War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (ebook reader for pc TXT) 📕

when I’m with him. What does that mean? Does it mean that it’s the real thing? Yes? Mamma, are you asleep?”

“No, my love; I am frightened myself,” answered her mother. “Now go!”

“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. “And could we ever have thought!⁠ ⁠…”

It seemed to Natásha that even at the time she first saw Prince Andréy at Otrádnoe she had fallen in love with him. It was as if she feared this strange, unexpected happiness of meeting again the very man she had then chosen (she was firmly convinced she had done so) and of finding him, as it seemed, not indifferent to her.

“And it had to happen that he should come specially to Petersburg while we are here. And it had to happen that we should meet at that ball. 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 Prince Andréy had written in Natásha’s album.

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

“Don’t, Natásha! Pray to God. ‘Marriages are made in heaven,’ ” said her mother.

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

At that very time Prince Andréy was sitting with Pierre and telling him of his love for Natásha and his firm resolve to make her his wife.

That day Countess Elèna Vasílievna had a reception at her house. The French ambassador was there, and a foreign prince of the blood who had of late become a frequent visitor of hers, and many brilliant ladies and gentlemen. Pierre, who had come downstairs, walked through the rooms and struck everyone by his preoccupied, absentminded, and morose air.

Since the ball he had felt the approach of a fit of nervous depression and had made desperate efforts to combat it. Since the intimacy of his wife with the royal prince, Pierre had unexpectedly been made a gentleman of the bedchamber, and from that time he had begun to feel oppressed and ashamed in court society, and dark thoughts of the vanity of all things human came to him oftener than before. At the same time the feeling he had noticed between his protégée Natásha and Prince Andréy accentuated his gloom by the contrast between his own position and his friend’s. He tried equally to avoid thinking about his wife, and about Natásha and Prince Andréy; and again everything seemed to him insignificant in comparison with eternity; again the question: for what? presented itself; and he forced himself to work day and night at Masonic labors, hoping to drive away the evil spirit that threatened him. Toward midnight, after he had left the countess’ apartments, he was sitting upstairs in a shabby dressing gown, copying out the original transaction of the Scottish lodge of Freemasons at a table in his low room cloudy with tobacco smoke, when someone came in. It was Prince Andréy.

“Ah, it’s you!” said Pierre with a preoccupied, dissatisfied air. “And I, you see, am hard at it.” He pointed to his manuscript book with that air of escaping from the ills of life with which unhappy people look at their work.

Prince Andréy, with a beaming, ecstatic expression of renewed life on 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 it yesterday and I have come to do so today. I never experienced anything like it before. I am in love, my friend!”

Suddenly Pierre heaved a deep sigh and dumped his heavy person down on the sofa beside Prince Andréy.

“With Natásha Rostóva, 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 and suffered, but I would not exchange even that torment for anything in the world, I have not lived till now. At last I live, but I can’t live without her! But can she love me?⁠ ⁠… I am too old for her.⁠ ⁠… Why don’t you speak?”

“I? I? What did I tell you?” said Pierre suddenly, rising and beginning 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 Andréy, smiling and looking into Pierre’s eyes.

“She does, I know,” Pierre cried fiercely.

“But do listen,” returned Prince Andréy, holding him by the arm. “Do you 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 face really changed, his brow became smooth, and he listened gladly to Prince Andréy. Prince Andréy seemed, and really was, quite a different, quite a new man. Where was his spleen, his contempt for life, his disillusionment? Pierre was the only person to whom he made up his mind to speak openly; and to him he told all that was in his 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 this marriage and love her, or would do without his consent; then he marveled 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 of such love,” said Prince