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NATASHA was sixteen, and it was the year 1809, that year to which she had reckoned up on her fingers with Boris, after she had kissed him four years before. Since then she had not once seen discount skechers him. When Boris was mentioned she would speak quite freely of it before Sonya and her mother, treating it as a settled thing that all that had passed between them was childish nonsense, not worth talking of and long ago forgotten. But in the most secret recesses of her soul the question whether her engagement to Boris were really a mere jest or a solemn, binding promise worried her.

Ever since Boris had left Moscow in 1805 to go into the army he had not once seen the Rostovs. Several times he had been in Moscow, and in travelling had passed not far from Otradnoe, but he had not once been at the Rostovs’.

It had sometimes occurred to Natasha that he did not want to see her, and her surmises had been confirmed by the mournful tone in which he was referred to by her elders.

“Old friends are soon forgotten nowadays,” the countess would say after Boris had been mentioned.

Anna Mihalovna had taken in these latter days to seeing less of the Rostovs. There was a marked dignity, too, in her manner with them, and she spoke on every occasion with thankfulness and enthusiasm of her son’s great abilities and brilliant career. When the Rostovs arrived in Petersburg Boris came to call on them.

It was not without emotion that he came to see them. His reminiscences of Natasha were Boris’s most poetic memories. But at the same time he came to call on them firmly resolved to make her and her relations feel that the childish vows between Natasha and him could have no binding force for her or for him. He had a brilliant position in society, thanks to his intimacy with Countess Bezuhov; a brilliant position in the service, thanks to the protection of a great person whose confidence he had completely won; and he was beginning to make plans for marrying one of the richest heiresses in Petersburg, plans which might very easily be realised. When Boris went into the Rostovs’ drawing-room, Natasha was in her own room. On hearing of his arrival she almost ran with a flushed face into the drawing-room, radiant with a smile that was more than cordial.

Boris had thought of Natasha as the little girl he had known four years before in a short frock, with black eyes glancing under her curls, and a desperate, childish giggle; and so, when a quite different Natasha came in, he was taken aback and his face expressed surprise and admiration. His expression delighted Natasha.

“Well, would you know your mischievous little playmate?” said the countess. Boris kissed Natasha’s hand, and said he was surprised at the change in her.

“How pretty you have grown!”

“I should hope so!” was the answer in Natasha’s laughing eyes.

“And does papa look older?” she asked.

Natasha sat still, taking no part in the talk between Boris and her mother. Silently and minutely she scrutinised the young man who had been her suitor in her childhood. He felt oppressed by that persistent, friendly gaze, and glanced once or twice at her.

The uniform, the spurs, the tie, the way Boris had brushed his hair,—it was all fashionable and comme il faut. That Natasha noticed at once. He sat a little sideways on a low chair beside the countess, with his right hand smacking the exquisitely clean and perfectly fitting glove on his left. He talked with a peculiar, refined compression of the lips about the divisions of the best society in Petersburg; with faint irony referred to old days in Moscow and old Moscow acquaintances. Not unintentionally, as Natasha felt, he mentioned some of the highest aristocracy, alluded to the ambassador’s ball, at which he had been present, and to invitations from N. N. and from S. S.

Natasha sat the whole time without speaking, looking up from under her brows at him. Her eyes made Boris more and more uneasy and embarrassed. He looked round more frequently at Natasha, and broke off in his sentences. After staying no more than ten minutes he got up and took leave. Still the same curious, challenging, and rather ironical eyes gazed at him. After his first visit, Boris said to himself that Natasha was as attractive to him as she had been in the past, but that he must not give way to his feelings, because to marry her—a girl almost without fortune—would be the ruin of his career, and to renew their old relations without any intention of marriage would be dishonourable. Boris resolved to avoid meeting Natasha; but in spite of this resolution he came a few days later, and began to come often, and to spend whole days at the Rostovs’. He fancied that it was essential for him to have a frank explanation with Natasha, to tell her that all the past must be forgotten, that in spite of everything…she could not be his wife, that he had no means, and that they would never consent to her marrying him. But he always failed to do so, and felt an awkwardness in approaching the subject. Every day he became more and more entangled. Natasha—so her mother and Sonya judged—seemed to be in love with Boris, as in the past. She sang for him her favourite songs, showed him her album, made him write in it, would not let him refer to the past, making him feel how delightful she considered the present; and every day he went home in a whirl without having said what he meant to say, not knowing what he was doing, why he had come, and how it would end. Boris gave up visiting Ellen, received reproachful notes every day from her, and still spent whole days together at the Rostovs’. ONE EVENING the old countess in her bed-jacket, without her false curls and with only one poor wisp of hair peeping out from under her white cotton nightcap, was bowing down on the carpet, sighing and moaning as she repeated her evening prayers. Her door creaked, and Natasha, also in a bed-jacket, ran in, bare-legged, with her feet in slippers, and her hair in curl papers. The countess looked round and frowned. She was repeating her last prayer. “Can it be this couch will be my bier?” Her devotional mood was dispelled. Natasha, flushed and eager, stopped suddenly short in her rapid movement as she saw her mother at her prayers. She half-sat down and unconsciously put out her tongue at herself.

Seeing that her mother was still praying, she ran on tiptoe to the bed; and rapidly slipping one little foot against the other, pushed off her slippers and sprang on to that couch which the countess cheap skechers in her prayer feared might become her bier. That couch was a high feather-bed, with five pillows, each smaller than the one below. Natasha skipped in, sank into the feather-bed, rolled over towards the side, and began snuggling up under the quilt, tucking herself up, bending her knees up to her chin, kicking out and giving a faintly audible giggle as she alternately hid her face under the quilt and peeped out at her mother. The countess had finished her prayers, and was approaching her bed with a stern face, but seeing that Natasha was playing bo-peep with her she smiled her good-natured, weak smile.

“Come, come, come!” said the mother.

“Mamma, may I speak; yes?” said Natasha. “Come, under the chin, one, and now another, and enough.” And she clutched at her mother’s neck and kissed her favourite place on her chin. In Natasha’s behaviour to her mother there was a superficial roughness of manner, but she had a natural tact and knack of doing things, so that, however she snatched her mother in her arms, she always managed so that she was not hurt, nor uncomfortable, nor displeased by it.

“Well, what is it to-night?” said her mother, settling herself in the pillows and waiting for Natasha, who had already rolled over twice, to lie down by her side under the bedclothes, to put out her arms and assume a serious expression.

These visits of Natasha to her mother at night before the count came home from the club were one of the greatest pleasures both of mother and daughter.

“What is it to-night? And I want to talk to you…” Natasha put her hand on her mother’s lips.

“About Boris…I know,” she said seriously; “that’s what I have come about. Don’t say it; I know. No, do say it!” She took her hand away. “Say it, mamma! He’s nice, eh?”

“Natasha, you are sixteen! At your age I was married. You say Boris is nice. He is very nice, and I love him like a son! But what do you want? …What are you thinking about? You have quite turned his head, I can see that…”

As she said this, the countess looked round at her daughter. Natasha was lying, looking steadily straight before her at one of the mahogany sphinxes carved on a corner of the bedstead, so that the countess could only see her daughter’s face in profile. Her face impressed the countess by its strikingly serious and concentrated expression.

Natasha was listening and considering.

“Well, so what then?” she said.

“You have completely turned his head, and what for? What do you want of him? You know you can’t marry him.”

“Why not?” said Natasha, with no change in her attitude.

“Because he’s so young, because he’s poor, because he’s a relation…because you don’t care for him yourself.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know. It’s not right, my darling.”

“But if I want to…” said Natasha.

“Leave off talking nonsense,” said the countess.

“But if I want to…”

“Natasha, I am serious…”

Natasha did not let her finish; she drew the countess’s large hand to her, and kissed it on the upper side, and then on the palm, then turned it over again and began kissing it on the knuckle of the top joint of the finger, then on the space between the knuckles, then on a knuckle again, whispering: “January, February, March, April, May.”

“Speak, mamma; why are you silent? Speak,” she said, looking round at her mother, who was gazing tenderly at her daughter, and apparently in gazing at her had forgotten all she meant to say.

“This won’t do, my dear. It’s not every one who will understand your childish feelings for one another, and seeing him on such intimate terms with you may prejudice you in the eyes of other young men who visit us, and what is of more consequence, it’s making him wretched for nothing. He had very likely found a match that would suit him, some wealthy girl, and now he’s half-crazy.”

“Half-crazy?” repeated Natasha.

“I’ll tell you what happened in my own case. I had a cousin…”

“I know—Kirilla Matveitch; but he’s old.”

“He was not always old. But I tell you what, Natasha, I’ll speak to Boris. He mustn’t come so often…”

“Why mustn’t he, if he wants to?”

“Because I know it can’t come to anything.”

“How do you know? No, mamma, don’t speak to him. What nonsense!” said Natasha, in the tone of a man being robbed of his property. “Well, I won’t marry him, so let him come, if he enjoys it and I enjoy it.”

Natasha looked at her mother, smiling. “Not to be married, but—just so,” she repeated.

“How so, my dear?”

“Oh, just so. I see it’s very necessary I shouldn’t marry him, but…just so.”

“Just so, just so,” repeated the countess, and shaking all over, she went off into a good-natured, unexpectedly elderly laugh.

“Don’t laugh, stop,” cried Natasha; “you’re shaking all the bed. You’re awfully like me, just another giggler…Stop…” She snatched both the countess’s hands, kissed one knuckle of the little finger, for June, and went on kissing—July, August—on the other hand. “Mamma, is he very much in love? What do you think? Were men as much in love with you? And he’s very nice, very, very nice! Only not quite to my liking—he’s so narrow, somehow, like a clock on the wall.… Don’t you understand?…Narrow, you know, grey, light-coloured…”
“What nonsense you talk!” said the countess.
Natasha went on:

“Don’t you really understand? Nikolenka would understand…Bezuhov now—he’s blue, dark blue and red, and he’s quadrangular.”

“You’re flirting with him, too,” said the countess, laughing.

“No, he’s a freemason, I have heard. He’s jolly, dark blue and red; how am I to explain to you…”

“Little countess,” they heard the count’s voice through the door, “you’re not asleep?” Natasha skipped up, snatched up her slippers, and ran barefoot to her own room. For a long while she could not go to sleep. She kept musing on no one’s being able to understand all she understood and all that was in her.

“Sonya?” she wondered, looking at her friend asleep, curled up like a kitten with her great mass of hair. “No, how could she! She’s virtuous. She’s in love with Nikolenka and doesn’t care to know anything more. Mamma, even she doesn’t understand. It’s wonderful how clever I am and how…she is charming,” she went on, speaking of herself in the third person, and fancying that it was some very clever, the very cleverest and finest of men, who was saying it of her… “There is everything, everything in her,” this man continued, “extraordinarily clever, charming and then pretty, extraordinarily pretty, graceful. She swims, rides capitally, and a voice!—a marvellous voice, one may say!” She hummed her favourite musical phrase from an opera of Cherubini, flung herself into bed, laughed with delight at the thought that she would soon be asleep, called to Dunyasha to blow out the candle; and before Dunyasha had left her cheap skechers shoes room she had already passed into another still happier world of dreams, where everything was as easy and as beautiful as in reality, and was only better because it was all different.
Next day the countess sent for Boris, and talked to him, and from that day he gave up visiting at the Rostovs’.

ON THE 31ST of December, on the eve of the new year 1810, a ball was given by a grand personage who had been a star of the court of Catherine. The Tsar and the diplomatic corps were to be present at this ball.

The well-known mansion of this grandee in the English Embankment was illuminated by innumerable lights. The police were standing at the lighted entry, laid with red baize; and not merely policemen, but a police commander was at the entrance, and dozens of officers of the police. Carriages kept driving away, and fresh ones kept driving up, with grooms in red livery and grooms in plumed hats. From the carriages black skechers boots emerged men wearing uniforms, stars, and ribbons; while ladies in satin and ermine stepped carefully out on the carriage steps, that were let down with a bang, and then walked hurriedly and noiselessly over the baize of the entry.

Almost every time a new carriage drove up, a whisper ran through the crowd and hats were taken off. “The Emperor?…No, a minister…prince…ambassador…Don’t you see the plumes?…” was audible in the crowd. One person, better dressed than the rest, seemed to know every one, and mentioned by name all the most celebrated personages of the day.

A third of the guests had already arrived at this ball, while the Rostovs, who were to be present at it, were still engaged in hurried preparations.

Many had been the discussions and the preparations for that ball in the Rostov family; many the fears that an invitation might not arrive, that the dresses would not be ready, and that everything would not be arranged as it ought to be.

The Rostovs were to be accompanied by Marya Ignatyevna Peronsky, a friend and relation of the countess, a thin and yellow maid-of-honour of the old court, who was acting as a guide to the provincial Rostovs in the higher circles of Petersburg society.

At ten o’clock the Rostovs were to drive to Tavritchesky Garden to call for the maid-of-honour. Meantime it was five minutes to ten, and the young ladies were not yet dressed.

Natasha was going to her first great ball. She had got up at eight o’clock that morning, and had spent the whole day in feverish agitation and activity. All her energies had since morning been directed to the one aim of getting herself, her mother, and Sonya as well dressed as possible. Sonya and her mother put themselves entirely in her hands. The countess was to wear a dark red velvet dress; the two girls white tulle dresses over pink silk slips, and roses on their bodices. They were to wear their hair à la grecque.

All the essentials were ready. Feet, arms, necks, and ears had been washed, scented, and powdered with peculiar care in readiness for the ball. Openwork silk stockings and white satin shoes with ribbons had been put on. The hairdressing was almost accomplished. Sonya was finishing dressing, so was the countess; but Natasha, who had been busily looking after every one, was behindhand. She was still sitting before the looking-glass with a peignoir thrown over her thin shoulders. Sonya, already dressed, stood in the middle of the room, and was trying to fasten in a last ribbon, hurting her little finger as she pressed the pin with a scrooping sound into the silk.

“Not like that, Sonya, not like that!” said Natasha, turning her head, and clutching her hair in both hands, as the maid arranging it was not quick enough in letting it go. “The ribbon mustn’t go like that; come here.” Sonya squatted down. Natasha pinned the ribbon in her own way.

“Really, miss, you mustn’t do so,” said the maid, holding Natasha’s hair.

“Oh, my goodness! Afterwards! There, that’s right, Sonya.”

“Will you soon be ready?” they heard the countess’s voice. “It will be ten in a minute.”

“Immediately, immediately.… And are you ready, mamma?”

“Only my cap to fasten on.”

“Don’t do it without me,” shouted Natasha; “you don’t know how to!”

“But it’s ten o’clock already.”

It had been arranged to be at the ball at half-past ten, and Natasha still had to dress, and they had to drive to Tavritchesky Garden.

When her coiffure was finished, Natasha, in her mother’s dressing-jacket and a short petticoat under which her dancing-shoes could be seen, ran up to Sonya, looked her over, and then ran to her mother. Turning her head round, she pinned on her cap, and hurriedly kissing her grey hair, ran back to the maids who were shortening her skirt.

All attention was now centred on Natasha’s skirt, which was too long. Two maids were running it up round the edge, hurriedly biting off the threads. A third one, with pins in her teeth and lips, was running from the countess to Sonya; a fourth was holding up the whole tulle dress in her arms.

“Mavrushka, quicker, darling!”

“Give me that thimble, miss.”

“Will you be quick?” said the count from outside the door, coming in. “Here are your smelling-salts. Madame Peronsky must be tired of waiting.”

“Ready, miss,” said the maid, lifting up the shortened tulle skirt on two fingers, blowing something off it, and giving it a shake to show her appreciation of the transparency and purity of what she had in her hands.

Natasha began putting on the dress.

“In a minute, in a minute, don’t come in, papa,” she shouted to her father at the door, from under the tulle of the dress that concealed all her face. Sonya slammed the door. A minute later the count was admitted. He was wearing a blue frock coat, stockings, and dancing-shoes, and was perfumed and pomaded.

“Ah, papa, how nice you look, lovely!” said Natasha, standing in the middle of the room, stroking out the folds of her tulle.

“If you please, miss, if you please…” said a maid, pulling up the skirt and turning the pins from one corner of her mouth to the other with her tongue.

“Say what you like!” cried Sonya, with despair in her voice, as she gazed at Natasha’s skirt, “say what you like!—it’s too long still!”

Natasha walked a little further off to look at herself in the pierglass. The skirt was too long.

“My goodness, madam, it’s not a bit too long,” said Mavrushka, creeping along the floor on her knees after her young lady.

“Well, if it’s long, we’ll tack it up, in one minute, we’ll tack it up,” said Dunyasha, a resolute character. And taking a needle out of the kerchief on her bosom she set to work again on the floor.

At that moment the countess in her cap and velvet gown walked shyly with soft steps into the room.

“Oo-oo! my beauty!” cried the count. “She looks nicer than any of you!”…He would have embraced her, but, flushing, she drew back to avoid being crumpled.

“Mamma, the cap should be more on one side,” said Natasha. “I’ll pin it fresh,” and she darted forward. The maids turning up her skirt, not prepared for her hasty movement, tore off a piece of the tulle.

“Oh, mercy! What was that? Really it’s not my fault…”

“It’s all right, I’ll run it up, it won’t show,” said Dunyasha.

“My beauty, my queen!” said the old nurse coming in at the doorway. “And Sonyushka, too; ah, the beauties!…”

At a quarter past ten they were at last seated in their carriage and driving off. But they still had to drive to Tavritchesky Garden

Madame Peronsky was ready and waiting. In spite of her age and ugliness, just the same process had been going on with her as with the Rostovs, not with flurry, for with her it was a matter of routine. Her elderly and unprepossessing person had been also washed and scented and powdered; she had washed as carefully behind her ears, and like the Rostovs’ nurse, her old maid had enthusiastically admired her mistress’s attire, when she came into the drawing-room in her yellow gown adorned with her badge of a maid-of-honour. Madame Peronsky praised the Rostovs’ costumes, and they praised her attire and her taste. Then, careful of their coiffures and their dresses, at eleven o’clock they settled themselves black skechers shoes in the carriages and drove off. NATASHA had not had a free moment all that day, and had not once had time to think of what lay before her.

In the damp, chill air, in the closeness and half dark of the swaying carriage, she pictured to herself for the first time what was in store for her there, at the ball, in the brightly lighted halls—music, flowers, dancing, the Tsar, all the brilliant young people of Petersburg. The prospect before her was so splendid that she could not even believe that it would come to pass: so incongruous it seemed with the chilliness, darkness, and closeness of the carriage. She could only grasp all that awaited her when, walking over the red cloth, she went into the vestibule, took off her cloak, and walked beside Sonya in front of her mother between the flowers up the lighted staircase. Only then she remembered how she must behave at a ball, and tried to assume the majestic manner that she considered indispensable for a girl at a ball. But luckily she felt that there was a mist before her eyes; she could see nothing clearly, her pulse beat a hundred times a minute, and the blood throbbed at her heart. She was unable to assume the manner that would have made her absurd; and moved on, thrilling with excitement, and trying with all her might simply to conceal it. And it was just in this mood that she looked her best. In front and behind them walked guests dressed in similar ball-dresses and conversing in similarly subdued tones. The looking-glasses on the stair-cases reflected ladies in white, blue, and pink dresses, with diamonds and pearls on their bare arms and necks.

Natasha looked into the looking-glasses and could not distinguish herself from the rest. All was mingled into one brilliant procession. At the entrance into the first room, the regular hum of voices, footsteps, greetings, deafened Natasha; the light and brilliance dazzled her still more. The host and hostess who had been already standing at the door for half an hour, saying exactly the same words to every guest on arrival, Charmé de vous voir, gave the same greeting to the Rostovs and Madame Peronsky. The two young girls in their white dresses, with roses alike in their black hair, made curtsies just alike, but unconsciously the hostess’s eyes rested longer on the slender figure of Natasha. She looked at her, and smiled at her a smile that was something more than the smile of welcome she had for all. Looking at her, the hostess was reminded perhaps of her golden days of girlhood, gone never to return, of her own first ball. The host too followed Natasha with his eyes, and asked the count which of the girls was his daughter.

“Charming!” he said, kissing his own finger-tips.

In the ballroom, guests stood crowding about the entry in expectation of the Tsar. The countess took up her position in the front row of this crowd. Natasha heard and felt that several voices were asking who she was, that many pairs of eyes were fixed on her. She knew that she was making a good impression on those who noticed her, and this observation calmed her somewhat.

“There are some like ourselves, and some not as good,” she thought.

Madame Peronsky was pointing out to the countess the most distinguished persons at the ball.

“That is the Dutch ambassador, do you see, the grey-haired man,” Madame Peronsky was saying, indicating an old man with a profusion of silver-grey curls, who was surrounded by ladies laughing at some story he was telling. “And here she comes, the queen of Petersburg society, Countess Bezuhov,” she said, pointing to Ellen who had just come in.

“How lovely! She’s quite equal to Marya Antonovna. Look how attentive all the men are to her, young and old alike. She’s both lovely and clever.… They say Prince So-and-So is wild about her. And you see these two, though they are not good-looking, they are even more run after.”

She pointed out a lady who was crossing the room accompanied by a very ugly daughter.

“That’s the heiress of a million,” said Madame Peronsky. “And, look, here come her suitors.…That’s Countess Bezuhov’s brother, Anatole Kuragin,” she said, pointing to a handsome officer in the Horse Guards, who passed by them looking from the height of his lifted head over the ladies to something beyond them. “He is handsome, isn’t he? They say he is to be married to that heiress. And your cousin, Drubetskoy, is very attentive to her too. They say she has millions. Oh, that’s the French ambassador himself,” she said in answer to the countess’s inquiry as to the identity of Caulaincourt. “Just look, he’s like some monarch. But yet they’re nice, the French are very nice. No people more charming in society. Ah, here she is! Yes, still lovelier than any one, our Marya Antonovna! And how simply dressed! Exquisite!”

“And that stout fellow in spectacles is a universal freemason,” said Madame Peronsky, indicating Bezuhov. “Set him beside his wife: he’s a motley fool!”

Swinging his stout frame, Pierre slouched through the crowd, nodding to right and to left, as casually and good-naturedly as though he were walking through a crowd in a market. He made his way through the crowd unmistakably looking for some one.

Natasha looked with joy at the familiar face of Pierre, the motley fool, as Madame Peronsky called him, and knew that it was they, and she in particular, of whom Pierre was in search in the crowd. Pierre had promised her to be at the ball and to find her partners. But before reaching them, Pierre came to a standstill beside a very handsome, dark man of medium height in a white uniform, who was standing in a window talking to a tall man wearing stars and a ribbon.

Natasha at once recognised the handsome young man in the white uniform; it was Bolkonsky, who seemed to her to have grown much younger, happier, and better looking.

“There’s some one else we know, Bolkonsky, do you see, mamma?” said Natasha, pointing out Prince Andrey. “Do you remember he stayed a night at home, at Otradnoe?”

“Oh, do you know him?” said Madame Peronsky. “I can’t bear him. Every one is crazy over him. And his conceit! it’s beyond black skechers all bounds! He takes after his worthy papa! And he’s hand in glove now with Speransky, making out some sort of plans for reform. Just look how he behaves with ladies! She’s speaking to him, and he has turned his back on her,” she said, pointing to him. “I would soon send him about his business if he were to treat me like those ladies.”

THERE was a sudden stir, the crowd began talking, rushed forward, then moved apart again, and down the space left open black skechers through it, the Tsar walked to the strains of the band, which struck up at once. Behind him walked the host and hostess. The Tsar walked in rapidly, bowing to right and to left, as though trying to hurry over the first moments of greeting. The musicians played the polonaise in vogue at the time on account of the words set to it. The words began: “Alexander, Elisaveta, our hearts ye ravish quite.” The Tsar went into the drawing-room, the crowd made a dash for the door; several persons ran hurriedly to the door and back with excited faces. The crowd made another rush back, away from the drawing-room door at which the Tsar appeared in conversation with the hostess. A young man, looking distraught, pounced down on the ladies and begged them to move aside. Several, with faces that betrayed a total oblivion of all the rules of decorum, squeezed forward, to the destruction of their dresses. The men began approaching the ladies, and couples were formed for the polonaise.

There was a general movement of retreat, and the Tsar, smiling, came out of the drawing-room door, leading out the lady of the house, and not keeping time to the music. He was followed by the host with Marya Antonovna Narishkin; then came ambassadors, ministers, and various generals, whose names Madame Peronsky never tired of reciting. More than half the ladies had partners, and were taking part, or preparing to take part, in the polonaise.

Natasha felt that she would be left with her mother and Sonya in that minority of the ladies who were crowded back against the wall, and not invited to dance the polonaise. She stood, her thin arms hanging at her sides, and her scarcely outlined bosom heaving regularly. She held her breath, and gazed before her with shining, frightened eyes, with an expression of equal readiness for the utmost bliss or the utmost misery. She took no interest in the Tsar, nor in all the great people Madame Peronsky was pointing out; her mind was filled by one thought: “Is it possible no one will come up to me? Is it possible that I shall not dance among the foremost? Is it possible I shall not be noticed by all these men, who now don’t even seem to see me, but if they look at me, look with an expression as though they would say: ‘Ah! that’s not she, so it’s no use looking’?” “No, it cannot be!” she thought. “They must know how I long to dance, how well I dance, and how they would enjoy dancing with me.”

The strains of the polonaise, which had already lasted some time, were beginning to sound like a melancholy reminiscence in the ears of Natasha. She wanted to cry. Madame Peronsky had left them. The count was at the other end of the ballroom, the countess, Sonya, and she stood in that crowd of strangers as lonely as in a forest, of no interest, of no use to any one. Prince Andrey with a lady passed close by them, obviously not recognising them. The handsome Anatole said something smiling to the lady on his arm, and he glanced at Natasha’s face as one looks at a wall. Boris passed by them, twice, and each time turned away. Berg and his wife, who were not dancing, came towards them.

This family meeting here, in a ballroom, seemed a humiliating thing to Natasha, as though there were nowhere else for family talk but here at a ball. She did not listen, and did not look at Vera, who said something to her about her own green dress.

At last the Tsar stood still beside the last of his partners (he had danced with three), the music ceased. An anxious-looking adjutant ran up to the Rostovs, begging them to move a little further back, though they were already close to the wall, and from the orchestra came the circumspect, precise, seductively, stately rhythm of the waltz. The Tsar glanced with a smile down the ballroom. A moment passed; no one had yet begun. An adjutant, who was a steward, went up to Countess Bezuhov and asked her to dance. Smiling, she raised her hand and laid it on the adjutant’s shoulder without looking at him. The adjutant-steward, a master of his art, grasped his partner firmly, and with confident deliberation and smoothness broke with her into the first gallop round the edge of the circle, then at the corner of the ballroom caught his partner’s left hand, turned her; and through the quickening strains of the music nothing could be heard but the regular jingle of the spurs on the adjutant’s rapid, practised feet, and at every third beat the swish of his partner’s flying velvet skirt as she whirled round.

Natasha looked at them, and was ready to cry that it was not she dancing that first round of the waltz.

Prince Andrey, in his white uniform of a cavalry colonel, wearing stockings and dancing-shoes, stood looking eager and lively, in the front of the ring not far from the Rostovs. Baron Firhoff was talking to him of the proposed first sitting of the State Council to be held next day. From his intimacy with Speransky, and the part he was taking in the labours of the legislative commission, Prince Andrey was in a position to give authoritative information in regard to that sitting, about which the most diverse rumours were current. But he did not hear what Firhoff was saying to him, and looked from the Tsar to the gentlemen preparing to dance, who had not yet stepped out into the ring.

Prince Andrey was watching these gentlemen, who were timid in the presence of the Tsar, and the ladies, who were dying to be asked to dance.

Pierre went up to Prince Andrey and took him by the arm.

“You always dance. Here is my protégée, the younger Rostov girl, ask her,” he said.

“Where?” asked Bolkonsky. “I beg your pardon,” he said, turning to the baron, “we will finish this conversation in another place, but at a ball one must dance.” He went forward in the direction indicated by Pierre. Natasha’s despairing, tremulous face broke upon Prince Andrey. He recognised her, guessed her feelings, saw that it was her debut, remembered what she had said at the window, and with an expression of pleasure on his face he approached Countess Rostov.

“Permit me to introduce you to my daughter,” said the countess, reddening.

“I have the pleasure of her acquaintance already, if the countess remembers me,” said Prince Andrey, with a low and courteous bow, which seemed a direct contradiction to Madame Peronsky’s remarks about his rudeness. He went up to Natasha, and raised his hand to put it round her waist before he had fully uttered the invitation to dance. He proposed a waltz to her. The tremulous expression of Natasha’s face, ready for despair or for ecstasy, brightened at once into a happy, grateful, childlike smile.

“I have been a long while waiting for you,” that alarmed and happy young girl seemed to say to him in the smile that peeped out through the starting tears as she raised her hand to Prince Andrey’s shoulder. They were the second couple that walked forward into the ring.

Prince Andrey was one of the best dancers of his day. Natasha danced exquisitely. Her little feet in their satin dancing-shoes performed their task lightly and independently of her, and her face beamed with a rapture of happiness.

Her bare neck and arms were thin, and not beautiful compared with Ellen’s shoulders. Her shoulders were thin, her bosom undefined, her arms were slender. But Ellen was, as it were, covered with the hard varnish of those thousands of eyes that had scanned her Jimmy choo shoes store person, while Natasha seemed like a young girl stripped for the first time, who would have been greatly ashamed if she had not been assured by every one that it must be so.

Prince Andrey loved dancing. He was anxious to escape as quickly as he could from the political and intellectual conversations into which every one tried to draw him, and anxious too to break through that burdensome barrier of constraint arising from the presence of the Tsar; so he made haste to dance, and chose Natasha for a partner because Pierre pointed her out to him, and because she was the first pretty girl who caught his eyes. But he had no sooner put his arm round that slender, supple waist, and felt her stirring so close to him, and smiling so close to him, than the intoxication of her beauty flew to his head. He felt full of life and youth again as, drawing a deep breath, he brought her to a standstill and began to watch the other couples.AFTER PRINCE ANDREY, Boris came up to ask Natasha to dance, and he was followed by the dancing adjutant who had opened the ball, and many other young men. Natasha, flushed and happy, passed on her superfluous partners to Sonya, and never ceased dancing all the evening, She noticed nothing and saw nothing of what was absorbing every one else at that ball. She did not notice that the Tsar talked a long time with the French ambassador, that his manner was particularly gracious to a certain lady, that Prince So-and-So and Mr. So-and-So had said and done this and that, that Ellen’s success had been brilliant, and that So-and-So had paid her marked attention. She did not even see the Tsar, and was only aware that he was gone from noticing that the ball became livelier after his departure.

In one of the most enjoyable cotillions before supper, Prince Andrey danced again with Natasha. He reminded her of how he had first seen her in the avenue at Otradnoe, and how she could not sleep on that moonlight night, and told her how he had unwittingly listened to her. Natasha blushed at these recollections, and tried as it were to excuse herself, as though there were something to be ashamed of in the emotion to which Prince Andrey had unwittingly played the eavesdropper.

Like all men who have grown up in society, Prince Andrey liked meeting anything not of the conventional society stamp. And such was Natasha with her wonder, her delight, her shyness, and even her mistakes in talking French. His manner was particularly tender and circumspect as he talked to her. Sitting beside her, and talking of the simplest and most trifling subjects, Prince Andrey admired the radiant brilliance of her eyes and her smile, that had no concern with what was said but was due simply to her own happiness. When Natasha was chosen again, and she got up with a smile and was dancing, Prince Andrey particularly admired her shy grace. In the middle of the cotillion, Natasha went back to her place, breathless at the end of a figure. Another partner again chose her. She was tired and panting, and evidently she thought for an instant of refusing, but immediately she put her hand on her partner’s shoulder and was off again gaily, smiling to Prince Andrey.

“I should have been glad to rest and sit by you. I’m tired; but you see how they keep asking me, and I’m glad of it, and I’m happy, and I love every one, and you and I understand all about it,” and more, much more was said in that smile. When her partner left her side, Natasha flew across the room to choose two ladies for the figure.

“If she goes first to her cousin and then to another lady, she will be my wife,” Prince Andrey—greatly to his own surprise—caught himself saying mentally, as he watched her. She did go first to her cousin.

“What nonsense does sometimes come into one’s mind!” thought Prince Andrey, “but one thing’s certain, that girl is so charming, so original, that she won’t be dancing here a month before she will be married.… She’s a rare thing here,” he thought, as Natasha settled herself beside him, sticking in the rose that was falling out of her bodice.

At the end of the cotillion, the old count in his blue frock coat went up to the young people who had been dancing. He invited Prince Andrey to come and see them, and asked his daughter whether she were enjoying herself. Natasha did not at once answer, she only smiled a smile that said reproachfully: “How can you ask such a question?”

“Enjoying myself as I never have before in my life!” she said, and Prince Andrey noticed how her thin arms were swiftly raised as though to embrace her father, and dropped again at once. Natasha was happy as she had never been in her life. She was at that highest pitch of happiness, when one becomes completely good and kind, and disbelieves in the very possibility of evil, unhappiness, and sorrow.

At that ball Pierre for the first time felt humiliated by the position his wife took in the highest court circle. He was sullen and absent-minded. There was a broad furrow right across his forehead, as he stood in a window, staring over his spectacles and seeing no one. Natasha passed close by him on her way in to supper. Pierre’s gloomy, unhappy face struck her. She stopped, facing him. She longed to come to his aid, to bestow on him some of her own overflowing happiness. “How delightful it is,” she said; “isn’t it?”
Pierre smiled an absent-minded smile, obviously not grasping what was said to him. “Yes, I’m very glad,” he said. 
“How can people be discontented at jimmy choo shoes anything!” thought Natasha. “Especially any one as nice as Bezuhov.”
In Natasha’s eyes all the people at the ball were particularly kind, sweet, good people, loving one another; none were capable of wronging one another, and so all must be happy.

NEXT DAY when Prince Andrey thought of the ball it did not occupy his mind for long. “Yes, it was a very successful ball. cheap jimmy choo shoes And besides…yes, the younger Rostov is very charming. There’s something fresh in her, original, unlike Petersburg.” That was all he thought about the previous day’s ball, and after his morning tea he set to work.

But from fatigue and want of sleep he was not very well disposed for work, and could get nothing done. He was continually criticising his own work—a habit common with him—and was glad when he heard a visitor arrive.

The visitor was Bitsky, a man who was a member of various committees and of all the societies in Petersburg. He was a passionate adherent of the new ideas and of Speransky, and the busiest purveyor of news in Petersburg, one of those men who choose their opinions like their clothes—according to the fashion—but for that very reason seem the most vehement partisans. Scarcely waiting to remove his hat, he ran fussily up to Prince Andrey, and at once began talking. He had just learned particulars of the sitting of the State Council of that morning, opened by the Tsar, and began enthusiastically upon the subject. The Tsar’s speech had been, he said, an extraordinary one. It had been a speech such as are only delivered by constitutional monarchs. “The Emperor directly asserted that the Council and the Senate are the estates of the realm; he said that government should be founded not on arbitrary authority, but on a secure basis. The Emperor said that the fiscal system must be reconstituted and the accounts must be public,” Bitsky announced, laying stress on certain words, and opening his eyes significantly. “Yes, to-day’s sitting marks an epoch, the greatest epoch in our history,” he concluded.

Prince Andrey heard his account of the opening of the State Council, to which he had been looking forward with such eagerness, and to which he had attached so much consequence, and was amazed that now, when it had come to pass, this event, far from affecting him, struck him as less than insignificant. With quiet irony he listened to Bitsky’s enthusiastic description. The idea in his mind was of the simplest. “What is it to me and Bitsky,” he thought, “what is it to us, whatever the Emperor is pleased to say in the Council? Can all that make me any happier or better?”

And this simple reflection suddenly destroyed all Prince Andrey’s former interest in the reforms that were being made. That day Prince Andrey was to dine with Speransky, “with only a few friends,” as the host had said in inviting him. That dinner, in the intimate home circle of the man who had so fascinated him, had seemed very attractive to Prince Andrey, especially as he had not hitherto seen Speransky in his home surroundings. But now he had no wish to go to it.

At the hour fixed, however, Prince Andrey was entering the small house in Tavritchesky Garden. The little house, which was Speransky’s property, was distinguished by an extraordinary cleanliness, suggestive of the cleanliness of a convent. In the parqueted dining-room, Prince Andrey, who was a little late, found all that circle of Speransky’s intimate friends already gathered together at five o’clock. There were no ladies present, except Speransky’s little daughter (with a long face like her father’s) and her governess. The guests were Gervais, Magnitsky and Stolypin. From the vestibule Prince Andrey had caught the sound of loud voices and a ringing, staccato laugh—a laugh such as one hears on the stage. Some one—it sounded like Speransky—was giving vent to a staccato “ha…ha…ha…” Prince Andrey had never before heard Speransky laugh, and this shrill, ringing laugh from the great statesman made a strange impression on him.

Prince Andrey went into the dining-room. The whole party were standing between the two windows at a little table laid with hors d’?uvres. Speransky was standing at the table with a mirthful countenance, wearing a grey frock coat with a star, and the white waistcoat and high white stock, in which he had been at the famous sitting of the State Council. His guests formed a ring round him. Turning towards him Magnitsky was relating an anecdote. Speransky listened, laughing beforehand at what Magnitsky was going to say. Just as Prince Andrey walked into the room, Magnitsky’s words were again drowned in laughter. Stolypin gave vent to a bass guffaw as he munched a piece of bread and cheese. Gervais softly hissed a chuckle, and Speransky laughed his shrill, staccato laugh.

Speransky, still laughing, gave Prince Andrey his soft, white hand. “Very glad to see you, prince,” he said. “One minute…” he turned to Magnitsky, whose tale he was interrupting. “We have made a compact to-day; this is a holiday dinner, and not one word about business.” And he turned again to the story-teller, and again he laughed.

With a sense of wondering and melancholy disillusion, Prince Andrey heard his laughter and looked at Speransky laughing. It was not Speransky, but some other man, it seemed to Prince Andrey. All that had seemed mysterious and attractive in Speransky suddenly seemed to Prince Andrey obvious and unattractive.

At dinner the conversation never paused for a moment, and consisted of something like the contents of a jest-book. Magnitsky had hardly finished his anecdote when another gentleman expressed his readiness to relate something even more amusing. The anecdotes for the most part related, if not to the service itself, to persons prominent in the service. It was as though in this circle the utter insignificance of these prominent persons was so completely accepted that the only attitude possible towards them was one of good-humoured hilarity. Speransky told them how at the council that morning a deaf statesman, on being asked his opinion, replied that he was of the same opinion. Gervais described a whole episode of the revision, only remarkable for the imbecility of all concerned in it. Stolypin, stammering, took up the conversation and began talking of the abuses of the old order of things, with a warmth that threatened to give the conversation a serious turn. Magnitsky began to make fun of Stolypin’s earnestness. Gervais put in his joke, and the conversation resumed its former lively tone. It was obvious that after his labours Speransky liked to rest and be amused in the circle of his friends; and all his friends understood his tastes, Jimmy choo shoes online and were trying to amuse him and themselves. But this kind of gaiety seemed to Prince Andrey tiresome and anything but gay. Speransky’s high voice struck him unpleasantly, and his continual laugh in its high-pitched, falsetto note was for some reason an offence to Prince Andrey’s feelings. Prince Andrey did not laugh, and was afraid he would be felt uncongenial by this party. But no one noticed his lack of sympathy with the general merriment. All of them appeared to be greatly enjoying themselves.

Several times he tried to enter into the conversation, but every time the word was snatched out of his mouth, like a cork out of water, and he could not bandy jokes with them. There was nothing wrong or unseemly in what they said; it was all witty, and might have been amusing, but something—that very something that makes the zest of gaiety—was wanting, and they did not even know of its existence.

After dinner Speransky’s daughter and her governess rose from the table. Speransky patted his daughter with his white hand, and kissed her. And that gesture, too, seemed to Prince Andrey unnatural.

The men sat on over their port, after the English fashion. A conversation sprang up about Napoleon’s doings in Spain, of which all were united in approving, while Prince Andrey attacked them. But in the middle of this discussion Speransky, obviously wishing to change the subject, began with a smile telling an anecdote, which had no connection with it. For several instants every one was silent.

As they sat at table, Speransky, corking up a bottle of wine and saying, “Nowadays good wine doesn’t go a-begging!” gave it to the servant and got up. All rose, and talking just as noisily, went into the drawing-room. Speransky was handed two envelopes brought by a special courier. He took them and went into his study. As soon as he had gone, there was a lull in the general gaiety, and the guests began conversing sensibly in low tones together.

“Well, now for the recitation!” said Speransky, coming out of his study. “A marvellous talent!” he said to Prince Andrey. Magnitsky at once threw himself into an attitude, and began to recite comic French verses, a skit he had composed on various well-known persons. Several times he was interrupted by applause. At the conclusion of the recitation Prince Andrey went up to Speransky to say good-bye.

“Why so early?” said Speransky.

“I promised to be at a soirée.…”

They said no more. Prince Andrey looked at those mirror-like, impenetrable eyes, so close to his, and he felt it ludicrous that he should have expected anything from Speransky, and from all his own work connected with him, and marvelled how he could have ascribed any value to what Speransky was doing. That punctual, mirthless laugh was ringing in Prince Andrey’s ears long after he had left Speransky’s.

On reaching home Prince Andrey began looking at his life in Peters-burg during the last four months, as though it were something new. He thought of the efforts he had made, and the people he had tried to see, and the history of his project of army reform, which had been accepted for consideration, and had been shelved because another scheme, a very poor one, had already been worked out and presented to the Tsar. He thought of the sittings of the committee, of which Berg was a member. He thought of the conscientious and prolonged deliberations that took place at those sittings on every point relating to the formalities of the sittings themselves, and the studious brevity with which anything relating to the reality of their duties was touched on in passing. He thought of his work on the legislative reforms, of his careful translation of the Roman and French codes into Russian, and he felt ashamed of himself. Then he vividly imagined Bogutcharovo, his pursuits in the country, his expedition to Ryazan; he thought of his peasants, of Dron the village elder; and applying the section on Personal Rights, which he had divided into paragraphs, to them, he marvelled how he could have so long busied himself on work so idle. THE NEXT DAY Prince Andrey paid calls on various people whom he had not visited before, and among them on the Rostovs, with whom he had renewed his acquaintance at the ball. Apart from considerations of politeness, which necessitated a call on the Rostovs, Prince Andrey wanted to see at home that original, eager girl, who had left such a pleasant recollection with him.

Natasha was one of the first to meet him. She was in a blue everyday dress, in which she struck Prince Andrey as looking prettier than in her ball-dress. She and all the family received Prince Andrey like an old friend, simply and cordially. All the family, which Prince Andrey had once criticised so severely, now seemed to him to consist of excellent, simple, kindly people. The hospitality and good-nature of the old count, particularly striking and attractive in Petersburg, was such that Prince Andrey could not refuse to stay to dinner. “Yes, these are good-natured, capital people,” thought Bolkonsky. “Of course they have no conception, what a treasure they possess in Natasha; but they are good people, who make the best possible background for the strikingly poetical figure of that charming girl, so full of life!”

Prince Andrey was conscious in Natasha of a special world, utterly remote from him, brimful of joys unknown to him, that strange world, which even in the avenue at Otradnoe, and on that moonlight night at the window had tantalised him. Now that no longer tantalised him, it seemed no longer an alien world; but he himself was stepping into it, and finding new pleasures in it.

After dinner Natasha went to the clavichord, at Prince Andrey’s request, and began singing. Prince Andrey stood at the window talking to the ladies, and listened to her. In the middle of a phrase, Prince Andrey ceased speaking, and felt suddenly a lump in his throat from tears, the possibility of which he had not dreamed of in himself. He looked at Natasha singing, and something new and blissful stirred in his soul. He was happy, and at the same time he was sad. He certainly had nothing to weep about, but he was ready to weep. For what? For his past love? For the little princess? For his lost illusions? … For his hopes for the future? … Yes, and no. The chief thing which made him ready to weep was a sudden, vivid sense of the fearful contrast between something infinitely great and illimitable existing in him, and something limited and material, which he himself was, and even she was.

This contrast made his heart ache, and rejoiced him while she was singing.

As soon as Natasha had finished singing, she went up to him, and asked how he liked her voice. She asked this, and was abashed after saying it, conscious that she ought not to have asked such a question. He smiled, looking at her, and said he liked her singing, as he liked everything she did.

It was late in the evening when Prince Andrey left the Rostovs’. He went to bed from the habit of going to bed, but soon saw that he could not sleep. He lighted a candle and sat up in bed; then got up, then lay down again, not in the least wearied by his sleeplessness: he felt a new joy in his soul, as though he had come out of a stuffy room into the open daylight. It never even occurred to him that he was in love with this little Rostov girl. He was not thinking about her. He only pictured her to himself, and the whole of life rose before him in a new light as he did so. “Why do I struggle? Why am I troubled in this narrow cramped routine, when life, all life, with all its joys, lies open before me?” he said to himself. And for the first time for a very long while, he began making happy plans for the future. He made up his mind that he ought to look after his son’s education, to find a tutor, and entrust the child to him. Then he ought to retire from the army, and go abroad, see England, Switzerland, Italy. “I must take advantage of my liberty,jimmy choo shoes while I feel so much youth and strength in me,” he told himself. “Pierre was right in saying that one must believe in the possibility of happiness, in order to be happy, and now I do believe in it. Let us leave the dead to bury the dead; but while one is living, one must live and be happy,” he thought.

ONE MORNING Colonel Adolphe Berg, whom Pierre knew just as he knew every one in Moscow and Petersburg, called upon him. He was wearing a brand-new uniform, and had his powdered locks mbt shoes standing up over his forehead, as worn by the Tsar Alexander Pavlovitch.

“I have just been calling on the countess, your spouse, and to my misfortune, my request could not be granted. I hope I shall be more fortunate with you, count,” he said, smiling.

“What is it you desire, colonel? I am at your disposal.”

“I am by now, quite settled in my new quarters,” Berg informed him with perfect conviction that to hear this fact could not but be agreeable; “and so I was desirous of giving a little soirée for my friends and my spouse.” (He smiled still more blandly.) “I meant to ask the countess and you to do me the honour to come to us for a cup of tea, and … to supper.”

Only the Countess Elena Vassilyevna, who considered it beneath her to associate with nobodies like the Bergs, could have had the cruelty to refuse such an invitation. Berg explained so clearly why he wanted to gather together a small and select company at his new rooms; and why it would be agreeable to him to do so; and why he would grudge spending money on cards, or anything else harmful; but was ready for the sake of good society to incur expense, that Pierre could not refuse, and promised to come.

“Only not late, count, if I may venture to beg. Ten minutes to eight, I venture to beg. We will make up a party for boston. Our general is coming; he is very kind to me. We will have a little supper, count, so I shall esteem it an honour.”

Contrary to his usual habit (he was almost always late) Pierre arrived at the Bergs’ not at ten minutes to eight, but at a quarter to eight.

The Bergs had made all necessary preparations for their little party, and were quite ready to receive their guests.

Berg and his wife were sitting in a new, clean, light study, furnished with little busts and pictures and new furniture. Berg, with his new uniform closely buttoned up, sat beside his wife, and was explaining to her that one always could and ought to cultivate the acquaintance of people above one—for only then is there anything agreeable in acquaintances. “You pick up something, you can put in a word for something. Look at me now, how I used to manage in the lower grades (Berg reckoned his life not by years but by promotions). “My comrades are nothing still, while I’m a lieutenant-colonel. I have the happiness of being your husband” (he got up and kissed Vera’s hand, but on the way turned back the corner of the rug, which was rucked-up). “And how did I obtain all this? Chiefly by knowing how to select my acquaintances. It goes without saying, of course, that one has to be conscientious and punctual in the discharge of one’s duties.”

Berg smiled with a sense of his own superiority over a mere weak woman, and paused, reflecting that this charming wife of his was, after all, a weak woman, who could never attain all that constituted a man’s dignity,—ein Mann zu sein. Vera smiled, too, at the same time with a sense of her superiority over her conscientious, excellent husband, who yet, like all men, according to Vera’s ideas of them, took such a mistaken view of life. Berg, judging from his wife, considered all women weak and foolish. Vera, judging from her husband only, and generalising from her observation of him, supposed that all men ascribed common-sense to none but themselves, and at the same time had no understanding for anything, and were conceited and egoistic.

Berg got up, and cautiously embracing his wife so as not to crush the lace bertha, for which he had paid a round sum, he kissed her just on her lips.

“There’s only one thing: we mustn’t have children too soon,” he said, by a connection of ideas of which he was himself unconscious.

“Yes,” answered Vera, “I don’t at all desire that. We must live for society.”

“Princess Yusupov was wearing one just like that,” said Berg, pointing with a happy and good-humoured smile to the bertha.

At that moment they were informed that Count Bezuhov had arrived. Both the young couple exchanged glances of self-satisfaction, each mentally claiming the credit of this visit.

“See what comes of knowing how to make acquaintances,” thought Berg. “See what comes of behaving properly!”

“But, please, when I am entertaining guests,” said Vera, “don’t you interrupt me, because I know with what to entertain each of them, and what to say in the company of different people.”

Berg, too, smiled.

“Oh, but sometimes men must have their masculine conversation,” he said.

Pierre was shown into the little drawing-room, in which it was impossible to sit down without disturbing the symmetry, tidiness, and order; and consequently it was quite comprehensible, and not strange, that Berg should magnanimously offer to disturb the symmetry of the armchair or of the sofa for an honoured guest, and apparently finding himself in miserable indecision in the matter, should leave his guest to solve the question of selection. Pierre destroyed the symmetry, moved out a chair for himself, and Berg and Vera promptly began their soirée, interrupting each other in their efforts to entertain their guest.

Vera, deciding in her own mind that Pierre mbt walking shoes ought to be entertained with conversation about the French Embassy, promptly embarked upon that subject. Berg, deciding that masculine conversation was what was required, interrupted his wife’s remarks by reference to the question of war with Austria, and made an unconscious jump from that general subject to personal considerations upon the proposal made him to take part in the Austrain campaign, and the reasons which had led him to decline it. Although the conversation was extremely disconnected, and Vera resented the intervention of the masculine element, both the young people felt with satisfaction that although only one guest was present, the soirée had begun very well, and that their soirée was as like every other soirée as two drops of water,—with the same conversation and tea and lighted candles.

The next to arrive was Boris, an old comrade of Berg’s. There was a certain shade of patronage and condescension in his manner to Berg and Vera. After Boris came the colonel and his lady, then the general himself, then the Rostovs, and the soirée now began to be exactly, incontestably, like all other soirées. Berg and Vera could hardly repress their smiles of glee at the sight of all this movement in their drawing-room, at the sound of the disconnected chatter, and the rustle of skirts and of curtsies. Everything was precisely as everybody always has it; especially so was the general, who admired their rooms, clapped Berg on the shoulder, and with paternal authority insisted on arranging the table for boston. The general sat by Count Ilya Andreivitch, as the guest next in precedence to himself. The elderly guests were together, the younger people together, the hostess at the tea-table, on which there were cakes in the silver cake-basket exactly like the cakes at the Panins’ soirées. Everything was precisely like what everybody else had. PIERRE, as one of the most honoured guests, was obliged to sit down to boston with the old count, the general, and the colonel. As he sat at the boston-table he happened to be directly facing Natasha and he was struck by the curious change that had come over her since the day of the ball. Natasha was silent, and not only was she not so pretty as she had been at the ball, she would have been positively plain but for the look of gentle indifference to everything in her face

“What is wrong with her?” Pierre wondered, glancing at her. She was sitting by her sister at the tea-table; she gave reluctant answers to Boris at her side and did not look at him. After playing all of one suit and taking five tricks to his partner’s satisfaction, Pierre, having caught the sound of greetings and the steps of some one entering while he took his tricks glanced at her again.

“Why, what has happened to her?” he said to himself in still greater wonder.

Prince Andrey was standing before her saying something to her with an expression of guarded tenderness on his face. She, lifting her head, was looking at him, flushing crimson, and visibly trying to control her breathing, which came in panting gasps. And the vivid glow of some inner fire that had been quenched before was alight in her again. She was utterly transformed. From a plain girl she was once more the beautiful creature she had been at the ball.

Prince Andrey went up to Pierre, and Pierre noticed a new, youthful expression in his friend’s face. Several times Pierre changed his seat during the play, sitting sometimes with his back to Natasha, sometimes facing her, and during all the six rubbers he was observing her and his friend.

“Something very serious is happening between them,” thought Pierre, and a feeling at once of gladness and of bitterness made him agitated and forgetful of the game.

After six rubbers the general got up, saying it was of no use playing like that, and Pierre was at liberty. Natasha, at one side of the room, was talking to Sonya and Boris. Vera, with a subtle smile, was saying something to Prince Andrey. Pierre went up to his friend, and, asking whether they were talking secrets, sat down beside them. Vera, noticing Prince Andrey’s attention to Natasha, felt that at a soirée, at a real soirée, it was absolutely necessary there should be delicate allusions to the tender passion, and seizing an opportunity when Prince Andrey was alone, began a conversation with him upon the emotions generally, and her sister in particular. She felt that, with a guest so intellectual as she considered Prince Andrey, she must put all her diplomatic tact into the task before her. When Pierre went up to them he noticed that Vera was in full flow of self-complacent talk, while Prince Andrey seemed embarrassed—a thing that rarely happened to him.

“What do you think?” Vera was saying with a subtle smile. “You, prince, have so much penetration and see into people’s characters at once. What do you think about Natalie? Is she capable of constancy in her attachments? Is she capable, like other women” (Vera meant herself) “of loving a man once for all and remaining faithful to him for ever? That’s what I regard as true love! What do you think, prince?”

“I know your sister too little,” answered Prince Andrey, with a sarcastic smile, under which he tried to conceal his embarrassment, “to decide a question so delicate; and, besides, I have noticed that the less attractive a woman is, the more constant she is apt to be,” he added, and he looked at Pierre, who at that moment joined them.

“Yes, that is true, prince. In these days,” pursued Vera (talking of “these days,” as persons of limited intellect as a rule love to do, supposing they have discovered and estimated the peculiarities of the times and that human characteristics do change with the times), “in these days a girl has so much liberty that the pleasure of being paid attention often stifles these feelings in her. And Natalie, it must be confessed, is very susceptible on that side.”

This going back to Natasha again made Prince Andrey contract his brows disagreeably. He tried to get up, but Vera persisted with a still more subtle smile.

“Nobody, I imagine, has been so much run after as she has,” Vera went on; “but no one, until quite of late, has ever made a serious impression on her. Of course, you know, count,” she turned to Pierre, “even our charming cousin, Boris, who, entre nous, was very, very far gone in the region of the tender passion …” She intended an allusion to the map of love then in fashion.

Prince Andrey scowled, and was mute.

“But, of course, you are a friend of Boris’s?” Vera said to him

“Yes, I know him. …”

“He has probably told you of his childish love for Natasha?”

“Oh, was there a childish love between them?” asked Prince Andrey with a sudden, unexpected flush on his face.

“Yes. You know between cousins the close intimacy often leads to love. Cousinhood is a dangerous neighbourhood. Isn’t it?”

“Oh, not a doubt of it,” said Prince Andrey, and with sudden and unnatural liveliness, he began joking with Pierre about the necessity of his being careful with his cousins at Moscow, ladies of fifty, and in the middle of these jesting remarks he got up, and taking Pierre’s arm, drew him aside.

“Well, what is it?” said Pierre, who had been watching in wonder his friend’s excitement, and noticed the glance he turned upon Natasha as he got up.

“I must, I must talk to you,” said Prince Andrey. “You know that pair of women’s gloves” (he referred to the masonic gloves given to a newly initiated brother to be entrusted to the woman he loved). “I … but no, I will talk to you later on. …” And with a strange light in his eyes and a restlessness in his movements, Prince Andrey approached Natasha and sat down beside her. Pierre saw that Prince Andrey asked her some question, and she answered him, flushing hotly.

But at that moment Berg approached Pierre, and insisted upon his taking part in an argument between the general and the colonel on affairs in Spain.

Berg was satisfied and happy. The smile of glee never left his face. The soirée was a great success, and exactly like other soirées he had seen. Everything was precisely similar: the ladies’ refined conversation, and the cards, and after the cards the general raising his voice and the samovar and the tea cakes; but one thing was still lacking, mbt sandals walk which he had always seen at soirées, and wished to imitate. There was still wanting the usual loud conversation between the gentlemen and discussion about some serious intellectual question. The general had started that conversation, and Berg drew Pierre into it.

NEXT DAY Prince Andrey went to dine at the Rostovs’, as Count Ilya Andreitch had invited him, and spent the whole day with them.

Every one in the house perceived on whose account Prince Andrey came, and he openly tried to be all day long with Natasha.

Not only in the soul of Natasha—scared, but happy and enthusiastic—in the whole household, too, there was a feeling mbt on sale of awe, of something of great gravity being bound to happen. With sorrowful and sternly serious eyes the countess looked at Prince Andrey as he talked to Natasha, and shyly and self-consciously tried to begin some insignificant talk with him as soon as he looked round at her. Sonya was afraid to leave Natasha, and afraid of being in their way if she stayed with them. Natasha turned pale in a panic of expectation every time she was left for a moment alone with him. Prince Andrey’s timidity impressed her. She felt that he wanted to tell her something, but could not bring himself up to the point.

When Prince Andrey had gone away in the evening, the countess went up to Natasha and whispered:

“Well?”

“Mamma, for God’s sake, don’t ask me anything just now. This one can’t talk of,” said Natasha.

But in spite of this answer, Natasha lay a long while in her mother’s bed that night, her eyes fixed before her, excited and scared by turns. She told her how he had praised her, how he had said he was going abroad, how he had asked where they were going to spend the summer, and how he had asked her about Boris.

“But anything like this, like this … I have never felt before!” she said. “Only I’m afraid with him, I’m always afraid with him. What does that mean? Does it mean that it’s the real thing? Mamma, are you asleep?”

“No, my darling. I’m afraid of him myself,” answered her mother. “Go to bed.”

“Anyhow, I shouldn’t go to sleep. How stupid sleep is! Mamma, mamma, nothing like this have I ever felt before,” she said, with wonder and terror at the feeling she recognised in herself. “And could we ever have dreamed! …”

It seemed to Natasha that she had fallen in love with Prince Andrey the first time she saw him at Otradnoe. She was as it were terrified at this strange, unexpected happiness that the man she had chosen even then (she was firmly convinced that she had done so)—that very man should meet them again now and be apparently not indifferent to her.

“And it seems as though it all happened on purpose—his coming to Petersburg just while we are here. And our meeting at that ball. It was all fate. It’s clear that it is fate, that it has all led up to this. Even then, as soon as I saw him, I felt something quite different.”

“What has he said to you? What are those verses? Read them …” said the mother thoughtfully, referring to the verses Prince Andrey had written in Natasha’s album.

“Mamma, does it matter his being a widower?”

“Hush, Natasha. Pray to God. Marriages are made in heaven,” she said, quoting the French proverb.

“Mamma, darling, how I love you! how happy I am!” cried Natasha, shedding tears of excitement and happiness and hugging her mother.

At that very time Prince Andrey was telling Pierre of his love for Natasha and of his fixed determination to marry her.

That evening the Countess Elena Vassilyevna gave a reception; the French ambassador was there, and a royal prince who had become a very frequent visitor at the countess’s of late and many brilliant ladies and gentlemen. Pierre came down to it, wandered through the rooms and impressed all the guests by his look of concentrated preoccupation and gloom.

Pierre had been feeling one of his attacks of nervous depression coming upon him ever since the day of the ball and had been making desperate efforts to struggle against it. Since his wife’s intrigue with the royal prince, Pierre had been to his surprise appointed a kammerherr, and ever since he had felt a sense of weariness and shame in court society, and his old ideas of the vanity of all things human began to come back oftener and oftener. The feeling he had lately noticed between his protégée Natasha and Prince Andrey had aggravated his gloom by the contrast between his own position and his friend’s. He tried equally to avoid thinking of his wife and also of Natasha and Prince Andrey. Again everything seemed to him insignificant in comparison with eternity; again the question rose before him: “What for?” And for days and nights together he forced himself to work at masonic labours, hoping to keep off the evil spirit. Pierre had come out of the countess’s apartments at midnight, and was sitting in a shabby dressing-gown at the table in his own low-pitched, smoke-blackened room upstairs, copying out long transactions of the Scottish freemasons, when some one came into his room. It was Prince Andrey.

“Oh, it’s you,” said Pierre, with a preoccupied and dissatisfied air. “I’m at work, you see,” he added, pointing to the manuscript book with that look of escaping from the ills of life with which unhappy people look at their work.

Prince Andrey stood before Pierre with a radiant, ecstatic face, full of new life, and with the egoism of happiness smiled at him without noticing his gloomy face.

“Well, my dear boy,” he said, “I wanted to tell you yesterday, and I have come to do so to-day. I have never felt anything like it. I am in love.”

Pierre suddenly heaved a heavy sigh, and dumped down his heavy person on the sofa beside Prince Andrey.

“With Natasha Rostov, yes?” he said “Yes, yes, who else could it be? I would never have believed it, but the feeling is too strong for me. Yesterday I was in torment, in agony, but I would not exchange that agony even for anything in the world. I have never lived till now, but I cannot live without her. But can she love me? … I’m too old for her.…Why don’t you speak? …”

“I? I? What did I tell you?” said Pierre, suddenly getting up and walking about the room. “I always thought so.…That girl is a treasure.…She’s a very rare sort of girl.…My dear fellow, don’t, I entreat you, be too wise, don’t doubt, marry, marry, marry! … And I am sure no man was ever happier than you will be.”

“But she?”

“She loves you.”

“Don’t talk nonsense …” said Prince Andrey, smiling and looking into Pierre’s face.

“She loves you, I know it,” Pierre cried angrily.

“No; do listen,” said Prince Andrey, taking hold of him by the arm and stopping him. “Do you know the state I am in? I must talk about it to some one.”

“Well, well, talk away, I’m very glad,” said Pierre, and his face did really change, the line of care in his brow was smoothed away, and he listened gladly to Prince Andrey. His friend seemed, and was indeed, an utterly different, new man. What had become of his ennui, his contempt of life, his disillusionment? Pierre was the only person to whom he could have brought himself to speak quite openly; but to him he did reveal all that was in his heart. Readily and boldly he made plans reaching far into the future; said he could not sacrifice his own happiness to the caprices of his father; declared that he would force his father to agree to the marriage and like her, or dispense with his consent altogether; then he marvelled at the feeling which had taken possession of him, as something strange, and apart, independent of himself.

“I should never have believed it, if any one had told me I could love like this,” said Prince Andrey. “It is utterly different from the feeling I once had. The whole world is split into two halves for me: one—she, and there all is happiness, hope, and light; the other half—all where she is not, there all is dejection and darkness.…”

“Darkness and gloom,” repeated Pierre; “yes, yes, I understand that.”

“I can’t help loving the light; that’s not my fault; and I am very happy. Do you understand me? I know you are glad for me.”

“Yes, yes,” Pierre assented, looking at his friend with eyes full of tenderness and sadness. The brighter the picture of Prince Andrey’s fate before his mind, the darker seemed his own. TO GET MARRIED his father’s consent was wanted, and to obtain this Prince Andrey set off to see his father.

The father received his son’s communication with external composure but with inward wrath. He could not comprehend how any one could want to alter his life, to introduce any new element into it, when life was for him so near its end. “If they would only let me live my life out as I want to, and then do as they like!” the old man said to himself. With his son, however, he made use of that diplomacy to which he always had resort in case of gravity. Assuming a calm tone, he went into the whole question judicially.

In the first place, the marriage was not a brilliant one from the point of view of birth, fortune, or distinction. Secondly, Prince Andrey was not in his first youth, and was delicate in health (the old man laid special stress on this), and the girl was very young. Thirdly, there was his son, whom it would be a pity to entrust to a mere girl. “Fourthly, and finally,” said the father, looking ironically at his son, “I beg you to defer the matter for a year; go abroad, and get well; find a German, as you want to do so, for Prince Nikolay, and then, if your love, your passion, your obstinacy—what you choose—are so great, then get married. And that’s my last word on the subject; you know, the last …” the old prince concluded, in a tone that showed that nothing would compel him to alter his decision.

Prince Andrey saw clearly that the old man hoped that either his feeling or that of his betrothed would not stand the test of a year or that he, the old prince, would die himself in the course of it, and he decided to act in accordance with his father’s wish; to make an offer and to defer the marriage for a year.

Three weeks after his last visit to the Rostovs, Prince Andrey returned to Petersburg.

The day after her conversation with her mother, Natasha spent the whole day expecting Bolkonsky but he did not come. The next day, and the third, it was just the same. Pierre too stayed away, and Natasha, not knowing Prince Andrey had gone away to see his father, did not know how to interpret his absence.

So passed the three weeks. Natasha would not go out anywhere, and wandered like a shadow about the house, idle and listless, wept at night in secret, and did not go in to her mother in the evenings. She was continually flushing and very irritable. It seemed to her that every one knew of her disappointment, was laughing at her, and pitying her. In spite of all the intensity of her inward grief, the wound to her vanity aggravated her misery.

She came in to the countess one day, tried to say something, and all at once burst into tears. Her tears were the tears of an offended child, who does not know why it is being punished. The countess tried to comfort Natasha. At first she listened to her mother’s words, but suddenly she interrupted her:

“Stop, mamma, I don’t think of him or want to think of him! Why, he kept coming, and he has left off, and he has left off …” Her voice quivered, she almost began to cry, but recovered herself, and went on calmly:

“And I don’t want to be married at all. And I’m afraid of him; I have quite, quite got over it now…”

The day after this conversation, Natasha put on the old dress she specially associated with the fun she had often had when wearing it in the mornings, and began from early morning to take up her old manner of life, which she had given up ever since the ball. After morning tea, she went into the big hall, which she particularly liked on account of the loud resonance in it, and began singing her sol-fa exercises. When she had finished the first exercise she stood still in the middle of the room and repeated a single musical phrase which particularly pleased her. She listened with delight, as though it were new to her, to the charm of these notes ringing out, filling the empty space of the great room and dying slowly away, and she felt all at once cheerful. “Why think so much about it; things are nice even as it is,” she said to herself; and she began walking up and down the room, not putting her feet simply down on the resounding parquet, but at each step bending her foot from the heel to the toe (she had on some new shoes she particularly liked), and listening to the regular tap of the heel and creak of the toe with the same pleasure with which she had listened to the sound of her own voice. Passing by the looking-glass, she glanced into it. “Yes, that’s me!” the expression of her face seemed to say at the sight of herself. “Well, and very nice too. And I need nobody.”

A footman would have come in to clear away something in the room, but she would not let him come in. She shut the door after him, and continued her promenade about the room. She had come back that morning to her favourite mood of loving herself and being ecstatic over herself. “What a charming creature that Natasha is!” she said again of herself, speaking as some third person, a generic, masculine person.

“Pretty, a voice, young, and she’s in nobody’s way, only leave her in peace.” But, however much she might be left in peace, she could not now be at peace, and she felt that immediately.

In the vestibule the hall-door opened; someone was asking, “At home?” and steps were audible. Natasha was looking at herself in the glass, but she did not see herself. She heard sounds in the vestibule. When she saw herself, her face was pale. It was he. She knew it for certain, though she herself caught the sound of his voice at the opened door.

Natasha, pale and panic-stricken, flew into the drawing-room.

“Mamma, Bolkonsky has come,” she said. “Mamma, this is awful, unbearable! … I don’t want … to be tortured! What am I to do?”

The countess had not time to answer her before Prince Andrey with a troubled and serious face walked into the drawing-room. As soon as he saw Natasha his face beamed with delight. He kissed the countess’s hand and Natasha’s, and sat down beside the sofa.

“It’s a long while since we have had the pleasure …” the countess was beginning, but Prince Andrey cut her short, answering her implied question, and obviously in haste to say what he had to say.

“I have not been to see you all this time because I have been to see my father; I had to talk over a very important matter with him. I only returned last night,” he said, glancing at Natasha. “I want to have a talk with you, countess,” he added after a moment’s silence.

The countess dropped her eyes, sighing heavily.

“I am at your disposal,” she brought out.

Natasha knew she ought to go, but she was unable to do so: something seemed gripping her throat, and, regardless of civility, she stared straight at Prince Andrey with wide-open eyes.

“At once? … This minute? … No, it cannot be!” she was thinking.

He glanced at her again, and that glance convinced her that she was not mistaken. Yes, at once, this very minute her fate was to be decided.

“Run away, Natasha; I will call you,” the countess whispered.

With frightened and imploring eyes Natasha glanced at Prince Andrey and at her mother, and went out.

“I have come, countess, to ask for your daughter’s hand,” said Prince Andrey.

The countess’s face flushed hotly, but she said nothing.

“Your offer …” the countess began at last, sedately. He sat silent, looking into her face. “Your offer” … (she hesitated in confusion) “is agreeable to us, and … I accept your offer. I am glad of it. And my husband … I hope … but it must rest with herself …”

“I will speak to her, when I have received your consent.…Do you give it me?” said Prince Andrey.

“Yes,” said the countess, and she held out her hand to him, and with mingled feelings of aversion and tenderness she pressed her lips to his forehead as he bent to kiss her hand. Her wish was to love him as a son; but she felt that he was a man alien to her, and that she was afraid of him.

“I am sure my husband will consent,” said the countess; “but your father …”

“My father, whom I have informed of my plans, has made it an express condition that the marriage should not take place for a year. That too, I meant to speak of to you,” said Prince Andrey.

“It is true that Natasha is very young, but—so long as that?”

“It could not be helped,” said Prince Andrey with a sigh.

“I will send her to you,” said the countess, and she went out of the room.

“Lord, have mercy upon us!” she kept repeating as she looked for her daughter.

Sonya told her that Natasha was in her bedroom. She was sitting on her bed, with a pale face and dry eyes; she was gazing at the holy picture, and murmuring something to herself as she rapidly crossed herself. Seeing her mother she leaped up and flew towards her.

“Well, mamma, … well?”

“Go, go to him. He asks your hand,” said the countess, coldly it seemed to Natasha.…“Yes … go …” the mother murmured mournfully and reproachfully with a deep sigh as her daughter ran off.

Natasha could not have said how she reached the drawing-room. As she entered the door and caught sight of him, she stopped short: “Is it possible that this stranger has now become everything to me?” she asked herself, and instantly answered: “Yes, everything: he alone is dearer to me now than everything in the world.” Prince Andrey approached her with downcast eyes.

“I have loved you from the first minute I saw you. Can I hope?”

He glanced at her and was struck by the serious, impassioned look in her face. Her face seemed to say: “Why ask? Why doubt of what you cannot but know? Why talk when no words can express what one feels?”

She came nearer to him and stopped. He took her hand and kissed it.

“Do you love me?”

“Yes, yes,” said Natasha, almost angrily it seemed. She drew a deep sigh, and another, her breathing came more and more quickly, and she burst into sobs.

“What is it? What’s the matter?”

“Oh, I am so happy,” she answered, smiling through her tears. She bent over closer to him, thought a second, as though wondering whether it were possible, and then kissed him.

Prince Andrey held her hands, looked into her eyes and could find no trace of his former love for her in his heart. Some sudden reaction seemed to have taken place in his soul; there was none of the poetic and mysterious charm of desire left in it; instead of that there was pity for her feminine and childish weakness, terror at her devotion and trustfulness, an irksome, yet sweet, sense of duty, binding him to her for ever. The actual feeling, though not so joyous and poetical as the former feeling, was more serious and deeper.

“Did your mamma tell you that it cannot be for a year?” said Prince Andrey, still gazing into her eyes.

“Can this be I, the baby-girl (as every one used to call me)?” Natasha was thinking. “Can I really be from this minute a wife, on a level with this unknown, charming, intellectual man, who is looked up to even by my father? Can it be true? Can it be true that now there can be no more playing with life, that now I am grown up, that now a responsibility is laid upon me for every word and action? Oh, what did he ask me?”

“No,” she answered, but she had not understood his question.

“Forgive me,” said Prince Andrey, “but you are so young, and I have had so much experience of life. I am afraid for you. You don’t know yourself.”

Natasha listened with mbt shoes concentrated attention, trying to take in the meaning of his words; but she did not understand them

“Hard as that year will be to me, delaying my happiness,” continued Prince Andrey, “in that time you will be sure of yourself. I beg you to make me happy in a year, but you are free; our engagement shall be kept a secret, and if you should find out that you do not love me, or if you should come to love …” said Prince Andrey with a forced smile.

“Why do you say that?” Natasha interrupted. “You know that from the very day when you first came to Otradnoe, I have loved you,” she said, firmly persuaded that she was speaking the truth.

“In a year you will learn to know yourself.…”

“A who-ole year!” cried Natasha suddenly, only now grasping that their marriage was to be deferred for a year. “But why a year? … Why a year?…”

Prince Andrey began to explain to her the reasons for this delay. Natasha did not hear him.

“And can’t it be helped?” she asked. Prince Andrey made no reply, but his face expressed the impossibility of altering this decision.

“That’s awful! Oh, it’s awful, awful!” Natasha cried suddenly, and she broke into sobs again. “I shall die if I have to wait a year; it’s impossible, it’s awful.” She glanced at her lover’s face and saw the look of sympathetic pain and perplexity on it.

“No, no, I’ll do anything,” she said,mbt running shoes suddenly checking her tears; “I’m so happy!”

Her father and mother came into the room and gave the betrothed couple their blessing. From that day Prince Andrey began to visit the Rostovs as Natasha’s affianced lover.

THERE WAS NO formal betrothal and no announcement was made of the engagement of Bolkonsky and Natasha; Prince mbt online store Andrey insisted upon that. He said that since he was responsible for the delay of their marriage, he ought to bear the whole burden of it. He said that he was bound for ever by his word, but he did not want to bind Natasha and would leave her perfect freedom. If in another six months she were to feel that she did not love him, she would have a perfect right to refuse him. It need hardly be said that neither Natasha nor her parents would hear of this possibility; but Prince Andrey insisted on having his own way. Prince Andrey came every day to the Rostovs’, but he did not behave with Natasha as though he were engaged to her; he addressed her formally and kissed only her hand. From the day of his proposal Prince Andrey’s relations with Natasha had become quite different from what had existed between them before: their relations were simple and intimate. It seemed as though till then they had not known each other. Both loved to recall how they had regarded one another when they were nothing to each other. Now they both felt utterly different creatures—then affected, now simple and sincere. At first there had been a feeling of awkwardness in the family in regard to Prince Andrey. He seemed a man from another world, and Natasha used for a long while to try and make her people understand Prince Andrey, and declared to every one with pride that he only seemed to be so different, that he was really like every one else, and that she was not afraid of him and no one need be. After a few days, the rest of the family got accustomed to seeing him, and went on without constraint with their usual manner of life, in which he took part. He knew how to talk to the count about the management of his estates, to the countess and Natasha about dress, and to Sonya about her album and embroidery. Sometimes the Rostovs among themselves, and in Prince Andrey’s presence, expressed their wonder at the way it had all happened, and at the events that obviously betokened that it was to be: Prince Andrey’s coming to Otradnoe, and their coming to Petersburg, and the resemblance between Natasha and Prince Andrey, which the old nurse had remarked on Prince Andrey’s first visit, and the meeting in 1805 between Andrey and Nikolay, and many other incidents betokening that it was to be, were observed by the family.

The house was full of that poetic atmosphere of dullness and silence, which always accompanies the presence of an engaged couple. Often as they all sat together every one was silent. Sometimes the others got up and went away, and the engaged pair were still as mute when they were left alone. Rarely they spoke of their future life together. Prince Andrey felt frightened and ashamed to speak of it. Natasha shared the feeling, as she did all his feelings, which she never failed to divine. Once Natasha began questioning him about his son.

Prince Andrey blushed—a thing frequent with him at that time, which Natasha particularly liked to see—and said that his son would not live with them.

“Why not?” said Natasha, taking fright.

“I cannot take him from his grandfather and then…”

“How I should have loved him!” said Natasha, at once divining his thought; “but I know you want to avoid any pretext for our being blamed.”

The old count sometimes came up to Prince Andrey, kissed him and asked his advice about some question relating to Petya’s education or Nikolay’s position. The old countess sighed as she looked at them. Sonya was afraid every instant of being in their way, and was always trying to find excuses for leaving them alone, even when they had no wish to be alone. When Prince Andrey talked—he described things very well—Natasha listened to him with pride. When she talked, she noticed with joy and dread that he watched her with an intent and scrutinising look. She asked herself in perplexity: “What is it he seeks in me? What is it he is probing for with that look? What if I haven’t in me what he is searching for in that look?” Sometimes she fell into the mood of wild gaiety characteristic of her, and then she particularly loved to see and hear how Prince Andrey laughed. He rarely laughed, but when he did laugh he abandoned himself utterly to his mirth, and she always felt herself drawn closer to him by this laughter. Natasha would have been perfectly happy if the thought of the separation before her, coming closer and closer, had not terrified her. He too turned pale and cold at the mere thought of it.

On the day before he was to leave Petersburg, Prince Andrey brought with him Pierre, who had not been at the Rostovs’ since the day of the ball. Pierre seemed absent-minded and embarrassed. He talked chiefly to the countess. Natasha was sitting at the chess-board with Sonya, and invited Prince Andrey to join them. He went to them.

“You have known Bezuhov a long while, haven’t you?” he asked. “Do you like him?”

“Yes; he’s very nice, but very absurd.”

And she began, as people always did when speaking of Pierre, to tell anecdotes of his absent-mindedness, anecdotes which were made up, indeed, about him.

“You know, I have confided our secret to him,” said Prince Andrey. “I have known him from childhood. He has a heart of gold. I beg you, Natalie,” he said, with sudden seriousness, “I am going away; God knows what may happen. You may change … Oh, I know I ought not to speak of that. Only one thing—if anything were to happen to you, while I am away …”

“What could happen?”

“If any trouble were to come,” pursued Prince Andrey. “I beg you, Mademoiselle Sophie, if anything were to happen, to go to him and no one else for advice and help. He is a most absent-minded and eccentric person, but he has the truest heart.”

Neither her father nor her mother, neither Sonya nor Prince Andrey could have foreseen the effect of the parting on Natasha. She wandered about the house all that day, flushed, excited, and tearless, busying herself about the most trivial matters as though she had no notion of what was before her. She did not weep even at the moment when he kissed her hand for the last time.

“Don’t go away!” was all she said, in a voice that made him wonder whether he ought not really to remain, and that he remembered long after. When he had gone, she still did not weep; but for several days she sat in her room, not crying, but taking no interest in anything, and only saying from time to time: “Oh, why did he go?” But a fortnight after his departure, she surprised those around her equally by recovering from her state of spiritual sickness, and became herself again, only with a change in her moral physiognomy, such as one sees in the faces of children after a long illness. THE HEALTH AND CHARACTER of Prince Nikolay Andreitch Bolkonsky had, during that year, after his son had left him, grown considerably feebler. He became more irritable than ever, and it was Princess Marya who as a rule bore the brunt of his outbursts of causeless fury. He seemed studiously to seek out all the tender spots in her consciousness so as to inflict on her the cruellest wounds possible. Princess Marya had two passions and consequently two joys: her nephew, Nikolushka, and religion; and both were favourite subjects for the old prince’s attacks and jeers. Whatever was being spoken of, he would bring the conversation round to the superstitiousness of old maids, or the petting and spoiling of children. “You want to make mbt online him” (Nikolushka) “just such another old maid as you are yourself. Prince Andrey wants a son and not an old maid,” he would say. Or addressing Mademoiselle Bourienne he would ask her, before Princess Marya, how she liked our village priests and holy pictures, and make jests about them.…

He was constantly wounding Princess Marya’s feelings, but his daughter needed no effort to forgive him. Could he be to blame in anything he did to her, could her father, who as she knew in spite of it all, loved her, be unjust? And indeed what is justice? Princess Marya never gave a thought to that proud word, “justice.” All the complex laws of humanity were summed up for her in one clear and simple law—the law of love and self-sacrifice, laid down by Him who had in His love suffered for humanity, though He was God Himself. What had she to do with the justice or injustice of other people? All she had to do was to suffer and to love; and that she did.

In the winter Prince Andrey had come to Bleak Hills, had been gay, gentle, and affectionate, as Princess Marya had not seen him for years. She felt that something had happened to him, but he said nothing to his sister of his love. Before his departure, Prince Andrey had a long conversation with his father, and Princess Marya noticed that they were ill pleased with each other at parting.

Soon after Prince Andrey had gone, Princess Marya wrote from Bleak Hills to her friend in Petersburg, Julie Karagin, whom Princess Marya had dreamed—as girls always do dream—of marrying to her brother. She was at this time in mourning for the death of a brother, who had been killed in Turkey.

“Sorrow, it seems, is our common lot, my sweet and tender friend Julie.

“Your loss is so terrible that I can only explain it to myself, as a special sign of the grace of God, who in His love for you would chasten you and your incomparable mother.

“Ah, my dear, religion, and religion alone can—I don’t say comfort us—but save us from despair. Religion alone can interpret to us what, without its aid, man cannot comprehend: to what end, for what cause, good, elevated beings who are able to find happiness in life, not injuring others, but indispensable to their happiness, are called away to God, while the wicked, the useless, injuring others and a burden to themselves and others, are left living. The first death which I have seen, and which I shall never forget—the death of my dear little sister-in-law—made on me just the same impression. Just as you question destiny, and ask why your noble brother had to die, so did I wonder what reason there was for that angel Liza to die—who had never done the slightest harm to any one, never even had a thought in her heart that was not kind. And yet—do you know, dear friend—five years have passed since then, and even I, with my poor intelligence, begin now to understand clearly why it was needful she should die, and in what way that death was but an expression of the boundless grace of the Creator, all of whose acts, though for the most part we comprehend them not, are but manifestations of His infinite love for His creatures. Perhaps, I often think, she was of too angelic an innocence to have the force to perform all a mother’s duties. As a young wife, she was irreproachable; possibly she could not have been equally so as a mother. As it is, not only has she left us, and particularly Prince Andrey, the purest memories and regrets, but there she is in all likelihood receiving a place for which I dare not hope for myself. But not to speak of her alone, that early and terrible death has had the most blessed influence on me and on my brother, in spite of all our grief. At the time, at the moment of our loss, I could not have entertained such thoughts; at that time I should have dismissed them in horror, but now it seems clear and incontestable. I write all this to you, dear friend, simply to convince you of the Gospel truth, which has become a principle of life for me: not one hair of our head falls without His will. And the guiding principle of His will is only His infinite love for us, and so whatever may befall us, all is for our good.

“You ask whether we shall spend next winter in Moscow. In spite of all my desire to see you, I do not expect and do not wish to do so. And you will be surprised to hear that Bonaparte is responsible for this! I will tell you why: my father’s health is noticeably weaker, he cannot endure contradiction and is easily irritated. This irritability is, as you are aware, most readily aroused on political subjects. He cannot endure the idea that Bonaparte is treating on equal terms with all the sovereigns of Europe, especially our own, the grandson of the great Catherine! As you know, I take absolutely no interest in politics, but from my father and his conversations with Mihail Ivanovitch, I know all that goes on in the world, and have heard of all the honours conferred on Bonaparte. It seems that Bleak Hills is now the only spot on the terrestrial globe where he is not recognised as a great man—still less as Emperor of France. And my father cannot tolerate this state of things. It seems to me that my father shows a disinclination for the visit to Moscow, chiefly owing to his political views and his foreseeing the difficulties likely to arise from his habit of expressing his opinions freely with no regard for any one. All that he would gain from medical treatment in Moscow, he would lose from the inevitable discussions upon Bonaparte. In any case the matter will very soon be settled.

“Our home life goes on in its old way, except for the absence of my brother Andrey. As I wrote to you before, he has greatly changed of late. It is only of late, during this year that he seems to have quite recovered from the shock of his loss. He has become again just as I knew him as a child, good-natured, affectionate, with a heart such as I know in no one else. He feels now, it seems to me, that life is not over for him. But, together with this moral change, he has become very weak physically. He is thinner than ever and more nervous. I feel anxious about him and glad that he is taking this tour abroad, which the doctors prescribed long ago. I hope that it will cure him. You write to me that he is spoken of in Petersburg as one of the most capable, cultivated, and intellectual young men. Forgive me for the pride of family—I never doubted it. The good he did here to every one—from his peasants to the local nobility—is incalculable. When he went to Petersburg he was received as he deserved. I wonder at the way reports fly from Petersburg to Moscow, and especially such groundless ones as the rumour you wrote to me about, of my brother’s supposed engagement to the little Rostov girl. I don’t imagine that Andrey will ever marry any one at all, and certainly not her. And I will tell you why. In the first place, I know that though he rarely speaks of his late wife, the grief of his loss has penetrated too deeply into his heart for him ever to be ready to give her a successor, and our little angel a step-mother. Secondly, because, as far as I can ascertain, that girl is not one of the kind of women who could attract my brother Andrey. I do not believe mbt outlet that Andrey has chosen her for his wife; and I will frankly confess, I should not wish for such a thing. But how I have been running on; I am finishing my second sheet. Farewell, my sweet friend; and may God keep you in His holy and mighty care. My dear companion, Mademoiselle Bourienne, sends you kisses

IN THE MIDDLE of the summer Princess Marya, to her surprise, received a letter from Prince Andrey, who was in mbt casual sale Switzerland. In it he told her strange and surprising news. He informed his sister of his engagement to the younger Rostov. His whole letter was full of loving enthusiasm for his betrothed, and tender and confiding affection for his sister. He wrote that he had never loved as he loved now, and that it was only now that he saw all the value and meaning of life. He begged his sister to forgive him for having said nothing of his plans to her on his last visit to Bleak Hills, though he had spoken of it to his father. He had said nothing to her for fear Princess Marya would beg her father to give his consent, and, without attaining her object, would irritate her father and draw all the weight of his displeasure upon herself. The matter was not, however, then, he wrote to her, so completely settled as now. “At that time our father insisted on a delay of a year, and now six months, half of the period specified, is over, and I remain firmer than ever in my resolution. If it were not for the doctors keeping me here at the waters I should be back in Russia myself; but, as it is, I must put off my return for another three months. You know me and my relations with our father. I want nothing from him. I have been, and always shall be, independent; but to act in opposition to his will, to incur his anger when he has perhaps not long left to be with us, would destroy half my happiness. I am writing a letter to him now, and I beg you to choose a favourable moment to give him the letter, and to let me know how he looks at the whole matter, and if there is any hope of his agreeing to shorten the year by three months.”

After long hesitations, doubts, and prayers, Princess Marya gave the letter to her father. The next day the old prince said to her calmly:

“Write to your brother to wait till I’m dead.… He won’t have long to wait. I shall soon set him free.”

The princess tried to make some reply, but her father would not let her speak, and went on, getting louder and louder. “Let him marry, let him marry, the dear fellow.… A nice connection!… Clever people, eh? Rich, eh? Oh yes, a fine stepmother for Nikolushka she’ll make! You write to him he can marry her to-morrow. Nikolushka shall have her for a stepmother, and I’ll marry little Bourienne!… Ha, ha, ha, and so he shall have a stepmother too! Only there’s one thing, I won’t have any more women-folk about my house; he may marry and go and live by himself. Perhaps you’ll go and live with him too?” He turned to Princess Marya: “You’re welcome to, and good luck to you!”

After this outburst the prince did not once allude to the subject again. But his repressed anger at his son’s poor-spirited behaviour found a vent in his treatment of his daughter. He now added to his former subjects for jeering and annoying her a new one—allusions to a stepmother and gallantries to Mademoiselle Bourienne.

“Why shouldn’t I marry her?” he would say to his daughter. “A capital princess she will make!” And latterly, to her perplexity and amazement, Princess Marya began to notice that her father was really beginning to attach himself more and more closely to the French-woman. Princess Marya wrote to Prince Andrey and told him how their father had taken the letter, but comforted her brother with hopes that he would become reconciled to the idea.

Nikolushka and his education, her brother Andrey and religion, were Princess Marya’s joys and consolations. But apart from those, since every one must have personal hopes, Princess Marya cherished, in the deepest secrecy of her heart, a hidden dream and hope that was the source of the chief comfort in her life. This comforting dream and hope was given her by “God’s folk”—the crazy prophets and the pilgrims, who visited her without the prince’s knowledge. The longer Princess Marya lived, the more experience and observation she had of life, the more she wondered at the shortsightedness of men, who seek here on earth for enjoyment, toil, suffer, strive and do each other harm to attain that impossible, visionary, and sinful happiness. Prince Andrey had loved a wife; she died; that was not enough for him, he wanted to bind his happiness to another woman. Her father did not want that, because he coveted a more distinguished or a wealthier match for Andrey. And they were all striving, and suffering, and in torment, and sullying their souls, their eternal souls, to attain a bliss the duration of which was but a moment. Not only do we know that for ourselves. Christ, the Son of God, came down upon earth and told us that this life is but for a moment, is but a probation; yet we still cling to it and think to find happiness in it. “How is it no one has realised that?” Princess Marya wondered. “No one but these despised people of God who, with wallets over their shoulders, come to me by the back stairs, afraid of the prince catching sight of them, and not from fear of ill-usage, but from fear of tempting him to sin. To leave home and country, give up all thoughts of worldly blessings, and clinging to nothing, to wander from place to place in a home-spun smock under a different name, doing people no harm, but praying for them, praying equally for those who drive them away and those who succour them: higher than that truth and that life there is no truth and no life!”

There was one Pilgrim-woman, Fedosyushka, a quiet, little woman of about fifty, marked by smallpox, who had been wandering for over thirty years barefooted and wearing chains. Princess Marya was particularly fond of her. One day when sitting in a dark room, by the light only of the lamp before the holy picture, Fedosyushka told her about her life. Princess Marya felt all at once so strongly that Fedosyushka was the one person who had found the right way of life, that she resolved to go on a pilgrimage herself. When Fedosyushka had gone to bed Princess Marya pondered a long while over it, and at last made up her mind that—however strange it might be—she must go on a pilgrimage. She confided her intention to no one but a monk, Father Akinfy, and this priest approved of her project. On the pretence of getting presents for pilgrim women, Princess Marya had prepared for herself the complete outfit of a pilgrim—a smock, plaited shoes, a full-skirted coat, and a black kerchief. Often she went to her secret wardrobe, where she kept them, and stood in uncertainty whether the time to carry out her plan had come or not.

Often as she listened to the pilgrims’ tales, their simple phrases—that had become mechanical to them, but were to her ears full of the deepest significance—worked upon her till she was several times ready to throw up everything and run away from home. In imagination she already saw herself with Fedosyushka in a coarse smock, trudging along the dusty road with her wallet and her staff, going on her pilgrimage, free from envy, free from earthly love, free from all desires, from one saint to another; and at last thither where there is neither sorrow nor sighing, but everlasting joy and blessedness.

“I shall come to one place. I shall pray there, and before I have time to grow used to it, to love it, I shall go on further. And I shall go on till my legs give way under me and I lie down and die somewhere, and reach at last that quiet, eternal haven, where is neither sorrow nor sighing!…” thought Princess Marya.

But then at the sight of her father, and still more of little Nikolushka, she wavered in her resolution, wept in secret, and felt that she was a sinner, that she loved her father and her nephew more than God. THE BIBLICAL TRADITION tells us that the absence of work—idleness—was a condition of the first man’s blessedness before the Fall. The love of idleness has remained the same in fallen man; but the curse still lies heavy upon man, and not only because in the sweat of our brow we must eat bread, but because from our moral qualities we are unable to be idle and at peace. A secret voice tells us that we must be to blame for being idle. If a man could find a state in which while being idle he could feel himself to be of use and to be doing his duty, he would have attained to one side of primitive blessedness. And such a state of obligatory and irreproachable idleness is enjoyed by a whole class—the military class. It is in that obligatory and irreproachable idleness that the chief attraction of military service has always consisted, and will always consist.

Nikolay Rostov was enjoying this blessed privilege to the full, as after the year 1807 he remained in the Pavlograd regiment, in command of the squadron that had been Denisov’s.

Rostov had become a bluff, good-natured fellow, who would have been thought rather bad form by his old acquaintances in Moscow, though he was loved and respected by his comrades, his subordinates, and his superior officers, and was well content with his life. Of late—in the year 1809—he had found more and more frequently in letters from home complaints on the part of his mother that their pecuniary position was going from bad to worse, and that it was high time for him to come home, to gladden and comfort the hearts of his old parents.

As he read those letters, Nikolay felt a pang of dread at their wanting to drag him out of the surroundings in which, by fencing himself off from all the complexities of existence, he was living so mbt sale quietly and peacefully. He felt that sooner or later he would have to plunge again into that whirlpool of life, with many difficulties and business to attend to, with the steward’s accounts, with quarrels and intrigues, and ties, with society, with Sonya’s love and his promise to her. All that was terribly difficult and complicated; and he answered his mother’s letters with cold letters in French on the classic model, beginning “Ma chère maman,” and ending: “Votre obéissant fils,” saying nothing of any intention of coming home. In 1810 he received letters from home in which he was told of Natasha’s engagement to Bolkonsky, and of the marriage being deferred for a year, because the old prince would not consent to it. This letter chagrined and mortified Nikolay. In the first place, he was sorry to be losing from home Natasha, whom he cared more for than all the rest of the family. Secondly, from his hussar point of view, he regretted not having been at home at the time, as he would have shown this Bolkonsky that it was by no means such an honour to be connected with him, and that if he cared for Natasha he could get on just as well without his crazy old father’s consent. For a moment he hesitated whether to ask for leave, so as to see Natasha engaged, but then the man?uvres were just coming on, and thoughts of Sonya, of complications, recurred to him, and again he put it off. But in the spring of the same year he got a letter from his mother, written without his father’s knowledge, and that letter decided him. She wrote that if Nikolay did not come and look after things, their whole estate would have to be sold by auction, and they would all be beggars. The count was so weak, put such entire confidence in Mitenka, and was so good-natured, and every one took advantage of him, so that things were going from bad to worse. “I beseech you, for God’s sake, to come at once, if you don’t want to make me and all your family miserable,” wrote the countess.

That letter produced an effect on Nikolay. He had that common sense of mediocrity which showed him what was his duty.

His duty now was, if not to retire from the army, at least to go home on leave. Why he had to go, he could not have said; but, after his after-dinner nap, he ordered his grey mare to be saddled, a terribly vicious beast that he had not ridden for a long while.

He returned home with his horse in a lather, and told Lavrushka—he had kept on Denisov’s old valet—and the comrades who dropped in that evening, that he had applied for leave and was going home. It was strange and difficult for him to believe that he was going away without hearing from the staff whether he had been promoted to be a captain or had received the St. Anne for the last man?uvres (a matter of the greatest interest to him). It was strange to him to think of going away like this without having sold Count Goluhovsky his three roan horses, over which the Polish count was haggling with him. Rostov had taken a bet that he would get two thousand for them. It seemed inconceivable that without him the ball could take place which the hussars were to give in honour of their favourite Polish belle, Madame Pshazdetsky, to outdo the Uhlans, who had given a ball to their favourite belle, Madame Borzhozovsky. Yet he knew he must leave world, where all was well and all was clear, to go where all was nonsensical and complicated. A week later his leave came. His comrades—not only in the regiment, but throughout the whole brigade—gave Rostov a dinner that cost a subscription of fifteen roubles a head. Two bands of musicians played, two choruses sang; Rostov danced the trepak with Major Bazov; the drunken officers tossed him in the air, hugged him, dropped him; the soldiers of the third squadron tossed him once more and shouted hurrah! Then they put Rostov in a sledge and escorted him as far as the first posting-station on his way.

For the first half of the journey, from Krementchug to Kiev, all Rostov’s thoughts—as is apt to be the case with travellers—turned to what he had left behind—to his squadron. But after being jolted over the first half of the journey, he had begun to forget his three roans and his quartermaster, Dozhoyveyky, and was beginning to wonder uneasily what he should find on reaching Otradnoe. The nearer he got, the more intense, far more intense, were his thoughts of home (as though moral feeling were subject to the law of acceleration in inverse ratio with the square of the distance). At the station nearest to Otradnoe he gave the sledge-driver a tip of three roubles, and ran breathless up the steps of his home, like a boy.

After the excitement of the first meeting, and the strange feeling of disappointment after his expectations—the feeling that “it’s just the same; why was I in such a hurry?”—Nikolay began to settle down in his old world of home. His father and mother were just the same, only a little older. All that was new in them was a certain uneasiness and at times a difference of opinion, which he had never seen between them before, and soon learned to be due to the difficulties of their position.

Sonya was now nearly twenty. She would grow no prettier now; there was no promise in her of more to come; but what she had was enough. She was brimming over with love and happiness as soon as Nikolay came home, and this girl’s faithful, steadfast love for him gladdened his heart. Petya and Natasha surprised Nikolay more than all the rest. Petya was a big, handsome lad of thirteen, whose voice was already cracking; he was full of gaiety and clever pranks. Nikolay did not get over his wonder at Natasha for a long while, and laughed as he looked at her.

“You’re utterly different,” he told her.

“How? Uglier?”

“No, quite the contrary; but what dignity! A real princess!” he whispered to her.

“Yes, yes, yes,” cried Natasha gleefully.

Natasha told him all the story of Prince Andrey’s lovemaking, of his visit to Otradnoe, and showed him his last letter.
“Well, are you glad?” asked Natasha. “I’m so at peace and happy now.”

“Very glad,” answered Nikolay. “He’s a splendid fellow. Are you very much in love, then?”

“How shall I say?” answered Natasha. “I was in love with Boris, with our teacher, with Denisov; but this is utterly different. I feel calm, settled. I know there is no one better than he in the world, and so I am calm now and content. It’s utterly different from anything before…”

Nikolay expressed his dissatisfaction at the marriage being put off for a year. But Natasha fell on him with exasperation, proving to him that no other course was possible, that it would be a horrid thing to enter a family against the father’s will, and that she would not consent to it herself.

“You don’t understand at all, at all,” she kept saying.

Nikolay paused a moment, and then said he agreed with her.

Her brother often wondered as he looked at her. It seemed quite incredible that she was a girl in love and parted from her betrothed lover. She was even-tempered, serene, and quite as light-hearted as ever. This made Nikolay wonder, and look on the engagement to Bolkonsky rather sceptically. He could not believe that her fate was by now sealed, especially as he had never seen her with Prince Andrey. It still seemed to him that there was something not real in this proposed marriage.

“Why this delay? Why were they not formally betrothed?” he thought.

Once in talking to his mother about his sister, he found to his surprise, and partly to his satisfaction, that at the bottom of her heart his mother sometimes regarded the marriage as sceptically as he did.

“Here, you see, he writes,” she said, showing her son a letter from Prince Andrey with that latent feeling of grudge which mothers always have in regard to their daughter’s happiness in marriage, “he writes that he won’t be coming before December. What can it be that mbt casual keeps him? Illness, no doubt! His health is very weak. Don’t tell Natasha. Don’t make a mistake, because she seems in good spirits; it’s the last she has of her girlhood, and I know how she is when she gets his letters. Still, God grant, all may be well yet,” she always concluded: “he’s a splendid fellow.”

IN THE EARLY PART of his time at home Nikolay was serious and even dull. He was worried by the necessity of meddling in discount mbt shoes the stupid business matters which his mother had sent for him to look after. To be rid of this burden as soon as possible, on the third day after his return, he marched angrily off, making no reply to inquiries where he was going, with scowling brows entered Mitenka’s lodge, and demanded from him an account in full. What he meant by an account in full, Nikolay knew even less than the panic-stricken and bewildered Mitenka. The conversation and Mitenka’s accounts did not last long. The village elder, the deputy, and the village clerk, waiting in the entry of the lodge, heard with awe and delight at first the booming and snapping of the young count’s voice in a constantly ascending scale, then terrible words of abuse, flung one after another.

“Robber! Ungrateful brute!…I’ll thrash the dog!…not papa to deal with…plundering us…” and so on.

Then, with no less awe and delight, these persons saw the young count, with a red face and bloodshot eyes, dragging Mitenka out by the collar, kicking him with great dexterity at every appropriate moment between his words, and shouting:

“Away with you! Never let me set eyes on you, blackguard!”

Mitenka flew head first down six steps and ran to the shrubbery. This shrubbery was well known as a haven of refuge for delinquents at Otradnoe. Mitenka had, on coming home drunk from the town, himself hidden in the shrubbery, and many of the residents of Otradnoe had been indebted to the saving power of the shrubbery when anxious to conceal themselves from Mitenka.

Mitenka’s wife and sister-in-law, with frightened faces, peeped into the passage from the door of their room, where was a bright samovar boiling, and the bailiff’s high bedstead stood under a quilted patchwork coverlet.

The young count walked by, treading resolutely and breathing hard, taking no notice of them, and went into the house.

The countess heard at once through her maids of what had been happening in the lodge, and on one side was comforted by the reflection that now their position would be sure to improve, though on the other hand she was uneasy as to the effect of the scene on her son. She went several times on tiptoe to his door, and listened as he lighted one pipe after another.

The next day the old count drew his son on one side, and, with a timid smile, said to him, “But you know, my dear boy, you had no reason to be so angry. Mitenka has told me all about it.”

“I knew,” thought Nikolay, “that I should never make head or tail of anything in this crazy world.”

“You were angry at his not having put down these seven hundred and eight roubles. But you see they were carried forward by double entry, and you didn’t look at the next page.”

“Papa, he’s a blackguard and a thief, I am certain. And what I have done, I have done. But if you don’t wish it, I will say nothing to him.”

“No, my dear boy!” (The old count was confused. He was conscious that he had mismanaged his wife’s estate and had wronged his children, but he had no notion how to rectify the position.) “No, I beg you to go into things. I am old. I…”

“No, papa, forgive me if I have done what you dislike. I know less about it than you do.”

“Damn them all, these peasants, and money matters and double entries,” he thought. “I used once to understand scoring at cards, but bookkeeping by the double entry is quite beyond me,” he said to himself, and from that time he did not meddle further with the management of the family affairs. But one day the countess called her son into her room, told him that she had a promissory note from Anna Mihalovna for two thousand roubles, and asked Nikolay what he thought it best to do about it.

“Well,” answered Nikolay, “you say that it rests with me. I don’t like Anna Mihalovna, and I don’t like Boris, but they were our friends, and they were poor. So that’s what I would do!” and he tore up the note and by so doing made the countess sob with tears of joy. After this, young Rostov took no further part in business of any sort, but devoted himself with passionate interest to everything to do with the chase, which was kept up on a great scale on the old count’s estate. WINTRY WEATHER was already setting in, the morning frosts hardened the earth drenched by the autumn rains. Already the grass was full of tufts, and stood out bright green against the patches of brown winter cornland trodden by the cattle, and the pale yellow stubble of the summer cornfields, and the reddish strips of buckwheat. The uplands and copses, which at the end of August had still been green islands among the black fields ploughed ready for winter corn, and the stubble had become golden and lurid red islands in a sea of bright green autumn crops. The grey hare had already half-changed its coat, the foxes’ cubs were beginning to leave their parents, and the young wolves were bigger than dogs. It was the best time of the year for the chase. The dogs mbt outlet of an ardent young sportsman like Rostov were only just coming into fit state for hunting, so that at a common council of the huntsmen it was decided to give the dogs three days’ rest, and on the 16th of September to go off on a hunting expedition, beginning with Dubravy, where there was a litter of wolves that had never been hunted.

Such was the position of affairs on the 14th of September.

All that day the dogs were kept at home. It was keen and frosty weather, but towards evening the sky clouded over and it began to thaw. On the morning of the 15th of September when young Rostov in his dressing-gown looked out of window he saw a morning which was all the heart could desire for hunting. It looked as though the sky were melting, and without the slightest wind, sinking down upon the earth. The only movement in the air was the soft downward motion of microscopic drops of moisture or mist. The bare twigs in the garden were hung with transparent drops which dripped on to the freshly fallen leaves. The earth in the kitchen-garden had a gleaming, wet, black look like the centre of a poppy, and at a short distance away it melted off into the damp, dim veil of fog.

Nikolay went out on to the wet and muddy steps. There was a smell of decaying leaves and dogs. The broad-backed, black and tan bitch Milka, with her big, prominent, black eyes, caught sight of her master, got up, stretched out her hindlegs, lay down like a hare, then suddenly jumped up and licked him right on his nose and moustache. Another harrier, catching sight of his master from the bright coloured path, arched its back, darted headlong to the steps, and, lifting its tail, rubbed itself against Nikolay’s legs.

“O, hoy!” He heard at that moment the inimitable hunting halloo which unites the deepest bass and the shrillest tenor notes. And round the corner came the huntsman and whipper-in, Danilo, a grey, wrinkled man, with his hair cropped round in the Ukrainian fashion. He held a bent whip in his hand, and his face had that expression of independence and scorn for everything in the world, which is only to be seen in huntsmen. He took off his Circassian cap to his master and looked scornfully at him. That scorn was not offensive to his master. Nikolay knew that this Danilo, disdainful of all, and superior to everything, was still his man and his huntsman.

“Danilo,” said Nikolay, at the sight of this hunting weather, those dogs, and the huntsman, feeling shyly that he was being carried away by that irresistible sporting passion in which a man forgets all his previous intentions, like a man in love at the sight of his mistress.

“What is your bidding, your excellency?” asked a bass voice, fit for a head deacon, and hoarse from hallooing, and a pair of flashing black eyes glanced up from under their brows at the silent young master. “Surely you can’t resist it?” those two eyes seemed to be asking.

“It’s a good day, eh? Just right for riding and hunting, eh?” said Nikolay, scratching Milka behind the ears.

Danilo winked and made no reply.
“I sent Uvarka out to listen at daybreak,” his bass boomed out after a moment’s silence. “He brought word she’s moved into the Otradnoe enclosure; there was howling there.” (“She’s moved” meant that the mother wolf, of whom both knew, had moved with her cubs into the Otradnoe copse, which was a small hunting preserve about two versts away.)
“Shouldn’t we go, eh?” said Nikolay. “Come to me with Uvarka.”
“As you desire.”
“Then put off feeding them.”
“Yes, sir!”
Five minutes later Danilo and Uvarka were standing in Nikolay’s big study. Although Danilo was not tall, to see him in a room gave one an impression such as one has on seeing a horse or bear standing on the floor among the furniture and surroundings of human life. Danilo felt this himself, and as usual he kept close to the door and tried to speak more softly, and not to move for fear of causing some breakage in the master’s apartments. He did his utmost to get everything said quickly so as to get as soon as might be out into the open again, from under a ceiling out under the sky.

After making inquiries and extracting from Danilo an admission that the dogs were fit (Danilo himself was longing to go), Nikolay told them to have the horses saddled. But just as Danilo was about to go, Natasha, wrapped in a big shawl of her old nurse’s, ran into the room, not yet dressed, and her hair in disorder. Petya ran in with her.
“Are you going?” said Natasha. “I knew you would! Sonya said you weren’t going. I knew that on such a day you couldn’t help going!”
“Yes, we’re going,” Nikolay answered reluctantly. As he meant to attempt serious hunting he did not want to take Natasha and Petya. “We are going, but only wolf-hunting; it will be dull for you.”

“You know that it’s the greatest of my pleasures,” said Natasha. “It’s too bad—he’s going himself, has ordered the horses out and not a word to us.”

“No hindrance bars a Russian’s path!” declaimed Petya; “let’s go!”

“But you mustn’t, you know; mamma said you were not to,” said Nikolay to Natasha.

“No, I’m going, I must go,” said Natasha stoutly. “Danilo, bid them saddle my horse, and tell Mihailo to come with my discount mbt leash,” she said to the huntsman.

Simply to be in a room seemed irksome and unfitting to Danilo, but to have anything to do with a young lady he felt to be utterly impossible. He cast down his eyes and made haste to get away, making as though it were no affair of his, and trying to avoid accidentally doing some hurt to the young lady.

THE OLD COUNT, whose hunting establishment had always been kept up on a large scale, had now handed it all over to his son’s mbt chapa care, but on that day, the 15th of September, being in excellent spirits he prepared to join the expedition. Within an hour the whole party was before the porch. When Natasha and Petya said something to Nikolay he walked by them with a stern and serious air, betokening that he had no time to waste on trifles. He looked over everything to do with the hunt, sent a pack of hounds and huntsmen on ahead to cut off the wolf from behind, got on his chestnut Don horse, and whistling to the dogs of his leash, he set off across the threshing-floor to the field leading to the Otradnoe preserve. The old count’s horse, a sorrel gelding, with a white mane and tail, called Viflyanka, was led by the count’s groom; he was himself to drive straight in a light gig to the spot fixed for him to stand.

Fifty-four hounds were led out under the charge of six whippers-in and grooms. Of huntsmen, properly speaking, there were taking part in the hunt eight men besides the members of the family, and more than forty greyhounds ran behind them, so that with the hounds in leashes there were about a hundred and thirty dogs and twenty persons on horseback.

Every dog knew its master and its call. Every man in the hunt knew his task, his place, and the part assigned him. As soon as they had passed beyond the fence, they all moved without noise or talk, lengthening out along the road and the field to the Otradnoe forest.

The horses stepped over the field as over a soft carpet, splashing now and then into pools as they crossed the road. The foggy sky still seemed falling imperceptibly and regularly down on the earth; the air was still and warm, and there was no sound but now and then the whistle of a huntsman, the snort of a horse, the clack of a whip, or the whine of a dog who had dropped out of his place. When they had gone a verst, five more horsemen accompanied by dogs appeared out of the mist to meet the Rostovs. The foremost of them was a fresh, handsome old man with large, grey moustaches.

“Good-day, uncle,” said Nikolay as the old man rode up to him.

“All’s well and march!…I was sure of it,” began the man addressed as uncle. He was not really the Rostovs’ uncle, but a distant relative, who had a small property in their neighbourhood.

‘I was sure you couldn’t resist, and a good thing you have come out. All’s well and quick march.” (This was the uncle’s favorite saying.) “You had better attack the preserve at once, for my Girtchilk brought me word that the Ilagins are out with their hounds at Korniky; they’ll snatch the litter right under your noses.”

“That’s where I’m going. Shall we join the packs?” asked Nikolay.

The hounds were joined into one pack, and the uncle and Nikolay rode on side by side.

Natasha, muffled up in a shawl which did not hide her eager face and shining eyes, galloped up to them, accompanied by Petya, who kept beside her, and Mihailo, the huntsman and groom, who had been told to look after her. Petya was laughing and switching and pulling his horse. Natasha sat her raven Arabtchick with grace and confidence and controlled him with an easy and steady hand.

The uncle looked with disapproval at Petya and Natasha. He did not like a mixture of frivolity with the serious business of the hunt.

“Good-day, uncle; we’re coming to the hunt too!” shouted Petya.

“Good-day, good-day, and mind you don’t ride down the dogs,” said the uncle sternly.

“Nikolenka, what a delightful dog Trunila is! he knew me,” said Natasha of her favourite dog.

“In the first place, Trunila’s not a dog, but a wolf-hound,” thought Nikolay. He glanced at his sister trying to make her feel the distance that lay between them at that moment. Natasha understood it.

“Don’t imagine we shall get in anybody’s way, uncle,” said Natasha.

“We’ll stay in our right place and not stir from it.”

“And you’ll do well, little countess,” said the uncle. “Only don’t fall off your horse,” he added, “or you’d never get on again—all’s well, quick march!”

The Otradnoe preserve came into sight, an oasis of greenness, two hundred and fifty yards away. Rostov, settling finally with the uncle from what point to set the dogs on, pointed out to Natasha the place mbt shoe where she was to stand, a place where there was no chance of anything running out, and went round to close in from behind above the ravine.

“Now, nephew, you’re on the track of an old wolf,” said the uncle; “mind he doesn’t give you the slip.”

“That’s as it happens,” answered Rostov. “Karay, hey!” he shouted, replying to the uncle’s warning by this call to his dog. Karay was an old, misshapen, muddy-coloured hound, famous for attacking an old wolf unaided. All took their places.

The old count, who knew his son’s ardour in the hunt, hurried to avoid being late, and the whippers-in had hardly reached the place when Count Ilya Andreitch, with a cheerful face, and flushed and quivering cheeks, drove up with his pair of raven horses, over the green field to the place left for him. Straightening his fur coat and putting on his hunting appurtenances, he mounted his sleek, well-fed, quiet, good-humoured Viflyanka, who was turning grey like himself. The horses with the gig were sent back. Count Ilya Andreitch, though he was at heart no sportsman, knew well all the rules of sport. He rode into the edge of the thicket of bushes, behind which he was standing, picked up the reins, settled himself at his ease in the saddle, and, feeling that he was ready, looked about him smiling.

Near him stood his valet, Semyon Tchekmar, a veteran horseman, though now heavy in the saddle. Tchekmar held on a leash three wolfhounds of a special breed, spirited hounds, though they too had grown fat like their master and his horse. Two other keen old dogs were lying beside them not in a leash. A hundred paces further in the edge of the copse stood another groom of the count’s, Mitka, a reckless rider and passionate sportsman. The count had followed the old custom of drinking before hunting a silver goblet of spiced brandy; he had had a slight lunch and after that half a bottle of his favourite bordeaux.

Count Ilya Andreitch was rather flushed from the wine and the drive; his eyes, covered by moisture, were particularly bright, and sitting in the saddle wrapped up in his fur coat, he looked like a baby taken out for a drive.
After seeing after his duties, Tchekmar, with his thin face and sunken cheeks, looked towards his master, with whom he had lived on the best of terms for thirty years. Perceiving that he was in a genial humour, he anticipated a pleasant chat. A third person rode circumspectly—he had no doubt been cautioned—out of the wood, and stood still behind the count. This personage was a grey-bearded old man, wearing a woman’s gown and a high, peaked cap. It was the buffoon, Nastasya Ivanovna.

“Well, Nastasya Ivanovna,” whispered the count, winking at him, “you only scare off the game, and Danilo will give it you.”

“I wasn’t born yesterday,” said Nastasya Ivanovna.

“Sh!” hissed the count, and he turned to Semyon. “Have you seen Natalya Ilyinitchna?” he asked Semyon. “Where is she?”
“Her honour’s with Pyotr Ilyitch, behind the high grass at Zharvry,” answered Semyon, smiling. “Though she is a lady, she has a great love for the chase.”

“And you wonder at her riding, Semyon,…eh?” said the count, “for a man even it wouldn’t be amiss!”
“Who wouldn’t wonder! So daring, so smart!”
“And where’s Nikolasha? Above the Lyadovsky upland, eh?” the count asked still in a whisper.

“Yes, sir. His honour knows where he had best stand. He knows the ins and outs of hunting, so that Danilo and I are sometimes quite astonished at him,” said Semyon, who knew how to please his master.

“He’s a good, clever sportsman, eh? And what do you say to his riding, eh?”

“A perfect picture he is! How he drove the fox out of the Zavarzinsky thicket the other day. He galloped down from the ravine, it was a sight—the horse worth a thousand roubles, and the rider beyond all price. Yes, you would have to look a long while to find his match!”

“To look a long while…” repeated the count, obviously regretting that Semyon’s praises had come to so speedy a termination. “A long while,” he repeated, turning back the skirt of his coat and looking for his snuff-box.

“The other day they were coming out from Mass in all their glory, Mihail Sidoritch…” Semyon stopped short, hearing distinctly in the still air the rush of the hounds, with no more than two or three dogs giving tongue. With his head on one side, he listened, shaking a warning finger at his master. “They’re on the scent of the litter…” he whispered; “they have gone straight toward Lyadovsky upland.”

The count, with a smile still lingering on his face, looked straight before him along the path, and did not take a pinch from the snuff-box he held in his hand. The hounds’ cry was followed by the bass note of the hunting cry for a wolf sounded on Danilo’s horn. The pack joined the first three dogs, and the voices of the hounds could be heard in full cry with the peculiar note which serves to betoken that they are after a wolf. The whippers-in were not now hallooing, but urging on the hounds with cries of “Loo! loo! loo!” and above all the voices rose the voice of Danilo, passing from a deep note to piercing shrillness. Danilo’s voice seemed to fill the whole forest, to pierce beyond it, and echo far away in the open country.

After listening for a few seconds in silence, the count and his groom felt certain that the hounds had divided into two packs: one, the larger, was going off into the distance, in particularly hot cry; the other part of the pack was moving along the forest past the count, and it was with this pack that Danilo’s voice was heard urging the dogs on. The sounds from both packs melted into unison and broke apart again, but both were getting further away. Semyon sighed and stooped down to straighten the leash, in which a young dog had caught his leg. The count too sighed, and noticing the snuff-box in his hand, he opened it and took a pinch.

“Back!” cried Semyon to the dog, which had poked out beyond the bushes. The count started, and dropped the snuff-box. Nastasya Ivanovna got off his horse and began picking it up.

The count and Semyon watched him. All of a sudden, as so often happens, the sound of the hunt was in an instant close at hand, as though the baying dogs and Danilo’s cries were just upon them.

The count looked round, and on the right he saw Mitka, who was staring at the count with eyes starting out of his head. Lifting his cap, he pointed in front to the other side.

“Look out!” he shouted in a voice that showed the words had long been fretting him to be uttered. And letting go the dogs, he galloped towards the count.

The count and Semyon galloped out of the bushes, and on their left they saw a wolf. With a soft, rolling gait it moved at a slow amble further to their left into the very thicket in which they had been standing. The angry dogs whined, and pulling themselves free from the leash, flew by the horses’ hoofs after the wolf.

The wolf paused in his flight; awkwardly, like a man with a quinsy, he turned his heavy-browed head towards the dogs, and still with the same soft, rolling gait gave one bound and a second, and, waving its tail, disappeared into the bushes. At the same instant, with a cry like a wail, there sprang desperately out of the thicket opposite one hound, then a second and a third, and all the pack flew across the open ground towards the very spot where the wolf had vanished. The bushes were parted behind the dogs, and Danilo’s brown horse, dark with sweat, emerged from them. On its long back Danilo sat perched up and swaying forward. He had no cap on his grey hair, that fluttered in disorder above his red, perspiring face.

“Loo! loo! loo!…” he was shouting. When he caught sight of the count, there was a flash like lightning in his eyes.

“B—!” he shouted, using a brutally coarse term of abuse and menacing the count with his lifted whip. “Let the wolf slip!…sportsmen indeed!” And as though scorning to waste more words on the confused and frightened count, he lashed the moist and heavy sides of his brown gelding with all the fury that had been ready for the count, and flew off after the dogs. The count stood like a man who has been thrashed, looking about him and trying to smile and call for Semyon to sympathise with his plight. But mbt shoes Semyon was not there; he had galloped round to cut the wolf off from the forest. The greyhounds, too, were running to and fro on both sides. But the wolf got off into the bushes, and not one of the party succeeded in coming across him.