It was long since the Rostovs had
news of Nicholas. Not till midwinter was the
count at last handed a letter addressed in his son’s
handwriting. On receiving it, he ran on tiptoe
to his study in alarm and haste, trying to escape
notice, closed the door, and began to read the letter.
Anna Mikhaylovna, who always knew
everything that passed in the house, on hearing of
the arrival of the letter went softly into the room
and found the count with it in his hand, sobbing and
laughing at the same time.
Anna Mikhaylovna, though her circumstances
had improved, was still living with the Rostovs.
“My dear friend?” said
she, in a tone of pathetic inquiry, prepared to sympathize
in any way.
The count sobbed yet more.
“Nikolenka... a letter... wa...
a... s... wounded... my darling boy... the countess...
promoted to be an officer... thank God... How
tell the little countess!”
Anna Mikhaylovna sat down beside him,
with her own handkerchief wiped the tears from his
eyes and from the letter, then having dried her own
eyes she comforted the count, and decided that at dinner
and till teatime she would prepare the countess, and
after tea, with God’s help, would inform her.
At dinner Anna Mikhaylovna talked
the whole time about the war news and about Nikolenka,
twice asked when the last letter had been received
from him, though she knew that already, and remarked
that they might very likely be getting a letter from
him that day. Each time that these hints began
to make the countess anxious and she glanced uneasily
at the count and at Anna Mikhaylovna, the latter very
adroitly turned the conversation to insignificant
matters. Natasha, who, of the whole family, was
the most gifted with a capacity to feel any shades
of intonation, look, and expression, pricked up her
ears from the beginning of the meal and was certain
that there was some secret between her father and
Anna Mikhaylovna, that it had something to do with
her brother, and that Anna Mikhaylovna was preparing
them for it. Bold as she was, Natasha, who knew
how sensitive her mother was to anything relating
to Nikolenka, did not venture to ask any questions
at dinner, but she was too excited to eat anything
and kept wriggling about on her chair regardless of
her governess’ remarks. After dinner, she
rushed head long after Anna Mikhaylovna and, dashing
at her, flung herself on her neck as soon as she overtook
her in the sitting room.
“Auntie, darling, do tell me what it is!”
“Nothing, my dear.”
“No, dearest, sweet one, honey,
I won’t give up I know you know something.”
Anna Mikhaylovna shook her head.
“You are a little slyboots,” she said.
“A letter from Nikolenka!
I’m sure of it!” exclaimed Natasha, reading
confirmation in Anna Mikhaylovna’s face.
“But for God’s sake, be careful, you know
how it may affect your mamma.”
“I will, I will, only tell me!
You won’t? Then I will go and tell at once.”
Anna Mikhaylovna, in a few words,
told her the contents of the letter, on condition
that she should tell no one.
“No, on my true word of honor,”
said Natasha, crossing herself, “I won’t
tell anyone!” and she ran off at once to Sonya.
“Nikolenka... wounded... a letter,”
she announced in gleeful triumph.
“Nicholas!” was all Sonya said, instantly
turning white.
Natasha, seeing the impression the
news of her brother’s wound produced on Sonya,
felt for the first time the sorrowful side of the news.
She rushed to Sonya, hugged her, and began to cry.
“A little wound, but he has
been made an officer; he is well now, he wrote himself,”
said she through her tears.
“There now! It’s
true that all you women are crybabies,” remarked
Petya, pacing the room with large, resolute strides.
“Now I’m very glad, very glad indeed,
that my brother has distinguished himself so.
You are all blubberers and understand nothing.”
Natasha smiled through her tears.
“You haven’t read the letter?” asked
Sonya.
“No, but she said that it was all over and that
he’s now an officer.”
“Thank God!” said Sonya,
crossing herself. “But perhaps she deceived
you. Let us go to Mamma.”
Petya paced the room in silence for a time.
“If I’d been in Nikolenka’s
place I would have killed even more of those Frenchmen,”
he said. “What nasty brutes they are!
I’d have killed so many that there’d have
been a heap of them.”
“Hold your tongue, Petya, what a goose you are!”
“I’m not a goose, but they are who cry
about trifles,” said Petya.
“Do you remember him?” Natasha suddenly
asked, after a moment’s silence.
Sonya smiled.
“Do I remember Nicholas?”
“No, Sonya, but do you remember
so that you remember him perfectly, remember everything?”
said Natasha, with an expressive gesture, evidently
wishing to give her words a very definite meaning.
“I remember Nikolenka too, I remember him well,”
she said. “But I don’t remember Boris.
I don’t remember him a bit.”
“What! You don’t remember Boris?”
asked Sonya in surprise.
“It’s not that I don’t
remember I know what he is like, but not
as I remember Nikolenka. Him I just
shut my eyes and remember, but Boris... No!”
(She shut her eyes.) “No! there’s nothing
at all.”
“Oh, Natasha!” said Sonya,
looking ecstatically and earnestly at her friend as
if she did not consider her worthy to hear what she
meant to say and as if she were saying it to someone
else, with whom joking was out of the question, “I
am in love with your brother once for all and, whatever
may happen to him or to me, shall never cease to love
him as long as I live.”
Natasha looked at Sonya with wondering
and inquisitive eyes, and said nothing. She felt
that Sonya was speaking the truth, that there was such
love as Sonya was speaking of. But Natasha had
not yet felt anything like it. She believed it
could be, but did not understand it.
“Shall you write to him?” she asked.
Sonya became thoughtful. The
question of how to write to Nicholas, and whether
she ought to write, tormented her. Now that he
was already an officer and a wounded hero, would it
be right to remind him of herself and, as it might
seem, of the obligations to her he had taken on himself?
“I don’t know. I
think if he writes, I will write too,” she said,
blushing.
“And you won’t feel ashamed to write to
him?”
Sonya smiled.
“No.”
“And I should be ashamed to write to Boris.
I’m not going to.”
“Why should you be ashamed?”
“Well, I don’t know. It’s awkward
and would make me ashamed.”
“And I know why she’d
be ashamed,” said Petya, offended by Natasha’s
previous remark. “It’s because she
was in love with that fat one in spectacles”
(that was how Petya described his namesake, the new
Count Bezukhov) “and now she’s in love
with that singer” (he meant Natasha’s
Italian singing master), “that’s why she’s
ashamed!”
“Petya, you’re a stupid!” said Natasha.
“Not more stupid than you, madam,”
said the nine-year-old Petya, with the air of an old
brigadier.
The countess had been prepared by
Anna Mikhaylovna’s hints at dinner. On
retiring to her own room, she sat in an armchair, her
eyes fixed on a miniature portrait of her son on the
lid of a snuffbox, while the tears kept coming into
her eyes. Anna Mikhaylovna, with the letter, came
on tiptoe to the countess’ door and paused.
“Don’t come in,”
she said to the old count who was following her.
“Come later.” And she went in, closing
the door behind her.
The count put his ear to the keyhole and listened.
At first he heard the sound of indifferent
voices, then Anna Mikhaylovna’s voice alone
in a long speech, then a cry, then silence, then both
voices together with glad intonations, and then footsteps.
Anna Mikhaylovna opened the door. Her face wore
the proud expression of a surgeon who has just performed
a difficult operation and admits the public to appreciate
his skill.
“It is done!” she said
to the count, pointing triumphantly to the countess,
who sat holding in one hand the snuffbox with its portrait
and in the other the letter, and pressing them alternately
to her lips.
When she saw the count, she stretched
out her arms to him, embraced his bald head, over
which she again looked at the letter and the portrait,
and in order to press them again to her lips, she slightly
pushed away the bald head. Vera, Natasha, Sonya,
and Petya now entered the room, and the reading of
the letter began. After a brief description of
the campaign and the two battles in which he had taken
part, and his promotion, Nicholas said that he kissed
his father’s and mother’s hands asking
for their blessing, and that he kissed Vera, Natasha,
and Petya. Besides that, he sent greetings to
Monsieur Schelling, Madame Schoss, and his old
nurse, and asked them to kiss for him “dear Sonya,
whom he loved and thought of just the same as ever.”
When she heard this Sonya blushed so that tears came
into her eyes and, unable to bear the looks turned
upon her, ran away into the dancing hall, whirled round
it at full speed with her dress puffed out like a
balloon, and, flushed and smiling, plumped down on
the floor. The countess was crying.
“Why are you crying, Mamma?”
asked Vera. “From all he says one should
be glad and not cry.”
This was quite true, but the count,
the countess, and Natasha looked at her reproachfully.
“And who is it she takes after?” thought
the countess.
Nicholas’ letter was read over
hundreds of times, and those who were considered worthy
to hear it had to come to the countess, for she did
not let it out of her hands. The tutors came,
and the nurses, and Dmitri, and several acquaintances,
and the countess reread the letter each time with
fresh pleasure and each time discovered in it fresh
proofs of Nikolenka’s virtues. How strange,
how extraordinary, how joyful it seemed, that her
son, the scarcely perceptible motion of whose tiny
limbs she had felt twenty years ago within her, that
son about whom she used to have quarrels with the
too indulgent count, that son who had first learned
to say “pear” and then “granny,”
that this son should now be away in a foreign land
amid strange surroundings, a manly warrior doing some
kind of man’s work of his own, without help or
guidance. The universal experience of ages, showing
that children do grow imperceptibly from the cradle
to manhood, did not exist for the countess. Her
son’s growth toward manhood, at each of its stages,
had seemed as extraordinary to her as if there had
never existed the millions of human beings who grew
up in the same way. As twenty years before, it
seemed impossible that the little creature who lived
somewhere under her heart would ever cry, suck her
breast, and begin to speak, so now she could not believe
that that little creature could be this strong, brave
man, this model son and officer that, judging by this
letter, he now was.
“What a style! How charmingly
he describes!” said she, reading the descriptive
part of the letter. “And what a soul!
Not a word about himself.... Not a word!
About some Denisov or other, though he himself, I
dare say, is braver than any of them. He says
nothing about his sufferings. What a heart!
How like him it is! And how he has remembered
everybody! Not forgetting anyone. I always
said when he was only so high I always
said....”
For more than a week preparations
were being made, rough drafts of letters to Nicholas
from all the household were written and copied out,
while under the supervision of the countess and the
solicitude of the count, money and all things necessary
for the uniform and equipment of the newly commissioned
officer were collected. Anna Mikhaylovna, practical
woman that she was, had even managed by favor with
army authorities to secure advantageous means of communication
for herself and her son. She had opportunities
of sending her letters to the Grand Duke Constantine
Pavlovich, who commanded the Guards. The Rostovs
supposed that The Russian Guards, Abroad, was quite
a definite address, and that if a letter reached the
Grand Duke in command of the Guards there was no reason
why it should not reach the Pavlograd regiment, which
was presumably somewhere in the same neighborhood.
And so it was decided to send the letters and money
by the Grand Duke’s courier to Boris and Boris
was to forward them to Nicholas. The letters were
from the old count, the countess, Petya, Vera, Natasha,
and Sonya, and finally there were six thousand rubles
for his outfit and various other things the old count
sent to his son.