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By Root 3559 0

adversaries nor their seconds suffered. But the story of the duel, confirmed by Pierre’s separation from his wife, spread in society. Pierre, who had been viewed indulgently, patronizingly, when he was an illegitimate son, who had been coddled and made much of when he was the best suitor in the Russian empire, had lost much in the opinion of society after his marriage, when brides and mothers had nothing to expect from him, the more so as he neither could nor would seek its favor. Now he alone was blamed for what had happened; it was said that he was a jealous dunderhead, subject to the same fits of bloodthirsty rage as his father. And when Hélène returned to Petersburg after Pierre’s departure, she was received by all her acquaintances not only cordially, but with a shade of deference, in view of her misfortunes. When talk turned to her husband, Hélène assumed a dignified expression, which she—though without understanding its significance—adopted with her own special tact. This expression meant that she was resolved to endure her misfortune without complaining, and that her husband was a cross sent her by God. Prince Vassily voiced his opinion with more candor. He would shrug his shoulders when the talk turned to Pierre and say, tapping his forehead:

“Un cerveau fêlé—je le disais toujours.”*293

“I said it first thing,” Anna Pavlovna would say of Pierre, “I said at once then and before everyone else” (she insisted on her priority), “that he is a crazy young man, spoiled by the depraved ideas of our time. I said it back when everyone admired him, and he had just come from abroad and, remember, played some sort of Marat at one of my soirées. And how did it end? Even then I didn’t want this marriage, and predicted everything that’s happened.”

As before, Anna Pavlovna, on free evenings, held soirées at her home such as she alone had the gift to organize—evenings at which, first of all, there gathered la crème de la véritable bonne société, la fine fleur de l’essence intellectuelle de la société de Pétersbourg,†294 as Anna Pavlovna herself put it. Besides this refined selection of society, Anna Pavlovna’s soirées were also distinguished in that, at each soirée, Anna Pavlovna served up for her guests some new, interesting person, and that nowhere as at these soirées did the level of the political thermometer indicate the mood of legitimist Petersburg court society so clearly and firmly.

At the end of 1806, when all the sad details had been received of Napoleon’s destruction of the Prussian army at Jena and Auerstädt and the surrender of most of the Prussian fortresses, when our army had already entered Prussia and our second war with Napoleon had begun,8 Anna Pavlovna gathered a soirée in her home. La crème de la véritable bonne société consisted of the enchanting and unfortunate Hélène, abandoned by her husband, of Mortemart, of the enchanting Prince Ippolit, just come from Vienna, two diplomats, the aunt, a young man who in this drawing room simply bore the title of un homme de beaucoup de mérite,‡295 a newly appointed lady-in-waiting with her mother, and some other less conspicuous persons.

The person to whom Anna Pavlovna treated her guests as a novelty that evening was Boris Drubetskoy, who had just come as a courier from the Prussian army, where he was an adjutant attached to a very important person.

The level of the political thermometer shown to the company that evening was the following: however hard all European sovereigns and military leaders try to pander to Bonapartius, in order to cause me, and us in general, unpleasantness and grief, our opinion of Bonapartius cannot change. We will not cease to voice our unfeigned way of thinking on that account, and we can only say to the Prussian king and others: “So much the worse for you. Tu l’as voulu, Georges Dandin,§296 9 that’s all we can say.” That was what the political thermometer indicated at Anna Pavlovna’s soirée. When Boris, who was to be served up to the guests, entered the drawing room, nearly the entire company had gathered, and the conversation, guided