War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [746]
Among the gentry of the province, Nikolai was respected, but not liked. He was not concerned with the interests of the gentry. And for that some regarded him as a proud, others as a stupid man. All his time in the summer, from the spring sowing to the harvest, was spent on farm work. In the fall, with the same business-like seriousness with which he occupied himself with farming, he gave himself to hunting, going off for a month or two with his hunt. In winter he rode around to his other estates and took up reading. His reading consisted mostly of history books, which he ordered each year for a certain sum. He was putting together, as he said, a serious library, and made it a rule to read all the books he bought. He would sit in his study with an important look over this reading, which was first self-imposed as a duty, but later became a habitual occupation that provided him with a special sort of pleasure and the awareness of being occupied with a serious matter. Except for business trips, he spent the greater part of the time in winter at home, sharing the life of his family and entering into the minute relations between mother and children. He became closer and closer with his wife, every day discovering new spiritual treasures in her.
From the time of Nikolai’s marriage, Sonya had been living in his house. Before his marriage, blaming himself and praising her, Nikolai had told his fiancée everything that there had been between him and Sonya. He had asked Princess Marya to be gentle and kind with his cousin. Countess Marya felt the full guilt of her husband; she also felt her own guilt before Sonya; she thought that her fortune had influenced Nikolai’s choice, could not reproach Sonya for anything, wished to love her, but not only did not love her, but often found wicked feelings against her in her heart and could not overcome them.
Once she got to talking with her friend Natasha about Sonya and about her unfairness towards her.
“You know what,” said Natasha, “you’ve read the Gospels a great deal; there’s a passage in them that’s exactly about Sonya.”
“What?” Countess Marya asked in astonishment.
“‘To him who has will be given, from him who has not will be taken,’7 remember? She’s the one who has not—why, I don’t know; maybe she lacks egoism—I don’t know, but from her will be taken, and everything has been taken. I feel terribly sorry for her sometimes; I used to want terribly for Nicolas to marry her; but I always had a sort of presentiment that it would never be. She’s a sterile blossom, you know, like on strawberries? Sometimes I feel sorry for her, but sometimes I think she doesn’t feel it the way we would.”
And though Countess Marya explained to Natasha that those words of the Gospel should be understood differently—looking at Sonya, she agreed with the explanation given by Natasha. Indeed it did seem that Sonya was not burdened by her position and was completely reconciled with her destiny as a sterile blossom. It seemed she valued not so much the people as the whole family. Like a cat, she became accustomed not to the people, but to the house. She took care of the old countess, petted and pampered the children, was always ready to render the small services she was capable of; but all this was involuntarily taken with far too little gratitude…
The country seat at Bald Hills had been rebuilt, but no longer on the footing it had been on under the late prince.
The buildings, begun in the lean time, were more than simple. The enormous house, on the old stone foundations, was built of wood and plastered only inside. The big, roomy house with its bare plank floors was furnished with the simplest hard sofas and armchairs, tables and chairs, fashioned from their own birches by their own joiners. The house was spacious, with rooms for the servants and separate quarters for visitors. The relations of the Rostovs and Bolkonskys sometimes descended on Bald Hills by whole families, with their sixteen horses, with dozens of servants, and stayed for months. Besides that, four times a year, on the