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"What else did he say to you? What are those verses? Read them..." said her mother, thoughtfully, referring to some verses Prince Andrew had written in Natasha's album. "Mamma, one need not be ashamed of his being a widower?" "Don't, Natasha! Pray to God. 'Marriages are made in heaven," said her mother. "Darling Mummy, how I love you!
Perhaps, he thought, he would best gain his end by indirect efforts to make her betray herself. "Leonti said," he began, "that you have been reading books out of my library. Did you read them with him?" "Sometimes he told me of the contents of certain books; others I read with the priest, Natasha's husband." "What books did you read with the priest?"
She looked at Natasha's dresses and praised them, as well as a new dress of her own made of "metallic gauze," which she had received from Paris, and advised Natasha to have one like it. "But anything suits you, my charmer!" she remarked. A smile of pleasure never left Natasha's face.
Boris kissed Natasha's hand and said that he was astonished at the change in her. "How handsome you have grown!" "I should think so!" replied Natasha's laughing eyes. "And is Papa older?" she asked. Natasha sat down and, without joining in Boris' conversation with the countess, silently and minutely studied her childhood's suitor.
She wrote to him formal, monotonous, and dry letters, to which she attached no importance herself, and in the rough copies of which the countess corrected her mistakes in spelling. There was still no improvement in the countess' health, but it was impossible to defer the journey to Moscow any longer. Natasha's trousseau had to be ordered and the house sold.
When halfway home Nicholas handed the reins to the coachman and ran for a moment to Natasha's sleigh and stood on its wing. "Natasha!" he whispered in French, "do you know I have made up my mind about Sonya?" "Have you told her?" asked Natasha, suddenly beaming all over with joy. "Oh, how strange you are with that mustache and those eyebrows!... Natasha are you glad?" "I am so glad, so glad!
Bang, bang! went the first sleigh over a cradle hole in the snow of the road, and each of the other sleighs jolted in the same way, and rudely breaking the frost-bound stillness, the troykas began to speed along the road, one after the other. "A hare's track, a lot of tracks!" rang out Natasha's voice through the frost-bound air. "How light it is, Nicholas!" came Sonya's voice.
When it came to Natasha's turn to choose a partner, she rose and, tripping rapidly across in her little shoes trimmed with bows, ran timidly to the corner where Denisov sat. She saw that everybody was looking at her and waiting. Nicholas saw that Denisov was refusing though he smiled delightedly. He ran up to them. "Please, Vasili Dmitrich," Natasha was saying, "do come!"
In 1810 he received letters from his parents, in which they told him of Natasha's engagement to Bolkonski, and that the wedding would be in a year's time because the old prince made difficulties. This letter grieved and mortified Nicholas.
It will be remembered that, as a result of Natasha's act of vengeance, the elder Princess Chechevinski left behind her only a fraction of the money her son expected to inherit. And this fraction he by no means hoarded, but with cynical disregard of the future he poured money out like water, gambling, drinking, plunging into every form of dissipation.
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