War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [256]
Princess Marya silently looked at him and smiled tenderly.
“I’ve known you a long time and love you like a brother,” she said. “How do you find Andrei?” she asked hastily, not giving him time to say anything to her affectionate words. “He worries me very much. This winter his health has improved, but last spring his wound reopened, and the doctor said he should go abroad for treatment. And morally I fear very much for him. He’s not of the same character as us women, who suffer and weep out our grief. He carries it inside him. Today he’s merry and lively; but it’s your arrival that has had that effect on him: he’s rarely that way. If only you could persuade him to go abroad! He needs activity, and this regular, quiet life is ruining him. Others don’t notice, but I see it.”
Towards ten o’clock the manservants rushed out to the porch, hearing the bells of the old prince’s carriage as it drove up. Prince Andrei and Pierre also went out to the porch.
“Who’s that?” the old prince asked, getting out of the carriage and seeing Pierre.
“Ah! Very glad! Kiss me!” he said on learning who the unknown young man was.
The old prince was in good spirits and treated Pierre affectionately.
Before supper Prince Andrei, returning to his father’s study, found the old prince in hot dispute with Pierre. Pierre insisted that a time would come when there would be no more war. The old prince, mockingly, but without getting angry, argued against him.
“Drain the blood from their veins, put in water, then there’ll be no more war. Nonsense, old women’s nonsense,” he said, but even so he patted Pierre affectionately on the shoulder and went over to the desk, where Prince Andrei, evidently unwilling to enter the conversation, was looking through the papers that the old prince had brought from town. The old prince went over to him and began talking about business.
“The marshal, Count Rostov, failed to produce half the men. He came to town and decided to invite me to dinner. I gave him a real dinner…And look at this one…Well, my boy,” Prince Nikolai Andreich said to his son, slapping Pierre on the shoulder, “your friend’s a fine fellow, I’ve come to love him! He fires me up. Another man talks cleverly, and you don’t want to listen to him, but he talks nonsense, yet he fires me up, old as I am. Well, go, go,” he said, “maybe I’ll come and sit with you at supper. And argue again. Love my foolish Princess Marya,” he called to Pierre from the door.
Only now, during his visit to Bald Hills, did Pierre appreciate all the strength and charm of his friendship with Prince Andrei. This charm expressed itself not so much in his relations with him, as in his relations with the whole family and household. With the severe old prince and the meek and timid Princes Marya, Pierre felt at once like an old friend, though he barely knew them. They all loved him already. Not only did Princess Marya, won over by his meek attitude towards the wanderers, give him her most luminous looks, but the little one-year-old Prince Nikolai, as his grandfather called him, smiled at Pierre and went to his arms. And Mikhail Ivanych and Mlle Bourienne looked at him with joyful smiles when he talked with the old prince.
The old prince came out for supper: this was obviously for Pierre’s sake. He was extremely affectionate with him on both days of his stay at Bald Hills and told him to come to visit.
When Pierre left and all the members of the family came together, they began to discuss him, as always happens after the departure of a new person, and, as rarely happens, they all said only good things about him.
XV
Returning from leave this time, Rostov felt and realized for the first time how strong his bond was with Denisov and the whole regiment.
As Rostov approached the regiment, he experienced a feeling similar to what he had experienced on approaching his house on Povarskaya. When he saw the first hussar in the unbuttoned uniform of his regiment, when he recognized the red-haired Dementyev, saw the red-coated horses at the