War and Peace

fter his interview with Pierre in Moscow, Prince Andrew went to
Petersburg, on business as he told his family, but really to meet
Anatole Kurágin whom he felt it necessary to encounter. On reaching
Petersburg he inquired for Kurágin but the latter had already left the
city. Pierre had warned his brother-in-law that Prince Andrew was on
his track. Anatole Kurágin promptly obtained an appointment from
the Minister of War and went to join the army in Moldavia. While in
Petersburg Prince Andrew met Kutúzov, his former commander who was
always well disposed toward him, and Kutúzov suggested that he should
accompany him to the army in Moldavia, to which the old general had
been appointed commander in chief. So Prince Andrew, having received an
appointment on the headquarters staff, left for Turkey.

Prince Andrew did not think it proper to write and challenge Kurágin.
He thought that if he challenged him without some fresh cause it might
compromise the young Countess Rostóva and so he wanted to meet Kurágin
personally in order to find a fresh pretext for a duel. But he again
failed to meet Kurágin in Turkey, for soon after Prince Andrew arrived,
the latter returned to Russia. In a new country, amid new conditions,
Prince Andrew found life easier to bear. After his betrothed had broken
faith with him—which he felt the more acutely the more he tried to
conceal its effects—the surroundings in which he had been happy became
trying to him, and the freedom and independence he had once prized
so highly were still more so. Not only could he no longer think the
thoughts that had first come to him as he lay gazing at the sky on the
field of Austerlitz and had later enlarged upon with Pierre, and which
had filled his solitude at Boguchárovo and then in Switzerland and Rome,
but he even dreaded to recall them and the bright and boundless horizons
they had revealed. He was now concerned only with the nearest practical
matters unrelated to his past interests, and he seized on these the more
eagerly the more those past interests were closed to him. It was as if
that lofty, infinite canopy of heaven that had once towered above him
had suddenly turned into a low, solid vault that weighed him down, in
which all was clear, but nothing eternal or mysterious.

Of the activities that presented themselves to him, army service was the
simplest and most familiar. As a general on duty on Kutúzov’s staff,
he applied himself to business with zeal and perseverance and surprised
Kutúzov by his willingness and accuracy in work. Not having found
Kurágin in Turkey, Prince Andrew did not think it necessary to rush back
to Russia after him, but all the same he knew that however long it might
be before he met Kurágin, despite his contempt for him and despite all
the proofs he deduced to convince himself that it was not worth stooping
to a conflict with him—he knew that when he did meet him he would not
be able to resist calling him out, any more than a ravenous man can help
snatching at food. And the consciousness that the insult was not yet
avenged, that his rancor was still unspent, weighed on his heart and
poisoned the artificial tranquillity which he managed to obtain in
Turkey by means of restless, plodding, and rather vainglorious and
ambitious activity.

In the year 1812, when news of the war with Napoleon reached
Bucharest—where Kutúzov had been living for two months, passing his
days and nights with a Wallachian woman—Prince Andrew asked Kutúzov
to transfer him to the Western Army. Kutúzov, who was already weary of
Bolkónski’s activity which seemed to reproach his own idleness, very
readily let him go and gave him a mission to Barclay de Tolly.

Before joining the Western Army which was then, in May, encamped at
Drissa, Prince Andrew visited Bald Hills which was directly on his way,
being only two miles off the Smolénsk highroad. During the last three
years there had been so many changes in his life, he had thought, felt,
and seen so much (having traveled both in the east and the west), that
on reaching Bald Hills it struck him as strange and unexpected to find
the way of life there unchanged and still the same in every detail.
He entered through the gates with their stone pillars and drove up
the avenue leading to the house as if he were entering an enchanted,
sleeping castle. The same old stateliness, the same cleanliness, the
same stillness reigned there, and inside there was the same furniture,
the same walls, sounds, and smell, and the same timid faces, only
somewhat older. Princess Mary was still the same timid, plain maiden
getting on in years, uselessly and joylessly passing the best years of
her life in fear and constant suffering. Mademoiselle Bourienne was
the same coquettish, self-satisfied girl, enjoying every moment of her
existence and full of joyous hopes for the future. She had merely become
more self-confident, Prince Andrew thought. Dessalles, the tutor he had
brought from Switzerland, was wearing a coat of Russian cut and
talking broken Russian to the servants, but was still the same narrowly
intelligent, conscientious, and pedantic preceptor. The old prince
had changed in appearance only by the loss of a tooth, which left a
noticeable gap on one side of his mouth; in character he was the same as
ever, only showing still more irritability and skepticism as to what was
happening in the world. Little Nicholas alone had changed. He had grown,
become rosier, had curly dark hair, and, when merry and laughing, quite
unconsciously lifted the upper lip of his pretty little mouth just
as the little princess used to do. He alone did not obey the law of
immutability in the enchanted, sleeping castle. But though externally
all remained as of old, the inner relations of all these people had
changed since Prince Andrew had seen them last. The household was
divided into two alien and hostile camps, who changed their habits for
his sake and only met because he was there. To the one camp belonged
the old prince, Mademoiselle Bourienne, and the architect; to the other
Princess Mary, Dessalles, little Nicholas, and all the old nurses and
maids.

During his stay at Bald Hills all the family dined together, but they
were ill at ease and Prince Andrew felt that he was a visitor for whose
sake an exception was being made and that his presence made them all
feel awkward. Involuntarily feeling this at dinner on the first day, he
was taciturn, and the old prince noticing this also became morosely dumb
and retired to his apartments directly after dinner. In the evening,
when Prince Andrew went to him and, trying to rouse him, began to
tell him of the young Count Kámensky’s campaign, the old prince
began unexpectedly to talk about Princess Mary, blaming her for her
superstitions and her dislike of Mademoiselle Bourienne, who, he said,
was the only person really attached to him.

The old prince said that if he was ill it was only because of Princess
Mary: that she purposely worried and irritated him, and that by
indulgence and silly talk she was spoiling little Prince Nicholas. The
old prince knew very well that he tormented his daughter and that her
life was very hard, but he also knew that he could not help tormenting
her and that she deserved it. “Why does Prince Andrew, who sees this,
say nothing to me about his sister? Does he think me a scoundrel, or an
old fool who, without any reason, keeps his own daughter at a distance
and attaches this Frenchwoman to himself? He doesn’t understand, so I
must explain it, and he must hear me out,” thought the old prince.
And he began explaining why he could not put up with his daughter’s
unreasonable character.

“If you ask me,” said Prince Andrew, without looking up (he was
censuring his father for the first time in his life), “I did not wish to
speak about it, but as you ask me I will give you my frank opinion. If
there is any misunderstanding and discord between you and Mary, I can’t
blame her for it at all. I know how she loves and respects you. Since
you ask me,” continued Prince Andrew, becoming irritable—as he was
always liable to do of late—“I can only say that if there are any
misunderstandings they are caused by that worthless woman, who is not
fit to be my sister’s companion.”

The old man at first stared fixedly at his son, and an unnatural smile
disclosed the fresh gap between his teeth to which Prince Andrew could
not get accustomed.

“What companion, my dear boy? Eh? You’ve already been talking it over!
Eh?”

“Father, I did not want to judge,” said Prince Andrew, in a hard and
bitter tone, “but you challenged me, and I have said, and always shall
say, that Mary is not to blame, but those to blame—the one to blame—is
that Frenchwoman.”

“Ah, he has passed judgment... passed judgement!” said the old man in a
low voice and, as it seemed to Prince Andrew, with some embarrassment,
but then he suddenly jumped up and cried: “Be off, be off! Let not a
trace of you remain here!...”

Prince Andrew wished to leave at once, but Princess Mary persuaded him
to stay another day. That day he did not see his father, who did not
leave his room and admitted no one but Mademoiselle Bourienne and
Tíkhon, but asked several times whether his son had gone. Next day,
before leaving, Prince Andrew went to his son’s rooms. The boy,
curly-headed like his mother and glowing with health, sat on his knee,
and Prince Andrew began telling him the story of Bluebeard, but fell
into a reverie without finishing the story. He thought not of this
pretty child, his son whom he held on his knee, but of himself. He
sought in himself either remorse for having angered his father or regret
at leaving home for the first time in his life on bad terms with him,
and was horrified to find neither. What meant still more to him was that
he sought and did not find in himself the former tenderness for his son
which he had hoped to reawaken by caressing the boy and taking him on
his knee.

“Well, go on!” said his son.

Prince Andrew, without replying, put him down from his knee and went out
of the room.

As soon as Prince Andrew had given up his daily occupations, and
especially on returning to the old conditions of life amid which he had
been happy, weariness of life overcame him with its former intensity,
and he hastened to escape from these memories and to find some work as
soon as possible.

“So you’ve decided to go, Andrew?” asked his sister.

“Thank God that I can,” replied Prince Andrew. “I am very sorry you
can’t.”

“Why do you say that?” replied Princess Mary. “Why do you say that,
when you are going to this terrible war, and he is so old? Mademoiselle
Bourienne says he has been asking about you....”

As soon as she began to speak of that, her lips trembled and her tears
began to fall. Prince Andrew turned away and began pacing the room.

“Ah, my God! my God! When one thinks who and what—what trash—can cause
people misery!” he said with a malignity that alarmed Princess Mary.

She understood that when speaking of “trash” he referred not only to
Mademoiselle Bourienne, the cause of her misery, but also to the man who
had ruined his own happiness.

“Andrew! One thing I beg, I entreat of you!” she said, touching his
elbow and looking at him with eyes that shone through her tears. “I
understand you” (she looked down). “Don’t imagine that sorrow is the
work of men. Men are His tools.” She looked a little above Prince
Andrew’s head with the confident, accustomed look with which one looks
at the place where a familiar portrait hangs. “Sorrow is sent by Him,
not by men. Men are His instruments, they are not to blame. If you think
someone has wronged you, forget it and forgive! We have no right to
punish. And then you will know the happiness of forgiving.”

“If I were a woman I would do so, Mary. That is a woman’s virtue. But
a man should not and cannot forgive and forget,” he replied, and though
till that moment he had not been thinking of Kurágin, all his unexpended
anger suddenly swelled up in his heart.

“If Mary is already persuading me to forgive, it means that I ought long
ago to have punished him,” he thought. And giving her no further reply,
he began thinking of the glad vindictive moment when he would meet
Kurágin who he knew was now in the army.

Princess Mary begged him to stay one day more, saying that she knew how
unhappy her father would be if Andrew left without being reconciled to
him, but Prince Andrew replied that he would probably soon be back again
from the army and would certainly write to his father, but that the
longer he stayed now the more embittered their differences would become.

“Good-by, Andrew! Remember that misfortunes come from God, and men are
never to blame,” were the last words he heard from his sister when he
took leave of her.

“Then it must be so!” thought Prince Andrew as he drove out of the
avenue from the house at Bald Hills. “She, poor innocent creature, is
left to be victimized by an old man who has outlived his wits. The old
man feels he is guilty, but cannot change himself. My boy is growing up
and rejoices in life, in which like everybody else he will deceive or be
deceived. And I am off to the army. Why? I myself don’t know. I want
to meet that man whom I despise, so as to give him a chance to kill and
laugh at me!”

These conditions of life had been the same before, but then they were
all connected, while now they had all tumbled to pieces. Only senseless
things, lacking coherence, presented themselves one after another to
Prince Andrew’s mind.