War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [757]
“Thank you, my friend, you’ve comforted me,” she said, as she always did. “But the best thing is that you’ve brought yourself. I’ve never seen the like of it; you ought to give your wife a scolding. What is it? She’s like a crazy person without you. Doesn’t see anything, doesn’t remember anything,” she said her habitual words. “Look, Anna Timofeevna,” she added, “what a case our boy’s brought me.”
Mrs. Belov praised the gifts and admired her cotton fabric.
Though Pierre, Natasha, Nikolai, Marya, and Denisov had much to talk about that they would not speak of in the countess’s presence, not because anything was concealed from her, but because she was so behind in many things that, if one began to say something in her presence, it would be necessary to answer her questions, put in inappropriately, and repeat once more what had already been repeated to her several times—to tell her that this one had died, that that one had married, which she once more would not remember—but they sat over tea as usual by the samovar in the drawing room, and Pierre answered the countess’s questions, needless for her and of interest to no one, saying that Prince Vassily had aged and that Countess Marya Vassilievna had sent her greetings and remembered her, and so on…
Such conversation, of interest to no one, but necessary, went on all through tea. For tea around the round table and the samovar, at which Sonya presided, all the grown-up members of the household gathered. The children, tutors, and governesses had already had tea, and their voices could be heard in the neighboring sitting room. At tea everyone sat in their usual places. Nikolai sat at a little table by the stove, where tea was served to him. The old borzoi bitch Milka, daughter of the first Milka, with a totally gray-haired face, against which her big, black, protruding eyes showed more sharply, lay in an armchair beside him. Denisov with his half-gray curly hair, mustache, and side-whiskers, in an unbuttoned general’s tunic, sat next to Countess Marya. Pierre sat between his wife and the old countess. He was talking about what he knew might interest the old lady and be understood by her. He spoke of external, social events and of the people who had once made up the circle of the old countess’s contemporaries, who had once been an actual, living, definite circle, but who now, mostly scattered over the world, were living out their time, as she was, gleaning the remaining ears of what they had sown in their lives. But they, these contemporaries, seemed to the old countess the only serious and real world. From Pierre’s animation, Natasha could see that his trip had been interesting, that he would have liked to tell about many things, but he did not dare speak in the countess’s presence. Denisov, besides his not being a member of the family, and therefore not understanding Pierre’s cautiousness, was quite interested, as a disgruntled man, in what was happening in Petersburg, and constantly provoked Pierre into telling now about some story that had just happened in the Semyonovsky regiment, now about Arakcheev, now about the Biblical Society. Pierre occasionally got carried away and began telling, but Nikolai and Natasha brought him back each time to the health of Prince Ivan and Countess Marya Antonovna.
“Well, what about all that madness, Gossner and the Tatarinov woman—is it still going on?”8
“Still going on, hah!” cried Pierre. “Stronger than ever. The Biblical Society—that’s now the whole government.”
“What’s that, mon cher ami?” asked the countess, who had finished her tea and clearly wished to find a pretext for getting angry after eating. “What’s that you say: the government? I don’t