War and Peace

“WELL, PRINCE, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family
estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you
don’t tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend
the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist—
I really believe he is Antichrist—I will have nothing more
to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer
my ‘faithful slave,’ as you call yourself! But how do you
do? I see I have frightened you—sit down and tell me all
the news.”
It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the wellknown
Anna Pavlovna Scherer, maid of honor and favorite
of the Empress Marya Fedorovna. With these
words she greeted Prince Vasili Kuragin, a man of high
rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her
reception. Anna Pavlovna had had a cough for some
days. She was, as she said, suffering from la grippe; grippe
being then a new word in St. Petersburg, used only by
the elite.
All her invitations without exception, written in French,
and delivered by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning,
ran as follows:
“If you have nothing better to do, Count [or Prince],
and if the prospect of spending an evening with a poor
invalid is not too terrible, I shall be very charmed to see
you tonight between 7 and 10-Annette Scherer.”
“Heavens! what a virulent attack!” replied the prince,
not in the least disconcerted by this reception. He had
just entered, wearing an embroidered court uniform, knee
breeches, and shoes, and had stars on his breast and a
serene expression on his flat face. He spoke in that refined
French in which our grandfathers not only spoke
but thought, and with the gentle, patronizing intonation
natural to a man of importance who had grown old in
society and at court. He went up to Anna Pavlovna,
kissed her hand, presenting to her his bald, scented, and
shining head, and complacently seated himself on the
sofa.
“First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are. Set your
friend’s mind at rest,” said he without altering his tone,
beneath the politeness and affected sympathy of which
indifference and even irony could be discerned.
“Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be
calm in times like these if one has any feeling?” said Anna
Pavlovna. “You are staying the whole evening, I hope?”
“And the fete at the English ambassador’s? Today is
Wednesday. I must put in an appearance there,” said the
prince. “My daughter is coming for me to take me there.”
“I thought today’s fete had been canceled. I confess
all these festivities and fireworks are becoming wearisome.”
“If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment
would have been put off,” said the prince, who,
like a wound-up clock, by force of habit said things he
did not even wish to be believed.
“Don’t tease! Well, and what has been decided about
Novosiltsev’s dispatch? You know everything.”
“What can one say about it?” replied the prince in a
cold, listless tone. “What has been decided? They have
decided that Buonaparte has burnt his boats, and I believe
that we are ready to burn ours.”
Prince Vasili always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating
a stale part. Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the contrary,
despite her forty years, overflowed with animation
and impulsiveness. To be an enthusiast had become her
social vocation and, sometimes even when she did not
feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to disappoint
the expectations of those who knew her. The subdued
smile which, though it did not suit her faded features,
always played round her lips expressed, as in a
spoiled child, a continual consciousness of her charming
defect, which she neither wished, nor could, nor considered
it necessary, to correct.
In the midst of a conversation on political matters Anna
Pavlovna burst out:
“Oh, don’t speak to me of Austria. Perhaps I don’t
understand things, but Austria never has wished, and
does not wish, for war. She is betraying us! Russia alone
must save Europe. Our gracious sovereign recognizes
his high vocation and will be true to it. That is the one
thing I have faith in! Our good and wonderful sovereign
has to perform the noblest role on earth, and he is so
virtuous and noble that God will not forsake him. He will
fulfill his vocation and crush the hydra of revolution, which
has become more terrible than ever in the person of this
murderer and villain! We alone must avenge the blood
of the just one.... Whom, I ask you...