Book 3 Part 2 Chapter 3 (Chapter 190 overall)

Chapter Summaries: Dole: The prince's instructions to Alpatuitch. The prince retires. A vision of the past. Potemkin (Pat-yom-kin).
Maude: The old Prince sends Alpatych to Smolensk with various commissions, and does not know where to have his bed placed. He remembers Prince Andrew's letter, and reads and understands it
Briggs: Alpatych is sent to Smolensk.
Pevear and Volokhonsky: The old prince sends Alpatych to Smolensk. Finally reads Prince Andrei's letter and understands the danger. Recollections.

Translation:

III.

When Mihail Ivanych returned with the letter to the office, the prince in glasses, with a lampshade to his eyes and to the candlelight, sat in the open bureau, with papers in his long away set aside hand and in some solemn pose, reading his paperwork (remarks, as he called them), which must be delivered to the sovereign after his death.

When Mihail Ivanych entered, in his eyes were standing tears of memories about this time, when he wrote that what he was reading now. He took from the hands of Mihail Ivanych the letter, placed it in his pocket, laid the paperwork and called now the long time waiting Alpatych.

In the leaflet of paperwork at his was written that what was needed in Smolensk, and he, going by the room past the waiting at the door Alpatych, began to give back orders.

— First, paper mail, do you hear, eight quires, here by patterned; gold-edged... swatch, so that it was indispensable; varnish, sealing wax— by the note of Mihail Ivanych.

He went by the room and looked at the memorable note.

— Then to the governor personally give the letter about the entry.

Then was needed gate valves for the door of the new buildings, indispensably such a style that the prince invented himself. Then a box of bookbinding was needed to be ordered for stacking the will.

The recoil of orders to Alpatych went on for more than two hours. The prince all did not let him go. He sat down, thought and, closing his eyes, nodded off. Alpatych stirred.

— Well, go on, go on; should something be needed, I will send.

Alpatych got out. The prince came up again to the bureau, peeping at it, fingering with his hand the paperwork, again locked it and sat down to the table to write a letter to the governor.

Now it was late when he got up, sealing the letter. He wanted to sleep, but he knew that he was not falling asleep, and that the worst thoughts came to him in bed. He called Tihon and went with him by the rooms, so that to say to him, where to lay the bed on the current night. He went, trying every corner.

Everywhere to him seemed not okay, but worse only was the habitual sofa in the office. This sofa was scary to him, probably by his heavy thoughts which he changed his mind, lying on it. Nowhere was okay, but all the same better than all was the corner on the sofa behind the piano: he never slept here anymore.

Tihon brought with the waiter the bed and began to set it.

— Not so, not so! — shouted the prince and himself moved in the quarter a little farther from the corner, and then again closer.

"Well, finally all is remade, now to rest," thought the prince and left to Tihon to undress himself.

Annoyingly grimacing from the efforts that were needed to make, so that to take off the caftan and trousers, the prince undressed, heavily lowered on the bed and as if thinking, contemptuously looked at his yellow withered legs. He did not think, but he hesitated before the forthcoming to him labor of raising these legs and moving on the bed. "Oh, how heavy! Oh, though would soon finish these proceedings, and you would let me go!" he thought. He made, tucking his lips, for the twenty-thousandth time this effort and lied down. Yet barely had he lied down, as suddenly all the bed evenly called under him forward and backwards, as if heavily breathing and pushing. This happened with him almost every night. He opened his closed eyes.

— No calm, damn! — he grunted with anger at someone."Yes, yes, still something major was, extremely something major I saved for myself at night in bed. The gate valves? No, about this was said. No, something such, something was in the living room. Princess Marya lied about something. Desala — this fool — spoke something. In the pocket something — I do not remember."

— Tishka! About what behind dinner was said?

— About Prince Mihail...

— Keep silent, keep silent. — the prince clapped his hand by the table. — Yes, I know, the letter of Prince Andrey. Princess Marya read. Desala spoke something about Vitebsk. Now I will read.

He told to get the letter from his pocket and move to the bed a table with lemonade and a twisted waxy candle and, wearing his glasses, began to read. Here only in the silence of the night, in the weak light from below green caps, he, reading the letter, for the first time at a moment got the matters of it.

"The French are at Vitebsk, in four transitions they may be at Smolensk; they may already be there."

— Tishka! — Tihon jumped up. — No you do not need to, do not need to! — he screamed.

He put away the letter under the candlestick and closed his eyes. And to him presented the Danube, a light colored noon, reeds, a Russian camp and he entering, he, a young general, without one wrinkle on his face, cheerful, merry, rosy, in the painted tent of Potemkin, and a burning sense of envy to the favorite, so the same strong as then, worried him. And he remembered all those words which were said then in the first appointment with Potemkin. And to him presented with yellowness on a bold face, a not tall, thick woman — the mother-empress, her smile and words, when she for the first time, caressing him, accepted him, and he remembered her same face in the hearse, and that collision with Zubov, who was then at her coffin for the right to approach to her hand.

"Ah, soon, soon to return to that time, and so that to present all finished soon, soon, so that they leave me alone!"

Time: see previous chapter, two hours
Mentioned: dinner, four days

Locations: see previous chapter
Mentioned: Smolensk, French, Vitebsk, Danube. Russian

Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: The old prince tries to give Alpatych instructions while Mikhail Ivanych watches. He can’t find a place to sleep and he wonders around thinking, with everything seeming bad to him. He begins to look at Andrei’s letter again and then remembers or imagines his glory days and his meeting with Potemkin.

Characters (characters who do not appear, but are mentioned are placed in italics. First appearances are in Bold. First mentions are underlined. Final appearance denoted by *):

Mikhail Ivanuitch

Nikolai Bolkonsky (“the old prince”)

Alexander (“sovereign”)

Alpatuitch

Tikhon (also “Tishka”, as in Dole and Briggs. Wiener, Maude, and Bell do not use this name.)

Princess Mariya

Dessalles

Prince Andrei

Potemkin

Zubof (“Zubov” in Garnett, Dunnigan, and Mandelker.)

The little mother empress (also “matushka-imperatritsa” in Dole. While another person would famously called this in Russian history, this should be understood as Catherine the Great. “Dowager-Empress” in Edmonds and
Briggs (no hyphen). “The empress” in Wiener. “Our Mother the Empress” in Bell. “the mother empress” in Garnett and Dunnigan (who uses capitals). “The Empress-Mother” in Maude and Mandelker.)

(Bolkonsky also mentions a governor. Also a man servant who helps Tikhon make Bolkonsky’s bed. There is a reference to a Prince Mikhail, which could be several different characters, such as Kutuzof or Barclay de Tolly.)

Abridged Versions: Line break but no chapter break in Bell.
Gibian: Chapter 3.

Fuller: Chapter is preserved and followed by a line break.

Komroff: Instead of Tihon mentioning that they were talking about Prince Mikhail at dinner, he mentions Prince Andre. Other than that, chapter seems preserved. Hard to tell if there is a line break since the next section
starts on the next page.

Kropotkin: Mikhail Ivanuitch’s role in the chapter is cut. Rest of chapter is preserved, end of chapter 2.

Bromfield: No chapter break but the chapter is basically the same.
Simmons: Chapter 3: the chapter is whittled down to the discussion Bolkonsky has with Tikhon and his reading of the letter and understanding. This removes Michael Ivanovich, Alpatych, and his remembering of Catherine's
funeral.

Additional Notes:

Montefiore Page 210: “Far from being the nymphomaniac of legend, she (Catherine) was an obsessional serial monogamist who adored sharing card games in her cosy apartments and discussing her literary and artistic

interests with her beloved: she gave Adjutant-General Orlov the apartment above hers...Potemkin, whom she had met on the night of the coup, was famous for his good looks (“his hair is more beautiful than mine,” she

said), brilliant intellect, interest in theology, and mimicry.”

Page 272: (at the assassination of Tsar Paul) “Count Arakcheev galloped up to the gates of Petersburg to save the emperor. On Pahlen’s orders he was denied entry and sent back to his estate…”As everyone knows,” replied Pahlen, “you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.”...One of the valets shouted a warning until “I slashed him dangerously on the head with my sabre,” recalled Bennigsen. Platon Zubov lost his nerve and wanted to flee. Bennigsen gripped his arm: “What? Now you want to withdraw? We’re too advanced to follow your advice which would ruin as all. The wine is poured and must be drunk.”...the glacially cool Benningsen”

Troyat/Pinkham: Page 12: “Platov Zubov, had subjugated her by a charming profile, an insolent carriage, and the radiant warmth of their skin between the sheets. With Plato Zubov she felt, in her own words, “like a

fly that has been numbed by the cold and suddenly comes back to life.”

Page 31: “Alexander...glanced sideways and was disgusted to find Plato Zubov, who could not contain his despair, weeping not for his imperial mistress but for the position he had held by her side.”

Davis: Page 658: “In 1787 Field Marshal Prince Gregory Potemkin (1739-91), Governor of New Russia, organized a river journey down the Dnieper for the Empress Catherine and her court. His aim was to prove

his success in colonizing the province, recently wrested from the Ottomans. To this end he assembled a number of mobile ‘villages’, each located at a strategic spot on the river bank. As soon as the imperial barge

hove into sight Potemkin’s men, all dressed up as jolly peasants, raised a hearty cheer for the Empress and the foreign ambassadors. Then, as soon as it turned the bend, they stripped off their caps and smocks,

dismantled the sets, and rebuilt them overnight further downstream.”