War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [752]
The entire household was governed only by the imaginary orders of the husband, that is, by Pierre’s wishes, which Natasha tried to guess. The manner and place of their life, their acquaintances, their connections, Natasha’s occupations, the raising of the children—not only was everything done according to the express will of Pierre, but Natasha tried to guess what might follow from Pierre’s thoughts voiced in conversation. And she rightly guessed the essence of Pierre’s wishes, and, having once guessed it, she firmly held to what she had chosen. When Pierre himself wanted to be unfaithful to his wish, she fought him with his own weapons.
Thus, during a difficult time, which Pierre remembered ever after, when Natasha had given birth to a first weak child, and they had had to change wet nurses three times, and Natasha had become sick with despair, Pierre had told her once of Rousseau’s thoughts, with which he was in complete agreement, about the unnaturalness and harmfulness of wet nurses. With the next child, despite the opposition of her mother, the doctors, and the husband himself, who rose up against her nursing as a then unheard-of and harmful thing, she had stood her ground, and from then on had nursed all her children herself.
Quite often, in moments of irritation, it happened that the husband and wife would spend a long time arguing; then, after the argument, Pierre, to his joy and surprise, would find not only in his wife’s words, but in her actions, the very thought she had been arguing against. And he not only found the same thought, but found it purified of whatever had been superfluous, provoked by passion and argument, in his expression of it.
After seven years of married life, Pierre felt a joyful, firm consciousness that he was not a bad man, and he felt it because he saw himself reflected in his wife. In himself he felt all the good and the bad mixed together and obscuring each other. But only what was truly good was reflected in his wife; all that was not entirely good was rejected. And this reflection came not by way of logical thinking, but otherwise—as a mysterious, unmediated reflection.
XI
Two months before then, Pierre, already visiting with the Rostovs, had received a letter from Prince Fyodor, summoning him to Petersburg to discuss important questions which interested the members of a society in Petersburg of which Pierre was one of the chief founders.
Having read this letter, as she read all her husband’s letters, Natasha herself suggested that he go to Petersburg, hard as his absence was for her. To all that belonged to her husband’s intellectual, abstract pursuits, without understanding them, she ascribed enormous importance, and she was in constant fear of being a hindrance to this activity of her husband’s. To Pierre’s timid, questioning glance after reading the letter, she responded by asking him to go, but only to determine for certain the time of his return. And he was granted a four-week leave.
Ever since the term of Pierre’s leave had expired, two weeks before then, Natasha had been in a constant state of fear, sadness, and irritation.
Denisov, a retired general discontented with the current state of affairs, who came during those last two weeks, looked at Natasha with surprise and sadness, as at an unfaithful portrait of a once-loved person. A dull, despondent gaze, out-of-place replies, and conversation about the nursery was all he saw and heard from the former enchantress.
Natasha was sad and irritated all that time, especially when her mother, her brother, or Countess Marya, comforting her, tried to excuse Pierre and think up reasons for his delay.
“It’s all foolishness,