War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [765]
“You know what I’m thinking about?” she said. “About Platon Karataev. How about him? Would he approve of you now?”
Pierre was not surprised in the least by this question. He understood his wife’s train of thought.
“Platon Karataev?” he said and fell to thinking, evidently trying in all sincerity to imagine Karataev’s opinion on this subject. “He wouldn’t understand, but anyhow, I think, yes.”
“I love you terribly!” Natasha said suddenly. “Terribly. Terribly!”
“No, he wouldn’t approve of me,” said Pierre, having reflected. “What he would approve of is our family life. He wished so much to see seemliness, happiness, peace in everything, and I would have shown us to him with pride. Now, you say—parting. But you wouldn’t believe what a special feeling I have for you after we’ve been parted…”
“Yes, there’s also…” Natasha began.
“No, it’s not that. I never stop loving you. And it’s impossible to love more; and that’s especially…Well, yes…” He did not finish, because their eyes met and said all the rest.
“What stupidity,” Natasha said suddenly, “that the honeymoon and the first time is the happiest. On the contrary, now it’s best. If only you didn’t go away. Remember how we quarreled? And it was always my fault. Always. And what we quarreled about—I don’t even remember.”
“Always the same thing,” said Pierre, smiling, “jealo…”
“Don’t say it, I can’t bear it,” Natasha cried. And a cold, angry gleam lit up in her eyes. “Did you see her?” she added, after a pause.
“No, and if I had, I wouldn’t have recognized her.”
They fell silent.
“Ah, you know? As you were talking in the study, I was looking at you,” Natasha began, clearly trying to ward off the intruding cloud. “You and he are as alike as two drops of water—the boy, I mean.” (She referred to her son that way.) “Ah, it’s time to go to him…Time…Too bad I have to leave.”
They fell silent for a few seconds. Then they suddenly turned to each other and started saying something at the same time. Pierre began with self-satisfaction and enthusiasm, Natasha with a quiet, happy smile. Colliding, they both stopped, giving way to each other.
“No, what were you saying? Speak, speak.”
“No, you tell me, mine was just something stupid,” said Natasha.
Pierre said what he had started. It was a continuation of his self-satisfied discourse about his success in Petersburg. It seemed to him at that moment that he was called upon to give a new direction to the whole of Russian society and the whole world.
“I was going to say only that all thoughts that have great consequences are always simple. My whole thought is that, since vicious people band together and constitute a force, honest people need only do the same. It’s that simple.”
“Yes.”
“And what were you going to say?”
“Just something stupid.”
“No, but still.”
“It’s nothing, trifles,” said Natasha, her smile shining still more brightly. “I only wanted to tell you about Petya: today the nanny came to take him from me, he laughed, closed his eyes, and pressed himself to me—he must have thought he was hiding. He’s awfully sweet. That’s him shouting. Well, goodbye!” And she left the room.
At that same time, downstairs, in Nikolenka Bolkonsky’s part of the house, in his bedroom, an icon lamp was burning as always (the boy was afraid of the dark, and they could not get him to drop this bad habit). Dessales slept propped up high on his four pillows, and his Roman nose produced the steady sounds of snoring. Nikolenka, having just woken up in a cold sweat, his eyes wide open, sat up on his bed and looked around. A terrible dream had awakened him. In his dream he had seen himself and Pierre wearing helmets—the kind illustrated in his edition of Plutarch. He and Uncle Pierre were marching at the head of a huge army. This army consisted of slanting white lines that filled the air like the spiderwebs that fly about in the fall and that Dessales called le fil de la Vierge.*756 Ahead was glory, just the same as these threads, only slightly