| NATASHA, as soon as she was alone with her husband, had begun talking too, as only husband and wife can talk, that is, understanding and communicating their thoughts to each other, with extraordinary clearness and rapidity, by a quite peculiar method opposed to all the rules of logic, without the aid of premises, deductions, and conclusions. Natasha was so used to talking to her husband in this fashion that a logical sequence of thought on Pierre’s part was to her an infallible symptom of something being out of tune between them. When he began arguing, talking reasonably and calmly, and when she was led on by his example into doing the same, she knew it would infallibly lead to a quarrel. From the moment they were alone together and Natasha, with wide-open, happy eyes, crept softly up to him and suddenly, swiftly seizing his head, pressed it to her bosom, saying, ‘‘Now you’re all mine, mine! You shan’t escape!’’ that conversation began that contravened every rule of logic, especially because they talked of several different subjects at once. This discussion of all sorts of things at once, far from hindering clearness of comprehension, was the surest token that they understood one another fully. As in a dream everything is uncertain, meaningless, and contradictory except the feeling that directs the dream, so in this communion of ideas, apart from every law of reason, what is clear and consecutive is not what is said, but the feeling that prompts the words. Natasha talked to Pierre of the daily round of existence at her brother’s; told him how she had suffered and been half-dead without him; and that she was fonder of Marie than ever, and Marie was better in every way than she was. In saying this Natasha was quite sincere in acknowledging Marie’s superiority, but at the same time she expected Pierre to prefer her to Marie and all other women, and now, especially after he had been seeing a great many women in Petersburg, to tell her so anew. In response to Natasha’s words, Pierre told her how intolerable he had found the evening parties and dinners with ladies in Petersburg. ‘‘I have quite lost the art of talking to ladies,’’ he said; ‘‘it was horribly tiresome. Especially as I was so busy.’’ Natasha looked intently at him, and went on. ‘‘Marie, now she is wonderful!’’ she said. ‘‘The insight she has into children. She seems to see straight into their souls. Yesterday, for instance, Mitenka was naughty…’’ ‘‘And isn’t he like his father?’’ Pierre put in. Natasha knew why he made this remark about Mitenka’s likeness to Nikolay. He disliked the thought of his dispute with his brother-in-law, and was longing to hear what she thought about it. ‘‘It’s a weakness of Nikolay’s, that if anything is not generally accepted, he will never agree with it. And I see that that’s just what you value to ouvrir une carrière,’’ she said, repeating a phrase Pierre had once uttered. ‘‘No, the real thing is that to Nikolay,’’ said Pierre, ‘‘thoughts and ideas are an amusement, almost a pastime. Here he’s forming a library and has made it a rule not to buy a new book till he has read through the last he has bought—Sismondi and Rousseau and Montesquieu,’’ Pierre added with a smile. ‘‘You know how I—,’’ he was beginning to soften his criticism; but Natasha interrupted, giving him thereby to understand that that was not necessary. ‘‘So you say ideas to him are not serious…’’ ‘‘Yes, and to me nothing else is serious. All the while I was in Petersburg, I seemed to be seeing every one in a dream. When I am absorbed by an idea, nothing else is serious.’’ ‘‘Oh, what a pity I didn’t see your meeting with the children,’’ said Natasha. ‘‘Which was the most pleased? Liza, of course?’’ ‘‘Yes,’’ said Pierre, and he went on with what interested him. ‘‘Nikolay says we ought not to think. But I can’t help it. To say nothing of the fact (I can say so to you) that in Petersburg I felt that the whole thing would go to pieces without me, every one pulled his own way. But I succeeded in bringing them all together; and then my idea is so clear and simple. I don’t say we ought to work against so and so. We may be mistaken. But I say let those join hands who care for the good cause, and let our one standard be energy and honesty. Prince Sergey is a capital fellow, and clever.’’ Natasha would have had no doubt that Pierre’s idea was a grand idea, but that one thing troubled her. It was his being her husband. ‘‘Is it possible that a man of such value, of such importance to society, is at the same time my husband? How can it have happened?’’ She wanted to express this doubt to him. ‘‘Who are the persons who could decide positively whether he is so much cleverer than all of them?’’ she wondered, and she went over in imagination the people who were very much respected by Pierre. There was nobody whom, to judge by his own account, he had respected so much as Platon Karataev. ‘‘Do you know what I am thinking about?’’ she said. ‘‘About Platon Karataev. What would he have said? Would he have approved of you now?’’ Pierre was not in the least surprised at this question. He understood the connection of his wife’s ideas. ‘‘Platon Karataev?’’ he said, and he pondered, evidently trying sincerely to picture what Karataev’s judgment would have been on the subject. ‘‘He would not have understood, and yet, perhaps, he would.’’ ‘‘I like you awfully!’’ said Natasha all at once. ‘‘Awfully! awfully!’’ ‘‘No, he wouldn’t have approved,’’ said Pierre, musing. ‘‘What he would have approved of is our home life. He did so like to see seemliness, happiness, peace in everything, and I could have shown him all of us with pride. You talk about separation. But you would not believe what a special feeling I have for you after separation …’’ ‘‘And, besides, …’’ Natasha was beginning. ‘‘No, not so. I never leave off loving you. And one couldn’t love more; but it’s something special.…’’ He did not finish, because their eyes meeting said the rest. ‘‘What nonsense,’’ said Natasha suddenly, ‘‘it all is about the honeymoon and that the greatest happiness is at first. On the contrary, now is much the best. If only you wouldn’t go away. Do you remember how we used to quarrel? And I was always in the wrong. It was always my doing. And what we quarrelled about—I don’t remember even.’’ ‘‘Always the same thing,’’ said Pierre smiling. ‘‘Jea …’’ ‘‘Don’t say it, I can’t bear it,’’ cried Natasha, and a cold, vindictive light gleamed in her eyes. ‘‘Did you see her?’’ she added after a pause. ‘‘No; and if I had, I shouldn’t have known her.’’ They were silent. ‘‘Oh! do you know, when you were talking in the study, I was looking at you,’’ said Natasha, obviously trying to drive away the cloud that had come between them. ‘‘And do you know you are like him as two drops of water, like the boy.’’ That was what she called her baby son. ‘‘Ah, it’s time I went to him. … But I am sorry to go away.’’ They were both silent for some seconds. Then all at once, at the same moment, they turned to each other and began talking. Pierre was beginning with self-satisfaction and enthusiasm, Natasha with a soft, happy smile. Interrupting each other, both stopped, waiting for the other to go on. ‘‘No, what is it? Tell me, tell me.’’ ‘‘No, you tell me, it wasn’t anything, only nonsense,’’ said Natasha. Pierre said what he had been going to say. It was the sequel to his complacent reflections on his success in Petersburg. It seemed to him at that moment that he was destined to give a new direction to the progress of the whole of Russian society and of the whole world. ‘‘I only meant to say that all ideas that have immense results are always simple. All my idea really is that if vicious people are united and form a power, honest men must do the same. It’s so simple, you see.’’ ‘‘Yes.’’ ‘‘But what were you going to say?’’ ‘‘Oh, nothing, nonsense.’’ ‘‘No, say it though.’’ ‘‘Oh, nothing, only silly nonsense,’’ said Natasha, breaking into a more beaming smile than ever. ‘‘I was only going to tell you about Petya. Nurse came up to take him from me to-day, he laughed and puckered up his face and squeezed up to me—I suppose he thought he was hiding. He’s awfully sweet. … There he is crying. Well, good-bye!’’ and she ran out of the room. Meanwhile, below in Nikolinka Bolkonsky’s bedroom a lamp was burning as usual (the boy was afraid of the dark and could not be cured of this weakness). Dessalle was asleep with his head high on his four pillows, and his Roman nose gave forth rhythmic sounds of snoring. Nikolinka had just waked up in a cold sweat, and was sitting up in bed, gazing with wide-open eyes straight before him. He had been waked by a fearful dream. In his dream his Uncle Pierre and he in helmets, such as appeared in the illustrations in his Plutarch, were marching at the head of an immense army. This army was made up of slanting, white threads that filled the air like those spider-webs that float in autumn and that Dessalle used to call le fil de la Vierge. Ahead of them was glory, which was something like those threads too, only somewhat more opaque. They—he and Pierre—were flying lightly and happily nearer and nearer to their goal. All at once the threads that moved them seemed to grow weak and tangled; and it was all difficult. And Uncle Nikolay stood before them in a stern and menacing attitude. ‘‘Have you done this?’’ he said, pointing to broken pens and sticks of sealing-wax. ‘‘I did love you, but Araktcheev has bidden me, and I will kill the first that moves forward.’’ Nikolinka looked round for Pierre; but Pierre was not there. Instead of Pierre, there was his father—Prince Andrey—and his father had no shape or form, but he was there; and seeing him, Nikolinka felt the weakness of love; he felt powerless, limp, and relaxed. His father caressed him and pitied him, but his Uncle Nikolay was moving down upon them, coming closer and closer. A great horror came over Nikolinka, and he waked up. ‘‘My father!’’ he thought. (Although there were two very good portraits of Prince Andrey in the house, Nikolinka never thought of his father in human form.) ‘‘My father has been with me, and has caressed me. He approved of me; he approved of Uncle Pierre. Whatever he might tell me, I would do it. Mucius Scaevola burnt his hand. But why should not the same sort of thing happen in my life? I know they want me to study. And I am going to study. But some day I shall have finished, and then I will act. One thing only I pray God for, that the same sort of thing may happen with me as with Plutarch’s men, and I will act in the same way. I will do more. Every one shall know of me, shall love me, and admire me.’’ And all at once Nikolinka felt his breast heaving with sobs, and he burst into tears. ‘‘Are you ill?’’ he heard Dessalle’s voice. ‘‘No,’’ answered Nikolinka, and he lay back on his pillow. ‘‘How good and kind he is; I love him!’’ He thought of Dessalle. ‘‘But Uncle Pierre! Oh, what a wonderful man! And my father? Father! Father! Yes, I will do something that even he would be content with …’’ |
