bolkonski’s household felt that their
life had not been real till then. Their powers
of reasoning, feeling, and observing immediately increased
tenfold, and their life, which seemed to have been
passed in darkness, was suddenly lit up by a new brightness,
full of significance.
Princess Mary grew quite unconscious
of her face and coiffure. The handsome open face
of the man who might perhaps be her husband absorbed
all her attention. He seemed to her kind, brave,
determined, manly, and magnanimous. She felt
convinced of that. Thousands of dreams of a future
family life continually rose in her imagination.
She drove them away and tried to conceal them.
“But am I not too cold with
him?” thought the princess. “I try
to be reserved because in the depth of my soul I feel
too near to him already, but then he cannot know what
I think of him and may imagine that I do not like
him.”
And Princess Mary tried, but could
not manage, to be cordial to her new guest. “Poor
girl, she’s devilish ugly!” thought Anatole.
Mademoiselle Bourienne, also roused
to great excitement by Anatole’s arrival, thought
in another way. Of course, she, a handsome young
woman without any definite position, without relations
or even a country, did not intend to devote her life
to serving Prince Bolkonski, to reading aloud to him
and being friends with Princess Mary. Mademoiselle
Bourienne had long been waiting for a Russian prince
who, able to appreciate at a glance her superiority
to the plain, badly dressed, ungainly Russian princesses,
would fall in love with her and carry her off; and
here at last was a Russian prince. Mademoiselle
Bourienne knew a story, heard from her aunt but finished
in her own way, which she liked to repeat to herself.
It was the story of a girl who had been seduced, and
to whom her poor mother (sa pauvre mere)
appeared, and reproached her for yielding to a man
without being married. Mademoiselle Bourienne
was often touched to tears as in imagination she told
this story to him, her seducer. And now he, a
real Russian prince, had appeared. He would carry
her away and then sa pauvre mere would
appear and he would marry her. So her future
shaped itself in Mademoiselle Bourienne’s head
at the very time she was talking to Anatole about
Paris. It was not calculation that guided her
(she did not even for a moment consider what she should
do), but all this had long been familiar to her, and
now that Anatole had appeared it just grouped itself
around him and she wished and tried to please him
as much as possible.
The little princess, like an old war
horse that hears the trumpet, unconsciously and quite
forgetting her condition, prepared for the familiar
gallop of coquetry, without any ulterior motive or
any struggle, but with naïve and lighthearted gaiety.
Although in female society Anatole
usually assumed the rôle of a man tired of being run
after by women, his vanity was flattered by the spectacle
of his power over these three women. Besides that,
he was beginning to feel for the pretty and provocative
Mademoiselle Bourienne that passionate animal feeling
which was apt to master him with great suddenness
and prompt him to the coarsest and most reckless actions.
After tea, the company went into the
sitting room and Princess Mary was asked to play on
the clavichord. Anatole, laughing and in high
spirits, came and leaned on his elbows, facing her
and beside Mademoiselle Bourienne. Princess Mary
felt his look with a painfully joyous emotion.
Her favorite sonata bore her into a most intimately
poetic world and the look she felt upon her made that
world still more poetic. But Anatole’s
expression, though his eyes were fixed on her, referred
not to her but to the movements of Mademoiselle Bourienne’s
little foot, which he was then touching with his own
under the clavichord. Mademoiselle Bourienne
was also looking at Princess Mary, and in her lovely
eyes there was a look of fearful joy and hope that
was also new to the princess.
“How she loves me!” thought
Princess Mary. “How happy I am now, and
how happy I may be with such a friend and such a husband!
Husband? Can it be possible?” she thought,
not daring to look at his face, but still feeling
his eyes gazing at her.
In the evening, after supper, when
all were about to retire, Anatole kissed Princess
Mary’s hand. She did not know how she found
the courage, but she looked straight into his handsome
face as it came near to her shortsighted eyes.
Turning from Princess Mary he went up and kissed Mademoiselle
Bourienne’s hand. (This was not etiquette, but
then he did everything so simply and with such assurance!)
Mademoiselle Bourienne flushed, and gave the princess
a frightened look.
“What delicacy!” thought
the princess. “Is it possible that Amelie”
(Mademoiselle Bourienne) “thinks I could be jealous
of her, and not value her pure affection and devotion
to me?” She went up to her and kissed her warmly.
Anatole went up to kiss the little princess’
hand.
“No! No! No!
When your father writes to tell me that you are behaving
well I will give you my hand to kiss. Not till
then!” she said. And smilingly raising
a finger at him, she left the room.