War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [208]
In the night he called his valet and told him to pack up to go to Petersburg. He could not remain under the same roof with her. He could not imagine how he was going to speak to her now. He decided that he would go the next day and leave her a letter in which he would announce his intention to part with her forever.
In the morning, when the valet came into his study bringing coffee, Pierre was lying asleep on the sofa with an open book in his hand.
He woke up and looked around fearfully for a long time, unable to understand where he was.
“The countess told me to ask whether Your Excellency is at home,” said the valet.
But before Pierre decided on what answer he would give, the countess herself, in a white satin dressing gown embroidered with silver, and with her hair done up simply (two enormous braids wound twice around her lovely head en diadème), came into the room calmly and majestically; only there was a wrinkle of wrath on her marble and slightly prominent forehead. With her all-enduring calm, she refrained from speaking in front of the valet. She knew about the duel and had come to talk about it. She waited until the valet set down the coffee and went out. Pierre looked at her timidly through his spectacles and, as a hare surrounded by hounds presses its ears back and goes on sitting in full view of its enemies, so he attempted to go on reading; but he felt that it was senseless and impossible, and again glanced at her timidly. She did not sit down and looked at him with a contemptuous smile, waiting for the valet to leave.
“What is this? What have you done, I ask you?” she said sternly.
“I?…what? I…” said Pierre.
“What a brave fellow we’ve got here! Well, answer, what is this duel? What did you want to prove by it? What, I ask you.” Pierre shifted heavily on the sofa, opened his mouth, but could not answer.
“Since you don’t answer, I’ll tell you…” Hélène went on. “You believe everything you’re told. You were told…” Hélène laughed, “that Dolokhov is my lover,” she said in French, with her coarse precision of speech, pronouncing the word lover like any other word, “and you believed it! But what did you prove by it? What did you prove by this duel? That you’re a fool, que vous êtes un sot; everybody knew that anyway. What will it lead to? That I will become the laughing-stock of all Moscow; that everyone will say that you, in a drunken state, forgetting yourself, challenged to a duel a man of whom you were groundlessly jealous,” Hélène raised her voice and became more and more inspired, “and who is better than you in all respects…”
“Hm…hm…” Pierre grunted, without looking at her or stirring any limb of his body.
“And why should you believe that he is my lover?…Why? Because I like his company? If you were more intelligent and agreeable, I’d prefer yours.”
“Don’t speak to me…I beg you,” Pierre whispered hoarsely.
“Why shouldn’t I speak! I can speak, and I’ll say boldly that there are few wives who wouldn’t take lovers (des amants) with a husband like you, but I didn’t do that,” she said. Pierre wanted to say something, gave her a strange look, the expression of which