War and Peace

élène understood that the question was very simple and easy from
the ecclesiastical point of view, and that her directors were making
difficulties only because they were apprehensive as to how the matter
would be regarded by the secular authorities.

So she decided that it was necessary to prepare the opinion of society.
She provoked the jealousy of the elderly magnate and told him what she
had told her other suitor; that is, she put the matter so that the only
way for him to obtain a right over her was to marry her. The elderly
magnate was at first as much taken aback by this suggestion of marriage
with a woman whose husband was alive, as the younger man had been, but
Hélène’s imperturbable conviction that it was as simple and natural as
marrying a maiden had its effect on him too. Had Hélène herself shown
the least sign of hesitation, shame, or secrecy, her cause would
certainly have been lost; but not only did she show no signs of secrecy
or shame, on the contrary, with good-natured naïveté she told her
intimate friends (and these were all Petersburg) that both the prince
and the magnate had proposed to her and that she loved both and was
afraid of grieving either.

A rumor immediately spread in Petersburg, not that Hélène wanted to
be divorced from her husband (had such a report spread many would have
opposed so illegal an intention) but simply that the unfortunate and
interesting Hélène was in doubt which of the two men she should marry.
The question was no longer whether this was possible, but only which was
the better match and how the matter would be regarded at court. There
were, it is true, some rigid individuals unable to rise to the height of
such a question, who saw in the project a desecration of the sacrament
of marriage, but there were not many such and they remained silent,
while the majority were interested in Hélène’s good fortune and in the
question which match would be the more advantageous. Whether it was
right or wrong to remarry while one had a husband living they did not
discuss, for that question had evidently been settled by people “wiser
than you or me,” as they said, and to doubt the correctness of that
decision would be to risk exposing one’s stupidity and incapacity to
live in society.

Only Márya Dmítrievna Akhrosímova, who had come to Petersburg that
summer to see one of her sons, allowed herself plainly to express
an opinion contrary to the general one. Meeting Hélène at a ball she
stopped her in the middle of the room and, amid general silence, said
in her gruff voice: “So wives of living men have started marrying
again! Perhaps you think you have invented a novelty? You have been
forestalled, my dear! It was thought of long ago. It is done in all the
brothels,” and with these words Márya Dmítrievna, turning up her wide
sleeves with her usual threatening gesture and glancing sternly round,
moved across the room.

Though people were afraid of Márya Dmítrievna she was regarded in
Petersburg as a buffoon, and so of what she had said they only noticed,
and repeated in a whisper, the one coarse word she had used, supposing
the whole sting of her remark to lie in that word.

Prince Vasíli, who of late very often forgot what he had said and
repeated one and the same thing a hundred times, remarked to his
daughter whenever he chanced to see her:

“Hélène, I have a word to say to you,” and he would lead her
aside, drawing her hand downward. “I have heard of certain projects
concerning... you know. Well my dear child, you know how your father’s
heart rejoices to know that you... You have suffered so much.... But, my
dear child, consult only your own heart. That is all I have to say,” and
concealing his unvarying emotion he would press his cheek against his
daughter’s and move away.

Bilíbin, who had not lost his reputation of an exceedingly clever man,
and who was one of the disinterested friends so brilliant a woman as
Hélène always has—men friends who can never change into lovers—once gave
her his view of the matter at a small and intimate gathering.

“Listen, Bilíbin,” said Hélène (she always called friends of that sort
by their surnames), and she touched his coat sleeve with her white,
beringed fingers. “Tell me, as you would a sister, what I ought to do.
Which of the two?”

Bilíbin wrinkled up the skin over his eyebrows and pondered, with a
smile on his lips.

“You are not taking me unawares, you know,” said he. “As a true friend,
I have thought and thought again about your affair. You see, if you
marry the prince”—he meant the younger man—and he crooked one finger,
“you forever lose the chance of marrying the other, and you will
displease the court besides. (You know there is some kind of
connection.) But if you marry the old count you will make his last days
happy, and as widow of the Grand... the prince would no longer be making
a mésalliance by marrying you,” and Bilíbin smoothed out his forehead.

“That’s a true friend!” said Hélène beaming, and again touching
Bilíbin’s sleeve. “But I love them, you know, and don’t want to distress
either of them. I would give my life for the happiness of them both.”

Bilíbin shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say that not even he could
help in that difficulty.

“Une maîtresse-femme! * That’s what is called putting things squarely.
She would like to be married to all three at the same time,” thought he.

* A masterly woman.

“But tell me, how will your husband look at the matter?” Bilíbin asked,
his reputation being so well established that he did not fear to ask so
naïve a question. “Will he agree?”

“Oh, he loves me so!” said Hélène, who for some reason imagined that
Pierre too loved her. “He will do anything for me.”

Bilíbin puckered his skin in preparation for something witty.

“Even divorce you?” said he.

Hélène laughed.

Among those who ventured to doubt the justifiability of the proposed
marriage was Hélène’s mother, Princess Kurágina. She was continually
tormented by jealousy of her daughter, and now that jealousy concerned
a subject near to her own heart, she could not reconcile herself to the
idea. She consulted a Russian priest as to the possibility of divorce
and remarriage during a husband’s lifetime, and the priest told her that
it was impossible, and to her delight showed her a text in the Gospel
which (as it seemed to him) plainly forbids remarriage while the husband
is alive.

Armed with these arguments, which appeared to her unanswerable, she
drove to her daughter’s early one morning so as to find her alone.

Having listened to her mother’s objections, Hélène smiled blandly and
ironically.

“But it says plainly: ‘Whosoever shall marry her that is divorced...’”
said the old princess.

“Ah, Maman, ne dites pas de bêtises. Vous ne comprenez rien. Dans ma
position j’ai des devoirs,” * said Hélène changing from Russian, in
which language she always felt that her case did not sound quite clear,
into French which suited it better.

* “Oh, Mamma, don’t talk nonsense! You don’t understand
anything. In my position I have obligations.”

“But, my dear....”

“Oh, Mamma, how is it you don’t understand that the Holy Father, who has
the right to grant dispensations...”

Just then the lady companion who lived with Hélène came in to announce
that His Highness was in the ballroom and wished to see her.

“Non, dites-lui que je ne veux pas le voir, que je suis furieuse contre
lui, parce qu’il m’a manqué parole.” *

* “No, tell him I don’t wish to see him, I am furious with
him for not keeping his word to me.”

“Comtesse, à tout péché miséricorde,” * said a fair-haired young man
with a long face and nose, as he entered the room.

* “Countess, there is mercy for every sin.”

The old princess rose respectfully and curtsied. The young man who had
entered took no notice of her. The princess nodded to her daughter and
sidled out of the room.

“Yes, she is right,” thought the old princess, all her convictions
dissipated by the appearance of His Highness. “She is right, but how
is it that we in our irrecoverable youth did not know it? Yet it is so
simple,” she thought as she got into her carriage.

By the beginning of August Hélène’s affairs were clearly defined and
she wrote a letter to her husband—who, as she imagined, loved her very
much—informing him of her intention to marry N.N. and of her having
embraced the one true faith, and asking him to carry out all the
formalities necessary for a divorce, which would be explained to him by
the bearer of the letter.

And so I pray God to have you, my friend, in His holy and powerful
keeping—Your friend Hélène.

This letter was brought to Pierre’s house when he was on the field of
Borodinó.