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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 familyβ€”that is, one wife or one husband. NatΓ‘sha needed a husband. A husband was given her and he gave her a family. And she not only saw no need of any other or better husband, but as all the powers of her soul were intent on serving that husband and family, she could not imagine and saw no interest in imagining how it would be if things were different.

NatΓ‘sha did not care for society in general, but prized the more the society of her relativesβ€”Countess Mary, and her brother, her mother, and SΓ³nya. She valued the company of those to whom she could come striding disheveled from the nursery in her dressing gown, and with joyful face show a yellow instead of a green stain on baby’s napkin, and from whom she could hear reassuring words to the effect that baby was much better.

To such an extent had NatΓ‘sha let herself go that the way she dressed and did her hair, her ill-chosen words, and her jealousyβ€”she was jealous of SΓ³nya, of the governess, and of every woman, pretty or plainβ€”were habitual subjects of jest to those about her. The general opinion was that Pierre was under his wife’s thumb, which was really true. From the very first days of their married life NatΓ‘sha had announced her demands. Pierre was greatly surprised by his wife’s view, to him a perfectly novel one, that every moment of his life belonged to her and to the family. His wife’s demands astonished him, but they also flattered him, and he submitted to them.

Pierre’s subjection consisted in the fact that he not only dared not flirt with, but dared not even speak smilingly to, any other woman; did not dare dine at the Club as a pastime, did not dare spend money on a whim, and did not dare absent himself for any length of time, except on businessβ€”in which his wife included his intellectual pursuits, which she did not in the least understand but to which she attributed great importance. To make up for this, at home Pierre had the right to regulate his life and that of the whole family exactly as he chose. At home NatΓ‘sha placed herself in the position of a slave to her husband, and the whole household went on tiptoe when he was occupiedβ€”that is, was reading or writing in his study. Pierre had but to show a partiality for anything to get just what he liked done always. He had only to express a wish and NatΓ‘sha would jump up and run to fulfill it.

The entire household was governed according to Pierre’s supposed orders, that is, by his wishes which NatΓ‘sha tried to guess. Their way of life and place of residence, their acquaintances and ties, NatΓ‘sha’s occupations, the children’s upbringing, were all selected not merely with regard to Pierre’s expressed wishes, but to what NatΓ‘sha from the thoughts he expressed in conversation supposed his wishes to be. And she deduced the essentials of his wishes quite correctly, and having once arrived at them clung to them tenaciously. When Pierre himself wanted to change his mind she would fight him with his own weapons.

Thus in a time of trouble ever memorable to him after the birth of their first child who was delicate, when they had to change the wet nurse three times and NatΓ‘sha fell ill from despair, Pierre one day told her of Rousseau’s view, with which he quite agreed, that to have a wet nurse is unnatural and harmful. When her next baby was born, despite the opposition of her mother, the doctors, and even of her husband himselfβ€”who were all vigorously opposed to her nursing her baby herself, a thing then unheard of and considered injuriousβ€”she insisted on having her own way, and after that nursed all her babies herself.

It very often happened that in a moment of irritation husband and wife would have a dispute, but long afterwards Pierre to his surprise and delight would find in his wife’s ideas and actions the very thought against which she had argued, but divested of everything superfluous that in the excitement of the dispute he had added when expressing his opinion.

After seven years of marriage Pierre had the joyous and firm consciousness that he was not a bad man, and he felt this because he saw himself reflected in his wife. He felt the good and bad within himself inextricably mingled and overlapping. But only what was really good in him was reflected in his wife, all that was not quite good was rejected. And this was not the result of logical reasoning but was a direct and mysterious reflection.

CHAPTER XI

Two months previously when Pierre was already staying with the RostΓ³vs he had received a letter from Prince Theodore, asking him to come to Petersburg to confer on some important questions that were being discussed there by a society of which Pierre was one of the principal founders.

On reading that letter (she always read her husband’s letters) NatΓ‘sha herself suggested that he should go to Petersburg, though she would feel his absence very acutely. She attributed immense importance to all her husband’s intellectual and abstract interests though she did not understand them, and she always dreaded being a hindrance to him in such matters. To Pierre’s timid look of inquiry after reading the letter she replied by asking him to go, but to fix a definite date for his return. He was given four weeks’ leave of absence.

Ever since that leave of absence had expired, more than a fortnight before, NatΓ‘sha had been in a constant state of alarm, depression, and irritability.

DenΓ­sov, now a general on the retired list and much dissatisfied with the present state of affairs, had arrived during that fortnight. He looked at NatΓ‘sha with sorrow and surprise as at a bad likeness of a person once dear. A dull, dejected look, random replies, and talk about the nursery was all he saw and heard from his former enchantress.

NatΓ‘sha was sad and irritable all that time, especially when her mother, her brother, SΓ³nya, or Countess Mary in their efforts to console her tried to excuse Pierre and suggested reasons for his delay in returning.

β€œIt’s all nonsense, all rubbishβ€”those discussions which lead to nothing and all those idiotic societies!” NatΓ‘sha declared of the very affairs in the immense importance of which she firmly believed.

And she would go to the nursery to nurse PΓ©tya, her only boy. No one else could tell her anything so comforting or so reasonable as this little three-month-old creature when he lay at her breast and she was conscious of the movement of his lips and the snuffling of his little nose. That creature said: β€œYou are angry, you are jealous, you would like to pay him out, you are afraidβ€”but here am I! And I am he...” and that was unanswerable. It was more than true.

During that fortnight of anxiety NatΓ‘sha resorted to the baby for comfort so often, and fussed over him so much, that she overfed him and he fell ill. She was terrified by his illness, and yet that was just what she needed. While attending to him she bore the anxiety about her husband more easily.

She was nursing her boy when the sound of Pierre’s sleigh was heard at the front door, and the old nurseβ€”knowing

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