War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [354]
The next day the prince did not say a word to his daughter; but she noticed that over dinner he ordered the food served starting with Mlle Bourienne. At the end of dinner, when the butler, out of old habit, again served the coffee starting with the princess, the prince suddenly flew into a rage, flung his cane at Filipp, and at once gave orders for him to be sent as a soldier.
“They don’t hear…I told them twice!…they don’t hear! She’s the first person in this house; she’s my best friend,” cried the prince. “And,” he shouted wrathfully, addressing Princess Marya for the first time, “if you allow yourself once more, as you did yesterday…to forget yourself before her, I’ll show you who is master in this house. Out! I don’t want to see you! Apologize to her!”
Princess Marya apologized to Amalia Evgenievna and to her father for herself and for the butler Filipp, who asked her to intercede for him.
At such moments a feeling resembling the pride of sacrifice gathered in Princess Marya’s soul. And suddenly at those same moments, in her presence, this father whom she had judged would either search for his spectacles, fumbling just next to them and not seeing them, or forget what had just happened, or make a false step with his weakening legs and look around to see if anyone had noticed his weakness, or, which was worst of all, over dinner, if there were no guests to excite him, would suddenly doze off, dropping his napkin, and hanging his shaking head over his plate. “He’s old and weak, and I dare to judge him!” she would think with self-loathing at such moments.
III
In 1811 there was living in Moscow a French doctor who quickly became the fashion, a man of immense height, handsome, amiable as Frenchmen are, and, as all Moscow said, extraordinarily skillful in his profession—Métivier. He was received in houses of high society not as a doctor, but as an equal.
Prince Nikolai Andreich, who had always laughed at medical science, had recently, on the advice of Mlle Bourienne, admitted this doctor to his presence and grown used to him. Métivier called on the prince twice a week.
On St. Nicholas’s day, the prince’s name day, all Moscow came to his door, but he gave orders to receive no one and to invite only a few to dinner, the list of whom he gave to Princess Marya.
Métivier, arriving on that morning with his felicitations, found it appropriate in his quality as a doctor de forcer la consigne,*359 as he said to Princess Marya, and went to see the prince. It so happened that on that morning of his name day the old prince was in one of his worst moods. He had been going wearily about the house all morning, picking on everyone and pretending that he did not understand what was said to him and that he himself was not understood. Princess Marya knew only too well this mood of quiet and preoccupied grumbling, which usually resolved itself in an outburst of rage, and she went about all morning as if under a loaded and cocked gun, awaiting the inevitable shot. Until the doctor’s arrival, the morning had gone fairly well. Having let the doctor in, Princess Marya sat down with a book in the drawing room, from where she could hear everything that was happening in the study.
First she heard only Métivier’s voice, then her father’s voice; then both voices began speaking at once, the door was thrown open, and on the threshold appeared the frightened, handsome figure of Métivier with his black forelock and the figure of the prince in his nightcap and robe, his face distorted by rage and the pupils of his eyes rolled downwards.
“You don’t understand?” the prince was shouting. “But I do! French spy! Bonaparte’s slave and spy, out of my house—out, I say!” and he slammed the door.
Métivier, shrugging his shoulders, went over to Mlle Bourienne, who, hearing the shouting, had come running from the neighboring room.
“The prince is not entirely well—la bile et le transport au cerveau. Tranquillisez-vous, je repasserai demain,”†360 said Métivier, and, putting his finger to his lips, he hurriedly left.
Behind the door, slippered footsteps were