“It seems I can congratulate you,” Anna Pavlovna whispered to the princess and kissed her warmly. “If it weren’t for my migraine, I would have stayed.”
The princess said nothing in reply; she was tormented by envy of her daughter’s happiness.
While the guests were taking their leave, Pierre remained alone with Hélène for a long time in the small drawing room where they were sitting. Often before, during the last month and a half, he had remained alone with Hélène, but he had never spoken to her of love. Now he felt that this was necessary, but he simply could not resolve upon this last step. He was ashamed; it seemed to him that here, beside Hélène, he was occupying someone else’s place. “This happiness is not for you,” some inner voice was telling him. “This happiness is for those who do not have what you have.” But he had to say something, and so he began to speak. He asked her whether she was pleased with tonight’s soirée. She answered with her usual simplicity that this name day had been one of the most pleasant for her.
Some of the nearest relations were still there. They were sitting in the big drawing room. Prince Vassily walked lazily over to Pierre. Pierre stood up and said it was already late. Prince Vassily gave him a sternly questioning look, as if what he had said was so strange that he could not even hear it well. But then the expression of sternness changed, and Prince Vassily pulled Pierre’s arm down, seated him, and smiled gently.
“Well, Lelya?” he at once addressed his daughter in that careless tone of habitual tenderness which is adopted by parents who have been affectionate with their children since childhood, but which Prince Vassily only approximated by means of imitating other parents.
And again he turned to Pierre.
“‘Sergei Kuzmich, from all sides,’” he said, undoing the top button of his waistcoat.
Pierre smiled, but it was clear from his smile that he realized it was not the anecdote about Sergei Kuzmich that interested Prince Vassily just then; and Prince Vassily realized that Pierre realized it. Prince Vassily suddenly burbled something and left. To Pierre it looked as if even Prince Vassily was embarrassed. The sight of this worldly old man’s embarrassment touched Pierre; he glanced at Hélène—she, too, seemed embarrassed, and her glance said: “Well, it’s your own fault.”
“I must inevitably cross it, but I can’t, I can’t,” thought Pierre, and again he began talking about unrelated things, about Sergei Kuzmich, asking what the anecdote was, because he had not heard it well. Hélène replied with a smile that she did not know either.
When Prince Vassily came into the drawing room, the princess was talking softly with an elderly lady about Pierre.
“Of course, c’est un parti très brilliant, mais le bonheur, ma chère…”*235
“Les marriages se font dans les cieux,”†236 the elderly lady replied.
Prince Vassily, as if not listening to the ladies, went to the far corner and sat on the sofa. He closed his eyes and seemed to be dozing. His head began to nod, and he woke up.
“Aline,” he said to his wife, “allez voir ce qu’ils font.”‡237
The princess went to the door, passed by it with a significant, indifferent look, and peeked into the drawing room. Pierre and Hélène were sitting and talking in the same way.
“All the same!” she said to her husband.
Prince Vassily frowned, his mouth twisted to one side, his cheeks twitched with an unpleasant, coarse expression peculiar to him; he roused himself, got up, threw his head back, and with a resolute stride walked past the ladies into the small drawing room. He strode quickly, joyfully up to Pierre. The prince’s expression was so extraordinarily joyful that Pierre stood up, frightened, when he saw him.
“Thank God!” he said. “My wife has told me everything.” He embraced Pierre with one arm, his daughter with the other. “Lelya, my friend! I’m very, very glad.” His voice quavered. “I loved your father…and she will be a good wife to you…God bless you!…”
He embraced his daughter, then Pierre again, and kissed him with his old man’s mouth. Tears actually wet his cheeks.
“Princess, come here,” he called.
The princess came in and also wept. The elderly lady also dabbed herself with her handkerchief. They kissed Pierre, and he kissed the beautiful Hélène’s hand several times. After a while, they were left alone again.
“All this had to be so and could not be otherwise,” thought Pierre, “therefore there’s no point in asking whether it’s good or bad. It’s good because it’s definite, and there’s no more of the old tormenting doubt.” Pierre silently held his fiancée’s hand and looked at her beautiful breast rising and falling.
“Hélène!” he said aloud and stopped.
“Something special is said on these occasions,” he thought, but he simply could not remember precisely what was said on these occasions. He looked at her face. She moved closer to him. Her face blushed.
“Oh, take off those…whatever they’re…” She was pointing to his spectacles.
Pierre took off his spectacles, and his eyes, on top of the general strangeness of people’s eyes when they take off their spectacles, had a frightened and questioning look. He was about to bend down to her hand and kiss it; but she, with a quick and crude movement of her head, intercepted his lips and brought them together with her own. Her face struck Pierre by its altered, unpleasantly perplexed expression.
“It’s too late now, it’s all over; and anyway I love her,” thought Pierre.
“Je vous aime!” he said, having remembered what needed to be said on these occasions; but the words sounded so meager that he felt ashamed of himself.
A month and a half later he was married and settled down, as they say, the happy possessor of a beautiful wife and millions of roubles, in the big, newly done-over house of the counts Bezukhov in Petersburg.
III
Old Prince Nikolai Andreich Bolkonsky received a letter from Prince Vassily in December 1805, informing him of his arrival together with his son. (“I am going to an inspection, and, of course, for me seventy miles is no detour if I can visit you, my much-esteemed benefactor,” he wrote, “and my Anatole is keeping me company on his way to the army; and I hope you will allow him personally to express the deep respect which he, in imitation of his father, has for you.”)
“So Marie doesn’t have to be taken out: suitors are coming to us themselves,” the little princess said indiscreetly on hearing of it.
Prince Nikolai Andreich winced and said nothing.
Two weeks after the receipt of the letter, in the evening, Prince Vassily’s people arrived in advance of him, and the next day he himself arrived with his son.
Old Bolkonsky had always had a rather low opinion of Prince Vassily’s character, and the more so in recent times, when Prince Vassily, under the new reigns of Paul and Alexander, had gone far in rank and honors. Now, from the hints in the letter and from the little princess, he understood what the matter was, and the low opinion of Prince Vassily in Prince Nikolai Andreich’s soul turned into a feeling of hostile disdain. He snorted constantly when he spoke of him. On the day of Prince Vassily’s arrival, Prince Nikolai Andreich was especially displeased and ill-humored. Whether he was ill-humored because Prince Vassily was coming, or he was especially displeased with Prince Vassily’s coming because he was ill-humored, in any case he was ill-humored, and already in the morning Tikhon had advised the architect against going to the prince with a report.