Countess Marya listened to her husband, and understood all he sail to her. She knew that when he was thus thinking aloud, he would some times ask what he had been saying, and was vexed when he noticed shi had been thinking of something else. But she had to make a great effor to attend, because she did not feel the slightest interest in what he wa: saying to her. She looked at him, and though she would not exactly think of other things, her feelings were elsewhere. She felt a submissive, tendei love for this man, who could never understand all that she understood: and she seemed, for that very reason, to love him the more, with a shadi of passionate tenderness. Apart from that feeling, which absorbed hei entirely, and prevented her from following the details of her husband’s plans, thoughts kept floating through her brain that had nothing in common with what he was saying. She thought of her nephew (what her husband had said of his excitement over Pierre’s talk had made a great impression on her), and various traits of his tender, sensitive character rose to her mind; and while she thought of her nephew, she thought, too, of her own children. She did not compare her nephew with her own children, but she compared her own feeling for him, and her feeling for her children, and felt, with sorrow, that in her feeling for Nikolinka there was something wanting.
Sometimes the idea had occurred to her that this difference was due to his age; but she felt guilty towards him, and in her soul vowed to amend, and to do the impossible, that is, in this life, to love her husband, and her children, and Nikolinka, and all her fellow-creatures, as Christ loved men. Countess Marya’s soul was always striving towards the infinite, the eternal, and the perfect, and so she could never be at peace. A stern expression came into her face from that hidden, lofty suffering of the spirit, weighed down by the flesh. Nikolay gazed at her. ‘My God! What will become of us, if she dies, as I dread, when she looks like that?’ he thought, and standing before the holy images, he began to repeat his evening prayer.
XVI
'atasha, as soon as she was alone with her husband, had begun talking 0, as only husband and wife can talk, that is, understanding and com- unicating their thoughts to each other, with extraordinary clearness and .pidity, by a quite peculiar method opposed to all the rules of logic, ithout the aid of premises, deductions, and conclusions. Natasha was ) used to talking to her husband in this fashion that a logical sequence ••1 f thought on Pierre’s part was to her an infallible symptom of something eing out of tune between them. When he began arguing, talking reason- bly and calmly, and when she was led on by his example into doing the ime, she knew it would infallibly lead to a quarrel.
From the moment they were alone together and Natasha, with wide- pen, happy eyes, crept softly up to him and suddenly, swiftly seizing his ead, pressed it to her bosom, saying, ‘Now you’re all mine, mine! You han’t escape!’ that conversation began that contravened every rule of ogic, especially because they talked of several different subjects at once. This discussion of all sorts of things at once, far from hindering clearness if comprehension, was the surest token that they understood one another fully.
As in a dream everything is uncertain, meaningless, and contradictory except the feeling that directs the dream, so in this communion of ideas, apart from every law of reason, what is clear and consecutive is not what is said, but the feeling that prompts the words.
; Natasha talked to Pierre of the daily round of existence at her brother’s; told him how she had suffered and been half-dead without him; and that jshe was fonder of Marie than ever, and Marie was better in every way than she was. In saying this Natasha was quite sincere in acknowledging Marie’s superiority, but at the same time she expected Pierre to prefer her to Marie and all other women, and now, especially after he had been seeing a great many women in Petersburg, to tell her so anew. In response to Natasha’s words, Pierre told her how intolerable he had found the evening parties and dinners with ladies in Petersburg.
‘I have quite lost the art of talking to ladies,’ he said; ‘it was horribly tiresome. Especially as I was so busy.’
Natasha looked intently at him, and went on. ‘Marie, now she is wonderful!’ she said. ‘The insight she has into children. She seems to see straight into their souls. Yesterday, for instance, Mitenka was naughty . . .’
‘And isn’t he like his father?’ Pierre put in.
Natasha knew why he made this remark about Mitenka’s likeness to Nikolay. He disliked’ the thought of his dispute with his brother-in-law, and was longing.to hear what she thought about it.
‘It’s a weakness of Nikolay’s, that if anything is not generally accepted, he will never agree with it. And I see that that’s just what you value to
noS WAR AND PEACE
