War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [67]
Seeing his father’s insistent demand, Prince Andrei, reluctantly at first, but then with more and more animation, and inadvertently switching from Russian to French, out of habit, in the middle of his discourse, began to explain the plan of operations for the proposed campaign. He told how a ninety-thousand-man army was to threaten Prussia, so as to draw her out of neutrality and involve her in the war, how part of that army was to unite with the Swedish army in Strahlsund, how two hundred and twenty thousand Austrians, united with a hundred thousand Russians, were to go into action in Italy and on the Rhine, and how fifty thousand Russians and fifty thousand English would land at Naples, and how in all a five-hundred-thousand-strong army was to attack the French from different sides. The old prince showed not the slightest interest during the telling, as though he was not listening, and, continuing to dress as he paced, interrupted him three times unexpectedly. Once he stopped him and shouted:
“The white one! the white one!”
This meant that Tikhon had not handed him the waistcoat he wanted. Another time he stopped, asked:
“And how soon will she give birth?” and, shaking his head reproachfully, said: “Not good! Go on, go on.”
The third time, as Prince Andrei was finishing his description, the old man sang in an old man’s off-key voice: “Malbroug s’en va-t-en guerre. Dieu sait quand reviendra.”*164 47
His son merely smiled.
“I’m not saying that this is a plan I approve of,” the son said, “I’ve only told you what’s in it. Napoleon has already put together a plan no worse than this one.”
“Well, you haven’t told me anything new.” And the old man muttered pensively to himself in a quick patter: “Dieu sait quand reviendra. Go to the dining room.”
XXIV
At the appointed hour, powdered and clean-shaven, the prince came out to the dining room, where he was awaited by his daughter-in-law, Princess Marya, Mlle Bourienne, and the prince’s architect, who by the prince’s strange caprice was admitted to the table, though by his insignificant position the man could in no way count on such an honor. The prince, who in his life kept firmly to social distinctions and rarely admitted even important provincial officials to the table, suddenly decided to demonstrate by means of the architect Mikhail Ivanovich, who used to blow his nose in the corner on a checkered handkerchief, that all men are equal, and more than once impressed it upon his daughter that Mikhail Ivanovich was no worse than you or I. At table the prince most often addressed himself to the wordless Mikhail Ivanovich.
In the dining room, immensely high like all the rooms in the house, the prince’s entrance was awaited by the domestics and servants standing behind each chair; the butler, a napkin over his arm, examined the place settings, winking to the lackeys and constantly shifting his anxious gaze from the wall clock to the door from which the prince was to appear. Prince Andrei was looking at a huge gilded frame, new to him, with a picture of the family tree of the princes Bolkonsky, which hung across the room from an equally huge frame with a poorly painted portrait (obviously from the hand of a household artist) of a sovereign prince in a crown, who was supposed to be a descendant of Rurik and the first ancestor of the Bolkonsky family. Prince Andrei looked at this genealogical tree, shaking his head and chuckling with the air of someone looking at a portrait that is a ridiculously good likeness.
“That’s him all over!” he said to Prince Marya, who came up to him.
Princess Marya looked at her brother in surprise. She did not understand what made him smile. Everything her father did evoked an awe in her which was not subject to discussion.
“Every man has his Achilles’ heel,” Prince Andrei went on. “With his enormous intelligence, donner dans ce ridicule!”*165
Princess Marya could