War and Peace Leo Tolstoy (best e books to read .TXT) 📖

not fear to ask so naive a question. “Will he agree?”

“Oh, he loves me so!” said Elèn, who for some reason imagined that Pierre too loved her. “He will do anything for me.”

Bilíbin puckered his skin in preparation for something witty.

“Even divorce you?” said he.

Elèn laughed.

Among those who ventured to doubt the justifiability of the proposed marriage was Elèn’s mother, Princess Kurágina. She was continually tormented by jealousy of her daughter, and now that jealousy concerned a subject near to her own heart, she could not reconcile herself to the idea. She consulted a Russian priest as to the possibility of divorce and remarriage during a husband’s lifetime, and the priest told her that it was impossible, and to her delight showed her a text in the Gospel which (as it seemed to him) plainly forbids remarriage while the husband is alive.

Armed with these arguments, which appeared to her unanswerable, she drove to her daughter’s early one morning so as to find her alone.

Having listened to her mother’s objections, Elèn smiled blandly and ironically.

“But it says plainly: ‘Whosoever shall marry her that is divorced⁠ ⁠…’ ” said the old princess.

“Ah, Maman, ne dites pas de bêtises. Vous ne comprenez rien. Dans ma position j’ai des devoirs,”96 said Elèn changing from Russian, in which language she always felt that her case did not sound quite clear, into French which suited it better.

“But, my dear⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh, Mamma, how is it you don’t understand that the Holy Father, who has the right to grant dispensations⁠ ⁠…”

Just then the lady companion who lived with Elèn came in to announce that His Highness was in the ballroom and wished to see her.

“Non, dites-lui que je ne veux pas le voir, que je suis furieuse contre lui, parce qu’il m’a manqué parole.”97

“Comtesse, à tout péché miséricorde,”98 said a fair-haired young man with a long face and nose, as he entered the room.

The old princess rose respectfully and curtsied. The young man who had entered took no notice of her. The princess nodded to her daughter and sidled out of the room.

“Yes, she is right,” thought the old princess, all her convictions dissipated by the appearance of His Highness. “She is right, but how is it that we in our irrecoverable youth did not know it? Yet it is so simple,” she thought as she got into her carriage.

By the beginning of August Elèn’s affairs were clearly defined and she wrote a letter to her husband⁠—who, as she imagined, loved her very much⁠—informing him of her intention to marry N. N. and of her having embraced the one true faith, and asking him to carry out all the formalities necessary for a divorce, which would be explained to him by the bearer of the letter.

And so I pray God to have you, my friend, in His holy and powerful keeping⁠—Your friend Hélène.

This letter was brought to Pierre’s house when he was on the field of Borodinó.

VIII

Toward the end of the battle of Borodinó, Pierre, having run down from Raévski’s battery a second time, made his way through a gully to Knyazkóvo with a crowd of soldiers, reached the dressing station, and seeing blood and hearing cries and groans hurried on, still entangled in the crowds of soldiers.

The one thing he now desired with his whole soul was to get away quickly from the terrible sensations amid which he had lived that day and return to ordinary conditions of life and sleep quietly in a room in his own bed. He felt that only in the ordinary conditions of life would he be able to understand himself and all he had seen and felt. But such ordinary conditions of life were nowhere to be found.

Though shells and bullets did not whistle over the road along which he was going, still on all sides there was what there had been on the field of battle. There were still the same suffering, exhausted, and sometimes strangely indifferent faces, the same blood, the same soldiers’ overcoats, the same sounds of firing which, though distant now, still aroused terror, and besides this there were the foul air and the dust.

Having gone a couple of miles along the Mozháysk road, Pierre sat down by the roadside.

Dusk had fallen, and the roar of guns died away. Pierre lay leaning on his elbow for a long time, gazing at the shadows that moved past him in the darkness. He was continually imagining that a cannon ball was flying toward him with a terrific whizz, and then he shuddered and sat up. He had no idea how long he had been there. In the middle of the night three soldiers, having brought some firewood, settled down near him and began lighting a fire.

The soldiers, who threw sidelong glances at Pierre, got the fire to burn and placed an iron pot on it into which they broke some dried bread and put a little dripping. The pleasant odor of greasy viands mingled with the smell of smoke. Pierre sat up and sighed. The three soldiers were eating and talking among themselves, taking no notice of him.

“And who may you be?” one of them suddenly asked Pierre, evidently meaning what Pierre himself had in mind, namely: “If you want to eat we’ll give you some food, only let us know whether you are an honest man.”

“I, I⁠ ⁠…” said Pierre, feeling it necessary to minimize his social position as much as possible so as to be nearer to the soldiers and better understood by them. “By rights I am a militia officer, but my men are not here. I came to the battle and have lost them.”

“There now!” said one of the soldiers.

Another shook his head.

“Would you like a little mash?” the first soldier asked, and handed Pierre a wooden spoon after licking it clean.

Pierre sat down by the fire and began eating the mash, as they called the food