War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [431]
The doctor came that day, examined Natasha, and said she should continue to take those last powders he had prescribed two weeks ago.
“Be sure to continue, morning and evening,” he said, clearly pleased in all good conscience with his success. “Only, I beg you, be precise. Don’t worry, Countess,” the doctor said jokingly, catching the gold piece deftly in his soft palm, “she’ll soon be singing and frolicking again. This last medicine is very, very good for her. She’s quite refreshed.”
The countess looked at her nails, spat on them a little for luck, and went back to the drawing room with a cheerful face.
XVIII
At the beginning of July, more and more alarming rumors spread in Moscow about the course of the war: there was talk of the sovereign’s appeal to the people, about the sovereign coming himself from the army to Moscow. And since up to the eleventh of July the manifesto and appeal had not been received, exaggerated rumors about them and about the situation of Russia went around. It was said that the sovereign had left the army because it was in danger, it was said that Smolensk had surrendered, that Napoleon had a million troops, and that only a miracle could save Russia.
On the eleventh of July, a Saturday, the manifesto was received, but not yet printed; and Pierre, who was at the Rostovs’, promised to come the next day, Sunday, for dinner, and bring the manifesto and appeal, which he was to obtain from Count Rastopchin.
That Sunday the Rostovs, as usual, went to the liturgy at the Razumovskys’ house chapel. It was a hot July day. By ten o’clock, when the Rostovs were getting out of the carriage before the church, in the hot air, in the cries of the hawkers, in the light and gay-colored summer clothes of the crowd, in the dusty leaves of the trees along the boulevard, in the sounds of the music and the white breeches of a battalion marching to change the guard, in the rattling of carriages over the cobblestones, and in the bright brilliance of the hot sun, there was already that summer languor, that content and discontent with the present, which is felt especially strongly on a clear, hot day in town. All the Moscow nobility, all the Rostovs’ acquaintances, were in the Razumovskys’ chapel (that year, as if expecting something, many wealthy families, who usually went off to their country estates, stayed in town). Walking behind the liveried footman who made way through the crowd before her mother, Natasha heard a young man’s voice saying of her in much too loud a whisper:
“That’s Miss Rostov, the one who…”
“She’s thinner, but still pretty!”
She heard, or seemed to hear, the names of Kuragin and Bolkonsky mentioned. However, it always seemed so to her. It always seemed to her that everyone who looked at her thought only of what had happened to her. Suffering, and with a sinking heart, as always in a crowd, Natasha walked in her violet dress with black lace as women know how to walk—the more calmly and majestically, the more pained and ashamed she felt at heart. She knew she was pretty, and she was not mistaken, but that did not cause her joy as it used to. On the contrary, it tormented her most of all lately, and especially on this bright, hot summer day in town. “One Sunday later, one week later,” she said to herself, remembering how she had been here the last Sunday, “and it’s the same life without living, and the same conditions in which it used to be so easy to live. I’m pretty, I’m young, and I know that I’m good now, I was bad before, but now I’m good, I know it,” she thought, “and yet my best years are going by for nothing, for nobody.” She stationed herself next to her mother and exchanged words with acquaintances who stood nearby. Out of habit, Natasha studied the ladies’ dresses, disapproved of the tenue*428 of a lady near her and the improper way she crossed herself with a quick little movement, again thought with vexation that she was being