“Mais, mon
cher Monsieur Pierre,” said Anna Pavlovna, “what have you to say for a great
man who was capable of executing the due—or simply any human being—guiltless
and untried?”
“I should like
to ask,” said the vicomte, “how monsieur would explain the 18th of Brumaire?
Was not that treachery?”
“It was a
juggling trick not at all like a great man’s way of acting.”
“And the
wounded he killed in Africa?” said the little princess; “that was awful!” And
she shrugged her shoulders.
“He’s a
plebeian, whatever you may say,” said Prince Ippolit.
Monsieur Pierre did not know which to
answer. He looked at them all and smiled. His smile was utterly unlike the
half-smile of all the others. When he smiled, suddenly, instantaneously, his
serious, even rather sullen, face vanished completely, and a quite different
face appeared, childish, good-humoured, even rather stupid, that seemed to beg
indulgence. The vicomte, who was seeing him for the first time, saw clearly
that this Jacobin was by no means so formidable as his words. Every one was
silent.
“How is he to
answer every one at once?” said Prince Andrey. “Besides, in the actions of a
statesman, one must distinguish between his acts as a private person and as a
general or an emperor. So it seems to me.”
“Yes, yes, of
course,” put in Pierre, delighted at the assistance that had come to support
him.
“One must
admit,” pursued Prince Andrey, “that Napoleon as a man was great at the bridge
of Arcola, or in the hospital at Jaffa, when he gave his hand to the
plague-stricken, but…but there are other actions it would be hard to justify.”
Prince Andrey, who obviously wished to
relieve the awkwardness of Pierre’s
position, got up to go, and made a sign to his wife.
Suddenly Prince Ippolit got up, and with a
wave of his hands stopped every one, and motioning to them to be seated, began:
“Ah, I heard a
Moscow story to-day; I must entertain you with it. You will excuse me, vicomte,
I must tell it in Russian. If not, the point of the story will be lost.” And
Prince Ippolit began speaking in Russian, using the sort of jargon Frenchmen
speak after spending a year in Russia.
Every one waited expectant; Prince Ippolit had so eagerly, so insistently
called for the attention of all for his story.
“In Moscow
there is a lady, une dame. And she is very stingy. She wanted to have two
footmen behind her carriage. And very tall footmen. That was her taste. And she
had a lady’s maid, also very tall. She said…”
Here Prince Ippolit paused and pondered,
apparently collecting his ideas with difficulty.
“She said…yes,
she said: ‘Girl,’ to the lady’s maid, ‘put on livrée, and get up behind the
carriage, to pay calls.’ ”
t minu� { A n `zs ��q a had, in spite of her social adroitness, been dismayed by
Pierre’s outbreak; but when she saw that the vicomte was
not greatly discomposed by
Pierre’s
sacrilegious utterances, and had convinced herself that it was impossible to
suppress them, she rallied her forces and joined the vicomte in attacking the
orator.
ml>
e � � s s H�r s turned completely round, and bending over the little princess asked her for a
needle, and began showing her the coat-of-arms of the Condé family, scratching
it with the needle on the table. He explained the coat-of-arms with an air of
gravity, as though the princess had asked him about it. “Staff, gules;
engrailed with gules of azure—house of Condé,” he said. The princess listened
smiling.
— r � c a s ��r e ladies — in which I have had the
happiness to be received, that I have not yet had time to think of the
climate,” he said. Not letting the abbé and
Pierre slip out of her grasp, Anna Pavlovna,
for greater convenience in watching them, made them join the bigger group.
