Lights, camera, Tom Cruise!

Book One: 1805. Chapter I

"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 and you are no longer my friend, no longer my 'faithful
slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened
you- sit down and tell me all the news."

It was in July, 1805,
and the speaker was the well-known Anna Pavlovna Scherer, maid of honor
and favorite of the Empress Marya Fedorovna. With these words she
greeted Prince Vasili Kuragin, a man of high rank and importance, who
was the first to arrive at her reception. Anna Pavlovna had had a cough
for some days. She was, as she said, suffering from la grippe; grippe
being then a new word in St. Petersburg, used only by the elite.

All her invitations without exception, written in French, and delivered
by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning, ran as follows:


"If you have nothing better to do, Count [or Prince], and if the
prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too terrible,
I shall be very charmed to see you tonight between 7 and 10- Annette
Scherer."

"Heavens! what a virulent attack!" replied the
prince, not in the least disconcerted by this reception. He had just
entered, wearing an embroidered court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes,
and had stars on his breast and a serene expression on his flat face.
He spoke in that refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke
but thought, and with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a
man of importance who had grown old in society and at court. He went up
to Anna Pavlovna, kissed her hand, presenting to her his bald, scented,
and shining head, and complacently seated himself on the sofa.


"First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are. Set your friend's mind
at rest," said he without altering his tone, beneath the politeness and
affected sympathy of which indifference and even irony could be
discerned.

"Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be
calm in times like these if one has any feeling?" said Anna Pavlovna.
"You are staying the whole evening, I hope?"

"And the fete at
the English ambassador's? Today is Wednesday. I must put in an
appearance there," said the prince. "My daughter is coming for me to
take me there."

"I thought today's fete had been canceled. I
confess all these festivities and fireworks are becoming wearisome."

"If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment would have
been put off," said the prince, who, like a wound-up clock, by force of
habit said things he did not even wish to be believed.

"Don't
tease! Well, and what has been decided about Novosiltsev's dispatch? You
know everything."

"What can one say about it?" replied the
prince in a cold, listless tone. "What has been decided? They have
decided that Buonaparte has burnt his boats, and I believe that we are
ready to burn ours."

Prince Vasili always spoke languidly, like
an actor repeating a stale part. Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the contrary,
despite her forty years, overflowed with animation and impulsiveness.
To be an enthusiast had become her social vocation and, sometimes even
when she did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to
disappoint the expectations of those who knew her. The subdued smile
which, though it did not suit her faded features, always played round
her lips expressed, as in a spoiled child, a continual consciousness of
her charming defect, which she neither wished, nor could, nor considered
it necessary, to correct.

In the midst of a conversation on
political matters Anna Pavlovna burst out:

"Oh, don't speak to
me of Austria. Perhaps I don't understand things, but Austria never has
wished, and does not wish, for war. She is betraying us! Russia alone
must save Europe. Our gracious sovereign recognizes his high vocation
and will be true to it. That is the one thing I have faith in! Our good
and wonderful sovereign has to perform the noblest role on earth, and he
is so virtuous and noble that God will not forsake him. He will fulfill
his vocation and crush the hydra of revolution, which has become more
terrible than ever in the person of this murderer and villain! We alone
must avenge the blood of the just one.... Whom, I ask you, can we rely
on?... England with her commercial spirit will not and cannot understand
the Emperor Alexander's loftiness of soul. She has refused to evacuate
Malta. She wanted to find, and still seeks, some secret motive in our
actions. What answer did Novosiltsev get? None. The English have not
understood and cannot understand the self-abnegation of our Emperor who
wants nothing for himself, but only desires the good of mankind. And
what have they promised? Nothing! And what little they have promised
they will not perform! Prussia has always declared that Buonaparte is
invincible, and that all Europe is powerless before him.... And I don't
believe a word that Hardenburg says, or Haugwitz either. This famous
Prussian neutrality is just a trap. I have faith only in God and the
lofty destiny of our adored monarch. He will save Europe!"

She
suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity.

"I think,"
said the prince with a smile, "that if you had been sent instead of our
dear Wintzingerode you would have captured the King of Prussia's consent
by assault. You are so eloquent. Will you give me a cup of tea?"

"In a moment. A propos," she added, becoming calm again, "I am
expecting two very interesting men tonight, le Vicomte de Mortemart, who
is connected with the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of the best
French families. He is one of the genuine emigres, the good ones. And
also the Abbe Morio. Do you know that profound thinker? He has been
received by the Emperor. Had you heard?"

"I shall be delighted
to meet them," said the prince. "But tell me," he added with studied
carelessness as if it had only just occurred to him, though the question
he was about to ask was the chief motive of his visit, "is it true that
the Dowager Empress wants Baron Funke to be appointed first secretary
at Vienna? The baron by all accounts is a poor creature."


Prince Vasili wished to obtain this post for his son, but others were
trying through the Dowager Empress Marya Fedorovna to secure it for the
baron.

Anna Pavlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that
neither she nor anyone else had a right to criticize what the Empress
desired or was pleased with.

"Baron Funke has been recommended
to the Dowager Empress by her sister," was all she said, in a dry and
mournful tone.

As she named the Empress, Anna Pavlovna's face
suddenly assumed an expression of profound and sincere devotion and
respect mingled with sadness, and this occurred every time she mentioned
her illustrious patroness. She added that Her Majesty had deigned to
show Baron Funke beaucoup d'estime, and again her face clouded over with
sadness.

The prince was silent and looked indifferent. But,
with the womanly and courtierlike quickness and tact habitual to her,
Anna Pavlovna wished both to rebuke him (for daring to speak he had done
of a man recommended to the Empress) and at the same time to console
him, so she said:

"Now about your family. Do you know that
since your daughter came out everyone has been enraptured by her? They
say she is amazingly beautiful."

The prince bowed to signify
his respect and gratitude.

"I often think," she continued after
a short pause, drawing nearer to the prince and smiling amiably at him
as if to show that political and social topics were ended and the time
had come for intimate conversation- "I often think how unfairly
sometimes the joys of life are distributed. Why has fate given you two
such splendid children? I don't speak of Anatole, your youngest. I don't
like him," she added in a tone admitting of no rejoinder and raising
her eyebrows. "Two such charming children. And really you appreciate
them less than anyone, and so you don't deserve to have them."


And she smiled her ecstatic smile.

"I can't help it," said the
prince. "Lavater would have said I lack the bump of paternity."

"Don't joke; I mean to have a serious talk with you. Do you know I am
dissatisfied with your younger son? Between ourselves" (and her face
assumed its melancholy expression), "he was mentioned at Her Majesty's
and you were pitied...."

The prince answered nothing, but she
looked at him significantly, awaiting a reply. He frowned.


"What would you have me do?" he said at last. "You know I did all a
father could for their education, and they have both turned out fools.
Hippolyte is at least a quiet fool, but Anatole is an active one. That
is the only difference between them." He said this smiling in a way more
natural and animated than usual, so that the wrinkles round his mouth
very clearly revealed something unexpectedly coarse and unpleasant.

"And why are children born to such men as you? If you were not a father
there would be nothing I could reproach you with," said Anna Pavlovna,
looking up pensively.

"I am your faithful slave and to you
alone I can confess that my children are the bane of my life. It is the
cross I have to bear. That is how I explain it to myself. It can't be
helped!"

He said no more, but expressed his resignation to
cruel fate by a gesture. Anna Pavlovna meditated.

"Have you
never thought of marrying your prodigal son Anatole?" she asked. "They
say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and though I don't feel that
weakness in myself as yet,I know a little person who is very unhappy
with her father. She is a relation of yours, Princess Mary Bolkonskaya."


Prince Vasili did not reply, though, with the quickness of
memory and perception befitting a man of the world, he indicated by a
movement of the head that he was considering this information.


"Do you know," he said at last, evidently unable to check the sad
current of his thoughts, "that Anatole is costing me forty thousand
rubles a year? And," he went on after a pause, "what will it be in five
years, if he goes on like this?" Presently he added: "That's what we
fathers have to put up with.... Is this princess of yours rich?"

"Her father is very rich and stingy. He lives in the country. He is the
well-known Prince Bolkonski who had to retire from the army under the
late Emperor, and was nicknamed 'the King of Prussia.' He is very clever
but eccentric, and a bore. The poor girl is very unhappy. She has a
brother; I think you know him, he married Lise Meinen lately. He is an
aide-de-camp of Kutuzov's and will be here tonight."

"Listen,
dear Annette," said the prince, suddenly taking Anna Pavlovna's hand and
for some reason drawing it downwards. "Arrange that affair for me and I
shall always be your most devoted slave- slafe wigh an f, as a village
elder of mine writes in his reports. She is rich and of good family and
that's all I want."

And with the familiarity and easy grace
peculiar to him, he raised the maid of honor's hand to his lips, kissed
it, and swung it to and fro as he lay back in his armchair, looking in
another direction.

"Attendez," said Anna Pavlovna, reflecting,
"I'll speak to Lise, young Bolkonski's wife, this very evening, and
perhaps the thing can be arranged. It shall be on your family's behalf
that I'll start my apprenticeship as old maid."