War and peace ( Constance Garnett-1900)

‘Mon ami!’ said the mother in a voice of entreaty, again touching her son’s hand, as though the contact might soothe or rouse him. Boris said no more, but without taking off his overcoat, looked inquiringly at his mother.

‘My good man,’ Anna Mihalovna said ingratiatingly, addressing the hall-porter, ‘I know that Count Kirill Vladimirovitch is very ill . . . that is why I am here. ... I am a relation. ... I shall not disturb him, my good man. ... I need only see Prince Vassily Sergyevitch; he’s staying here, I know. Announce us, please.’

The hall-porter sullenly pulled the bell-rope that rang upstairs and turned away.

‘Princess Drubetskoy to see Prince Vassily Sergyevitch,’ he called to a footman in stockings, slippers and a frockcoat, who ran down from above, and looked down from the turn in the staircase.

The mother straightened out the folds of her dyed silk gown, looked at herself in the full-length Venetian looking-glass on the wall, and boldly walked up on the stair carpet in her shabby, shapeless shoes.

‘My dear, you promised me,’ she turned again to her son, rousing him by a touch on his arm. The son, with his eyes on the floor, walked submissively after her.

They went into a large room, from which a door led to the apartments that had been assigned to Prince Vassily.

At the moment when the mother and son reached the middle of the room and were about to ask their way of an old footman, who had darted out at their entrance, the bronze handle of one of the doors turned, and Prince Vassily, dressed in a house jacket of velvet, with one star, came out, accompanying a handsome, black-haired man. This man was the celebrated Petersburg doctor, Lorrain.

Tt is positive, then?’ said the Prince.

‘Prince, err are est humanum,’ answered the doctor, lisping, and pronouncing the Latin words with a French accent.

‘Very well, very well . . .’

Perceiving Anna Mihalovna and her son, Prince Vassily dismissed the doctor with a bow, and in silence, with an air of inquiry, advanced to meet them. The son noticed how an expression of intense grief came at once into his mother’s eyes, and he smiled slightly.

‘Yes, in what distressing circumstances we were destined to meet again, prince. . . . Tell me how is our dear patient?’ she said, apparently not observing the frigid, offensive glance that was fixed on her. Prince Vassily stared at her, then at Boris with a look ox inquiry that amounted to perplexity. Boris bowed politely. Prince Vassily, without acknowledging his bow, turned away to Anna Mihalovna, and to her question he replied by a movement of the head and lips, indicative of the worst fears for the patient.

‘Is it possible?’ cried Anna Mihalovna. ‘Ah, this is terrible! It is dreadful to think . . . This is my son,’ she added, indicating Boris. ‘Pie wanted to thank you in person.’

Boris once more made a polite bow.

‘Believe me, prince, a mother’s heart will never forget what you have done for us.’

‘I am glad I have been able to do you any service, my dear Anna Mihalovna,’ said Prince Vassily, pulling his lace frill straight, and in voice and manner manifesting here in Moscow, before Anna Mihalovna, who was under obligation to him, an even greater sense of his own dignity than in Petersburg at Anna Pavlovna’s soiree.

‘Try to do your duty in the service, and to be worthy of it,’ he added, turning severely to him.‘I am glad . . . you are here on leave?’he asked in his expressionless voice.

‘I am awaiting orders, your excellency, to join my new regiment,’ answered Boris, showing no sign either of resentment at the prince’s abrupt manner, nor of desire to get into conversation, but speaking with such respectful composure that the prince looked at him attentively.

‘You are living with your mother?’

‘I am living at Countess Rostov’s,’ said Boris, again adding: ‘your excellency.’

‘The Ilya Rostov, who married Natalie Shinshin,’ said Anna Mihal- ovna.

T know, I know,’ said Prince Vassily in his monotonous voice. ‘I have never been able to understand how Natalie Shinshin could make up her mind to marry that unlicked bear. A completely stupid and ridiculous person. And a gambler too, I am told.’

‘But a very worthy man, prince,’ observed Anna Mihalovna, with a pathetic smile, as though she too recognised that Count Rostov deserved this criticism, but begged him not to be too hard on the poor old fellow. ‘What do the doctors say?’ asked the princess, after a brief pause, and again the expression of deep distress reappeared on her tear-worn face.

‘There is little hope,’ said the prince.

‘And, I was so longing to thank uncle once more for all his kindness to me and to Boris. He is his godson,’ she added in a tone that suggested that Prince Vassily would be highly delighted to hear this fact.