War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [759]
“Before you had to be a German, now you have to dance with this Tatarinov woman and Madame Krüdener, to read…Eckartshausen9 and the rest. Ah! I’d turn that fine fellow Bonaparte loose on them! He’d knock all this foolishness out of them. Well, have you ever seen anything like it—giving the Semyonovsky regiment to that foot soldier Schwartz!” he shouted.
Nikolai, though without Denisov’s wish to find everything bad, also considered it a very worthwhile and important thing to discuss the government, and considered that the fact that A was appointed minister here, and B governor general there, and that the sovereign said such-and-such, but the minister said such-and-such—that all this was a very significant matter. And he considered it necessary to be interested in it and questioned Pierre about it. Under the questioning of these two interlocutors, the conversation never departed from the usual character of gossip about high spheres of government.
But Natasha, knowing all the ways and thoughts of her husband, saw that Pierre had long wanted to but could not lead the conversation a different way and voice his innermost thought, the one for which he had gone to Petersburg to consult with his new friend, Prince Fyodor; and she helped him with a question: how was his business with Prince Fyodor?
“What is it about?” asked Nikolai.
“The same thing all over again,” said Pierre, glancing around. “Everybody sees that things are taking such a nasty turn that they can’t be left like this, and that it’s the duty of all honest men to oppose it as far as they can.”
“But what can honest men do?” Nikolai said, frowning slightly. “What can be done?”
“Here’s what…”
“Let’s go to my study,” said Nikolai.
Natasha, who had long anticipated that they would come to fetch her to nurse the baby, heard the nanny call and went to the nursery. Countess Marya went with her. The men went to the study, and Nikolenka Bolkonsky, unnoticed by his uncle, went there, too, and sat in the shadow, by the window, at the writing table.
“Well, what are you going to do?” asked Denisov.
“Eternal fantasies,” said Nikolai.
“Here’s what,” Pierre began, not sitting down, and now pacing the room, now stopping, lisping and making rapid gestures with his hands while he talked. “Here’s what. The situation in Petersburg is like this: the sovereign doesn’t enter into anything. He’s totally given up to this mysticism” (Pierre could not forgive mysticism in anyone now.) “All he seeks is peace, and peace can be given him only by those people sans foi ni loi*751 who hack up and stifle everything far and wide: Magnitsky, Arakcheev, and tutti quanti†752 …You’ll agree that if you weren’t personally taken up with farming, but only wanted peace, then the harsher your bailiff, the sooner you’d achieve your purpose?” he turned to Nikolai.
“Well, but what are you getting at?” said Nikolai.
“Well, and so everything’s falling apart. There’s thievery in the courts, in the army only the rod: drill, settlements10—they torment the people, stifle enlightenment. Whatever is young and honest, they destroy! Everybody sees that it can’t go on like this. It’s all too strained and bound to snap,” Pierre said (as people have been saying as long as governments have existed, once they look attentively at any government whatever). “I said just one thing to them in Petersburg.”
“To whom?” asked Denisov.
“Well, you know to whom,” said Pierre, glancing significantly from under his eyebrows, “to Prince Fyodor and all of them. To contribute to enlightenment and philanthropy is all very well, of course. It’s a splendid aim and all; but in the present circumstances, something else is needed.”
Just then Nikolai noticed the presence of his nephew. His