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Tears suddenly rose in her eyes, she turned away, lifted her music before her eyes, began singing again, and again began walking up and down the room. Just then Petya came running in from the drawing room. Petya was now a handsome rosy lad of fifteen with full red lips and resembled Natasha.

I am nursing and my milk was spoiled.... Petya was at death's door. But you were enjoying yourself. Yes, enjoying..." Pierre knew he was not to blame, for he could not have come sooner; he knew this outburst was unseemly and would blow over in a minute or two; above all he knew that he himself was bright and happy. He wanted to smile but dared not even think of doing so.

'What, now, do you want a horse for? for driving or for breeding? Sitnikov inquired of me. 'Oh, I'll see both sorts. 'To be sure, to be sure, the horsedealer commented, dwelling on each syllable. 'Petya, show the gentleman Ermine. We came out into the yard. 'But won't you let them bring you a bench out of the hut?... You don't want to sit down.... As you please.

Nothing Petya could have seen now would have surprised him. He was in a fairy kingdom where everything was possible. He looked up at the sky. And the sky was a fairy realm like the earth. It was clearing, and over the tops of the trees clouds were swiftly sailing as if unveiling the stars. Sometimes it looked as if the clouds were passing, and a clear black sky appeared.

He sprang forward and upset an old woman who was catching at a biscuit; the old woman did not consider herself defeated though she was lying on the ground she grabbed at some biscuits but her hand did not reach them. Petya pushed her hand away with his knee, seized a biscuit, and as if fearing to be too late, again shouted "Hurrah!" with a voice already hoarse.

"It's all nonsense, all rubbish those discussions which lead to nothing and all those idiotic societies!" Natasha declared of the very affairs in the immense importance of which she firmly believed. And she would go to the nursery to nurse Petya, her only boy.

Though she concealed from him her intention of keeping him under her wing, Petya guessed her designs, and instinctively fearing that he might give way to emotion when with her might "become womanish" as he termed it to himself he treated her coldly, avoided her, and during his stay in Moscow attached himself exclusively to Natasha for whom he had always had a particularly brotherly tenderness, almost lover-like.

She exhaled happiness and love from the time Nicholas returned, and the faithful, unalterable love of this girl had a gladdening effect on him. Petya and Natasha surprised Nicholas most. Petya was a big handsome boy of thirteen, merry, witty, and mischievous, with a voice that was already breaking. As for Natasha, for a long while Nicholas wondered and laughed whenever he looked at her.

Petya ran up and offered her his back. She jumped on it, putting her arms round his neck, and he pranced along with her. "No, don't... the island of Madagascar!" she said, and jumping off his back she went downstairs.

As long as Nicholas alone was in danger the countess imagined that she loved her first-born more than all her other children and even reproached herself for it; but when her youngest: the scapegrace who had been bad at lessons, was always breaking things in the house and making himself a nuisance to everybody, that snub-nosed Petya with his merry black eyes and fresh rosy cheeks where soft down was just beginning to show when he was thrown amid those big, dreadful, cruel men who were fighting somewhere about something and apparently finding pleasure in it then his mother thought she loved him more, much more, than all her other children.