“Nikolushka…a letter…wounded…wa…was…ma chère…wounded…my darling boy…my little countess…promoted to officer…thank God…How shall I tell my little countess?…”
Anna Mikhailovna sat down beside him, took her handkerchief, wiped the tears from his eyes, the letter stained by them, and her own tears, read the letter, reassured the count, and decided that she would prepare the countess over dinner and before tea, and after tea would announce everything, with God’s help.
All through dinner, Anna Mikhailovna talked about rumors of the war, about Nikolushka; she asked twice when the last letter had come from him, though she already knew, and observed that a letter could very easily come that day. Each time these hints made the countess begin to worry and look anxiously now at the count, now at Anna Mikhailovna, Anna Mikhailovna quite imperceptibly turned the conversation to insignificant subjects. Natasha, the best endowed of all the family with the ability to detect the nuances of intonations, glances, and facial expressions, had pricked up her ears since the beginning of dinner, and knew that there was something between her father and Anna Mikhailovna, and something concerning her brother, and that Anna Mikhailovna was making preparations. In spite of all her boldness (Natasha knew how sensitive her mother was to everything that had to do with news of Nikolushka), she did not venture to ask any questions during dinner, and ate nothing from anxiousness, and fidgeted on her chair, not listening to her governess’s reproaches. After dinner, she rushed headlong after Anna Mikhailovna and threw herself on her neck at full speed in the sitting room.
“Auntie, darling, tell me, what is it?”
“Nothing, my friend.”
“No, my darling, my dear heart, my honey, my peach, I won’t let go, I know you know something.”
Anna Mikhailovna shook her head.
“Vous êtes une fine mouche, mon enfant,”*258 she said.
“A letter from Nikolenka? Surely!” cried Natasha, reading the affirmative answer in Anna Mikhailovna’s face.
“But for God’s sake be more carefuclass="underline" you know what a shock it may give your maman.”
“I will, I will be, but tell me. You won’t? Then I’ll go and tell her now.”
Anna Mikhailovna briefly recounted to Natasha the contents of the letter, on condition that she not tell anyone.
“My noble word of honor,” said Natasha, crossing herself, “I won’t tell anyone”—and she immediately ran to Sonya.
“Nikolenka…wounded…a letter…” she said solemnly and joyfully.
“Nicolas!” Sonya merely said, instantly turning pale.
Seeing the impression the news of her brother’s wound made on Sonya, Natasha felt for the first time the whole grievous side of this news.
She rushed to Sonya, embraced her, and wept.
“Slightly wounded, but promoted to officer; he’s recovered now, he wrote himself,” she said through her tears.
“It’s obvious all you women are crybabies,” said Petya, pacing the room in big, resolute strides. “I’m very glad, really very glad, that my brother has distinguished himself. You’re all blubberers! You understand nothing.”
Natasha smiled through her tears.
“You haven’t read the letter?” asked Sonya.
“No, I haven’t, but she said it’s all over and he’s already an officer…”
“Thank God,” said Sonya, crossing herself. “But maybe she deceived you? Let’s go to maman.”
Petya silently paced the room.
“If I were in Nikolushka’s place, I’d have killed even more of those Frenchmen,” he said, “they’re so disgusting! I’d have cut down so many, there’d be a whole pile,” Petya went on.
“Shut up, Petya, what a fool you are!…”
“I’m not a fool, the fools are the ones who cry over trifles,” said Petya.
“Do you remember him?” Natasha suddenly asked, after a moment’s silence. Sonya smiled.
“Do I remember Nicolas?”
“No, Sonya, do you remember him so as to remember everything, remember really well,” said Natasha, with an assiduous gesture, evidently wishing to give her words the most serious meaning. “I remember Nikolenka, too, I do,” she said. “But not Boris. I don’t remember him at all.”
“What? You don’t remember Boris?” Sonya asked in surprise.
“It’s not that I don’t remember him—I know how he is, but I don’t remember him the way I do Nikolenka. I close my eyes, and I remember him, but Boris I don’t” (she closed her eyes), “no—nothing!”
“Ah, Natasha!” Sonya said rapturously and seriously, without looking at her friend, as if she considered her unworthy of what she intended to say, and as if she was saying it to someone else, with whom it was impossible to joke. “I’ve fallen in love with your brother once and for all, and whatever happens to him, or to me, I will never stop loving him—all my life.”
Natasha looked at Sonya with astonished, curious eyes and said nothing. She felt that what Sonya had said was true, that there was such love as Sonya was talking about; but Natasha had never experienced anything like that. She believed it could be, but did not understand it.
“Will you write to him?” she asked.
Sonya fell to thinking. The question of how to write to Nicolas, and whether she should write to him, was a question that tormented her. Now that he was already an officer and a wounded hero, would it be right on her part to remind him of herself and, as it were, of the commitment he had taken upon himself in her regard.
“I don’t know; I think, since he writes, I’ll write, too,” she said, blushing.
“And you won’t be ashamed to write to him?”
Sonya smiled.
“No.”
“But I’d be ashamed to write to Boris, so I won’t.”
“Ashamed of what?”
“Just so, I don’t know. Awkward, ashamed.”
“But I know why she’d be ashamed,” said Petya, offended by Natasha’s first remark, “because she was in love with that fat one in spectacles” (so Petya described his namesake, the new Count Bezukhov); “now she’s in love with this singer” (Petya was referring to Natasha’s Italian singing teacher): “so she’s ashamed.”
“Petya, you’re stupid,” said Natasha.
“No stupider than you, old girl,” said the nine-year-old Petya, as if he was an old brigadier.
The countess had been prepared during dinner by Anna Mikhailovna’s hints. Going to her room, she sat in an armchair, not taking her eyes from the miniature portrait of her son on a snuffbox, and tears welled up in her eyes. Anna Mikhailovna came to the countess’s room on tiptoe with the letter and paused.
“Don’t come in,” she said to the old count, who was following her, “later,” she said, and closed the door behind her.
The count put his ear to the keyhole and began to listen.
At first he heard the sounds of indifferent talk, then only the sound of Anna Mikhailovna’s voice making a long speech, then a cry, then silence, then both voices again, speaking together with joyful intonations, and then footsteps, and then Anna Mikhailovna opened the door to him. Anna Mikhailovna’s face bore the proud expression of a surgeon who has completed a difficult amputation and admits the public so that it can appreciate his art.
“C’est fait!”*259 she said to the count, pointing with a solemn gesture to the countess, who was holding the snuffbox with the portrait in one hand and the letter in the other, and pressing her lips first to the one, then to the other.
Seeing the count, she held her arms out to him, embraced his bald head, and again, over his bald head, looked at the letter and the portrait, and again pushed the bald head slightly away so as to press her lips to them. Vera, Natasha, Sonya, and Petya came into the room, and the reading began. In the letter Nikolushka gave a brief description of the march, the two battles in which he had taken part, and his promotion to officer, and said that he kissed the hands of maman and papa, asking their blessing, and kissed Vera, Natasha, and Petya. Besides that, he sent his greetings to M. Schelling, and Mme Schoss, and the nanny, and besides that he asked them to kiss his dear Sonya, whom he loved as ever and remembered as ever. Hearing that, Sonya blushed so much that tears came to her eyes. And, unable to bear the gazes turned to her, she rushed to the ballroom, made a run, twirled, and, her dress ballooning, all flushed and smiling, sat down on the floor. The countess was crying.