《War And Peace》 Book1 CHAPTER III
by Leo Tolstoy
ANNA PAVLOVNA'S soirée was in full swing. The spindles kept up their
regular hum on all sides without pause. Except the aunt, beside whom was sitting no one
but an elderly lady with a thin, careworn face, who seemed rather out of her element in
this brilliant society, the company was broken up into three groups. In one of these, the
more masculine, the centre was the abbé; in the other, the group of young people,
the chief attractions were the beautiful Princess Ellen, Prince Vassily's daughter, and
the little Princess Bolkonsky, with her rosy prettiness, too plump for her years. In the
third group were Mortemart and Anna Pavlovna.
The vicomte was a pretty young gentleman with soft features and manners, who obviously
regarded himself as a celebrity, but with good breeding modestly allowed the company the
benefit of his society. Anna Pavlovna unmistakably regarded him as the chief entertainment
she was giving her guests. As a clever maître d'hôtel serves as
something superlatively good the piece of beef which no one would have cared to eat seeing
it in the dirty kitchen, Anna Pavlovna that evening served up to her guests — first, the
vicomte and then the abbé, as something superlatively subtle. In Mortemart's
group the talk turned at once on the execution of the duc d'Enghien. The vicomte said
that the duc d'Enghien had been lost by his own magnanimity and that there were special
reasons for Bonaparte's bitterness against him.
“Ah, come! Tell us about that, vicomte,” said Anna Pavlovna gleefully, feeling that
the phrase had a peculiarly Louis Quinze note about it: “Contez-nous cela, vicomte.”
The vicomte bowed and smiled courteously in token of his readiness to obey. Anna
Pavlovna made a circle round the vicomte and invited every one to hear his story.
“The vicomte was personally acquainted with his highness,” Anna Pavlovna whispered
to one. “The vicomte tells a story perfectly,” she said to another. “How one sees
the man of quality,” she said to a third, and the vicomte was presented to the company
in the most elegant and advantageous light, like the roast-beef on the hot dish garnished
with green parsley.
The vicomte was about to begin his narrative, and he smiled subtly.
“Come over here, chère Hélène,” said Anna Pavlovna to
the young beauty who was sitting a little way off, the centre of another group.
Princess Ellen smiled. She got up with the same unchanging smile of the acknowledged
beauty with which she had entered the drawing-room. Her white ball-dress adorned with ivy
and moss rustled lightly; her white shoulders, glossy hair, and diamonds glittered, as she
passed between the men who moved apart to make way for her. Not looking directly at any
one, but smiling at every one, as it were courteously allowing to all the right to admire
the beauty of her figure, her full shoulders, her bosom and back, which were extremely
exposed in the mode of the day, she moved up to Anna Pavlovna, seeming to bring with her
the brilliance of the ballroom. Ellen was so lovely that she was not merely free from the
slightest shade of coquetry, she seemed on the contrary ashamed of the too evident, too
violent and all-conquering influence of her beauty. She seemed to wish but to be unable to
soften the effect of her beauty.
“What a beautiful woman!” every one said on seeing her. As though struck by
something extraordinary, the vicomte shrugged his shoulders and dropped his eyes, when she
seated herself near him and dazzled him too with the same unchanging smile.
“Madame, I doubt my abilities before such an audience,” he said, bowing with a
smile.
The princess leaned her plump, bare arm on the table and did not find it necessary to
say anything. She waited, smiling. During the vicomte's story she sat upright, looking
from time to time at her beautiful, plump arm, which lay with its line changed by pressure
on the table, then at her still lovelier bosom, on which she set straight her diamond
necklace. Several times she settled the folds of her gown and when the narrative made a
sensation upon the audience, she glanced at Anna Pavlovna and at once assumed the
expression she saw on the maid-of-honour's face, then she relapsed again into her
unvarying smile. After Ellen the little princess too moved away from the tea-table.
“Wait for me, I will take my work,” she said. “Come, what are you thinking of?”
she said to Prince Ippolit. “Bring me my reticule.”
The little princess, smiling and talking to every one, at once effected a change of
position, and settling down again, gaily smoothed out her skirts.
“Now I'm comfortable,” she said, and begging the vicomte to begin, she took up
her work. Prince Ippolit brought her reticule, moved to her side, and bending close over
her chair, sat beside her.
Le charmant Hippolyte struck every one as extraordinarily like this sister, and,
still more, as being, in spite of the likeness, strikingly ugly. His features were like
his sister's, but in her, everything was radiant with joyous life, with the complacent,
never-failing smile of youth and life and an extraordinary antique beauty of figure. The
brother's face on the contrary was clouded over by imbecility and invariably wore a look
of aggressive fretfulness, while he was thin and feebly built. His eyes, his nose, his
mouth — everything was, as it were, puckered up in one vacant, bored grimace, while his
arms and legs always fell into the most grotesque attitudes.
“It is not a ghost story,” he said, sitting down by the princess and hurriedly
fixing his eyeglass in his eye, as though without that instrument he could not begin to
speak.
“Why, no, my dear fellow,” said the astonished vicomte, with a shrug.
“Because I detest ghost stories,” said Prince Ippolit in a tone which showed that
he uttered the words before he was aware of their meaning.
From the self-confidence with which he spoke no one could tell whether what he said was
very clever or very stupid. He was dressed in a dark-green frock coat, breeches of the
colour of the cuisse de nymphe effrayée, as he called it, stockings and
slippers. The vicomte very charmingly related the anecdote then current, that the duc d'Enghien
had secretly visited Paris for the sake of an interview with the actress, Mlle. Georges,
and that there he met Bonaparte, who also enjoyed the favours of the celebrated actress,
and that, meeting the duc, Napoleon had fallen into one of the fits to which he was
subject and had been completely in the duc's power, how the duc had not taken advantage
of it, and Bonaparte had in the sequel avenged his magnanimity by the duc's death.
The story was very charming and interesting, especially at the point when the rivals
suddenly recognise each other, and the ladies seemed to be greatly excited by it. “Charmant!”
said Anna Pavlovna, looking inquiringly at the little princess. “Charming!” whispered
the little princess, sticking her needle into her work as an indication that the interest
and charm of the story prevented her working. The vicomte appreciated this silent homage,
and smiling gratefully, resumed his narrative. But meanwhile Anna Pavlovna, still keeping
a watch on the dreadful young man, noticed that he was talking too loudly and too warmly
with the abbé and hurried to the spot of danger. Pierre had in fact succeeded in
getting into a political conversation with the abbé on the balance of power, and
the abbé, evidently interested by the simple-hearted fervour of the young man, was
unfolding to him his cherished idea. Both were listening and talking too eagerly and
naturally, and Anna Pavlovna did not like it.
“The means? — the balance of power in Europe and the rights of the people,” said
the abbé. “One powerful state like Russia — with the prestige of barbarism —
need only take a disinterested stand at the head of the alliance that aims at securing the
balance of power in Europe, and it would save the world!” “How are you going to get
such a balance of power?” Pierre was beginning; but at that moment Anna Pavlovna came
up, and glancing severely at Pierre, asked the Italian how he was supporting the climate.
The Italian's face changed instantly and assumed the look of offensive, affected
sweetness, which was evidently its habitual expression in conversation with women. “I am
so enchanted by the wit and culture of the society — especially of the ladies — in
which I have had the happiness to be received, that I have not yet had time to think of
the climate,” he said. Not letting the abbé and Pierre slip out of her grasp,
Anna Pavlovna, for greater convenience in watching them, made them join the bigger group.
At that moment another guest walked into the drawing-room. This was the young Prince
Andrey Bolkonsky, the husband of the little princess. Prince Bolkonsky was a very handsome
young man, of medium height, with clear, clean-cut features. Everything in his appearance,
from his weary, bored expression to his slow, measured step, formed the most striking
contrast to his lively little wife. Obviously all the people in the drawing-room were
familiar figures to him, and more than that, he was unmistakably so sick of them that even
to look at them and to listen to them was a weariness to him. Of all the wearisome faces
the face of his pretty wife seemed to bore him most. With a grimace that distorted his
handsome face he turned away from her. He kissed Anna Pavlovna's hand, and with
half-closed eyelids scanned the whole company.
“You are enlisting for the war, prince?” said Anna Pavlovna.
“General Kutuzov has been kind enough to have me as an aide-de-camp,” said
Bolkonsky.
“And Lise, your wife? —”
“She is going into the country.”
“Isn't it too bad of you to rob us of your charming wife?”
“André,” said his wife, addressing her husband in exactly the same
coquettish tone in which she spoke to outsiders, “the vicomte has just told us such a
story about Mlle. Georges and Bonaparte!”
Prince Andrey scowled and turned away. Pierre, who had kept his eyes joyfully and
affectionately fixed on him ever since he came in, went up to him and took hold of his
arm. Prince Andrey, without looking round, twisted his face into a grimace of annoyance at
any one's touching him, but seeing Pierre's smiling face, he gave him a smile that was
unexpectedly sweet and pleasant.
“Why, you! … And in such society too,” he said to Pierre.
“I knew you would be here,” answered Pierre. “I'm coming to supper with you,”
he added in an undertone, not to interrupt the vicomte who was still talking. “Can I?”
“Oh no, impossible,” said Prince Andrey, laughing, with a squeeze of his hand
giving Pierre to understand that there was no need to ask. He would have said something
more, but at that instant Prince Vassily and his daughter got up and the two young men
rose to make way for them.
“Pardon me, my dear vicomte,” said Prince Vassily in French, gently pulling him
down by his sleeve to prevent him from getting up from his seat. “This luckless fête
at the ambassador's deprives me of a pleasure and interrupts you. I am very sorry to
leave your enchanting party,” he said to Anna Pavlovna.
His daughter, Princess Ellen, lightly holding the folds of her gown, passed between the
chairs, and the smile glowed more brightly than ever on her handsome face. Pierre looked
with rapturous, almost frightened eyes at this beautiful creature as she passed them.
“Very lovely!” said Prince Andrey.
“Very,” said Pierre.
As he came up to them, Prince Vassily took Pierre by the arm, and addressing Anna
Pavlovna:
“Get this bear into shape for me,” he said. “Here he has been staying with me for
a month, and this is the first time I have seen him in society. Nothing's so necessary
for a young man as the society of clever women.”
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