War and Peace

ext day, having been invited by the count, Prince Andrew dined with the
Rostóvs and spent the rest of the day there.

Everyone in the house realized for whose sake Prince Andrew came, and
without concealing it he tried to be with Natásha all day. Not only in
the soul of the frightened yet happy and enraptured Natásha, but in the
whole house, there was a feeling of awe at something important that was
bound to happen. The countess looked with sad and sternly serious eyes
at Prince Andrew when he talked to Natásha and timidly started some
artificial conversation about trifles as soon as he looked her way.
Sónya was afraid to leave Natásha and afraid of being in the way when
she was with them. Natásha grew pale, in a panic of expectation, when
she remained alone with him for a moment. Prince Andrew surprised her by
his timidity. She felt that he wanted to say something to her but could
not bring himself to do so.

In the evening, when Prince Andrew had left, the countess went up to
Natásha and whispered: “Well, what?”

“Mamma! For heaven’s sake don’t ask me anything now! One can’t
talk about that,” said Natásha.

But all the same that night Natásha, now agitated and now frightened,
lay a long time in her mother’s bed gazing straight before her. She
told her how he had complimented her, how he told her he was going
abroad, asked her where they were going to spend the summer, and then
how he had asked her about Borís.

“But such a... such a... never happened to me before!” she said.
“Only I feel afraid in his presence. I am always afraid when I’m
with him. What does that mean? Does it mean that it’s the real thing?
Yes? Mamma, are you asleep?”

“No, my love; I am frightened myself,” answered her mother. “Now
go!”

“All the same I shan’t sleep. What silliness, to sleep! Mummy!
Mummy! such a thing never happened to me before,” she said, surprised
and alarmed at the feeling she was aware of in herself. “And could we
ever have thought!...”

It seemed to Natásha that even at the time she first saw Prince Andrew
at Otrádnoe she had fallen in love with him. It was as if she feared
this strange, unexpected happiness of meeting again the very man she had
then chosen (she was firmly convinced she had done so) and of finding
him, as it seemed, not indifferent to her.

“And it had to happen that he should come specially to Petersburg
while we are here. And it had to happen that we should meet at that
ball. It is fate. Clearly it is fate that everything led up to this!
Already then, directly I saw him I felt something peculiar.”

“What else did he say to you? What are those verses? Read them...”
said her mother, thoughtfully, referring to some verses Prince Andrew
had written in Natásha’s album.

“Mamma, one need not be ashamed of his being a widower?”

“Don’t, Natásha! Pray to God. ‘Marriages are made in
heaven,’” said her mother.

“Darling Mummy, how I love you! How happy I am!” cried Natásha,
shedding tears of joy and excitement and embracing her mother.

At that very time Prince Andrew was sitting with Pierre and telling him
of his love for Natásha and his firm resolve to make her his wife.

That day Countess Hélène had a reception at her house. The French
ambassador was there, and a foreign prince of the blood who had of
late become a frequent visitor of hers, and many brilliant ladies and
gentlemen. Pierre, who had come downstairs, walked through the rooms and
struck everyone by his preoccupied, absent-minded, and morose air.

Since the ball he had felt the approach of a fit of nervous depression
and had made desperate efforts to combat it. Since the intimacy of
his wife with the royal prince, Pierre had unexpectedly been made a
gentleman of the bedchamber, and from that time he had begun to feel
oppressed and ashamed in court society, and dark thoughts of the vanity
of all things human came to him oftener than before. At the same time
the feeling he had noticed between his protégée Natásha and Prince
Andrew accentuated his gloom by the contrast between his own position
and his friend’s. He tried equally to avoid thinking about his wife,
and about Natásha and Prince Andrew; and again everything seemed to him
insignificant in comparison with eternity; again the question: for what?
presented itself; and he forced himself to work day and night at Masonic
labors, hoping to drive away the evil spirit that threatened him. Toward
midnight, after he had left the countess’ apartments, he was sitting
upstairs in a shabby dressing gown, copying out the original transaction
of the Scottish lodge of Freemasons at a table in his low room cloudy
with tobacco smoke, when someone came in. It was Prince Andrew.

“Ah, it’s you!” said Pierre with a preoccupied, dissatisfied air.
“And I, you see, am hard at it.” He pointed to his manuscript book
with that air of escaping from the ills of life with which unhappy
people look at their work.

Prince Andrew, with a beaming, ecstatic expression of renewed life on
his face, paused in front of Pierre and, not noticing his sad look,
smiled at him with the egotism of joy.

“Well, dear heart,” said he, “I wanted to tell you about it
yesterday and I have come to do so today. I never experienced anything
like it before. I am in love, my friend!”

Suddenly Pierre heaved a deep sigh and dumped his heavy person down on
the sofa beside Prince Andrew.

“With Natásha Rostóva, yes?” said he.

“Yes, yes! Who else should it be? I should never have believed it,
but the feeling is stronger than I. Yesterday I tormented myself and
suffered, but I would not exchange even that torment for anything in
the world, I have not lived till now. At last I live, but I can’t
live without her! But can she love me?... I am too old for her.... Why
don’t you speak?”

“I? I? What did I tell you?” said Pierre suddenly, rising and
beginning to pace up and down the room. “I always thought it.... That
girl is such a treasure... she is a rare girl.... My dear friend,
I entreat you, don’t philosophize, don’t doubt, marry, marry,
marry.... And I am sure there will not be a happier man than you.”

“But what of her?”

“She loves you.”

“Don’t talk rubbish...” said Prince Andrew, smiling and looking
into Pierre’s eyes.

“She does, I know,” Pierre cried fiercely.

“But do listen,” returned Prince Andrew, holding him by the
arm. “Do you know the condition I am in? I must talk about it to
someone.”

“Well, go on, go on. I am very glad,” said Pierre, and his face
really changed, his brow became smooth, and he listened gladly to Prince
Andrew. Prince Andrew seemed, and really was, quite a different, quite
a new man. Where was his spleen, his contempt for life, his
disillusionment? Pierre was the only person to whom he made up his mind
to speak openly; and to him he told all that was in his soul. Now he
boldly and lightly made plans for an extended future, said he could not
sacrifice his own happiness to his father’s caprice, and spoke of how
he would either make his father consent to this marriage and love her,
or would do without his consent; then he marveled at the feeling that
had mastered him as at something strange, apart from and independent of
himself.

“I should not have believed anyone who told me that I was capable of
such love,” said Prince Andrew. “It is not at all the same feeling
that I knew in the past. The whole world is now for me divided into two
halves: one half is she, and there all is joy, hope, light: the
other half is everything where she is not, and there is all gloom and
darkness....”

“Darkness and gloom,” reiterated Pierre: “yes, yes, I understand
that.”

“I cannot help loving the light, it is not my fault. And I am very
happy! You understand me? I know you are glad for my sake.”

“Yes, yes,” Pierre assented, looking at his friend with a touched
and sad expression in his eyes. The brighter Prince Andrew’s lot
appeared to him, the gloomier seemed his own.