Translator Corner
Minasan Oidemasu! This is Yukkuri demasu!
A short chapter for today.
As always,
DISCLAIMER: There is no guarantee that my translation is 100%
correct. Please correct me if I was wrong.
Plus, if you
want to thank someone go to the guys at Ainushi Translation who give me the RAW
for this LN. They’re the real MVPs.
THIS CHAPTER
IS NOT READER VIEW FRIENDLY, activate your Javascript and CLICK THE BUTTON
OKAY?.
“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
well-known Anna Pávlovna Schérer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress
Márya Fëdorovna. With these words she greeted Prince Vasíli Kurágin, a man of
high rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her reception. Anna
Pávlovna 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
Schérer.”
“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 Pávlovna, 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 Pávlovna. “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
Novosíltsev’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 Vasíli always spoke languidly, like an actor
repeating a stale part. Anna Pávlovna Schérer 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 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 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.
“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.”
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 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 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 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 any clever
conversation that was to be heard. Seeing the self-confident and refined
expression on the faces of those present he was always expecting to hear
something very profound. At last he came up to Morio. Here the conversation
seemed interesting and he stood waiting for an opportunity to express his own
views, as young people are fond of doing.
Author:
みのろう (Minorou)
Translator:
Yukkuri Oniisan!
Editor:
Online Grammar Editor!
Chapter 2
The Kingdom’s Miscalculation
Part 7
