LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

married to her,” she added, evidently frightened by the imminent content of this tale, which seemed to her too free in the presence of a young girl.

      “One attachment is no hindrance to another,” the vicomte continued, smiling subtly and failing to perceive Anna Pavlovna’s apprehension. “But the point is that prior to her intimacy with the duke, Mademoiselle Georges had enjoyed intimate relations with another person.”

      He paused.

      “That person was called Buonaparte,” he announced, glancing round at his listeners with a smile. Anna Pavlovna, in her turn, glanced around uneasily, seeing the tale becoming ever more dangerous.

      “And so,” the vicomte continued, “the new sultan from the Thousand and One Nights did not scorn to spend frequent evenings at the home of the most beautiful, most agreeable woman in France. And Mademoiselle Georges” – he paused, with an expressive shrug of his shoulders – “was obliged to make a virtue of necessity. The fortunate Buonaparte would usually arrive in the evening, without appointing the days in advance.”

      “Ah! I see what is coming, and it fills me with horror,” said the pretty little Princess Bolkonskaya with a shudder of her lissom, shapely shoulders.

      The elderly lady, who had been sitting beside the aunt the whole evening, came to join the raconteur’s circle and shook her head with an emphatic, sad smile.

      “It is terrible, is it not?” she said, although she had obviously not even heard the beginning of the story. No one paid any attention to the inappropriateness of her remark, nor indeed to her.

      Prince Hippolyte promptly declared in a loud voice:

      “Georges in the role of Clytemnestra, how marvellous!”

      Anna Pavlovna remained silent and anxious, still not having finally made up her mind whether the tale that the vicomte was telling was proper or improper. On the one hand, it involved evening visits to actresses, on the other hand, if the Vicomte de Mortemart himself, a relative of the Montmorencys through the Rohans, the finest representative of the St. Germain district, was going to make unseemly talk in the drawing room, then who, after all, knew what was proper or improper?

      “One evening,” the vicomte continued, surveying his listeners and becoming more animated, “this Clytemnestra, having enchanted the entire theatre with her astonishing interpretation of Racine, returned home and thought she would rest to recover from her fatigue and excitement. She was not expecting the sultan.”

      Anna Pavlovna shuddered at the word “sultan”. Princess Hélène lowered her eyes and stopped smiling.

      “Then suddenly the maidservant announced that the former Vicomte Rocroi wished to see the great actress. Rocroi was the name that the duke used for himself. He was received,” the vicomte added, and after pausing for a few seconds in order to make it clear that he was not telling all that he knew, he continued: “The table gleamed with crystal, enamel, silver and porcelain. Two places were set, the time flew by imperceptibly, and the delight …”

      Unexpectedly at this point in the narrative Prince Hippolyte emitted a peculiar, loud sound, which some took for a cough, others for snuffling, mumbling or laughing, and he began hastily fumbling after the lorgnette which he had dropped. The narrator stopped in astonishment. The alarmed Anna Pavlovna interrupted the description of the delights which the vicomte was depicting with such relish.

      “Do not keep us in suspense, vicomte,” she said.

      The vicomte smiled.

      “Delight reduced hours to minutes, when suddenly there came a ring at the door and the startled maid, trembling, came running in to announce that a terrible Bonapartist Mameluke was ringing and that his appalling master was already standing at the entrance …”

      “Charmant, délicieux,” whispered the little Princess Bolkonskaya, jabbing her needle into her embroidery as if to indicate that the fascination and charm of the story had prevented her from continuing her work.

      The vicomte acknowledged this mute praise with a grateful smile and was about to continue when a new person entered the drawing room and effected the very pause that was required.

      IV

      This new person was the young Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, husband of the little princess. It was clear, not so much from the way the young prince had arrived late and was yet received in the most polite fashion by the hostess, as from the way that he made his entrance, that he was one of those young people who are so pampered by society that they have come to despise it. The young prince, a slightly short but slim man, was extremely handsome, with dark hair and a brownish complexion and a somewhat languorous air; he was dressed with exceptional elegance and had tiny hands and feet. Everything about his appearance, from his bored and weary gaze to his measured saunter, made the sharpest possible contrast to his lively little wife. He was evidently not only acquainted with everyone present in the drawing room, but so sick of them all that he found it utterly tedious even to look at or listen to them, since he knew in advance exactly how everything would go. Of all the people there that he found so very boring, he seemed to find none more so than his own pretty wife. He turned away from her lovely face with a faint, sour grimace that spoiled his handsome features, as if he were thinking: “You were the last thing this company required to make it utterly loathsome to me.”

      He kissed Anna Pavlovna’s hand with an expression that suggested he would have given God only knew what to be spared this onerous duty and, squinting his eyes till they were almost closed, he surveyed the assembled company.

      “You have a large gathering,” he said in a high, thin voice, nodding to one person while proffering his hand to another, holding it out to be shaken.

      “You intend to go to the war, prince?” said Anna Pavlovna.

      “General Kutuzóv,” he said, stressing the final syllable, zóff, like a Frenchman, and removing a glove from a perfectly white, tiny hand with which he rubbed his eye, “General-in-Chief Kutuzóv has asked me to be his adjutant.”

      “But what about Lise, your wife?”

      “She will go to the country.”

      “And are you not ashamed to deprive us of your delightful wife?”

      The young adjutant puffed out his lips to make a derisive sound of the kind that only the French make, but said nothing.

      “André,” said his wife, addressing her husband in the same flirtatious tone in which she addressed strangers, “do come here and sit down and listen to the story the vicomte is telling us about Mademoiselle Georges and Buonaparte.”

      Andrei narrowed his eyes and sat down as far away as possible, as though he had not heard his wife.

      “Pray continue, vicomte,” said Anna Pavlovna. “The vicomte was telling us how the Duc d’Enghien visited Mademoiselle Georges,” she added, addressing the new arrival, so that he could follow the continuation of the story.

      “The purported rivalry between Buonaparte and the duke over Mademoiselle Georges,” said Prince Andrei in a tone suggesting it was absurd for anyone not to know about that, and he slumped against the armrest of his chair. At this point the young man in spectacles named Monsieur Pierre, who had not taken his delighted, affectionate gaze off Prince Andrei from the moment he entered the drawing room, approached him and grasped him by the arm. Prince Andrei was so incurious that, without even glancing round, he twisted his face into a grimace that expressed annoyance with whoever was touching his epaulette, but on seeing Pierre’s smiling face, Prince Andrei also broke into a smile, and suddenly his entire face was transformed by the kind and intelligent expression that suffused it.

      “What’s this? You here, my dear Horse Guard?” the prince asked with delight, but also with a slightly patronising and supercilious inflection.

      “I knew that you would be,” replied Pierre. “I’ll

Скачать книгу