In the early days of his married life his wife’s expectation that he should forget nothing he had undertaken to buy had struck him as strange, and he had been impressed by her serious chagrin when after his first absence he had returned having forgotten everything. But in time he had grown used to this. Knowing that Natasha gave him no commissions on her own account, and for others only asked him to get things when he had himself offered to do so, he now took a childish pleasure, that was a surprise to himself, in those purchases of presents for all the household, and never forgot anything. If he incurred Natasha’s censure now, it was only for buying too much, and paying too much for his purchases. To her other defects in the eyes of the world—good qualities in Pierre’s eyes— her untidiness and negligence, Natasha added that of stinginess.
Ever since Pierre had begun living a home life, involving increased
tpenses in a large house, he had noticed to his astonishment that he us spending half what he had spent in the past, and that his circum- ■ances, somewhat straitened latterly, especially by his first wife’s debts, ure beginning to improve.
Living was much cheaper, because his life was coherent; the most ex- unsive luxury in his former manner of life, that is, the possibility of a omplete change in it at any moment, Pierre had not now, and had no isire for. He felt that his manner of life was settled now once for all till ;ath; that to change it was not in his power, and therefore that manner
life was cheaper.
With a beaming, smiling countenance, Pierre was unpacking his urchases.
‘Look!’ he said, unfolding a piece of material like a shopman. Natasha as sitting opposite him with her eldest girl on her knee, and she turned er sparkling eyes from her husband to what he was showing her.
That’s for Madame Byelov? Splendid.’ She touched it to feel the oodness of the material. ‘It must have been a rouble a yard?’
Pierre mentioned the price.
‘Very dear,’ said Natasha. ‘Well, how pleased the children will be and laman too. Only you shouldn’t have bought me this,’ she added, unable o suppress a smile, as she admired the gold and pearl comb, of a pattern list then coming into fashion.
‘Adele kept on at me to buy it,’ said Pierre.
‘When shall I wear it?’ Natasha put it in her coil of hair. ‘It will do nhen I have to bring little Masha out; perhaps they will come in again hen. Well, let us go in.’
And gathering up the presents, they went first into the nursery, and hen in to see the countess.
The countess, as her habit was, was sitting playing patience with Vladame Byelov when Pierre and Natasha went into the drawing-room jvith parcels under their arms.
The countess was by now over sixty. Her hair was completely grey, md she wore a cap that surrounded her whole face with a frill. Her face vas wrinkled, her upper lip had sunk, and her eyes were dim.
After the deaths of her son and her husband that had followed so quickly on one another, she had felt herself a creature accidentally forgotten in this world, with no object and no interest in life. She ate and drank, slept and lay awake, but she did not live. Life gave her no impressions. She wanted nothing from life but peace, and that peace she could find only in death. But until death came to her she had to go on living—that is, using her vital forces. There was in the highest degree noticeable in her what may be observed in very small children and in very old people. No external aim could be seen in her existence; all that could be seen was the need to exercise her various capacities and propensities. She had to eat, to sleep, to think, to talk, to weep, to work, to get angry, and so on, simply because she had a stomach, a brain, muscles, nerves, and spleen. All this she did, not at the promptings of
any external motive, as people do in the full vigour of life, when the ai towards which they strive screens from our view that other aim ■ exercising their powers. She only talked because she needed to exerci; her lungs and her tongue. She cried like a child, because she needed tl physical relief of tears, and so on. What for people in their full vigoi is a motive, with her was obviously a pretext.
Thus in the morning, especially if she had eaten anything too rich tl night before, she sought an occasion for anger, and pitched on the fin excuse—the deafness of Madame Byelov.
From the other end of the room she would begin to say something t her in a low voice.
‘I fancy it is warmer to-day, my dear,’ she would say in a whispei And when Madame Byelov replied: ‘To be sure, they have come,’ sh would mutter angrily: ‘Mercy on us, how deaf and stupid she is!’
