• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 3566 0

he wrote his own name—Comte Pierre Besouhoff; the sum of the numbers was also far from the right one. He changed the orthography, putting z in place of s, added de, added the article le, and still did not get the desired result. Then it occurred to him that, if the answer to the question he was seeking was contained in his name, then the answer would certainly mention his nationality. He wrote Le russe Besuhof and, counting up the numbers, got 671. It was only five too much; five was e, the same e that was dropped from the article in the words L’empereur. Having dropped the e in the same way, albeit incorrectly, Pierre got the sought-for answer: L’russe Besuhof, which equalled 666. This discovery excited him. He did not know how, by what connection he was bound up with that great event which had been predicted in the Apocalypse; but he did not doubt that connection for a moment. His love for Miss Rostov, the Antichrist, Napoleon’s invasion, the comet, 666, l’empereur Napoléon and l’russe Besuhof—all that together must ripen, burst, and lead him out of that spellbound, worthless world of Moscow habits in which he felt himself imprisoned, and bring him to a great deed and great happiness.

On the eve of that Sunday when the prayer was read, Pierre had promised the Rostovs that he would bring them from Count Rastopchin, whom he knew well, both the appeal to Russia and the latest news from the army. In the morning, stopping at Count Rastopchin’s, Pierre found with him a just-arrived courier from the army.

The courier was an acquaintance of Pierre’s from the Moscow ballrooms.

“For God’s sake, can’t you lighten it for me?” said the courier. “I’ve got a bag full of letters to parents.”

Among those letters was Nikolai Rostov’s letter to his father. Pierre took it. Besides that, Count Rastopchin gave Pierre the sovereign’s appeal to Moscow, only just printed, the latest orders to the army, and his own latest bulletin. Looking through the orders to the army, Pierre found in one of them, amidst information about the wounded, killed, and decorated, the name of Nikolai Rostov, awarded the St. George, fourth degree, for bravery shown during the Ostrovna action, and in the same order the appointment of Prince Andrei Bolkonsky as commander of a regiment of chasseurs. Though he was reluctant to remind the Rostovs of Bolkonsky, Pierre could not refrain from his wish to give them the glad news of their son’s decoration, and, keeping the appeal, the bulletin, and the other orders, so as to bring them to dinner in person, he sent the printed order and the letter to the Rostovs.

The conversation with Count Rastopchin, his preoccupied and hasty tone, the meeting with the courier, who told casually of things going poorly in the army, of rumors of spies found in Moscow, of a paper circulating in Moscow which said that Napoleon promised to occupy both Russian capitals before autumn, of talk of the expected arrival of the sovereign the next day—all this aroused with renewed force in Pierre that feeling of excitement and expectation which had not left him since the time of the comet’s appearance and especially since the start of the war.

Pierre had long been thinking of entering military service, and he would have done so had he not been hindered, first, by his belonging to the Masonic order, to which he was bound by oath and which preached eternal peace and the abolition of war, and second, by looking at the great number of Muscovites donning uniforms and preaching patriotism, which somehow made him ashamed to take such a step. But the main reason why he would not carry out his intention of entering military service consisted in his vague notion that he, l’russe Besuhof, had the number of the beast, 666, that his participation in the great deed of setting a limit to the power of the beast that spoke great things and blasphemies was predestined from all eternity, and that he was therefore not to undertake anything, but to wait for what was to happen.

XX

At the Rostovs’, as always on Sundays, some of their closest acquaintances were dining.