War and Peace
accompanies the presence of a betrothed couple. Often when all sitting
together everyone kept silent. Sometimes the others would get up and
go away and the couple, left alone, still remained silent. They rarely
spoke of their future life. Prince Andrew was afraid and ashamed to
speak of it. Natásha shared this as she did all his feelings, which she
constantly divined. Once she began questioning him about his son. Prince
Andrew blushed, as he often did now—Natásha particularly liked it in
him—and said that his son would not live with them.
“Why not?” asked Natásha in a frightened tone.
“I cannot take him away from his grandfather, and besides...”
“How I should have loved him!” said Natásha, immediately guessing
his thought; “but I know you wish to avoid any pretext for finding
fault with us.”
Sometimes the old count would come up, kiss Prince Andrew, and ask
his advice about Pétya’s education or Nicholas’ service. The
old countess sighed as she looked at them; Sónya was always getting
frightened lest she should be in the way and tried to find excuses for
leaving them alone, even when they did not wish it. When Prince Andrew
spoke (he could tell a story very well), Natásha listened to him
with pride; when she spoke she noticed with fear and joy that he gazed
attentively and scrutinizingly at her. She asked herself in perplexity:
“What does he look for in me? He is trying to discover something by
looking at me! What if what he seeks in me is not there?” Sometimes
she fell into one of the mad, merry moods characteristic of her, and
then she particularly loved to hear and see how Prince Andrew laughed.
He seldom laughed, but when he did he abandoned himself entirely to his
laughter, and after such a laugh she always felt nearer to him. Natásha
would have been completely happy if the thought of the separation
awaiting her and drawing near had not terrified her, just as the mere
thought of it made him turn pale and cold.
On the eve of his departure from Petersburg Prince Andrew brought with
him Pierre, who had not been to the Rostóvs’ once since the ball.
Pierre seemed disconcerted and embarrassed. He was talking to the
countess, and Natásha sat down beside a little chess table with Sónya,
thereby inviting Prince Andrew to come too. He did so.
“You have known Bezúkhov a long time?” he asked. “Do you like
him?”
“Yes, he’s a dear, but very absurd.”
And as usual when speaking of Pierre, she began to tell anecdotes of his
absent-mindedness, some of which had even been invented about him.
“Do you know I have entrusted him with our secret? I have known him
from childhood. He has a heart of gold. I beg you, Natalie,” Prince
Andrew said with sudden seriousness—“I am going away and heaven
knows what may happen. You may cease to... all right, I know I am not
to say that. Only this, then: whatever may happen to you when I am not
here...”
“What can happen?”
“Whatever trouble may come,” Prince Andrew continued, “I beg
you, Mademoiselle Sophie, whatever may happen, to turn to him alone for
advice and help! He is a most absent-minded and absurd fellow, but he
has a heart of gold.”
Neither her father, nor her mother, nor Sónya, nor Prince Andrew
himself could have foreseen how the separation from her lover would act
on Natásha. Flushed and agitated she went about the house all that day,
dry-eyed, occupied with most trivial matters as if not understanding
what awaited her. She did not even cry when, on taking leave, he kissed
her hand for the last time. “Don’t go!” she said in a tone
that made him wonder whether he really ought not to stay and which he
remembered long afterwards. Nor did she cry when he was gone; but
for several days she sat in her room dry-eyed, taking no interest in
anything and only saying now and then, “Oh, why did he go away?”
But a fortnight after his departure, to the surprise of those around
her, she recovered from her mental sickness just as suddenly and became
her old self again, but with a change in her moral physiognomy, as a
child gets up after a long illness with a changed expression of face.
CHAPTER XXV
During that year after his son’s departure, Prince Nicholas
Bolkónski’s health and temper became much worse. He grew still more
irritable, and it was Princess Mary who generally bore the brunt of his
frequent fits of unprovoked anger. He seemed carefully to seek out
her tender spots so as to torture her mentally as harshly as possible.
Princess Mary had two passions and consequently two joys—her nephew,
little Nicholas, and religion—and these were the favorite subjects
of the prince’s attacks and ridicule. Whatever was spoken of he would
bring round to the superstitiousness of old maids, or the petting
and spoiling of children. “You want to make him”—little
Nicholas—“into an old maid like yourself! A pity! Prince Andrew
wants a son and not an old maid,” he would say. Or, turning to
Mademoiselle Bourienne, he would ask her in Princess Mary’s presence
how she liked our village priests and icons and would joke about them.
He continually hurt Princess Mary’s feelings and tormented her, but it
cost her no effort to forgive him. Could he be to blame toward her, or
could her father, whom she knew loved her in spite of it all, be unjust?
And what is justice? The princess never thought of that proud word
“justice.” All the complex laws of man centered for her in one clear
and simple law—the law of love and self-sacrifice taught us by Him who
lovingly suffered for mankind though He Himself was God. What had she to
do with the justice or injustice of other people? She had to endure and
love, and that she did.
During the winter Prince Andrew had come to Bald Hills and had been gay,
gentle, and more affectionate than Princess Mary had known him for a
long time past. She felt that something had happened to him, but he said
nothing to her about his love. Before he left he had a long talk with
his father about something, and Princess Mary noticed that before his
departure they were dissatisfied with one another.
Soon after Prince Andrew had gone, Princess Mary wrote to her friend
Julie Karágina in Petersburg, whom she had dreamed (as all girls dream)
of marrying to her brother, and who was at that time in mourning for her
own brother, killed in Turkey.
Sorrow, it seems, is our common lot, my dear, tender friend Julie.
Your loss is so terrible that I can only explain it to myself as a
special providence of God who, loving you, wishes to try you and your
excellent mother. Oh, my friend! Religion, and religion alone, can—I
will not say comfort us—but save us from despair. Religion alone can
explain to us what without its help man cannot comprehend: why, for what
cause, kind and noble beings able to find happiness in life—not merely
harming no one but necessary to the happiness of others—are called
away to God, while cruel, useless, harmful persons, or such as are a
burden to themselves and to others, are left living. The first death I
saw, and one I shall never forget—that of my dear sister-in-law—left
that impression on me. Just as you ask destiny why your splendid brother
had to die, so I asked why that angel Lise, who not only never wronged
anyone, but in whose soul there were never any unkind thoughts, had to
die. And what do you think, dear friend? Five years have passed since
then, and already I, with my petty understanding, begin to see clearly
why she had to die, and in what way that death was but an expression
of the infinite goodness of the Creator, whose every action, though
generally incomprehensible to us, is but a manifestation of His infinite
love for His creatures. Perhaps, I often think, she was too angelically
innocent to have the strength to perform all a mother’s duties. As a
young wife she was irreproachable; perhaps she could not have been so
as a mother. As it is, not only has she left us, and particularly Prince
Andrew, with the purest regrets and memories, but probably she will
there receive a place I dare not hope for myself. But not to speak of
her alone, that early and terrible death has had the most beneficent
influence on me and on my brother in spite of all our grief. Then, at
the moment of our loss, these thoughts could not occur to me; I should
then have dismissed them with horror, but now they are very clear and
certain. I write all this to you, dear friend, only to convince you
of the Gospel truth which has become for me a principle of life: not
a single hair of our heads will fall without His will. And His will is
governed only by infinite love for us, and so whatever befalls us is for
our good.
You ask whether we shall spend next winter in Moscow. In spite of my
wish to see you, I do not think so and do not want to do so. You will
be surprised to hear that the reason for this is Buonaparte! The case is
this: my father’s health is growing noticeably worse, he cannot stand
any contradiction and is becoming irritable. This irritability is, as
you know, chiefly directed to political questions. He cannot endure
the notion that Buonaparte is negotiating on equal terms with all the
sovereigns of Europe and particularly with our own, the grandson of the
Great Catherine! As you know, I am quite indifferent to politics, but
from my father’s remarks and his talks with Michael Ivánovich I know
all that goes on in the world and especially about the honors conferred
on Buonaparte, who only at Bald Hills in the whole world, it seems, is
not accepted as a great man, still less as Emperor of France. And my
father cannot stand this. It seems to me that it is chiefly because of
his political views that my father is reluctant to speak of going to
Moscow; for he foresees the encounters that would result from his way
of expressing his views regardless of anybody. All the benefit he might
derive from a course of treatment he would lose as a result of the
disputes about Buonaparte which would be inevitable. In any case it will
be decided very shortly.
Our family life goes on in the old way except for my brother Andrew’s
absence. He, as I wrote you before, has changed very much of late. After
his sorrow he only this year quite recovered his spirits. He has again
become as I used to know him when a child: kind, affectionate, with that
heart of gold to which I know no equal. He has realized, it seems to me,
that life is not over for him. But together with this mental change
he has grown physically much weaker. He has become thinner and more
nervous. I am anxious about him and glad he is taking this trip abroad
which the doctors recommended long ago. I hope it will cure him. You
write that in Petersburg he is spoken of as one of the most active,
cultivated, and capable of the young men. Forgive my vanity as a
relation, but I never doubted it. The good he has done to everybody
here, from his peasants up to the gentry, is incalculable. On his
arrival in Petersburg he received only his due. I always wonder at the
way rumors fly from Petersburg to Moscow, especially such false ones as
that you write about—I mean the report of my brother’s betrothal to
the little Rostóva. I do not think my brother will ever marry again,
and certainly not her; and this is why: first, I know that though he
rarely speaks about the wife he has lost, the grief of that loss
has gone too deep in his heart for him ever to decide to give her a
successor and our little angel a stepmother. Secondly because, as far
as I know, that girl is not the kind of girl who could please Prince
Andrew. I do not think he would choose her for a wife, and frankly I do
not wish it. But I am running on too long and am at the end of my second
sheet. Good-by, my dear friend. May God keep you in His holy and mighty
care. My dear friend, Mademoiselle Bourienne, sends you kisses.
MARY