War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [61]
“Well, ma’am,” the old man began, bending close to his daughter over the notebook and putting one arm on the back of the chair in which the princess was sitting, so that the princess felt herself surrounded on all sides by her father’s smell of tobacco and pungent old age, which she had known so long. “Well, ma’am, these triangles are similar; kindly look, the angle ABC…”
The princess glanced fearfully at her father’s bright eyes, so near to her; red blotches came over her face, and it was obvious that she understood nothing, and was so afraid that fear would prevent her from understanding all of her father’s further explanations, however clear they were. Whether it was the teacher or the pupil who was at fault, the same thing repeated itself each day: the princess felt giddy, saw nothing, heard nothing, but only felt the lean face of her stern father near her, felt his breathing and his smell, and thought only of how to get out of the study as quickly as possible and work out the problem in the freedom of her own room. The old man would get beside himself: he would noisily move the chair he was sitting in back and forth, try hard to keep himself from flying into a rage, and almost always flew into a rage, poured out abuse, and sometimes flung the notebook away.
The princess gave the wrong answer.
“Well, aren’t you a fool!” shouted the prince, shoving the notebook away, but he got up at once, paced about, touched the princess’s hair with his hands, and sat down again.
He moved closer and continued his explanations.
“It won’t do, Princess, it won’t do,” he said, when the princess, having taken and closed the notebook with the next day’s lesson, was getting ready to leave. “Mathematics is a great thing, my lady. And I don’t want you to be like our stupid women here. Much patience, much pleasure.” He patted her on the cheek. “It will knock the foolishness out of your head.”
She was about to leave, but he gestured for her to stop and took a new, uncut book from the tall table.
“Here’s some Key to the Mystery44 your Héloïse sends you. Religious. But I don’t interfere with anyone’s beliefs…I’ve looked through it. Take it. Well, off with you, off with you!”
He patted her on the shoulder and locked the door behind her himself.
Princess Marya went back to her room with the sad, frightened expression which rarely left her and made her unattractive, sickly face still more unattractive, and sat down at her desk, covered with miniature portraits and heaped with books and notebooks. The princess was as disorderly as her father was orderly. She put down her geometry notebook and impatiently unsealed the letter. The letter was from the princess’s closest childhood friend; this friend was that same Julie Karagin who had been at the Rostovs’ name-day party.
Julie wrote:
Chère et excellente amie, quelle chose terrible et effrayante que l’absence! J’ai beau me dire que la moitié de mon existence et de mon bonheur est en vous, que malgré la distance qui nous sépare, nos coeurs sont unis par des liens indissolubles; le mien se révolte contre la destinée, et je ne puis, malgré les plaisirs et les distractions qui m’entourent, vaincre une certaine tristesse cachée que je ressens au fond du coeur depuis notre séparation. Pourquoi ne sommes-nous pas réunies, comme cette été dans votre grand cabinet sur le canapé bleu, le canapé à confidences? Pourquoi ne puis-je, comme il y a trois mois, puiser de nouvelles forces morales dans votre regard si doux, si calme et si pénétrant, regard que j’aimais tant et que je crois voir devant moi, quand je vous écris?*148
Having read that far, Princess Marya sighed and glanced into the pier glass that stood to the right of her. The mirror reflected an unattractive, weak body and a thin face. Her eyes, always sad, now looked into the mirror with particular hopelessness. “She’s flattering me,” thought the princess, and she turned away and went on reading. Julie, however, was not flattering her friend: indeed, the princess’s eyes, large, deep, and luminous (sometimes it was as