War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [437]
“Well, mon cher, did you get the manifesto?” asked the old count. “My little countess went to the liturgy at the Razumovskys’ and heard a new prayer. A very good one, she says.”
“I’ve got it,” replied Pierre. “Tomorrow the sovereign will be here…There will be an extraordinary assembly of the nobility and, they say, a conscription of ten men per thousand. Ah, yes, and I congratulate you.”
“Yes, yes, thank God. Well, and what news from the army?”
“Our side has retreated again. Near Smolensk already, they say,” replied Pierre.
“My God, my God!” said the count. “So where is the manifesto?”
“The appeal! Ah, yes!” Pierre started hunting for the papers in his pockets and could not find them. Continuing to slap his pockets, he kissed the hand of the countess, who came in, and looked around uneasily, evidently waiting for Natasha, who was no longer singing, but had not yet come to the drawing room.
“By God, I don’t know where I put it,” he said.
“Well, really, he’s forever losing things,” said the countess.
Natasha came in with a face softened by emotion and sat down, looking silently at Pierre. As soon as she entered the room, Pierre’s face, downcast till then, brightened, and, while he went on searching for the paper, he looked at her several times.
“By God, I’ll go and fetch it, I left it at home. Certainly…”
“Well, you’ll be late for dinner.”
“Ah, and my coachman has driven off.”
But Sonya, who had gone to the front hall to look for the papers, had found them in Pierre’s hat, tucked carefully under the lining. Pierre was about to start reading.
“No, after dinner,” said the old count, clearly anticipating great pleasure from this reading.
Over dinner, at which they drank champagne to the health of the new chevalier of St. George, Shinshin told them the town news about the illness of an old Georgian princess, about Métivier’s disappearance from Moscow, and about how they brought some German to Rastopchin and announced to him that he was a spine (so Count Rastopchin told it himself), and how Count Rastopchin ordered the spine set free, telling the folk that he was not a spine, but just a prickly old German.31
“They catch them, they catch them,” said the count. “I even told the countess to speak less French. Now’s not the time.”
“Have you heard?” said Shinshin. “Prince Golitsyn has hired a Russian teacher, he’s taking lessons in Russian—il commence à devenir dangereux de parler français dans les rues.”*429
“Well, now, Count Pyotr Kirilych, once they start calling up the militia, you’ll have to get on a horse, too?” said the old count, addressing Pierre.
Pierre had been silent and pensive all through this dinner. As if not understanding, he looked at the count when he addressed him.
“Yes, yes, to war,” he said, “no! What kind of warrior am I? Anyhow, it’s all so strange, so strange! I don’t understand it myself. I don’t know, I’m so far from having any taste for the military, but nowadays nobody can answer for himself.”
After dinner, the count settled comfortably in an armchair and with a serious face asked Sonya, who was famous for her skill at reading, to read.
“To our first-throned capital, Moscow:32
“The enemy has entered within the borders of Russia with great forces. He comes to devastate our beloved fatherland,” Sonya read diligently in her high little voice. The count listened, his eyes closed, sighing fitfully in certain places.
Natasha sat erect, looking searchingly and directly now at her father, now at Pierre.
Pierre felt her gaze on him and tried not to look at her. The countess shook her head disapprovingly and crossly at each solemn phrase of the manifesto. In all these words she saw only that the dangers which threatened her son would not end soon. Shinshin, composing his mouth into a mocking smile, was obviously preparing to mock at the first thing that presented itself for mockery: at Sonya’s reading, at what the count would say, even at the appeal itself, if no better pretext appeared.
Having read about the dangers that threatened Russia, about the hopes the sovereign placed in Moscow,