| The friends were silent. Neither cared to begin talking. Pierre
continually glanced at Prince Andrew; Prince Andrew rubbed his forehead
with his small hand.
"Let us go and have supper," he said with a sigh,
going to the door.
They entered the elegant, newly decorated, and luxurious dining
room. Everything from the table napkins to the silver, china,
and glass bore that imprint of newness found in the households
of the newly married. Halfway through supper Prince Andrew leaned
his elbows on the table and, with a look of nervous agitation
such as Pierre had never before seen on his face, began to talk-
as one who has long had something on his mind and suddenly determines
to speak out.
"Never, never marry, my dear fellow! That's my advice:
never marry till you can say to yourself that you have done all
you are capable of, and until you have ceased to love the woman
of your choice and have seen her plainly as she is, or else you
will make a cruel and irrevocable mistake. Marry when you are
old and good for nothing- or all that is good and noble in you
will be lost. It will all be wasted on trifles. Yes! Yes! Yes!
Don't look at me with such surprise. If you marry expecting anything
from yourself in the future, you will feel at every step that
for you all is ended, all is closed except the drawing room, where
you will be ranged side by side with a court lackey and an idiot!...
But what's the good?..." and he waved his arm.
Pierre took off his spectacles, which made his face seem different
and the good-natured expression still more apparent, and gazed
at his friend in amazement.
"My wife," continued Prince Andrew, "is an
excellent woman, one of those rare women with whom a man's honor
is safe; but, O God, what would I not give now to be unmarried!
You are the first and only one to whom I mention this, because
I like you."
As he said this Prince Andrew was less than ever like that
Bolkonski who had lolled in Anna Pavlovna's easy chairs and with
half-closed eyes had uttered French phrases between his teeth.
Every muscle of his thin face was now quivering with nervous excitement;
his eyes, in which the fire of life had seemed extinguished, now
flashed with brilliant light. It was evident that the more lifeless
he seemed at ordinary times, the more impassioned he became in
these moments of almost morbid irritation.
"You don't understand why I say this," he continued,
"but it is the whole story of life. You talk of Bonaparte
and his career," said he (though Pierre had not mentioned
Bonaparte), "but Bonaparte when he worked went step by step
toward his goal. He was free, he had nothing but his aim to consider,
and he reached it. But tie yourself up with a woman and, like
a chained convict, you lose all freedom! And all you have of hope
and strength merely weighs you down and torments you with regret.
Drawing rooms, gossip, balls, vanity, and triviality- these are
the enchanted circle I cannot escape from. I am now going to the
war, the greatest war there ever was, and I know nothing and am
fit for nothing. I am very amiable and have a caustic wit,"
continued Prince Andrew, "and at Anna Pavlovna's they listen
to me. And that stupid set without whom my wife cannot exist,
and those women... If you only knew what those society women are,
and women in general! My father is right. Selfish, vain, stupid,
trivial in everything- that's what women are when you see them
in their true colors! When you meet them in society it seems as
if there were something in them, but there's nothing, nothing,
nothing! No, don't marry, my dear fellow; don't marry!" concluded
Prince Andrew.
"It seems funny to me," said Pierre, "that
you, you should consider yourself incapable and your life a spoiled
life. You have everything before you, everything. And you..."
He did not finish his sentence, but his tone showed how highly
he thought of his friend and how much he expected of him in the
future.
"How can he talk like that?" thought Pierre. He
considered his friend a model of perfection because Prince Andrew
possessed in the highest degree just the very qualities Pierre
lacked, and which might be best described as strength of will.
Pierre was always astonished at Prince Andrew's calm manner of
treating everybody, his extraordinary memory, his extensive reading
(he had read everything, knew everything, and had an opinion about
everything), but above all at his capacity for work and study.
And if Pierre was often struck by Andrew's lack of capacity for
philosophical meditation (to which he himself was particularly
addicted), he regarded even this not as a defect but as a sign
of strength.
Even in the best, most friendly and simplest relations of
life, praise and commendation are essential, just as grease is
necessary to wheels that they may run smoothly.
"My part is played out," said Prince Andrew. "What's
the use of talking about me? Let us talk about you," he added
after a silence, smiling at his reassuring thoughts.
That smile was immediately reflected on Pierre's face.
"But what is there to say about me?" said Pierre,
his face relaxing into a careless, merry smile. "What am
I? An illegitimate son!" He suddenly blushed crimson, and
it was plain that he had made a great effort to say this. "Without
a name and without means... And it really..." But he did
not say what "it really" was. "For the present
I am free and am all right. Only I haven't the least idea what
I am to do; I wanted to consult you seriously."
Prince Andrew looked kindly at him, yet his glance- friendly
and affectionate as it was- expressed a sense of his own superiority.
"I am fond of you, especially as you are the one live
man among our whole set. Yes, you're all right! Choose what you
will; it's all the same. You'll be all right anywhere. But look
here: give up visiting those Kuragins and leading that sort of
life. It suits you so badly- all this debauchery, dissipation,
and the rest of it!"
"What would you have, my dear fellow?" answered
Pierre, shrugging his shoulders. "Women, my dear fellow;
women!"
"I don't understand it," replied Prince Andrew.
"Women who are comme il faut, that's a different matter;
but the Kuragins' set of women, 'women and wine' I don't understand!"
Pierre was staying at Prince Vasili Kuragin's and sharing
the dissipated life of his son Anatole, the son whom they were
planning to reform by marrying him to Prince Andrew's sister.
"Do you know?" said Pierre, as if suddenly struck
by a happy thought, "seriously, I have long been thinking
of it.... Leading such a life I can't decide or think properly
about anything. One's head aches, and one spends all one's money.
He asked me for tonight, but I won't go."
"You give me your word of honor not to go?"
"On my honor!"
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