Book Four: 1806 - Chapter VI

by Leo Tolstoy

　　Pierre had of late rarely seen his wife alone. Both in Petersburgand in Moscow their house was always full of visitors. The night afterthe duel he did not go to his bedroom but, as he often did, remainedin his father's room, that huge room in which Count Bezukhov had died.

　　He lay down on the sofa meaning to fall asleep and forget all thathad happened to him, but could not do so. Such a storm of feelings,thoughts, and memories suddenly arose within him that he could notfall asleep, nor even remain in one place, but had to jump up and pacethe room with rapid steps. Now he seemed to see her in the earlydays of their marriage, with bare shoulders and a languid,passionate look on her face, and then immediately he saw beside herDolokhov's handsome, insolent, hard, and mocking face as he had seenit at the banquet, and then that same face pale, quivering, andsuffering, as it had been when he reeled and sank on the snow.

　　"What has happened?" he asked himself. "I have killed her lover,yes, killed my wife's lover. Yes, that was it! And why? How did I cometo do it?"- "Because you married her," answered an inner voice.

　　"But in what was I to blame?" he asked. "In marrying her withoutloving her; in deceiving yourself and her." And he vividly recalledthat moment after supper at Prince Vasili's, when he spoke those wordshe had found so difficult to utter: "I love you." "It all comes fromthat! Even then I felt it," he thought. "I felt then that it was notso, that I had no right to do it. And so it turns out."

　　He remembered his honeymoon and blushed at the recollection.Particularly vivid, humiliating, and shameful was the recollectionof how one day soon after his marriage he came out of the bedroom intohis study a little before noon in his silk dressing gown and found hishead steward there, who, bowing respectfully, looked into his face andat his dressing gown and smiled slightly, as if expressingrespectful understanding of his employer's happiness.

　　"But how often I have felt proud of her, proud of her majesticbeauty and social tact," thought he; "been proud of my house, in whichshe received all Petersburg, proud of her unapproachability andbeauty. So this is what I was proud of! I then thought that I didnot understand her. How often when considering her character I havetold myself that I was to blame for not understanding her, for notunderstanding that constant composure and complacency and lack ofall interests or desires, and the whole secret lies in the terribletruth that she is a depraved woman. Now I have spoken that terribleword to myself all has become clear.

　　"Anatole used to come to borrow money from her and used to kissher naked shoulders. She did not give him the money, but let herselfbe kissed. Her father in jest tried to rouse her jealousy, and shereplied with a calm smile that she was not so stupid as to be jealous:'Let him do what he pleases,' she used to say of me. One day I askedher if she felt any symptoms of pregnancy. She laughedcontemptuously and said she was not a fool to want to have children,and that she was not going to have any children by me."

　　Then he recalled the coarseness and bluntness of her thoughts andthe vulgarity of the expressions that were natural to her, thoughshe had been brought up in the most aristocratic circles.

　　"I'm not such a fool.... Just you try it on.... Allez-vouspromener,"* she used to say. Often seeing the success she had withyoung and old men and women Pierre could not understand why he did notlove her.

　　*"You clear out of this."

　　"Yes, I never loved her," said he to himself; "I knew she was adepraved woman," he repeated, "but dared not admit it to myself. Andnow there's Dolokhov sitting in the snow with a forced smile andperhaps dying, while meeting my remorse with some forced bravado!"

　　Pierre was one of those people who, in spite of an appearance ofwhat is called weak character, do not seek a confidant in theirtroubles. He digested his sufferings alone.

　　"It is all, all her fault," he said to himself; "but what of that?Why did I bind myself to her? Why did I say 'Je vous aime'* to her,which was a lie, and worse than a lie? I am guilty and mustendure... what? A slur on my name? A misfortune for life? Oh, that'snonsense," he thought. "The slur on my name and honor- that's allapart from myself.

　　*I love you.

　　"Louis XVI was executed because they said he was dishonorable anda criminal," came into Pierre's head, "and from their point of viewthey were right, as were those too who canonized him and died amartyr's death for his sake. Then Robespierre was beheaded for being adespot. Who is right and who is wrong? No one! But if you are alive-live: tomorrow you'll die as I might have died an hour ago. And isit worth tormenting oneself, when one has only a moment of life incomparison with eternity?"

　　But at the moment when he imagined himself calmed by suchreflections, she suddenly came into his mind as she was at the momentswhen he had most strongly expressed his insincere love for her, and hefelt the blood rush to his heart and had again to get up and moveabout and break and tear whatever came to his hand. "Why did I tellher that 'Je vous aime'?" he kept repeating to himself. And when hehad said it for the tenth time, Molibre's words: "Mais que diablealloit-il faire dans cette galere?" occurred to him, and he began tolaugh at himself.

　　In the night he called his valet and told him to pack up to go toPetersburg. He could not imagine how he could speak to her now. Heresolved to go away next day and leave a letter informing her of hisintention to part from her forever.

　　Next morning when the valet came into the room with his coffee,Pierre was lying asleep on the ottoman with an open book in his hand.

　　He woke up and looked round for a while with a startledexpression, unable to realize where he was.

　　"The countess told me to inquire whether your excellency was athome," said the valet.

　　But before Pierre could decide what answer he would send, thecountess herself in a white satin dressing gown embroidered withsilver and with simply dressed hair (two immense plaits twice roundher lovely head like a coronet) entered the room, calm and majestic,except that there was a wrathful wrinkle on her rather prominentmarble brow. With her imperturbable calm she did not begin to speak infront of the valet. She knew of the duel and had come to speak aboutit. She waited till the valet had set down the coffee things andleft the room. Pierre looked at her timidly over his spectacles, andlike a hare surrounded by hounds who lays back her ears andcontinues to crouch motionless before her enemies, he tried tocontinue reading. But feeling this to be senseless and impossible,he again glanced timidly at her. She did not sit down but looked athim with a contemptuous smile, waiting for the valet to go.

　　"Well, what's this now? What have you been up to now, I shouldlike to know?" she asked sternly.

　　"I? What have I...?" stammered Pierre.

　　"So it seems you're a hero, eh? Come now, what was this duelabout? What is it meant to prove? What? I ask you."

　　Pierre turned over heavily on the ottoman and opened his mouth,but could not reply.

　　"If you won't answer, I'll tell you..." Helene went on. "You believeeverything you're told. You were told..." Helene laughed, "thatDolokhov was my lover," she said in French with her coarse plainnessof speech, uttering the word amant as casually as any other word, "andyou believed it! Well, what have you proved? What does this duelprove? That you're a fool, que vous etes un sot, but everybody knewthat. What will be the result? That I shall be the laughingstock ofall Moscow, that everyone will say that you, drunk and not knowingwhat you were about, challenged a man you are jealous of withoutcause." Helene raised her voice and became more and more excited, "Aman who's a better man than you in every way..."

　　"Hm... Hm...!" growled Pierre, frowning without looking at her,and not moving a muscle.

　　"And how could you believe he was my lover? Why? Because I likehis company? If you were cleverer and more agreeable, I shouldprefer yours."

　　"Don't speak to me... I beg you," muttered Pierre hoarsely.

　　"Why shouldn't I speak? I can speak as I like, and I tell youplainly that there are not many wives with husbands such as you whowould not have taken lovers (des amants), but I have not done so,"said she.

　　Pierre wished to say something, looked at her with eyes whosestrange expression she did not understand, and lay down again. Hewas suffering physically at that moment, there was a weight on hischest and he could not breathe. He knew that he must do something toput an end to this suffering, but what he wanted to do was tooterrible.

　　"We had better separate," he muttered in a broken voice.

　　"Separate? Very well, but only if you give me a fortune," saidHelene. "Separate! That's a thing to frighten me with!"

　　Pierre leaped up from the sofa and rushed staggering toward her.

　　"I'll kill you!" he shouted, and seizing the marble top of a tablewith a strength he had never before felt, he made a step toward herbrandishing the slab.

　　Helene's face became terrible, she shrieked and sprang aside. Hisfather's nature showed itself in Pierre. He felt the fascination anddelight of frenzy. He flung down the slab, broke it, and swooping downon her with outstretched hands shouted, "Get out!" in such aterrible voice that the whole house heard it with horror. God knowswhat he would have done at that moment had Helene not fled from theroom.

　　A week later Pierre gave his wife full power to control all hisestates in Great Russia, which formed the larger part of his property,and left for Petersburg alone.