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Morning came with its cares and bustle. Everyone got up and
began to move about and talk, dressmakers came again. Marya Dmitrievna
appeared, and they were called to breakfast. Natasha kept looking
uneasily at everybody with wide-open eyes, as if wishing to intercept
every glance directed toward her, and tried to appear the same
as usual.
After breakfast, which was her best time, Marya Dmitrievna
sat down in her armchair and called Natasha and the count to her.
"Well, friends, I have now thought the whole matter over
and this is my advice," she began. "Yesterday, as you
know, I went to see Prince Bolkonski. Well, I had a talk with
him.... He took it into his head to begin shouting, but I am not
one to be shouted down. I said what I had to say!"
"Well, and he?" asked the count.
"He? He's crazy... he did not want to listen. But what's
the use of talking? As it is we have worn the poor girl out,"
said Marya Dmitrievna. "My advice to you is finish your business
and go back home to Otradnoe... and wait there."
"Oh, no!" exclaimed Natasha.
"Yes, go back," said Marya Dmitrievna, "and
wait there. If your betrothed comes here now- there will be no
avoiding a quarrel; but alone with the old man he will talk things
over and then come on to you."
Count Rostov approved of this suggestion, appreciating its
reasonableness. If the old man came round it would be all the
better to visit him in Moscow or at Bald Hills later on; and if
not, the wedding, against his wishes, could only be arranged at
Otradnoe.
"That is perfectly true. And I am sorry I went to see
him and took her," said the old count.
"No, why be sorry? Being here, you had to pay your respects.
But if he won't- that's his affair," said Marya Dmitrievna,
looking for something in her reticule. "Besides, the trousseau
is ready, so there is nothing to wait for; and what is not ready
I'll send after you. Though I don't like letting you go, it is
the best way. So go, with God's blessing!"
Having found what she was looking for in the reticule she
handed it to Natasha. It was a letter from Princess Mary.
"She has written to you. How she torments herself, poor
thing! She's afraid you might think that she does not like you."
"But she doesn't like me," said Natasha.
"Don't talk nonsense!" cried Marya Dmitrievna.
"I shan't believe anyone, I know she doesn't like me,"
replied Natasha boldly as she took the letter, and her face expressed
a cold and angry resolution that caused Marya Dmitrievna to look
at her more intently and to frown.
"Don't answer like that, my good girl!" she said.
"What I say is true! Write an answer!" Natasha did not
reply and went to her own room to read Princess Mary's letter.
Princess Mary wrote that she was in despair at the misunderstanding
that had occurred between them. Whatever her father's feelings
might be, she begged Natasha to believe that she could not help
loving her as the one chosen by her brother, for whose happiness
she was ready to sacrifice everything.
"Do not think, however," she wrote, "that my
father is ill-disposed toward you. He is an invalid and an old
man who must be forgiven; but he is good and magnanimous and will
love her who makes his son happy." Princess Mary went on
to ask Natasha to fix a time when she could see her again.
After reading the letter Natasha sat down at the writing table
to answer it. "Dear Princess," she wrote in French quickly
and mechanically, and then paused. What more could she write after
all that had happened the evening before? "Yes, yes! All
that has happened, and now all is changed," she thought as
she sat with the letter she had begun before her. "Must I
break off with him? Must I really? That's awful... and to escape
from these dreadful thoughts she went to Sonya and began sorting
patterns with her.
After dinner Natasha went to her room and again took up Princess
Mary's letter. "Can it be that it is all over?" she
thought. "Can it be that all this has happened so quickly
and has destroyed all that went before?" She recalled her
love for Prince Andrew in all its former strength, and at the
same time felt that she loved Kuragin. She vividly pictured herself
as Prince Andrew's wife, and the scenes of happiness with him
she had so often repeated in her imagination, and at the same
time, aglow with excitement, recalled every detail of yesterday's
interview with Anatole.
"Why could that not be as well?" she sometimes asked
herself in complete bewilderment. "Only so could I be completely
happy; but now I have to choose, and I can't be happy without
either of them. Only," she thought, "to tell Prince
Andrew what has happened or to hide it from him are both equally
impossible. But with that one nothing is spoiled. But am I really
to abandon forever the joy of Prince Andrew's love, in which I
have lived so long?"
"Please, Miss!" whispered a maid entering the room
with a mysterious air. "A man told me to give you this-"
and she handed Natasha a letter.
"Only, for Christ's sake..." the girl went on, as
Natasha, without thinking, mechanically broke the seal and read
a love letter from Anatole, of which, without taking in a word,
she understood only that it was a letter from him- from the man
she loved. Yes, she loved him, or else how could that have happened
which had happened? And how could she have a love letter from
him in her hand?
With trembling hands Natasha held that passionate love letter
which Dolokhov had composed for Anatole, and as she read it she
found in it an echo of all that she herself imagined she was feeling.
"Since yesterday evening my fate has been sealed; to
be loved by you or to die. There is no other way for me,"
the letter began. Then he went on to say that he knew her parents
would not give her to him- for this there were secret reasons
he could reveal only to her- but that if she loved him she need
only say the word yes, and no human power could hinder their bliss.
Love would conquer all. He would steal her away and carry her
off to the ends of the earth.
"Yes, yes! I love him!" thought Natasha, reading
the letter for the twentieth time and finding some peculiarly
deep meaning in each word of it.
That evening Marya Dmitrievna was going to the Akharovs' and
proposed to take the girls with her. Natasha, pleading a headache,
remained at home.
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