‘Never, never could I have believed,’ she murmured to herself, ‘tha one could be so happy.’ Her face lighted up with a smile; but at tb same moment she sighed, and a soft melancholy came into her thoughtfu glance. It was as though, apart from the happiness she was feeling then was another happiness unattainable in this life, which she could not helj remembering at that moment.
X
Natasha was married in the early spring of 1813, and by 1820 she hai three daughters and a son. The latter had been eagerly desired, and sli
ias now nursing him herself. She had grown stouter and broader, so that itwas hard to recognise in the robust-looking young mother the slim, n bile Natasha of old days. Her features had become more defined, and ure an expression of calm softness and serenity. Her face had no longer Lit ever-glowing fire of eagerness that had once constituted her chief :irm. Now, often her face and body were all that was to be seen, and t) soul was not visible at all. All there was to be seen in her was a yorous, handsome, and fruitful mother. Only on rare occasions now t“ old fire glowed in her again. That happened only when, as now, her nsband returned after absence, when a sick child recovered, or when she 5)ke to Countess Marya of Prince Andrey (to her husband she never like of Prince Andrey, fancying he might be jealous of her love for in), or on the rare occasions when something happened to attract her t her singing, which she had entirely laid aside since her marriage. And i those rare moments, when the old fire glowed again, she was more iractive, with her handsome, fully-developed figure, than she had ever ten in the past.
Since her marriage Natasha and her husband had lived in Moscow, in Itersburg, on their estate near Moscow, and at her mother’s; that is to 51/, at Nikolay’s. The young Countess Bezuhov was little seen in society, id those who had seen her there were not greatly pleased with her. She ,>s neither charming nor amiable. It was not that Natasha was fond of ilitude (she could not have said whether she liked it or not; she rather Dposed indeed that she did not); but as she was bearing and nursing r'ldren, and taking interest in every minute of her husband’s life, she ..ild not meet all these demands on her except by renouncing society, [ery one who had known Natasha before her marriage marvelled at ije change that had taken place in her, as though it were something ex- b ordinary. Only the old countess, with her mother’s insight, had seen tit what was at the root of all Natasha’s wild outbursts of feeling was nply the need of children and a husband of her own, as she often used t declare, more in earnest than in joke, at Otradnoe. The mother was pprised at the wonder of people who did not understand Natasha, and neated that she had always known that she would make an exemplary tfe and mother.
‘Only she does carry her devotion to her husband and children to an fireme,’ the countess would say; ‘so much so, that it’s positively foolish.’ Natasha did not follow the golden rule preached by so many prudent [rsons, especially by the French, that recommends that a girl on marry- ig should not neglect herself, should not give up her accomplishments, iould think even more of her appearance than when a young girl, and sauld try to fascinate her husband as she had fascinated him before he us her husband. Natasha, on the contrary, had at once abandoned all lr accomplishments, of which the greatest was her singing. She gave that 1 just because it was such a great attraction. Natasha troubled herself 1 tie about manners or delicacy of speech; nor did she think of showing rself to her husband in the most becoming attitudes and costumes, nor
*p8B WAR AND PEACE
strive to avoid worrying him by being over-exacting. She acted in dir contravention of all those rules. She felt that the arts of attraction tl instinct had taught her to use before would now have seemed or ludicrous to her husband, to whom she had from the first moment gi\ herself up entirely, that is with her whole soul, not keeping a single corr of it hidden from him. She felt that the tie that bound her to her husba did not rest on those romantic feelings which had attracted him to h but rested on something else undefined, but as strong as the tie tl bound her soul to her body.
To curl her hair, put on a crinoline, and sing songs to attract her hr band would have seemed to her as strange as to deck herself up so as please herself. To adorn herself to please others might perhaps have be agreeable to her—she did not know—but she had absolutely no time f it. The chief reason why she could not attend to her singing, nor to h dress, nor to the careful choice of her words was that she simply had r'l time to think of those things.
