War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [240]
Having come on Tuesday evening to Hélène’s magnificent salon, Boris was not given a clear explanation of why it had been necessary for him to come. There were other guests, the countess spoke little to him, and only as he kissed her hand on taking his leave did she, with a strange absence of a smile, unexpectedly, in a whisper, say to him:
“Venez demain dîner…le soir. Il faut que vous veniez…Venez.”#311
During this stay in Petersburg, Boris became an intimate of Countess Bezukhov’s house.
VIII
The war was heating up, and its theater was approaching the borders of Russia. Everywhere curses were heard on the enemy of the human race Bonapartius; militia and recruits were being gathered from the villages, and divergent news kept coming from the theater of the war, false as usual and therefore reinterpreted in various ways.
The life of old Prince Bolkonsky, Prince Andrei, and Princess Marya had changed much since 1805.
In 1806 the old prince was made one of the eight commanders in chief of the militia then appointed all over Russia. The old prince, despite the weakness of age, which had become especially noticeable during the time when he counted his son as killed, did not believe he had the right to refuse the function assigned to him by the sovereign himself, and this activity newly opened up for him roused and strengthened him. He traveled continually around the three provinces entrusted to him; he was thorough to the point of pedantry in his duties, strict to the point of cruelty with his subordinates, and personally entered into the minutest details of things. Princess Marya now stopped taking lessons in mathematics from her father, and merely went to her father’s study in the mornings, whenever he was at home, accompanied by the wet nurse and little Prince Nikolai (as his grandfather called him). The nursing Prince Nikolai lived with his wet nurse and the nanny Savishna in the rooms of the late princess, and Princess Marya spent the greater part of the day in the nursery, replacing her little nephew’s mother as well as she could. Mlle Bourienne also seemed to love the boy passionately, and Princess Marya, often depriving herself, yielded to her friend the pleasure of dandling the “little angel” (as she called her nephew) and playing with him.
Near the altar of the church at Bald Hills there was a chapel over the grave of the little princess, and in the chapel had been placed a marble memorial, brought from Italy, in the form of an angel with spread wings ready to soar into the sky. The angel had a slightly raised upper lip, as if he was about to smile, and once, as they were leaving the chapel, Prince Andrei and Princess Marya confessed to each other that the angel’s face strangely reminded them of the face of the deceased woman. But stranger still was something that Prince Andrei did not tell his sister, which was that in the expression which the artist had chanced to give the angel’s face, Prince Andrei read the same words of meek reproach he had once read on his dead wife’s face: “Ah, why have you done this to me?…”
Soon after Prince Andrei’s return, the old prince separated his son’s share of the inheritance and gave him Bogucharovo, a large estate thirty miles from Bald Hills. Partly on account of the painful memories connected with Bald Hills, partly because Prince Andrei did not always feel able to bear calmly with his father’s character, and partly because he needed solitude, Prince Andrei took advantage of Bogucharovo, began building, and spent most of his time there.
After the Austerlitz campaign, Prince Andrei had firmly decided never to serve in the army again; and when war began and everyone had to serve, he took a post raising militia under his father’s leadership, in order to get out of active service. It was as if, after the campaign of 1805, the old prince and his son had exchanged roles. The old prince, roused by his activity, expected nothing but good from the