danilo_art

"Young ladies, married and unmarried, liked him because without making love to any of them, he was equally amiable to all, especially after supper. 'Il est charmant; il n'a pas de sexe [He is charming; he has no sex],' they said of him. Pierre was one of those retired gentleman-in-waiting of whom there were hundreds good-humoredly ending their days in Moscow. How horrified he would have been seven years before, when he first arrived from abroad, had he been told that there was no need for him to seek or plan anything, that his rut had long been shaped, eternally predetermined, and that wriggle as he might, he would be what all in his position were. He could not have believed it! Had he not at one time longed with all his heart to establish a republic in Russia; then himself to be a Napoleon; then to be a philosopher; and then a strategist and the conqueror of Napoleon? Sometimes he consoled himself with the thought that he was only living this life temporarily; but then he was shocked by the thought of how many, like himself, had entered that life and that Club temporarily, with all their teeth and hair, and had only left when not a single tooth or hair remained."

2022-10-16 15:37