War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [723]
On the third day after his arrival in Moscow, he learned from the Drubetskoys that Princess Marya was in Moscow. The death, the sufferings, the last days of Prince Andrei had often occupied Pierre, and now came to his mind again with new vividness. Having learned at dinner that Princess Marya was in Moscow and living in her unburnt house on Vzdvizhenka, he went to see her that same evening.
On the way to Princess Marya, Pierre never stopped thinking of Prince Andrei, of his friendship with him, of his various meetings with him, and especially of the last one in Borodino.
“Can it be that he died in the spiteful mood he was in then? Can it be that the explanation of life was not revealed to him before death?” thought Pierre. He remembered about Karataev, about his death, and involuntarily started comparing these two men, so different and at the same time so similar, because of the love he had for both of them, and because both had lived and both had died.
Pierre drove up to the old prince’s house in the most serious state of mind. The house was intact. There were traces of damage, but the character of the house was the same. An old servant, who met Pierre with a stern face, as if wishing to make it known to the visitor that the prince’s absence had not disturbed the order of the house, said that the princess had been pleased to retire to her rooms and that she received on Sundays.
“Announce me; perhaps she’ll receive me,” said Pierre.
“Yes, sir,” said the servant. “Please come to the portrait room.”
A few minutes later the servant and Dessales came out to Pierre. Dessales told Pierre on the princess’s behalf that she would be very glad to see him and asked, if he would forgive her lack of ceremony, that he come to her rooms upstairs.
In a room with a low ceiling, lit by one candle, sat the princess and with her someone else in a black dress. Pierre recalled that the princess always had lady companions, but who and what sort these companions were, Pierre did not know and did not recall. “It’s one of her companions,” he thought, glancing at the lady in the black dress.
The princess rose quickly to meet him and gave him her hand.
“Yes,” she said, looking intently into his changed face after he had kissed her hand, “so this is how you and I meet. During the last days, he often spoke of you,” she said, shifting her gaze from Pierre to the companion with a shyness that struck him for a moment.
“I was so glad to learn that you had been saved. It was the only joyful news we had received for a long time.” Again, still more uneasily, the princess glanced at her companion and was about to say something, but Pierre interrupted her.
“Can you imagine, I knew nothing about him,” he said. “I counted him as killed. All I knew, I knew from other people, at third hand. I know only that he ended up with the Rostovs…What a fate!”
Pierre was speaking quickly, animatedly. He glanced once at the face of the companion, saw an attentively tender, curious gaze directed at him, and, as often happens during a conversation, felt for some reason that this companion in the black dress was a sweet, kind, nice being, who would not hinder his heart-to-heart talk with Princess Marya.
But when he said the last words about the Rostovs, the perplexity on Princess Marya’s face showed still more strongly. She again shifted her gaze from Pierre’s face to the face of the lady in the black dress and said:
“Don’t you recognize her?”
Pierre glanced once more at the pale, fine face of the companion, with its dark eyes and strange mouth. Something dear, long forgotten, and more than sweet looked at him from those attentive eyes.
“But no, it can’t be,” he thought. “This stern, thin, pale, aged face? It can’t be her. It’s only a reminiscence of that one.” But just then Princess Marya