doubtful whether he had really been there the night before
and really seen Natasha and talked to her. ‘Perhaps I imagined it; perhaps I shall go in and find no one there.’ But he
had hardly entered the room before he felt her presence with
his whole being by the loss of his sense of freedom. She was
in the same black dress with soft folds and her hair was done
the same way as the day before, yet she was quite different.
Had she been like this when he entered the day before he
could not for a moment have failed to recognize her.
She was as he had known her almost as a child and later on as Prince Andrew’s fiancee. A bright questioning
light shone in her eyes, and on her face was a friendly and
strangely roguish expression.
Pierre dined with them and would have spent the whole
evening there, but Princess Mary was going to vespers and
Pierre left the house with her.
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Next day he came early, dined, and stayed the whole evening. Though Princess Mary and Natasha were evidently
glad to see their visitor and though all Pierre’s interest was
now centered in that house, by the evening they had talked
over everything and the conversation passed from one trivial topic to another and repeatedly broke off. He stayed so
long that Princess Mary and Natasha exchanged glances,
evidently wondering when he would go. Pierre noticed this
but could not go. He felt uneasy and embarrassed, but sat on
because he simply could not get up and take his leave.
Princess Mary, foreseeing no end to this, rose first, and
complaining of a headache began to say good night.
‘So you are going to Petersburg tomorrow?’ she asked.
‘No, I am not going,’ Pierre replied hastily, in a surprised
tone and as though offended. ‘Yes… no… to Petersburg? Tomorrowbut I won’t say good-by yet. I will call round in case
you have any commissions for me,’ said he, standing before
Princess Mary and turning red, but not taking his departure.
Natasha gave him her hand and went out. Princess Mary
on the other hand instead of going away sank into an armchair, and looked sternly and intently at him with her deep,
radiant eyes. The weariness she had plainly shown before
had now quite passed off. With a deep and long-drawn sigh
she seemed to be prepared for a lengthy talk.
When Natasha left the room Pierre’s confusion and awkwardness immediately vanished and were replaced by eager
excitement. He quickly moved an armchair toward Princess
Mary.
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‘Yes, I wanted to tell you,’ said he, answering her look as
if she had spoken. ‘Princess, help me! What am I to do? Can
I hope? Princess, my dear friend, listen! I know it all. I know
I am not worthy of her, I know it’s impossible to speak of it
now. But I want to be a brother to her. No, not that, I don’t,
I can’t..’
He paused and rubbed his face and eyes with his hands.
‘Well,’ he went on with an evident effort at self-control
and coherence. ‘I don’t know when I began to love her, but
I have loved her and her alone all my life, and I love her
so that I cannot imagine life without her. I cannot propose
to her at present, but the thought that perhaps she might
someday be my wife and that I may be missing that possibility… that possibility… is terrible. Tell me, can I hope? Tell me
what I am to do, dear princess!’ he added after a pause, and
touched her hand as she did not reply.
‘I am thinking of what you have told me,’ answered Princess Mary. ‘This is what I will say. You are right that to speak
to her of love at present..’
Princess Mary stopped. She was going to say that to
speak of love was impossible, but she stopped because she
had seen by the sudden change in Natasha two days before
that she would not only not be hurt if Pierre spoke of his
love, but that it was the very thing she wished for.
‘To speak to her now wouldn’t do,’ said the princess all
the same.
‘But what am I to do?
‘Leave it to me,’ said Princess Mary. ‘I know..’
Pierre was looking into Princess Mary’s eyes.
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‘Well?… Well?…’ he said.
‘I know that she loves… will love you,’ Princess Mary corrected herself.
Before her words were out, Pierre had sprung up and
with a frightened expression seized Princess Mary’s hand.
‘What makes you think so? You think I may hope? You
think…?’
‘Yes, I think so,’ said Princess Mary with a smile. ‘Write
to her parents, and leave it to me. I will tell her when I can. I
wish it to happen and my heart tells me it will.’
‘No, it cannot be! How happy I am! But it can’t be…. How
happy I am! No, it can’t be!’ Pierre kept saying as he kissed
Princess Mary’s hands.
‘Go to Petersburg, that will be best. And I will write to
you,’ she said.
‘To Petersburg? Go there? Very well, I’ll go. But I may
come again tomorrow?’
Next day Pierre came to say good-by. Natasha was less
animated than she had been the day before; but that day as
he looked at her Pierre sometimes felt as if he was vanishing
and that neither he nor she existed any longer, that nothing
existed but happiness. ‘Is it possible? No, it can’t be,’ he told
himself at every look, gesture, and word that filled his soul
with joy.
When on saying good-by he took her thin, slender hand,
he could not help holding it a little longer in his own.
‘Is it possible that this hand, that face, those eyes, all this
treasure of feminine charm so strange to me now, is it possible that it will one day be mine forever, as familiar to me
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as I am to myself?… No, that’s impossible!..’
‘Good-by, Count,’ she said aloud. ‘I shall look forward
very much to your return,’ she added in a whisper.
And these simple words, her look, and the expression on
her face which accompanied them, formed for two months
the subject of inexhaustible memories, interpretations, and
happy meditations for Pierre. ‘‘I shall look forward very
much to your return….’ Yes, yes, how did she say it? Yes, ‘I
shall look forward very much to your return.’ Oh, how happy I am! What is happening to me? How happy I am!’ said
Pierre to himself.
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Chapter XIX
There was nothing in Pierre’s soul now at all like what
had troubled it during his courtship of Helene.
He did not repeat to himself with a sickening feeling of
shame the words he had spoken, or say: ‘Oh, why did I not
say that?’ and, ‘Whatever made me say ‘Je vous aime’?’ On
the contrary, he now repeated in imagination every word
that he or Natasha had spoken and pictured every detail
of her face and smile, and did not wish to diminish or add
anything, but only to repeat it again and again. There was
now not a shadow of doubt in his mind as to whether what
he had undertaken was right or wrong. Only one terrible
doubt sometimes crossed his mind: ‘Wasn’t it all a dream?
Isn’t Princess Mary mistaken? Am I not too conceited and
self-confident? I believe all thisand suddenly Princess Mary
will tell her, and she will be sure to smile and say: ‘How
strange! He must be deluding himself. Doesn’t he know that
he is a man, just a man, while I…? I am something altogether
different and higher.’’
That was the only doubt often troubling Pierre. He did not
now make any plans. The happiness before him appeared so
inconceivable that if only he could attain it, it would be the
end of all things. Everything ended with that.
A joyful, unexpected frenzy, of which he had thought
himself incapable, possessed him. The whole meaning of
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lifenot for him alone but for the whole worldseemed to him
centered in his love and the possibility of being loved by
her. At times everybody seemed to him to be occupied with
one thing onlyhis future happiness. Sometimes it seemed to
him that other people were all as pleased as he was himself
and merely tried to hide that pleasure by pretending to be
busy with other interests. In every word and gesture he saw
allusions to his happiness. He often surprised those he met
by his significantly happy looks and smiles which seemed to
express a secret understanding between him and them. And
when he realized that people might not be aware of his happiness, he pitied them with his whole heart and felt a desire
somehow to explain to them that all that occupied them was
a mere frivolous trifle unworthy of attention.
When it was suggested to him that he should enter the
civil service, or when the war or any general political affairs
were discussed on the assumption that everybody’s welfare
depended on this or that issue of events, he would listen
with a mild and pitying smile and surprise people by his
strange comments. But at this time he saw everybodyboth
those who, as he imagined, understood the real meaning
of life (that is, what he was feeling) and those unfortunates
who evidently did not understand itin the bright light of the
emotion that shone within himself, and at once without any
effort saw in everyone he met everything that was good and
worthy of being loved.
When dealing with the affairs and papers of his dead
wife, her memory aroused in him no feeling but pity that
she had not known the bliss he now knew. Prince Vasili,
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who having obtained a new post and some fresh decorations was particularly proud at this time, seemed to him a
pathetic, kindly old man much to be pitied.
Often in afterlife Pierre recalled this period of blissful insanity. All the views he formed of men and circumstances at
this time remained true for him always. He not only did not
renounce them subsequently, but when he was in doubt or
inwardly at variance, he referred to the views he had held at
this time of his madness and they always proved correct.
‘I may have appeared strange and queer then,’ he thought,
‘but I
