War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [41]
Anna Mikhailovna instantly realized what it was about and bent forward so as to embrace the countess adroitly at the right moment.
“This is for Boris from me, to have his uniform made…”
Anna Mikhailovna was already embracing her and weeping. The countess was also weeping. They wept because they were friends; and because they were kind; and because they, who had been friends since childhood, were concerned with such a mean subject—money; and because their youth was gone…But for both of them they were pleasant tears…
XV
Countess Rostov, with her daughters and an already large number of guests, was sitting in the drawing room. The count led the male guests to his study, to offer them his prize collection of Turkish pipes. From time to time he came out and asked whether she had come yet. They were expecting Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimov, known in society as le terrible dragon, a lady famous neither for her wealth nor for her rank, but for her directness of mind and frank simplicity of manners. Marya Dmitrievna was known to the tsar’s family, was known to all Moscow and all Petersburg, and both cities, astonished at her, chuckled secretly at her rudeness and told anecdotes about her; nevertheless, everyone without exception respected and feared her.
In the smoke-filled study the conversation turned to the war, which had been declared in the manifesto, and to recruitment.32 No one had read the manifesto yet, but everyone knew of its appearance. The count sat on an ottoman between two smoking and talking neighbors. The count himself neither smoked nor talked, but, inclining his head now to one side, now to the other, looked with obvious pleasure at the smokers and listened to the conversation of his two neighbors, whom he had set on each other.
One of the talkers was a civilian with a wrinkled, bilious, gaunt, and clean-shaven face, a man approaching old age, though dressed like a most fashionable young man; he sat with his feet on the ottoman, looking like a familiar of the house, the amber bit deep in the side of his mouth, impetuously sucking in smoke and squinting. This was the old bachelor Shinshin, the countess’s cousin, a wicked tongue, as the talk went in Moscow drawing rooms. He seemed to be condescending to his interlocutor. The other, a fresh, pink officer of the guards, impeccably scrubbed, combed, and buttoned-up, held the amber bit in the middle of his mouth and drew the smoke in lightly with his pink lips, letting it out of his handsome mouth in rings. This was that Lieutenant Berg, an officer of the Semyonovsky regiment, with whom Boris was going off to join the regiment, and whom Natasha, teasing Vera, her older sister, called her fiancé. The count sat between them and listened attentively. For the count, the most agreeable occupation, apart from the game of Boston, which he liked very much, was the position of listener, especially when he managed to set two garrulous interlocutors on each other.
“Well, what then, old boy, mon très honorable Alphonse Karlych,” said Shinshin, chuckling and combining (which was a peculiarity of his speech) the simplest popular Russian expressions with refined French phrases. “Vous comptez vous faire des rentes sur l’état,*109 you want to get a little something from your company?”
“No, Pyotr Nikolaevich, I merely wish to prove, sir, that the cavalry is much less profitable than the infantry. Now look, Pyotr Nikolaevich, just consider my position.”
Berg always spoke very precisely, calmly, and courteously. His conversation was always concerned with himself alone; he always kept calmly silent when the talk was about something that had no direct relation to himself. And he could be silent like that for several hours, without experiencing in himself or causing in others the slightest embarrassment. But as soon as the conversation concerned him personally, he began to speak expansively and with obvious pleasure.
“Consider my position, Pyotr Nikolaich: if I were in the cavalry, I’d get no more than two hundred roubles every four months, even with the rank