War and Peace

élène, having returned with the court from Vílna 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 Vílna 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. Hélène 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 Bezúkhova, 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 Hélène, 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 Hélène 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 Hélène,
beginning to cry.

The prince tried to comfort her, but Hélène, 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 Hélène.

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 Hélène 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 à 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. Hélène 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 Hélène 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 grâce.

After that a long-frocked abbé 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 Hélène 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, Hélène—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. Hélène was wearing a white
dress, transparent over her shoulders and bosom. The abbé, 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 Hélène 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. Hélène 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 abbé, 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 Hélène, 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.