ET: Almanac

Pierre was sitting opposite Dolohov and Nikolay Rostov. He ate greedily and drink heavily, as he always did. But those who knew him slightly could see that some great change was taking place in him that day. He was silent all through dinner, and blinking and screwing up his eyes, looked about him, or letting his eyes rest on something with an air of complete absent-mindedness, rubbed the bridge of his nose with his finger. His face was depressed and gloomy. He seemed not to be seeing or hearing what was passing about him and to be thinking of some one thing, something painful and unsettled.

This unsettled question that worried him was due to the hints dropped by the princess, his cousin, at Moscow in regard to Dolohov's close intimacy with his wife, and to an anonymous letter he had received that morning, which, with the vile jocoseness peculiar to all anonymous letters, had said that he didn't seem to see clearly through his spectacles, and that his wife's connection with Dolohov was a secret from no one but himself. Pierre did not absolutely believe either the princess's hints, or the anonymous letter, but he was afraid now to look at Dolohov, who sat opposite him. Every time his glance casually met Dolohov's handsome, insolent eyes, Pierre felt as though something awful, hideous was rising up in his soul, and he made haste to turn away. involuntarily recalling all his wife's past and her attitude to Dolohov, Pierre saw clearly that what was said in the letter might well be true, might at least appear to be the truth, if only it had not related to his wife. Pierre could not help recalling how Dolohov, who had been completely reinstated, had returned to Petersburg and come to see him. Dolohov had taken advantage of his friendly relations with Pierre in their old rowdy days, had come straight to his house, and Pierre had established him in it and lent him money. Pierre recalled how Ellen, smiling, had expressed her dissatisfaction at Dolohov's staying in their house, and how cynically Dolohov had praised his wife's beauty to him, and how he had never since left them up to the time of their coming to Moscow.

'Yes, he is very handsome,' thought Pierre, 'and I know him. There would be a particular charm for him in disgracing my name and turning me into ridicule, just because I have exerted myself in his behalf, have befriended him and helped him. I know, I understand what zest that would be sure to give his betrayal of me, if it were true. Yes, if it were true, but I don't believe it. I have no right to and I can't believe it.' He recalled the expression on Dolohov's face in his moments of cruelty, such as when he was tying the police officer to the bear and dropping him into the water, or when he had utterly without provocation challenged a man to a duel or killed a sledge-driver's horse with a shot from his pistol. That expression often came into Dolohov's face when he was looking at him. 'Yes, he's a dueling bully,' thought Pierre; 'to him it means nothing to kill a man, it must seem to him that every one's afraid of him. He must like him. He must think I am afraid of him. And, in fact, I really am afraid of him,' Pierre mused; and again at these thoughts he felt as though something terrible and hideous were rising up in his soul. Dolohov, Denisov, and Rostov were sitting facing Pierre and seemed to be greatly enjoying themselves. Rostov talked away merrily to his two friends, of whom one was a dashing hussar, the other a notorious duelist and scapegrace, and now and then cast ironical glances at Pierre and seemed to be greatly enjoying themselves. Rostov talked away merrily to his two friends, of whom one was a dashing hussar, the other a notorious duelist and scapegrace, and now and then cast ironical glances at Pierre, whose appearance at the dinner was a striking one, with his preoccupied, absentminded, massive figure. Rostov looked with disfavor upon Pierre. In the first place, because Pierre, in the eyes of the smart hussar, was a rich civilian, and husband of a beauty, was altogether, in fact, an old Oman. And secondly, because Pierre in his preoccupation and absent-mindedness had not recognized Rostov and had failed to respond to his bow. When they got up to drink the health of the Tsar, Pierre, plunged in thought, did not rise nor take up his glass.

'What are you about?' Rostov shouted to him, looking at him with enthusiastic an exasperated eyes. 'Don't you hear: the health of our sovereign the Emperor!'

Peter with a sigh obeyed, got up, emptied his glass, and waiting till all were seated again, he turned with his kindly smile to Rostov. 'Why, I didn't recognize you,' he said. But Rostov had no thoughts for him, he was shouting 'Hurrah!'

'Why don't you renew the acquaintance?' said Dolohov to Rostov.

'Oh, other him, he's a fool,' said Rostov.

'One has to be sweet to the husbands of pretty women,' said Denisov. Pierre did not hear what they were saying, but he knew they were talking of him. He flushed and turned away. 'Well, now to the health of pretty women,' said Dolohov, and with a serious expression, through a smile lurked in the corners of his mouth, he turned to Pierre.

'To the health of pretty women, Petrusha, and their lovers too,' he said.

Pierre, with downcast eyes, sipped his glass, w without looking at Dolohov or answering him. The footman, distributing copies of Kutuzov's cantata, laid a copy by Pierre, as one of the more honored guests. He would have taken it, but Dolohov bent forward, snatched the paper out of his hands and began reading it. Pierre glanced at Dolohov, and his eyes dropped; something terrible and hideous, that had been torturing him all through the dinner, rose up and took possession of him. He bent the whole of his ungainly person across the table. 'Don't you dare to take it!' he shouted.

Hearing that shout and seeing to whom it was addressed, Nesvitsky and his neighbor on the right side turned in haste and alarm to Bezuhov.

'Hush, hush, what are you about?' whispered panic-stricken voices. Dolohov looked at Pierre with his clear, mirthful, cruel eyes, still with the same smile, as though he were saying: 'Come now, this is what I like.'

'I won't give it up,' he said distinctly.

Pale and with quivering lips, Pierre snatched the copy.

'You . . . you . . . blackguard! . . . I challenge you,' he said, and moving back his chair, he got up from the table. At the second Pierre did this and uttered these words he felt that the question of his wife's guilt, that had been torturing him for the last four and twenty hours, was finally and incontestably answered in the affirmative. He hated her and was severed from her for ever. In spite of Denison's entreaties that Rostov would have nothing to do with the affair, Rostov agreed to be Dolohov's second, and after dinner he discussed with Nesvitsky, Bezuhov's second, the arrangements of the duel. Pierre had gone home, but Rostov its Dolohov and Denisov stayed on at the club listening to the gypsies and the singers till late in the evening.

So good-bye till to-morrow, at Sokolniky,' said Dolohov, as he parted from Rostov at the club steps.

'And do you feel quite calm?' asked Rostov.

Dolohov stopped.

'Well do you see, in a couple of words I'll let you into the whole secret of dwelling. If, when you go to a duel, you make your will and write long letters to your parents, if you think that you may be killed, you're a fool and certain to be done for. But go with the firm intention of killing your man, as quickly and as surely as may be, then everything will be all right. As our bear-killer from Kostroma used to say to me: 'A bear,' he'd say, 'why, who's not afraid of one? but come to see one, and your fear's all gone, all you hope is he won't get away!" Well, that's just how I feel. A demain, mon Cher.'

Next day at eight o'clock in the morning, Pierre and Nesvitsky reached the Sokoniky copse, and found Dolohov, Denisov, and Rostov already there. Pierre had the air of a man absorbed in reflections in no way connected with the matter in hand. His face looked hollow and yellow. He had not slept all night. He looked about him absent-mindedly, and screwed up his eyes, as though in glaring sunshine. He was exclusively absorbed by two considerations; the guilt of his wife, of which after a sleepless night he had not a vestige of doubt, and the guiltlessness of Dolohov, who was in no way bound to guard the honor of a man, who was nothing to him. 'Maybe I should have done the same in is place,' thought Pierre. 'For certain, indeed, I should have done the same; then why this duel, this murder? Either I shall kill him, or he will shoot me in the head, in the elbow, or the knee. To get away from here, to run, to bury myself somewhere,' was the longing that came into his mind. But precisely at the moments when such ideas were in his mind, he would turn with a peculiarly calm and unconcerned face, which inspired respect in the seconds looking at him, and ask: 'Will it be soon?' or 'Aren't we ready?'

When everything was ready, the swords stuck in the snow to mark the barrier, and the pistols loaded, Nesvitsky went up to Pierre.

'I should not be doing my duty, count' he said in a timid voice, 'nor justifying the confidence and the honor you have done me in choosing me for your second, if at this grave moment, this very grave moment, I did not speak the whole truth to you. I consider that the quarrel has not sufficient grounds and is not worth shedding blood over. . . . You were not right, not quite in the right; you out your temper. . . .'

'Oh, yes, it was awfully stupid,' said Pierre.

'Then allow me to express your regret, and I am convinced that our opponents will agree to accept your apology,' said Nesvitsky (who, like the others assisting in the affair, and every one at such affairs, was unable to believe that the quarrel would come to an actual duel). 'You know, count, it is far nobler to acknowledge one's mistake than to push things to the irrevocable. Therew as no great offense on either side. Permit me to convey . . .'

'No, what are you talking about?' said Pierre; 'it doesn't matter. . . . Ready then?' he added. 'Only tell me how and where I am to go, and what to shoot at?' he said with a smile unnaturally gentle. He took up a pistol, and began inquiring how to let it off, as he had never had a pistol in his hand before, a fact he did not care to confess. 'Oh, yes, of course, I know, I had only forgotten,' he said.

'No apologies, absolutely nothing,' Dolohov was saying to Denisov, who for his part was also making an attempt at reconciliation, and he too went up to the appointed spot.

The place chosen for the duel was some eighty paces from the road, on which their sledges had been left, in a small clearing in the pine wood, covered with snow that had thawed in the warmer weather of the last few days. The antagonists stood forty paces from each other at the further edge of the clearing. The seconds, in measuring the paces, left tracks in the deep, wet snow from the spot where they had been standing to the swords of Nesvitsky and Denisov, which had been thrust in the ground ten paces from one another to mark the barrier. The thaw and mist persisted; forty paces away nothing could be seen. In three minutes everything was ready, but still they delayed beginning. Every one was silent.

----

'Well, let us begin,' said Dolohov.

'To be sure,' said Pierre, still with the same smile.

A feeling of dread was in the air. It was obvious that the affair that had begun so lightly could not now be in any way turned back, that it was going forward of itself, independently of men's will, and must run its course. Denisov was the first to come forward to the barrier and pronounce the words:

'Since the antagonists refuse all reconciliation, would it not be as well to begin? Take your pistols, and at the word "three" begin to advance together. O . . . one! Two! Three! . . .' Denisov shouted angrily, and he walked away from the barrier. Both walked along the trodden tracks closer and closer together, beginning to recognize one another in the mist. The combatants had the right to fire when they chose as they approached the barrier. Dolohov walked slowly, not lifting his pistol, and looking intently with his clear, shining blue eyes into the face of his antagonist. His mouth wore, as always, the semblance of a smile.

'So when I like, I can fire,' said Pierre, and at the word three, he walked with rapid steps forward, straying off the beaten track and stepping over the untrodden snow. Pierre held his pistol at full length in his right hand, obviously afraid of killing himself with that pistol. His left arm he studiously held behind him, because he felt inclined to use it to support his right arm, and knew he that he was not allowed. After advancing six paces and getting off the track into the snow, Pierre looked about under his feet, glanced rapidly again at Dolohov, and stretching out his finger, as he had been shown, fired. Not at all expecting so loud a report, Pierre started at his own shot, then smiled at his own sensation and stood still. The smoke, which was made thicker by the fog, hindered him from seeing for the first moment; but the other shot that he was expecting did not follow. Al that could be heard was Doloho's rapid footsteps, and his figure came into view through the smoke. With one hand he was clutching at his left side, the other was clenched on the lower pistol. His face was pale. Rostov was running up and saying something to him.

'N . . . no,' Dolohov muttered through his teeth, 'no, it's not over'; and struggling on a few sinking, staggering steps up to the sword, he sank on to the snow beside it. His left hand was covered with blood, he rubbed it on his coat and leaned upon it. His face was pale, frowning and trembling.

'Co . . .' Dolohov began, but he could not at once articulate the words; 'come up' he said, with an effort. Pierre, hardly able to restrain his sobs, ran towards Dolohov, and would have crossed the space that separated the barriers, when Dolohov cried; 'To the barrier!' and Pierre, grasping what was wanted, stood still just a t the sword. Only ten paces divided them. Dolohov putting his head down, greedily bit at the snow, lifted his head again, sat up, tried to get on his legs and sat down, trying to find a secure centre of gravity. he took a mouthful of the cold snow, and sucked it; his lips quivered, but still he smiled; his eyes glittered with the strain and exasperation of the struggle with his failing forces. He raised the pistol and began taking aim.

'Sideways, don't expose yourself to the pistol,' said Nesvitsky.

'Don't face it!' Denisov could not help shouting, though it waste an antagonist.

With his gentle smile of sympathy and remorse, Pierre stood with his legs and arms straddling helplessly, and his broad chest directly facing Dolohov, and looked at him mournfully. Denisov, Rostov, and Nesvitskyscrewed up their eyes. At the same instant they heard a shot and Dolohov's wrathful cry.

'Missed!' shouted Dolohov, and he dropped helplessly, face downwards, in the snow. Pierre clutched at his head, and turning back, walked into the wood, off the path in the snow, muttering aloud incoherent words.

'Stupid . . . stupid! Death . . . lies . . .' he kept repeating, scowling. Nesvitsky stopped him and took him home.

Rostov and Denisov got the wounded Dolohov away.

Dolohov lay int he sledge with closed eyes, in silence, and uttered not a word in rpply to questions addressed to him. But as they were driving into Moscow, he suddenly came to himself, and lifting his head with an effort, he took the hand of Rostov, who was sitting near him. Rostov was struck by the utterly transformed and unexpectedly passionately tender expression on Dolohov's face.

'Well? How do you feel?' asked Rostov.

'Bad! but that's not the point. My friend,' said Dolohov, in a breaking voice, 'where are we? We are in Moscow, I know. I don't matter, but I have killed her, killed her. . . . She won't get over this. She can't bear . . .'

'Who?' asked Rostov.

'My mother. My mother, my angel, my adored angel, my mother,' and squeezing Rostov's hand, Dolohov burst into tears. When he was a little calmer, he explained to Rostov that he was living with his mother, that if his mother were to see him dying, she would not get over the shock. He besought Rostov to go to her and prepare her.

Rostov drove on ahead to carry out his wish, and to his immense astonishment he learned that Dolohov, this bully, this noted duelist Dolohov, lived at Moscow with his old mother and a hunchback sister, and was the tenderest son and brother.

----

Pierre had of late rarely see his wife alone. Both at Petersburg and at Moscow their house had been constantly full of guests. On the night following the duel he did not go to his bedroom, but spent the night, as he often did, in his huge study, formerly his father's room, the very room indeed in which Count Bezuhov had died.

He lay down on the couch and tried to go to sleep, so as to forget all that had happened to him, but he could not do so. Such a tempest of feelings, thoughts, and reminiscences suddenly arose in his soul, that, far from going to sleep, he could not even sit still in one place, and was forced to leap up from the couch and pace with rapid steps about the room. At one moment he had a vision of his wife, as she was in the first days after their marriage, with her bare shoulders, and languid, passionate eyes; and then immediately by her side he saw the handsome, impudent, hard and ironical face of Dolohov, as he had seen it at the banquet, and again the same face of Dolohov, pale, quivering, in agony; as it had been when he turned and sank in the snow.

'What has happened?' he asked himself; 'I have killed her lover; yes, killed the lover of my wife. Yes, that has happened. Why was it? How have I come to this? 'Because you married her,' answered an inner voice.

'But how am I to blame?' he asked. 'For marrying without loving her, for deceiving yourself and her.' And vividly he recalled that minute after supper at Prince Vassily's when he had said those words he found so difficult to utter; 'I love you.' 'It has all come from that. Even then I felt it,' he thought; 'I felt at the time that it wasn't the right thing, that I had no right to do it. And so it has turned out.' He recalled the honeymoon, and blushed at the recollection of it. Particularly vivid, humiliating and shameful was the memory of how one day soon after his marriage he had come in his silk dressing-gown out of his bedroom into his study at twelve o'clock in the day, and in his study had found his head steward, who had bowed deferentially, and looking at Pierre's face and his dressing gown, had faintly smiled, as though to express by that smile his respectful sympathy with his patron's happiness. 'And how often I have been proud of he, proud of her majestic beauty, her social tact,' he thought; 'proud of my house, in which she received all Petersburg, proud of her unapproachability and beauty. So this was what I prided myself on. I used to think then that I did not understand her. How often, reflecting on her character, I have told myself that I was to blame, that I did not understand her, did not understand that everlasting composure and complacency, and the absence of all preferences and desires, and the solution of the whole riddle lay in that fearful word, that she is a dissolute woman; I have found that fearful word, and all has become clear.

'Anatole used to come to borrow money of her, and used to kiss heron her bare shoulders. She didn't give him money; but she let herself be kissed. Her father sed to try in joke to rouse her jealousy; with a serene smile she used to say she was not fool enough to be jealous. Let him do as he likes, she used to say about me. I asked her once if she felt no symptoms of pregnancy. She laughed contemptuously, and said she was not such a fool as to want children, and that she would never have a child by me.'

Then he thought of the coarseness, the bluntness of her ideas, and the vulgarity of the expressions that were characteristic of her, although she had been brought up in the highest aristocratic circles. 'Not quite such a fool . . . you just try it on . . . you clear out of this,' she would say. Often, watching the favorable impression she made on young and old, on men and women, Pierre could not understand why it was he did not love her. 'Yes; I never loved her,' Pierre said to himself; 'I knew she was a dissolute woman,' he repeated to himself; 'but I did not dare own it to myself.

'And now Dolohov; there he sits in the snow and forces himself to smile; and dies with maybe some swaggering affectation on his lips in answer to my remorse.'

Pierre was one of those people who in spite of external weakness of character--so-called--do not seek a confidant for their sorrows. He worked through his trouble alone.

'She, she alone is to blame for everything,' he said to himself; 'but what of that? Why did I bind myself to her; why did I say to her that "I love you," which was a lie, and worse than a lie,' he said to himself; 'I am to blame, and out to bear . . . What? The disgrace to my name, the misery of my life? Oh, that's all rubbish,' he thought, 'disgrace to one's name and honor, all that's relative, all that's apart from myself.

'Louis XVI was executed because they said he was dishonorable and a criminal' (the idea crossed Pierre's mind), 'and they were right from their point of view just as those were right too who died a martyr's death for his sake, and canonized him as a saint. Then Robespierre was executed for being a tyrant. Who is right, who is wrong? No one. But live while you live, to-morrow you die, as I might have died an hour ago. And is it worth worrying oneself, when life is only one second in comparison with eternity?' But at the moment when he believed himself soothed by reflections of that sort, he suddenly had a vision of her, and of her at those moments when he had most violently expressed his most insincere love to her, and he felt a rush of blood to his heart, and had to jump up again, and move about and break and tear to pieces anything that his hands came across. 'Why did I say to her "I love you"? he kept repeating to himself. And as he repeated the question for the tenth time the saying of Moliére came into his head: 'But what the devil was he doing in the galley?' and he laughed at himself.

In the night he called for his valet and bade him pack up to go to Petersburg. He could not conceive how he was going to speak to her now. He resolved that next day he would go away, leaving her a letter, in which he would announce his intention of parting from her for ever.

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

He woke up and looked about him for a long while in alarm, unable to grasp where he was.

'The countess sent to inquire if your excellency were at home,' said the valet.

But before Pierre had time to make up his mind what answer he would send, the countess herself walked calmly and majestically into the room. She was wearing a white satin dressing-gown embroidered with silver, and had her hair in two immense coils wound like a coronet around her exquisite head. In spite of her calm, there was a wrathful line on her rather prominent, marble brow. With her accustomed self-control and composure she did not begin to speak till the valet had left the room. She knew of the duel and had come to talk of it. She waited till the valet had set the coffee and gone out. Pierre looked timidly at her over his spectacles, and as the hare, hemmed in by dogs, goes on lying with its ears back in sight of its foes, so he tried to go on reading. But he felt that this was senseless and impossible, and again he glanced timidly at her. She did not sit down, but stood looking at him with a disdainful smile, waiting for the valet to be gone.

'What's this about ow? What have you been up to? I'm asking you,' she said sternly.

'I? I? what?' said Pierre.

'You going in for deeds of valor! Now, answer me, what does this duel mean? What did you want to prove by it? Eh! I ask you the question.' Pierre turned heavily on the sofa, opened his mouth but could not answer.

'If you won't answer, I'll tell you . . .' Ellen went on. 'You believe everything you're told. You were told . . .' Ellen laughed, 'that Dolohov was my lover,' she said in French, with her coarse plainness of speech, uttering the word 'amant' like any other word, 'and you believed it! But what have you proved by this? What have you proved by this duel? That you're a fool; but every one knew that as it was. What does it lead to? Why, that I'm made a laughing-stock to all Moscow, that every one's saying that when you were drunk and didn't know what you were doing, you challenged a man of whom you were jealous without grounds,' Ellen raised her voice and grew more and more passionate; 'who's a better man than you in every respect. . . .'

'Hem . . . hem . . .' Pierre growled, wrinkling up his face, and neither looking at her nor stirring a muscle.

'And how came you to believe that he's my lover? . . . Eh? Because I like his society? If you were cleverer and more agreeable, I should prefer yours.'

'Don't speak to me . . . I beseech you,' Pierre muttered huskily.

'Why shouldn't I speak? I can speak as I like, and I tell you boldly that it's not many a wife who with a husband like you wouldn't have taken a lover, but I haven't done it,' she said. Pierre tried to say something, glanced at her with strange eyes, whose meaning she did not comprehend, and lay down again. He was in physical agony at that moment; he felt a weight on his chest so that he could not breathe. He knew that he must do something to put an end to this agony but what he wanted to do was too horrible.

'We had better part,' he articulated huskily.

'Part, by all means, only if you give me a fortune,' said Ellen. . . . 'Part--that's a threat to frighten me!'

Pierre leaped up from the couch and rushed staggering towards her.

'I'll kill you!' he shouted, and snatching up a marble slab from a table with a strength he had not known in himself till then, he made a step towards her and waved it at her.

Ellen's face was terrible to see; she shrieked and darted away from him. His father's nature showed itself in him. Pierre felt the abandonment and the fascination of frenzy. He flung down the slab, shivering it into fragments, and with open arms swooping down upon Ellen, screamed 'Go!' in a voice so terrible that they heard it all over the house with horror. God knows what Pierre would have done at that moment if Ellen had not run out of the room.



A week later Pierre had made over to his wife the revenue from all his estates in Great Russia, which made up the larger half of his property, and had gone away alone to Petersburg.




Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace



...and now a different translation

Pierre was sitting across from Dolokhov and Nikolai Rostov. He ate a lot and greedily, and drank a lot, as usual. But those who knew him intimately could see that some great change had taken place in him that day. He was silent all through dinner and, squinting and wincing, looked around him or, fixing his eyes with a completely absentminded air, rubbed the bridge of his nose with his finger. His face was dejected and gloomy. He seemed to see and hear nothing of what was going on around him and to be thinking of some one painful and unresolved thing.

Tis unreserved question that tormented him came from the hints of the young princess in Moscow at Dolokhov's intimacy with his wife, and from an anonymous letter he had received that morning, which said, with the mean jocularity of all anonymous letters, that he saw poorly through his through his spectacles and that his wife's liaison with Dolokhov was a secret to no one but him. Pierre decidedly did not believe either the princess's hints or the letter, but it was scary to him now to look at Dolokhov, who was sitting in front of him. Each time his gaze chanced to meet Dolokhov's handsome, insolent eyes, Pierre felt something terrible and ugly rise up in his soul, and he quickly turned away. Involuntarily recalling all his wife's past and her relations with Dolokho, Pierre saw clearly that what was said in the letter might be true, might at least seem true, if it had not concerned his wife. Pierre involuntarily recalled how Dolokhov, to whom everything had been restored after the campaign, had returned to Petersburg and come to see him. Using his relations of carousing friendship with Pierre, Dolokhov had come straight to his houses and Pierre had put him up and lent him money. Pierre recalled how Hélène, smiling, had expressed her displeasure at Dolokhov's living in their house, and how Dolokhov had cynically praised his wife's beauty to him, and how from then until they came to Moscow, he had not parted from them for a minute.

"Yes, he's very handsome," thought Pierre, "I know him. For him there would be a special charm in disgracing my name and laughing at me, precisely because I solicited for him, took him in, and helped him. I know, I understand what salt it would give his deceit in his own eyes, if it were true. Yes, if it were true; but I don't believe it, I have no right to and cannot believe it." He recalled the expression Dolokhov's face assumed in moments when cruelty came over him, as when he tied the policeman to the bear and threw him into the water, or when he challenged a man to a duel for no reason, or killed a cabby's horse with a pistol. That expression as often on Dolokhov's face when he looked at him. "Yes, he's a duelist," thought Pierre, "to kill a man is nothing to him he must think everybody's afraid of him, it must make him feel good, He must think I'm afraid of him. And, in fact, I'm afraid of him,' thought Pierre, and again, at these thoughts, he felt something frightful and ugly rise up in his soul. Dolokhov, Denisov, and Rostov now sat facing Pierre and seemed very merry. Rostov talked merrily with his two friends, one of whom was a dashing hussar, the other a notorious duelist and scapegrace, and from time to time glanced mockingly at Pierre, who stood out at this dinner because of his concentrated, absentminded, massive figure. Rostov looked at Pierre unkindly, first, because in his hussar's eyes Pierre was a rich civilian, the husband of a beauty, and generally an old woman; second, because Pierre, in his concentrated and absentminded mood, had not recognized Rostov and had not responded to his bow. When they drank to the sovereign's health, Pierre, being deep in thought, did not rise or take his glass.

"What's with you?" Rostov shouted, looking at him with rapturously spiteful eyes. "Don't you hear: to the health of the sovereign emperor!" Pierre sighed, rose obediently, drank his glass, and, waiting for everyone to sit down, turned to Rostov with his kindly smile.

"And I just didn't recognize you," he said. But Rostov could not be bothered, he was shouting "Hurrah!"

"Why don't you renew your acquaintance?" Dolokhov said to Rostov.

"He's a fool, God help him," said Rostov.

"We must cherish the husbands of pretty women," said Denisov.

Pierre did not hear what they were saying, but hew knew it was about him. He blushed and turned away.

"Well, now to the health of beautiful women," said Dolokhov, and with a serious expression, but with a smile at the corners of his mouth, he turned to Pierre, glass in hand. "To the health of beautiful women, Petrusha, and of their lovers," he said.

Pierre, his eyes lowered, drank from his glass without looking at Dolokhov or answering him. The servant who was handing out Kutuzov's cantata laid a sheet before Pierre, as one of the more honored guests. Pierre was about to pick it up, but Dolokhov leaned across, snatched it from his hand, and began to read it. Pierre looked at Dolokhov, the pupils of his eyes sank: the something terrible and ugly that had sickened him during dinner rose up and took possession of him. He leaned his entire corpulent body across the table.

"Don't you dare take it!" he cried.

Hearing this cry and seeing to whom it was addressed, Nesvitsky and Pierre's neighbor on the right turned fearfully and hastily to Bezukhov.

"Enough, enough, what's wrong?" frightened voices whispered. Dolokhov looked at Pierre with his light, merry cruel eyes, and with the same smile, as if saying"Ah, this is what I like."

"I won't give it to you," he said distinctly.

Pale, his lip trembling, Pierre tore at the page.

"You . . . you . . . are a scoundrel! . . . I challenge you!" he said and, having moved his chair back, he got up from the table. The very second he did so and uttered those words, he felt that the question of his wife's guilt, which had tormented him all that past day, was definitively and indubitably resolved in the affirmative. He hated her and was severed from her forever. In spite of Denisov's pleas that Rostov not get involved in the affair, Rostov agreed to be Dolokhov's second, and after dinner talked over the conditions of the duel with Nesvitsky, Bezukhov's second. Pierre went home, and Rostov sat in the club with Dolokhov and Denisov till late in the evening, listening to the Gypsies and the singers.

"So, till tomorrow in Sokolniki," said Dolokhov, taking leave of Rostov on the porch of the club.

"And you're calm?" asked Rostov.

Dolokhov stopped.

"Look, I'll reveal to you in two words the whole secret of a duel. If you're going to a duel, and you write your will and tender letters to your parents, if you think you may be killed, you're a fool and are certainly lost; you should go with the firm intention of killing him as quickly and certainly as possible; then everything's in good order, as our bear hunter in Kostroma used to say. 'How can you not be afraid of a bear?' he'd say. 'But once you see him, your fear goes away, except of letting him escape. Well, that's how I am. A domain, mon Cher."

The next day, at eight o'clock in the morning, Pierre and Nesvitsky arrived at the Sokolniki woods and found Dolokhov, Denisov, and Rostov already there. Pierre had the look of a man occupied with some considerations of no concern to the present affair. His pinched face was yellow. He obviously had not slept that night. He looked around absentmindedly and winced as if from the bright sun. Two considerations occupied him exclusively: the guilt of his wife, of which, after the sleepless night, not the least doubt remained; and the innocence of Dolokhov, who had no reason whatever to preserve the honor of a man who was a stranger to him. "Maybe I would have done the same thing in his place," thought Pierre. "I even certainly would have done the same thing. Why this duel, this murder? Either I'll kill him, or he'll hit me in the head, in the elbow, in the knee. Leave here, run away, bury myself somewhere," came to his head. But precisely in the moments when such thoughts came to him, he, with that especially calm and absentminded air, which inspired respect in those who looked at him, would ask: "Will it be soon, are we ready?"

When everything was ready, the swords stuck in the snow to mark the barrier to which they had to walk, and the pistols loaded, Nesvitsky came over to Pierre.

"I would not be fulfilling my duty, Count," he said in a timid voice, "and would not justify the trust and honor you have shown me by choosing me as your second, if I did not tell you the whole truth at this important, this very important, moment. I think this affair has no sufficient grounds and is not worth shedding blood over . . . You were wrong, you lost your temper . . ."

"Ah, yes, terribly stupid . . ." said Pierre.

"Then allow me to convey your regrets, and I'm certain that our adversaries will agree to accept your apology," said Nesvitsky (like the other participants in the affair, and like everyone in similar affairs, not believing that things would go so far as an actual duel). "You know, Count, it's much more noble to acknowledge your mistake than to bring the matter to a point beyond repair . . . There was no offense on either side. Allow me to talk it over . . ."

"No, what is there to talk about!" said Pierre. "It makes no difference . . . So, are we ready?" he added. "Only tell me, where am I to go and where am I to shoot?" he said with an unnaturally meek smile. He took the pistol in his hands and began asking how to pull the trigger, because until then he had never handled a pistol, something he did not want to admit. "Ah, yes, like that, I know, I just forgot," he said.

"No apologies, decidedly nothing," Dolokhov replied to Denisov, who for his part also made an attempt at reconciliation, and he also walked to the designated place.

The place chosen for the duel was some eighty paces off the road, where the sleighs had been left, in a small clearing int he pine woods, covered with snow wet from the thaw that had set in over the last few days. The adversaries stood some forty paces from each other, at the edges of the clearing. Nesvitsky and Denisov, measuring out the paces, left tracks imprinted in the deep, wet snow from the places where they were standing to their swords, marking the barrier and stuck into the ground ten paces apart. The thaw and the fog persisted; at a distance of forty paces they could not see each other clearly. In three minutes all was ready, and still they were slow to begin. Everyone was silent.