War and Peace: Original Version. Лев Толстой

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СКАЧАТЬ he will be victorious, because he is a great man. The death of the duke was necessary. He is a genius and the difference between a genius and ordinary people is that he does not act for himself, but for humanity. The royalists wished to inflame once again the internal war and revolution that he had suppressed. He needed domestic peace, and with the execution of the duke he set an example that made the Bourbons stop their intrigues.”

      “But, mon cher Monsieur Pierre,” said Anna Pavlovna, attempting to overcome him by meekness, “how can you call the means to the restoration of the legitimate throne intrigues?”

      “Only the will of the people is legitimate,” he replied, “and they drove out the Bourbons and handed power to the great Napoleon.”

      And he looked triumphantly over the top of his spectacles at his listeners.

      “Ah! The Social Contract,” the vicomte said in a quiet voice, evidently reassured at having recognised the source from which his opponent’s views were derived.

      “Well, after this …!” exclaimed Anna Pavlovna.

      But even after this Pierre continued speaking just as uncivilly.

      “No,” he said, growing more and more animated, “the Bourbons and the royalists fled from the revolution, they could not understand it. But this man rose above it, and suppressed its abuses while retaining all that is good – the equality of citizens and freedom of speech and of the press, and only because of this did he acquire power.”

      “Indeed, but if, having taken power, he had returned it to the rightful king,” said the vicomte ironically, “then I should call him a great man.”

      “He could not have done that. The people gave him power only so that he could rid them of the Bourbons, and because the people saw in him a great man. The revolution itself was a great thing,” continued Monsieur Pierre, demonstrating with this audacious and challenging introductory phrase his great youth and desire to express everything as quickly as possible.

      “Revolution and regicide are a great thing! After this …”

      “I am not talking of regicide. When Napoleon appeared, the revolution had already run its course, and the nation put itself into his hands of its own accord. But he understood the ideas of the revolution and became its representative.”

      “Yes, the ideas of plunder, murder and regicide,” the ironic voice interrupted once again.

      “Those were the extremes, of course, but that is not what is most important, what is important are the rights of man, emancipation from prejudices, the equality of citizens; and Napoleon retained all of these ideas in full force.”

      “Liberty and equality,” the vicomte said derisively, as though he had decided finally to demonstrate seriously to this youth the full stupidity of his words. “All high-sounding words which have been compromised long ago. Who does not love liberty and equality? Our Saviour preached liberty and equality. But after the revolution were people any happier? On the contrary. We wanted liberty, but Buonaparte is destroying it.”

      Prince Andrei looked with a merry smile by turns at Monsieur Pierre, at the vicomte and at his hostess, and evidently found this unexpected and indecorous episode amusing. During the first minute of Pierre’s outburst Anna Pavlovna had been horrified, for all her experience of the world, but when she saw that, despite the sacrilegious sentiments expressed by Pierre, the vicomte did not lose his temper, and when she became convinced that it was no longer possible to suppress what was being said, she gathered her strength and joined forces with the vicomte to assail the orator.

      “But, my dear Monsieur Pierre,” said Anna Pavlovna, “how do you explain a great man who was capable of executing a duke or, in the final analysis, simply a man, without a trial and without any proven guilt?”

      “I would like to ask,” said the vicomte, “how Monsieur Pierre explains the Eighteenth Brumaire. Surely this is deceit? It is cheap swindling, in no way resembling the conduct of a great man.”

      “And the prisoners whom he killed in Africa?” the little princess interjected at the same point. “That is awful.” And she shrugged her little shoulders.

      “He is a scoundrel, no matter what you say,” said Prince Hippolyte.

      Monsieur Pierre did not know whom to answer, he glanced round at them all and smiled, and the smile exposed his uneven black teeth. His smile was not the same as other people’s, which merge into the absence of a smile. On the contrary, when his smile came, his serious, even rather sullen face instantly disappeared and a different one replaced it; childish, kind, even a little stupid, and seeming to beg forgiveness.

      The vicomte, who was seeing him for the first time, realised that this Jacobin was by no means as terrible as the things that he said. Everyone fell silent.

      “Well, do you want him to answer everyone at once?” Prince Andrei’s voice rang out. “Besides, in the actions of a statesman one should distinguish between the actions of the individual and those of the general or the emperor. So it seems to me.”

      “Yes, yes, of course,” put in Pierre, delighted at the support that had been offered him. “As a man, he is great on the Bridge at Arcole, in the hospital in Jaffa, where he offers his hand to victims of the plague, but …”

      Prince Andrei, evidently wishing to mitigate the awkwardness caused by Pierre’s oration, half-rose to his feet, preparing to leave and signalling to his wife.

      “It is difficult,” he said, “to judge people of our own time, posterity will judge them.”

      Suddenly Prince Hippolyte stood up, halting everybody by gesturing with his hands and requesting them to be seated, and began speaking:

      “Today I was told a quite charming Moscow anecdote, I simply must regale you with it. I beg your pardon, vicomte, I shall tell it in Russian, otherwise the whole point of the story will be lost.”

      And Prince Hippolyte began speaking in Russian with the same accent with which French people who have spent a year in Russia speak. Everyone paused, so keenly and insistently did Prince Hippolyte demand their attention for his story.

      “There is à Moscou a certain lady. And she be very mean. She needed have two footmen behind a carriage. And very tall. That was to her taste. And she had chambermaid who was tall also. She said …”

      At this point Prince Hippolyte began pondering, evidently struggling to figure something out.

      “She said … yes, she said, ‘Girl, put livery on and go with me to carriage to make visits.’”

      Then Prince Hippolyte snorted and began to chortle far sooner than his listeners, which was something of a disadvantage to the narrator. However, many of them, including the elderly lady and Anna Pavlovna, did smile.

      “She set off. Suddenly strong wind appeared. Girl lose her hat and long hair tumble down all loose …”

      Then he could hold out no longer and burst into fitful laughter, and through this laughter he said:

      “And so the whole world find out …”

      That was how the anecdote ended. Although it was not clear why he told it or why it absolutely had to be told in Russian, Anna Pavlovna and the others were nonetheless grateful for Prince Hippolyte’s courtesy, СКАЧАТЬ