War And Peace: Epilogue 1 - CHAPTER XIV

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SOON AFTER THIS the children came in to say good-night. The children kissed

every one, the tutors and governesses said good-night and went away. Dessalle

alone remained with his pupil. The tutor whispered to his young charge to come

downstairs.

“No, M. Dessalle, I will ask my aunt for leave to stay,” Nikolinka

Bolkonsky answered, also in a whisper.

“Ma tante, will you let me stay?” said Nikolinka, going up to his

aunt. His face was full of entreaty, excitement, and enthusiasm. Countess Marya

looked at him and turned to Pierre

“When you are here, there is no tearing him away …” she said.

“I will bring him directly, M. Dessalle. Good-night,” said Pierre, giving

his hand to the Swiss tutor, and he turned smiling to Nikolinka. “We have not

seen each other at all yet. Marie, how like he is growing,” he added, turning

to Countess Marya.

“Like my father?” said the boy, flushing crimson and looking up at Pierre

with rapturous, shining eyes.

Pierre nodded to him, and went on with the conversation that had been

interrupted by the children. Countess Marya had some canvas embroidery in her

hands; Natasha sat with her eyes fixed on her husband. Nikolay and Denisov got

up, asked for pipes, smoked, and took cups of tea from Sonya, still sitting with

weary pertinacity at the samovar, and asked questions of Pierre. The

curly-headed, delicate boy, with his shining eyes, sat unnoticed by any one in a

corner. Turning the curly head and the slender neck above his laydown collar to

follow Pierre's movements, he trembled now and then, and murmured something to

himself, evidently thrilled by some new and violent emotion.

The conversation turned on the scandals of the day in the higher government

circles, a subject in which the majority of people usually find the chief

interest of home politics. Denisov, who was dissatisfied with the government on

account of his own disappointments in the service, heard with glee of all the

follies, as he considered them, that were going on now in Petersburg, and made

his comments on Pierre's words in harsh and in cutting phrases.

“In old days you had to be a German to be anybody, nowadays you have to

dance with the Tatarinov woman and Madame Krüdner, to read …Eckartshausen, and

the rest of that crew. Ugh! I would let good old Bonaparte loose again! He would

knock all the nonsense out of them. Why, isn't it beyond everything to have

given that fellow Schwartz the Semyonovsky regiment?” he shouted.

Though Nikolay had not Denisov's disposition to find everything amiss, he too

thought it dignified and becoming to criticise the government, and he believed

that the fact, that A. had been appointed minister of such a department, and B.

had been made governor of such a province, and the Tsar had said this, and the

minister had said that, were all matters of the greatest importance. And he

thought it incumbent upon him to take an interest in the subject and to question

Pierre about it. So the questions put by Nikolay and Denisov kept the

conversation on the usual lines of gossip about the higher government

circles.

But Natasha, who knew every thought and expression in her husband, saw that

Pierre all the while wanted to lead the conversation into another channel, and

to open his heart on his own idea, the idea which he had gone to Petersburg to

consult his new friend Prince Fyodor about. She saw too that he could not lead

up to this, and she came to the rescue with a question: How had he settled

things with Prince Fyodor?

“What was that?” asked Nikolay.

“All the same thing over and over again,” said Pierre, looking about him.

“Every one sees that things are all going so wrong that they can't be endured,

and that it's the duty of all honest men to oppose it to the utmost of their

power.”

“Why, what can honest men do?” said Nikolay, frowning slightly. “What can

be done?”

“Why, this…”

“Let us go into the study,” said Nikolay.

Natasha, who had a long while been expecting to be fetched to her baby, heard

the nurse calling her, and went off to the nursery. Countess Marya went with

her. The men went to the study, and Nikolinka Bolkonsky stole in, unnoticed by

his uncle, and sat down at the writing table, in the dark by the window.

“Well, what are you going to do?” said Denisov.

“Everlastingly these fantastic schemes,” said Nikolay.

“Well,” Pierre began, not sitting down, but pacing the room, and coming to

an occasional standstill, lisping and gesticulating rapidly as he talked. “This

is the position of things in Petersburg: the Tsar lets everything go. He is

entirely wrapped up in this mysticism” (mysticism Pierre could not forgive in

anybody now). “All he asks for is peace; and he can only get peace through

these men of no faith and no conscience, who are stifling and destroying

everything, Magnitsky and Araktcheev, and tutti quanti…You will admit

that if you did not look after your property yourself, and only asked for peace

and quiet, the crueller your bailiff were, the more readily you would attain

your object,” he said, turning to Nikolay.

“Well, but what is the drift of all this?” said Nikolay.

“Why, everything is going to ruin. Bribery in the law-courts, in the army

nothing but coercion and drill: exile—people are being tortured, and

enlightenment is suppressed. Everything youthful and honourable—they are

crushing! Everybody sees that it can't go on like this. The strain is too great,

and the string must snap,” said Pierre (as men always do say, looking into the

working of any government so long as governments have existed). “I told them

one thing in Petersburg.”

“Told whom?” asked Denisov.

“Oh, you know whom,” said Pierre, with a meaning look from under his brows,

“Prince Fyodor and all of them. Zeal in educational and philanthropic work is

all very good of course. Their object is excellent and all the rest of it; but

in present circumstances what is wanted is something else.”

At that moment Nikolay noticed the presence of his nephew. His face fell; he

went up to him.

“Why are you here?”

“Oh, let him be,” said Pierre, taking hold of Nikolay's arm; and he went

on. “That's not enough, I told them; something else is wanted now. While you

stand waiting for the string to snap every moment; while every one is expecting

the inevitable revolution, as many people as possible should join hands as

closely as they can to withstand the general catastrophe. All the youth and

energy is being drawn away and dissipated. One lured by women, another by

honours, a third by display or money—they are all going over to the wrong side.

As for independent, honest men, like you and me—there are none of them left. I

say: enlarge the scope of the society: let the mot d'ordre be not loyalty

only, but independence and action.”

Nikolay, leaving his nephew, had angrily moved out a chair, and sat down in

it. As he listened to Pierre, he coughed in a dissatisfied way, and frowned more

and more.

“But action with what object?” he cried. “And what attitude do you take up

to the government?”

“Why, the attitude of supporters! The society will perhaps not even be a

secret one, if the government will allow it. So far from being hostile to the

government, we are the real conservatives. It is a society of gentlemen,

in the full significance of the word. It is simply to prevent Pugatchov from

coming to massacre my children and yours, to prevent Araktcheev from

transporting me to a military settlement, that we are joining hands, with the

sole object of the common welfare and security.”

“Yes; but it's a secret society, and consequently a hostile and mischievous

society, which can only lead to evil.”

“Why so? Did the Tugend-bund which saved Europe” (people did not yet

venture to believe that Russia had saved Europe) “lead to evil? A

Tugend-bund it is, an alliance of virtue; it is love and mutual help; it

is what Christ preached on the cross…”

Natasha, coming into the room in the middle of the conversation, looked

joyfully at her husband. She was not rejoicing in what he was saying. It did not

interest her indeed, because it seemed to her that it was all so excessively

simple, and that she had known it long ago. She fancied this, because she knew

all that it sprang from—all Pierre's soul. But she was glad looking at his

eager, enthusiastic figure.

Pierre was watched with even more rapturous gladness by the boy with the

slender neck in the laydown collar, who had been forgotten by all of them. Every

word Pierre uttered set his heart in a glow, and his fingers moving nervously,

he unconsciously picked up and broke to pieces the sticks of sealing-wax and

pens on his uncle's table.

“It's not at all what you imagine, but just such a society as the German

Tugend-bund is what I propose.”

“Well, my boy, that's all very well for the sausage-eaters—a

Tugend-bund—but I don't understand it, and I can't even pronounce it,”

Denisov's loud, positive voice broke in. “Everything's rotten and corrupt; I

agree there; only your Tugend-bund I don't understand, but if one is

dissatisfied,—a bunt now” (i.e. riot or mutiny), “je suis

votre homme!”

Pierre smiled, Natasha laughed; but Nikolay knitted his brows more than ever,

and began arguing with Pierre that no revolution was to be expected, and that

the danger he talked of had no existence but in his imagination. Pierre

maintained his view, and as his intellectual faculties were keener and more

resourceful, Nikolay was soon at a loss for an answer. This angered him still

more, as in his heart he felt convinced, not by reasoning, but by something

stronger than reasoning, of the indubitable truth of his own view.

“Well, let me tell you,” he said, getting up and nervously setting his pipe

down in the corner, and then flinging it away; “I can't prove it you. You say

everything is all rotten, and there will be a revolution; I don't see it; but

you say our oath of allegiance is a conditional thing, and as to that, let me

tell you, you are my greatest friend, you know that, but you make a secret

society, you begin working against the government—whatever it may be, I know

it's my duty to obey it. And if Araktcheev bids me march against you with a

squadron and cut you down, I shan't hesitate for a second, I shall go. And then

you may think what you like about it.”

An awkward silence followed these words. Natasha was the first to break it by

defending her husband and attacking her brother. Her defence was weak and

clumsy. But it attained her object. The conversation was taken up again, and no

longer in the unpleasantly hostile tone in which Nikolay's last words had been

spoken.

When they all got up to go in to supper, Nikolinka Bolkonsky went up to

Pierre with a pale face and shining, luminous eyes.

“Uncle Pierre…you…no…If papa had been alive…he would have been on your

side?” he asked.

Pierre saw in a flash all the original, complicated and violent travail of

thought and feeling that must have been going on independently in this boy

during the conversation. And recalling all he had been saying, he felt vexed

that the boy should have heard him. He had to answer him, however.

“I believe he would,” he said reluctantly, and he went out of the

study.

The boy looked down, and then for the first time seemed to become aware of

the havoc he had been making on the writing-table. He flushed hotly and went up

to Nikolay.

“Uncle, forgive me; I did it—not on purpose,” he said, pointing to the

fragments of sealing-wax and pens.

Nikolay bounded up angrily. “Very good, very good,” he said, throwing the

bits of pens and sealing-wax under the table. And with evident effort mastering

his fury, he turned away from him.

“You ought not to have been here at all,” he said.

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1. Ebooks list page : 85
2. War And Peace: Epilogue 2 - CHAPTER I
3. War And Peace: Epilogue 1 - CHAPTER IV
4. War And Peace: Epilogue 1 - CHAPTER V
5. War And Peace: Epilogue 1 - CHAPTER VI
6. War And Peace: Epilogue 1 - CHAPTER VII
7. War And Peace: Epilogue 1 - CHAPTER IX
8. War And Peace: Epilogue 1 - CHAPTER X
9. War And Peace: Epilogue 1 - CHAPTER XI
10. War And Peace: Epilogue 1 - CHAPTER XII
11. War And Peace: Epilogue 1 - CHAPTER XVI
12. War And Peace: Epilogue 1 - CHAPTER III
13. War And Peace: Epilogue 2 - CHAPTER IV
14. War And Peace: Epilogue 1 - CHAPTER I
15. War And Peace: Epilogue 2 - CHAPTER II
16. War And Peace: Epilogue 2 - CHAPTER III