War and Peace
Copyright© 2025 by Leo Tolstoy
Chapter 7
When Borís and Anna Pávlovna returned to the others Prince Hippolyte had the ear of the company.
Bending forward in his armchair he said: “Le Roi de Prusse!” and having said this laughed. Everyone turned toward him.
“Le Roi de Prusse?” Hippolyte said interrogatively, again laughing, and then calmly and seriously sat back in his chair. Anna Pávlovna waited for him to go on, but as he seemed quite decided to say no more she began to tell of how at Potsdam the impious Bonaparte had stolen the sword of Frederick the Great.
“It is the sword of Frederick the Great which I...” she began, but Hippolyte interrupted her with the words: “Le Roi de Prusse...” and again, as soon as all turned toward him, excused himself and said no more.
Anna Pávlovna frowned. Mortemart, Hippolyte’s friend, addressed him firmly.
“Come now, what about your Roi de Prusse?”
Hippolyte laughed as if ashamed of laughing.
“Oh, it’s nothing. I only wished to say...” (he wanted to repeat a joke he had heard in Vienna and which he had been trying all that evening to get in) “I only wished to say that we are wrong to fight pour le Roi de Prusse!”
Borís smiled circumspectly, so that it might be taken as ironical or appreciative according to the way the joke was received. Everybody laughed.
“Your joke is too bad, it’s witty but unjust,” said Anna Pávlovna, shaking her little shriveled finger at him.
“We are not fighting pour le Roi de Prusse, but for right principles. Oh, that wicked Prince Hippolyte!” she said.
The conversation did not flag all evening and turned chiefly on the political news. It became particularly animated toward the end of the evening when the rewards bestowed by the Emperor were mentioned.
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