War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [357]
He began to speak more loudly, obviously so that everyone could hear him.
“French clothes, French thoughts, French feelings! Here you threw Métivier out because he’s French and a scoundrel, but our ladies go crawling after him. Yesterday I was at a soirée, and out of five ladies there, three were Catholic and, with the pope’s permission, were doing embroidery on Sunday. And they sat there all but naked, like a signboard for a public bathhouse, if I may say so. Eh, Prince, when you look at our young people, you want to take Peter the Great’s old cudgel from the Kunstkamera7 and give them a good drubbing, to beat all the foolishness out of them!”
They all fell silent. The old prince looked at Rastopchin with a smile on his face, shaking his head approvingly.
“Well, good-bye, Your Excellency, be well,” said Rastopchin, getting up with his peculiarly quick movements and holding out his hand to the prince.
“Good-bye, dear heart—it’s always like a harp, listening to him!” said the old prince, holding him by the hand and offering him his cheek for a kiss. The others got up along with Rastopchin.
IV
Sitting in the drawing room and listening to this talk and gossip among the old men, Princess Marya understood nothing of what she heard; she was thinking only of whether the guests had noticed her father’s hostile attitude towards her. She did not even notice the special attention and courtesy shown her during that dinner by Drubetskoy, who was already visiting their house for the third time.
Princess Marya turned, with an absentminded, questioning look, to Pierre, who, the last of the guests, hat in hand and a smile on his face, went up to her after the prince had gone and they were left alone in the drawing room.
“May I stay a while longer?” he asked, letting his fat body sink into an armchair beside Princess Marya.
“Oh, yes,” she said, and her glance added, “Did you notice anything?”
Pierre was in a pleasant after-dinner mood. He looked straight ahead and smiled quietly.
“Have you known that young man for a long time, Princess?” he asked.
“Which one?”
“Drubetskoy.”
“No, not long…”
“And do you like him?”
“Yes, he’s a pleasant young man…Why do you ask me that?” said Princess Marya, still thinking about her morning conversation with her father.
“Because I’ve made an observation: a young man usually comes to Moscow from Petersburg only with the aim of marrying a rich bride.”
“You have made that observation?” asked Princess Marya.
“Yes,” Pierre went on with a smile, “and this young man now behaves himself in such a way that, wherever there’s a rich bride, he’s there, too. I can read him like a book. He’s undecided now whom to attack: you or Mlle Julie Karagin. Il est très assidu auprès d’elle.”*363
“Does he visit them?”
“Yes, very often. And do you know the new way of courting?” Pierre said with a merry smile, clearly being in that merry mood of good-natured mockery for which he reproached himself so often in his diary.
“No,” said Princess Marya.
“Nowadays, in order to please Moscow girls, il faut être mélancolique. Et il est très mélancolique auprès de mademoiselle Karagine,”†364 said Pierre.
“Vraiment?”‡365 said Princess Marya, looking into Pierre’s kind face and never ceasing to think about her grief. “It would be easier for me,” she thought, “if I decided to confide everything I feel to someone. And I’d like to tell it all precisely to Pierre. He’s so kind and noble. It would make it easier for me. He could give me advice!”
“Would you consider marrying him?” asked Pierre.
“Ah, my God, Count, there are moments when I’d marry anybody!” Princess Marya said suddenly, to her own surprise, with tears in her voice. “Ah, how painful it is to love a person who is close to you and feel…that you can do nothing for him,” she went on in a trembling voice, “except grieve him, and when you know that you cannot change that. There’s only one thing left—to go away, but where will I go?”
“What is it, what’s wrong,