A short time later, when he went up to the large circle, Anna Pavlovna said to him:
“On dit que vous embellisez votre maison de Pétersbourg.”*231
(That was true: the architect had said it was needed, and Pierre, not knowing why himself, was redecorating his enormous house in Petersburg.)
“C’est bien, mais ne déménagez pas de chez le prince Basile. Il est bon d’avoir un ami comme le prince,” she said, smiling at Prince Vassily. “J’en sais quelque chose. N’est-ce pas?†232 And you’re still so young. You need advice. You’re not angry with me for exercising an old woman’s rights?” She paused, as women always pause and wait for something after referring to their age. “If you get married, that’s another matter.” And she united them in a single glance. Pierre did not look at Hélène, nor she at him. But she was still just as terribly close to him. He mumbled something and blushed.
On returning home, Pierre could not fall asleep for a long time, thinking about what had happened to him. And what had happened to him? Nothing. He had simply realized that a woman he had known as a child, of whom he used to say distractedly, “Yes, good-looking,” when told that Hélène was a beauty—he had realized that this woman could belong to him.
“But she’s stupid, I’ve said myself that she’s stupid,” he thought. “This isn’t love. On the contrary, there’s something vile in the feeling she aroused in me, something forbidden. I’ve been told that her brother Anatole was in love with her and she with him, and there was a whole story, and that’s why Anatole was sent away. Ippolit is her brother. Prince Vassily is her father. It’s not good,” he thought; but while he was arguing like that (these arguments were left unfinished), he caught himself smiling and was aware that a whole series of arguments had floated up from behind the others, that he was at the same time thinking about her worthlessness and dreaming of how she would be his wife, how she might come to love him, how she might be quite different, and how everything he had thought and heard about her might be untrue. And again he saw her not as some daughter of Prince Vassily, but saw her whole body, merely covered by a gray dress. “But no, why did this thought not occur to me before?” And again he said to himself that it was impossible, that there would be something vile, unnatural, as it seemed to him, and dishonest in this marriage. He recalled her former words and looks, and the words and looks of those who had seen them together. He recalled the words and looks of Anna Pavlovna when she spoke to him about his house, recalled hundreds of similar hints from Prince Vassily and others, and terror came over him at the thought that he might already have bound himself in some way to go through with something which was obviously not good and which he ought not to do. But while he expressed this realization to himself, on the other side of his soul her image floated up in all its feminine beauty.
II
In November of 1805 Prince Vassily was to go to inspect four provinces. He arranged this assignment for himself so as to visit his disordered estates at the same time and, having picked up his son Anatole (where his regiment was stationed), to go with him to see Prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky, in order to marry his son to the daughter of this rich old man. But before his departure and these new affairs, Prince Vassily had to decide things with Pierre, who of late had indeed been spending whole days at home, that is, at Prince Vassily’s, where he lived, and who was ridiculous, agitated, and stupid (as a man in love ought to be) in Hélène’s presence, but had still not made a proposal.
“Tout ça est bel et bon, mais il faut que ça finisse,”*233 Prince Vassily said to himself one morning with a sad sigh, conscious that Pierre, who owed so much to him (well, Christ be with him!), was not quite acting properly in this matter. “Youth…frivolity…well, God be with him,” thought Prince Vassily, pleasantly aware of his kindness, “mais il faut que ça finisse. The day after tomorrow is Lelya’s name day. I’ll invite people, and if he doesn’t understand what he ought to do, then it will be my business. Yes, my business. I’m a father!”
In the month and a half since Anna Pavlovna’s soirée, followed by the sleepless, agitated night in which he decided that marriage to Hélène would be a misfortune and that he must avoid her and go away, Pierre, after this decision, did not move out of Prince Vassily’s house, and felt with horror that in people’s eyes he was becoming more and more bound to her every day, that he simply could not go back to his former view of her, nor could he tear himself away from her, that it would be terrible, but that he would have to bind his fate to hers. He might perhaps have refrained, but not a day passed without Prince Vassily (who rarely held receptions) having a soirée at which Pierre had to be present, if he did not want to spoil the general pleasure and disappoint everyone’s expectations. Prince Vassily, in those rare moments when he was at home, would pass by Pierre, pull his hand downwards, distractedly offer him his clean-shaven, wrinkled cheek to kiss, and say either “See you tomorrow,” or “At dinner, otherwise I won’t see you,” or “I’m staying for your sake,” and so on. But despite the fact that, when Prince Vassily stayed for Pierre’s sake (as he put it), he did not say two words to him, Pierre did not feel himself capable of disappointing his expectations. Every day he said one and the same thing to himself: “I must finally understand her, and find out for myself who she is. Was I mistaken before, or am I mistaken now? No, she’s not stupid; no, she’s a wonderful girl!” he sometimes said to himself. “She’s never mistaken in anything, she never says anything stupid. She speaks little, but what she says is always simple and clear. So she’s not stupid. She’s never been embarrassed and is not embarrassed now. So she’s not a bad woman!” It often happened when he was with her that he would begin to argue, to think aloud, and she responded to that each time either by a brief but appropriate remark, showing that it did not interest her, or by a silent smile and glance, which showed Pierre her superiority most palpably. She was right in considering all arguments as nonsense compared with that smile.
She always addressed him with a joyful, trusting smile, meant for him alone, in which there was something more significant than what was in the general smile that always adorned her face. Pierre knew that everyone was only waiting for him finally to say one word, to cross a certain line, and he knew that sooner or later he would cross it; but some incomprehensible terror seized him at the mere thought of that frightful step. A thousand times in the course of that month and a half, all the while feeling himself drawn more and more into that frightening abyss, Pierre had said to himself: “But what is it? I need resolve. Don’t I have any?”
He wanted to resolve it, but felt with terror that in this case he lacked the resolve that he knew he had and that indeed was in him. Pierre was one of those people who are strong only when they feel themselves perfectly pure. And since the day when he had been possessed by that feeling of desire which he had experienced over the snuffbox at Anna Pavlovna’s, an unconscious feeling of guilt on account of that attraction had paralyzed his resolve.
On Hélène’s name day a small company of friends and relations—the closest people, as the princess put it—had supper at Prince Vassily’s. All these friends and relations had been given the feeling that the name-day girl’s lot was to be decided that day. The guests were sitting over supper. Princess Kuragin, a massive, once-beautiful, imposing woman, presided as mistress of the house. On either side of her sat the guests of honor—an old general, his wife, and Anna Pavlovna Scherer; at the end of the table sat the less old and honored guests, and there also, as part of the household, sat Pierre and Hélène—next to each other. Prince Vassily did not eat: he strolled around the table in a merry state of mind, sitting down now with one, now with another of the guests. To each he spoke a casual and agreeable word, except for Pierre and Hélène, whose presence he seemed not to notice. Prince Vassily enlivened everyone. The wax candles burned brightly, the silver and crystal, the ladies’ gowns, and the gold and silver epaulettes shone; servants in red kaftans scurried around the table; the sounds of knives, glasses, plates were heard, and the sounds of animated talk in several conversations around that table. An old chamberlain was heard at one end assuring a little old baroness of his ardent love for her, and so, too, was her laughter; at the other end, the story of the unsuccess of some Marya Viktorovna. At the middle of the table Prince Vassily concentrated listeners around himself. He was telling the ladies, with a jocular smile on his lips, about the latest session—on Wednesday—of the state council, at which Sergei Kuzmich Vyazmitinov, the new military governor general of Petersburg, had received and read the then-famous rescript of the sovereign Alexander Pavlovich from the army, in which the sovereign, addressing Sergei Kuzmich, said that he had received declarations of the people’s devotion from all sides, and that the declaration from Petersburg was especially pleasing to him, that he was proud of the honor of being the head of such a nation and would try to prove worthy of it. The rescript began with the words: “Sergei Kuzmich! From all sides rumors reach me,” and so on.