经典名著《战争与和平》节选阅读-英汉互译

经典名著《战争与和平》节选阅读

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英汉互译< /p>

CHAPTER XXIII

THE GREY-HAIRED VALET was sitting in the waiting-room

dozing and listening to the prince's snoring in his immense

study. From a far-off part of the house there came through

closed doors the sound of difficult passages of a sonata of

Dusseck's repeated twenty times over.

At that moment a carriage and a little cart drove up to

the steps, and Prince Andrey got out of the carriage, helped

his little wife out and let her pass into the house before

him. Grey Tihon in his wig, popping out at the door of the

waiting-room, informed him in a whisper that the prince was

taking a nap and made haste to close the door. Tihon knew

that no extraordinary event, not even the arrival of his son,

would be permitted to break through the routine of the day.

Prince Andrey was apparently as well aware of the fact as

Tihon. He looked at his watch as though to ascertain whether

his father's habits had changed during the time he had not

seen him, and satisfying himself that they were unchanged, he

turned to his wife.

“He will get

up in twenty minutes. Let's go to Marie,”

he said.

The little princess had grown stouter during this time,

but her short upper lip, with a smile and the faint moustache

on it, rose as gaily and charmingly as ever when she spoke.

“Why, it is a palace,”

she said to her husband, looking

round her with exactly the expression with which people pay

compliments to the host at a ball.

“Come, quick, quick!” As she looked about her, she

smiled at Tihon and at her husband, and at the footman who

was showing them in.

“It is Marie practising? Let us go quietly, we must

surprise her.” Prince Andrey followed her with a courteous

and depressed expression.

“You're looking older, Tihon,” he said as he passed to

the old man, who was kissing his hand.

Before they had reached the room, from which the sounds

of the clavichord were coming, the pretty, fair-haired

Frenchwoman emerged from a side- door.

Mademoiselle Bourienne seemed overwhelmed with delight.

“Ah, what a pleasure for the princess!” she exclaimed.

“At last! I must tell her.”

“No, no, please not” … said the little princess,

kissing her. “You are Mademoiselle Bourienne; I know you

already through my sister-in-law's friendship for you. She

does not expect us!”

They went up to the door of the divan- room, from which

came the sound of the same passage repeated over and over

again. Prince Andrey stood still frowning as though in

expectation of something unpleasant.

The little princess went in. The passage broke off in the

middle; he heard an exclamation, the heavy tread of Princess

Marya, and the sound of kissing. When Prince Andrey went in,

the two ladies, who had only seen each other once for a short

time at Prince Andrey's wedding, were clasped in each other's

arms, warmly pressing their lips to the first place each had

chanced upon. Mademoiselle Bourienne was standing near them,

her hands pressed to her heart; she was smiling devoutly,

apparently equally ready to weep and to laugh. Prince Andrey

shrugged his shoulders, and scowled as lovers of music scowl

when they hear a false note. The two ladies let each other go;

then hastened again, as though each afraid of being remiss,

to hug each other, began kissing each other's hands and

pulling them away, and then fell to kissing each other on the

face again.

Then they quite astonished Prince Andrey by both suddenly

bursting into tears and beginning the kissing over again.

Mademoiselle Bourienne cried too. Prince Andrey was

unmistakably ill at ease. But to the two women it seemed such

a natural thing that they should weep; it seemed never to

have occurred to them that their meeting could have taken

place without tears.

“Ah, ma chère!… Ah, Marie!” … both the ladies began

talking at once, and they laughed. “I had a dream last night.

Then you did not expect us?

O Marie, you have got thinner.”

“And you are looking better …”

“I recognized the princess at once,” put in

Mademoiselle Bourienne.

“And I had no idea!” … cried Princess Marya. “Ah,

Andrey, I did not see you.”

Prince Andrey and his sister kissed each other's hands,

and he told her she was just as great a cry-baby as she

always had been. Princess Marya turned to her brother, and

through her tears, her great, luminous eyes, that were

beautiful at that instant, rested with a loving, warm and

gentle gaze on Prince Andrey's face. The little princess

talked incessantly. The short, downy upper lip was

continually flying down to meet the rosy, lower lip when

necessary, and parting again in a smile of gleaming teeth and

eyes. The little princess described an incident that had

occurred to them on Spasskoe hill, and might have been

serious for her in her condition. And immediately after that

she communicated the intelligence that she had left all her

clothes in Petersburg, and God knew what she would have to go

about in here, and that Andrey was quite changed, and that

Kitty Odintsov had married an old man, and that a suitor had

turned up for Princess Marya, “who was a suitor worth

having,” but that they would talk about that later. Princess

Marya was still gazing mutely at her brother, and her

beautiful eyes were full of love and melancholy. It was clear

that her thoughts were following a train of their own, apart

from the chatter of her sister-in-law. In the middle of the

latter's description of the last fête

-day at Petersburg, she

addressed her brother.

“And is it quite settled that you are going to the war,

Andrey?” she said, sighing. Liza sighed too.

“Yes, and to

-

morrow too,” answered her brother.

“He is deserting me here, and Heaven knows why, when he

mi

ght have had promotion …” Princess Marya did not listen

to the end, but following her own train of thought, she

turned to her sister-in-law, letting her affectionate eyes

rest on her waist.

“Is it really true?” she said.

The face of her sister-in- law changed. She sighed.

“Yes, it's true,” she said. “Oh! It's very dreadful …”

Liza's lip drooped. She put her face close to her sister-

in-law's face, and again she unexpectedly began to cry.

“She needs rest,” said Prince Andrey, frowning. “Don't

you, Liza? Take her to your room, while I go to father. How

is he

—just the same?”

“The same, just the same; I don't know what you will

think,” Princess Marya answered joyfully.

“And the same hour

s, and the walks about the avenues,

and the lathe?” asked Prince Andrey with a scarcely

perceptible smile, showing that, in spite of all his love and

respect for his father, he recognised his weaknesses.

“The same hours and the lathe, mathematics too, an

d my

geometry lessons,”

Princess Marya answered gaily, as though those lessons

were one of the most delightful events of her life.

When the twenty minutes had elapsed, and the time for the

old prince to get up had come, Tihon came to call the young

man to his father. The old man made a departure from his

ordinary routine in honour of his son's arrival. He directed

that he should be admitted into his apartments during his

time for dressing, before dinner. The old prince used to wear

the old-fashioned dress, the kaftan and powder. And when

Prince Andrey

—

not with the disdainful face and manners with

which he walked into drawing-rooms, but with the eager face

with which he had talked to Pierre

—

went in to his father's

room, the old gentleman was in his dressing-room sitting in a

roomy morocco chair in a peignoir, with his head in the hands

of Tihon.

“Ah! the warrior! So you want to fight Bonaparte?” said

the old man, shaking his powdered head as far as his plaited

tail, which was in Tihon's hands, would permit him.

“Mind you look sharp after him, at any rate, or he'll

soon be putting us on the list of his subjects. How are you?”

And he held out his cheek to him.

The old gentleman was in excellent humour after his nap

before dinner. (He used to say that sleep after dinner was

silver, but before dinner it was golden.) He took delighted,

sidelong glances at his son from under his thick, overhanging

brows. Prince Andrey went up and kissed his father on the

spot indicated for him. He made no reply on his father's

favourite topic

—

jesting banter at the military men of the

period, and particularly at Bonaparte.

“Yes, I have come to you, father, bringing a wife with

child,” said Prince Andrey, with eager and reverential eyes

watching every movement of his father

's face. “How is your

health?”

“None but fools, my lad, and profligates are unwell, and

you know me; busy from morning till night and temperate, so

of course I'm well.”

“Thank God,” said his son, smiling.

“God's not much to do with the matter. Come, tell me,”

the old man went on, going back to his favourite hobby, “how

have the Germans trained you to fight with Bonaparte on their

new scientific method

—strategy as they call it?”

Prince Andrey smiled.

“Give me time to recover myself, father,” he said, with

a smile that showed that his father's failings did not

prevent his respecting and loving him. “Why, I have only

just got here.”

“Nonsense, nonsense,” cried the old man, shaking his

tail to try whether it were tightly plaited, and taking his

son by the hand. “The house is ready for your wife. Marie

will look after her and show her everything, and talk

nineteen to the dozen with her too. That's their feminine way.

I'm glad to have her. Sit down, talk to me. Mihelson's army,

I understand, Tolstoy's too … a simultaneous expedition …

but what's the army of the South going to do? Prussia, her

neutrality … I know all that. What of Austria?” he said,

getting up from his chair and walking about the room, with

Tihon running after him, giving him various articles of his

apparel. “What about Sweden? How will they cross Pomerania?”

Prince Andrey, seeing the urgency of his father's

questions, began explaining the plan of operations of the

proposed campaign, speaking at first reluctantly, but