War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [142]
“Hem! hem! huff! huff!” said the prince and sat down at the table.
His plate did not seem clean to him; he pointed to a spot and flung it aside. Tikhon caught it and handed it to the butler. The little princess was not unwell; but her fear of the prince was so insuperable that, on learning that he was ill-humored, she decided not to come out.
“I’m afraid for the baby,” she said to Mlle Bourienne, “God knows what fright may do.”
In general, the little princess lived at Bald Hills under a constant feeling of fear and antipathy for the old prince, though she was not aware of the antipathy, because the fear was so predominant that she could not feel it. On the prince’s side there was also antipathy, but it was smothered by contempt. The princess, having made herself at home at Bald Hills, had especially grown to love Mlle Bourienne, spent whole days with her, invited her to sleep in her room, and often talked with her about her father-in-law, criticizing him.
“Il nous arrive du monde, mon prince,” said Mlle Bourienne, unfolding a white napkin with her pink little hands. “Son excellence le prince Kouragine avec son fils, à ce que j’ai entendu dire?”*238 she said questioningly.
“Hm! this excellence is a little brat…I solicited his post for him in the ministry,” the prince said peevishly. “And why the son, I cannot comprehend. Princess Lizaveta Karlovna and Princess Marya may know, but I don’t know why they’re bringing this son here. I have no need of him.” And he looked at his blushing daughter.
“Unwell, are you? Afraid of the minister, as that blockhead Alpatych said today?”
“No, mon père.”
Unfortunate as Mlle Bourienne’s choice of subject had been, she did not stop and babbled about the conservatory, about the beauty of a newly opened flower, and after the soup the prince relented.
After dinner he went to see his daughter-in-law. The little princess was sitting at a small table chatting with the maid Masha. She turned pale when she saw her father-in-law.
The little princess was much changed. She was rather more bad- than good-looking now. Her cheeks sagged, her lip rose up, her eyes were drawn down.
“Yes, a sort of heaviness,” she replied to the prince’s question of how she felt.
“Do you need anything?”
“No, merci, mon père.”
“Well, all right, all right.”
He left and went to the servants’ room. Alpatych, his head bowed, was standing in the servants’ room.
“Has the road been covered?”
“It has, Your Excellency; forgive me, for God’s sake, it was only my stupidity.”
The prince cut him short and laughed his unnatural laugh.
“Well, all right, all right.”
He offered his hand for Alpatych to kiss and went to his study.
In the evening Prince Vassily arrived. He was met on the “avenue” (as they called the front drive) by the coachmen and servants, who with shouts dragged his carts and sleigh to the wing over the road that had been deliberately covered with snow.
Prince Vassily and Anatole were given separate rooms.
Anatole, having taken off his tunic, sat with arms akimbo before a table, at a corner of which, smiling, he directed fixedly and distractedly his beautiful big eyes. He looked upon his whole life as a ceaseless entertainment, which somebody for some reason had taken it upon himself to arrange for him. Now, too, he looked in this way upon his journey to the wicked old man and the rich, ugly heiress. All this, as he supposed, might turn out very nice and amusing. “And why shouldn’t I marry her, if she’s very rich? That never hurts,” thought Anatole.
He shaved, scented himself with a thoroughness and foppishness that had become habitual to him, and with his innately good-humored and triumphant expression, carrying his handsome head high, went into his father’s room. Two valets were bustling around Prince Vassily, dressing him; he himself looked around animatedly and nodded cheerfully to his entering son, as if to say: “Right, that’s how I need you to look!”
“No, without joking, father, is she very ugly? Eh?” he asked in French, as if continuing a conversation they had had more than once