War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
After much hesitation, many misgivings and endless prayers, Princess Marya handed the letter to her father. The following day the old prince said to her calmly:
'Write and tell your brother to wait till I'm dead . . . He won't have long to wait. I'll soon set him free.'
The princess made as if to protest, but her father would have none of it, and he ranted on louder and louder. 'Go on, get yourself married, darling boy . . . Splendid family! . . . Clever people, eh? Plenty of money, eh? Oh yes, a nice little stepmother for Nikolay! Tell him not to wait - get married tomorrow . . . She'll be a stepmother for our little Nikolay, and I'll marry the little Bourienne girl! . . . He-he-he, can't have him doing without his own stepmother! Just one thing, no women-folk around this house from now on. Let him get married and go and live on his own. Why don't you go and live with him?' He turned to Princess Marya: 'Good luck to you! It's a cold world out there, a very cold world.'
After this outburst the prince never returned to the subject. But all his pent-up fury at his son's lack of spirit vented itself in the way he treated his daughter. To his former pretexts for taunting her he now added another one - snide remarks about stepmothers and being ever so nice to Mademoiselle Bourienne.
'Why shouldn't I marry her?' he would say to his daughter. 'She'd make a splendid princess!' And as the days went by, much to her surprise and bewilderment, Princess Marya began to notice that her father really was beginning to associate more and more with the French girl. Princess Marya wrote to Prince Andrey and described their father's reaction to the letter, but she consoled her brother with the hope that she might be able to bring him round.
Little Nikolay and his education, her brother Andrey and religion - these were Princess Marya's pleasures and consolations. But apart from them, since everybody has to have personal hopes, Princess Marya fostered, in the secret depths of her inner being, a private dream and a hidden hope from which she drew what consolation there was in her life. The consoling dream and hope came to her from her 'Servants of God' - the holy fools and pilgrims who visited her behind the prince's back. The longer Princess Marya lived, the more she observed life and experienced it, the more she marvelled at the shortsightedness of people who seek pleasure and happiness here on earth, toiling away, suffering and struggling, and doing so much harm to each other in pursuit of an impossible will-o'-the-wisp of happiness in iniquity. Prince Andrey had loved a wife and she had died, but that wasn't enough for him; he now wanted to bind his happiness to another woman. Her father was against it because he wanted a more distinguished or a wealthier match for Andrey. And all of them were struggling and suffering, tormenting themselves and tainting their souls, their eternal souls, to find themselves blessings that were only ephemeral. We are all well aware of this, but in any case Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came down to earth and told us that this life is but for a moment, it is a trial, yet we still cling to it and think to find happiness in it. 'Why can't people see this?' Princess Marya wondered. 'Well some people can - those despised Servants of God, who come to me up the backstairs with bags on their backs, scared of being seen by the prince, not because they're worried about persecution, but from fear of leading him into sin. To leave hearth and home, to renounce all thoughts of worldly blessings, and to wander the world, with nothing to cling to, in sackcloth and tatters, with a new name, doing no harm, but praying for people, praying equally for those who persecute and those who give succour - there is no truth and no life higher than this truth and this life!'
There was one pilgrim by the name of Theodosia, a quiet little woman of fifty, with a pockmarked faced, who had been wandering the world for over thirty years barefoot and wearing heavy chains. Princess Marya was particularly fond of her. One evening when they were sitting together in a dark room lit only by an icon-lamp, Theodosia told her life-story. Princess Marya felt such a strong intuition that Theodosia was the one person who had found the right path in life that she decided she ought to go on a pilgrimage herself. When Theodosia had gone to bed Princess Marya thought things over well into the night and eventually came to the conclusion that - however strange it might look - she must go on a pilgrimage. She confided her intention to no one but a monk, Father Akinfi, and he gave her project his blessing. On the pretext of buying presents for pilgrim women, Princess Marya built up the complete outfit of a pilgrim - a rough smock, shoes of plaited bark, a kaftan and a black scarf. She would often go over to the secret chest where these things were hidden and hover there, undecided whether the time might not have come to carry out her plan.
Often as she listened to the pilgrim-women's stories she was so transported by their simple sayings - mechanical phrases to them, but powerful profundities to her ears - that she was more than once tempted ready to drop everything and run away from home. She could imagine herself alongside Theodosia, dressed in a rough smock, setting out on her pilgrimage with scrip and staff, trudging the dusty road, free from envy, free from earthly love, free from every desire, proceeding from one saint to another, and arriving at last where there is neither sorrow nor sighing, but everlasting joy and happiness.
'I shall come to a place and pray, but before I can grow used to it and love it, I shall move on. And I shall walk on till my legs give way under me, then shall I lie down and die, and come at last to that eternal haven of peace and quiet, where there is neither sorrow nor sighing!' thought Princess Marya.
But at the first sight of her father, and especially little Nikolay, she would falter, shed a few silent tears and feel like a woman of sin. Did she not love her father and her nephew more than God?
PART IV
CHAPTER 1
According to biblical tradition the absence of work - idleness - was a condition of the first man's state of blessedness before the Fall. The love of idleness has been preserved in fallen man, but now a heavy curse lies upon him, not only because we have to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow, but also because our sense of morality will not allow us to be both idle and at ease. Whenever we are idle a secret voice keeps telling us to feel guilty. If man could discover a state in which he could be idle and still feel useful and on the path of duty, he would have regained one aspect of that primitive state of blessedness. And there is one such state of enforced and irreproachable idleness enjoyed by an entire class of men - the military class. It is this state of enforced and irreproachable idleness that forms the chief attraction of military service, and it always will.
Nikolay Rostov had been enjoying this blessed state to the full as he served on, after the year 1807, in the Pavlograd regiment, now commanding the squadron that had been Denisov's. Rostov had become a bluff, personable young man, likely to have been considered rather a bad egg by his old Moscow acquaintances, though he was loved and respected by his present comrades, subordinates and superiors, and he was enjoying life. But latterly, in the year 1809, he had begun to receive more and more letters from home full of complaints from his mother that things were going from bad to worse, and it was high time he came home to bring a little cheer and comfort to his old parents.
Reading these letters, Nikolay felt dismayed that anyone should want to extricate him from the environment in which he was living so quietly and comfortably, cut off from all the complexities of existence. He felt that sooner or later he might have to plunge back into that maelstrom of life, with all sorts of things going wrong and having to be put right, stewards' accounts, quarrels and intrigues, ties, society, to say nothing of Sonya's love and the promise he had made to her. It all seemed so terribly difficult and complicated that he took to answering his mother with frigid letters in very formal French, beginning 'My dear mamma', and ending 'Your obedient son', avoiding all mention of a time when he might return home. One letter in 1810 informed him of Natasha's engagement to Bolkonsky, and the year-long postponement of their wedding because the old prince wouldn't give his consent. This letter left Nikolay feeling worried and offended. For one thing, he would be sorry to lose Natasha from the household, be
That letter deeply affected Nikolay. He had an ordinary man's common sense and this told him what he simply had to do. He had to retire from the army, or at least to go home on leave. He had no real idea of why he had to go, but straight after his lunch-time nap he ordered his horse to be saddled, a grey by the name of Mars, a brute of a stallion that he hadn't ridden for ages. He galloped off, and when he returned, with the horse in a lather, he told Lavrushka, Denisov's old valet who had stayed on with him, and the comrades who dropped in that evening, that he had applied for leave and was on his way home. It all seemed so difficult, strange, quite unimaginable: he was going away without hearing from the staff about the only things that really mattered to him - was he being made up to captain or getting the Order of St Anne for the last manoeuvres? - he was going away without clinching the sale of his three roans to the Polish Count Goluchowski after all that haggling (with Rostov placing a side-bet that he would get two thousand for them); the ball would go ahead without him, the ball given by the hussars in honour of their favourite Polish belle, Madame Przazdziecka (one in the eye for the Uhlans, who had given a ball for their favourite belle, Madame Borzozowska) - but despite all this he simply knew he had to leave this lovely, clear-cut world for one that was nothing but messy nonsense. A week later his leave came through. His comrades - not only from the regiment, but from the whole brigade - gave Rostov a subscription dinner at fifteen roubles a head. There were two bands playing and two choruses singing, Rostov danced the trepak with Major Basov, the drunken officers tossed him in the air, hugged him and dropped him on the floor, followed by the men of the third squadron, who tossed him up again with a great 'Hurrah!' Then they put him in his sledge and went with him as far as the first post-station.
During the first half of the journey, from Kremenchug to Kiev, Rostov spent the whole time thinking back, as always happens on these occasions, to what he had left behind - in his case, to the squadron. But once he had jolted his bumpy way past the half-way point, he stopped thinking about his three roans, his quartermaster and Panna Borzozowska, and started to wonder rather anxiously how he would find things at Otradnoye. The nearer he got, the more intensely, much more intensely, his thoughts turned to home (as if inner feelings were also subject to the law of gravitation, varying in inverse proportion to the square of the distance). At the last station before Otradnoye he gave the sledge-driver a three-rouble tip, and soon he was racing up the steps of his home, all out of breath like a little boy.
After the excitement of the first meeting, and the odd feeling of being let down by expectations ('Everything's the same. Why was I in such a hurry to get here?'), Nikolay began to settle down and get used to the old way of living at home. His father and mother were just the same, though they had aged a little. The only thing new about them was a certain uneasiness and the occasional disagreement that hadn't been there before, deriving, as he was soon to learn, from the awful state of their affairs.
Sonya was now nearly twenty. She would grow no prettier than this; there was no more promise to be fulfilled, though what she had was quite enough. She had blossomed with love and happiness the moment Nikolay had come home, and this young girl's faithful, unshakeable love for him gladdened his heart. It was Petya and Natasha who surprised Nikolay most of all. Petya had grown into a tall, handsome boy of thirteen, full of happy fun, and his voice was breaking. Nikolay marvelled at Natasha for quite some time, and gave a laugh as he looked at her.
'My, how you've changed,' he told her.
'What do you mean "changed"? Am I uglier?'
'No, just the opposite. But there's a kind of dignity . . . A real princess!' he whispered to her.
'Yes, yes, yes!' cried Natasha gleefully.
Natasha ran through the story of her romantic attachment to Prince Andrey, and his visit to Otradnoye, and she produced his last letter.
'Well, aren't you pleased?' asked Natasha. 'I feel so calm and happy now.'
'Yes,' answered Nikolay. 'He's a splendid man. Are you very much in love with him?'
'What can I say?' answered Natasha. 'I've been in love with Boris, my teacher and Denisov, but this is completely different. I feel calm, settled. I know there's no better man in all the world, and so I feel calm and contented. It's completely different . . .'
Nikolay expressed his dissatisfaction at the marriage being delayed for a year, but Natasha turned on him in exasperation, arguing that this was the only possible way, it would have been awful to enter a family against the father's will, and anyway it was what she wanted herself.
'You just don't understand,' she kept saying.
Nikolay hesitated, and then said he agreed with her.
Her brother often wondered as he watched her. She just didn't seem like a young girl in love who was separated from her fiance. She was calm, composed and as cheerful as ever, which didn't seem right to Nikolay, and he became very doubtful about her engagement to Bolkonsky. He couldn't bring himself to believe that her fate was sealed, especially without ever seeing her with Prince Andrey. He couldn't get it out of his head that there was something wrong with this proposed marriage.
'What's this delay all about? Why was there no announcement?' he thought.
In the course of a conversation with his mother about his sister, he discovered to his surprise, and somewhat to his satisfaction, that deep down his mother sometimes had her own doubts about the marriage.
'Look what he says,' she said, showing her son a letter from Prince Andrey with that hidden resentment that mothers always feel towards their daughters' future married happiness. 'He says he can't come before December. What could possibly keep him? Illness, I suppose! He's not very well. Don't mention this to Natasha. And don't be surprised if she's all bright and cheerful. It's just that she's playing out the last days of her girlhood, and I know how she reacts when she gets letters from him. Oh well, God willing, everything will turn out all right.' She ended as she always did by saying, 'He's a splendid man.'
CHAPTER 2
For some time after his arrival Nikolay was in a serious frame of mind bordering on depression. He was worrying about the impending need to tackle the ridiculous business affairs that had caused his mother to send for him. Then on the third day, in order to get this burden off his shoulders as soon as possible, he stormed off, scowling and saying nothing to Natasha when she asked where he was going, went straight to Mitenka's lodge and demanded a full account of everything. What was meant by a full account of everything Nikolay knew even less than the cowering, bewildered Mitenka. Neither the conversation nor Mitenka's run through the accounts lasted any length of time. The village elder, the peasant spokesman and the village clerk were waiting outside in the entrance hall, and they heard all that was going on with a mixture of horror and pleasure, first the rising bellow and thunder of the young count's voice, louder and louder, higher and higher, terrible words pouring out one after another.
Then, with undiminished horror and pleasure, these people watched as the young count, purple with rage, his eyes bloodshot, dragged Mitenka out by the scruff of his neck, kneeing him and punctuating his own words with expert kicks up the steward's backside, and yelled, 'Get out of here! Get out and don't come back, you vile crook!'
Mitenka flew headlong down the half-dozen steps and shot off into the shrubbery. (This shrubbery was well known as a haven for all the delinquents of Otradnoye. Many a time Mitenka himself had come back from town roaring drunk and gone to ground in the shrubbery, and various denizens of Otradnoye anxious to keep clear of Mitenka had become familiar with its protective powers.)