War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [54]
“Ayez confiance en sa miséricorde!”†131 she said to him and, pointing to a little settee on which he could sit and wait for her, made inaudibly for the door that everyone was looking at, and, following the barely audible noise of that door, disappeared behind it.
Pierre, having decided to obey his guide in all things, made for the little settee she had pointed out to him. As soon as Anna Mikhailovna disappeared, he noticed that the eyes of everyone in the room turned to him with something more than curiosity and sympathy. He noticed that they all exchanged whispers, indicating him with their eyes, as if with fear and even obsequiousness. He was being shown a respect no one had ever shown him before: a lady unknown to him, who had been talking with the clerical persons, got up from her place and offered him a seat; the adjutant picked up a glove Pierre had dropped and handed it to him; the doctors fell deferentially silent when he walked past them and stepped aside to make way for him. Pierre first wanted to sit somewhere else, so as not to inconvenience the lady, wanted to pick up the glove himself, and to bypass the doctors, who were not standing in his way; but he suddenly felt that that would be improper, he felt that that night he was the person responsible for performing some terrible rite which everyone expected, and that he therefore had to accept services from them all. He silently accepted the glove from the adjutant, sat down in the lady’s place, putting his big hands on his symmetrically displayed knees in the naïve pose of an Egyptian statue, and decided to himself that this was precisely as it had to be and that that evening, so as not to lose his head and do something foolish, he ought not to act according to his own reasoning, but give himself up entirely to the will of those who were guiding him.
Two minutes had not gone by before Prince Vassily, in his kaftan with three stars, holding his head high, majestically entered the room. He seemed to have grown thinner since morning; his eyes were larger than usual as he looked around and saw Pierre. He went over to him, took his hand (something he had never done before), and pulled it down, as if testing whether it was well attached.
“Courage, courage, mon ami. Il a demandé de vous voir. C’est bien…”*132 And he was about to leave.
But Pierre considered it necessary to ask:
“How is the health of…” He hesitated, not knowing whether it was proper to call the dying man “count” yet he was embarrassed to call him “father.”
“Il a eu encore un coup, il y a une demi-heure.†133 Yet another stroke. Courage, mon ami…”
Pierre was in such a state of mental confusion that, at the word “stroke,” he pictured some sort of blow to the body. He looked at Prince Vassily in perplexity, and only then realized that “stroke” referred to an illness. Prince Vassily spoke several words to Lorrain in passing and went through the door on tiptoe. He did not know how to walk on tiptoe, and his whole body bobbed up and down awkwardly. The elder princess went in after him, then the clerical persons and the acolytes went in, then the servants also went through the door. Behind the door movement was heard, and finally, with the same face, pale but firm in the fulfillment of her duty, Anna Mikhailovna rushed out and, touching Pierre’s arm, said:
“La bonté divine est inépuisable. C’est la cérémonie de l’extrême onction qui va commencer. Venez.”‡134
Pierre went through the door, stepping on the soft carpet, and noticed that the adjutant and the unknown lady, and some other servants—all came in after him, as if there was no longer any need to ask permission to enter that room.
XX
Pierre knew well that big room, divided by columns and an archway, all hung with Persian carpets. The part of the room behind the columns, where on one side stood a high mahogany bed under a silk canopy and on the other an enormous stand with icons, was brightly lit with red light, as is usual in churches during evening services. Under the shining casings of the icons stood