WHILE IN THE ROSTOVS' HALL they were dancing the sixth anglaise, while the weary orchestra played wrong notes, and the tired footmen and cooks were getting the supper, Count Bezuhov had just had his sixth stroke. The doctors declared that there was no hope of recovery; the sick man received absolution and the sacrament while unconscious. Preparations were being made for administering extreme unction, and the house was full of the bustle and thrill of suspense usual at such moments. Outside the house undertakers were crowding beyond the gates, trying to escape the notice of the carriages that drove up, but eagerly anticipating a good order for the count's funeral. The governor of Moscow, who had been constantly sending his adjutants to inquire after the count's condition, came himself that evening to say good-bye to the renowned grandee of Catherine's court, Count Bezuhov.
The magnificent reception-room was full. Every one stood up respectfully when the governor, after being half an hour alone with the sick man, came out of the sick-room. Bestowing scanty recognition on the bows with which he was received, he tried to escape as quickly as possible from the gaze of the doctors, ecclesiastical personages, and relations. Prince Vassily, who had grown paler and thinner during the last few days, escorted the governor out, and softly repeated something to him several times over.
After seeing the governor, Prince Vassily sat down on a chair in the hall alone, crossing one leg high over the other, leaning his elbow on his knee, and covering his eyes with his hand. After sitting so for some time he got up, and with steps more hurried than his wont, he crossed the long corridor, looking round him with frightened eyes, and went to the back part of the house to the apartments of the eldest princess.
The persons he had left in the dimly lighted reception-room, next to the sick-room, talked in broken whispers among themselves, pausing, and looking round with eyes full of suspense and inquiry whenever the door that led into the dying man's room creaked as some one went in or came out.
“Man's limitation,” said a little man, an ecclesiastic of some sort, to a lady, who was sitting near him listening na?vely to his words—“his limitation is fixed, there is no overstepping it.”
“I wonder if it won't be late for extreme unction?” inquired the lady, using his clerical title, and apparently having no opinion of her own on the matter.
“It is a great mystery, ma'am,” answered the clerk, passing his hands over his bald head, on which lay a few tresses of carefully combed, half grey hair.
“Who was that? was it the governor himself?” they were asking at the other end of the room. “What a young-looking man!”
“And he's over sixty!. … What, do they say, the count does not know any one? Do they mean to give extreme unction?”
“I knew a man who received extreme unction seven times.”
The second princess came out of the sick-room with tearful eyes, and sat down beside Doctor Lorrain, who was sitting in a graceful pose under the portrait of Catherine, with his elbow on the table.
“Very fine,” said the doctor in reply to a question about the weather; “very fine, princess, and besides, at Moscow, one might suppose oneself in the country.”
“Might one not?” said the princess, sighing. “So may he have something to drink?” Lorrain thought a moment.
“He has taken his medicine?”
“Yes.”
The doctor looked at his memoranda.
“Take a glass of boiled water and put in a pinch” (he showed with his delicate fingers what was meant by a pinch) “of cream of tartar.”
“There has never been a case,” said the German doctor to the adjutant, speaking broken Russian, “of recovery after having a third stroke.”
“And what a vigorous man he was!” said the adjutant. “And to whom will his great wealth go?” he added in a whisper.
“Candidates will be found,” the German replied, smiling. Every one looked round again at the door; it creaked, and the second princess having made the drink according to Lorrain's direction, carried it into the sick-room. The German doctor went up to Lorrain.
“Can it drag on till to-morrow morning?” asked the German, with a vile French accent.
Lorrain, with compressed lips and a stern face, moved his finger before his nose to express a negative.
“To-night, not later,” he said softly, and with a decorous smile of satisfaction at being able to understand and to express the exact position of the sick man, he walked away.
Meanwhile Prince Vassily had opened the door of the princess's room.
It was half dark in the room; there were only two lamps burning before the holy pictures, and there was a sweet perfume of incense and flowers. The whole room was furnished with miniature furniture, little sideboards, small bookcases, and small tables. Behind a screen could be seen the white coverings of a high feather-bed. A little dog barked.
“Ah, is that you, mon cousin?”
She got up and smoothed her hair, which was always, even now, so extraordinarily smooth that it seemed as though made out of one piece with her head and covered with varnish.
“Has anything happened?” she asked. “I am in continual dread.”
“Nothing, everything is unchanged. I have only come to have a little talk with you, Katish, about business,” said the prince, sitting down wearily in the low chair from which she had just risen. “How warm it is here, though,” he said. “Come, sit here; let us talk.”
“I wondered whether anything had happened,” said the princess, and with her stonily severe expression unchanged, she sat down opposite the prince, preparing herself to listen. “I have been trying to get some sleep, mon cousin, but I can't.”
“Well, my dear?” said Prince Vassily, taking the princess's hand, and bending it downwards as his habit was.
It was plain that this “well?” referred to much that they both comprehended without mentioning it in words.
The princess, with her spare, upright figure, so disproportionately long in the body, looked straight at the prince with no sign of emotion in her prominent grey eyes. She shook her head, and sighing looked towards the holy pictures. Her gesture might have been interpreted as an expression of grief and devotion, or as an expression of weariness and the hope of a speedy release. Prince Vassily took it as an expression of weariness.
“And do you suppose it's any easier for me?” he said. “I am as worn out as a post horse. I must have a little talk with you, Katish, and a very serious one.”
Prince Vassily paused. and his cheeks began twitching nervously, first on one side, then on the other, giving his face an unpleasant expression such as was never seen on his countenance when he was in drawing-rooms. His eyes, too, were different from usual: at one moment they stared with a sort of insolent jocoseness, at the next they looked round furtively.
The princess, pulling her dog on her lap with her thin, dry hands, gazed intently at the eyes of Prince Vassily, but it was evident that she would not break the silence, if she had to sit silent till morning.
“You see, my dear princess and cousin, Katerina Semyonovna,” pursued Prince Vassily, obviously with some inner conflict bracing himself to go on with what he wanted to say, “at such moments as the present, one has to think of everything. One must think of the future, of you … I care for all of you as if you were my own children; you know that.”
The princess looked at him with the same dull immovable gaze.
“Finally, we have to think of my family too,” continued Prince Vassily, angrily pushing away a little table and not looking at her: “you know, Katish, that you three Mamontov sisters and my wife,—we are the only direct heirs of the count. I know, I know how painful it is for you to speak and think of such things. And it's as hard for me; but, my dear, I am a man over fifty, I must be ready for ............