War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [52]
“Now I’ve understood everything. I know whose intrigue it is. I know,” said the princess.
“That’s not the point, dear heart.”
“It’s your protégée, your dear Anna Mikhailovna, whom I wouldn’t have as a housemaid—that vile, loathsome woman.”
“Ne perdons point de temps.”‡125
“Ah, don’t speak to me! Last winter she wormed her way in here and told the count a whole heap of such vile, such nasty things about us all, especially Sophie—I can’t repeat it—that the count became ill and didn’t want to see us for two weeks. I know it was then that he wrote that nasty, loathsome document; but I thought the document meant nothing.”
“Nous y voilà,§126 why didn’t you tell me anything before?”
“It’s in the inlaid portfolio he keeps under his pillow. Now I know,” said the princess, not replying. “Yes, if I have a sin, a great sin, it’s my hatred of that loathsome woman,” the princess nearly shouted, changing into a competely different person. “And why is she worming her way in here? But I’ll have it out with her, I’ll have it all out. The time will come!”
XIX
While such conversations were going on in the reception room and the princess’s apartments, the carriage bringing Pierre (who had been sent for) and Anna Mikhailovna (who found it necessary to go with him) was driving into Count Bezukhov’s courtyard. As the wheels of the carriage rumbled softly over the straw spread under the windows, Anna Mikhailovna, turning to her companion with words of comfort, discovered that he was asleep in the corner of the carriage, and woke him up. Coming to his senses, Pierre followed Anna Mikhailovna out of the carriage and only then thought about the meeting with his dying father that lay ahead of him. He noticed that they had driven up not to the front, but to the back entrance. Just as he was stepping out, two men in tradesman’s clothes hastily ran away from the entrance into the shadow of the wall. Having stopped, Pierre made out several more men of the same sort in the shadow of the house on both sides. But neither Anna Mikhailovna, nor the footman, nor the coachman, who could not help seeing these men, paid any attention to them. So that is how it has to be, Pierre decided to himself and went after Anna Mikhailovna. Anna Mikhailovna went up the dimly lit, narrow stone stairs with hasty steps, calling to Pierre, who lagged behind her, and who, though he did not understand why in general he had to go to the count, and still less why he had to go by the back stairs, decided to himself, judging by Anna Mikhailovna’s assurance and haste, that this had necessarily to be so. Halfway up the stairs, they were nearly knocked off their feet by some people with buckets who came running down the stairs, stamping with their boots. These people pressed themselves to the wall to let Pierre and Anna Mikhailovna pass and did not show the least surprise when they saw them.
“Is this the way to the princesses’ apartments?” Anna Mikhailovna asked one of them.
“Yes,” the lackey answered in a bold, loud voice, as though everything was permitted now, “the door on the left, good lady.”
“Maybe the count didn’t send for me,” said Pierre, when he came to the landing. “I’ll just go to my own rooms.”
Anna Mikhailovna stopped so that Pierre could catch up with her.
“Ah, mon ami!” she said, with the same gesture as in the morning, when she touched her son’s arm, “croyez que je souffre autant que vous, mais soyez homme.”*127
“Really, why don’t I go?” asked Pierre, looking at Anna Mikhailovna affectionately through his spectacles.
“Ah, mon