Anna Pavlovna's Evening (Book One, 1805)

"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist — I really believe he is Antichrist — I will have nothing more to do with you."

It was in July 1805, and the speaker was Anna Pavlovna Scherer, maid of honour to the Empress, receiving her first guest at her evening party in Petersburg. The guest was Prince Vasili Kuragin, a man of high rank and importance, who spoke French with that elaborate grace in which our grandfathers not only spoke but thought, and who had come to the evening chiefly to learn whether a post he wanted for his son had been settled.

Anna Pavlovna's drawing room filled. She moved among her guests like the owner of a spinning mill who, having set his hands to work, goes about watching for a spindle that has stopped or one that creaks. There was the beautiful Hélène, Prince Vasili's daughter, whose smile never changed and whose white shoulders were the admiration of the room; there was the little Princess Bolkonskaya, pregnant, with a short upper lip that showed her teeth, chattering gaily; and her husband, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, handsome, dry and bored, who looked at everyone in the room as if he were tired of them all, and most of all of his wife.

And there was a stout young man with close-cropped hair and spectacles, in light-coloured breeches, who came in with an observant, natural expression that alarmed his hostess, as though he were something too large and unsuitable for the place. This was Pierre, the illegitimate son of the famous Count Bezukhov, one of the richest grandees of Catherine's time, who was now dying in Moscow. Pierre had just returned from abroad, where he had been educated, and this was his first appearance in society. He argued too loudly in praise of Napoleon; he said that the execution of the Duc d'Enghien had been a political necessity; he blundered from one group to another; and Anna Pavlovna, smiling, steered him away as one might steer away a puppy from the china.

Only Prince Andrei was glad to see him. When the party ended, Pierre went home with him, and in Andrei's study, while the little princess sulked, the two friends talked late into the night.

"Why are you going to the war?" asked Pierre.

"Why? I don't know. I must. Besides, I am going because the life I lead here does not suit me." Andrei glanced toward the door where his wife had gone. "Never, never marry, my dear fellow. That's my advice. Don't marry until you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable of, and until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and have seen her plainly as she is. Otherwise you will make a cruel and irrevocable mistake. Marry when you are old and good for nothing — or all that is good and noble in you will be lost. It will all be wasted on trifles. You are the only person I can talk to. Drawing rooms, gossip, balls, vanity, triviality — these are the enchanted circle I cannot escape from."

Pierre promised Andrei he would give up his wild friends, Anatole Kuragin and Dolokhov; and he went straight from Andrei's to Anatole's, where the young officers were drinking. That night Dolokhov, a Semyonov officer with clear blue eyes and a cold, insolent courage, wagered that he would drink a whole bottle of rum sitting on the outer ledge of a third-floor window, without holding on. He did it. A few days later the whole company, with a live bear, were in trouble with the police; Dolokhov was reduced to the ranks, Anatole was sent out of Petersburg, and Pierre was sent to Moscow.

In Moscow it was the name day of two Natalyas, mother and daughter, at the house of Count Ilya Rostov. The Rostovs were an old, kind, hospitable, extravagant family who were always in debt and always cheerful. The Count received his guests with the same words for everyone: "Charmed, delighted, ma chère." Into the drawing room, in the middle of the formal visits, burst the younger daughter, Natasha — thirteen years old, dark-eyed, wide-mouthed, not pretty but full of life — laughing and hiding her face in her mother's lace. With her came her cousin Sonya, a slim, quiet, dark girl who lived with the family and loved Nikolai, the eldest son, a frank, impetuous young man who was leaving the university to join the hussars; and little Petya, nine years old. Only the eldest daughter, Vera, cold and correct, was never quite at home in that warm house.

Among the guests was Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskaya, an old friend of the Countess, poor and persistent, who had come to Moscow to secure a place in the Guards for her son Boris, and to see whether the dying Count Bezukhov, Boris's godfather, would leave him anything. She went to the great house where the old Count lay, taking Pierre with her, for she had decided he must be at his father's bedside.

There, in the silent rooms full of doctors and priests, a struggle was going on. Prince Vasili, who was a relative of the old Count through his wife, and the eldest of the Count's nieces, had learned that the old man had written to the Emperor asking that Pierre be legitimised and made his heir. That letter and the will were in an inlaid portfolio under the Count's pillow. While Pierre sat bewildered by the bed of his dying father — a huge, magnificent old head on the pillow, one hand lying on the coverlet — the princess tried to carry the portfolio away, and Anna Mikhailovna, with a sweet and implacable face, held onto it. The two women tugged at it in the anteroom. And at that moment the door opened, and someone said that the Count was dead. The princess dropped the portfolio, and Anna Mikhailovna took it in to Prince Vasili with tears in her eyes. Pierre was Count Bezukhov now, and one of the richest men in Russia.

At Bald Hills, the estate of the old Prince Nikolai Bolkonsky, Andrei's father, life went by the clock. The old prince was a retired general-in-chief, banished to the country under the Emperor Paul and never recalled. He believed there were only two sources of human vice, idleness and superstition, and only two virtues, activity and intelligence. He taught his daughter, Princess Marya, algebra and geometry every morning, made her weep over the problems, and loved her in the only way he knew, by tormenting her. Princess Marya was plain, with large, deep, luminous eyes that redeemed her face. She read the Gospels and received pilgrims secretly, and her whole hope was in God.

Andrei brought his wife to Bald Hills, to leave her there while he went to the war. Before he left, Princess Marya hung round his neck a little silver icon of the Saviour. "Whatever you may think, do this for me. Promise me you will never take it off." He kissed her and promised, half laughing.

"Remember one thing, Prince Andrei," said his father as they parted. "If they kill you, it will hurt me, your old father." He paused. "But if I learn that you have not behaved like a son of Nikolai Bolkonsky, I shall be — ashamed!"

"You need not have said that to me, father," said his son, smiling.