6

The rustle of a woman’s dress was heard in the next room. Prince Andrei shook himself as if coming out of sleep and his face took on the same expression it had worn in Anna Pavlovna’s drawing room. Pierre removed his feet from the sofa. The Princess came in. She had changed her dress and was wearing something less formal, but equally fresh and elegant. Prince Andrei stood up and politely placed a chair for her.

“I often wonder,” she began, speaking in French as always, and briskly and fussily settling herself in the easy chair, “why Annette has never married. How stupid all you men are not to have married her. Forgive me for saying so, but you have no sense about women. What an argumentative fellow you are, Monsieur Pierre!”

“I am still arguing with your husband. I can’t understand why he wants to go to war,” said Pierre, with none of the restraint common to young men in the presence of a young woman.

The Princess started. Evidently Pierre’s words touched her to the quick.

“Ah, that’s exactly what I say! I don’t understand it, I simply do not understand why men can’t get along without war. How is it we women don’t want such a thing, have no need for it? Now, you shall be the judge. I keep telling him: here he is Uncle’s aide-de-camp—a most brilliant position. He is so well known, so highly esteemed. The other day at the Apraksins’ I heard a lady asking: ‘Is that the famous Prince Andrei?’ On my word of honor!” She laughed. “That’s how he is received everywhere. He might easily become an aide-de-camp to the Emperor. You know the Emperor spoke most graciously to him. Annette and I were talking about how easily it might be arranged. What do you think?”

Pierre glanced at Prince Andrei, and, observing that the conversation was displeasing to him, made no reply.

“When are you leaving?” he asked.

“Oh, don’t talk of his going, don’t even mention it! I won’t hear it spoken of!” exclaimed the Princess in the same playfully capricious tone she had used with Ippolit at the soirée, and which was plainly ill-suited to the family circle in which Pierre was virtually a member. “Today when I thought of all these precious associations being broken off—— And then, you know, Andrei—” she turned to her husband with a significant look, “I’m afraid, I’m afraid,” she whispered, and a shudder ran down her spine.

Her husband looked at her as if surprised to notice someone besides Pierre and himself in the room, and with icy courtesy inquired:

“What are you afraid of, Lisa? I don’t understand.”

“You see what egotists men are—all of them, all egotists! Just because of some whim of his—goodness knows why—he deserts me, shuts me up alone in the country.”

“With my father and sister, don’t forget,” said Prince Andrei softly.

“Alone, all the same, without my friends…. And he expects me not to be afraid.”

Her tone was querulous, and her raised lip now gave her face not a joyous, but a bestial squirrellike expression. She fell silent, as if finding it indelicate to speak of her condition before Pierre, since this was, in essence, what they were talking about.

“I still do not know what it is you are afraid of,” Prince Andrei repeated in an even tone, not taking his eyes from his wife’s face.

The Princess blushed and threw up her hands in despair.

“Oh, Andrei, how you have changed, how you have changed….”

“Your doctor recommends that you retire earlier,” said Prince Andrei. “You had better go to bed.”

The Princess said nothing, but all at once her short, downy lip began to quiver. Prince Andrei shrugged his shoulders, got up, and commenced walking about the room.

Pierre peered through his spectacles with naive surprise, looking first at the Prince, then at his wife; he stirred uneasily, as if he too meant to get up but changed his mind.

“Why should I mind Monsieur Pierre being here?” the little Princess suddenly exclaimed, her pretty face crumpling into a tearful grimace. “I have wanted to ask you for a long time, Andrei: why have you changed so toward me? What have I done? You are going away to war, and you feel no pity for me—Why?”

“Lisa!” was all Prince Andrei said, but in that one word there was an entreaty, a threat, and above all the assurance that she would regret her words.

“You treat me like an invalid or a child,” she went on hurriedly. “I see it all. You weren’t like this six months ago, were you?”

“Lisa, I beg you to desist,” said Prince Andrei, still more explicitly.

Pierre, who had been growing more and more agitated during this conversation, stood up and went to the Princess. He seemed unable to bear the sight of tears and was ready to cry himself.

“Don’t upset yourself, Princess. It appears this way to you because—I assure you, I myself have experienced—— The reason is—it’s because of—— No, excuse me, an outsider is in the way here. No, don’t distress yourself…. Good-bye.”

Prince Andrei caught him by the hand.

“No, wait, Pierre. The Princess is so kind, she would not wish to deprive me of the pleasure of spending the evening with you.”

“Oh, he thinks only of himself!” cried the Princess, unable to restrain tears of anger.

“Lisa!” said Prince Andrei, raising his voice to a pitch that showed his patience was exhausted.

Suddenly the angry, squirrellike expression on the Princess’s pretty little face changed to an appealing, piteous look of fear. Her beautiful eyes glanced mistrustfully at her husband and on her face there appeared the timorous, contrite expression one sees in a dog when it rapidly but feebly wags its drooping tail.

“Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!” she muttered, and picking up her skirts with one hand she went up to her husband and kissed him on the forehead.

“ Bon soir, Lisa,” he said, rising and politely kissing her hand as if she were a stranger.

* * *

The friends did not speak. Neither of them felt like breaking the silence. From time to time Pierre glanced at Prince Andrei; Prince Andrei kept rubbing his forehead with his small hand.

“Let us go and have supper,” he said with a sigh, getting up and going to the door.

They went into the elegant dining room, which had been newly and opulently decorated. Everything from the table napkins to the silver, china, and crystal bore that imprint of newness peculiar to the households of recently married couples. Halfway through supper, like a man who has long borne something in his heart and suddenly decides to speak out, Prince Andrei leaned his elbows on the table, and, with an expression of nervous irritation that Pierre had never seen on his friend’s face before, began to talk.

“Never, never marry, my friend! That is my advice to you: never marry till you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable of doing, and till you have ceased loving the woman you have chosen and can see her clearly, or you will make a cruel and irrevocable mistake. Marry when you are old and no longer good for anything, otherwise all that is fine and noble in you will be lost—all wasted on trifles. Yes, yes, yes! Don’t look at me with such surprise. If you expect anything of yourself in the future, you will feel at every step that all is over, all is closed to you except the drawing room, where you will be on the level of a court lackey and an idiot…. Well, what more is there to say?” He made a vigorous gesture of dismissal.

Pierre took off his spectacles, which changed his face, making it look even more kindhearted; he gazed at his friend in astonishment.

“My wife,” Prince Andrei continued, “is an excellent woman, one of those rare women with whom a man’s honor is secure, but, my God, what wouldn’t I give not to be married now! You are the first and only one to whom I have said this, because I like you.”

As he talked, Prince Andrei became less and less like the Bolkonsky who had been lolling in Anna Pavlovna’s easy chairs with half-closed eyes, and murmuring French phrases through half-closed lips. Every muscle of his drawn face quivered with nervous energy; his eyes, in which the fire of life then seemed to have been extinguished, now flashed with a brilliant, radiant light. Apparently the more lifeless he seemed at ordinary times, the more forceful he became in moments of irritation.

“You don’t understand why I say this,” he continued, “but, you see, this is the whole story of life. You talk of Bonaparte and his career,” he said, though Pierre had not mentioned Bonaparte, “you talk of Bonaparte—why, when he was working toward his goal, he went forward step by step; he was free; he had nothing except his goal to consider, and he attained it. But tie yourself to a woman and you’re bound hand and foot—all freedom gone. And all the hope and strength you have within you only weighs you down, tortures you with regret. Drawing rooms, gossip, balls, vanity, frivolity—there you have the enchanted circle from which I am unable to escape. Now I am going off to war, the greatest war there ever was, and I know nothing, am fit for nothing. Je suis très aimable et très caustique, ” continued Prince Andrei, “and at Anna Pavlovna’s everyone listens to me. And that senseless society, without which my wife cannot live, and those women—— If you only knew what all those femmes distinguées, what women in general, are! My father is right. Selfish, vain, obtuse, and petty in everything—that’s what women are when they show themselves in their true colors. Looking at them as they appear in society, you think there is something to them, but there is nothing, nothing, nothing! No, don’t marry, my dear fellow, don’t marry!” said Prince Andrei in conclusion.

“It seems to me preposterous that you— you should consider yourself incompetent, and your life ruined. You have everything before you, everything. And you——”

He did not finish the sentence, but his tone conveyed how highly he valued his friend, and how much he expected of him in the future.

“How can he talk like that?” Pierre wondered. Precisely because Prince Andrei embodied all those qualities that he himself lacked, and which might best be summed up as will power, Pierre regarded him as the model of perfection. He was always amazed at Prince Andrei’s easy demeanor with people in every walk of life, his extraordinary memory, his erudition (he had read everything, knew everything, had an opinion on everything), and above all at his capacity for work and study. And if he was often struck by Andrei’s incapacity for the sort of speculative philosophizing to which he himself was particularly addicted, he considered it not so much a defect as a sign of strength.

Even in the best, the simplest, and most friendly relations, flattery and praise are as necessary as the oiling of wheels to keep them running smoothly.

“I’m done for,” said Prince Andrei. “Why talk about me? Let us talk about you,” he resumed after a momentary silence, smiling at his own reassuring thoughts.

His smile was instantly reflected on Pierre’s face.

“What’s there to say about me?” Pierre said, his lips parting in a carefree, merry smile. “I am a bastard!” And he suddenly blushed crimson: it had obviously required a great effort for him to say this. “Without name or fortune. And it really is——” But he did not say what it really was. “For the present I am free, and I’m all right. Only I have no idea what to take up. I wanted seriously to consult you.”

Prince Andrei looked at him with kindly eyes, but his glance, friendly and affectionate as it was, expressed a consciousness of his own superiority.

“I am very fond of you, especially as you are the one live person in our entire circle. Yes, you are all right. Choose what you will, it’s all the same. You will be all right anywhere. But there’s just one thing: give up seeing those Kuragins, and leading that sort of life. It doesn’t suit you—that dissipation and debauchery, and all the rest…”

“Que voulez-vous, mon cher?” said Pierre, shrugging his shoulders. “Les femmes, mon cher, les femmes!”

“I do not understand,” rejoined Prince Andrei. “ Les femmes comme il faut, that’s another matter; but the women Kuragin consorts with—wine and women—that I do not understand!”

Pierre had been living at Prince Vasily Kuragin’s and participating in the dissolute life of his son Anatol, whom they were planning to reform by arranging a marriage with Prince Andrei’s sister.

“Do you know what?” Pierre began, as if suddenly struck by a happy thought. “Seriously, I’ve been thinking that for a long time. This sort of life makes it impossible to consider anything, to arrive at a decision. My head aches, my money’s all gone—— He invited me again for tonight, but I won’t go.”

“Will you give me your word of honor you’ll give up going?”

“My word of honor!”

It was past one o’clock by the time Pierre left his friend, and was one of those luminous June nights in Petersburg. He took a cab, intending to go straight home, but the nearer he got to the house, the more impossible he felt it would be to sleep on such a night; it was more like early evening or morning, light enough to see a great distance in the deserted streets. On the way, Pierre remembered that Anatol Kuragin was expecting his friends for cards that evening, after which there would be the usual drinking bout, ending in one of Pierre’s favorite diversions.

“It would be pleasant to go to Kuragin’s,” he thought.

He recalled his promise to Prince Andrei not to go there again, and immediately, as happens with people who, as they say, lack strength of character, he felt such a passionate desire to indulge once more in the debauchery to which he was now quite accustomed, that he decided to go. And it occurred to him that his promise to Prince Andrei was of no consequence because he had earlier promised Prince Anatol that he would come; and for that matter, he thought, all these words of honor are mere conventions, having no definite meaning, especially if one considers that one may be dead by tomorrow, or something so extraordinary might happen that there would no longer be any question of honor or dishonor. This sort of reasoning, which nullified all intentions and decisions, was not infrequent with Pierre. He went to Kuragin’s.

When he reached the large house in which Kuragin lived, near the Horse Guards caserne, he went up the steps leading to the lighted porch and entered the house by an open door. There was no one in the hall; empty bottles, cloaks, and overshoes were strewn about; there was the smell of wine and the sound of voices talking and shouting in the distance.

Cards and supper were over, but the guests had not yet departed. Pierre threw off his cloak and went into the first room, where the remains of supper were still on the table and a solitary footman, thinking no one could see him, was furtively drinking what was left in the glasses. In the next room there was an uproar: the shouting of familiar voices, boisterous laughter, and the growling of a bear. Some eight or nine young men were eagerly crowding around an open window. Three others were romping with a young bear, one pulling him by a chain and trying to frighten the others.

“I bet a hundred on Stevens!” cried one.

“No holding on!” shouted another.

“I bet on Dolokhov!” a third called out. “You witness the bet, Kuragin!”

“Come, leave off there with Bruin, there’s a bet on!”

“In one draft, or he loses.”

“Yakov, bring a bottle! Yakov!” shouted the host, a tall handsome young man standing in the midst of the group, without a coat, his fine linen shirt open over his chest. “Wait, gentlemen. Here he is—Petrushka, my dear fellow!” he called to Pierre.

Another voice, conspicuous for its sobriety among all these drunken voices, came from a man of medium height with clear blue eyes.

“Come here, witness the bets!” he shouted from the window.

This was Dolokhov, an officer of the Semyonovsky regiment, a notorious gambler and duelist, who was living at Anatol’s. Pierre looked around the room with a jovial smile. “I don’t understand. What’s it all about?”

“Wait, he’s not drunk yet. Bring a bottle,” said Anatol, taking a glass from the table and going up to Pierre.

“First of all, drink!”

Pierre commenced drinking one glass after another, surveying from under his eyebrows the drunken guests and listening to their babble, as they again crowded around the window. Anatol kept refilling his glass, while explaining that Dolokhov had bet the English naval officer Stevens that he could drink a bottle of rum sitting on the third-floor window ledge with his legs hanging out.

“Go on, drink it all,” said Anatol, emptying the bottle into Pierre’s glass, “or I won’t let you go!”

“No, I don’t want to,” said Pierre, pushing Anatol aside and going to the window.

Dolokhov, holding the Englishman by the hand, was distinctly and precisely repeating the terms of the bet, addressing himself chiefly to Anatol and Pierre.

Dolokhov was a man of medium height with curly hair and lucent blue eyes. He was about twenty-five. Like all infantry officers, he had no moustache, so that his mouth, the most striking feature of his face, was clearly visible. The lines of that mouth were chiseled with remarkable delicacy. The wedge-shaped middle of the upper lip closed decisively over the firm lower lip, and something like two distinct smiles played continuously at the corners of his mouth; this, together with the mettlesome, insolent, intelligent look in his eyes, created such an impression that it was impossible not to notice that face. Dolokhov was a man of small means and no connections, and despite the fact that Anatol spent tens of thousands, Dolokhov managed to live with him on such a footing that everyone who knew them both had more respect for him—including Anatol himself. Dolokhov played every sort of game and nearly always won. And however much he drank he remained clearheaded. In the Petersburg world of rakes and prodigals they were both notorious at that time.

The bottle of rum was brought; the window frame, which prevented anyone from sitting on the outer ledge, was being torn out by two footmen, urged on and intimidated by the directions shouted at them.

Anatol, with his swaggering air, strode over to the window. He felt like breaking something. Thrusting the footmen aside, he tugged at the sash, but it would not yield. He smashed a windowpane.

“You try it, Samson,” he said, turning to Pierre.

Pierre took hold of the crosspiece, pulled, and ripped out the oak frame with a crash.

“All out—or they’ll think I’m holding on,” said Dolokhov.

“So the Englishman’s been bragging, eh?…All right?” asked Anatol.

“All right,” said Pierre, looking at Dolokhov, who had picked up the bottle of rum and was going to the window, from which the light of the sky, a mingling of twilight and dawn, could be seen.

Dolokhov, the bottle of rum in his hand, jumped onto the windowsill.

“Listen!” he shouted, standing on the windowsill facing the room.

Everyone stopped talking.

“I bet,” he spoke in French so the Englishman could understand him, but spoke it none too well, “I bet fifty imperials—or do you want to make it a hundred?” he added, addressing the Englishman.

“No, fifty,” said the Englishman.

“All right, fifty imperials—that I will drink a whole bottle of rum without taking the bottle from my mouth, and will drink it sitting outside the window, here, on this spot (he bent down and pointed to the sloping ledge outside the window), without holding on to anything…. Is that right?”

“Quite right,” said the Englishman.

Anatol turned to the Englishman and, taking him by the coat button and looking down at him (the Englishman was short), repeated the terms of the wager in English.

“Wait!” shouted Dolokhov, rapping the bottle against the side of the window to get attention. “Wait, Kuragin! Listen! If anyone else does the same, I’ll pay a hundred. Understand?”

The Englishman nodded without indicating whether or not he intended to accept this new wager. Anatol did not release him, however, and, despite the fact that he kept nodding to show that he understood, translated what Dolokhov had said into English.

A slim youth, a hussar in the Life Guards who had been losing all evening, climbed onto the windowsill, put his head out, and looked down.

“Oh-oo-oh!” he breathed, peering down at the stone pavement.

“Shut up!” cried Dolokhov, pushing him off the windowsill so that he tripped over his spurs as he jumped awkwardly into the room.

Placing the bottle on the windowsill where it would be within reach, Dolokhov slowly and cautiously crawled through the window. He sat down, lowered his legs, and with his hands pressed against the sides of the window adjusted his position, moving a little to the right, then to the left, before dropping his hands and reaching for the bottle. Anatol brought two candles and set them on the windowsill, though it was already quite light. Dolokhov’s back in his white shirt, and his curly head, were lit up from both sides. Everyone crowded around the window, the Englishman in front. Pierre smiled but said nothing. One man, older than the others, stepped forward with a frightened, angry expression on his face and was about to seize Dolokhov by the shirt.

“Gentlemen, this is preposterous!” exclaimed this somewhat more sensible man. “He’ll kill himself!”

Anatol stopped him.

“Don’t touch him! If you startle him, he will kill himself. And what then?…Eh?”

Dolokhov looked round, then, holding on with both hands, settled himself once more.

“If anyone interferes again,” he said, spacing his words and forcing them through his thin, compressed lips, “I’ll throw him down there instantly. Now then!”

And with these words he turned back, lowered his hands, took the bottle and lifted it to his lips, then threw back his head and raised his free hand to balance himself. One of the footmen, who had bent down to pick up the broken glass, remained in that position without taking his eyes from the window and Dolokhov’s back. Anatol stood erect and wide-eyed. The Englishman looked on from the side with pursed lips. The man who had wanted to stop the affair fled to a corner of the room and threw himself on a sofa, his face to the wall. Pierre covered his eyes, but a faint smile, like something that had been left behind, remained on his face, though it now expressed fear and horror. No one spoke. Pierre took his hand from his eyes. Dolokhov still sat in the same position, but his head was thrown so far back that his curly hair touched his shirt collar and the hand holding the bottle rose higher and higher, trembling with the strain. As the bottle went up and his head bent farther back, the bottle was visibly emptying.

“Why does it go on so long?” Pierre wondered. It seemed to him that more than half an hour had elapsed.

Dolokhov made a sudden movement with his back and his hand twitched nervously; this was enough to shift his whole body on the sloping ledge. He began to slip; his head and arm shook still more from the strain. One arm moved as if to clutch the windowsill, then drew back. Pierre again covered his eyes, telling himself he would never open them again. All at once he became aware of everything stirring around him. He looked up. Dolokhov was standing on the windowsill, pale but elated.

“Empty!”

He tossed the bottle to the Englishman, who deftly caught it. Dolokhov jumped down. He smelled strongly of rum.

“Splendid!…Brave lad!…Now there’s a wager for you!…Damned if it isn’t!” came from all sides.

The Englishman took out his purse and counted out the money. Dolokhov knit his brows and did not speak. Pierre jumped up onto the windowsill.

“Gentlemen! Who wants to bet with me! I’ll do the same!” he suddenly shouted. “I’ll even do it without a wager. Tell them to bring me a bottle. I’ll do it. Bring the bottle!”

“Let him—let him do it!” said Dolokhov with a smile.

“Have you gone mad?…Who would let you?…Just standing on a staircase makes you giddy!” came from several voices at once.

“I’ll drink it down—give me a bottle of rum!” cried Pierre, going to the table and pounding on it with drunken insistence, then climbing back onto the windowsill.

They seized him by the arms, but he was so strong that everyone who came near him was sent flying.

“No, you’ll never manage him that way,” said Anatol. “Wait—I know how to get around him…. Listen!” he cried. “I’ll take you up on it tomorrow, but now we’re all going to ———’s.”

“Come on then!” cried Pierre. “Let’s go! And we’ll take Bruin with us!”

And he caught hold of the bear, took it in his arms, and commenced dancing around the room with it. Ur1wpm94SYgljzrTaQR8don9MSAZjQzZvV2mFqmycDgwmRsSX/mIxjIPUSOD0OH5