When they all got up to go in to supper, Nikolinka Bolkonsky went i to Pierre with a pale face and shining, luminous eyes.
‘Uncle Pierre . . . you ... no ... If papa had been alive . . .
I would have been on your side?’ he asked.
Pierre saw in a flash all the original, complicated and violent travail c thought and feeling that must have been going on independently in tis boy during the conversation. And recalling all he had been saying,
] felt vexed that the boy should have heard him. He had to answer lm, however.
‘I believe he would,’ he said reluctantly, and he went out of the study. The boy looked down, and then for the first time seemed to become ivare of the havoc he had been making on the writing-table. He flushed >tly and went up to Nikolay.
‘Uncle, forgive me; I did it—not on purpose,’ he said, pointing to the agments of sealing-wax and pens.
Nikolay bounded up angrily. ‘Very good, very good,’ he said, throw- g the bits of pens and sealing-wax under the table. And with evident (fort mastering his fury, he turned away from him.
‘You ought not to have been here at all,’ he said.
XV
.T supper no more was said of politics and societies, but a conversation urned on the subject most agreeable to Nikolay—reminiscences of 1812. )enisov started the talk, and Pierre was particularly cordial and amus- rg. And the party broke up on the friendliest terms. Nikolay, after un- ressing in his study, and giving instructions to his steward, who was waiting him went in his dressing-gown to his bedroom, and found his /ife still at her writing-table: she was writing something.
1 ‘What are you writing, Marie?’asked Nikolay. Countess Marya flushed, ihe was afraid that what she was writing would not be understood and pproved by her husband.
She would have liked to conceal what she was writing from him, and iit the same time, she was glad he had caught her, and she had to tell him.
’It’s my diary, Nikolay,’ she said, handing him a blue note-book, filled with her firm, bold handwriting.
‘A diary!’ . . . said Nikolay, with a shade of mockery, and he took he note-book. He saw written in French:
‘December 4.—Andryusha’ (their elder boy) ‘would not be dressed when he waked up this morning, and Mademoiselle Louise sent for me. He was naughty and obstinate. I tried threatening him, but he only got more ill-tempered. Then I undertook to manage him, left him, and helped nurse get the other children up, and told him I did not love him. For a
long while he was quiet, as though he were surprised. Then he rushed 01 to me in his night-shirt, and sobbed so that I could not soothe him for long while. It was clear that what distressed him most was having grieve me. Then, when I gave him his report in the evening, he cried piteous! again as he kissed me. One can do anything with him by tenderness.’
‘What is his report?’ asked Nikolay.
‘I have begun giving the elder ones little marks in the evening of ho they have behaved.’
Nikolay glanced at the luminous eyes watching him, and went on turi ing over, and read the diary. Everything in the children’s lives was note down in it that seemed to the mother of interest as showing the characte of the children, or leading to general conclusions as to methods of bringin them up. It consisted mostly of the most trilling details; but they did nc seem so either to the mother or the father, as he now, for the first thru read this record of his children’s lives. On the 5th of December there wa the note:
‘Mitya was naughty at table. Papa said he should have no pudding. H had none; but he looked so miserably and greedily at the others whil they were eating. I believe that punishing them by depriving them of swee things only develops greediness. Must tell Nikolay.’
Nikolay put the book down and looked at his wife. The luminous eye looked at him doubtfully, to see whether he approved or not. There coul be no doubtof Nikolay’s approval, of his enthusiastic admiration of hi wife.
Perhaps there was no need to do it so pedantically; perhaps there wa no need of it all, thought Nikolay; but this untiring, perpetual spiritua effort, directed only at the children’s moral welfare, enchanted him. I Nikolay could have analysed his feelings, he would have found tha the very ground work of his steady and tender love and pride in hi: wife was always this feeling of awe at her spirituality, at that elevatei moral world that he could hardly enter, in which his wife always lived.
He was proud that she was so clever and so good, recognising his owi insignificance beside her in the spiritual world, and he rejoiced the mor< that she, with her soul, not only belonged to him, but was a part of hi; very self.
