P.S. Let me have news of your brother and his charming little
wife.
The princess pondered awhile with a thoughtful smile and her
luminous eyes lit up so that her face was entirely transformed. Then she
suddenly rose and with her heavy tread went up to the table. She took a sheet
of paper and her hand moved rapidly over it. This is the reply she
wrote, also in French:
Dear and precious Friend, Your letter of the
13th has given me great delight. So you still love me, my romantic Julie?
Separation, of which you say so much that is bad, does not seem to have had
its usual effect on you. You complain of our separation. What then should I
say, if I dared complain, I who am deprived of all who are dear to me? Ah, if
we had not religion to console us life would be very sad. Why do
you suppose that I should look severely on your affection for that
young man? On such matters I am only severe with myself. I understand
such feelings in others, and if never having felt them I cannot approve
of them, neither do I condemn them. Only it seems to me that
Christian love, love of one's neighbor, love of one's enemy, is worthier,
sweeter, and better than the feelings which the beautiful eyes of a young man
can inspire in a romantic and loving young girl like yourself.
The
news of Count Bezukhov's death reached us before your letter and my father
was much affected by it. He says the count was the last representative but
one of the great century, and that it is his own turn now, but that he will
do all he can to let his turn come as late as possible. God preserve us from
that terrible misfortune!
I cannot agree with you about Pierre, whom I
knew as a child. He always seemed to me to have an excellent heart, and that
is the quality I value most in people. As to his inheritance and the part
played by Prince Vasili, it is very sad for both. Ah, my dear friend, our
divine Saviour's words, that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye
of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, are
terribly true. I pity Prince Vasili but am still more sorry for Pierre. So
young, and burdened with such riches--to what temptations he will be
exposed! If I were asked what I desire most on earth, it would be to be
poorer than the poorest beggar. A thousand thanks, dear friend, for the
volume you have sent me and which has such success in Moscow. Yet since
you tell me that among some good things it contains others which our
weak human understanding cannot grasp, it seems to me rather useless to
spend time in reading what is unintelligible and can therefore bear no
fruit. I never could understand the fondness some people have for
confusing their minds by dwelling on mystical books that merely awaken
their doubts and excite their imagination, giving them a bent for
exaggeration quite contrary to Christian simplicity. Let us rather read the
Epistles and Gospels. Let us not seek to penetrate what mysteries they
contain; for how can we, miserable sinners that we are, know the terrible
and holy secrets of Providence while we remain in this flesh which forms
an impenetrable veil between us and the Eternal? Let us rather
confine ourselves to studying those sublime rules which our divine Saviour
has left for our guidance here below. Let us try to conform to them
and follow them, and let us be persuaded that the less we let our
feeble human minds roam, the better we shall please God, who rejects
all knowledge that does not come from Him; and the less we seek to
fathom what He has been pleased to conceal from us, the sooner will
He vouchsafe its revelation to us through His divine Spirit.
My father
has not spoken to me of a suitor, but has only told me that he has received a
letter and is expecting a visit from Prince Vasili. In regard to this project
of marriage for me, I will tell you, dear sweet friend, that I look on
marriage as a divine institution to which we must conform. However painful it
may be to me, should the Almighty lay the duties of wife and mother upon me I
shall try to perform them as faithfully as I can, without disquieting myself
by examining my feelings toward him whom He may give me for husband.
I
have had a letter from my brother, who announces his speedy arrival at Bald
Hills with his wife. This pleasure will be but a brief one, however, for he
will leave us again to take part in this unhappy war into which we have been
drawn, God knows how or why. Not only where you are--at the heart of affairs
and of the world--is the talk all of war, even here amid fieldwork and the
calm of nature--which townsfolk consider characteristic of the
country--rumors of war are heard and painfully felt. My father talks of
nothing but marches and countermarches, things of which I understand nothing;
and the day before yesterday during my daily walk through the village I
witnessed a heartrending scene.... It was a convoy of conscripts enrolled
from our people and starting to join the army. You should have seen the state
of the mothers, wives, and children of the men who were going and
should have heard the sobs. It seems as though mankind has forgotten the
laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached love and forgiveness of
injuries-- and that men attribute the greatest merit to skill in killing
one another.
Adieu, dear and kind friend; may our divine Saviour and
His most Holy Mother keep you in their holy and all-powerful
care!
MARY
"Ah, you are sending off a letter, Princess? I have
already dispatched mine. I have written to my poor mother," said the smiling
Mademoiselle Bourienne rapidly, in her pleasant mellow tones and with
guttural r's. She brought into Princess Mary's strenuous, mournful, and
gloomy world a quite different atmosphere, careless, lighthearted, and
self-satisfied.
"Princess, I must warn you," she added, lowering her
voice and evidently listening to herself with pleasure, and speaking with
exaggerated grasseyement, "the prince has been scolding Michael Ivanovich. He
is in a very bad humor, very morose. Be prepared."
"Ah, dear friend,"
replied Princess Mary, "I have asked you never to warn me of the humor my
father is in. I do not allow myself to judge him and would not have others do
so."
The princess glanced at her watch and, seeing that she was five
minutes late in starting her practice on the clavichord, went into the
sitting room with a look of alarm. Between twelve and two o'clock, as the
day was mapped out, the prince rested and the princess played
the clavichord.
CHAPTER XXVI
The gray-haired valet
was sitting drowsily listening to the snoring of the prince, who was in his
large study. From the far side of the house through the closed doors came the
sound of difficult passages--twenty times repeated--of a sonata by
Dussek.
Just then a closed carriage and another with a hood drove up to
the porch. Prince Andrew got out of the carriage, helped his little wife
to alight, and let her pass into the house before him. Old Tikhon,
wearing a wig, put his head out of the door of the antechamber, reported in
a whisper that the prince was sleeping, and hastily closed the
door. Tikhon knew that neither the son's arrival nor any other unusual
event must be allowed to disturb the appointed order of the day. Prince
Andrew apparently knew this as well as Tikhon; he looked at his watch as if
to ascertain whether his father's habits had changed since he was at
home last, and, having assured himself that they had not, he turned to
his wife.
"He will get up in twenty minutes. Let us go across to
Mary's room," he said.
The little princess had grown stouter during
this time, but her eyes and her short, downy, smiling lip lifted when she
began to speak just as merrily and prettily as ever.
"Why, this is a
palace!" she said to her husband, looking around with the expression with
which people compliment their host at a ball. "Let's come, quick, quick!" And
with a glance round, she smiled at Tikhon, at her husband, and at the footman
who accompanied them.
"Is that Mary practicing? Let's go quietly and take
her by surprise."
Prince Andrew followed her with a courteous but sad
expression.
"You've grown older, Tikhon," he said in passing to the old
man, who kissed his hand.
Before they reached the room from which the
sounds of the clavichord came, the pretty, fair haired Frenchwoman,
Mademoiselle Bourienne, rushed out apparently beside herself with
delight.
"Ah! what joy for the princess!" exclaimed she: "At last! I must
let her know."
"No, no, please not... You are Mademoiselle Bourienne,"
said the little princess, kissing her. "I know you already through my
sister-in-law's friendship for you. She was not expecting us?"
They
went up to the door of the sitting room from which came the sound of the
oft-repeated passage of the sonata. Prince Andrew stopped and made a grimace,
as if expecting something unpleasant.
The little princess entered the
room. The passage broke off in the middle, a cry was heard, then Princess
Mary's heavy tread and the sound of kissing. When Prince Andrew went in the
two princesses, who had only met once before for a short time at his wedding,
were in each other's arms warmly pressing their lips to whatever place they
happened to touch. Mademoiselle Bourienne stood near them pressing her hand
to her heart, with a beatific smile and obviously equally ready to cry or
to laugh. Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders and frowned, as lovers
of music do when they hear a false note. The two women let go of
one another, and then, as if afraid of being too late, seized each
other's hands, kissing them and pulling them away, and again began kissing
each other on the face, and then to Prince Andrew's surprise both began
to cry and kissed again. Mademoiselle Bourienne also began to cry.
Prince Andrew evidently felt ill at ease, but to the two women it seemed
quite natural that they should cry, and apparently it never entered
their heads that it could have been otherwise at this meeting.
"Ah! my
dear!... Ah! Mary!" they suddenly exclaimed, and then laughed. "I dreamed
last night..."--"You were not expecting us?..." "Ah! Mary, you have got
thinner?..." "And you have grown stouter!..."
"I knew the princess at
once," put in Mademoiselle Bourienne.
"And I had no idea!..." exclaimed
Princess Mary. "Ah, Andrew, I did not see you."
Prince Andrew and his
sister, hand in hand, kissed one another, and he told her she was still the
same crybaby as ever. Princess Mary had turned toward her brother, and
through her tears the loving, warm, gentle look of her large luminous eyes,
very beautiful at that moment, rested on Prince Andrew's face.
The
little princess talked incessantly, her short, downy upper lip continually
and rapidly touching her rosy nether lip when necessary and drawing up again
next moment when her face broke into a smile of glittering teeth and
sparkling eyes. She told of an accident they had had on the Spasski Hill
which might have been serious for her in her condition, and immediately after
that informed them that she had left all her clothes in Petersburg and that
heaven knew what she would have to dress in here; and that Andrew had quite
changed, and that Kitty Odyntsova had married an old man, and that there was
a suitor for Mary, a real one, but that they would talk of that later.
Princess Mary was still looking silently at her brother and her beautiful
eyes were full of love and sadness. It was plain that she was following a
train of thought independent of her sister-in-law's words. In the midst of
a description of the last Petersburg fete she addressed her
brother:
"So you are really going to the war, Andrew?" she said
sighing.
Lise sighed too.
"Yes, and even tomorrow," replied her
brother.
"He is leaving me here, God knows why, when he might have
had promotion..."
Princess Mary did not listen to the end, but
continuing her train of thought turned to her sister-in-law with a tender
glance at her figure.
"Is it certain?" she said.
The face of the
little princess changed. She sighed and said: "Yes, quite certain. Ah! it is
very dreadful..."
Her lip descended. She brought her face close to her
sister-in-law's and unexpectedly again began to cry.
"She needs rest,"
said Prince Andrew with a frown. "Don't you, Lise? Take her to your room and
I'll go to Father. How is he? Just the same?"
"Yes, just the same. Though
I don't know what your opinion will be," answered the princess
joyfully.
"And are the hours the same? And the walks in the avenues? And
the lathe?" asked Prince Andrew with a scarcely perceptible smile
which showed that, in spite of all his love and respect for his father, he
was aware of his weaknesses.
"The hours are the same, and the lathe,
and also the mathematics and my geometry lessons," said Princess Mary
gleefully, as if her lessons in geometry were among the greatest delights of
her life.
When the twenty minutes had elapsed and the time had come for
the old prince to get up, Tikhon came to call the young prince to his
father. The old man made a departure from his usual routine in honor of
his son's arrival: he gave orders to admit him to his apartments while
he dressed for dinner. The old prince always dressed in
old-fashioned style, wearing an antique coat and powdered hair; and when
Prince Andrew entered his father's dressing room (not with the contemptuous
look and manner he wore in drawing rooms, but with the animated face with
which he talked to Pierre), the old man was sitting on a large
leather-covered chair, wrapped in a powdering mantle, entrusting his head to
Tikhon.
"Ah! here's the warrior! Wants to vanquish Buonaparte?" said the
old man, shaking his powdered head as much as the tail, which Tikhon
was holding fast to plait, would allow.
"You at least must tackle him
properly, or else if he goes on like this he'll soon have us, too, for his
subjects! How are you?" And he held out his cheek.
The old man was in
a good temper after his nap before dinner. (He used to say that a nap "after
dinner was silver--before dinner, golden.") He cast happy, sidelong glances
at his son from under his thick, bushy eyebrows. Prince Andrew went up and
kissed his father on the spot indicated to him. He made no reply on his
father's favorite topic-- making fun of the military men of the day, and more
particularly of Bonaparte.
"Yes, Father, I have come to you and
brought my wife who is pregnant," said Prince Andrew, following every
movement of his father's face with an eager and respectful look. "How is your
health?"
"Only fools and rakes fall ill, my boy. You know me: I am busy
from morning till night and abstemious, so of course I am
well."
"Thank God," said his son smiling.
"God has nothing to do
with it! Well, go on," he continued, returning to his hobby; "tell me how the
Germans have taught you to fight Bonaparte by this new science you call
'strategy.'"
Prince Andrew smiled.
"Give me time to collect my
wits, Father," said he, with a smile that showed that his father's foibles
did not prevent his son from loving and honoring him. "Why, I have not yet
had time to settle down!"
"Nonsense, nonsense!" cried the old man,
shaking his pigtail to see whether it was firmly plaited, and grasping his by
the hand. "The house for your wife is ready. Princess Mary will take her
there and show her over, and they'll talk nineteen to the dozen. That's their
woman's way! I am glad to have her. Sit down and talk. About Mikhelson's army
I understand--Tolstoy's too... a simultaneous expedition.... But
what's the southern army to do? Prussia is neutral... I know that. What
about Austria?" said he, rising from his chair and pacing up and down the
room followed by Tikhon, who ran after him, handing him different articles
of clothing. "What of Sweden? How will they cross Pomerania?"
Prince
Andrew, seeing that his father insisted, began--at first reluctantly, but
gradually with more and more animation, and from habit changing unconsciously
from Russian to French as he went on--to explain the plan of operation for
the coming campaign. He explained how an army, ninety thousand strong, was to
threaten Prussia so as to bring her out of her neutrality and draw her into
the war; how part of that army was to join some Swedish forces at Stralsund;
how two hundred and twenty thousand Austrians, with a hundred thousand
Russians, were to operate in Italy and on the Rhine; how fifty thousand
Russians and as many English were to land at Naples, and how a total force of
five hundred thousand men was to attack the French from different sides. The
old prince did not evince the least interest during this explanation, but as
if he were not listening to it continued to dress while walking about, and
three times unexpectedly interrupted. Once he stopped it by shouting:
"The white one, the white one!"
This meant that Tikhon was not handing
him the waistcoat he wanted. Another time he interrupted, saying:
"And
will she soon be confined?" and shaking his head reproachfully said: "That's
bad! Go on, go on."
The third interruption came when Prince Andrew was
finishing his description. The old man began to sing, in the cracked voice of
old age: "Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre. Dieu sait quand reviendra."
*
* "Marlborough is going to the wars; God knows when he'll
return."
His son only smiled.
"I don't say it's a plan I approve
of," said the son; "I am only telling you what it is. Napoleon has also
formed his plan by now, not worse than this one."
"Well, you've told
me nothing new," and the old man repeated, meditatively and
rapidly:
"Dieu sait quand reviendra. Go to the dining
room."
CHAPTER XXVII
At the appointed hour the prince,
powdered and shaven, entered the dining room where his daughter-in-law,
Princess Mary, and Mademoiselle Bourienne were already awaiting him together
with his architect, who by a strange caprice of his employer's was admitted
to table though the position of that insignificant individual was such as
could certainly not have caused him to expect that honor. The prince, who
generally kept very strictly to social distinctions and rarely admitted even
important government officials to his table, had unexpectedly selected
Michael Ivanovich (who always went into a corner to blow his nose on his
checked handkerchief) to illustrate the theory that all men are equals, and
had more than once impressed on his daughter that Michael Ivanovich was
"not a whit worse than you or I." At dinner the prince usually spoke to
the taciturn Michael Ivanovich more often than to anyone else.
In the
dining room, which like all the rooms in the house was exceedingly lofty, the
members of the household and the footmen--one behind each chair--stood
waiting for the prince to enter. The head butler, napkin on arm, was scanning
the setting of the table, making signs to the footmen, and anxiously glancing
from the clock to the door by which the prince was to enter. Prince Andrew
was looking at a large gilt frame, new to him, containing the genealogical
tree of the Princes Bolkonski, opposite which hung another such frame with a
badly painted portrait (evidently by the hand of the artist belonging to the
estate) of a ruling prince, in a crown--an alleged descendant of Rurik
and ancestor of the Bolkonskis. Prince Andrew, looking again at
that genealogical tree, shook his head, laughing as a man laughs who looks
at a portrait so characteristic of the original as to be amusing.
"How
thoroughly like him that is!" he said to Princess Mary, who had come up to
him.
Princess Mary looked at her brother in surprise. She did not
understand what he was laughing at. Everything her father did inspired her
with reverence and was beyond question.
"Everyone has his Achilles'
heel," continued Prince Andrew. "Fancy, with his powerful mind, indulging in
such nonsense!"
Princess Mary could not understand the boldness of her
brother's criticism and was about to reply, when the expected footsteps were
heard coming from the study. The prince walked in quickly and jauntily as
was his wont, as if intentionally contrasting the briskness of his
manners with the strict formality of his house. At that moment the great
clock struck two and another with a shrill tone joined in from the
drawing room. The prince stood still; his lively glittering eyes from
under their thick, bushy eyebrows sternly scanned all present and rested
on the little princess. She felt, as courtiers do when the Tsar enters,
the sensation of fear and respect which the old man inspired in all
around him. He stroked her hair and then patted her awkwardly on the back
of her neck.
"I'm glad, glad, to see you," he said, looking
attentively into her eyes, and then quickly went to his place and sat down.
"Sit down, sit down! Sit down, Michael Ianovich!"
He indicated a place
beside him to his daughter-in-law. A footman moved the chair for
her.
"Ho, ho!" said the old man, casting his eyes on her rounded
figure. "You've been in a hurry. That's bad!"
He laughed in his usual
dry, cold, unpleasant way, with his lips only and not with his
eyes.
"You must walk, walk as much as possible, as much as possible," he
said.
The little princess did not, or did not wish to, hear his words.
She was silent and seemed confused. The prince asked her about her father,
and she began to smile and talk. He asked about mutual acquaintances,
and she became still more animated and chattered away giving him
greetings from various people and retelling the town gossip.
"Countess
Apraksina, poor thing, has lost her husband and she has cried her eyes out,"
she said, growing more and more lively.
As she became animated the prince
looked at her more and more sternly, and suddenly, as if he had studied her
sufficiently and had formed a definite idea of her, he turned away and
addressed Michael Ivanovich.
"Well, Michael Ivanovich, our Bonaparte will
be having a bad time of it. Prince Andrew" (he always spoke thus of his son)
"has been telling me what forces are being collected against him! While you
and I never thought much of him."
Michael Ivanovich did not at all
know when "you and I" had said such things about Bonaparte, but understanding
that he was wanted as a peg on which to hang the prince's favorite topic, he
looked inquiringly at the young prince, wondering what would
follow.
"He is a great tactician!" said the prince to his son, pointing
to the architect.
And the conversation again turned on the war, on
Bonaparte, and the generals and statesmen of the day. The old prince seemed
convinced not only that all the men of the day were mere babies who did not
know the A B C of war or of politics, and that Bonaparte was an
insignificant little Frenchy, successful only because there were no longer
any Potemkins or Suvorovs left to oppose him; but he was also convinced
that there were no political difficulties in Europe and no real war, but
only a sort of puppet show at which the men of the day were
playing, pretending to do something real. Prince Andrew gaily bore with
his father's ridicule of the new men, and drew him on and listened to
him with evident pleasure.
"The past always seems good," said he, "but
did not Suvorov himself fall into a trap Moreau set him, and from which he
did not know how to escape?"
"Who told you that? Who?" cried the
prince. "Suvorov!" And he jerked away his plate, which Tikhon briskly caught.
"Suvorov!... Consider, Prince Andrew. Two... Frederick and Suvorov;
Moreau!... Moreau would have been a prisoner if Suvorov had had a free hand;
but he had the Hofs-kriegs-wurst-schnapps-Rath on his hands. It would have
puzzled the devil himself! When you get there you'll find out what those
Hofs- kriegs-wurst-Raths are! Suvorov couldn't manage them so what chance
has Michael Kutuzov? No, my dear boy," he continued, "you and your
generals won't get on against Buonaparte; you'll have to call in the French,
so that birds of a feather may fight together. The German, Pahlen, has
been sent to New York in America, to fetch the Frenchman, Moreau," he
said, alluding to the invitation made that year to Moreau to enter the
Russian service.... "Wonderful!... Were the Potemkins, Suvorovs, and
Orlovs Germans? No, lad, either you fellows have all lost your wits, or I
have outlived mine. May God help you, but we'll see what will
happen. Buonaparte has become a great commander among them! Hm!..."
"I
don't at all say that all the plans are good," said Prince Andrew, "I am only
surprised at your opinion of Bonaparte. You may laugh as much as you like,
but all the same Bonaparte is a great general!"
"Michael Ivanovich!"
cried the old prince to the architect who, busy with his roast meat, hoped he
had been forgotten: "Didn't I tell you Buonaparte was a great tactician?
Here, he says the same thing."
"To be sure, your excellency," replied the
architect.
The prince again laughed his frigid laugh.
"Buonaparte
was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He has got splendid soldiers.
Besides he began by attacking Germans. And only idlers have failed to beat
the Germans. Since the world began everybody has beaten the Germans. They
beat no one--except one another. He made his reputation fighting
them."
And the prince began explaining all the blunders which, according
to him, Bonaparte had made in his campaigns and even in politics. His
son made no rejoinder, but it was evident that whatever arguments
were presented he was as little able as his father to change his opinion.
He listened, refraining from a reply, and involuntarily wondered how
this old man, living alone in the country for so many years, could know
and discuss so minutely and acutely all the recent European military
and political events.
"You think I'm an old man and don't understand
the present state of affairs?" concluded his father. "But it troubles me. I
don't sleep at night. Come now, where has this great commander of yours shown
his skill?" he concluded.
"That would take too long to tell," answered
the son.
"Well, then go to your Buonaparte! Mademoiselle Bourienne,
here's another admirer of that powder-monkey emperor of yours," he exclaimed
in excellent French.
"You know, Prince, I am not a
Bonapartist!"
"Dieu sait quand reviendra..." hummed the prince out of
tune and, with a laugh still more so, he quitted the table.
The little
princess during the whole discussion and the rest of the dinner sat silent,
glancing with a frightened look now at her father-in- law and now at Princess
Mary. When they left the table she took her sister-in-law's arm and drew her
into another room.
"What a clever man your father is," said she; "perhaps
that is why I am afraid of him."
"Oh, he is so kind!" answered
Princess Mary.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Prince Andrew was to
leave next evening. The old prince, not altering his routine, retired as
usual after dinner. The little princess was in her sister-in-law's room.
Prince Andrew in a traveling coat without epaulettes had been packing with
his valet in the rooms assigned to him. After inspecting the carriage himself
and seeing the trunks put in, he ordered the horses to be harnessed. Only
those things he always kept with him remained in his room; a small box, a
large canteen fitted with silver plate, two Turkish pistols and a saber--a
present from his father who had brought it from the siege of Ochakov. All
these traveling effects of Prince Andrew's were in very good order: new,
clean, and in cloth covers carefully tied with tapes.
When starting on
a journey or changing their mode of life, men capable of reflection are
generally in a serious frame of mind. At such moments one reviews the past
and plans for the future. Prince Andrew's face looked very thoughtful and
tender. With his hands behind him he paced briskly from corner to corner of
the room, looking straight before him and thoughtfully shaking his head. Did
he fear going to the war, or was he sad at leaving his wife?--perhaps both,
but evidently he did not wish to be seen in that mood, for hearing footsteps
in the passage he hurriedly unclasped his hands, stopped at a table as if
tying the cover of the small box, and assumed his usual tranquil and
impenetrable expression. It was the heavy tread of Princess Mary that he
heard.
"I hear you have given orders to harness," she cried, panting (she
had apparently been running), "and I did so wish to have another talk
with you alone! God knows how long we may again be parted. You are not
angry with me for coming? You have changed so, Andrusha," she added, as if
to explain such a question.
She smiled as she uttered his pet name,
"Andrusha." It was obviously strange to her to think that this stern handsome
man should be Andrusha- -the slender mischievous boy who had been her
playfellow in childhood.
"And where is Lise?" he asked, answering her
question only by a smile.
"She was so tired that she has fallen asleep on
the sofa in my room. Oh, Andrew! What a treasure of a wife you have," said
she, sitting down on the sofa, facing her brother. "She is quite a child:
such a dear, merry child. I have grown so fond of her."
Prince Andrew
was silent, but the princess noticed the ironical and contemptuous look that
showed itself on his face.
"One must be indulgent to little weaknesses;
who is free from them, Andrew? Don't forget that she has grown up and been
educated in society, and so her position now is not a rosy one. We should
enter into everyone's situation. Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner. *
Think what it must be for her, poor thing, after what she has been used to,
to be parted from her husband and be left alone in the country, in
her condition! It's very hard."
* To understand all is to forgive
all.
Prince Andrew smiled as he looked at his sister, as we smile at
those we think we thoroughly understand.
"You live in the country and
don't think the life terrible," he replied.
"I... that's different. Why
speak of me? I don't want any other life, and can't, for I know no other. But
think, Andrew: for a young society woman to be buried in the country during
the best years of her life, all alone--for Papa is always busy, and I...
well, you know what poor resources I have for entertaining a woman used to
the best society. There is only Mademoiselle
Bourienne...." |
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