War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [452]
“No peace, curse you!” he growled angrily at someone. “Yes, yes, there was something important, something very important, that I was saving for the night in bed. The door bolts? No, I said that. No, it was something that was in the drawing room. Princess Marya blathered something. Dessales—that fool—said something. Something in my pocket—I don’t remember.”
“Tishka! What were we talking about at dinner?”
“About the prince, Mikhail…”
“Silence, silence.” The prince slapped his hand on the table. “Yes! I know, Prince Andrei’s letter. Princess Marya read it. Dessales said something about Vitebsk. I’ll read it now.”
He had the letter taken from his pocket and a little table with lemonade and a spiral wax candle moved closer to the bed, and, putting on his spectacles, began to read. Only now, in the quiet of night, by the faint light from under the green shade, reading through the letter, did he momentarily grasp its meaning for the first time.
“The French are in Vitebsk, in four days’ march they may be in Smolensk; they may be there already.”
“Tishka!” Tikhon jumped up. “No, never mind, never mind!” he cried.
He hid the letter under the candlestick and closed his eyes. And before him stood the Danube, bright noonday, bullrushes, the Russian camp, and he, a young general, without a wrinkle on his face, brisk, cheerful, red-cheeked, goes into Potemkin’s decorated tent, and a burning feeling of envy of the favorite, as strong now as it was then, stirs him. And he remembers all the words that were said then at his first meeting with Potemkin. And before him stands a short, fat woman with a yellow tint to her fleshy face—the mother-empress, her smiles, her words when she received him, with favors, for the first time, and he remembers the same face on a catafalque, and his clash with Zubov, who then stood by her coffin, over his right to go up and kiss her hand.
“Ah, quickly, quickly go back to that time, and let all this now be finished as quickly as possible, and let them leave me in peace!”
IV
Bald Hills, the estate of Prince Nikolai Andreich Bolkonsky, lay forty miles east of Smolensk and two miles from the Moscow road.
The same evening that the prince gave orders to Alpatych, Dessales, having demanded to see Princess Marya, told her that, as the prince was not quite well, and was taking no measures for his own safety, and it was clear from Prince Andrei’s letter that to stay at Bald Hills was unsafe, he respectfully advised her to write and send with Alpatych her own letter to the head of the province in Smolensk, asking him to inform her about the situation and the degree of danger Bald Hills was exposed to. Dessales wrote a letter to the governor for Princess Marya, she signed it, and this letter was given to Alpatych with orders to deliver it to the governor and, in case of danger, to return as soon as possible.
Having received all his orders, Alpatych, accompanied by the domestics, in a white felt hat (the prince’s gift), with a stick, just like the prince, came out to get into the little leather kibitka, harnessed to a troika of well-fed roans.
The bell was tied up, and the harness bells were stopped with bits of paper. The prince did not allow anyone in Bald Hills to drive with bells. But Alpatych liked bells on a long journey. Alpatych’s courtiers—the land reeve, the clerk, the scullery maid, the cook, two old women, a boy servant, the coachmen, and other domestics—saw him off.
His daughter tucked some down-filled chintz pillows behind his back and under him. His old sister-in-law gave him a little bundle on the sly. One of the coachmen supported his arm as he got in.
“Well, well, women’s preparations! Women, women!” Alpatych, huffing, said in a patter, just the way the prince said it, and got into the kibitka. Giving the land reeve some last orders about work, Alpatych, no longer imitating the prince, took the hat