chapter16

“Perhaps, later, I may tell you, my dear boy, that if I had not been there God knows what would have happened. You know, my uncle promised me, only the day before yesterday, not to forget Boris. But he had no time. I hope, dear friend, that you will fulfil your father’s desire.”

Pierre did not understand a word, and colouring shyly, looked dumbly at Anna Mihalovna. After talking to him, Anna Mihalovna drove to the Rostovs’, and went to bed. On waking in the morning, she told the Rostovs and all her acquaintances the details of Count Bezuhov’s death. She said that the count had died, as she would wish to die herself, that his end had been not simply touching, but edifying; that the last interview of the father and son had been so touching that she could not recall it without tears; and that she did not know which had behaved more nobly in those terrible moments: the father, who had remembered everything and every one so well at the last, and had said such moving words to his son; or Pierre, whom it was heartbreaking to see, so utterly crushed was he, though he yet tried to conceal his grief, so as not to distress his dying father. “It is painful, but it does one good; it uplifts the soul to see such men as the old count and his worthy son,” she said. She told them about the action of the princess and Prince Vassily too, but in great secrecy, in whispers, and with disapproval.

Chapter 22

AT BLEAK HILLS, the estate of Prince Nikolay Andreivitch Bolkonsky, the arrival of young Prince Andrey and his wife was daily expected. But this expectation did not disturb the regular routine in which life moved in the old prince’s household. Prince Nikolay Andreivitch, once a commander-in-chief, known in the fashionable world by the nickname of “the Prussian king,” had been exiled to his estate in the reign of Paul, and had remained at Bleak Hills ever since with his daughter, Princess Marya, and her companion, Mademoiselle Bourienne. Even in the new reign, though he had received permission to return to the capital, he had never left his home in the country, saying that if any one wanted to see him, he could travel the hundred and fifty versts from Moscow to Bleak Hills, and, for his part, he wanted nobody and nothing. He used to maintain that human vices all sprang from only two sources—idleness and superstition, and that there were but two virtues—energy and intelligence. He had himself undertaken the education of his daughter; and to develop in her these important qualities, he continued giving her lessons in algebra and geometry up to her twentieth year, and mapped out her whole life in uninterrupted occupation. He was himself always occupied in writing his memoirs, working out problems in higher mathematics, turning snuff-boxes on his lathe, working in his garden, or looking after the erection of farm buildings which were always being built on his estate. Since the great thing for enabling one to get through work is regularity, he had carried regularity in his manner of life to the highest point of exactitude. His meals were served in a fixed and invariable manner, and not only at a certain hour, but at a certain minute. With those about him, from his daughter to his servants, the count was sharp and invariably exacting, and so, without being cruel, he inspired a degree of respect and awe that the most cruel man could not readily have commanded. In spite of the fact that he was now on the retired list, and had no influence whatever in political circles, every high official in the province in which was the prince’s estate felt obliged to call upon him, and had, just like the architect, the gardener, or Princess Marya, to wait till the regular hour at which the prince always made his appearance in the lofty waiting-room. And every one in the waiting-room felt the same veneration, and even awe, when the immensely high door of the study opened and showed the small figure of the old man in a powdered wig, with his little withered hands and grey, overhanging eyebrows, that, at times when he scowled, hid the gleam in his shrewd, youthful-looking eyes.