War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [51]
“That’s all we need!” the princess interrupted, smiling sardonically and without changing the expression of her eyes. “I’m a woman; in your opinion, we’re all stupid; but I know enough to be sure that an illegitimate son cannot inherit…Un bâtard,” she added, supposing that this translation would definitively prove to the prince his groundlessness.
“How is it you don’t understand, finally, Catiche? You’re so intelligent, how is it you don’t understand: if the count wrote a letter to the sovereign, in which he asked that his son be recognized as legitimate, it means that Pierre will no longer be Pierre, but Count Bezukhov, and then according to the will he’ll get everything. And if the will and the letter have not been destroyed, there will be nothing left for you except the consolation that you have been virtuous et tout ce qui s’en suit.*122 That is certain.”
“I know that the will has been written; but I also know that it is not valid, and you seem to consider me a perfect fool, mon cousin,” said the princess, with that expression with which women speak when they suppose they have said something witty and insulting.
“My dear Princess Katerina Semyonovna!” Prince Vassily began speaking impatiently. “I have come to you not in order to exchange barbs, but in order to talk with you, as with a kinswoman, a good, kind, true kinswoman, about your own interests. I tell you for the tenth time that if the letter to the sovereign and the will favoring Pierre are among the count’s papers, then, my darling, you and your sisters do not inherit. If you don’t believe me, believe people who know: I’ve just spoken with Dmitri Onufrich” (this was the family lawyer), “and he says the same thing.”
Evidently something suddenly changed in the princess’s mind; her thin lips turned pale (her eyes remained the same), and her voice, when she began to speak, kept breaking into such tremors as she evidently did not expect herself.
“That would be just fine,” she said. “I don’t want anything and never did.”
She threw the dog off her lap and straightened the folds of her dress.
“There’s gratitude, there’s thankfulness to people who have sacrificed everything for him,” she said. “Wonderful! Very fine! I need nothing, Prince.”
“Yes, but you’re not alone, you have sisters,” replied Prince Vassily.
But the princess was not listening to him.
“Yes, I’ve long known, but I had forgotten, that apart from baseness, deceit, envy, intrigue, apart from ingratitude, the blackest ingratitude, I could expect nothing in this house…”
“Do you or do you not know where the will is?” Prince Vassily asked, his cheeks twitching still more than before.
“Yes, I was stupid, I still believed in people, and loved them, and sacrificed myself. But only those who are mean and vile succeed. I know whose intrigue this is.”
The princess was about to get up, but the prince held her by the arm. The princess had the air of someone who has suddenly become disappointed in the whole human race; she looked spitefully at her interlocutor.
“There’s still time, my friend. Remember, Catiche, it was all done inadvertently, in a moment of wrath, illness, and then forgotten. Our duty, my dear, is to correct his mistake, to alleviate his last moments by not allowing him to do this injustice, by not letting him die thinking he has made unhappy those people who…”
“Those people who sacrificed everything for him,” the princess picked up, again trying to rise, but the prince did not let her, “something he was never able to appreciate. No, mon cousin,” she added with a sigh, “I shall remember that one can expect no reward in this world, that in this world there is neither honor nor justice. One must be cunning and wicked in this world.”
“Well, voyons,*123 calm down; I know your excellent heart.”
“No, I have a wicked heart.”
“I know