“Why, my poor Katish, it is as clear as daylight. He will then be the only legal heir of all, and you won’t receive as much as this, see. You ought to know, my dear, whether the will and the petition were written, and whether they have been destroyed, and if they have somehow been overlooked, then you ought to know where they are and to find them, because …”

“That would be rather too much!” the princess interrupted him, smiling sardonically, with no change in the expression of her eyes. “I am a woman, and you think we are all silly; but I do know so much, that an illegitimate son can’t inherit … Un bâtard,” she added, supposing that by this translation of the word she was conclusively proving to the prince the groundlessness of his contention.

“How can you not understand, Katish, really! You are so intelligent; how is it you don’t understand that if the count has written a letter to the Emperor, begging him to recognise his son as legitimate, then Pierre will not be Pierre but Count Bezuhov, and then he will inherit everything under the will? And if the will and the letter have not been destroyed, then except the consolation of having been dutiful and of all that results from having done your duty, nothing is left for you. That’s the fact.”

“I know that the will was made, but I know, too, that it is invalid, and you seem to take me for a perfect fool, mon cousin,” said the princess, with the air with which women speak when they imagine they are saying something witty and biting.

“My dear princess, Katerina Semyonovna!” Prince Vassily began impatiently, “I have come to you not to provoke you, but to talk to you as a kinswoman, a good, kind-hearted, true kinswoman, of your own interests. I tell you for the tenth time that if the letter to the Emperor and the will in Pierre’s favour are among the count’s papers, you, my dear girl, and your sisters are not heiresses. If you don’t believe me, believe people who know; I have just been talking to Dmitry Onufritch” (this was the family solicitor); “he said the same.”

There was obviously some sudden change in the princess’s ideas; her thin lips turned white (her eyes did not change), and when she began to speak, her voice passed through transitions, which she clearly did not herself anticipate.

“That would be a pretty thing,” she said. “I wanted nothing, and I want nothing.” She flung her dog off her lap and smoothed out the folds of her skirt.

“That’s the gratitude, that’s the recognition people get who have sacrificed everything for him,” she said. “Very nice! Excellent! I don’t want anything, prince.”

“Yes, but you are not alone, you have sisters,” answered Prince Vassily. But the princess did not heed him.

“Yes, I knew it long ago, but I’d forgotten that I could expect nothing in this house but baseness, deceit, envy, scheming, nothing but ingratitude, the blackest ingratitude …”

“Do you or do you not know where that will is?” asked Prince Vassily, the twitching of his cheeks more marked than ever.

“Yes, I have been foolish; I still kept faith in people, and cared for them and sacrificed myself. But no one succeeds except those who are base and vile. I know whose plotting this is.”

The princess would have risen, but the prince held her by the arm. The princess had the air of a person who has suddenly lost faith in the whole human race. She looked viciously at her companion.

“There is still time, my dear. Remember, Katish, that all this was done heedlessly, in a moment of anger, of illness, and then forgotten. Our duty, my dear girl, is to correct his mistake, to soften his last moments