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da "War and Peace" (libro IV cap. 2)
| ... Having given several more orders, he was about to go to his "little countess" to have a rest, but remembering something else of importance, he returned again, called back the cook and the club steward, and again began giving orders. A light footstep and the clinking of spurs were heard at the door, and the young count, handsome, rosy, with a dark little mustache, evidently rested and made sleeker by his easy life in Moscow, entered the room. "Ah, my boy, my head's in a whirl!" said the old man with a smile, as if he felt a little confused before his son. "Now, if you would only help a bit! I must have singers too. I shall have my own orchestra, but shouldn't we get the gypsy singers as well? You military men like that sort of thing." "Really, Papa, I believe Prince Bagration worried himself less before the battle of Schon Grabern than you do now," said his son with a smile. The old count pretended to be angry. "Yes, you talk, but try it yourself!" And the count turned to the cook, who, with a shrewd and respectful expression, looked observantly and sympathetically at the father and son. "What have the young people come to nowadays, eh, Feoktist?" said he. "Laughing at us old fellows!" "That's so, your excellency, all they have to do is to eat a good dinner, but providing it and serving it all up, that's not their business! "That's it, that's it!" exclaimed the count, and gaily seizing his son by both hands, he cried, "Now I've got you, so take the sleigh and pair at once, and go to Bezukhob's, and tell him 'Count Ilya has sent you to ask for strawberries and fresh pineapples.' We can't get them from anyone else. He's not there himself, so you'll have to go in and ask the princesses; and from there go on to the Rasgulyay- the coachman Ipatka knows- and look up the gypsy Ilyushka, the one who danced at Count Orlov's, you remember, in a white Cossack coat, and bring him along to me." "And am I to bring the gypsy girls along with him?" asked Nicholas, laughing. "Dear, dear!..." At that moment, with noiseless footsteps and with the businesslike, preoccupied, yet meekly Christian look which never left her face, Anna Mikhaylovna entered the hall. ..... |