War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [286]
IX
Then, as always, high society, assembling at court and at large balls, was subdivided into several circles, each having its own nuance. Among them, the most extensive one was the French circle of the Napoleonic alliance—the circle of Count Rumyantsev and Caulaincourt. In this circle, one of the most conspicuous places was occupied by Hélène, as soon as she settled with her husband in Petersburg. She was frequented by gentlemen from the French embassy and a great number of people, known for their intelligence and courtesy, who belonged to that trend.
Hélène had been in Erfurt during the famous meeting of the emperors, and from there had brought these connections with all the noteworthy Napoleonists of Europe. In Erfurt she had brilliant success. Napoleon himself, noticing her in the theater, asked who she was and praised her beauty. Her success as a beautiful and elegant woman did not surprise Pierre, because with the years she had become still more beautiful than before. But what did surprise him was that in these two years his wife had succeeded in acquiring a reputation “d’une femme charmante, aussi spirituelle que belle.”*341 The famous prince de Ligne wrote eight-page letters to her. Bilibin saved up his mots so as to speak them for the first time in front of the countess Bezukhov. To be received in the countess Bezukhov’s salon was considered a diploma in intelligence; young men read books before Hélène’s soirées so as to have something to talk about in her salon, and embassy secretaries, and even ambassadors, confided diplomatic secrets to her, so that Hélène was a power in a certain sense. Pierre, who knew that she was very stupid, sometimes, with a strange feeling of perplexity and fear, attended her soirées and dinners, where politics, poetry, and philosophy were discussed. At these soirées, he experienced a feeling similar to what a conjurer experiences, expecting each time that his trick will be exposed. But either because stupidity was precisely necessary for keeping such a salon, or because those who were tricked found pleasure in the trick itself, the trick was not exposed, and the reputation of Elena Vassilievna Bezukhov as une femme charmante et spirituelle was so firmly established that she could utter the greatest banalities and stupidities, and still they all admired her every word and sought for a deep meaning in them, which she herself never suspected.
Pierre was precisely the husband necessary for this brilliant society woman. He was that absentminded eccentric, a grand seigneur of a husband, who got in nobody’s way and not only did not spoil the general impression of high tone in the drawing room, but, by way of contrast to his wife’s gracefulness and tact, served as an advantageous backdrop for her. As a result of his constant, concentrated occupation with nonmaterial interests over those two years, and his sincere scorn of everything else, Pierre adopted in his wife’s society, which did not interest him, that tone of indifference, negligence, and benevolence towards everyone, which cannot be acquired artificially and which, for that reason, inspires an involuntary respect. He came into his wife’s drawing room as into a theater, was acquainted with them all, was equally glad to see them all, and was equally indifferent to them all. Occasionally he got into a conversation that interested him, and then, without considering whether les messieurs de l’ambassade were there or not, mumbled his opinions, which were sometimes completely out of tone with the present moment. But the opinion about the eccentric husband de la femme la plus distinguée de Pétersbourg*342 was so well established that no one took his quirks au sérieux.
Among the many young men who