War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [53]
Pierre understood none of it; he had a still stronger impression that this was how it had to be, and he obediently followed Anna Mikhailovna, who was already opening the door.
The door led to the backstairs hallway. In the corner sat the princesses’ old servant knitting a sock. Pierre had never been in this part of the house; he had not even suspected the existence of these rooms. Anna Mikhailovna asked a girl who walked past them with a carafe on a tray (calling her dear and sweetheart) about the princesses’ health, and drew Pierre further down the stone corridor. The first room to the left from the corridor led to the princesses’ living quarters. The maid with the carafe, in her haste (everything was being done in haste just then in this house), did not close the door, and as they were passing by, Pierre and Anna Mikhailovna involuntarily glanced into the room where the eldest princess and Prince Vassily were sitting close together, talking. Seeing them pass by, Prince Vassily made an impatient movement and drew back; the princess jumped up and, in a desperate gesture, slammed the door shut with all her might.
This gesture was so unlike the princess’s usual calm, the fear that showed on Prince Vassily’s face was so inconsistent with his augustness, that Pierre stopped and looked at his guide questioningly through his spectacles. Anna Mikhailovna expressed no surprise, she only smiled slightly and sighed, as if to show that she had expected it all.
“Soyez homme, mon ami, c’est moi qui veillerai à vos intérêts,”†129 she said in response to his look and went still more quickly down the corridor.
Pierre did not understand what it was all about, and still less what veiller à vos intérêts meant, but he understood that it all had to be so. From the corridor they went into the half-lit salon adjoining the count’s anteroom. It was one of those cold and luxurious rooms which Pierre knew only from the front porch. But in this room, too, in the middle of it, stood an empty tub, and water had been spilled on the carpet. They encountered a servant and an acolyte with a censer, who were walking on tiptoe and paid no attention to them. They went into the anteroom, so familiar to Pierre, with its two Italian windows opening on the winter garden, a big bust, and a full-length portrait of Catherine. The same people, in almost the same positions, were sitting in the anteroom, exchanging whispers. They all fell silent and turned to look at the entering Anna Mikhailovna, with her pale, weepy face, and the big, fat Pierre, who, with his head hanging, obediently followed her.
Anna Mikhailovna’s face expressed an awareness that the decisive moment had come; with the manner of a business-like Petersburg lady, she entered the room still more boldly than in the morning, not letting Pierre stray from her. She felt that, since she was bringing with her the person whom the dying man wished to see, her reception was assured. With a quick glance around, taking in everyone who was in the room and noticing the count’s father confessor, not really bending down, but suddenly making herself smaller, at a quick amble, glided over to the father confessor and respectfully received a blessing first from the one, then from the other clerical person.
“Thank God we’re in time,” she said to the clerical person. “We, his relations, were all so afraid. This young man is the count’s son,” she added in a lower voice. “A terrible moment!”
Having spoken these words, she went over to the doctor.
“Cher docteur,” she said to him, “ce jeune homme est le fils du comte…y a-t-il de l’espoir?”*130
The doctor was silent, raising his eyes and shoulders with a quick movement. Anna Mikhailovna, with exactly the same movement, raised her shoulders and eyes, almost closing them, sighed, and walked away from the doctor towards Pierre. She addressed Pierre with