“Do you or do you not know where the will is?” Prince Vassily asked, his cheeks twitching still more than before.
“Yes, I was stupid, I still believed in people, and loved them, and sacrificed myself. But only those who are mean and vile succeed. I know whose intrigue this is.”
The princess was about to get up, but the prince held her by the arm. The princess had the air of someone who has suddenly become disappointed in the whole human race; she looked spitefully at her interlocutor.
“There’s still time, my friend. Remember, Catiche, it was all done inadvertently, in a moment of wrath, illness, and then forgotten. Our duty, my dear, is to correct his mistake, to alleviate his last moments by not allowing him to do this injustice, by not letting him die thinking he has made unhappy those people who…”
“Those people who sacrificed everything for him,” the princess picked up, again trying to rise, but the prince did not let her, “something he was never able to appreciate. No, mon cousin,” she added with a sigh, “I shall remember that one can expect no reward in this world, that in this world there is neither honor nor justice. One must be cunning and wicked in this world.”
“Well, voyons,*123 calm down; I know your excellent heart.”
“No, I have a wicked heart.”
“I know your heart,” the prince repeated, “I value your friendship, and I wish you were of the same opinion about me. Calm down and parlons raison,†124 while there’s time—maybe a day, maybe an hour. Tell me all you know about the will, and above all, where it is: you must know. We’ll take it right now and show it to the count. He has surely forgotten about it by now and will want it destroyed. You understand that my only desire is to fulfill his wishes religiously; that is the only reason I’ve come here. I am here only to help him and you.”
“Now I’ve understood everything. I know whose intrigue it is. I know,” said the princess.
“That’s not the point, dear heart.”
“It’s your protégée, your dear Anna Mikhailovna, whom I wouldn’t have as a housemaid—that vile, loathsome woman.”
“Ne perdons point de temps.”‡125
“Ah, don’t speak to me! Last winter she wormed her way in here and told the count a whole heap of such vile, such nasty things about us all, especially Sophie—I can’t repeat it—that the count became ill and didn’t want to see us for two weeks. I know it was then that he wrote that nasty, loathsome document; but I thought the document meant nothing.”
“Nous y voilà,§126 why didn’t you tell me anything before?”
“It’s in the inlaid portfolio he keeps under his pillow. Now I know,” said the princess, not replying. “Yes, if I have a sin, a great sin, it’s my hatred of that loathsome woman,” the princess nearly shouted, changing into a competely different person. “And why is she worming her way in here? But I’ll have it out with her, I’ll have it all out. The time will come!”
XIX
While such conversations were going on in the reception room and the princess’s apartments, the carriage bringing Pierre (who had been sent for) and Anna Mikhailovna (who found it necessary to go with him) was driving into Count Bezukhov’s courtyard. As the wheels of the carriage rumbled softly over the straw spread under the windows, Anna Mikhailovna, turning to her companion with words of comfort, discovered that he was asleep in the corner of the carriage, and woke him up. Coming to his senses, Pierre followed Anna Mikhailovna out of the carriage and only then thought about the meeting with his dying father that lay ahead of him. He noticed that they had driven up not to the front, but to the back entrance. Just as he was stepping out, two men in tradesman’s clothes hastily ran away from the entrance into the shadow of the wall. Having stopped, Pierre made out several more men of the same sort in the shadow of the house on both sides. But neither Anna Mikhailovna, nor the footman, nor the coachman, who could not help seeing these men, paid any attention to them. So that is how it has to be, Pierre decided to himself and went after Anna Mikhailovna. Anna Mikhailovna went up the dimly lit, narrow stone stairs with hasty steps, calling to Pierre, who lagged behind her, and who, though he did not understand why in general he had to go to the count, and still less why he had to go by the back stairs, decided to himself, judging by Anna Mikhailovna’s assurance and haste, that this had necessarily to be so. Halfway up the stairs, they were nearly knocked off their feet by some people with buckets who came running down the stairs, stamping with their boots. These people pressed themselves to the wall to let Pierre and Anna Mikhailovna pass and did not show the least surprise when they saw them.
“Is this the way to the princesses’ apartments?” Anna Mikhailovna asked one of them.
“Yes,” the lackey answered in a bold, loud voice, as though everything was permitted now, “the door on the left, good lady.”
“Maybe the count didn’t send for me,” said Pierre, when he came to the landing. “I’ll just go to my own rooms.”
Anna Mikhailovna stopped so that Pierre could catch up with her.
“Ah, mon ami!” she said, with the same gesture as in the morning, when she touched her son’s arm, “croyez que je souffre autant que vous, mais soyez homme.”*127
“Really, why don’t I go?” asked Pierre, looking at Anna Mikhailovna affectionately through his spectacles.
“Ah, mon ami, oubliez les torts qu’on a pu avoir envers vous, pensez que c’est votre père…peut-être à l’agonie.” She sighed. “Je vous ai tout de suite aimé comme mon fils. Fiez à moi, Pierre. Je n’oublierais pas vos intérêts.”*128
Pierre understood none of it; he had a still stronger impression that this was how it had to be, and he obediently followed Anna Mikhailovna, who was already opening the door.
The door led to the backstairs hallway. In the corner sat the princesses’ old servant knitting a sock. Pierre had never been in this part of the house; he had not even suspected the existence of these rooms. Anna Mikhailovna asked a girl who walked past them with a carafe on a tray (calling her dear and sweetheart) about the princesses’ health, and drew Pierre further down the stone corridor. The first room to the left from the corridor led to the princesses’ living quarters. The maid with the carafe, in her haste (everything was being done in haste just then in this house), did not close the door, and as they were passing by, Pierre and Anna Mikhailovna involuntarily glanced into the room where the eldest princess and Prince Vassily were sitting close together, talking. Seeing them pass by, Prince Vassily made an impatient movement and drew back; the princess jumped up and, in a desperate gesture, slammed the door shut with all her might.
This gesture was so unlike the princess’s usual calm, the fear that showed on Prince Vassily’s face was so inconsistent with his augustness, that Pierre stopped and looked at his guide questioningly through his spectacles. Anna Mikhailovna expressed no surprise, she only smiled slightly and sighed, as if to show that she had expected it all.
“Soyez homme, mon ami, c’est moi qui veillerai à vos intérêts,”†129 she said in response to his look and went still more quickly down the corridor.
Pierre did not understand what it was all about, and still less what veiller à vos intérêts meant, but he understood that it all had to be so. From the corridor they went into the half-lit salon adjoining the count’s anteroom. It was one of those cold and luxurious rooms which Pierre knew only from the front porch. But in this room, too, in the middle of it, stood an empty tub, and water had been spilled on the carpet. They encountered a servant and an acolyte with a censer, who were walking on tiptoe and paid no attention to them. They went into the anteroom, so familiar to Pierre, with its two Italian windows opening on the winter garden, a big bust, and a full-length portrait of Catherine. The same people, in almost the same positions, were sitting in the anteroom, exchanging whispers. They all fell silent and turned to look at the entering Anna Mikhailovna, with her pale, weepy face, and the big, fat Pierre, who, with his head hanging, obediently followed her.