War and Peace

he Bible legend tells us that the absence of labor—idleness—was a
condition of the first man’s blessedness before the Fall. Fallen man
has retained a love of idleness, but the curse weighs on the race not
only because we have to seek our bread in the sweat of our brows, but
because our moral nature is such that we cannot be both idle and at
ease. An inner voice tells us we are in the wrong if we are idle. If man
could find a state in which he felt that though idle he was fulfilling
his duty, he would have found one of the conditions of man’s primitive
blessedness. And such a state of obligatory and irreproachable idleness
is the lot of a whole class—the military. The chief attraction of
military service has consisted and will consist in this compulsory and
irreproachable idleness.

Nicholas Rostóv experienced this blissful condition to the full when,
after 1807, he continued to serve in the Pávlograd regiment, in which
he already commanded the squadron he had taken over from Denísov.

Rostóv had become a bluff, good-natured fellow, whom his Moscow
acquaintances would have considered rather bad form, but who was liked
and respected by his comrades, subordinates, and superiors, and was well
contented with his life. Of late, in 1809, he found in letters from home
more frequent complaints from his mother that their affairs were falling
into greater and greater disorder, and that it was time for him to come
back to gladden and comfort his old parents.

Reading these letters, Nicholas felt a dread of their wanting to
take him away from surroundings in which, protected from all the
entanglements of life, he was living so calmly and quietly. He felt that
sooner or later he would have to re-enter that whirlpool of life, with
its embarrassments and affairs to be straightened out, its accounts
with stewards, quarrels, and intrigues, its ties, society, and with
Sónya’s love and his promise to her. It was all dreadfully difficult
and complicated; and he replied to his mother in cold, formal letters
in French, beginning: “My dear Mamma,” and ending: “Your obedient
son,” which said nothing of when he would return. In 1810 he received
letters from his parents, in which they told him of Natásha’s
engagement to Bolkónski, and that the wedding would be in a year’s
time because the old prince made difficulties. This letter grieved and
mortified Nicholas. In the first place he was sorry that Natásha, for
whom he cared more than for anyone else in the family, should be lost to
the home; and secondly, from his hussar point of view, he regretted not
to have been there to show that fellow Bolkónski that connection with
him was no such great honor after all, and that if he loved Natásha he
might dispense with permission from his dotard father. For a moment he
hesitated whether he should not apply for leave in order to see Natásha
before she was married, but then came the maneuvers, and considerations
about Sónya and about the confusion of their affairs, and Nicholas
again put it off. But in the spring of that year, he received a letter
from his mother, written without his father’s knowledge, and that
letter persuaded him to return. She wrote that if he did not come and
take matters in hand, their whole property would be sold by auction and
they would all have to go begging. The count was so weak, and trusted
Mítenka so much, and was so good-natured, that everybody took advantage
of him and things were going from bad to worse. “For God’s sake, I
implore you, come at once if you do not wish to make me and the whole
family wretched,” wrote the countess.

This letter touched Nicholas. He had that common sense of a
matter-of-fact man which showed him what he ought to do.

The right thing now was, if not to retire from the service, at any rate
to go home on leave. Why he had to go he did not know; but after his
after-dinner nap he gave orders to saddle Mars, an extremely vicious
gray stallion that had not been ridden for a long time, and when
he returned with the horse all in a lather, he informed Lavrúshka
(Denísov’s servant who had remained with him) and his comrades who
turned up in the evening that he was applying for leave and was going
home. Difficult and strange as it was for him to reflect that he would
go away without having heard from the staff—and this interested him
extremely—whether he was promoted to a captaincy or would receive the
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!”