At the Rostovs’ it was the name day of the Natalyas, mother and younger daughter.24 Since morning, coach and sixes had constantly been driving up and leaving, bringing people with congratulations to the big house of the countess Rostov on Povarskaya Street, which was known to all Moscow. The countess with her beautiful older daughter and the guests, who constantly replaced each other, were sitting in the drawing room.
The countess was a woman with a thin, Oriental type of face, forty-five years old, evidently worn out by children, of whom she had had twelve. The slowness of her movements and speech, caused by weakness, gave her an air of importance that inspired respect. Princess Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskoy, as a member of the household, sat right there, helping with the business of receiving the guests and occupying them with conversation. The young people were in the back rooms, finding it unnecessary to take part in receiving visits. The count met the guests and saw them off, inviting them all to dinner.
“Much obliged to you, ma chère or mon cher” (he said ma chère or mon cher to everyone without exception and without the slightest nuance, whether they were of higher or lower standing than himself), “for myself and the dear name-day ladies. See that you come for dinner. You’ll offend me if you don’t, mon cher. I cordially invite you on behalf of the whole family, ma chère.” These words he said with the same expression on his full, cheerful, and clean-shaven face, with the same strong handshake and repeated short bows, to everyone without exception or variation. Having seen off a guest, the count would return to the gentleman or lady who was still in the drawing room; moving up an armchair, and with the look of a man who loves life and knows how to live it, spreading his legs dashingly and putting his hands on his knees, he would sway significantly, offer his surmises about the weather, discuss health, sometimes in Russian, sometimes in very poor but self-confident French, and again, with the look of a man weary but firm in the fulfillment of his duty, would go to see people off, smoothing the thin gray hair over his bald spot, and again invite them to dinner. Occasionally, on returning from the front hall, he would pass through the conservatory and the servants’ room to a big marble hall, where a table of eighty settings was being laid, and, looking at the servants carrying silver and china, opening out tables, and spreading damask tablecloths, he would call Dmitri Vassilievich, a nobleman who managed all his affairs, and say:
“Well, well, Mitenka, see that it’s all nice. Right, right,” he would say, looking over the enormous, opened-out table. “The main thing’s the setout. So, so…” And, sighing self-contentedly, he would go back to the drawing room.
“Marya Lvovna Karagin with daughter!” the countess’s enormous footman announced in a bass voice, coming to the door of the drawing room. The countess pondered and took a pinch from a gold snuffbox with her husband’s portrait on it.
“I’m worn out with these visits,” she said. “Well, she’ll be the last I receive. She’s so prim. Ask her in,” she said to the footman in a sad voice, as if to say: “Well, so finish me off.”
A tall, stout, proud-looking lady and her round-faced, smiling daughter came into the room, rustling their skirts.
“Chère comtesse, il y a si longtemps…elle a été alitée, la pauvre enfant…au bal des Razoumowsky…et la comtesse Apraksine…j’ai été si heureuse…”*83 women’s voices were heard, interrupting each other and merging with the rustling of skirts and the moving of chairs. That sort of conversation began which is designed to last just long enough so that one can get up at the first pause, with a rustling of skirts, say, “Je suis bien charmée; la santé de maman…et la comtesse Apraksine,”*84 and again, with a rustling of skirts, go back to the front hall, put on a fur coat or a cloak, and drive off. The conversation turned to the main news of the town at that time—the illness of the rich and famous beau of Catherine’s time, old Count Bezukhov, and his illegitimate son Pierre, who had behaved so improperly at Anna Pavlovna Scherer’s soirée.
“I’m very sorry for the poor count,” said the guest. “He was in poor health to begin with, and now this distress on account of his son. It will kill him!”
“What do you mean?” asked the countess, as if she did not know what the guest was talking about, though she had already heard the cause of Count Bezukhov’s distress a good fifteen times.
“It’s modern upbringing! While still abroad,” the guest went on, “this young man was left to himself, and now in Petersburg, they say, he did such awful things that he’s been banished by the police.”
“You don’t say!” said the countess.
“He chose his acquaintances poorly,” Princess Anna Mikhailovna mixed in. “Prince Vassily’s son, he and a certain Dolokhov, they say, were up to God knows what. And they’ve both suffered for it. Dolokhov has been broken to the ranks, and Bezukhov’s son has been banished to Moscow. As for Anatole Kuragin—his father somehow hushed it up. But they did banish him from Petersburg.”
“Why, what on earth did they do?” asked the countess.
“They’re perfect ruffians, especially Dolokhov,” said the guest. “He’s the son of Marya Ivanovna Dolokhov, such a respectable lady, and what then? Can you imagine: the three of them found a bear somewhere, put it in the carriage with them, and went to the actresses. The police came running to quiet them down. They took a policeman and tied him back to back with the bear, and threw the bear into the Moika. So the bear goes swimming about with the policeman on him.”
“A fine figure the policeman must have cut, ma chère,” cried the count, dying with laughter.
“Ah, how terrible! What is there to laugh at, Count?”
But the ladies could not help laughing themselves.
“They barely managed to save the poor fellow,” the guest went on. “That’s how intelligently the son of Count Kirill Vladimirovich Bezukhov amuses himself!” she added. “And I heard he was so well-bred and intelligent. There’s what all this foreign upbringing leads to. I hope no one receives him here, despite his wealth. They wanted to introduce him to me. I decidedly refused: I have daughters.”
“What makes you say this young man is so wealthy?” asked the countess, leaning away from the girls, who at once pretended they were not listening. “The man has only illegitimate children. It seems…Pierre, too, is illegitimate.”
The guest waved her hand.
“He has a score of them, I should think.”
Princess Anna Mikhailovna mixed into the conversation, clearly wishing to show her connections and her knowledge of all the circumstances of society.
“The thing is this,” she said significantly and also in a half whisper. “Count Kirill Vladimirovich’s reputation is well-known…He’s lost count of his children, but this Pierre was his favorite.”
“How good-looking the old man was,” said the countess, “even last year! I’ve never seen a handsomer man.”
“He’s quite changed now,” said Anna Mikhailovna. “So, as I was about to say,” she went on, “Prince Vassily is the direct heir to the whole fortune through his wife, but the father loved Pierre very much, concerned himself with his upbringing, and wrote to the sovereign…so that when he dies (he’s so poorly that they expect it any moment, and Lorrain has come from Petersburg), no one knows who will get this enormous fortune, Pierre or Prince Vassily. Forty thousand souls,25 and millions of roubles. I know it very well, because Prince Vassily told me himself. And Kirill Vladimirovich is my uncle twice removed through my mother. And he’s Borya’s godfather,” she added, as if ascribing no importance to this circumstance.