love my wife? I don’t love her, but… I don’t know how to put
it. Without you, or when something comes between us like
this, I seem lost and can’t do anything. Now do I love my
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finger? I don’t love it, but just try to cut it off!
‘I’m not like that myself, but I understand. So you’re not
angry with me?’
‘Awfully angry!’ he said, smiling and getting up. And
smoothing his hair he began to pace the room.
‘Do you know, Mary, what I’ve been thinking?’ he began,
immediately thinking aloud in his wife’s presence now that
they had made it up.
He did not ask if she was ready to listen to him. He did
not care. A thought had occurred to him and so it belonged
to her also. And he told her of his intention to persuade
Pierre to stay with them till spring.
Countess Mary listened till he had finished, made some
remark, and in her turn began thinking aloud. Her thoughts
were about the children.
‘You can see the woman in her already,’ she said in
French, pointing to little Natasha. ‘You reproach us women
with being illogical. Here is our logic. I say: ‘Papa wants to
sleep!’ but she says, ‘No, he’s laughing.’ And she was right,’
said Countess Mary with a happy smile.
‘Yes, yes.’ And Nicholas, taking his little daughter in his
strong hand, lifted her high, placed her on his shoulder, held
her by the legs, and paced the room with her. There was an
expression of carefree happiness on the faces of both father
and daughter.
‘But you know you may be unfair. You are too fond of
this one,’ his wife whispered in French.
‘Yes, but what am I to do?… I try not to show..’
At that moment they heard the sound of the door pulley
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and footsteps in the hall and anteroom, as if someone had
arrived.
‘Somebody has come.’
‘I am sure it is Pierre. I will go and see,’ said Countess
Mary and left the room.
In her absence Nicholas allowed himself to give his little
daughter a gallop round the room. Out of breath, he took
the laughing child quickly from his shoulder and pressed
her to his heart. His capers reminded him of dancing, and
looking at the child’s round happy little face he thought of
what she would be like when he was an old man, taking her
into society and dancing the mazurka with her as his old father had danced Daniel Cooper with his daughter.
‘It is he, it is he, Nicholas!’ said Countess Mary, re-entering the room a few minutes later. ‘Now our Natasha has
come to life. You should have seen her ecstasy, and how he
caught it for having stayed away so long. Well, come along
now, quick, quick! It’s time you two were parted,’ she added,
looking smilingly at the little girl who clung to her father.
Nicholas went out holding the child by the hand.
Countess Mary remained in the sitting room.
‘I should never, never have believed that one could be so
happy,’ she whispered to herself. A smile lit up her face but
at the same time she sighed, and her deep eyes expressed a
quiet sadness as though she felt, through her happiness, that
there is another sort of happiness unattainable in this life
and of which she involuntarily thought at that instant.
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Chapter X
Natasha had married in the early spring of 1813, and in
1820 already had three daughters besides a son for whom
she had longed and whom she was now nursing. She had
grown stouter and broader, so that it was difficult to recognize in this robust, motherly woman the slim, lively
Natasha of former days. Her features were more defined and
had a calm, soft, and serene expression. In her face there
was none of the ever-glowing animation that had formerly
burned there and constituted its charm. Now her face and
body were of all that one saw, and her soul was not visible
at all. All that struck the eye was a strong, handsome, and
fertile woman. The old fire very rarely kindled in her face
now. That happened only when, as was the case that day, her
husband returned home, or a sick child was convalescent, or
when she and Countess Mary spoke of Prince Andrew (she
never mentioned him to her husband, who she imagined
was jealous of Prince Andrew’s memory), or on the rare occasions when something happened to induce her to sing, a
practice she had quite abandoned since her marriage. At the
rare moments when the old fire did kindle in her handsome,
fully developed body she was even more attractive than in
former days.
Since their marriage Natasha and her husband had lived
in Moscow, in Petersburg, on their estate near Moscow,
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or with her mother, that is to say, in Nicholas’ house. The
young Countess Bezukhova was not often seen in society,
and those who met her there were not pleased with her and
found her neither attractive nor amiable. Not that Natasha
liked solitudeshe did not know whether she liked it or not,
she even thought that she did notbut with her pregnancies,
her confinements, the nursing of her children, and sharing every moment of her husband’s life, she had demands
on her time which could be satisfied only by renouncing
society. All who had known Natasha before her marriage
wondered at the change in her as at something extraordinary. Only the old countess with her maternal instinct had
realized that all Natasha’s outbursts had been due to her
need of children and a husbandas she herself had once exclaimed at Otradnoe not so much in fun as in earnestand
her mother was now surprised at the surprise expressed by
those who had never understood Natasha, and she kept saying that she had always known that Natasha would make an
exemplary wife and mother.
‘Only she lets her love of her husband and children overflow all bounds,’ said the countess, ‘so that it even becomes
absurd.’
Natasha did not follow the golden rule advocated by
clever folk, especially by the French, which says that a girl
should not let herself go when she marries, should not neglect her accomplishments, should be even more careful of
her appearance than when she was unmarried, and should
fascinate her husband as much as she did before he became
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doned all her witchery, of which her singing had been an
unusually powerful part. She gave it up just because it was
so powerfully seductive. She took no pains with her manners or with of speech, or with her toilet, or to show herself
to her husband in her most becoming attitudes, or to avoid
inconveniencing him by being too exacting. She acted in
contradiction to all those rules. She felt that the allurements
instinct had formerly taught her to use would now be merely ridiculous in the eyes of her husband, to whom she had
from the first moment given herself up entirelythat is, with
her whole soul, leaving no corner of it hidden from him.
She felt that her unity with her husband was not maintained
by the poetic feelings that had attracted him to her, but by
something elseindefinite but firm as the bond between her
own body and soul.
To fluff out her curls, put on fashionable dresses, and
sing romantic songs to fascinate her husband would have
seemed as strange as to adorn herself to attract herself. To
adorn herself for others might perhaps have been agreeableshe did not knowbut she had no time at all for it. The
chief reason for devoting no time either to singing, to dress,
or to choosing her words was that she really had no time to
spare for these things.
We know that man has the faculty of becoming completely absorbed in a subject however trivial it may be, and
that there is no subject so trivial that it will not grow to infinite proportions if one’s entire attention is devoted to it.
The subject which wholly engrossed Natasha’s attention
was her family: that is, her husband whom she had to keep
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so that he should belong entirely to her and to the home, and
the children whom she had to bear, bring into the world,
nurse, and bring up.
And the deeper she penetrated, not with her mind only
but with her whole soul, her whole being, into the subject
that absorbed her, the larger did that subject grow and the
weaker and more inadequate did her powers appear, so that
she concentrated them wholly on that one thing and yet was
unable to accomplish all that she considered necessary.
There were then as now conversations and discussions
about women’s rights, the relations of husband and wife and
their freedom and rights, though these themes were not yet
termed questions as they are now; but these topics were not
merely uninteresting to Natasha, she positively did not understand them.
These questions, then as now, existed only for those who
see nothing in marriage but the pleasure married people get
from one another, that is, only the beginnings of marriage
and not its whole significance, which lies in the family.
Discussions and questions of that kind, which are like
the question of how to get the greatest gratification from
one’s dinner, did not then and do not now exist for those for
whom the purpose of a dinner is the nourishment it affords;
and the purpose of marriage is the family.
If the purpose of dinner is to nourish the body, a man
who eats two dinners at once may perhaps get more enjoyment but will not attain his purpose, for his stomach will
not digest the two dinners.
If the purpose of marriage is the family, the person who
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wishes to have many wives or husbands may perhaps obtain
much pleasure, but in that case will not have a family.
If the purpose of food is nourishment and the purpose
of marriage is the family, the whole question resolves itself
into not eating more than one can digest, and not having
more wives or husbands than are needed for the familythat
is, one wife or one husband. Natasha needed a husband. A
husband was given her and he gave her a family. And she
not only saw no need of
