Neither her father, nor her mother, neither Sonya nor Prince Andrevi could have foreseen the effect of the parting on Natasha. She wandered about the house all that day, flushed, excited, and tearless, busying hersell about the most trivial matters as though she had no notion of what was! before her. She did not weep even at the moment when he kissed heii hand for the last time.
‘Don’t go away!’ was all she said, in a voice that made him wonden whether he ought not really to remain, and that he remembered lonp after. When he had gone, she still did not weep; but for several day:, she sat in her room, not crying, but taking no interest in anything, anc only saying from time to time: ‘Oh, why did he go?’ But a fortnight afte his departure, she surprised those around her equally by recovering fron her state of spiritual sickness, and became herself again, only with < change in her moral physiognomy, such as one sees in the faces of chil dren after a long illness.
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XXV
The health and character of Prince Nikolay Andreitch Bolkonksy had, during that year, after his son had left him, grown considerably feebler. He became more irritable than ever, and it was Princess Marya who as a rule bore the brunt of his outbursts of causeless fury. He seemed studiously to seek out all the tender spots in her consciousness so as to inflict on her the cruellest wounds possible. Princess Marya had two passions and consequently two joys: her nephew, Nikolushka, and religion; and both were favourite subjects for the old prince’s attacks and jeers. Whatever was being spoken of, he would bring the conversation round to the superstitiousness of old maids, or the petting and spoiling of children. ‘You want to make him’ (Nikolushka) ‘just such another old maid as you are yourself. Prince Andrey wants a son and not an old maid,’ he would say. Or addressing Mademoiselle Bourienne he would ask her, before Princess Marya, how she liked our village priests and holy pictures, and make jests about them. . . .
He was constantly wounding Princess Marya’s feelings, but his daughter needed no effort to forgive him. Could he be to blame in anything he did to her, could her father, who as she knew in spite of it all, loved her, be unjust? And indeed what is justice? Princess Marya never gave a thought to that proud word, ‘justice.’ All the complex laws of humanity were summed up for her in one clear and simple law : —the law of love and self-sacrifice, laid down by Him who had in His love suffered for humanity, though He was God Himself. What had she to do with the [justice or injustice of other people? All she had to do was to suffer and to love; and that she did.
In the winter Prince Andrey had come to Bleak Hills, had been gay, gentle, and affectionate, as Princess Marya had not seen him for years. She felt that something had happened to him, but he said nothing to his sister of his love. Before his departure, Prince Andrey had a long conversation with his father, and Princess Marya noticed that they were .11 pleased with each other at parting.
Soon after Prince /ndrey had gone, Princess Marya wrote from Bleak dills to her friend in Petersburg, Julie Karagin, whom Princess Marya lad dreamed—as girls always do dream—of marrying to her brother, ihe was at this time in mourning for the death of a brother, who had been ailed in Turkey.
' ‘Sorrow, it seems, is our common lot, my sweet and tender friend Julie.
! ‘Your loss is so terrible that I can only explain it to myself, as a pecial sign of the grace of God, who in His love for you would chasten ou and your incomparable mother.
j ‘Ah, my dear, religion, and religion alone can—I don’t say comfort s—but save us from despair. Religion alone can interpret to us what,
452 WAR AND PEACE
