War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [24]
“But what is there to say about me?” asked Pierre, spreading his mouth into a carefree, merry smile. “What am I? Je suis un bâtard!” And he suddenly flushed crimson. One could see that it had cost him great effort to say that. “Sans nom, sans fortune†80 …And what, really…” But he did not say what really. “I’m free so far, and I feel fine. Only I have no idea where to make my start. I seriously wanted to ask your advice.”
Prince Andrei looked at him with kindly eyes. But in his friendly, gentle gaze a consciousness of his own superiority still showed.
“You’re dear to me especially because you’re the only live person in our whole society. That’s fine for you. Choose whatever you like; it’s all the same. You’ll be fine anywhere, but there’s one thing: stop going to those Kuragins and leading that sort of life. It simply doesn’t suit you: all this carousing with hussars, and all…”
“Que voulez-vous, mon cher,” said Pierre, shrugging his shoulders, “les femmes, mon cher, les femmes!”‡81
“I don’t understand,” replied Andrei. “Les femmes comme il faut are another matter; but les femmes of Kuragin, les femmes et le vin,§82 I don’t understand!”
Pierre lived at Prince Vassily Kuragin’s and took part in the dissolute life of his son Anatole, the same one they planned to marry to Prince Andrei’s sister in order to reform him.
“You know what?” said Pierre, as if a lucky thought had unexpectedly occurred to him. “Seriously, I’ve been thinking that for a long time. With this life I can’t decide or even consider anything. I have a headache and no money. He invited me tonight, but I won’t go.”
“Give me your word of honor that you won’t go anymore?”
“Word of honor!”
It was already past one o’clock when Pierre left his friend’s house. It was a duskless Petersburg June night. Pierre got into a hired carriage with the intention of going home. But the closer he came, the more he felt the impossibility of falling asleep on that night, which more resembled an evening or a morning. One could see far down the empty streets. On the way, Pierre recalled that the usual gambling company was to gather at Anatole Kuragin’s that evening, after which there was usually drinking, ending with one of Pierre’s favorite amusements.
“It would be nice to go to Kuragin’s,” he thought. But at once he remembered the word of honor he had given Prince Andrei not to visit Kuragin.
But at once, as happens with so-called characterless people, he desired so passionately to experience again that dissolute life so familiar to him, that he decided to go. And at once the thought occurred to him that the word he had given meant nothing, because before giving his word to Prince Andrei, he had also given Prince Anatole his word that he would be there; finally he thought that all these words of honor were mere conventions, with no definite meaning, especially if you considered that you might die the next day, or something so extraordinary might happen to you that there would no longer be either honor or dishonor. That sort of reasoning often came to Pierre, destroying all his decisions and suppositions. He went to Kuragin’s.
Driving up to the porch of a large house near the horse guards’ barracks, in which Anatole lived, he went up the lighted porch, the stairs, and entered an open door. There was no one in the front hall; empty bottles, capes, galoshes were lying about; there was a smell of wine, the noise of distant talking and shouting.
Cards and supper were over, but the guests had not dispersed yet. Pierre threw off his cape and went into the first room, where the remains of supper lay and one lackey, thinking no one could see him, was finishing on the sly what was left of the wine in the glasses. From the third room came a racket, guffawing, the shouting of familiar voices, and the roaring of a bear. Some eight young men were crowded busily by an open window. Three were romping with a young bear, one of them dragging it by a chain, trying to frighten the others.
“I stake a hundred on Stevens!” shouted one.
“Make sure