Anna Pavlovna Scherer, like the others, manifested to Pierre the change that had occurred in society’s view of him.
Formerly, in Anna Pavlovna’s presence, Pierre had constantly felt that what he said was improper, tactless, out of place; that his remarks, which seemed clever to him while he was preparing them in his imagination, became stupid as soon as he spoke them aloud, and that, on the contrary, the dullest remarks of Ippolit came out as clever and pleasing. Now everything he said came out as charmant. Even if Anna Pavlovna did not say it, he could see that she wanted to say it and only restrained herself out of respect for his modesty.
In the beginning of the winter of 1805–1806, Pierre received the customary pink note from Anna Pavlovna with an invitation, to which was added: “Vous trouverez chez moi la belle Hélène, qu’on ne se lasse jamais voir.”*225
Reading this passage, Pierre felt for the first time that between him and Hélène some sort of connection had been formed, recognized by other people, and this thought at the same time frightened him, as if an obligation had been laid upon him which he could not fulfill, and also pleased him as an amusing supposition.
The soirée at Anna Pavlovna’s was the same as the first, only the novelty that Anna Pavlovna was now treating her guests to was not Mortemart, but a diplomat who had come from Berlin and brought the freshest details about the emperor Alexander’s visit to Potsdam and the two august friends swearing an indissoluble union in defending the right cause against the enemy of the human race.1 Pierre was received by Anna Pavlovna with a tinge of sorrow which obviously referred to the fresh loss that had befallen the young man, the death of Count Bezukhov (everyone constantly considered it their duty to convince Pierre that he was very grieved by the death of a father he had hardly known)—and the sorrow was of the same sort as that supreme sorrow which was expressed at the mention of the august empress Maria Feodorovna. Pierre felt flattered by it. Anna Pavlovna arranged the circles in her drawing room with her usual artfulness. The large circle where Prince Vassily and the generals were had use of the diplomat. Another circle was formed by the tea table. Pierre wanted to join the first, but Anna Pavlovna, who was in the excited state of a commander on the battlefield, when thousands of brilliant new thoughts come along which one scarcely has time to bring to fulfullment—Anna Pavlovna, seeing Pierre, touched his sleeve with her finger:
“Attendez, j’ai des vues sur vous pour ce soir.”*226 She glanced at Hélène and smiled at her.
“Ma bonne Hélène, il faut que vous soyez charitable pour ma pauvre tante, qui a une adoration pour vous. Allez lui tenir companie pour dix minutes.†227 And so that it won’t be too boring for you, here you have the dear count, who will not refuse to follow you.”
The beauty went to the aunt, but Anna Pavlovna kept Pierre by her, making it look as though she had to give some last necessary instructions.
“She’s ravishing, isn’t she?” she said to Pierre, pointing to the majestic beauty as she sailed off. “Et quelle tenue!‡228 What tact for such a young girl, and what a masterly ability to behave! It comes from the heart. Happy the one to whom she will belong! With her even the most unworldly husband will involuntarily and effortlessly occupy a brilliant place in society. Isn’t that so? I only wanted to know your opinion.” And Anna Pavlovna let Pierre go.
Pierre was sincere in answering affirmatively Anna Pavlovna’s question about the artfulness of Hélène’s behavior. If he ever thought about Hélène, he thought precisely about her beauty and that extraordinary, calm ability of hers to be silently dignified in society.
The aunt received the two young people in her corner, but, it seemed, wished to hide her adoration of Hélène and rather wished to show her fear before Anna Pavlovna. She glanced at her niece as if asking what she was to do with these people. As she was leaving them, Anna Pavlovna again touched Pierre’s sleeve with her finger and said:
“J’espère, que vous ne direz plus qu’on s’ennui chez moi”§229 —and she glanced at Hélène.
Hélène smiled with an air that said she did not allow the possibility that anyone could see her and not feel admiration. The aunt cleared her throat, swallowed her saliva, and said in French that she was very glad to see Hélène; then she turned to Pierre with the same greeting and the same mien. In the middle of the boring and faltering conversation, Hélène glanced at Pierre and smiled at him that serene, beautiful smile which she smiled at everyone. Pierre was so used to that smile, it said so little to him, that he did not pay any attention to it. The aunt was talking just then about a collection of snuffboxes that had belonged to Pierre’s late father, Count Bezukhov, and she showed her own snuffbox. Princess Hélène asked to see the portrait of the aunt’s husband, which was painted on this snuffbox.
“It must be the work of Vinesse,”2 said Pierre, naming a famous miniaturist, leaning towards the table in order to take the snuffbox in his hands, and listening to the conversation at the other table.
He got up, wishing to go around, but the aunt handed him the snuffbox right over Hélène, behind her back. Hélène leaned forward so as to make room and, smiling, glanced around. As always at soirées, she was wearing a gown in the fashion of the time, quite open in front and back. Her bust, which had always looked like marble to Pierre, was now such a short distance from him that he could involuntarily make out with his nearsighted eyes the living loveliness of her shoulders and neck, and so close to his lips that he had only to lean forward a little to touch her. He sensed the warmth of her body, the smell of her perfume, and the creaking of her corset as she breathed. He saw not her marble beauty, which made one with her gown, he saw and sensed all the loveliness of her body, which was merely covered by clothes. And once he had seen it, he could not see otherwise, as we cannot return to a once-exposed deception.
She turned, looked straight at him with her shining dark eyes, and smiled.
“So you never noticed before how beautiful I am?” Hélène seemed to say. “You never noticed that I am a woman? Yes, I am a woman who could belong to anyone, even you,” said her gaze. And at that moment Pierre felt that Hélène not only could, but must be his wife, that it could not be otherwise.
He knew it at that moment as certainly as he would have known it standing at the altar with her. How it would be and when, he did not know; he did not even know whether it would be good (he even felt that it was not good for some reason), but he knew that it would be.
Pierre lowered his eyes, raised them again, and wanted to see her once more as a distant, alien beauty, the way he had seen her every day before then; but he could no longer do that. Could not, just as a man who once looked at a stalk of tall grass in the mist and saw it as a tree, can look at the stalk of grass itself and once more see it as a tree. She was terribly close to him. She already had power over him. And there were no longer any obstructions between them, except for the obstruction of his own will.
“Bon, je vous laisse dans votre petit coin. Je vois que vous y êtes très bien,”*230 said the voice of Anna Pavlovna.
And Pierre, trying fearfully to recall whether he had done anything reprehensible, blushed and looked around him. It seemed to him that everyone knew what had happened to him as well as he did.