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“Ptya, you’re a stupid!” said Natsha.
“Not more stupid than you, madam,” said the nine-year-old Ptya, with the air of an old brigadier.
The countess had been prepared by Anna Mikhylovna’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 Mikhylovna, 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 Mikhylovna’s voice alone in a long speech, then a cry, then silence, then both voices together with glad intonations, and then footsteps. Anna Mikhylovna 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. Vra, Natsha, Snya, and Ptya 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 Vra, Natsha, and Ptya. Besides that, he sent greetings to Monsieur Schelling, Madame Schoss, and his old nurse, and asked them to kiss for him “dear Snya, whom he loved and thought of just the same as ever.” When she heard this Snya 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 Vra. “From all he says one should be glad and not cry.”
This was quite true, but the count, the countess, and Natsha looked at her reproachfully. “And who is it she takes after?” thought the countess.
Nicholas’ letter was read over hundreds of times, and those who were considered worthy to hear it had to come to the countess, for she did not let it out of her hands. The tutors came, and the nurses, and Dmtri, and several acquaintances, and the countess reread the letter each time with fresh pleasure and each time discovered in it fresh proofs of Niklenka’s virtues. How strange, how extraordinary, how joyful it seemed, that her son, the scarcely perceptible motion of whose tiny limbs she had felt twenty years ago within her, that son about whom she used to have quarrels with the too indulgent count, that son who had first learned to say “pear” and then “granny,” that this son should now be away in a foreign land amid strange surroundings, a manly warrior doing some kind of man’s work of his own, without help or guidance. The universal experience of ages, showing that children do grow imperceptibly from the cradle to manhood, did not exist for the countess. Her son’s growth toward manhood, at each of its stages, had seemed as extraordinary to her as if there had never existed the millions of human beings who grew up in the same way. As twenty years before, it seemed impossible that the little creature who lived somewhere under her heart would ever cry, suck her breast, and begin to speak, so now she could not believe that that little creature could be this strong, brave man, this model son and officer that, judging by this letter, he now was.
“What a style! How charmingly he describes!” said she, reading the descriptive part of the letter. “And what a soul! Not a word about himself.... Not a word! About some Densov or other, though he himself, I dare say, is braver than any of them. He says nothing about his sufferings. What a heart! How like him it is! And how he has remembered everybody! Not forgetting anyone. I always said when he was only so high—I always said....”
For more than a week preparations were being made, rough drafts of letters to Nicholas from all the household were written and copied out, while under the supervision of the countess and the solicitude of the count, money and all things necessary for the uniform and equipment of the newly commissioned officer were collected. Anna Mikhylovna, practical woman that she was, had even managed by favor with army authorities to secure advantageous means of communication for herself and her son. She had opportunities of sending her letters to the Grand Duke Constantine Pvlovich, who commanded the Guards. The Rostvs supposed that The Russian Guards, Abroad, was quite a definite address, and that if a letter reached the Grand Duke in command of the Guards there was no reason why it should not reach the Pvlograd regiment, which was presumably somewhere in the same neighborhood. And so it was decided to send the letters and money by the Grand Duke’s courier to Bors and Bors was to forward them to Nicholas. The letters were from the old count, the countess, Ptya, Vra, Natsha, and Snya, and finally there were six thousand rubles for his outfit and various other things the old count sent to his son.
On the twelfth of November, Kutzov’s active army, in camp before Olmtz, was preparing to be reviewed next day by the two Emperors—the Russian and the Austrian. The Guards, just arrived from Russia, spent the night ten miles from Olmtz and next morning were to come straight to the review, reaching the field at Olmtz by ten o’clock.
That day Nicholas Rostv received a letter from Bors, telling him that the Ismylov regiment was quartered for the night ten miles from Olmtz and that he wanted to see him as he had a letter and money for him. Rostv was particularly in need of money now that the troops, after their active service, were stationed near Olmtz and the camp swarmed with well-provisioned sutlers and Austrian Jews offering all sorts of tempting wares. The Pvlograds held feast after feast, celebrating awards they had received for the campaign, and made expeditions to Olmtz to visit a certain Caroline the Hungarian, who had recently opened a restaurant there with girls as waitresses. Rostv, who had just celebrated his promotion to a cornetcy and bought Densov’s horse, Bedouin, was in debt all round, to his comrades and the sutlers. On receiving Bors’ letter he rode with a fellow officer to Olmtz, dined there, drank a bottle of wine, and then set off alone to the Guards’ camp to find his old playmate. Rostv had not yet had time to get his uniform. He had on a shabby cadet jacket, decorated with a soldier’s cross, equally shabby cadet’s riding breeches lined with worn leather, and an officer’s saber with a sword knot. The Don horse he was riding was one he had bought from a Cossack during the campaign, and he wore a crumpled hussar cap stuck jauntily back on one side of his head. As he rode up to the camp he thought how he would impress Bors and all his comrades of the Guards by his appearance—that of a fighting hussar who had been under fire.
