“Heaven only knows, my dear! These rich grandees are so selfish. Still, I will take Borís and go to see him at once, and I shall speak to him straight out. Let people think what they will of me, it’s really all the same to me when my son’s fate is at stake.” The princess rose. “It’s now two o’clock and you dine at four. There will just be time.”
And like a practical Petersburg lady who knows how to make the most of time, Anna Mikháylovna sent someone to call her son, and went into the anteroom with him.
“Good-by, my dear,” said she to the countess who saw her to the door, and added in a whisper so that her son should not hear, “Wish me good luck.”
“Are you going to Count Cyril Vladímirovich, my dear?” said the count coming out from the dining hall into the anteroom, and he added: “If he is better, ask Pierre to dine with us. He has been to the house, you know, and danced with the children. Be sure to invite him, my dear. We will see how Tarás distinguishes himself today. He says Count Orlóv never gave such a dinner as ours will be!”
CHAPTER XV
“My dear Borís,” said Princess Anna Mikháylovna to her son as Countess Rostóva’s carriage in which they were seated drove over the straw covered street and turned into the wide courtyard of Count Cyril Vladímirovich Bezúkhov’s house. “My dear Borís,” said the mother, drawing her hand from beneath her old mantle and laying it timidly and tenderly on her son’s arm, “be affectionate and attentive to him. Count Cyril Vladímirovich is your godfather after all, and your future depends on him. Remember that, my dear, and be nice to him, as you so well know how to be.”
“If only I knew that anything besides humiliation would come of it...” answered her son coldly. “But I have promised and will do it for your sake.”
Although the hall porter saw someone’s carriage standing at the entrance, after scrutinizing the mother and son (who without asking to be announced had passed straight through the glass porch between the rows of statues in niches) and looking significantly at the lady’s old cloak, he asked whether they wanted the count or the princesses, and, hearing that they wished to see the count, said his excellency was worse today, and that his excellency was not receiving anyone.
“We may as well go back,” said the son in French.
“My dear!” exclaimed his mother imploringly, again laying her hand on his arm as if that touch might soothe or rouse him.