________________________________________________
_ Count Ilya Rostov had resigned the position of Marshal of the
Nobility because it involved him in too much expense, but still his
affairs did not improve. Natasha and Nicholas often noticed their
parents conferring together anxiously and privately and heard
suggestions of selling the fine ancestral Rostov house and estate near
Moscow. It was not necessary to entertain so freely as when the
count had been Marshal, and life at Otradnoe was quieter than in
former years, but still the enormous house and its lodges were full of
people and more than twenty sat down to table every day. These were
all their own people who had settled down in the house almost as
members of the family, or persons who were, it seemed, obliged to live
in the count's house. Such were Dimmler the musician and his wife,
Vogel the dancing master and his family, Belova, an old maiden lady,
an inmate of the house, and many others such as Petya's tutors, the
girls' former governess, and other people who simply found it
preferable and more advantageous to live in the count's house than
at home. They had not as many visitors as before, but the old habits
of life without which the count and countess could not conceive of
existence remained unchanged. There was still the hunting
establishment which Nicholas had even enlarged, the same fifty
horses and fifteen grooms in the stables, the same expensive
presents and dinner parties to the whole district on name days;
there were still the count's games of whist and boston, at which-
spreading out his cards so that everybody could see them- he let
himself be plundered of hundreds of rubles every day by his neighbors,
who looked upon an opportunity to play a rubber with Count Rostov as a
most profitable source of income.
The count moved in his affairs as in a huge net, trying not to
believe that he was entangled but becoming more and more so at every
step, and feeling too feeble to break the meshes or to set to work
carefully and patiently to disentangle them. The countess, with her
loving heart, felt that her children were being ruined, that it was
not the count's fault for he could not help being what he was- that
(though he tried to hide it) he himself suffered from the
consciousness of his own and his children's ruin, and she tried to
find means of remedying the position. From her feminine point of
view she could see only one solution, namely, for Nicholas to marry
a rich heiress. She felt this to be their last hope and that if
Nicholas refused the match she had found for him, she would have to
abandon the hope of ever getting matters right. This match was with
Julie Karagina, the daughter of excellent and virtuous parents, a girl
the Rostovs had known from childhood, and who had now become a wealthy
heiress through the death of the last of her brothers.
The countess had written direct to Julie's mother in Moscow
suggesting a marriage between their children and had received a
favorable answer from her. Karagina had replied that for her part
she was agreeable, and everything depend on her daughter's
inclination. She invited Nicholas to come to Moscow.
Several times the countess, with tears in her eyes, told her son
that now both her daughters were settled, her only wish was to see him
married. She said she could lie down in her grave peacefully if that
were accomplished. Then she told him that she knew of a splendid
girl and tried to discover what he thought about marriage.
At other times she praised Julie to him and advised him to go to
Moscow during the holidays to amuse himself. Nicholas guessed what his
mother's remarks were leading to and during one of these conversations
induced her to speak quite frankly. She told him that her only hope of
getting their affairs disentangled now lay in his marrying Julie
Karagina.
"But, Mamma, suppose I loved a girl who has no fortune, would you
expect me to sacrifice my feelings and my honor for the sake of
money?" he asked his mother, not realizing the cruelty of his question
and only wishing to show his noble-mindedness.
"No, you have not understood me," said his mother, not knowing how
to justify herself. "You have not understood me, Nikolenka. It is your
happiness I wish for," she added, feeling that she was telling an
untruth and was becoming entangled. She began to cry.
"Mamma, don't cry! Only tell me that you wish it, and you know I
will give my life, anything, to put you at ease," said Nicholas. "I
would sacrifice anything for you- even my feelings."
But the countess did not want the question put like that: she did
not want a sacrifice from her son, she herself wished to make a
sacrifice for him.
"No, you have not understood me, don't let us talk about it," she
replied, wiping away her tears.
"Maybe I do love a poor girl," said Nicholas to himself. "Am I to
sacrifice my feelings and my honor for money? I wonder how Mamma could
speak so to me. Because Sonya is poor I must not love her," he
thought, "must not respond to her faithful, devoted love? Yet I should
certainly be happier with her than with some doll-like Julie. I can
always sacrifice my feelings for my family's welfare," he said to
himself, "but I can't coerce my feelings. If I love Sonya, that
feeling is for me stronger and higher than all else."
Nicholas did not go to Moscow, and the countess did not renew the
conversation with him about marriage. She saw with sorrow, and
sometimes with exasperation, symptoms of a growing attachment
between her son and the portionless Sonya. Though she blamed herself
for it, she could not refrain from grumbling at and worrying Sonya,
often pulling her up without reason, addressing her stiffly as "my
dear," and using the formal "you" instead of the intimate "thou" in
speaking to her. The kindhearted countess was the more vexed with
Sonya because that poor, dark-eyed niece of hers was so meek, so kind,
so devotedly grateful to her benefactors, and so faithfully,
unchangingly, and unselfishly in love with Nicholas, that there were
no grounds for finding fault with her.
Nicholas was spending the last of his leave at home. A fourth letter
had come from Prince Andrew, from Rome, in which he wrote that he
would have been on his way back to Russia long ago had not his wound
unexpectedly reopened in the warm climate, which obliged him to
defer his return till the beginning of the new year. Natasha was still
as much in love with her betrothed, found the same comfort in that
love, and was still as ready to throw herself into all the pleasures
of life as before; but at the end of the fourth month of their
separation she began to have fits of depression which she could not
master. She felt sorry for herself: sorry that she was being wasted
all this time and of no use to anyone- while she felt herself so
capable of loving and being loved.
Things were not cheerful in the Rostovs' home. _
Read next: Book Seven: 1810-11: Chapter 9
Read previous: Book Seven: 1810-11: Chapter 7
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