War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [390]
“If there was treason and there were proofs of his secret communications with Napoleon, they would be made public,” he said heatedly and hastily. “Personally I don’t like and have never liked Speransky, but I do like justice.” Pierre now recognized in his friend the all too familiar need to worry and argue about things extraneous to him, only in order to stifle his all too painful innermost thoughts.
When Prince Meshchersky left, Prince Andrei took Pierre by the arm and invited him to the room he had been given. There was a rumpled bed in the room and open suitcases and trunks. Prince Andrei went over to one of them and took out a box. From the box he took a bundle of papers. He did it all silently and very quickly. He straightened up and cleared his throat. His face was frowning, his lips were compressed.
“Forgive me for troubling you…” Pierre realized that Prince Andrei wanted to talk about Natasha, and his broad face expressed regret and compassion. This expression of Pierre’s face angered Prince Andrei; he went on resolutely, in a ringing and unpleasant voice: “I have received a refusal from Countess Rostov, and rumors have reached me about her hand being sought by your brother-in-law, or something like that. Is it true?”
“Both true and not true,” Pierre began, but Prince Andrei interrupted him.
“Here are her letters,” he said, “and her portrait.” He took the bundle from the table and handed it to Pierre.
“Give this to the countess…if you see her.”
“She’s very ill,” said Pierre.
“So she’s still here?” asked Prince Andrei. “And Prince Kuragin?” he asked quickly.
“He left long ago. She was near death…”
“I deeply regret her illness,” said Prince Andrei. He grinned coldly, spitefully, unpleasantly, like his father.
“But Mr. Kuragin did not, then, bestow his hand upon Countess Rostov?” Andrei asked. He snorted through his nose several times.
“He couldn’t marry, because he’s already married,” said Pierre.
Prince Andrei laughed unpleasantly, again resembling his father.
“And where is he now, your brother-in-law, may I ask?” he said.
“He left for Peter…however, I don’t know,” said Pierre.
“It makes no difference,” said Prince Andrei. “Tell Countess Rostov that she was and is completely free and that I wish her all the best.”
Pierre took the bundle of papers. Prince Andrei, as if trying to remember if he had something else to say, or waiting for Pierre to say something, stood looking at him with fixed eyes.
“Listen, do you remember our argument in Petersburg,” asked Pierre, “remember, about…”
“I do,” Prince Andrei said hastily. “I said that a fallen woman should be forgiven, but I did not say that I could forgive. I cannot.”
“But can this be compared…?” said Pierre. Prince Andrei interrupted him. He cried sharply:
“Yes, to ask for her hand again, to be magnanimous and all that?…Yes, it’s very noble, but I can’t walk sur les brisées de monsieur.*389 If you wish to be my friend, never speak to me of that…of all that. Well, good-bye. You will deliver it?…”
Pierre left and went to see the old prince and Princess Marya.
The old man seemed more animated than usual. Princess Marya was the same as ever, but Pierre saw in her, beyond her compassion for her brother, her joy that her brother’s marriage had been thwarted. Looking at them, Pierre realized what contempt and spite they all felt for the Rostovs, and realized that it was impossible in their presence even to mention the name of her who could exchange Prince Andrei for whomever it might be.
Over dinner the talk turned to the war, the approach of which was becoming obvious. Prince Andrei talked incessantly and argued now with his father, now with the Swiss tutor Dessales, and seemed more animated than usual—an animation the moral cause of which