War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [451]
“He keeps bustling about,” Mikhail Ivanych said with a respectfully mocking smile, which made Princess Marya turn pale. “He’s very anxious about the new building. He read for a while, and now,” said Mikhail Ivanych, lowering his voice, “he’s at his desk, must be busy with his will.” (Lately one of the prince’s favorite occupations had been busying himself with the papers that were to be left after his death and which he called his will.)
“And Alpatych is being sent to Smolensk?” asked Princess Marya.
“That he is, ma’am, he’s been waiting a long time.”
III
When Mikhail Ivanych came back to the study with the letter, the prince, wearing spectacles, with a shade over his eyes and over the candle, was sitting at the open bureau, with papers in his outstretched hand, reading in a somewhat solemn pose his “remarks” (as he called them), to be delivered to the sovereign after his death.
When Mikhail Ivanych came in, his eyes were filled with tears of remembrance of the time when he had been writing what he was now reading. He took the letter from Mikhail Ivanych’s hands, put it in his pocket, put his papers away, and called the already long-waiting Alpatych.
He had written what he needed from Smolensk on a sheet of paper, and, walking across the room past Alpatych, who was waiting at the door, he began giving orders.
“First, some stationery, do you hear? Eight quires. Here’s a sample; gilt-edged…a sample, get exactly the same thing. Varnish, sealing wax—as on Mikhail Ivanych’s list.”
He took a few steps around the room and glanced at his memorandum.
“Then deliver the letter about the deed to the governor in person.”
Then door bolts were needed for the new construction, of exactly the design the prince himself had devised. Then an ironbound box had to be ordered to keep the will in.
The giving of instructions to Alpatych went on for more than two hours. The prince would not let him go. He sat down, fell to thinking, and, closing his eyes, dozed off. Alpatych stirred.
“Well, off you go, off you go. If I need anything, I’ll send for you.”
Alpatych left. The prince went over to the bureau again, looked into it, touched his papers with his hand, locked it again, and sat down at the desk to write the letter to the governor.
It was already late when he stood up, having sealed the letter. He wanted to sleep, but he knew he would not be able to fall asleep and that the worst thoughts came to him in bed. He called Tikhon and walked about the rooms with him, so as to tell him where to make up his bed for that night. He walked about, sizing up every little corner.
Everywhere seemed bad to him, but worst of all was his customary couch in the study. This couch was frightful to him, probably because of the painful thoughts that came to him as he lay on it. Nowhere was good, but in any case the best of all was the little corner in the sitting room behind the piano: he had never yet slept there.
Tikhon and another servant brought the bed and began to make it up.
“Not like that, not like that!” cried the prince, and he himself moved it a few inches further from the corner, then a little closer again.
“Well, I’ve finally done everything, now I can rest,” thought the prince, and he allowed Tikhon to undress him.
Wincing vexedly at the efforts that had to be made in order to take off his kaftan and trousers, the prince undressed, lowered himself heavily onto the bed, and seemed to lapse into thought, looking contemptuously at his yellow, shriveled legs. He did not lapse into thought, but hesitated before the labor that faced him of raising those legs and shifting himself onto the bed. “Oh, how hard it is! Oh, if only these labors would be over quickly, quickly, and you would release me!” he thought. Compressing his lips, he made this effort for the twentieth time and lay down. But just as he lay