War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [36]
Boris fell silent and, without taking off his overcoat, looked questioningly at his mother.
“Dearest,” Anna Mikhailovna said in a tender little voice, turning to the porter, “I know Count Kirill Vladimirovich is very ill…that’s why I’ve come…I’m a relation…I won’t trouble anyone, dearest…All I need is to see Prince Vassily Sergeevich: he is staying here, I believe. Announce us, please.”
The porter sullenly pulled the bell rope that rang upstairs and turned away.
“Princess Drubetskoy to see Prince Vassily Sergeevich,” he called out to the servant in stockings, shoes, and a tailcoat, who had come running down and was now peering from the turn of the stairway.
The mother smoothed the folds of her re-dyed silk dress, looked in a full-length Venetian mirror on the wall, and, in her down-at-heel shoes, went briskly up the carpet of the stairs.
“Mon cher, vous m’avez promis,”*94 she addressed her son again, touching his hand to encourage him.
The son, lowering his eyes, calmly followed after her.
They entered a large room, in which one door led to the apartment assigned to Prince Vassily.
As the mother and son reached the middle of the room, intending to ask their way from an old servant who had jumped up when they came in, the bronze handle of one of the doors turned, and Prince Vassily, in an informal velvet house jacket, with one star, came out, accompanying a handsome dark-haired man. This man was the famous Petersburg doctor, Lorrain.
“C’est donc positif?”†95 the prince was saying.
“Mon prince, ‘errare humanum est,’ mais…”‡96 the doctor replied, swallowing his r’s and pronouncing the Latin words with a French accent.
“C’est bien, c’est bien…”§97
Noticing Anna Mikhailovna and her son, Prince Vassily dismissed the doctor with a bow and silently, but with a questioning look, came over to them. The son noticed how deep grief suddenly appeared in his mother’s eyes and smiled slightly.
“Yes, Prince, we meet here under such sad circumstances…Well, how is our dear patient?” she said, as if oblivious of the cold, insulting gaze directed at her.
Prince Vassily looked questioningly, to the point of bewilderment, at her, then at Boris. Boris bowed courteously. Prince Vassily, without responding to the bow, turned to Anna Mikhailovna and replied to her question with a movement of the head and lips signifying the worst hopes for the patient.
“Can it be?” exclaimed Anna Mikhailovna. “Ah, it’s terrible! I’m afraid to think…This is my son,” she added, pointing to Boris. “He wanted to thank you himself.”
Boris once more bowed courteously.
“Believe me, Prince, a mother’s heart will never forget what you have done for us.”
“I’m glad that I could give you pleasure, my dearest Anna Mikhailovna,” said Prince Vassily, straightening his jabot and in his gesture and voice displaying here, in Moscow, before the patronized Anna Mikhailovna, far greater importance than in Petersburg, at Annette Scherer’s soirée.
“Try to serve well and be worthy,” he added, sternly addressing Boris. “I’m glad…You’re here on leave?” he dictated in his passionless tone.
“Awaiting orders, Your Excellency, to be dispatched to my new assignment,” replied Boris, showing neither vexation at the prince’s abrupt tone, nor the wish to get into conversation, but so calmly and deferentially that the prince looked at him intently.
“You live with your mother?”
“I live at the countess Rostov’s,” said Boris, again adding, “Your Excellency.”
“It’s that Ilya Rostov who married Nathalie Shinshin,” said Anna Mikhailovna.
“I know, I know,” said Prince Vassily in his monotone voice. “Je n’ai jamais pu concevoir comment Natalie s’est décidée à épouser cet ours mal-léché! Un personnage complètement stupide et ridicule. Et joueur à ce qu’on dit.”*98
“Mais très brave homme, mon prince,”†99 observed Anna Mikhailovna, smiling touchingly, as though she, too, knew that Count Rostov deserved such an opinion, but begged for pity on the poor old man.
“What do the doctors say?” the princess asked after a brief pause and again showing great sorrow