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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.
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