War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [246]
Every day Pierre busied himself with his head steward. But he felt that his busying did not move things one step foward. He felt that his busying went on independently of things, that it did not mesh with things and did not make them move. On the one hand, the head steward, presenting things in the worst light, showed Pierre the necessity of paying off debts and undertaking new works using serf labor, to which Pierre would not agree; on the other hand, Pierre demanded a start to the business of liberation, against which the steward advanced the necessity of first paying the debt to the Trust Council, and hence the impossibility of a speedy liberation.
The steward did not say it was completely impossible; to achieve that goal, he suggested selling the woodlands in Kostroma province, selling the bottomlands and the Crimean estate. But all these operations, as the steward spoke of them, became bound up with such a complexity of processes of lifting prohibitions, requesting permissions, and so on, that Pierre was at a loss and only said to him: “Yes, yes, do that.”
Pierre did not have the practical tenacity that would have given him the possibility of undertaking the business directly, and therefore he did not like it, and only tried to pretend to the steward that he was occupied with it. And the steward tried to pretend to the count that he considered this occupation quite useful for the master and inconvenient for himself.
In the big town acquaintances turned up; strangers hastened to make the acquaintance and greet cordially the newly arrived rich man, the biggest proprietor in the province. Temptations in connection with Pierre’s main weakness, the one he had confessed when he was being received into the lodge, were also so strong that Pierre could not resist them. Again whole days, weeks, months of Pierre’s life passed busily taken up with soirées, dinners, lunches, balls, giving him no time to recover his senses, just as in Petersburg. Instead of the new life Pierre had hoped to lead, he still lived the same life as before, only in different surroundings.
Of the three precepts of Masonry, Pierre realized that he was not fulfilling the one which required every Mason to be an example of the moral life, and of the seven virtues he was totally lacking in two: good character and the love of death. He comforted himself by thinking that he was fulfilling another duty instead—the setting to rights of the human race—and had other virtues—love of his neighbor and, especially, generosity.
In the spring of 1807, Pierre decided to go back to Petersburg. On the way back he intended to visit all his estates and personally ascertain what of all he had prescribed had been done, and what the situation now was of the people whom God had entrusted to him and whose benefactor he was trying to be.
The steward—who considered all the young count’s ventures near madness, unprofitable for himself, for Pierre, and for the peasants—made concessions. Continuing to present the business of emancipation as impossible, he ordered the construction of large buildings for schools, hospitals, and almshouses on all the estates; had receptions prepared everywhere for the master’s arrival, not sumptuously festive, which he knew Pierre would not like, but of religious thanksgiving, with icons and bread and salt,14 precisely such as would impress and deceive the master, as he understood him.
The southern spring, the comfortable, quick travel in a Viennese carriage, and the solitude on the way worked joyfully on Pierre. The estates he had not yet been to were one more picturesque than the other; the people everywhere seemed prosperous and touchingly grateful for the benefactions he had done them. Everywhere there were welcomes, which, though they sometimes embarrassed Pierre, at the bottom of his heart called up a joyful feeling in him. In one place the peasants offered him bread and salt and the icon of Peter and Paul,15 and asked his permission, in honor of his patron saints Peter and Paul, as a sign of love and gratitude for his benefactions,