“What, has something happened?” she asked. “I’m so frightened.”
“Nothing, it’s all the same; I have only come to have a talk with you, Catiche, about business,” said the prince, sitting with an air of fatigue in the armchair from which she had gotten up. “How warm you keep it, though,” he said. “Well, sit down here, causons.”*119
“I thought something had happened,” said the princess, and with her unchanging, stern and stony expression, she sat down opposite the prince and prepared to listen.
“I wanted to get some sleep, mon cousin, but I can’t.”
“Well, and so, my dear?” said Prince Vassily, taking the princess’s hand and pulling it down, as was his habit.
It was clear that this “and so” referred to many things they both understood without naming them.
The princess, with her dry and straight waist, incongruously long for her legs, looked straight and passionlessly at the prince with her prominent gray eyes. She shook her head and, sighing, turned to look at the icons. Her gesture could have been interpreted either as an expression of sorrow and devotion, or as an expression of weariness and hope for a speedy repose. Prince Vassily interpreted this gesture as an expression of weariness.
“And do you think it’s any easier for me?” he said. “Je suis éreinté comme un cheval de poste;†120 but all the same I must talk with you, Catiche, and very seriously.”
Prince Vassily fell silent, and his cheeks began to twitch nervously now on one side, now on the other, giving his face an unpleasant expression which never appeared on Prince Vassily’s face when he was in a drawing room. His eyes were also not the same as usuaclass="underline" now they looked with insolent jocularity, now they glanced around fearfully.
The princess, holding the dog on her lap with her dry, thin hands, looked attentively into Prince Vassily’s eyes; but it was evident that she would not break the silence with a question, even if she had to remain silent till morning.
“So you see, my dear princess and cousin, Katerina Semyonovna,” Prince Vassily continued, evidently getting himself to continue his talk only after an inner struggle, “at moments like this, it is necessary to think of everything. It is necessary to think of the future, of you…I love you all like my own children, you know that.”
The princess went on looking at him just as dully and fixedly.
“Finally, it is necessary to think of my family, too,” Prince Vassily continued, angrily pushing a little table away and without looking at her. “You know, Catiche, that you three Mamontov sisters, and my wife as well—we are the count’s only direct heirs. I know, I know how hard it is for you to speak and think about such things. It’s no easier for me; but I’m over fifty, my friend, I must be ready for anything. Do you know that I have sent for Pierre, and that the count, pointing directly at his portrait, demanded that he come?”
Prince Vassily looked questioningly at the princess, but could not tell whether she was considering what he had said to her, or was simply staring at him…
“There’s one thing for which I never cease praying to God, mon cousin,” she replied, “that He have mercy on him and grant that his beautiful soul peacefully depart this…”
“Yes, that’s right,” Prince Vassily went on impatiently, rubbing his bald head and angrily seizing the little table he had pushed away and moving it towards him again, “but, finally…finally, the thing is, as you know yourself, that last winter the count wrote a will according to which, passing over his direct heirs and us, he bequeathed all his property to Pierre.”
“He has written all sorts of wills,” the princess said calmly, “but he cannot bequeath anything to Pierre! Pierre is illegitimate.”
“But, ma chère,” Prince Vassily said suddenly, clutching the little table to him, becoming animated, and beginning to speak more quickly, “what if a letter had been written to the sovereign and the count had asked to adopt Pierre? You understand, given the count’s merits, his request would be granted…”
The princess smiled as people smile who think they know more about a matter than those they are talking with.
“I’ll tell you more,” Prince Vassily went on, gripping her hand. “The letter has been written, though not sent, and the sovereign knows of it. The only question is whether it has been destroyed or not. If not, then as soon as it’s all over,” Prince Vassily sighed, letting it be understood what he meant by the words all over, “and the count’s papers are opened, the will and the letter will be sent to the sovereign, and his request will most likely be granted. As a legitimate son, Pierre will get everything.”
“And our share?” asked the princess, smiling ironically, as if anything but that could happen.
“Mais, ma pauvre Catiche, c’est clair comme le jour.*121 He alone is then the legitimate heir to everything, and you won’t get even this much. You must know, my dear, whether the will and the letter were written, and whether they have been destroyed. And if they’ve been overlooked for some reason, you must know where they are and must find them, because…”
“That’s all we need!” the princess interrupted, smiling sardonically and without changing the expression of her eyes. “I’m a woman; in your opinion, we’re all stupid; but I know enough to be sure that an illegitimate son cannot inherit…Un bâtard,” she added, supposing that this translation would definitively prove to the prince his groundlessness.
“How is it you don’t understand, finally, Catiche? You’re so intelligent, how is it you don’t understand: if the count wrote a letter to the sovereign, in which he asked that his son be recognized as legitimate, it means that Pierre will no longer be Pierre, but Count Bezukhov, and then according to the will he’ll get everything. And if the will and the letter have not been destroyed, there will be nothing left for you except the consolation that you have been virtuous et tout ce qui s’en suit.*122 That is certain.”
“I know that the will has been written; but I also know that it is not valid, and you seem to consider me a perfect fool, mon cousin,” said the princess, with that expression with which women speak when they suppose they have said something witty and insulting.
“My dear Princess Katerina Semyonovna!” Prince Vassily began speaking impatiently. “I have come to you not in order to exchange barbs, but in order to talk with you, as with a kinswoman, a good, kind, true kinswoman, about your own interests. I tell you for the tenth time that if the letter to the sovereign and the will favoring Pierre are among the count’s papers, then, my darling, you and your sisters do not inherit. If you don’t believe me, believe people who know: I’ve just spoken with Dmitri Onufrich” (this was the family lawyer), “and he says the same thing.”
Evidently something suddenly changed in the princess’s mind; her thin lips turned pale (her eyes remained the same), and her voice, when she began to speak, kept breaking into such tremors as she evidently did not expect herself.
“That would be just fine,” she said. “I don’t want anything and never did.”
She threw the dog off her lap and straightened the folds of her dress.
“There’s gratitude, there’s thankfulness to people who have sacrificed everything for him,” she said. “Wonderful! Very fine! I need nothing, Prince.”
“Yes, but you’re not alone, you have sisters,” replied Prince Vassily.
But the princess was not listening to him.
“Yes, I’ve long known, but I had forgotten, that apart from baseness, deceit, envy, intrigue, apart from ingratitude, the blackest ingratitude, I could expect nothing in this house…”