Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace - Original Version

“Yes!” said Boris.

“For ever?” the girl said. “Until death itself?”

And, taking him by the arm, she calmly walked with him into the nursery. Boris’s handsome, refined face turned red and the expression of mockery disappeared entirely from his lips. He thrust out his chest and sighed in happiness and contentment. His eyes seemed to be gazing far into the future, four years ahead, to the happy year of 1809. The young people gathered once again in the nursery, where they loved to sit most of all.

“No, you shan’t leave!” shouted Nikolai, who did and said everything passionately and impetuously, grabbing Boris by the sleeve of his uniform jacket with one hand and pulling his arm away from his sister with the other. “You have to get married.”

“You have to! You have to!” both the girls cried.

“I’ll be the sexton, Nikolaenka,” shouted Petrushka. “Please, let me be the sexton: ‘Oh Lord have mercy!’”

Although it might seem incomprehensible how much fun young men and girls could find in the wedding of the doll and Boris, one look at the exultation and joy expressed on all their faces when the doll, adorned with Seville orange blossom and wearing a white dress, was set on its kidskin bottom on a little post and Boris, who was ready to agree to anything, was led up to her, and little Petrusha, having donned a skirt, pretended he was the sexton – one look at all this was enough to share in this joy, even without understanding it.

During the dressing of the bride, for decency’s sake Nikolai and Boris were banished from the room. Nikolai walked to and fro, sighing to himself and shrugging his shoulders.

NATASHA ROSTOV AND BORIS DRUBETSKOY Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866

“What’s the matter?” asked Boris.

Nikolai glanced at his friend and gestured despairingly with his hand.

“Ah, you don’t know what just happened to me!” he said, clutching his head in his hands.

“What?” asked Boris, in a calm, humorous tone.

“Well, I’m going away, and she … No, I can’t say it!”

“But what is it?” Boris asked again. “Something with Sonya?”

“Yes. Do you know what?”

“What?”

“Agh, it’s incredible! What do you think? Do I have to tell my father after this?”

“But what?”

“You know, I don’t even know myself how it happened, I kissed Sonya today: I have acted vilely. But what am I to do? I am madly in love. But was it bad of me? I know it was bad … What do you say?”

Boris smiled.

“What are you saying? Did you really?” he asked in sly, mocking amazement. “Kissed her straight on the lips? When?”

“Why, just now. You wouldn’t have done that? Eh? You wouldn’t have. Have I acted badly?”

“Well, I don’t know. It all depends on what your intentions are.”

“Well! But of course. That’s right. I told her. As soon as they make me an officer, I shall marry her.”

“That’s amazing,” declared Boris. “How very decisive you are!”

Nikolai laughed, reassured.

“I’m amazed that you have never been in love and no one has ever fallen in love with you.”

“That’s my character,” said Boris, blushing.

“Oh, yes, you’re so very cunning! It’s true what Vera says,” Nikolai said and suddenly began tickling his friend.

“And you’re so very awful. It is true, what Vera says.” And Boris, who disliked being tickled, pushed his friend’s hands away. “You’re bound to do something extraordinary.”

Both of them, laughing, went back to the girls to conclude the rite of marriage.

The countess felt so tired after the visits that she gave orders not to receive anyone else, and the doorman was given strict instructions to invite everyone who might still arrive with congratulations to dine. Besides that, she wanted to have a confidential talk with her childhood friend Anna Mikhailovna, whom she had not seen properly since her arrival from St. Petersburg. Anna Mikhailovna, with her careworn and agreeable face, moved closer to the countess’s armchair.

“I shall be entirely candid with you,” said Anna Mikhailovna. “There are so few of us old friends left. That is why I value your friendship so.”

The princess looked at Vera and stopped. The countess squeezed her friend’s hand.

“Vera,” said the countess, addressing her elder, and obviously less loved daughter. “How can you be so completely tactless? Surely you can tell you are not needed here? Go to your sisters or …”

The beautiful Vera smiled, apparently not feeling in the least insulted, and went to her room. But as she passed by the nursery she noticed two couples in there, seated symmetrically at the two windows. Sonya was sitting close beside Nikolai, who, with his face flushed, was reading her the first poem that he had ever composed. Boris and Natasha were sitting by the other window without speaking. Boris was holding her hand and he let go of it when Vera appeared. Natasha picked up the little box of gloves standing beside her and began sorting through them. Vera smiled. Nikolai and Sonya looked at her, got up and left the room.

“Natasha,” said Vera to her younger sister, who was intently sorting through the scented gloves. “Why do Nikolai and Sonya run away from me? What secrets do they have?”

“Why, what business is it of yours, Vera?” Natasha asked protectively in her squeaky voice, continuing with her work. She was evidently feeling even more kind and affectionate towards everyone because of her own happiness.

“It’s very stupid of them,” said Vera in a tone that Natasha thought sounded offensive.

“Everyone has their own secrets. We don’t bother you and Berg,” she said, growing heated.

“How stupid! You’ll see, I’m going to tell mama how you carry on with Boris. It’s not right.”

“Natalya Ilinishna treats me perfectly well. I can’t complain,” he said sarcastically.

Natasha did not laugh and looked up at him.

“Don’t, Boris, you’re such a diplomat” (the word diplomat was very popular with the children, in the special meaning which they gave to this word), “it’s really boring,” she said. “Why is she pestering me?”

She turned to Vera.

“You’ll never understand,” she said, “because you’ve never loved anyone, you have no heart, you’re nothing but Madame de Genlis” (this nickname, which was regarded as very insulting, had been given to Vera by Nikolai) “and your greatest pleasure is to cause trouble for others. You can flirt with Berg as much as you like.”

She blurted this out hurriedly and flounced out of the nursery.

The beautiful Vera, who had such an irritating, disagreeable effect on everyone, smiled again with the same smile that meant nothing and, apparently unaffected by what had been said to her, went up to the mirror and adjusted her scarf and hair. As she gazed at her own beautiful face, she visibly turned colder and calmer than ever.

In the drawing room the conversation was continuing.

“Ah, my dear,” said the countess, “in my life too not everything is roses. Do you think I cannot see that with the way we live, our fortune will not last long? And it’s all the club, and his generous nature. When we are in the country, what rest do we get there? Theatres, hunts and God knows what else. But there I am talking about myself! Now, how did you arrange everything? I am constantly amazed at you, Annette, at your age, the way you gallop off in a carriage on your own, to Moscow, to St. Petersburg, to all the ministers and all the important people, and you know how to deal with them all, I am amazed! Well, how did everything go? I don’t know how to do anything of that sort.”