War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [352]
On an empty stomach, in the morning, all the old questions seemed as insoluble and frightening as ever, and Pierre would hastily seize a book and was glad when somebody came to see him.
Sometimes Pierre remembered stories he had heard about how soldiers at war, taking cover under enemy fire, when there is nothing to do, try to find some occupation for themselves so as to endure the danger more easily. And to Pierre all people seemed to be such soldiers, saving themselves from life: some with ambition, some with cards, some with drafting laws, some with women, some with playthings, some with horses, some with politics, some with hunting, some with wine, some with affairs of state. “Nothing is either trivial or important, it’s all the same; only save yourself from it as best you can!” thought Pierre. “Only not to see it, that dreadful it!”
II
At the beginning of winter, Prince Nikolai Andreich Bolkonsky came to Moscow with his daughter. Because of his past, because of his intelligence and originality, and especially because of the weakening just then of the raptures over the reign of Alexander I, and because of the anti-French and patriotic tendencies which reigned at that time in Moscow, Prince Nikolai Andreich at once became an object of special deference among the Muscovites and the center of Moscow opposition to the government.
The prince had aged very much that year. Distinct signs of senility appeared in him: falling asleep unexpectedly, a forgetfulness of recent events and a good memory of those long past, and the childish vanity with which he accepted the role of head of the Moscow opposition. Despite which, when the old man, especially in the evenings, came out to tea in his fur-trimmed jacket and powdered wig and, prompted by someone, began his curt stories of the past or his still more curt and cutting opinions of the present, he aroused in all his guests the same feeling of deferential respect. For his visitors, the whole of that old house, with its enormous pier glasses, its prerevolutionary furniture, those powdered footmen, and the tough and intelligent old man, himself of the previous century, with his meek daughter and the pretty little Frenchwoman, who both stood in awe of him, presented a majestically agreeable spectacle. But the visitors did not consider that, besides those two or three hours during which they saw their hosts, there were another twenty-two hours in the day during which the secret inner life of the house went on.
Lately in Moscow that inner life had become very painful for Princess Marya. She was deprived in Moscow of her best joys—conversations with the people of God and solitude, which refreshed her in Bald Hills—nor did she have any of the advantages or joys of life in the capital. She did not go into society; everybody knew that her father would not let her go without him, and he could not go on account of ill health, and so she was never invited to dinners or soirées. Princess Marya had completely abandoned all hope of getting married. She saw the coldness and animosity with which Prince Nikolai Andreich received and sent away the young men, possible suitors, who occasionally appeared in their house. Princess Marya had no friends. During this time in Moscow, she had become disappointed in the two persons closest to her: Mlle Bourienne, with whom she could not be fully candid even before, now became disagreeable to her, and she, for certain reasons, began to withdraw from her; Julie, who lived in Moscow and with whom Princess Marya had corresponded for the last five years, turned out to be totally foreign to her when Princess Marya met her again in person. At that time Julie, who, owing to the deaths of her brothers, had become one of the richest prospective