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Updated: May 28, 2025
Bilibin, who had not lost his reputation of an exceedingly clever man, and who was one of the disinterested friends so brilliant a woman as Helene always has men friends who can never change into lovers once gave her his view of the matter at a small and intimate gathering. "Tell me, as you would a sister, what I ought to do. Which of the two?"
"That's a true friend!" said Helene beaming, and again touching Bilibin's sleeve. "But I love them, you know, and don't want to distress either of them. I would give my life for the happiness of them both." Bilibin shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say that not even he could help in that difficulty. "Une maitresse-femme! * That's what is called putting things squarely.
He read without understanding half of it, read only to forget, if but for a moment, what he had too long been thinking of so painfully to the exclusion of all else. Bilibin was now at army headquarters in a diplomatic capacity, and though he wrote in French and used French jests and French idioms, he described the whole campaign with a fearless self-censure and self-derision genuinely Russian.
Bilibin puckered his skin in preparation for something witty. "Even divorce you?" said he. Helene laughed. Among those who ventured to doubt the justifiability of the proposed marriage was Helene's mother, Princess Kuragina. She was continually tormented by jealousy of her daughter, and now that jealousy concerned a subject near to her own heart, she could not reconcile herself to the idea.
"But if the bridge is crossed it means that the army too is lost? It will be cut off," said he. "That's just it," answered Bilibin. "Listen! The French entered Vienna as I told you. Very well. Next day, which was yesterday, those gentlemen, messieurs les marechaux, * Murat, Lannes, and Belliard, mount and ride to the bridge.
She would like to be married to all three at the same time," thought he. * A masterly woman. "But tell me, how will your husband look at the matter?" Bilibin asked, his reputation being so well established that he did not fear to ask so naive a question. "Will he agree?" "Oh, he loves me so!" said Helene, who for some reason imagined that Pierre too loved her. "He will do anything for me."
It will be as I said at the beginning of the campaign, it won't be your skirmishing at Durrenstein, or gunpowder at all, that will decide the matter, but those who devised it," said Bilibin quoting one of his own mots, releasing the wrinkles on his forehead, and pausing. "The only question is what will come of the meeting between the Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia in Berlin?
"Demosthenes, I know thee by the pebble thou secretest in thy golden mouth!" said Bilibin, and the mop of hair on his head moved with satisfaction. Everybody laughed, and Hippolyte louder than anyone. He was evidently distressed, and breathed painfully, but could not restrain the wild laughter that convulsed his usually impassive features.
They had known each other previously in Petersburg, but had become more intimate when Prince Andrew was in Vienna with Kutuzov. Just as Prince Andrew was a young man who gave promise of rising high in the military profession, so to an even greater extent Bilibin gave promise of rising in his diplomatic career.
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