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"I'll stay here," muttered Natasha. "Do lie down," she added crossly, and buried her face in the pillow. The countess, Madame Schoss, and Sonya undressed hastily and lay down. The small lamp in front of the icons was the only light left in the room.
Then she left the room without answering Mme. Schoss, who was utterly mystified by her strange exclamation. She next met Pétia and a companion, both very full of some fireworks which were to be let off that evening. "Pétia!" she exclaimed, "carry me down-stairs!"
Besides that, he sent greetings to Monsieur Schelling, Madame Schoss, and his old nurse, and asked them to kiss for him "dear Sonya, whom he loved and thought of just the same as ever."
Madame Schoss, who had been out to visit her daughter, increased the countess' fears still more by telling what she had seen at a spirit dealer's in Myasnitski Street. When returning by that street she had been unable to pass because of a drunken crowd rioting in front of the shop.
First she heard her mother praying and sighing and the creaking of her bed under her, then Madame Schoss' familiar whistling snore and Sonya's gentle breathing. Then the countess called to Natasha. Natasha did not answer. "I think she's asleep, Mamma," said Sonya softly. After a short silence the countess spoke again but this time no one replied.
The countess knew this, but what it might be she did not know, and this alarmed and tormented her. "Natasha, undress, darling; lie down on my bed." A bed had been made on a bedstead for the countess only. Madame Schoss and the two girls were to sleep on some hay on the floor. "No, Mamma, I will lie down here on the floor," Natasha replied irritably and she went to the window and opened it.
"I think this used to be Natasha," thought Nicholas, "and that was Madame Schoss, but perhaps it's not, and this Circassian with the mustache I don't know, but I love her." "Aren't you cold?" he asked. They did not answer but began to laugh. Dimmler from the sleigh behind shouted something probably something funny but they could not make out what he said.
Sonya and Madame Schoss, who had not yet undressed, went out with him. Only Natasha and the countess remained in the room. Petya was no longer with the family, he had gone on with his regiment which was making for Troitsa. The countess, on hearing that Moscow was on fire, began to cry.
It was so light that he could see the moonlight reflected from the metal harness disks and from the eyes of the horses, who looked round in alarm at the noisy party under the shadow of the porch roof. Natasha, Sonya, Madame Schoss, and two maids got into Nicholas' sleigh; Dimmler, his wife, and Petya, into the old count's, and the rest of the mummers seated themselves in the other two sleighs.
Natacha, who had noted everything, managed so that she, Mme. Schoss, and Dimmler should return in one sleigh, while the maids went with Nicolas and Sonia in another. Nicolas was in no hurry to get home; he could not help looking at Sonia and trying to find under her disguise the true Sonia his Sonia, from whom nothing now could ever part him.
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