War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [371]
“Am I lost for Prince Andrei’s love, or not?” she asked herself, and with a placating smile, she answered herself: “What a fool I am to be asking that! What happened to me? Nothing. I did nothing, I didn’t provoke it in any way. No one will know of it, and I will never see him again,” she said to herself. “So it’s clear that nothing happened, that there’s nothing to repent of, that Prince Andrei can love me like this. But what’s this like this? Ah, my God, my God! why isn’t he here?” Natasha would calm down for a moment, but then again some instinct would tell her that, although it was all true and nothing had happened—the instinct would tell her that all the former purity of her love for Prince Andrei was lost. And again in her imagination she would repeat her whole conversation with Kuragin, and picture the face, the gesture, the tender smile of that handsome and bold man when he pressed her arm.
XI
Anatole Kuragin was living in Moscow because his father had sent him away from Petersburg, where he spent over twenty thousand a year in cash and the same amount in debts, which his creditors demanded from his father.
The father announced to the son that he would pay half his debts for the last time, but only on condition that he go to Moscow in his capacity as the commander in chief’s adjutant, which he had solicited for him, and try finally to find a good match for himself there. He pointed out Princess Marya and Julie Karagin for him.
Anatole agreed and went to Moscow, where he stayed with Pierre. At first, Pierre received Anatole reluctantly, but then he got used to him, occasionally went carousing with him, and gave him money in the guise of loans.
Anatole, as Shinshin rightly said of him, had driven all the Moscow ladies out of their minds ever since his arrival, especially by neglecting them and apparently preferring Gypsy women and French actresses, with the foremost of whom, Mlle George, he was said to be in intimate relations. He never missed a single carouse at Dolokhov’s and at other Moscow merrymakers’, drank all night long, outdrank everybody, and attended all the high society soirées and balls. There was talk of several intrigues of his with Moscow ladies, and at balls he paid court to some. But he never approached young girls, especially rich, marriageable ones, who were for the most part plain, the less so in that Anatole—something no one but his closest friends knew—had gotten married two years before. Two years before, while his regiment was stationed in Poland, a modest Polish landowner had forced Anatole to marry his daughter.
Anatole quite soon abandoned his wife and, for the money he promised to send to his father-in-law, reserved for himself the right to pass himself off as a bachelor.
Anatole was always content with his position, with himself, and with others. He was instinctively convinced with his whole being that it was impossible for him to live otherwise than the way he lived, and that he had never in his life done anything bad. He was not capable of reflecting either on how his actions might affect others, or on what might come of one or another of his actions. He was convinced that, just as the duck was created so that it must always live in water, so he was created by God so that he must live on an income of thirty thousand and occupy a high position in society. He believed it so firmly that others, looking at him, were also convinced of it and refused him neither a high position in society, nor the money which he, obviously without paying it back, borrowed from anyone and everyone.
He was not a gambler, at least he never cared about winning, and never even regretted losing. He was not vain. To him it made absolutely no difference what people thought of him. Still less could he be accused of being ambitious. Several times he taunted his father by ruining his career,