War And Peace

‘He couldn’t have done that. The people had given him power to get rid of the Bourbons, that was all, and also because they thought he was a great man. The Revolution was a splendid achievement,’ Monsieur Pierre insisted, his desperate and challenging pronouncement betraying extreme youth and a desire to blurt everything out at once.

‘Revolution and regicide are splendid achievements? . . . Well, whatever next? . . . Are you sure you wouldn’t like to come over to this table?’ repeated Anna Pavlovna.

‘Ah, the Social Contract,’¹⁰ said the viscount with a pinched smile. ‘I’m not talking about regicide. I’m talking about ideas.’

‘Yes, ideas. Robbery, murder, regicide!’ an ironical voice put in.

‘These were the extremes, of course, but they weren’t the meaning of the whole Revolution. That was in human rights, freedom from prejudice, equality . . . Those were the strong ideas that Napoleon stood up for.’

‘Liberty and equality,’ said the viscount contemptuously. He seemed at last to have made up his mind to take this young man seriously and demonstrate how silly his outpourings had been. ‘Nothing but loud slogans, long compromised. Which of us does not love liberty and equality? Our Saviour himself preached liberty and equality. Have the people been any happier since the Revolution? Quite the reverse. We wanted liberty, but Bonaparte has destroyed it.’

Prince Andrey smiled at them all, Pierre, viscount and hostess.

Just for a moment following Pierre’s outburst Anna Pavlovna had been taken aback, for all her social skills, but when she saw that the viscount was not greatly put out by Pierre’s sacrilegious way of speaking, and realized there was no stopping it, she rallied, came in on the viscount’s side and attacked the other speaker.

‘But my dear Monsieur Pierre,’ she said, ‘how do you account for a great man being capable of executing a duke, a human being after all, who was innocent and untried?’

‘What I should like to ask,’ said the viscount, ‘is how Monsieur accounts for the 18th Brumaire?¹¹ That was very underhand, wasn’t it? It was a sneaky piece of work, nothing like a great man’s way of doing things.’

‘And what about all those prisoners that he killed in Africa?’¹² said the little princess. ‘That was horrible!’ And she gave a shrug.

‘He’s an upstart, whatever you say,’ said Prince Hippolyte.

Not knowing which one to answer, Monsieur Pierre surveyed them all with a smile. His smile was not like theirs – theirs were not real smiles. Whenever he smiled a sudden and immediate change came over his serious, perhaps rather gloomy face, and a very different face appeared, childish, good-natured, a bit on the silly side, half-apologetic. Noticing him for the first time, the viscount realized that this Jacobin¹³ was much less formidable than the words he uttered.

For a while no one spoke.

‘Is he supposed to answer everybody at once?’ asked Prince Andrey. ‘Anyway, in the actions of a statesman, you do have to distinguish between how he acts as a private person and what he does as a general or an emperor. That’s how it seems to me.’

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ put in Pierre, delighted that someone had come in on his side.

‘You have to admit,’ pursued Prince Andrey, ‘that Napoleon on the bridge at Arcola was a great man, and also in the hospital at Jaffa when he shook hands with the plague-victims,¹⁴ but . . . well, there are other actions it would be hard to justify.’

Prince Andrey, clearly intent on relieving Pierre’s embarrassment, now got up to go, signalling to his wife.

All of a sudden Prince Hippolyte got to his feet and gestured for them all to stop and sit down again. Then he spoke. ‘Er, I heard a really good Moscow story today. I must tell you. Begging your pardon, Viscount, it will have to be in Russian, or you won’t get the point.’ And Prince Hippolyte began speaking in Russian, imitating the kind of speech that Frenchmen achieve after a year or so in Russia. Everyone stopped and paid attention, the prince having insisted so urgently that they should listen to his story.

‘Well there was this lady, une dame, in Moscow. Very stingy. She had to have two footmen behind her carriage. Very tall footmen. That was her taste. And she had a lady’s maid, also very tall. She said . . .’ He hesitated, obviously having trouble getting his story together.

‘She said . . . Yes, that’s it, she said, “You, girl,” (to the lady’s maid) “put your livery on and get up behind the carriage. We’re going out visiting.”

At this point Prince Hippolyte snorted and laughed out loud, running well ahead of his listeners, which created a really bad impression of him as a storyteller. Still, there were plenty of people, including the elderly lady and Anna Pavlovna, who did manage a smile.

‘She drove off. Suddenly a strong wind blew up. The girl lost her hat, and her long hair was scattered about all over the place . . .’