we talk about at dinner?"

"About Prince Michael..."

"Be quiet, quiet!" The prince slapped his hand on the table. "Yes, I
know, Prince Andrew's letter! Princess Mary read it. Dessalles said
something about Vitebsk. Now I'll read it."

He had the letter taken from his pocket and the table--on which stood a
glass of lemonade and a spiral wax candle--moved close to the bed, and
putting on his spectacles he began reading. Only now in the stillness of
the night, reading it by the faint light under the green shade, did he
grasp its meaning for a moment.

"The French at Vitebsk, in four days' march they may be at Smolensk;
perhaps are already there! Tikhon!" Tikhon jumped up. "No, no, I don't
want anything!" he shouted.

He put the letter under the candlestick and closed his eyes. And there
rose before him the Danube at bright noonday: reeds, the Russian
camp, and himself a young general without a wrinkle on his ruddy face,
vigorous and alert, entering Potemkin's gaily colored tent, and a
burning sense of jealousy of "the favorite" agitated him now as strongly
as it had done then. He recalled all the words spoken at that
first meeting with Potemkin. And he saw before him a plump, rather
sallow-faced, short, stout woman, the Empress Mother, with her smile
and her words at her first gracious reception of him, and then that same
face on the catafalque, and the encounter he had with Zubov over her
coffin about his right to kiss her hand.

"Oh, quicker, quicker! To get back to that time and have done with all
the present! Quicker, quicker--and that they should leave me in peace!"

CHAPTER IV

Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Bolkonski's estate, lay forty miles east
from Smolensk and two miles from the main road to Moscow.

The same evening that the prince gave his instructions to Alpatych,
Dessalles, having asked to see Princess Mary, told her that, as the
prince was not very well and was taking no steps to secure his safety,
though from Prince Andrew's letter it was evident that to remain at Bald
Hills might be dangerous, he respectfully advised her to send a letter
by Alpatych to the Provincial Governor at Smolensk, asking him to let
her know the state of affairs and the extent of the danger to which
Bald Hills was exposed. Dessalles wrote this letter to the Governor
for Princess Mary, she signed it, and it was given to Alpatych with
instructions to hand it to the Governor and to come back as quickly as
possible