War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [12]
“C’est bien aimable à vous, monsieur Pierre, d’être venu voir une pauvre malade,”*33 Anna Pavlovna said to him, exchanging fearful looks with the aunt, to whom she was bringing him. Pierre burbled something incomprehensible and went on searching for something with his eyes. He smiled joyfully, merrily, bowed to the little princess as to a close acquaintance, and went up to the aunt. Anna Pavlovna’s fear was not in vain, because Pierre, without hearing out the aunt’s talk about her majesty’s health, walked away from her. The frightened Anna Pavlovna stopped him with the words:
“You don’t know the abbé Morio? He’s a very interesting man…” she said.
“Yes, I’ve heard about his plan for eternal peace,11 and it’s very interesting, but hardly possible…”
“You think so?…” said Anna Pavlovna, in order to say something, and again turned to her duties as mistress of the house, but Pierre committed the reverse discourtesy. Earlier he had walked away without hearing out a lady who was talking to him; now he held with his conversation a lady who needed to leave him. Lowering his head and spreading his big feet, he began to explain to Anna Pavlovna why he thought that the abbé’s plan was a chimera.
“We’ll talk later,” Anna Pavlovna said, smiling.
And, ridding herself of the young man who did not know how to live, she returned to her duties as mistress of the house and went on listening and looking out, ready to come to the rescue at any point where the conversation lagged. As the owner of a spinning mill, having put his workers in their places, strolls about the establishment, watching out for an idle spindle or the odd one squealing much too loudly, and hastens to go and slow it down or start it up at the proper speed—so Anna Pavlovna strolled about her drawing room, going up to a circle that had fallen silent or was too talkative, and with one word or rearrangement set the conversation machine running evenly and properly again. But amidst all these cares there could still be seen in her a special fear for Pierre. She glanced at him concernedly when he went over to listen to what was being talked about around Mortemart and went on to another circle where the abbé was talking. For Pierre, brought up abroad, this soirée of Anna Pavlovna’s was the first he had seen in Russia. He knew that all the intelligentsia of Petersburg was gathered there, and, like a child in a toy shop, he looked everywhere at once. He kept fearing to miss intelligent conversations that he might have listened to. Looking at the self-assured and elegant expressions on the faces gathered here, he kept expecting something especially intelligent. Finally he went up to Morio. The conversation seemed interesting to him, and he stopped, waiting for a chance to voice his thoughts, as young people like to do.
III
Anna Pavlovna’s soirée got going. The spindles on all sides hummed evenly and ceaselessly. Besides ma tante, next to whom sat only one elderly lady with a thin, weepy face, somewhat alien to this brilliant company, the company had broken up into three circles. In one, mostly masculine, the center was the abbé in another, of young people, it was the beautiful Princess Hélène, Prince Vassily’s daughter, and the pretty, red-cheeked little princess Bolkonsky, too plump for her age. In the third, it was Mortemart and Anna Pavlovna.
The viscount was a nice-looking young man, with soft features and manners, obviously regarded himself as a celebrity, but, from good breeding, modestly allowed himself to be made use of by the company in which he found himself. Anna Pavlovna was obviously treating her guests to him. As a good maître d’hôtel presents, as something supernaturally excellent, a piece of beef one would not want to eat if one saw it in the dirty kitchen, so that evening Anna Pavlovna served up to her guests first the viscount, then the abbé, as something supernaturally refined. In Mortemart’s circle the conversation turned at once to the murder of the duc d’Enghien.12 The viscount said that the duc d’Enghien had perished from his own magnanimity and