War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [10]
And she smiled her rapturous smile.
“Que voulez-vous? Lavater aurait dit que je n’ai pas la bosse de la paternité,”‡17 said the prince.
“Stop joking. I wanted to talk seriously with you. You know, I’m displeased with your younger son. Just between us,” her face acquired a sad look, “there was talk about him at her majesty’s, and you were pitied…”
The prince did not reply, but she fell silent, looking at him significantly, waiting for a reply. Prince Vassily winced.
“What am I to do?” he said finally. “You know, I did all a father could for their upbringing, and they both turned out des imbéciles. Ippolit is at least an untroublesome fool, but Anatole is a troublesome one. That’s the only difference,” he said, smiling more unnaturally and animatedly than usual, and with that showing especially clearly in the wrinkles that formed around his mouth something unexpectedly coarse and disagreeable.
“Ah, why do such people as you have children? If you weren’t a father, I’d have nothing to reproach you for,” said Anna Pavlovna, raising her eyes pensively.
“Je suis votre faithful slave, et à vous seule je puis l’avouer. My children—ce sont les entraves de mon existence.*18 That’s my cross. I explain it that way to myself. Que voulez-vous?…” He paused, expressing with a gesture his submission to cruel fate.
Anna Pavlovna fell to thinking.
“Have you never thought of getting your prodigal son Anatole married? They say,” she observed, “that old maids ont la manie des marriages.†19 I don’t feel I have that weakness yet, but I know one petite personne who is very unhappy with her father, une parente à nous, une princesse Bolkonsky.”‡20 Prince Vassily did not reply, though, with the quickness of grasp and memory characteristic of society people, he showed by a nod of the head that he had taken this information into account.
“No, you know, this Anatole costs me forty thousand a year,” he said, obviously unable to restrain the melancholy course of his thoughts. He paused.
“How will it be in five years, if it goes on like this? Voilà l’avantage d’être père.§21 Is she rich, this princess of yours?”
“Her father is very rich and stingy. He lives in the country. You know, it’s the famous Prince Bolkonsky,9 already retired under the late emperor and nicknamed ‘the King of Prussia.’ He’s a very intelligent man, but an odd and difficult one. La pauvre petite est malheureuse comme les pierres.#22 She has a brother, Kutuzov’s adjutant, the one who recently married Lise Meinen. He’ll come tonight.”
“Écoutez, chère Annette,” said the prince, suddenly taking his interlocutor by the hand and pulling it down for some reason. “Arrangez-moi cette affaire et je suis votre faithful slave à tout jamais (slafe—comme mon village headman écrit des reports: f instead of v).**23 She’s from a good family and rich. That’s all I need.”
And with those free and familiarly graceful movements which distinguished him, he took the maid of honor’s hand, kissed it, and, having kissed it, waved the maid-of-honorly hand a little, sprawled himself in an armchair, and looked away.
“Attendez,” Anna Pavlovna said, pondering. “Tonight I’ll discuss it with Lise (la femme du jeune Bolkonsky). And maybe something can be settled. Ce sera dans votre famille que je ferai mon apprentissage de vielle fille.”††24
II
Anna Pavlovna’s drawing room gradually began to fill up. The high nobility of Petersburg came, people quite diverse in age and character, but alike in the society they lived in. Prince Vassily’s daughter, the beautiful Hélène, came to fetch her father and go with him to the fête at the ambassador’s. She was wearing a ball gown with a monogram.10 The young little princess Bolkonsky, known as la femme la plus séduisante de Pétersbourg,*25 also came; married the previous winter, she did not go into high society now for reason of her pregnancy, but did still go to small soirées. Prince Ippolit,