Thoughts like these were never far from Pierre's mind, and the whole of this universally accepted hypocritical sham, for all its familiarity, astonished him each time like something new. 'I understand this tangled mess of hypocrisy,' he thought, 'but how can I tell people everything I understand? I've tried, and I always find they understand it as well as I do at the bottom of their hearts, but there's something they're trying not to see. They won't see - that. Oh well, it's the way of things, I suppose. But here am I - what can I do with myself?' thought Pierre.
He had the unfortunate capacity that many men have, especially Russians, for seeing and believing in the possibility of goodness and truth, yet seeing the evil and falsehood in life too clearly to be capable of taking any serious part in it. Every aspect of human activity he saw as bound up with evil and deception. Whatever he tried to be, whatever he decided to do, he found himself repelled by evil and falsehood, with every avenue of activity blocked off. And meanwhile he had to live on and find things to do. It was too horrible to be ground down by life's insoluble problems, so he latched on to any old distraction that came along, just to get them out of his mind. He tried all kinds of society, drank a lot, bought pictures, built things and, most of all, he read.
He read and reread everything he could get his hands on. When he got home at night he would pick up a book and start on it before his valets had finished undressing him, and then read himself to sleep. From sleep he proceeded to drawing-room and club gossip; from gossip to wine, women and song; and from these back to more gossip, reading and wine. Wine was becoming more and more a mental and physical necessity. He defied the doctors who warned him that with his corpulence wine was a danger to his health, and kept on drinking heavily. The only time he felt good was when he had mechanically emptied several glasses of wine into his big mouth. Only then did he feel a pleasing sensation of warmth flowing through his whole body, along with a sentimental attachment to his fellow men, and enough wit to come out with an off-the-cuff response to any idea, as long as he didn't have to go too deeply into it. It was only after drinking a bottle or two of wine that he could vaguely accept that the horribly tangled skein of life, which had held such terrors for him, turned out to be less terrifying than he had imagined. As, with a ringing in his head, he chatted away, listened to people as they talked or read after dinner and supper, he couldn't get away from the sight of that tangled skein in one aspect or another. Only under the influence of wine could he say to himself, 'There's nothing to it. I'll soon get that disentangled. Look, I've got the solution here. But now's not the time. I'll sort it out later!' Except that 'later' never came.
Next morning at breakfast all the old questions resurfaced, as horribly insoluble as ever, so Pierre would dive into a book with all speed and rejoice when a visitor called.
Sometimes Pierre remembered what he had been told about soldiers in a shelter under fire with nothing to do, trying their best to keep busy and thus make the danger easier to bear. And Pierre pictured all men as soldiers like these, escaping from life through ambition, cards, law-making, women, little playthings, horses, politics, sport, wine, even government service. 'Everything matters, nothing matters, it's all the same. If I can only escape, one way or another!' thought Pierre. 'And not see it, the terrible it.'
CHAPTER 2
At the beginning of the winter old Prince Bolkonsky and his daughter moved to Moscow. He had become an object of special veneration in Moscow because of his past achievements, his powerful intellect and unusual character, and this, together with the current decline in the popularity of Tsar Alexander's regime, which coincided with a surge in anti-French sentiment and Russian patriotism, now made him the natural centre of opposition to the government.
The prince had aged a good deal that year. He had begun to show clear signs of senility: nodding off without any warning, forgetting very recent events while clearly remembering incidents from long ago, and the childlike vanity with which he assumed leadership of the Moscow opposition. Nevertheless, when the old man came down for tea, especially of an evening, wearing his powdered wig and a thick little coat, and responded to someone's challenge by launching forth into a series of sharp comments on the old days, or even sharper and more vitriolic criticism of the present day, he still evoked the same old feelings of respect and admiration in all his guests. For any visitors, that old-fashioned house, with its enormous mirrors, pre-Revolution furniture and powdered footmen, and the stern and shrewd old man, himself a relic from the past, along with his gentle daughter and the pretty Frenchwoman, both of whom doted on him, presented a magnificent and most appealing spectacle. But those same visitors never stopped to think that in addition to the couple of hours when they saw their hosts there were another twenty-two in the daily cycle during which the hidden private life of the household continued.
That private life in Moscow had recently become very hard for Princess Marya. In town she was deprived of her greatest pleasures - conversations with the pilgrims and the solitude, both of which she had found so refreshing at Bald Hills - and none of the advantages and delights of metropolitan life applied to her. She never went out into society; everyone knew that her father wouldn't allow her to go anywhere without him, and because of his failing health he couldn't go anywhere. People had stopped inviting her to dinner-parties or balls. Princess Marya had by now abandoned all hope of marriage. She had noted the frostiness and animosity with which the old prince received and dismissed any young men, possible suitors, who appeared at the house from time to time. Friends she had none; during this stay in Moscow she had lost faith in the two friends who had been closest to her. She had become disenchanted with Mademoiselle Bourienne, in whom she had never had complete confidence, and now she kept her at bay for a number of reasons. Julie Karagin, a regular pen-friend over five long years, was here in Moscow, but when they met face to face she struck Princess Marya as utterly alien. On the death of her brothers Julie had become one of the wealthiest heiresses in Moscow and was now making the most of the heady pleasures offered by high society and was surrounded by young men who seemed suddenly appreciative of her virtues. Julie had reached the stage when a young society lady no longer in the first flush of youth begins to sense that her last chance of getting married has come and her fate must soon be decided once and for all. Every Thursday Princess Marya smiled a lugubrious smile as she contemplated the prospect of having no one to write to because Julie was here on the spot and seeing her once a week, not that there was any pleasure to be derived from their meetings. Like the old French emigre who declined to marry the lady with whom he had spent all his evenings over many years because if he got married he wouldn't know where to spend his evenings, she regretted that with Julie being here she had no one to write to. In Moscow Princess Marya had no one to talk to either, and no one to share her troubles with, just at a time when many new troubles were adding themselves to the old ones. The time for Prince Andrey's return and marriage was fast approaching, and the task he had given her of bringing their father round was so far from completion that the whole thing seemed beyond hope - the slightest reference to young Countess Rostov simply enraged the old prince, who was almost always in a foul mood nowadays in any case. Another item in Princess Marya's store of recent troubles arose from the way she had been teaching her six-year-old nephew. In her attitude to little Nikolay she was shocked to find herself displaying the same signs of irritability as her father. However often she told herself not to lose her temper, almost every time she sat down to teach her nephew and pointed to letters of the French alphabet she felt such an urgent desire to make things easy and hurry the process of transferring knowledge from herself to the child (who was always scared stiff that his auntie might be about to come down on him), that at the slightest hint of inattention she quivered and gabbled and snapped at him, or shouted and sometimes grabbed him by his little hand and stood him in a corner. Once she had stood him there she would burst into tears at her own wicked and violent behaviour, whereupon li
ttle Nikolay, not to be outdone when it came to sobbing, would creep out of his corner without waiting for permission, walk over and pull her wet hands away from her face in an effort to console her. But the worst, easily the worst of her troubles was her father's terrible temper, which was invariably directed against his daughter and had recently reached the point of cruelty. Had he forced her to spend every night on her knees in supplication, had he beaten her, or made her chop wood and carry water, it would never have occurred that her lot was a hard one. But this loving tyrant - all the crueller for loving her so much and using that as a pretext for tormenting himself and her - was a past master at deliberate degradation and humiliation and convincing her she was always to blame for anything that happened. He had recently developed a new quirk, one which caused Princess Marya more misery than anything else - and this was his growing intimacy with Mademoiselle Bourienne. The idea that had occurred to him as a joke when he got the first news of his son's intentions - that if Andrey was going to get married, he might as well marry Mademoiselle Bourienne - clearly appealed to him, and in recent days he had gone out his way to shock her (as she saw it) by being particularly gracious to Mademoiselle Bourienne and demonstrating dissatisfaction with his daughter by a corresponding demonstration of love for the Frenchwoman.
One day, before her very eyes (she couldn't help thinking her father did it on purpose because she was there) the old prince kissed Mademoiselle Bourienne on the hand, then drew her close and gave her a passionate hug. Princess Marya blushed to the roots of her hair and fled from the room. A few minutes later Mademoiselle Bourienne breezed into Princess Marya's room, all smiles and chattering away merrily in her pleasant little voice. Princess Marya dried her tears hastily, marched over to the Frenchwoman and, without realizing what she was doing, turned on her in wild fury, gulping and screaming, 'You vile thing . . . it's inhuman . . . taking advantage of a feeble old . . .'
She couldn't go on. 'Get out of my room!' she yelled, breaking down in sobs.
Next day the old prince ignored his daughter, but she noticed that at dinner he gave orders for Mademoiselle Bourienne to be served first. Towards the end of dinner, when the footman served the princess with coffee first, from sheer habit, the old prince flew into a wild rage, flung his cane at Filipp and gave immediate orders for him to be sent off into the army.
'Insubordination . . . told him twice . . . and he still didn't obey! She's the first person in this house, she's my best friend,' roared the old prince. 'And as for you,' he fulminated, addressing Princess Marya for the first time, 'you dare ever again to do what you did yesterday . . . forget yourself in her presence, and I'll show you who's master in this house. Go on! Get out of my sight! Apologize to her!'
Princess Marya gave her apology to Mademoiselle Bourienne and also to her father, for what she had done and also for the behaviour of the footman, Filipp, who was begging her to intercede.
At moments like this Princess Marya's soul was afflicted by a sensation not far from the pride of self-sacrifice. And yet all of a sudden at moments like this, the very father she was censuring would either start looking for his spectacles, groping around close to them without seeing them, or completely forget what had just happened, or else he would take a single tottering step on his spindly legs and stare round to see whether anyone had noticed his feebleness, or - worst of all - over dinner, when there were no guests to stimulate him, he would suddenly nod off, dropping his napkin and letting his shaking head droop down over his plate. 'Oh, he's so old and feeble, and I have the gall to criticize him!' she thought at moments like this in hateful self-reproach.
CHAPTER 3
In the year 1811 there lived in Moscow a French doctor by the name of Metivier, who was suddenly all the rage. He was very tall and handsome, he had the nice manners of a true Frenchman, and all Moscow had him down as a very accomplished physician. He was received in the very best houses, not merely as a doctor but as an equal.
Old Prince Bolkonsky had always poured scorn on medicine, but in recent days he had taken Mademoiselle Bourienne's advice, and allowed this doctor to see him, gradually getting used to his visits. Metivier came to see the old prince two or three times a week.
On St Nicholas's day, the old prince's name-day, all Moscow turned up at his front door, but he gave orders for no one to be admitted. Only one or two guests, whose names were on a list that he had given to Princess Marya, were to be invited to lunch.
Metivier turned up that morning with his greetings and considered it proper as the old prince's doctor to 'break the embargo', as he put it to Princess Marya, and go in to see the prince. As it happened, on the morning of his name-day the old prince was in one of his foulest moods. He had spent the whole morning tramping through the house, finding fault with everybody and pretending he couldn't understand anything that was said to him and nobody understood what he was saying. Princess Marya was all too familiar with this mood of nervous, simmering touchiness, which usually culminated in a furious outburst, and she went about that morning like someone staring down the barrel of a cocked and loaded gun and waiting for the inevitable big bang. The morning had gone off reasonably well - until the doctor arrived. After showing the doctor in, Princess Marya sat down with a book in the drawing-room not far from the door, through which she could hear everything that was going on in the prince's study.
At first the only voice she could hear was Metivier's, then came her father's, then both of them together. Then the door flew open, and in the doorway stood Metivier, a handsome figure of a man with his shock of black hair but terrified out of his wits, and behind him the old prince in skull-cap and dressing-gown, his face hideous with rage and the pupils of his eyes looking down at the floor.
'So, you don't know what's going on?' roared the old prince. 'Well I do! You French spy, you slave of Bonaparte. You're a spy! Get out, I tell you! Get out of my house!' And he slammed the door. Metivier gave a shrug and walked over to Mademoiselle Bourienne, who had come running in from the next room when she heard all the shouting.
'The prince is not quite himself - a touch of bile and a rush of blood to the brain. Don't be too concerned. I'll look in tomorrow,' said Metivier, and he scurried away putting a finger to his lips.
Through the door came the sound of shuffling slippers and a voice shouting, 'Spies and traitors! Traitors everywhere! No peace in your own house!'
When Metivier had gone the old prince summoned his daughter and deluged her with the whole fury of his passion. She was to blame for letting the spy in. Hadn't he told her, yes, told her, to put the names down on a list and not let anyone else in? Why had she let that scoundrel in? It was all her fault. He couldn't get a minute's peace with her in the house - he couldn't even die in peace.
'No, madam, we must part, we must part, I tell you! I can't take any more,' he said, storming out of the room. And as if to rob her of any crumb of consolation, he walked back in, did his best to look calm and collected, and added, 'And don't imagine that I've said this in the heat of the moment. Oh no, I'm perfectly calm and I've given it a lot of thought. It's going to happen. We must part. You can find yourself somewhere else to live! . . .' And he couldn't even leave it at that. With the vicious fury found only in a man inspired by love, and in obvious anguish himself, he shook his fists at her and roared, 'Oh! If only some fool would marry her!' With that he slammed the door, sent for Mademoiselle Bourienne and subsided in his study.
At two o'clock the six luncheon guests arrived and foregathered in the drawing-room to wait for him - the famous Count Rostopchin, Prince Lopukhin and his nephew, General Chatrov, a former army colleague of the prince's, and two representatives of the younger generation, Pierre and Boris Drubetskoy. Boris, who had only recently come back to Moscow on leave, had been most anxious to meet Prince Nikolay Bolkonsky and had wormed his way in so effectively that for his sake the old prince had made an exception to his usual rule of keeping all young bachelors out of the house.
The prince did not receive
'society people' as such, but his house was the focal point of a small clique where - though there wasn't much talk of this in town - it was more flattering to be received than anywhere else. Boris had latched on to this a week previously when he had heard Rostopchin turn down an invitation from the commander-in-chief of Moscow, who had invited him to dinner on St Nicholas's day, with the words, 'That's the day when I always visit Prince Nikolay Bolkonsky to pay my devotion to the relics.'
'Oh yes, of course . . .' replied the commander-in-chief. 'How is he, by the way?'
The little party which had come together before luncheon in the old-fashioned drawing-room with its high ceiling and old furniture was much like a law-court in solemn session. They sat there in silence, and if they did speak it was in subdued tones. Prince Nikolay, when he came in, looked grim and reluctant to speak. Princess Marya seemed even more meek and mild than usual. The guests preferred to leave her out of the conversation, since it was obvious that she wasn't up to it. Count Rostopchin held the thread of the conversation all on his own, treating them to the latest news, first from the town and then the world of politics.
Lopukhin and the old general put in the odd remark now and then. Prince Nikolay presided like a judge receiving a submission, with nothing more than the occasional grunt or the briefest of words to indicate that he was taking stock of the facts laid before him. The tone of the conversation was based on the assumption that no one approved of what was being done in the political world. Events were described that clearly confirmed the idea of everything going from bad to worse, but in every account and every critical discourse it was remarkable how each speaker held back, or was held back by someone else, if he got anywhere near the borderline where criticism might have touched on the person of the Tsar himself.