Her face grew sad.
“Ah, little countess!…” And the count began fussing, pulling out his wallet.
“I need a lot, Count, I need five hundred rubles.” And, taking out a cambric handkerchief, she began rubbing her husband’s waistcoat.
“Just a moment. Hey, you there!” he cried in a voice such as people use who are sure that those they call will come rushing to them. “Send Mitenka to me!”
Mitenka, that nobleman’s son, brought up by the count, who now managed all his affairs, came into the room with quiet steps.
“The thing is, my dear…” the count said to the deferential young man as he came in. “Bring me…” He pondered. “Yes, yes, seven hundred roubles. And see that you don’t bring torn and dirty ones like the other time, but nice ones, for the countess.”
“Yes, Mitenka, please, be sure they’re clean,” said the countess, sighing sadly.
“When shall I bring it, Your Excellency?” asked Mitenka. “Allow me to tell you that…However, please don’t worry,” he added, noticing that the count was beginning to breathe heavily and quickly, which was always a sign of incipient wrath. “I almost forgot…Shall I deliver it this minute?”
“Yes, yes, right, bring it. Give it to the countess.”
“He’s pure gold, my Mitenka,” the count added, smiling, when the young man went out. “Nothing’s ever impossible. I can’t stand that. Everything’s possible.”
“Ah, money, Count, money—there’s so much grief in the world because of it!” said the countess. “But I need this money very badly.”
“You, my dear countess, are a notorious spendthrift,” said the count, and, kissing his wife’s hand, he went back to his study.
When Anna Mikhailovna came back from Bezukhov’s, the money was already lying before the countess, all in new notes, under a handkerchief on a little table, and Anna Mikhailovna noticed that something was troubling the countess.
“Well, my friend?” asked the countess.
“Ah, he’s in such a terrible state! You wouldn’t recognize him, he’s so poorly, so poorly; I stayed only a minute and didn’t say two words…”
“Annette, for God’s sake, don’t refuse me,” the countess said suddenly, blushing, which was quite strange with her thin, dignified, and no longer young face, and taking the money from under the handkerchief.
Anna Mikhailovna instantly realized what it was about and bent forward so as to embrace the countess adroitly at the right moment.
“This is for Boris from me, to have his uniform made…”
Anna Mikhailovna was already embracing her and weeping. The countess was also weeping. They wept because they were friends; and because they were kind; and because they, who had been friends since childhood, were concerned with such a mean subject—money; and because their youth was gone…But for both of them they were pleasant tears…
XV
Countess Rostov, with her daughters and an already large number of guests, was sitting in the drawing room. The count led the male guests to his study, to offer them his prize collection of Turkish pipes. From time to time he came out and asked whether she had come yet. They were expecting Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimov, known in society as le terrible dragon, a lady famous neither for her wealth nor for her rank, but for her directness of mind and frank simplicity of manners. Marya Dmitrievna was known to the tsar’s family, was known to all Moscow and all Petersburg, and both cities, astonished at her, chuckled secretly at her rudeness and told anecdotes about her; nevertheless, everyone without exception respected and feared her.
In the smoke-filled study the conversation turned to the war, which had been declared in the manifesto, and to recruitment.32 No one had read the manifesto yet, but everyone knew of its appearance. The count sat on an ottoman between two smoking and talking neighbors. The count himself neither smoked nor talked, but, inclining his head now to one side, now to the other, looked with obvious pleasure at the smokers and listened to the conversation of his two neighbors, whom he had set on each other.
One of the talkers was a civilian with a wrinkled, bilious, gaunt, and clean-shaven face, a man approaching old age, though dressed like a most fashionable young man; he sat with his feet on the ottoman, looking like a familiar of the house, the amber bit deep in the side of his mouth, impetuously sucking in smoke and squinting. This was the old bachelor Shinshin, the countess’s cousin, a wicked tongue, as the talk went in Moscow drawing rooms. He seemed to be condescending to his interlocutor. The other, a fresh, pink officer of the guards, impeccably scrubbed, combed, and buttoned-up, held the amber bit in the middle of his mouth and drew the smoke in lightly with his pink lips, letting it out of his handsome mouth in rings. This was that Lieutenant Berg, an officer of the Semyonovsky regiment, with whom Boris was going off to join the regiment, and whom Natasha, teasing Vera, her older sister, called her fiancé. The count sat between them and listened attentively. For the count, the most agreeable occupation, apart from the game of Boston, which he liked very much, was the position of listener, especially when he managed to set two garrulous interlocutors on each other.
“Well, what then, old boy, mon très honorable Alphonse Karlych,” said Shinshin, chuckling and combining (which was a peculiarity of his speech) the simplest popular Russian expressions with refined French phrases. “Vous comptez vous faire des rentes sur l’état,*109 you want to get a little something from your company?”
“No, Pyotr Nikolaevich, I merely wish to prove, sir, that the cavalry is much less profitable than the infantry. Now look, Pyotr Nikolaevich, just consider my position.”
Berg always spoke very precisely, calmly, and courteously. His conversation was always concerned with himself alone; he always kept calmly silent when the talk was about something that had no direct relation to himself. And he could be silent like that for several hours, without experiencing in himself or causing in others the slightest embarrassment. But as soon as the conversation concerned him personally, he began to speak expansively and with obvious pleasure.
“Consider my position, Pyotr Nikolaich: if I were in the cavalry, I’d get no more than two hundred roubles every four months, even with the rank of sublieutenant; while now I get two hundred and thirty,” he said with a joyful, pleasant smile, looking at Shinshin and the count as though it was obvious to him that his success would always constitute the chief goal of everyone else’s desires.
“Besides that, Pyotr Nikolaevich, in transferring to the guards, I am in view,” Berg went on, “and vacancies in the foot guards are much more frequent. Then, consider for yourself how I’m able to get along on two hundred and thirty rubles. Yet I save some and also send some to my father,” he went on, letting out a smoke ring.
“La balance y est…A German can make cheese from chalk, comme dit le proverbe,”†110 said Shinshin, shifting the amber to the other side of his mouth, and he winked at the count.
The count burst out laughing. Other guests, seeing that Shinshin was conducting a conversation, came over to listen. Berg, oblivious of both the mockery and the indifference, went on to tell how he, by being transferred to the guards, was already one rank ahead of his comrades in the corps, how in wartime the company commander might be killed, and he, remaining the senior in the company, could very easily become the commander, and how everyone in the regiment liked him, and how his papa was pleased with him. Berg apparently enjoyed telling about it all and seemed not to suspect that other people might also have their interests. But everything he told about was so nice, so earnest, the naïveté of his youthful egoism was so obvious, that his listeners were disarmed.