Anna Mikhailovna’s face expressed an awareness that the decisive moment had come; with the manner of a business-like Petersburg lady, she entered the room still more boldly than in the morning, not letting Pierre stray from her. She felt that, since she was bringing with her the person whom the dying man wished to see, her reception was assured. With a quick glance around, taking in everyone who was in the room and noticing the count’s father confessor, not really bending down, but suddenly making herself smaller, at a quick amble, glided over to the father confessor and respectfully received a blessing first from the one, then from the other clerical person.
“Thank God we’re in time,” she said to the clerical person. “We, his relations, were all so afraid. This young man is the count’s son,” she added in a lower voice. “A terrible moment!”
Having spoken these words, she went over to the doctor.
“Cher docteur,” she said to him, “ce jeune homme est le fils du comte…y a-t-il de l’espoir?”*130
The doctor was silent, raising his eyes and shoulders with a quick movement. Anna Mikhailovna, with exactly the same movement, raised her shoulders and eyes, almost closing them, sighed, and walked away from the doctor towards Pierre. She addressed Pierre with special respectfulness and tender sorrow.
“Ayez confiance en sa miséricorde!”†131 she said to him and, pointing to a little settee on which he could sit and wait for her, made inaudibly for the door that everyone was looking at, and, following the barely audible noise of that door, disappeared behind it.
Pierre, having decided to obey his guide in all things, made for the little settee she had pointed out to him. As soon as Anna Mikhailovna disappeared, he noticed that the eyes of everyone in the room turned to him with something more than curiosity and sympathy. He noticed that they all exchanged whispers, indicating him with their eyes, as if with fear and even obsequiousness. He was being shown a respect no one had ever shown him before: a lady unknown to him, who had been talking with the clerical persons, got up from her place and offered him a seat; the adjutant picked up a glove Pierre had dropped and handed it to him; the doctors fell deferentially silent when he walked past them and stepped aside to make way for him. Pierre first wanted to sit somewhere else, so as not to inconvenience the lady, wanted to pick up the glove himself, and to bypass the doctors, who were not standing in his way; but he suddenly felt that that would be improper, he felt that that night he was the person responsible for performing some terrible rite which everyone expected, and that he therefore had to accept services from them all. He silently accepted the glove from the adjutant, sat down in the lady’s place, putting his big hands on his symmetrically displayed knees in the naïve pose of an Egyptian statue, and decided to himself that this was precisely as it had to be and that that evening, so as not to lose his head and do something foolish, he ought not to act according to his own reasoning, but give himself up entirely to the will of those who were guiding him.
Two minutes had not gone by before Prince Vassily, in his kaftan with three stars, holding his head high, majestically entered the room. He seemed to have grown thinner since morning; his eyes were larger than usual as he looked around and saw Pierre. He went over to him, took his hand (something he had never done before), and pulled it down, as if testing whether it was well attached.
“Courage, courage, mon ami. Il a demandé de vous voir. C’est bien…”*132 And he was about to leave.
But Pierre considered it necessary to ask:
“How is the health of…” He hesitated, not knowing whether it was proper to call the dying man “count” yet he was embarrassed to call him “father.”
“Il a eu encore un coup, il y a une demi-heure.†133 Yet another stroke. Courage, mon ami…”
Pierre was in such a state of mental confusion that, at the word “stroke,” he pictured some sort of blow to the body. He looked at Prince Vassily in perplexity, and only then realized that “stroke” referred to an illness. Prince Vassily spoke several words to Lorrain in passing and went through the door on tiptoe. He did not know how to walk on tiptoe, and his whole body bobbed up and down awkwardly. The elder princess went in after him, then the clerical persons and the acolytes went in, then the servants also went through the door. Behind the door movement was heard, and finally, with the same face, pale but firm in the fulfillment of her duty, Anna Mikhailovna rushed out and, touching Pierre’s arm, said:
“La bonté divine est inépuisable. C’est la cérémonie de l’extrême onction qui va commencer. Venez.”‡134
Pierre went through the door, stepping on the soft carpet, and noticed that the adjutant and the unknown lady, and some other servants—all came in after him, as if there was no longer any need to ask permission to enter that room.
XX
Pierre knew well that big room, divided by columns and an archway, all hung with Persian carpets. The part of the room behind the columns, where on one side stood a high mahogany bed under a silk canopy and on the other an enormous stand with icons, was brightly lit with red light, as is usual in churches during evening services. Under the shining casings of the icons stood a long Voltaire armchair, and on the chair, its upper part spread with snow-white, unrumpled, apparently just-changed pillows, covered to the waist with a bright green coverlet, lay the majestic figure, so familiar to Pierre, of his father, Count Bezukhov, with the same mane of gray hair, reminiscent of a lion’s, above his broad forehead, and the same characteristically noble, deep furrows on his handsome reddish-yellow face. He lay directly under the icons; his two large, fat arms were freed of the coverlet and lay on top of it. In his right hand, which lay palm down, a wax candle had been placed between the thumb and the index finger, held in place by an old servant who reached from behind the armchair. Over the armchair stood the clerical persons in their majestic, shining vestments, their long hair spread loose on them, lighted candles in their hands, performing the service with slow solemnity. A little behind them stood the two younger princesses, holding handkerchiefs to their eyes, and in front of them the elder princess, Catiche, with a spiteful and resolute air, not taking her eyes off the icons for a moment, as if telling everyone that she would not answer for herself if she glanced back. Anna Mikhailovna, meek sorrow and all-forgiveness on her face, and the unknown lady stood by the door. Prince Vassily stood on the other side of the door, close to the armchair, behind a velvet-upholstered chair with its carved back turned to him, resting his elbow on it, holding a candle in his left hand, crossing himself with the right, raising his eyes each time he put the fingers to his forehead. His face expressed calm piety and submission to the will of God. “If you don’t understand these feelings, the worse for you,” his face seemed to say.
Behind him stood the adjutant, the doctors, and the male servants; the men and women were separated as in church. All were silent, crossing themselves, only the church reading could be heard, the restrained bass singing, and, in moments of silence, sighing and the shuffling of feet. Anna Mikhailovna, with a significant air which showed that she knew what she was doing, went all the way across the room to give Pierre a candle. He lit it and, diverted by observing the others, began to cross himself with the same hand in which he was holding the candle.