When he suddenly realised all the joyful significance of that cry, tears choked him, and leaning both elbows on the window-sill he cried, sobbing as children cry. The door opened. The doctor with his shirt sleeves tucked up, and no coat on, came out of the room, pale, and his lower jaw twitching. Prince Andrey addressed him, but the doctor, looking at him in a distracted way, passed by without uttering a word. A woman ran out, and, seeing Prince Andrey, stopped hesitating in the door. He went into his wife’s room. She was lying dead in the same position in which he had seen her five minutes before, and in spite of the fixed gaze and white cheeks, there was the same expression still on the charming childish face with the little lip covered with fine dark hair. ‘I love you all, and have done no harm to any one, and what have you done to me?’ said her charming, piteous, dead face. In a corner of the room was something red and tiny, squealing and grunting in the trembling white hands of Marya Bogdanovna.
Two hours later Prince Andrey went with soft steps into his father’s room. The old man knew everything already. He was standing near the door, and, as soon as it opened, his rough old arms closed like a vice round his son’s neck, and without a word he burst into sobs like a child.
Three days afterwards the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrey went to the steps of the tomb to take his last farewell of her. Even in the coffin the face was the same, though the eyes were closed. ‘Ah, what have you done to me?’ it still seemed to say; and Prince Andrey felt that something was being torn out of his soul, that he was guilty of a crime that he could never set right nor forget. He could not weep. The old man, too, went in and kissed the little waxen hand that lay so peacefully crossed over the other, and to him, too, her face said: ‘Ah, what have you done to me, and why?’ And the old man turned angrily away, when he caught sight of the face.
In another five days there followed the christening of the young prince, Nikolay Andreitch. The nurse held the swaddling clothes up to her chin, while the priest with a goose feather anointed the baby’s red, wrinkled hands and feet.
His grandfather, who -was his godfather, trembling and afraid of dropping the baby, carried him round the battered tin font, and handed him
over to the godmother, Princess Marya. Faint with terror that they would let the baby drown in the font, Prince Andrey sat in an adjoining room, waiting for the conclusion of the ceremony. He looked joyfully at the baby when the nurse brought him out, and nodded approvingly when the nurse told him that a bit of wax with the baby’s hairs in it, thrown into the font, had not sunk in the water but floated on the surface.
X
Rostov’s share in the duel between Dolohov and Bezuhov had been hushed up by the efforts of the old count, and instead of being degraded to the ranks, as Nikolay had expected, he had been appointed an adjutant to the governor of Moscow. In consequence of this, he could not go to the country with the rest of the family, but was kept by his new duties all the summer in Moscow. Dolohov recovered, and Rostov became particularly friendly with him during his convalescence. Dolohov lay ill in the house of his mother, who was tenderly and passionately devoted to him. Marya Ivanovna, who had taken a fancy to Rostov, seeing his attachment to her Fedya, often talked to him about her son.
‘Yes, count, he is too noble, too pure-hearted,’ she would say, ‘for the corrupt society of our day. Virtue is in favour with no one; it is apt to be a reproach to everybody. Come, tell me, count, was it right, was it honourable on Bezuhov’s part? Fedya in his noble-hearted way loved him, and even now he never says a word against him. In Petersburg those pranks with the police constables, those practical jokes they played there, didn’t they do everything together? And Bezuhov got nothing for it, while Fedya took all the blame on his shoulders. What he has had to go through! He has been reinstated, I know, but how could they help reinstating him? I don’t suppose there were many such gallant, true sons of their fatherland out there! And now, what?—this duel! Is there any feeling, any honour left in men? Knowing he was the only son, to call him out and aim so straight at him! We may be thankful God has been merciful to us. And what was it all for? Why, who hasn’t intrigues nowadays? Why, if he were so jealous—I can understand it—he ought to have let it be seen long before, you know, and it had been going on for a year. And then to call him out, reckoning on Fedya’s not fighting him because he was indebted to him. What baseness! What vileness! I know you understand Fedya, my dear count, and that’s why I love you, believe me, from my heart. Few do understand him. His is such a lofty, heavenly nature! ’
Dolohov himself, during his convalescence, often said to Rostov things which could never have been expected from him.
