The French Doctor's Expulsion — War and Peace

In 1811 the tall, handsome French doctor Métivier has become the fashion in Moscow, received not merely as a physician but as an equal. Prince Nicholas has always ridiculed medicine, yet on Bourienne's advice he lets Métivier visit twice a week. On December 6, St. Nicholas' Day and the prince's name day, all Moscow comes to the door, but he admits no one and invites to dinner only a small list he gives Mary. Métivier arrives with congratulations and, as a doctor, considers it proper to force the guard.

That morning the prince has been finding fault, pretending not to understand. Mary goes about as if facing a cocked gun. After the doctor is admitted she sits with a book near the study door. Voices rise; the door is flung open; Métivier appears terrified and the prince in dressing gown and fez, pupils rolled down, shouts that he is a French spy, a slave of Buonaparte, and slams the door. Métivier shrugs to Bourienne that it is bile and a rush of blood, kisses his fingers, and hastens away. Rage then lands on Mary: she let the spy in against the list; they must part; he cannot die quietly. He returns as if calm to say he has thought it over, then shakes his fists and screams that if only some fool would marry her.

At two o'clock the six chosen guests assemble: Count Rostopchín, Prince Lopukhín and his nephew, old General Chatróv, Pierre, and Borís Drubetskóy, who has contrived an exception to the rule against receiving bachelors. Rostopchín has even told the commander in chief he always pays his devotions to the relics of Prince Nicholas on this day. Dinner talk circles Napoleon's seizure of Oldenburg and the Russian Note, stopping short of the sovereign. Rostopchín repeats that Bonaparte treats Europe as a pirate does a captured vessel. The prince says he shifts dukes as one might move serfs from Bald Hills to Boguchárovo. After roast and champagne Mary receives only a cold, angry cheek; the morning's sentence remains in force. Over coffee the prince argues for an armed eastern frontier. Rostopchín, louder, calls Paris the kingdom of heaven for Russian youth and wants Peter the Great's cudgel taken from the museum. The old prince says his words are music.