Book Six: 1808-10 - Chapter XXII

by Leo Tolstoy

　　Next day, having been invited by the count, Prince Andrew dined withthe Rostovs and spent the rest of the day there.

　　Everyone in the house realized for whose sake Prince Andrew came,and without concealing it he tried to be with Natasha all day. Notonly in the soul of the frightened yet happy and enraptured Natasha,but in the whole house, there was a feeling of awe at somethingimportant that was bound to happen. The countess looked with sad andsternly serious eyes at Prince Andrew when he talked to Natasha andtimidly started some artificial conversation about trifles as soonas he looked her way. Sonya was afraid to leave Natasha and afraidof being in the way when she was with them. Natasha grew pale, in apanic of expectation, when she remained alone with him for a moment.Prince Andrew surprised her by his timidity. She felt that he wantedto say something to her but could not bring himself to do so.

　　In the evening, when Prince Andrew had left, the countess went up toNatasha and whispered: "Well, what?"

　　"Mamma! For heaven's sake don't ask me anything now! One can'ttalk about that," said Natasha.

　　But all the same that night Natasha, now agitated and nowfrightened, lay long time in her mother's bed gazing straight beforeher. She told her how he had complimented her, how he told her hewas going abroad, asked her where they were going to spend the summer,and then how he had asked her about Boris.

　　"But such a... such a... never happened to me before!" she said."Only I feel afraid in his presence. I am always afraid when I'mwith him. What does that mean? Does it mean that it's the realthing? Yes? Mamma, are you asleep?"

　　"No, my love; I am frightened myself," answered her mother. "Nowgo!"

　　"All the same I shan't sleep. What silliness, to sleep! Mummy!Mummy! such a thing never happened to me before," she said,surprised and alarmed at the feeling she was aware of in herself. "Andcould we ever have thought!..."

　　It seemed to Natasha that even at the time she first saw PrinceAndrew at Otradnoe she had fallen in love with him. It was as if shefeared this strange, unexpected happiness of meeting again the veryman she had then chosen (she was firmly convinced she had done so) andof finding him, as it seemed, not indifferent to her.

　　"And it had to happen that he should come specially to Petersburgwhile we are here. And it had to happen that we should meet at thatball. It is fate. Clearly it is fate that everything led up to this!Already then, directly I saw him I felt something peculiar."

　　"What else did he say to you? What are those verses? Read them..."said her mother, thoughtfully, referring to some verses PrinceAndrew had written in Natasha's album.

　　"Mamma, one need not be ashamed of his being a widower?"

　　"Don't, Natasha! Pray to God. 'Marriages are made in heaven,'"said her mother.

　　"Darling Mummy, how I love you! How happy I am!" cried Natasha,shedding tears of joy and excitement and embracing her mother.

　　At that very time Prince Andrew was sitting with Pierre andtelling him of his love for Natasha and his firm resolve to make herhis wife.

　　That day Countess Helene had a reception at her house. The Frenchambassador was there, and a foreign prince of the blood who had oflate become a frequent visitor of hers, and many brilliant ladiesand gentlemen. Pierre, who had come downstairs, walked through therooms and struck everyone by his preoccupied, absent-minded, andmorose air.

　　Since the ball he had felt the approach of a fit of nervousdepression and had made desperate efforts to combat it. Since theintimacy of his wife with the royal prince, Pierre had unexpectedlybeen made a gentleman of the bedchamber, and from that time he hadbegun to feel oppressed and ashamed in court society, and darkthoughts of the vanity of all things human came to him oftener thanbefore. At the same time the feeling he had noticed between hisprotegee Natasha and Prince Andrew accentuated his gloom by thecontrast between his own position and his friend's. He tried equallyto avoid thinking about his wife, and about Natasha and Prince Andrew;and again everything seemed to him insignificant in comparison witheternity; again the question: for what? presented itself; and heforced himself to work day and night at Masonic labors, hoping todrive away the evil spirit that threatened him. Toward midnight, afterhe had left the countess' apartments, he was sitting upstairs in ashabby dressing gown, copying out the original transaction of theScottish lodge of Freemasons at a table in his low room cloudy withtobacco smoke, when someone came in. It was Prince Andrew.

　　"Ah, it's you!" said Pierre with a preoccupied, dissatisfied air."And I, you see, am hard at it." He pointed to his manuscript bookwith that air of escaping from the ills of life with which unhappypeople look at their work.

　　Prince Andrew, with a beaming, ecstatic expression of renewed lifeon his face, paused in front of Pierre and, not noticing his sad look,smiled at him with the egotism of joy.

　　"Well, dear heart," said he, "I wanted to tell you about ityesterday and I have come to do so today. I never experienced anythinglike it before. I am in love, my friend!"

　　Suddenly Pierre heaved a deep sigh and dumped his heavy persondown on the sofa beside Prince Andrew.

　　"With Natasha Rostova, yes?" said he.

　　"Yes, yes! Who else should it be? I should never have believed it,but the feeling is stronger than I. Yesterday I tormented myself andsuffered, but I would not exchange even that torment for anything inthe world, I have not lived till now. At last I live, but I can't livewithout her! But can she love me?... I am too old for her.... Whydon't you speak?"

　　"I? I? What did I tell you?" said Pierre suddenly, rising andbeginning to pace up and down the room. "I always thought it....That girl is such a treasure... she is a rare girl.... My dear friend,I entreat you, don't philosophize, don't doubt, marry, marry,marry.... And I am sure there will not be a happier man than you."

　　"But what of her?"

　　"She loves you."

　　"Don't talk rubbish..." said Prince Andrew, smiling and looking intoPierre's eyes.

　　"She does, I know," Pierre cried fiercely.

　　"But do listen," returned Prince Andrew, holding him by the arm. "Doyou know the condition I am in? I must talk about it to someone."

　　"Well, go on, go on. I am very glad," said Pierre, and his facereally changed, his brow became smooth, and he listened gladly toPrince Andrew. Prince Andrew seemed, and really was, quite adifferent, quite a new man. Where was his spleen, his contempt forlife, his disillusionment? Pierre was the only person to whom hemade up his mind to speak openly; and to him he told all that was inhis soul. Now he boldly and lightly made plans for an extended future,said he could not sacrifice his own happiness to his father's caprice,and spoke of how he would either make his father consent to thismarriage and love her, or would do without his consent; then hemarveled at the feeling that had mastered him as at something strange,apart from and independent of himself.

　　"I should not have believed anyone who told me that I was capable ofsuch love," said Prince Andrew. "It is not at all the same feelingthat I knew in the past. The whole world is now for me divided intotwo halves: one half is she, and there all is joy, hope, light: theother half is everything where she is not, and there is all gloomand darkness...."

　　"Darkness and gloom," reiterated Pierre: "yes, yes, I understandthat."

　　"I cannot help loving the light, it is not my fault. And I am veryhappy! You understand me? I know you are glad for my sake."

　　"Yes, yes," Pierre assented, looking at his friend with a touchedand sad expression in his eyes. The brighter Prince Andrew's lotappeared to him, the gloomier seemed his own.