War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [66]
“And you’re decidedly going to the war, André?” she said, sighing.
Lise also sighed.
“Tomorrow even,” her brother answered.
“Il m’abondonne ici et Dieu sait pourquoi, quand il aurait pu avoir de l’avancement…”†163
Princess Marya did not finish listening and, continuing with the thread of her thoughts, turned to her sister-in-law, her gentle eyes indicating her stomach.
“Is it certain?” she asked.
The princess’s face changed. She sighed.
“Yes, certain,” she said. “Ah! It’s very frightening…”
Liza’s little lip lowered. She brought her face close to her sister-in-law’s face and again wept unexpectedly.
“She needs rest,” said Prince Andrei, wincing. “Isn’t it so, Liza? Take her to your rooms, and I’ll go to father. How is he, the same?”
“The same, yes, the same; I don’t know whether in your eyes,” the princess replied joyfully.
“The same hours, and the strolls in the avenues? The lathe?” asked Prince Andrei with a barely perceptible smile, which showed that, despite all his love and respect for his father, he was aware of his weaknesses.
“The same hours, and the lathe, also mathematics, and my geometry lessons,” Princess Marya replied joyfully, as though her lessons in geometry were one of the most joyful impressions of her life.
When they had waited out the twenty minutes until it was time for the old prince to get up, Tikhon came to summon the young prince to his father. In honor of his son’s arrival, the old man had made an exception in his way of life: he gave orders to allow him into his part of the house while he was still dressing for dinner. The prince held to the old fashion of wearing a kaftan and powdering his hair. And at the moment when Prince Andrei (not with that peevish expression and manner he assumed in drawing rooms, but with the same animated face he had when he talked with Pierre) came to his father’s, the old man was sitting in his dressing room, on a wide morocco-upholstered armchair, in a powdering mantle, entrusting his head to Tikhon’s hands.
“Ah! The warrior! So you want to defeat Bonaparte?” said the old man, shaking his powdered head as much as the braided queue, which was in Tikhon’s hands, would let him. “At least give him a good drubbing, or pretty soon he’ll be writing us down, too, as his subjects. Greetings!” And he offered his cheek.
The old man was in high spirits following his before-dinner nap. (He used to say that an after-dinner nap was silver, but a before-dinner nap was gold.) He joyfully cast sidelong glances at his son from under his thick, beetling brows. Prince Andrei went up and kissed his father on the place indicated to him. He did not respond to his father’s favorite subject—poking fun at the present-day military, and especially at Bonaparte.
“Yes, I’ve come to see you, papa, and with a pregnant wife,” said Prince Andrei, his animated and respectful eyes following the movement of every feature of his father’s face. “How is your health?”
“Only fools and profligates can be unwell, my boy, and you know me: I’m busy from morning till evening, I’m temperate, and so I’m well.”
“Thank God,” his son said, smiling.
“God has nothing to do with it. Well, tell me,” he went on, getting back on his hobbyhorse, “how have the Germans taught you to fight Bonaparte by this new science of yours known as strategy?”
Prince Andrei smiled.
“Let me collect my wits, papa,” he said, with a smile which showed that his father’s weaknesses did not prevent him from loving and respecting him. “I haven’t even settled in.”
“Nonsense, nonsense,” cried the old man, shaking his queue to see whether it was tightly braided and seizing his son’s arm. “The house is ready for your wife. Princess Marya will take her around and show her and babble three cartloads. That’s their womanish business. I’m glad of her. Sit down, tell me. Mikhelson’s army I understand, and Tolstoy’s…a simultaneous landing…What’s the southern army going to do? Prussia, neutrality…that I know. What about