Bab Bab 133 · 第133章

The Bible legend tells us that the absence of labor—idleness—was a

condition of the first man’s blessedness before the Fall. Fallen man

has retained a love of idleness, but the curse weighs on the race not

only because we have to seek our bread in the sweat of our brows, but

because our moral nature is such that we cannot be both idle and at

ease. An inner voice tells us we are in the wrong if we are idle. If man

could find a state in which he felt that though idle he was fulfilling

his duty, he would have found one of the conditions of man’s primitive

blessedness. And such a state of obligatory and irreproachable idleness

is the lot of a whole class—the military. The chief attraction of

military service has consisted and will consist in this compulsory and

irreproachable idleness.

Nicholas Rostóv experienced this blissful condition to the full when,

after 1807, he continued to serve in the Pávlograd regiment, in which

he already commanded the squadron he had taken over from Denísov.

Rostóv had become a bluff, good-natured fellow, whom his Moscow

acquaintances would have considered rather bad form, but who was liked

and respected by his comrades, subordinates, and superiors, and was well

contented with his life. Of late, in 1809, he found in letters from home

more frequent complaints from his mother that their affairs were falling

into greater and greater disorder, and that it was time for him to come

back to gladden and comfort his old parents.

Reading these letters, Nicholas felt a dread of their wanting to

take him away from surroundings in which, protected from all the

entanglements of life, he was living so calmly and quietly. He felt that

sooner or later he would have to re-enter that whirlpool of life, with

its embarrassments and affairs to be straightened out, its accounts

with stewards, quarrels, and intrigues, its ties, society, and with

Sónya’s love and his promise to her. It was all dreadfully difficult

and complicated; and he replied to his mother in cold, formal letters

in French, beginning: “My dear Mamma,” and ending: “Your obedient

son,” which said nothing of when he would return. In 1810 he received

letters from his parents, in which they told him of Natásha’s

engagement to Bolkónski, and that the wedding would be in a year’s

time because the old prince made difficulties. This letter grieved and

mortified Nicholas. In the first place he was sorry that Natásha, for

whom he cared more than for anyone else in the family, should be lost to

the home; and secondly, from his hussar point of view, he regretted not

to have been there to show that fellow Bolkónski that connection with

him was no such great honor after all, and that if he loved Natásha he

might dispense with permission from his dotard father. For a moment he

hesitated whether he should not apply for leave in order to see Natásha

before she was married, but then came the maneuvers, and considerations

about Sónya and about the confusion of their affairs, and Nicholas

again put it off. But in the spring of that year, he received a letter

from his mother, written without his father’s knowledge, and that

letter persuaded him to return. She wrote that if he did not come and

take matters in hand, their whole property would be sold by auction and

they would all have to go begging. The count was so weak, and trusted

Mítenka so much, and was so good-natured, that everybody took advantage

of him and things were going from bad to worse. “For God’s sake, I

implore you, come at once if you do not wish to make me and the whole

family wretched,” wrote the countess.

This letter touched Nicholas. He had that common sense of a

matter-of-fact man which showed him what he ought to do.

The right thing now was, if not to retire from the service, at any rate

to go home on leave. Why he had to go he did not know; but after his

after-dinner nap he gave orders to saddle Mars, an extremely vicious

gray stallion that had not been ridden for a long time, and when

he returned with the horse all in a lather, he informed Lavrúshka

(Denísov’s servant who had remained with him) and his comrades who

turned up in the evening that he was applying for leave and was going

home. Difficult and strange as it was for him to reflect that he would

go away without having heard from the staff—and this interested him

extremely—whether he was promoted to a captaincy or would receive the

Order of St. Anne for the last maneuvers; strange as it was to think

that he would go away without having sold his three roans to the Polish

Count Golukhovski, who was bargaining for the horses Rostóv had betted

he would sell for two thousand rubles; incomprehensible as it

seemed that the ball the hussars were giving in honor of the Polish

Mademoiselle Przazdziecka (out of rivalry to the Uhlans who had given

one in honor of their Polish Mademoiselle Borzozowska) would take place

without him—he knew he must go away from this good, bright world to

somewhere where everything was stupid and confused. A week later he

obtained his leave. His hussar comrades—not only those of his own

regiment, but the whole brigade—gave Rostóv a dinner to which the

subscription was fifteen rubles a head, and at which there were two

bands and two choirs of singers. Rostóv danced the Trepák with Major

Básov; the tipsy officers tossed, embraced, and dropped Rostóv; the

soldiers of the third squadron tossed him too, and shouted “hurrah!”

and then they put him in his sleigh and escorted him as far as the first

post station.

During the first half of the journey—from Kremenchúg to Kiev—all

Rostóv’s thoughts, as is usual in such cases, were behind him, with

the squadron; but when he had gone more than halfway he began to forget

his three roans and Dozhoyvéyko, his quartermaster, and to wonder

anxiously how things would be at Otrádnoe and what he would find

there. Thoughts of home grew stronger the nearer he approached it—far

stronger, as though this feeling of his was subject to the law by which

the force of attraction is in inverse proportion to the square of the

distance. At the last post station before Otrádnoe he gave the driver a

three-ruble tip, and on arriving he ran breathlessly, like a boy, up the

steps of his home.

After the rapture of meeting, and after that odd feeling of unsatisfied

expectation—the feeling that “everything is just the same, so why

did I hurry?”—Nicholas began to settle down in his old home world.

His father and mother were much the same, only a little older. What was

new in them was a certain uneasiness and occasional discord, which there

used not to be, and which, as Nicholas soon found out, was due to the

bad state of their affairs. Sónya was nearly twenty; she had stopped

growing prettier and promised nothing more than she was already, but

that was enough. She exhaled happiness and love from the time Nicholas

returned, and the faithful, unalterable love of this girl had a

gladdening effect on him. Pétya and Natásha surprised Nicholas

most. Pétya was a big handsome boy of thirteen, merry, witty, and

mischievous, with a voice that was already breaking. As for Natásha,

for a long while Nicholas wondered and laughed whenever he looked at

her.

“You’re not the same at all,” he said.

“How? Am I uglier?”

“On the contrary, but what dignity? A princess!” he whispered to

her.

“Yes, yes, yes!” cried Natásha, joyfully.

She told him about her romance with Prince Andrew and of his visit to

Otrádnoe and showed him his last letter.

“Well, are you glad?” Natásha asked. “I am so tranquil and happy

now.”

“Very glad,” answered Nicholas. “He is an excellent fellow.... And

are you very much in love?”

“How shall I put it?” replied Natásha. “I was in love with

Borís, with my teacher, and with Denísov, but this is quite different.

I feel at peace and settled. I know that no better man than he exists,

and I am calm and contented now. Not at all as before.”

Nicholas expressed his disapproval of the postponement of the marriage

for a year; but Natásha attacked her brother with exasperation, proving

to him that it could not be otherwise, and that it would be a bad thing

to enter a family against the father’s will, and that she herself

wished it so.

“You don’t at all understand,” she said.

Nicholas was silent and agreed with her.

Her brother often wondered as he looked at her. She did not seem at

all like a girl in love and parted from her affianced husband. She was

even-tempered and calm and quite as cheerful as of old. This amazed

Nicholas and even made him regard Bolkónski’s courtship skeptically.

He could not believe that her fate was sealed, especially as he had

not seen her with Prince Andrew. It always seemed to him that there was

something not quite right about this intended marriage.

“Why this delay? Why no betrothal?” he thought. Once, when he had

touched on this topic with his mother, he discovered, to his surprise

and somewhat to his satisfaction, that in the depth of her soul she too

had doubts about this marriage.

“You see he writes,” said she, showing her son a letter of Prince

Andrew’s, with that latent grudge a mother always has in regard to a

daughter’s future married happiness, “he writes that he won’t come

before December. What can be keeping him? Illness, probably! His health

is very delicate. Don’t tell Natásha. And don’t attach importance

to her being so bright: that’s because she’s living through the last

days of her girlhood, but I know what she is like every time we receive

a letter from him! However, God grant that everything turns out well!”

(She always ended with these words.) “He is an excellent man!”