Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 by Leo Tolstoy

Author:Leo Tolstoy [Tolstoy, Leo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2017-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

XII

The day after the theater, the Rostovs did not go anywhere, and no one came to them. Marya Dmitrievna discussed something with Natasha’s father, concealing it from her. Natasha could guess that they were talking about the old prince, working something out, and that disturbed and offended her. She was expecting Prince Andrei any moment and had sent the yard porter to Vzdvizhenka twice that day to find out if he had come. He had not. It was now harder for her than in the first days after her arrival. To her impatience and sadness were added the unpleasant memory of meeting Princess Marya and the old prince, and a fear and uneasiness of which she did not know the cause. She kept fancying either that he would never come or that something would happen to her before he came. She could not, as before, think about him calmly and for a long time, alone with herself. As soon as she began thinking about him, to her memory of him were added the memories of the old prince, of Princess Marya, of last night’s performance, and of Kuragin. She again faced the question of whether she was to blame, whether she had already broken faith with Prince Andrei, and she again found herself recalling in the minutest detail every word, every gesture, every shade of expression that had played on the face of this man, who was able to arouse in her an incomprehensible and frightening feeling. In the eyes of those around her, Natasha seemed more animated than usual, but she was far from being as calm and happy as she had been before.

On Sunday morning, Marya Dmitrievna invited her guests to the liturgy at her parish of the Dormition on Mogiltsy.

“I don’t like these fashionable churches,” she said, obviously proud of her freedom of thought. “God is the same everywhere. We have a wonderful priest, he celebrates properly, with some nobility, and so does the deacon. Is it some sort of holiness if the choir sings a concert? I don’t like it, it’s nothing but indulgence!”

Marya Dmitrievna liked Sundays and knew how to make them festive. Her house was always all scrubbed and cleaned on Saturday; she and her servants did no work, everybody got dressed up festively, and everybody went to the liturgy. Courses were added to the mistress’s dinner, and the servants were given vodka and a roast goose or suckling pig. But in nothing in the whole house was the festivity so noticeable as in Marya Dmitrievna’s broad, stern face, which on that day acquired a permanent expression of solemnity.

When they had finished coffee after the liturgy, in the drawing room, where the dustcovers had been removed, it was announced to Marya Dmitrievna that the carriage was ready, and she, with a stern look, dressed in the fancy shawl in which she went visiting, stood up and declared that she was going to see Prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky, to have a talk with him concerning Natasha.

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