After a few words to Pierre about the awful roads from the Polish frontier, about people he had met in Switzerland who knew Pierre, and about M. Dessalles, whom he had brought from abroad to be his son's tutor, Prince Andrew again joined warmly in the conversation about Speranski which was still going on between the two old men.
'If there were treason, or proofs of secret relations with Napoleon, they would have been made public,' he said with warmth and haste. 'I do not, and never did, like Speranski personally, but I like justice!'
Pierre now recognized in his friend a need with which he was only too familiar, to get excited and to have arguments about extraneous matters in order to stifle thoughts that were too oppressive and too intimate. When Prince Meshcherski had left, Prince Andrew took Pierre's arm and asked him into the room that had been assigned him. A bed had been made up there, and some open portmanteaus and trunks stood about. Prince Andrew went to one and took out a small casket, from which he drew a packet wrapped in paper. He did it all silently and very quickly. He stood up and coughed. His face was gloomy and his lips compressed.
'Forgive me for troubling you...'
Pierre saw that Prince Andrew was going to speak of Natasha, and his broad face expressed pity and sympathy. This expression irritated Prince Andrew, and in a determined, ringing, and unpleasant tone he continued:
'I have received a refusal from Countess Rostova and have heard reports of your brother-in-law having sought her hand, or something of that kind. Is that true?'
'Both true and untrue,' Pierre began; but Prince Andrew interrupted him.
'Here are her letters and her portrait,' said he.
He took the packet from the table and handed it to Pierre.
'Give this to the countess... if you see her.'
'She is very ill,' said Pierre.
'Then she is here still?' said Prince Andrew. 'And Prince Kuragin?' he added quickly.
'He left long ago. She has been at death's door.'
'I much regret her illness,' said Prince Andrew; and he smiled like his father, coldly, maliciously, and unpleasantly.
'So Monsieur Kuragin has not honored Countess Rostova with his hand?' said Prince Andrew, and he snorted several times.
'He could not marry, for he was married already,' said Pierre.
Prince Andrew laughed disagreeably, again reminding one of his father.
'And where is your brother-in-law now, if I may ask?' he said.
'He has gone to Peters... But I don't know,' said Pierre.
'Well, it doesn't matter,' said Prince Andrew. 'Tell Countess Rostova that she was and is perfectly free and that I wish her all that is good.'
Pierre took the packet. Prince Andrew, as if trying to remember whether he had something more to say, or waiting to see if Pierre would say anything, looked fixedly at him.
'I say, do you remember our discussion in Petersburg?' asked Pierre, 'about...'
'Yes,' returned Prince Andrew hastily. 'I said that a fallen woman should be forgiven, but I didn't say I could forgive her. I can't.'
'But can this be compared...?' said Pierre.
Prince Andrew interrupted him and cried sharply: 'Yes, ask her hand again, be magnanimous, and so on?... Yes, that would be very noble, but I am unable to follow in that gentleman's footsteps. If you wish to be my friend never speak to me of that... of all that! Well, good-by. So you'll give her the packet?'
Pierre left the room and went to the old prince and Princess Mary.
The old man seemed livelier than usual. Princess Mary was the same as always, but beneath her sympathy for her brother, Pierre noticed her satisfaction that the engagement had been broken off. Looking at them Pierre realized what contempt and animosity they all felt for the Rostovs, and that it was impossible in their presence even to mention the name of her who could give up Prince Andrew for anyone else.
At dinner the talk turned on the war, the approach of which was becoming evident. Prince Andrew talked incessantly, arguing now with his father, now with the Swiss tutor Dessalles, and showing an unnatural animation, the cause of which Pierre so well understood.
CHAPTER XXII
That same evening Pierre went to the Rostovs' to fulfill the commission entrusted to him. Natasha was in bed, the count at the Club, and Pierre, after giving the letters to Sonya, went to Marya Dmitrievna who was interested to know how Prince Andrew had taken the news. Ten minutes later Sonya came to Marya Dmitrievna.
'Natasha insists on seeing Count Peter Kirilovich,' said she.
'But how? Are we to take him up to her? The room there has not been tidied up.'
'No, she has dressed and gone into the drawing room,' said Sonya.
Marya Dmitrievna only shrugged her shoulders.
'When will her mother come? She has worried me to death! Now mind, don't tell her everything!' said she to Pierre. 'One hasn't the heart to scold her, she is so much to be pitied, so much to be pitied.'
