War and Peace
Order of St. Anne for the last maneuvers; strange as it was to think
that he would go away without having sold his three roans to the Polish
Count Golukhovski, who was bargaining for the horses Rostóv had betted
he would sell for two thousand rubles; incomprehensible as it
seemed that the ball the hussars were giving in honor of the Polish
Mademoiselle Przazdziecka (out of rivalry to the Uhlans who had given
one in honor of their Polish Mademoiselle Borzozowska) would take place
without him—he knew he must go away from this good, bright world to
somewhere where everything was stupid and confused. A week later he
obtained his leave. His hussar comrades—not only those of his own
regiment, but the whole brigade—gave Rostóv a dinner to which the
subscription was fifteen rubles a head, and at which there were two
bands and two choirs of singers. Rostóv danced the Trepák with Major
Básov; the tipsy officers tossed, embraced, and dropped Rostóv; the
soldiers of the third squadron tossed him too, and shouted “hurrah!”
and then they put him in his sleigh and escorted him as far as the first
post station.
During the first half of the journey—from Kremenchúg to Kiev—all
Rostóv’s thoughts, as is usual in such cases, were behind him, with
the squadron; but when he had gone more than halfway he began to forget
his three roans and Dozhoyvéyko, his quartermaster, and to wonder
anxiously how things would be at Otrádnoe and what he would find
there. Thoughts of home grew stronger the nearer he approached it—far
stronger, as though this feeling of his was subject to the law by which
the force of attraction is in inverse proportion to the square of the
distance. At the last post station before Otrádnoe he gave the driver a
three-ruble tip, and on arriving he ran breathlessly, like a boy, up the
steps of his home.
After the rapture of meeting, and after that odd feeling of unsatisfied
expectation—the feeling that “everything is just the same, so why
did I hurry?”—Nicholas began to settle down in his old home world.
His father and mother were much the same, only a little older. What was
new in them was a certain uneasiness and occasional discord, which there
used not to be, and which, as Nicholas soon found out, was due to the
bad state of their affairs. Sónya was nearly twenty; she had stopped
growing prettier and promised nothing more than she was already, but
that was enough. She exhaled happiness and love from the time Nicholas
returned, and the faithful, unalterable love of this girl had a
gladdening effect on him. Pétya and Natásha surprised Nicholas
most. Pétya was a big handsome boy of thirteen, merry, witty, and
mischievous, with a voice that was already breaking. As for Natásha,
for a long while Nicholas wondered and laughed whenever he looked at
her.
“You’re not the same at all,” he said.
“How? Am I uglier?”
“On the contrary, but what dignity? A princess!” he whispered to
her.
“Yes, yes, yes!” cried Natásha, joyfully.
She told him about her romance with Prince Andrew and of his visit to
Otrádnoe and showed him his last letter.
“Well, are you glad?” Natásha asked. “I am so tranquil and happy
now.”
“Very glad,” answered Nicholas. “He is an excellent fellow.... And
are you very much in love?”
“How shall I put it?” replied Natásha. “I was in love with
Borís, with my teacher, and with Denísov, but this is quite different.
I feel at peace and settled. I know that no better man than he exists,
and I am calm and contented now. Not at all as before.”
Nicholas expressed his disapproval of the postponement of the marriage
for a year; but Natásha attacked her brother with exasperation, proving
to him that it could not be otherwise, and that it would be a bad thing
to enter a family against the father’s will, and that she herself
wished it so.
“You don’t at all understand,” she said.
Nicholas was silent and agreed with her.
Her brother often wondered as he looked at her. She did not seem at
all like a girl in love and parted from her affianced husband. She was
even-tempered and calm and quite as cheerful as of old. This amazed
Nicholas and even made him regard Bolkónski’s courtship skeptically.
He could not believe that her fate was sealed, especially as he had
not seen her with Prince Andrew. It always seemed to him that there was
something not quite right about this intended marriage.
“Why this delay? Why no betrothal?” he thought. Once, when he had
touched on this topic with his mother, he discovered, to his surprise
and somewhat to his satisfaction, that in the depth of her soul she too
had doubts about this marriage.
“You see he writes,” said she, showing her son a letter of Prince
Andrew’s, with that latent grudge a mother always has in regard to a
daughter’s future married happiness, “he writes that he won’t come
before December. What can be keeping him? Illness, probably! His health
is very delicate. Don’t tell Natásha. And don’t attach importance
to her being so bright: that’s because she’s living through the last
days of her girlhood, but I know what she is like every time we receive
a letter from him! However, God grant that everything turns out well!”
(She always ended with these words.) “He is an excellent man!”
CHAPTER II
After reaching home Nicholas was at first serious and even dull. He was
worried by the impending necessity of interfering in the stupid business
matters for which his mother had called him home. To throw off this
burden as quickly as possible, on the third day after his arrival he
went, angry and scowling and without answering questions as to where he
was going, to Mítenka’s lodge and demanded an account of everything.
But what an account of everything might be Nicholas knew even less
than the frightened and bewildered Mítenka. The conversation and the
examination of the accounts with Mítenka did not last long. The village
elder, a peasant delegate, and the village clerk, who were waiting in
the passage, heard with fear and delight first the young count’s voice
roaring and snapping and rising louder and louder, and then words of
abuse, dreadful words, ejaculated one after the other.
“Robber!... Ungrateful wretch!... I’ll hack the dog to pieces! I’m
not my father!... Robbing us!...” and so on.
Then with no less fear and delight they saw how the young count, red in
the face and with bloodshot eyes, dragged Mítenka out by the scruff of
the neck and applied his foot and knee to his behind with great agility
at convenient moments between the words, shouting, “Be off! Never let
me see your face here again, you villain!”
Mítenka flew headlong down the six steps and ran away into the
shrubbery. (This shrubbery was a well-known haven of refuge for culprits
at Otrádnoe. Mítenka himself, returning tipsy from the town, used
to hide there, and many of the residents at Otrádnoe, hiding from
Mítenka, knew of its protective qualities.)
Mítenka’s wife and sisters-in-law thrust their heads and frightened
faces out of the door of a room where a bright samovar was boiling and
where the steward’s high bedstead stood with its patchwork quilt.
The young count paid no heed to them, but, breathing hard, passed by
with resolute strides and went into the house.
The countess, who heard at once from the maids what had happened at the
lodge, was calmed by the thought that now their affairs would certainly
improve, but on the other hand felt anxious as to the effect this
excitement might have on her son. She went several times to his door on
tiptoe and listened, as he lighted one pipe after another.
Next day the old count called his son aside and, with an embarrassed
smile, said to him:
“But you know, my dear boy, it’s a pity you got excited! Mítenka
has told me all about it.”
“I knew,” thought Nicholas, “that I should never understand
anything in this crazy world.”
“You were angry that he had not entered those 700 rubles. But they
were carried forward—and you did not look at the other page.”
“Papa, he is a blackguard and a thief! I know he is! And what I have
done, I have done; but, if you like, I won’t speak to him again.”
“No, my dear boy” (the count, too, felt embarrassed. He knew he had
mismanaged his wife’s property and was to blame toward his children,
but he did not know how to remedy it). “No, I beg you to attend to the
business. I am old. I...”
“No, Papa. Forgive me if I have caused you unpleasantness. I
understand it all less than you do.”
“Devil take all these peasants, and money matters, and carryings
forward from page to page,” he thought. “I used to understand what
a ‘corner’ and the stakes at cards meant, but carrying forward to
another page I don’t understand at all,” said he to himself, and
after that he did not meddle in business affairs. But once the countess
called her son and informed him that she had a promissory note from Anna
Mikháylovna for two thousand rubles, and asked him what he thought of
doing with it.
“This,” answered Nicholas. “You say it rests with me. Well, I
don’t like Anna Mikháylovna and I don’t like Borís, but they were
our friends and poor. Well then, this!” and he tore up the note, and
by so doing caused the old countess to weep tears of joy. After that,
young Rostóv took no further part in any business affairs, but
devoted himself with passionate enthusiasm to what was to him a new
pursuit—the chase—for which his father kept a large establishment.
CHAPTER III
The weather was already growing wintry and morning frosts congealed
an earth saturated by autumn rains. The verdure had thickened and its
bright green stood out sharply against the brownish strips of winter rye
trodden down by the cattle, and against the pale-yellow stubble of the
spring buckwheat. The wooded ravines and the copses, which at the end of
August had still been green islands amid black fields and stubble, had
become golden and bright-red islands amid the green winter rye. The
hares had already half changed their summer coats, the fox cubs were
beginning to scatter, and the young wolves were bigger than dogs. It was
the best time of the year for the chase. The hounds of that ardent young
sportsman Rostóv had not merely reached hard winter condition, but were
so jaded that at a meeting of the huntsmen it was decided to give them
a three days’ rest and then, on the sixteenth of September, to go on
a distant expedition, starting from the oak grove where there was an
undisturbed litter of wolf cubs.
All that day the hounds remained at home. It was frosty and the air was
sharp, but toward evening the sky became overcast and it began to thaw.
On the fifteenth, when young Rostóv, in his dressing gown, looked out
of the window, he saw it was an unsurpassable morning for hunting: it
was as if the sky were melting and sinking to the earth without any
wind. The only motion in the air was that of the dripping, microscopic
particles of drizzling mist. The bare twigs in the garden were hung with
transparent drops which fell on the freshly fallen leaves. The earth in
the kitchen garden looked wet and black and glistened like poppy seed
and at a short distance merged into the dull, moist veil of mist.
Nicholas went out into the wet and muddy porch. There was a smell of
decaying leaves and of dog. Mílka, a black-spotted, broad-haunched
bitch with prominent black eyes, got up on seeing her master, stretched
her hind legs, lay down like a hare, and then suddenly jumped up and
licked him right on his nose and mustache. Another borzoi, a dog,
catching sight of his master from the garden path, arched his back
and, rushing headlong toward the porch with lifted tail, began rubbing
himself against his legs.
“O-hoy!” came at that moment, that inimitable huntsman’s call
which unites the deepest bass with the shrillest tenor, and round