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The day after his son had left, Prince Nicholas sent for Princess
Mary to come to his study.
"Well? Are you satisfied now?" said he. "You've
made me quarrel with my son! Satisfied, are you? That's all you
wanted! Satisfied?... It hurts me, it hurts. I'm old and weak
and this is what you wanted. Well then, gloat over it! Gloat over
it!"
After that Princess Mary did not see her father for a whole
week. He was ill and did not leave his study.
Princess Mary noticed to her surprise that during this illness
the old prince not only excluded her from his room, but did not
admit Mademoiselle Bourienne either. Tikhon alone attended him.
At the end of the week the prince reappeared and resumed his
former way of life, devoting himself with special activity to
building operations and the arrangement of the gardens and completely
breaking off his relations with Mademoiselle Bourienne. His looks
and cold tone to his daughter seemed to say: "There, you
see? You plotted against me, you lied to Prince Andrew about my
relations with that Frenchwoman and made me quarrel with him,
but you see I need neither her nor you!"
Princess Mary spent half of every day with little Nicholas,
watching his lessons, teaching him Russian and music herself,
and talking to Dessalles; the rest of the day she spent over her
books, with her old nurse, or with "God's folk" who
sometimes came by the back door to see her.
Of the war Princess Mary thought as women do think about wars.
She feared for her brother who was in it, was horrified by and
amazed at the strange cruelty that impels men to kill one another,
but she did not understand the significance of this war, which
seemed to her like all previous wars. She did not realize the
significance of this war, though Dessalles with whom she constantly
conversed was passionately interested in its progress and tried
to explain his own conception of it to her, and though the "God's
folk" who came to see her reported, in their own way, the
rumors current among the people of an invasion by Antichrist,
and though Julie (now Princess Drubetskaya), who had resumed correspondence
with her, wrote patriotic letters from Moscow.
"I write you in Russian, my good friend," wrote
Julie in her Frenchified Russian, "because I have a detestation
for all the French, and the same for their language which I cannot
support to hear spoken.... We in Moscow are elated by enthusiasm
for our adored Emperor.
"My poor husband is enduring pains and hunger in Jewish
taverns, but the news which I have inspires me yet more.
"You heard probably of the heroic exploit of Raevski,
embracing his two sons and saying: 'I will perish with them but
we will not be shaken!' And truly though the enemy was twice stronger
than we, we were unshakable. We pass the time as we can, but in
war as in war! The princesses Aline and Sophie sit whole days
with me, and we, unhappy widows of live men, make beautiful conversations
over our charpie, only you, my friend, are missing..." and
so on.
The chief reason Princess Mary did not realize the full significance
of this war was that the old prince never spoke of it, did not
recognize it, and laughed at Dessalles when he mentioned it at
dinner. The prince's tone was so calm and confident that Princess
Mary unhesitatingly believed him.
All that July the old prince was exceedingly active and even
animated. He planned another garden and began a new building for
the domestic serfs. The only thing that made Princess Mary anxious
about him was that he slept very little and, instead of sleeping
in his study as usual, changed his sleeping place every day. One
day he would order his camp bed to be set up in the glass gallery,
another day he remained on the couch or on the lounge chair in
the drawing room and dozed there without undressing, while- instead
of Mademoiselle Bourienne- a serf boy read to him. Then again
he would spend a night in the dining room.
On August 1, a second letter was received from Prince Andrew.
In his first letter which came soon after he had left home, Prince
Andrew had dutifully asked his father's forgiveness for what he
had allowed himself to say and begged to be restored to his favor.
To this letter the old prince had replied affectionately, and
from that time had kept the Frenchwoman at at Prince Andrew's
second letter, written near Vitebsk after the French had occupied
that town, gave a brief account of the whole campaign, enclosed
for them a plan he had drawn and forecasts as to the further progress
of the war. In this letter Prince Andrew pointed out to his father
the danger of staying at Bald Hills, so near the theater of war
and on the army's direct line of march, and advised him to move
to Moscow.
At dinner that day, on Dessalles' mentioning that the French
were said to have already entered Vitebsk, the old prince remembered
his son's letter.
"There was a letter from Prince Andrew today," he
said to Princess Mary- "Haven't you read it?"
"No, Father," she replied in a frightened voice.
She could not have read the letter as she did not even know
it had arrived.
"He writes about this war," said the prince, with
the ironic smile that had become habitual to him in speaking of
the present war.
"That must be very interesting," said Dessalles.
"Prince Andrew is in a position to know..."
"Oh, very interesting!" said Mademoiselle Bourienne.
"Go and get it for me," said the old prince to Mademoiselle
Bourienne. "You know- under the paperweight on the little
table."
Mademoiselle Bourienne jumped up eagerly.
"No, don't!" he exclaimed with a frown. "You
go, Michael Ivanovich."
Michael Ivanovich rose and went to the study. But as soon
as he had left the room the old prince, looking uneasily round,
threw down his napkin and went himself.
"They can't do anything... always make some muddle,"
he muttered.
While he was away Princess Mary, Dessalles, Mademoiselle Bourienne,
and even little Nicholas exchanged looks in silence. The old prince
returned with quick steps, accompanied by Michael Ivanovich, bringing
the letter and a plan. These he put down beside him- not letting
anyone read them at dinner.
On moving to the drawing room he handed the letter to Princess
Mary and, spreading out before him the plan of the new building
and fixing his eyes upon it, told her to read the letter aloud.
When she had done so Princess Mary looked inquiringly at her father.
He was examining the plan, evidently engrossed in his own ideas.
"What do you think of it, Prince?" Dessalles ventured
to ask.
"I? I?..." said the prince as if unpleasantly awakened,
and not taking his eyes from the plan of the building.
"Very possibly the theater of war will move so near to
us that..."
"Ha ha ha! The theater of war!" said the prince.
"I have said and still say that the theater of war is Poland
and the enemy will never get beyond the Niemen."
Dessalles looked in amazement at the prince, who was talking
of the Niemen when the enemy was already at the Dnieper, but Princess
Mary, forgetting the geographical position of the Niemen, thought
that what her father was saying was correct.
"When the snow melts they'll sink in the Polish swamps.
Only they could fail to see it," the prince continued, evidently
thinking of the campaign of 1807 which seemed to him so recent.
"Bennigsen should have advanced into Prussia sooner, then
things would have taken a different turn..."
"But, Prince," Dessalles began timidly, "the
letter mentions Vitebsk...."
"Ah, the letter? Yes..." replied the prince peevishly.
"Yes... yes..." His face suddenly took on a morose expression.
He paused. "Yes, he writes that the French were beaten at...
at... what river is it?"
Dessalles dropped his eyes.
"The prince says nothing about that," he remarked
gently.
"Doesn't he? But I didn't invent it myself."
No one spoke for a long time.
"Yes... yes... Well, Michael Ivanovich," he suddenly
went on, raising his head and pointing to the plan of the building,
"tell me how you mean to alter it...."
Michael Ivanovich went up to the plan, and the prince after
speaking to him about the building looked angrily at Princess
Mary and Dessalles and went to his own room.
Princess Mary saw Dessalles' embarrassed and astonished look
fixed on her father, noticed his silence, and was struck by the
fact that her father had forgotten his son's letter on the drawing-room
table; but she was not only afraid to speak of it and ask Dessalles
the reason of his confusion and silence, but was afraid even to
think about it.
In the evening Michael Ivanovich, sent by the prince, came
to Princess Mary for Prince Andrew's letter which had been forgotten
in the drawing room. She gave it to him and, unpleasant as it
was to her to do so, ventured to ask him what her father was doing.
"Always busy," replied Michael Ivanovich with a
respectfully ironic smile which caused Princess Mary to turn pale.
"He's worrying very much about the new building. He has been
reading a little, but now"- Michael Ivanovich went on, lowering
his voice- "now he's at his desk, busy with his will, I expect."
(One of the prince's favorite occupations of late had been the
preparation of some papers he meant to leave at his death and
which he called his "will.")
"And Alpatych is being sent to Smolensk?" asked
Princess Mary.
"Oh, yes, he has been waiting to start for some time."
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