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 Pávlovna 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, can we rely on?. . . England with her commercial spirit will
not and cannot understand the Emperor Alexander’s loftiness of soul. She has
refused to evacuate Malta. She wanted to find, and still seeks, some secret
motive in our actions. What answer did Novosíltsev get? None. The English
have not understood and cannot understand the self-abnegation of our Emperor
who wants nothing for himself, but only desires the good of mankind. And what
have they promised? Nothing! And what little they have promised they will not
perform! Prussia has always declared that Buonaparte is invincible, and that all
Europe is powerless before him. . . . And I don’t believe a word that Hardenburg
says, or Haugwitz either. This famous Prussian neutrality is just a trap. I have
faith only in God and the lofty destiny of our adored monarch. He will save
Europe!”
She suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity.
“I think,” said the prince with a smile, “that if you had been sent instead of our
dear Wintzingerode you would have captured the King of Prussia’s consent by
assault. You are so eloquent. Will you give me a cup of tea?”
“In a moment. À propos,” she added, becoming calm again, “I am expecting
two very interesting men tonight, le Vicomte de Mortemart, who is connected
with the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of the best French families.
He is one of the genuine émigrés, the good ones. And also the Abbé Morio. Do
you know that profound thinker? He has been received by the Emperor. Had
you heard?”
“I shall be delighted to meet them,” said the prince. “But tell me,” he added
with studied carelessness as if it had only just occurred to him, though the
question he was about to ask was the chief motive of his visit, “is it true that the
Dowager Empress wants Baron Funke to be appointed first secretary at Vienna?
The baron by all accounts is a poor creature.”
Prince Vasíli wished to obtain this post for his son, but others were trying

1
through the Dowager Empress Márya Fëdorovna to secure it for the baron.
Anna Pávlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that neither she nor anyone
else had a right to criticize what the Empress desired or was pleased with.
“Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager Empress by her sister,”
was all she said, in a dry and mournful tone.
As she named the Empress, Anna Pávlovna’s face suddenly assumed an expression
of profound and sincere devotion and respect mingled with sadness, and this
occurred every time she mentioned her illustrious patroness. She added that Her
Majesty had deigned to show Baron Funke beaucoup d’estime, and again her
face clouded over with sadness.
The prince was silent and looked indifferent. But, with the womanly and
courtierlike quickness and tact habitual to her, Anna Pávlovna wished both to
rebuke him (for daring to speak as he had done of a man recommended to the
Empress) and at the same time to console him, so she said:
“Now about your family. Do you know that since your daughter came out
everyone has been enraptured by her? They say she is amazingly beautiful.”
The prince bowed to signify his respect and gratitude.
“I often think,” she continued after a short pause, drawing nearer to the prince
and smiling amiably at him as if to show that political and social topics were
ended and the time had come for intimate conversation—“I often think how
unfairly sometimes the joys of life are distributed. Why has fate given you two
such splendid children? I don’t speak of Anatole, your youngest. I don’t like
him,” she added in a tone admitting of no rejoinder and raising her eyebrows.
“Two such charming children. And really you appreciate them less than anyone,
and so you don’t deserve to have them.”
And she smiled her ecstatic smile.
“I can’t help it,” said the prince. “Lavater would have said I lack the bump of
paternity.”
“Don’t joke; I mean to have a serious talk with you. Do you know I am dissatisfied
with your younger son? Between ourselves” (and her face assumed its melancholy
expression), “he was mentioned at Her Majesty’s and you were pitied. . . .”
The prince answered nothing, but she looked at him significantly, awaiting a
reply. He frowned.
“What would you have me do?” he said at last. “You know I did all a father
could for their education, and they have both turned out fools. Hippolyte is
at least a quiet fool, but Anatole is an active one. That is the only difference
between them.” He said this smiling in a way more natural and animated than
usual, so that the wrinkles round his mouth very clearly revealed something
unexpectedly coarse and unpleasant.

2
“And why are children born to such men as you? If you were not a father there
would be nothing I could reproach you with,” said Anna Pávlovna, looking up
pensively.
“I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess that my children are the
bane of my life. It is the cross I have to bear. That is how I explain it to myself.
It can’t be helped!”
He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel fate by a gesture. Anna
Pávlovna meditated.
“Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal son Anatole?” she asked.
“They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and though I don’t feel
that weakness in myself as yet, I know a little person who is very unhappy with
her father. She is a relation of yours, Princess Mary Bolkónskaya.”
Prince Vasíli did not reply, though, with the quickness of memory and perception
befitting a man of the world, he indicated by a movement of the head that he
was considering this information.
“Do you know,” he said at last, evidently unable to check the sad current of his
thoughts, “that Anatole is costing me forty thousand rubles a year? And,” he
went on after a pause, “what will it be in five years, if he goes on like this?”
Presently he added: “That’s what we fathers have to put up with. . . . Is this
princess of yours rich?”
“Her father is very rich and stingy. He lives in the country. He is the well-known
Prince Bolkónski who had to retire from the army under the late Emperor, and
was nicknamed ‘the King of Prussia.’ He is very clever but eccentric, and a bore.
The poor girl is very unhappy. She has a brother; I think you know him, he
married Lise Meinen lately. He is an aide-de-camp of Kutúzov’s and will be here
tonight.”
“Listen, dear Annette,” said the prince, suddenly taking Anna Pávlovna’s hand
and for some reason drawing it downwards. “Arrange that affair for me and I
shall always be your most devoted slave-slafe with an f, as a village elder of mine
writes in his reports. She is rich and of good family and that’s all I want.”
And with the familiarity and easy grace peculiar to him, he raised the maid of
honor’s hand to his lips, kissed it, and swung it to and fro as he lay back in his
armchair, looking in another direction.
“Attendez,” said Anna Pávlovna, reflecting, “I’ll speak to Lise, young Bolkónski’s
wife, this very evening, and perhaps the thing can be arranged. It shall be on
your family’s behalf that I’ll start my apprenticeship as old maid.”
CHAPTER II
Anna Pávlovna’s drawing room was gradually filling. The highest Petersburg
society was assembled there: people differing widely in age and character but
alike in the social circle to which they belonged. Prince Vasíli’s daughter, the

3
beautiful Hélène, came to take her father to the ambassador’s entertainment; she
wore a ball dress and her badge as maid of honor. The youthful little Princess
Bolkónskaya, known as la femme la plus séduisante de Pétersbourg, * was also
there. She had been married during the previous winter, and being pregnant did
not go to any large gatherings, but only to small receptions. Prince Vasíli’s son,
Hippolyte, had come with Mortemart, whom he introduced. The Abbé Morio
and many others had also come.
* The most fascinating woman in Petersburg.
To each new arrival Anna Pávlovna said, “You have not yet seen my aunt,” or
“You do not know my aunt?” and very gravely conducted him or her to a little
old lady, wearing large bows of ribbon in her cap, who had come sailing in from
another room as soon as the guests began to arrive; and slowly turning her eyes
from the visitor to her aunt, Anna Pávlovna mentioned each one’s name and
then left them.
Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom not one of
them knew, not one of them wanted to know, and not one of them cared about;
Anna Pávlovna observed these greetings with mournful and solemn interest and
silent approval. The aunt spoke to each of them in the same words, about their
health and her own, and the health of Her Majesty, “who, thank God, was better
today.” And each visitor, though politeness prevented his showing impatience,
left the old woman with a sense of relief at having performed a vexatious duty
and did not return to her the whole evening.
The young Princess Bolkónskaya had brought some work in a gold-embroidered
velvet bag. Her pretty little upper lip, on which a delicate dark down was just
perceptible, was too short for her teeth, but it lifted all the more sweetly, and
was especially charming when she occasionally drew it down to meet the lower
lip. As is always the case with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defect—the
shortness of her upper lip and her half-open mouth—seemed to be her own
special and peculiar form of beauty. Everyone brightened at the sight of this
pretty young woman, so soon to become a mother, so full of life and health, and
carrying her burden so lightly. Old men and dull dispirited young ones who
looked at her, after being in her company and talking to her a little while, felt
as if they too were becoming, like her, full of life and health. All who talked to
her, and at each word saw her bright smile and the constant gleam of her white
teeth, thought that they were in a specially amiable mood that day.
The little princess went round the table with quick, short, swaying steps, her
workbag on her arm, and gaily spreading out her dress sat down on a sofa near
the silver samovar, as if all she was doing was a pleasure to herself and to all
around her. “I have brought my work,” said she in French, displaying her bag
and addressing all present. “Mind, Annette, I hope you have not played a wicked
trick on me,” she added, turning to her hostess. “You wrote that it was to be
quite a small reception, and just see how badly I am dressed.” And she spread
out her arms to show her short-waisted, lace-trimmed, dainty gray dress, girdled

4
with a broad ribbon just below the breast.
“Soyez tranquille, Lise, you will always be prettier than anyone else,” replied
Anna Pávlovna.
“You know,” said the princess in the same tone of voice and still in French,
turning to a general, “my husband is deserting me? He is going to get himself
killed. Tell me what this wretched war is for?” she added, addressing Prince
Vasíli, and without waiting for an answer she turned to speak to his daughter,
the beautiful Hélène.
“What a delightful woman this little princess is!” said Prince Vasíli to Anna
Pávlovna.
One of the next arrivals was a stout, heavily built young man with close-cropped
hair, spectacles, the light-colored breeches fashionable at that time, a very high
ruffle, and a brown dress coat. This stout young man was an illegitimate son of
Count Bezúkhov, a well-known grandee of Catherine’s time who now lay dying in
Moscow. The young man had not yet entered either the military or civil service,
as he had only just returned from abroad where he had been educated, and this
was his first appearance in society. Anna Pávlovna greeted him with the nod
she accorded to the lowest hierarchy in her drawing room. But in spite of this
lowest-grade greeting, a look of anxiety and fear, as at the sight of something
too large and unsuited to the place, came over her face when she saw Pierre
enter. Though he was certainly rather bigger than the other men in the room,
her anxiety could only have reference to the clever though shy, but observant and
natural, expression which distinguished him from everyone else in that drawing
room.
“It is very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come and visit a poor invalid,” said
Anna Pávlovna, exchanging an alarmed glance with her aunt as she conducted
him to her.
Pierre murmured something unintelligible, and continued to look round as if in
search of something. On his way to the aunt he bowed to the little princess with
a pleased smile, as to an intimate acquaintance.
Anna Pávlovna’s alarm was justified, for Pierre turned away from the aunt
without waiting to hear her speech about Her Majesty’s health. Anna Pávlovna
in dismay detained him with the words: “Do you know the Abbé Morio? He is
a most interesting man.”
“Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and it is very interesting
but hardly feasible.”
“You think so?” rejoined Anna Pávlovna in order to say something and get away
to attend to her duties as hostess. But Pierre now committed a reverse act of
impoliteness. First he had left a lady before she had finished speaking to him,
and now he continued to speak to another who wished to get away. With his

5
head bent, and his big feet spread apart, he began explaining his reasons for
thinking the abbé’s plan chimerical.
“We will talk of it later,” said Anna Pávlovna with a smile.
And having got rid of this young man who did not know how to behave, she
resumed her duties as hostess and continued to listen and watch, ready to help
at any point where the conversation might happen to flag. As the foreman of
a spinning mill, when he has set the hands to work, goes round and notices
here a spindle that has stopped or there one that creaks or makes more noise
than it should, and hastens to check the machine or set it in proper motion, so
Anna Pávlovna moved about her drawing room, approaching now a silent, now a
too-noisy group, and by a word or slight rearrangement kept the conversational
machine in steady, proper, and regular motion. But amid these cares her anxiety
about Pierre was evident. She kept an anxious watch on him when he approached
the group round Mortemart to listen to what was being said there, and again
when he passed to another group whose center was the abbé.
Pierre had been educated abroad, and this reception at Anna Pávlovna’s was
the first he had attended in Russia. He knew that all the intellectual lights of
Petersburg were gathered there and, like a child in a toyshop, did not know
which way to look, afraid of missing