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II

Anna Pavlovna’s drawing room began filling up little by little. The highest nobility of St. Petersburg arrived, people who differed greatly in age and character, but were alike in terms of the society in which they all lived: the diplomat Count Z. arrived, covered in stars and decorations from all the foreign courts, then came the Princess L., a fading beauty, the wife of an envoy; a decrepit general entered, clattering his sabre and wheezing; then Prince Vasily’s daughter, the beautiful Hélène, entered, having called to collect her father in order to go on with him to the ambassador’s festivities. She was wearing a ball gown and her insigne as a lady-in-waiting. The young little Princess Bolkonskaya, known as the most enchanting woman in St. Petersburg, also arrived; she had married the previous winter and now no longer appeared at great society events on account of being pregnant, but she still went out to small soirées.

“You have not yet met …” or “I don’t think you know my aunt …” said Anna Pavlovna to each of her guests as they arrived, leading them across with great seriousness to a little old woman with tall bows on her cap who had come gliding out of the next room as soon as the guests had begun to arrive; she introduced each by name, slowly shifting her gaze from guest to aunt, before moving aside. All of the guests performed the ritual of greeting this aunt who was known to no one, in whom no one was interested and whom no one wanted to meet. Anna Pavlovna followed their greetings with sad, solemn concern, tacitly giving approval. In speaking to each of them the aunt used the same expressions, whether they concerned the guest’s health, her own health or the health of Her Majesty, which today, thank God, was improved. Concealing their haste out of a sense of decorum, all who approached the old woman left with a feeling of relief at an onerous duty fulfilled, never to approach her again for the entire evening. Of the ten or so gentlemen and ladies already present, some were gathered by the tea table, some were in the nook behind the trellis, and some by the window: all of them made conversation and moved freely about from one group to another.

The young Princess Bolkonskaya arrived with her needlework in a velvet bag embroidered in gold. Her pretty little upper lip with its faint hint of a dark moustache was too short to cover her teeth, but it opened all the more sweetly for that and occasionally stretched down more sweetly still to touch her lower lip. As is always the case with thoroughly attractive women, her fault – the shortness of her upper lip and her half-open mouth – seemed to be her special, very own beauty. Everyone was gladdened by the sight of this pretty mother-to-be so full of health and vitality, who bore her condition so lightly. Just looking at her, being with her and talking for a while made old men as well as bored, sullen young men feel as though they themselves were growing like her. Anyone who spoke with her and saw the radiant smile that accompanied her every word and the brilliant white teeth that were constantly visible, thought he was especially charming that day. Every one of them thought so. Waddling with short, quick steps, the little princess moved round the table with her needlework bag hanging from her arm and, adjusting her dress, sat herself down happily on the divan beside the silver samovar, as though whatever she did was amusing to herself and to everyone around her.

“I’ve brought along my work,” she said, opening the top of her reticule and addressing everybody at once.

“Now, Annette, don’t you play any nasty tricks on me,” she said, addressing the hostess. “You wrote that you were only having a little soirée, and see how poorly dressed I am.” And she spread out her arms to show off her elegant grey gown trimmed with lace and girdled with a broad ribbon under the bosom.

“Don’t you worry, Lise, you will always be the loveliest of all,” replied Anna Pavlovna.

“You know, my husband is abandoning me, he’s going off to get himself killed,” she continued in the same tone, addressing the general. “Tell me, whatever is the point of this loathsome war?” she asked, turning to Prince Vasily and, without waiting for a reply, turned to Prince Vasily’s daughter, the beautiful Hélène: “You know, Hélène, you are becoming too lovely, just too lovely.”

“What a delightful creature this little princess is!” Prince Vasily said quietly to Anna Pavlovna.

“Your charming son Hippolyte is madly in love with her.”

“The fool has taste.”

Shortly after the little princess entered, a stout young man with short-cropped hair came in, wearing spectacles, light-coloured knee-breeches after the fashion of the time, a high ruffle and brown tailcoat. Despite the fashionable cut of his clothes, this fat young man was clumsy and awkward, in the way that healthy peasant lads are clumsy and awkward. But he was unembarrassed and resolute in his movements. He halted for a moment in the centre of the drawing room and, failing to locate the hostess, bowed to everyone except her, despite the signs she was making to him. Taking the old aunt for Anna Pavlovna herself, he sat down beside her and began speaking, but finally realising from the aunt’s astonished face that this was not the right thing to do, he stood up and said:

THE LITTLE PRINCESS Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866

“I beg your pardon, mademoiselle, I thought you weren’t you.”

Even the impassive aunt blushed at these senseless words and waved with a despairing expression to her niece, beckoning for help. Anna Pavlovna left the other guest with whom she was occupied and came across.

“It’s so very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come to visit a poor invalid,” she said to him, smiling and exchanging glances with her aunt.

Pierre then did something even worse. He sat down beside Anna Pavlovna with the expression of a man who intended to stay for some time and immediately started talking about Rousseau, of whom they had spoken at their last meeting but one. Anna Pavlovna had no time for this. She was busy listening, watching, arranging and rearranging her guests.

“I cannot understand why,” said the young man, peering significantly at his interlocutress over the top of his spectacles, “everyone so dislikes The Confessions, when the Nouvelle Héloïse is far more inferior.”

The fat young man expressed his meaning awkwardly, challenging Anna Pavlovna to an argument and completely failing to notice that the lady-in-waiting had absolutely no interest whatever in which work was good or bad, especially now, when she had so many other things to think of and remember.

PIERRE BEZUKHOV Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866

“‘May the last trumpet sound when it will, I shall appear with this book in my hand,’” he said, smiling as he quoted the first page of The Confessions. “No, madame, if you read the book, you will love the man.”

“Yes, of course,” replied Anna Pavlovna, in spite of holding entirely the opposite opinion, and she surveyed her guests, wishing to get to her feet. But Pierre continued:

“It’s not just a book, it’s an entire work. The Confessions is a total confession. Is that not so?”

“But I have no desire to be his confessor, Monsieur Pierre, his sins are too vile,” she said, rising to her feet with a smile. “Come along, I shall introduce you to my cousin.”

And having rid herself of this young man who did not know how to behave, she returned to her concerns as mistress of the house and continued listening and watching, ready to offer assistance whenever conversation flagged, like the foreman of a spinning mill who, with his workers all at their places, keeps pacing about, watching that the spindles all keep turning. And just as the foreman of the spinning mill, on noticing that a spindle has stopped or is squeaking strangely or loudly, hurries across and adjusts it or sets it moving as it should, so Anna Pavlovna approached a circle that had fallen quiet or was talking too much and, with a single word or slight rearrangement, set her regular, decorous conversational engine in motion once again.

III

Anna Pavlovna’s soirée was in full swing. On various sides the spindles were humming away smoothly and steadily. Apart from the aunt, beside whom there sat only a single elderly lady with a thin, tearful face, somewhat out of place in this brilliant company, and the fat Monsieur Pierre who, following his tactless conversations with the aunt and Anna Pavlovna, had remained silent for the entire evening and, evidently being acquainted with hardly anyone there, merely gazed around with lively interest at those who were walking about and talking more loudly than others, the remaining company had divided into three circles. At the centre of one was the beautiful Princess Hélène, Prince Vasily’s daughter, in the second it was Anna Pavlovna herself, in the third it was the little Princess Bolkonskaya – pretty, rosy-cheeked and very pregnant for her young age.

Prince Vasily’s son Hippolyte – “your charming son Hippolyte” as Anna Pavlovna invariably called him – made his entrance, as did the expected vicomte, over whom, according to Anna Pavlovna, “all our ladies” were quite beside themselves. Hippolyte came in peering through a lorgnette, and without lowering this lorgnette, drawled loudly but indistinctly, “the Vicomte de Mortemart” and immediately, paying no attention to his father, seated himself beside the little princess and, inclining his head so close that very little space remained between his face and hers, he began to tell her something obscure and private, laughing.

The vicomte was an attractive-looking young man, with mild features and manners who evidently considered himself a celebrity but, being well brought up, modestly permitted the company in which he found himself to take advantage of his person. Anna Pavlovna was obviously offering him to her guests as a treat. Just as a good maître d’hôtel presents as a supreme delicacy that piece of beef which no one would wish to eat if they had seen it in the filthy kitchen, so this evening Anna Pavlovna served up the vicomte to her guests as something supremely refined, although the gentlemen who were staying at the same hotel and played billiards with him every day saw him as little more than a master of cannon shots, and did not feel in the least bit fortunate to have met the vicomte and spoken with him.

Talk immediately turned to the murder of the Duc d’Enghien. The vicomte said the duke had been killed by his own magnanimity and that there were particular reasons for Bonaparte’s animosity.

“Ah! Do tell us about that, vicomte,” said Anna Pavlovna.

The vicomte bowed slightly as a token of acquiescence and smiled courteously. Anna Pavlovna walked round the vicomte and invited everyone to listen to his story.

“The vicomte was personally acquainted with the duke,” Anna Pavlovna whispered to one person.

“The vicomte is a marvellous raconteur,” she declared to another.

“So obviously a man of good society,” she said to a third, and thus the vicomte was served up to the company in a tasteful manner in the best possible light, like roast beef on a hot dish garnished with fresh green herbs.

The vicomte, about to begin his story, gave a delicate smile.

“Move over here, chère Hélène,” said Anna Pavlovna to the beautiful princess, who was sitting a little distance away, at the centre of a different circle.

Princess Hélène was smiling. She stood up, wearing that same constant smile of a perfectly beautiful woman with which she had entered the drawing room. With a slight rustle of her white ball gown trimmed with its plush and fur, and a gleam of white shoulders, glossy hair and diamonds, she stepped between the men who had made way for her and, looking at none of them, but smiling at all as though obligingly granting each one the right to admire the beauty of her figure and well-formed shoulders and her bosom and her back that were greatly exposed in the fashion of the day, and seeming to bring with her all the splendour of a ball, she went over to Anna Pavlovna. Hélène was so lovely that not only was there not a shade of coquetry to be seen in her, but she seemed, on the contrary, to be ashamed of the all-too-overwhelming power of her undeniable beauty. It was as though she wished to diminish her beauty and could not. “What a beautiful woman!” said all who saw her.

As though overcome by something quite extraordinary, the vicomte shrugged his shoulders and lowered his eyes as she seated herself before him and illuminated him with that same unvarying smile.

“Madame, truly I fear for my abilities before such an audience,” he said, bowing his head and smiling.

The princess, finding it needless to respond, rested the elbow of her shapely, exposed arm on the table. She waited, smiling. Throughout the whole story she sat up straight, glancing occasionally either at her beautiful, well-fleshed arm, the shape of which had changed in pressing against the table, or at her even more beautiful bosom, on which she adjusted her diamond necklace; several times she rearranged the folds of her gown and every time that she was impressed by something in the story, she glanced round at Anna Pavlovna and immediately assumed the very same expression that the lady-in-waiting’s face wore, then settled once again into her radiant smile. Following Hélène, the little princess had also come over from the tea table.

“Attendez-moi, I’ll get my needlework,” she said. “Now, what ever are you thinking of?” she asked, addressing Prince Hippolyte. “Fetch me my ridicule.”

The little princess, smiling and chatting on all sides, promptly made everyone shuffle about as she took her place, and then cheerfully sat rearranging herself.

“Now I’m all right,” she said and, requesting them to begin, she took up her work. Prince Hippolyte, after bringing her work-bag, had gone round behind her and, drawing up an armchair, sat close beside her.

The charming Hippolyte was striking for his uncommon resemblance to his beautiful sister, but even more for the fact that, despite the resemblance, he was amazingly ugly. The features of his face were precisely the same as those of his sister, but in her case everything was constantly illuminated by a buoyant, self-sufficient, youthfully vital smile and an exceptional, classical beauty of body, while in the brother’s case, on the contrary, the same face was clouded by idiocy and invariably expressed a self-opinionated peevishness, while the body was puny and weak. The eyes, nose and mouth – all seemed to be clenched into a single indeterminate, dull grimace, and the hands and legs always assumed unnatural positions.

“It isn’t a ghost story, is it?” he asked, having seated himself beside the princess and hastily set his lorgnette to his eyes, as though he could not speak without this instrument.

“Most decidedly not, my dear fellow,” said the astonished storyteller, with a shrug of his shoulders.

“The thing is, I absolutely detest ghost stories,” he said in a tone that made it clear that he uttered words first and only realised what they meant afterwards.

Because he spoke with such self-confidence, no one could tell whether what he had said was very clever or very stupid. He was dressed in a dark-green frock coat and knee-breeches in the flesh-pink shade that he called cuisse de nymphe éffrayée, with stockings and shoes. He had seated himself as far back as possible in the armchair, facing the raconteur, and placed one hand, with one plain and one engraved signet ring, upon the table in front of him in such an outstretched pose that it clearly cost him a great deal of effort to maintain it at that distance, and yet he held it there throughout the story. In the palm of his other hand he clasped his lorgnette, teasing up with that same hand the curly “titus” coiffure that lent his elongated face an even odder expression and, as though he had just remembered something, he began looking first at his hand with the rings, extended in display, then at the vicomte’s feet, and then he twisted himself entirely around with a rapid, lurching movement, the way he did everything, and stared long and hard at the Princess Bolkonskaya.

HIPPOLYTE KURAGIN Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866

“When I had the good fortune to see the late lamented Duc d’Enghien for the last time,” the vicomte began in a tone of mournful elegance, surveying his listeners, “he spoke in the most flattering terms of the beauty and genius of the great Mademoiselle Georges. Who does not know this brilliant and charming woman? I expressed my surprise as to how the duke could have come to know her, not having been in Paris in recent years. The duke smiled and told me that Paris is not as far from Mannheim as it might seem. I was horrified and informed his highness of my terror at the thought of his visiting Paris. ‘Sir,’ I said, ‘God only knows whether even here we are not surrounded by turncoats and traitors and whether your presence in Paris, no matter how secret it may be, is not known to Buonaparte!’ But the duke only smiled at my words with the chivalry and courage which constitute the distinguishing trait of his line.”

“The house of Condé is a branch of laurel grafted on to the tree of the Bourbons, as Pitt recently said,” Prince Vasily pronounced in a monotone, as though he were dictating to some invisible clerk.

“Monsieur Pitt put it very well,” his son Hippolyte added laconically, twisting abruptly on his armchair, his trunk in one direction and his legs in the other, after hastily snatching up his lorgnette and directing his sights at his parent.

“In short,” continued the vicomte, addressing himself primarily to the beautiful Princess Hélène, who kept her gaze fixed on him, “I had to leave Etenheim and only later learned that the duke, in the impetuosity of his valour, had travelled to Paris and paid Mademoiselle Georges the honour not only of admiring her, but also of visiting her.”

“But he had an attachment of the heart for the Princess Charlotte de Rohan Rochefort,” Anna Pavlovna interrupted passionately. “They said that he was secretly married to her,” she added, evidently frightened by the imminent content of this tale, which seemed to her too free in the presence of a young girl.

“One attachment is no hindrance to another,” the vicomte continued, smiling subtly and failing to perceive Anna Pavlovna’s apprehension. “But the point is that prior to her intimacy with the duke, Mademoiselle Georges had enjoyed intimate relations with another person.”

He paused.

“That person was called Buonaparte,” he announced, glancing round at his listeners with a smile. Anna Pavlovna, in her turn, glanced around uneasily, seeing the tale becoming ever more dangerous.

“And so,” the vicomte continued, “the new sultan from the Thousand and One Nights did not scorn to spend frequent evenings at the home of the most beautiful, most agreeable woman in France. And Mademoiselle Georges” – he paused, with an expressive shrug of his shoulders – “was obliged to make a virtue of necessity. The fortunate Buonaparte would usually arrive in the evening, without appointing the days in advance.”

“Ah! I see what is coming, and it fills me with horror,” said the pretty little Princess Bolkonskaya with a shudder of her lissom, shapely shoulders.

The elderly lady, who had been sitting beside the aunt the whole evening, came to join the raconteur’s circle and shook her head with an emphatic, sad smile.

“It is terrible, is it not?” she said, although she had obviously not even heard the beginning of the story. No one paid any attention to the inappropriateness of her remark, nor indeed to her.

Prince Hippolyte promptly declared in a loud voice:

“Georges in the role of Clytemnestra, how marvellous!”

Anna Pavlovna remained silent and anxious, still not having finally made up her mind whether the tale that the vicomte was telling was proper or improper. On the one hand, it involved evening visits to actresses, on the other hand, if the Vicomte de Mortemart himself, a relative of the Montmorencys through the Rohans, the finest representative of the St. Germain district, was going to make unseemly talk in the drawing room, then who, after all, knew what was proper or improper?

“One evening,” the vicomte continued, surveying his listeners and becoming more animated, “this Clytemnestra, having enchanted the entire theatre with her astonishing interpretation of Racine, returned home and thought she would rest to recover from her fatigue and excitement. She was not expecting the sultan.”

Anna Pavlovna shuddered at the word “sultan”. Princess Hélène lowered her eyes and stopped smiling.

“Then suddenly the maidservant announced that the former Vicomte Rocroi wished to see the great actress. Rocroi was the name that the duke used for himself. He was received,” the vicomte added, and after pausing for a few seconds in order to make it clear that he was not telling all that he knew, he continued: “The table gleamed with crystal, enamel, silver and porcelain. Two places were set, the time flew by imperceptibly, and the delight …”

Unexpectedly at this point in the narrative Prince Hippolyte emitted a peculiar, loud sound, which some took for a cough, others for snuffling, mumbling or laughing, and he began hastily fumbling after the lorgnette which he had dropped. The narrator stopped in astonishment. The alarmed Anna Pavlovna interrupted the description of the delights which the vicomte was depicting with such relish.

“Do not keep us in suspense, vicomte,” she said.

The vicomte smiled.

“Delight reduced hours to minutes, when suddenly there came a ring at the door and the startled maid, trembling, came running in to announce that a terrible Bonapartist Mameluke was ringing and that his appalling master was already standing at the entrance …”

“Charmant, délicieux,” whispered the little Princess Bolkonskaya, jabbing her needle into her embroidery as if to indicate that the fascination and charm of the story had prevented her from continuing her work.

The vicomte acknowledged this mute praise with a grateful smile and was about to continue when a new person entered the drawing room and effected the very pause that was required.