War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [301]
“If she goes to her cousin first and then to another lady, she’ll be my wife,” Prince Andrei quite unexpectedly said to himself, looking at her. She went to her cousin first.
“What nonsense sometimes comes into one’s head!” thought Prince Andrei. “But the one sure thing is that this girl is so sweet, so special, that she won’t spend a month dancing here before she gets married…It’s a rarity here,” he thought, as Natasha, straightening a rose that had gone awry on her corsage, was sitting down beside him.
At the end of the cotillion, the old count in his dark blue tailcoat came over to the dancers. He invited Prince Andrei to come and see him, and asked his daughter whether she was having a good time. Natasha did not reply and only smiled a smile which said with reproach: “How can you ask that?”
“I’ve never enjoyed myself so much in my life!” she said, and Prince Andrei noticed how her thin arms rose quickly to embrace her father and at once dropped again. Natasha was happier than she had ever been before in her life. She was in that highest degree of happiness when a person becomes perfectly kind and good, and does not believe in the possibility of evil, unhappiness, and grief.
At this ball Pierre felt insulted for the first time by the position his wife occupied in high spheres. He was sullen and distracted. There was a deep furrow across his brow, and, standing by the window, he looked through his spectacles, seeing no one.
Natasha walked past him on her way to supper.
Pierre’s gloomy, unhappy face struck her. She stopped in front of him. She wanted to help him, to transfer to him the overflow of her own happiness.
“Such a merry time,” she said, “isn’t it, Count?”
Pierre smiled distractedly, obviously not understanding what was being said to him.
“Yes, I’m very glad,” he said.
“How can they be displeased with anything,” thought Natasha. “Especially such a nice man as this Bezukhov?” In Natasha’s eyes, all who were at the ball were equally kind, nice, wonderful people, and loved each other: no one could offend anyone, and therefore they should all be happy.
XVIII
The next day Prince Andrei remembered yesterday’s ball, but his thought did not dwell on it for long. “Yes, it was a very brilliant ball. And then, too…yes, Miss Rostov is very sweet. There’s something fresh in her, something special, non-Petersburg, that makes her different.” That was all he thought about the ball, and, having had tea, he sat down to work.
But from fatigue or lack of sleep, the day was not good for work, and Prince Andrei could do nothing, kept criticizing his own efforts, as often happened with him, and was glad when he heard someone arrive.
The visitor was Bitsky, who worked on various commissions, frequented all the societies of Petersburg, was a passionate admirer of the new ideas and of Speransky, an anxious Petersburg newsmonger, one of those people who choose a trend as they do their clothes—according to the fashion, but who, because of it, look like the most ardent partisans of the trend. He rushed into Prince Andrei’s room and, barely managing to take his hat off, anxiously began talking. He had just learned the details of the session of the State Council that morning, opened by the sovereign, and was recounting it with rapture. The sovereign’s speech had been extraordinary. It had been one of those speeches that only constitutional monarchs make. “The sovereign said straight out that the Council and the Senate were estates of the realm; he said that the government should be based not on arbitrariness, but on firm principles. The sovereign said that the finances should be reformed and the accounting made public,” Bitsky recounted, emphasizing certain words and widening his eyes significantly.
“Yes, today’s event marks an epoch, the greatest epoch in our