War and Peace

Two months previously when Pierre was already staying with the Rostóvs he had received a letter from Prince Theodore, asking him to come to Petersburg to confer on some important questions that were being discussed there by a society of which Pierre was one of the principal founders. On reading that letter (she always read her husband’s letters) Natásha herself suggested that he should go to Petersburg, though she would feel his absence very acutely. She attributed immense importance to all her husband’s intellectual and abstract interests though she did not understand them, and she always dreaded being a hindrance to him in such matters. To Pierre’s timid look of inquiry after reading the letter she replied by asking him to go, but to fix a definite date for his return. He was given four weeks’ leave of absence. Ever since that leave of absence had expired, more than a fortnight before, Natásha had been in a constant state of alarm, depression, and irritability. Denísov, now a general on the retired list and much dissatisfied with the present state of affairs, had arrived during that fortnight. He looked at Natásha with sorrow and surprise as at a bad likeness of a person once dear. A dull, dejected look, random replies, and talk about the nursery was all he saw and heard from his former enchantress. Natásha was sad and irritable all that time, especially when her mother, her brother, Sónya, or Countess Mary in their efforts to console her tried to excuse Pierre and suggested reasons for his delay in returning. “It’s all nonsense, all rubbish—those discussions which lead to nothing and all those idiotic societies!” Natásha declared of the very affairs in the immense importance of which she firmly believed. And she would go to the nursery to nurse Pétya, her only boy. No one else could tell her anything so comforting or so reasonable as this little three-month-old creature when he lay at her breast and she was conscious of the movement of his lips and the snuffling of his little nose. That creature said: “You are angry, you are jealous, you would like to pay him out, you are afraid—but here am I! And I am he...” and that was unanswerable. It was more than true. During that fortnight of anxiety Natásha resorted to the baby for comfort so often, and fussed over him so much, that she overfed him and he fell ill. She was terrified by his illness, and yet that was just what she needed. While attending to him she bore the anxiety about her husband more easily. She was nursing her boy when the sound of Pierre’s sleigh was heard at the front door, and the old nurse—knowing how to please her mistress—entered the room inaudibly but hurriedly and with a beaming face. “Has he come?” Natásha asked quickly in a whisper, afraid to move lest she should rouse the dozing baby. “He’s come, ma’am,” whispered the nurse. The blood rushed to Natásha’s...