Chapter 9 Chapter nine

The little duchess (who has just eased from labor pains) leans on the pillow in her white nightcap.Curly locks of black hair stood out on either side of her feverish, sweaty cheeks, and she opened a pretty little crimson mouth with black down on the upper lip, and a pleasant smile on her face.Prince Andrew came into the room, stopped in front of her, and stood near the end of the sofa where she was sleeping.Her bright eyes, without changing their expression, looked at him with childlike terror. "I love you all, I have harmed no one, why should I suffer? Help me." Her expression spoke.She saw her husband, but she couldn't figure out the meaning of his presence in front of her at this moment.Prince Andrew went around the sofa and kissed her on the forehead.

"My darling," he said, which he never said to her. "God is merciful..." She glanced at him with a questioning, childlike reproach. "I used to look forward to your rescue. I didn't get anything. I didn't get anything. You are the same!" Her eyes said.She was not surprised that he had come, she did not understand that he had gone home.His presence had nothing to do with her pain or to alleviate it.The unbearable labor pains broke out again, and Marya Bogdanovna persuaded Prince Andrew to leave the room. The obstetrician came into the room.Prince Andrew came out of the room, met Princess Marya, and went up to her again.They began to speak in low tones, but the conversation was often interrupted.They waited, they listened.

"Allez, monami," said Princess Maria.Prince Andrew went again to his wife, sat down in the next room, and waited.A woman came out of her room bewildered and frightened when she saw Prince Andrew.She covered her face with her hands and sat like that for a few minutes.The moaning of miserable, helpless animals can be heard from behind the door.Prince Andrew got up, went to the door, and tried to open it.It is not known who was holding the doorknob. -------- ① French: My friend, you go. "Don't go in, don't go in!" A terrified voice came from there.He started pacing up and down the room.The shouting stopped, and a few more seconds passed.Suddenly there was a terrible cry from the next room. It was not her cry, she would not have cried like that.Prince Andrew ran to the door, the shouting died down, and the cry of a baby could be heard.

"Why did you take the child there?" thought Prince Andrew for a while at first. "Child? What kind of child? . . . Why is there a child here? Perhaps a child has been born?" When he suddenly understood the meaning of joy in this cry, tears made him breathless, and he propped his elbows on the window sill, sobbing like a child.The door opened.The doctor came out of the room without his frock coat, with his shirtcuffs rolled up, pale, with a trembling jaw.Prince Andrew turned to him.But the doctor looked at him blankly, walked past him without saying a word.A woman ran out, and when she saw Prince Andrew, she hesitated on the threshold.He went into his wife's room.She lay still, dead, as he had seen her five minutes before, and though her eyes were fixed and her cheeks pale, her beautiful childlike face was overgrown with black. The same expression was still on the hairy lips.

"I love you all, I have done no harm to anyone, and what have you done to me?" said her beautiful, charming, poor dead face.In the corner of the room, Marya Bogdanovna held a little red thing in her trembling white hands, and he groaned and burst into tears. Two hours later, Prince Andrew went quietly into his father's study.The old man already knew all about it.He stood close to the door, and as soon as the door opened, the old man silently stretched out a pair of old hands as thick as a vise to wrap around his son's neck, and wept bitterly like a child. Three days later they held a requiem for the little princess, and Prince Andrei went up the coffin-stairs when he bid farewell to her body.Although she had closed her eyes in the coffin, her face remained the same. "Oh, why are you treating me like this?" Her face seemed to be still speaking, and Prince Andrew felt that something had suddenly come off his soul, that he had committed an irreparable and unforgettable crime. .He couldn't cry.The old man also came in and kissed her little sallow hand which was resting calmly on top of the other, and her face seemed to say to him: "Why are you doing this to me?" The old man saw this. With another face, he turned around angrily.

Five days later they christened the young prince Nikolai Andreitch.The nurse pressed her chin to the cloth while the priest anointed the boy's wrinkled, red palms and feet with a goose feather. The grandfather who acted as godfather held the baby tremblingly, fearing that he would fall, walked around the crumpled tin christening box, and handed the baby to the godmother, Princess Maria.Prince Andrew was so frightened that he almost held his breath that the child might be drowned, and sat in another room until the christening was over.When the nurse brought out the baby, he looked at him happily.When the nanny told him: A piece of beeswax with baby hair stuck in it was thrown into the christening box, and it didn't sink, it floated up.He nodded, approvingly.