War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [619]
Princess Marya did not speak of her brother, turning the conversation to another subject as soon as her aunt mentioned Prince Andrei. It was clear that she could speak artificially about the misfortunes of Russia, but her brother was a subject too close to her heart, and she would not and could not speak lightly of him. Nikolai noticed that, as he generally noticed, with a keenness of observation unusual for him, all the nuances of Princess Marya’s character, which only confirmed his conviction that she was an utterly special and extraordinary being. Nikolai, just like Princess Marya, blushed and became embarrassed when someone talked to him about the princess, and even when he thought about her, but in her presence he felt perfectly free and said not at all what he had prepared, but what instantly and always appropriately came to his head.
During Nikolai’s brief visit, as usual in a house where there are children, he resorted to Prince Andrei’s little son when there was a moment of silence, stroking his head and asking if he wanted to be a hussar. He took the boy in his arms, began tossing him merrily, and turned to look at Princess Marya. Her tender, happy, and timid gaze followed the boy she loved in the arms of the man she loved. Nikolai noticed this gaze and, as if understanding its meaning, blushed with pleasure and began to kiss the boy merrily and good-naturedly.
Princess Marya did not go out because she was in mourning, and Nikolai did not consider it proper to visit them; but the governor’s wife still went on with her matchmaking business and, having told Nikolai the flattering things Princess Marya had said about him and vice versa, insisted that Rostov should declare himself to Princess Marya. For that talk, she arranged a meeting between the young people at the bishop’s before the liturgy.
Though Rostov told the governor’s wife that he would not make any sort of declaration to Princess Marya, he did promise to come.
Just as in Tilsit Rostov had not allowed himself to doubt that what everyone recognized as good was indeed good, so also now, after a brief but sincere struggle between his effort to arrange his life according to his own reason and a humble submission to circumstances, he chose the latter and gave himself up to the power which (he felt) was irresistibly drawing him somewhere. He knew that, having given Sonya his promise, to speak out his feelings to Princess Marya would be what he called base. And he knew that he would never do anything base. But he also knew (or did not know, but felt in the depths of his soul) that, in yielding now to the power of the circumstances and the people who were guiding him, he was not only doing nothing bad, but was doing something very, very important, more important than anything he had ever done in his life.
After his meeting with Princess Marya, the form of his life outwardly remained the same, but all his former pleasures lost their charm for him, and he often thought of Princess Marya; but he never thought of her as he thought, without exception, of all the young ladies he met in society, nor as he had long thought, and at one time with rapture, about Sonya. Like almost every honorable young man, he had thought of all young ladies as future wives, applying to them in his imagination all the conditions of married life: a white dressing gown, a wife at the samovar, the wife’s carriage, children, maman and papa, his relations with her, and so on, and so forth; and he had enjoyed these pictures of the future; but when he thought of Princess Marya, with whom they were matchmaking him, he never could imagine anything of their future married life. Even when he tried, everything came out incoherent and false. It only made him feel eerie.
VII
The dreadful news of the battle of Borodino, of our losses in dead and wounded, and the still more dreadful news about the loss of Moscow, were received in Voronezh in the middle