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AT THE EXACT HOUR, the prince, powdered and shaven, walked into the
dining-room, where there were waiting for him his daughter-in-law, Princess
Marya, Mademoiselle Bourienne, and the prince's architect, who, by a strange
whim of the old gentleman's, dined at his table, though being an insignificant
person of no social standing, he would not naturally have expected to be treated
with such honour. The prince, who was in practice a firm stickler for
distinctions of tank, and rarely admitted to his table even important provincial
functionaries, had suddenly pitched on the architect Mihail Ivanovitch, blowing
his nose in a check pocket-handkerchief in the corner, to illustrate the theory
that all men are equal, and had more than once impressed upon his daughter that
Mihail Ivanovitch was every whit as good as himself and her. At table the prince
addressed his conversation to the taciturn architect more often than to any
one.
In the dining-room, which, like all the other rooms in the house, was
immensely lofty, the prince's entrance was awaited by all the members of his
household and the footmen, standing behind each chair. The butler with a
table-napkin on his arm scanned the setting of the table, making signs to the
footmen, and continually he glanced uneasily from the clock on the wall to the
door, by which the prince was to enter. Prince Andrey stood at an immense golden
frame on the wall that was new to him. It contained the genealogical tree of the
Bolkonskys, and hanging opposite it was a frame, equally immense, with a badly
painted representation (evidently the work of some household artist) of a
reigning prince in a crown, intended for the descendant of Rurik and founder of
the family of the Bolkonsky princes. Prince Andrey looked at this genealogical
tree shaking his head, and he laughed.
“There you have him all over!” he said to Princess Marya as she came up to
him.
Princess Marya looked at her brother in surprise. She did not know what he
was smiling at. Everything her father did inspired in her reverence that did not
admit of criticism.
“Every one has his weak spot,” Prince Andrey went on; “with his vast
intellect to condescend to such triviality!”
Princess Marya could not understand the boldness of her brother's criticism
and was making ready to protest, when the step they were all listening for was
heard coming from the study. The prince walked in with a quick, lively step, as
he always walked, as though intentionally contrasting the elasticity of his
movements with the rigidity of the routine of the house. At that instant the big
clock struck two, and another clock in the drawing-room echoed it in thinner
tones. The prince stood still; his keen, stern eyes gleaming under his bushy,
overhanging brows scanned all the company and rested on the little princess. The
little princess experienced at that moment the sensation that courtiers know on
the entrance of the Tsar, that feeling of awe and veneration that this old man
inspired in every one about him. He stroked the little princess on the head, and
then with an awkward movement patted her on her neck.
“I'm glad, glad to see you,” he said, and looking intently into her eyes he
walked away and sat down in his place. “Sit down, sit down, Mihail Ivanovitch,
sit down.”
He pointed his daughter-in-law to a seat beside him. The footman moved a
chair back for her.
“Ho, ho!” said the old man, looking at her rounded figure. “You've not lost
time; that's bad!” He laughed a dry, cold, unpleasant laugh, laughing as he
always did with his lips, but not with his eyes. “You must have exercise, as
much exercise as possible, as much as possible,” he said.
The little princess did not hear or did not care to hear his words. She sat
dumb and seemed disconcerted. The prince asked after her father, and she began
to talk and to smile. He asked her about common acquaintances; the princess
became more and more animated, and began talking away, giving the prince
greetings from various people and retailing the gossip of the town.
“Poor Countess Apraxin has lost her husband; she has quite cried her eyes
out, poor dear,” she said, growing more and more lively.
As she became livelier, the prince looked more and more sternly at her, and
all at once, as though he had studied her sufficiently and had formed a clear
idea of her, he turned away and addressed Mihail Ivanovitch:
“Well, Mihail Ivanovitch, our friend Bonaparte is to have a bad time of it.
Prince Andrey” (this was how he always spoke of his son) “has been telling me
what forces are being massed against him! While you and I have always looked
upon him as a very insignificant person.”
Mihail Ivanovitch, utterly at a loss to conjecture when “you and I” had said
anything of the sort about Bonaparte, but grasping that he was wanted for the
introduction of the prince's favourite subject, glanced in wonder at the young
prince, not knowing what was to come next.
“He's a great tactician!” said the prince to his son, indicating the
architect, and the conversation turned again on the war, on Bonaparte, and the
generals and political personages of the day. The old prince was, it seemed,
convinced that all the public men of the period were mere babes who had no idea
of the A B C of military and political matters; while Bonaparte, according to
him, was an insignificant Frenchman, who had met with success simply because
there were no Potyomkins and Suvorovs to oppose him. He was even persuaded
firmly that there were no political difficulties in Europe, that there was no
war indeed, but only a sort of marionette show in which the men of the day took
part, pretending to be doing the real thing. Prince Andrey received his father's
jeers at modern people gaily, and with obvious pleasure drew his father out and
listened to him.
“Does everything seem good that was done in the past?” he said; “why, didn't
Suvorov himself fall into the trap Moreau laid for him, and wasn't he unable to
get out of it too?”
“Who told you that? Who said so?” cried the prince. “Suvorov!” And he flung
away his plate, which Tihon very neatly caught. “Suvorov!… Think again, Prince
Andrey. There were two men—Friedrich and Suvorov … Moreau! Moreau would have
been a prisoner if Suvorov's hands had been free, but his hands were tied by the
Hofsskriegswurstschnappsrath; the devil himself would have been in a tight
place. Ah, you'll find out what these Hofskriegswurstschnappsraths are like!
Suvorov couldn't get the better of them, so how is Mihail Kutuzov going to do
it? No, my dear,” he went on; “so you and your generals aren't able to get round
Bonaparte; you must needs call in Frenchmen —set a thief to catch a thief! The
German, Pahlen, has been sent to New York in America to get the Frenchman
Moreau,” he said, alluding to the invitation that had that year been made to
Moreau to enter the Russian service. “A queer business!…Why the Potyomkins, the
Suvorovs, the Orlovs, were they Germans? No, my lad, either you have all lost
your wits, or I have outlived mine. God help you, and we shall see. Bonaparte's
become a great military leader among them! H'm!…”
“I don't say at all that all those plans are good,” said Prince Andrey; “only
I can't understand how you can have such an opinion of Bonaparte. Laugh, if you
like, but Bonaparte is any way a great general!”
“Mihail Ivanovitch!” the old prince cried to the architect, who, absorbed in
the roast meat, hoped they had forgotten him. “Didn't I tell you Bonaparte was a
great tactician? Here he says so too.”
“To be sure, your excellency,” replied the architect. The prince laughed
again his frigid laugh.
“Bonaparte was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He has splendid
soldiers. And he attacked the Germans first too. And any fool can beat the
Germans. From the very beginning of the world every one has beaten the Germans.
And they've never beaten any one. They only conquer each other. He made his
reputation fighting against them.”
And the prince began analysing all the blunders that in his opinion Bonaparte
had committed in his wars and even in politics. His son did not protest, but it
was evident that whatever arguments were advanced against him, he was as little
disposed to give up his opinion as the old prince himself. Prince Andrey
listened and refrained from replying. He could not help wondering how this old
man, living so many years alone and never leaving the country, could know all
the military and political events in Europe of the last few years in such detail
and with such accuracy, and form his own judgment on them.
“You think I'm an old man and don't understand the actual position of
affairs?” he wound up. “But I'll tell you I'm taken up with it! I don't sleep at
nights. Come, where has this great general of yours proved himself to be
such?”
“That would be a long story,” answered his son.
“You go along to your Bonaparte. Mademoiselle Bourienne, here is another
admirer of your blackguard of an emperor!” he cried in excellent French.
“You know that I am not a Bonapartist, prince.”
“God knows when he'll come back …” the prince hummed in falsetto, laughed
still more falsetto, and got up from the table.
The little princess had sat silent during the whole discussion and the rest
of the dinner, looking in alarm first at Princess Marya and then at her
father-in-law. When they left the dinner-table, she took her sister-in-law's arm
and drew her into another room.
“What a clever man your father is,” she said; “perhaps that is why I am
afraid of him.”
“Oh, he is so kind!” said Princess Marya.
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