According to biblical tradition the absence of work – idleness – was a condition of the first man’s state of blessedness before the Fall. The love of idleness has been preserved in fallen man, but now a heavy curse lies upon him, not only because we have to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow, but also because our sense of morality will not allow us to be both idle and at ease. Whenever we are idle a secret voice keeps telling us to feel guilty. If man could discover a state in which he could be idle and still feel useful and on the path of duty, he would have regained one aspect of that primitive state of blessedness. And there is one such state of enforced and irreproachable idleness enjoyed by an entire class of men – the military class. It is this state of enforced and irreproachable idleness that forms the chief attraction of military service, and it always will.
Nikolay Rostov had been enjoying this blessed state to the full as he served on, after the year 1807, in the Pavlograd regiment, now commanding the squadron that had been Denisov’s. Rostov had become a bluff, personable young man, likely to have been considered rather a bad egg by his old Moscow acquaintances, though he was loved and respected by his present comrades, subordinates and superiors, and he was enjoying life. But latterly, in the year 1809, he had begun to receive more and more letters from home full of complaints from his mother that things were going from bad to worse, and it was high time he came home to bring a little cheer and comfort to his old parents.
Reading these letters, Nikolay felt dismayed that anyone should want to extricate him from the environment in which he was living so quietly and comfortably, cut off from all the complexities of existence. He felt that sooner or later he might have to plunge back into that maelstrom of life, with all sorts of things going wrong and having to be put right, stewards’ accounts, quarrels and intrigues, ties, society, to say nothing of Sonya’s love and the promise he had made to her. It all seemed so terribly difficult and complicated that he took to answering his mother with frigid letters in very formal French, beginning ‘My dear mamma’, and ending ‘Your obedient son’, avoiding all mention of a time when he might return home. One letter in 1810 informed him of Natasha’s engagement to Bolkonsky, and the year-long postponement of their wedding because the old prince wouldn’t give his consent. This letter left Nikolay feeling worried and offended. For one thing, he would be sorry to lose Natasha from the household, because he cared for her more anyone else in the family. Secondly, with his hussar’s way of looking at things he regretted not having been there when all this had been going on; he’d have shown this Bolkonsky that linking up with him wasn’t all that much of an honour, and if he really loved Natasha he would get married without his crazy old father’s consent. For a moment he wondered whether to ask for leave, to see Natasha and find out how she was coping with her engagement, but they had manoeuvres coming up, and there was this business with Sonya, and everything was so complicated that he put it off again. But in the spring of that year he got another letter from his mother, written without his father’s knowledge, and this was what decided him. She told him if he didn’t come home and take charge, their whole estate would have to go under the hammer and they would be out on the street. The count was so weak, and he trusted Mitenka too much, and he was such a nice man that everyone took advantage of him, and things were going from bad to worse. ‘I beg you in the name of God, please come home immediately, if you don’t want me and all the family to be left utterly miserable,’ wrote the countess.
