“He is deserting me here, and Heaven knows why, when he might have had promotion …” Princess Marya did not listen to the end, but following her own train of thought, she turned to her sister-in-law, letting her affectionate eyes rest on her waist.
“Is it really true？” she said.
The face of her sister-in-law changed. She sighed.
“Yes, it’s true,” she said. “Oh！ It’s very dreadful …”
Liza’s lip drooped. She put her face close to her sister-in-law’s face, and again she unexpectedly began to cry.
“She needs rest,” said Prince Andrey, frowning. “Don’t you, Liza？ Take her to your room, while I go to father. How is he—just the same？”
“The same, just the same; I don’t know what you will think,” Princess Marya answered joyfully.
“And the same hours, and the walks about the avenues, and the lathe？” asked Prince Andrey with a scarcely perceptible smile, showing that, in spite of all his love and respect for his father, he recognised his weaknesses.
“The same hours and the lathe, mathematics too, and my geometry lessons,” Princess Marya answered gaily, as though those lessons were one of the most delightful events of her life.
When the twenty minutes had elapsed, and the time for the old prince to get up had come, Tihon came to call the young man to his father. The old man made a departure from his ordinary routine in honour of his son’s arrival. He directed that he should be admitted into his apartments during his time for dressing, before dinner. The old prince used to wear the old-fashioned dress, the kaftan and powder. And when Prince Andrey—not with the disdainful face and manners with which he walked into drawing-rooms, but with the eager face with which he had talked to Pierre—went in to his father’s room, the old gentleman was in his dressing-room sitting in a roomy morocco chair in a peignoir, with his head in the hands of Tihon.
“Ah！ the warrior！ So you want to fight Bonaparte？” said the old man, shaking his powdered head as far as his plaited tail, which was in Tihon’s hands, would permit him.
“Mind you look sharp after him, at any rate, or he’ll soon be putting us on the list of his subjects. How are you？”
And he held out his cheek to him.
The old gentleman was in excellent humour after his nap before dinner. （He used to say that sleep after dinner was silver, but before dinner it was golden.） He took delighted, sidelong glances at his son from under his thick, overhanging brows. Prince Andrey went up and kissed his father on the spot indicated for him. He made no reply on his father’s favourite topic—jesting banter at the military men of the period, and particularly at Bonaparte.
“Yes, I have come to you, father, bringing a wife with child,” said Prince Andrey, with eager and reverential eyes watching every movement of his father’s face. “How is your health？”
“None but fools, my lad, and profligates are unwell, and you know me; busy from morning till night and temperate, so of course I’m well.”
“Thank God,” said his son, smiling.
“God’s not much to do with the matter. Come, tell me,” the old man went on, going back to his favourite hobby, “how have the Germans trained you to fight with Bonaparte on their new scientific method—strategy as they call it？”
Prince Andrey smiled.
“Give me time to recover myself, father,” he said, with a smile that showed that his father’s failings did not prevent his respecting and loving him. “Why, I have only just got here.”
“Nonsense, nonsense,” cried the old man, shaking his tail to try whether it were tightly plaited, and taking his son by the hand. “The house is ready for your wife. Marie will look after her and show her everything, and talk nineteen to the dozen with her too. That’s their feminine way. I’m glad to have her. Sit down, talk to me. Mihelson’s army, I understand, Tolstoy’s too … a simultaneous expedition … but what’s the army of the South going to do？ Prussia, her neutrality … I know all that. What of Austria？” he said, getting up from his chair and walking about the room, with Tihon running after him, giving him various articles of his apparel. “What about Sweden？ How will they cross Pomerania？”
Prince Andrey, seeing the urgency of his father’s questions, began explaining the plan of operations of the proposed campaign, speaking at first reluctantly, but becoming more interested as he went on, and unconsciously from habit passing from Russian into French. He told him how an army of ninety thousand troops was to threaten Prussia so as to drive her out of her neutrality and draw her into the war, how part of these troops were to join the Swedish troops at Strahlsund, how two hundred and twenty thousand Austrians were to combine with a hundred thousand Russians in Italy and on the Rhine, and how fifty thousand Russians and fifty thousand English troops were to meet at Naples, and how the army, forming a total of five hundred thousand, was to attack the French on different sides at once. The old prince did not manifest the slightest interest in what he told him. He went on dressing, as he walked about, apparently not listening, and three times he unexpectedly interrupted him. Once he stopped him and shouted： “the white one！ the white one！”
This meant that Tihon had not given him the waistcoat he wanted. Another time, he stood still, asked： “And will she be confined soon？” and shook his head reproachfully： “That’s bad！ Go on, go on.”
The third time was when Prince Andrey was just finishing his description. The old man hummed in French, in his falsetto old voice： “Malbrook goes off to battle, God knows when he’ll come back.”
His son only smiled.
“I don’t say that this is a plan I approve of,” he said; “I’m only telling you what it is. Napoleon has made a plan by now as good as this one.”
“Well, you have told me nothing new.” And thoughtfully the old man repeated, speaking quickly to himself： “God knows when he’ll come back. Go into the dining-room.”