《War And Peace》　Book3 　CHAPTER II
　　　　by Leo Tolstoy

IN THE DECEMBER of 1805, the old Prince Nikolay Andreitch Bolkonsky received
a letter from Prince Vassily, announcing that he intended to visit him with his
son. ("I am going on an inspection tour, and of course a hundred versts is only
a step out of the way for me to visit you, my deeply-honoured benefactor," he
wrote. "My Anatole is accompanying me on his way to the army, and I hope you
will permit him to express to you in person the profound veneration that,
following his father's example, he entertains for you.")

"Well, there's no need to bring Marie out, it seems; suitors come to us of
themselves," the little princess said heedlessly on hearing of this. Prince
Nikolay Andreitch scowled and said nothing.

A fortnight after receiving the letter, Prince Vassily's servants arrived one
evening in advance of him, and the following day he came himself with his
son.

Old Bolkonsky had always had a poor opinion of Prince Vassily's character,
and this opinion had grown stronger of late since Prince Vassily had, under the
new reigns of Paul and Alexander, advanced to high rank and honours. Now from
the letter and the little princess's hints, he saw what the object of the visit
was, and his poor opinion of Prince Vassily passed into a feeling of ill-will
and contempt in the old prince's heart. He snorted indignantly whenever he spoke
of him. On the day of Prince Vassily's arrival, the old prince was particularly
discontented and out of humour. Whether he was out of humour because Prince
Vassily was coming, or whether he was particularly displeased at Prince
Vassily's coming because he was out of humour, no one can say. But he was out of
humour, and early in the morning Tihon had dissuaded the architect from going to
the prince with his report.

"Listen how he's walking," said Tihon, calling the attention of the architect
to the sound of the prince's footsteps. "Stepping flat on his heels ... then we
know ..."

At nine o'clock, however, the old prince went out for a walk, as usual,
wearing his short, velvet, fur-lined cloak with a sable collar and a sable cap.
There had been a fall of snow on the previous evening. The path along which
Prince Nikolay Andreitch walked to the conservatory had been cleared; there were
marks of a broom in the swept snow, and a spade had been left sticking in the
crisp bank of snow that bordered the path on both sides. The prince walked
through the conservatories, the servants' quarters, and the out-buildings,
frowning and silent.

"Could a sledge drive up?" he asked the respectfulsteward, who was escorting
him to the house, with a countenance and manners like his own.

"The snow is deep, your excellency. I gave orders for the avenue to be swept
too."

The prince nodded, and was approaching the steps. "Glory to Thee, O Lord!"
thought the steward, "the storm has passed over!"

"It would have been hard to drive up, your excellency," added the steward.
"So I hear, your excellency, there's a minister coming to visit your
excellency?" The prince turned to the steward and stared with scowling eyes at
him.

"Eh? A minister? What minister? Who gave you orders?" he began in his shrill,
cruel voice. "For the princess my daughter, you do not clear the way, but for
the minister you do! For me there are no ministers!"

"Your excellency, I supposed ..."

"You supposed," shouted the prince, articulating with greater and greater
haste and incoherence. "You supposed ... Brigands! blackguards! ... I'll teach you
to suppose," and raising his stick he waved it at Alpatitch, and would have hit
him, had not the stewardinstinctively shrunk back and escaped the blow. "You
supposed ... Blackguards! ..." he still cried hurriedly. But although Alpatitch,
shocked at his own insolence in dodging the blow, went closer to the prince,
with his bald head bent humbly before him, or perhaps just because of this, the
prince did not lift the stick again, and still shouting, "Blackguards! ... fill up
the road ..." he ran to his room.

Princess Marya and Mademoiselle Bourienne stood, waiting for the old prince
before dinner, well aware that he was out of temper. Mademoiselle Bourienne's
beaming countenance seemed to say, "I know nothing about it, I am just the same
as usual," while Princess Marya stood pale and terrified with downcast eyes.
What made it harder for Princess Marya was that she knew that she ought to act
like Mademoiselle Bourienne at such times, but she could not do it. She felt,
"If I behave as if I did not notice it, he'll think I have no sympathy with him.
If I behave as if I were depressed and out of humour myself, he'll say (as
indeed often happened) that I'm sulky ..." and so on.

The prince glanced at his daughter's scared face and snorted.

"Stuff!" or perhaps "stupid!" he muttered. "And the other is not here!
they've been telling tales to her already," he thought, noticing that the little
princess was not in the dining-room.

"Where's Princess Liza?" he asked. "In hiding?"

"She's not quite well," said Mademoiselle Bourienne with a bright smile; "she
is not coming down. In her condition it is only to be expected."

"H'm! h'm! kh! kh!" growled the prince, and he sat down to the table. He
thought his plate was not clean: he pointed to a mark on it and threw it away.
Tihon caught it and handed it to a footman. The little princess was quite well,
but she was in such overwhelming terror of the prince, that on hearing he was in
a bad temper, she had decided not to come in.

"I am afraid for my baby," she said to Mademoiselle Bourienne; "God knows
what might not be the result of a fright."

The little princess, in fact, lived at Bleak Hills in a state of continual
terror of the old prince, and had an aversion for him, of which she was herself
unconscious, so completely did terror overbear every other feeling. There was
the same aversion on the prince's side, too; but in his case it was swallowed up
in contempt. As she went on staying at Bleak Hills, the little princess became
particularly fond of Mademoiselle Bourienne; she spent her days with her, begged
her to sleep in her room, and often talked of her father-in-law, and criticised
him to her.

"We have company coming, prince," said Mademoiselle Bourienne, her rosy
fingers unfolding her dinner-napkin. "His excellency Prince Kuragin with his
son, as I have heard say?" she said in a tone of inquiry.

"H'm! ... his excellence is an upstart. I got him his place in the
college," the old prince said huffily. "And what his son's coming for, I can't
make out. Princess Lizaveta Karlovna and Princess Marya can tell us, maybe; I
don't know what he's bringing his son here for. I don't want him." And he looked
at his daughter, who turned crimson.

"Unwell, eh? Scared of the minister, as that blockhead Alpatitch called him
to-day?"

"Non, mon père."

Unsuccessful as Mademoiselle Bourienne had been in the subject she had
started, she did not desist, but went on prattling away about the
conservatories, the beauty of a flower that had just opened, and after the soup
the prince subsided.

After dinner he went to see his daughter-in-law. The little princess was
sitting at a little table gossiping with Masha, her maid. She turned pale on
seeing her father-in-law.

The little princess was greatly changed. She looked ugly rather than pretty
now. Her cheeks were sunken, her lip was drawn up, and her eyes were
hollow.

"Yes, a sort of heaviness," she said in answer to the prince's inquiry how
she felt.

"Isn't there anything you need?"

"Non, merci, mon père."

"Oh, very well then, very well."

He went out and into the waiting-room. Alpatitch was standing there with
downcast head.

"Filled up the road again?"

"Yes, your excellency; for God's sake, forgive me, it was simply a
blunder."

The prince cut him short with his unnatural laugh.

"Oh, very well, very well." He held out his hand, which Alpatitch kissed, and
then he went to his study.

In the evening Prince Vassily arrived. He was met on the way by the coachmen
and footmen of the Bolkonskys, who with shouts dragged his carriages and sledge
to the lodge, over the road, which had been purposely obstructed with snow
again.

Prince Vassily and Anatole were conducted to separate apartments.

Taking off his tunic, Anatole sat with his elbows on the table, on a corner
of which he fixed his handsome, large eyes with a smiling, unconcerned stare.
All his life he had looked upon as an uninterrupted entertainment, which some
one or other was, he felt, somehow bound to provide for him. In just the same
spirit he had looked at his visit to the cross old gentleman and his rich and
hideous daughter. It might all, according to his anticipations, turn out very
jolly and amusing. "And why not get married, if she has such a lot of money?
That never comes amiss," thought Anatole.

He shaved and scented himself with the care and elegance that had become
habitual with him, and with his characteristic expression of all-conquering
good-humour, he walked into his father's room, holding, his head high. Two
valets were busily engaged in dressing Prince Vassily; he was looking about him
eagerly, and nodded gaily to his son, as he entered with an air that said, "Yes,
that's just how I wanted to see you looking."

"Come, joking apart, father, is she so hideous? Eh?" he asked in French, as
though reverting to a subject more than once discussed on the journey.

"Nonsense! The great thing for you is to try and be respectful and sensible
with the old prince."

"If he gets nasty, I'm off," said Anatole. "I can't stand those old
gentlemen. Eh?"

"Remember that for you everything depends on it."

Meanwhile, in the feminine part of the household not only the arrival of the
minister and his son was already known, but the appearance of both had been
minutely described. Princess Marya was sitting alone in her room doing her
utmost to control her inner emotion.

"Why did they write, why did Liza tell me about it? Why, it cannot be!" she
thought, looking at herself in the glass. "How am I to go into the drawing-room?
Even if I like him, I could never be myself with him now." The mere thought of
her father's eyes reduced her to terror. The little princess and Mademoiselle
Bourienne had already obtained all necessary information from the maid, Masha;
they had learned what a handsome fellow the minister's son was, with rosy cheeks
and black eye-brows; how his papa had dragged his legs upstairs with difficulty,
while he, like a young eagle, had flown up after him three steps at a time. On
receiving these items of information, the little princess and Mademoiselle
Bourienne, whose eager voices were audible in the corridor, went into Princess
Marya's room.

"They are come, Marie, do you know?" said the little princess, waddling in
and sinking heavily into an armchair. She was not wearing the gown in which she
had been sitting in the morning, but had put on one of her best dresses. Her
hair had been carefully arranged, and her face was full of an eager excitement,
which did not, however, conceal its wasted and pallid look. In the smart clothes
which she had been used to wear in Petersburg in society, the loss of her good
looks was even more noticeable. Mademoiselle Bourienne, too, had put some hardly
perceptible finishing touches to her costume, which made her fresh, pretty face
even more attractive.

"What, and you are staying just as you are, dear princess. They will come in
a minute to tell us the gentlemen are in the drawing-room," she began. "We shall
have to go down, and you are doing nothing at all to your dress."

The little princess got up from her chair, rang for the maid, and hurriedly
and eagerly began to arrange what Princess Marya was to wear, and to put her
ideas into practice. Princess Marya's sense of personal dignity was wounded by
her own agitation at the arrival of her suitor, and still more was she mortified
that her two companions should not even conceive that she ought not to be so
agitated. To have told them how ashamed she was of herself and of them would
have been to betray her own excitement. Besides, to refuse to be dressed up, as
they suggested, would have been exposing herself to reiterated raillery and
insistence. She flushed; her beautiful eyes grew dim; her face was suffused with
patches of crimson; and with the unbeautiful, victimised expression which was
the one most often seen on her face, she abandoned herself to Mademoiselle
Bourienne and Liza. Both women exerted themselves with perfect sincerity
to make her look well. She was so plain that the idea of rivalry with her could
never have entered their heads. Consequently it was with perfect sincerity, in
the naïve and unhesitating conviction women have that dress can make a face
handsome, that they set to work to attire her.

"No, really, ma bonne amie, that dress isn't pretty," said Liza,
looking sideways at Princess Marya from a distance; "tell her to put on you your
maroon velvet there. Yes, really! Why, you know, it may be the turning-point in
your whole life. That one's too light, it's not right, no, it's not!"

It was not the dress that was wrong, but the face and the whole figure of the
princess, but that was not felt by Mademoiselle Bourienne and the little
princess. They still fancied that if they were to put a blue ribbon in her hair,
and do it up high, and to put the blue sash lower on the maroon dress and so on,
then all would be well. They forgot that the frightened face and figure of
Princess Marya could not be changed, and therefore, however presentable they
might make the setting and decoration of the face, the face itself would still
look piteous and ugly. After two or three changes, to which Princess Marya
submitted passively, when her hair had been done on the top of her head (which
completely changed and utterly disfigured her), and the blue sash and best
maroon velvet dress had been put on, the little princess walked twice round, and
with her little hand stroked out a fold here and pulled down the sash there, and
gazed at her with her head first on one side and then on the other.

"No, it won't do," she said resolutely, throwing up her hands. "No, Marie,
decidedly that does not suit you. I like you better in your little grey everyday
frock. No, please do that for me. Katya," she said to the maid, "bring the
princess her grey dress, and look, Mademoiselle Bourienne, how I'll arrange it,"
she said, smiling with a foretaste of artistic pleasure. But when Katya brought
the dress, Princess Marya was still sitting motionless before the looking-glass,
looking at her own face, and in the looking-glass she saw that there were tears
in her eyes and her mouth was quivering, on the point of breaking into
sobs.

"Come, dear princess," said Mademoiselle Bourienne, "one more little
effort."

The little princess, taking the dress from the hands of the maid, went up to
Princess Marya.

"Now, we'll try something simple and charming," she said. Her voice and
Mademoiselle Bourienne's and the giggle of Katya blended into a sort of gay
babble like the twitter of birds.

"No, leave me alone," said the princess; and there was such seriousness and
such suffering in her voice that the twitter of the birds ceased at once. They
looked at the great, beautiful eyes, full of tears and of thought, looking at
them imploringly, and they saw that to insist was useless and even cruel.

"At least alter your hair," said the little princess. "I told you," she said
reproachfully to Mademoiselle Bourienne, "there were faces which that way of
doing the hair does not suit a bit. Not a bit, not a bit, please alter
it."

"Leave me alone, leave me alone, all that is nothing to me," answered a voice
scarcely able to struggle with tears.

Mademoiselle Bourienne and the little princess could not but admit to
themselves that Princess Marya was very plain in this guise, far worse than
usual, but it was too late. She looked at them with an expression they knew
well, an expression of deep thought and sadness. That expression did not inspire
fear. (That was a feeling she could never have inspired in any one.) But they
knew that when that expression came into her face, she was mute and inflexible
in her resolutions.

"You will alter it, won't you?" said Liza, and when Princess Marya made no
reply, Liza went out of the room.

Princess Marya was left alone. She did not act upon Liza's wishes, she did
not re-arrange her hair, she did not even glance into the looking-glass. Letting
her eyes and her hands drop helplessly, she sat mentally dreaming. She pictured
her husband, a man, a strong, masterful, and inconceivably attractive creature,
who would bear her away all at once into an utterly different, happy world of
his own. A child, her own, like the baby she had seen at her old nurse's
daughter's, she fancied at her own breast. The husband standing, gazing tenderly
at her and the child. "But no, it can never be, I am too ugly," she
thought.

"Kindly come to tea. The prince will be going in immediately," said the
maid's voice at the door. She started and was horrified at what she had been
thinking. And before going downstairs she went into the oratory, and fixing her
eyes on the black outline of the great image of the Saviour, she stood for
several minutes before it with clasped hands. Princess Marya's soul was full of
an agonising doubt. Could the joy of love, of earthly love for a man, be for
her? In her reveries of marriage, Princess Marya dreamed of happiness in a home
and children of her own, but her chief, her strongest and most secret dream was
of earthly love. The feeling became the stronger the more she tried to conceal
it from others, and even from herself. "My God," she said, "how am I to subdue
in my heart these temptings of the devil? How am I to renounce for ever all evil
thoughts, so as in peace to fulfil Thy will?" And scarcely had she put this
question than God's answer came to her in her own heart. "Desire nothing for
thyself, be not covetous, anxious, envious. The future of men and thy destiny
too must be unknown for thee; but live that thou mayest be ready for all. If it
shall be God's will to prove thee in the duties of marriage, be ready to obey
His will." With this soothing thought (though still she hoped for the fulfilment
of that forbiddenearthly dream) Princess Marya crossed herself, sighing, and
went downstairs, without thinking of her dress nor how her hair was done; of how
she would go in nor what she would say. What could all that signify beside the
guidance of Him, without Whose will not one hair falls from the head of man?