War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [144]
“No, it’s impossible,” she said resolutely, clasping her hands. “Non, Marie, décidément, ça ne vous va pas. Je vous aime mieux dans votre petite robe grise de tout les jours. Non, de grâce, faites cela pour moi.*241 Katya,” she said to the maid, “bring the princess her little gray dress, and watch, Mlle Bourienne, how I’m going to arrange it,” she said, with a smiling foretaste of artistic delight.
But when Katya brought the dress requested, Princess Marya was still sitting motionless before the mirror, looking at her face, and saw in the mirror that tears had welled up in her eyes and her mouth was trembling, getting ready to weep.
“Voyons, chère princesse,” said Mlle Bourienne, “encore un petit effort.”†242
The little princess, taking the dress from the maid’s hands, was approaching Princess Marya.
“No, now we’ll make it simple and sweet,” she said.
Her voice, Mlle Bourienne’s, and Katya’s, who was laughing about something, blended into a merry warbling which resembled the song of birds.
“Non, laissez-moi,”‡243 said the princess.
And there was so much seriousness and suffering in her voice that the birds’ warbling immediately ceased. They looked at her big, beautiful eyes, filled with tears and thought, looking at them clearly and pleadingly, and understood that to insist would be useless and even cruel.
“Au moins changez la coiffure,” said the little princess. “Je vous disais,” she said with reproach, turning to Mlle Bourienne, “Marie a une de ces figures, auxquelles ce genre de coiffure ne vas pas du tout. Mais du tout, du tout. Changez de grâce.”§244
“Laissez-moi, laissez-moi, tout ça m’est parfaitement égal,”#245 answered a voice barely holding back its tears.
Mlle Bourienne and the little princess had to confess to themselves that as she was Princess Marya looked very bad, worse than ever; but it was already late. She looked at them with that expression they knew, an expression of thought and sadness. This expression did not inspire any fear of Princess Marya in them. (She never inspired that feeling in anyone.) But they knew that when that expression appeared on her face, she became silent and unshakeable in her decisions.
“Vous changerez, n’est-ce pas?”*246 said Liza, and when Princess Marya made no reply, Liza left the room.
Princess Marya remained alone. She did not carry out Liza’s wish, and not only did not change her hairstyle, but did not even look at herself in the mirror. Strengthlessly lowering her eyes and arms, she sat silently and thought. She imagined a husband, a man, a strong, dominating, and incomprehensibly attractive being, suddenly carrying her off into his own completely different, happy world. Her own baby, like the one she had seen yesterday at her nurse’s daughter’s—she imagined at her own breast. The husband stands and looks tenderly at her and the baby. “But no, it’s impossible, I’m too plain,” she thought.
“Please come to tea. The prince will come out shortly,” said the maid’s voice outside the door.
She roused herself and was horrified at what she had been thinking. And before going downstairs, she stood up, went to her icon room, and, fixing her eyes on the dark lamp-lit face of a large icon of the Savior, stood before it with clasped hands for several minutes. There was tormenting doubt in Princess Marya’s soul. Was the joy of love, of earthly love for a man, possible for her? Thinking of marriage, Princess Marya dreamed of family happiness and children, but her chiefest, strongest, and most secret dream was of earthly love. This feeling was all the stronger, the more she tried to conceal it from others and even from herself. “My God,” she said, “how can I suppress these devil’s thoughts in my heart? How can I renounce evil imaginings forever, so