War and Peace

ount Ilyá Rostóv had resigned the position of Marshal of the Nobility
because it involved him in too much expense, but still his affairs
did not improve. Natásha and Nicholas often noticed their parents
conferring together anxiously and privately and heard suggestions of
selling the fine ancestral Rostóv house and estate near Moscow. It was
not necessary to entertain so freely as when the count had been Marshal,
and life at Otrádnoe was quieter than in former years, but still the
enormous house and its lodges were full of people and more than twenty
sat down to table every day. These were all their own people who had
settled down in the house almost as members of the family, or persons
who were, it seemed, obliged to live in the count’s house. Such were
Dimmler the musician and his wife, Vogel the dancing master and his
family, Belóva, an old maiden lady, an inmate of the house, and many
others such as Pétya’s tutors, the girls’ former governess, and
other people who simply found it preferable and more advantageous to
live in the count’s house than at home. They had not as many visitors
as before, but the old habits of life without which the count and
countess could not conceive of existence remained unchanged. There was
still the hunting establishment which Nicholas had even enlarged, the
same fifty horses and fifteen grooms in the stables, the same expensive
presents and dinner parties to the whole district on name days; there
were still the count’s games of whist and boston, at which—spreading
out his cards so that everybody could see them—he let himself be
plundered of hundreds of rubles every day by his neighbors, who looked
upon an opportunity to play a rubber with Count Rostóv as a most
profitable source of income.

The count moved in his affairs as in a huge net, trying not to believe
that he was entangled but becoming more and more so at every step, and
feeling too feeble to break the meshes or to set to work carefully and
patiently to disentangle them. The countess, with her loving heart, felt
that her children were being ruined, that it was not the count’s fault
for he could not help being what he was—that (though he tried to
hide it) he himself suffered from the consciousness of his own and
his children’s ruin, and she tried to find means of remedying the
position. From her feminine point of view she could see only one
solution, namely, for Nicholas to marry a rich heiress. She felt this to
be their last hope and that if Nicholas refused the match she had found
for him, she would have to abandon the hope of ever getting matters
right. This match was with Julie Karágina, the daughter of excellent
and virtuous parents, a girl the Rostóvs had known from childhood, and
who had now become a wealthy heiress through the death of the last of
her brothers.

The countess had written direct to Julie’s mother in Moscow suggesting
a marriage between their children and had received a favorable answer
from her. Karágina had replied that for her part she was agreeable, and
everything depend on her daughter’s inclination. She invited Nicholas
to come to Moscow.

Several times the countess, with tears in her eyes, told her son that
now both her daughters were settled, her only wish was to see him
married. She said she could lie down in her grave peacefully if that
were accomplished. Then she told him that she knew of a splendid girl
and tried to discover what he thought about marriage.

At other times she praised Julie to him and advised him to go to
Moscow during the holidays to amuse himself. Nicholas guessed what his
mother’s remarks were leading to and during one of these conversations
induced her to speak quite frankly. She told him that her only hope
of getting their affairs disentangled now lay in his marrying Julie
Karágina.

“But, Mamma, suppose I loved a girl who has no fortune, would
you expect me to sacrifice my feelings and my honor for the sake of
money?” he asked his mother, not realizing the cruelty of his question
and only wishing to show his noble-mindedness.

“No, you have not understood me,” said his mother, not knowing how
to justify herself. “You have not understood me, Nikólenka. It is
your happiness I wish for,” she added, feeling that she was telling an
untruth and was becoming entangled. She began to cry.

“Mamma, don’t cry! Only tell me that you wish it, and you know I
will give my life, anything, to put you at ease,” said Nicholas. “I
would sacrifice anything for you—even my feelings.”

But the countess did not want the question put like that: she did not
want a sacrifice from her son, she herself wished to make a sacrifice
for him.

“No, you have not understood me, don’t let us talk about it,” she
replied, wiping away her tears.

“Maybe I do love a poor girl,” said Nicholas to himself. “Am I to
sacrifice my feelings and my honor for money? I wonder how Mamma could
speak so to me. Because Sónya is poor I must not love her,” he
thought, “must not respond to her faithful, devoted love? Yet I should
certainly be happier with her than with some doll-like Julie. I can
always sacrifice my feelings for my family’s welfare,” he said to
himself, “but I can’t coerce my feelings. If I love Sónya, that
feeling is for me stronger and higher than all else.”

Nicholas did not go to Moscow, and the countess did not renew the
conversation with him about marriage. She saw with sorrow, and sometimes
with exasperation, symptoms of a growing attachment between her son and
the portionless Sónya. Though she blamed herself for it, she could
not refrain from grumbling at and worrying Sónya, often pulling her up
without reason, addressing her stiffly as “my dear,” and using the
formal “you” instead of the intimate “thou” in speaking to her.
The kindhearted countess was the more vexed with Sónya because that
poor, dark-eyed niece of hers was so meek, so kind, so devotedly
grateful to her benefactors, and so faithfully, unchangingly, and
unselfishly in love with Nicholas, that there were no grounds for
finding fault with her.

Nicholas was spending the last of his leave at home. A fourth letter had
come from Prince Andrew, from Rome, in which he wrote that he would have
been on his way back to Russia long ago had not his wound unexpectedly
reopened in the warm climate, which obliged him to defer his return till
the beginning of the new year. Natásha was still as much in love with
her betrothed, found the same comfort in that love, and was still as
ready to throw herself into all the pleasures of life as before; but at
the end of the fourth month of their separation she began to have fits
of depression which she could not master. She felt sorry for herself:
sorry that she was being wasted all this time and of no use to
anyone—while she felt herself so capable of loving and being loved.

Things were not cheerful in the Rostóvs’ home.