Kabanata Kabanata 2 · 第2章

Anna Pávlovna’s drawing room was gradually filling. The highest

Petersburg society was assembled there: people differing widely in age

and character but alike in the social circle to which they belonged.

Prince Vasíli’s daughter, the beautiful Hélène, came to take her

father to the ambassador’s entertainment; she wore a ball dress and

her badge as maid of honor. The youthful little Princess Bolkónskaya,

known as la femme la plus séduisante de Pétersbourg, * was also there.

She had been married during the previous winter, and being pregnant did

not go to any large gatherings, but only to small receptions. Prince

Vasíli’s son, Hippolyte, had come with Mortemart, whom he introduced.

The Abbé Morio and many others had also come.

* The most fascinating woman in Petersburg.

To each new arrival Anna Pávlovna said, “You have not yet seen my

aunt,” or “You do not know my aunt?” and very gravely conducted

him or her to a little old lady, wearing large bows of ribbon in her

cap, who had come sailing in from another room as soon as the guests

began to arrive; and slowly turning her eyes from the visitor to her

aunt, Anna Pávlovna mentioned each one’s name and then left them.

Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom not

one of them knew, not one of them wanted to know, and not one of them

cared about; Anna Pávlovna observed these greetings with mournful and

solemn interest and silent approval. The aunt spoke to each of them in

the same words, about their health and her own, and the health of Her

Majesty, “who, thank God, was better today.” And each visitor,

though politeness prevented his showing impatience, left the old woman

with a sense of relief at having performed a vexatious duty and did not

return to her the whole evening.

The young Princess Bolkónskaya had brought some work in a

gold-embroidered velvet bag. Her pretty little upper lip, on which a

delicate dark down was just perceptible, was too short for her teeth,

but it lifted all the more sweetly, and was especially charming when she

occasionally drew it down to meet the lower lip. As is always the case

with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defect—the shortness of her

upper lip and her half-open mouth—seemed to be her own special and

peculiar form of beauty. Everyone brightened at the sight of this pretty

young woman, so soon to become a mother, so full of life and health, and

carrying her burden so lightly. Old men and dull dispirited young ones

who looked at her, after being in her company and talking to her a

little while, felt as if they too were becoming, like her, full of life

and health. All who talked to her, and at each word saw her bright smile

and the constant gleam of her white teeth, thought that they were in a

specially amiable mood that day.

The little princess went round the table with quick, short, swaying

steps, her workbag on her arm, and gaily spreading out her dress sat

down on a sofa near the silver samovar, as if all she was doing was a

pleasure to herself and to all around her. “I have brought my work,”

said she in French, displaying her bag and addressing all present.

“Mind, Annette, I hope you have not played a wicked trick on me,”

she added, turning to her hostess. “You wrote that it was to be quite

a small reception, and just see how badly I am dressed.” And she

spread out her arms to show her short-waisted, lace-trimmed, dainty gray

dress, girdled with a broad ribbon just below the breast.

“Soyez tranquille, Lise, you will always be prettier than anyone

else,” replied Anna Pávlovna.

“You know,” said the princess in the same tone of voice and still in

French, turning to a general, “my husband is deserting me? He is going

to get himself killed. Tell me what this wretched war is for?” she

added, addressing Prince Vasíli, and without waiting for an answer she

turned to speak to his daughter, the beautiful Hélène.

“What a delightful woman this little princess is!” said Prince

Vasíli to Anna Pávlovna.

One of the next arrivals was a stout, heavily built young man with

close-cropped hair, spectacles, the light-colored breeches fashionable

at that time, a very high ruffle, and a brown dress coat. This stout

young man was an illegitimate son of Count Bezúkhov, a well-known

grandee of Catherine’s time who now lay dying in Moscow. The young man

had not yet entered either the military or civil service, as he had only

just returned from abroad where he had been educated, and this was his

first appearance in society. Anna Pávlovna greeted him with the nod she

accorded to the lowest hierarchy in her drawing room. But in spite of

this lowest-grade greeting, a look of anxiety and fear, as at the sight

of something too large and unsuited to the place, came over her face

when she saw Pierre enter. Though he was certainly rather bigger than

the other men in the room, her anxiety could only have reference to

the clever though shy, but observant and natural, expression which

distinguished him from everyone else in that drawing room.

“It is very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come and visit a poor

invalid,” said Anna Pávlovna, exchanging an alarmed glance with her

aunt as she conducted him to her.

Pierre murmured something unintelligible, and continued to look round as

if in search of something. On his way to the aunt he bowed to the little

princess with a pleased smile, as to an intimate acquaintance.

Anna Pávlovna’s alarm was justified, for Pierre turned away from the

aunt without waiting to hear her speech about Her Majesty’s health.

Anna Pávlovna in dismay detained him with the words: “Do you know the

Abbé Morio? He is a most interesting man.”

“Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and it is very

interesting but hardly feasible.”

“You think so?” rejoined Anna Pávlovna in order to say something

and get away to attend to her duties as hostess. But Pierre now

committed a reverse act of impoliteness. First he had left a lady before

she had finished speaking to him, and now he continued to speak to

another who wished to get away. With his head bent, and his big feet

spread apart, he began explaining his reasons for thinking the abbé’s

plan chimerical.

“We will talk of it later,” said Anna Pávlovna with a smile.

And having got rid of this young man who did not know how to behave, she

resumed her duties as hostess and continued to listen and watch, ready

to help at any point where the conversation might happen to flag. As

the foreman of a spinning mill, when he has set the hands to work, goes

round and notices here a spindle that has stopped or there one that

creaks or makes more noise than it should, and hastens to check the

machine or set it in proper motion, so Anna Pávlovna moved about her

drawing room, approaching now a silent, now a too-noisy group, and by a

word or slight rearrangement kept the conversational machine in steady,

proper, and regular motion. But amid these cares her anxiety about

Pierre was evident. She kept an anxious watch on him when he approached

the group round Mortemart to listen to what was being said there, and

again when he passed to another group whose center was the abbé.

Pierre had been educated abroad, and this reception at Anna

Pávlovna’s was the first he had attended in Russia. He knew that all

the intellectual lights of Petersburg were gathered there and, like a

child in a toyshop, did not know which way to look, afraid of missing

any clever conversation that was to be heard. Seeing the self-confident

and refined expression on the faces of those present he was always

expecting to hear something very profound. At last he came up to Morio.

Here the conversation seemed interesting and he stood waiting for an

opportunity to express his own views, as young people are fond of doing.