“And what, has he aged, Prince Vassily?” asked the countess. “I haven’t seen him since our theater performances at the Rumyantsevs’. And I suppose he’s forgotten me. Il me faisait la cour,”‡91 the countess remembered with a smile.
“He’s the same as ever,” replied Anna Mikhailovna, “amiable, overflowing. Les grandeurs ne lui ont pas tourné la tête de tout.§92 ‘I’m sorry I can do so little for you, dear Princess,’ he says to me, ‘I’m yours to command.’ No, he’s a nice man, and excellent family. But you know my love for my son, Nathalie. I don’t know what I wouldn’t do for his happiness. And my circumstances are so bad,” Anna Mikhailovna went on sadly, lowering her voice, “so bad that I’m now in a most terrible position. My wretched lawsuit eats up all I have and doesn’t get anywhere. Can you imagine, I don’t have even ten kopecks à la lettre,#93 and I don’t know how I’ll pay to equip Boris.” She took out a handkerchief and began to cry. “I need five hundred roubles, and all I have is one twenty-five-rouble note. I’m in such a position…My only hope now rests with Count Kirill Alexandrovich Bezukhov. If he doesn’t care to support his godson—he’s Borya’s godfather—and lay out something for his maintenance, all my troubles will have been in vain, I won’t have the money to equip him.”
The countess also waxed tearful and silently pondered something.
“I often think—maybe it’s sinful,” said the princess, “but I often think: here Count Kirill Vladimirovich Bezukhov lives alone…this enormous fortune…and what does he live for? Life’s a burden to him, and Borya is only beginning to live.”
“He’ll surely leave Boris something,” said the countess.
“God knows, chère amie! These rich courtiers are such egoists. But even so I’ll go to him now with Boris and tell him outright what it’s about. Let them think whatever they like of me, it really makes no difference to me, when my son’s destiny depends on it.” The princess got up. “It’s now two o’clock, and you dine at four. I have time to go.”
And with the air of a practical Petersburg lady who knows how to make use of her time, Anna Mikhailovna sent for her son and went out with him to the front hall.
“Good-bye, dear heart,” she said to the countess, who came to see her to the door; “wish me success,” she added in a whisper, so that her son would not hear.
“Are you going to see Count Kirill Vladimirovich, ma chère?” the count asked from the dining room, also coming out to the front hall. “If he’s better, invite Pierre to dine with us. He used to come here, danced with the children. Invite him without fail, ma chère. Well, we’ll see how Taras distinguishes himself today. He says that Count Orlov had no such dinners as we’re going to have.”
XII
“Mon cher Boris,” Princess Anna Mikhailovna said to her son when Countess Rostov’s carriage, in which they were sitting, drove down the straw-laid street29 and into the wide courtyard of Count Kirill Vladimirovich Bezukhov. “Mon cher Boris,” said the mother, freeing her hand from under her old mantle and placing it with a timid and caressing movement on her son’s hand, “be gentle, be attentive. Count Kirill Vladimirovich is, after all, your godfather, and your future fate depends on him. Remember that, mon cher, be nice, as you know how to be…”
“If I knew anything would come of it besides humiliation…” her son replied coldly. “But I’ve promised you, and I’m doing it for you.”
Despite the fact that someone’s carriage was standing at the entrance, the porter, having looked over the mother and son (who, without asking to be announced, had walked directly through the glass entryway between two rows of statues in niches), with a significant glance at the old mantle, asked whom they wanted to see, the princesses or the count, and, on learning that it was the count, said that his excellency was feeling worse that day, and that his excellency was not receiving anyone.
“We can leave,” the son said in French.
“Mon ami!” the mother said in a pleading voice, again touching her son’s hand as if this touch could calm or encourage him.
Boris fell silent and, without taking off his overcoat, looked questioningly at his mother.
“Dearest,” Anna Mikhailovna said in a tender little voice, turning to the porter, “I know Count Kirill Vladimirovich is very ill…that’s why I’ve come…I’m a relation…I won’t trouble anyone, dearest…All I need is to see Prince Vassily Sergeevich: he is staying here, I believe. Announce us, please.”
The porter sullenly pulled the bell rope that rang upstairs and turned away.
“Princess Drubetskoy to see Prince Vassily Sergeevich,” he called out to the servant in stockings, shoes, and a tailcoat, who had come running down and was now peering from the turn of the stairway.
The mother smoothed the folds of her re-dyed silk dress, looked in a full-length Venetian mirror on the wall, and, in her down-at-heel shoes, went briskly up the carpet of the stairs.
“Mon cher, vous m’avez promis,”*94 she addressed her son again, touching his hand to encourage him.
The son, lowering his eyes, calmly followed after her.
They entered a large room, in which one door led to the apartment assigned to Prince Vassily.
As the mother and son reached the middle of the room, intending to ask their way from an old servant who had jumped up when they came in, the bronze handle of one of the doors turned, and Prince Vassily, in an informal velvet house jacket, with one star, came out, accompanying a handsome dark-haired man. This man was the famous Petersburg doctor, Lorrain.
“C’est donc positif?”†95 the prince was saying.
“Mon prince, ‘errare humanum est,’ mais…”‡96 the doctor replied, swallowing his r’s and pronouncing the Latin words with a French accent.
“C’est bien, c’est bien…”§97
Noticing Anna Mikhailovna and her son, Prince Vassily dismissed the doctor with a bow and silently, but with a questioning look, came over to them. The son noticed how deep grief suddenly appeared in his mother’s eyes and smiled slightly.
“Yes, Prince, we meet here under such sad circumstances…Well, how is our dear patient?” she said, as if oblivious of the cold, insulting gaze directed at her.
Prince Vassily looked questioningly, to the point of bewilderment, at her, then at Boris. Boris bowed courteously. Prince Vassily, without responding to the bow, turned to Anna Mikhailovna and replied to her question with a movement of the head and lips signifying the worst hopes for the patient.
“Can it be?” exclaimed Anna Mikhailovna. “Ah, it’s terrible! I’m afraid to think…This is my son,” she added, pointing to Boris. “He wanted to thank you himself.”
Boris once more bowed courteously.
“Believe me, Prince, a mother’s heart will never forget what you have done for us.”
“I’m glad that I could give you pleasure, my dearest Anna Mikhailovna,” said Prince Vassily, straightening his jabot and in his gesture and voice displaying here, in Moscow, before the patronized Anna Mikhailovna, far greater importance than in Petersburg, at Annette Scherer’s soirée.
“Try to serve well and be worthy,” he added, sternly addressing Boris. “I’m glad…You’re here on leave?” he dictated in his passionless tone.
“Awaiting orders, Your Excellency, to be dispatched to my new assignment,” replied Boris, showing neither vexation at the prince’s abrupt tone, nor the wish to get into conversation, but so calmly and deferentially that the prince looked at him intently.