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The Bible legend tells us that the absence of labor- idleness-
was a condition of the first man's blessedness before the Fall.
Fallen man has retained a love of idleness, but the curse weighs
on the race not only because we have to seek our bread in the
sweat of our brows, but because our moral nature is such that
we cannot be both idle and at ease. An inner voice tells us we
are in the wrong if we are idle. If man could find a state in
which he felt that though idle he was fulfilling his duty, he
would have found one of the conditions of man's primitive blessedness.
And such a state of obligatory and irreproachable idleness is
the lot of a whole class- the military. The chief attraction of
military service has consisted and will consist in this compulsory
and irreproachable idleness.
Nicholas Rostov experienced this blissful condition to the
full when, after 1807, he continued to serve in the Pavlograd
regiment, in which he already commanded the squadron he had taken
over from Denisov.
Rostov had become a bluff, good-natured fellow, whom his Moscow
acquaintances would have considered rather bad form, but who was
liked and respected by his comrades, subordinates, and superiors,
and was well contented with his life. Of late, in 1809, he found
in letters from home more frequent complaints from his mother
that their affairs were falling into greater and greater disorder,
and that it was time for him to come back to gladden and comfort
his old parents.
Reading these letters, Nicholas felt a dread of their wanting
to take him away from surroundings in which, protected from all
the entanglements of life, he was living so calmly and quietly.
He felt that sooner or later he would have to re-enter that whirlpool
of life, with its embarrassments and affairs to be straightened
out, its accounts with stewards, quarrels, and intrigues, its
ties, society, and with Sonya's love and his promise to her. It
was all dreadfully difficult and complicated; and he replied to
his mother in cold, formal letters in French, beginning: "My
dear Mamma," and ending: "Your obedient son," which
said nothing of when he would return. In 1810 he received letters
from his parents, in which they told him of Natasha's engagement
to Bolkonski, and that the wedding would be in a year's time because
the old prince made difficulties. This letter grieved and mortified
Nicholas. In the first place he was sorry that Natasha, for whom
he cared more than for anyone else in the family, should be lost
to the home; and secondly, from his hussar point of view, he regretted
not to have been there to show that fellow Bolkonski that connection
with him was no such great honor after all, and that if he loved
Natasha he might dispense with permission from his dotard father.
For a moment he hesitated whether he should not apply for leave
in order to see Natasha before she was married, but then came
the maneuvers, and considerations about Sonya and about the confusion
of their affairs, and Nicholas again put it off. But in the spring
of that year, he received a letter from his mother, written without
his father's knowledge, and that letter persuaded him to return.
She wrote that if he did not come and take matters in hand, their
whole property would be sold by auction and they would all have
to go begging. The count was so weak, and trusted Mitenka so much,
and was so good-natured, that everybody took advantage of him
and things were going from bad to worse. "For God's sake,
I implore you, come at once if you do not wish to make me and
the whole family wretched," wrote the countess.
This letter touched Nicholas. He had that common sense of
a matter-of-fact man which showed him what he ought to do.
The right thing now was, if not to retire from the service,
at any rate to go home on leave. Why he had to go he did not know;
but after his after-dinner nap he gave orders to saddle Mars,
an extremely vicious gray stallion that had not been ridden for
a long time, and when he returned with the horse all in a lather,
he informed Lavrushka (Denisov's servant who had remained with
him) and his comrades who turned up in the evening that he was
applying for leave and was going home. Difficult and strange as
it was for him to reflect that he would go away without having
heard from the staff- and this interested him extremely- whether
he was promoted to a captaincy or would receive the Order of St.
Anne for the last maneuvers; strange as it was to think that he
would go away without having sold his three roans to the Polish
Count Golukhovski, who was bargaining for the horses Rostov had
betted he would sell for two thousand rubles; incomprehensible
as it seemed that the ball the hussars were giving in honor of
the Polish Mademoiselle Przazdziecka (out of rivalry to the Uhlans
who had given one in honor of their Polish Mademoiselle Borzozowska)
would take place without him- he knew he must go away from this
good, bright world to somewhere where everything was stupid and
confused. A week later he obtained his leave. His hussar comrades-
not only those of his own regiment, but the whole brigade- gave
Rostov a dinner to which the subscription was fifteen rubles a
head, and at which there were two bands and two choirs of singers.
Rostov danced the Trepak with Major Basov; the tipsy officers
tossed, embraced, and dropped Rostov; the soldiers of the third
squadron tossed him too, and shouted "hurrah!" and then
they put him in his sleigh and escorted him as far as the first
post station.
During the first half of the journey- from Kremenchug to Kiev-
all Rostov's thoughts, as is usual in such cases, were behind
him, with the squadron; but when he had gone more than halfway
he began to forget his three roans and Dozhoyveyko, his quartermaster,
and to wonder anxiously how things would be at Otradnoe and what
he would find there. Thoughts of home grew stronger the nearer
he approached it- far stronger, as though this feeling of his
was subject to the law by which the force of attraction is in
inverse proportion to the square of the distance. At the last
post station before Otradnoe he gave the driver a three-ruble
tip, and on arriving he ran breathlessly, like a boy, up the steps
of his home.
After the rapture of meeting, and after that odd feeling of
unsatisfied expectation- the feeling that "everything is
just the same, so why did I hurry?"- Nicholas began to settle
down in his old home world. His father and mother were much the
same, only a little older. What was new in them was a certain
uneasiness and occasional discord, which there used not to be,
and which, as Nicholas soon found out, was due to the bad state
of their affairs. Sonya was nearly twenty; she had stopped growing
prettier and promised nothing more than she was already, but that
was enough. She exhaled happiness and love from the time Nicholas
returned, and the faithful, unalterable love of this girl had
a gladdening effect on him. Petya and Natasha surprised Nicholas
most. Petya was a big handsome boy of thirteen, merry, witty,
and mischievous, with a voice that was already breaking. As for
Natasha, for a long while Nicholas wondered and laughed whenever
he looked at her.
"You're not the same at all," he said.
"How? Am I uglier?"
"On the contrary, but what dignity? A princess!"
he whispered to her.
"Yes, yes, yes!" cried Natasha, joyfully.
She told him about her romance with Prince Andrew and of his
visit to Otradnoe and showed him his last letter.
"Well, are you glad?" Natasha asked. "I am
so tranquil and happy now."
"Very glad," answered Nicholas. "He is an excellent
fellow.... And are you very much in love?"
"How shall I put it?" replied Natasha. "I was
in love with Boris, with my teacher, and with Denisov, but this
is quite different. I feel at peace and settled. I know that no
better man than he exists, and I am calm and contented now. Not
at all as before."
Nicholas expressed his disapproval of the postponement of
the marriage for a year; but Natasha attacked her brother with
exasperation, proving to him that it could not be otherwise, and
that it would be a bad thing to enter a family against the father's
will, and that she herself wished it so.
"You don't at all understand," she said.
Nicholas was silent and agreed with her.
Her brother often wondered as he looked at her. She did not
seem at all like a girl in love and parted from her affianced
husband. She was even-tempered and calm and quite as cheerful
as of old. This amazed Nicholas and even made him regard Bolkonski's
courtship skeptically. He could not believe that her fate was
sealed, especially as he had not seen her with Prince Andrew.
It always seemed to him that there was something not quite right
about this intended marriage.
"Why this delay? Why no betrothal?" he thought.
Once, when he had touched on this topic with his mother, he discovered,
to his surprise and somewhat to his satisfaction, that in the
depth of her soul she too had doubts about this marriage.
"You see he writes," said she, showing her son a
letter of Prince Andrew's, with that latent grudge a mother always
has in regard to a daughter's future married happiness, "he
writes that he won't come before December. What can be keeping
him? Illness, probably! His health is very delicate. Don't tell
Natasha. And don't attach importance to her being so bright: that's
because she's living through the last days of her girlhood, but
I know what she is like every time we receive a letter from him!
However, God grant that everything turns out well!" (She
always ended with these words.) "He is an excellent man!"
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