War and Peace. Leo Tolstoy

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      Anna Mikháylovna, in a few words, told her the contents of the letter, on condition that she should tell no one.

      “No, on my true word of honor,” said Natásha, crossing herself, “I won’t tell anyone!” and she ran off at once to Sónya.

      “Nikólenka... wounded... a letter,” she announced in gleeful triumph.

      “Nicholas!” was all Sónya said, instantly turning white.

      Natásha, seeing the impression the news of her brother’s wound produced on Sónya, felt for the first time the sorrowful side of the news.

      She rushed to Sónya, hugged her, and began to cry.

      “A little wound, but he has been made an officer; he is well now, he wrote himself,” said she through her tears.

      “There now! It’s true that all you women are crybabies,” remarked Pétya, pacing the room with large, resolute strides. “Now I’m very glad, very glad indeed, that my brother has distinguished himself so. You are all blubberers and understand nothing.”

      Natásha smiled through her tears.

      “You haven’t read the letter?” asked Sónya.

      “No, but she said that it was all over and that he’s now an officer.”

      “Thank God!” said Sónya, crossing herself. “But perhaps she deceived you. Let us go to Mamma.”

      Pétya paced the room in silence for a time.

      “If I’d been in Nikólenka’s place I would have killed even more of those Frenchmen,” he said. “What nasty brutes they are! I’d have killed so many that there’d have been a heap of them.”

      “Hold your tongue, Pétya, what a goose you are!”

      “I’m not a goose, but they are who cry about trifles,” said Pétya.

      “Do you remember him?” Natásha suddenly asked, after a moment’s silence.

      Sónya smiled.

      “Do I remember Nicholas?”

      “No, Sónya, but do you remember so that you remember him perfectly, remember everything?” said Natásha, with an expressive gesture, evidently wishing to give her words a very definite meaning. “I remember Nikólenka too, I remember him well,” she said. “But I don’t remember Borís. I don’t remember him a bit.”

      “What! You don’t remember Borís?” asked Sónya in surprise.

      “It’s not that I don’t remember—I know what he is like, but not as I remember Nikólenka. Him—I just shut my eyes and remember, but Borís... No!” (She shut her eyes.) “No! there’s nothing at all.”

      “Oh, Natásha!” said Sónya, looking ecstatically and earnestly at her friend as if she did not consider her worthy to hear what she meant to say and as if she were saying it to someone else, with whom joking was out of the question, “I am in love with your brother once for all and, whatever may happen to him or to me, shall never cease to love him as long as I live.”

      Natásha looked at Sónya with wondering and inquisitive eyes, and said nothing. She felt that Sónya was speaking the truth, that there was such love as Sónya was speaking of. But Natásha had not yet felt anything like it. She believed it could be, but did not understand it.

      “Shall you write to him?” she asked.

      Sónya became thoughtful. The question of how to write to Nicholas, and whether she ought to write, tormented her. Now that he was already an officer and a wounded hero, would it be right to remind him of herself and, as it might seem, of the obligations to her he had taken on himself?

      “I don’t know. I think if he writes, I will write too,” she said, blushing.

      “And you won’t feel ashamed to write to him?”

      Sónya smiled.

      “No.”

      “And I should be ashamed to write to Borís. I’m not going to.”

      “Why should you be ashamed?”

      “Well, I don’t know. It’s awkward and would make me ashamed.”

      “And I know why she’d be ashamed,” said Pétya, offended by Natásha’s previous remark. “It’s because she was in love with that fat one in spectacles” (that was how Pétya described his namesake, the new Count Bezúkhov) “and now she’s in love with that singer” (he meant Natásha’s Italian singing master), “that’s why she’s ashamed!”

      “Pétya, you’re a stupid!” said Natásha.

      “Not more stupid than you, madam,” said the nine-year-old Pétya, with the air of an old brigadier.

      The countess had been prepared by Anna Mikháylovna’s hints at dinner. On retiring to her own room, she sat in an armchair, her eyes fixed on a miniature portrait of her son on the lid of a snuffbox, while the tears kept coming into her eyes. Anna Mikháylovna, with the letter, came on tiptoe to the countess’ door and paused.

      “Don’t come in,” she said to the old count who was following her. “Come later.” And she went in, closing the door behind her.

      The count put his ear to the keyhole and listened.

      At first he heard the sound of indifferent voices, then Anna Mikháylovna’s voice alone in a long speech, then a cry, then silence, then both voices together with glad intonations, and then footsteps. Anna Mikháylovna opened the door. Her face wore the proud expression of a surgeon who has just performed a difficult operation and admits the public to appreciate his skill.

      “It is done!” she said to the count, pointing triumphantly to the countess, who sat holding in one hand the snuffbox with its portrait and in the other the letter, and pressing them alternately to her lips.

      When she saw the count, she stretched out her arms to him, embraced his bald head, over which she again looked at the letter and the portrait, and in order to press them again to her lips, she slightly pushed away the bald head. Véra, Natásha, Sónya, and Pétya now entered the room, and the reading of the letter began. After a brief description of the campaign and the two battles in which he had taken part, and his promotion, Nicholas said that he kissed his father’s and mother’s hands asking for their blessing, and that he kissed Véra, Natásha, and Pétya. Besides that, he sent greetings to Monsieur Schelling, Madame Schoss, and his old nurse, and asked them to kiss for him “dear Sónya, whom he loved and thought of just the same as ever.” When she heard this Sónya blushed so that tears came into her eyes and, unable to bear the looks turned upon her, ran away into the dancing hall, whirled round it at full speed with her dress puffed out like a balloon, and, flushed and smiling, plumped down on the floor. The countess was crying.

      “Why are you crying, Mamma?” asked Véra. “From all he says one should be glad and not cry.”

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