War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [743]
“There are thousands of reasons why” (he placed special emphasis on the word why). “Thank you, Princess,” he said softly. “It’s sometimes hard.”
“So that’s why! That’s why!” an inner voice was saying in Princess Marya’s soul. “No, it wasn’t only that cheerful, kind, and open gaze, not only that handsome appearance that I loved in him; I guessed at his noble, firm, self-sacrificing soul,” she said to herself. “Yes, he’s poor now, and I’m rich…Yes, it’s only because of that…Yes, if it weren’t for that…” And, recalling his former tenderness and looking now at his kind and sad face, she suddenly understood the reason for his coldness.
“But why, Count, why?” she suddenly almost cried out involuntarily, moving towards him. “Why, tell me? You must tell me.” He was silent. “I don’t know your why, Count,” she went on. “But it’s hard for me, it’s…I’ll confess it to you. You want for some reason to deprive me of your former friendship. And that pains me.” There were tears in her eyes and in her voice. “There has been so little happiness in my life that every loss is hard for me…Forgive me, good-bye.” She suddenly began to weep and started out of the room.
“Princess, wait, for God’s sake!” he cried, trying to stop her. “Princess!”
She glanced back. For a few seconds they looked silently into each other’s eyes, and the distant and impossible suddenly became near, possible, and inevitable.
VII
In the fall of 1814, Nikolai married Princess Marya and moved with his wife, mother, and Sonya to live at Bald Hills.
In three years, without selling his wife’s estate, he paid off the remaining debts and, having received a small inheritance from a deceased cousin, also paid back his debt to Pierre.
In three more years, by 1820, Nikolai had so arranged his financial affairs that he bought another small estate near Bald Hills and was negotiating to buy back his father’s Otradnoe, which was his fondest dream.
Having begun farming out of necessity, he quickly developed such a passion for it that it became his favorite and almost sole occupation. Nikolai was a simple farmer, did not like innovations, especially the English ones which were becoming fashionable then, laughed at theoretical writings on farming, did not like millworks, expensive products, expensive cereal crops, and generally was not taken up with any specific part of farming. Before his eyes there was always only the estate as a whole and not some separate part of it. And the chief thing on the estate was not nitrogen and not oxygen, which were in the soil or the air, not a special plow and manure, but the chief tool by means of which nitrogen, and oxygen, and manure, and the plow became operative—that is, the laboring muzhik. When Nikolai took up farming and began going into its various parts, his attention was especially drawn to the muzhik; the muzhik appeared to him not only as a tool, but as a goal and a judge. He began by studying the muzhik, trying to understand what he wanted, what he considered bad or good, and only pretended to give instructions and orders, but in essence was only learning the methods and speech of the muzhiks and their judgments of what was good and what was bad. And only when he understood the tastes and strivings of the muzhik, learned to speak his language and understand the hidden meaning of his speech, when he felt akin to him, only then did he begin boldly to manage him, that is, to fulfill in relation to the muzhiks that very duty the fulfillment of which was demanded of him. And Nikolai’s farming produced the most brilliant results.
On taking up the management of the estate, Nikolai at once, unerringly, by some gift of insight, appointed as bailiff, headman, and delegate the very people who would have been chosen by the muzhiks themselves if it had been up to them, and his officers never changed. Before studying the chemical