War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [141]
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.
“Do you hear how his honor is walking?” Tikhon said, drawing the architect’s attention to the sound of the prince’s footsteps. “Stepping full on his heels—we know about that…”
However, as usual, after eight o’clock the prince went out for a walk in his velvet coat with the sable collar and matching hat. It had snowed the day before. The path on which Prince Nikolai Andreich always walked to the conservatory had been cleared, the traces of the broom could be seen on the swept snow, and a shovel was stuck in one of the loosely heaped-up snowbanks that lined both sides of the path. The prince walked through the conservatory, the servants’ quarters and outbuildings, frowning and silent.
“But can one get through in a sleigh?” he asked the steward, who accompanied him back to the house, a respectable man, in face and manner resembling his master.
“The snow is deep, Your Excellency. I’ve already ordered it cleared on the avenue.”
The prince inclined his head and went up to the porch. “Thank God,” thought the steward, “the cloud has passed!”
“It would have been hard to get through, Your Excellency,” the steward added. “So we’ve heard, Your Excellency, that a minister is going to be visiting Your Excellency?”
The prince turned to the steward and fixed him with a frowning gaze.
“What? A minister? What minister? Who ordered it?” he began speaking in his piercingly harsh voice. “You didn’t clear it for the princess, my daughter, but for a minister! I have no ministers!”
“Your Excellency, I assumed…”
“You assumed!” cried the prince, articulating the words still more hastily and incoherently. “You assumed…Brigands! Knaves!…I’ll teach you to assume.” And, raising his stick, he swung it at Alpatych, and would have hit him, if the steward had not instinctively avoided the blow. “Assumed!…Knaves!…” he shouted hurriedly. But even though Alpatych, frightened by his own boldness in avoiding the blow, approached the prince with his bald head obediently bowed, or perhaps precisely because of it, the prince, while shouting, “Knaves!…Cover the road!”—did not raise his stick again and ran inside.
Before dinner the young princess and Mlle Bourienne, knowing that the prince was ill-humored, stood waiting for him, Mlle Bourienne with a beaming face which said: “I know nothing, I’m the same as ever,” and Princess Marya, pale, frightened, with lowered eyes. The hardest thing of all for Princess Marya was that she knew that on these occasions she ought to behave like Mlle Bourienne, but could not do it. She imagined: “If I make as if I don’t notice, he’ll think I have no compassion for him; if I make as if I myself am dull and ill-humored, he’ll say (as has happened) that I’m moping,” and so on.
The prince looked at his daughter’s frightened face and snorted.
“Tra…or a dimwit!…” he said.
“And the other one’s not here! They’ve already spread the gossip,” he thought about the little princess, who was not in the dining room.
“And where is the princess?” he asked. “Hiding?…”
“She’s not quite well,” Mlle Bourienne replied with a cheerful smile, “she won’t be coming out. It’s so understandable in