Count Osterman-Tolstoy met the hussars on their return, summoned Rostov, thanked him and told him he would report his gallant action to the Tsar and would recommend him for the cross of St. George. When Rostov was called up to Count Osterman, bethinking himself that he had received no command to charge, he had no doubt that his commanding officer sent for him to reprimand him for his breach of discipline. Osterman’s flattering words and promise of a reward should, therefore, have been a pleasant surprise to Rostov; but he still suffered from that unpleasant vague feeling of moral nausea. ‘Why, what on earth is it that’s worrying me?’ he wondered, as he rode away from the general. ‘Ilyin? No, he’s all right. Did I do anything disgraceful? No, that’s not it either!’ Something else fretted him like a remorse. ‘Yes, yes, that officer with the dimple. And I remember clearly how my hand paused when I had lifted it.’
Rostov saw the prisoners being led away, and galloped after them to look at his Frenchman with the dimple in his chin. He was sitting in his strange uniform on one of the spare horses, looking uneasily about him. The sword-cut in his arm could hardly be called a wound. He looked at Rostov with a constrained smile, and waved his hand by way of a greeting. Rostov still felt the same discomfort and vague remorse.
All that day and the next Rostov’s friends and comrades noticed that, without being exactly depressed or irritable, he was silent, dreamy, and preoccupied. He did not care to drink, tried to be alone, and seemed absorbed in thought. Rostov was still pondering on his brilliant exploit, which, to his amazement, had won him the St. George’s Cross and made his reputation indeed for fearless gallantry. There was something he could not fathom in it. ‘So they are even more frightened than we are,’ he thought. ‘Why, is this all that’s meant by heroism? And did I do it for the sake of my country? And was he to blame with his dimple and his blue eyes? How frightened he was! He thought I was going to kill him. Why should I kill him? My hand trembled. And they have given me the St. George’s Cross. I can’t make it out, I can’t make it out!’
But while Nikolay was worrying over these questions in his heart and unable to find any clear solution of the doubts that troubled him, the wheel of fortune was turning in his favour, as so often happens in the service.' He was brought forward after the affair at Ostrovna, received the command of a battalion of hussars, and when an officer of dauntless courage was wanted he was picked out.
XVI
Countess Rostov had not recovered her strength when she received the news of Natasha’s illness. Weak as she still was, she set out at once for Moscow with Petya and the whole household, and the Rostovs moved from Marya Dmitryevna’s into their own house, where the whole family were installed.
Natasha’s illness was so serious that, luckily for herself and her parents, all thought of what had caused it, of her conduct and of the breaking off of her engagement, fell into the background. She was so ill that no one could consider how far she was to blame for all that had happened, while she could not eat nor sleep, was growing visibly thinner, coughed, and was, as the doctors gave them to understand, in actual danger. Nothing could be thought of but how to make her well again. Doctors came to see Natasha, both separately and in consultation. They said a great deal in French, in German, and in Latin. They criticised one another, and prescribed the most diverse remedies for all the diseases they were familiar with. But it never occurred to one of them to make the simple reflection that they could not understand the disease from which Natasha was suffering, as no single disease can be fully understood in a living person; for every living person has his individual peculiarities and always has his own peculiar, new, complex complaints unknown to medicine—not a disease of the lungs, of the kidneys, of the skin, of the heart, and so on, as described in medical books, but a disease that consists of one out of the innumerable combinations of ailments of those organs. This simple reflection can never occur to doctors (just as a sorcerer cannot entertain the idea that he is unable to work magic
6 iS WARANDPEACE
