Emma Watson Pussy
Books:
Anna Karenina
War And Peace
|
his
forehead, wetting him with her tears. Then after a pause she said:
"He is no more...."
Pierre looked at her over his spectacles.
"Come, I will go with you. Try to weep, nothing gives such relief as
tears."
She led him into the dark drawing room and Pierre was glad no one
could see his face. Anna Mikhaylovna left him, and when she returned
he was fast asleep with his head on his arm.
In the morning Anna Mikhaylovna said to Pierre:
"Yes, my dear, this is a great loss for us all, not to speak of you.
But God will support you: you are young, and are now, I hope, in
command of an immense fortune. The will has not yet been opened. I
know you well enough to be sure that this will not turn your head, but
it imposes duties on you, and you must be a man."
Pierre was silent.
"Perhaps later on I may tell you, my dear boy, that if I had not
been there, God only knows what would have happened! You know, Uncle
promised me only the day before yesterday not to forget Boris. But
he had no time. I hope, my dear friend, you will carry out your
fathers wish?"
Pierre understood nothing of all this and coloring shyly looked in
silence at Princess Anna Mikhaylovna. After her talk with Pierre, Anna
Mikhaylovna returned to the Rostovs and went to bed. On waking in the
morning she told the Rostovs and all her acquaintances the details
of Count Bezukhovs death. She said the count had died as she would
herself wish to die, that his end was not only touching but
edifying. As to the last meeting between father and son, it was so
touching that she could not think of it without tears, and did not
know which had behaved better during those awful moments--the father
who so remembered everything and everybody at last and had
spoken such pathetic words to the son, or Pierre, whom it had been
pitiful to see, so stricken was he with grief, though he tried hard to
hide it in order not to sadden 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," said she. Of the behavior of the eldest
princess and Prince Vasili she spoke disapprovingly, but in whispers
and as a great secret.
CHAPTER XXV
At Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Andreevich Bolkonskis estate, the
arrival of young Prince Andrew and his wife was daily expected, but
this expectation did not upset the regular routine of life in the old
princes household. General in Chief Prince Nicholas Andreevich
(nicknamed in society, "the King of Prussia") ever since the Emperor
Paul had exiled him to his country estate had lived there continuously
with his daughter, Princess Mary, and her companion, Mademoiselle
Bourienne. Though in the new reign he was free to return to the
capitals, he still continued to live in the country, remarking that
anyone who wanted to see him could come the hundred miles from Moscow
to Bald Hills, while he himself needed no one and nothing. He used to
say that there are only two sources of human vice--idleness and
superstition, and only two virtues--activity and intelligence. He
himself undertook his daughters education, and to develop these two
cardinal virtues in her gave her lessons in algebra and geometry till
she was twenty, and arranged her life so that her whole time was
occupied. He was himself always occupied: writing his memoirs, solving
problems in higher mathematics, turning snuffboxes on a lathe, working
in the garden, or superintending the building that was always going on
at his estate. As regularity is a prime condition facilitating
activity, regularity in his household was carried to the highest point
of exactitude. He always came to table under precisely the same
conditions, and not only at the same hour but at the same minute. With
those about him, from his daughter to his serfs, the prince was sharp
and invariably exacting, so that without being a hardhearted man he
inspired such fear and respect as few hardhearted men would have
aroused. Although he was in retirement and had now no influence in
political affairs, every high official appointed to the province in
which the princes estate lay considered it his duty to visit him and
waited in the lofty antechamber just as the architect, gardener, or
Princess Mary did, till the prince appeared punctually to the
appointed hour. Everyone sitting in this antechamber experienced the
same
War And Peace page 48 War And Peace page 50
|
