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Helene, having returned with the court from Vilna to Petersburg,
found herself in a difficult position.
In Petersburg she had enjoyed the special protection of a
grandee who occupied one of the highest posts in the Empire. In
Vilna she had formed an intimacy with a young foreign prince.
When she returned to Petersburg both the magnate and the prince
were there, and both claimed their rights. Helene was faced by
a new problem- how to preserve her intimacy with both without
offending either.
What would have seemed difficult or even impossible to another
woman did not cause the least embarrassment to Countess Bezukhova,
who evidently deserved her reputation of being a very clever woman.
Had she attempted concealment, or tried to extricate herself from
her awkward position by cunning, she would have spoiled her case
by acknowledging herself guilty. But Helene, like a really great
man who can do whatever he pleases, at once assumed her own position
to be correct, as she sincerely believed it to be, and that everyone
else was to blame.
The first time the young foreigner allowed himself to reproach
her, she lifted her beautiful head and, half turning to him, said
firmly: "That's just like a man- selfish and cruel! I expected
nothing else. A woman sacrifices herself for you, she suffers,
and this is her reward! What right have you, monseigneur, to demand
an account of my attachments and friendships? He is a man who
has been more than a father to me!" The prince was about
to say something, but Helene interrupted him.
"Well, yes," said she, "it may be that he has
other sentiments for me than those of a father, but that is not
a reason for me to shut my door on him. I am not a man, that I
should repay kindness with ingratitude! Know, monseigneur, that
in all that relates to my intimate feelings I render account only
to God and to my conscience," she concluded, laying her hand
on her beautiful, fully expanded bosom and looking up to heaven.
"But for heaven's sake listen to me!"
"Marry me, and I will be your slave!"
"But that's impossible."
"You won't deign to demean yourself by marrying me, you..."
said Helene, beginning to cry.
The prince tried to comfort her, but Helene, as if quite distraught,
said through her tears that there was nothing to prevent her marrying,
that there were precedents (there were up to that time very few,
but she mentioned Napoleon and some other exalted personages),
that she had never been her husband's wife, and that she had been
sacrificed.
"But the law, religion..." said the prince, already
yielding.
"The law, religion... What have they been invented for
if they can't arrange that?" said Helene.
The prince was surprised that so simple an idea had not occurred
to him, and he applied for advice to the holy brethren of the
Society of Jesus, with whom he was on intimate terms.
A few days later at one of those enchanting fetes which Helene
gave at her country house on the Stone Island, the charming Monsieur
de Jobert, a man no longer young, with snow white hair and brilliant
black eyes, a Jesuit a robe courte* was presented to her, and
in the garden by the light of the illuminations and to the sound
of music talked to her for a long time of the love of God, of
Christ, of the Sacred Heart, and of the consolations the one true
Catholic religion affords in this world and the next. Helene was
touched, and more than once tears rose to her eyes and to those
of Monsieur de Jobert and their voices trembled. A dance, for
which her partner came to seek her, put an end to her discourse
with her future directeur de conscience, but the next evening
Monsieur de Jobert came to see Helene when she was alone, and
after that often came again.
*Lay member of the Society of Jesus.
One day he took the countess to a Roman Catholic church, where
she knelt down before the altar to which she was led. The enchanting,
middle-aged Frenchman laid his hands on her head and, as she herself
afterward described it, she felt something like a fresh breeze
wafted into her soul. It was explained to her that this was la
grace.
After that a long-frocked abbe was brought to her. She confessed
to him, and he absolved her from her sins. Next day she received
a box containing the Sacred Host, which was left at her house
for her to partake of. A few days later Helene learned with pleasure
that she had now been admitted to the true Catholic Church and
that in a few days the Pope himself would hear of her and would
send her a certain document.
All that was done around her and to her at this time, all
the attention devoted to her by so many clever men and expressed
in such pleasant, refined ways, and the state of dove-like purity
she was now in (she wore only white dresses and white ribbons
all that time) gave her pleasure, but her pleasure did not cause
her for a moment to forget her aim. And as it always happens in
contests of cunning that a stupid person gets the better of cleverer
ones, Helene- having realized that the main object of all these
words and all this trouble was, after converting her to Catholicism,
to obtain money from her for Jesuit institutions (as to which
she received indications)- before parting with her money insisted
that the various operations necessary to free her from her husband
should be performed. In her view the aim of every religion was
merely to preserve certain proprieties while affording satisfaction
to human desires. And with this aim, in one of her talks with
her Father Confessor, she insisted on an answer to the question,
in how far was she bound by her marriage?
They were sitting in the twilight by a window in the drawing
room. The scent of flowers came in at the window. Helene was wearing
a white dress, transparent over her shoulders and bosom. The abbe,
a well-fed man with a plump, clean-shaven chin, a pleasant firm
mouth, and white hands meekly folded on his knees, sat close to
Helene and, with a subtle smile on his lips and a peaceful look
of delight at her beauty, occasionally glanced at her face as
he explained his opinion on the subject. Helene with an uneasy
smile looked at his curly hair and his plump, clean-shaven, blackish
cheeks and every moment expected the conversation to take a fresh
turn. But the abbe, though he evidently enjoyed the beauty of
his companion, was absorbed in his mastery of the matter.
The course of the Father Confessor's arguments ran as follows:
"Ignorant of the import of what you were undertaking, you
made a vow of conjugal fidelity to a man who on his part, by entering
the married state without faith in the religious significance
of marriage, committed an act of sacrilege. That marriage lacked
the dual significance it should have had. Yet in spite of this
your vow was binding. You swerved from it. What did you commit
by so acting? A venial, or a mortal, sin? A venial sin, for you
acted without evil intention. If now you married again with the
object of bearing children, your sin might be forgiven. But the
question is again a twofold one: firstly..."
But suddenly Helene, who was getting bored, said with one
of her bewitching smiles: "But I think that having espoused
the true religion I cannot be bound by what a false religion laid
upon me."
The director of her conscience was astounded at having the
case presented to him thus with the simplicity of Columbus' egg.
He was delighted at the unexpected rapidity of his pupil's progress,
but could not abandon the edifice of argument he had laboriously
constructed.
"Let us understand one another, Countess," said
he with a smile, and began refuting his spiritual daughter's arguments.
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